Damn it, it looks like Nova comes with a hero. I was hoping she wouldn't. I'm starting to get the grim feeling that every commander that is a likable character with lots of fans is going to have a hero, and co-op will turn into a big hero-fest.

DrSeRRoD

United States490 Posts

October 03 2016 23:35 GMT

#725

I think since Terran didn't have a hero unit, and now Protoss has one, they made Nova the unit. Probably a good way to avoid giving ghosts/nukes to a commander, just making her the solo-ghost with a nuke ability. She also has the DLC shotgun so we may have various playstyles of controlling her, which would be new and unique amongst in-game commanders.

SidianTheBard

United States2475 Posts

October 04 2016 00:59 GMT

#726

It only made sense she would be a controllable hero especially considering all the files from her campaign are already in the game. Now just increase the unit size a bit to make her stand out more and bam, good to go!

I also hope ghosts/spectres are available with Nova. Like a Vorazun playstyle but for Nova. Permacloaked units. Maybe ghosts will be cheaper to get? 75/25 or something so they are the unit you mass? Of course they'd have different spells but it could be fun.

Permacloak libs, ghosts, nova, marines, banshees, wraiths & medivacs? Probably tanks with boosters because why not.

Think she'll have a top commander bar like Alarak? Nuke type ammo system like toxic nest? Slowly get more nukes over time, that'd be neat. Then have 3 buttons at the top that switch between her weapons, sniper rifle, shotgun or sword.

edit:

Watched the preview video, it says to check out the Nova co-op preview but I can't seem to find it?

Rizare

Canada592 Posts

October 04 2016 01:46 GMT

#727

On October 04 2016 09:59 SidianTheBard wrote:
It only made sense she would be a controllable hero especially considering all the files from her campaign are already in the game. Now just increase the unit size a bit to make her stand out more and bam, good to go!

I also hope ghosts/spectres are available with Nova. Like a Vorazun playstyle but for Nova. Permacloaked units. Maybe ghosts will be cheaper to get? 75/25 or something so they are the unit you mass? Of course they'd have different spells but it could be fun.

Permacloak libs, ghosts, nova, marines, banshees, wraiths & medivacs? Probably tanks with boosters because why not.

Think she'll have a top commander bar like Alarak? Nuke type ammo system like toxic nest? Slowly get more nukes over time, that'd be neat. Then have 3 buttons at the top that switch between her weapons, sniper rifle, shotgun or sword.

edit:

Watched the preview video, it says to check out the Nova co-op preview but I can't seem to find it?

When you hover the mouse over the preview video toward the end, it says that it's coming soon.

Unlike Alarak, I'll wait for a bit before buying her like I did with Abathur.

DrSeRRoD

United States490 Posts

October 04 2016 11:34 GMT

#728

It looks like they want to push 3.7 to try the new MMR system with the next season, which is Oct 18th. I'd say the week before, we get the usual teasers on twitter, then the video the Friday or Monday before, and then Nova on the 18th. Looking forward to playing a new commander, but not the long queue times.

Laurens

Belgium4557 Posts

October 12 2016 07:38 GMT

#729

Forgive me for being months late, but I just noticed you have to pay 5 euros each for the new commanders? Am I the only one who finds this ridiculous?

What is the new content we are paying for exactly, some new upgrades?

I understand paying for the Nova campaign, but extra commanders..

Not sure why they gave Karax for free and then charged for subsequent ones either.

I'll probably buy it anyway because I really like co-op, damn you Blizzard...

fezvez

France3021 Posts

October 12 2016 13:00 GMT

#730

I am fine with paying for Nova if it means that Co-op keep getting patches / updates / new maps / new mutators.

DrSeRRoD

United States490 Posts

October 12 2016 15:00 GMT

#731

Paying $5 for 10+ hours of gameplay with a new commander is worth it for me. There's nothing else funding co-op, so if being able to play using a different commander at that price is what helps them keep pumping out commanders, maps, and more co-op content, I'm all for it. They probably didn't have the pricing and infrastructure finalized with Karax, but it looks like they're all set now with commanders and new skins. We don't get new maps very fast, so being able to play the current/old maps in a new way (commanders & mutations) is the best option for now and, at the price of a coffee or sub, it's a steal IMO.

weikor

Austria580 Posts

October 12 2016 17:47 GMT

#732

yeah definitely one of the more humane prices of blizzard.

In wow Faction and server transfer (basically paying to play with your friends if theyre on a different server and a different faction) costs 45 euro and doesnt improve the game at all.

