So here are some random thoughts I've had from playing SC2 at Blizzcon.
- Marines are really fucking strong. I played a game against PsyonicReaver and his 4 marines killed 2 zealots and 1 dragoon. Marines are stronger and have a lot quicker firing rate and are easier to micro, equating to some really imbalance early game.
- Probes are the strongest workers IMO... it is easier to micro probes and they fire faster + range , making them the strongest worker.
- Zerg is REALLY weak early game vs rushes (ZvP) if they don't get lings fast. Worker micro doesn't work the same as in SC1. For example, in SC1 if you stack workers and go through the unit you can disrupt it and attack without losing workers.. this doesn't quite work in SC2. I.E, Yellow was able to kill about 4-5-6 drones with 1 zealot and 1 probe just because drones blow and the zerg went FE.
- Fast expand is probably not as viable in SC2 as it has become in SC1 just because micro works in such a way that early game you really need units, even static defense (cannons / sunkens) are very weak in comparison to SC1.
- Storm has a smaller radius, doesn't last as long - but is much more powerful.
- Stalkers are REALLY strong if you have a group of about 12-15 with blink, holy fuck.
- Assimilators/Gas things randomly stop working, so you have to micro probes and shit so you can mine mins / gas effectively throughout the game.
- Multiple Building Select has been tweaked ... for example if you hotkey 5 gateways and want to make 5 zealots you need to press (Z+Z+Z+Z+Z) instead of just clicking "Z". I guess in this way they wanted to make you feel more like you are macroing. It took a few games to actually figure this out and adjust - but macro is still a lot easier.
- Computer AI is actually pretty decent - I played a TvT against computer on hardest difficulty and it was actually pretty decent. It ended up with 6 bases at the end of the game (about 30 min game) and beat me.
- Unit AI is better than in SC1.. for example, units auto swarm (I.E if you attack with zerglings they will automatically go to surround opponents units)
- You can't hotkey locations in SC2 (unless it is a different button in this game). In SC1 you can Shift + F2/F3 etc on a location and have it hotkeyed. This is particularly useful late game if you have 10-15 gateways or whatever and lots of units and can't hotkey all your gates, you just hotkey the location and hit F2 then spam. In SC2, you can't do that. Although I suppose it is mitigated by being able to hotkey 15 gateways at once.
- Space bar still centers the screen, which is good.
- I also noticed that upgrades research a LOT faster (at least for protoss).
- Mutalisks kinda suck because they don't stack and you can't use patrol trick to make them imbalance
--------
Overall Analysis and Thoughts about the Game
SC2 was REALLY fun to play. I think that if you approach SC2 from a non competitive standpoint and are playing because you love gaming/starcraft then you will thoroughly enjoy the game. It has beautiful graphics, the AI is clever enough that the learning curve is not too steep because micro is essentially done for you at times (Zergling auto-surround, etc) and you can just have a lot of fun playing the game and fooling around with abilities and shit.
From a competitive standpoint I think the game has a LOOOOOOOONG way to go before it can be close to what BW has been. Watching SC2 competitively was not nearly as exciting as watching BW games, and playing competitive SC2 games wasn't nearly as stressful / demanding as playing a competitive BW game is.
Also a problem I had with the game is that they need to rework the color schemes. It is really difficult to see zerg units on creep, and also it really gets hard to differentiate your own units. For example, zealots and templars end up looking really similar if they are clumped together; same thing with the terran melee units.
I would say that I really like SC2, but it is far from being ready as a competitive game to replace BW. I hope that Blizzard is patient and keeps working on it and doesn't release it any time soon.
2 more years until we get a perfect product I'd say!
Thank u for sharing ur toughts! I tried to follow everything trough the stream but those 1231231231245 commercials and repetitive videos drove me crazy.
Btw as for ur last sentence:DO u think that sc2 will be released in 2 years? Or ur saying the game actually need at least 2 years plus patching and feedback from players to be able stand up as a competitive game?
One thing that has always worried me is the color scheme and not being able to tell the difference between certain units such as HTs and Zeals as mentioned above, i really hope they come up with something to fix that.
Please stop the X are imba comments, you played it for the most 2 days, no one on planet earth is in position to make a good balance review off 2 days of gameplay. Commenting on how new units and mechanics work are very helpful, but balance comments just degrades the quality of the post
And are you sure there is no more position hotkeys? Did you look the help options, maybe it's a different key?
From a competitive standpoint I think the game has a LOOOOOOOONG way to go before it can be close to what BW has been. Watching SC2 competitively was not nearly as exciting as watching BW games, and playing competitive SC2 games wasn't nearly as stressful / demanding as playing a competitive BW game is.
I spoke to Plexa yesterday and he said the same thing, but I just can't help feeling it's because you guys don't know SC2 well enough yet (obviously I haven't played it at all). The fun part of watching SC is the strategies involved in it. When you watch Flash vs ForGG, every small detail tells you something: "oh, he only has two scvs on gas, not three", "wow, he went dual factory then starport, not factory then dual starport" etc. In SC2 you don't have that, you just watch people building units and attacking each other. Once you get to know the game better, this might change.
The same goes for the game not being as tense. At blizzcon, no-one is really taking the game seriously and there's no feeling of equal levels of skill or whatever. Once you play online against people who are your same skill level, and you know that if you fuck up the new gas mechanic, or if you micro a group of stalkers badly you could lose the game, things might get tenser.
