Heart of the Swarm Preview [Archive]

Rainbow Dash

May 31st, 2011, 09:42 AM

Via Teamliquid (http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=228212)

Pretty standard stuff I guess, this kinda bothers me though.

Q: What changes will come to Battle.net with Heart of the Swarm?

A: As far as Battle.net improvements, one primary focus will be on getting the StarCraft Marketplace up and running at some point around the launch of Heart of the Swarm. The maps and mods community in StarCraft II has published tens of thousands of custom maps using the StarCraft II editor. Our goal with the new Marketplace design will be in upgrading the custom map UI to better showcase the wide variety of great new maps and mods to players who are looking for fun new gaming experiences. We want players to be able to more easily find, rate, and sort through all the great custom maps that have been created.

The Marketplace will also eventually include a commerce element that will allow mapmakers to charge a fee for their work. While there will always be a wealth of free content, we believe that allowing content creators to profit from their work will foster an environment for more complex and higher-quality custom maps. Our ultimate hope is that the StarCraft Marketplace will function and thrive in a similar manner as mobile "app-stores" -- tons of free and premium content for players, and a limitless source of entertainment through StarCraft II and Battle.net.

We do have other Battle.net feature upgrades and improvements planned as well, and we'll have more details on those at a later date.

I can't really think of any justification for making players have to pay for custom content, especially not custom sc2 maps lol.

Bodzilla

May 31st, 2011, 10:46 AM

as long as it's optional.

Hotrod

May 31st, 2011, 10:57 AM

What the hell? Making people pay to play some custom maps? That's the most retarded thing I've ever heard... And it's not like their maps will ever become popular either since most people won't want to pay.

Dwood

May 31st, 2011, 11:28 AM

Blizzard just wants to make bank on custom maps. The rest is lip service.

Edit: However, I am interested in the campaign of it. Too bad I gave away my SC2 WoL account. I may want it back Freelancer lol.

Hotrod

May 31st, 2011, 12:47 PM

The campaign is by far the best part of StarCraft 2 and is probably the only reason I'm buying the expansion.

Rainbow Dash

May 31st, 2011, 01:47 PM

The campaign is by far the best part of StarCraft 2 and is probably the only reason I'm buying the expansion.

hahahahahahhahahaah aha ha ha aha ahhahah ahahah

the campaign was fucking terrible.

as long as it's optional.

Hats in tf2 are optional!!!

Dwood

May 31st, 2011, 06:24 PM

hahahahahahhahahaah aha ha ha aha ahhahah ahahah

the campaign was fucking terrible.

Do explain.

Rainbow Dash

May 31st, 2011, 06:56 PM

Do explain.

First, play sc1+bw.

Second Kerrigan is supposed to be some horrible threat, and every time we see her she's just an absolute fucking incompetent.

Third Raynor is nothing more than a whiny cunt now, and Mengsk is a pathetic villain too.

Oh, and at the last moment they kill off the one good character for no apparent reason.

Do I need to go on?

Siliconmaster

May 31st, 2011, 07:07 PM

...I thought the campaign was awesome :saddowns:

Dwood

May 31st, 2011, 07:18 PM

First, play sc1+bw.

Second Kerrigan is supposed to be some horrible threat, and every time we see her she's just an absolute fucking incompetent.

Third Raynor is nothing more than a whiny cunt now, and Mengsk is a pathetic villain too.

Oh, and at the last moment they kill off the one good character for no apparent reason.

Do I need to go on?

Oh. Thought you were griping about the campaign levels, not the story.

Siliconmaster

May 31st, 2011, 07:36 PM

Idk, I liked both the levels AND the story. And the story was the only reason I bought the game in the first place, to be honest. I've never had fast enough internet to game online at home. Therefore, multiplayer wasn't on my priority list.

