"For this week’s update, we wanted to talk to you guys about the big topics that came up during the recent community summit event. The event began with Mike welcoming everyone, and before we get into specific topics, we wanted to relay something he said—that the goal of StarCraft II is not necessarily about making the most widely played game out there, but it is to make the best game that we can. The designers on our team thought this was a really simple yet super clear way to describe our main goal with StarCraft II as we continue to work on Legacy of the Void—make plans for the future of StarCraft II beyond that—and wanted to share with everyone. Now, on to some of the event highlights from our point of view! Overall Summit Thoughts The community summit was an awesome event for many reasons:
Many of the big topics that were on our minds were also on yours, so it was reassuring to feel aligned with pros, casters, influencers, and the general community on what’s important around the world. That said, we can always do better and will keep challenging ourselves here.
Though we discuss regional issues often, it was a good opportunity for the Korea crowd to hear viewpoints from the non-Korea side, and vice versa. It was also a great opportunity to have some of the core members of our game team interact, helping us get a better view of the big picture.
The summit provided a valuable chance to get into more details on and have a more of a discussion than is possible in forum posts and on message boards, which can move slowly and can sometimes come across as one-side. We definitely want this type of back-and-forth interaction, but due to us mostly communicating in text, that’s always a challenge.
Having everyone experience more clearly that there are always opposing sides and multiple viewpoints on topics. This is sometime our team is exposed to a lot due to the nature of our job, but it was cool to have an even bigger crowd of people see that things that are supposedly set in stone and things that are viewed as “everyone agrees with X” or “everyone knows this is how it is” aren’t necessarily so clear cut.
We are so grateful that this group of people was willing to take the time to visit in-person and share their feedback on our direction. Many of them traveled a great distance, and every single one of them contributed to our thinking in a meaningful way—we sincerely appreciate it.
Finally, it was just fun to be around so many people from all around the world who love StarCraft II as much as we do.
As our community team also pointed out, there will be more of these events in the future with a wider range of pros, casters, influencers, and members of the community, and we’re definitely looking forward to them as well.
Game Difficulty Discussion As many of us on the team expected, this proved to be a tough topic. We knew going in there would be clear disagreements, as we’ve been seeing in many places—including individual pro feedback—that the majority of the Korean community disagrees with our goals for Void, while many outside of Korea strongly agree with our direction.
As many of you already know, these are the main goals that our team has for Legacy of the Void:
More action, less down time.
More micro on both sides in engagements.
New ways to show off skill.
Make the game more difficult for pros.
Make the game more approachable to regular players through new features such as Archon Mode and Allied Commanders.
This was easily the biggest topic for the members of the Korean community at this event, and after many discussions with lots of different groups of people, we came out of the conversation with some new angles to potentially approach what we’re doing: Instead of just making the game more difficult for pros across the board, we wanted to also take some passes at exactly where we want the game to be more difficult and where we want to make the game easier. With this line of thought, and when discussing specific areas of focus, we came out with some key takeaways:
Approaching Void’s difficulty isn’t as simple as just saying things like “every unit add and change needs to make the game easier” or “every unit add has to have clear micro/hardcore add to make the game way more difficult to master.” It really depends on a case-by-case basis.
For example: New Terran/Zerg units are a bit easier to use than Protoss because Protoss is currently the slightly easier race to master.
We will explore internally if there are areas of the game require a lot of skill, but don’t show off well, and consider whether these can be simplified.
For example: Creep tumor spreading well is super-easy to spot and notice as the opponent playing against it. However, with spawn larva, it’s very difficult to know if a player is doing well.
Even if we make LotV X% easier, due to the nature of StarCraft II, it will never be the most instantly accessible or easy-to-master game out there. Our focus should be on making sure new players have the necessarily tools and steps they need to become part of the community. Going more into detail:
While a new player might not think the SC2 1v1 experience appears inherently accessible, its rich complexity is a part of what makes it so intriguing—and ultimately engaging.
We can do a better job making the transition for brand-new players easier. For example, I’m completely new to RTSs or SC2. In Void, maybe the flow for getting me into 1v1 looks something like this: Play the campaign; move on to Allied Commanders; try out Training Mode; play some team games with my favorite ally from Allied commanders; try out Archon Mode; and then try 1v1.
We’re not saying that everyone interested in playing SC2 needs to eventually move into 1v1—obviously, we anticipate some Void players will be drawn solely to Allied Commanders, while others will live in team games for years, and that’s great. However, we can make it easier for those interested in every part of SC2 to make the leap from the most accessible part to the most hardcore part—by making it happen in smaller steps.
While we know there aren’t really any solutions in this update, we thought it’d be valuable to share some of the topics we’ll be looking into in more detail in the future. These are challenging issues to address, and we don’t expect any of these big topics to have an easy or quick fix. But we’ll be taking the time, resources, and analysis necessary to really dig into the details around these areas, and your focused, and specific feedback will be greatly appreciated. Thank you for your support, and hopefully you found our perspective on the summit valuable.
We’ve also talked a lot about various popular Protoss topics such as Force Fields, Warp Gates, and Gateway unit strength, but this post has already gone on too long—so we’ll leave that for next week’s update.
In our next update, we’ll be discussing the Protoss in Legacy of the Void more in-depth, so stay tuned!"
Not really sure what to take from that. It's not very concrete, but I guess that's because it's hard to be concrete about these sorts of things. So the big one to take away from this is of course; HELL YEAH THANKS FOR THE UPDATES AND I'M GONNA READ THEM ALL!
I'm REALLY liking these constant updates. Blizz is finally asking themselves the right questions about what makes Starcraft a fun, interesting and challenging game.
On the topic of easy to play, I think one of the core importances is that when a player builds a unit for its core purpose, the unit should fullfill that purpose without needing too much control. The part where micro and skill scaling come in should be to get more efficiency out of what the unit does or use the units abilities and movement and attacks in creative new ways.
One example I like to bring up in that spirit is the ravager corrosive bile shot. A low level player may not have the skill to get the shots of very often and fast enough in a combat, because he has to cycle through selections. But the core idea why anyone would make a ravager is that you use that shot on your opponent's units as often as possible. This is where the unit becomes very hard to implement in your gameplay if you are new, as without the shot, the ravager always ends up a worse choice than easier to use units like zerglings, roaches or hydralisks. Hence, the pure application of the shot onto your opponent's army should be made easier than it is now for lower level players, otherwise they won't draw any use out of that unit. While the usage of the shot to deny forcefields, to zone out opponents by prediciting movement, to find better targets and possibly other applications is the part where the unit should scale depending on skill.
Honestly the main thing I feel the game needs right now, is a collosus rework. Gateways, forcefields, is fine.. Collosus are just boring and lame, and now even weak to the point of useless.. Give us some alternate source of long range AOE.. Honestly, the Liberator ground dmg woulda been amazing on a collosus type unit! (not as powerful but that mechanic of stationary area chosen dmg dealing)
I'm still hesitant Blizzard knows how to make this game as great as its potential is (after DH today, it has amazing moments, reminds me why I love this game) but its a step in the right direction.
I feel like there is some misunderstanding of what Koreans disagree and non-Koreans agree about in Blizzard's goals for LotV. Neither side agrees with Blizzard's implementation, and I feel that is what the issue is.
We need clarification and a particular precision in words to see what exactly is agreed/disagreed.
On July 18 2015 07:58 Big J wrote: On the topic of easy to play, I think one of the core importances is that when a player builds a unit for its core purpose, the unit should fullfill that purpose without needing too much control. The part where micro and skill scaling come in should be to get more efficiency out of what the unit does or use the units abilities and movement and attacks in creative new ways.
One example I like to bring up in that spirit is the ravager corrosive bile shot. A low level player may not have the skill to get the shots of very often and fast enough in a combat, because he has to cycle through selections. But the core idea why anyone would make a ravager is that you use that shot on your opponent's units as often as possible. This is where the unit becomes very hard to implement in your gameplay if you are new, as without the shot, the ravager always ends up a worse choice than easier to use units like zerglings, roaches or hydralisks. Hence, the pure application of the shot onto your opponent's army should be made easier than it is now for lower level players, otherwise they won't draw any use out of that unit. While the usage of the shot to deny forcefields, to zone out opponents by prediciting movement, to find better targets and possibly other applications is the part where the unit should scale depending on skill.
What about Marines vs Banelings? That is the fundamental unit relationship of TvZ, and if you can't split Marines because you're new, the Marine will always lose to the Baneling.
And yet Marine vs Baneling is at the heart of what makes TvZ one of the best MUs in the game.
On July 18 2015 07:58 Big J wrote: On the topic of easy to play, I think one of the core importances is that when a player builds a unit for its core purpose, the unit should fullfill that purpose without needing too much control. The part where micro and skill scaling come in should be to get more efficiency out of what the unit does or use the units abilities and movement and attacks in creative new ways.
One example I like to bring up in that spirit is the ravager corrosive bile shot. A low level player may not have the skill to get the shots of very often and fast enough in a combat, because he has to cycle through selections. But the core idea why anyone would make a ravager is that you use that shot on your opponent's units as often as possible. This is where the unit becomes very hard to implement in your gameplay if you are new, as without the shot, the ravager always ends up a worse choice than easier to use units like zerglings, roaches or hydralisks. Hence, the pure application of the shot onto your opponent's army should be made easier than it is now for lower level players, otherwise they won't draw any use out of that unit. While the usage of the shot to deny forcefields, to zone out opponents by prediciting movement, to find better targets and possibly other applications is the part where the unit should scale depending on skill.
What about Marines vs Banelings? That is the fundamental unit relationship of TvZ, and if you can't split Marines because you're new, the Marine will always lose to the Baneling.
And yet Marine vs Baneling is at the heart of what makes TvZ one of the best MUs in the game.
Unless you build WMs and throw this back to the zerg. He'll either play around it or lose a pack of units each shot.
More micro on both sides in engagements. New ways to show off skill. Make the game more difficult for pros.
His kinda saying the exact same thing here.
Also he indirectly verifies my theory that he doens't know what his job is. His primary goal should be to make it more fun to play. No it doesn't matter if you make it "more difficult for pro's" if becomes less fun for the 99%. And no you can't just tell them to play Allied Commander or whatever if they actually want to play a competitive RTS 1v1.This shows a very unnuanced understanding of his target groups.
But if its unfun to spam Immortal shield and die to build-order losses, that's hurtful to the succes of the game.
On July 18 2015 07:58 Big J wrote: On the topic of easy to play, I think one of the core importances is that when a player builds a unit for its core purpose, the unit should fullfill that purpose without needing too much control. The part where micro and skill scaling come in should be to get more efficiency out of what the unit does or use the units abilities and movement and attacks in creative new ways.
One example I like to bring up in that spirit is the ravager corrosive bile shot. A low level player may not have the skill to get the shots of very often and fast enough in a combat, because he has to cycle through selections. But the core idea why anyone would make a ravager is that you use that shot on your opponent's units as often as possible. This is where the unit becomes very hard to implement in your gameplay if you are new, as without the shot, the ravager always ends up a worse choice than easier to use units like zerglings, roaches or hydralisks. Hence, the pure application of the shot onto your opponent's army should be made easier than it is now for lower level players, otherwise they won't draw any use out of that unit. While the usage of the shot to deny forcefields, to zone out opponents by prediciting movement, to find better targets and possibly other applications is the part where the unit should scale depending on skill.
What about Marines vs Banelings? That is the fundamental unit relationship of TvZ, and if you can't split Marines because you're new, the Marine will always lose to the Baneling.
And yet Marine vs Baneling is at the heart of what makes TvZ one of the best MUs in the game.
Unless you build WMs and throw this back to the zerg. He'll either play around it or lose a pack of units each shot.
I wasn't implying that the relationship is one-sided. I'm just saying that if the Ravager's high skill floor is a problem, then what do we make of the Marine being the core Terran unit in every Terran MU?
The problem isn't having a high skill floor, it's having a selectively high skill floor, where A-moving as a wood league Protoss army is a lot easier than countering that Protoss army with wood league Corrosive Bile. Raise the skill floor all over the place and all new players will suck proportionately.
On July 18 2015 07:58 Big J wrote: On the topic of easy to play, I think one of the core importances is that when a player builds a unit for its core purpose, the unit should fullfill that purpose without needing too much control. The part where micro and skill scaling come in should be to get more efficiency out of what the unit does or use the units abilities and movement and attacks in creative new ways.
