I just finished it at brutal, after 12-13 hours of play. And meanwhile I was playing, it hit me how easy this campaign is. There were not a single mission that I didnt steamroll on first try except for 1 or 2 random missions where I just fooled around and had to reload 3 to the latest autosave.
The last mission was a joke. I remember WoL campain where I struggled hard on some missions, for example In Utter Darkness and All In, but also other missions where really hard.
Or maybe its just me not being a noob anymore..
Other then the difficulty the campain was really great, better conversations and emotions then in WoL.
So nice being a student.. playing for 12- 13 hours and all. Or unemployed... or a progamer.. whichever you are :S
Yeah. but they removed all the brutal and hard achievements i think.. its just normal ach and whatever achi.. should be much more doable than WOL ones
Did you do it WHILE trying to get the achi/ bonus missions? I think if you strive for perfect execution, its much harder than just getting thru the missions.
I watched NonY a-move everything on brutal in the last mission with self-reviving-at-full-health ultralisks and mega-hydras, only one attempt needed. At least he -spoiler alert- + Show Spoiler +
On March 12 2013 11:30 lazyitachi wrote: So nice being a student.. playing for 12- 13 hours and all. Or unemployed... or a progamer.. whichever you are :S
Yeah. but they removed all the brutal and hard achievements i think.. its just normal ach and whatever achi.. should be much more doable than WOL ones
Did you do it WHILE trying to get the achi/ bonus missions? I think if you strive for perfect execution, its much harder than just getting thru the missions.
Not that i have any insight in it. But the reason for possibly (i havent't played yet) making the campaign slightly easier, might be to get people to instead of grinding campaign, get on multiplayer faster.
Maybe the achievments are (possibly) reduced, is because they want people to grind the multiplayer instead of the singleplayer.
Simply finish the campaign on Brutal is never hard, even in WoL, the hard part in HotS are the achievements, I found the Mastery category achievements are way harder than most the objective achievements of WoL campaign.
On March 12 2013 11:30 lazyitachi wrote: So nice being a student.. playing for 12- 13 hours and all. Or unemployed... or a progamer.. whichever you are :S
Yeah. but they removed all the brutal and hard achievements i think.. its just normal ach and whatever achi.. should be much more doable than WOL ones
Did you do it WHILE trying to get the achi/ bonus missions? I think if you strive for perfect execution, its much harder than just getting thru the missions.
There are still hard achievements, but they are under "mastery".
On March 12 2013 11:37 digmouse wrote: Simply finish the campaign on Brutal is never hard, even in WoL, the hard part in HotS are the achievements, I found the Mastery category achievements are way harder than most the objective achievements of WoL campaign.
Shit, I didn't even notice those achievements. They do look challenging, that's cool.
I can deal with the cheesy story/script, but it is way too easy. Nony was not even halfheartedly playing, and it was a joke. I am also very disappointed that Blizzard did not add more Challenge missions. Getting brutal achievements will be difficult, but completing brutal difficulty campaign? Not at all. Considerably easier than in WoL. Blizzard is too focused on flashy stuff instead of actual gameplay. Disappointing singleplayer; meh multiplayer (at least it is better than WoL >_>).
They could have at least made it so that hero units do not respawn on brutal... that is just like wtf. I think I could accept the HotS campaign if heroes could not respawn. Blizzard simplifying the game even more >_>
Lol is this for real ? :X WoL felt already pretty easy, only the last one was hard.... if you guys say HotS is EASIER.... what the fuck I thought they said Brutal would be really hard.
I'm gonna agree. 12-13 hours to do it here too. I failed a few times in a few missions, but for the most part I glided right through. It definitely felt easier than the WoL campaign. Maybe it has something to do with us having had 3 years to know the game or something.
The hardest part of the game was pretty early sadly, + Show Spoiler +
The primal zerg bosses, the one that spawns banes is a bitch
I still have a some achievements to get, but I've never been much of an achievement whore (plus I played on SEA, so I doubt those are going to transfer over to US anyway), so I'm just gonna jump headfirst into the 1v1's when it launches in the US in a few hours.
Campaign was still fun though, just wish it had a bit more smashing my head into a wall instead of massing roaches and smashing 1-a into an army.
Was trying to decide whether or not to buy this game, since the single player sounds horrible and the multiplayer looks marginally better than WoL I'm going to go ahead and say no.
Nony pretty much made roaches, made hydras and a-moved through all the levels. I haven't played it yet, but it didn't look nearly as entertaining as WoL campaign, and maybe even easier
Did it in 9, even with watching all the cinematics and talking to everyone.
Game is signicifcantly easier even on brutal. It gives you a much larger economy to play around with every level so you can just drone 2 bases and max out on something you like, plus kerrigan gets stupidly fucking overpowered stupidly fucking fast.
I've heard so many mixed reactions about the campaign. It'll be nice to try out for myself.. But I do get the overall impression that it is easier compared to WoL, and a different type of experience.
On March 12 2013 13:50 Terranlover wrote: that was by far the worst campaigne i ever played lol, bad story, bad pacing, bad presentation, way too easy and way too short.
Your statement doesn't mean anything. I can list at least 50 games with a shorter and worse campaign than hots
I just watched all the cinematics on youtube, the story itself seemed a lot more appealing to me. I haven't been following much of HotS, you guys all seemed to be trashing everything about the game, when clearly it's definitely improved. I dunno what you're expecting...
On March 12 2013 15:28 padfoota wrote: So I was playing Diablo 3....I mean HoTS campaign -_-
Yeah, exactly my thoughts.
It doesn't play like starcraft. Boss battles where you dodge abilities as if you were playing WoW or D3. Constant hero missions that felt more like playing necromancer in D2 where your minions are just there for the fun but your hero does everything. Lots of pointless missions, especially the stupid evolution missions, where you basically just a-move your way through.
The campaign is bad, really bad. I'd say it's an even bigger disappointment than Diablo 3.
The story... well, it didn't convince me either. It's extremely contrived, even more than WoL.
And have you tried doing the Mastery category achievement, that's the hard part, I think that's what the "Master Archive" is for, as far as I see a lot of those achievements are straight impossible with normal play on first play through, maybe some have easy tricks I don't know about.
On March 12 2013 13:36 Whatson wrote: Nony pretty much made roaches, made hydras and a-moved through all the levels. I haven't played it yet, but it didn't look nearly as entertaining as WoL campaign, and maybe even easier
A progamer steam rolled through the campaign and now its too ez. Am i missing something?
I remember the last mission i think in BW i was looking at the guide and it literally said, save here and bum rush the overmind with the 200 army of terran and the 200 army of toss. Do not try and take a head on engagement because if you lose, you can't beat the mission. Now that was hard. Or defending the xel'naga temple Without killing all the zerg before hand.
What I really really didn't like is that there is not a single mission that is a simple "macro up and go kill the other guy". Not one in 20. Every mission has some gimmick. And even the missions closest to that give you what... 2 bases max? And if you're lucky one will have 10 mineral patches.
On March 12 2013 17:02 dainbramage wrote: Just finished.
What I really really didn't like is that there is not a single mission that is a simple "macro up and go kill the other guy". Not one in 20. Every mission has some gimmick. And even the missions closest to that give you what... 2 bases max? And if you're lucky one will have 10 mineral patches.
On March 12 2013 17:02 dainbramage wrote: Just finished.
What I really really didn't like is that there is not a single mission that is a simple "macro up and go kill the other guy". Not one in 20. Every mission has some gimmick. And even the missions closest to that give you what... 2 bases max? And if you're lucky one will have 10 mineral patches.
There are thousands of this type of mission. They're located in the Multiplayer Campaign.
On March 12 2013 17:02 dainbramage wrote: Just finished.
What I really really didn't like is that there is not a single mission that is a simple "macro up and go kill the other guy". Not one in 20. Every mission has some gimmick. And even the missions closest to that give you what... 2 bases max? And if you're lucky one will have 10 mineral patches.
Hey I made 200/200 a couple times :/
I did in the one where you had to collect terrazine gas biomass, and the hybrid lab missions. Mostly because I lost pretty much nothing. Final mission I never made it to 200/200 though (just... was able to win before reaching it), which I think is kind of a joke.
On March 12 2013 17:02 dainbramage wrote: Just finished.
What I really really didn't like is that there is not a single mission that is a simple "macro up and go kill the other guy". Not one in 20. Every mission has some gimmick. And even the missions closest to that give you what... 2 bases max? And if you're lucky one will have 10 mineral patches.
There are thousands of this type of mission. They're located in the Multiplayer Campaign.
And if that's what starcraft is meant to be about, there should be missions like that in the campaign.
It was much easier than WoL IMO. Story and missions were okayish, but I'm still very disappointed that the overarching story for Starcraft 1 was a battle for the known universe and the survival of each species, while Starcraft 2 is a just a dumb love story with a 'dark looming threat on the horizon'. Why does everything have to be a love story? For the casuals? I seriously doubt that.
Less gimmicky missions than WoL overall, but still doesn't play like a real RTS. I wanna build shit vs harder and harder odds and just go fucking kill them. Didn't get to either expand or inject larva for some reason. Otherwise it was definitely better than WoL and worth playing though, even if it has nothing on the BW campaign. That's still by far the best RTS campaign ever made, with Warcraft 2 a close second.
The upgrades you get for the units is definetely ridiculously strong - Hydra free stim, on creep all units stim, endless roach and jumping banelings -_-
. That's still by far the best RTS campaign ever made
Best? Seriously? Half of the missions were around "Make army and destroy every thing of enemy fortress"
Yes. That's what an RTS is all about. It's the entire point of the genre. If I buy an RTS, I want to play an RTS. The missions were also reasonably hard and generally required you to battle over resources and expand several times to win instead of this modern retard mode where you only play the objective and 'find all the thingies' with what you're given at the start of the map. BW = king.
IMO, so far the weakest campaign in Starcraft so far.
Weak story, characters feel empty, plotline is obious, missions are plain and not that hard even on brutal, most of them are annoying rather than hard.
It was definatly the easiest campaign so far. But I did enjoy it. My favourite unit combo was max queen broodlord, you could amove against anything while reinforcing with queens
How do you beat The Crucible (the protect kerrigan chrysalis mission) on brutal and also get the bonus objective? I built 20 or so lings and burrowed them next to it, i have a save file with about 6 minutes left with them there - i can build 10 or so mutas and fly down to kill the zerg thing, and my base defense is all fine until the last 90 seconds.. consistently failing with 20 seconds on the clock, everything i have gets destroyed. Im not sure what to build, more spines, more swarm hosts? It feels like infinite mutas would not work - i tried having a dozen or two of them and the units that cant shoot up just kill kerrigan before the mutas can kill them.
I had no trouble at all on any mission but this one i failed three times in a row - maybe i just need to restart.
On March 12 2013 18:46 DidYuhim wrote: IMO, so far the weakest campaign in Starcraft so far.
Weak story, characters feel empty, plotline is obious, missions are plain and not that hard even on brutal, most of them are annoying rather than hard.
I hope mr.Metzen will deliver in next episode.
Yeah the Campaign was pretty mediocre to even bad. Alot of stuff felt extremely recycled . I had alot of fun playing the WoL campaign but this one i really disliked . Never going to touch it again . Don't care about archivements anyway.
Honestly it only feels easier than WoL. It's roughly the same difficulty, just a couple things are more streamlined and we're all more familiar with the game than we were for WoL's campaign.
Boring. Got to the Drakken Pulse Cannon mission, sighed when I saw the 10 minute timer. Sighed when I saw what the nydus worms gave me. Not going to play any more campaign.
Boring. As. Fuck.
Bad voice acting, I don't give a shit about Jim Raynor and Sarah Kerrigan's thing, and it doesn't even feel like starcraft. Every time I put my hand back on the keyboard, my fingers went into League of Legends position instead of Starcraft position.
I loved it personally. It felt a touch easy for me too, but then again I've played a lot of wings, I'm sure if I was new it wouldn't be that different. I really really liked it. Go the zerg
On March 12 2013 19:18 Cyro wrote: How do you beat The Crucible (the protect kerrigan chrysalis mission) on brutal and also get the bonus objective? I built 20 or so lings and burrowed them next to it, i have a save file with about 6 minutes left with them there - i can build 10 or so mutas and fly down to kill the zerg thing, and my base defense is all fine until the last 90 seconds.. consistently failing with 20 seconds on the clock, everything i have gets destroyed. Im not sure what to build, more spines, more swarm hosts? It feels like infinite mutas would not work - i tried having a dozen or two of them and the units that cant shoot up just kill kerrigan before the mutas can kill them.
I had no trouble at all on any mission but this one i failed three times in a row - maybe i just need to restart.
Restarted it 3 times too. But got it on the third try though. All I did was to take the expand relatively fast, and then make a lot of Swarm Host first protecting the crysallis. After a couple of SH I built mutas for the bonus mission. And then I built lots of spines + queens since I had tons of minerals. I made about 10 spines and 1-2 spores for each entrances. Had like 10 spines 8 SH and 4-5 queens for each paths (there are 3 paths in the end). I didn't even use the emergency button in the end since it was a cakewalk. :/ (Used it for the fun though)
On March 12 2013 14:28 noD wrote: Not easier people are just better e after 3 years... Plus zerg OP (jk well not really...)
True just remember all the cheese we have failed against or done in the past 3 years and the late game we all get better. some just faster then other But i got the game last night. midnight release because i got limited edition and could nt play because i gotta go to work so i cant wait to get home
Ok for me. Not bad not too good. The improvement in cut scenes was reaaally nice though.
I like:
-The Evolution and Kerrigan leveling -The campaign UI -So much improved cut scenes -Lurker :D -Hot kerrigan
I didn't like:
-Zerg talking really good english (I think its for the users to understand the story) but still they kinda talk and act like humans already. That's not the zerg I used to know.
-Cheesy lines. and some weird zerg to zerg talk.
-I feel like playing Diablo 3 and a bit of Warcraft on the missions vs Primal Zergs
On March 12 2013 19:18 Cyro wrote: How do you beat The Crucible (the protect kerrigan chrysalis mission) on brutal and also get the bonus objective? I built 20 or so lings and burrowed them next to it, i have a save file with about 6 minutes left with them there - i can build 10 or so mutas and fly down to kill the zerg thing, and my base defense is all fine until the last 90 seconds.. consistently failing with 20 seconds on the clock, everything i have gets destroyed. Im not sure what to build, more spines, more swarm hosts? It feels like infinite mutas would not work - i tried having a dozen or two of them and the units that cant shoot up just kill kerrigan before the mutas can kill them.
I had no trouble at all on any mission but this one i failed three times in a row - maybe i just need to restart.
You should probably go for less mutas and more swarm hosts/spines.
On March 12 2013 22:24 shin_toss wrote: [Might contain Spoilers!]
Ok for me. Not bad not too good. The improvement in cut scenes was reaaally nice though.
I like:
-The Evolution and Kerrigan leveling -The campaign UI -So much improved cut scenes -Lurker :D -Hot kerrigan
I didn't like:
-Zerg talking really good english (I think its for the users to understand the story) but still they kinda talk and act like humans already. That's not the zerg I used to know.
-Cheesy lines. and some weird zerg to zerg talk.
-I feel like playing Diablo 3 and a bit of Warcraft on the missions vs Primal Zergs
-Too easy.
-Story kinda sucked for me.
-Izsha looks like the bad guy in Harry Potter
Yeah but consider, that WoL is also very easy, even on brutal. In most missions you just gotta make MMM and destroy everything. You destroy everything so hard, that it's even possible to get almost all achievements on brutal. And yes, the cheese is the biggest complain I have so far (not finished yet). Blizz should learn how to write good scripts. Story is okay...ish so far.
Easy so far, but that's almost to be expected. The problem I've had is the pacing. It just feels all chunky and awkward. WoL wasn't exactly a feat of a playthrough, but I was hoping to see some improvements in story development or something. The upgrading units was interesting enough, but a lot of the Kerrigan-centric play was just brutally dull and pedantic.
I thought the campaign was great. Whilst easy, and having some eerily similar (almost re-skinned) WoL missions, it definitely was a lot of fun and innovative. Think about a new person coming to play this (i know they will probably already have WoL, but those that dont - will probably think its really helpful)
Regardless, the zerg units were a lot of fun, but yeh they did seem OP towards the end the Pod drops + leaping banelings with +50% radius was very a-move friendly. Oh well :D I only did it on hard, brutal shall be more challenging.
On March 12 2013 22:53 GizmoPT wrote: anyone found any easter eggsyet ? or everyone just rushing campaign ?
In one of the Primal missions I saw something along the lines of "Unknown Beast" run and burrow before i realised what was going on. I figure if you kill it you get an easter egg.
Also found someones arm (i forget the name) randomly in a mission. Not sure of the relevance though
The hotted up Hellion was kinda cool looking to. WTB that skin.
On March 12 2013 22:53 GizmoPT wrote: anyone found any easter eggsyet ? or everyone just rushing campaign ?
Yeah when you're in the prison or the spaceship with the larvae (dont' remember which) you can click on some of the prisoners/guys on the ship and one of them is "Diablo: Lord of Terror". I sighed, and kept going.
On March 12 2013 18:46 DidYuhim wrote: IMO, so far the weakest campaign in Starcraft so far.
Weak story, characters feel empty, plotline is obious, missions are plain and not that hard even on brutal, most of them are annoying rather than hard.
I hope mr.Metzen will deliver in next episode.
I won't comment on HotS because I'm not very far in yet. It's decent so far but of course not a ground breaking story.
However, come on, Metzen just sucks. The guy is a terrible writer. I mean... seriously how many more failures from the guy do Blizzard/People need before losing faith in the guy.
In WOL, the campain difficulty varried very strongly depending on your upgrades and tech choices, and units avialability.
In HOTS, mission progression is more linear, you do not have the money, and a lot of new Zerg units are pretty dam OP. The Jumping zerling, jumping baneling, the roach with broodlings, and so on.
While in WOL your terran became the nearly unstopable bunch, if you pick proper, there was a lot more options, and a lot more room for playstyles. And there were alternative story missions.
At the very least, WOL had a number of very hard missions, if you didn`t get particular type of unit. In HOTS, it is not the case.
How one of the top North American players, who has been playing this game day in and day out for a living for the last several years, finds this game mode, which was designed to be played by millions of casual gamers, *TOO EASY*... is just really poor design on Blizzard's part.
So here we are, almost everyone bitching about the difficulty of the campaign and the shallowness of the plot. How easily are people over looking the sheer QUALITY of the game, the polish and fun factor? It took me about 10 hours to finish brutal and every hour I was still amazed by it. On all aspects of visuals: art, animation, palette, and models the game is gorgeous. The detail that you find in every level is just absurd. There were some glitches/bugs but it only happened twice. As good as it looks it sounds just as good. When the only part of a game you find lacking is your disagreement with how the story or difficulty is handled it means that its a seriously well polished game that oozes quality. It's not perfect, but it's damn close; an arbitrary thing such as difficulty cannot be included.
Even though the story was a bit cheesy (not really a fan of how most Blizzard characters are default Mary Sues) it was still really well done. I know that this is their style and I try to appreciate it, and once you do it's hard not to see the immense love that has gone into this game. They wanted to do something different with the campaign, achieve a different feel, and they succeeded. How can people know that, then blame them because its bad since they don't like the concept, regardless of execution?