Bodzilla

May 31st, 2011, 08:43 PM

sory was no where near as good as SC1 and broodwar, but i am looking forward to it.

i'm just a bit saddened by how they've stated things like the Overseer arn't cool so they're thinking of removing it and a heap of changes in the campaign are based around that.... rather then the lore :/

n00b1n8R

May 31st, 2011, 10:07 PM

The campaign is by far the best part of StarCraft 2 and is probably the only reason I'm buying the expansion.
haha yeah ri-

Do explain.
omaigawd you're serious :lmao:

The in between missions interface was clunky and annoying, the changes to the characters were dumb, the story and "drama" made me laugh so much I couldn't even sit through the whole thing and they killed the coolest character at the end.

Blizzard has never been good at writing stories though :allears:

sory was no where near as good as SC1 and broodwar, but i am looking forward to it.

i'm just a bit saddened by how they've stated things like the Overseer arn't cool so they're thinking of removing it and a heap of changes in the campaign are based around that.... rather then the lore :/
Well the overseer is fast (compared to an overlord) and has detection which makes it a better scout than an OL. But changeling is pretty useless against a half-competent opponent and the corruption thing is fairly useful but not too exciting from a spectator's point of view.

I don't really mind them removing lame units and focusing on improving gameplay as opposed to focusing on a bad lore and going about it from that perspective.

Fingers crossed they remove the collosus and buff carriers/mothership!

Rainbow Dash

May 31st, 2011, 10:52 PM

Fingers crossed they remove the collosus and buff carriers/mothership!

Fingers crossed they leave collosi and just make carriers on par with collosi, so the other races can whine about more slow units that cause them to lose to the "PROTOSS DEATH BALL" because they're dumb enough to face a "DEATHBALL" head on (and still come out on top most of the time lol) instead of utilizing drops against the most immobile army in the fucking game.

n00b1n8R

June 1st, 2011, 12:06 AM

Collosi are boring, I haven't' built any in like a month.

Rainbow Dash

June 1st, 2011, 07:54 AM

I'm not going to deny they're boring, I also don't build them either, but they're still easily one of the only units the toss has that allows them a chance at winning against good players.

Bodzilla

June 1st, 2011, 08:13 AM

Rainbow Dash

June 1st, 2011, 08:58 AM

n00b1n8R

June 1st, 2011, 09:14 AM

immortals, DT's, HT's, Sentrys, blink stalkers, chargelots, pheonix voidray carrier mothership warp prism observer, colossus..... yeah toss has terrible unit diversity, having what 13 completely different types of units.

i love you but your HORRIBLE at balancing this game bro.
To be fare, it's not hard to shut down DT's, zealot midgame are just fodder until they get legs, carriers are bad without their upgrade (and inferior to broodlords in almost every way) and MS's are 8 fucking supply, require the most out of the way tech in the game and very situational.

Also, you forgot observers.

E: Oh and warp prism are painful without speed upgrades for drops and eat robo time (I'm still having fun with them, I just don't think they're particularly good though).

Rainbow Dash

June 1st, 2011, 09:41 AM

Compared to the other race's drop capabilities warp prism's are a joke, their capacity is shit (4 stalkers aren't a very scary drop), they're far weaker than medivacs/overlords, and they require a speed upgrade to get anywhere at a reasonable rate. The warp in mechanic is really neat, it's a shame they're so fucking useless though, and just about any units you warp in with them are guaranteed to not make it back home anyway if you're being aggressive with them.

Phoenixes are also terrible, they're actually more useful as anti ground than anti air, which is pathetic for an "Air superiority' fighter.

Carriers are just garbage, even with 3x weapons, if the enemy has any anti air units the interceptors just disappear anyway and take half an hour to be rebuilt, AND they require an upgrade to be remotely useful.

n00b1n8R

June 1st, 2011, 10:11 AM

Phoenix's are really good at worker harass once you get half a dozen of them (and with a voidray can deal with queens pretty effectively) but unlike muta's, they take a long time to build up decent numbers. They're nice for denying OL's but I never use them in PvT.

TBH, hallucinated phoenix's are often times more useful than real ones.