One example I like to bring up in that spirit is the ravager corrosive bile shot. A low level player may not have the skill to get the shots of very often and fast enough in a combat, because he has to cycle through selections. But the core idea why anyone would make a ravager is that you use that shot on your opponent's units as often as possible. This is where the unit becomes very hard to implement in your gameplay if you are new, as without the shot, the ravager always ends up a worse choice than easier to use units like zerglings, roaches or hydralisks. Hence, the pure application of the shot onto your opponent's army should be made easier than it is now for lower level players, otherwise they won't draw any use out of that unit. While the usage of the shot to deny forcefields, to zone out opponents by prediciting movement, to find better targets and possibly other applications is the part where the unit should scale depending on skill.
What about Marines vs Banelings? That is the fundamental unit relationship of TvZ, and if you can't split Marines because you're new, the Marine will always lose to the Baneling.
And yet Marine vs Baneling is at the heart of what makes TvZ one of the best MUs in the game.
I'm talking about unit functionality, not who-counters-who without extra control. Does the marine attack on its own? Yes, so it does what you built it for. Functionally that's it. It has one purpose, which is fire its weapon as often as it can. That's what it does without control, great. The part where micro and skill scaling come in should be to get more efficiency out of what the unit does or use the units abilities and movement and attacks in creative new ways. That's what you can do with the marine against the baneling in the form of spliting and kiting to make its core (and only) functionality - attacking enemies - more efficient.
Now take the ravager as comparison. Does the ravager do what you made it for? Well, no, because noone ever gets ravagers with the main purpose of just having it attack with its weapon attack. You always want to spam the corrosive bile ability, that's just how it is designed with the low cooldown and without energy cost.
Nice to hear Blizzard's interpretation of the event; I'd also like to hear from some of the participants, if they had similar experiences and what they learned.
As for difficulty, the thing I am most worried about is complexity creep. Elegant games have simple rules/abilities but complex and subtle interactions, whereas games with tons of spells/abilities/gimmicks are just cluttered and, imo, offputting to newcomers.
Example: Marine vs Baneling, both units are simple enough, but to win the fight either player must understand and leverage the units' respective strengths and weaknesses; and the fight could be close or a blowout. Compare this to the bad old days of Brood Lord/Infestor, or Swarm Hosts - spells, units, and abilities flying every which way but not compelling gameplay at all - the game could be decided in a single fungal or neural in the first case, or only with grinding inexorability in the second.
On July 18 2015 08:58 Big J wrote: Now take the ravager as comparison. Does the ravager do what you made it for? Well, no, because noone ever gets ravagers with the main purpose of just having it attack with its weapon attack. You always want to spam the corrosive bile ability, that's just how it is designed with the low cooldown and without energy cost.
O.K, I'm starting to understand. Just to make sure we're on the same page, what's your take on Disruptors (disregarding their invulnerability)?
More micro on both sides in engagements. New ways to show off skill. Make the game more difficult for pros.
His kinda saying the exact same thing here.
Also he indirectly verifies my theory that he doens't know what his job is. His primary goal should be to make it more fun to play. No it doesn't matter if you make it "more difficult for pro's" if becomes less fun for the 99%. And no you can't just tell them to play Allied Commander or whatever if they actually want to play a competitive RTS 1v1.This shows a very unnuanced understanding of his target groups.
But if its unfun to spam Immortal shield and die to build-order losses, that's hurtful to the succes of the game.
Making the game more difficult for pros does not mean it will be less fun for 99%. 90% will still suck and will be nowhere near the skill ceiling anyway, doesn't matter how hard the game is at the top. For the competitive scene this is a great idea imo. It could actually mean the return of Bonjwas, if a top pro is able to distinguish himself more from other pros than right now in HotS. They just have to be careful not to raise the skill floor too much, but they are aware of that.
On July 18 2015 08:07 purakushi wrote: I feel like there is some misunderstanding of what Koreans disagree and non-Koreans agree about in Blizzard's goals for LotV. Neither side agrees with Blizzard's implementation, and I feel that is what the issue is.
It is a good practice to speak for yourself instead of other people.
The more time I spend playing the LOTV beta I am really enjoying it. The games feel like a tug of war, back and forth... rather than I got my third sniped, now I'm infinitely behind and I'm just waiting for them to push so I can die. I just played two games and at multiple times in the games it looked like either side could win.
*Also for the record, losing in LOTV doesn't feel like total shit where I wanted to break my keyboard in half (the main reason I stopped playing hots was cause it generally felt bad to lose).
More micro on both sides in engagements. New ways to show off skill. Make the game more difficult for pros.
His kinda saying the exact same thing here.
Also he indirectly verifies my theory that he doens't know what his job is. His primary goal should be to make it more fun to play. No it doesn't matter if you make it "more difficult for pro's" if becomes less fun for the 99%. And no you can't just tell them to play Allied Commander or whatever if they actually want to play a competitive RTS 1v1.This shows a very unnuanced understanding of his target groups.
But if its unfun to spam Immortal shield and die to build-order losses, that's hurtful to the succes of the game.
Making the game more difficult for pros does not mean it will be less fun for 99%. 90% will still suck and will be nowhere near the skill ceiling anyway, doesn't matter how hard the game is at the top. For the competitive scene this is a great idea imo. It could actually mean the return of Bonjwas, if a top pro is able to distinguish himself more from other pros than right now in HotS. They just have to be careful not to raise the skill floor too much, but they are aware of that.
It's interesting though, I thought pros playing archon mode kind of demonstrates that they haven't really come close to the skill ceiling for sc2 (I could be wrong here, maybe they are close)? Either way its an interesting point you make.
The updates are really amazing. With weekly updates it feels like a real conversation between devs and players, the entire atmosphere of these talks has shifted since these updates.
Just an Armory that unlocks the ground mode for Liberators with no research is to good + the hellbat push who is already very powerful by itself. There is also no reason to make siege tanks now with the exception of harassing in the early game.
I feel that Terran Mech havent be discovered much and buffing it was the wrong way for Blizz to see more mech play.
I feel like the larger worker count eliminating early game just makes it hell to scout and have more BO wins...
LotV is fun sure, but there is nagging feeling in mind that it is just new game buzz. The changes dont sit all that right with siege tank drops and disruptor with adepts and all. glad David kim s sharing with this forum but we shall have to see the result
Glad to see they're addressing Protoss in at least some capacity. Glad to have the updates and at least get a glimpse of the thought process going on with the SC2 team.
Regarding getting players into SC2, please, Blizzard, please, don't neglect the pulling power of the Arcade. It's been a cornerstone of SC since StarCraft was invented, and even during those glorious days I was in C+ trying to bust my way into B- I'd still dedicate a few hours every night at the end of laddering to unwind and play Heaven's Final Hour, BGH (not really UMS, but Phantom Mode is!), all sorts of tower defence games, SAT Control (still working on the remake)... the list goes on and on and on.
When I'm trying to sell my friends, coworkers, etc. on this game, Arcade is a really strong point. I can basically say, "Look, when you buy this game for $40, what you're really getting is the game plus all these other games made and maintained by the community - Tower Defense, our own brand of MOBAs, zombie survival maps... fucking third person shooters are a thing in SC2!" Because every game, at some point, will wear you out. Maybe after a week of playing, maybe after a year, maybe after three minutes. But here's a bunch of cool other games that are way less competitive. And here's a bunch of games that are just as competitive, like Star Battle. Or a good Heaven's match.
Hell, the most actively played game on Steam is the sequel to a WC3 arcade map.
Anyways, there's a lot of strides you've already taken with Arcade. The open games queue is the best tool, although I'd say it should be the default. But even now, with Arcade being free for Starter Edition users, I don't see a lot of encouragement for new or returning users to play on it when it's such a natural way to get used to the SC2 environment. A lot of the most popular maps are low-intensity versions of StarCraft II multiplayer (like Phantom Mode or Observer maps). Maybe we'll see 2v2, 3v3, FFA, and 3-players-per-force archonmode maps spring up, or for the players who don't like the economy, we'll see the return of money maps - a StarCraft II version of Big Game Hunters, but more popular than the existing versions we have today. And those players are potentially going to want to make the jump to bigger and better things, and buy the full version of the game.
I love what the Blizzard team is doing with archonmode and allied commanders, and I fully support their efforts in finding new and exciting ways to get people into StarCraft II, but I don't want them to forget that their community does that organically through Arcade.
On July 18 2015 09:49 jinjin5000 wrote: I feel like the larger worker count eliminating early game just makes it hell to scout and have more BO wins...
LotV is fun sure, but there is nagging feeling in mind that it is just new game buzz. The changes dont sit all that right with siege tank drops and disruptor with adepts and all. glad David kim s sharing with this forum but we shall have to see the result
Thankfully, he's presenting what sound like actionable items soon, so we might be able to see what they're planning on doing with respect to your comment (and Canata's) and all the non-Korean progamers'.
On July 18 2015 09:51 [UoN]Sentinel wrote:
Hell, the most actively played game on Steam is a polished version of a WC3 arcade map.
Ooookay hahaha it's not quite that simple, Valve put a lot of work into polishing it to the point where I think we need a stronger word for that.
On July 18 2015 09:49 jinjin5000 wrote: I feel like the larger worker count eliminating early game just makes it hell to scout and have more BO wins...
LotV is fun sure, but there is nagging feeling in mind that it is just new game buzz. The changes dont sit all that right with siege tank drops and disruptor with adepts and all. glad David kim s sharing with this forum but we shall have to see the result
Thankfully, he's presenting what sound like actionable items soon, so we might be able to see what they're planning on doing with respect to your comment (and Canata's) and all the non-Korean progamers'.
Hell, the most actively played game on Steam is a polished version of a WC3 arcade map.
Ooookay hahaha it's not quite that simple, Valve put a lot of work into polishing it to the point where I think we need a stronger word for that.
Fair enough, although the core gameplay (including most of the champions/stats) is virtually unchanged. Like I played Dota for a while, picked up Dota 2 not too long ago, and got right into it. For instance the Pudge of Dota 2 plays almost exactly like the Pudge of Dota 1.
But it all started with DotA, and even before Valve and Riot came along, there were tournaments and a pro scene for DotA. And you can go even further back and credit this whole thing to the StarCraft 1 UMS Aeon of Strife.
On July 18 2015 09:49 jinjin5000 wrote: I feel like the larger worker count eliminating early game just makes it hell to scout and have more BO wins...
LotV is fun sure, but there is nagging feeling in mind that it is just new game buzz. The changes dont sit all that right with siege tank drops and disruptor with adepts and all. glad David kim s sharing with this forum but we shall have to see the result
Thankfully, he's presenting what sound like actionable items soon, so we might be able to see what they're planning on doing with respect to your comment (and Canata's) and all the non-Korean progamers'.
On July 18 2015 09:51 [UoN]Sentinel wrote:
Hell, the most actively played game on Steam is a polished version of a WC3 arcade map.
Ooookay hahaha it's not quite that simple, Valve put a lot of work into polishing it to the point where I think we need a stronger word for that.
Fair enough, although the core gameplay (including most of the champions/stats) is virtually unchanged. Like I played Dota for a while, picked up Dota 2 not too long ago, and got right into it. For instance the Pudge of Dota 2 plays almost exactly like the Pudge of Dota 1.
But it all started with DotA, and even before Valve and Riot came along, there were tournaments and a pro scene for DotA. And you can go even further back and credit this whole thing to the StarCraft 1 UMS Aeon of Strife.
I absolutely agree, but I still maintain that we need a stronger word than "polish."
On July 18 2015 09:49 jinjin5000 wrote: I feel like the larger worker count eliminating early game just makes it hell to scout and have more BO wins...
LotV is fun sure, but there is nagging feeling in mind that it is just new game buzz. The changes dont sit all that right with siege tank drops and disruptor with adepts and all. glad David kim s sharing with this forum but we shall have to see the result
Thankfully, he's presenting what sound like actionable items soon, so we might be able to see what they're planning on doing with respect to your comment (and Canata's) and all the non-Korean progamers'.
On July 18 2015 09:51 [UoN]Sentinel wrote:
Hell, the most actively played game on Steam is a polished version of a WC3 arcade map.
Ooookay hahaha it's not quite that simple, Valve put a lot of work into polishing it to the point where I think we need a stronger word for that.
Fair enough, although the core gameplay (including most of the champions/stats) is virtually unchanged. Like I played Dota for a while, picked up Dota 2 not too long ago, and got right into it. For instance the Pudge of Dota 2 plays almost exactly like the Pudge of Dota 1.
But it all started with DotA, and even before Valve and Riot came along, there were tournaments and a pro scene for DotA. And you can go even further back and credit this whole thing to the StarCraft 1 UMS Aeon of Strife.
I absolutely agree, but I still maintain that we need a stronger word than "polish."
So the one thing I wanted to hear about isn't until next week T_T.
