Just when we all thought that BlizzCon was going to be about World of Warcraft, Hearthstone, and Heroes of the Storm, news slowly came trickling in that Blizzard had a big announcement prepared for Starcraft. It had been 20 months since the release of Heart of the Swarm, but the pessimists in many believed that it was just going to be a new patch, maybe some new bug fixes, or perhaps an announcement of an announcement.
Instead, Blizzard unveiled Legacy of the Void. It wasn't just a vision or a plan, however: Blizzard already had a playable alpha available at BlizzCon. The scene was abuzz with thoughts and theorycrafting about the new units and new economy, but few were able to get a hands on experience with the coming expansion.
Fortunately, Team Liquid was at the scene, and we were able to pick the brains of some pros and commentators on their thoughts on Legacy of the Void. More interviews to follow.
While we upload the remaining two interviews (featuring Bomber and MMA), take some time to watch the LotV exhibition matches that took place at Blizzcon. Twitter
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MMA
While we upload the remaining two interviews (featuring Bomber and MMA), take some time to watch the LotV exhibition matches that took place at Blizzcon. Twitter
What is the reason for this weird formatting in articles here recently with the dots before the numbers everywhere? It looks so odd and ugly. And I have never seen it anywhere else before, so I am pretty sure it is not common even in English. Please use something normal like "#1" or "1." or just "1" but not ".1".
On November 11 2014 05:29 Paragleiber wrote: What is the reason for this weird formatting in articles here recently with the dots before the numbers everywhere? It looks so odd and ugly. And I have never seen it anywhere else before, so I am pretty sure it is not common even in English. Please use something normal like "#1" or "1." or just "1" but not ".1".
On November 11 2014 05:29 Paragleiber wrote: What is the reason for this weird formatting in articles here recently with the dots before the numbers everywhere? It looks so odd and ugly. And I have never seen it anywhere else before, so I am pretty sure it is not common even in English. Please use something normal like "#1" or "1." or just "1" but not ".1".
"Recently" as in the last two+ years they used this for?
Seriously all this talk about Protoss only getting one new unit is such bullshit. I dont think lotv being the protoss expansion is a proper justification why they need more, terran did not have more units in wol than the other races, neither did get zerg more units with hots than the others. It was protoss who got the most units in the zerg expansion and imo with the tweaking of msc they got by far the most attention during the beta (which was needed cuz protoss design sucks). Much rather than adding new units to protoss blizzard should look into the crappy design of the existing ones *cough* colossus *cough*
Also Seeker youre awesome those interviews are hilarious (the introduction into the scarlett one omfg haha :D) And how long do these uploads for bomber/mma take upload or riot Kappa
On November 11 2014 07:16 DooMDash wrote: Huk likes the new Protoss unit, interesting. I thought it was extremely uninspired. Still crossing my fingers for the Reaver instead of something.
I think it's actually pretty neat, but its stats are in serious need of revising. As it stands, it's hard to use, but easy to avoid. Neither pros nor noobs will get much use out of it in the current form.
On November 11 2014 06:18 Mambo wrote: Great interviews. Next time put foam around microphone.
I dont think that was actually any problem, going from 1st Video with Meru to 2nd with Seeker the first thing you notice is that Seeker has his Mic a lot closer to his mouth than Meru who holds it almost half a meter away.
Noticable during the Polt introduction how his voice became a lot more clearly and normal when he moved it a little closer to Polt.
Awesome stuff TL:; was hoping you guys would do LOTV interviews with Pro's and Suppy (:OO) , and here they are :D
I apologize in advance for the popping noises whenever I talked... I didn't realize I didn't need to have the mic that close to my mouth. I'll do better next time I promise!
Poll: Do you want the interviews transcribed?
Yes (115)
85%
No (21)
15%
136 total votes
Your vote: Do you want the interviews transcribed?
On November 11 2014 07:13 [PkF] Wire wrote: Vids are kinda unpractical, anyone could transcript ?
I might as well say that we're not going to regularly transcript interviews that aren't super high-profile or important. Takes a lot of work, especially for semi-long to long interviews. If anyone wants to transcribe these it would be great, but I wouldn't hope for any staff members doing it.
Edit: and as I type this I suppose Seeker has infinite time and work ethic on his hands. It might happen, after all.
On November 11 2014 07:13 [PkF] Wire wrote: Vids are kinda unpractical, anyone could transcript ?
I might as well say that we're not going to regularly transcript interviews that aren't super high-profile or important. Takes a lot of work, especially for semi-long to long interviews. If anyone wants to transcribe these it would be great, but I wouldn't hope for any staff members doing it.
Edit: and as I type this I suppose Seeker has infinite time and work ethic on his hands. It might happen, after all.
Of course. Maybe a transcript of some key answers could be done though.
For a moment from the title, I thought this would be like in a format like a Kids React, which would be awesome. Someone needs to point cameras at the faces of pros at the next big Blizzard trailer reveal.
On November 11 2014 07:40 Anderlicious wrote: That male interviewer is just really bad.
Yes. Fuck Seeker for being one of the most active members in our community and going out of his way to translate interviews for us. And fuck him for making videos with the pros. What a noob. l2p Seeker.
#Pitchfork
All jokes aside, thanks Meru and Seeker, I enjoyed the interviews, and whilst Seeker can go for some practice with the microphone, I'm sure he has noticed so himself :-)!
If seeker needs help transcribing the interviewsame I wouldn't mind helping after class. In 6 hours. Although I've never transcribed anything before I want to help the community ( ͡; ͜ʖ ͡. Ps. I'm asking because it would be inefficient for us both to do it at the same time
Agree with Suppy, please experiment with the pathing to avoid the unit clumping, at least for terran and protoss units.
I mean, it looks pretty unnatural how they are moving currently, all cuddled together shoulder by shoulder. But it does fit the zerg theme, with them all being controlled by a single entity.
On November 11 2014 08:04 The_Red_Viper wrote: Ah one thing, how come i have never heard of meru before? Is she typically not doing sc2? Or am i just crazy?
She started volunteering for us after Red Bull Battlegrounds last year. She and Shiro have been doing the graphics for all the Blizzcon coverage.
On November 11 2014 08:04 The_Red_Viper wrote: Ah one thing, how come i have never heard of meru before? Is she typically not doing sc2? Or am i just crazy?
She started volunteering for us after Red Bull Battlegrounds last year. She and Shiro have been doing the graphics for all the Blizzcon coverage.
Oh great! Great work there too (ty for the answer^^)
On November 11 2014 08:04 The_Red_Viper wrote: Ah one thing, how come i have never heard of meru before? Is she typically not doing sc2? Or am i just crazy?
Hi there! I'm just new to the TL family
I started with IEM Shenzhen, did picture gallery that was posted on TL and transcribed interviews. Then IEM Toronto I did the infeza interview and the up close and personal video, and photos for the event. Went to Redbull in DC this past month, again the gallery posted here were mine and helped monk/wax with the DRG/Scarlett interviews.
And inbetween all that I do graphics with shiro together (as suggested by my adorable little brush icon) for all these news article posts and such ^^ I coded the layout for the road to blizzcon articles.
Polt says that all pros who played exhibition games agreed that Zerg is the strongest right now! Followed closely by Terran. Whaaat? From what we've seen, Herc's good, Cyclone is OP to hell, Banshees are great, Siege Tanks got buffed, Thors got buffed, BCs got buffed... and Zerg is potentially even stronger than that appears at first glance?
On November 11 2014 08:04 The_Red_Viper wrote: Ah one thing, how come i have never heard of meru before? Is she typically not doing sc2? Or am i just crazy?
Hi there! I'm just new to the TL family
I started with IEM Shenzhen, did picture gallery that was posted on TL and transcribed interviews. Then IEM Toronto I did the infeza interview and the up close and personal video, and photos for the event. Went to Redbull in DC this past month, again the gallery posted here were mine and helped monk/wax with the DRG/Scarlett interviews.
And inbetween all that I do graphics with shiro together (as suggested by my adorable little brush icon) for all these news article posts and such ^^ I coded the layout for the road to blizzcon articles.
Haha somehow i kinda missed that (sry :D) Great job with this interview and the general graphics though! Great to see the TL crew getting bigger ^^ (even when my timing is kinda off :D)
After HuK mentioned micro I instantly thought "please say top 3 micro, please say top 3 micro" aaaand Seeker delivers. :p
I don't think we need full transcriptions, but maybe a very short summary of the opinions in general might be in order for those who don't have time to watch all of the videos.
On November 11 2014 09:03 pure.Wasted wrote: Thanks Meru and Seeker.
Polt says that all pros who played exhibition games agreed that Zerg is the strongest right now! Followed closely by Terran. Whaaat? From what we've seen, Herc's good, Cyclone is OP to hell, Banshees are great, Siege Tanks got buffed, Thors got buffed, BCs got buffed... and Zerg is potentially even stronger than that appears at first glance?
Siege Tanks didnt get a buff. At least not directly. More indirectly through Medivacs cause they can picked up in Siege Mode. A straight buff would be something like a damage buff or cost reduction.
Nice Interviews. Nice to know what all the High level players think about the changes.
On November 11 2014 09:03 pure.Wasted wrote: Thanks Meru and Seeker.
Polt says that all pros who played exhibition games agreed that Zerg is the strongest right now! Followed closely by Terran. Whaaat? From what we've seen, Herc's good, Cyclone is OP to hell, Banshees are great, Siege Tanks got buffed, Thors got buffed, BCs got buffed... and Zerg is potentially even stronger than that appears at first glance?
Siege Tanks didnt get a buff. At least not directly. More indirectly through Medivacs cause they can picked up in Siege Mode. A straight buff would be something like a damage buff or cost reduction.
Nice Interviews. Nice to know what all the High level players think about the changes.
"Can now be picked up by Medivacs" is a buff, because the unit can now do a good thing it could not do before.
Regardless. The point is Terrans got some straight buffs, some OP units, some indirect/synergistic buffs and added utility... and yet all pros agree to a man that Zerg is stronger. Whaaaaaaaaaat.
Roughly transcribed the Polt interview for fun. If you think this is tolerable, I will do more for this thread. I will also edit them so they have better grammar. I just wanted to get this one done quickly :D
Seeker: So Polt, you are here in Anaheim, the Blizzcon Grand Finals Stage. How do you feel being in this kind of environment right now?
Polt: Everyone knows that Blizzcon tournament is the best tournament for Starcraft 2 players, and, it is glorious to be here as a player.
Seeker: Now, Polt, I'm sure many fans are going to wonder what's going to happen to you for 2015. You are here living in America so still going to participate in WCS America, so a lot of the fans are wondering what is your plan, what are you going to do, what will we expect from Polt for 2015?
Polt: The year 2015 will be pretty much the same as 2014 for me. I will be staying in America for the whole year and playing in WCS America, I don't know if I need to say America or Europe, but anyways, the combined WCS, so it's basically the same.
I will participate in a lot of foreign tournaments like IEM or Dreamhack, so I think I have a lot of chance to win another trophy and show my games to my fans.
Seeker: So, Polt, I'm sure a lot of fans are curious about this, because you are actually one of the few players who got to experience LotV, you actually got into the finals of the exhibition matches with your partner SoO. So the fans want to know, I want to know, everyone wants to know how do you feel about the LotV changes, the worker changes, the mineral changes, how do you feel about these changes, are they good, are they bad?
Polt: Yeah, all of the players and David Kim talked about that a lot because David Kim and balance they wanted to hear the pro players' opinion and the pro players want to hear why they make those changes.
So, the conclusion is basically most of people think the beginning of the game is kind of boring, because if one of the players doesn't do something proxy, then basically it's the same, they just mine minerals make workers and expand; they they wanted to delete that part and jump into the next part.
And the mineral change is, there is like Protoss or Terran just defend, defend, defend, build 200 army and go out, that's not the situation the balance team wanted, so they want to change that. Since the mineral patches reduced to 1000, players need to expand more and more, that makes more engagements to happen, and possibly nothing like just making swarm hosts and defending or just making mech and defending. That's not going to happen in LotV.
Seeker: I see. Thank you very much Polt. So all 3 races we have new units and a lot of changes have occurred. Tell us, which race do you think is the strongest race, which race is the weakest race, which race do you think got the most benefit out of all these changes that occurred?
Polt: It's very difficult to say because we are not used to playing that game, it's totally new, we just played like a few games, maybe more than 10 games, but it's just not enough to get into that game.
So, but, as far as we talked about that, all of the pro players here concluded that Zerg is the strongest, Terran is pretty close to Zerg, and Protoss is so weak.
Seeker: Thank you Polt, those were some great insights on changes that occurred with LotV.
Now, those changes aren't final, but for now, you heard what Polt's opinion about the changes for LotV was. I think that LotV has potential to be an amazing game, an amazing expansion.
Now Polt, do you have some words for the fans who love you, who scream out your name every time you win a championship?
Polt: Actually, I'm really sorry, because I lost in Ro16. It was not expected to me, I think. But, I have a lot of tournaments coming up, one will be IEM San Jose, that will be great, I don't know about next year, I will have WCS America and other IEM and Dreamhack tournaments, things like that. So, I think I'm sure I'm going to win at least another championship trophy, so please keep cheering for me. everyone knows I live in America and I love American fans. Thank you.
Seeker: There you go, that was Polt, he loves his American fans and he wants you to keep cheering for him, and we will because we know he is one of the greatest Terran players out there right now. This is Seeker from Team Liquid, signing out for now.
On November 11 2014 10:21 Firnafth wrote: Roughly transcribed the Polt interview for fun. If you think this is tolerable, I will do more for this thread. I will also edit them so they have better grammar. I just wanted to get this one done quickly :D
Seeker: So Polt, you are here in Anaheim, the Blizzcon Grand Finals Stage. How do you feel being in this kind of environment right now?
Polt: Everyone knows that Blizzcon tournament is the best tournament for Starcraft 2 players, and, it is glorious to be here as a player.
Seeker: Now, Polt, I'm sure many fans are going to wonder what's going to happen to you for 2015. You are here living in America so still going to participate in WCS America, so a lot of the fans are wondering what is your plan, what are you going to do, what will we expect from Polt for 2015?
Polt: The year 2015 will be pretty much the same as 2014 for me. I will be staying in America for the whole year and playing in WCS America, I don't know if I need to say America or Europe, but anyways, the combined WCS, so it's basically the same.
I will participate in a lot of foreign tournaments like IEM or Dreamhack, so I think I have a lot of chance to win another trophy and show my games to my fans.
Seeker: So, Polt, I'm sure a lot of fans are curious about this, because you are actually one of the few players who got to experience LotV, you actually got into the finals of the exhibition matches with your partner SoO. So the fans want to know, I want to know, everyone wants to know how do you feel about the LotV changes, the worker changes, the mineral changes, how do you feel about these changes, are they good, are they bad?
Polt: Yeah, all of the players and David Kim talked about that a lot because David Kim and balance they wanted to hear the pro players' opinion and the pro players want to hear why they make those changes.
So, the conclusion is basically most of people think the beginning of the game is kind of boring, because if one of the players doesn't do something proxy, then basically it's the same, they just mine minerals make workers and expand; they they wanted to delete that part and jump into the next part.
And the mineral change is, there is like Protoss or Terran just defend, defend, defend, build 200 army and go out, that's not the situation the balance team wanted, so they want to change that. Since the mineral patches reduced to 1000, players need to expand more and more, that makes more engagements to happen, and possibly nothing like just making swarm hosts and defending or just making mech and defending. That's not going to happen in LotV.
Seeker: I see. Thank you very much Polt. So all 3 races we have new units and a lot of changes have occurred. Tell us, which race do you think is the strongest race, which race is the weakest race, which race do you think got the most benefit out of all these changes that occurred?
Polt: It's very difficult to say because we are not used to playing that game, it's totally new, we just played like a few games, maybe more than 10 games, but it's just not enough to get into that game.
So, but, as far as we talked about that, all of the pro players here concluded that Zerg is the strongest, Terran is pretty close to Zerg, and Protoss is so weak.
Seeker: Thank you Polt, those were some great insights on changes that occurred with LotV.
Now, those changes aren't final, but for now, you heard what Polt's opinion about the changes for LotV was. I think that LotV has potential to be an amazing game, an amazing expansion.
Now Polt, do you have some words for the fans who love you, who scream out your name every time you win a championship?
