Bêta : Legacy of the Void
David Kim, Senior Game Designer chez Blizzard et responsable entre autres de l'équilibrage sur Starcraft II et sur la future extension de Legacy of the Void, s'est exprimé sur les dernières évolutions prévues dans le jeu, sur les retours qu'elles avaient suscitées dans la communauté et l'évolution vers laquelle elles tendent.
Cette semaine plusieurs points sont abordés :
- les changements sur la technologie de transfert. Après plusieurs semaines de réflexion, l'équipe de développement en est arrivée aux propositions suivantes. Dans le cas de pylônes où des portails avec porte de transfert sont présents dans la zone d'alimentation, le transfert prendrait 2 secondes, ce qui serait une amélioration en défense. Si les pylônes ne possèdent pas de Portails avec porte de transfert, le transfert prendrait 16 secondes, ce qui serait un nerf en phase offensive. Le but ici est de forcer les joueurs a attaquer non plus en avançant avec des Pylônes mais avec le Prisme de transfert qui est, lui aussi, à 2 secondes.
- le Disrupteur pose toujours des problèmes, et l'équipe de développement travaille toujours dessus, notamment en utilisant les idées de la communauté.
- les nouveaux groupes de contrôle, annoncés pour le mode Archonte, sont aussi implémentés pour le 1v1.
- les mécaniques de macro sont un sujet de discussion. Avec l'évolution de LotV vers plus d'actions, plus de micro, moins de temps morts, il est envisagé de les rendre plus simples. Deux options sont envisagées :
La première est de nerfer les trois races (efficacité des mules diminuées de 20%, coût du chronoboost augmenté à 50 sans être plus efficace, injection de larves automatique mais seulement 3 sont créées).
La seconde est de carrément les supprimer (mules et chronoboost) ou des les réduire drastiquement (injection de larves automatique mais seulement 2 créées à chaque fois). Les deux sont encore en phase de réflexion et en aucun cas cela n'est définitif.
- des remerciements sont adressés aux organisateurs de tournois sur le mode Archonte.
David Kim sur Mise à jour sur les retours de la Communauté (Source)
This week, we’ve mostly been focusing on iterating on a few specific topics through various meetings, discussions, playtests, and new idea generation.
Warp Gate changes
In last week’s Protoss update, we brought up some potential changes that we were looking at for Warp Gate. We tried a large number of different changes in this area, and where we are currently at is this:
- Units take 2 seconds to warp-in at Pylons that have Warpgates touching their pylon power.
-Buff to defensive case.
- Units take 16 seconds to warp in at Pylons not “connected” to Warpgates.
- Huge nerf to the offensive case.
- Warp Prism power fields take 2 seconds.
- Players will need to tech to Warp Prisms in order to offensive warp in well.
- Due to the smaller warp-radius of the Warp Prism, players may require several to effectively warp-in offensively with their army (this is countered somewhat by the fact that the offensive warp-in case is much stronger than before).
We tried many different designs in this area that have ultimately similar results, but this design seems to be the most clean in terms of added rules. With the offensive early warp-ins being less of a threat, we wanted to buff the defensive case and the Warp Prism case. We also felt that it’s ok to have a much stronger Warp Prism because players have had to commit to that tech in order to have access to its strength.
Disruptor
We still agree with you that the current version in the beta is not good, because just being invulnerable for so long doesn’t have the interesting micro and the potential for cool interactions. With that in mind, we’ve actually been focusing heavily on trying out various community suggestions and also branching off our own ideas from your suggestions. We’ll have a better update for you on the Disruptor next week, since we’re not quite done playtesting the various versions and forming conclusions on this area yet.
Alt control group for 1v1
We noticed some players were asking for the new alt control group feature to be added to 1v1, so we wanted to clear up some confusion and make sure that everybody knew that this feature is not specific to archon mode and can be used in any mode of StarCraft 2!
Macro Mechanics
Macro mechanics are something we’ve absolutely seen the community discuss in the past. With Legacy of the Void becoming more difficult to play due to our main goals - more action, micro on both sides during engagements, less downtime, etc. - we have been exploring areas that we can make easier. For these, we’re trying to locate areas that are difficult to manage but aren’t really easily noticeable. For example, as a player doing larva inject, it’s somewhat difficult for me to tell how well I’m doing in a given game. Further, my opponent really has no idea how well I’m doing it either. In esports matches, this is also something that viewers can’t tell either. Because macro mechanics are an area that’s difficult to do, and not many people can really tell how well someone is doing it, we’ve been exploring potentially cutting them or making them less important.
Currently, we’re looking at two options here.
Option 1:
- Spawn larva is autocast by default, but spawn only 3 larva.
- Mule efficiency is nerfed by 20% or so.
- Chrono boost cost increased to 50, and efficiency not quite doubled.
The thought here is that because efficiency is nerfed overall, it’s not as big of a deal to not do these mechanics spot on all the time.
Option 2:
- Cut chrono
- Cut mule
- Spawn larva is autocast by default, but spawn only 2 larva
The thought here is just do away with these added clicks, we do lose a little bit of strategy and decision making but we wonder if that’s ok, and have a clean version where players don’t need to do the extra clicks.
With that said, keep in mind neither of these versions are final, they’re just one of two potential directions we can go in this area.
Shoutouts
Finally, we also wanted to give a shoutout this week to the various Archon mode tournaments going on, as well as the MSI 2015 WSL tournament.
We saw a lot of excitement around the Redbull Archon tournament especially in the TvT series last weekend. BasetradeTV also had many cool moments, and one that was really memorable to us was the situation where a Korean team lost to a new Terran strategy from a foreign team. Then, in the following series, a different Zerg team countered the same strategy using Ravagers. In truth, seeing the more innovative teams performing better than the more “skilled at HotS” teams was pretty awesome.
For HotS, we really enjoyed the first matches of the MSI 2015 WSL. Although the games weren’t the highest skill like we’re used to seeing these days, the more casual and different type of environment was a cool change of pace and very entertaining to watch. Lastly, we wanted to also shoutout to Hungryapp TV for trying something new and fun.
In conclusion, thanks for all the continued feedback on Legacy of the Void. Let us know what you think of these changes and we look forward to hearing your thoughts!
