|
Hey guys
First of all. I am only a diamond player, but I had a very easy time beating HOTS on brutal the first time I tried. I decided to find out exactly how easy heart of the swarm was. So I set up a number of different restrictions to test if I could beat it with those. Here they are:
Mouse only (I used no keyboard whatsoever, and it was easy)
Ling queen (I only bought queens and lings (+ drones and overlords)
No expo (surprisingly easy)
Lings + 3 queens (The reason for 3 queens is that there is a mission where you need creep spread, and don't have a starting queen)
Mouse no expo
Mouse ling queen
Mouse ling 3queen
Mouse no expo ling queen
Mouse no expo ling 3 queens
Queen only! (This one is fairly difficult)
And last and best:
I've beaten HOTS on brutal with only 6 guys on minerals for the entire campaign.
In some missions you have to use Kerrigan's banelings a lot, but that being said, you basicly can take no damage with this against any attack. Meaning the fact that you have less drones or whatever, doesn't matter. You just have to wait.
Using any of these restrictions The Crucible is by far the hardest map to get past. I can say fairly certain that The Crucible cannot be beat with only 5 drones on minerals. You'll get overrun from all 3 sides and die with around 2 mins remain, no matter what setup you have. Even with 6 and using mining pairs, you get overrun. The thing is so close to dying, but it can be done.
I really hope Blizzard decides to make LoTV harder, because this is just messed up. It's so easy!!!!
/Mozdk
Ps: Any other suggestions to what I might try, are welcome :D
|
if they make it harder, achievement category "mastery" might be impossible.
|
On December 02 2014 21:59 Dingodile wrote:
if they make it harder, achievement category "mastery" might be impossible.
So the main part of HOTS is not the campaign? It's the mastery achievements. I'm sorry, but to me the campaign is what matters.
|
WoL campaign is way harder then HotS, quite sad
|
Might be because of the achievement system.
The BW campaign was sooo hard compared to the SC1 campaign and you can do this, because you're expected to be experienced, since you already beat the original one.
|
1001 YEARS KESPAJAIL22272 Posts
New rule: You can only touch your keyboard and mouse while holding your breath
* Disclaimer: lichter takes no responsibility for anyone that actually tries this and passes out
|
United Kingdom36161 Posts
On December 02 2014 22:07 KalWarkov wrote:
WoL campaign is way harder then HotS, quite sad
agreed, I played them back to back (WoL just before HotS came out) and the difference was pretty remarkable.
|
On December 02 2014 22:12 lichter wrote:
New rule: You can only touch your keyboard and mouse while holding your breath
* Disclaimer: lichter takes no responsibility for anyone that actually tries this and passes out
I swim. This would be easy :D
|
Wow. How much time did it take to end the campaign with 6 guys on minerals?
|
On December 02 2014 22:07 KalWarkov wrote:
WoL campaign is way harder then HotS, quite sad
Not really. You can complete nearly half missions with MM (Marine + Medic) and a little something else (depends on what unit in that mission you get, e.g. vikings in Haven's Fall/Safe Haven). That's how I saved credits to get the Masters achievements (Purchasing all upgrades of Vehicles, Aircrafts, Buildings, etc. at Swann's. Even if you finish all 29 missions the credits you earn won't be enough to upgrade everything so you may have to play the campaign for multiple times and finish one category at a time). Only the four upgrades for marine and medic are necessary while others are all optional.
|
Still, too hard for me 
|
Agreed it's way too easy but most people just complete it for the story/cinematics and move on. Seeing as in-game restrictions aren't enough maybe try to blunt your mechanics/brain with this one:
A shot (hard liquor of your choice) every time you finish a mission.
5 pushups/situps every time you use a kerrigan ability.
Must complete in one session.
|
pretty impressive.
I fully agree that the campaign was waaaay to easy. Like, when I set a game on "hard", I expect to be challenged and save/load a lot on certain maps. When I set a game on "brutal", I expect that at least half of the missions aren't winable without massive abuses of the AI and map-bugs. Cheating opponents and stuff like that is what I want to see on such a difficulty.
Brutal in HotS however was more like "well, don't be stupid and you will get by without saving the game.".
WoL was harder... but also not at the level I expect "brutal" to be.
|
On December 02 2014 22:17 Nogard wrote:
Wow. How much time did it take to end the campaign with 6 guys on minerals?
Most missions took under an hour in blizzard time. Last few all under 2.
|
I can tell you guys that I haven't even beaten the last mission of WoL on brutal yet. So the difference is monumental.
|
|
|
On December 02 2014 22:40 eurTsItniH wrote:
Don't use Kerrigan.
That sounds fun. And I can actually use all the restrictions above, in combination with this
|
On December 02 2014 22:23 TedCruz2016 wrote:Show nested quote +On December 02 2014 22:07 KalWarkov wrote:
WoL campaign is way harder then HotS, quite sad Not really. You can complete nearly half missions with MM (Marine + Medic) and a little something else (depends on what unit in that mission you get, e.g. vikings in Haven's Fall/Safe Haven). That's how I saved credits to get the Masters achievements (Purchasing all upgrades of Vehicles, Aircrafts, Buildings, etc. at Swann's. Even if you finish all 29 missions the credits you earn won't be enough to upgrade everything so you may have to play the campaign for multiple times and finish one category at a time). Only the four upgrades for marine and medic are necessary while others are all optional.
try all missons - brutal in both 
|
You say the campaign is what matters and dismiss the mastery achievements but then you are basically making up your own achievements, just the game does not track them.
