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It's mostly a creep-spread tutorial. That and one of few chances to make a defensive burrow relevant in casual play.
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# ? Mar 2, 2024 09:04 |
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# ? Jun 5, 2024 19:44 |
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DTurtle posted:If I see the map correctly, it’s just our base connected to the enemy base with a winding path. There are no expansions, just a few enemy outposts scattered along the path. There is no reactivity, no change in tactics or enemy composition. Finally, the "bonus" objective is just three carcasses randomly placed along the path. And it is still more interesting than "there are four points you have to reach, each guarded by progressively stronger enemy forces, oh and you are on timer" repeated ad nauseam in LotV. Heart of the Swarm, with all its flaws, was peak performance when it comes to mission design, at least compared to LotV (with WoL campaign being glorified tutorial).
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# ? Mar 2, 2024 10:07 |
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That sounds like peak was really low. I liked WotL campaigns much more, because they didn't give you hero unit that soloed all missions it was in, but I can't say that's better mission design on its own.
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# ? Mar 2, 2024 10:15 |
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If Warfield is the best general the dominion's got it's amazing they've held together at all. Also his name is stupid. It's clearly made up as a general-sounding name. Did his parents do that to boost his military career or did he change it himself depending on his rank? Scource. Great anti-air strain. Perfect for use against dominion and protoss vessels. Do not bother to collect. I am very smart.
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# ? Mar 2, 2024 11:06 |
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Is it possible to destroy the Gorgons without the Scourge Nests or are they only killable by trigger, not by sheer damage?
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# ? Mar 2, 2024 12:28 |
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PurpleXVI posted:Is it possible to destroy the Gorgons without the Scourge Nests or are they only killable by trigger, not by sheer damage? They don't even have health. You play by the rules or die.
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# ? Mar 2, 2024 12:32 |
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So what happens if you let the gorgon pass by a section, then build a new hatchery past where it's already flown, to keep you in the game? Does it fly back, or is it broken..?
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# ? Mar 2, 2024 12:39 |
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This mission really does wonders for completely neutering the Dominion as a threat. Their best general is a totally incompetent boob!
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# ? Mar 2, 2024 12:51 |
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Huh, I thought I remembered him launching multiple Gorgons at a time toward the end. Maybe that's just something I expected rather than actually happened?
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# ? Mar 2, 2024 12:51 |
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HannibalBarca posted:This mission really does wonders for completely neutering the Dominion as a threat. Their best general is a totally incompetent boob! WoL did establish that Raynor was the only reason they didn't immediately die when attacking Char.
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# ? Mar 2, 2024 13:02 |
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TeeQueue posted:
There's been instances in modded campaigns that probably didn't require extra coding where the gorgon killed the main hive and then backtracked to kill stuff that had been built behind it. Zerg being expected to multihatch probably caught that design flaw early.
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# ? Mar 2, 2024 13:05 |
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Why's the Dominion even still on Char? Is there anything there except volcanoes and zerg?
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# ? Mar 2, 2024 13:10 |
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TeeQueue posted:
Just checked. When the Gorgon reaches your base it'll pick a building and park on top of it, prioritizing Extractors, then other buildings, then your Hatch. It'll ignore Drones unless you actively command them to attack. Although the nature of zerg bases means the Hatch will probably be in range anyways. Once everything in the starting base is dead it'll beeline to wherever your next Hatch is, repeating until you either lose or finally pop a Scourge Nest. So it isn't an instant game over, but good luck getting any units made when the Gorgon is taking wonky paths and Drones have to walk a mile each way to harvest minerals
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# ? Mar 2, 2024 13:11 |
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BisbyWorl posted:Just checked.
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# ? Mar 2, 2024 13:29 |
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You see zerg have a preset kill limit. Knowing their weakness I sent wave after wave of my own gorgons at them until they reached their limits and shut down. Angry Salami posted:Why's the Dominion even still on Char? Is there anything there except volcanoes and zerg?
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# ? Mar 2, 2024 14:32 |
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Poil posted:You see zerg have a preset kill limit. Knowing their weakness I sent wave after wave of my own gorgons at them until they reached their limits and shut down. Ironically Warfield actually did stop trying right before Kerrigan ran out of scourge and he'd have overwhelmed her.