Polt: Actually, I'm really sorry, because I lost in Ro16. It was not expected to me, I think. But, I have a lot of tournaments coming up, one will be IEM San Jose, that will be great, I don't know about next year, I will have WCS America and other IEM and Dreamhack tournaments, things like that. So, I think I'm sure I'm going to win at least another championship trophy, so please keep cheering for me. everyone knows I live in America and I love American fans. Thank you.
Seeker: There you go, that was Polt, he loves his American fans and he wants you to keep cheering for him, and we will because we know he is one of the greatest Terran players out there right now. This is Seeker from Team Liquid, signing out for now.
On November 11 2014 07:16 DooMDash wrote: Huk likes the new Protoss unit, interesting. I thought it was extremely uninspired. Still crossing my fingers for the Reaver instead of something.
It's basically a reusable scarab, I'm surprised more people don't like it.
Detonate it, pick it up with a prism, wait for the attack cooldown, drop it, detonate it... sound familiar?
On November 11 2014 07:16 DooMDash wrote: Huk likes the new Protoss unit, interesting. I thought it was extremely uninspired. Still crossing my fingers for the Reaver instead of something.
It's basically a reusable scarab, I'm surprised more people don't like it.
Detonate it, pick it up with a prism, wait for the attack cooldown, drop it, detonate it... sound familiar?
That's an interesting comparison. It's lacking the factor of being dependent on a really slow, expensive, and squishy unit, but it still has some similarities. I think it will need to have a few stat alterations though. Perhaps make its standard movement speed excruciatingly slow, but have its invulnerable state be very fast, but fairly brief. Maybe something like 3.75 movement speed for 4 or 5 seconds, and then a ~10 second cooldown where it cannot move by itself.
On November 11 2014 07:16 DooMDash wrote: Huk likes the new Protoss unit, interesting. I thought it was extremely uninspired. Still crossing my fingers for the Reaver instead of something.
It's basically a reusable scarab, I'm surprised more people don't like it.
Detonate it, pick it up with a prism, wait for the attack cooldown, drop it, detonate it... sound familiar?
That's an interesting comparison. It's lacking the factor of being dependent on a really slow, expensive, and squishy unit, but it still has some similarities. I think it will need to have a few stat alterations though. Perhaps make its standard movement speed excruciatingly slow, but have its invulnerable state be very fast, but fairly brief. Maybe something like 3.75 movement speed for 4 or 5 seconds, and then a ~10 second cooldown where it cannot move by itself.
Or you could try the opposite: make the unit very fast, but slow for 1.5 seconds while invulnerable.
I'm surprised zerg turns out to be the best among the pro players. Maybe its because zerg benefits most from the new faster pace, where players need to move out and expand more as opposed to sitting on bases and turtling.
Saw people asking for transcripts so thought I would just write it out while I listened. Not an exact transcript at points, but generally what has been said.
Apollo - Really good, it's Blizzcon, it's the second day, very close to the finals right now, it's a whole year coming to an end so it's a really good place to be right now.
M - Definitely. Now who did you have your heart set out on to be the winner to win it all.
A - I picked Taeja from the very get go despite being in the lower, more difficult bracket. I initially predicted CJ herO and Taeja to be in the finals w/ Taeja winning it.
M - Have you tried the new expansion?
A - I've played about three games it's not a lot but three games I have played it.
M - One for each race? What do you think about the new units?
A - Yes. The Terran units are fun, because I think they are a little bit OP right now. The cyclone was imbalanced.
M - For those that don't know the Cyclone is a unit that can lock onto a target and attack and move at the same time from a really long range.
A - It has almost 0 cooldown as well so it can re-target instantly pretty much. That was just incredibly powerful in the early to mid game of any terran matchup, very strong.
M - And it's only 150-150 right? So incredibly cheap?
A - Maybe 100 gas, not sure exactly. Then they've got the Herc, which is the guy which grabs on to thing. That was fun, it wasn't as super powerful as the cyclone but it was fun to mess around with. Then with Terran i just messed around w/ the Banshees + BCs a little a bit , overall pretty fun just quite strong right now. With Protoss I played the least with protoss because they haven't had the most of changes, the only major change is the disruptor, the new unit. That was fun but difficult to use effectively I felt, because I don't know when or how to use it. You have to get Robo Bay to use as well so you can't use it too early. It has really good uses it can go in a Warp Prism as well and I think it's going to be very good against flanking Marine Marauders and rerally good against the mass Zerg as well. I didn't have as much play around with that. I messed around with the Tempest they are FAST.
M - Yes I think a lot of the Protoss air units received a speed upgrade.
A - The carrier was super strong and the tempest super fast. That was really fun bit to play with. I think there is still things missing and it feels really weird with only one unit new for Protoss in the Protoss expansion so I think we're just missing some elements there which I am sure will come out soon enough. Then Zerg, the Ravager was a lot of fun. It's a really good cool unit. It's the new Roach morph thing. You get the RW and you need a lair and you can play around with it. It has a pretty good default damage when it just fires regularly and it has Corrosive Bile which is really fun but very difficult to hit things with. The Lurker was a lot of fun but difficult to use I think it may be a little bit weak right now. But obviously all the balance is not meant to be yeah, right now. I suppose that was about it with Zerg, I didn't use the SH.
M - Do you have a favorite race in LotV right now?
A - I think everyone is favouring Terran because it's kind of strong, the cyclone is so fun, what game isn't fun that has an imbalanced unit with it?
M - I was playing with Grubby and Cassandra before and Grubby said it was even worse than the Warhound.
A - It feels like it, especially against Protoss I can see where he is coming from, especially as Protoss. It doesn't matter what you build, Zealot, Sentry, Immortal, Stalker, Phoenix, it doesn't matter it all just dies.
M - A little about you. This was a busy year for you, you were everywhere and you seem like you were loving everything with ESL EU etc, so for all your fans what can we expect from Apollo in 2014?
A - A lot of the same I suppose, this year I did all the IEM, all the DH apart from ones I couldn't go to and all of WCS and I'm lookign to do exactly the same next year I wanna be at all the big tournaments SC2 is my game it's the only thing I want to do I dont want to do anything else, so I just wanna stay with Starcraft so I'm going to be working hard to keep that going for next year. I want to do a lot of other things, Youtube and streaming and stuff but it is difficult with all the other work I do with ESL. I don't really have enough time, i work office hours with ESL currently. I go in, if I'm not playing SC2 in the office I'm helping with the production side of things like, I think this can make our show better, I want to do this for our next WCS show, so that takes up a lot of my time. If I don't end up doing that as much next year which I think will be weird if I dont then I will do more streaming and stuff like this, but just a lot more of the same.
M - So I'm sure everyone is looking forward to that if you do have the spare time.
Seeker - Hey this is Seeker from TL. With me is EG HuK. He needs no intro, he has been around a long time and he has won championships before. This guy is good at SC, but of course a lot of people do have questions about LotV, Blizzard just announced it and a lot of people are curious about what's going on. HuK has tried the game and I think he has a lot of great stuff to say. The worker counter change from 6 to 12 and the mineral patch change from 1500 to 1000, do you think it's going to affect the balance of the game and the strategies players want to use and maybe even a meta shift, how do you feel about this?
HuK - I definitely think it's a big change in the right direction. It's hard to say if it's going to be enough or not. My initial impression from what people told me was that the saturation was going to be maxed at 12 / most efficient at 12, which I liked a lot more because if you went up to 60-70 workers you could go to 6 bases and you could have a much better economy than on 3/4 bases with the same workers. I thought in that way it would be more Brood War-ish, it would be better if they changed the minerals to maybe 6 patches per base and kept the same amount of workers. Either way it's good and it's going to entice faster gameplaye and make it more economy based than it was before. But overall it's going in the right direction.
S - In your opinion which race became the strongest, weakest, benefited the most and got screwed over?
H - Either way it doesn't matter I think they will change it before release but based on now Terran is the strongest simply because of the one unit that just moves and shoots (Cyclone) and destroys everything. Zergs units are all very fun and strong if used right then I would say Protoss got the short end of the stick. Most of the units are pretty boring, the Immortal buff is just a change not really a buff. The only unit I would be excited about would be the the little ball of energy that goes around and does splash damage (Disruptor).
S - If David Kim and the SC2 design team were in front of you right now, what would you tell them about LotV? If you were in charge of the direction LotV would be heading in, would you tell them to revert some changes or change something in a specific direction?
H - I would tell them that the economy needs more work. I like the idea of it being necesary to have more than three mining bases, even with the eco changes the bases mine out faster so it makes you need to take expos quicker and transition quicker to new bases and you cant turtle so much on 3 base but at the same time I would like it more if you could be efficient on 6 bases and have a big economy advantage over someone on 3 base. I feel we don't have that right now in SC2 and it was a big part of Brood War and it made controlling space an important thing and I think it would be a better game if they could do that sometime.
S - Finally, for your fans who expect big things from you for 2015, please say something for them. What can we see from HuK in 2015?
H - I'm looking forward to it, the region lock is going to help a lot obviously and just in general when LotV comes out if they keep going in the direction they are going seems like they want to make it more micro orientated and obviously I feel I have pretty good micro and yeah hopefully I do well next year.
S - That was EG HuK. We're going to see a lot of great things from him in 2015, top 3 micro, yeah?! Keep giving him all the love and support he is a player who deserves it. A lot of talent and potential.
Seeker - Hey Seeker from TL and with me today a player who needs no introductions, he has won countless numbers of tournaments, he has placed high he is without a doubt one of the best Terrans in the world, it is CM Storms Polt, how are you?
Polt - Hi, pretty good.
S - So Polt you are here in Anaheim, the Blizzcon grand finals stage, how do you feel being in this environment right now?
P - Everyone knows Blizzcon tournament is the best tournament for SC2 players and it is really glorious to be here as a player.
S - I'm sure a lot of fans who are wondering what will happen with you in 2015, you are here living in America so you are still going to participate in WCS America and I'm sure a lot of fans are wondering what to expect in 2015.
P - 2015 will be the same as 2014 for me, I will be staying in the US for the whole year playing for WCS America. I don't know if I need to say AM or EU but anyways the combined WCS. So basically the same. I am going to participate in a lot of foreign tournaments like IEM or DH, so I think I have a lot of chance to win another trophy and a lot of chances to show my games to my fans.
S - I'm sure a lot of fans are curious about this because you are one of the few players who got to experience LotV. You got to the finals of the WCS Grand Finals exhibition matches with soO. How do you feel about LotV changes, the worker and mineral changes? How do you feel about them?
P - All of the players and David Kim talked about it a lot. D Kim and balance team wanted to hear pro players opinion and pro players wanted to hear why they made them changes and so the conclusion is most people think beginning of the game is kind of boring. if one player does not proxy, it is the same ! Mine mineral and gas build workers and expand, it's boring so they wanted to delete that part and get to the next part. ANd the mineral change is there is like Protoss or Terran just defend, defend, defend and build up 200 army and go out and it's kind of not the situation the balance team wanted and they wanted to change that. Since the mineral patches are reduced to 1000 players need to expand more and more and it makes more engagements happen and possibly nothing like making Swarm Hosts or Mech and defending. That won't happen in LotV.
S - We have new units and a lot of changes have occurred. Which race do you think is the strongest, weakest and has benefited the most from the changes?
P - It's hard to say because we are not used to playing the game, it's totally new we have only played a few games. Maybe more than ten games but it's not enough to get into that game. But as far as we talked about it, we pretty much concluded, all the pro players, that Zerg is the strongest and Terran is very close to Zerg and Protoss is so weak.
S - Thank you Polt those were some great insights on the changes that have occurred so far in LotV. These changes are not final but you heard what Polts current opinion on LotV are. Polt, final words for your fans? For your TL fans and international fans? For all your fans who love you and who scream out your name when you win a championship?
P - Actually I'm really sorry because I lost in RO16, it was not expected to me I think. But I have a lot of tournaments coming up, my next tournament is IEM San Jose. I don't know about next year but I have WCS America and some IEM and DH and things like that. So I think I'm pretty much sure I'm going to win at least one more championship trophy so please keep cheering for me. Everyone knows I'm living in America and I love American fans.
Seeker - It's Seeker from TL and today's guest is the very famous, funny and very handsome Rotterdam. So being here at Anaheim at a grand final stage like this, where Blizzard specifically built the stage for this tournament, just being in this environment how do you feel right now?
Rotterdam - Are you making fun of the average interviewer or something whenever someone wins a tournament like 'How do you feel right now?' . If you mean it seriously --
S - I mean it seriously!
R - Obviously it feels great and it's awesome to see so much effort went into building the arena like this. A couple of months ago I was on Remax and I was asked what I was expecting from the WCS grand finals and I said I would be disappointed if they went with the same lame stage that they went with in 2011 and 2013, cause I never really liked that stage that much. Like for 2011 ok but for 2013 I didn't like it and 2014 should have really been different so. The stage is super bad ass. One of the things I find the most fun as well is I get to meet very happy Starcraft fans, on the internet it sometimes seems we have so many Debby Downers in our community and I recently called out a couple of die hard SC2 fans on twitter. I know them guys love the game but they are just so freaking negative all the time that sometimes it kinda ruins my mood. And here you just meet these genuinely happy people that cannot believe that they can watch an event this big and they get to meet their favorite SC2 players and they say some nice words to you about your casting or my team-work with Nate and that is actually the most fun thing for me so obviously it feels great.
S - That's great to hear. I can't imagine what it must feel like like to be someone who gets to cast these and to just be here in this presence right now. So I gotta know, because a lot of people want to know, because Blizzard finally made a LotV announcement. You were with the pro-gamers and watching the games, how do you feel about the new changes for LotV such as increasing the worker count and reducing the mineral patches? Do you think it will affect the game drastically?
R - It is pretty - ooh sorry I felt like I had an ant or a bug on my leg. I'm very paranoid when it comes to ants. I think drastic is a big word, because at the end of the day we are still playing SC and some things will still look very much the same but does it have a huge impact in certain areas, or a certain way in which we approach professional SCor even casual SC, like yeah absolutely it's going to help a lot with the downtime early on, it won't take a minute to see the first gateway coming down or something. I think it's very exciting, it's fun and I think above all it's going to be very challenging. Because bases are going to run out a little sooner. I love my 2 base attacks and I can still do them but i can't do them for as long as I used to do them. Like the good old Elfi attack, 22 minutes on 2 bases is not going to work so it's definitely going to have a really big impact on the way we see SC and the way we play it but we should also not over-do it like yeah, it's big but it's still SC and it's the same workers mining the minerals. I am very excited about it. Once again the top Koreans will once more have the chance to truly show they are better than the rest of the world because there are more options, there is more expanding and it will be more demanding to play at the highest level. Maybe not in the first two minutes I think it's actually a little bit easier for the casual because sometimes you already skip like a couple seconds to build a worker and they fall behind and they dont understand the game. Now they all start with 12 so you have money to build you first gateway and it becomes a lot more accessible. But the moment the first base starts running out that's when a game becomes a lot more challenging which I think obviously the better your macro is, and mine isn't very good, the more that will benefit you. The more players like I will struggle a little bit.
S - Thank you, I gotta know in your opinion which race is the strongest and weakest in LotV. Which race got the most benefits and which race got screwed over?
R - First of all I think people who are freaking out about balance are being ridiculous. Like guys, don't worry this isn't even pre-alpha. Yeah ok we finally see the game and it's awesome and some thing looks really silly. You don't have to be a rocket scientist right now to figure out that Terran looks ridiculously strong - their new units and abilities are amazing but I don't focus that they look really strong I focus on the fact that they look fun as hell. I'm a Protoss player my Terran sucks and my Terran macro is the worst, I supply block myself at freaking 18 probably, but it looks so fun it looks like the new units are very fun and you can do so much cool stuff with it. I don't think any race got screwed over. I do wish Protoss got 2 new units as I felt in HotS we didn't feel like we got two new units because we got the Mothership core but you can only make one of them so I didn't see it as a brand new unit I saw it as a smaller version of a unit we already have and we got the Oracle which is pretty important in this day and age of Protoss. Now we got the Disruptor which looks like a pretty bad ass unit which is challenging to control but still very fun but I wish we had one more. I have a different point of view from Blizzard at this point, they want to make sure every unit in the game is being used but I feel they should just put a bunch of units in it then we'll figure out which ones we use and which ones we use a little less then later on we can patch and nerf things. I just like having a little more stuff. I don't think any race got screwed but Terran got the best hand so far.
S - Thank you. Say something to your fans, the people who love ROTTERDAM as a player as a caster and let us know what to expect from you in 2015.