Not using kerrigan is a good one. Or just use standard units with none of the evolutions/upgrades. The campaign is fun, the multiplayer is there for the challenge.
|
I think the point of HotS campaign was that the brutal mode was easy but the achievements were where the challenge was. I don't really feel like farming achievements though. And I don't particularly seek a tough challenge in my single player mode, players on B.net are harder to beat (well, some of them are ;D).
|
What is interesting is how easy the hots campaign is compared to wol. I must admit to my shame, that I struggled a bit in the wol campaign on brutal. Some missions took several tries to get it right, mainly because the protoss shred medic+marine. 
|
Yeah, brutal mode was too easy. I hoped for something more challenging.
Maybe LotV will be more difficult, but I doubt it, blizzard designs their games for the lowest common denominator now.
|
I really feel that the Wol campagin and the Hots campaign are quite equal in difficulty, with the exception of the last map. All in on brutal is way harder than the last Hots map.
|
Canada8159 Posts
Here's to hoping that LotV brutal will be hard
|
Try parking Kerrigan in your base and play brutal. It changes things quite a lot. Not having a superwoman insectoid demi-goddess makes several missions rather different.
|
Some people enjoy speedruns, I've seen quite a few Grand Theft Auto streamers that just do that. Maybe you should give it a try, kind of like "Hurry up it's raid night achievement" sort of style, sort of thing, sort of fun having.
|
On December 02 2014 22:57 Squat wrote:
Try parking Kerrigan in our base and play brutal. It changes things quite a lot. Not having a superwoman insectoid demi-goddess makes several missions rather different.
Already on it.
|
As easy as that campaign was, imo HotS' units were more fun to use than WoL's units. Maybe because they felt even more imba? Maybe I feel that way because the campaign was easier? I don't really know, I just had a lot of (easy) fun with teleporting swarmhosts and impalers and all that.
|
hots campaign was really ez ;_;
|
Everything is pretty easy when you've had a few years to dissect it, study it, and invent strategies. It's harder when it's fresh. AIs are necessarily limited in RTS games, you will always find a way to beat a static AI if you work hard enough at it.
|
Czech Republic12129 Posts
Don't know, when I was trying to get all the secondary objectives I was restarting several missions. Multiple times. WoL included(damn, the Thor mission under 20 minutes was insane, but fun  )
It has to be easy in this way if you want to give player a chance to accomplish the rest too(not mentioning master achievements which were too tough even for progamers(I think destiny was raging on stream?).
So, no. The campaign is brutal if you want all the achievements and secondary objectives.
You are just using different set of achievements and goals/objectives =)
|
On December 02 2014 22:52 Jer99 wrote:
Here's to hoping that LotV brutal will be hard
Only if there's no active hero unit like Kerrigan.
|
United Kingdom36161 Posts
On December 02 2014 23:17 deacon.frost wrote:Don't know, when I was trying to get all the secondary objectives I was restarting several missions. Multiple times. WoL included(damn, the Thor mission under 20 minutes was insane, but fun ) It has to be easy in this way if you want to give player a chance to accomplish the rest too(not mentioning master achievements which were too tough even for progamers(I think destiny was raging on stream?). So, no. The campaign is brutal if you want all the achievements and secondary objectives. You are just using different set of achievements and goals/objectives =)
I just want it to be difficult to complete the mission, I never cared about any achievements.
|
I somewhat agree, but it shouldn't be much harder than HotS. It would be off-putting for too many players. Remember diamond still means you're better than >90% of all 1v1 players. Also, as others have pointed out, the achievements give you some more challenge and as long as you can challenge yourself, like you did, it doesn't really matter right?
|
Northern Ireland174 Posts
I too would like to see a really difficult to complete campaign in LoTV. HoTS was a disappointment in how easy it was, even on the hardest setting. Maybe because I was a complete noob that I found WoL difficult on brutal but it was also a lot of fun getting through (what I thought was) tough as shit missions. I felt great completing it.
Finishing HoTS wasn't that memorable and I think I had the whole thing done in 2 days. Not what I was expecting, so here is hoping that Blizzard makes LoTV take a least a month to beat on Brutal!
|
United Kingdom36161 Posts
On December 03 2014 00:13 bartus88 wrote:
I somewhat agree, but it shouldn't be much harder than HotS. It would be off-putting for too many players. Remember diamond still means you're better than >90% of all 1v1 players. Also, as others have pointed out, the achievements give you some more challenge and as long as you can challenge yourself, like you did, it doesn't really matter right?
The point is you have levels of difficulty that aren't Brutal for people who aren't capable...
|
On December 03 2014 00:13 bartus88 wrote:
I somewhat agree, but it shouldn't be much harder than HotS. It would be off-putting for too many players. Remember diamond still means you're better than >90% of all 1v1 players. Also, as others have pointed out, the achievements give you some more challenge and as long as you can challenge yourself, like you did, it doesn't really matter right?