Really hoping Blizzard will make radical changes to Force Fields, Warp Gates, and Gateway unit strength but I refuse to get my hopes up I imagine nothing will happen in this regard, but I am hoping to be proved wrong.
We’ve also talked a lot about various popular Protoss topics such as Force Fields, Warp Gates, and Gateway unit strength, but this post has already gone on too long—so we’ll leave that for next week’s update.
In our next update, we’ll be discussing the Protoss in Legacy of the Void more in-depth, so stay tuned!"
On July 18 2015 11:44 BisuDagger wrote: Sounds like a fun meeting. Of course, I'm sure my invite was lost in the mail. Feel free to PM me for my correct address blizzard.
They probably sent it to Bisu, but Bisu didn't show up because he was scared the army recruiter would be looking for him there.
On July 18 2015 11:44 BisuDagger wrote: Sounds like a fun meeting. Of course, I'm sure my invite was lost in the mail. Feel free to PM me for my correct address blizzard.
They probably sent it to Bisu, but Bisu didn't show up because he was scared the army recruiter would be looking for him there.
On July 18 2015 11:44 BisuDagger wrote: Sounds like a fun meeting. Of course, I'm sure my invite was lost in the mail. Feel free to PM me for my correct address blizzard.
They probably sent it to Bisu, but Bisu didn't show up because he was scared the army recruiter would be looking for him there.
He got an extension at least :D
He should move to France and train all the French SC/SC2 players in exchange for asylum.
I hope they don't take away warpgate and forcefields, I like Protoss as is and I feel that if they do something to drastic we might end up with something worse. It always seems like those that complain the loudest just doesn't even play the game, which I guess is natural but there's people also who like it as it is and we'll suffer if they change it.
Complexity arising out of Simplicity! Not complexity arising out of complexity. This is the formula for any competition that is popular.
Very simple concept. Blizz needs to understand this, before they can really make the game better.
This concept applies especially to Archon Mode and Allied Commander, which don't necessarily make the game easier to play, because the key to playing these modes is good communication with your ally. Further, is it really fun when someone else does all the cool things for you and you don't know whats going on?
Also, there is hardly any downtime in SC2. Take LoL the most popular game in the world... its like 4-5 minutes before anything significant happens. Take Hots, that first scout counts for a lot. I think Blizz is confusing excitement with importance. A lot of important things happen in the first 2-3 min of HOTs, not a lot of exciting things happen.
On July 18 2015 12:07 Firkraag8 wrote: I hope they don't take away warpgate and forcefields, I like Protoss as is and I feel that if they do something to drastic we might end up with something worse. It always seems like those that complain the loudest just doesn't even play the game, which I guess is natural but there's people also who like it as it is and we'll suffer if they change it.
It definitely seems that way, if they change forcefields/gateways it'll be because the zerg players / bad players who just can't learn to beat it are complaining, Its not a way to work on balancing a game, look at the winrates and professional scene instead. I don't see a lack of zergs winning top tournaments nor do I see an overwhelming number of Protoss winning major touranments.
The only thing protoss needs is a major reworking of the collosus. Gateway is fine and forcefields are fine also if ANY zerg player would build a ravager (the counter to FF) or you know, do like the korean pros and maybe not get caught out of position??? or roach burrow. Without FF, the protoss gateway army is too weak to fight even zerglings alone.
On July 18 2015 12:07 Firkraag8 wrote: I hope they don't take away warpgate and forcefields, I like Protoss as is and I feel that if they do something to drastic we might end up with something worse. It always seems like those that complain the loudest just doesn't even play the game, which I guess is natural but there's people also who like it as it is and we'll suffer if they change it.
It definitely seems that way, if they change forcefields/gateways it'll be because the zerg players / bad players who just can't learn to beat it are complaining, Its not a way to work on balancing a game, look at the winrates and professional scene instead. I don't see a lack of zergs winning top tournaments nor do I see an overwhelming number of Protoss winning major touranments.
The only thing protoss needs is a major reworking of the collosus. Gateway is fine and forcefields are fine also if ANY zerg player would build a ravager (the counter to FF) or you know, do like the korean pros and maybe not get caught out of position??? or roach burrow. Without FF, the protoss gateway army is too weak to fight even zerglings alone.
You misunderstand, the biggest complaint seem to be designwise where they want to get rid of warpgate and forcefields in order to let Protoss have stronger gateway units. So it's not about balance necessarily but design. Either way I don't agree with them, both warpgate and forcefields are cool.
While a new player might not think the SC2 1v1 experience appears inherently accessible, its rich complexity is a part of what makes it so intriguing—and ultimately engaging.
We can do a better job making the transition for brand-new players easier. For example, I’m completely new to RTSs or SC2. In Void, maybe the flow for getting me into 1v1 looks something like this: Play the campaign; move on to Allied Commanders; try out Training Mode; play some team games with my favorite ally from Allied commanders; try out Archon Mode; and then try 1v1.
We’re not saying that everyone interested in playing SC2 needs to eventually move into 1v1—obviously, we anticipate some Void players will be drawn solely to Allied Commanders, while others will live in team games for years, and that’s great. However, we can make it easier for those interested in every part of SC2 to make the leap from the most accessible part to the most hardcore part—by making it happen in smaller steps.
What. The. Fuck. How is this thinking possible?
SC2, at it's heart, is a 1v1 game. It's a (fun) competitive game based on learning how the races and matchups and interactions work; the rest is extraneous. I'm not saying this because I believe 1v1 is the only way to play, but because the game has been marketed and branded this way since its inception, and it makes no sense to expect that the richest part of a player's experience is going to be building confidence to play a single NORMAL game of SC2. Even if I'm brand new to an RTS, my goal when downloading an RTS is to play an RTS.
For example, if I download Minesweeper, I may not know the rules or how to play, but I can immediately jump into the game, learn little bits and pieces, and quickly master the game. If I download League of Legends, I can immediately jump into a blind pick game and begin learning the basics of how to play against real people without much stress. But in SC2, it's EXPECTED that I'll need to spend several days or weeks just building up enough knowledge and confidence to play a standard game of SC2? Why is the game so hard that a brand new player literally cannot play the game they downloaded?
I appreciate the work towards creating a game that helps new players transition, and I especially appreciate these constant updates. But I personally think it's absolutely flawed that the game has such tight transitions and punishing mechanics that new players are expected to fail, get frustrated, and leave without some sort of alternative gaming safety net.
While a new player might not think the SC2 1v1 experience appears inherently accessible, its rich complexity is a part of what makes it so intriguing—and ultimately engaging.
We can do a better job making the transition for brand-new players easier. For example, I’m completely new to RTSs or SC2. In Void, maybe the flow for getting me into 1v1 looks something like this: Play the campaign; move on to Allied Commanders; try out Training Mode; play some team games with my favorite ally from Allied commanders; try out Archon Mode; and then try 1v1.
We’re not saying that everyone interested in playing SC2 needs to eventually move into 1v1—obviously, we anticipate some Void players will be drawn solely to Allied Commanders, while others will live in team games for years, and that’s great. However, we can make it easier for those interested in every part of SC2 to make the leap from the most accessible part to the most hardcore part—by making it happen in smaller steps.
What. The. Fuck. How is this thinking possible?
SC2, at it's heart, is a 1v1 game. It's a (fun) competitive game based on learning how the races and matchups and interactions work; the rest is extraneous. I'm not saying this because I believe 1v1 is the only way to play, but because the game has been marketed and branded this way since its inception, and it makes no sense to expect that the richest part of a player's experience is going to be building confidence to play a single NORMAL game of SC2. Even if I'm brand new to an RTS, my goal when downloading an RTS is to play an RTS.
For example, if I download Minesweeper, I may not know the rules or how to play, but I can immediately jump into the game, learn little bits and pieces, and quickly master the game. If I download League of Legends, I can immediately jump into a blind pick game and begin learning the basics of how to play against real people without much stress. But in SC2, it's EXPECTED that I'll need to spend several days or weeks just building up enough knowledge and confidence to play a standard game of SC2? Why is the game so hard that a brand new player literally cannot play the game they downloaded?
I appreciate the work towards creating a game that helps new players transition, and I especially appreciate these constant updates. But I personally think it's absolutely flawed that the game has such tight transitions and punishing mechanics that new players are expected to fail, get frustrated, and leave without some sort of alternative gaming safety net.
Took me nearly three years to win a game of multiplayer in Brood War.
Used to be, you play the campaign, learn how all the units work, maybe play against the AI, and then hop in. Now the campaign is too radically different, and the meta shifts all the time from what the AI is capable of (was true in BW as well), so you introduce steps to make it more fun. Team games (archonmode), then eventually work up the strength to 1v1.
When I made the switch to SC2 and had no idea what I was doing anymore, I ended up being the same way. Start with team games, 2v2's and 4v4's, learning some builds, then hopping into 1v1 and starting my slog back to greatness.
I feel really numb... I want to help, but my threads on the Bnet forums are ignored ("Blizz reads, but does not necessarily post in every thread"). Now only the "relevant" persons are invited to this event; how can I, as a normal player, help or make a difference in the game design process? I never get any feedback, the best I can hope for is that Blizz just fixes the stuff without any comment. They made the patching process more transparent, why are they not doing it here? Especially with the long term plans, I still dont know what they want to do.
- So you want new players to have 500apm ? or current players to double their apm ? why ? to increase carpel tunnel incidence ?
More micro on both sides in engagements.
- So you want new players to have 500apm ? or current players to double their apm ? why ? to increase carpel tunnel incidence ? There already is alot of micro.
New ways to show off skill.
- Design a better game, and the skill will show. If the game is about timings and worker killing, what room is there for 'showing off skill' , or is that already 'showing off skill' ? Clarify what you mean 'showing off skill'.
Make the game more difficult for pros.
- Why ? The game is 'difficult' enough, requiring hands to be replaced by cybernetic hands that dont tire is the goal ?
Make the game more approachable to regular players through new features such as Archon Mode and Allied Commanders.
More micro on both sides in engagements. New ways to show off skill. Make the game more difficult for pros.
His kinda saying the exact same thing here.
Also he indirectly verifies my theory that he doens't know what his job is. His primary goal should be to make it more fun to play. No it doesn't matter if you make it "more difficult for pro's" if becomes less fun for the 99%. And no you can't just tell them to play Allied Commander or whatever if they actually want to play a competitive RTS 1v1.This shows a very unnuanced understanding of his target groups.
But if its unfun to spam Immortal shield and die to build-order losses, that's hurtful to the succes of the game.
Making the game more difficult for pros does not mean it will be less fun for 99%. 90% will still suck and will be nowhere near the skill ceiling anyway, doesn't matter how hard the game is at the top. For the competitive scene this is a great idea imo. It could actually mean the return of Bonjwas, if a top pro is able to distinguish himself more from other pros than right now in HotS. They just have to be careful not to raise the skill floor too much, but they are aware of that.
My complaint is that the "make the game more enjoyable" isn't on the list at all on all when it should be the main/most important of them all. How hard the game is for progamers is imo completely irrelevant. What matters for the esports-side is that the game is fun to watch. This can be created through great micro interactions and strategic diversity rather than forcing APM for the sake of APM.
As an example of something unfun: Dying to an Oracle in the base because you only had 5 Marines instead of 6. David Kim on the other hand likes it because it "increases action".
David Kim directly made the game less enjoyable when he reversed the ebay requirement for turrets.
Instead, here is how I would write the goals.
Main goal: More fun playing experience for the majority of the 1v1 playerbase: Sub goal: Make the game very enjoyable to watch.
How to accomplish it: - Reduce the impact of having the wrong build order so the game becomes more forgiving without having super optimized build orders/scouting patterns. - Creating more micro interactions that rewards unit movement instead of button pressing for the sake of button pressing. - Get rid of the areas where the game gets overly complicated in terms of mechanics (e.g. control groups/too many units with abilities where it isn't needed). - Add more options in terms of playstyles where each playstyle plays out very differently (e.g. mobility based vs positionaly based). - Make all units and upgrades viable + they should have different advantages and disadvantages --> As few choices as possible are "must do's". - Minimize periods where nothing happens/getting rid of turtle playstyles where the army can't attack into you (note: this doesn't mean a positionally/defensive style shouldn't be possible, but it should contain more army trading).
On July 18 2015 13:09 SC2John wrote: What. The. Fuck. How is this thinking possible?
i agree with Blizzard's thinking completely as far as how people flow into 1v1s. This is not new thinking. Sigaty has outlined this thinking many times during the development of WoL.
i came from playing Campaign Mode Starcraft64 for the N64. most of the little group of noobs in my school started off this way as well... either N64 campaign or PC SC1 Campaign
While a new player might not think the SC2 1v1 experience appears inherently accessible, its rich complexity is a part of what makes it so intriguing—and ultimately engaging.