As I've said though, I obviously haven't played the game so I can't really say, but I just know that on the surface, SC is no more enthralling than any other RTS. Ask some non-competitive gamers what their favourite RTS is, and chances are you'll get as many Red Alerts and Age of Empires as SCs. What makes SC a better game is that it has so much depth to it, and that the more you play it and understand it, the more fun it becomes. Hopefully SC2 is the same. Only time will tell.
- Zerg is REALLY weak early game vs rushes (ZvP) if they don't get lings fast. Worker micro doesn't work the same as in SC1. For example, in SC1 if you stack workers and go through the unit you can disrupt it and attack without losing workers.. this doesn't quite work in SC2. I.E, Yellow was able to kill about 4-5-6 drones with 1 zealot and 1 probe just because drones blow and the zerg went FE.
- Fast expand is probably not as viable in SC2 as it has become in SC1 just because micro works in such a way that early game you really need units, even static defense (cannons / sunkens) are very weak in comparison to SC1.
I think some of that may be due to map imbalance, (from what I saw) the starting places were very close to each other.
If i was lead designed, i would purposely create lots of glitches and tricks that only very skilled players could pull off
(reaver scarabs, mineral glitching, drilling workers etc)
as well as muta micro and patrol tricks etc.
they dont seem to realise that they need to add other dimensions to the game that you cant learn straight away. i know its new and there may be many tricks unrealised as of yet. But itl really retract from the game if things like this arnt introduced
On October 12 2008 21:49 Zuries wrote: they dont seem to realise that they need to add other dimensions to the game that you cant learn straight away. i know its new and there may be many tricks unrealised as of yet. But itl really retract from the game if things like this arnt introduced
I don't know if the necessarily need to be glitches, I think just normal skills might also serve that purpose. For instance, psistorms aren't glitches, you get people who can psistorm better than others. Since lots of units have skills, maximising the use of these skills might be something worth learning.
The best example I can think of this is dota. There are almost no commonly used glitches, and controlling your hero is pure micro, yet you can notice the difference between different quality players easily. So it doesn't necessarily need to be a difficult manuever to do a skill, other stuff like when to use the skill, skill placement etc. can make a big difference. With that said, a few skills that aren't just one click away would be nice, like storm for instance. With the smaller radius you'll need to throw your storms damn well. Skills like that where there's a real difference between using the skill and using it well would be nice.
but features like vulture patrol and muta stack are better and require more skill than just "wc3 control" over units like: Try to unstack mutalisks with a irradiated one in the group...
On October 12 2008 22:04 Ki_Do wrote: but features like vulture patrol and muta stack are better and require more skill than just "wc3 control" over units like: Try to unstack mutalisks with a irradiated one in the group...
yeah you totally need that aspect of the game to make it a great e-sports game... I mean I dont really get kicks out of seeing forgg putting 2 scvs on gas instead of 3 or going fac-> port instead of fac -> cc although i know what it means strategically. what turns me on is sexy mutalisk micro or a tense rush which is deflected by some gosu drone drilling and stuff like that...
On October 12 2008 21:16 PobTheCad wrote: This gas randomly stops working thing is a bug right? i mean seriously?
Xeris is wrong, it's not a random thing.
Every 300 gas the thing stops working and recharges. Once it goes back online then you have another 300 etc
Well no, not random . Although, I didn't know it was every 300 gas. Either way I think its kind of stupid and pointless. They have automine for workers, but then they say "hey lets make gas stop working at certain intervals to make them feel like they need to micro workers"
On October 12 2008 22:04 Ki_Do wrote: but features like vulture patrol and muta stack are better and require more skill than just "wc3 control" over units like: Try to unstack mutalisks with a irradiated one in the group...
however you have to realize that these aspects of SC1 were not intentional. it is really hard to do on purpose what was an accident the first time.
On October 12 2008 21:16 PobTheCad wrote: This gas randomly stops working thing is a bug right? i mean seriously?
Xeris is wrong, it's not a random thing.
Every 300 gas the thing stops working and recharges. Once it goes back online then you have another 300 etc
Well no, not random . Although, I didn't know it was every 300 gas. Either way I think its kind of stupid and pointless. They have automine for workers, but then they say "hey lets make gas stop working at certain intervals to make them feel like they need to micro workers"
bleh.
it's interesting because you can have a huge gas boost in early game for a very early tech.
On October 12 2008 21:16 PobTheCad wrote: This gas randomly stops working thing is a bug right? i mean seriously?
Xeris is wrong, it's not a random thing.
Every 300 gas the thing stops working and recharges. Once it goes back online then you have another 300 etc
Well no, not random . Although, I didn't know it was every 300 gas. Either way I think its kind of stupid and pointless. They have automine for workers, but then they say "hey lets make gas stop working at certain intervals to make them feel like they need to micro workers"
bleh.
it's interesting because you can have a huge gas boost in early game for a very early tech.
No no no, what he meant was.... -In BW, you manually mined minerals and gas. -But now in SC2, you now have AUTOMINE! -So now let's add a the 300 GAS LIMIT THING so people have to manually shift SCVs between mining minerals and gas. So why not AUTOMINE for that as well?. -If Blizz aren't gonna add AUTOMINE for that shit, they might as well take out AUTOMINE and the 300 GAS LIMIT SHIT changing it back to BW's manual mining. Less annoying yet simpler though it may require more micro. I don't want some silly gas mining to dictate when I should return to manage my base.
VERY VERY VERY BAD GAME DESIGN IDEA AS WELL AS DECISION, Mr Browder! Just take out AUTOMINE and MBS if you want macro consumption. You cannot compensate for the loss in macro requirements that way. Not like that. Not like that.
If they get enough feedback from the pro side of things, I would imagine patrol-esque micro might be possible. It would certainly fall into their Easy to play difficult to master philosophy. Let's hope so.
