Meloku's Blizzcon Experience!

Hello all, it's good to be back!

I'd like to share my impressions of the game, as well as answer any questions you might have:

what I like:
The game is amazing, it is fast, fluid, clean, and smooth. If I play video games for more than about 2 hours I will start to get a headache. The fact that starcraft 2 didn't give me any sort of headache is a testament to the pure quality of the game.

The different environments of the game are spectacular. The detail on every level is insane (yet, they stated in the art panel that there will be multiple settings for various user settings)

The game engine is unlike anything we've ever seen. The AI is ABSOLUTELY brilliant. The old days of spamming clicks to get 5 groups up or down a ramp are over. The ai now brilliantly micros your units up ramps, through small entrances, and even THROUGH EACHOTHER. I sent 2 squads of marines, and was amazed to watch them glide effortlessly by eachother.

Sending your SCVs to mine now sends them all to seperate minerals directly, leaving the commander to do more important things.

the conclusion (good): THIS GAME HAS TAKEN A HUGE TURN FROM STARCRAFT THE ORIGINAL. The emphasis from macro has been REMOVED. Korean players had a distinct advantage in starcraft 1, because they could micro with a clunky UI that could only select one building, or 12 units. The advantage that the koreans had IS GOING TO EVAPORATE! Casual to mid scale players will no longer get lost in the frenzy that was starcraft late game. Flying around the screen spamming 12 clicks to build 12 units is a thing of the past.




What I don't like:

Special Abilities: Blizzard devs have been quoted saying "this is not warcraft 3. Units won't all have special abilities that you have to activate" ... guess what happened. I cannot think of a single unit that doesn't have a certain ability.

Overlapping roles This is majorly a concern for the terran. How much anti ground do we need? We've got the siege tank, the thor, the banshee, the plasma torpedo. Seriously, WHEN WILL IT END? The anti air for terran has a similar problem.

Warping in is too vulnerable, it needs to be slightly more powerful.

The terran cyborg and SCV need to go. I simply don't want to see a redneck every game I play, nor do I want to observe some crazy *** manakin in my command center.... *stops shaking angrily* ... sorry XD

WHERE THE f**k IS JIM RAYNOR's ORIGINAL VOICE... the lore panel said that "Jim Raynor is just an ordinary guy in the mist of political wolves, and mutating swarms. He's just an ordinary human being with extraordinary character, and yet he is a hero.
THATS WHAT HE WAS IN STARCRAFT 1... AND WHAT DID YOU GO AND DO, GIVE HIM A ROUGH TOUGH COWBOY VOICE???? WHAT ARE YOU THINKING....
*heavy breathing*
sorry.

Now I know you have all seen specifics about units and abilities, so I won't bother with them. The floor is now open up to questions.

and finally...I'd like to thank starcraft2forums.org for the ticket, and the great experience!


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Good:
The Protoss are very finished. Perhaps this is because they were started first, but every protoss unit has a definitive role.
The Reaver is out. we don't need the reaver AND the colossus.
The Tempest has been replaced by the carrier. My only slight concern is that the carrier will now need to be made stronger against ground to fill the tempests' role.
The Ghost is no longer completely useless in a fighter role. The ghost is highly mobile, very fast, and has a very powerful feel like it should have.
the reaper is now a very fast unit. love it.
Zealot's charge makes them useful late game, while adding an interesting aspect to the unit. It is also not an ability the player needs to activate, making it very cool!
the starbase Clearly inspired by homeworld, but still absolutely breathtaking and incredible.

Bad:
The cobra needs to be much much much faster. If you watched the terran demo, you can note that the cobra can't even get around thor as the commentator says it can. Instead, it is getting shot the whole time. hmm..... Without the vulture the terans are really crippled.

Spider mines need to come back, the reapers' charge simply does not replace the defenses terran need early game.

The mothership ...wtf happened? The mothership would have been an awesome addition. They removed it because a few 40 year old men (from 1up) had a lan and kept sending entire fleets at it... These people were so ignorant about starcraft they thought you started with 5 workers in the original. Their stupidity shouldn't interfere with the protoss having a unique aspect to their race. Seriously, I wish I could just show you how stupid motherships were at the demo. It was a protoss battlecruiser.

The nomad looks really stupid. Its repair is also completely useless. I needs to be able to clamp onto a capital ship and give it a steady hp/sec regeneration in order for it to have any use.


Merged posts. Please read the forum rules and do not double post.