How many AAA titles come out nowadays with such quality? With SimCity fresh in my mind this game feels like the kiss of an angel. In fact I can imagine a kid playing this game and feeling the same way I did when I first played SC all those years ago.
9.7/10
GJ Blizzard, one of best, and definitely the best since WoL, damn RTS campaign I've ever played.
On March 13 2013 01:13 jdsowa wrote: How one of the top North American players, who has been playing this game day in and day out for a living for the last several years, finds this game mode, which was designed to be played by millions of casual gamers, *TOO EASY*... is just really poor design on Blizzard's part.
You have various difficulty levels, so your point is moot, brutal should be pretty hard for less than pro-gamers. And cassuals can play their normall or easy to their heart desire.
Well i played it on hard in like 10 hours and thought it was entertaining. Yeah it may not have been that hard, but if i want that i can alweys play ladder against masters players.
I think the lower difficulties should be fore casuals, and brutal should be brutal. Your hero, kerrigan shouldn't just come back when she dies, you should have to restart. Less checkpoints, less or weaker abilities ect. People want to feel like they've accomplished something when they beat a game on it's hardest difficulty. Casual players or players who want to enjoy the story and not really be challenged should be fine with lower difficulties. But people who start a game and choose the hardest difficulty setting are looking to be challenged, not spoon fed.
Make the Brutal seem almost impossible, give people a portrait for beating it, make it mean something.
On March 13 2013 01:22 BeyondCtrL wrote: So here we are, almost everyone bitching about the difficulty of the campaign and the shallowness of the plot. How easily are people over looking the sheer QUALITY of the game, the polish and fun factor? It took me about 10 hours to finish brutal and every hour I was still amazed by it. On all aspects of visuals: art, animation, palette, and models the game is gorgeous. The detail that you find in every level is just absurd. There were some glitches/bugs but it only happened twice. As good as it looks it sounds just as good. When the only part of a game you find lacking is your disagreement with how the story or difficulty is handled it means that its a seriously well polished game that oozes quality. It's not perfect, but it's damn close; an arbitrary thing such as difficulty cannot be included.
Even though the story was a bit cheesy (not really a fan of how most Blizzard characters are default Mary Sues) it was still really well done. I know that this is their style and I try to appreciate it, and once you do it's hard not to see the immense love that has gone into this game. They wanted to do something different with the campaign, achieve a different feel, and they succeeded. How can people know that, then blame them because its bad since they don't like the concept, regardless of execution?
How many AAA titles come out nowadays with such quality? With SimCity fresh in my mind this game feels like the kiss of an angel. In fact I can imagine a kid playing this game and feeling the same way I did when I first played SC all those years ago.
9.7/10
GJ Blizzard, one of best, and definitely the best since WoL, damn RTS campaign I've ever played.
I haven't played it but the argument is kind of inane. It's like saying a polished turd doesn't stink...
On March 13 2013 01:22 BeyondCtrL wrote: So here we are, almost everyone bitching about the difficulty of the campaign and the shallowness of the plot. How easily are people over looking the sheer QUALITY of the game, the polish and fun factor? It took me about 10 hours to finish brutal and every hour I was still amazed by it. On all aspects of visuals: art, animation, palette, and models the game is gorgeous. The detail that you find in every level is just absurd. There were some glitches/bugs but it only happened twice. As good as it looks it sounds just as good. When the only part of a game you find lacking is your disagreement with how the story or difficulty is handled it means that its a seriously well polished game that oozes quality. It's not perfect, but it's damn close; an arbitrary thing such as difficulty cannot be included.
Even though the story was a bit cheesy (not really a fan of how most Blizzard characters are default Mary Sues) it was still really well done. I know that this is their style and I try to appreciate it, and once you do it's hard not to see the immense love that has gone into this game. They wanted to do something different with the campaign, achieve a different feel, and they succeeded. How can people know that, then blame them because its bad since they don't like the concept, regardless of execution?
How many AAA titles come out nowadays with such quality? With SimCity fresh in my mind this game feels like the kiss of an angel. In fact I can imagine a kid playing this game and feeling the same way I did when I first played SC all those years ago.
9.7/10
GJ Blizzard, one of best, and definitely the best since WoL, damn RTS campaign I've ever played.
I haven't played it but the argument is kind of inane. It's like saying a polished turd doesn't stink...
Well, an insipid reply if there ever was one. Troll harder.
Looks really easy so far on Brutal, except that mission where you end up vs that huge boss with the tentacles (Zurvan?). For some reason I thought it was really, really hard. Had to reload several times. Maybe I missed something.
I finished the campaign and I liked it. It was easy, but for a change I was in control of the most powerful force in the universe - not a bunch of whimps.
I played into the swarm feel, with hundreds of units flooding into enemy lines and tearing them apart and it was so much fun
I will have more than enough skill-oriented challenges on the ladder.
Yet, super easy.. Had to reset once, just because I didn't read the objectives right.. kerrigan was just way way to strong..
... Pretty linear mission path... Was kind hoping for something that would take a few days to complete but whatever... Working on the achievements will probably yield more challenging fun then just playing out the missions....
I just finished the campaign on Normal in roughly 10 hours.
The funny thing is that I didn't even know if I wanted to buy the game because I really disliked the Wings of Liberty campaign for some reason and I haven't played multi-player in almost a year and a half. I only purchased the game and pre-downloaded it maybe 4 hours before midnight.
I guess it was easy, but I'm the type of player who likes to dick around in my games. That's why I play it on normal. So the difficulty didn't bother me. But I liked this single player a lot more than a the last. I also play zerg so maybe that's part of it, but I also liked the story and structure a little more.
On March 13 2013 01:22 BeyondCtrL wrote: So here we are, almost everyone bitching about the difficulty of the campaign and the shallowness of the plot. How easily are people over looking the sheer QUALITY of the game, the polish and fun factor? It took me about 10 hours to finish brutal and every hour I was still amazed by it. On all aspects of visuals: art, animation, palette, and models the game is gorgeous. The detail that you find in every level is just absurd. There were some glitches/bugs but it only happened twice. As good as it looks it sounds just as good. When the only part of a game you find lacking is your disagreement with how the story or difficulty is handled it means that its a seriously well polished game that oozes quality. It's not perfect, but it's damn close; an arbitrary thing such as difficulty cannot be included.
Even though the story was a bit cheesy (not really a fan of how most Blizzard characters are default Mary Sues) it was still really well done. I know that this is their style and I try to appreciate it, and once you do it's hard not to see the immense love that has gone into this game. They wanted to do something different with the campaign, achieve a different feel, and they succeeded. How can people know that, then blame them because its bad since they don't like the concept, regardless of execution?
How many AAA titles come out nowadays with such quality? With SimCity fresh in my mind this game feels like the kiss of an angel. In fact I can imagine a kid playing this game and feeling the same way I did when I first played SC all those years ago.
9.7/10
GJ Blizzard, one of best, and definitely the best since WoL, damn RTS campaign I've ever played.
How is quantity of content and dificulty related? They are not, the content quality and difficulty are totally different.
on the 3 boss mission on zerus and I can't beat zurvan. Any tips?
I found that part relatively easy. What's actually killing you? + Show Spoiler +
The tentacles that come up, the final stage of his attacks
, or something else? Basically you primarily use the jump ability to do damage to him, and walk out of the way of things. Dash for fast movement to dodge / kill minor things if they're in the way, constant heals, and charge should do it. If you look on the ground you can see where his main attack will hit next, so you should really never get hit by it.
I actually died to the first guy on that mission (shame ), but the other ones I found easy.
on the 3 boss mission on zerus and I can't beat zurvan. Any tips?
I found that part relatively easy. What's actually killing you? + Show Spoiler +
The tentacles that come up, the final stage of his attacks
, or something else? Basically you primarily use the jump ability to do damage to him, and walk out of the way of things. Dash for fast movement to dodge / kill minor things if they're in the way, constant heals, and charge should do it. If you look on the ground you can see where his main attack will hit next, so you should really never get hit by it.
I actually died to the first guy on that mission (shame ), but the other ones I found easy.
I keep getting overwhelmed by numbers, i dont have the DPS/energy to kill all the spawns. your answer makes me think you never played it on brutral/hard
on the 3 boss mission on zerus and I can't beat zurvan. Any tips?
I found that part relatively easy. What's actually killing you? + Show Spoiler +
The tentacles that come up, the final stage of his attacks
, or something else? Basically you primarily use the jump ability to do damage to him, and walk out of the way of things. Dash for fast movement to dodge / kill minor things if they're in the way, constant heals, and charge should do it. If you look on the ground you can see where his main attack will hit next, so you should really never get hit by it.
I actually died to the first guy on that mission (shame ), but the other ones I found easy.
I keep getting overwhelmed by numbers, i dont have the DPS/energy to kill all the spawns. your answer makes me think you never played it on brutral/hard
I'm 4-5 hours in now (finished the Level with the 3 Bosses on Zerus and got the Lurkers) and I think it's waaay easier than the WoL campaign, so far there was no challenging mission.
I really like the mission design and the production quality in general, but I think they take your hand way too much with things like introducing abilities etc.
I mean it's cool for new players, but I think it's a little lame when you finish almost half a level that is based around your hero and you are still in a region where they explain skills to you. You feel like you are walking through a tutorial when you in fact are 3 hours into the game (which is already an expansion of a 10+ hours campaign in WoL!). It's like playing with a person behind your shoulder who tells you every single move that you have to do. Especially the first couple of missions feel a little shallow on the gameplay side. WoL had similar problems at times, but wasn't as extreme in my opinion.
The plot is really good so far, way better than WoL imo Overall really satisfied so far, and that says something because my expectations were pretty high.
on the 3 boss mission on zerus and I can't beat zurvan. Any tips?
I found that part relatively easy. What's actually killing you? + Show Spoiler +
The tentacles that come up, the final stage of his attacks
, or something else? Basically you primarily use the jump ability to do damage to him, and walk out of the way of things. Dash for fast movement to dodge / kill minor things if they're in the way, constant heals, and charge should do it. If you look on the ground you can see where his main attack will hit next, so you should really never get hit by it.
I actually died to the first guy on that mission (shame ), but the other ones I found easy.
I keep getting overwhelmed by numbers, i dont have the DPS/energy to kill all the spawns. your answer makes me think you never played it on brutral/hard
You can get the boss to kill most of them, by luring the adds to stand in the red incoming attack areas.
tried that already, keep dieing. I can get quite far just by hiding burrowed and waiting till i have an opening but i usually have to wait 20mins or more before i have a window of opportunity.
I keep getting overwhelmed by numbers, i dont have the DPS/energy to kill all the spawns. your answer makes me think you never played it on brutral/hard
I'm actually relieved I'm not the only one who found that boss really hard on Brutal. I had to use several saves. You have to use the jump ability all the time (plus attack with all units obv) and try to save as many units as possible. Against light spawns, use charge, otherwise use jump and attack move, but the tough ones are really hard to deal with while avoiding the tentacles. Ironically, the end is the easiest, since he stops spawning guys and you can just avoid his attacks and finish him.
on the 3 boss mission on zerus and I can't beat zurvan. Any tips?
I found that part relatively easy. What's actually killing you? + Show Spoiler +
The tentacles that come up, the final stage of his attacks
, or something else? Basically you primarily use the jump ability to do damage to him, and walk out of the way of things. Dash for fast movement to dodge / kill minor things if they're in the way, constant heals, and charge should do it. If you look on the ground you can see where his main attack will hit next, so you should really never get hit by it.
I actually died to the first guy on that mission (shame ), but the other ones I found easy.
I keep getting overwhelmed by numbers, i dont have the DPS/energy to kill all the spawns. your answer makes me think you never played it on brutral/hard
I played and beat every mission on brutal... Dash is very effective at killing the spawns. IIRC against Ultras I also used the jump. I had basically every possible level on Kerrigan at that point (don't know if you'd done all the optional objectives, but it helps a lot). I also had picked all my Kerrigan evolutions such that they helped her instead of Zerg as a whole. I never had a hard time avoiding the tentacles (I think I got hit once or something by them), and as long as I kept moving the spawns were pretty killable with my spells. I didn't bother keeping the other units alive (maybe if I'd been playing on a slower speed, but I didn't think they'd be very useful - for none of the other bosses did I bother keeping them alive).
tbh i think you ppl are talking crap... i have done every bonus objective except for 1 or two and im only level 40. Very far from "every kerrigan level". I've already worked out your "advice" and it hasn't worked on hard, let alone brutal. I think you guys never did it on brutal tbh.
currently 40mins into my current attempt, hiding int he ground waiting for a window of opportunity TT
I played and beat every mission on brutal... Dash is very effective at killing the spawns. IIRC against Ultras I also used the jump. I had basically every possible level on Kerrigan at that point (don't know if you'd done all the optional objectives, but it helps a lot). I also had picked all my Kerrigan evolutions such that they helped her instead of Zerg as a whole. I never had a hard time avoiding the tentacles (I think I got hit once or something by them), and as long as I kept moving the spawns were pretty killable with my spells. I didn't bother keeping the other units alive (maybe if I'd been playing on a slower speed, but I didn't think they'd be very useful - for none of the other bosses did I bother keeping them alive).
I'm starting to think it must depend on when you chose to do that mission. Because the hard spawns were really really hard to kill with my Kerrigan alone. Like auto attacks do almost nothing, dash does nothing, jump hurts them 60% or whatever).
I absolutely could *not* finish the boss if I didn't keep most of my units alive (which is almost impossible without saves).
On March 13 2013 02:58 mGGNoRe wrote: tbh i think you ppl are talking crap... i have done every bonus objective except for 1 or two and im only level 40. Very far from "every kerrigan level". I've already worked out your "advice" and it hasn't worked on hard, let alone brutal. I think you guys never did it on brutal tbh.
currently 40mins into my current attempt, hiding int he ground waiting for a window of opportunity TT
Did you even read my post? I mostly agree with you. It's hard (at least if you do it at a certain time in the campaign).
On March 13 2013 02:58 mGGNoRe wrote: tbh i think you ppl are talking crap... i have done every bonus objective except for 1 or two and im only level 40. Very far from "every kerrigan level". I've already worked out your "advice" and it hasn't worked on hard, let alone brutal. I think you guys never did it on brutal tbh.
currently 40mins into my current attempt, hiding int he ground waiting for a window of opportunity TT
Did you even read my post? I mostly agree with you. It's hard.
Why would he? You are supposdely giving advice on an impossible boss that can not be beaten. Of course you are talking crap!
Send 2 or 3 roach/hydra to both of the top ends of the platform, there is a dead zone there and it is relatively unlikely that they will get attacked by enemies there. After that just ignore your units and focus on microing Kerrigan, kill all the adds that spawn asap and only focus the boss when all the other units are dead.
I figured it was super obvious that by "every Kerrigan level" I meant every Kerrigan level it's possible to have at that point (i.e., I did all the bonus objectives on each of the missions before it), not that I was actually max level possible at the end of the campaign...
And yes, if you do it earlier on then it's probably harder. I didn't do Zerus until I had no other option. It also seems pretty retarded that you think I'm lying about beating the level, lol.
On March 13 2013 02:58 mGGNoRe wrote: tbh i think you ppl are talking crap... i have done every bonus objective except for 1 or two and im only level 40. Very far from "every kerrigan level". I've already worked out your "advice" and it hasn't worked on hard, let alone brutal. I think you guys never did it on brutal tbh.
currently 40mins into my current attempt, hiding int he ground waiting for a window of opportunity TT
Look, if you can't beat it on brutal (or even hard), with having the boss hit the adds and spamming abilities, then the problem is you, not the advice.
If most of you played WoL, the campaign could be significantly easier because you have also gotten a lot better at the game. Don't get me wrong, I am about 75% through the campaign (about 8 hours in) and I have not had any trouble on any of the missions, but comparing how I play these missions with how I played WoL, there's a significant improvement in my overall play.
On March 12 2013 13:25 zbedlam wrote: Was trying to decide whether or not to buy this game, since the single player sounds horrible and the multiplayer looks marginally better than WoL I'm going to go ahead and say no.
On March 13 2013 03:07 Cheetahlol wrote: If most of you played WoL, the campaign could be significantly easier because you have also gotten a lot better at the game. Don't get me wrong, I am about 75% through the campaign (about 8 hours in) and I have not had any trouble on any of the missions, but comparing how I play these missions with how I played WoL, there's a significant improvement in my overall play.
I played the WoL on brutal right before HotS on brutal. And it was way more challenging. Or better said, it was challenging. HotS was just a runthrough without any challenge what so ever...
On March 12 2013 11:35 Ooshmagoosh wrote: I watched NonY a-move everything on brutal in the last mission with self-reviving-at-full-health ultralisks and mega-hydras, only one attempt needed. At least he -spoiler alert- + Show Spoiler +
THe primal zerg boss fights are A LOT of fun - I'm defidently going to go replay that level just for the fun of those fights again.
As the campaign being too easy - I somewhat agree. For the hardcore gamer, it is pretty damn easy. However, for anyone below that, brutal still is a big challenge (if not out of reach). I wouldn't mind blizzard releasing a followup to the campaign that includes an "impossible" version that requires elite play to defeat, but this likely won't happen.
On March 12 2013 15:28 padfoota wrote: So I was playing Diablo 3....I mean HoTS campaign -_-
The campaign is bad, really bad. I'd say it's an even bigger disappointment than Diablo 3.
The story... well, it didn't convince me either. It's extremely contrived, even more than WoL.
Wait? What? I couldn't possibly disagree more.
Yeah, all these comments are really curious. Especially from people who took the time to sit through the whole thing in the first 24 hours after release, basically playing a whole day. Why do they play a Singleplayer campaign for that long in one sitting when they don't even like it :D
I think the challenge factor depends on your knowledge to play Zerg prior to Hots. I'm a Protoss player and have no clue how to play Zerg, so I think this new campaign will be challenging.
Also, unless you've replayed WOL recently with your current skill level, you can't compare what you think you remember from playing the Campaign years ago.
On March 13 2013 03:07 Cheetahlol wrote: If most of you played WoL, the campaign could be significantly easier because you have also gotten a lot better at the game. Don't get me wrong, I am about 75% through the campaign (about 8 hours in) and I have not had any trouble on any of the missions, but comparing how I play these missions with how I played WoL, there's a significant improvement in my overall play.
I played the WoL on brutal right before HotS on brutal. And it was way more challenging. Or better said, it was challenging. HotS was just a runthrough without any challenge what so ever...
Perhaps you're right. Now that I think about it, I just pretty much a moved spammed while maxing out on two bases lol
Some ability combinations seemed overpowered. For example zergling reconstruction + 3 zergling per egg upgrade gives you an endless stream of free and near instant build time zerglings. It makes swarm host's locust look like a joke.
Kerrigan being able to spawn 6 banelings on top of enemy units is also very good.
But who cares? the campaign is for fun. It's not serious business.
I am watching Raelcun play it, and oh god am I happy I didn't buy this. It doesn't even have anything to do with difficulty, it just looks terrible; the story is freakishly bad.
Blizzard had damaged the Starcraft story with WoL, but they destroyed it with HotS, successfully destroying 3/3 franchises' stories!