E: oh, and good luck kiting muta with them on my net connection :australia:

Bodzilla

June 1st, 2011, 10:58 AM

brood lords are a longer tech path then MS.

hope that helps.

n00b1n8R

June 1st, 2011, 07:46 PM

I didn't say it was the longest, I said it was the most indirect.
Brood lords are undeniably awesome. Mother ship and Carriers (and pheonix and voidray)? Not so much.

Rainbow Dash

June 1st, 2011, 09:40 PM

brood lords are a longer tech path then MS.

hope that helps.

uhm

They're both end of tier, and one is garbage, the other isn't, the time it takes to get them is irrelevant.

Bodzilla

June 1st, 2011, 10:56 PM

pool, lair, spire, infestation pit, hive, greater spire, corrupter, broodlord.

gateway, cyber, stargate, fleat beacon, mohership

n00b1n8R

June 1st, 2011, 11:14 PM

pool, lair, spire, infestation pit, hive, greater spire, corrupter, broodlord.

gateway, cyber, stargate, fleat beacon, mohership
Zerglings, muta/corrupter, infestors, broodlord

Zealot, sentry/stalker, pheonix/voidray, carrier/mothership

Which has the more versatile/better units (hint: all of the ones on the z path are good)

Bodzilla

June 2nd, 2011, 02:13 AM

you dont just Get broodlords.

you can never just GET broodlords.

in other words you'll die first.

n00b1n8R

June 2nd, 2011, 03:51 AM

(you can make corrupters and mutas while the Gspire is morphing right? curious)

What are you saying zilla :S

Bodzilla

June 2nd, 2011, 04:22 AM

i'm saying mutas wont keep you alive unless the toss is an idiot, they'll also delay your tech because they're a massive investment in gas, and corrupter's will eat up your supply and only be able to attack half of their army if they go collossus voidray and even less if they go just gateway collossus, meanwhile the toss army just rolls over the top of you.

if you can stay alive till your on your 5th base then you can switch into broods.

before then though is pretty suicidal.

n00b1n8R

June 2nd, 2011, 10:04 AM

Don't even get me started on muta's man, fuck mutalisks.

Rainbow Dash

June 2nd, 2011, 10:25 AM

if you can stay alive till your on your 5th base then you can switch into broods.

before then though is pretty suicidal.

Hahahha and carriers aren't?

You're joking right?

Bodzilla

June 2nd, 2011, 11:44 AM

you dont have to build them and you can get your mothership comfortably off 3 base and do stalker snipe attacks and recall before you loose anything.

as opposed to corrupters and you can do....... i... well... um.....

Rainbow Dash

June 2nd, 2011, 02:10 PM

Nothing, aside from easily counter just about every air unit in the game :S

Bodzilla

June 2nd, 2011, 06:42 PM

cool, have half an army only able to attack air. sound thinking.

theres a good reason why hydra roach corrupter went out of style, because it was bad.

n00b1n8R

June 2nd, 2011, 08:56 PM

cool, have half an army only able to attack air. sound thinking.
So vikings are bad too? (Don't pretend their ground form is worth anything)

Bodzilla

June 2nd, 2011, 11:53 PM

the seige tanks of the sky that can snipe shit easily and take literally no damage because of their long range.

yeah they're a horrible unit :downs:

you cant "just" snipe a collossus with corrupters without trading hundreds and hundreds of resources for it.

Rainbow Dash

June 3rd, 2011, 06:25 AM

Yeah because it's not like your roaches are going to roll over the stalker/zealot force if the stalkers start target firing your 5000 hp corruptors or something.

Bodzilla

June 3rd, 2011, 06:50 AM

bitch you must be joking. you do realize that protoss has been stomping the shit outta zerg competatively and non competitively for a long time now?
it's roach timing attacks thats killing greedy protoss rather then us make 300 supply soley on units and you loose 10.

you honestly thought no one thought to go pure roach in that time where zerg was in a very dark hole????

Rainbow Dash

June 3rd, 2011, 02:45 PM

Clearly

http://i.imgur.com/MQ3LW.png

http://i.imgur.com/FVhM9.png

http://i.imgur.com/N36Xm.png

n00b1n8R

June 3rd, 2011, 08:18 PM

I'd like to see those winner and runner up charts normalized by the %P, Z and T entering >_>

Dwood

June 4th, 2011, 12:49 AM

Terran.