Why not? I meant it's not like you have to play on brutal. Make easy so basic that my cognitively challenged cat could do it, and make brutal so hard you need a Doctor Octopus backpack to beat it, and then the full spectrum in between. Done, everyone wins.
|
I'd like a difficulty level above Brutal myself. I used to be a masters player but now I haven't played in over a year, except like 2-3 god-awful games, and I'm quite shit, so if they made a difficulty level with just a stupid amount of units where even good players have to actually pay a little bit of attention, that'd be great. Maybe it would force me to get my mechanics back on track because they're completely fucked now and I can't be bothered to get rocked in mutliplayer by platinum players who know the meta 
But then again using the SP to get back to MP is dumb and I should man up and do it... I just... don't feel like playing this, at all...
|
Czech Republic12129 Posts
On December 03 2014 00:11 marvellosity wrote:Show nested quote +On December 02 2014 23:17 deacon.frost wrote:Don't know, when I was trying to get all the secondary objectives I was restarting several missions. Multiple times. WoL included(damn, the Thor mission under 20 minutes was insane, but fun ) It has to be easy in this way if you want to give player a chance to accomplish the rest too(not mentioning master achievements which were too tough even for progamers(I think destiny was raging on stream?). So, no. The campaign is brutal if you want all the achievements and secondary objectives. You are just using different set of achievements and goals/objectives =) I just want it to be difficult to complete the mission, I never cared about any achievements.
Yes, but people like you .... well, you are a small minority. So nope, it won't be any harder.
As I said - it is entertaining, that OP created his own achievements
|
On December 03 2014 00:25 marvellosity wrote:Show nested quote +On December 03 2014 00:13 bartus88 wrote:
I somewhat agree, but it shouldn't be much harder than HotS. It would be off-putting for too many players. Remember diamond still means you're better than >90% of all 1v1 players. Also, as others have pointed out, the achievements give you some more challenge and as long as you can challenge yourself, like you did, it doesn't really matter right? The point is you have levels of difficulty that aren't Brutal for people who aren't capable...
Yeah haha you're completely right. We on TL often forget that other settings even exist because of how easy Brutal already was, but Blizzard should definitely do something about it. Make Brutal brutally hard and the rest easier as it was meant to be.
|
On December 03 2014 00:39 deacon.frost wrote:Show nested quote +On December 03 2014 00:11 marvellosity wrote:On December 02 2014 23:17 deacon.frost wrote:Don't know, when I was trying to get all the secondary objectives I was restarting several missions. Multiple times. WoL included(damn, the Thor mission under 20 minutes was insane, but fun ) It has to be easy in this way if you want to give player a chance to accomplish the rest too(not mentioning master achievements which were too tough even for progamers(I think destiny was raging on stream?). So, no. The campaign is brutal if you want all the achievements and secondary objectives. You are just using different set of achievements and goals/objectives =) I just want it to be difficult to complete the mission, I never cared about any achievements. Yes, but people like you .... well, you are a small minority. So nope, it won't be any harder. As I said - it is entertaining, that OP created his own achievements
So we have, wait for it - multiple difficulty levels! Such an elegant and ostensibly obvious solution, shame no one has thought of it.
|
On December 03 2014 00:13 bartus88 wrote:
I somewhat agree, but it shouldn't be much harder than HotS. It would be off-putting for too many players. Remember diamond still means you're better than >90% of all 1v1 players. Also, as others have pointed out, the achievements give you some more challenge and as long as you can challenge yourself, like you did, it doesn't really matter right?
I just don't get why HOTS is so much easier than WOL. Like, 5x easier. Hard/brutal should at least force you to do more than silver-level macro a-move type shit to beat the missions (which WOL does do).
|
Hmm I thought it was just me because I'm better at Z than T, but I found HotS way easier than WoL as well.
|
Reverse your mouse, so moving it up will move the mouse cursor down, going left means it'll actually travel right.
|
Play the entire campaign zoomed in/tilted to the maximum
|
Play the campaign with only a touchscreen.
|
Play wearing boxing gloves.
|
On December 02 2014 22:57 REyeM wrote:Some people enjoy speedruns, I've seen quite a few Grand Theft Auto streamers that just do that. Maybe you should give it a try, kind of like "Hurry up it's raid night achievement" sort of style, sort of thing, sort of fun having.
The problem with speedrunning RTS is that there are often really long annoying missions that are impossible to speed up.
Example: SC2 WoL has zero hour, the dig, great train robbery (Can speedup 30 seconds), All-in.
Out of 19 missions required to complete WoL, 15 missions take 75 minutes the other 4 missions take 75 minutes = 2.5 hours (Brutal). In GTA if you're on some mission that you can't speedup i'm probably going to guess it doesn't take 20-30 minutes for that mission.
|
On December 03 2014 00:29 Squat wrote:Show nested quote +On December 03 2014 00:13 bartus88 wrote:
I somewhat agree, but it shouldn't be much harder than HotS. It would be off-putting for too many players. Remember diamond still means you're better than >90% of all 1v1 players. Also, as others have pointed out, the achievements give you some more challenge and as long as you can challenge yourself, like you did, it doesn't really matter right? Why not? I meant it's not like you have to play on brutal. Make easy so basic that my cognitively challenged cat could do it, and make brutal so hard you need a Doctor Octopus backpack to beat it, and then the full spectrum in between. Done, everyone wins.