Yeah I also watched Raelcun playing it and dear lord, the story is absolutely ridiculous, and since I mostly play games for their story I am thankful I did not buy it. Also, essence.
On March 13 2013 03:35 paralleluniverse wrote: Some ability combinations seemed overpowered. For example zergling reconstruction + 3 zergling per egg upgrade gives you an endless stream of free and near instant build time zerglings. It makes swarm host's locust look like a joke.
Kerrigan being able to spawn 6 banelings on top of enemy units is also very good.
But who cares? the campaign is for fun. It's not serious business.
You haven't tried getting wild mutationed speed-raptorlings yet then. You can almost beat campaign with them singlehandedly because they deal so much damage if they can't die.
In all honesty though, WoL was much, much more difficult than HotS was. Stuff like the sky version of the last mission of WoL was actually quite difficult. They honestly could've given maps with more than a couple minable bases as well. I understand that for most casual players, hitting injects is a chore that doesn't make sense for single player, but having to build 2 hatches per base, and only having 1-2 mining bases on most missions is really really limiting.
Apart from that Zurvan guy, fuck that guy. Died more times on him than all the other missions combined because I'm fucking bad.
On March 13 2013 03:32 striderxxx wrote: I think the challenge factor depends on your knowledge to play Zerg prior to Hots. I'm a Protoss player and have no clue how to play Zerg, so I think this new campaign will be challenging.
Also, unless you've replayed WOL recently with your current skill level, you can't compare what you think you remember from playing the Campaign years ago.
I actually replayed WoL, the final few missions (the BC space one, all the Char levels) and I thought they were much harder than HotS final missions. The story line was okayish I suppose, pretty cheesy but with a couple of twists in there, they really set it up nicely for Legacy. Like Isane said, the leveling thing was actually pretty legit. I also preferred the more linear storyline.
I actually thought the campaign was pretty fun . Was the dialogue a bit hamfisted and some of the things a bit silly? sure (In particular the mission where Kerrigan has to stand there while you use the other guy (being deliberately a bit vague) to take key areas in time seemed a bit silly ). That said, I liked it a lot more than WoL and I didn't find myself getting annoyed with Kerrigan the way I did with Raynor in WoL. I don't know, it felt like a big step up to me; also, the level design was pretty good, varied, and interesting.
On March 13 2013 03:51 Insane wrote: I actually thought the campaign was pretty fun . Was the dialogue a bit hamfisted and some of the things a bit silly? sure (In particular the mission where Kerrigan has to stand there while you use the other guy (being deliberately a bit vague) to take key areas in time seemed a bit silly ). That said, I liked it a lot more than WoL and I didn't find myself getting annoyed with Kerrigan the way I did with Raynor in WoL. I don't know, it felt like a big step up to me; also, the level design was pretty good, varied, and interesting.
I thought the dialogue was a big improvement over WoL.
I found almost ever word that came out of Raynor's mouth almost cringe worthy. His lines were just so corny.
On March 13 2013 03:51 Insane wrote: I actually thought the campaign was pretty fun . Was the dialogue a bit hamfisted and some of the things a bit silly? sure (In particular the mission where Kerrigan has to stand there while you use the other guy (being deliberately a bit vague) to take key areas in time seemed a bit silly ). That said, I liked it a lot more than WoL and I didn't find myself getting annoyed with Kerrigan the way I did with Raynor in WoL. I don't know, it felt like a big step up to me; also, the level design was pretty good, varied, and interesting.
I thought the dialogue was a big improvement over WoL.
I found almost ever word that came out of Raynor's mouth almost cringe worthy. His lines were just so corny.
Oh, yeah, I'm not saying it was somewhat awkward dialogue compared to WoL, just that there were some awkward dialogue moments. Raynor still struck me as cheesy/awkward lines a lot, but he wasn't in it very much, whereas Kerrigan's lines didn't feel nearly as awkward to me.
I just did the last 2 levels on brutal, so I cant say anything about the other missions, but it was pretty easy yeah. But it also felt pretty 'swarmy', and I guess that is what they were going for. I still enjoyed the campaign, bar the corny lines here and there.
On March 13 2013 03:51 Insane wrote: I actually thought the campaign was pretty fun . Was the dialogue a bit hamfisted and some of the things a bit silly? sure (In particular the mission where Kerrigan has to stand there while you use the other guy (being deliberately a bit vague) to take key areas in time seemed a bit silly ). That said, I liked it a lot more than WoL and I didn't find myself getting annoyed with Kerrigan the way I did with Raynor in WoL. I don't know, it felt like a big step up to me; also, the level design was pretty good, varied, and interesting.
I was very annoyed by Kerrigan . I hated the way she handled her buissness . Her motivation was murky at best in my eyes and the way she acted i actually killed her myself a few times because i disliked her that much after a cutscene.
On March 13 2013 03:51 Insane wrote: I actually thought the campaign was pretty fun . Was the dialogue a bit hamfisted and some of the things a bit silly? sure (In particular the mission where Kerrigan has to stand there while you use the other guy (being deliberately a bit vague) to take key areas in time seemed a bit silly ). That said, I liked it a lot more than WoL and I didn't find myself getting annoyed with Kerrigan the way I did with Raynor in WoL. I don't know, it felt like a big step up to me; also, the level design was pretty good, varied, and interesting.
I was very annoyed by Kerrigan . I hated the way she handled her buissness . Her motivation was murky at best in my eyes and the way she acted i actually killed her myself a few times because i disliked her that much after a cutscene.
Lol that's a lot of hate man. Kerrigan is hot, and like in real life, one doesn't care what a hot girl says or does, you'll still do whatever she bids of you.
I finished it on brutal in around 12h. I did find it easier then WOL, however I think this is because I have been playing sc2 since wol release. The campaign this time around did feel almost a little bit faster micro wise.
Well the campaign started off real good but that last mission..really lol?
It was like the most generic mission i've ever played. You literally just kill terran shit all the way to the terran main base then kill that too.
I was hoping mengsk would get into a powerranger megazord or some shit and youd have to control kerrigan and her captains and dodge super epic missles or some shit lol. Story wise was similar, started off great but the ending just wasn't exactly that interesting like WOl's was.
On March 12 2013 11:21 spirates wrote: I just finished it at brutal, after 12-13 hours of play. And meanwhile I was playing, it hit me how easy this campaign is. There were not a single mission that I didnt steamroll on first try except for 1 or 2 random missions where I just fooled around and had to reload 3 to the latest autosave.
The last mission was a joke. I remember WoL campain where I struggled hard on some missions, for example In Utter Darkness and All In, but also other missions where really hard.
Or maybe its just me not being a noob anymore..
Other then the difficulty the campain was really great, better conversations and emotions then in WoL.
I just finished it at brutal, after 12-13 hours of play
On March 13 2013 03:51 Insane wrote: I actually thought the campaign was pretty fun . Was the dialogue a bit hamfisted and some of the things a bit silly? sure (In particular the mission where Kerrigan has to stand there while you use the other guy (being deliberately a bit vague) to take key areas in time seemed a bit silly ). That said, I liked it a lot more than WoL and I didn't find myself getting annoyed with Kerrigan the way I did with Raynor in WoL. I don't know, it felt like a big step up to me; also, the level design was pretty good, varied, and interesting.
I was very annoyed by Kerrigan . I hated the way she handled her buissness . Her motivation was murky at best in my eyes and the way she acted i actually killed her myself a few times because i disliked her that much after a cutscene.
Lol that's a lot of hate man. Kerrigan is hot, and like in real life, one doesn't care what a hot girl says or does, you'll still do whatever she bids of you.
Aw hell naw . She like a crazy hot chick that even though she looks good the moment she opens her mouth you just want her to shup up and never open it again. I can fake liking those girls but in the back of my head just wanna make her stop spewing non-sense.
For example the way she reacted to Zeratul . What was that about ? What did he ever to do the actual Kerrigan and not the Kerrigan that was bad ? Why did she jump him like that ?
I enjoyed the cutscenes. I really don't like playing zerg so that part, ie the whole game, was not too entertaining, and supereasy even though ive played 0 times as zerg before (didn't play on brutal though because I didn't really enjoy the gameplay very much).
Pretty sure kerrigan gets here humanity back in the end, all while some poor protoss has to be heroic and sacrifice himself for the good of the world. :/
On March 13 2013 03:51 Insane wrote: I actually thought the campaign was pretty fun . Was the dialogue a bit hamfisted and some of the things a bit silly? sure (In particular the mission where Kerrigan has to stand there while you use the other guy (being deliberately a bit vague) to take key areas in time seemed a bit silly ). That said, I liked it a lot more than WoL and I didn't find myself getting annoyed with Kerrigan the way I did with Raynor in WoL. I don't know, it felt like a big step up to me; also, the level design was pretty good, varied, and interesting.
I was very annoyed by Kerrigan . I hated the way she handled her buissness . Her motivation was murky at best in my eyes and the way she acted i actually killed her myself a few times because i disliked her that much after a cutscene.
Lol that's a lot of hate man. Kerrigan is hot, and like in real life, one doesn't care what a hot girl says or does, you'll still do whatever she bids of you.
Aw hell naw . She like a crazy hot chick that even though she looks good the moment she opens her mouth you just want her to shup up and never open it again. I can fake liking those girls but in the back of my head just wanna make her stop spewing non-sense.
For example the way she reacted to Zeratul . What was that about ? What did he ever to do the actual Kerrigan and not the Kerrigan that was bad ? Why did she jump him like that ?
Yeah that one and the ending were extraordinarily stupid. I actually laughed while they were playing because of how stupid they were. I can't believe someone can actually write a script that's so bad, nevertheless have it accepted, for a game of this magnitude.
On March 13 2013 03:51 Insane wrote: I actually thought the campaign was pretty fun . Was the dialogue a bit hamfisted and some of the things a bit silly? sure (In particular the mission where Kerrigan has to stand there while you use the other guy (being deliberately a bit vague) to take key areas in time seemed a bit silly ). That said, I liked it a lot more than WoL and I didn't find myself getting annoyed with Kerrigan the way I did with Raynor in WoL. I don't know, it felt like a big step up to me; also, the level design was pretty good, varied, and interesting.
I was very annoyed by Kerrigan . I hated the way she handled her buissness . Her motivation was murky at best in my eyes and the way she acted i actually killed her myself a few times because i disliked her that much after a cutscene.
Lol that's a lot of hate man. Kerrigan is hot, and like in real life, one doesn't care what a hot girl says or does, you'll still do whatever she bids of you.
Aw hell naw . She like a crazy hot chick that even though she looks good the moment she opens her mouth you just want her to shup up and never open it again. I can fake liking those girls but in the back of my head just wanna make her stop spewing non-sense.
For example the way she reacted to Zeratul . What was that about ? What did he ever to do the actual Kerrigan and not the Kerrigan that was bad ? Why did she jump him like that ?
Yeah that one and the ending were extraordinarily stupid. I actually laughed while they were playing because of how stupid they were. I can't believe someone can actually write a script that's so bad, nevertheless have it accepted, for a game of this magnitude.
Yeah i can forgive a badly written campaign by now. Although considering how great in comparision the story of Warcraft III and the original Starcraft + Broodwar had been i'm still dissapointed . Those games told a way more interesting story and had alot less to work with . The only character i kinda liked was Stukov in this one but he didn't nearly get enough facetime and in the end was barely , if at all , relevant. Whats the point of bringing him back if you don't use him for story purposes ?
And don't even get me started on how they totally messed up the great plotline the predecessor set up for the second Starctaft. The whole Xel'Naga storyline just feels wierd and not really thought through.
. That's still by far the best RTS campaign ever made
Best? Seriously? Half of the missions were around "Make army and destroy every thing of enemy fortress"
Yes. That's what an RTS is all about. It's the entire point of the genre. If I buy an RTS, I want to play an RTS. The missions were also reasonably hard and generally required you to battle over resources and expand several times to win instead of this modern retard mode where you only play the objective and 'find all the thingies' with what you're given at the start of the map. BW = king.
SC:BW and WC3 both had the same problem: every mission was the same thing over and over again. Blizzard mixed it up with WoL, and mixed it up even more with HOTS. You can actually see that Blizzard took some inspiration from the way Relic did things with Dawn of War 2.
It's for the better really. If I want to build a base and destroy my enemy's base, I just play multiplayer.
On March 13 2013 04:59 ODKStevez wrote: You must have done it on casual. It is all about the story. Just enjoy it instead of complaining. It was amazing.
Enjoying the plot is the only "brutal" part of this game.
I don't know, I played the wol campaign split over 2 years and didn't enjoy it that much. I only finished it on sunday for hots, so I can't say which was longer. I played the hots campaign on hard and while it was easy, I did enjoy it a lot as I am not looking for a challenge in the singleplayer (if brutal is also no challenge at all that's sad of course). In conclusion this campaign was way better than the wol campaign imo, but maybe that's because I am zerg. I loved all the units, OP Kerrigan, the cinematics and the story was also ok. Props to Blizzard, I never thought I could have that much fun playing it or that I would even finish it before lotv release . Still now it's time for the multiplayer finally, propably won't touch singleplayer until lotv to refresh my memory.
Edit: The only thing I missed was a final Bossfight against Mengsk in the last mission. Like him in a super Odin or something :D.
If the campaign on Brutal was too easy for you, or if you just wanted more BW-style 'macro up and kill all' battles, then the SC2 you want is the ladder. The campaign was NOT built with you in mind. Just live with it. Blizzard's not going to make more money designing the campaign for you. They'll lose money.
The campaign was built for the casual never-got-out-of-bronze *if* they even did enough multiplayer to even get placed in it! Yes, a lot of people buy SC2, and play the campaign, and now mess with arcade some, and never do any more, and never *intended* to do any more. The campaign was built for them, not really for anyone who posts here. Do you think it was accidental that Blizzard added *training* for multiplayer? They wouldn't have done that if there wasn't a large SC2 audience that wasn't touching it.
Designing the campaign around the 2% is not a good economic move for Blizzard. They figure most of you will (as has been done here) slam through it as fast as possible, *if* you do it at all, and then go to the ladder. The campaign is there for people who buy the game with the campaign as their first and primary reason for doing so. Yes, those people exist, but you'll never (or at least very rarely) see them here. Don't get so insular in your ladder/progaming world that you think your way of playing SC2 is the only way that exists. You may not care that other people play differently, but you can bet Blizzard cares.
Edit: to be clear, I'm not putting down ladder/progaming here. I'm just reminding you it's not the ONLY way Blizzard makes money from SC2.
. That's still by far the best RTS campaign ever made
Best? Seriously? Half of the missions were around "Make army and destroy every thing of enemy fortress"
Yes. That's what an RTS is all about. It's the entire point of the genre. If I buy an RTS, I want to play an RTS. The missions were also reasonably hard and generally required you to battle over resources and expand several times to win instead of this modern retard mode where you only play the objective and 'find all the thingies' with what you're given at the start of the map. BW = king.
SC:BW and WC3 both had the same problem: every mission was the same thing over and over again. Blizzard mixed it up with WoL, and mixed it up even more with HOTS. You can actually see that Blizzard took some inspiration from the way Relic did things with Dawn of War 2.
It's for the better really. If I want to build a base and destroy my enemy's base, I just play multiplayer.
that certainly is true. but it does not change the fact that with all the options and everything blizzard had they still did not manage to write a good story. still the same problems as in WoL...bland characters and an obvious plot :/ the thing that annoys me the most about hots is that i feel like playing a tutorial for most of the time. i wanna figure stuff out by myself and not get a hand for every little task
The campaign had some pretty creative missions. The Primal Boss I had to eventually give up on at Brutal and even Hard - I don't have that kind of micro. Plot was comfortably better than Brood War and Starcraft 1, but worse than Warcraft 3 and TFT.
On March 12 2013 15:28 padfoota wrote: So I was playing Diablo 3....I mean HoTS campaign -_-
The campaign is bad, really bad. I'd say it's an even bigger disappointment than Diablo 3.
The story... well, it didn't convince me either. It's extremely contrived, even more than WoL.
Wait? What? I couldn't possibly disagree more.
Yeah, all these comments are really curious. Especially from people who took the time to sit through the whole thing in the first 24 hours after release, basically playing a whole day. Why do they play a Singleplayer campaign for that long in one sitting when they don't even like it :D
id say there is a correlation that ppl that feel obliged to play through a game in half a day that they waited for this long might be unable to actually enjoy it
I really want everybody on this forum to shut the fuck up about campaign difficulty, most of us have probably spend 200+ hours on this game which means that we are approximately 100 times better than everybody picking up this game. You should also be able to beat the highest difficulty of a campaign relatively easy with 200 hours xp.
If you honestly want challenge, try the "Mastery Achievments" on Brutal or generally all Achievements in one Runthrough.
EDIT: Story was kinda cringeworthy though, they seriously botched this one.
On March 13 2013 06:54 Evangelist wrote: The campaign had some pretty creative missions. The Primal Boss I had to eventually give up on at Brutal and even Hard - I don't have that kind of micro. Plot was comfortably better than Brood War and Starcraft 1, but worse than Warcraft 3 and TFT.
Yeah, that felt like Belial in D3. Normally I don't like these kind of missions but they were the best. My favorite one is the one on the Protoss ship where you are a Queen. That was fun. :D
Seeing that I reloaded a few times on hard already, it is probably not too easy. On the other hand, I don't have the hundreds of ladder game experience you guys have.
Since i know how boring normal difficulty is, i played the entire thing on hard. To my surprise i only had to restart one mission once. Should have played on brutal. So yes, I found it way to easy.
From the time I got Ultras I was going for Ultra+Queen every time. With the Auto-Transfuse Ultras are damn OP. Last Mission was crazy with Tourtoise Ultras (Resurrect on Death) with Burrowed Charge.
The game has the emotional dept of a rain-puddle and it's pretty obviously a hard format to tell a proper story in, but overall I found the campaign entertaining (and felt like a macro bad-ass when with my endless waves of roach-hydra ^^).
Blizzard kinda-sorta rectified the hero-to-the-rescue-of-damsel-in-distress of the first game, though Karrigan's actions never make much sense. Why exactly is she so pissed of at Mensk? He seems like just another player, not really worthy of the ire of the queen of blades.
I had to load twice on hard, both times because I wanted to play ling muta in missions it simply wasn't doable on (atleast not doable for me). Way too easy, I think Im gonna give brutal a try, at least those bosses on zerus people are talking about being challenging.
On March 13 2013 08:49 m0ck wrote: Why exactly is she so pissed of at Mensk? He seems like just another player, not really worthy of the ire of the queen of blades.
Well he did leave her to die, only for her destiny to turn out far worse; infestation.
I don't get it (well I havent bought he game yet), but WoL in brutal mode isn't hard, you can just build a mech army deathball and a-move to win, how can it get any easier?
On March 13 2013 06:54 Evangelist wrote: The campaign had some pretty creative missions. The Primal Boss I had to eventually give up on at Brutal and even Hard - I don't have that kind of micro. Plot was comfortably better than Brood War and Starcraft 1, but worse than Warcraft 3 and TFT.
i dont think blizzard will ever be able to get a campaign as good as the wc3roc campaign ever again
I did the whole thing on hard because I didn't feel like losing any missions, I just wanted to experience the story without much frustration. After reading here I'm beginning to think I could have done it on brutal and achieved the same thing. I really liked reincarnating lings + ultras, then mega hydras.