Phobias

June 5th, 2011, 03:44 AM

Give zerg back it's lurkers, then we'll have a high risk insta-win strat like quick dt's or banshees.

Note that I said 'high risk', not "FUCK DT'S AND BANSHEES ARE IMBA, HOLY FUCK."

n00b1n8R

June 5th, 2011, 05:56 AM

It's called 6pool bro

Rainbow Dash

June 5th, 2011, 07:26 AM

Give zerg back it's lurkers, then we'll have a high risk insta-win strat like quick dt's or banshees.

Note that I said 'high risk', not "FUCK DT'S AND BANSHEES ARE IMBA, HOLY FUCK."

Well, except banshees really are. Zerg has fuck all AA unless he rushes for it, or just spams out spore crawlers, meanwhile toss has AA, but not mobile detection unless they choose a single fucking tech path. Terran on the other hand LOL ON DEMMAND SCAN AND MARINES.

n00b1n8R

June 5th, 2011, 08:29 AM

Well, except banshees really are. Zerg has fuck all AA unless he rushes for it, or just spams out spore crawlers, meanwhile toss has AA, but not mobile detection unless they choose a single fucking tech path. Terran on the other hand LOL ON DEMMAND SCAN AND MARINES.
this post gave me cancer

Phobias

June 5th, 2011, 09:18 AM

It's called 6pool bro

6 pool doesn't work against a competent player unless you spine rush (zvz only) or have godlike micro.

Also I've seen zergs die to 1 base/1 gate dt's before, sure the zergs were gold/plat but they should have still known better. It's not hard to scout pure zealot and realise that gas is going somewhere.

Phopojijo

June 5th, 2011, 03:35 PM

Eh... Banshees aren't really an all-in except in the rare cheesy case.

I use them mostly as a step in my harassment from marines -> (A few Marauders if I decide to get stim/shields) -> hellions -> Banshees -> Battlecruiser + Marine + SCV heavy push. (Sometimes if they're fortified I push/pull/push/pull repairing on each pull -- it's pretty easy to destroy someone if you never lose your units {except a few marines} :p)

That's my Terran air harass the eff out of them build btw.

n00b1n8R

June 5th, 2011, 05:29 PM

6 pool doesn't work against a competent player unless you spine rush (zvz only) or have godlike micro.
Neither does a banshee rush though vOv
(what is it with plat ladder zergs 6pooling vP so much lmao)

Bodzilla

June 5th, 2011, 09:40 PM

well alot of Zergs dont truly understand the wonder and the joy of owning so many banelings, and as such believe that vs P they're on a timer. so alot of them just give it up straight away.

and plats always cheesy at the lower levels because it's basically where the cheesey fags stop having success with their strategy's, and being bad cheesey players they dont know how to do anything different.

n00b1n8R

June 7th, 2011, 09:40 PM

I present, the FACE of imbalance!
http://i.imgur.com/p7m8x.png
(updated for may)

FEAR its shocking 5% discrepancies!
MARVEL at the domination of Protoss!
TREMBLE as zilla and sell rush to have a shit flinging contest!

Siliconmaster

June 7th, 2011, 09:52 PM

Haha as a totally unbaised and uninvolved Starcraft player, I have to say, all three races seem fairly well balanced. And by those numbers, Protoss are actually a little underpowered.

Phobias

June 8th, 2011, 08:44 AM

That's because people who play toss are generally just baddies.

Z 4 lyfe.

Bodzilla

June 8th, 2011, 09:41 AM

see winrates are misleading, simply because of the graded leagues and ladders.