Brutal is already completely unplayable for 99% of the people who finished the campaign. People finding Brutal easy is a minority of a minority.
|
Play it with your feet only.
Alternatively do it standing on your head.
Though I have to admit I found the HotS campaign significantly easier than WoL. Kerrigan is pretty crazy.
|
Game is balanced around doing it without the special stuff you can grab, to prevent failure states where you can't win a mission because you skipped the secondary objectives for example.
If you want the proper difficult, don't upgrade anything. WoL was the same, the difference was upgrading units wasn't free like in HotS and you weren't able to get everything. HotS also brought an Hero unit along that could summon a Hero unit later on.
LotV will be the same, probably even more OP hero abilities, since the Hero unit is omni present on the map. Depends on how strongly it slaps you with free units.
That aside they are doing a good job at keeping you active and not sitting back to much and they add bonus difficulty by giving achievements. So basically everything I don't like.
But the Units and Upgrades they gave Zerg compared to Terran was what made the game so incredible easy.
So overall the design is fairly solid, unless you grab every objective and don't care for the achievements. But I think they realized that if they give out OP abilities so easily, they have to adapt the difficulty a bit to it. In LotV they will probably force feed you strong upgrades so they can up the difficult level accordingly. So we will get the OP units from HotS, with the WoL difficult level. Atleast that would be my bet.
But never forget the Sc2 AI is almost as dumb as the BW AI, and it will face the race that uses a certain book.
edit: Oh which reminds me, multiple endings. They don't have to give research points for the secondary objectives, but give you perfect ending points.
|
United Kingdom36161 Posts
On December 03 2014 01:23 -Celestial- wrote:
Play it with your feet only.
Alternatively do it standing on your head.
Though I have to admit I found the HotS campaign significantly easier than WoL. Kerrigan is pretty crazy.
ya it's the hero unit thing. if you can use the hero well, everything else is trivial.
|
On December 03 2014 01:21 maartendq wrote:Show nested quote +On December 03 2014 00:29 Squat wrote:On December 03 2014 00:13 bartus88 wrote:
I somewhat agree, but it shouldn't be much harder than HotS. It would be off-putting for too many players. Remember diamond still means you're better than >90% of all 1v1 players. Also, as others have pointed out, the achievements give you some more challenge and as long as you can challenge yourself, like you did, it doesn't really matter right? Why not? I meant it's not like you have to play on brutal. Make easy so basic that my cognitively challenged cat could do it, and make brutal so hard you need a Doctor Octopus backpack to beat it, and then the full spectrum in between. Done, everyone wins. Brutal is already completely unplayable for 99% of the people who finished the campaign. People finding Brutal easy is a minority of a minority.
So what's the harm in making it harder for that 1%? That argument was a complete non sequitur. If someone is unable to play on brutal, play on an easier setting. I'm not advocating for making the game super hard in single player, I just want the option.
|
On December 02 2014 22:51 KaiserJohan wrote:
Yeah, brutal mode was too easy. I hoped for something more challenging.
Maybe LotV will be more difficult, but I doubt it, blizzard designs their games for the lowest common denominator now.
That is what the easiest setting is for. In WoL, only a small percentage beat the game on brutal. Why put too much work into content which is used by a small percentage only?
Citing another one's personal achievement of beating the highest difficulty setting with additional restrictions and concluding that the game is designed for the lowest common denominator, is really BS.
|
I would agree that HotS was way easier than WoL, but at the same time I think it was a lot more fun? Like the mission design was a lot better... but they just needed to make them harder lol. No threat of failure made it not mean as much.
|
Well, "harder" shouldn't be equal to "AI just throws you 5x more units over the same duration". Making campaigns challenging requires a lot of work. It requires reworking all mission maps. And a mission will be still winnable in an hour (you don't want to play same mission for 4 days right?). From a developer perspective this is too much a high investment low return situation
|
just speedrun it, makes for infinite fun with any campaign because there is always room for improvement :>
|
They should make an Impossible difficulty that is really that... Impossible. I mean 0 chance of ever winning. Then the hardcore can bang their heads against that until SC3 is released
|
On December 03 2014 01:32 aike wrote:
I would agree that HotS was way easier than WoL, but at the same time I think it was a lot more fun? Like the mission design was a lot better... but they just needed to make them harder lol. No threat of failure made it not mean as much.
Much much more fun. Which is why I've bothered playing it so much.
|
On December 03 2014 01:17 Squat wrote:
Play wearing boxing gloves.
LOL
|
On December 03 2014 01:31 Squat wrote:Show nested quote +On December 03 2014 01:21 maartendq wrote:On December 03 2014 00:29 Squat wrote:On December 03 2014 00:13 bartus88 wrote:
I somewhat agree, but it shouldn't be much harder than HotS. It would be off-putting for too many players. Remember diamond still means you're better than >90% of all 1v1 players. Also, as others have pointed out, the achievements give you some more challenge and as long as you can challenge yourself, like you did, it doesn't really matter right? Why not? I meant it's not like you have to play on brutal. Make easy so basic that my cognitively challenged cat could do it, and make brutal so hard you need a Doctor Octopus backpack to beat it, and then the full spectrum in between. Done, everyone wins. Brutal is already completely unplayable for 99% of the people who finished the campaign. People finding Brutal easy is a minority of a minority. So what's the harm in making it harder for that 1%? That argument was a complete non sequitur. If someone is unable to play on brutal, play on an easier setting. I'm not advocating for making the game super hard in single player, I just want the option.