It seems like there are a lot more abilities on units overall too, so that will certainly require more control.
As far as art issues, I would be very surprised if the zealot templar mismatch and creep minimap confusion will remain for the gold version. They are calling this the Alpha stage of the game. . While a lot of the art looks finalized, I'm betting a lot of it isn't either. This complaint is at least voiced by all different types of people, so I figure it'll be resolved. From all of the stuff I've seen, I'd expect a HUD overhaul, but maybe it's just not seeing it in person. We've all seen the SC Alpha pictures. haha
Lots of time for changes, there isn't a release date yet, so . . I think we can all agree they care a lot about the product, at least.
Wait, so does it automatically shut down after 300 gas is mined or do you have to activate some sort of ability on your refinery that lets you mine more gas quicker but shuts down your refinery after 300 is mined?
it shuts down automatically after each 300 for a good amount of time.
basically you just hotkey the group of 3 workers to an unused key binding, which there are plenty of thanks to MBS and it warns you when your geyser goes down so you just toss the 3 workers onto min for a few minutes.
problem is i would always forget to put them back until i run out of gas then id go double gas to compensate.
it definitely reminds me of forgetting to go back and keep producing / putting workers on mins during a long macro game with intense battles
i never really got into the late game at blizzcon because i would always rush and usually win. but if my rush did some dmg i would go into tech mode and then get stomped by a counter attack that i didnt expect.
im still on the fence about the gas mechanic though. it definitely adds a bit of base macro. without it i would never even have to look at my base. at the same time it seems a bit tedious
but it also added some strategic depth because if you go gas heavy there a pause every now and then in your gas income so its tough to balance your income with your production consistently
I'd rather see it released in 6 months max, I mean really blizzard are being a bunch of market maniacs by continually saying alpha to ooh and ahhh people infact I even caught Dustin Browder on the shoutcast saying "pre-alpha" PRE-ALPHA? WTF ARE YOU SMOKING?
Seriously, in 6 months max, the game will still be fun, less bugs, and ready to go. SC wasn't too amazing at launch its certainly not what you know today as 1.15 BW and same thing for WC3:RoC it was pretty good at first, but once the expansion came out and more patches it was solid.
You can say all you want a game isn't ready, but when you do finally think"oh wow its ready!" Within the first week someone will find some cheese and abuse it over and over anyway and then begins the patching process. I haven't played the game, but from what I can tell blizzard is just delaying to keep building hype which is a dirty tactic, but whatever.
On October 13 2008 05:52 rOlEx wrote: it shuts down automatically after each 300 for a good amount of time.
basically you just hotkey the group of 3 workers to an unused key binding, which there are plenty of thanks to MBS and it warns you when your geyser goes down so you just toss the 3 workers onto min for a few minutes.
problem is i would always forget to put them back until i run out of gas then id go double gas to compensate.
it definitely reminds me of forgetting to go back and keep producing / putting workers on mins during a long macro game with intense battles
i never really got into the late game at blizzcon because i would always rush and usually win. but if my rush did some dmg i would go into tech mode and then get stomped by a counter attack that i didnt expect.
im still on the fence about the gas mechanic though. it definitely adds a bit of base macro. without it i would never even have to look at my base. at the same time it seems a bit tedious
but it also added some strategic depth because if you go gas heavy there a pause every now and then in your gas income so its tough to balance your income with your production consistently
this only matters for the first few minutes when you don't have much else to do anyway. once you get an econ of 2-3 bases, you can just leave your 3 scvs on the geysers and they will just keep mining. 3 more scvs on minerals really won't affect the game that much except for maybe the first 5 minutes.
Seriously, Zerg SUCK. Zerg sucks so hard I can't even describe it... The only thing you had to do in this version to beat anybody was 2 gate and tech to Zealot Charge. GG, every time without fail. It was pretty bad. I lost to a complete noob 1:1 when I was Zerg. Hydralisks are now 100 minerals and that threw me off hard. You also have to upgrade your den to get lurker abilities. As for now, I can definitely tell you that 1-basing is CRITICAL then you should transition into your expo, or else you are just dead.
It definitely is a fun game though, but right now, single player would be much more fun than multiplayer imo. It's too imbalanced to be fun in a competitive setting. I think the beta will be really good for them to fix balance issues.
I found that 2 gases in one base is about the same as a single geyser in BW, with slightly more potential. What I did was I put 3 workers on one gas until it runs out, then I move them over to the other geyser and switch back when that one runs out. The timing works out in that the geyser finishes recharging a little bit before the one you're mining runs out (so I wasn't doing it in the most effective way possible, but with less work). In this way 2 gas that shuts down and recharges is the same as having one gas that doesn't shut down. Assuming the gas mining rate is about the same as BW, and geysers can't deplete (I don't think I ever had depleted geysers), this means you can constantly be mining undepleted gas at the rate of one BW geyser. This also means you don't need to switch the workers on and off minerals, but instead between geysers. It's still not as attention demanding as not having automine, so I guess this mechanic is an attempt to compensate for not having it?
On October 13 2008 07:46 Quesadilla wrote: Seriously, Zerg SUCK. Zerg sucks so hard I can't even describe it... The only thing you had to do in this version to beat anybody was 2 gate and tech to Zealot Charge. GG, every time without fail. It was pretty bad. I lost to a complete noob 1:1 when I was Zerg. Hydralisks are now 100 minerals and that threw me off hard. You also have to upgrade your den to get lurker abilities. As for now, I can definitely tell you that 1-basing is CRITICAL then you should transition into your expo, or else you are just dead.