 

good review, I think that the terrans will eventually get some much needed buffs in the form of more aa, concerning Raynor I liked the new voice and look for him and makes sense for him to atleast be alittle different then in the original the setting is 10 years after BW after all

 

Nice man. I liked how you described the nomad's repair ability. I would like to ask if you played with the predator and how its intercept ability worked. owerup:

 

Answering the questions:

Can immortals target air? Yes

How did the intercept ability work? The predator is an anti air fighter. I expect blizz continue on its current path, and give it a medium aoe attack (similar to the corsair). The predator is good at attacking small ships while the viking air mode is good for taking on big ships with a slow heavy attack similar to wraith missiles.

As far as intercept worked, you would activate intercept mode, and the predator would shoot down things like incoming missiles. It worked very similarly to the protoss time bomb, but instead of stoping incoming projectiles, it shot them down.

 

awesome. it's good to know the immortal can target air now. great review.

 

Great review! I have a comment about the mothership change. It seems to me Blizzard is probably thinking along the line of gameplay balancing in alliance battle. Imagine you have several Protoss players alliances, with most of them going for motherships and a few taking defensive roles so that the other players can climb the tech tree. The end result would be more than one motherships on a map, right? How can the other races defend against this tactics?

It looks to me either way (to nerf mothership or not), Blizzard has to consider the scenario that there will be more than one motherships on a single map. Judging from their current decision, it is probable that their internal testing shows more than one motherships in the earlier form would just overwhelm the other races. This could be what justify their current decision to give mothership the nerf.

I think the nerf sucks though. The original concept of mothership is nice (a superior space fortress of the mighty Protoss fleet). Now it's been reduced to a Protoss BC+Arbiter.

 

Predatosr is cool, pretty much like command and conquer anti missile lasers. Anyway... protoss dont use missiles. not even one. Intercept will be useless agains them.

 

awesome review owerup: ;D

 

oh thanks for clearing the interceptor mode of the predator and its attack. the immortal having anti-air ability is a good sigh of relief. ^_^

 

eltia, if there are multiple motherships an easy way to counter them is with air.

 

how warp in works-
when you build units from a warp gate, they remain in a queue to be placed on the battlefield. As soon as you need them, you can send them to a place on the battlefield. The warp in time is about 6 seconds, which I find annoying.

 

so u can build like 5 units at one warp gate and once u need them u warp in those 5 anywhere in pylon power? or is it only 1 at a time?

 

And by we you mean people who only play Blizzard RTS games.

 

No paragon, I mean it's unlike anything anyone has ever seen.
The polygon count on every unit is incredible. Textures, Shading, Anti-aliasing, and shadows are unparalleled by anything on the market today.

 

lol, show me a rts that can do what starcraft engine is doing with singleplayer.

 

I have some questions that I've also posted in 10-Neon's thread cuz I'm not real sure where is the best place to post them.

- What happened to the reaper's flamethrower attack?
- What were the chevron markings above Terran units that we've seen in screenshots?
- Was there a movement speed upgrade for the cobra? The cobras that we saw in the Terran vid were hella slow.

 

Awesome review Meloku i wish i was there to play SC2... not fair *sob* sob* :upset: but at least we saw your review and now i know what SC2 is like ^_^ and i do agree about the Cobra's movement it is rather slow

owerup: to you!

 

Bring back the original Mother Ship!!! This new one sounds very average

 

DontHate, if there are multiple motherships an easy way to counter them would be with Ghost's lockdown. Air-to-Air would suck (literally) because of blackhole. (Keep in mind we are talking about multiple motherships with the original specification, not the latest one revealed in Blizzcon.)

 

I never had any trouble with the time it takes to warp units in. The only time it is a problem is when you're warping in a small number of units in a highly defended area... which should never be the case if you are using the Phase Prism as a transport- you should have 2-4 units to soak up the damage while the first warp-in batch arrives.

No, you cannot hold 5 units in a Warp Gate to wait to be warped in, you can only hold 1. If you want to warp 5 units at the same time you need 5 Gates.

red_dragoon: Yes, paragon is always this grumpy. While we're on the subject of graphics, they showed the Stalker's Blink animation in the art panel: the unit vanishes, sort of polygon by polygon, from the top to the bottom while it simultaneously reappears polygon-by-polygon at its destination. This is cool in itself, but they also noted that, while the unit is vanishing, the shadow is vanishing too: they really do have per-pixel shadows going on.

Remy:
-No flamethrower to be seen
-No chevrons to be seen
-I do not remember seeing a speed upgrade for the Cobra, even though yes, it really could have used one.

eltia: The Ghost does not, at this point, actually have Lockdown, so you have to use dedicated units... in the build we played, the MS couldn't attack air, so that might be the chink in the armor that you have to exploit.