The harm is that every difficulty level has to be thoroughly tested and you have only so much manpower. Adding content for 1% means less content for the rest.
|
On December 03 2014 01:48 [F_]aths wrote:Show nested quote +On December 03 2014 01:31 Squat wrote:On December 03 2014 01:21 maartendq wrote:On December 03 2014 00:29 Squat wrote:On December 03 2014 00:13 bartus88 wrote:
I somewhat agree, but it shouldn't be much harder than HotS. It would be off-putting for too many players. Remember diamond still means you're better than >90% of all 1v1 players. Also, as others have pointed out, the achievements give you some more challenge and as long as you can challenge yourself, like you did, it doesn't really matter right? Why not? I meant it's not like you have to play on brutal. Make easy so basic that my cognitively challenged cat could do it, and make brutal so hard you need a Doctor Octopus backpack to beat it, and then the full spectrum in between. Done, everyone wins. Brutal is already completely unplayable for 99% of the people who finished the campaign. People finding Brutal easy is a minority of a minority. So what's the harm in making it harder for that 1%? That argument was a complete non sequitur. If someone is unable to play on brutal, play on an easier setting. I'm not advocating for making the game super hard in single player, I just want the option. The harm is that every difficulty level has to be thoroughly tested and you have only so much manpower. Adding content for 1% means less content for the rest. It's not that hard to make difficult games.
Anyway i think "brutal" shouldn't be so every diamond+ could do whole campaign on first try before playing it before. Like it was in WoL and HotS.
|
On December 03 2014 01:48 [F_]aths wrote:Show nested quote +On December 03 2014 01:31 Squat wrote:On December 03 2014 01:21 maartendq wrote:On December 03 2014 00:29 Squat wrote:On December 03 2014 00:13 bartus88 wrote:
I somewhat agree, but it shouldn't be much harder than HotS. It would be off-putting for too many players. Remember diamond still means you're better than >90% of all 1v1 players. Also, as others have pointed out, the achievements give you some more challenge and as long as you can challenge yourself, like you did, it doesn't really matter right? Why not? I meant it's not like you have to play on brutal. Make easy so basic that my cognitively challenged cat could do it, and make brutal so hard you need a Doctor Octopus backpack to beat it, and then the full spectrum in between. Done, everyone wins. Brutal is already completely unplayable for 99% of the people who finished the campaign. People finding Brutal easy is a minority of a minority. So what's the harm in making it harder for that 1%? That argument was a complete non sequitur. If someone is unable to play on brutal, play on an easier setting. I'm not advocating for making the game super hard in single player, I just want the option. The harm is that every difficulty level has to be thoroughly tested and you have only so much manpower. Adding content for 1% means less content for the rest.
So why even have brutal in the first place then? By this reasoning, we should only have whatever difficulty the most people can comfortably beat. I'm sorry, but these arguments seem increasingly spurious.
If we're going to have a brutal setting, make it worthy of the name, or don't even bother with it.
|
On December 03 2014 01:56 Tuczniak wrote:Show nested quote +On December 03 2014 01:48 [F_]aths wrote:On December 03 2014 01:31 Squat wrote:On December 03 2014 01:21 maartendq wrote:On December 03 2014 00:29 Squat wrote:On December 03 2014 00:13 bartus88 wrote:
I somewhat agree, but it shouldn't be much harder than HotS. It would be off-putting for too many players. Remember diamond still means you're better than >90% of all 1v1 players. Also, as others have pointed out, the achievements give you some more challenge and as long as you can challenge yourself, like you did, it doesn't really matter right? Why not? I meant it's not like you have to play on brutal. Make easy so basic that my cognitively challenged cat could do it, and make brutal so hard you need a Doctor Octopus backpack to beat it, and then the full spectrum in between. Done, everyone wins. Brutal is already completely unplayable for 99% of the people who finished the campaign. People finding Brutal easy is a minority of a minority. So what's the harm in making it harder for that 1%? That argument was a complete non sequitur. If someone is unable to play on brutal, play on an easier setting. I'm not advocating for making the game super hard in single player, I just want the option. The harm is that every difficulty level has to be thoroughly tested and you have only so much manpower. Adding content for 1% means less content for the rest. It's not that hard to make difficult games. Anyway i think "brutal" shouldn't be so every diamond+ could do whole campaign on first try before playing it before. Like it was in WoL and HotS.
It is hard to make difficult, yet fair games. Instead of bragging around how easy you think the campaign is (i finished both campaigns on brutal as well) why don't you enjoy playing with additional restrictions?