We can do a better job making the transition for brand-new players easier. For example, I’m completely new to RTSs or SC2. In Void, maybe the flow for getting me into 1v1 looks something like this: Play the campaign; move on to Allied Commanders; try out Training Mode; play some team games with my favorite ally from Allied commanders; try out Archon Mode; and then try 1v1.
We’re not saying that everyone interested in playing SC2 needs to eventually move into 1v1—obviously, we anticipate some Void players will be drawn solely to Allied Commanders, while others will live in team games for years, and that’s great. However, we can make it easier for those interested in every part of SC2 to make the leap from the most accessible part to the most hardcore part—by making it happen in smaller steps.
What. The. Fuck. How is this thinking possible?
SC2, at it's heart, is a 1v1 game. It's a (fun) competitive game based on learning how the races and matchups and interactions work; the rest is extraneous. I'm not saying this because I believe 1v1 is the only way to play, but because the game has been marketed and branded this way since its inception, and it makes no sense to expect that the richest part of a player's experience is going to be building confidence to play a single NORMAL game of SC2. Even if I'm brand new to an RTS, my goal when downloading an RTS is to play an RTS.
For example, if I download Minesweeper, I may not know the rules or how to play, but I can immediately jump into the game, learn little bits and pieces, and quickly master the game. If I download League of Legends, I can immediately jump into a blind pick game and begin learning the basics of how to play against real people without much stress. But in SC2, it's EXPECTED that I'll need to spend several days or weeks just building up enough knowledge and confidence to play a standard game of SC2? Why is the game so hard that a brand new player literally cannot play the game they downloaded?
I appreciate the work towards creating a game that helps new players transition, and I especially appreciate these constant updates. But I personally think it's absolutely flawed that the game has such tight transitions and punishing mechanics that new players are expected to fail, get frustrated, and leave without some sort of alternative gaming safety net.
That's actually how I got into 1v1. I know most of my fds did also except for one who never got into 1v1. We were never into 1v1 rts game except among ourselves before and it was great to have team ranked ladder for us to get better together and eventually play against each other and 1v1 ladder.
More micro on both sides in engagements. New ways to show off skill. Make the game more difficult for pros.
His kinda saying the exact same thing here.
Also he indirectly verifies my theory that he doens't know what his job is. His primary goal should be to make it more fun to play. No it doesn't matter if you make it "more difficult for pro's" if becomes less fun for the 99%. And no you can't just tell them to play Allied Commander or whatever if they actually want to play a competitive RTS 1v1.This shows a very unnuanced understanding of his target groups.
We usually disagree... but here we are in total agreement.
David Kim doesn't understand that making it more difficult for pro's makes the game more difficult for everyone.
UMS is central to player acclimation and longevity (like when you're bored of ranked).
On July 18 2015 07:22 SetGuitarsToKill wrote:
[*]Make the game more difficult for pros.
I like the rest of the rhetoric except this line. SC2 is already pretty damn hard, even for pros. It's more about making micro interactions digestible. There is plenty of skill cap left unexplored, but the window of micro expression can be broadened, if I were to glean anything from Razzia or Depth of Micro or BW and SC2: Pathing.
Blue balling us on that Toss and Cyclone stuff. Let it be stupid, it's okay.
More micro on both sides in engagements. New ways to show off skill. Make the game more difficult for pros.
His kinda saying the exact same thing here.
Also he indirectly verifies my theory that he doens't know what his job is. His primary goal should be to make it more fun to play. No it doesn't matter if you make it "more difficult for pro's" if becomes less fun for the 99%. And no you can't just tell them to play Allied Commander or whatever if they actually want to play a competitive RTS 1v1.This shows a very unnuanced understanding of his target groups.
We usually disagree... but here we are in total agreement.
David Kim doesn't understand that making it more difficult for pro's makes the game more difficult for everyone.
Yeh, though it depends how you make the game more difficult. If you make a lot of great microinteractions with counterplay while increasing the defenders advantage (so there is something to fall back on --> the game becomes more forgiving), the game will be more enjoyable for the majority of the target group.
But the skillcap is also increased as you always can get better at microing your units. When its counterbased you micro you units in relation to what the enemy is doing. If the enemy is doing X really well, then you can respond by doing Y even better and he needs to do X even even better.... etc. So the skillcap of proper micro interactions is almost infinitive.
But when the games become more difficult in terms of "i have to press an extra button every 10th second" or " i need to scout for 6 different things and time everything out perfectly or I die" --> the game becomes harder in the wrong way.
Updates still great. Better keep applauding them, Blizzard finally gets up to page when it comes to handling the community. Now it's excellent they're focusing on making the game harder because see, I don't think making SC2 more accessible and casual-friently is going to lead anywhere, the RTS genre is just not popular enough. The only way to get a real audience for SC2 is to make it a BW-like niche : an area of elite skill and excellence (which it really isn't right now) that could, eventually, find its way and keep the fire burning.
Am i the only one who is a bit disappointed in Blizz still having this archaic approach of wanting more micro and simplier macro in a game that is supposed to be about strategy and not APM? I do not want to sound like a jerkass, but there was some clear reason why BW was a way more acclaimed and played game than WC3, and i find difficoult how anyone could think that moving the micro vs macro bar toward the micro, like WC3 did, is going to benefit the game. We need less fancy explosion and more strategic depth in our goddamn strategy game. I'm thinking that people, including blizz, focus exclusively on units, forgetting that there is supposed to be an entire other half about the game, named structures. I know it's too late for this but how about adding 1 less unit to each race and instead coming up with a new interesting building that adds depth to the macro/base defense/positional warfare? Someone already inconsciusly come to that exact conclusion seeing how much support had pseudo-structure units like the combat barricade et similia. Unfortunatly it too late to hope for this kind of shift in mentality, since they already committed to this unit bloat we have but it would have been awesome to see it.
Sounds like the Koreans really hammered in that units don't all need active abilities. LotV protoss for example isn't fun to play at all currently, because everything has its active ability you need to use perfectly or you die. That was a problem in the past (relying on good forcefields/storms) and that's the part of protoss that needs to be phased out, not increased.
Thank god Blizzard is being more and more open-minded. Protoss is the race with the most design flaws and the most issues people are talking about don't even apply for other races like the whole too many abilities thing. Really fuck Protoss.
On July 18 2015 12:07 Firkraag8 wrote: I hope they don't take away warpgate and forcefields, I like Protoss as is and I feel that if they do something to drastic we might end up with something worse. It always seems like those that complain the loudest just doesn't even play the game, which I guess is natural but there's people also who like it as it is and we'll suffer if they change it.
It definitely seems that way, if they change forcefields/gateways it'll be because the zerg players / bad players who just can't learn to beat it are complaining, Its not a way to work on balancing a game, look at the winrates and professional scene instead. I don't see a lack of zergs winning top tournaments nor do I see an overwhelming number of Protoss winning major touranments.
The only thing protoss needs is a major reworking of the collosus. Gateway is fine and forcefields are fine also if ANY zerg player would build a ravager (the counter to FF) or you know, do like the korean pros and maybe not get caught out of position??? or roach burrow. Without FF, the protoss gateway army is too weak to fight even zerglings alone.
You misunderstand, the biggest complaint seem to be designwise where they want to get rid of warpgate and forcefields in order to let Protoss have stronger gateway units. So it's not about balance necessarily but design. Either way I don't agree with them, both warpgate and forcefields are cool.
Why everyboby seems to think gateway units are too weak? In PvZ, Protoss does not even bother to make Colosus as blink stalkers sentries and HT can compete with everything zerg until maybe ultras and brood'lords composition
On July 18 2015 12:07 Firkraag8 wrote: I hope they don't take away warpgate and forcefields, I like Protoss as is and I feel that if they do something to drastic we might end up with something worse. It always seems like those that complain the loudest just doesn't even play the game, which I guess is natural but there's people also who like it as it is and we'll suffer if they change it.
It definitely seems that way, if they change forcefields/gateways it'll be because the zerg players / bad players who just can't learn to beat it are complaining, Its not a way to work on balancing a game, look at the winrates and professional scene instead. I don't see a lack of zergs winning top tournaments nor do I see an overwhelming number of Protoss winning major touranments.
The only thing protoss needs is a major reworking of the collosus. Gateway is fine and forcefields are fine also if ANY zerg player would build a ravager (the counter to FF) or you know, do like the korean pros and maybe not get caught out of position??? or roach burrow. Without FF, the protoss gateway army is too weak to fight even zerglings alone.
You misunderstand, the biggest complaint seem to be designwise where they want to get rid of warpgate and forcefields in order to let Protoss have stronger gateway units. So it's not about balance necessarily but design. Either way I don't agree with them, both warpgate and forcefields are cool.
Why everyboby seems to think gateway units are too weak? In PvZ, Protoss does not even bother to make Colosus as blink stalkers sentries and HT can compete with everything zerg until maybe ultras and brood'lords composition
I do not want to sound like a jerkass, but there was some clear reason why BW was a way more acclaimed and played game than WC3, and i find difficoult how anyone could think that moving the micro vs macro bar toward the micro, like WC3 did,
There is a reason MOBA's are more popular and that's because people prefer micro. The people who like building supply depots are by far in the minority. And BW had required more APM than sc2, so your example doens't make a whole lot of sense.
Keep in mind that from classic SC1 to BW, Terran gained 3 abilities through medic, Protoss gained 4 abilities through Dark Archon and Corsair. I honestly don't see why there is such a negative backlash. Miss a single dark swarm in ZvP/T over the course of a whole game? You just lost your third / fourth and lost. Bad siege / unsiege in TvP or mine laying? Dead. Botch 1 storm vs 3-5 hatch hydra push? Dead.
Honestly people's expectations are way different than it was years ago. 10 years ago "having fun" in BW included making a spawning pool at any time between 6-9 workers and making some lings, or trying to get a tank sieged up in time vs Protoss. Now everybody EXPECTS people to have build orders and timings and know the unit compositions to even play 1v1 "properly". Truth is you CAN just go into 1v1 with out know anything about the game, but you would be a bronze noob just like a E/D- noob on iccup. It's not just a case of Blizzard wanting to structure how players have fun, it's the community as well. Nobody even wants to talk to the Bronze - Gold noobie, referring them instead to "just learn to macro" or "learn a build order".
Now people whine when they miss a forcefield, or fail to notice a harassing unit on their minimap, or lost to an extremely specific build order counter. In BW you forget to sim city your natural on any number of specific maps properly as terran or protoss and just die to 6 lings. People are just more keen to blame it on the active abilities rather than the passive because it's much more visual and they attribute their loses to it, when nothing fundamentally changed about RTS's for decades. Call me a weirdo but I actually found the active abilities in BW more rewarding than SC2 because they are arguably MORE DIFFICULT to use due to lack of smart casting.
"the goal of StarCraft II is not necessarily about making the most widely played game out there, but it is to make the best game that we can."
As long as they have this goal, I am happy. A good game is not necessarily the game I like the most. But a good game might offers greater rewards for getting better at it.
The more I read of these updates, the less convinced I am they'll be able to do any major changes with the expansion. They're so locked in on the mentality that they're right with everything they do, that any changes where they give in to community pressure is a badly shoehorned in compromise. I think this quote summarise it quite nicely:
As many of us on the team expected, this proved to be a tough topic. We knew going in there would be clear disagreements, as we’ve been seeing in many places—including individual pro feedback—that the majority of the Korean community disagrees with our goals for Void, while many outside of Korea strongly agree with our direction.
I really haven't seen any people strongly agree with the direction they're taking. At most I see people going "stop complaining, there's still lots of time left of beta". When pros disagree with their design goals, that are essentially created for the esport-crowd, you'd better listen instead of dismissing the people that has the deepest knowledge and most playtime; if even they dislike artificially making the game harder, it sure as hell won't bring in new players. They really need to be more flexible with their design goals, because this rigidity and pride has been a problem since WoL.
@Caihead: I honestly don't see why you expect players that probably do not play BW (anymore) to want things to be like BW. These "justify things by showing how they were in broodwar and noone complaint there"-arguments are getting so tiring. I couldn't give any fuck about how others liked what was in broodwar. What I give a fuck about is how my game plays right now and what conclusion I can draw for the future developments of this game. And excessive amounts of active abilities is something I don't like in STARCRAFT 2. I already don't enjoy playing with 2 different active caster units (e.g. Infestor+Viper, or ghost+raven) in one army, even less 3 (infestor+viper+queen) and I can't see my fun in STARCRAFT 2 increase by also having to implement active skills on more non-caster units into my play.