It definitely is a fun game though, but right now, single player would be much more fun than multiplayer imo. It's too imbalanced to be fun in a competitive setting. I think the beta will be really good for them to fix balance issues.
I dunno, I felt lingroach beat zeals pretty badly in this build. Also banelings rape everything of protosses.
On October 13 2008 07:46 Quesadilla wrote: Seriously, Zerg SUCK. Zerg sucks so hard I can't even describe it... The only thing you had to do in this version to beat anybody was 2 gate and tech to Zealot Charge. GG, every time without fail. It was pretty bad. I lost to a complete noob 1:1 when I was Zerg. Hydralisks are now 100 minerals and that threw me off hard. You also have to upgrade your den to get lurker abilities. As for now, I can definitely tell you that 1-basing is CRITICAL then you should transition into your expo, or else you are just dead.
It definitely is a fun game though, but right now, single player would be much more fun than multiplayer imo. It's too imbalanced to be fun in a competitive setting. I think the beta will be really good for them to fix balance issues.
Did you try 12 pool or variation of it? Workers gather 5min per trip in this build too?
I'm sorry but some people really come off as ignorant. Saying zerg sucks because hydras cost more? You know its a different game right? This alone is proof enough why releasing it sooner than later is BETTER because they're not going to keep all the same old strategies viable, people will come up with new things continually and that's why games like wc3 is up to x.23 or whatever and sc 1.15 again even on the worker stuff, its different, they could take out automining, but why not make it different?
I just feel like all I'm reading is, "its different from what I'm used to, since its not like what I'm used to 100% they still have to work on it" I know I'm cynical, but damn
Geysers deplete, completely (not even like a +2 gas thing, it's complete depletion). Which would make sense as to why there are 2 geysers in every base in the first place.
From a competitive standpoint I think the game has a LOOOOOOOONG way to go before it can be close to what BW has been. Watching SC2 competitively was not nearly as exciting as watching BW games, and playing competitive SC2 games wasn't nearly as stressful / demanding as playing a competitive BW game is.
I spoke to Plexa yesterday and he said the same thing, but I just can't help feeling it's because you guys don't know SC2 well enough yet (obviously I haven't played it at all). The fun part of watching SC is the strategies involved in it. When you watch Flash vs ForGG, every small detail tells you something: "oh, he only has two scvs on gas, not three", "wow, he went dual factory then starport, not factory then dual starport" etc. In SC2 you don't have that, you just watch people building units and attacking each other. Once you get to know the game better, this might change.
The same goes for the game not being as tense. At blizzcon, no-one is really taking the game seriously and there's no feeling of equal levels of skill or whatever. Once you play online against people who are your same skill level, and you know that if you fuck up the new gas mechanic, or if you micro a group of stalkers badly you could lose the game, things might get tenser.
As I've said though, I obviously haven't played the game so I can't really say, but I just know that on the surface, SC is no more enthralling than any other RTS. Ask some non-competitive gamers what their favourite RTS is, and chances are you'll get as many Red Alerts and Age of Empires as SCs. What makes SC a better game is that it has so much depth to it, and that the more you play it and understand it, the more fun it becomes. Hopefully SC2 is the same. Only time will tell.
I wanted to quote this to make sure people read it. It's a great point (except for maybe the third paragraph )
I've seen some people say that Protoss has "more" macro because of Warpgates which you must continually go back to your base to upgrade. I really hope that Blizzard can just add a lot more of these "fun" and "useful" features to the other races that aren't necessary to be able to play the game at a "low" level, but if you can keep it up, then you will be a much stronger player... Thus a good way to further differentiate between skill levels.
Overall, I don't really care about MBS or automine, but it'd be so good for the community if they could keep those two features in and legitly add in more reasons to macro in your base. Because then everyone is pretty much happy! Except for the extremely conservative types, I guess!
Man what i,ve noted is that Colossus sucks at worker killing. In SC1, if you put your reaver behind minerals and shoots its bye to close workers. In Yellow game we see him attacking with colossus to no effect, its hilarious, not even 1 dead worker. Such a expensive unit cant cause 40 damage on 1 hit? They say it causes more than 100 damage over timer but its so slow its impraticable against human opponents. And the predetermined line path was terrible to me also, it must be perfect positioned to hit various units (and the low damage dont help as i said before).
The bad thing is, they put a War3 Noob (lol) against a SC pro, and the pro was playing Protoss, so i think its natural people say its imbalanced toward toss side. The Zerg had 3 bases (!) minning and let Protoss (Yellow) with only one base build one huge Stalker army. It was hilarious seeing 24+ Stalkers vs 8 hydras and some zerglings. Really dont know where zerg put his money. Even made me think Stalkers are Imba, what i think its not the case.
On October 13 2008 05:52 rOlEx wrote: it shuts down automatically after each 300 for a good amount of time.
basically you just hotkey the group of 3 workers to an unused key binding, which there are plenty of thanks to MBS and it warns you when your geyser goes down so you just toss the 3 workers onto min for a few minutes.
problem is i would always forget to put them back until i run out of gas then id go double gas to compensate.
it definitely reminds me of forgetting to go back and keep producing / putting workers on mins during a long macro game with intense battles
i never really got into the late game at blizzcon because i would always rush and usually win. but if my rush did some dmg i would go into tech mode and then get stomped by a counter attack that i didnt expect.