I see no valid criticism in this thread that the campaign is in fact too easy for a strategy game campaign. I see some players who have hundreds of hours multiplayer experience bragging about how easy they find the campaign missions.
|
On December 03 2014 01:59 Squat wrote:Show nested quote +On December 03 2014 01:48 [F_]aths wrote:On December 03 2014 01:31 Squat wrote:On December 03 2014 01:21 maartendq wrote:On December 03 2014 00:29 Squat wrote:On December 03 2014 00:13 bartus88 wrote:
I somewhat agree, but it shouldn't be much harder than HotS. It would be off-putting for too many players. Remember diamond still means you're better than >90% of all 1v1 players. Also, as others have pointed out, the achievements give you some more challenge and as long as you can challenge yourself, like you did, it doesn't really matter right? Why not? I meant it's not like you have to play on brutal. Make easy so basic that my cognitively challenged cat could do it, and make brutal so hard you need a Doctor Octopus backpack to beat it, and then the full spectrum in between. Done, everyone wins. Brutal is already completely unplayable for 99% of the people who finished the campaign. People finding Brutal easy is a minority of a minority. So what's the harm in making it harder for that 1%? That argument was a complete non sequitur. If someone is unable to play on brutal, play on an easier setting. I'm not advocating for making the game super hard in single player, I just want the option. The harm is that every difficulty level has to be thoroughly tested and you have only so much manpower. Adding content for 1% means less content for the rest. So why even have brutal in the first place then? By this reasoning, we should only have whatever difficulty the most people can comfortably beat. I'm sorry, but these arguments seem increasingly spurious. If we're going to have a brutal setting, make it worthy of the name, or don't even bother with it.
If we only had the first three difficulties and no 'brutal' setting, a larger percentage of players would have no real challenge. If brutal would be much, much harder than hard, we in fact still would have only three usable difficulty settings for most players. If we would have five instead of four settings, it would require more work in mission design which would mean less content somewhere else.
|
How about playing with your off-hand?
I know I would get destroyed.
|
On December 03 2014 02:16 Salteador Neo wrote:
How about playing with your off-hand?
I know I would get destroyed.
Might consider that. Sounds difficult.
|
I used to play The broodwar campaign with only 1 worker per mineral when I was younger. No wonder it was so difficult.
My suggestion would be to have some sort of drinking game.
Use kerrigan - Take a sip
Supply blocked - take a sip
Finish a mission - Finish your drink
fail to complete a mission - 1 shot
JOKER Bonus: sc2 crashes - 3 shots
Or whatever rules you fancy.
|
Compared to old school RTS campaigns like Command & Conquer and Age of Empires I would say HotS is on the easy side for sure. Probably lacking a bit too much challenge wise. WoL has more challenging levels, especially on brutal, but certainly not hard overall. I remember finding Starcraft and Broodwar campaigns even easier, mostly because there was no difficulty adjuster.
|
On December 03 2014 01:34 mantequilla wrote:Well, "harder" shouldn't be equal to "AI just throws you 5x more units over the same duration". Making campaigns challenging requires a lot of work. It requires reworking all mission maps. And a mission will be still winnable in an hour (you don't want to play same mission for 4 days right?). From a developer perspective this is too much a high investment low return situation To put my reply in perspective, I am one of the guys who spent two years the Brood War campaigns in Starcraft 2, so I do have some experience in mapmaking, even though it all happened on my free time.
You make maps challenging because that makes for a better game, even if a large fraction of players won't use it. I'm not a professionnal developper, but when making the Brood War campaigns remake, we took that extra step to make sure the maps would be challenging for, say, diamond players. Then we added lower difficulty levels so more people could play them.
Did that require more work? Yes. Was it worth it? Yes. Players really felt they had done something when completing a campaign. Spending three hours to try and beat the final mission usually ends it "that was fun" when they finally do it.
I don't want to sound like I'm teaching Blizzard employees their job, they are professionnal and I'm not. WoL and HotS campaigns are vastly larger than anything I'm ever going to do. But there were difficulty issues with the HotS campaign.
Kerrigan's ability were definitely overpowered. Spawn banelings should never have made it past beta testing, not only did it make your units irrelevant, but it also made enemy units irrelevant. Enemy waves fell in three categories: those I could break in one spawn banelings, in two spawn banelings, and air. You could increase the size of attack waves, I'm not sure I would particularly notice. Predictably, the difficulty mostly came from the timer, not the obstacles you had to overcomme.
An other point is that the AI barely used any abilities. I recall Templar using psionic storm, but the Terran never used cloak or scan. That's an other way to make missions challenging, but it didn't happen, even though it takes a trigger of three lines to make banshees cloak (it is literally three, I did it).
A note about Casual difficulty: I once tried the level where you rescue Raynor in Casual. I a-moved to the other side of the map, went away to cook dinner, and when I returned, Kerrigan was alive and well where I told her to go. I did it again for the second half of the level, and won the achievement "Never have Kerrigan go below 50% hp". I suspect it would be difficult to lose that level in Casual even if you tried.
Now, obviously, this is Casual and maybe that level is an exception. But who exactly is Casual difficulty (or lack thereof) designed for? This level is near the end of the campaign but you can, literally, win it without playing. I find this telling because I don't think this would happen if the difficulties were designed as a way to challenge players. I feel the campaign was design to be "cool" and accessible to lots of players, rather than balanced - even though the two are not mutually exclusive, thanks to difficulty levels.