Rizare

Canada592 Posts

October 12 2016 18:23 GMT

#733

They explained here that all future commanders would cost money but since Karax was the first one to be added, he would be given for free to everyone that owns LOTV. http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/blog/19975211/karax-now-available-in-legacy-of-the-void-co-op-missions-12-15-2015

In the meantime, those are the 2 gif teasers from the Starcraft twitter about Nova so far while we are waiting for the preview blog.

tokinho

United States792 Posts

October 12 2016 22:31 GMT

#734

On October 13 2016 03:23 Rizare wrote:
They explained here that all future commanders would cost money but since Karax was the first one to be added, he would be given for free to everyone that owns LOTV. http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/blog/19975211/karax-now-available-in-legacy-of-the-void-co-op-missions-12-15-2015

In the meantime, those are the 2 gif teasers from the Starcraft twitter about Nova so far while we are waiting for the preview blog.

https://twitter.com/StarCraft/status/785533211308728320
https://twitter.com/StarCraft/status/785918286139498496

nice! nova release

Rizare

Canada592 Posts

October 13 2016 17:55 GMT

#735

And the official preview is up for anyone who wants to dissect without any actual numbers. http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/blog/20320355/

quick tl;dr
-She starts with her maximum 100 supply so never need to build supply depot
-She can only have 1 rax, 1 factory and 1 starport and she has stronger but more expensive variants of marines, marauders, ghosts with emp, hellbats, goliaths, tanks, liberators, banshees and ravens. Also you can deploy them anywhere and no build time(?)
-Her calldowns cost minerals instead of energy but have short cooldowns

So it seems she'll be quite micro-intensive to play.

Edit: Nathanias got to play Nova at the Blizzard HQ(?). Not done watching the videos but marines are freaking 600 mins, hahahahaha. Here's the video.

Tuczniak

1561 Posts

October 15 2016 12:22 GMT

#736

I think she will be fun, but I have concerns of her viability on hard missions and mutations.

Another thing is that microing is fun, but having extremely diverse army where every unit have at least one active ability is more spamming than microing. And I wonder if we will be supposed to upgrade attack/defence on bio, mech and air separately. We will have to see.

The Bottle

242 Posts

October 15 2016 17:39 GMT

#737

Nova looks like a lot of fun. I don't think it's just a case of spamming. Your liberator and tank positioning is important (especially tanks, which don't have Raynor's fast transform or Swann's hercs, but there's a higher reward for placing them right). Goliaths have no active ability but you want to focus on targeting correctly with them. And the fact that keeping your units alive is more important with Nova than with most other commanders adds a large element of micro. There will be a lot of choosing which unit is right to use in which engagement (pushing Nova forward alone, sieging your liberators before your units engage, etc.)

If anything, I think Nova's worst missions will be forward pushing missions (void shards, rak'shir, etc). Because here you are trying to engage carefully and correctly while your Zagara or Vorazun ally is just a-moving forward and destroying everything. But she will be fantastic in things like Mist Opportunities, train map, etc. She might also be pretty strong on Vermillion Problem because of the transport ability.Though she might hit a wall with the scourge/viper comp, since some of her strongest units are air. (Though maybe if you save your defense drones and seeker missiles for the scourge you might be all right.)

Icysoul

Canada254 Posts

October 15 2016 18:10 GMT

#738

It's hard to predict how strong she will be without knowing how resource starved she will be with the expensive units. But my initial impression is that well microed she should be one of the stronger commaders. She has the carpet bomb thing to handle massive waves like the last wave of void launch, and mobility for missions like trains and vermillion. A weakness could be something like viper scourge baneling, but even then nova herself can do quite a bit before the wave actually arrives. Tactically her main weakness might be that if she falls behind, its really hard to come back given how hard it is to be cost-efficient when you have a small army.

I think pushing forward wouldn't be as bad as you predicted however, since her explosive mine thing can wittle down some of the problematic units that she might struggle the most against.

Kirena

United States6 Posts

October 15 2016 19:17 GMT

#739

I wonder how exactly the "Resistant to Stuns" aspect works in practice for her forces. Is it literally just Stuns? Or does it affect other kinds of crowd control? Will her units be immune to things like Viper Abducts or Blinding Clouds? What all qualifies as a Stun in Coop Missions?

BaneRiders

Sweden3630 Posts

October 15 2016 21:32 GMT

#740

I may be a bit late to the party but something occurred to me today. I played the mutation on hard with random partners, and it turned out some of them played on brutal. I teamed up with one of them and we played both on brutal a couple of times with the same composition as before. It is difficult for me to judge based on a few games of course, but I did have a feeling that it got more difficult when both were playing on brutal instead of hard/brutal. I noticed for sure the different SCV speed (played Raynor) between hard and brutal, and another thing was that when playing hard/brutal, it actually counted as brutal in the achievements counter, but I only got the additional XP when I had selected brutal myself. Is this common knowledge since 1994 or something? Is there a real difference when playing hard/brutal vs brutal/brutal or pure imagination from my side?