And when did the Protoss ever use their Psionic abilities to levitate shit and choke people? That is totally Darth Vader and Jedi shit. Am I wrong?
According to the novels Ghosts could kill people by thinking about it, so... i guess anything's possible with telekinesis in the Korpulu sector.
On the units, i think many of these mechanics will not make it into launch. I do applaud Blizz though for recognizing the needs of each race. I think though it would be a mistake to fill all the gaps, because those gaps are what makes the races different. I'm disappointed that they did not see a reason to nerf mules, if anything.
And when did the Protoss ever use their Psionic abilities to levitate shit and choke people? That is totally Darth Vader and Jedi shit. Am I wrong?
According to the novels Ghosts could kill people by thinking about it, so... i guess anything's possible with telekinesis in the Korpulu sector.
On the units, i think many of these mechanics will not make it into launch. I do applaud Blizz though for recognizing the needs of each race. I think though it would be a mistake to fill all the gaps, because those gaps are what makes the races different. I'm disappointed that they did not see a reason to nerf mules, if anything.
Mules are fine. They give you a boost in ecomony now, but you mine out way faster so late game you need to expand much more. It's to allow the terran to keep up in income compared to protoss with chrono and zerg with massive amounts of drones/larva inject.
On October 22 2011 16:18 NadaSound wrote: Is it just me or does this look like some dumb shit? I think I can see Dustin Browder's C&C influence infiltrating the game. All these units seem to be flashy, corny, cheesy units!!! I mean come on a transformer hellion WTF!!!! They should just keep things simple and straight forward.
And what the fuck is going on with the storyline it seem like its evolving into a Star Wars fan fiction. Kerrigan use the force!!!!
I just hope this game some what resembles WoL and especially BW and SCI. I just think they should focus on solid game play for that "wow" factor; rather than making bullshit snazzy units to make the game interesting. AS you can see I'm not very optimistic.
^This is exactly what I'm thinking.
My sentiments exactly. Everything seems just really gimmicky with units being designed based solely on "flash" "cool" factor (to attract the casuals), rather than designing things from a balance perspective and completely disregarding the actual validity of the unit. The gigantic thor and go-kart hellion (a variation of which is found in basically every C&C game) were already pushing the limit, but this HotS thing has just gone way to far. Way, way, wayto far.
Blizzard thought process for this expansion has basically been: 1. Think of random, gimmicky, flash shit 2. Hope that you implemented so much of said shit that it mixes well together 3. If broken, buff and or nerf a few times 4. ?????? 5. Profit 6. Make another expansion pack
i agree, these new units don't feel like units in a classic RTS game. and i don't like the idea of a hero thor. but i hope they at least redesign the thor model to make it look cooler though, cuz i'm a terran player, lawl. also, they took out carrier and mothership, and added three units, so technically toss only gains one unit. hmm, but if they are useful , that's what really matters. also the new abilities on nexus should be very good.
I just don't understand how any protoss player could not love the idea of a replicator. It's such a potent unit and will open up the skill cap for protoss so much. It's just so versatile, If terran builds a raven copy it and suddenly vikings aren't as potent v.s. collosus, if he doesn't build a raven punish him with DTs... or you know... cloaked banshes XD. I think if the cost of it is confirmed at 200/200, it will be about perfect. It should be risky to build one, if they aren't going for costly units or if you can't be cost effective with the unit.
The oracle as a harass unit seems good to me. The terran has a potent macro mechanic, the protoss counters it with anti macro, it should even out a few things in the early mid game.The cast seemed to have good enough range that phoenix could protect them from vikings while they hit the mineral line and disable turrets. seems like it should promote a good micro and decision based battle v.s. terran.
I also mourn the loss of the carrier as well, but i can't help but feel it will make it's way back into the game in the protoss expansion. Meanwhile the tempest will make late game protoss air awesome in it's own way.
On October 22 2011 17:02 observ wrote: should have brought back the firebat instead of a battle helion.... a firebat drop would have been so much fun.
Yes, but then you still can't go just factories/mech against protoss as firebats would melt against everything protoss has, which was the problem Blizzard have solved. :D
"All those times as the protoss player when you felt like the ghosts were a little too strong or the infestors were a little too strong, you now have the option to copy those units and use it against your opponents."
Yeahhh... except EMP doesn't do jack against terran, and 200/200/4 infestors is kind of ridiculous.
On October 22 2011 16:26 ToastieNL wrote: Well, am I the only one thinking that in late game it could be awesome to replicate a SCV, build a CC and use the CC to build SCVs to REPAIR your Protoss army? Their numbers cam be loq-ish, like 5-8, but it helps you keep both health and shield in the green, of which health is most valuable vs Terran!?!? Sounds stupid or sounds aweesome?
or, just go to terran's mineral line in the early-mid game copy an SCV, and mass recall the SCV to your base immediately. just a thought *shrugs*
On October 22 2011 16:01 roymarthyup wrote: the warhound seems overpowered. the warhound is basically stalkers that dont suck, or better yet warhounds are like marauders that can attack air
stat for stat, thors have always been "overpowered". the only thing making thors not overpowered is the fact that zealots do OK against them and immortal/VR are good against thors and ling/roach can swarm thors with zergs macro advantages
but anyway, thors themselves actually have pretty overpowered stats. 1 thor kills 3 zealots or stalkers easy and both are 6food
thors actually CRUSH 3stalkers. completely CRUSH.
and from what it looks like, warhounds are balanced to have equal POWER PER FOOD of the thor. meaning warhounds are still just as overpowered as the thor, but now probably move faster as well
warhounds are basically stalkers that dont suck. thors were balanced because they were SO SLOW meaning their overpowered stats were justified. about these warounds... i dont know...