im still on the fence about the gas mechanic though. it definitely adds a bit of base macro. without it i would never even have to look at my base. at the same time it seems a bit tedious
but it also added some strategic depth because if you go gas heavy there a pause every now and then in your gas income so its tough to balance your income with your production consistently
this only matters for the first few minutes when you don't have much else to do anyway. once you get an econ of 2-3 bases, you can just leave your 3 scvs on the geysers and they will just keep mining. 3 more scvs on minerals really won't affect the game that much except for maybe the first 5 minutes.
well if its really late game and you're going off 3 - 4 bases with 2 geysers at each then you've got 18 - 24 workers inactive for a good amount of time.
imagine if in late game sc someone lost 18 - 24 workers or had that many workers off mining for any time at all. that would be a huge game changing thing. and at that amount of bases keeping all your workers on min / gas would get really hard.
also the guy who says zerg sucks obviously didnt ling rush, ling/roach, fast tech to lurks (no-one gets observers because they were all wowtards).
im pretty sure i played semioldguy at the end of day 2 and he was pretty much the only non-wowtard i played all weekend and it was the most fun game (even though i lost)
2 more years until we get a perfect product I'd say!
agree with you... if sc2 not qualify for tl critics, i prefer that blizzards dont sell the game
There's only so much internal testing that can be done though. No matter what, when the game is released and thousands start playing on bnet, there will need to be changes. So hoping for the perfect game before release is a pipe dream.
On October 12 2008 18:41 Xeris wrote: 2 more years until we get a perfect product I'd say!
How about 2 years of patches and it comes out in >6 months?
because the game isn't even close to being ready.
you tards who keep saying stuff without having played it need to stfu until you have played it. I've played SC2 last year and this year. it has nothing to do with SC2 being a different game and I'm used to SC1 and I want SC2 to be the same thing - that is so far from the truth.
the point is that the game is still far from being what I'm sure Blizzard is hoping it will be. you need to realize that SC1's success was largely a fluke, but now that they know of how huge SC1 became they want SC2 to be similarly/more successful. with that in mind, SC2 is NOT ready, and not close to being ready.
the game is going to be VERY different, but it is not ready; simple as that.
On October 13 2008 12:44 danieldrsa wrote: Man what i,ve noted is that Colossus sucks at worker killing. In SC1, if you put your reaver behind minerals and shoots its bye to close workers. In Yellow game we see him attacking with colossus to no effect, its hilarious, not even 1 dead worker. Such a expensive unit cant cause 40 damage on 1 hit? They say it causes more than 100 damage over timer but its so slow its impraticable against human opponents. And the predetermined line path was terrible to me also, it must be perfect positioned to hit various units (and the low damage dont help as i said before).
The bad thing is, they put a War3 Noob (lol) against a SC pro, and the pro was playing Protoss, so i think its natural people say its imbalanced toward toss side. The Zerg had 3 bases (!) minning and let Protoss (Yellow) with only one base build one huge Stalker army. It was hilarious seeing 24+ Stalkers vs 8 hydras and some zerglings. Really dont know where zerg put his money. Even made me think Stalkers are Imba, what i think its not the case.
1) SonKie is good at WC3 2) Yellow had an expansion in both games.
On October 13 2008 19:46 Ki_Do wrote: unless they can remove mbs in a patch the game isnt ready yet =)
Don't see why they wouldn't be able to do that, however, they won't.
Maybe if everyone in beta told them how much they hated MBS, but I think it will be there in some form. MBS that only allowed you to set rally points would be nice... Or being able to select multiple buildings but not hotkey them.
I havnt played, but here are a few thoughts I have after watching.
The gas mechanic seems to be a pain in the ass simply because your gas comes in intervals. Id much rather an economy where the player is in charge of when he wants his income, not be forced to wait till his geysers are recharged.
Also the grouping of the units looks like it will hurt micro. Everything is soo clumped together that the battle takes place in a reallly tiny area. This must make microing these units almost impossible.
Worker harassing without Aoe spells seems to be really difficult. The collosus especially is crapballs at worker harrass.
If an observer holds alt on during battle, he should be stabbed.
On October 13 2008 12:44 danieldrsa wrote: Man what i,ve noted is that Colossus sucks at worker killing. In SC1, if you put your reaver behind minerals and shoots its bye to close workers. In Yellow game we see him attacking with colossus to no effect, its hilarious, not even 1 dead worker. Such a expensive unit cant cause 40 damage on 1 hit? They say it causes more than 100 damage over timer but its so slow its impraticable against human opponents. And the predetermined line path was terrible to me also, it must be perfect positioned to hit various units (and the low damage dont help as i said before).
The bad thing is, they put a War3 Noob (lol) against a SC pro, and the pro was playing Protoss, so i think its natural people say its imbalanced toward toss side. The Zerg had 3 bases (!) minning and let Protoss (Yellow) with only one base build one huge Stalker army. It was hilarious seeing 24+ Stalkers vs 8 hydras and some zerglings. Really dont know where zerg put his money. Even made me think Stalkers are Imba, what i think its not the case.
1) SonKie is good at WC3 2) Yellow had an expansion in both games.
On October 13 2008 19:46 Ki_Do wrote: unless they can remove mbs in a patch the game isnt ready yet =)
Don't see why they wouldn't be able to do that, however, they won't.
Maybe if everyone in beta told them how much they hated MBS, but I think it will be there in some form. MBS that only allowed you to set rally points would be nice... Or being able to select multiple buildings but not hotkey them.
I was kidding when i say War3 Noob, ive read the blog where someone from TL says to Sonkie (not knowing it was him) that the War3 Noob was awful (lol). But what you think of Colossus? Dont you agree it sucks at worker killing?
On October 13 2008 22:48 danieldrsa wrote: But what you think of Colossus? Dont you agree it sucks at worker killing?