On March 13 2013 06:54 Evangelist wrote: The campaign had some pretty creative missions. The Primal Boss I had to eventually give up on at Brutal and even Hard - I don't have that kind of micro. Plot was comfortably better than Brood War and Starcraft 1, but worse than Warcraft 3 and TFT.
i dont think blizzard will ever be able to get a campaign as good as the wc3roc campaign ever again
i just played through that campaign again a couple months ago. so damn good.
On March 13 2013 08:49 m0ck wrote: Why exactly is she so pissed of at Mensk? He seems like just another player, not really worthy of the ire of the queen of blades.
Well he did leave her to die, only for her destiny to turn out far worse; infestation.
I get that, but considering the endless millions being killed in the never ending war, it seems like she takes his actions more personal than needed ^^
Though I suppose Blizzard might argue that the story is enhanced by the element of self-inflicted tragedy in her undergoing the transformation to the queen of blades (though this time without a voice in her ear/mind) by her own volition in order to regain her power and enabling the fulfillment of the number one goal of the campaign, to enact revenge on Mensk. I can see why they wanted to tell that story, and read as an outline there is some beautiful, tragic irony in her fate. But it just never comes together in the campaign. Where is her pain in giving herself to swarm again? Where is her doubt of going down the line to becomethe being that her "love", who seemingly play's a big role in the motivation of her actions, risked his life to rescue her from? It's just never there, instead Kerrigan is usually semi-smug and everything other than introspective.
I think it could have been a decent, emotional story of gaining power but losing herself (as is somewhat indicated in the story ("we've all become monsters")) but the story needed a different emphasis and different, well, timing, for it not just to be a meaningless seesawing of Kerrigan->QoB->Kerrigan->QoB..
So I just finished it on hard, and I just don't know why I didn't go brutal straight away. This campaign is WAY easier than the WoL one, and is in my personal opinion, less enjoyable.
It's far more linear, it's shorter, it's a lot more repetitive, etc., so I don't really know how to feel about it. I'd still say it's worth playing through though, but I guess I expected more.
Also about the primal zerg boss, I found him very easy, killed on first attempt, just dash around to kill stuff and heal yourself whenever you need it. No need to rush with killing the boss, just focus on not dying.
The different mutations were so beneficial, like the raptorling and the vile roach, kinda makes the game a walk in the park, not to mention the later upgrades. Also Abathur best voice ever?
On March 13 2013 09:19 vultdylan wrote: The different mutations were so beneficial, like the raptorling and the vile roach, kinda makes the game a walk in the park, not to mention the later upgrades. Also Abathur best voice ever?
Yeah, i really like his voice especially when upgrade unit. "preparing for evolution, await decision"
and what's a master archive? Is it just a mission archive like in WoL?
Just going to chime in and agree with the sentiment that it is indeed a lot easier than WoL. Played through it on hard and none of the missions were even close to a challenge. In WoL there were some missions where you early on f.ex 'had to' employ specific strategies to make sure you survived, or made it within the time limit, in every mission in HoTS all you need to do is build drones > Get 200/200, and then you win. I have not played SC2 in like 6-12 months, and am not better now than I was when WoL launched. No real optional\non linear missions where you choose a side\an action. No minigame (lost viking) : ( And overall I knew already from entering that I would find the zerg campaign just generally less interesting than terran.
On March 13 2013 09:19 vultdylan wrote: The different mutations were so beneficial, like the raptorling and the vile roach, kinda makes the game a walk in the park, not to mention the later upgrades. Also Abathur best voice ever?
Yeah, i really like his voice especially when upgrade unit. "preparing for evolution, await decision"
and what's a master archive? Is it just a mission archive like in WoL?
Its a missions archive, but it also lets you change all the various upgrades before every mission. Which lets you tailor upgrades for every mission (something you could not do in WoL afaik?) which is one more reason why they could have made the difficulty of the campaign harder than it was in WoL instead of easier.
On March 13 2013 09:19 vultdylan wrote: The different mutations were so beneficial, like the raptorling and the vile roach, kinda makes the game a walk in the park, not to mention the later upgrades. Also Abathur best voice ever?
I'm surprised it was so easy for all of you. I'm currently stuck on mission 4 brutal, where I'm trying to kill zagara's base. All of my lings die and I don't have enough money to max out again.
I've been finding it really easy on brutal too, but I'm hardly into the campaign. It's amazing that you don't have to inject your hatcheries... I think that's what makes it a lot easier than it should be.
On March 13 2013 09:19 vultdylan wrote: The different mutations were so beneficial, like the raptorling and the vile roach, kinda makes the game a walk in the park, not to mention the later upgrades. Also Abathur best voice ever?
Yeah, i really like his voice especially when upgrade unit. "preparing for evolution, await decision"
and what's a master archive? Is it just a mission archive like in WoL?
Its a missions archive, but it also lets you change all the various upgrades before every mission. Which lets you tailor upgrades for every mission (something you could not do in WoL afaik?) which is one more reason why they could have made the difficulty of the campaign harder than it was in WoL instead of easier.
The master archive is for completing the mastery achievements I think, most of those achievements are very hard on first play through.
Yes they made the single player campaign to be a breeze. And that's awesome for us because it will bring new player slowly to multiplayer. That's our goal, that's blizzard goal. Rejoice!
It's the "defend the chrysalis" mission, which imo seemed like one of the harder missions. Then again, I've only gone through the WoL campaign on Hard, and I'm currently going through the HotS campaign on Hard as well.
The WoL campaign was definitely harder. By a large margin. It's coming from a guy who just finished the brutal missions 1-2 weeks prior to Hots' release.
the WoL campaign was definitively harder, but it seems to be MUCH harder to get all the achievements from the Maestry tab on HotS than it is to simply complete WoL Brutal.
So if you want *that* challenge, go for the Maestry difficulty :D
I thought I was playing Diablo 3 for a second. HOTS campaign is absolute POS. The story is so damn cheesy, the missions are boring as hell, the game is too easy, and its like none of the missions are actually RTS. Just diablo esque game play. Oh well.
Missions were all really easy. But the story and characters were fantastic compared to wings of liberty. Knocked out all brutal missions on first try. Sorry, self-reviving ultralisks are just imbalanced. :D
On March 12 2013 17:02 dainbramage wrote: Just finished.
What I really really didn't like is that there is not a single mission that is a simple "macro up and go kill the other guy". Not one in 20. Every mission has some gimmick. And even the missions closest to that give you what... 2 bases max? And if you're lucky one will have 10 mineral patches.
No please, those missions are awfully boring, and most missions on this campaign are already that way... but with 2-3 bases instead and just build army nonstop to kill your opponent.
I didn't have tons of fun playing the campaign on brutal as i did with WoL tho, and i am not interested on getting the achievements done, because the missions weren't exactly exciting for me. I guess the most important reason is because i just don't enjoy playing zerg. I just build swarmroaches spam, till i got some new shiny, and the ultralisks magnataurs, shitload of them, A move and win.
And kerrigan... the fuck the "one woman army" quote is so true it's not even funny, i was normally doing multiprong attacks with my army on one side and her on another to finish missions quicker
And the story... well i don't know, everything was already figured out i guess, no big surprises (I was one of those who didn't think about why Tychus was released on the WoL campaign... so imagine my face with the ending :d).
On March 13 2013 11:25 Lexpar wrote: That third mission is horrible. Attack a huge Terran siege tank outpost with slow lings and queens. Awesome.
Yeah... half the mission spreading creep for the queens
Ninja edit .... So much truth with the diablo 3 comment. I was like wtf is belial doing here.
Zerus missions are definitely the hardest, the primal zerg bosses ends up being Kerrigan vs the boss cuz all your other units die. The chrysalis one is also pretty hard, I decided just to go mass spine-crawler + muta, lot better than using swarmhosts imo.
The storyline was a LOT better than WoL. Difficulty was a LOT easier than WOL. Definitely just made mass roaches, lings, or ultras and a moved. Whatever. I actually died a fiew times in "All IIn" on WoL. This time around I really never worried about being dead. Well, except for the Zerus mission. F that guy. He's gigantic lolol.
All in all, a win for the casuals. They get a better story and it's easier to beat.
Just ran through it on hard in basically 10 hours while watching every cinematic, clicking on every person, etc. I was very happy with the story, considering how awful I thought the WoL story was. There was at least a little bit of depth this time, where you could see Kerrigan showing regret of some of her decisions, you felt her pain when Raynor was like 'WTF? YOU'RE INFESTED AGAIN?!?!' even though she only got infested again to save his ass.
Good use of the day I say. I wish that the game was harder so I could do it again and have it be a challenge on playthrough, but oh well. There's always ladder. lol.
i really dont think the campaign even at the hardest level is meant to be a challenge for good master level gamers. i really think that the whole point of including the campaign is to try to draw more people into the multiplayer universe. i for one would buy the game without a campaign and so would 99 percent of the people using this site.
On March 13 2013 11:50 IamPryda wrote: i really dont think the campaign even at the hardest level is meant to be a challenge for good master level gamers. i really think that the whole point of including the campaign is to try to draw more people into the multiplayer universe. i for one would buy the game without a campaign and so would 99 percent of the people using this site.
Hmm, I think if there are 4 difficulties, at least one could be challenging. Make three for normal play and one for anyone who wants to feel a pain.
It was notably easier than WoL, I think the mission design in general was pretty bad. The last level stuck out on how ridiculously easy it was compared to All-In from WoL.
It's been a day since realease and this thread is already here, omfg.. I've done a few missions and so far it's epic like always when blizzard doing something, looooove snow missions!!
Has anyone been able to do the brutal mission rendezvous where you only have slow lings and queens? I can't do the mastery achievement to kill the bases for the life of me. There's like hellbats, thors, and tanks everywhere vs slow lings.
So far the most effective thing I've tried was probably trying to snipe buildings with 10 queens and kerri while lings are dumped to the buffer damage.
Spine push doesn't work because of how slow it is trying to push against thor / tank, burrow time just seems to long for it to be viable.
Have to agree with the general consensus that the campaign got easier but the story got better. I really enjoyed playing kerrigan rpg style and will definitely go back at some point to try out some of her other abilities. Blizzard did a good job of making me "feel" like kerrigan and becoming stronger and part of the swarm. Can't wait for the story to finish!
In the interviews I remember blizzard emphasizing that WoL was more of a "ragtag" game where you were in control of a smaller group of soldiers (on the Hyperion) whereas in HOTS it should feel like you are in control of an entire army. But terran units in small combinations just lead to more challenging and interesting micro situations I think, so you had a lot of levels that felt like a mix of a puzzle but with varying degrees of micro/macro. Haven't beaten HOTS yet but so far it seems that zerg units (and the concept of the swarm) are just not as conducive for those kinds of experiences.
I don't get Im not blizz nor ea fan (i actually hate them both) but the people who are saying 12-15 hours is little is the same kind of person that buys assassin's creed or tomb raider and finish them in 8 hours ...
Hero units do that to rts campaigns, didn't expected anything else. Campaign was really lovely and Blizzard not going out of line with the other studios and making the ending sequence "bad" (I liked the ending, but okay its not the real ending so they are of the hook for now) + Show Spoiler +
and spellcaster spells are above bw op, create free units, get energy, mind control everything after you secured it under a timewarp disruption web, if you win with 900 supply you win with style ... unless you have a bad computer like me that crashed at that point. WoL Marines dropping out of the sky are underpowered against what you got in HotS
Next playthrough I will try the campaign without any evolutions. And Burrow Sarah at the start. No one is forcing you to use the girls best friend skill tree
Campaign was okay, story was kinda meh, but finally covered up Mengsk (I goddamn hate this guy). That Belial camo was genius, haha. At some point I was questioning myself why was I playing Wings of Liberty again? Playing through 20 missions to cure Kerrigan only to become Queen of Blades again. Wat?
Edit: Plus I was hoping Nova would get a bigger role in the plot. But naaaaw
On March 13 2013 09:19 vultdylan wrote: The different mutations were so beneficial, like the raptorling and the vile roach, kinda makes the game a walk in the park, not to mention the later upgrades. Also Abathur best voice ever?
his voice reminded me of Anubarak a lot
Anyone know if Abathur's voice actor is the same guy who did Grunt from Mass Effect (Steve Blum, also did Spike in Cowboy Bebop). Sounds really similar but it could just be a voice filter.
All in all, a pretty fun campaign. They didn't blow me out of the water, but it was certainly worth the time and money, and I know I'll be going through it again a couple times for the master achievements. The Kerrigan RPG nature is something I'm not sure I like or dislike, it's interesting and keeps up a decent pace of action, but doesn't feel 100% refined. I could be delusional though.
But as I said, on the whole I had a good deal with the campaign. As far as difficulty goes I can't say, I only beat the game on Hard maybe having to restart once or twice, so I think I'll go see how Brutal treats me .
Zurvan wasn't too hard for me. I played on Hard difficulty so that might have to do with it but I 1-shot him. The campaign was really exciting to me, they went into an amazingly different direction and I was locked to my seat for 11 hours straight. That said I think the game's difficulty has almost a perfect balance, yet way different than WoL for some reason. I kind of liked it.
On March 13 2013 13:09 Thalandros wrote: Zurvan wasn't too hard for me. I played on Hard difficulty so that might have to do with it but I 1-shot him. The campaign was really exciting to me, they went into an amazingly different direction and I was locked to my seat for 11 hours straight. That said I think the game's difficulty has almost a perfect balance, yet way different than WoL for some reason. I kind of liked it.
was quite unimpressed with the final missions finished the last 2 very easily in one shot
especially compared to all-in, that shit was like impossible took Artosis like 2 days to manage to finish it off
i feel all in all though the difficulty was good, there was a few missions i had had to redo to manage to finish it off but then i did it brutal first run
I don't believe anyone beat + Show Spoiler +on brutal until I see a video of it done tbqh F*cking.... help?
33 deaths and counting
not that hard, jsut focus on dodging his fingers, remember they do friendly splash so use that to advantage
jsut focus on staying alive and keep your orig units as alive as possible and focusing on him
50 deaths and counting now... I seriously refuse to believe it's possible on brutal until I see video proof I must be missing something if everyone else thought it was relatively unchallenging
Those spawns that shoot acide + the ultralisks = instant GG, they destroy everything
On March 13 2013 13:31 ffadicted wrote: 50 deaths and counting now... I seriously refuse to believe it's possible on brutal until I see video proof I must be missing something if everyone else thought it was relatively unchallenging
Those spawns that shoot acide + the ultralisks = instant GG, they destroy everything
just kite them as much as possible and take them down with leap
On March 13 2013 13:19 Forikorder wrote: was quite unimpressed with the final missions finished the last 2 very easily in one shot
especially compared to all-in, that shit was like impossible took Artosis like 2 days to manage to finish it off
i feel all in all though the difficulty was good, there was a few missions i had had to redo to manage to finish it off but then i did it brutal first run
I don't believe anyone beat + Show Spoiler +on brutal until I see a video of it done tbqh F*cking.... help?
33 deaths and counting
not that hard, jsut focus on dodging his fingers, remember they do friendly splash so use that to advantage
jsut focus on staying alive and keep your orig units as alive as possible and focusing on him
On all the bosses I just let all my units die and solo'd them with kerrigan. Her heal ability is totally overpowered. I one shotted all the bosses (on brutal, not sure if that makes a diff)
On March 13 2013 13:19 Forikorder wrote: was quite unimpressed with the final missions finished the last 2 very easily in one shot
especially compared to all-in, that shit was like impossible took Artosis like 2 days to manage to finish it off
i feel all in all though the difficulty was good, there was a few missions i had had to redo to manage to finish it off but then i did it brutal first run
I don't believe anyone beat + Show Spoiler +on brutal until I see a video of it done tbqh F*cking.... help?
33 deaths and counting
not that hard, jsut focus on dodging his fingers, remember they do friendly splash so use that to advantage
jsut focus on staying alive and keep your orig units as alive as possible and focusing on him
On all the bosses I just let all my units die and solo'd them with kerrigan. Her heal ability is totally overpowered. I one shotted all the bosses (on brutal, not sure if that makes a diff)
pretty much same for me, except on swarm host boss i died a couple times because i got surrounded by the locusts and was too dumb to realise they were all detonating on me
On March 13 2013 12:57 ffadicted wrote: I don't believe anyone beat + Show Spoiler +
Zurvan
on brutal until I see a video of it done tbqh F*cking.... help?
33 deaths and counting
I managed to do that with something like 20 deaths, really important to keep your first unit alive as long as possible, splitting them into two groups and spamming spells 24/7
the campaign *feels* easy, but then again I've been playing this game since 2010 as Zerg. With that said, I'm enjoying the level-design so far. Keeping my expectations kind of low for the story and plot. There is no N-U-A...wait, no, there's an A in Blizzard. No N, C, or E, though. That spells Nuance. :D
for an expansion,this was great. lol at people complaining about it being to easy....why not just not select any upgrades like it says at the begining. I'd like to see you complete it then
On March 13 2013 14:03 SuperYo1000 wrote: for an expansion,this was great. lol at people complaining about it being to easy....why not just not select any upgrades like it says at the begining. I'd like to see you complete it then
its alot more fulfilling to play something thats naturally challenging and suceed then make artificial barriers to make ti challenging
Yes, it was quite easy. But do you think it could possible have something to do with the fact that we've all played three years of SC2 already? When I finished WoL on Brutal it felt easier than when I finished it on normal, simply because I had played a lot of SC2 in between that.
I found it pretty easy, however I'm comparing it to when I first played WoL, where I was bronze :D I'm now Diamond, so to be fair, it should be easy ^^
I feel like mutas are king lol... especially on the zerg maps/planet.
I literally only make lings and Mutas, since i unlocked mutas... especially for the + Show Spoiler +
Protect Kerrigan in the Cocoon mission.. was infinitely easier when i stopped using terrible swarm hosts and just went mass ling muta.... Killing the tyrannosaur was fun tho with mass muta... did a lot of splitting and pulling out the one he was targeting to avoid splash/aoe
You have to keep enough energy to one shot the hydralisks when they spawn, with 2 successive "charge thing", and run to dodge and kite the melee and spitting guys and let Zurvan kill them, while constantly healing. You absolutely have to kill the spawning range units as fast as possible, else they constantly dish out DPS and you can't just run&heal your way out of the others.
I didn't buy HotS but these arguments about "can't it be only easier because you already played WoL?" are ridiculous. You played BW before that for 10 years. You could've played Total Annihilation, Red Alert, Warcraft, etc too. Is this your first RTS? Your first video game? I'm pretty sure everyone who says it's easier does so because it actually is.
sure, its feels like hard (some missions) and mostly normal and some of easy (banelings mission, hydralisk mission, feeding zerg mission), but not brutal at all, only maybe zerg bosses mission, that was quite hard, but i think it is hard because bad game design
I thought it was incredibly easy. I think you can beat brutal by massing lings and A-moving. I also thought that the story was really lacking, and the missions played off the same themes as WoL campaign. Also the boss fights felt like I was fighting Diablo3 bosses with sc2 units.
Another thing im surprised is that the ending was the same one that was leaked out over a year ago. I thought they would of changed it a bit but it was the exact same.