How can you complain about balance at this stage of HOTS...
I'll really have to see how this plays out. It seems they made zerg a "complete race", while giving terrans and protoss ways to survive against that (but not much more). It's exciting at least, not sure how it'll play out, one part of me says that everything is bleh and on the other hand I think it could be to sc2 what broodwar was for sc. Transformers hellions are not that bad, I thought transformers vikings were a terrible idea and it turned out pretty well. Protoss units seems gimmicky imo tho. It looks like "We're unable to balance protoss without them being too UP or too OP, so we'll just give protoss every other race's units". I also feel they shouldn't have removed the mothership. People just discovered it can be a good standard unit (it's not there yet but they remove it at the exact same moment it started to be explored). I think the same about carriers, they could have balanced them instead or just removing them. (or perhaps it was like the race is, too hard to balance without it falling one way or another of the balance line). I'm excited about the zerg tho, I guess that's normal for the zerg expansion. For the last month or 2 I really started to have big hope for starcraft 2 to be a real broodwar successor. TvT is there, TvZ is there too imo, played at the highest level this matchup is a beauty. We can say that ZvZ is there too, it's not hard tho xD. I hope the expansion won't destroy that.
On October 22 2011 16:18 NadaSound wrote: Is it just me or does this look like some dumb shit? I think I can see Dustin Browder's C&C influence infiltrating the game. All these units seem to be flashy, corny, cheesy units!!! I mean come on a transformer hellion WTF!!!! They should just keep things simple and straight forward.
And what the fuck is going on with the storyline it seem like its evolving into a Star Wars fan fiction. Kerrigan use the force!!!!
I just hope this game some what resembles WoL and especially BW and SCI. I just think they should focus on solid game play for that "wow" factor; rather than making bullshit snazzy units to make the game interesting. AS you can see I'm not very optimistic.
^This is exactly what I'm thinking.
My sentiments exactly. Everything seems just really gimmicky with units being designed based solely on "flash" "cool" factor (to attract the casuals), rather than designing things from a balance perspective and completely disregarding the actual validity of the unit. The gigantic thor and go-kart hellion (a variation of which is found in basically every C&C game) were already pushing the limit, but this HotS thing has just gone way to far. Way, way, wayto far.
Blizzard thought process for this expansion has basically been: 1. Think of random, gimmicky, flash shit 2. Hope that you implemented so much of said shit that it mixes well together 3. If broken, buff and or nerf a few times 4. ?????? 5. Profit 6. Make another expansion pack
Browder actually admits to that in one of his interviews:
"Well, it’s tough. The Terrans have enough stuff already, thus it becomes a guessing game to know what to do for them. We have to be careful about what new units we can add to the game. At the end of the day, we still have to add in cool s***. [Players] are giving us their money; we have to give them something cool."
On October 22 2011 16:35 Empirimancer wrote: I like the units ability-wise, but aesthetically there are some pretty bad ones. The Protoss army will now have too many blob/spherical units: The Sentry, and now the Replicant and Oracle. Spheres are pretty boring, but even if they weren't diversity would be nice.
The Tempest is ok, but its attack looks silly. Just tossing a big sphere (a sphere again!). It would be nice if the attack actually looked like a tempest.
The Warhound just looks ridiculous, makeshift and toy-like.
The zerg units look good, though.
To expand on this:
Protoss units are a little similar but still not bad. I don't mind more protoss 'robotics' but a little more variety would be nice. All in all decent aesthetics that fit the race. Good names too, except the tempest.
Zerg units are pretty good. Viper tongue looks much better than infestor/spine stupid thing, but the animation looks completely ridiculous. These look and feel more zerg-like than WoL new units (Infestor, Roach, etc). Good job. Pretty good names.
Terran: Battle Hellion - great concept, bad name, goofy art. Just be fan-servicey and call it the HellBat. Why not make the Hellion hover and make both modes look better? Do we HAVE to have wheels? WarHound - bad name, horrible art. Looks like a bad transformer, too gundam, too tall, not cohesive at all. Attack animation looks bad. We can only hope this unit model was a first pass. That's what I would guess.
Shredder? Stupid name. Looks both like a stalker (another 4 legged unit with a torso on top, now all 3 races have them) and like a swarm host. Way too similar body. Just make it a machine with treads and a drill bit or something.
Outstanding WoL issues: Raven looks too sleek, should be closer to original 'construction' direction Phoenix needs to be renamed Eh, I'm tired. Gnite. =)
Terran loses thor as it is currently. It's now like the mothership was and has no AA. Works better than the mothership ever did as it just gets targeted down. Carriers were worthless in the game and no amount of changing would fix that, which is why they've shelved it now and replicants are great as a ghost to EMP the ghost ball is pretty damn baller.
On October 22 2011 17:11 Qikz wrote: Terran loses thor as it is currently. It's now like the mothership was and has no AA. Works better than the mothership ever did as it just gets targeted down. Carriers were worthless in the game and no amount of changing would fix that, which is why they've shelved it now and replicants are great as a ghost to EMP the ghost ball is pretty damn baller.
Tell that to HongUn. The fact is, they probably would have developed over the next year with the metagame and new maps.
Terran only get 2 new units tho, as the hellion can go into battle-mode or w/e. Terran already has too many diff units imo, should give Protoss even more "cheap" units.
On October 22 2011 17:14 kickazs wrote: Terran only get 2 new units tho, as the hellion can go into battle-mode or w/e. Terran already has too many diff units imo, should give Protoss even more "cheap" units.
That kind of breaks away from the core of Starcraft though. Protoss can't really have cheap units, relying more on better ones.
EPT