R - Thanks to everyone who is kind and polite over internet as obviously there is a lot of negative people as I said before. For those amount of negative people we have so many amazing passionate SC2 fans a lot of them are very nice to me and have shown me a lot of support over the years and even at an event like Blizzcon people come to me and say man I used to watch you 3-4 years ago it's amazing how far you've came as a SC commentator so I have nothing but love for all these guys and I'm very happy they put me in a position to do what I do. I will not deny at a certain point some days you feel lazy as you do, we're only human and you almost take it for granted, but then you go to an event and meet all these people that say 'Man you are the luckiest guy in the world' and I think about it and I'm like yeah I pretty much am ! I may not be the richest, I know people #CASTERMONEY it's a good joke and all but it's not always like that, it isn't always sunshine but I am very blessed to be in the position I am in. Thanks to everyone who has been watching and giving feedback and giving responses over the internet and the last few months I didn't stream a lot at all and that will change. I was busy with WCS and Redbull then I had a girlfriend for a while but that didn't work out for me so I'm going to go back to the lifestyle I had at the start of the year when I want to focus a lot on playing. I think right now I am the worst player I have been in 2-2.5 years. If I play 100-150 games I am back where I want to be but I don't feel confident in my play. I'm going to be streaming a lot and I'll be trying to make it entertaining. It's hard for me to say exactly what 2015 has in store for me because I still have to talk with companies but I have high hopes it will be another year like this one. 2014 was awesome , I learnt a lot and I improved a lot in life as a person and work wise and I feel I improved in my job. I hope 2015 will be as good and as fun as 2014 and keep a close eye on social media and you will see what to expect from me.
Seeker - She is a player who needs no intro, she is famous, she is talented, she is beautiful. Scarlett, so glad you are here. I'm going to ask you questions everyone is dying to know about and that is about LotV. Now you told me you played lotv so I think a lot of people will be excited to hear what you have to say to this. The worker and mineral changes and other changes with LotV, these changes aren't final but I'm sure you've had a chance to experience them. How do you feel about it so far? What do you think is going on with the game?
Scarlett - I'm actually very excited about the mineral changes and how many workers per base you have to mine with mostly because it makes you expand more and there are more harassment options when you are spread out more. I think it will make the game more exciting to play and to watch, however starting with more workers I'm not sure I do like that because it will reduce the amount of viable builds. There is no proxy reaper or 2 barracks or you can't 11 gate in PvP. I know some people like that but I think it removes some depth to the game as it will be a lot easier to play greedy at the tart with no real way to be punished.
Seeker - So do you think these changes are good in the long run or do you feel they are taking a step back in the world of SC2?
Scarlett - I like the mineral and workers per base are a really good change, but not the workers you start with. I think 8 or 9 would be fine but 12 is a little bit too far ahead. It removes a bunch of builds. Starting with 8 speeds up the game 30 seconds and there is no build you use without making two workers except six pool, which isn't even that good.
Seeker - Of the three races which do you think is the strongest, weakest, received the most benefits and which got screwed over in LotV.
Scarlett - I haven't played Protoss or Terran so I don't know how strong their units are but in terms of overall changes I really like what they did for Zerg they gave you a lot more options in the mid-game and more units you can make. You can destroy force fields now which is like very nice it will hopefully help against all-ins and stuff. In terms of what I liked the least I don't know what is the weakest but I don't like the Terran changes that much. The banshee speed thing, it's the same as when they though of buffing DT speed, it's like do we really need this? It's going to make a lot of games where people just die to one cloaked banshee. Like TvT they scan you just boost out, it's silly I think. The Herc it's not really what Terran units are for the most part, it's almost like a chargelot with AoE, it's more like a Protoss unit I think. I don't like how the new mech unit works, it's really boring. It's like a Phoenix on the ground and it doesn't have any abilities I don't think, so you just right click and it slowly drives backwards and it keeps on shooting. There is no micro potential in that, you don't even stop to fire you just right click somewhere and that's it.
Seeker - Final question, if David Kim and the SC2 game designers were in front of you and you could give them advice or tell them things about LotV you would like to see either things they are doing now or changes you want done or even something reverted back, what would you say to them?
Scarlett - Well I like the general direction they are doing, especially they are trying very big changes which they did not do in HotS so I really like that and they should keep doing it through the beta. Try and cover big changes not just with a new units but with mechanics of the game itself like the mineral and worker changes. I think they should experiment more with things like that.
Seeker - Finally what can fans expect from you in 2015? Please say something to your fans who are cheering for you in 2015.
Scarlett - I really hope I can qualify for this tournament, Blizzcon finals, next year. That would be amazing to go to and I know a lot of fans would like to see me go there and so I'm really going to try for that. Maybe next year I will go to school at the end so I will try to make it a good year. If I got to school I would still I wouldn't retire, I'd still play part time. But I'll try make it a really good year next year, I didn't do as well as I wanted this year so hopefully next year is better.
Edit : Formatted a bit more nicely. Somebody already did the Suppy one so I will leave it. I tried to stick as much as possible to exactly what was being said but at some points may have changed a word used or so or missed a short sentence etc. Also cut the 'outros' in the last few.
Just decided to transcribe the Suppy one for fun, to see if my typing could keep up with his talking lol. Conclusion: cannot even on 0.5 times speed -.- Anyways hope someone finds this useful. Grammar isn't very good and I tried to cut out some of the 'likes' and 'ums'.
Seeker: Hello everyone, this is Seeker from TeamLiquid and with me is none other than Evil Genius's Suppy and get this, he is going to be talking about Legacy of the Void today. So a lot of things you guys have been curious about, Suppy is going to answer them for you.
So, first things first Suppy, the worker change count: gone from 6 to 12, and the mineral number count has gone from 1500 to 1000. What does this mean for Legacy of the Void? I mean, nothings finalized yet but these are some pretty drastic changes. Is there a meta shift here, maybe some strategy changes, balance changes? What's going on - what do you think?
Suppy: I actually am very excited about the change and I'm very excited that Blizzard is trying to make big moves to spice up the game. The economy change, in terms of changing the bases from 1500 minerals to 1000, I think is going to benefit the game a lot. It's gonna force people to expand a lot more and you can't just rely on a three base build and just turtle there. You have to make expansions. And what that's going to open up is a lot of area for harassment. It's just gonna make the game a lot more fast paced and a lot more small battles around the map. Hopefully, this is what I'm imagining. And a lot more skirmishes everywhere rather than the deathball 1A mentality. In terms of the 12 worker count, I dunno, I think this is a pretty cool change. Of course, there is the chance that you're gonna lose a lot of strategies. For me, it's actually really good because I always die to those early cheeses so I'm happy if they start with 12 workers they can't do those as well. But I like that it starts the game out faster and it kinda reminds me of Warcraft where people start building stuff right away. I think it's a cool direction and I'm glad that Blizzard is trying out more radical changes.
Seeker: So of the three races right now, which race do you think benefited the most from Legacy of the Void and benefitied the least? And which race do you think is the strongest and which race do you think is the weakest?
Suppy: So just based off the changes from the Youtube videos, I definitely thought Zerg benefited the most and Terran benefited the least. But when I actually saw the gameplay, I switched that and thought that Terran benefited the most. I think maybe Protoss benefited the least. I was watching some of the exhibition matches and they didn't get maybe the coolest units or anything, but the units they did get seemed very strong, and the buffs to their existing units did seem to be very very powerful. I think Zerg got the coolest changes still, so I'm very happy about that. Zerg always was, I felt, the most limited race, cause we only had like 10 units, and the other races had like 12 or 13. But I think Protoss benefited the least. But overall I think every race got some really cool stuff.
Seeker: Imagine if David Kim and the Starcraft 2 design team were right in front of you. What would you tell them? Would you tell them to revert some changes or would you tell them to keep some changes or... what would you tell them if you were in charge of the direction that Legacy of the Void would be heading in?
Suppy: I'd have a lot of things. One thing I've been very big about is I'd love to change the pathing of the units so it's kinda more similar to Brood War. Not necessarily dumbing the AI down, but making it so they're not as smart and like, kinda just walking around in a circle. They'd kinda walk in a line like you'd expect from Brood War, so that makes flanking more important. Cause otherwise your units would get stuck. Another thing is I'd really encourage them to watch LaLush's depth of SC2 Micro video from, I think, 2013. It was a while ago. They have addressed it and they said stuff like, "oh, the common audience wouldn't be able to understand this level of micro". But I really think people would. They would be able to precieve the difference in skill between someone who could really micro and control a unit and someone who couldn't. And not only that but it just makes the game feel better when your units respond to you very well. Final thing, probably I would want them to change the moving shot, especially for the new unit, what's that car...
Seeker: HERC? Cyclone?
Suppy: No, cyclone, yeah. I think they should change that. It doesn't look like it takes much micro. They kinda just move around. It's kinda like the phoenix. Blizzard has argued that the moving shot from Brood War, people wouldn't be able to understand that or appreciate it. But I don't think people look at a phoenix being microed or look at a Cyclone being microed and be like "wow that is some amazing micro"! It would be so much cooler if it was the vulture from Brood War where you actually had to interact with it, where it was possible to make mistakes, or it was possible to juke your enemy. I think they should change the moving shot to a real moving shot. Not this watered down, easy moving shot.
Seeker: All right, thank you very much. Now, finally, please say something for your fans who are expecting big things from you. What can we see from Suppy in 2015?
Suppy: So obviously I've been back in school so I haven't been streaming or playing as much, but I'm definitely very excited, especially for Legacy of the Void. It's kinda making me want to play Starcraft a lot again, and I'm very excited for that. Especially with the coming WCS 2015 changes, I'm gonna try my best. Somebody made a Reddit thread a couple days ago, saying they miss Suppy, and that made me feel very happy. So thank you very much, I'll try to come back and give you guys good streams and stuff.
Seeker: All right, there you have it. That's Suppy. He loves his fans and he's excited for Legacy of the Void. And we may see a giant comeback from him for the year 2015. But for now, that's all. I'm Seeker from Team Liquid, signing out.
Scarlett was on point and I agree with much of what she said.
The merc does feel out of place with respect to its play style. Terran has generally consisted of range units and positional play, where as this unit is essentially a harder to use chargelot. The cyclone just seems ridiculous, not just because it's a phoenix on wheels and has a low skill ceiling for micro, but also because it's a straight up hard counter. Sc2 needs less hard counters and instead more soft counters where engagements are determined by control and micro, and not so much because unit y beats unit x.
LOL just yesterday, I think on Wax's blog I saw a picture of him in Acer apparal and someone said something about him looking like seeker (to which seeker responded about him looking like wax) without even clicking the video I thought back on that (i have never seen seeker prior to this) and I laughed my ass off for half the video. But this does not detract from the quality of the videos whatsoever. Keep up the good work!
On November 11 2014 11:57 FREEloss_ca wrote: Scarlett was on point and I agree with much of what she said.
The merc does feel out of place with respect to its play style. Terran has generally consisted of range units and positional play, where as this unit is essentially a harder to use chargelot. The cyclone just seems ridiculous, not just because it's a phoenix on wheels and has a low skill ceiling for micro, but also because it's a straight up hard counter. Sc2 needs less hard counters and instead more soft counters where engagements are determined by control and micro, and not so much because unit y beats unit x.
On November 11 2014 07:16 DooMDash wrote: Huk likes the new Protoss unit, interesting. I thought it was extremely uninspired. Still crossing my fingers for the Reaver instead of something.
It's basically a reusable scarab, I'm surprised more people don't like it.
Detonate it, pick it up with a prism, wait for the attack cooldown, drop it, detonate it... sound familiar?
The siege lift with medivac is a lot more efficient as a reaver.
On November 11 2014 15:09 Seeker wrote: Man... YouTube people are brutal Oo;;
its youtube, what did you expect?
And reddit..... but yea in all honesty love all the work seeker does for the community, but that doesn't change the fact that he is not that great of an interviewer.
On November 11 2014 15:09 Seeker wrote: Man... YouTube people are brutal Oo;;
its youtube, what did you expect?
And reddit..... but yea in all honesty love all the work seeker does for the community, but that doesn't change the fact that he is not that great of an interviewer.
It also doesn't change the fact that skill comes with experience. Most people arent great interviewers off the bat.
On November 11 2014 15:09 Seeker wrote: Man... YouTube people are brutal Oo;;
its youtube, what did you expect?
And reddit..... but yea in all honesty love all the work seeker does for the community, but that doesn't change the fact that he is not that great of an interviewer.
Well that was my first time as an interviewer. This experience has helped me learn a lot of things. I'll get better in no time.
On November 11 2014 15:09 Seeker wrote: Man... YouTube people are brutal Oo;;
its youtube, what did you expect?
And reddit..... but yea in all honesty love all the work seeker does for the community, but that doesn't change the fact that he is not that great of an interviewer.
Well that was my first time as an interviewer. This experience has helped me learn a lot of things. I'll get better in no time.
Thank you for the insights Mister!
They envy you, you went to Blizzcon and talked to pros, who wouldn't?
Interviewing ppl is not as easy as it looks. I am glad there are no voice files from my (non e-sports) attempts, huehue.
On November 11 2014 15:09 Seeker wrote: Man... YouTube people are brutal Oo;;
its youtube, what did you expect?
And reddit..... but yea in all honesty love all the work seeker does for the community, but that doesn't change the fact that he is not that great of an interviewer.
Well that was my first time as an interviewer. This experience has helped me learn a lot of things. I'll get better in no time.
I honestly love your enthusiasm. Please keep doing them!! #passion
On November 11 2014 15:09 Seeker wrote: Man... YouTube people are brutal Oo;;
its youtube, what did you expect?
And reddit..... but yea in all honesty love all the work seeker does for the community, but that doesn't change the fact that he is not that great of an interviewer.
Well that was my first time as an interviewer. This experience has helped me learn a lot of things. I'll get better in no time.
I honestly love your enthusiasm. Please keep doing them!! #passion
I agree. Your passion shines through the interview and that's good. Just put the mic further from your mourth and it'll be perfect (: Pro players' reactions to the changes are interesting too. I agree with Scarlett's thoughts on the new Terran units. And lol at Scarlett's "You can't 11 gate in PvP", Scarlett confirmed full-time Protoss now.
On November 11 2014 15:09 Seeker wrote: Man... YouTube people are brutal Oo;;
its youtube, what did you expect?
And reddit..... but yea in all honesty love all the work seeker does for the community, but that doesn't change the fact that he is not that great of an interviewer.
Well that was my first time as an interviewer. This experience has helped me learn a lot of things. I'll get better in no time.
not sure if this was mentioned, but try not to ask more than 2 questions at the same time coz you'll confuse the hell out of them. E.g. in your Scarlett interview. I'm sure the obvious stuff others have covered. Gl hf
On November 11 2014 15:09 Seeker wrote: Man... YouTube people are brutal Oo;;
its youtube, what did you expect?
And reddit..... but yea in all honesty love all the work seeker does for the community, but that doesn't change the fact that he is not that great of an interviewer.
Well that was my first time as an interviewer. This experience has helped me learn a lot of things. I'll get better in no time.
I think you were good. Youtube always shits on everyone.
On November 11 2014 15:09 Seeker wrote: Man... YouTube people are brutal Oo;;
its youtube, what did you expect?
And reddit..... but yea in all honesty love all the work seeker does for the community, but that doesn't change the fact that he is not that great of an interviewer.
Well that was my first time as an interviewer. This experience has helped me learn a lot of things. I'll get better in no time.
Even hot bid started out as a newbie, youll get it and if people compare you to him you have some big shoes to fill
I know this isn't how it works but try not to think about people who give non-constructive feedback
On November 11 2014 05:29 Paragleiber wrote: What is the reason for this weird formatting in articles here recently with the dots before the numbers everywhere? It looks so odd and ugly. And I have never seen it anywhere else before, so I am pretty sure it is not common even in English. Please use something normal like "#1" or "1." or just "1" but not ".1".
Rofl... You have got to be kidding me. lol. You did no just compain about a . or essentially a bullet point.
On November 11 2014 17:39 KeksX wrote: Any way someone can post a little summary of the impressions? I'm stuck at work for a while so I can't watch these :[
Posted earlier :
On November 11 2014 11:04 Wardi wrote: Saw people asking for transcripts so thought I would just write it out while I listened. Not an exact transcript at points, but generally what has been said.
Apollo - Really good, it's Blizzcon, it's the second day, very close to the finals right now, it's a whole year coming to an end so it's a really good place to be right now.