Brutal is by no means super hard, however try the mastery missions. they're not quite a walk in the park and ive had to use loads many many times. to make it even harder try it on brutal instead of hard.
Beat brutal in about 8 hrs. Pretty fun, though the game progressively got easier as you got more mutations and kerrigan goes balls. Honestly past a certain point, you can just drone up, take a nearly neutral (there is usually one), and mass roach hydra to victory. Threw in some ultras for the last few.
On March 13 2013 13:31 ffadicted wrote: 50 deaths and counting now... I seriously refuse to believe it's possible on brutal until I see video proof I must be missing something if everyone else thought it was relatively unchallenging
Those spawns that shoot acide + the ultralisks = instant GG, they destroy everything
Here's a protip that makes it easy: Use Burrow. If your heal is on cooldown, burrow in a safe location, wait for its cooldown to end (you'll also be back to full mana), pop back up and get to full hp. Continue kiting. It takes a while though. The fastest way is definitely to try and keep your units in a safe location as long as possible so they can pump out damage.
Game felt pretty easy on brutal, the only map I had to reload a few times was the one where they kept dropping nukes. Ran out of resources the first few times.
I would suggest the whole point of intimidating difficulty levels named 'Brutal' is to push players to the limit. Yes, even the skilled ones.
Hell, isn't that why you have multiple difficulty levels at all? To appeal to a range of people? The weaker/newer players wouldn't get all up in arms about not being able to get past clearly marked higher-difficulties, just like the skillful/experienced ones would hardly complain about easy mode being easy. It's the fact that the mode which should challenge them does not, and that's a legitimate complaint.
Yeah... it's a campaign. It's not meant to feel too incredibly difficult. You're going through it to be told a story. Not sure what people were expecting here.
On March 13 2013 17:58 Tracil wrote: I would suggest the whole point of intimidating difficulty levels named 'Brutal' is to push players to the limit. Yes, even the skilled ones.
Hell, isn't that why you have multiple difficulty levels at all? To appeal to a range of people? The weaker/newer players wouldn't get all up in arms about not being able to get past clearly marked higher-difficulties, just like the skillful/experienced ones would hardly complain about easy mode being easy. It's the fact that the mode which should challenge them does not, and that's a legitimate complaint.
If you do the hardest difficulty too hard nowadays, you will have a bunch of casual players crying out loud that the brutal difficulty is bullshit, about how they should be able to beat it because they are experienced RTS'ers, and they will find and list you big ass lists of what "the issues with the difficulty" are.
I agree with you, but it's an ego thing. Xcom enemy unknown reminded me how retarded and entlited people can be when speaking of difficulties so i may be a littles biased tho.
On March 13 2013 18:01 Maesy wrote: Yeah... it's a campaign. It's not meant to feel too incredibly difficult. You're going through it to be told a story. Not sure what people were expecting here.
Pretty arguable, given the quality of Blizzard stories? I think a lot of people were playing for creative/difficult missions rather than MetzenPlot 3, now with even siller "love" moments.
I played a dozen or so missions, i beat all of them on the first try, no saves, no fails to checkpoints, aside from one mission which i failed, reset to checkpoint 3 times, failing each, and then restarted and beat easily because i sat on like 15 drones instead of 30 for half of the mission in my first attempt, not knowing how many i was able to make without having seen the mission before.
No guides, no revision of strategy, honestly i would really like if there was a fifth difficulty that was extremely extremely difficult but gave half a dozen special portraits or something - a difficulty that requires work to beat, because i just cant see any masters players, even without guides, discussion, revision, checkpointing or help taking more than 1 try for most of the missions.
On March 13 2013 05:39 Ketch wrote: With mega spinecrawlers, everything is easy
rofl what the fuck, I hope that's not real
Hehe, it was some bug, Spinecrawler was attacking when I went into a cutscene, afterwards, the attacking point was stuck, I could move it everywhere and it extended ^^
Incredibly easy, yes..I swear I could complete every single mission on brutal only by using Kerrigan. There were usually no timers or limits on the missions, so you could just push yourself forward and kill every single enemy using the super strong spells. Sometimes I was wondering if I was playing on normal or easy. There were a serious lack of macro missions, or pretty much none at all. On some maps it was possible to expand once or twice, but it just wasn't necessary to win as you had Kerrigan. Trying to push with anything but her would just be very cost inefficient, Some of the missions I pushed really hard and lost everything (went down to like 10 supply 20 minutes in) but still you could just rebuild and eventually win. Felt like it was impossible to actually lose most of the time. Some people on here are saying that people have just gotten better and that's why it was easy. Well, that is certainly not true as many of us have been playing WoL campaign semi-recently and it's definitely much more difficult. I think without using Kerrigan _at all_ it might be closer to the WoL level of difficulty.
The last time I played much SC2 was back in 2010 and I was laughably bad as Zerg and yeah, this one is much easier. F2 + A all day.
Compared to WoL the dialogue and voice acting and overall presentation is better. They learned their lesson and had more of a focus on the levels instead of a bunch of pointless side missions that just create a mess of alternate time lines. On the other hand, the upgrade missions are filler. I couldn't tell you the names of any of the Zerg NPCs. I'm gonna guess pretty much no one thought they actually killed Raynor off screen. And after the last mission I was just like really, that's it? I was kinda expecting something else to happen. I mean it works, it's fine, but usually the second part of a trilogy is the lowest point of the heroes. Or have something to set up the third. But it's pretty much all roses.
Now we get to go kill a dark void god. We high fantasy now.
I got through it within 12-14 hours. Having FUN, taking in the story and lore. Messing around. Loving the cinematics. If you love SC for the story and the game alot of ppl were happy with it. They had FUN. Idk why people keep hating so much, most people knew what was gnna happen and how it was going to go. Play the game and have fun, then hop on ladder and keep on like you did with WoL.
Sure you can go through all the game with Hydra-Roach. But the idea is to not try to beat it as fast as possible. I did abillion combinations just to have FUN.
Perhaps just abit tougher would be nice. I personally wanted more story, but im a lore lover, otherwise I felt it appropiate. Dont regret a cent.
I played on "hard" first run to have a good reason to play brutal next playthrough.
The campaign is as hard as you want it to be. Some of the mutations are just stupidly overpowered and will make it really hard compared to say.. making roach hydra or my personal favorite INFESTORS with.... wait for it.... CONSUME, yes, you can insta replenish your infestor energy with free units while mind controling everything in your path (except heroics but that's what other units are for).
On March 12 2013 11:37 digmouse wrote: Simply finish the campaign on Brutal is never hard, even in WoL, the hard part in HotS are the achievements, I found the Mastery category achievements are way harder than most the objective achievements of WoL campaign.
I agree. I felt like the campaign was way too easy, but it seems like Blizzard tried to transition the difficulty towards additional achievements as opposed to completion at higher difficulties. Overall I think the Mastery category adds the level of difficulty I wanted.
Yes, the "we are more experienced" is even funnier.Even if that was the case (which it isn't) If we are more experienced there should be a difficulty for us. Brood war is campaign is actually harder than vanilla sc. Like way way harder, most expansions at that time where made with the mindset that you already knew about the game, and were harder than the vanilla version.
I guess there are the mastery... but to be fair didn't enjoy the missions that much oppossed to WoL.
On March 13 2013 19:35 Godwrath wrote: Yes, the "we are more experienced" is even funnier.Even if that was the case (which it isn't) If we are more experienced there should be a difficulty for us. Brood war is campaign is actually harder than vanilla sc. Like way way harder, most expansions at that time where made with the mindset that you already knew about the game, and were harder than the vanilla version.
I guess there are the mastery... but to be fair didn't enjoy the missions that much oppossed to WoL.
I think the "we are more experienced" should be applied in the sense that we (TL community) play more RTS than most of the other gamers since the RTS genre is very limited to very few game. Therefore, the campaign felt easier to us because they design with people who has no or very little RTS in mind.
I would say that I haven't played RTS for quite a long time, and hard difficulty sometimes make me struggle a bit too.
Lets be honest here, sc1 and BW were fairly easy RTS campaigns, but they are still classics. On topic though, I thought the HotS campaign was easier than WoL. Brutal on WoL did have some genuinely challenging missions. I also thought the design of missions was superior in WoL, which I actually thought was a really good RTS campaign and considering I go back to original C&C times I have played a few.
Really? I thought it was a nice storyline and a decent campaign overall.
Ofcourse, for most of us 'gamers' the campaign is too easy. But the campaign is just an easy way for the casuals to experience the story. Think about a new player with NO experience in RTS, its gonna be hard for them even on easy setting.
I always figured the campaign is a casual, for fun bit and online is the hard, GG NO RE bit.
I'm a Master Zerg but I keep losing like a noob on hard... only to go on TL and read how easy it's supposed to be :p
My unit control is so bad in the campaign. Kerrigan doesn't "fit" anywhere compared to how I play on the ladder, and every boss fight kicks my ass. Maybe because I take it too lightly.
The campaign is pretty much what I expected so far, the missions are fun and the writing bad. Not "well it's a game writing often sucks" bad, but "bad even compared to most AAA games" bad.
On March 13 2013 19:43 Swift118 wrote: Lets be honest here, sc1 and BW were fairly easy RTS campaigns, but they are still classics. On topic though, I thought the HotS campaign was easier than WoL. Brutal on WoL did have some genuinely challenging missions. I also thought the design of missions was superior in WoL, which I actually thought was a really good RTS campaign and considering I go back to original C&C times I have played a few.
BW campaign wasn't easy the first time, especially omega(the last mission)
not insanely difficult to get through most missions on hard. it seemed a lot harder at the start. i must've died like 15 times trying to do the second kaldir (or whatever it's called) mission on brutal, and died a few times when i toned it back to hard too. trying to get all the achievements on the first run through would've made it a lot more difficult but i didnt feel like referencing the achievement list all the time when i was just running through it to have fun and enjoy it for its newness. some missions on brutal are going to be really hard when i go back to them.
i dunno what my motivation is though? like you get all the portraits just for beating the segments so there's not that shiny new prize when you get say all the zerus mission achievements. probably will still do it when i've got some time to kill.
from my one playthrough i'd say overall it's about the same as WoL, maybe a little easier. towards the end, maxed out kerrigan and evolved strains makes it feel a lot easier. it all snowballs really quickly.
On March 13 2013 19:51 AbuseYouMerc wrote: Really? I thought it was a nice storyline and a decent campaign overall.
Ofcourse, for most of us 'gamers' the campaign is too easy. But the campaign is just an easy way for the casuals to experience the story. Think about a new player with NO experience in RTS, its gonna be hard for them even on easy setting.
I always figured the campaign is a casual, for fun bit and online is the hard, GG NO RE bit.
There's no need to have 4 different difficulty settings all catering to casual gamers. I mean, the whole purpose of having so many difficulty levels is that there is a challenging, but doable setting for almost everyone. Right now, almost all people at diamond and above don't seem to have much trouble with the HotS Brutal campaign as it is
The boss looked the same for me except it spat big spawns like all the time (5 or 6). In your video he only sends the easy ones that you can dash through, except once at the end. Also he doesn't seem to send them nearly as often. Wtf
I guess this is somehow randomly decided before the mission starts or something, and explains why the boss fight sounds so much harder for some people compared to others.
WTF are you people complaining about? The point of this game is to play Multiplayer. LOL i even read this one guy's comment saying: "Gee duh there was no game where you could macro up 200 army and beat the computer" guess what einstien? play multiplayer! Campaign should be gimicky because it would be boring as shit if you macro and mass up and kill shit outright a-move style! Whats wrong with the world nowadays people just complain shit all the time. Campaign is just the icing of the cake.
It's funny because when Wol came out people were saying the exact same thing, that the game was way too easy, missions were gimmicky and all you needed was marine/medic + whatever special unit was introduced in the mission.
Took me a few tries to learn his pattern; he`ll either spawn a set of lings and hydras or an ultra with some of those acid spitters or will just spash the platform with his tentacles. the hydras and lings are easy, your dash should deal with them easy. For the ultra/spitters use your heal to keep alive and kite, when you see an indicator of where a tentacle will hit stop next to it so the ultra takes the hit, once or twice and hes an easy kill. during tentacles only keep mobile and attack, overall just avoid his tentacle smashes. at low HP he`ll start balsting a 3rd of the platform at a time, just your your dash/jump to avoid it and finish him!
On March 12 2013 18:00 vrok wrote: It was much easier than WoL IMO. Story and missions were okayish, but I'm still very disappointed that the overarching story for Starcraft 1 was a battle for the known universe and the survival of each species, while Starcraft 2 is a just a dumb love story with a 'dark looming threat on the horizon'. Why does everything have to be a love story? For the casuals? I seriously doubt that.
Less gimmicky missions than WoL overall, but still doesn't play like a real RTS. I wanna build shit vs harder and harder odds and just go fucking kill them. Didn't get to either expand or inject larva for some reason. Otherwise it was definitely better than WoL and worth playing though, even if it has nothing on the BW campaign. That's still by far the best RTS campaign ever made, with Warcraft 2 a close second.
I don't mean to single this post out, this is only an example. But wtf. This just seems overly negative. But I guess other person's gimmick is a another persons cool hook. If all you wan't to do is macro up against hard odds there are the vs. AI challenges/achievements, as was the case with WoL. The campaing is not about that and doesn't need to be about that. I mean why would you expect them to do things exactly as they did 15 years ago? Why should they do the same stuff that's been done 100 times already? I applaud Blizz for doing "gimmicky" stuff and really enjoyed the campaing. But I do agree it should have been a little bit harder. And ok, maybe 1 or 2 "regular macro missions" wouldn't have hurt.
About the love story..
It's the same thing with almost every movie (and nowadays game) where there is some kind of war or huge disaster. There are always key chracters in the center of it that peolpe can relate to. It really is the key to an engaging story. And yes, it's usually a love story. I doesn't have to be a love story but it's probably the easiest choice. There is nothing wrong with it and it's done because it works. And the original SC had that too, but it was more on the background, where as now it's the center piece of the story.
I dunno.. it feels like people have really over the top expectations and are simply unable to enjoy things as they are.
Have to say... I agree. Brutal was alot easier than it was in WoL. I just felt incredibly overpowered... particularly because Kerrigan is just way too good.
It took me about a week to play through WoL on Brutal... HotS took me 1,5 days... nuff said.
On March 13 2013 19:43 Swift118 wrote: Lets be honest here, sc1 and BW were fairly easy RTS campaigns, but they are still classics. On topic though, I thought the HotS campaign was easier than WoL. Brutal on WoL did have some genuinely challenging missions. I also thought the design of missions was superior in WoL, which I actually thought was a really good RTS campaign and considering I go back to original C&C times I have played a few.
BW campaign wasn't easy the first time, especially omega(the last mission)
Well maybe not easy, but certainly not difficult. Omega was challenging, but more becasue of its size and time to complete the level, the difficulty in actually progression in the level was not too demanding compared to some of the other RTS campaigns back then.
Compared to WOL campaign I feel this is easier. I play Terran and still I am finding that I have an easier time in this campaign. The only one that took me 3+ tries was the Primal Zerg.
I agree that the campaign was nice but so very short and easy :/ I remember spending weeks on WC3 and broodwar campaigns and finished this one in less than a day too.
On March 13 2013 21:05 woreyour wrote: WTF are you people complaining about? The point of this game is to play Multiplayer. LOL i even read this one guy's comment saying: "Gee duh there was no game where you could macro up 200 army and beat the computer" guess what einstien? play multiplayer! Campaign should be gimicky because it would be boring as shit if you macro and mass up and kill shit outright a-move style! Whats wrong with the world nowadays people just complain shit all the time. Campaign is just the icing of the cake.
I prefer the single player campaigns in RTS games. Playing the same 3 matchups over and over again gets boring extremely quickly for me in multiplayer. I do play it, but it's not the main focus for me. I like watching pros play once in a while, although WoL got dry 1-2 years ago for me. And guess what, a ton of people also have single player as their main focus, so it's not something companies take lightly.
So if the single player campaign sucks, no I won't buy it. I expect to have varied missions and I expect some of them to be extensive missions requiring full armies. At the end of the day, the campaign is pretty easy, doesn't offer a ton of variety in terms of missions (especially bonus objectives, always the same thing) and the story is horrendous. At best, I think HotS gets a 5 or 6 out of 10 for single player.
I've enjoyed it but yes it is too easy. I blame a lot of this on the lack of a failure point if Kerrigan dies. Even if you overextend and make a mistake, You just wait 60 seconds and then win the mission.
I actually left the first time Kerrigan died because I thought I failed.....
On March 13 2013 23:20 Zandar wrote: I agree that the campaign was nice but so very short and easy :/ I remember spending weeks on WC3 and broodwar campaigns and finished this one in less than a day too.
Old school RTS single player campaigns tended to have a lot of filler though. There were a lot of missions where it was just one more tech unit, build a base, kill enemy, rinse and repeat. I pretty much cheated through the entire BW campaign when I was a kid just to see the story, whereas I just beat HOTS brutal no sweat. I actually prefer this model where the single player is solely for story and skips the repetition. After all, they could have followed the steps of recent games (esp. AAA EA games) where you have to grind for experience/points/whatever to see the whole thing/advance the story and people would complain. If people want to play just for RTS aspects, that's what the ladder/customs is for.
I think we improved. For exemple, when i first played the campaign of SC and BW near 12 or 13 years ago i thought it was too difficult and i cheated for the story, same thing for W3 campaign. After near 3 years of non stop Wol playing, i played again the sc, sc bw, wol campaigns and have fun to finish again wc3 campaigns. Was for fun but i noticed that was really (really) not difficult when you have RTS mechanics. For Hots campaign it's definitely not easier than Wol, it's pretty equal (i saw it when i replayed the wol campaign one month ago). But i admit that for a zerg player like me it was not really a challenge.
Fun facts: i went back to my base every 25 sec/energy for injection even with the special queen PS: i want all the super-imba units from the campaign in multi
It seemed a bit easier than WoL, mostly because the 'hold out and survive' thing only really got 1 mission (chrysilis) and that wasn't very difficult at all. Still had fun with it, story was okayish. also, roaches that spawn mini roaches are pretty good. as are immortal ultralisks and drop pods from kerrigan.
The difficulty design is... not very cool - a level can be challenging the first time, but once you figure the gist of it, it becomes 1hand-able even on Brutal. It's a pretty silly way of making things.
For example, people are talking about Zurvan Belial?, which was one of the few encounters that actually felt nicer - but even there, + Show Spoiler +
once you understand where the 'safe zones' are and split your units, it becomes trivial as well
LE: Or Belial. The story/atmosphere didn't rub on me at all. I felt more immersed in the SC1 2D briefing screens than I was in this whole game.
On March 14 2013 00:20 n0ise wrote: The difficulty design is... not very cool - a level can be challenging the first time, but once you figure the gist of it, it becomes 1hand-able even on Brutal. It's a pretty silly way of making things.
For example, people are talking about Zurvan, which was one of the few encounters that actually felt nicer - but even there, + Show Spoiler +
once you understand where the 'safe zones' are and split your units, it becomes trivial as well
On March 14 2013 00:36 ProbeEtPylon wrote: In my opinion, people should replay the SC1 campaings. Then they would love WoLs and HotSs campaign...
