Progamer Opinions on Heart of the Swarm - Page 8

On August 22 2012 01:21 Swift118 wrote:
I do not care for Cloud's attitude, but putting that aside he made a great point amongst all the QQ and abuse. Instead of making Protoss and Zerg units harder to control they are veering towards making Terran more a-move friendly. As much from some lame personal point of view I would like Terran unit comps a bit easier to control, I would prefer other races having harder armies to control to make the game better.

On August 22 2012 02:05 Evangelist wrote:

No, Cloud. David Kim is not an idiot. David Kim is one of the designers of a multi-million copy selling game and he is responsible for your fucking career. Show some goddamn respect.

On August 22 2012 00:01 DougJDempsey wrote:


they used to do damage in burst however, which was clearly stronger in the long run instead of small chunks that get worst as the opponent's units get more armor upgrades. and where do they "see quite a lot of play"? unless you are confusing them with brood lords, i havent seen that much BC play in pro games.

On August 22 2012 02:15 Yorbon wrote:
I feel more like the swarm host is a unit to have as support in battles, but can also offer some tools to break someone when crippled. So you won't get one/some to break someone, but you may be able to break someone by having one/some. i think it must be seen as a way to put on extra pressure when turtling is the opponents' most comfortable position.

I actually like it, to be honest. Especially against protoss, i feel like i have to commit heavily, or not attack at all. This is a kind of middle road.

On August 22 2012 02:17 Na_Dann_Ma_GoGo wrote:
@ Evangelist

Well said!

It makes me cringe hearing about those "a move" units that supposedly don't take skill and all that.

Just because a unit is simply by design doesn't mean the unit won't provide enough versatility nor that that there's no skill required in using them.

I mean is anyone going to argue that the Marine, about as simple as a unit as it gets, is for "a move"-noobs?
This is a real time strategy game after all, you can do insanely much with even very simple units.

On August 22 2012 02:38 MetalPanda wrote:
I'm so tired of Archon toilet/Neural Parasite battles in PvZ as a spectator, please remove that!

On August 22 2012 02:38 MetalPanda wrote:
I'm so tired of Archon toilet/Neural Parasite battles in PvZ as a spectator, please remove that!

On August 22 2012 02:32 PauseBreak wrote:
@ Evengelist

Protoss and Zerg are mainly "1a" units. While Terran absolutely has to micro almost everything. Giving Terran a few "1a" units and giving Protoss and Zerg micro units only levels the field. Z&P have A while Terran has B. Now Terran as A and P&Z have B. Same AB thing going on.
Its not like one race is getting anything more special than another.



And Dustin Browder doesn't "like" positional play.

On August 22 2012 02:28 Grumbels wrote:

The marine is interesting because it interacts well with formations. You can choose between having a concave, a ball, having them split up, having a few units ahead to snipe. This works because marines are small, cheap and fast. A warhound which is big and hard to control doesn't function like that; area of effect won't kill it, the pathfinding as such will always have it in an optimal position and they're too expensive to risk in any position other than at the back of your army, similar to immortals. Even David Kim admits that the warhound is made to give casual players a chance to win with a mech composition, although not with mech style gameplay.

And there is no point in saying that this is just an alpha build and that everything will be changed. Blizzard has never demonstrated that they particularly care about the opinions of pro gamers. If you listen to any of their explanations for why they introduced certain units or why they scrapped them, it's in almost all cases because casuals had problems with something. When there are complaints about terran being too hard to play compared to protoss and zerg they don't use the opportunity granted by the expansion to fundamentally rework the respective difficulty of the races; rather leave the existing game intact and add a few units to terran to give them easier play styles.

A lot of units from Wings of Liberty never worked out too well. Examples are the roach, colossus and corruptor. It is obvious that if Heart of the Swarm is to be seen as a real step in their commitment to creating the best e-sports game possible, that they would remove or rework a lot of those units. After all, they do have two full years of development time, so don't tell me they can't come up with more than just a few units. I think it's rather the case that they are planning to cash in on whatever popularity Wings still has, that's why they are unwilling to remove any units people might possibly be attached to, even if it doesn't create the most ideal game. (they will find ways to keep the carrier, don't worry)

The game currently is obviously broken, it is too volatile at the top and a lot of the match-ups are not anywhere close to an optimal state. Over time a lot of match-ups seemed to have regressed and become less interesting. I'll admit to enjoying the game a lot still, but my enthusiasm has waned a great deal. I personally don't see how I can follow several more years of e.g. turtle into deathball into win for both zerg and protoss, much less if they decide to give terran similar play styles. I hope that the influx of KeSPA players and the release of Heart of the Swarm will bring some excitement and improve both the viewing and playing experience, but given that Blizzard has constantly demonstrated they favor short-term popularity by appealing to the lowest common denominator over facilitating an optimal e-sports experience, I have great doubts whether it will be successful.

I know I'm being a bit unfair to Blizzard. Browder and Kim obviously genuinely want this game to succeed, Heart of the Swarm will likely improve the scene and it's already a pretty fun game. Nevertheless, it could be so much better which is obvious if you compare SC2 to Brood War or even Warcraft 3. Maybe if Blizzard was not so constrained by being a part of a big corporation chasing profits and unwilling to take risks by deviating from their winning formula things would have been different. To be honest I'm not sure why no smaller developers have bothered creating a title that is more suited to being an e-sport, but maybe it will happen in the future. After all, a game does not really need cinematics, a 3D engine, a large single player campaign, an ambitious social networking environment to be successful as a game, with a focus on creating interesting compelling gameplay. Brood War would have had roughly the same amount of success if it had none of those things, just the multiplayer experience and all these additions are simply about corporate profits, not about a commitment to e-sports.

* The Battle Cruisers speed boost will be removed, Battle Cruisers will have increased damage

On August 22 2012 02:58 Wombat_NI wrote:
Well played sir, excellent post. Don't know why you bothered given that people will not even bother to read it in all likelihood and continue to spout inaccuracies based on their assumptions on why people don't like the direction that HoTS appears to be going.