EPT![[image loading]](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CM809rKWoAAiV0C.jpg)
http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/18724767129
Hey everyone. This week’s community feedback update includes a slew of updates, design considerations, and shout-outs; we’re going to cover the macro mechanics, Adept, a few Zerg changes, the Cyclone, and the Liberator.
First off, we’d like to give a shout-out to Red Bull eSports for running awesome beta events. Compared to the HotS beta, we’re making a lot of big changes to the game and so we truly value high-level games being played regularly. We feel like the Red Bull events have been extremely helpful in developing Legacy of the Void and we are definitely looking forward to their next event! If you guys haven’t checked these games out yet, please do; being able to see new LotV strategies, cheering for fan favorites who are teaming up as Archons, and the fun format they’ve been iterating on seem to be the biggest cool factors.
Now, on to discussing some further developments in Legacy of the Void!
Game is too easy or too difficult due to macro changes discussions
We’ve heard the discussions on both sides of this topic. Our perspective so far is that we think there’s still plenty of both micro and macro mastery needed in StarCraft II, and freeing up some clicks per race does look to be a good direction to go. While we hear some pro gamers who say things like “macro is so easy that everyone’s macro will be equal now”, we highly doubt they will all be playing at the highest possible skill level due to these changes. Further, we’re definitely not seeing perfect macro from any of the three races right now. Last weekend, we looked at pro-level players competitively playing archon mode and we were able to point out plenty of player mistakes in terms of macro, micro, delayed reaction times, etc. This is with two pros playing as one, so we just imagine how big the skill-gap among professional players would still be especially in 1v1 games.
We’d also like to remind everyone that the direction we’ve taken here has come out of the community summit where top-tier Korean pro players nearly unanimously said that even HotS is way too difficult to master in all aspects. As we discussed the topic with them, reducing the clicks and work needed on macro mechanics was the best solution we came up with in that discussion group. We just wanted to point this out, because there does seem to be some disconnect between the Korean pro players’ opinions vs. some crowds of people making conclusions on what they believe Korean pros would think on these changes.
Keep in mind though that testing on these changes is definitely not final, and we haven’t made hard conclusions yet. We would really like to encourage you guys once again to not be too extreme in both your thought processes and conclusions in this area. During this week’s “The Late Game”, we felt iNcontroL and Rifkin were alluding to the same concept when they were talking about how perception of the Carrier changed from useless to OP. When balancing or designing, it’s so important to avoid getting into a narrow, extreme view of changes in order to be able to evaluate the changes fairly.
Adept
We’ve tried various upgrades for the Adept this week, and realized that we do really want a more straightforward upgrade for this unit. As a core unit, the Adept is already pushing it in terms of ability complexity, and the unit itself (even without any upgrades) is already in a cool, distinct spot. However, we do still agree that a health upgrade on an already tanky unit is probably not the best way to go. We’ll most likely try out a different, simple stat upgrade for this unit’s upgrade slot soon.
Separate from the Adept upgrade, we wanted to discuss one additional topic for the Adept. Currently there’s an issue where Adepts are very difficult to counter with tier 1 or tier 2 units on Protoss. There’s also another potential issue of early game Terran bio not having a solid counter to Adepts since Adepts counter Marines in the early game, and Marauders are only soft counters to the Adept. Here, we’re testing a version of the Adept that is armored instead of light.
Corruptor
We agree with your feedback in that the Corruptor’s new ability overlaps a lot with the new role of the Swarm Host. Both are heavily targeted towards sniping Nexus/CC/Hatcheries. Because the new role of the Swarm Host is looking to be in a cool and unique spot, we are exploring potential ways to change up the Corruptor’s ability to give it a different recycle role. Right now, we’re playing around with a version of the ability where the damage is much lower but the Corruptor can use the ability on units to give a bit more power against the ground once the air threats have been taken care of. The goal here is not to encourage players to tech to Corruptors even when no enemy air units are in play, but rather to have the damage in a place that if you happened to have Corruptors due to enemy air threats out there, they can help against the ground a bit.
Overlord drops moving to Lair
We heard the feedback that this is too big of a nerf as many of you, and the person in the fancy suit, pointed out. We will playtest some different ways to potentially get this change to a better place somewhere in between where it used to be vs. where it is now and see if we can find a better solution.
Roach burrow move speed
We agree that we probably went too far with this change. We’ve evaluated not just the high level streams and tournament games, but also looked into many replays that players sent us. Regardless of whether the burrow-move Roaches won Zerg the game, or if the strategy didn’t quite work out, we agree that the current speed might be too much. We’re trying our best to locate a number that encourages burrow-move usage more so than in HotS, but doesn’t make the strategy quite as powerful as it is in the current state.
Cyclone damage
We agree with the general feedback here that the AA damage can use some help in the late-game. We’d like to improve this perhaps by pointing the ability damage to be more +armored focused so that not all air units are countered easily by the Cyclone in the late game. Still, we would like to also point out that having the initially lower damage (before the +damage research) has been a good thing because it allows the opponents to harass against players teching to early Cyclones; it also gives opponents enough time to react before the upgraded Cyclone comes into play.
Liberator strength
This we believe is mostly a timing thing. Sometimes, Liberators come into play before the counters are ready, and especially with the use of Zero-ground on some maps, they can become very difficult to deal with. We don’t think it’s a good idea to have to build maps around this unit going forward, so we believe a good solution here would be to bring the upgrade back into the game. This would allow us to have a tool to control the timing of when Liberators can start attacking ground units a bit better. We probably don’t need the armory requirement in this case, because the upgrade requirement as well as the tech lab needed for the first Starport might already be enough of a nerf.
Thank you as always for your ongoing participation and feedback in the beta, and please remember the playtest the balance update that just went out this week. We are also very excited to test out some of the big changes that went in and will be playing as much as we can during this long weekend!