M - Definitely. Now who did you have your heart set out on to be the winner to win it all.
A - I picked Taeja from the very get go despite being in the lower, more difficult bracket. I initially predicted CJ herO and Taeja to be in the finals w/ Taeja winning it.
M - Have you tried the new expansion?
A - I've played about three games it's not a lot but three games I have played it.
M - One for each race? What do you think about the new units?
A - Yes. The Terran units are fun, because I think they are a little bit OP right now. The cyclone was imbalanced.
M - For those that don't know the Cyclone is a unit that can lock onto a target and attack and move at the same time from a really long range.
A - It has almost 0 cooldown as well so it can re-target instantly pretty much. That was just incredibly powerful in the early to mid game of any terran matchup, very strong.
M - And it's only 150-150 right? So incredibly cheap?
A - Maybe 100 gas, not sure exactly. Then they've got the Herc, which is the guy which grabs on to thing. That was fun, it wasn't as super powerful as the cyclone but it was fun to mess around with. Then with Terran i just messed around w/ the Banshees + BCs a little a bit , overall pretty fun just quite strong right now. With Protoss I played the least with protoss because they haven't had the most of changes, the only major change is the disruptor, the new unit. That was fun but difficult to use effectively I felt, because I don't know when or how to use it. You have to get Robo Bay to use as well so you can't use it too early. It has really good uses it can go in a Warp Prism as well and I think it's going to be very good against flanking Marine Marauders and rerally good against the mass Zerg as well. I didn't have as much play around with that. I messed around with the Tempest they are FAST.
M - Yes I think a lot of the Protoss air units received a speed upgrade.
A - The carrier was super strong and the tempest super fast. That was really fun bit to play with. I think there is still things missing and it feels really weird with only one unit new for Protoss in the Protoss expansion so I think we're just missing some elements there which I am sure will come out soon enough. Then Zerg, the Ravager was a lot of fun. It's a really good cool unit. It's the new Roach morph thing. You get the RW and you need a lair and you can play around with it. It has a pretty good default damage when it just fires regularly and it has Corrosive Bile which is really fun but very difficult to hit things with. The Lurker was a lot of fun but difficult to use I think it may be a little bit weak right now. But obviously all the balance is not meant to be yeah, right now. I suppose that was about it with Zerg, I didn't use the SH.
M - Do you have a favorite race in LotV right now?
A - I think everyone is favouring Terran because it's kind of strong, the cyclone is so fun, what game isn't fun that has an imbalanced unit with it?
M - I was playing with Grubby and Cassandra before and Grubby said it was even worse than the Warhound.
A - It feels like it, especially against Protoss I can see where he is coming from, especially as Protoss. It doesn't matter what you build, Zealot, Sentry, Immortal, Stalker, Phoenix, it doesn't matter it all just dies.
M - A little about you. This was a busy year for you, you were everywhere and you seem like you were loving everything with ESL EU etc, so for all your fans what can we expect from Apollo in 2014?
A - A lot of the same I suppose, this year I did all the IEM, all the DH apart from ones I couldn't go to and all of WCS and I'm lookign to do exactly the same next year I wanna be at all the big tournaments SC2 is my game it's the only thing I want to do I dont want to do anything else, so I just wanna stay with Starcraft so I'm going to be working hard to keep that going for next year. I want to do a lot of other things, Youtube and streaming and stuff but it is difficult with all the other work I do with ESL. I don't really have enough time, i work office hours with ESL currently. I go in, if I'm not playing SC2 in the office I'm helping with the production side of things like, I think this can make our show better, I want to do this for our next WCS show, so that takes up a lot of my time. If I don't end up doing that as much next year which I think will be weird if I dont then I will do more streaming and stuff like this, but just a lot more of the same.
M - So I'm sure everyone is looking forward to that if you do have the spare time.
Seeker - Hey this is Seeker from TL. With me is EG HuK. He needs no intro, he has been around a long time and he has won championships before. This guy is good at SC, but of course a lot of people do have questions about LotV, Blizzard just announced it and a lot of people are curious about what's going on. HuK has tried the game and I think he has a lot of great stuff to say. The worker counter change from 6 to 12 and the mineral patch change from 1500 to 1000, do you think it's going to affect the balance of the game and the strategies players want to use and maybe even a meta shift, how do you feel about this?
HuK - I definitely think it's a big change in the right direction. It's hard to say if it's going to be enough or not. My initial impression from what people told me was that the saturation was going to be maxed at 12 / most efficient at 12, which I liked a lot more because if you went up to 60-70 workers you could go to 6 bases and you could have a much better economy than on 3/4 bases with the same workers. I thought in that way it would be more Brood War-ish, it would be better if they changed the minerals to maybe 6 patches per base and kept the same amount of workers. Either way it's good and it's going to entice faster gameplaye and make it more economy based than it was before. But overall it's going in the right direction.
S - In your opinion which race became the strongest, weakest, benefited the most and got screwed over?
H - Either way it doesn't matter I think they will change it before release but based on now Terran is the strongest simply because of the one unit that just moves and shoots (Cyclone) and destroys everything. Zergs units are all very fun and strong if used right then I would say Protoss got the short end of the stick. Most of the units are pretty boring, the Immortal buff is just a change not really a buff. The only unit I would be excited about would be the the little ball of energy that goes around and does splash damage (Disruptor).
S - If David Kim and the SC2 design team were in front of you right now, what would you tell them about LotV? If you were in charge of the direction LotV would be heading in, would you tell them to revert some changes or change something in a specific direction?
H - I would tell them that the economy needs more work. I like the idea of it being necesary to have more than three mining bases, even with the eco changes the bases mine out faster so it makes you need to take expos quicker and transition quicker to new bases and you cant turtle so much on 3 base but at the same time I would like it more if you could be efficient on 6 bases and have a big economy advantage over someone on 3 base. I feel we don't have that right now in SC2 and it was a big part of Brood War and it made controlling space an important thing and I think it would be a better game if they could do that sometime.
S - Finally, for your fans who expect big things from you for 2015, please say something for them. What can we see from HuK in 2015?
H - I'm looking forward to it, the region lock is going to help a lot obviously and just in general when LotV comes out if they keep going in the direction they are going seems like they want to make it more micro orientated and obviously I feel I have pretty good micro and yeah hopefully I do well next year.
S - That was EG HuK. We're going to see a lot of great things from him in 2015, top 3 micro, yeah?! Keep giving him all the love and support he is a player who deserves it. A lot of talent and potential.
Seeker - Hey Seeker from TL and with me today a player who needs no introductions, he has won countless numbers of tournaments, he has placed high he is without a doubt one of the best Terrans in the world, it is CM Storms Polt, how are you?
Polt - Hi, pretty good.
S - So Polt you are here in Anaheim, the Blizzcon grand finals stage, how do you feel being in this environment right now?
P - Everyone knows Blizzcon tournament is the best tournament for SC2 players and it is really glorious to be here as a player.
S - I'm sure a lot of fans who are wondering what will happen with you in 2015, you are here living in America so you are still going to participate in WCS America and I'm sure a lot of fans are wondering what to expect in 2015.
P - 2015 will be the same as 2014 for me, I will be staying in the US for the whole year playing for WCS America. I don't know if I need to say AM or EU but anyways the combined WCS. So basically the same. I am going to participate in a lot of foreign tournaments like IEM or DH, so I think I have a lot of chance to win another trophy and a lot of chances to show my games to my fans.
S - I'm sure a lot of fans are curious about this because you are one of the few players who got to experience LotV. You got to the finals of the WCS Grand Finals exhibition matches with soO. How do you feel about LotV changes, the worker and mineral changes? How do you feel about them?
P - All of the players and David Kim talked about it a lot. D Kim and balance team wanted to hear pro players opinion and pro players wanted to hear why they made them changes and so the conclusion is most people think beginning of the game is kind of boring. if one player does not proxy, it is the same ! Mine mineral and gas build workers and expand, it's boring so they wanted to delete that part and get to the next part. ANd the mineral change is there is like Protoss or Terran just defend, defend, defend and build up 200 army and go out and it's kind of not the situation the balance team wanted and they wanted to change that. Since the mineral patches are reduced to 1000 players need to expand more and more and it makes more engagements happen and possibly nothing like making Swarm Hosts or Mech and defending. That won't happen in LotV.
S - We have new units and a lot of changes have occurred. Which race do you think is the strongest, weakest and has benefited the most from the changes?
P - It's hard to say because we are not used to playing the game, it's totally new we have only played a few games. Maybe more than ten games but it's not enough to get into that game. But as far as we talked about it, we pretty much concluded, all the pro players, that Zerg is the strongest and Terran is very close to Zerg and Protoss is so weak.
S - Thank you Polt those were some great insights on the changes that have occurred so far in LotV. These changes are not final but you heard what Polts current opinion on LotV are. Polt, final words for your fans? For your TL fans and international fans? For all your fans who love you and who scream out your name when you win a championship?
P - Actually I'm really sorry because I lost in RO16, it was not expected to me I think. But I have a lot of tournaments coming up, my next tournament is IEM San Jose. I don't know about next year but I have WCS America and some IEM and DH and things like that. So I think I'm pretty much sure I'm going to win at least one more championship trophy so please keep cheering for me. Everyone knows I'm living in America and I love American fans.
Seeker - It's Seeker from TL and today's guest is the very famous, funny and very handsome Rotterdam. So being here at Anaheim at a grand final stage like this, where Blizzard specifically built the stage for this tournament, just being in this environment how do you feel right now?
Rotterdam - Are you making fun of the average interviewer or something whenever someone wins a tournament like 'How do you feel right now?' . If you mean it seriously --
S - I mean it seriously!
R - Obviously it feels great and it's awesome to see so much effort went into building the arena like this. A couple of months ago I was on Remax and I was asked what I was expecting from the WCS grand finals and I said I would be disappointed if they went with the same lame stage that they went with in 2011 and 2013, cause I never really liked that stage that much. Like for 2011 ok but for 2013 I didn't like it and 2014 should have really been different so. The stage is super bad ass. One of the things I find the most fun as well is I get to meet very happy Starcraft fans, on the internet it sometimes seems we have so many Debby Downers in our community and I recently called out a couple of die hard SC2 fans on twitter. I know them guys love the game but they are just so freaking negative all the time that sometimes it kinda ruins my mood. And here you just meet these genuinely happy people that cannot believe that they can watch an event this big and they get to meet their favorite SC2 players and they say some nice words to you about your casting or my team-work with Nate and that is actually the most fun thing for me so obviously it feels great.
S - That's great to hear. I can't imagine what it must feel like like to be someone who gets to cast these and to just be here in this presence right now. So I gotta know, because a lot of people want to know, because Blizzard finally made a LotV announcement. You were with the pro-gamers and watching the games, how do you feel about the new changes for LotV such as increasing the worker count and reducing the mineral patches? Do you think it will affect the game drastically?
R - It is pretty - ooh sorry I felt like I had an ant or a bug on my leg. I'm very paranoid when it comes to ants. I think drastic is a big word, because at the end of the day we are still playing SC and some things will still look very much the same but does it have a huge impact in certain areas, or a certain way in which we approach professional SCor even casual SC, like yeah absolutely it's going to help a lot with the downtime early on, it won't take a minute to see the first gateway coming down or something. I think it's very exciting, it's fun and I think above all it's going to be very challenging. Because bases are going to run out a little sooner. I love my 2 base attacks and I can still do them but i can't do them for as long as I used to do them. Like the good old Elfi attack, 22 minutes on 2 bases is not going to work so it's definitely going to have a really big impact on the way we see SC and the way we play it but we should also not over-do it like yeah, it's big but it's still SC and it's the same workers mining the minerals. I am very excited about it. Once again the top Koreans will once more have the chance to truly show they are better than the rest of the world because there are more options, there is more expanding and it will be more demanding to play at the highest level. Maybe not in the first two minutes I think it's actually a little bit easier for the casual because sometimes you already skip like a couple seconds to build a worker and they fall behind and they dont understand the game. Now they all start with 12 so you have money to build you first gateway and it becomes a lot more accessible. But the moment the first base starts running out that's when a game becomes a lot more challenging which I think obviously the better your macro is, and mine isn't very good, the more that will benefit you. The more players like I will struggle a little bit.
S - Thank you, I gotta know in your opinion which race is the strongest and weakest in LotV. Which race got the most benefits and which race got screwed over?
R - First of all I think people who are freaking out about balance are being ridiculous. Like guys, don't worry this isn't even pre-alpha. Yeah ok we finally see the game and it's awesome and some thing looks really silly. You don't have to be a rocket scientist right now to figure out that Terran looks ridiculously strong - their new units and abilities are amazing but I don't focus that they look really strong I focus on the fact that they look fun as hell. I'm a Protoss player my Terran sucks and my Terran macro is the worst, I supply block myself at freaking 18 probably, but it looks so fun it looks like the new units are very fun and you can do so much cool stuff with it. I don't think any race got screwed over. I do wish Protoss got 2 new units as I felt in HotS we didn't feel like we got two new units because we got the Mothership core but you can only make one of them so I didn't see it as a brand new unit I saw it as a smaller version of a unit we already have and we got the Oracle which is pretty important in this day and age of Protoss. Now we got the Disruptor which looks like a pretty bad ass unit which is challenging to control but still very fun but I wish we had one more. I have a different point of view from Blizzard at this point, they want to make sure every unit in the game is being used but I feel they should just put a bunch of units in it then we'll figure out which ones we use and which ones we use a little less then later on we can patch and nerf things. I just like having a little more stuff. I don't think any race got screwed but Terran got the best hand so far.
S - Thank you. Say something to your fans, the people who love ROTTERDAM as a player as a caster and let us know what to expect from you in 2015.
R - Thanks to everyone who is kind and polite over internet as obviously there is a lot of negative people as I said before. For those amount of negative people we have so many amazing passionate SC2 fans a lot of them are very nice to me and have shown me a lot of support over the years and even at an event like Blizzcon people come to me and say man I used to watch you 3-4 years ago it's amazing how far you've came as a SC commentator so I have nothing but love for all these guys and I'm very happy they put me in a position to do what I do. I will not deny at a certain point some days you feel lazy as you do, we're only human and you almost take it for granted, but then you go to an event and meet all these people that say 'Man you are the luckiest guy in the world' and I think about it and I'm like yeah I pretty much am ! I may not be the richest, I know people #CASTERMONEY it's a good joke and all but it's not always like that, it isn't always sunshine but I am very blessed to be in the position I am in. Thanks to everyone who has been watching and giving feedback and giving responses over the internet and the last few months I didn't stream a lot at all and that will change. I was busy with WCS and Redbull then I had a girlfriend for a while but that didn't work out for me so I'm going to go back to the lifestyle I had at the start of the year when I want to focus a lot on playing. I think right now I am the worst player I have been in 2-2.5 years. If I play 100-150 games I am back where I want to be but I don't feel confident in my play. I'm going to be streaming a lot and I'll be trying to make it entertaining. It's hard for me to say exactly what 2015 has in store for me because I still have to talk with companies but I have high hopes it will be another year like this one. 2014 was awesome , I learnt a lot and I improved a lot in life as a person and work wise and I feel I improved in my job. I hope 2015 will be as good and as fun as 2014 and keep a close eye on social media and you will see what to expect from me.
Seeker - She is a player who needs no intro, she is famous, she is talented, she is beautiful. Scarlett, so glad you are here. I'm going to ask you questions everyone is dying to know about and that is about LotV. Now you told me you played lotv so I think a lot of people will be excited to hear what you have to say to this. The worker and mineral changes and other changes with LotV, these changes aren't final but I'm sure you've had a chance to experience them. How do you feel about it so far? What do you think is going on with the game?
Scarlett - I'm actually very excited about the mineral changes and how many workers per base you have to mine with mostly because it makes you expand more and there are more harassment options when you are spread out more. I think it will make the game more exciting to play and to watch, however starting with more workers I'm not sure I do like that because it will reduce the amount of viable builds. There is no proxy reaper or 2 barracks or you can't 11 gate in PvP. I know some people like that but I think it removes some depth to the game as it will be a lot easier to play greedy at the tart with no real way to be punished.
Seeker - So do you think these changes are good in the long run or do you feel they are taking a step back in the world of SC2?
Scarlett - I like the mineral and workers per base are a really good change, but not the workers you start with. I think 8 or 9 would be fine but 12 is a little bit too far ahead. It removes a bunch of builds. Starting with 8 speeds up the game 30 seconds and there is no build you use without making two workers except six pool, which isn't even that good.