Haha the worst part of sc1 was the ai, but if you didn't abused it it was quiet fun. But Sc2 campaigns really set a new bar for campaigns in terms of game flow. But it was really funny how in BW you could basically shut down a whole base by planting a single missile turret in a certain spot.
And here is the point, AIs are bad and they have to give you a chance to build up a base as well. It is really hard to create a difficult that matches each individual person. And someone playing games on a regular basis against other people, are not likely to fall to a computer. It is also not new that stuff gets to easy for people. But as I already wrote in this thread, they found ways to adjust the difficult to their liking. And without using the evolutions and Kerrigan, HotS is giving me quiet a challenge (mostly because the resources are so spare) so far.
I think the only campaign mission in a Blizzard game that made me feel helpless was the peasant rebellion in warcraft 2. Ran out of Gold a few times there. But I still was a kid there.
Kerrigan as a hero unit was a lot of fun. Evolutions were fun (I picked raptorling (green) and all the other evolutions were purple). Early on in the campaign I had bigger difficulties than I had later on. Last few missions really lackluster in terms of challenge. WoL definitely harder, and a lot more fun. I liked the concept of primal zerg. Missions pretty fun themselves with varied objectives. Narud dieing, Amon being ressurected. Stukov is a major +. Asshole Mengsk dead.
I did not like the tech tree in the campaign. Some things like larva inject, overlord drops or nydus worm were NEVER available. Cheesy dialogue and simplistic story. No protoss offshoot mini storyline/campaign. Story didn't advance much at all. Leaving all the plot and twists for LotV, a tall order. No new info about Amon, hybrids, duran's origins etc. Kerrigan not recognizing Narud as Duran. Narud not transforming into Duran during the cinematic.
I recently played the WOL campaign on brutal again, and found it actually extremely easy. There are two challenging missions, and they are basically the same mission: defend waves of Zerg attacks. And depending how you do All-In, it can also be trivial (for example, if you get the mind control device, kill the nydus worms and mind control all the brood lords - Kerrigan can't even move when she attacks). I would probably have liked to see the last 2 HOTS missions a bit harder (for example, I echo the people who say that when a hero dies in campaign, on brutal at least, there should be no resurrection), but saying it was much easier than WOL forgets how easy WOL's campaign actually is for someone who has an idea of how to play SC2.
Not through the whole campaign yet, but it seemed very easy so far. Sometimes I even have to check if I didn't accidently switch to a lower difficulty. And I let my units dance in some of the decisive battles or do weird/funny stuff (there's no campagin replay feature, isn't it?) It's not that I am bored, the story is okish, and the difficulty is ok, that I also die from time to time (mostly because I like to leave my base unattended )
I found only one thing challenging - the Belial-guy (forgot his name, the fat zerg in the jungle) As I was playing diablo 3, I hated the bossfight vs Belial the most, and now they copied him to the sc2 campaign just to annoy me? Aren't rocks enough, Dustin, AREN'T THEY ENOUGH? DO YOU ENJOY KICKING A MAN LYING ON THE GROUND? just kidding, we are cool ♥
The final Zerus mission was hard as FUCK. But other than that, yes, I felt it was pretty easy. It's also very possible that I'm just now horrible at the game anymore, I can't really tell. I think it's hard to discern at the moment, I'd like to hear what Blizzard has to say. At the very least, I personally REALLY enjoyed the story line.
WOL was completely trivialized by marine/medic and viking/banshee/SV. Even on brutal, most missions you can just crank out reactored marine/medic and utterly wipe the floor with anything you see. HOTS has some overpowered stuff, and I've only finished about 60% of the campaign, but early missions can definitely be challenging with how weak your early game compositions are. Especially if you're going for the hard mode achievements, some of which are out of the way or are completely counter to other things you have to do in the campaign.
But yes, Kerrigan dying should be game over. The whole "your DNA is stored in the hatchery" is so BS anyway.
EDIT: I do think the difficulty is correct. Most of the people complaining about how "easy" the game is will be diamond+; in which case, ladder will be much more challenging and rewarding anyway. Having brutal achievements that are almost impossible to get, or making the vanilla difficulty higher, is simply a deterrent to those who play casually. When I started brood war, I had about 30 apm. We have to consider the newbies, too; RTS games are not easy to start out.
EDIT 2: I hope you don't have to do evolution missions on a second playthrough...they're ok a first time around to see the units, but a second one...
I think the campaign was made easy because of the fact that there so many ways to spawn free units. Zerglings can be respawned for free. Ultralisks can revive. Roaches can make enemy units spawn mini roaches upon death. Swarm hosts, broodlords!
On March 14 2013 02:21 Sandster wrote: WOL was completely trivialized by marine/medic and viking/banshee/SV. Even on brutal, most missions you can just crank out reactored marine/medic and utterly wipe the floor with anything you see. HOTS has some overpowered stuff, and I've only finished about 60% of the campaign, but early missions can definitely be challenging with how weak your early game compositions are. Especially if you're going for the hard mode achievements, some of which are out of the way or are completely counter to other things you have to do in the campaign.
But yes, Kerrigan dying should be game over. The whole "your DNA is stored in the hatchery" is so BS anyway.
Um, you can do every single mission with roach/hydra, it's even easier than WoL campaign with bio. AI doesn't know how to use aoe, and the mutations (the roachling one, they are way up in target priority for AI) for roaches make it even more a-movy. If you then manage to hit the aoe heal of Kerrigan occasionally, you'll hardly lose any units whatsoever. Without even larva inject, it was really boring. That, plus the mutation missions and the lack of any story and any character interaction (Stukov was ok, but came way too late to make a difference), really made the campaign a snoozefest compared to WoL.
On March 14 2013 02:21 Sandster wrote: EDIT: I do think the difficulty is correct. Most of the people complaining about how "easy" the game is will be diamond+; in which case, ladder will be much more challenging and rewarding anyway. Having brutal achievements that are almost impossible to get, or making the vanilla difficulty higher, is simply a deterrent to those who play casually. When I started brood war, I had about 30 apm. We have to consider the newbies, too; RTS games are not easy to start out.
Yeah, as far as 'not easy to start out', there's a reason Blizzard added training for Matchmaking, three levels of it. They pull new people in with the casual campaign, and then see how many will actually play MP and stay.
They don't write the campaign for the progamer type because they figure they'll just go play Ladder anyway.
Actually my biggest complaint was that, so far, the game doesn't play like zerg at all. There's no larva inject, and rarely a need (or even possibility) to expand.
And yeah the roachling mutation is kind of overpowered. But I've been having a harder time with this campaign than WOL, simply because I'm going for the Mastery achievements, and I'm not a zerg player.
I just think that Kerrigan was balanced poorly. My skill set was the single-target blast (for large units), the short AoE dash (for small units), mend, and ability efficiency. She could practically solo maybe half the missions in the latter part of the game. Add in some roach/hydra and it's really hard to lose, even on brutal, going for every bonus objective and achievement (except the time ones).
Infestors are overpowered as well. Once you learn to manage their high enemy targeting priority, their permanent mind control is insanely good. In the last mission, my composition was roach/infestor/thor/battlecruiser.
The campaign was incredibly fun though, even if it was a bit on the easy side.
On March 14 2013 02:34 Sandster wrote: Actually my biggest complaint was that, so far, the game doesn't play like zerg at all. There's no larva inject, and rarely a need (or even possibility) to expand.
And yeah the roachling mutation is kind of overpowered. But I've been having a harder time with this campaign than WOL, simply because I'm going for the Mastery achievements, and I'm not a zerg player.
I remember there being a viable natural expansion in just about every mission, although at the very start it's often blocked by an easy-to-clear terran or protoss base.
I agree that it's not at all like multiplayer, where injecting is basically the #1 priority. Instead, just play it like Brood War zerg, adding on macro hatches whenever you have spare minerals. I was never short on larva.
Is anyone else getting their achievement counter/bar stuck for some of Kerrigan's abilities? A few of them are permanently stuck at a number (twin-drone, Kinetic Blast kills, Leaping Death) and it's quite annoying and has not fixed itself, even starting a new campaign.
On March 14 2013 02:21 Sandster wrote: EDIT: I do think the difficulty is correct. Most of the people complaining about how "easy" the game is will be diamond+; in which case, ladder will be much more challenging and rewarding anyway. Having brutal achievements that are almost impossible to get, or making the vanilla difficulty higher, is simply a deterrent to those who play casually. When I started brood war, I had about 30 apm. We have to consider the newbies, too; RTS games are not easy to start out.
EDIT 2: I hope you don't have to do evolution missions on a second playthrough...they're ok a first time around to see the units, but a second one...
What's the problem with having Brutal being harder, aimed at being a challenge for, as you say, "diamond+"? People aren't saying 'why are there easy difficulties', more like 'why is 90% of the game trivial once you figure the key of the particular mission'.
Outside of the obvious reason 'Casual Billy won't enjoy it'. Design idea that can also be observed in the the storyline and the (lack of) depth of the actual fluff/setting of the game. Commercial taken to the extreme.
There are a few missions when you get hit on 2-3 fronts at the same time, those were pretty cool.
@EDIT 2: Yeah, the evolution missions are... maybe you're more tolerant than I am, but I can't understand whoever came up with that design. The first times ok, but having to go through the same random shit for every mutation is pretty silly.
I just went through about 7 hours or so on Brutal and it seems much easier than WoL so far... Although the game play seems more fun. Playing as kerrican is a lot more like a small MMO kind of micro game.
On March 14 2013 02:21 Sandster wrote: EDIT: I do think the difficulty is correct. Most of the people complaining about how "easy" the game is will be diamond+; in which case, ladder will be much more challenging and rewarding anyway. Having brutal achievements that are almost impossible to get, or making the vanilla difficulty higher, is simply a deterrent to those who play casually. When I started brood war, I had about 30 apm. We have to consider the newbies, too; RTS games are not easy to start out.
EDIT 2: I hope you don't have to do evolution missions on a second playthrough...they're ok a first time around to see the units, but a second one...
What's the problem with having Brutal being harder, aimed at being a challenge for, as you say, "diamond+"? People aren't saying 'why are there easy difficulties', more like 'why is 90% of the game trivial once you figure the key of the particular mission'.
@EDIT 2: Yeah, the evolution missions are... maybe you're more tolerant than I am, but I can't understand whoever came up with that design. The first times ok, but having to go through the same random shit for every mutation is pretty silly.
Making a game for 2% of the game population is kind of dumb. Some of the Mastery achievements are pretty challenging. Only a few missions are hard, and it was the same way in WOL. Lots of games are like that, and that's why there are gamer-induced handicaps (e.g. no upgrades, or not using overpowered upgrades).
Some of those missions made me glad I used to play League of Legends, though. That primal zerg mission achievement for finishing in under 12 minutes was really fun.
The Hots campaign is way easier than WoL. I just finished after a 10h session. At WoL I had already played the beta for months and mechanically I was probably better than I am right since I haven't played since the initial season 2. Some upgrade in WoL could make the campaign easily manageable but I didn't take planetary fortress or any tanks upgrade before getting to charr and there are multiple missions that I couldn't complete even after 10+ tries. I needed to plan pattern of attacks and time defenses for the AI attacks for multiple WoL missions(Welcome to the jungle, Utter darkness, For HotS I just took whatever upgrades for units I found fun and just rolled most missions on the first attempt. Missions I failed was because I got cocky and went for optionnal objectives right at the start and got attacked while I was out of base but if you defend the first attack on your base you will complete the mission 99% of the time. The last mission is clearly too easy and Kerrigan is WAY too strong on primal missions she just can't die.
On March 13 2013 22:34 Inori wrote: Am I the only one who felt that big ones were easier? Hydra have good dps, so I had to react quickly. Big ones I attacked with Q skill, then ran around and navigated them under boss tentacles, he killed more of them than I did...
It's easy until you don't have any of your own units left and the boss spawns them faster than you can kill them (while avoiding tentacles yourself, that is). Then it becomes a bit harder.
On March 14 2013 02:21 Sandster wrote: EDIT: I do think the difficulty is correct. Most of the people complaining about how "easy" the game is will be diamond+; in which case, ladder will be much more challenging and rewarding anyway. Having brutal achievements that are almost impossible to get, or making the vanilla difficulty higher, is simply a deterrent to those who play casually. When I started brood war, I had about 30 apm. We have to consider the newbies, too; RTS games are not easy to start out.
EDIT 2: I hope you don't have to do evolution missions on a second playthrough...they're ok a first time around to see the units, but a second one...
What's the problem with having Brutal being harder, aimed at being a challenge for, as you say, "diamond+"? People aren't saying 'why are there easy difficulties', more like 'why is 90% of the game trivial once you figure the key of the particular mission'.
Outside of the obvious reason 'Casual Billy won't enjoy it'. Design idea that can also be observed in the the storyline and the (lack of) depth of the actual fluff/setting of the game. Commercial taken to the extreme.
There are a few missions when you get hit on 2-3 fronts at the same time, those were pretty cool.
@EDIT 2: Yeah, the evolution missions are... maybe you're more tolerant than I am, but I can't understand whoever came up with that design. The first times ok, but having to go through the same random shit for every mutation is pretty silly.
Single player campaigns are not designed that way, there are very few games that have a difficulty setting that only the very best players can beat. I agree that SC2 would be good with such a difficulty, but it is not something standard at all.
Question - If you finished the game on Hard (or any lower difficulty) and want to get the Brutal completion/achievements, can you replay the missions, or do you need to start a new campaign? (In WoL I think you had to start a new campaign).
the missions are fun, although some are basically the same as in WoL or other RTS:
Kerrigan Metamorph = Last WoL Mission = Archimonde Summon in WC3 Gather 100 of X, dont let enemy get 100 of X Get 7 Bio Mass/Vespene Gas, dont let enemy get 7 of Bio Mass/Vespene Gas The Dig from WoL and Kerrigan/Narud Death-Ray-Stare
What i definitely liked was that you can change your Tech between missions, so you dont get stuck on a bad choice, like All In - Air without Zerg Mind Control.
I liked the no-Base Missions, especially the Protoss-Ship Infestation.
edit: btw. what is it with blizzard and boss battles in every game now
I agree this was definetely much easier than WoL. A big part of that is Kerrigan being a one (wo)man army. You barely need support units. The casmpaign played like a mixture of warcraft 3 and diablo. Was well done IMO but kind of short and too easy on brutal. You can't get all the achievements on brutal though, while completing the mission and all bonus, but that's about the only difficulty.
On March 14 2013 02:46 DrSeRRoD wrote: Is anyone else getting their achievement counter/bar stuck for some of Kerrigan's abilities? A few of them are permanently stuck at a number (twin-drone, Kinetic Blast kills, Leaping Death) and it's quite annoying and has not fixed itself, even starting a new campaign.
I had this problem too, but then I figured out that you need to do each achievement in just one mission, not spread out over multiple.
I think the campaign was awesome!!!! I enjoyed it a lot... Since the start of wol i have became much more experienced in RTS games so i cannot compare the two. It felt easier but still i played it very nice ... They did an hell of a job on the missions... i only missed special / secret missions... are they in hots?
On March 14 2013 03:35 Inori wrote: Err... I actually suicided my army on this boss fight because they were just distracting me from microing kerrigan...
Hence why I guess doing the mission at different times must have something to do with it (or something random). Suiciding my army was extremely tempting but I absolutely couldn't handle the continuous big spawns without them (at least until the boss had like 1/3 of his HP left).
I really liked the campaign and my biggest problem with it wasn't the difficulty. My problem was that it didn't really feel zergy without having to larva inject or mass expand. They should have had at least 1 or 2 missions where there were potentially 4-5 bases to take.
yeah it was kinda lacking in big drawn out macro missions which is my only big disappointment of the campaign. a side effect of cramming so many different mission mechanics into the game i guess. so many missions with timers of some sort in them.
edit: also no one should be surprised the average TL user finds the campaign easy, lol. if people who can get into diamond and masters league found it challenging, the average person who buys the game would probably just stop playing before they got to the end.
I'm not even going to lie, throughout the entire campaign I just spammed vile roaches/hydra and maybe some muta and torrasque ultras and I just straight up destroyed everything.
playing the whole thing on brutal, I only had to restart a few missions because I rushed the optional objectives way too early or because I forgot to finish up optional objectives, definitely didnt feel challenging at all. early on it felt like I was playing league of legends with some zergling support, I was more concerned about hitting those qs when its off cd rather than macro. later on after I unlocked swarmhost, it was just always mass swarm host, and use kerrigan to pick off any detectors/anti air with her q. and once I got the swarmhost mutation, I just added infestors, and it felt like infestor/broodlord, except the broodlord in this case can teleport to anywhere with creep.
just finished my playthrough. tried to make things harder by doing every achieve on brutal, but even then the only missions i had to develop solid strats for were in the beginning stages. some missions required multiple runs, usually the ones where you had to go out of your way to kill stuff or the timed, because you cant afford to waste units on kerrigan level ups etc.
going to work on doing all the mastery achieves on brutal now. i managed to get a few of them while i was doing my normal playthrough, which is kind of funny. working backwards on this, im stuck on conviction, which is save raynor by 8 minutes. the normal achieve is get to the prison bay by 8 minutes, lol.
I have a question, I finished the campaign on brutal but when i see my profile it only shows that "Heart of the Swarm Completed" and No indicator of beating it in brutal like what i saw on my friends profile. Help please
On March 14 2013 07:17 esla_sol wrote: just finished my playthrough. tried to make things harder by doing every achieve on brutal, but even then the only missions i had to develop solid strats for were in the beginning stages. some missions required multiple runs, usually the ones where you had to go out of your way to kill stuff or the timed, because you cant afford to waste units on kerrigan level ups etc.
going to work on doing all the mastery achieves on brutal now. i managed to get a few of them while i was doing my normal playthrough, which is kind of funny. working backwards on this, im stuck on conviction, which is save raynor by 8 minutes. the normal achieve is get to the prison bay by 8 minutes, lol.
I'm stuck in the rendezvous mission mastery achievement. Kill all buildings in under 15 min and all I got are zerglings and queens and a low eco base to begin with. Yay.
The 10 min (yeah, you got +2 min ) rescue of Raynor was not that much of a problem. Finished it with 1 min left. Just overtake Thors and Tanks with your infestors and skip stuff whenever possible. You gotta know which doors require killing all terrans in the room before the door, though. I got the charge (+30% runspeed passiv) and psiblast thing (300 damage singletarget nuke) for Kerrigan plus the heal.
As soon as I got Roach tech I steamrolled everything with max out 3/3 Roach/Queen or Roach/Kerrigan Heal army every game. Brutal is supposed to make you upset that you have to retry a mission fifteen times and that just didn't happen. In WoL the Protoss Fleet last battle and the last mission was really hard and an expansion is supposed to be harder. First level of Broodwar is almost as hard as last level classic starcraft. It's my only complaint to a otherwise super awesome campaign.
Pros : - Visible effort in storytelling. Cinematics, lots of them! - Varied missions. I really liked the infiltration mission in the protoss ship. - Big effort on the diversity of units at your disposal - Excellent way to make you replay specific missions after you've finished once
Cons : - Scenario is cheesy. - Scenario is unlikely. The characters say things that come from nowhere, and make strange decisions. The Zeratul part, especially the way it is introduced - Obvious fanservice is obvious. For example the return of the UED guy (I try to avoid spoilers) - Too easy. I played on brutal and reloaded exactly twice. I have no trouble with OP units, but give more supply to the opponents! - Not much incentive to restart the campaign as a whole. The evolution missions are a bore. - No "very hard" challenge at any point. Why are the mastery achievements not required in Brutal? - Reduced difficulty compared to multiplayer : where are the injects? Queen speed off creep and global creep spread is also a joke.