TL;DR: I agree that the HotS campaign were too easy, and a lot of it came from overpowered abilities. But more to the point, I feel Blizzard didn't really try to make them challenging.
|
On December 03 2014 02:02 [F_]aths wrote:I see no valid criticism in this thread that the campaign is in fact too easy for a strategy game campaign. I see some players who have hundreds of hours multiplayer experience bragging about how easy they find the campaign missions.
I haven't played SC2 since 2011 when I beat the campaign on Hard and had like 100 games to my multiplayer name. Maybe less.
Two weeks ago I loaded up WOL single player on brutal. I've beaten almost every mission on my first try. The ones I didn't beat on the first try? Their execution comes down to getting lucky, either by doing the missions in the optimal order (to have the right units) or those stupid Marauder patrols being in the right place, or finding a gimmick solution (DT walls in the last Protoss mission).
The point here being that if the missions didn't come down to luck or knowing some gimmick solutions, I, having not played the game since 2011, and not playing it much at all when I did play it, would have beaten the entire thing on my first try.
And you don't think that's too easy.
OK.
p.s.: on a slight side note, I've been really disappointed with just how few macro missions there are in WOL (and yeah, I know, HOTS is even worse). Every single mission doesn't have to be KKND, but how about 1/5? 1/10? 1/20?
|
Remember when devs used to make challenging games that was not achievement hunting? I liked those days man. Only game that gave me those feels in recent years was probably Dark Souls.
|
On December 03 2014 02:41 KrOmander wrote:
Remember when devs used to make challenging games that was not achievement hunting? I liked those days man. Only game that gave me those feels in recent years was probably Dark Souls.
There are still plenty of games like that out there, if you know where to look.
|
On December 03 2014 02:44 Nafa wrote:Show nested quote +On December 03 2014 02:41 KrOmander wrote:
Remember when devs used to make challenging games that was not achievement hunting? I liked those days man. Only game that gave me those feels in recent years was probably Dark Souls.
There are still plenty of games like that out there, if you know where to look.
Really? Where do I have to look for these games then? They seem to be doing a great job of avoiding my attention..
|
On December 03 2014 02:35 Telenil wrote:
But there were difficulty issues with the HotS campaign.
Kerrigan's ability were definitely overpowered. Spawn banelings should never have made it past beta testing, not only did it make your units irrelevant, but it also made enemy units irrelevant. As I understood Blizzard, Kerrigan was intended to be OP.
Maybe not everyone enjoys being able to almost solo the front line, I also felt that some unit types were superfluous. But HotS is seemingly about Kerrigan as hero character with really strong combat abilities.
|
Really? Where do I have to look for these games then? They seem to be doing a great job of avoiding my attention..
Steam would be a great start, there are plenty of games there.
|
On December 03 2014 02:41 pure.Wasted wrote:Show nested quote +On December 03 2014 02:02 [F_]aths wrote:I see no valid criticism in this thread that the campaign is in fact too easy for a strategy game campaign. I see some players who have hundreds of hours multiplayer experience bragging about how easy they find the campaign missions. I haven't played SC2 since 2011 when I beat the campaign on Hard and had like 100 games to my multiplayer name. Maybe less. Two weeks ago I loaded up WOL single player on brutal. I've beaten almost every mission on my first try. The ones I didn't beat on the first try? Their execution comes down to getting lucky, either by doing the missions in the optimal order (to have the right units) or those stupid Marauder patrols being in the right place, or finding a gimmick solution (DT walls in the last Protoss mission). The point here being that if the missions didn't come down to luck or knowing some gimmick solutions, I, having not played the game since 2011, and not playing it much at all when I did play it, would have beaten the entire thing on my first try. And you don't think that's too easy. OK. p.s.: on a slight side note, I've been really disappointed with just how few macro missions there are in WOL (and yeah, I know, HOTS is even worse). Every single mission doesn't have to be KKND, but how about 1/5? 1/10? 1/20?
(If you want to macro, you can use the multiplayer mode or play a custom vs AI.)
I guess that most RTS single player fans don't even know what macro management is. Did you play Command&Conquer? I did play the campaign and was proud when I had a mammoth tank. (I talk about the 1995 original C&C.)
Of course I consider both campaigns, especially HotS, easy. But I have years of prior RTS experience in multiplayer as well (when I quickly learned, that a lot of early units is better than to save up for a mammoth.)
|
On December 03 2014 03:03 Nafa wrote:Show nested quote +
Really? Where do I have to look for these games then? They seem to be doing a great job of avoiding my attention..
Steam would be a great start, there are plenty of games there.
Yes I have a steam account thanks.
|
Bisutopia19320 Posts
They did a great job of making the user feel really powerful while controlling the swarm. Unfortunately, it ultimately makes the accomplishment of winning in brutal underwhelming.
I remember playing through the WoL campaign and selecting brutal on my first play through. The stupid mission where resources are rare and lava keeps rising was pretty difficult the first time through. Now I've improved enough where I skate through all brutal levels excluding the final mission. That actually requires you to pay attention if your builds aren't gimmicky.
|
|
|
On December 03 2014 08:21 frajen86 wrote:
Speedrun it!
Starcraft speedrunning is really fun, especially the original series with its amount of glitches and imba. I was running Precursor at one point, anything beyond that is out of my league.