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# ? Mar 2, 2024 14:40 |
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Y'know, the funny thing is, the "Real Scale" mod for Heart of the Swarm fixes Warfield's big tactical dumbassery here. Because in Real Scale, the Gorgon is so goddamn enormously massive... that there is only one in the entire mission. And it takes every Scourge Nest on the map to destroy it. Each successive Scourge nest simply weakens it.
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# ? Mar 2, 2024 15:16 |
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Tenebrais posted:Ironically Warfield actually did stop trying right before Kerrigan ran out of scourge and he'd have overwhelmed her. Yeah, if he had exactly one more gorgon it would've worked.
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# ? Mar 2, 2024 17:08 |
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I see Warfield being here as just hinting down the remaining Zerg broods there. It was Kerrigans primary hive cluster, so chances are that is where most of the Zerg numbers were, so they are just slowly trying to exterminate the last of the major numbers/prevent some Broodmother popping up and gathering enough numbers to cause a problem later.
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# ? Mar 2, 2024 17:13 |
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Fun Fact: The Zerg Bits that you gather are actually Defiler Bones! Fun Fact #2: The Defiler itself is actually in Heart! ... as an unfinished, untextured model! This was a deliberate choice by Blizzard, as they wanted to see "what the community would do with it". The answer was "nothing", as everyone in the modding community saw it as the blatantly naked play it was to try to get users to cook up the textures for them.
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# ? Mar 2, 2024 17:45 |
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The best mods for HotS are the ones that remove Kerrigan from battlefield.
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# ? Mar 2, 2024 19:10 |
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you're just mad that she's got toes now
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# ? Mar 2, 2024 19:15 |
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I always just left Kerrigan in the base and feel pretty good about that choice.
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# ? Mar 2, 2024 19:30 |
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Intermission 9 Kilysa is the Broodmother that we saw during the Hydralisk evolution mission, meaning this is a continuity error. But hey, recognition! It's also one of the worst loving things in Heart! Do that, and you will earn your place within the Swarm. See, Mengsk sacrificing Tarsonis to the ravenous zerg to gain supreme power is treated as his most horrible act, to the point where the Rebellion missions back in Wings were all about revealing that to the general public. But Kerrigan? Kerrigan sacrifices a world to the zerg as a loving hazing ritual. Like, even as a big production hub there's no way a world can be a loving monolith of industry where every single soul is working at the factory! There has to be hospitals! Diners! Schools! Bars! Every single one of them gets put to the torch! And you know Kerrigan won't give a poo poo about the non-combatants! God, gently caress Kerrigan. The worst part is there's barely any payoff for this! There will be no dramatic moment where Kerrigan has her back to the wall and and the Broodmothers ride in to save the day! You could literally cut this out entirely and it would change nothing! >Talk to Izsha. Perhaps not all of them wish to rule the Swarm. Or perhaps they know there is safety in numbers. Another convo change if done before Zerus: quote:Izsha. When the Queen of Blades... when I commanded the Swarm here on Char. What was I like? >Talk to Dehaka This is the same 'Essence is change. Change is survival.' convo you get with Dehaka after reaching Kaldir, so I won't count it twice. >Talk to Zagara. Vision, is this like cunning? No. Viciousness? Abathur. Go to him. His work is painful. His work will make you understand vision. I will go. >Examine Warfield's Compound. He has no idea what he's up against. The Mutalisks flying around in the distance aren't here if you haven't done Zerus, naturally. This also gets different lines if Zagara is still in the room: quote:That fortress is nearly unassailable. There is only one ground approach and one- >Talk to Abathur. I was born a terran. Kerrigan sounds downright offended here. Rare terran individuals, high psionic potential. Overcome flawed origins. From now on, we won't be doing any more experiments on humans. Am pleased to know it. Kerrigan's levels. We need only your command, my queen. And now to murder the poo poo out of Warfield. BisbyWorl fucked around with this message at 04:44 on Mar 3, 2024 |
# ? Mar 3, 2024 04:35 |
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It's really fun watching Kerrigan swing from utterly awful on a large scale to random preventive decency on a small scale and knowing that since Blizz is writing, none of it means anything at all unless further bad writing happens that will manage to gently caress it up twice before it lands. I'm pretty sure teen me could write better than that, I even should have some evidence lying around, that I need to burn.
