Heart of the Swarm to be Unveiled Next Month - Page 31

So my wish for HotS, in a nutshell, is for Zerg to become a little more surprising and a little less easily surprised. After that, it can be balanced more accurately and easily with the other races, who will in turn feel less obliged to go for the bullsh... surprising win.

On May 24 2011 10:28 Sapphire.lux wrote:

I will agree with, to some degree, the complete opposite of this. IMO, the "BO/ surprise, etc" loss is due to 99% bad play (not reading the signs that could reveal a strategy) but, at high levels especially, this is often times because of limited scouting options (for all races).

Terran has to choose between econ and scan, scan that might not actually tell anything. Protoss has to build the observers from the same building that makes vital units. Zerg needs lair. Often times by the time you get in to the position to scout it can be to late.

For HOTS i would very much like the scouting options to be improved. Destroying entire strategies though nerfs it not right IMO (thor nerf LOL) If you "hide" somewhere on the map certain things for an all in or something and the opposing player fails in scouting then it's ok. Wanting to scout a main and simply not being able to is bad :p

And a FACTORY unit that is good against armored air.

That is all i want for Christmas!

On May 24 2011 07:19 Umpteen wrote:


I wanted to use this as a springboard for expressing my own hopes with regards to HotS.

I've long since lost count of the number of times some full or partial version of the following sentiment has been expressed on these boards:

"Zergs just aren't innovating the way Terran and Protoss players are. I mean, we've had phoenix openers, 4-gate, 6-gate, blink, 3 gate expand, all manner of 2-rax, banshees, marauder/hellion, thor rushes - and what do Zerg do? 6-pool, or whine if they can't hatch first in close positions. What are they complaining about; they win GSLs don't they?"

Yes, Zerg players have been unusually vocal since release, and while the intervening balance changes perhaps vindicate some of the QQ, the other matchups have changed at least as profoundly and so ought, by the same logic, to have curtailed or precipitated equal displeasure from the other races. Since this hasn't happened, what are Zerg players bitching about?

Short version: most QQ isn't about balance. It's about surprise.

For the long version, we turn first to Day[9]. Watch enough of him, and he'll end up telling you that a strategy that relies upon surprising your opponent isn't a good strategy, which is good advice if you're playing a highly refined, decade-old game like Broodwar where there are always a half-dozen well-known tells to give you away.

But this is Starcraft 2, a much younger and less well-understood game. And of the three races, it turned out that Zerg is, by some considerable margin, the easiest to surprise, and has the fewest (or the least apparent) surprises up its chitin.

This fact is not obvious upon a cursory inspection of the Zerg tech tree. Burrowed banelings sound like they have the potential to be pretty fucking surprising. Infestors burrowing into your mineral line. Roaches popping up and down and refusing to die. Overseers gooping up your buildings. Nydus worms. It sounds like Zerg has everything they need to surprise the living shit out of everyone.

Unfortunately, it didn't seem to work out that way. While it turned out that Terran could pretty safely rush for banshees or blue-flame hellions or Thors or drops, and Protoss could pretty safely rush for DTs or blink stalkers or Phoenix or Void Rays (pick a tech, and rushing for it has paid off for T and P over the past year) there really wasn't much Zerg could rush for that wouldn't be shut down or beaten to the punch by most things his opponent was likely to be doing. And even when a given build ceased to be a complete surprise, a lot of Protoss and Terran effort was expended finding ways to conceal what they were doing or misdirect their Zerg opponents.

And yet. And yet.

Despite the inarguably large proportion of games Zergs all over the world and at all levels were losing to surprising strategies (or 'bullshit' as it is pronounced in the Zerg tongue), they held their ground on the ladder and - though tending to be somewhat under-represented in tournaments - nevertheless walked away with the coveted GSL title more than once.

That should be ringing alarm bells somewhere. Zerg players in general doing OK despite high rates of build-order loss? Zerg pros generally not doing so well, but one or two dominating? Hmm.

A race ought not to be kept in check largely through the element of surprise. Either the surprises will cease to be effective - in which case the game will end up broken at the pro level or imbalanced for casual play - or the success of Zerg pros will become a coinflip.

So my wish for HotS, in a nutshell, is for Zerg to become a little more surprising and a little less easily surprised. After that, it can be balanced more accurately and easily with the other races, who will in turn feel less obliged to go for the bullsh... surprising win.

On May 24 2011 10:35 rbx270j wrote:



And I want Terran to have a melee T1 unit instead of marines but that aint gonna happen

On May 24 2011 10:39 masterbreti wrote:
The only thing that worries me is they say they are introducing a rpg like mechanic.

I'm hoping this is for single player only, making a rts more like a rpg just sounds wrong

On May 24 2011 10:57 ChowChillaCharlie wrote:
Has there been an actual date set for this? Or are we still on "sometime this week"?

On May 24 2011 16:24 Denda Reloaded wrote:
dunno if it's true, but it seems like we won't get any information until may 31st, because of nda (?)

http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/2548840145

On May 24 2011 13:14 TedJustice wrote:
I love how people read "RPG like mechanics" and suddenly the red flags went up, and they didn't read anything else.

That was said by the Kotaku author, not by blizzard. It was basically saying "the single player will probably have a shop and upgrades like in WoL's singleplayer" and it was complete speculation.