Seeker - Of the three races which do you think is the strongest, weakest, received the most benefits and which got screwed over in LotV.
Scarlett - I haven't played Protoss or Terran so I don't know how strong their units are but in terms of overall changes I really like what they did for Zerg they gave you a lot more options in the mid-game and more units you can make. You can destroy force fields now which is like very nice it will hopefully help against all-ins and stuff. In terms of what I liked the least I don't know what is the weakest but I don't like the Terran changes that much. The banshee speed thing, it's the same as when they though of buffing DT speed, it's like do we really need this? It's going to make a lot of games where people just die to one cloaked banshee. Like TvT they scan you just boost out, it's silly I think. The Herc it's not really what Terran units are for the most part, it's almost like a chargelot with AoE, it's more like a Protoss unit I think. I don't like how the new mech unit works, it's really boring. It's like a Phoenix on the ground and it doesn't have any abilities I don't think, so you just right click and it slowly drives backwards and it keeps on shooting. There is no micro potential in that, you don't even stop to fire you just right click somewhere and that's it.
Seeker - Final question, if David Kim and the SC2 game designers were in front of you and you could give them advice or tell them things about LotV you would like to see either things they are doing now or changes you want done or even something reverted back, what would you say to them?
Scarlett - Well I like the general direction they are doing, especially they are trying very big changes which they did not do in HotS so I really like that and they should keep doing it through the beta. Try and cover big changes not just with a new units but with mechanics of the game itself like the mineral and worker changes. I think they should experiment more with things like that.
Seeker - Finally what can fans expect from you in 2015? Please say something to your fans who are cheering for you in 2015.
Scarlett - I really hope I can qualify for this tournament, Blizzcon finals, next year. That would be amazing to go to and I know a lot of fans would like to see me go there and so I'm really going to try for that. Maybe next year I will go to school at the end so I will try to make it a good year. If I got to school I would still I wouldn't retire, I'd still play part time. But I'll try make it a really good year next year, I didn't do as well as I wanted this year so hopefully next year is better.
Edit : Formatted a bit more nicely. Somebody already did the Suppy one so I will leave it. I tried to stick as much as possible to exactly what was being said but at some points may have changed a word used or so or missed a short sentence etc. Also cut the 'outros' in the last few.
On November 11 2014 10:21 Firnafth wrote: Roughly transcribed the Polt interview for fun. If you think this is tolerable, I will do more for this thread. I will also edit them so they have better grammar. I just wanted to get this one done quickly :D
Seeker: So Polt, you are here in Anaheim, the Blizzcon Grand Finals Stage. How do you feel being in this kind of environment right now?
Polt: Everyone knows that Blizzcon tournament is the best tournament for Starcraft 2 players, and, it is glorious to be here as a player.
Seeker: Now, Polt, I'm sure many fans are going to wonder what's going to happen to you for 2015. You are here living in America so still going to participate in WCS America, so a lot of the fans are wondering what is your plan, what are you going to do, what will we expect from Polt for 2015?
Polt: The year 2015 will be pretty much the same as 2014 for me. I will be staying in America for the whole year and playing in WCS America, I don't know if I need to say America or Europe, but anyways, the combined WCS, so it's basically the same.
I will participate in a lot of foreign tournaments like IEM or Dreamhack, so I think I have a lot of chance to win another trophy and show my games to my fans.
Seeker: So, Polt, I'm sure a lot of fans are curious about this, because you are actually one of the few players who got to experience LotV, you actually got into the finals of the exhibition matches with your partner SoO. So the fans want to know, I want to know, everyone wants to know how do you feel about the LotV changes, the worker changes, the mineral changes, how do you feel about these changes, are they good, are they bad?
Polt: Yeah, all of the players and David Kim talked about that a lot because David Kim and balance they wanted to hear the pro players' opinion and the pro players want to hear why they make those changes.
So, the conclusion is basically most of people think the beginning of the game is kind of boring, because if one of the players doesn't do something proxy, then basically it's the same, they just mine minerals make workers and expand; they they wanted to delete that part and jump into the next part.
And the mineral change is, there is like Protoss or Terran just defend, defend, defend, build 200 army and go out, that's not the situation the balance team wanted, so they want to change that. Since the mineral patches reduced to 1000, players need to expand more and more, that makes more engagements to happen, and possibly nothing like just making swarm hosts and defending or just making mech and defending. That's not going to happen in LotV.
Seeker: I see. Thank you very much Polt. So all 3 races we have new units and a lot of changes have occurred. Tell us, which race do you think is the strongest race, which race is the weakest race, which race do you think got the most benefit out of all these changes that occurred?
Polt: It's very difficult to say because we are not used to playing that game, it's totally new, we just played like a few games, maybe more than 10 games, but it's just not enough to get into that game.
So, but, as far as we talked about that, all of the pro players here concluded that Zerg is the strongest, Terran is pretty close to Zerg, and Protoss is so weak.
Seeker: Thank you Polt, those were some great insights on changes that occurred with LotV.
Now, those changes aren't final, but for now, you heard what Polt's opinion about the changes for LotV was. I think that LotV has potential to be an amazing game, an amazing expansion.
Now Polt, do you have some words for the fans who love you, who scream out your name every time you win a championship?
Polt: Actually, I'm really sorry, because I lost in Ro16. It was not expected to me, I think. But, I have a lot of tournaments coming up, one will be IEM San Jose, that will be great, I don't know about next year, I will have WCS America and other IEM and Dreamhack tournaments, things like that. So, I think I'm sure I'm going to win at least another championship trophy, so please keep cheering for me. everyone knows I live in America and I love American fans. Thank you.
Seeker: There you go, that was Polt, he loves his American fans and he wants you to keep cheering for him, and we will because we know he is one of the greatest Terran players out there right now. This is Seeker from Team Liquid, signing out for now.
On November 11 2014 11:05 GenesisX wrote: Just decided to transcribe the Suppy one for fun, to see if my typing could keep up with his talking lol. Conclusion: cannot even on 0.5 times speed -.- Anyways hope someone finds this useful. Grammar isn't very good and I tried to cut out some of the 'likes' and 'ums'.
Seeker: Hello everyone, this is Seeker from TeamLiquid and with me is none other than Evil Genius's Suppy and get this, he is going to be talking about Legacy of the Void today. So a lot of things you guys have been curious about, Suppy is going to answer them for you.
So, first things first Suppy, the worker change count: gone from 6 to 12, and the mineral number count has gone from 1500 to 1000. What does this mean for Legacy of the Void? I mean, nothings finalized yet but these are some pretty drastic changes. Is there a meta shift here, maybe some strategy changes, balance changes? What's going on - what do you think?
Suppy: I actually am very excited about the change and I'm very excited that Blizzard is trying to make big moves to spice up the game. The economy change, in terms of changing the bases from 1500 minerals to 1000, I think is going to benefit the game a lot. It's gonna force people to expand a lot more and you can't just rely on a three base build and just turtle there. You have to make expansions. And what that's going to open up is a lot of area for harassment. It's just gonna make the game a lot more fast paced and a lot more small battles around the map. Hopefully, this is what I'm imagining. And a lot more skirmishes everywhere rather than the deathball 1A mentality. In terms of the 12 worker count, I dunno, I think this is a pretty cool change. Of course, there is the chance that you're gonna lose a lot of strategies. For me, it's actually really good because I always die to those early cheeses so I'm happy if they start with 12 workers they can't do those as well. But I like that it starts the game out faster and it kinda reminds me of Warcraft where people start building stuff right away. I think it's a cool direction and I'm glad that Blizzard is trying out more radical changes.
Seeker: So of the three races right now, which race do you think benefited the most from Legacy of the Void and benefitied the least? And which race do you think is the strongest and which race do you think is the weakest?
Suppy: So just based off the changes from the Youtube videos, I definitely thought Zerg benefited the most and Terran benefited the least. But when I actually saw the gameplay, I switched that and thought that Terran benefited the most. I think maybe Protoss benefited the least. I was watching some of the exhibition matches and they didn't get maybe the coolest units or anything, but the units they did get seemed very strong, and the buffs to their existing units did seem to be very very powerful. I think Zerg got the coolest changes still, so I'm very happy about that. Zerg always was, I felt, the most limited race, cause we only had like 10 units, and the other races had like 12 or 13. But I think Protoss benefited the least. But overall I think every race got some really cool stuff.
Seeker: Imagine if David Kim and the Starcraft 2 design team were right in front of you. What would you tell them? Would you tell them to revert some changes or would you tell them to keep some changes or... what would you tell them if you were in charge of the direction that Legacy of the Void would be heading in?
Suppy: I'd have a lot of things. One thing I've been very big about is I'd love to change the pathing of the units so it's kinda more similar to Brood War. Not necessarily dumbing the AI down, but making it so they're not as smart and like, kinda just walking around in a circle. They'd kinda walk in a line like you'd expect from Brood War, so that makes flanking more important. Cause otherwise your units would get stuck. Another thing is I'd really encourage them to watch LaLush's depth of SC2 Micro video from, I think, 2013. It was a while ago. They have addressed it and they said stuff like, "oh, the common audience wouldn't be able to understand this level of micro". But I really think people would. They would be able to precieve the difference in skill between someone who could really micro and control a unit and someone who couldn't. And not only that but it just makes the game feel better when your units respond to you very well. Final thing, probably I would want them to change the moving shot, especially for the new unit, what's that car...
Seeker: HERC? Cyclone?
Suppy: No, cyclone, yeah. I think they should change that. It doesn't look like it takes much micro. They kinda just move around. It's kinda like the phoenix. Blizzard has argued that the moving shot from Brood War, people wouldn't be able to understand that or appreciate it. But I don't think people look at a phoenix being microed or look at a Cyclone being microed and be like "wow that is some amazing micro"! It would be so much cooler if it was the vulture from Brood War where you actually had to interact with it, where it was possible to make mistakes, or it was possible to juke your enemy. I think they should change the moving shot to a real moving shot. Not this watered down, easy moving shot.
Seeker: All right, thank you very much. Now, finally, please say something for your fans who are expecting big things from you. What can we see from Suppy in 2015?
Suppy: So obviously I've been back in school so I haven't been streaming or playing as much, but I'm definitely very excited, especially for Legacy of the Void. It's kinda making me want to play Starcraft a lot again, and I'm very excited for that. Especially with the coming WCS 2015 changes, I'm gonna try my best. Somebody made a Reddit thread a couple days ago, saying they miss Suppy, and that made me feel very happy. So thank you very much, I'll try to come back and give you guys good streams and stuff.
Seeker: All right, there you have it. That's Suppy. He loves his fans and he's excited for Legacy of the Void. And we may see a giant comeback from him for the year 2015. But for now, that's all. I'm Seeker from Team Liquid, signing out.
On November 11 2014 17:39 KeksX wrote: Any way someone can post a little summary of the impressions? I'm stuck at work for a while so I can't watch these :[
On November 11 2014 11:04 Wardi wrote: Saw people asking for transcripts so thought I would just write it out while I listened. Not an exact transcript at points, but generally what has been said.
Apollo - Really good, it's Blizzcon, it's the second day, very close to the finals right now, it's a whole year coming to an end so it's a really good place to be right now.
M - Definitely. Now who did you have your heart set out on to be the winner to win it all.
A - I picked Taeja from the very get go despite being in the lower, more difficult bracket. I initially predicted CJ herO and Taeja to be in the finals w/ Taeja winning it.
M - Have you tried the new expansion?
A - I've played about three games it's not a lot but three games I have played it.
M - One for each race? What do you think about the new units?
A - Yes. The Terran units are fun, because I think they are a little bit OP right now. The cyclone was imbalanced.
M - For those that don't know the Cyclone is a unit that can lock onto a target and attack and move at the same time from a really long range.
A - It has almost 0 cooldown as well so it can re-target instantly pretty much. That was just incredibly powerful in the early to mid game of any terran matchup, very strong.
M - And it's only 150-150 right? So incredibly cheap?
A - Maybe 100 gas, not sure exactly. Then they've got the Herc, which is the guy which grabs on to thing. That was fun, it wasn't as super powerful as the cyclone but it was fun to mess around with. Then with Terran i just messed around w/ the Banshees + BCs a little a bit , overall pretty fun just quite strong right now. With Protoss I played the least with protoss because they haven't had the most of changes, the only major change is the disruptor, the new unit. That was fun but difficult to use effectively I felt, because I don't know when or how to use it. You have to get Robo Bay to use as well so you can't use it too early. It has really good uses it can go in a Warp Prism as well and I think it's going to be very good against flanking Marine Marauders and rerally good against the mass Zerg as well. I didn't have as much play around with that. I messed around with the Tempest they are FAST.
M - Yes I think a lot of the Protoss air units received a speed upgrade.
A - The carrier was super strong and the tempest super fast. That was really fun bit to play with. I think there is still things missing and it feels really weird with only one unit new for Protoss in the Protoss expansion so I think we're just missing some elements there which I am sure will come out soon enough. Then Zerg, the Ravager was a lot of fun. It's a really good cool unit. It's the new Roach morph thing. You get the RW and you need a lair and you can play around with it. It has a pretty good default damage when it just fires regularly and it has Corrosive Bile which is really fun but very difficult to hit things with. The Lurker was a lot of fun but difficult to use I think it may be a little bit weak right now. But obviously all the balance is not meant to be yeah, right now. I suppose that was about it with Zerg, I didn't use the SH.
M - Do you have a favorite race in LotV right now?
A - I think everyone is favouring Terran because it's kind of strong, the cyclone is so fun, what game isn't fun that has an imbalanced unit with it?
M - I was playing with Grubby and Cassandra before and Grubby said it was even worse than the Warhound.
A - It feels like it, especially against Protoss I can see where he is coming from, especially as Protoss. It doesn't matter what you build, Zealot, Sentry, Immortal, Stalker, Phoenix, it doesn't matter it all just dies.
M - A little about you. This was a busy year for you, you were everywhere and you seem like you were loving everything with ESL EU etc, so for all your fans what can we expect from Apollo in 2014?
A - A lot of the same I suppose, this year I did all the IEM, all the DH apart from ones I couldn't go to and all of WCS and I'm lookign to do exactly the same next year I wanna be at all the big tournaments SC2 is my game it's the only thing I want to do I dont want to do anything else, so I just wanna stay with Starcraft so I'm going to be working hard to keep that going for next year. I want to do a lot of other things, Youtube and streaming and stuff but it is difficult with all the other work I do with ESL. I don't really have enough time, i work office hours with ESL currently. I go in, if I'm not playing SC2 in the office I'm helping with the production side of things like, I think this can make our show better, I want to do this for our next WCS show, so that takes up a lot of my time. If I don't end up doing that as much next year which I think will be weird if I dont then I will do more streaming and stuff like this, but just a lot more of the same.
M - So I'm sure everyone is looking forward to that if you do have the spare time.
Seeker - Hey this is Seeker from TL. With me is EG HuK. He needs no intro, he has been around a long time and he has won championships before. This guy is good at SC, but of course a lot of people do have questions about LotV, Blizzard just announced it and a lot of people are curious about what's going on. HuK has tried the game and I think he has a lot of great stuff to say. The worker counter change from 6 to 12 and the mineral patch change from 1500 to 1000, do you think it's going to affect the balance of the game and the strategies players want to use and maybe even a meta shift, how do you feel about this?
HuK - I definitely think it's a big change in the right direction. It's hard to say if it's going to be enough or not. My initial impression from what people told me was that the saturation was going to be maxed at 12 / most efficient at 12, which I liked a lot more because if you went up to 60-70 workers you could go to 6 bases and you could have a much better economy than on 3/4 bases with the same workers. I thought in that way it would be more Brood War-ish, it would be better if they changed the minerals to maybe 6 patches per base and kept the same amount of workers. Either way it's good and it's going to entice faster gameplaye and make it more economy based than it was before. But overall it's going in the right direction.
S - In your opinion which race became the strongest, weakest, benefited the most and got screwed over?
H - Either way it doesn't matter I think they will change it before release but based on now Terran is the strongest simply because of the one unit that just moves and shoots (Cyclone) and destroys everything. Zergs units are all very fun and strong if used right then I would say Protoss got the short end of the stick. Most of the units are pretty boring, the Immortal buff is just a change not really a buff. The only unit I would be excited about would be the the little ball of energy that goes around and does splash damage (Disruptor).