Zergs are loosing to shitty skilless strategy's, while they out macro, spend their money better army positioning, knowledge of what the opponents doing and prepare the counters to it. Thats what's broken, is that in terms of the games understanding and mechanics we're on par with people playing FAR worse then we are.

if you out play your opponent in every facet of the game you should not loose base'd on 1 wrong decision... but thats whats happening. and it's being masked by the statistics because we'll still end up winning a reasonable percentage of the games regardless.... which will bring us close to a 50% winrate.

the point is that when we win we have to win HARD. we can never scrape through with a win and we have next to zero chance in coming back from a defecit because we dont have the ability to harrass (bar mutas which is pretty easily shut down untill the Mutas have 2000/2000 minerals invested in them...)

the problems for Z are as follows.
it's rare we can harrass our player to death because we simply dont have the tools and it's easy to stop.
we cant scout an opponent if they're smart about how they hide their tech.
we dont have units that can effectively zone sections defensively for us.
we dont have anything cost effcient
and if we build units to defend from something we cant scout or know ahead of time we end up behind.

These points make it nearly impossible to come from behind.

where if you compare it to something like DT's, collossi sentry's, tanks, rines and medivacs you can atleast hit some sections i mentioned and come back into the game.

Rainbow Dash

June 8th, 2011, 09:48 AM

the problems for P are as follows.
it's rare we can harrass our player to death because we simply dont have the tools and it's easy to stop.
we cant scout an opponent if they're smart about how they hide their tech.
we dont have units that can effectively zone sections defensively for us.
we dont have anything cost effcient
and if we build units to defend from something we cant scout or know ahead of time we end up behind.

Dwood

June 8th, 2011, 09:59 AM

Observers.

Rainbow Dash

June 8th, 2011, 10:04 AM

You can not be serious.

No harass? You have mutalisks, speedlings, viable drops, contaminate, nydus worms, compared to toss who has, what exactly, blink, warp prisms and phoenixes which are really just a shittier more expensive mutalisk. Oh, and an army that if you split it up you have 0 chance against the other guy.

No scouting? You have a flying supply unit that you have from the start of the game which you can fly over your opponents base whenever and as much as you want, and stick all over the map to know what's up. You have changelings which are pretty much the perfect scout to put on your opponent's army, hell, of all the races you have the best ability to scout the opponent, so I have no idea what you're complaining about here.

Oh and cost efficient, hahahahahahahahahah.

100 mineral zealot, loses to 4 zerglings, or two marines, ALWAYS if the terran or zerg is the least bit capable of micro.

125 mineral, and 50 gas stalker loses to a roach, to lings, and only beats marauders 1v1 if the toss uses heavy micro.

The sentry is the only spellcaster in the fucking early game, and usually the only one that ever gets seen, and the entire toss gateway army either has these, and uses their forcefields/shields perfectly or loses to every other race, meanwhile having the most expensive, and the most garbage early game units.

The only way the toss can beat another army with gateway units (- sentry) is to amazingly out macro his opponent, and literally have 2 for 1 of his army, so really, don't complain about your cost efficiency :S

Observers.

Are shut down by any turrets/spores/cannons, or any detectors in the base, because they die in 2 shots, our only useful base scouting measure is really just hallucinated phoenixes.

Bodzilla

June 8th, 2011, 10:30 AM

being able to have units thats a figment of you imagination and get a complete scout is P cool.
mutalisks are a mid game unit which is incredibly gas intensive and cant really kill shit other then workers untill you have a decent sized muta ball.
like a hell of alot invested in it.

speedlings can counter, but never harrass, with a solid defense or building placement we cant do shit.

Drops or nydus are both a 300/300 investment. now drops put your supply cap at risk and nydus only release's 1 thing at a time, which means you generally cant get a heap of units in quickly do damage and get out like you could with say a warp prism or a medivac drop.
and other then defensive nydus both have no other use's.
it's also on a different tech line unlike starport or robo.

medivacs can heal an army and warp prism can give you units at your front line. instantly.

now do you honestly think having a sentry is not cost efficient? or that stalkers give you early map control, pressure options AND deny our scouting? the stalker is not a STATS unit it's a UTILITY unit, get that through you head you sexual fiend!

yes you can loose with bad forcefeilds, however you have the ability to constantly all game long build advantages by splitting and killing my army. name something even close to that for zerg.