I find WoL's Brutal significantly easier than HotS', at least I haven't yet bothered to finish the latter. Abusing the Terran tech was so much more fun.
|
I would love love love LotV to be near impossible.
|
On December 03 2014 08:30 rotta wrote:Starcraft speedrunning is really fun, especially the original series with its amount of glitches and imba. I was running Precursor at one point, anything beyond that is out of my league. I find WoL's Brutal significantly easier than HotS', at least I haven't yet bothered to finish the latter. Abusing the Terran tech was so much more fun.
It's not the same game. HotS campaign is a RPG, which was the oringinal plan. With Kerrigan the superheroine dropping banelings and summoning Leviathan, you hardly need anything else.
|
On December 03 2014 09:42 caznitch wrote:
I would love love love LotV to be near impossible.
Too bad then that they explicitly said at Blizzcon that we can expect LotV's Brutal to be roughly the same as in HotS.
|
On December 03 2014 11:30 Maniak_ wrote:Show nested quote +On December 03 2014 09:42 caznitch wrote:
I would love love love LotV to be near impossible. Too bad then that they explicitly said at Blizzcon that we can expect LotV's Brutal to be roughly the same as in HotS.
Well fuck balls then! Don't remember that part.
|
On December 02 2014 22:12 lichter wrote:
New rule: You can only touch your keyboard and mouse while holding your breath
* Disclaimer: lichter takes no responsibility for anyone that actually tries this and passes out
Hmm...I don't think I can do this, i'd be hyperventilating as much as I toke
|
On December 03 2014 09:42 caznitch wrote:
I would love love love LotV to be near impossible.
It is going to be the Protoss campaign, nothing is impossible with Protoss.
Sorry I had to.
|
|
|
On December 03 2014 09:42 caznitch wrote:
I would love love love LotV to be near impossible.
We've already had a mini toss campaign in WoL. Did that feel "near impossible"?
|
On December 02 2014 22:12 lichter wrote:
New rule: You can only touch your keyboard and mouse while holding your breath
* Disclaimer: lichter takes no responsibility for anyone that actually tries this and passes out
Good, I will use my mouse only.
Why you give me such easy challenges?
|
I thought the campaign was super ez. I played brutal and typed "terribleterribledamage (might be terrible terrible damage" and rolled through it.
|
Well, it took Jaedong a few tries to beat The Crucible on brutal for the first time
|
On December 03 2014 12:00 GGzerG wrote:Show nested quote +On December 03 2014 09:42 caznitch wrote:
I would love love love LotV to be near impossible. It is going to be the Protoss campaign, nothing is impossible with Protoss. Sorry I had to.
Regardless of the campaign's difficulty, some Achievements must be very challenging.
|
On December 03 2014 14:53 TedCruz2016 wrote:
Regardless of the campaign's difficulty, some Achievements must be very challenging.
Truth to be told, the Mastery achievements were what I would expect from Brutal difficulty. You have to think it through and possibly try a few times before you get them. Still, the main challenge comes from the timer, not the enemy waves proper.
Well, I guess my first LotV playthrough will have to be in Brutal...
|
The starcraft 2 vanilla campaign was pretty good for difficulty and was pretty fun and epic to pass. The hots was terrible even getting all the achievements was easy. I think i only died few times during the campaign but still was no were near as epic as i expected i feel it is not up to standard in difficulty. I expected more from blizzard.
|
On December 03 2014 12:52 TedCruz2016 wrote:Show nested quote +On December 03 2014 09:42 caznitch wrote:
I would love love love LotV to be near impossible. We've already had a mini toss campaign in WoL. Did that feel "near impossible"?
That last mission of it (In Utter Darkness) can be pretty tricky on Brutal if you don't want to abuse DT walls.
|
On December 04 2014 01:11 -Celestial- wrote:Show nested quote +On December 03 2014 12:52 TedCruz2016 wrote:On December 03 2014 09:42 caznitch wrote:
I would love love love LotV to be near impossible. We've already had a mini toss campaign in WoL. Did that feel "near impossible"? That last mission of it (In Utter Darkness) can be pretty tricky on Brutal if you don't want to abuse DT walls.
Mmh even without abusing this, with just DTs and overseer sniping it's still pretty easy even to get all achievements on Brutal (though it may be close for the last one).
But timed missions (and especially *long* timed missions) are still annoying. Just enough to do so you can't do anything else while waiting, but not enough to do to be interesting :/
|
I wont do speedruns. Not for a while anyway.
But I'm currently at the SH mission without Kerrigan... Which is the same. I've allowed myself to use her to get bonus mission points. As long as she never fires at anything. And don't use abilities.
|
On December 04 2014 01:11 -Celestial- wrote:Show nested quote +On December 03 2014 12:52 TedCruz2016 wrote:On December 03 2014 09:42 caznitch wrote:
I would love love love LotV to be near impossible. We've already had a mini toss campaign in WoL. Did that feel "near impossible"? That last mission of it (In Utter Darkness) can be pretty tricky on Brutal if you don't want to abuse DT walls.
For me the key was immortals.
I did not need the DT wall because my immortals blasted the hybrids to smithereens. At least for long enough to make it through brutal. Of course I also built phoenixes for air defence.
|
|
|
|
|
|
EPT