S - If David Kim and the SC2 design team were in front of you right now, what would you tell them about LotV? If you were in charge of the direction LotV would be heading in, would you tell them to revert some changes or change something in a specific direction?
H - I would tell them that the economy needs more work. I like the idea of it being necesary to have more than three mining bases, even with the eco changes the bases mine out faster so it makes you need to take expos quicker and transition quicker to new bases and you cant turtle so much on 3 base but at the same time I would like it more if you could be efficient on 6 bases and have a big economy advantage over someone on 3 base. I feel we don't have that right now in SC2 and it was a big part of Brood War and it made controlling space an important thing and I think it would be a better game if they could do that sometime.
S - Finally, for your fans who expect big things from you for 2015, please say something for them. What can we see from HuK in 2015?
H - I'm looking forward to it, the region lock is going to help a lot obviously and just in general when LotV comes out if they keep going in the direction they are going seems like they want to make it more micro orientated and obviously I feel I have pretty good micro and yeah hopefully I do well next year.
S - That was EG HuK. We're going to see a lot of great things from him in 2015, top 3 micro, yeah?! Keep giving him all the love and support he is a player who deserves it. A lot of talent and potential.
Seeker - Hey Seeker from TL and with me today a player who needs no introductions, he has won countless numbers of tournaments, he has placed high he is without a doubt one of the best Terrans in the world, it is CM Storms Polt, how are you?
Polt - Hi, pretty good.
S - So Polt you are here in Anaheim, the Blizzcon grand finals stage, how do you feel being in this environment right now?
P - Everyone knows Blizzcon tournament is the best tournament for SC2 players and it is really glorious to be here as a player.
S - I'm sure a lot of fans who are wondering what will happen with you in 2015, you are here living in America so you are still going to participate in WCS America and I'm sure a lot of fans are wondering what to expect in 2015.
P - 2015 will be the same as 2014 for me, I will be staying in the US for the whole year playing for WCS America. I don't know if I need to say AM or EU but anyways the combined WCS. So basically the same. I am going to participate in a lot of foreign tournaments like IEM or DH, so I think I have a lot of chance to win another trophy and a lot of chances to show my games to my fans.
S - I'm sure a lot of fans are curious about this because you are one of the few players who got to experience LotV. You got to the finals of the WCS Grand Finals exhibition matches with soO. How do you feel about LotV changes, the worker and mineral changes? How do you feel about them?
P - All of the players and David Kim talked about it a lot. D Kim and balance team wanted to hear pro players opinion and pro players wanted to hear why they made them changes and so the conclusion is most people think beginning of the game is kind of boring. if one player does not proxy, it is the same ! Mine mineral and gas build workers and expand, it's boring so they wanted to delete that part and get to the next part. ANd the mineral change is there is like Protoss or Terran just defend, defend, defend and build up 200 army and go out and it's kind of not the situation the balance team wanted and they wanted to change that. Since the mineral patches are reduced to 1000 players need to expand more and more and it makes more engagements happen and possibly nothing like making Swarm Hosts or Mech and defending. That won't happen in LotV.
S - We have new units and a lot of changes have occurred. Which race do you think is the strongest, weakest and has benefited the most from the changes?
P - It's hard to say because we are not used to playing the game, it's totally new we have only played a few games. Maybe more than ten games but it's not enough to get into that game. But as far as we talked about it, we pretty much concluded, all the pro players, that Zerg is the strongest and Terran is very close to Zerg and Protoss is so weak.
S - Thank you Polt those were some great insights on the changes that have occurred so far in LotV. These changes are not final but you heard what Polts current opinion on LotV are. Polt, final words for your fans? For your TL fans and international fans? For all your fans who love you and who scream out your name when you win a championship?
P - Actually I'm really sorry because I lost in RO16, it was not expected to me I think. But I have a lot of tournaments coming up, my next tournament is IEM San Jose. I don't know about next year but I have WCS America and some IEM and DH and things like that. So I think I'm pretty much sure I'm going to win at least one more championship trophy so please keep cheering for me. Everyone knows I'm living in America and I love American fans.
Seeker - It's Seeker from TL and today's guest is the very famous, funny and very handsome Rotterdam. So being here at Anaheim at a grand final stage like this, where Blizzard specifically built the stage for this tournament, just being in this environment how do you feel right now?
Rotterdam - Are you making fun of the average interviewer or something whenever someone wins a tournament like 'How do you feel right now?' . If you mean it seriously --
S - I mean it seriously!
R - Obviously it feels great and it's awesome to see so much effort went into building the arena like this. A couple of months ago I was on Remax and I was asked what I was expecting from the WCS grand finals and I said I would be disappointed if they went with the same lame stage that they went with in 2011 and 2013, cause I never really liked that stage that much. Like for 2011 ok but for 2013 I didn't like it and 2014 should have really been different so. The stage is super bad ass. One of the things I find the most fun as well is I get to meet very happy Starcraft fans, on the internet it sometimes seems we have so many Debby Downers in our community and I recently called out a couple of die hard SC2 fans on twitter. I know them guys love the game but they are just so freaking negative all the time that sometimes it kinda ruins my mood. And here you just meet these genuinely happy people that cannot believe that they can watch an event this big and they get to meet their favorite SC2 players and they say some nice words to you about your casting or my team-work with Nate and that is actually the most fun thing for me so obviously it feels great.
S - That's great to hear. I can't imagine what it must feel like like to be someone who gets to cast these and to just be here in this presence right now. So I gotta know, because a lot of people want to know, because Blizzard finally made a LotV announcement. You were with the pro-gamers and watching the games, how do you feel about the new changes for LotV such as increasing the worker count and reducing the mineral patches? Do you think it will affect the game drastically?
R - It is pretty - ooh sorry I felt like I had an ant or a bug on my leg. I'm very paranoid when it comes to ants. I think drastic is a big word, because at the end of the day we are still playing SC and some things will still look very much the same but does it have a huge impact in certain areas, or a certain way in which we approach professional SCor even casual SC, like yeah absolutely it's going to help a lot with the downtime early on, it won't take a minute to see the first gateway coming down or something. I think it's very exciting, it's fun and I think above all it's going to be very challenging. Because bases are going to run out a little sooner. I love my 2 base attacks and I can still do them but i can't do them for as long as I used to do them. Like the good old Elfi attack, 22 minutes on 2 bases is not going to work so it's definitely going to have a really big impact on the way we see SC and the way we play it but we should also not over-do it like yeah, it's big but it's still SC and it's the same workers mining the minerals. I am very excited about it. Once again the top Koreans will once more have the chance to truly show they are better than the rest of the world because there are more options, there is more expanding and it will be more demanding to play at the highest level. Maybe not in the first two minutes I think it's actually a little bit easier for the casual because sometimes you already skip like a couple seconds to build a worker and they fall behind and they dont understand the game. Now they all start with 12 so you have money to build you first gateway and it becomes a lot more accessible. But the moment the first base starts running out that's when a game becomes a lot more challenging which I think obviously the better your macro is, and mine isn't very good, the more that will benefit you. The more players like I will struggle a little bit.
S - Thank you, I gotta know in your opinion which race is the strongest and weakest in LotV. Which race got the most benefits and which race got screwed over?
R - First of all I think people who are freaking out about balance are being ridiculous. Like guys, don't worry this isn't even pre-alpha. Yeah ok we finally see the game and it's awesome and some thing looks really silly. You don't have to be a rocket scientist right now to figure out that Terran looks ridiculously strong - their new units and abilities are amazing but I don't focus that they look really strong I focus on the fact that they look fun as hell. I'm a Protoss player my Terran sucks and my Terran macro is the worst, I supply block myself at freaking 18 probably, but it looks so fun it looks like the new units are very fun and you can do so much cool stuff with it. I don't think any race got screwed over. I do wish Protoss got 2 new units as I felt in HotS we didn't feel like we got two new units because we got the Mothership core but you can only make one of them so I didn't see it as a brand new unit I saw it as a smaller version of a unit we already have and we got the Oracle which is pretty important in this day and age of Protoss. Now we got the Disruptor which looks like a pretty bad ass unit which is challenging to control but still very fun but I wish we had one more. I have a different point of view from Blizzard at this point, they want to make sure every unit in the game is being used but I feel they should just put a bunch of units in it then we'll figure out which ones we use and which ones we use a little less then later on we can patch and nerf things. I just like having a little more stuff. I don't think any race got screwed but Terran got the best hand so far.
S - Thank you. Say something to your fans, the people who love ROTTERDAM as a player as a caster and let us know what to expect from you in 2015.
R - Thanks to everyone who is kind and polite over internet as obviously there is a lot of negative people as I said before. For those amount of negative people we have so many amazing passionate SC2 fans a lot of them are very nice to me and have shown me a lot of support over the years and even at an event like Blizzcon people come to me and say man I used to watch you 3-4 years ago it's amazing how far you've came as a SC commentator so I have nothing but love for all these guys and I'm very happy they put me in a position to do what I do. I will not deny at a certain point some days you feel lazy as you do, we're only human and you almost take it for granted, but then you go to an event and meet all these people that say 'Man you are the luckiest guy in the world' and I think about it and I'm like yeah I pretty much am ! I may not be the richest, I know people #CASTERMONEY it's a good joke and all but it's not always like that, it isn't always sunshine but I am very blessed to be in the position I am in. Thanks to everyone who has been watching and giving feedback and giving responses over the internet and the last few months I didn't stream a lot at all and that will change. I was busy with WCS and Redbull then I had a girlfriend for a while but that didn't work out for me so I'm going to go back to the lifestyle I had at the start of the year when I want to focus a lot on playing. I think right now I am the worst player I have been in 2-2.5 years. If I play 100-150 games I am back where I want to be but I don't feel confident in my play. I'm going to be streaming a lot and I'll be trying to make it entertaining. It's hard for me to say exactly what 2015 has in store for me because I still have to talk with companies but I have high hopes it will be another year like this one. 2014 was awesome , I learnt a lot and I improved a lot in life as a person and work wise and I feel I improved in my job. I hope 2015 will be as good and as fun as 2014 and keep a close eye on social media and you will see what to expect from me.
Seeker - She is a player who needs no intro, she is famous, she is talented, she is beautiful. Scarlett, so glad you are here. I'm going to ask you questions everyone is dying to know about and that is about LotV. Now you told me you played lotv so I think a lot of people will be excited to hear what you have to say to this. The worker and mineral changes and other changes with LotV, these changes aren't final but I'm sure you've had a chance to experience them. How do you feel about it so far? What do you think is going on with the game?
Scarlett - I'm actually very excited about the mineral changes and how many workers per base you have to mine with mostly because it makes you expand more and there are more harassment options when you are spread out more. I think it will make the game more exciting to play and to watch, however starting with more workers I'm not sure I do like that because it will reduce the amount of viable builds. There is no proxy reaper or 2 barracks or you can't 11 gate in PvP. I know some people like that but I think it removes some depth to the game as it will be a lot easier to play greedy at the tart with no real way to be punished.
Seeker - So do you think these changes are good in the long run or do you feel they are taking a step back in the world of SC2?
Scarlett - I like the mineral and workers per base are a really good change, but not the workers you start with. I think 8 or 9 would be fine but 12 is a little bit too far ahead. It removes a bunch of builds. Starting with 8 speeds up the game 30 seconds and there is no build you use without making two workers except six pool, which isn't even that good.
Seeker - Of the three races which do you think is the strongest, weakest, received the most benefits and which got screwed over in LotV.
Scarlett - I haven't played Protoss or Terran so I don't know how strong their units are but in terms of overall changes I really like what they did for Zerg they gave you a lot more options in the mid-game and more units you can make. You can destroy force fields now which is like very nice it will hopefully help against all-ins and stuff. In terms of what I liked the least I don't know what is the weakest but I don't like the Terran changes that much. The banshee speed thing, it's the same as when they though of buffing DT speed, it's like do we really need this? It's going to make a lot of games where people just die to one cloaked banshee. Like TvT they scan you just boost out, it's silly I think. The Herc it's not really what Terran units are for the most part, it's almost like a chargelot with AoE, it's more like a Protoss unit I think. I don't like how the new mech unit works, it's really boring. It's like a Phoenix on the ground and it doesn't have any abilities I don't think, so you just right click and it slowly drives backwards and it keeps on shooting. There is no micro potential in that, you don't even stop to fire you just right click somewhere and that's it.
Seeker - Final question, if David Kim and the SC2 game designers were in front of you and you could give them advice or tell them things about LotV you would like to see either things they are doing now or changes you want done or even something reverted back, what would you say to them?
Scarlett - Well I like the general direction they are doing, especially they are trying very big changes which they did not do in HotS so I really like that and they should keep doing it through the beta. Try and cover big changes not just with a new units but with mechanics of the game itself like the mineral and worker changes. I think they should experiment more with things like that.
Seeker - Finally what can fans expect from you in 2015? Please say something to your fans who are cheering for you in 2015.
Scarlett - I really hope I can qualify for this tournament, Blizzcon finals, next year. That would be amazing to go to and I know a lot of fans would like to see me go there and so I'm really going to try for that. Maybe next year I will go to school at the end so I will try to make it a good year. If I got to school I would still I wouldn't retire, I'd still play part time. But I'll try make it a really good year next year, I didn't do as well as I wanted this year so hopefully next year is better.
Edit : Formatted a bit more nicely. Somebody already did the Suppy one so I will leave it. I tried to stick as much as possible to exactly what was being said but at some points may have changed a word used or so or missed a short sentence etc. Also cut the 'outros' in the last few.
On November 11 2014 10:21 Firnafth wrote: Roughly transcribed the Polt interview for fun. If you think this is tolerable, I will do more for this thread. I will also edit them so they have better grammar. I just wanted to get this one done quickly :D
Seeker: So Polt, you are here in Anaheim, the Blizzcon Grand Finals Stage. How do you feel being in this kind of environment right now?
Polt: Everyone knows that Blizzcon tournament is the best tournament for Starcraft 2 players, and, it is glorious to be here as a player.
Seeker: Now, Polt, I'm sure many fans are going to wonder what's going to happen to you for 2015. You are here living in America so still going to participate in WCS America, so a lot of the fans are wondering what is your plan, what are you going to do, what will we expect from Polt for 2015?
Polt: The year 2015 will be pretty much the same as 2014 for me. I will be staying in America for the whole year and playing in WCS America, I don't know if I need to say America or Europe, but anyways, the combined WCS, so it's basically the same.
I will participate in a lot of foreign tournaments like IEM or Dreamhack, so I think I have a lot of chance to win another trophy and show my games to my fans.
Seeker: So, Polt, I'm sure a lot of fans are curious about this, because you are actually one of the few players who got to experience LotV, you actually got into the finals of the exhibition matches with your partner SoO. So the fans want to know, I want to know, everyone wants to know how do you feel about the LotV changes, the worker changes, the mineral changes, how do you feel about these changes, are they good, are they bad?
Polt: Yeah, all of the players and David Kim talked about that a lot because David Kim and balance they wanted to hear the pro players' opinion and the pro players want to hear why they make those changes.
So, the conclusion is basically most of people think the beginning of the game is kind of boring, because if one of the players doesn't do something proxy, then basically it's the same, they just mine minerals make workers and expand; they they wanted to delete that part and jump into the next part.
And the mineral change is, there is like Protoss or Terran just defend, defend, defend, build 200 army and go out, that's not the situation the balance team wanted, so they want to change that. Since the mineral patches reduced to 1000, players need to expand more and more, that makes more engagements to happen, and possibly nothing like just making swarm hosts and defending or just making mech and defending. That's not going to happen in LotV.
Seeker: I see. Thank you very much Polt. So all 3 races we have new units and a lot of changes have occurred. Tell us, which race do you think is the strongest race, which race is the weakest race, which race do you think got the most benefit out of all these changes that occurred?
Polt: It's very difficult to say because we are not used to playing that game, it's totally new, we just played like a few games, maybe more than 10 games, but it's just not enough to get into that game.
So, but, as far as we talked about that, all of the pro players here concluded that Zerg is the strongest, Terran is pretty close to Zerg, and Protoss is so weak.
Seeker: Thank you Polt, those were some great insights on changes that occurred with LotV.
Now, those changes aren't final, but for now, you heard what Polt's opinion about the changes for LotV was. I think that LotV has potential to be an amazing game, an amazing expansion.
Now Polt, do you have some words for the fans who love you, who scream out your name every time you win a championship?