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# ? Mar 3, 2024 04:53 |
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The whole broodmother devouring random worlds thing is one of the more tonally braindead parts of heart of the swarm and also one of the more disappointing: you're literally devouring an entire world while trying to be morally superior and you don't even get to play it out.
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# ? Mar 3, 2024 05:37 |
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please never forget that this happened, it makes so many things so much funnier
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# ? Mar 3, 2024 06:08 |
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NewMars posted:The whole broodmother devouring random worlds thing is one of the more tonally braindead parts of heart of the swarm and also one of the more disappointing: you're literally devouring an entire world while trying to be morally superior and you don't even get to play it out. What's weird is they don't give the player a choice - they could say "do you want to send Kilysa to the planet that builds Wraiths or the planet that builds Goliaths" and maybe that's an interesting trade-off for your eventual invasion of Korhal but instead it's just something to click past that makes zero difference in anything.
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# ? Mar 3, 2024 07:05 |
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"We're putting a stop to any human experimentation." "Thank god, they sucked as material." Never change, Abathur.
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# ? Mar 3, 2024 07:09 |
TeeQueue posted:"We're putting a stop to any human experimentation." And the real clincher is that he’s saying that right before the mission where you get… late-stage infested terrans.
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# ? Mar 3, 2024 07:42 |
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"Wow, you really showed that planet who's boss, Kilysa!"
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# ? Mar 3, 2024 07:45 |
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Regalingualius posted:And the real clincher is that he’s saying that right before the mission where you get… late-stage infested terrans. That's what abominations are? Followup questions, what actual use case do abominations have in gameplay? I assume Abathur's comments are after years of trying to squeeze something useful out of human
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# ? Mar 3, 2024 10:21 |
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Poor Abathur, having to deal with Kerrigan and her mood swings. Kerrigan: "KILL ALL TERRANS hey Abathur you ever dissect any terrans?" Abathur: "Yes, it sucked because they suck." Kerrigan: "I used to be a Terran, you know!!!" Abathur: "I'm sure you were one of the special ones, my queen. Sigh."
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# ? Mar 3, 2024 12:10 |
Regalingualius posted:And the real clincher is that he’s saying that right before the mission where you get… late-stage infested terrans. Wait, what??? And here I was trying to suss out why she makes a point of 'no human experimentation' in the first place. Like, it's not any more deplorable than anything else she did in the last, I dunno, ten minutes.
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# ? Mar 3, 2024 12:21 |
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Someone must have been really attached to the visual of the Swarm consuming a planet, huh. It's some cool imagery, and would have worked if this was more like the Starcract 1 zerg campaign where you're just gleefully playing the bad guy. Obviously it doesn't work if you're still trying to play Kerrigan as morally conflicted. It also ties in with the way Starcraft 2 has a much broader and shallower scope - where the first game covered maybe eight planets over all of its campaigns, WoL had a separate one for each mission. Every planet is exactly one population centre, production facility or landmark. You could swap the name of each out for just the name of a local town and change nothing. I don't really have a problem with this - it's very, very standard for sci-fi - but I know it's something that bothered a lot of people about SC2. Just funny to see what while HotS' campaign structure gives each planet more focus, they really don't get any more gravitas.
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# ? Mar 3, 2024 12:58 |
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Omobono posted:That's what abominations are? Followup questions, what actual use case do abominations have in gameplay? They are better (non-evolved) ultras.
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# ? Mar 3, 2024 13:06 |
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Regalingualius posted:And the real clincher is that he’s saying that right before the mission where you get… late-stage infested terrans. There's one last detail about them that wraps this all up nicely in a bow, but I'll wait until the mission goes up before calling attention to it, unless Bisby points it out.
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# ? Mar 3, 2024 14:41 |
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BisbyWorl posted:That fortress is nearly unassailable. There is only one ground approach and one- This is a pretty funny exchange if you remember Kerrigan getting all offended at that Protoss prisoner with her "sure I may massacre refugees but how many Zerg have you killed, hmm?" line
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# ? Mar 3, 2024 14:50 |
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Aberrations are ridiculously powerful and frankly I'm upset about them. Heart has really awful roster bloat where you get a bunch of units "just because" and they wind up stepping over each other constantly.
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# ? Mar 3, 2024 15:14 |
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# ? Jun 5, 2024 19:44 |
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in the aberration's defense, stepping over things is literally in their job description
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# ? Mar 3, 2024 15:15 |