I don't mind their goals with LoTV but having a faster pace due to econ and more active abilities just removes the small strategy that existed in bronze to plat. The S part from RTS is being phased out I feel and will be exclusively for pros. I won't watch pros play a video game I don't play myself. E-sport isn't at the level of physical sports in that way.
big different between a spell such as forcefield to, which are used in atleast two matchups which the race relies upon 100% versus medic restoration which are only used vs ensnare for example
I do not want to sound like a jerkass, but there was some clear reason why BW was a way more acclaimed and played game than WC3, and i find difficoult how anyone could think that moving the micro vs macro bar toward the micro, like WC3 did,
There is a reason MOBA's are more popular and that's because people prefer micro. The people who like building supply depots are by far in the minority. And BW had required more APM than sc2, so your example doens't make a whole lot of sense.
Reason because MOBA are more populare it's because of the sense of immersion and personification that comes from playing a single strong dude ala classic RPG, fused togheter with a sense of progression from levelling up and buying equips/unlocking skills ecc. Basically, it's the charm of RPGs, witch are way more popular than RTSs. On top of that you have the "even playfield" of having a fresh start in each game in stark contrast with pvp in most other RPGs where the one with more hour of play has better equip and it's going to wipe your ass. Micro has absolutely no relevance in MOBAs popularity.
And APM =/= micro, actually mostly the opposite since the vast majority of the APMs are used to keep up in production or exanding behind the push. Actual combat does not require all that much APMs, unless you start packing each and every unit with actives, like the way SC2 did. In fact, average APM was higher in BW than WC3. Witch is one other point to the similaritys between SC2 and WC3, contrasted with the different approach of BW.
TL,DR: most of the APM goes to macro, of witch SC2 in lacking compared to BW. And it is my opinion that is one of reason why it's success is dwindling.
Even when the changes are something I don't like, I do like that Blizzard has a backbone when it comes to decisiveness, and it makes me feel everything will work out in the end.
2007scape fell apart because everything was done by community vote, so now it has broken minigames and implemented splashing (where you cast spells for 0 damage and farm xp while AFK) while other cool features like quests and other content are pushed aside since a lot of people just want enhanced PvP with more experience gain. I'd rather just go with Blizzard's vision for the game, offer feedback on the updates, and hope they take the advice, but ultimately leave the fate of the game to the people responsible for making it.
Things that seem OP right now, people will figure out builds to beat them. And there's only been 3 balance updates so far - there'll definitely be more as Blizzard puts more people into the beta. Everything is going to be ok.
Interesting read. I wouldt still love it if they at least confirmed they had a somewhat unified game design goal as far as units and skills go. They still keep contradicting which way they want to go on a unit to unit basis. If they want to do it that way its fine, but its a little annoying when they will/wont make a change and declare that the reasoning is that its good or bad for the game. Then days later they change something that directly contradicts that.
It leaves me feeling confused and a little put off since they cant seem to figure out which way they want things. Just be clear its on a unit and skill basis and I think most people would understand, but I truly am tired of reading about how they dont want to remove player agency one week while implementing a change that does exactly that the next.
"I'll believe it when I see it." I seent it.. We all seent it. A benefit of flying us out there under NDA is they can show the community members, people you hopefully trust, what they are working on. Then we can come back and say "things are looking awesome" without Blizzard having to put out unfinished information. THEY DIDN'T ASK US TO DO/SAY NICE THINGS. I'm doing it of my own volition because I think it's a benefit to our community if you guys know that good things are happening. As I said the other day, Blizzard doesn't like to announce things without them being all but ready to launch. It does more harm than good when there are delays and it is a mistake they hate making. TL;DR: We weren't just told about good things happening. We saw tangible evidence.
A call to action for players:
The last thing I would like to say, ALL OF YOU, including PROS - if you have Beta access you need to start playing Legacy of the Void. WCS is over for 2015 and there are very few big events left. Participate in the online cups that run Legacy of the Void (full transparency: I run one and I'm not saying this just to get more participation). David Kim and his fellow developers watch those events to gather data. They need you to make a meta, break the meta, and build a new one. So do the team and our community a favor and start grinding ladder games, playing in tournaments, using the new units and helping to make LotV the game we all want it to be.
The dev team for SC2 is huge (not including the even bigger support the game receives from other Blizzard divisions).
That's actually a relief. I remember WoL at one point had like 40 people working on it, I thought since SC2 isn't the most profitable Blizzard game it would have a few dozen people maintaining it. Combined with:
The dev team will remain 100% SC2 after LotV launches
I have high hopes for the future of the beta. And of course the game.
You will all shit your fucking pants before the end of 2015
Hopefully the season ending around Blizzcon has something to do with this. The announcement of LotV was earthshattering. If they can build half that hype I'll preorder on the spot (assuming they don't do some sort of flash release).
And:
Blizzard has heard your feedback and is doing a FUCK TON more than "hearing you and considering it."
I guess NDA's make sense there. We're not the most positive bunch, but if this is true, then I'll take back anything I spoke ill of Blizz when it comes to this beta.
EDIT:
On July 19 2015 03:08 TiberiusAk wrote: A call to action for players:
The last thing I would like to say, ALL OF YOU, including PROS - if you have Beta access you need to start playing Legacy of the Void. WCS is over for 2015 and there are very few big events left. Participate in the online cups that run Legacy of the Void (full transparency: I run one and I'm not saying this just to get more participation). David Kim and his fellow developers watch those events to gather data. They need you to make a meta, break the meta, and build a new one. So do the team and our community a favor and start grinding ladder games, playing in tournaments, using the new units and helping to make LotV the game we all want it to be.
This is also very true. And it's not limited to pros. Joe Q. Protoss in Silver can contribute to the meta if he's so inclined.
All you have to do is ask yourself, "how can I stop X from happening?" or "how can I make Y happen?". If it's bad, it's beta, nobody gives a shit. If it's good, well now you're winning games. 10 second auto-turrets with higher damage? Use backdoor harassment with Ravens! Cyclone no longer shoots up? Sounds like a job for double proxy stargate. There's not really any builds set in stone because of how much the game changes from patch to patch, so this is the perfect time to go back to the roots of "strategy" and start thinking on your feet instead of following a build.
On July 18 2015 17:42 Dekalinder wrote: Am i the only one who is a bit disappointed in Blizz still having this archaic approach of wanting more micro and simplier macro in a game that is supposed to be about strategy and not APM? I do not want to sound like a jerkass, but there was some clear reason why BW was a way more acclaimed and played game than WC3, and i find difficoult how anyone could think that moving the micro vs macro bar toward the micro, like WC3 did, is going to benefit the game. We need less fancy explosion and more strategic depth in our goddamn strategy game. I'm thinking that people, including blizz, focus exclusively on units, forgetting that there is supposed to be an entire other half about the game, named structures. I know it's too late for this but how about adding 1 less unit to each race and instead coming up with a new interesting building that adds depth to the macro/base defense/positional warfare? Someone already inconsciusly come to that exact conclusion seeing how much support had pseudo-structure units like the combat barricade et similia. Unfortunatly it too late to hope for this kind of shift in mentality, since they already committed to this unit bloat we have but it would have been awesome to see it.
You do sound like a jerkass though. Warcraft 3 was a success and fairly popular in Europe, China and South Korea. It died off because of League of Legends and Dota 2 being released and becoming popular. Ergo: even more micro intensive games, that are even 10x MORE popular than Starcraft and Starcraft BW. So you can even safely assume, that by focussing on unit interactions more than macro, makes the game more popular. I mean there is a clear reason why LoL is more popular than Sc2.
On July 18 2015 17:42 Dekalinder wrote: Am i the only one who is a bit disappointed in Blizz still having this archaic approach of wanting more micro and simplier macro in a game that is supposed to be about strategy and not APM? I do not want to sound like a jerkass, but there was some clear reason why BW was a way more acclaimed and played game than WC3, and i find difficoult how anyone could think that moving the micro vs macro bar toward the micro, like WC3 did, is going to benefit the game. We need less fancy explosion and more strategic depth in our goddamn strategy game. I'm thinking that people, including blizz, focus exclusively on units, forgetting that there is supposed to be an entire other half about the game, named structures. I know it's too late for this but how about adding 1 less unit to each race and instead coming up with a new interesting building that adds depth to the macro/base defense/positional warfare? Someone already inconsciusly come to that exact conclusion seeing how much support had pseudo-structure units like the combat barricade et similia. Unfortunatly it too late to hope for this kind of shift in mentality, since they already committed to this unit bloat we have but it would have been awesome to see it.
You do sound like a jerkass though. Warcraft 3 was a success and fairly popular in Europe, China and South Korea. It died off because of League of Legends and Dota 2 being released and becoming popular. Ergo: even more micro intensive games, that are even 10x MORE popular than Starcraft and Starcraft BW. So you can even safely assume, that by focussing on unit interactions more than macro, makes the game more popular. I mean there is a clear reason why LoL is more popular than Sc2.
I'm pretty sure the reason why LoL is more popular than SC2 has more dimensions than "there's more micro involved".
On July 18 2015 17:42 Dekalinder wrote: Am i the only one who is a bit disappointed in Blizz still having this archaic approach of wanting more micro and simplier macro in a game that is supposed to be about strategy and not APM? I do not want to sound like a jerkass, but there was some clear reason why BW was a way more acclaimed and played game than WC3, and i find difficoult how anyone could think that moving the micro vs macro bar toward the micro, like WC3 did, is going to benefit the game. We need less fancy explosion and more strategic depth in our goddamn strategy game. I'm thinking that people, including blizz, focus exclusively on units, forgetting that there is supposed to be an entire other half about the game, named structures. I know it's too late for this but how about adding 1 less unit to each race and instead coming up with a new interesting building that adds depth to the macro/base defense/positional warfare? Someone already inconsciusly come to that exact conclusion seeing how much support had pseudo-structure units like the combat barricade et similia. Unfortunatly it too late to hope for this kind of shift in mentality, since they already committed to this unit bloat we have but it would have been awesome to see it.
You do sound like a jerkass though. Warcraft 3 was a success and fairly popular in Europe, China and South Korea. It died off because of League of Legends and Dota 2 being released and becoming popular. Ergo: even more micro intensive games, that are even 10x MORE popular than Starcraft and Starcraft BW. So you can even safely assume, that by focussing on unit interactions more than macro, makes the game more popular. I mean there is a clear reason why LoL is more popular than Sc2.
I'm pretty sure the reason why LoL is more popular than SC2 has more dimensions than "there's more micro involved".
it was sarcasm. I just wanted to show how simplified reasoning leads to wrong conclusions.
On July 18 2015 17:42 Dekalinder wrote: Am i the only one who is a bit disappointed in Blizz still having this archaic approach of wanting more micro and simplier macro in a game that is supposed to be about strategy and not APM? I do not want to sound like a jerkass, but there was some clear reason why BW was a way more acclaimed and played game than WC3, and i find difficoult how anyone could think that moving the micro vs macro bar toward the micro, like WC3 did, is going to benefit the game. We need less fancy explosion and more strategic depth in our goddamn strategy game. I'm thinking that people, including blizz, focus exclusively on units, forgetting that there is supposed to be an entire other half about the game, named structures. I know it's too late for this but how about adding 1 less unit to each race and instead coming up with a new interesting building that adds depth to the macro/base defense/positional warfare? Someone already inconsciusly come to that exact conclusion seeing how much support had pseudo-structure units like the combat barricade et similia. Unfortunatly it too late to hope for this kind of shift in mentality, since they already committed to this unit bloat we have but it would have been awesome to see it.
You do sound like a jerkass though. Warcraft 3 was a success and fairly popular in Europe, China and South Korea. It died off because of League of Legends and Dota 2 being released and becoming popular. Ergo: even more micro intensive games, that are even 10x MORE popular than Starcraft and Starcraft BW. So you can even safely assume, that by focussing on unit interactions more than macro, makes the game more popular. I mean there is a clear reason why LoL is more popular than Sc2.
Meh, I think the two main differences why Mobas are so popular in comparison to RTS games are that first you don't have to switch screens and all that stuff. You have one guy and you watch that guy and micro that guy. And second that like 50% of what you theoretically have to do in current RTS games is selecting units/buldings - and the most efficient way for that seems to be to cycle and spam selections 24/7, so it is probably like 90% or so. 90% actions that don't even change anything and which aren't inherently fun.
By only making one guy to control and only some few menues Moba get around all of that stuff. That is the brilliance of them. They took the RTS gernre and stripped it of everything that was clunky and taxing to control by letting automazation and NPCs take over those parts. What's left is you playing the fun parts of RTS - battling - with minimal control-requirements.
Competing with that is not going to happen for SC2. You'd need a completely new approach to control and the game design would have to become much more linear, so that you couldn't be attacked where you aren't looking.