Polt: Actually, I'm really sorry, because I lost in Ro16. It was not expected to me, I think. But, I have a lot of tournaments coming up, one will be IEM San Jose, that will be great, I don't know about next year, I will have WCS America and other IEM and Dreamhack tournaments, things like that. So, I think I'm sure I'm going to win at least another championship trophy, so please keep cheering for me. everyone knows I live in America and I love American fans. Thank you.
Seeker: There you go, that was Polt, he loves his American fans and he wants you to keep cheering for him, and we will because we know he is one of the greatest Terran players out there right now. This is Seeker from Team Liquid, signing out for now.
On November 11 2014 11:05 GenesisX wrote: Just decided to transcribe the Suppy one for fun, to see if my typing could keep up with his talking lol. Conclusion: cannot even on 0.5 times speed -.- Anyways hope someone finds this useful. Grammar isn't very good and I tried to cut out some of the 'likes' and 'ums'.
Seeker: Hello everyone, this is Seeker from TeamLiquid and with me is none other than Evil Genius's Suppy and get this, he is going to be talking about Legacy of the Void today. So a lot of things you guys have been curious about, Suppy is going to answer them for you.
So, first things first Suppy, the worker change count: gone from 6 to 12, and the mineral number count has gone from 1500 to 1000. What does this mean for Legacy of the Void? I mean, nothings finalized yet but these are some pretty drastic changes. Is there a meta shift here, maybe some strategy changes, balance changes? What's going on - what do you think?
Suppy: I actually am very excited about the change and I'm very excited that Blizzard is trying to make big moves to spice up the game. The economy change, in terms of changing the bases from 1500 minerals to 1000, I think is going to benefit the game a lot. It's gonna force people to expand a lot more and you can't just rely on a three base build and just turtle there. You have to make expansions. And what that's going to open up is a lot of area for harassment. It's just gonna make the game a lot more fast paced and a lot more small battles around the map. Hopefully, this is what I'm imagining. And a lot more skirmishes everywhere rather than the deathball 1A mentality. In terms of the 12 worker count, I dunno, I think this is a pretty cool change. Of course, there is the chance that you're gonna lose a lot of strategies. For me, it's actually really good because I always die to those early cheeses so I'm happy if they start with 12 workers they can't do those as well. But I like that it starts the game out faster and it kinda reminds me of Warcraft where people start building stuff right away. I think it's a cool direction and I'm glad that Blizzard is trying out more radical changes.
Seeker: So of the three races right now, which race do you think benefited the most from Legacy of the Void and benefitied the least? And which race do you think is the strongest and which race do you think is the weakest?
Suppy: So just based off the changes from the Youtube videos, I definitely thought Zerg benefited the most and Terran benefited the least. But when I actually saw the gameplay, I switched that and thought that Terran benefited the most. I think maybe Protoss benefited the least. I was watching some of the exhibition matches and they didn't get maybe the coolest units or anything, but the units they did get seemed very strong, and the buffs to their existing units did seem to be very very powerful. I think Zerg got the coolest changes still, so I'm very happy about that. Zerg always was, I felt, the most limited race, cause we only had like 10 units, and the other races had like 12 or 13. But I think Protoss benefited the least. But overall I think every race got some really cool stuff.
Seeker: Imagine if David Kim and the Starcraft 2 design team were right in front of you. What would you tell them? Would you tell them to revert some changes or would you tell them to keep some changes or... what would you tell them if you were in charge of the direction that Legacy of the Void would be heading in?
Suppy: I'd have a lot of things. One thing I've been very big about is I'd love to change the pathing of the units so it's kinda more similar to Brood War. Not necessarily dumbing the AI down, but making it so they're not as smart and like, kinda just walking around in a circle. They'd kinda walk in a line like you'd expect from Brood War, so that makes flanking more important. Cause otherwise your units would get stuck. Another thing is I'd really encourage them to watch LaLush's depth of SC2 Micro video from, I think, 2013. It was a while ago. They have addressed it and they said stuff like, "oh, the common audience wouldn't be able to understand this level of micro". But I really think people would. They would be able to precieve the difference in skill between someone who could really micro and control a unit and someone who couldn't. And not only that but it just makes the game feel better when your units respond to you very well. Final thing, probably I would want them to change the moving shot, especially for the new unit, what's that car...
Seeker: HERC? Cyclone?
Suppy: No, cyclone, yeah. I think they should change that. It doesn't look like it takes much micro. They kinda just move around. It's kinda like the phoenix. Blizzard has argued that the moving shot from Brood War, people wouldn't be able to understand that or appreciate it. But I don't think people look at a phoenix being microed or look at a Cyclone being microed and be like "wow that is some amazing micro"! It would be so much cooler if it was the vulture from Brood War where you actually had to interact with it, where it was possible to make mistakes, or it was possible to juke your enemy. I think they should change the moving shot to a real moving shot. Not this watered down, easy moving shot.
Seeker: All right, thank you very much. Now, finally, please say something for your fans who are expecting big things from you. What can we see from Suppy in 2015?
Suppy: So obviously I've been back in school so I haven't been streaming or playing as much, but I'm definitely very excited, especially for Legacy of the Void. It's kinda making me want to play Starcraft a lot again, and I'm very excited for that. Especially with the coming WCS 2015 changes, I'm gonna try my best. Somebody made a Reddit thread a couple days ago, saying they miss Suppy, and that made me feel very happy. So thank you very much, I'll try to come back and give you guys good streams and stuff.
Seeker: All right, there you have it. That's Suppy. He loves his fans and he's excited for Legacy of the Void. And we may see a giant comeback from him for the year 2015. But for now, that's all. I'm Seeker from Team Liquid, signing out.
Wardi i see u are helping the community as always tnx!
No offence, but the questions on which race is OP were terrible.
The game is not supposed to be balanced yet, the questions should have been what they think about the new units, in terms of strategy, how fun it is to play, entertainment levels for viewer etc...
On November 11 2014 05:29 Paragleiber wrote: What is the reason for this weird formatting in articles here recently with the dots before the numbers everywhere? It looks so odd and ugly. And I have never seen it anywhere else before, so I am pretty sure it is not common even in English. Please use something normal like "#1" or "1." or just "1" but not ".1".
For the love of god, please keep using the dots just to shit this guy off.
Also, great article/piece - good to hear some of the thoughts :D
On November 11 2014 19:48 Highways wrote: No offence, but the questions on which race is OP were terrible.
The game is not supposed to be balanced yet, the questions should have been what they think about the new units, in terms of strategy, how fun it is to play, entertainment levels for viewer etc...
Well its surprising that Polt says many people think Zerg is stronger than Terran, I wish they would've elaborated on that.
On November 11 2014 19:48 Highways wrote: No offence, but the questions on which race is OP were terrible.
The game is not supposed to be balanced yet, the questions should have been what they think about the new units, in terms of strategy, how fun it is to play, entertainment levels for viewer etc...
I think the "op" question was fine to ask. People know that this is a first impressions to an alpha, and should know that nothing is final (see warhound, replicant, ultralisk burrow charge ,etc). I think anything regarding balance is useful to the balance team.
Nice interviews! You should let hotbid interview you, so you can get a feel for the weirdness.
On November 11 2014 05:29 Paragleiber wrote: What is the reason for this weird formatting in articles here recently with the dots before the numbers everywhere? It looks so odd and ugly. And I have never seen it anywhere else before, so I am pretty sure it is not common even in English. Please use something normal like "#1" or "1." or just "1" but not ".1".
haha i kinda agree, it's atrocious. it's like someone missed the good 'ol days when using ascii was the epitome of cool.
On November 11 2014 05:29 Paragleiber wrote: What is the reason for this weird formatting in articles here recently with the dots before the numbers everywhere? It looks so odd and ugly. And I have never seen it anywhere else before, so I am pretty sure it is not common even in English. Please use something normal like "#1" or "1." or just "1" but not ".1".
On November 11 2014 05:29 Paragleiber wrote: What is the reason for this weird formatting in articles here recently with the dots before the numbers everywhere? It looks so odd and ugly. And I have never seen it anywhere else before, so I am pretty sure it is not common even in English. Please use something normal like "#1" or "1." or just "1" but not ".1".
On November 11 2014 05:29 Paragleiber wrote: What is the reason for this weird formatting in articles here recently with the dots before the numbers everywhere? It looks so odd and ugly. And I have never seen it anywhere else before, so I am pretty sure it is not common even in English. Please use something normal like "#1" or "1." or just "1" but not ".1".
I absolutely agree. It is irrational.
Is there a law or something which says that ".1" isn't allowed? Because it looks like normal formatting to me. Not what you see on most websites, but not something totally strange either
On November 11 2014 05:29 Paragleiber wrote: What is the reason for this weird formatting in articles here recently with the dots before the numbers everywhere? It looks so odd and ugly. And I have never seen it anywhere else before, so I am pretty sure it is not common even in English. Please use something normal like "#1" or "1." or just "1" but not ".1".
I absolutely agree. It is irrational.
Is there a law or something which says that ".1" isn't allowed? Because it looks like normal formatting to me. Not what you see on most websites, but not something totally strange either
Its sort of like the craze for abbreviations on the internet. There was a thread where a guy used a HP abbreviation for Harry Potter. I wanted to shoot my self in the head.
On November 11 2014 05:29 Paragleiber wrote: What is the reason for this weird formatting in articles here recently with the dots before the numbers everywhere? It looks so odd and ugly. And I have never seen it anywhere else before, so I am pretty sure it is not common even in English. Please use something normal like "#1" or "1." or just "1" but not ".1".
I absolutely agree. It is irrational.
Actually, those terminating decimals (.1, .2, .3, ...) are rational
Also, who cares?
On topic: I definitely agree with HuK that as of right now, Protoss is getting the short end of the stick. Hopefully Protoss gets a second new unit and more buffs that end up making the race as interesting and powerful as what we see with LotV Terran and LotV Zerg
Rottie's response re: Protoss deserving more units struck me as a bit unfair. He said that he expected better from LOTV after what HOTS gave Protoss... HOTS gave Protoss 3 units, but he forgot entirely about the Tempest, didn't think the MSC should be counted, and only counted the Oracle at all.
Everyone asking for more Protoss units, you guys do realize that if LOTV shipped tomorrow, Protoss would have 18, Terran would have 16, and Zerg would have 15, right? It's cool to want new toys to play with and all, but maybe it's also time to start asking if Protoss really needs every one of those 18 and whether every one of those 18 does something interesting enough to deserve being a unit.
I do favor the theory of fewer, three-dimensional units whenever possible.
I'm truly grateful to MC and Hyun for demonstrating exactly what many thought when they saw those new terran units/upgrades. I kinda like some changes and the general idea of making it a little broodwar-esque again and trying a bunch of new things, and I'm excited to see how the starting workers enable you open with completely new BOs. But how can a balance team as experienced as Blizzard not see how imba those T units were. Maybe tunnel vision. Guess we will lose a few until final release. I wouldn't mind any imba units if Replicants ever became a thing
Perhaps I've become a grumpy old man, but why only videos and no transcripts? I don't really feel like sitting around watching a video, i'ld prefer to read the interview at my own pace.
On November 11 2014 21:36 KeksX wrote: Zerg actually has 14 units right now if you count out the overlord. +2 new units in lotv then so 16.
I didn't count Larva (mechanic), Drone (worker), Overlord, or Nydus (building equivalents), so that's how I got 15 in LOTV. But even if we count all of those and get 18, they still don't have more than Protoss. Heh.
On November 11 2014 21:36 KeksX wrote: Zerg actually has 14 units right now if you count out the overlord. +2 new units in lotv then so 16.
I didn't count Larva (mechanic), Drone (worker), Overlord, or Nydus (building equivalents), so that's how I got 15 in LOTV. But even if we count all of those and get 18, they still don't have more than Protoss. Heh.
Oh you're right, actually 13 without overlord. My bad.
On November 11 2014 21:36 KeksX wrote: Zerg actually has 14 units right now if you count out the overlord. +2 new units in lotv then so 16.
I didn't count Larva (mechanic), Drone (worker), Overlord, or Nydus (building equivalents), so that's how I got 15 in LOTV. But even if we count all of those and get 18, they still don't have more than Protoss. Heh.
I understand larva and drone, but the overlord should be counted imo. It moves, is build from larva and can do stuff (creep, evolve,drop)
On November 11 2014 21:36 KeksX wrote: Zerg actually has 14 units right now if you count out the overlord. +2 new units in lotv then so 16.
I didn't count Larva (mechanic), Drone (worker), Overlord, or Nydus (building equivalents), so that's how I got 15 in LOTV. But even if we count all of those and get 18, they still don't have more than Protoss. Heh.
I understand larva and drone, but the overlord should be counted imo. It moves, is build from larva and can do stuff (creep, evolve,drop)
Either way, 15 or 16, that doesn't make a huge difference. They still have either the fewest units or are tied for the fewest units with Terran.
Cool interviews. But plz seeker, you really need to work on your way to interview. This is too messy and you seems too nervous, just not caring, or maybe its just you try to put energy in your voice but it came out wrong.
Are you afraid to lose your cam? If its not the case plz watch people who answers the questions instead of the cam seems rude to me. (This part is for the "stand-up" interviews)
On topic: I definitely agree with HuK that as of right now, Protoss is getting the short end of the stick. Hopefully Protoss gets a second new unit and more buffs that end up making the race as interesting and powerful as what we see with LotV Terran and LotV Zerg
Zerg already got 2 new units. The Lurker and that unit with mortar bombs.
On topic: I definitely agree with HuK that as of right now, Protoss is getting the short end of the stick. Hopefully Protoss gets a second new unit and more buffs that end up making the race as interesting and powerful as what we see with LotV Terran and LotV Zerg
Zerg already got 2 new units. The Lurker and that unit with mortar bombs.
That's what I said. Protoss is the race with only 1 new unit at the moment. The other two races have two.
But others raised a good point about how Protoss already has the most units, so I'm okay with just making the current units better lol.
On November 11 2014 21:16 pure.Wasted wrote: Rottie's response re: Protoss deserving more units struck me as a bit unfair. He said that he expected better from LOTV after what HOTS gave Protoss... HOTS gave Protoss 3 units, but he forgot entirely about the Tempest, didn't think the MSC should be counted, and only counted the Oracle at all.
Everyone asking for more Protoss units, you guys do realize that if LOTV shipped tomorrow, Protoss would have 18, Terran would have 16, and Zerg would have 15, right? It's cool to want new toys to play with and all, but maybe it's also time to start asking if Protoss really needs every one of those 18 and whether every one of those 18 does something interesting enough to deserve being a unit.
I do favor the theory of fewer, three-dimensional units whenever possible.
On November 11 2014 21:16 pure.Wasted wrote: Rottie's response re: Protoss deserving more units struck me as a bit unfair. He said that he expected better from LOTV after what HOTS gave Protoss... HOTS gave Protoss 3 units, but he forgot entirely about the Tempest, didn't think the MSC should be counted, and only counted the Oracle at all.
Everyone asking for more Protoss units, you guys do realize that if LOTV shipped tomorrow, Protoss would have 18, Terran would have 16, and Zerg would have 15, right? It's cool to want new toys to play with and all, but maybe it's also time to start asking if Protoss really needs every one of those 18 and whether every one of those 18 does something interesting enough to deserve being a unit.
I do favor the theory of fewer, three-dimensional units whenever possible.
Too true!
I'd like to add to that, that the fact that LOTV brings us the Protoss campaign (and as such is seen as the Protoss expansion) is NOT a reason to say Protoss deserves the most new stuff. The multiplayer has nothing to do with the theme of the expansion.
On November 11 2014 21:16 pure.Wasted wrote: Rottie's response re: Protoss deserving more units struck me as a bit unfair. He said that he expected better from LOTV after what HOTS gave Protoss... HOTS gave Protoss 3 units, but he forgot entirely about the Tempest, didn't think the MSC should be counted, and only counted the Oracle at all.
Everyone asking for more Protoss units, you guys do realize that if LOTV shipped tomorrow, Protoss would have 18, Terran would have 16, and Zerg would have 15, right? It's cool to want new toys to play with and all, but maybe it's also time to start asking if Protoss really needs every one of those 18 and whether every one of those 18 does something interesting enough to deserve being a unit.
I do favor the theory of fewer, three-dimensional units whenever possible.
Tempest is a bad unit, slightly more useful than Carrier, but still bad. You see them in some late game pvp (10%) and turtle style pvz (less than 10%) It's reasonable that he totally forgot about it.
