StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm

[Kelthaz]

Unicron wrote:

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That sounds troubling to me. StarCraft made good impressions because it achieved an excellent balance between the three races, and also kept the lower units like Marines and Hydralisks perpetually useful. They didn't simply fall by the wayside once you got up to Battlecruisers. Personally I like to think that, of the three races, the Zerg had the greatest potential to be unbalanced or not work right because of their unique abilities, but they did work. Blizzard got it right back then.

Oh, the game is amazingly well balanced in the multiplayer and all units have a use even in the late game (except for Battlecruisers), but the campaign is going for more of an RPG style with less of a focus on army management. Blizzard doesn't care about balance in the single player campaign.

[Unicron]

Ah. Thanks for the clarification. I'd like to think they wouldn't intentionally let the balance go out the window, given how good it was in the original. But it's understandable that some elements would need tweaking and it's not always easy to get the ideal effect.

[Tribble puncher]

I feel like Blizzard is well on it's way to being the next E.A., this is just my opinion of course...

[Manticore]

Tribble puncher wrote:

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I feel like Blizzard is well on it's way to being the next E.A., this is just my opinion of course...

No, no they are not.

[Holdfast]

Everyone seems to says Brutal HotS single player is about the equivalent to Normal/Hard WoL, so I'm not surprised to read similar comments here. I'm more interested in how the competitive multiplayer scene is in HotS, and from watching bits of MLG Dallas over the weekend I'm definitely of the opinion that HotS is a MAJOR improvement over WoL.

Games are much more dynamic, faster-paced. It's so multipronged that the observer & casters actually couldn't keep up (they'll get better over time now they know what the metagame will be like). There were some stunning games esp. Flash vs Innovation and Flash vs Life. So much better than the last year of Wings. The medivac afterburner ability probably needs a slight nerf, but it makes for some great viewing.

TvZ in particular is ridiculously aggressive now, in a great way. Both sides have to continually attack to prevent the other snowballing them. It really plays to the advantage of the players with better APM/multitasking, which is how it should be. Protoss need something (photon cannon, oracle or mothership core buff, maybe?) to handle midgame Terran & Zerg. MC managed to win matches only through being super aggressive in early/mid. Something's needed to let Protoss stay in the midgame long enough to permit them to work towards a skytoss endgame composition IMO.

Anyway, I like the viewer experience in HotS so far.

[Jeyl]

Manticore wrote:

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No, no they are not.

Yeah. EA has more than three intellectual properties that they've been releasing new content for over the past decade and a half.

[Tribble puncher]

Manticore wrote:

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No, no they are not.

So what are your thoughts about the game requiring you to be always online then, if you don't mind me asking?

[Yoda]

From a multiplayer perspective... it's 40 bucks for what... 7 units? 7 units that don't come into my cheesy style of play just yet. Oh, and they made it so you can't use pylons to power stuff from low ground onto high ground? Lame.

It really bugs me that I haven't been able to quickly find a simple list of changes from WoL to HotS. Even if I restrict my google searches to the last week it pulls up really old shit like... "the Thor is now a superunit you can only build one of, like the mothership" and "carriers have been removed from the game" that doesn't even apply anymore.

Just from playing 3v3s and 2v2s the expansion has played almost exactly like WoL. I'm sure a lot of that is that I'm playing lots of other people unfamiliar with the changes... but still. Warcraft 3: The Frozen Throne felt like a significant change from the very first game I played. I've seen the new units here and there mostly built by people for pure novelty... aside from that the only difference I've really seen is that more players are building hellions. Though I haven't really seen much in the way of hellbats.

So I guess spore cralwers don't need evo chamber anymore? And I've heard that medivacs have some speed boost ability? Uhh.. ok. Maybe that would have been more intuitive if those changes were in the single player campaign guys...

Also, the +100XP nonsense is just laughable. I mean really... wtf is that crap. This game already had a slog of a grind for unlockable trinkets... this really doesn't make it any better. And at the end of the multiplayer game it takes me straight to my XP report? Really? Does anybody give half a shit about how much experience they earned?

Anyway, haven't played that many multiplayer games... just my impressions so far, so they could just as easily change. Except the XP thing. That will always be a joke, sorry Blizzard.

As for the always on DRM... I'll just say that I don't see any improvement from the Warcraft 3 system of having to log in for multiplayer, and having LAN and Single Player options available completely offline. The achievements can be fun and all, but we've all seen the same sort of in-game achievements that are just as good. Battle.net just isn't a big online hub of my gaming activity in the way that Xbox Live, Steam, or even PSN are. There is no utility to Diablo 3, SC2, and WoW achievements being unified in any way, assuming they even are (as I don't play their other two games).

[Manticore]

Tribble puncher wrote:

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So what are your thoughts about the game requiring you to be always online then, if you don't mind me asking?

I'll admit, I'm not as big a fan of it, but frankly, that has nothing to do with my statement. The big stupidity of EA isn't DRM (that's an industry-wide stupidity). It's how they treat their employees, and Blizzard is light-years beyond EA in that regard.

[Hoser]

Pros: Single player was actually fun. I honestly enjoyed playing my least favourite race. And I liked the direction they took the story, I don't mind a wild and crazy Zerg.
Cons: The always on still ticks me off, esp. at hotspots that block games, or on the road, or when they just have a bad server day.
The multiplayer bites. Nerfs and cuts, whiny players, it's like a MMO, not the lan friendly game I played in college.
The RPG lite stuff. Meh. I didn't really like it in War3 and didn't really like it here either.