Micro has absolutely no relevance in MOBAs popularity.
If that theory was correct then you would find a strong correlation between the most played LOL champs and the ones that "looks" the coolest.
However, that's not what you find. Instead, if you look at the data you'll discover that all of the most played champions in League are the biggest playmakers (aka the champs with outplay potential - we would call that micro in an RTS).
This strongly indicates that people enjoy the outplay-part (otherwise they wouldn't play those types of champs).
EDIT: On Heroes of the Storm reddit, the biggest (and perhaps only) playmaker in the game was also voted as the most fun assasin to play. http://strawpoll.me/4957391/r
If we look at Sc2, what type of playstyle is the most well-loved and enjoyed? Bio play and preferably against Muta/bling. That playstyle is extremely microintensive with a high skillcap. This also indicates that it's not the mere act of building suply depots of other buildings that people enjoy.
Meh, I think the two main differences why Mobas are so popular in comparison to RTS games are that first you don't have to switch screens and all that stuff. You have one guy and you watch that guy and micro that guy. And second that like 50% of what you theoretically have to do in current RTS games is selecting units/buldings - and the most efficient way for that seems to be to cycle and spam selections 24/7, so it is probably like 90% or so. 90% actions that don't even change anything and which aren't inherently fun.
I agree, but I also think the learning barrier matters too. It's not like MOBAs do not have a high learning barrier either, but it's more forgiving than of that in Sc2. If you don't know a correct build in a MOBA, you just get behind while you frequently will instadie in Sc2.
At the end of the day, MOBA's allow players to focus on the part of the game they find fun (the control/micro)-element.
Meh, I think the two main differences why Mobas are so popular in comparison to RTS games are that first you don't have to switch screens and all that stuff. You have one guy and you watch that guy and micro that guy. And second that like 50% of what you theoretically have to do in current RTS games is selecting units/buldings - and the most efficient way for that seems to be to cycle and spam selections 24/7, so it is probably like 90% or so. 90% actions that don't even change anything and which aren't inherently fun.
I agree, but I also think the learning barrier matters too. It's not like MOBAs do not have a high learning barrier either, but it's more forgiving than of that in Sc2. If you don't know a correct build in a MOBA, you just get behind while you frequently will instadie in Sc2.
At the end of the day, MOBA's allow players to focus on the part of the game they find fun (the control/micro)-element.
Of course, the games still need to be very good designed to be as popular as they are. Especially to compete with other mobas. But I think regardless how well you would design SC2 with the current point as start, you couldn't really start to compete with the top-Mobas. You'd maybe even have to innovate a completely new way how to select, how to give orders and so on.
On July 19 2015 09:23 c0ldfusion wrote: Glad to see that the entire Korean scene thinks LotV is too hard.
What boggles my mind is that why does the foreign scene want the game to be more difficult.
What's behind your opinion of the whole foreign scene wanting it to be more difficult? To be honest I don't ever recall reading anything along those line round these parts
On July 19 2015 09:23 c0ldfusion wrote: Glad to see that the entire Korean scene thinks LotV is too hard.
What boggles my mind is that why does the foreign scene want the game to be more difficult.
What's behind your opinion of the whole foreign scene wanting it to be more difficult? To be honest I don't ever recall reading anything along those line round these parts
It's in David Kim's summary in the OP.
Game Difficulty Discussion As many of us on the team expected, this proved to be a tough topic. We knew going in there would be clear disagreements, as we’ve been seeing in many places—including individual pro feedback—that the majority of the Korean community disagrees with our goals for Void, while many outside of Korea strongly agree with our direction.
As many of you already know, these are the main goals that our team has for Legacy of the Void:
More action, less down time. More micro on both sides in engagements. New ways to show off skill. Make the game more difficult for pros. Make the game more approachable to regular players through new features such as Archon Mode and Allied Commanders.
Even though you dismiss people's complaints, your counts pretty much confirm what everybody is saying. There are already more abilities in HotS compared to BW and LotV is adding even more. You also missed the abilities of the thor, overseer, mothership/core and the sentry's guardian shield.
The game isn't just a mess for players. It's a mess for spectators, too. BW had many fans who stopped playing the game ages ago or never played it at all. These people could still understand the game by watching. SC2 currently has way too many active abilities that don't do anything for spectators. They are designed 100% to be busywork for players. If you haven't played the game in a while, you might not even know these abilities exist or what they are there for.
I can't see anything about foreigners wanting the game to be more difficult (has anyone ever read a thread here stating that?), the reasoning behind wanting to make the game harder for pro's I understand, it's not really my place to say if this would be good or bad.
The only time I've heard the difficulty of LotV called in to question was with a recent translation here on TL by Catana I believe (which is a valid point). Sure the learning curve is steep, it is a difficult game, still don't believe that everyone outside Korea wants the game made even harder.
OP, you might want to put what you wrote in quotations. For a few sentences I thought the community was talking out of their ass again and officially claiming they're the game's designers :D
If you're interested in who exactly was invited to this "community summit" (which I had no idea about until reading the OP :D), I've found on some reddit post a non-exhaustive list of names:
JaKaTaK, Carbot, Lowko, iNcontroL, ZG, Rifkin,etc
The reddit post itself is very optimistic, I don't really know if I can trust it or not :D.
For next week's protoss update, I fully expect the classic statement: "We looked at it in internal testing and it didn't pan out well, Protoss is already nice enough!" I like Blizzard, but for now we've yet to see any hint that they're willing to shake things up to a great enough extent to please the hardcore community (us, TL). It's not an overly enthusiastic reddit post under NDA that will convince otherwise :D.
On another topic, I hugely agree with this post!
On July 18 2015 23:51 Big J wrote: @Caihead: I honestly don't see why you expect players that probably do not play BW (anymore) to want things to be like BW. These "justify things by showing how they were in broodwar and noone complaint there"-arguments are getting so tiring. I couldn't give any fuck about how others liked what was in broodwar. What I give a fuck about is how my game plays right now and what conclusion I can draw for the future developments of this game. And excessive amounts of active abilities is something I don't like in STARCRAFT 2. I already don't enjoy playing with 2 different active caster units (e.g. Infestor+Viper, or ghost+raven) in one army, even less 3 (infestor+viper+queen) and I can't see my fun in STARCRAFT 2 increase by also having to implement active skills on more non-caster units into my play.
I can't believe how pissed off I am when I'm forced to control 2 different casters and all the rest of the army with them :D. Thankfully I'm Terran so it doesn't happen that much, but I've already played some raven+ghost+viking+MMM and holy shit, what a pain in the ass this is :D.
I can't believe how pissed off I am when I'm forced to control 2 different casters and all the rest of the army with them :D. Thankfully I'm Terran so it doesn't happen that much, but I've already played some raven+ghost+viking+MMM and holy !@#$%^&*, what a pain in the !@#$%^&* this is :D.
I had hoped that Blizzard had reworked how you could use spellcasters along with each other. E.g. you should be able to stim bio units and use Ghost abilities without having two seperate control groups. Would make the game so much simpler and allow us to focus on unit movement instead of control group management.
I can't believe how pissed off I am when I'm forced to control 2 different casters and all the rest of the army with them :D. Thankfully I'm Terran so it doesn't happen that much, but I've already played some raven+ghost+viking+MMM and holy !@#$%^&*, what a pain in the !@#$%^&* this is :D.
I had hoped that Blizzard had reworked how you could use spellcasters along with each other. E.g. you should be able to stim bio units and use Ghost abilities without having two seperate control groups. Would make the game so much simpler and allow us to focus on unit movement instead of control group management.
It's also the nature of some spells. E.g. Mass queen with heal is one of the most frustrating "micro" experiences in the game imo. All you do is spam click targets that keep on running out of the rather small heal range (7). And on top of that the spell has a tiny cooldown that makes it very sluggish because then often the target is in range of a queen that just healed it, but not in range of the next best casting queen and the heal doesn't go off in time. And then you pair that with spamming infested Terrans and Ravager shots all over the place...
Though I'm giving the ravager more flak than it deserves. The ravager itself is very fun to play with, at least if you know about rapidfire. It's rather that I've already played it in conjunction with the infestor and the lurker and then it keeps on annoying me that I'm basically only clicking buttons and have no time for any positioning micro.
The last thing I would like to say, ALL OF YOU, including PROS - if you have Beta access you need to start playing Legacy of the Void. WCS is over for 2015 and there are very few big events left. Participate in the online cups that run Legacy of the Void (full transparency: I run one and I'm not saying this just to get more participation). David Kim and his fellow developers watch those events to gather data. They need you to make a meta, break the meta, and build a new one. So do the team and our community a favor and start grinding ladder games, playing in tournaments, using the new units and helping to make LotV the game we all want it to be.
Well, that's nice. But all the players here know the feeling of "damn, I looked away for a second and half of my army is gone"(or, in my usual case, all my army is without shields ).
And how am I supposed to play when I have lag spikes in Beta? I would love to play it, but I SO MUCH HATE these loses. And I really do not want to experience a loss where I couldn't do anything for 2-4 seconds because now I am waiting until the game will give me the ability to actually play it. Until they resolve this problem, LotV beta is not for me.
I wish they change the lurker attack sound. The BW sound was scary as hell, lotv sound...I can't even hear them when I'm being attacked by the spines :\
I hope they don't get too caught up in the "more difficult for pro's" department. The reason we want it more difficult is so we have more consistent top players. This can also be done by simply removing some of the random factors of openers, or improving the ability to scout. LotV has made that part of the game worse, which means, even though there's many more tasks to do well in LotV and that insane micro players will do well in that aspect, these players might end up being less consistent overall.
I hope they do someting that losing a game isn't frustating and winning a game is rewarding. Biggest factor here are hardcounter units and some spells. (small example) I do feel very frustating to lose a game because: I lost to mass FF I lost to (strong) wmines hits
I dont feel frustating to lose when such happened: I lost because my opponent show great muta skills I lost because my opponent show great blink stalkers micro.
Sadly most games happened like the first example (90% of all losses). And no, I dont feel good that I won my games with sick FF or good wmines random hits.
I feel frustrated by losing to Muta regeneration, while I don't mind if good FF secure my opponent a win. It is impossible to remove people feeling frustrated about a loss against what they percieve as unfair, because everyone plays differently and has different strengths and weaknesses.
While a new player might not think the SC2 1v1 experience appears inherently accessible, its rich complexity is a part of what makes it so intriguing—and ultimately engaging.
We can do a better job making the transition for brand-new players easier. For example, I’m completely new to RTSs or SC2. In Void, maybe the flow for getting me into 1v1 looks something like this: Play the campaign; move on to Allied Commanders; try out Training Mode; play some team games with my favorite ally from Allied commanders; try out Archon Mode; and then try 1v1.
We’re not saying that everyone interested in playing SC2 needs to eventually move into 1v1—obviously, we anticipate some Void players will be drawn solely to Allied Commanders, while others will live in team games for years, and that’s great. However, we can make it easier for those interested in every part of SC2 to make the leap from the most accessible part to the most hardcore part—by making it happen in smaller steps.
What. The. Fuck. How is this thinking possible?
SC2, at it's heart, is a 1v1 game. It's a (fun) competitive game based on learning how the races and matchups and interactions work; the rest is extraneous. I'm not saying this because I believe 1v1 is the only way to play, but because the game has been marketed and branded this way since its inception, and it makes no sense to expect that the richest part of a player's experience is going to be building confidence to play a single NORMAL game of SC2. Even if I'm brand new to an RTS, my goal when downloading an RTS is to play an RTS.
For example, if I download Minesweeper, I may not know the rules or how to play, but I can immediately jump into the game, learn little bits and pieces, and quickly master the game. If I download League of Legends, I can immediately jump into a blind pick game and begin learning the basics of how to play against real people without much stress. But in SC2, it's EXPECTED that I'll need to spend several days or weeks just building up enough knowledge and confidence to play a standard game of SC2? Why is the game so hard that a brand new player literally cannot play the game they downloaded?
I appreciate the work towards creating a game that helps new players transition, and I especially appreciate these constant updates. But I personally think it's absolutely flawed that the game has such tight transitions and punishing mechanics that new players are expected to fail, get frustrated, and leave without some sort of alternative gaming safety net.
This logic of Blizzard's makes sense to me. Like someone else posted, I got into rts through the campaign mode as well. Minesweeper is a simple game with simple rules. The rules stay simple, but the game can become very complex, like most sports out there. Anyone can play basketball, but to play it well is another thing.