OK, this still means that I finished the campaign. I like the campaign. But while I have done the WoL campaign something like 8 times, I probably won't do HotS campaign more than twice (for full achievements). I really miss the extremely hard missions of WoL such as All In or the protoss last mission. Also, the Research lab in WoL allowed you to have radically different army types. I remember fondly my bio-drop-pod campaign run, that was awesome. (The mech-only with regenerative steel and science vessel was cool too, but too easy)
Edit : Oh, and the bugs that will probably get corrected - Kerrigan cannot be assigned custom hotkeys. Damn shame, I had to put passives everywhere, just keeping kinetic blast and drop pods - Swarm hosts are buggy. They don't always pop locusts - Swarm hosts are not user friendly.Locusts are only autocast if enemy is in range? Great...
On March 13 2013 22:34 Inori wrote: Am I the only one who felt that big ones were easier? Hydra have good dps, so I had to react quickly. Big ones I attacked with Q skill, then ran around and navigated them under boss tentacles, he killed more of them than I did...
It's easy until you don't have any of your own units left and the boss spawns them faster than you can kill them (while avoiding tentacles yourself, that is). Then it becomes a bit harder.
You can always kill the units fast enough. The only challenge on this map is to get the speed run achievement (i'll be trying that some time today) I could easily sustain kerrigan indefinitely on any of the 4 bosses after my units died without any challenge at all. (on brutal) I played a decent amount of Impossible Bosses (WC3 map) though, which is essentially the same thing as this, but multiplayer and 100x harder.
On the final boss, remember that the tentacles also damage the units he spawns, though only a bit. This means you can dash+leap+dash and have everything essentially dead, finishing them up with a few auto-attacks.
I'm actually curious to see if I can beat the brutal only building zerglings and using kerrigan I don't think I'd be able to do something similar to the marine only no upgrade run I tried for WoL though, as marines are a lot better than zerglings...
Chellenges I want to try: Only Kerrigan can leave my base, kerrigan skills allowed, evolutions not allowed No non-drone units built, kerrigan skills and evolutions allowed Only Zerglings allowed to be built, no kerrigan skills, evolutions allowed
and the one I think will be quite impossible: No evolutions, no kerrigan upgrades, only allowed to build drones and zerglings
Quite a bit easier than Wings of Liberty. I think it is because their level designs are similar. Both had the majority of missions taking two bases and then achieving your various goals. But holding two bases is a lot easier for a zerg. And Kerrigan en plus.
Well, I played through most of it now, and Kerrigan is definitely way too OP, despite my comment earlier about losing. It's like she's 10 times better than WC3 heroes or something.
I haven't read any replies to this thread, but I just wanted to add my 2 cents: Yes, it was too easy.
I played through the campaign on Brutal first try and had few difficulties. There were a few missions where I had to restart, but maybe only 2 I had to attempt more than twice, and most I 1-shotted.
My background as a player: I'm a Protoss player, and I don't offrace often. Zerg is the race I offrace as less, and of the three races the one I'm least comfortable with by far. When I started out in 1v1, I was in Silver, moved up to Diamond, then down to Platinum for the majority of my 1v1 career. Which isn't much, I have less than 500 career total 1v1 games.
For a person of my background to breeze through Brutal is not right. I know that compared to casual players, I'm still highly skilled (Platinum lol), but that's what the Normal difficulty is for. Or hell, even the Hard difficulty. Brutal is 2 difficulties up from Normal and should be a challenge to people in Plat/Diamond, and impossible for Bronze/Silver players.
The current Brutal difficulty should be the Hard difficulty, and the new Brutal should actually be hard to beat. Or, add another difficulty, "Impossible" or something.
Campaign was significantly easier than WoL, in part due to kerrigan OP. I restarted 2 missions because I missed an artifact thing to give kerrigan a level.
Once Kerrigan has mend, just do queen/roach/kerrigan and spam mend. Use her Q (the one that does 300 dmg) on anything that hurts a lot (like siege tanks).
If I didnt mind things taking a long time, I could solo most missions with just kerrigan after a point.
It was as easy as WoL was. WoL only had one "hard" mission and it was the last one. Marine+medicmen made that that game totally broken. Atleast in HotS I can use different units and a-move my way to victory.
One thing that isn't making easy at all is the fucking Battle.net behavior that says that whenever Bnet or your connection drops , you can't fucking unlock the achievements for the mission you're currently doing. That's the second time I have to redo a mission that I've already done for this reason. They could fucking patch that stuff I don't know...
It seems that the only way to make the games as hard as they should be is to enforce artificial constraints on yourself.
For example, last week I played through WoL on Brutal using no Armory upgrades (the ones you buy with credits), and I've heard of people doing that with also no hired Mercenaries or Research. That's a challenge I'm not sure I'd be up for.
Or see what Destiny's doing lately on his stream, playing through Brutal, all bonus objectives + achievements. It seems decently difficult. He's not doing the Mastery Achievements as well though, doing those on Brutal would actually be really hard.
Well I liked Kerrigan and how powerful she was, but the enemy armies could have been a bit bigger and have some more entrenched bases. Big battles where you have to destryo multiple huge bases were also lacking. Instead there were a lot of fast paced timed missions.
On March 14 2013 07:17 esla_sol wrote: just finished my playthrough. tried to make things harder by doing every achieve on brutal, but even then the only missions i had to develop solid strats for were in the beginning stages. some missions required multiple runs, usually the ones where you had to go out of your way to kill stuff or the timed, because you cant afford to waste units on kerrigan level ups etc.
going to work on doing all the mastery achieves on brutal now. i managed to get a few of them while i was doing my normal playthrough, which is kind of funny. working backwards on this, im stuck on conviction, which is save raynor by 8 minutes. the normal achieve is get to the prison bay by 8 minutes, lol.
I'm stuck in the rendezvous mission mastery achievement. Kill all buildings in under 15 min and all I got are zerglings and queens and a low eco base to begin with. Yay.
The 10 min (yeah, you got +2 min ) rescue of Raynor was not that much of a problem. Finished it with 1 min left. Just overtake Thors and Tanks with your infestors and skip stuff whenever possible. You gotta know which doors require killing all terrans in the room before the door, though. I got the charge (+30% runspeed passiv) and psiblast thing (300 damage singletarget nuke) for Kerrigan plus the heal.
oh shit it's 10 minutes. i've been restarting at 8 min. im usually at the door with 10 seconds left, haha.
On March 14 2013 10:05 ZenithM wrote: One thing that isn't making easy at all is the fucking Battle.net behavior that says that whenever Bnet or your connection drops , you can't fucking unlock the achievements for the mission you're currently doing. That's the second time I have to redo a mission that I've already done for this reason. They could fucking patch that stuff I don't know...
I found HotS to be just as difficult as WoL (aka, not at all difficult). The "most difficult" WoL mission is generally considered to be the last Protoss mission, but all you have to do is mass Void Rays.
Try to get all 3 achievements + Mastery in ONE go. As in one mission, 4 achievements. No playing through seperate times for each individual achievement. All of them simultaneously in one mission. Those are the true objectives of each mission. Its also what makes the game truly challenging.
Trying to win the final mission in 25 minutes, while preventing any damage on Raynor's ship, while also killing Odin before it moves out? Now thats a difficult mission.
On March 14 2013 11:50 ch33psh33p wrote: You guys are looking at this all wrong.
Of course you can beat the campaign easily.
Try to get all 3 achievements + Mastery in ONE go. Those are the true objectives of each mission. Its also what makes the game truly challenging.
Trying to win the final mission in 25 minutes, while preventing any damage on Raynor's ship, while also killing Odin before it moves out? Now thats a difficult mission.
I dont think many of the people here saying this is easy will even get to korhol when they try this. The amount of times i failed shooting the messenger mastery + achievements is absurd.
Even on hard, trying this is many times more difficult than just doing brutal playthrough.
On March 14 2013 11:50 ch33psh33p wrote: You guys are looking at this all wrong.
Of course you can beat the campaign easily.
Try to get all 3 achievements + Mastery in ONE go. Those are the true objectives of each mission. Its also what makes the game truly challenging.
Trying to win the final mission in 25 minutes, while preventing any damage on Raynor's ship, while also killing Odin before it moves out? Now thats a difficult mission.
I dont think many of the people here saying this is easy will even get to korhol when they try this. The amount of times i failed shooting the messenger mastery + achievements is absurd.
Even on hard, trying this is many times more difficult than just doing brutal playthrough.
Exactly. People brute force the game, meet the bare minimum objectives, and call it easy. Of course, its made for casuals.
Get all the achievements in each mission at once if you want a challenge. Beating the final mission on Brutal in 25 minutes while trying to take care of Raynor's ass and blitzing Odin at the same time, that was literally near impossible. 50 playthroughs, and you still might not get it.
On March 14 2013 11:50 ch33psh33p wrote: You guys are looking at this all wrong.
Of course you can beat the campaign easily.
Try to get all 3 achievements + Mastery in ONE go. Those are the true objectives of each mission. Its also what makes the game truly challenging.
Trying to win the final mission in 25 minutes, while preventing any damage on Raynor's ship, while also killing Odin before it moves out? Now thats a difficult mission.
I dont think many of the people here saying this is easy will even get to korhol when they try this. The amount of times i failed shooting the messenger mastery + achievements is absurd.
Even on hard, trying this is many times more difficult than just doing brutal playthrough.
Exactly. People brute force the game, meet the bare minimum objectives, and call it easy. Of course, its made for casuals.
Get all the achievements in each mission at once if you want a challenge. Beating the final mission on Brutal in 25 minutes while trying to take care of Raynor's ass and blitzing Odin at the same time, that was literally near impossible. 50 playthroughs, and you still might not get it.
The Problem is that this way of playing totally breaks any kind of immersion and will just result in Reloads because you missed some tiny objective. That's no fun.
It feels different if you have to set your own limitations to make the game tougher.
I just want hard huge battles, where you actually need to make tactical decisions and use the correct units etc. Achievements are optional, I don't need them. When I am motivated I'll play the missions again for achievements.
But when I chose "brutal", then I want... something really tough. WoL was already kind of easy, but changed a lot depending on the order of units you unlocked. HotS you can finish in one go with all bonus objectives on brutal and like 50% of achievements without real effort.
I didnt go for any achievements and I got 51% of the achievements first time through on brutal. I didnt even look at them so when I got them I was quite surprised. Looking back through them, there were many that I was very close to getting or didnt get because I didnt know about it.
One I didnt know about: Poached Eggs (couldve easily done this as I was going mass muta and crushed everything). One I narrowly missed (despite not knowing about it): Nuclear Launch Rejected (got 19 of the 20)
There are a lot that would be extremely hard on brutal, but the hard achievements arent designed to be done on brutal.
I also discovered the overpoweredness of queen/roach/kerrigan later in the game.
On March 14 2013 11:50 ch33psh33p wrote: You guys are looking at this all wrong.
Of course you can beat the campaign easily.
Try to get all 3 achievements + Mastery in ONE go. Those are the true objectives of each mission. Its also what makes the game truly challenging.
Trying to win the final mission in 25 minutes, while preventing any damage on Raynor's ship, while also killing Odin before it moves out? Now thats a difficult mission.
I dont think many of the people here saying this is easy will even get to korhol when they try this. The amount of times i failed shooting the messenger mastery + achievements is absurd.
Even on hard, trying this is many times more difficult than just doing brutal playthrough.
Exactly. People brute force the game, meet the bare minimum objectives, and call it easy. Of course, its made for casuals.
Get all the achievements in each mission at once if you want a challenge. Beating the final mission on Brutal in 25 minutes while trying to take care of Raynor's ass and blitzing Odin at the same time, that was literally near impossible. 50 playthroughs, and you still might not get it.
just get the swarm hosts with deep tunnel ability, they're hilariously OP for defending multiple locations
I personally don't play single player to be challenged, that's what the multi player is for. I get annoyed when there are retarded parts in single player that just take too much time, by trial and error or through whatever method developers wanna increase the game's play time. The fact that Blizzard didn't do that with HotS is fine with me.
I was a bit annoyed at the fact that the thing you strove for in WoL got kinda fucked over so early on in the campaign but I got over that quickly. Some lines were a bit cheesy but overall I really fucking enjoyed the campaign a lot (even if it maybe could have needed a planet more or so). Also the Facehugger/Chestburster mission was awesome and I chuckled at the time limit for reinforcements in mission 3... Classic Blizzard <3 Can't say that I'm disappointed at all, people be negative, yo!
Well if you chose "brutal" then you do that to be challenged... If you like it soft then chose "casual". That'S great as long as they both deliver.
But oh well I still think it's an awesome campaing. "Enemy withing"(the Alien mission) was great and fighting endbosses with a supercharged Queen of Blades was a lot of fun.
I am not really disappointed with the single player, just sad that it was so short.
It's weird, in order to really challenge yourself in pretty much any game, you would have to impose certain limitations. Zelda, Metroid, MGS, all of that stuff didn't really have any inbred difficult, but let the player get creative in order to accomplish things.
I just finished it on normal. I remember WoL campaign being a pain in the ass on certain missions. HotS just seemed like a joke. No larva injects which I'm sure is for accessibility of the game but I dunno. Make base, saturate, expand if possible, make a ton of anything and A-move basically. If you have mend it's GG.
Yeah, it was normal, not hard, not brutal but I imagined at some point the difficulty would ramp up and it just never did. I got all the bonus objectives without ever breaking a sweat. I suppose I could go back through on brutal but tbh I just don't really have any desire to play through that again.
Wish there was more Kerrigan stuff and less Queen of Blades stuff. The dialogue much like WoL was pretty awful. I was excited to see what the campaign held but tbh I'm disappointed. Was sort of just playing DotA and throwing a bunch of whatever unit my finger held the button down to make. At least the multiplayer is a step in the right direction from WoL. Was just expecting something more.
is it just be or was that fight with the giant primal zerg completely copied from the belial fight in D3... Either way there wasn't enough actually rts style missions where you take bases and kill shit for the most part it felt far to rpg like and yes brutal was too easy.
On March 14 2013 14:56 HiTeK532 wrote: is it just be or was that fight with the giant primal zerg completely copied from the belial fight in D3... Either way there wasn't enough actually rts style missions where you take bases and kill shit for the most part it felt far to rpg like and yes brutal was too easy.
Yea it seemed to be taken right outta belial fight. Still fun tho since I haven't touched d3 in such a long time
HotS felt more like a RPG than a RTS - especially one that calls itself a successor to the original starcraft series (SC and SC:BW). Even on brutal it was ridiculous how easy it was to just solo everything with Kerrigan - making her "immortal" was just one of the many many terrible choices.
On March 12 2013 13:36 Whatson wrote: Nony pretty much made roaches, made hydras and a-moved through all the levels. I haven't played it yet, but it didn't look nearly as entertaining as WoL campaign, and maybe even easier
Pretty much what I did as well. I also looked all around for little secrets or fun areas and found none. I think after some MP leveling I'll go back and replay on brutal. I'll wait a bit though, didn't get like 3 achievements because of general buggyness.
On March 12 2013 13:36 Whatson wrote: Nony pretty much made roaches, made hydras and a-moved through all the levels. I haven't played it yet, but it didn't look nearly as entertaining as WoL campaign, and maybe even easier
Pretty much what I did as well. I also looked all around for little secrets or fun areas and found none. I think after some MP leveling I'll go back and replay on brutal. I'll wait a bit though, didn't get like 3 achievements because of general buggyness.
I found a murloc marine and a little diablo next to each other, I forget which mission it was though. Also found Artosilope and Tastilope ))))))) Probably a buncha other stuff I missed
On March 14 2013 14:56 HiTeK532 wrote: is it just be or was that fight with the giant primal zerg completely copied from the belial fight in D3... Either way there wasn't enough actually rts style missions where you take bases and kill shit for the most part it felt far to rpg like and yes brutal was too easy.
Huh? If anything, what I remembered about the campaign was the sheer number of missions where you take 2~3 bases, get 3/3/3, then a-move roach/hydra armies across the map with constant reinforcements.
On March 14 2013 14:56 HiTeK532 wrote: is it just be or was that fight with the giant primal zerg completely copied from the belial fight in D3... Either way there wasn't enough actually rts style missions where you take bases and kill shit for the most part it felt far to rpg like and yes brutal was too easy.
Huh? If anything, what I remembered about the campaign was the sheer number of missions where you take 2~3 bases, get 3/3/3, then a-move roach/hydra armies across the map with constant reinforcements.
No kidding, WoL had absolutely no expansions, or ones that would die instantly if you dared to take them.
Why didn't they just make it so that Kerrigan isn't immortal on Brutal? Or every enemy unit has +20% DPS output, or something? Why put a button there, saying "Brutal" when it just gives you the same sad experience as "Normal"? I'm pretty sure that if there are newcomers (to an expansion, so they also have to play through WoL, keep that in mind) they will pick the easiest difficulty because they don't know anything about the game. But if I am to press Brutal that's probably because I want to suffer and meet challenges which I would need to conquer through sweat and tears in order to feel accomplished. And if that doesn't happen then I am to be extremely dissapointed and probably not wanting to return for an experience like this once again.
Another question: I did the campaign, but haven't got neither the Narud Pic nor the brutal achievement. But the campaign is listed as "finished 27/27" I checked the archive aswell, all games on brutal... any advice what I missed?
Definitely. I didn't think so at first, cuz I had to lower it to hard for a few of the early-mid missions that I couldn't crack, but it actually got easier and I one shot every mission near the end including the final mission on brutal. Compare that to WoL where I still have not beat the final mission on brutal even after trying for hours before HotS came out.
I must say though, I loved the campaign. Great story great gameplay, lots of fun. Just too easy, especially at the end.
On March 14 2013 17:35 Hikari wrote: The mastery achievements are where the difficulty lies: trying to kill the odin while enduring assault from elite terran troops can be quite taxing
Or destroying every protoss base in the Narud-mission before the last temple is shut down. And these damn probes keep slipping through and rebuilding stuff.
I didn't think it was too easy but I'm not a zerg player.
What I did dislike is the lack of replayability and the removal of a lot of player choice. I liked in WoL how you got to pick between two missions for example tosh vs nova, it meant there was new things to explore when you played through again. I also liked the upgrade system better, more permanent choices on what to spend your money/research on meant the game played out differently... maybe you go mech heavy one time, maybe you go bio heavy the next, maybe you spend most of your money on mercs. HoTS just didn't have that. Also some of the kerrigan options are so broken that you would never want to go anything else. I mean the two SCVs at once thing was really good in WoL but in HoTS you get the second one for free AND they cost less supply, it's absolutely ridiculous. All this can be forgiven if the campaign is actually a decent length but IMO 10-12 hours is just too short.
On March 14 2013 17:04 Prugelhugel wrote: Another question: I did the campaign, but haven't got neither the Narud Pic nor the brutal achievement. But the campaign is listed as "finished 27/27" I checked the archive aswell, all games on brutal... any advice what I missed?