It still deals 16 line damage so three shots and you just killed a lot of workers. The animation is not a representation of the attack, it deals its damage in all of the area instantly when the beam hits the right side, the rest of the animation is just there for show.
On October 13 2008 22:53 Bosu wrote: Collosus looked pretty terrible. MBS will not be removed as the vast majority of people want to have it included.
answer:
On Blizzcast, Dustin Browder said: The simplest way to do it would be to roll back the interface to StarCraft one, the original StarCraft, which is definitely an option for us, but we really want to pursue and see if there is a way to make it work with the interface improvement that has become standard both for our games and our competitors titles.
On October 13 2008 22:48 danieldrsa wrote: But what you think of Colossus? Dont you agree it sucks at worker killing?
It still deals 16 line damage so three shots and you just killed a lot of workers. The animation is not a representation of the attack, it deals its damage in all of the area instantly when the beam hits the right side, the rest of the animation is just there for show.
16 line damage? LoL 3 shots to kill workers? double LoL
If its true, Colossi are the most useless piece of protoss army (cost/benefits)
On October 13 2008 12:44 danieldrsa wrote: Man what i,ve noted is that Colossus sucks at worker killing. In SC1, if you put your reaver behind minerals and shoots its bye to close workers. In Yellow game we see him attacking with colossus to no effect, its hilarious, not even 1 dead worker. Such a expensive unit cant cause 40 damage on 1 hit? They say it causes more than 100 damage over timer but its so slow its impraticable against human opponents. And the predetermined line path was terrible to me also, it must be perfect positioned to hit various units (and the low damage dont help as i said before).
The bad thing is, they put a War3 Noob (lol) against a SC pro, and the pro was playing Protoss, so i think its natural people say its imbalanced toward toss side. The Zerg had 3 bases (!) minning and let Protoss (Yellow) with only one base build one huge Stalker army. It was hilarious seeing 24+ Stalkers vs 8 hydras and some zerglings. Really dont know where zerg put his money. Even made me think Stalkers are Imba, what i think its not the case.
1) SonKie is good at WC3 2) Yellow had an expansion in both games.
On October 13 2008 19:46 Ki_Do wrote: unless they can remove mbs in a patch the game isnt ready yet =)
Don't see why they wouldn't be able to do that, however, they won't.
Maybe if everyone in beta told them how much they hated MBS, but I think it will be there in some form. MBS that only allowed you to set rally points would be nice... Or being able to select multiple buildings but not hotkey them.
I was kidding when i say War3 Noob, ive read the blog where someone from TL says to Sonkie (not knowing it was him) that the War3 Noob was awful (lol). But what you think of Colossus? Dont you agree it sucks at worker killing?
Yeah the colossus made me sad, bring the reaver back
On October 13 2008 22:48 danieldrsa wrote: But what you think of Colossus? Dont you agree it sucks at worker killing?
It still deals 16 line damage so three shots and you just killed a lot of workers. The animation is not a representation of the attack, it deals its damage in all of the area instantly when the beam hits the right side, the rest of the animation is just there for show.
16 line damage? LoL 3 shots to kill workers? double LoL
If its true, Colossi are the most useless piece of protoss army (cost/benefits)
When it did 25 damage it were seriously op though.
Yeah the colossus made me sad, bring the reaver back
If colossus cant wreak havoc on min line i agree Reaver is better.
I think with the new path system in SC2 the Reaver is imba because scarabs dont "stick" to buildinds, so there is no unpredictability when it attacks. The AI in SC2 makes him more powerful.
This is gonna be a real problem when SC2 launches and people try to Mod SC1 with the engine. I say, SC1 is so perfect that even some bugs made game better (mutas wasnt supposed to stack, but they did and it was great; units should not pass between some buildings, but then comes Boxer and everything changed)
IMO its the biggest challenge to SC2 be greater than SC1, not the balance. Even wrong SC1 was right
2 more years until we get a perfect product I'd say!
agree with you... if sc2 not qualify for tl critics, i prefer that blizzards dont sell the game
I prefer SC2 being released before I die of old age -- They can perfect the game via patching and expansions.
SC2 isn't even at a stage yet where they can fix minor changes with patches.
So, in your opinion, what needs to be changed that can't be fixed via patches? And which of these things are actually going to be changed without a beta?
On October 12 2008 21:16 PobTheCad wrote: This gas randomly stops working thing is a bug right? i mean seriously?
Xeris is wrong, it's not a random thing.
Every 300 gas the thing stops working and recharges. Once it goes back online then you have another 300 etc
yes and for some stupid reason the recharge timing wasn't exactly the same time that it takes to mine 300 gas with 3 workers. (so you couldn't switch back and forth between the 2 geysers with the same 3 workers.)
This is, imo, one of the main reasons why zerg sucked so bad. You have less drones all the time and you have even less making double the extractors (especially when FE). Instead of like 8-9 drones total to morph/mine gas at main/nat you need to use 16. So zerg has to macro the miners to gas and vise versa all the time. With P or T you can get away with leaving them on the geyser doing nothing.
PS- Did anyone else have trouble grabbing the correct amount of workers to and from gas every minute?
Use a templar if you want to kill workers, I'd say....
Colossi is probably there for cliff abuse. (aka map specific strat)
I wonder if they would have done much better if dropped behind the mineral line, ready to bail against the tiniest threat. At the location they were dropped in, even a reaver would have been lolol hydra-sniped.
On October 13 2008 22:48 danieldrsa wrote: But what you think of Colossus? Dont you agree it sucks at worker killing?