Starcraft (and rts in general) are complicated games with complicated rule sets, that are also hard to master. Most people will pick this game up to play it and get lost in all the rules. Probably a good chunk of people will give up on the game right there after getting stomped in a 1v1 and never understanding why they lost (because they don't understand all the rules). These non competitive modes give people different levels to learn and participate.
I personally think it will help the community grow larger and I would welcome that.
I agree about the punishing mechanics, but I think LOTV is much better than HOTS in this regard. I usually don't lose a LOTV game in one fight, but in HOTS I find my army is dead in a 3 second fight and it decides the game. Idk, I agree fights should be less punishing, more back and forth.
On July 19 2015 19:53 StarscreamG1 wrote: I wish they change the lurker attack sound. The BW sound was scary as hell, lotv sound...I can't even hear them when I'm being attacked by the spines :\
As many of you already know, these are the main goals that our team has for Legacy of the Void:
More action, less down time.
More micro on both sides in engagements.
New ways to show off skill.
Make the game more difficult for pros.
Make the game more approachable to regular players through new features such as Archon Mode and Allied Commanders.
I don't like these goals whatsoever and I think it's leading to questionable design choices. For example, having played with and against the Adept's ability it seems more anti-micro than anything else. It's like they just want to add a bunch of abilities and expect that will automatically create more micro possibilities, which isn't the case.
Then they make it so you start with 12 workers, which eliminates a lot of the skill needed to macro properly in the very early game.
New ways to show off skill. You mean new ways to show off skill to the uneducated spectators who have no appreciation for the finer, mostly unobservable points of managing a sc economy. They're catering to the spectator, not to the player.
As many of you already know, these are the main goals that our team has for Legacy of the Void:
More action, less down time.
More micro on both sides in engagements.
New ways to show off skill.
Make the game more difficult for pros.
Make the game more approachable to regular players through new features such as Archon Mode and Allied Commanders.
Then they make it so you start with 12 workers, which eliminates a lot of the skill needed to macro properly in the very early game.
That's debatable. Spamming the build worker key doesn't take much skill. People get so bored they invented drone stacking to squeeze some level of efficiency out of that first minute. The amount of return of something like that is minimal. It does take skill to scout and build workers at the same time, but that happens in LOTV.
The HOTS early game was boring for almost everyone (imo), that's why we have casting rants, cause there is nothing to talk about for the first 5 in game minutes. Minus cheese of course, but even that isn't much to talk about.
As many of you already know, these are the main goals that our team has for Legacy of the Void:
More action, less down time.
More micro on both sides in engagements.
New ways to show off skill.
Make the game more difficult for pros.
Make the game more approachable to regular players through new features such as Archon Mode and Allied Commanders.
I don't like these goals whatsoever and I think it's leading to questionable design choices. For example, having played with and against the Adept's ability it seems more anti-micro than anything else. It's like they just want to add a bunch of abilities and expect that will automatically create more micro possibilities, which isn't the case.
How exactly is it anti-micro?
Then they make it so you start with 12 workers, which eliminates a lot of the skill needed to macro properly in the very early game.
As ShambalaWar said, no it doesn't. There's not much you can do other than make workers and/or cheese, and there will be new cheeses you can do at 12 supply.
New ways to show off skill. You mean new ways to show off skill to the uneducated spectators who have no appreciation for the finer, mostly unobservable points of managing a sc economy. They're catering to the spectator, not to the player.
And what's wrong with that? Nobody's going to be hyped for a game because he managed to go the whole way without supply blocking himself. It's going to be because they have awesome blink micro, or they're defending at home while counterattacking with a drop in the enemy main, or something of that nature. And more of that is great for entertainment, which SC2 ultimately is.
I wonder if the people complaining about active abilities would be happier if Blizzard made the abilities of all units in any group of units selected available by shortcut rather than having to tab through or assign control groups, or if it would inspire pages and pages of whine of people saying "a million steps backwards" or "lowering the skill ceiling" or "nobody asked for it". There is no unified community voice on what should be done to "fix" Starcraft, because everyone and their dog has a different view of what their ideal RTS experience is due to how complex the systems in the genre can be. There are people who love watching a drawn out 2 hour turtle-fest when players take half the map and mine each other out, and there are people who love watching some ridiculously bullshit build on specific maps designed to win in under 10 minutes, you can't make a change that pleases both those demographics and doesn't upset some unforeseen third party.
As ShambalaWar said, no it doesn't. There's not much you can do other than make workers and/or cheese, and there will be new cheeses you can do at 12 supply.
That's only because the design of SC2 dictates that there is nothing worth doing during that time frame. That is part of the problem and all they're doing is covering that up by eliminating the very early game altogether. In WoL you used to be able to 1 base, not anymore. Now you can't cheese either. Why even bother with macro, just start everybody off with 3 bases and 11 supply depots.
And what's wrong with that? Nobody's going to be hyped for a game because he managed to go the whole way without supply blocking himself. It's going to be because they have awesome blink micro, or they're defending at home while counterattacking with a drop in the enemy main, or something of that nature. And more of that is great for entertainment, which SC2 ultimately is.
Because it's a step in the wrong direction. They're making the RTS genre more like a moba or an rpg game and ignoring the fundamentals.
As ShambalaWar said, no it doesn't. There's not much you can do other than make workers and/or cheese, and there will be new cheeses you can do at 12 supply.
That's only because the design of SC2 dictates that there is nothing worth doing during that time frame. That is part of the problem and all they're doing is covering that up by eliminating the very early game altogether. In WoL you used to be able to 1 base, not anymore. Now you can't cheese either. Why even bother with macro, just start everybody off with 3 bases and 11 supply depots.
What else would you like to do during those 2 minutes? What else would you like to see? If that's a problem, what is the solution?
You can still 1 base. You can 4 gate ridiculously early now. Double proxy stargate vs. Terran. 3 rax reaper might become a thing, who knows. They have bombs and you have money.
And why are you so fixated on them removing macro? They removed the part of the game where even elfi pushes a key on his keyboard then looks around his booth for 15 seconds. Macro is still the same.
And what's wrong with that? Nobody's going to be hyped for a game because he managed to go the whole way without supply blocking himself. It's going to be because they have awesome blink micro, or they're defending at home while counterattacking with a drop in the enemy main, or something of that nature. And more of that is great for entertainment, which SC2 ultimately is.
Because it's a step in the wrong direction. They're making the RTS genre more like a moba or an rpg game and ignoring the fundamentals.
The core RTS tenets are all there. The one thing you could maybe argue is that taking a base is now a decision like when to put down a factory or when to get your spire. And part of RTS's is, after all, army and unit control.
My problem with the adept ability is the ability to cancel it. It removes counterplay from the ability. For example, some adept ghosts leave the army as an attack happens. The other side has to decide whether they want to continue engaging the army with all their forces or split some off to engage the teleporting adepts. Regardless of their decision the protoss can then make the ideal decision whether to stay or teleport.
I am absolutely clueless about how to deal with liberators, I can hold the first hellbat/liberator push quite easily, but when terran starts massing them, I am absolutely helpless. I have tried with the sickest muta splits, hydras, and the only thing that seems to work is vipers and corruptors, but I have to have hive and corruptors as we all know have zero utility against ground, so yeah, any help is appreciated.
On July 20 2015 06:31 JacobShock wrote: I am absolutely clueless about how to deal with liberators, I can hold the first hellbat/liberator push quite easily, but when terran starts massing them, I am absolutely helpless. I have tried with the sickest muta splits, hydras, and the only thing that seems to work is vipers and corruptors, but I have to have hive and corruptors as we all know have zero utility against ground, so yeah, any help is appreciated.
Spore crawlers can't be targeted by the Liberator ground attack, good creep spread coupled with spores does decently because of the ground attack morphing time Hydralisk are pretty good vs them, Vipers are very good with the Parasitic bomb when they go mass Liberator. The key is to limit the bases they can take, Liberators are expensive limit the income and you win vs that style.
As ShambalaWar said, no it doesn't. There's not much you can do other than make workers and/or cheese, and there will be new cheeses you can do at 12 supply.
And what's wrong with that? Nobody's going to be hyped for a game because he managed to go the whole way without supply blocking himself. It's going to be because they have awesome blink micro, or they're defending at home while counterattacking with a drop in the enemy main, or something of that nature. And more of that is great for entertainment, which SC2 ultimately is.
Because it's a step in the wrong direction. They're making the RTS genre more like a moba or an rpg game and ignoring the fundamentals.
I always think it's interesting when someone says they are making sc2 into a moba.
Shouldn't an rts game resemble a moba game? This makes sense considering moba games were born from rts games.
I posted once "Listen to Korean Pro - Rain" regarding the widow mine buff and how it would TAKE AWAY tech paths, lo and behold, it did. Did they listen to Rain ? no. Was he right ? Yes.
Listen to the Korean community, that has the highest skilled players, what better advice is there ?
As many of you already know, these are the main goals that our team has for Legacy of the Void:
More action, less down time.
More micro on both sides in engagements.
New ways to show off skill.
Make the game more difficult for pros.
Make the game more approachable to regular players through new features such as Archon Mode and Allied Commanders.
Then they make it so you start with 12 workers, which eliminates a lot of the skill needed to macro properly in the very early game.
That's debatable. Spamming the build worker key doesn't take much skill. People get so bored they invented drone stacking to squeeze some level of efficiency out of that first minute. The amount of return of something like that is minimal. It does take skill to scout and build workers at the same time, but that happens in LOTV.
The HOTS early game was boring for almost everyone (imo), that's why we have casting rants, cause there is nothing to talk about for the first 5 in game minutes. Minus cheese of course, but even that isn't much to talk about.
I like the down-time at the start. For example, you may of just played an epic game just before, it's nice to have a slower pace at the beginning that builds up. Nice to 'settle-in' , rather than go crazy mode from start to finish. Caster ranting at start is fun imho, nice social aspect before the main action starts up, good variety. I prefer HOTS opening atm.
As many of you already know, these are the main goals that our team has for Legacy of the Void:
More action, less down time.
More micro on both sides in engagements.
New ways to show off skill.
Make the game more difficult for pros.
Make the game more approachable to regular players through new features such as Archon Mode and Allied Commanders.
Then they make it so you start with 12 workers, which eliminates a lot of the skill needed to macro properly in the very early game.
That's debatable. Spamming the build worker key doesn't take much skill. People get so bored they invented drone stacking to squeeze some level of efficiency out of that first minute. The amount of return of something like that is minimal. It does take skill to scout and build workers at the same time, but that happens in LOTV.
The HOTS early game was boring for almost everyone (imo), that's why we have casting rants, cause there is nothing to talk about for the first 5 in game minutes. Minus cheese of course, but even that isn't much to talk about.
I like the down-time at the start. For example, you may of just played an epic game just before, it's nice to have a slower pace at the beginning that builds up. Nice to 'settle-in' , rather than go crazy mode from start to finish. Caster ranting at start is fun imho, nice social aspect before the main action starts up, good variety. I prefer HOTS opening atm.
I've had the opposite feedback from my friends playing/watching SC2. For the longest time it's just minerals being mined. Sure there's good stuff later on, but it's not the most entertaining start. I have the same problem with MOBAs, yes you need the heroes to level before anything happens, but a minute 30 of buying and getting into position, and then another 3-ish minutes where nothing usually happens (unless there's some invade, which I guess is the analogue to a proxy or cannon rush) isn't too entertaining either.
As many of you already know, these are the main goals that our team has for Legacy of the Void:
More action, less down time.
More micro on both sides in engagements.
New ways to show off skill.
Make the game more difficult for pros.
Make the game more approachable to regular players through new features such as Archon Mode and Allied Commanders.
I don't like these goals whatsoever and I think it's leading to questionable design choices.
i don't think these goals are going to change. you may be able to change Blizzard's balance tweaking or the role of an individual unit in the game. i don't think Blizzard is changing direction on core values behind the direction of the game.. especially with teh game coming out this winter.
Here is a video of a guy who went to the Community Summit discussed in the OP for a little different perspective on Blizzard's development of an RTS game
this video only adds to my belief that BLizzard is doing a great job with LotV... and LotV will be really really good.
What about changing the collossus to single target, long (old) range, and with a good punch to it?
That way it could be actually good against lurkers, the unit that Protoss struggles the most against. And maybe decent against ultras too while we are at it.
Protoss has enough (and better, more interesting) AOE damage in the disruptor and storm.
Seriously, the liberator creates a bad dynamic. Half of the time I can take them down without them doing anything at all, the other half of the time I leave the game without taking a single combat because my opponent overlapped his circles properly. Even with the current range-bug, their range (as in, how far the unit can be from its targeting area) and their damage are way too high but the circle is probably too small to make it not so devastating. It just doesn't feel good playing against them.