On November 11 2014 21:16 pure.Wasted wrote: Rottie's response re: Protoss deserving more units struck me as a bit unfair. He said that he expected better from LOTV after what HOTS gave Protoss... HOTS gave Protoss 3 units, but he forgot entirely about the Tempest, didn't think the MSC should be counted, and only counted the Oracle at all.
Everyone asking for more Protoss units, you guys do realize that if LOTV shipped tomorrow, Protoss would have 18, Terran would have 16, and Zerg would have 15, right? It's cool to want new toys to play with and all, but maybe it's also time to start asking if Protoss really needs every one of those 18 and whether every one of those 18 does something interesting enough to deserve being a unit.
I do favor the theory of fewer, three-dimensional units whenever possible.
Well we've been trying to get rid of the colossus for 4+ years now :p
Scarlett nailed it. If Blizzard is trying changes they should always ask her first if it makes sense. This way 90% of stupid ideas could be shut down even before the average starcarft folks would have to deal with it! kthxbye
On November 11 2014 21:16 pure.Wasted wrote: Rottie's response re: Protoss deserving more units struck me as a bit unfair. He said that he expected better from LOTV after what HOTS gave Protoss... HOTS gave Protoss 3 units, but he forgot entirely about the Tempest, didn't think the MSC should be counted, and only counted the Oracle at all.
Everyone asking for more Protoss units, you guys do realize that if LOTV shipped tomorrow, Protoss would have 18, Terran would have 16, and Zerg would have 15, right? It's cool to want new toys to play with and all, but maybe it's also time to start asking if Protoss really needs every one of those 18 and whether every one of those 18 does something interesting enough to deserve being a unit.
I do favor the theory of fewer, three-dimensional units whenever possible.
Tempest is a bad unit, slightly more useful than Carrier, but still bad. You see them in some late game pvp (10%) and turtle style pvz (less than 10%) It's reasonable that he totally forgot about it.
And how exactly this has any connection to his comment?
On November 11 2014 21:16 pure.Wasted wrote: Rottie's response re: Protoss deserving more units struck me as a bit unfair. He said that he expected better from LOTV after what HOTS gave Protoss... HOTS gave Protoss 3 units, but he forgot entirely about the Tempest, didn't think the MSC should be counted, and only counted the Oracle at all.
Everyone asking for more Protoss units, you guys do realize that if LOTV shipped tomorrow, Protoss would have 18, Terran would have 16, and Zerg would have 15, right? It's cool to want new toys to play with and all, but maybe it's also time to start asking if Protoss really needs every one of those 18 and whether every one of those 18 does something interesting enough to deserve being a unit.
I do favor the theory of fewer, three-dimensional units whenever possible.
Well we've been trying to get rid of the colossus for 4+ years now :p
Yay, remove colossus and give toss 2 new toys, sounds great for everyone And if the tempest is not supposed to counter broodlords, BCs and colossi, and is not used vs Swarmhost turtle (we are getting rid of that right?), then might as well remove it and give something that is not as tech heavy.
On November 11 2014 21:16 pure.Wasted wrote: Rottie's response re: Protoss deserving more units struck me as a bit unfair. He said that he expected better from LOTV after what HOTS gave Protoss... HOTS gave Protoss 3 units, but he forgot entirely about the Tempest, didn't think the MSC should be counted, and only counted the Oracle at all.
Everyone asking for more Protoss units, you guys do realize that if LOTV shipped tomorrow, Protoss would have 18, Terran would have 16, and Zerg would have 15, right? It's cool to want new toys to play with and all, but maybe it's also time to start asking if Protoss really needs every one of those 18 and whether every one of those 18 does something interesting enough to deserve being a unit.
I do favor the theory of fewer, three-dimensional units whenever possible.
Well we've been trying to get rid of the colossus for 4+ years now :p
Yay, remove colossus and give toss 2 new toys, sounds great for everyone And if the tempest is not supposed to counter broodlords, BCs and colossi, and is not used vs Swarmhost turtle (we are getting rid of that right?), then might as well remove it and give something that is not as tech heavy.
Well it outranges lurkers. Zerg are forced to use abduct against tempest?
On November 11 2014 21:16 pure.Wasted wrote: Rottie's response re: Protoss deserving more units struck me as a bit unfair. He said that he expected better from LOTV after what HOTS gave Protoss... HOTS gave Protoss 3 units, but he forgot entirely about the Tempest, didn't think the MSC should be counted, and only counted the Oracle at all.
Everyone asking for more Protoss units, you guys do realize that if LOTV shipped tomorrow, Protoss would have 18, Terran would have 16, and Zerg would have 15, right? It's cool to want new toys to play with and all, but maybe it's also time to start asking if Protoss really needs every one of those 18 and whether every one of those 18 does something interesting enough to deserve being a unit.
I do favor the theory of fewer, three-dimensional units whenever possible.
Well we've been trying to get rid of the colossus for 4+ years now :p
On November 11 2014 10:21 Firnafth wrote: Roughly transcribed the Polt interview for fun. If you think this is tolerable, I will do more for this thread. I will also edit them so they have better grammar. I just wanted to get this one done quickly :D
Seeker: So Polt, you are here in Anaheim, the Blizzcon Grand Finals Stage. How do you feel being in this kind of environment right now?
Polt: Everyone knows that Blizzcon tournament is the best tournament for Starcraft 2 players, and, it is glorious to be here as a player.
Seeker: Now, Polt, I'm sure many fans are going to wonder what's going to happen to you for 2015. You are here living in America so still going to participate in WCS America, so a lot of the fans are wondering what is your plan, what are you going to do, what will we expect from Polt for 2015?
Polt: The year 2015 will be pretty much the same as 2014 for me. I will be staying in America for the whole year and playing in WCS America, I don't know if I need to say America or Europe, but anyways, the combined WCS, so it's basically the same.
I will participate in a lot of foreign tournaments like IEM or Dreamhack, so I think I have a lot of chance to win another trophy and show my games to my fans.
Seeker: So, Polt, I'm sure a lot of fans are curious about this, because you are actually one of the few players who got to experience LotV, you actually got into the finals of the exhibition matches with your partner SoO. So the fans want to know, I want to know, everyone wants to know how do you feel about the LotV changes, the worker changes, the mineral changes, how do you feel about these changes, are they good, are they bad?
Polt: Yeah, all of the players and David Kim talked about that a lot because David Kim and balance they wanted to hear the pro players' opinion and the pro players want to hear why they make those changes.
So, the conclusion is basically most of people think the beginning of the game is kind of boring, because if one of the players doesn't do something proxy, then basically it's the same, they just mine minerals make workers and expand; they they wanted to delete that part and jump into the next part.
And the mineral change is, there is like Protoss or Terran just defend, defend, defend, build 200 army and go out, that's not the situation the balance team wanted, so they want to change that. Since the mineral patches reduced to 1000, players need to expand more and more, that makes more engagements to happen, and possibly nothing like just making swarm hosts and defending or just making mech and defending. That's not going to happen in LotV.
Seeker: I see. Thank you very much Polt. So all 3 races we have new units and a lot of changes have occurred. Tell us, which race do you think is the strongest race, which race is the weakest race, which race do you think got the most benefit out of all these changes that occurred?
Polt: It's very difficult to say because we are not used to playing that game, it's totally new, we just played like a few games, maybe more than 10 games, but it's just not enough to get into that game.
So, but, as far as we talked about that, all of the pro players here concluded that Zerg is the strongest, Terran is pretty close to Zerg, and Protoss is so weak.
Seeker: Thank you Polt, those were some great insights on changes that occurred with LotV.
Now, those changes aren't final, but for now, you heard what Polt's opinion about the changes for LotV was. I think that LotV has potential to be an amazing game, an amazing expansion.
Now Polt, do you have some words for the fans who love you, who scream out your name every time you win a championship?
Polt: Actually, I'm really sorry, because I lost in Ro16. It was not expected to me, I think. But, I have a lot of tournaments coming up, one will be IEM San Jose, that will be great, I don't know about next year, I will have WCS America and other IEM and Dreamhack tournaments, things like that. So, I think I'm sure I'm going to win at least another championship trophy, so please keep cheering for me. everyone knows I live in America and I love American fans. Thank you.
Seeker: There you go, that was Polt, he loves his American fans and he wants you to keep cheering for him, and we will because we know he is one of the greatest Terran players out there right now. This is Seeker from Team Liquid, signing out for now.
BTW I think one thing to take into account is that watching videos eats up bandwidth, text really doesn't. So transcription is easier for literally everybody except the interviewer (who possibly needs to transcribe the questions anyway).
Suppy gets it. I'm so happy that he is calling Blizzard out on the whole "people wouldn't understand this". It is such a lame excuse, and it prevents much of the very basic micro with their workarounds.
I think tempest now will be used vs mech and vs lurkers, also i don't know if they kept the massive damage, but if the answers is yes, then it still useful vs colossus.
But yeah, carriers and temepst are kind of redundant now.
Yes i agree. I was kinda suprised that he mentioned this now But as usual Blizzard will not take it in account. They did not care last time, so why would they change their mind.
I think tempest now will be used vs mech and vs lurkers, also i don't know if they kept the massive damage, but if the answers is yes, then it still useful vs colossus.
But unlike now, it's not massable as that will make you too vulnerable to Vikings/Corrupters.
On November 13 2014 04:38 Charoisaur wrote: funny how most of the players say it's good because it's more similar to brood war without giving any reason why BWs economy was better.
There are plenty of reasons in these threads, now it is your choice to not read them and stay ignorant but reasons were given.
Just want to know if those who have bought the Blizzcon ticket do they access to the video, OR - it's something that has been forgotten to get uploaded, lol
@SigmaoctanusIV - There's a difference when an interview has the intention of hearing a pro's opinion and making it closer to the audience.. In other words - it seems a rather a bit serious topic/interview for Hotbid to have interviewed it IMO
On November 14 2014 03:16 VArsovskiSC wrote: Any chance we get to see the PvZ showmatch ?
Just want to know if those who have bought the Blizzcon ticket do they access to the video, OR - it's something that has been forgotten to get uploaded, lol
It's not in the archived videos. There's the preshow and the tvz for day 1, the final on day 2, but not the pvz. And I can't seem to find a way to get access to the entire day 1 stream. Only day 2 is available (which should not be the case, but maybe I'm missing something)
On November 14 2014 03:16 VArsovskiSC wrote: Any chance we get to see the PvZ showmatch ?
Just want to know if those who have bought the Blizzcon ticket do they access to the video, OR - it's something that has been forgotten to get uploaded, lol
It's not in the archived videos. There's the preshow and the tvz for day 1, the final on day 2, but not the pvz. And I can't seem to find a way to get access to the entire day 1 stream. Only day 2 is available (which should not be the case, but maybe I'm missing something)
On November 14 2014 03:16 VArsovskiSC wrote: Any chance we get to see the PvZ showmatch ?
Just want to know if those who have bought the Blizzcon ticket do they access to the video, OR - it's something that has been forgotten to get uploaded, lol
It's not in the archived videos. There's the preshow and the tvz for day 1, the final on day 2, but not the pvz. And I can't seem to find a way to get access to the entire day 1 stream. Only day 2 is available (which should not be the case, but maybe I'm missing something)
On November 17 2014 13:07 Seeker wrote: I've been so effing busy this week I haven't even been able to sleep properly. Sorry, but the interviews are going to take longer to upload.
I was really that close to troll about those missing interviews since i was waiting for them since this article been published! but i guess i ll just say "good luck" then!
I just saw the tank with the turret tracking . . It makes so much sense and realistic.
The current tank micro in SC2 look like a noob because it has to move the turret when the tank moves . . I mean like a primitive outdated lousy tank . . . same as collosus. It does not make sense at all.
Same as Viking when it has to pause awhile before shooting . It is so clumsy, considering it is a newly advanced model replacing Goliath and Wraith.
If they really wish to make a better game, they should focus on depth. To think the "new players won't understand" is simply condescending to the common audience. People are smart enough to catch on and is widely seen by the excitement of BW videos. Lalush's "Depth of Micro" points out key issues and evidence to it. The system doesn't need to replicate its predecessor completely but the clunky micro of SC2 is shockingly apparent. Depth of the game is a requirement.
TL;DR
Make units more responsive. Fix air micro instead of band-aid "solutions." Tighter turning speed for nimble fighters. Bring back turret-locking to various degrees depending on the unit. Start with 10 workers instead of 12. The cyclone is a terrible design currently. If it remains as is, make the lock-on a "skill shot" projectile (e.g. moba style) that a player can miss and not lock onto anything. Have a cool down to it. Reduce damage and range to balance it accordingly.
It might even be interesting to give the Protoss a skill shot reaver to toy with.
Worry about fine tuning balance once the game is fun and being played.
Sorry for the long ass delay. I will try to get this done this week but again, no promises. Thanksgiving break was great but it's mega crunch time now T-T
I largely agree with what HuK said about the economy changes. Just lowering the mineral count and increasing starting worker count isn't really attacking from the right angle. Only if bases saturate quicker or the 2 vs 3 worker saturation is much closer then we will see more bases and more action.
I think Zergs will be quite strong in LotV macro wise. All of the previous Maps will be rendered useless because of the 12Worker changes as this requires to get Natural and 3rd base insanely fast and actually holding them. So in New maps or edited(old)Maps it will be easier to hold 3bases very quickly. With the large larvae injects so early in the game, and the inevitable creep spread due to "normal" 3bases the Zergs-pro might get an advantage out of it. Just my two cents.
On December 02 2014 17:31 Shubhendu Singh wrote: I think Zergs will be quite strong in LotV macro wise. All of the previous Maps will be rendered useless because of the 12Worker changes as this requires to get Natural and 3rd base insanely fast and actually holding them. So in New maps or edited(old)Maps it will be easier to hold 3bases very quickly. With the large larvae injects so early in the game, and the inevitable creep spread due to "normal" 3bases the Zergs-pro might get an advantage out of it. Just my two cents.
it's very map dependant. If thirds are easy to take and 4ths are hard, it puts zerg in a tough position. If thirds are open and assaultabe, zergs will benefit. Assuming Terran gets nerfed reasonably
On December 02 2014 17:31 Shubhendu Singh wrote: I think Zergs will be quite strong in LotV macro wise. All of the previous Maps will be rendered useless because of the 12Worker changes as this requires to get Natural and 3rd base insanely fast and actually holding them. So in New maps or edited(old)Maps it will be easier to hold 3bases very quickly. With the large larvae injects so early in the game, and the inevitable creep spread due to "normal" 3bases the Zergs-pro might get an advantage out of it. Just my two cents.
I hope not. The entire point of those changes is to make people require more bases and spread out, not just make it so maps have 6 bases in each corner compared to the four or 5 now (which is dumb compared to the 3 in BW). :/
The idea of the worker change is to just get people to a point faster, they may be forced to expand to their natural faster (when actually it'll be at the same time, just without building worker time added in) but they should make it harder for all races to get a third base.
Being able to grab a third earlier or easier isn't necessarily a bad thing so long there are interesting engagements here and there.
A strong harassment unit like cyclone and herc can do exactly that. The only problem right now is if these units will right out end the game with simple harassment, just like the pre queen patch hellion run by.
It's still hard to say since there is hardly any meta developed yet.
But for now I think the economy change is fine so long the units and upgrade / tech timing is good.
On December 02 2014 17:31 Shubhendu Singh wrote: I think Zergs will be quite strong in LotV macro wise. All of the previous Maps will be rendered useless because of the 12Worker changes as this requires to get Natural and 3rd base insanely fast and actually holding them. So in New maps or edited(old)Maps it will be easier to hold 3bases very quickly. With the large larvae injects so early in the game, and the inevitable creep spread due to "normal" 3bases the Zergs-pro might get an advantage out of it. Just my two cents.
I hope not. The entire point of those changes is to make people require more bases and spread out, not just make it so maps have 6 bases in each corner compared to the four or 5 now (which is dumb compared to the 3 in BW). :/
The idea of the worker change is to just get people to a point faster, they may be forced to expand to their natural faster (when actually it'll be at the same time, just without building worker time added in) but they should make it harder for all races to get a third base.
Why should they make it harder for all races to take a 3rd? With the mineral patch changes people mine out their bases a whole lot quicker, on the contrary the 3rd, 4th and potentially 5th bases need to be a lot more accessible than they were in the past. And the 6th-7th need to be about the same level of difficulty to take as the old 4ths.
EPT
upload or riot Kappa