It still deals 16 line damage so three shots and you just killed a lot of workers. The animation is not a representation of the attack, it deals its damage in all of the area instantly when the beam hits the right side, the rest of the animation is just there for show.
16 line damage? LoL 3 shots to kill workers? double LoL
If its true, Colossi are the most useless piece of protoss army (cost/benefits)
When it did 25 damage it were seriously op though.
Didn't the colossus do 100 something damage on the WWI build?
MBS is not an issue for the game. The mechanic feels fine and it feels just right. Protoss have warp in (which tones down MBS significantly) and Zerg have the larvae management and creep strategy (an idea blizzard is amplifying). Terran however are piss easy because of MBS - but they are looking at solutions to that.
The real killer here is automine, it basically makes it so that you never have to return to base at all. Removing automine would make this game x100000 better.
On October 14 2008 18:19 Plexa wrote: MBS is not an issue for the game. The mechanic feels fine and it feels just right. Protoss have warp in (which tones down MBS significantly) and Zerg have the larvae management and creep strategy (an idea blizzard is amplifying). Terran however are piss easy because of MBS - but they are looking at solutions to that.
The real killer here is automine, it basically makes it so that you never have to return to base at all. Removing automine would make this game x100000 better.
heh okay its back.. i had put it somewhere else but i guess we cant have enough of Plexa =]
I've got an idea, what if automine works if there are only not mined mineral patches? Fe. there are 9 patches, and u buil a cc next to it, you build scv (automine them to mineralas), but when u reach the amount of scv equal to the number of patches they don't automine?
On October 14 2008 18:19 Plexa wrote: MBS is not an issue for the game. The mechanic feels fine and it feels just right. Protoss have warp in (which tones down MBS significantly) and Zerg have the larvae management and creep strategy (an idea blizzard is amplifying). Terran however are piss easy because of MBS - but they are looking at solutions to that.
I suppose blizz's strategy to add more macro to terran was that reactor/addons thingy. How did it feel to use those? Maybe there is some high macro potentional managing addons? Stuff like, put reactors on rax for quick marines, then lift off, switch rax for facs for fast helions, place raxes on addons for building marauders, then switch back to counter something... etc etc. Do you guys feel like this system could have the potential to offer interesting macro for terrans?
The real killer here is automine, it basically makes it so that you never have to return to base at all. Removing automine would make this game x100000 better.
I recently noticed that nowadays on bw if you right click on minerals with a group of workers + others it will actually order to mine instead of move! I proly sound stupid as hell, but I took some breaks from starcraft time to time and I suppose they patched that during these so I completely missed this change and I have been ctrl+clicking drones out of the group of rallied units on every iccup game till a couple of weeks ago. This frees me up so many actions, on my point of view it feels like I have auto-mine now, it's s easy So my question is, when they patched this to make mining easier (for zerg it is MUCH easier) was there so many people complaining that the game was too easy like people are complaining about auto-mine? ^^
Another reason fast expands seemed to be a lot less viable was because the naturals were usually set off to the side of the paths to the mains. The only way you could defend your choke would be to spend a lot on static defense to cover both the expo and runbys. Also most naturals had 2 paths in so there usually wasn't just one choke you could defend.
I also felt like I had to cut probes to add tech and especially to expand unlike in sc where your tech and expands just sort of flow out of you having a surplus cash flow. With static defense so weak it definitely seemed like you had to really build up before you could risk expanding.
I'm really on the fence about the whole double geyser/extraction cooldown thing. The cooldown period is about 30 seconds. I can see where they were intending for players to be able to stock up on gas in quick bursts, and making that a viable alternative to the more predictable stream of income from one geyser at a time. I just think it comes off as an unnecessary form of increased base management. I didn't really like it because it threw off my timing and a lot of times it took me a while to realize (even with the UI's geyser alert message) that my workers were just sitting idle at a geyser. My personal strategy was just to swap from one geyser to the other for a smoother rate of income and so I could adapt more quickly to given situations, and because it felt closer to BW.
Minerals only harvest at 5 per cluster instead of 8, that was pretty different and really threw me off. Timing for opening builds seemed to be about the same speed as BW because of this.
Also to the guy complaining about "pre-alpha" or whatever, "pre-alpha" is a development stage where not all features have been implemented yet. I don't know what your explosion was all about.
Oh and I have to mention the amazing new observer mode features. There are different toggleable overlays in the corner for Army, Resources, among other things. This shows you at a glance each player's resource stockpile as well as their rate of income and how much they have spent and are spending over time on armies, research, structures, etc. Observers can see each player's mouse clicks and what they have selected, as well. Very very cool, like they took all of Lasgo's and superpenguin's BW tools and integrated them directly. You can bet all of these features will be in replays as well. Totally awesome and catered directly to broadcasting e-sports.
its a little bit off topic, but why only the protoss workers have changed? I really loved the wings of probes now they look soo observish
BTW, Colossi are useless imo, by now In SC1 you always could go Reaver or Templar, both excelling in worker killing, damage dealers Say, robo bay, or cidatel. By now, only templars are viable in mineral line raids. Colossus are doing a great headache to blizz, just like Queen/Thors.
Edit I know they are experimenting, but the abilities are changing so quickly, also the units, that i dont know what expect next. I trust blizz, but its really confusing by now.
On October 15 2008 14:26 MyLostTemple wrote: i STILL hate mbs and automining.
Is the new version of MBS better than the old version? That is does 4zzzzzzz > 4z?
I never played the 4z build, but the 4zzzzz did feel at least a bit closer to SC1 (which I must add, back when I used to participate in the MBS threads a lot, I argued for as a potential compromise that should at least be tried! totally called this one!)