On July 21 2015 06:08 Big J wrote: Seriously, the liberator creates a bad dynamic. Half of the time I can take them down without them doing anything at all, the other half of the time I leave the game without taking a single combat because my opponent overlapped his circles properly. Even with the current range-bug, their range (as in, how far the unit can be from its targeting area) and their damage are way too high but the circle is probably too small to make it not so devastating. It just doesn't feel good playing against them.
They are clearly broken, tvz is unplayable right now vs anyone good. However the saddest thing I feel is they're going to complete remove mutas from tvz and does anybody really want that?
On July 21 2015 06:08 Big J wrote: Seriously, the liberator creates a bad dynamic. Half of the time I can take them down without them doing anything at all, the other half of the time I leave the game without taking a single combat because my opponent overlapped his circles properly. Even with the current range-bug, their range (as in, how far the unit can be from its targeting area) and their damage are way too high but the circle is probably too small to make it not so devastating. It just doesn't feel good playing against them.
They are clearly broken, tvz is unplayable right now vs anyone good. However the saddest thing I feel is they're going to complete remove mutas from tvz and does anybody really want that?
Played mutalisks for 5years, wouldn't be sad if they weren't the nonplusultra in ZvT for once and the game wasn't completely balanced around whether they can snowball or not. They feel pretty strong right now, but I'm having somewhat of an succes at the moment if I rush out roach/ravager type of play. Pretty good against the liberator rushes, good basis for anti-mech play in general.
Honestly everytime I give LOTV a game and play some games (liike today around 7-8) games I just find myself utterly frustrated by the experience. Every single game feels like its decided by build orders. The only games where I feel anything remotely like micro or multitasking are the ones where I go back to the good old bio play.
I find Adepts to be meh'ish. Dropping speedlings in enemy base is pretty neat, but I can't help but compare all types of dropplay with Medivac drops and it's just so much more satisfying when you can do pickup micro. The bit I played with Liberators I didn't particularly enjoy them (could be wrong here though) and Cyclones are obviously cancer. . I doubt anyone coming back from their MOBA's and giving LOTV a chance is gonna have fun. That's unless they are determined to get good at the game, because if you are just coming in with the attitude of "playing a couple of games to have fun" --> You won't have fun.
Its mainly the lack of early game defenders advantage that is so problematic in this game. And I can't bother spending time learning proper builds as there is no real reward in sight. By that I mean that there aren't any late game interactions/dynamic that seems awesome (a real mech style could have been awesome).
Then I check games from tournaments to find "inspiration" and I just see bad game after game.
On July 21 2015 06:08 Big J wrote: Seriously, the liberator creates a bad dynamic. Half of the time I can take them down without them doing anything at all, the other half of the time I leave the game without taking a single combat because my opponent overlapped his circles properly. Even with the current range-bug, their range (as in, how far the unit can be from its targeting area) and their damage are way too high but the circle is probably too small to make it not so devastating. It just doesn't feel good playing against them.
They are clearly broken, tvz is unplayable right now vs anyone good. However the saddest thing I feel is they're going to complete remove mutas from tvz and does anybody really want that?
Played mutalisks for 5years, wouldn't be sad if they weren't the nonplusultra in ZvT for once and the game wasn't completely balanced around whether they can snowball or not. They feel pretty strong right now, but I'm having somewhat of an succes at the moment if I rush out roach/ravager type of play. Pretty good against the liberator rushes, good basis for anti-mech play in general.
I dont see how that would be good against any high level player, the thing with the liberator rush is they already have a starport with reactor ready to transition into bio play, and also the factory that made the reactor can make a tech lab and get out tanks.
Dealing with the liberator rushes completely gimps zerg builds gives you a godlike unit and transitions perfectly into either mech or bio.
i'm thinking lurkers make it kind of tough for terran to stay active against big muta balls... considering their main tool was packs of marines, that can now get shredded, i guess blizzard figures they need a new tool in the liberator?
oh god the whiners are back, plz i would like it so much if some people could just shut up instead of always complaining about what they don't like. Blizz is not forcing you to buy it, and they stated that just whine about stuff is not usefull in any way.
On July 21 2015 07:04 BartCraft wrote: oh god the whiners are back, plz i would like it so much if some people could just shut up instead of always complaining about what they don't like. Blizz is not forcing you to buy it, and they stated that just whine about stuff is not usefull in any way.
I don't think you understand what feedback is. I definitely fit the target group that could buy LOTV (I am in the former Sc2 player that switched to MOBA's). Only listening to the feedback of those who are going to play Sc2 no matter what and will love the game no what is definitely not the best appraoch.
Also your comment is ironically stupid as noone is forcing you to respond to "whiners". Complaining about complainers gives no value besides wasting time. On the other hand providing specific reasoning for why you won't buy the product is another discussion.
Ok so since this is turning into a big "whats not fun about sc" whine, id like to point out that - to most players starcraft will never be "fun" to ladder with. its not the "imbalances" that make the game not fun. consider other games like Hots Lol or dota. They all have a "strongest" or imbalanced hero at any given point.
Sc2 is at its core, the most hardcore. bare bone and anti social video game available.
Youre pitched against one opponent. If you lose, you know that its your fault. You cant blame teammates or RNG like in other games. In Hearthstone, losing hurts a lot less because "oh the RNG", in HotS, that one teammate that gave them exp just sucked and thats why you lost.
People dont want to blame themselves, and that makes this game very stressful.
Dont give blizzard a hard time because you think its garbage and you lost to adept rushes.
On July 21 2015 06:44 mishimaBeef wrote: i'm thinking lurkers make it kind of tough for terran to stay active against big muta balls... considering their main tool was packs of marines, that can now get shredded, i guess blizzard figures they need a new tool in the liberator?
It looks like bio isn't viable against Z in a long, full tech game. Lurker / Ultra straight dump on bio builds. And bio has a harder time with mutas compared to the strong anti muta tools available to mech builds (Liberator / Thor). Considering how strong Liberator / Cyclone pushes are, I don't see a good reason to keep making marines when the enemy has serious tech units out. I feel like this is probably a good direction for the game overall.
On July 21 2015 07:24 weikor wrote: Ok so since this is turning into a big "whats not fun about sc" whine, id like to point out that - to most players starcraft will never be "fun" to ladder with. its not the "imbalances" that make the game not fun. consider other games like Hots Lol or dota. They all have a "strongest" or imbalanced hero at any given point.
Sc2 is at its core, the most hardcore. bare bone and anti social video game available.
Youre pitched against one opponent. If you lose, you know that its your fault. You cant blame teammates or RNG like in other games. In Hearthstone, losing hurts a lot less because "oh the RNG", in HotS, that one teammate that gave them exp just sucked and thats why you lost.
People dont want to blame themselves, and that makes this game very stressful.
Dont give blizzard a hard time because you think its garbage and you lost to adept rushes.
It's a beta. Blizzard explicitely said that they want to have feedback from people who play the game. I play the game every day at a quite a decent level. I gave my feedback. You can agree with it or not, but basically telling me to fuck off with what I write and why I write it is plainly garbage.
What purpose does the liberator exactly have, specifically meaning his siege mode. I am playing random and can´t really tell. He creates space, sure, but its kind of boring and this role should be done by the siege tank. As somebody mentioned, his position is incredible important, but once they are placed well its really hard to counter them.. Also the skin is terrible, but that isn´t priority right now.
Ok so since this is turning into a big "whats not fun about sc" whine, id like to point out that - to most players starcraft will never be "fun" to ladder with.
But I don't agree it has to be like that. I think you can genuinly make a game that is easier to learn and maintain the good parts of the game (or make it even better).
Honestly I never realized - before I came back from MOBA's - how frustrating/boring the game is. When I was playing the game on a daily basis from 2010-2011, I always thought about how I could improve. With that mentality you actually completely ignore design flaws in the game as you see all types of frustrations/obstacles as something that you just need to learn.
By the end of WOL everyone was so tired of the passiveness/deathballnies of the game and the selling point of HOTS (for me) was the speedmedivac as it actually allowed me to play a Maru'ish playstyle.
But let's look at LOTV from my perspective. For protoss, the only real improvement imo is the Disruptor that is more fun to use than the Colossus, but protoss is still not a race I enjoy.
For terran, I didn't find the new units very fun and the playstyle seems similar. Thus it feels like a new learning barrier without any potential benefits (perhaps the Liberator could proove me I am wrong. At least I am observing how this unit will fit into the meta).
I can see some selling points for zerg once the game gets properly balanced as Ravagers, Lurkers and Overlord drops can be fun, and moving shot on Mutas is great too. If I see some really awesome zerg games in tournaments, I might consider trying to learn the race.
So what would be a selling point for me (as a terran?). I want a "true" mech style where you can have tanks all over the map, do light harass and the enemy should be able to trade with you --> to be viable.
If this type of dynamic was possible in LOTV, I could see through the hopeless learning barrier. I would be willing to die to all types of stupid stuff as I would improve in the proces. And in the end, if I got good enough I would be able to play this "true mech"-style really well and I think that would be fun.
But when the only reason to play LOTV is a fast-paced experience, I might as well play HOTS.
People dont want to blame themselves, and that makes this game very stressful.
Ever had some of those games where you lost but still felt like it was a pretty cool/fun game?
I actually have had many of them. Probably at least half of my TvZ games in HOTS were awesome as they contained constant action and fun micro. That's not to say that I didn't balance whine after the games, but the experience was clearly different from how I feel about LOTV right now.
Alot of people will respond to that by saying that buildorder-loses are part of the game and you have to learn how to deal with it. Indeed, that's the right mentality if you want to improve as a player, but does that mean that LOTV is only for those people who want to continously improve?
It feels like Blizzard (wrongly) has assumed that there only are two groups who could play Starcraft:
1. Casuals who should play singleplayer, archon mode and allied commander. 2. Competitive players who like the high learning barrier and mechanical requirements.
But If only the above two target groups existed, LOL and DOTA wouldn't have millions of players playing a competitive multiplayer game. All I actually want is to play a couple of games once in a while and have fun, I don't want to touch singleplayer and I rather not rely on teammates.
And I think I share that goal with alot of other people that you may not hear a lot from because they probably aren't posting anymore on TL.
On July 21 2015 07:24 weikor wrote: Ok so since this is turning into a big "whats not fun about sc" whine, id like to point out that - to most players starcraft will never be "fun" to ladder with. its not the "imbalances" that make the game not fun. consider other games like Hots Lol or dota. They all have a "strongest" or imbalanced hero at any given point.
Sc2 is at its core, the most hardcore. bare bone and anti social video game available.
Youre pitched against one opponent. If you lose, you know that its your fault. You cant blame teammates or RNG like in other games. In Hearthstone, losing hurts a lot less because "oh the RNG", in HotS, that one teammate that gave them exp just sucked and thats why you lost.
People dont want to blame themselves, and that makes this game very stressful.
Dont give blizzard a hard time because you think its garbage and you lost to adept rushes.
This is a very interesting post, from a psychological perspective it's worth just being aware of a dynamic like this. I've had my fair share of rage from playing hots and just trying to "get better." I think it definitely hit on my self-worth, "If I try my best and can't make it to some league, what's wrong with me?" Idk, just tossing some of my personal experience out there.
What had me playing sc2 in the first place was the amount of FUN I had with it, and the awesome feeling of winning my first game! (That was a challenge).
I honestly think LOTV is a funner game than HOTS. 1 game is also not the investment it was in HOTS (30 to 60 min), it's over pretty quick and if I lose no big deal I just play again with a different strat.
That being said, I am really enjoying heroes of the storm right now. Having a hard time going to play sc2 beta because I would rather play that, which is strange... I never liked mobas. Hardcore sc2 fan here. I do think there is truth to the negative aspects of an antisocial game (1v1). This has me excited for archon mode, more people to play the traditional 1v1 style of rts. Quite a brilliant mode the more I consider it.
Speaking to why I'm into heroes now... Maybe it's nice to blame my teamies... They like to blame me!
I do think there is truth to the negative aspects of an antisocial game (1v1).
This argument is frequently used, but I honestly think it confuses correlation with causation. The reason I believe is so due to the average social soloq experience is utterly terrible. Hence why Blizzard almost promotes you to use the "mute all button". I think MOBA's are succesful despite the teamplay and not because of it.
Sure if you have some friends you can que up with it differs, but from my experience more than 50% of the people who play the game are soloquers.
Instead, I think what Heroes of the Storm does well is to allow you to focus on the fun part of the game --> Teamfights where you control your hero. The learning barrier is pretty low and more forgiving than in Sc2. If you misposition yourself in the early game or picks the "wrong" talent, the game still continues.
EPT
. Can't wait for the next update and see where Protoss is headed in LotV!
).