Had the exact same problem and you just can't go back and play an old mission on Brutal. Tried that and it didn't work.
This is how I fixed it:
Some hours on March 12th the Achievement service was down so there was pretty much 1-2 missions there that messed everything up.
1. Check if you have all of the Evolutions Missions completed. There you can see where there's a "gap" in the Achievements. For me I had the Baneling Mission Achievement Missing. 2. Load an old Save file just before what you're missing. Yes, you must load an old save file, otherwise it won't work. Play that mission + one or two more. 3. Voila. You got everything!
I did this and also did the Baneling Mission and now everything is fine with all of the achievements. .
I played the whole campaign on Brutal directly and in some cases it was hard but overall pretty easy. The most trouble I had was against the Primal zergs.
One thing you have to remember though is that many of us have 2+ years of StarCraft 2 experience. We are so much better at StarCraft now so it seems a lot easier. We take an expand directly, we macro efficiently etc.
So for Normal and Hard I don't think the difficulty levels are so way off. We are just better.
Personally I just wish that some of the missions on Brutal were a little bit harder.
Right now many achievements are broken. For example, my Kerrigan is on Lvl 70, but I did not get the achievement. Also, Many counters for Kerrigan achievements are frozen, for example I have killed 99/100 units with banelings. I think we need to wait till Blizzard fixes this.
Anyways, I had the same problem with the "20-missions-on-brutal achievement", but after replaying the missions, I have been awarded with it
On March 14 2013 18:27 C[h]ili wrote: Right now many achievements are broken. For example, my Kerrigan is on Lvl 70, but I did not get the achievement. Also, Many counters for Kerrigan achievements are frozen, for example I have killed 99/100 units with banelings. I think we need to wait till Blizzard fixes this.
Anyways, I had the same problem with the "20-missions-on-brutal achievement", but after replaying the missions, I have been awarded with it
But how did you know which missions already counted towards the achievement and which did not? Or did you just replay them all :D?
On March 14 2013 18:27 C[h]ili wrote: Right now many achievements are broken. For example, my Kerrigan is on Lvl 70, but I did not get the achievement. Also, Many counters for Kerrigan achievements are frozen, for example I have killed 99/100 units with banelings. I think we need to wait till Blizzard fixes this.
Anyways, I had the same problem with the "20-missions-on-brutal achievement", but after replaying the missions, I have been awarded with it
Nah they aren't actually broken but not described properly. Here is what I found in the battle.net-forums and it worked for me:
"I observed that many of these achievements have a hidden "in a single game" criteria despite not saying it.
If you are stuck in an achievement, its because it simply shows the Max you got from a single game. For example for mission 1 you got 49 Kinetic blast kills, it will show 49/50 in the achievement, however even if you kill 1 more using kinetic blast in the next mission, it wont go 50/50, but 1/50. so as crazy as it may seem, if you want to get the achievements RIGHT NOW, you gotta do it in a single game."
it was pretty simple tbh (only played on hard on the first go). remembering from wol i did struggle abit more on the same diff on the bigger defence missions like utter darkness and all in.
but since the final zerg mission is a frontal assult type of mission, the situation is kinda changed. its not very hard to make a defence mission into a challenge without making it into a step by step thing. basicly if they manage to make it so that you bearly hold as the timer goes out.. and seeing that you would be dead if it lasted 10 seconds more.. they have done their job
for attacking.. even more so when it comes to zerg. it would be hard to get it as a challenge for certain tech routes (think the op purple train) without making another tech route completly useless.
I also think it was fairly simple on brutal. Primal zergs caused me a few headaches but everything else wasnt that hard. In the final mission I just made ultras with torrasque evolution and hydras for anti-air. It was really easy and the drop-pod skill for Kerrigan is totally OP.
On March 14 2013 18:27 TheSilverfox wrote: One thing you have to remember though is that many of us have 2+ years of StarCraft 2 experience. We are so much better at StarCraft now so it seems a lot easier. We take an expand directly, we macro efficiently etc.
Sorry but that's not really true. Most of us had plenty of RTS experience before SC2. WC3, broodwar etc.
And try to play WoL campaign final mission on brutal today, it's just as hard as 2+ years ago.
didnt do it on brutal, just hard, but i found the primal zerg bosses shit easy actually.. :/ iirc the baneling host did kill me once when i fucked up like a noob but the other ones just kinda died
The missions I've done so far have been fairly simple. I've been making 2 macro hatches every base mission though. Kinda need the extra larva without queen inject, end up with 9999 minerals otherwise :-\
I couldn't agree more. I was a better player a while back and I had far greater trouble with the campaign in WoL. I just smashed through all missions. Was quite disappointed
Also I felt the production value and storytelling was better in WoL. By storytelling I don't mean the story was better, but it was told in a better way.
Anyways HotS looks good in multiplayer and its not like it was a terrible expirience, so all in all not to bad.
On March 14 2013 21:04 Frankenberry wrote: I couldn't agree more. I was a better player a while back and I had far greater trouble with the campaign in WoL. I just smashed through all missions. Was quite disappointed
Also I felt the production value and storytelling was better in WoL. By storytelling I don't mean the story was better, but it was told in a better way.
Anyways HotS looks good in multiplayer and its not like it was a terrible expirience, so all in all not to bad.
yeah it was kind of pleasing to just swarm everything
first time in a long while where my pc actually complained (a lot of units vs something like 200 worth of supply in ling/bling... i felt my computers middle finger rise
On March 14 2013 18:26 Holdinga wrote: how to do kill 4 gorgons in 120 secs ffs :D anybody know ? what's the catch
It's probably to spread creep everywhere and then super fast to creep the scourge nests 4 at a time
Yes, that's exactly it. Gorgons move slowly, and they only spawn when the previous one is destroyed, so use your initial creep tumor to spread creep out instead of to the scourge nest. Blitz your way across the map with 2+ queens, and only use a scourge nest if the gorgon gets close to your base.
That mission is pretty annoying if you are going for the achievement where only 5 units can die to gorgons, since I think broodlings count as well.
EDIT: But seriously, turtling on your ass in base until 3/3/3, using all of Kerrigan's abilities, and every op evolution/mutation, while doing the bare minimum is going to be easy. What the hell do you guys expect? Go for the Mastery achievements and then see if WoL was easier. Even ones early in the game...kill all of the Protoss docking bays without any messenger ships reaching a beacon, beat the primal zerg boss level in <12 minutes, etc. Several of the timed ones require you to be very efficient to complete.
On March 14 2013 18:27 TheSilverfox wrote: One thing you have to remember though is that many of us have 2+ years of StarCraft 2 experience. We are so much better at StarCraft now so it seems a lot easier. We take an expand directly, we macro efficiently etc.
Sorry but that's not really true. Most of us had plenty of RTS experience before SC2. WC3, broodwar etc.
And try to play WoL campaign final mission on brutal today, it's just as hard as 2+ years ago.
Lol, what? WoL is easy like hell. I replayed it before HotS.
You don't even need to abuse any of the standard shit like MM/banshee/etc, just macro up and a-move stuff, it's the same as HotS.
On March 14 2013 18:26 Holdinga wrote: how to do kill 4 gorgons in 120 secs ffs :D anybody know ? what's the catch
It's probably to spread creep everywhere and then super fast to creep the scourge nests 4 at a time
Its one of the easier ones if your are attempting that achievement alone. what you have to do is buy as much time with the first 2 gorgon so you can macro up and just steamroll through the units. Get tumors near but not on the scourge then activate them all (dont worry about waiting for the gorgon just activate them when 4 is in range).
At the start, spread your tumor above the nest so u hop over it and continue to spread. I did it with 3 queens helping me just spread creep and its alot easier if you have the roach upgrade that spawn roachlings.
On March 14 2013 18:27 TheSilverfox wrote: One thing you have to remember though is that many of us have 2+ years of StarCraft 2 experience. We are so much better at StarCraft now so it seems a lot easier. We take an expand directly, we macro efficiently etc.
Sorry but that's not really true. Most of us had plenty of RTS experience before SC2. WC3, broodwar etc.
And try to play WoL campaign final mission on brutal today, it's just as hard as 2+ years ago.
Lol, what? WoL is easy like hell. I replayed it before HotS.
You don't even need to abuse any of the standard shit like MM/banshee/etc, just macro up and a-move stuff, it's the same as HotS.
You don't a-move the last mission, in fact you don't need to move at all -_- It's not like pro-gamers or game-knowledgeable casters managed to do the last mission in one go you know ;D.
WoL's difficulty stemmed from making incorrect upgrade choices. HotS's comes from Mastery achievements.
Seriously, turtling on your ass with pre-nerf siege tanks and auto-repairing 6-slot bunkers while you have roaming squads of marine/medic isn't exactly hard either. The only difference is you didn't have a hero unit that essentially 1shots ultralisks.
EDIT: Is there no achievement that's doing all the Mastery achievements? That'd be the only one worth getting from the campaign.
On March 14 2013 22:53 Sandster wrote: WoL's difficulty stemmed from making incorrect upgrade choices. HotS's comes from Mastery achievements.
Seriously, turtling on your ass with pre-nerf siege tanks and auto-repairing 6-slot bunkers while you have roaming squads of marine/medic isn't exactly hard either. The only difference is you didn't have a hero unit that essentially 1shots ultralisks.
EDIT: Is there no achievement that's doing all the Mastery achievements? That'd be the only one worth getting from the campaign.
Theres none thats visible but if i were to guess, it could be a feat of strength (and they dont pop up until you do them).
On March 14 2013 22:53 Sandster wrote: WoL's difficulty stemmed from making incorrect upgrade choices. HotS's comes from Mastery achievements.
Seriously, turtling on your ass with pre-nerf siege tanks and auto-repairing 6-slot bunkers while you have roaming squads of marine/medic isn't exactly hard either. The only difference is you didn't have a hero unit that essentially 1shots ultralisks.
EDIT: Is there no achievement that's doing all the Mastery achievements? That'd be the only one worth getting from the campaign.
Theres none thats visible but if i were to guess, it could be a feat of strength (and they dont pop up until you do them).
Nope, there is no FoS achievement for doing all the Mastery achievements. I have them all completed, and for some strange reason the 2nd last mission does not have a mastery achievement.
They were fun in their own rights, but still not nearly challenging enough imo. They should have tuned it for brutal instead of hard. I even went to do some of them on brutal just for the fun of it.
Unfortunately haven't beaten it, don't have time to do every mission but I do find the Zerg flexibility to be better in some ways. I can choose to use Kerrigan in many ways (I prefer caster but a buddy had a good time using her as an attacking unit). Overall it's not that much more difficult in the early missions, all I've had to do so far is mass Roach and a-move.
This is actually my only minor complaint about this otherwise amazing campaign. I was indeed expecting a little more challenge. Especially because they said in an interview that some of the hardcore players had found the WoL campaign a little too easy so they wanted to make the challenge a little bit harder.
Well, I have completed the WoL campaign around 8 times now, and even recently, and there is no doubt that HotS campaign is easier to me. The zerg army is incredibly cool and the upgrade are so much fun! But between reviving ultras + free zerlings and kerrigan's powers, it just seems impossible to make the missions hard enough..
I honestly really really hope they could patch it to make it abit harder!
Yeah, the campaign missions were set up nicely, it's just that you get such ridiculously overpowered units and abilities that it's impossible to balance.
I haven't tried it, but playing without using Kerrigan or evolutions (or are they mutations?) would be the a good difficulty for Brutal. Leaping lings/banelings and roachlings are just too strong.
On March 13 2013 22:34 Inori wrote: Am I the only one who felt that big ones were easier? Hydra have good dps, so I had to react quickly. Big ones I attacked with Q skill, then ran around and navigated them under boss tentacles, he killed more of them than I did...
It's easy until you don't have any of your own units left and the boss spawns them faster than you can kill them (while avoiding tentacles yourself, that is). Then it becomes a bit harder.
You can always kill the units fast enough. The only challenge on this map is to get the speed run achievement (i'll be trying that some time today) I could easily sustain kerrigan indefinitely on any of the 4 bosses after my units died without any challenge at all. (on brutal) I played a decent amount of Impossible Bosses (WC3 map) though, which is essentially the same thing as this, but multiplayer and 100x harder.
On the final boss, remember that the tentacles also damage the units he spawns, though only a bit. This means you can dash+leap+dash and have everything essentially dead, finishing them up with a few auto-attacks.
Dash + leap + dash put the big ones at like 30% HP, need to do more, while avoiding tentacles and sometimes healing once in between. Before you can do that (or right as you finish them up) he'll just spawn more of them or you'll have time for only one Q on the boss or something. And you can't just spam the spells forever even though the mana regen is huge, gotta wait a bit.
Anyway, I just tried it at a friend's who did other planets before and it was quite a bit easier, also the boss kept spawning easy creeps as opposed to 95% big ones in my own run. So I guess it does have to do with all that
On March 13 2013 22:34 Inori wrote: Am I the only one who felt that big ones were easier? Hydra have good dps, so I had to react quickly. Big ones I attacked with Q skill, then ran around and navigated them under boss tentacles, he killed more of them than I did...
It's easy until you don't have any of your own units left and the boss spawns them faster than you can kill them (while avoiding tentacles yourself, that is). Then it becomes a bit harder.
You can always kill the units fast enough. The only challenge on this map is to get the speed run achievement (i'll be trying that some time today) I could easily sustain kerrigan indefinitely on any of the 4 bosses after my units died without any challenge at all. (on brutal) I played a decent amount of Impossible Bosses (WC3 map) though, which is essentially the same thing as this, but multiplayer and 100x harder.
On the final boss, remember that the tentacles also damage the units he spawns, though only a bit. This means you can dash+leap+dash and have everything essentially dead, finishing them up with a few auto-attacks.
Dash + leap + dash put the big ones at like 30% HP, need to do more, while avoiding tentacles and sometimes healing once in between. Before you can do that (or right as you finish them up) he'll just spawn more of them or you'll have time for only one Q on the boss or something. And you can't just spam the spells forever even though the mana regen is huge, gotta wait a bit.
Anyway, I just tried it at a friend's who did other planets before and it was quite a bit easier, also the boss kept spawning easy creeps as opposed to 95% big ones in my own run. So I guess it does have to do with all that
I double-leap the big one and finish it with one or two auto-attacks. Then leap the small ones and keep attacking them. If they get hit by the tentacle it's a nice bonus. It's important to be at full energy and with the heal cooldown finished when a new pack spawns. Dash does 50 damage per target, Leap is 150, so on the pack with 3 mobs, Dashing only breaks even if it hits all 3.
I do agree that the large packs with weaker mobs are easier though. Dash back and forth and they're all dead except for one or two on low HP.
On March 14 2013 23:42 Hier wrote: So I'm assuming everyone is talking about doing the mastery achievements while on brutal difficulty, right?
Try mastery + other achievements on brutal.
I don't get what you are referring to as mastery; each mission has 2 achievements, which can be completed on normal. What else is there? Are people just artificially augmenting difficulty?
Destroying 15 buildings before the time runs out on the 3rd mission on brutal seems to be near impossible.
On March 14 2013 23:42 Hier wrote: So I'm assuming everyone is talking about doing the mastery achievements while on brutal difficulty, right?
This, anyone saying WoL campaign posed more of a challenge are forgetting how badly they sucked back then.
Yeah, WoL normal was a challenge for me when I was a bronze player, but after reaching the pinnacle of high gold (meaning I still suck dick at sc2) I could most likely build nothing but scvs and beat normal now, much less mass any one army unit and a click to victory. I know, I started going through the campaign on brutal shortly before the expansion and it was so stupidly easy I had to make sure it was still on brutal after I finished some missions.
One thing's for certain: Warhounds are still OP in single-player and don't feel easy to take down. Whenever I see them, I freak out as they cut through my Roaches like a hot knife through butter.
On March 14 2013 23:54 striderxxx wrote: Blizzard should have put in an INSANE mode like other games where the intent is to be nearly impossible to beat instead of just being challenging.
They learned their lesson on 'INSANE' difficulty with D3. People clamored for it, clamored for it, clamored for it, but when Inferno came out, the same people who said "Don't nerf Inferno when it comes out!" said "Blizz you suck, this is too hard!!!".
In the end, communities claim to want difficulty, but, really, only a very small fraction actually wants it. The rest just try to exploit/munchkin/workaround the difficulty to say they've beat it; i.e. they want to say they've done it, but don't want it hard; or maybe I should say they don't want it hard *for themselves*. They just want it 'too hard for others.'. If they can't exploit/workaround/munchkin their way to it, then they cry foul.
As we found in D3, if <difficulty> exists, the very loud elite wanna-bes will expect the highest difficulty to be doable by them, (but, ohgod, can't be doable by casuals...can't have them enjoying themselves!) or it's 'too hard'. Wanna-be 'elite' players fuck up far more stuff than casuals ever did.
This forum has the small fraction that actually does want it hard. (And a few that I suspect to be wanna-bes from the way they posted, but I won't name names.)
Jokes and all, the only problem I had with the campaign some levels didn't have much difficulty. Also, the last level wasn't much of a challenge at all
On March 14 2013 23:54 striderxxx wrote: Blizzard should have put in an INSANE mode like other games where the intent is to be nearly impossible to beat instead of just being challenging.
They learned their lesson on 'INSANE' difficulty with D3. People clamored for it, clamored for it, clamored for it, but when Inferno came out, the same people who said "Don't nerf Inferno when it comes out!" said "Blizz you suck, this is too hard!!!".
In the end, communities claim to want difficulty, but, really, only a very small fraction actually wants it. The rest just try to exploit/munchkin/workaround the difficulty to say they've beat it; i.e. they want to say they've done it, but don't want it hard; or maybe I should say they don't want it hard *for themselves*. They just want it 'too hard for others.'. If they can't exploit/workaround/munchkin their way to it, then they cry foul.
As we found in D3, if <difficulty> exists, the very loud elite wanna-bes will expect the highest difficulty to be doable by them, (but, ohgod, can't be doable by casuals...can't have them enjoying themselves!) or it's 'too hard'. Wanna-be 'elite' players fuck up far more stuff than casuals ever did.
This forum has the small fraction that actually does want it hard. (And a few that I suspect to be wanna-bes from the way they posted, but I won't name names.)
Well there was alot of things wrong with diablo. The fact that you farmed named mob because they drop better stuff then the act bosses is a clear sign that something wrong with the game. When the boss of an act drop poop and is nothing but a hurdle for you to go into the next act to farm more named mob was one of the many problem. Diablo was never that hard, it was just a long grind. I believe having an insane difficulty would be nice but I doubt the AI can keep up and there is only so far they can go to for making the game any more difficult without handicapping.
If you know how to macro very well, just about every mission in HotS is a cakewalk even on Brutal Mode. Same can be said for WoL as well, but I found that on Brutal Mode to be just the right difficulty due to it's varied mission structure. 90% of HotS' missions is "destroy x" with very little variance. There was a lot more effort put into WoL.
I actually really liked the campaign and the story behind it. I don't get why you guys are whining about it. I'm a master zerg, so yeah, the missions weren't too hard. But they get a lot harder when you try to go for every achievement and bonus objective. I suggest you all do the same. If it's still to easy and you ace everything on brutal and still getting the achievements - try going for Master achievements. Fun fun fun