Funny enough, since it was my first time playing SC2, I actually often forgot about MBS in the first place which made Zerg macro feel even more demanding than SC1 when I first hit sdz and found out I only made two lings, lol.
But maybe I'm not the best to answer this question anyways... at my worst, I was only tentatively afraid of what MBS might do to the game's viability as an e-sport, and I definitely didn't get as much hands-on time with the game as the press guys
imo the 4zzzzz version is way worse than the 4z version with the 4z version if you wanted to modify your armies unit composition you had to go back and change the way your gateway hotkeys are set up (to get 6 stalkers 4 zealots and 2 ht's you had to have 3 hotkeys of gateways with the correct number in each) now you just go sssssszzzzhh. so basically the only reason you ever have to go back to your base is to build stuff.
(i think it might actually reduce the total number of actions anyway, it seems to me that it would require more actions to go through and reconfigure your gateway hotkeys than to press unit hotkeys a few extra times)
On October 15 2008 12:03 danieldrsa wrote: its a little bit off topic, but why only the protoss workers have changed? I really loved the wings of probes now they look soo observish
BTW, Colossi are useless imo, by now In SC1 you always could go Reaver or Templar, both excelling in worker killing, damage dealers Say, robo bay, or cidatel. By now, only templars are viable in mineral line raids. Colossus are doing a great headache to blizz, just like Queen/Thors.
Edit I know they are experimenting, but the abilities are changing so quickly, also the units, that i dont know what expect next. I trust blizz, but its really confusing by now.
theyre far from useless, they act more like a mix of archons and reavers than pure reavers. you're right that they are not worker raiders anymore, but theyre still very strong fighting/army support units.
I have a question here... for the ones who played the game. Did anyone use the old hold,patrol mechanics with any units to search for old tricks? i mean, patrol with banshee(to copycat the wraith patrol),mutalisk, patrol/hold with marauder, etcetera... ???
On October 13 2008 22:48 danieldrsa wrote: But what you think of Colossus? Dont you agree it sucks at worker killing?
It still deals 16 line damage so three shots and you just killed a lot of workers. The animation is not a representation of the attack, it deals its damage in all of the area instantly when the beam hits the right side, the rest of the animation is just there for show.
16 line damage? LoL 3 shots to kill workers? double LoL
If its true, Colossi are the most useless piece of protoss army (cost/benefits)
When it did 25 damage it were seriously op though.
Didn't the colossus do 100 something damage on the WWI build?
it did over 100 single target damage in the first build, it got changed to 25 line damage almost a year ago and then it were overpowered. But of course it had more health then also.
i haven't played starcraft 2 but people need to calm down. Ive played sc since the beginning and this feels like a repeat of the old process. Hell, starcraft didnt seem to obtain its complete balance until brood war. In the early stages everyone thought that zerg was really weak, and that 2 gate zeal was impossible to beat.
The reason why Starcraft and other blizzard games are so great is because of the great services and attention that blizzard provides. Blizzard is constantly testing this game, and its only at the beginning stages. They have not even released the beta yet, and we all know how the first starcraft changed alot from its original beta. Then we have more changes when the game actually comes out, from all the patches that it will receive. The constant update in patches, once the game is released, is what makes the game balanced. People say that is was luck that starcraft achieved such a great balance. But people seem to forget how much blizzard tinkered and worked with the game in its early stages. Blizzard is obviously repeating this long drawn out process. Even though starcraft 2 won't be the same game, it will be just as great or at least almost as great.
On October 16 2008 11:38 beaumaynz wrote: I think the most important thing is that Mind Control is missing. Please bring back MC
It's not missing. It's with the Infestor now. A modified one at that though(time-limited?). Don't forget that Corrupters also have a mind-control ability too... but passive and with chance.
On a different note: what were the Nighthawk's spells? I've read that there's no Seismic Thumper or whatever. Is that true? If so, why has it been mentioned? It seemed like a good ability, especially vs the beasty Ultras. ^_____^
On October 16 2008 11:38 beaumaynz wrote: I think the most important thing is that Mind Control is missing. Please bring back MC
It's not missing. It's with the Infestor now. A modified one at that though(time-limited?). Don't forget that Corrupters also have a mind-control ability too... but passive and with chance.
It's not the same... unless you can build a nexus/cc in the brief time you have a worker controlled. It doesn't have to be practical or anything, it's just fun to have it in there as a gimmick.
On October 16 2008 23:14 maybenexttime wrote: On a different note: what were the Nighthawk's spells? I've read that there's no Seismic Thumper or whatever. Is that true? If so, why has it been mentioned? It seemed like a good ability, especially vs the beasty Ultras. ^_____^
nighthawk has spider mines, auto-turret, and targeting drone which targets an enemy unit and that unit then takes +50% dmg
i never really saw any of the skills used extremely effectively to be honest but targeting drones could be really useful late game against motherships and ultras
On October 16 2008 11:38 beaumaynz wrote: I think the most important thing is that Mind Control is missing. Please bring back MC
It's not missing. It's with the Infestor now. A modified one at that though(time-limited?). Don't forget that Corrupters also have a mind-control ability too... but passive and with chance.
It's not the same... unless you can build a nexus/cc in the brief time you have a worker controlled. It doesn't have to be practical or anything, it's just fun to have it in there as a gimmick.
Then it's not the most important thing nor would it be counted as missing. >:3
There'd still be SC1 units in the editor(and prolly the campaign). I'm sure the old abilities would still be there. And most likely a SC:BW mod will be created for SC2 which in several interviews the Blizz employees have been enticing modders to do already.
EPT
)
