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Warmachine posted:The impression I got from videos and such is that SC2 is more or less in maintenance mode these days--despite being plenty active. But this was only a cursory look. I try not to look at anything related to Blizzard communities for too long because the toxicity makes SA's load-bearing slurs look like a Disney film. FWIW I got into co-op last year and the community seems extremely chill for the most part. I've done >500 matchmaking games (I don't think there's a way of getting an accurate count after the 500 match achievement?) and I think I've had one guy who was outright offensive and one guy deliberately teamkill me and throw the game and that's it. Occasionally I get someone who's just barely playing, I'm guessing bots or boosters hoping for a carry, but that's pretty rare too. I've had way more people happy to have a friendly chat, give genuine advice when I'm struggling with a new prestige or mutation, or even offer free carries to for powerlevelling. There's a couple of shithead regulars in lobby chat but that's easy enough to ignore, and admittedly I've not really pushed brutal+ so maybe people get pissier at the top level?
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Oct 26, 2023 21:36
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Side with Hanson. The protoss here are way too up themselves and I want to shoot them.
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Oct 29, 2023 11:26
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I assume Raynors Raiders handle logistics the same way as the party that never ends from Hitchhiker.
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Nov 2, 2023 12:52
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Isn't Man the greatest monster of all?
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Nov 5, 2023 21:30
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MagusofStars posted:But even in terms of gameplay, I really don’t think it matters for most games. The majority of your players are playing the campaign exactly once, aren’t reading a guide beforehand, and are just picking whatever feels right in the moment. As long as both results are good enough to be viable, that really is good enough; one option being mechanically superior to the other doesn’t hold anything back. This is kind of my feeling, that the flexible story makes more sense when you consider who they're developing for. I'd bet that as well as not playing through multiple times, a large portion of WoL players either never played the original games (like me) or had them as distant memories - they were 12 years old and by that point, extremely janky and awkward to play. There is just way less context for what the zerg are and why the protoss are saying this. From that point of view, halfway through your unserious space adventure (because you've not delayed it as late as possible), some blue smartass has just popped up and insisted you betray your friend by doing a massacre. Equally, with all the additional context, the thread was pretty consistent in siding with the protoss. Railroading you one way or the other, or having the choice but having a bad ending, is going to alienate a whole bunch of people. Giving the player the option to pick the route that feels right to their understanding of Starcraft feels like a pretty elegant solution to getting stories that at least sort of work for fans of the old games and fans of the new one. Like, I don't think the writing itself is particularly good, but within that constraint I think this is a good solution to mop up a bit of tonal dissonance, assuming that we're not going to, say, gather in a large group of people on an internet forum and analyse each path objective by objective and line by line.
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Nov 13, 2023 20:17
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Yeah, count me in as a SC2 liker, if we're admitting to things. It's dumb action sci-fi poo poo, but that's pretty much what I expected and what I wanted from the campaign of an RTS in 2010. The narrative broadly serves to give all these missions reasons to happen, and give me opportunities to go "oh that's wild" as they dream up a bigger robot to make bigger explosions. It's got easy to understand characters doing cool action movie things at each other, and at the end of the day this is a game about smashing space armies against each other, so I think it's the right direction for them to take it. I do think it's interesting how much the criticism here seems to be rooted in SC/BW and the wider lore, it definitely feels like the Big Complaint, the thing that takes it from being silly to being bad, is that it's not sufficiently faithful to the tone or lore. That's an entirely valid criticism, to be clear - as a universal rule, direct sequels should be follow ups to their originals - but it's notable to me that a lot of people here were just wanting a fundamentally different type of game to the one Blizzard ended up producing. I'd love if they somehow managed to make a genuine remake of the first games (as opposed to the recent "remaster") with the same story and mission structure but acceptably modern mechanics and graphics, because there is zero chance of me playing them in their current state and it would be interesting to have this dissonance experience in reverse.
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Nov 14, 2023 00:45
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Get rid of the worms, it makes for a more interesting finale (and I know we'll see both of the option missions but I do think the Nydus one is cooler).
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Nov 19, 2023 14:29
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Honestly, this internally inconsistent Kerrigan feels pretty good to me? Like, there's really no-one good in the starcraft universe, basically every main character is just some incredibly powerful bastard doing insane war crimes because they think they're right and the ends justify the means - Jim did it, Kerrigan is doing it, and Artanis will do it. On a macro level, every faction is wrong and evil, but really the only distinction that matters is protagonist vs antagonist - right now we're in Kerrigan's pov so we're doing the things she does, but I think SC2 works best if you don't take the implicit assumption that we're playing the hero. It's the Saturday morning cartoon version of that, because it's a sci-fi game about tanks and essence and psychic aliens, but that's still the best frame to view it in. And because it's a silly cartoon story, at some point the real evil will arrive and threaten to kill thousands of people and everyone will patch up their differences and defeat it with the power of friendship, at which point Kerrigan will truly become the galactic hero of prophecy.
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Jan 23, 2024 19:25
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I love coop, excited that your finally covering it! Raynor is billed as a beginner commander and I think does a pretty good job giving you a fairly basic and flexible toolkit. He is the favourite of boosters, morons, and people I can only assume are bots, because most of the least helpful people I get paired with are Raynors, but he can also provide an endless supply of marines which is the game's best weapon, and on p1 you don't even need much micro because they're so much tankier. Fun fact about the Hyperion, it fires significantly more shots while moving, so your best bet is to queue up a bunch of move command around the target rather than directly attacking anything. Void Thrashing as a map is odd in that it's one of the shortest and easiest for standard play, to the point where you (and the enemy) may well not actually max out into your endgame murder ball. It's enemy placements just tend not to be very scary, and the timing is extremely lenient. The void thrashers also spawn on timers, so a quick player can clear a lot of the accompaniment before worrying about the thrashers.
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Jan 30, 2024 15:19
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In defence of Zerus, it has some cool RTS missions! Take no note of the framing.
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Jan 30, 2024 16:45
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It is pretty obvious that this is not just undoing the whole thing from WoL, unless you guys have just been looking at the pretty pictures instead of reading the words accompanying them, in which case yeah she looks the same as the QoB so you might think that she's turned right back into it. Ye olde queene of blades was robbed of her humanity and crafted specifically to lead the swarm, to seek power and destroy the swarms enemies because that's what (the swarm type of) zerg are supposed to do. It's in the text that she was part of a corrupted swarm and was robbed of a lot of her original feelings and memories and motivations, in the effort to make her into the Overmind's perfect successor. When Jim mostly dezergifies her at the end of WoL she regains a lot of what she lost, and is expected to retain it thrrough this transition, as per what Zeratul, the Primals, and Kerrigan herself have said about it. This is her sacrificing an element of her humanity to become powerful enough to defeat Mengsk and avenge Jim, but it is still going to be Sarah at the helm. By going back to the source of the Zerg, she's getting all that Zergy goodness but without any of the big bad's corruption. There's a bit of dramatic irony that Jim's gone through all that for her and now she's got to undo some of it for him, but it's not a full reversal. Kith posted:i was pretty into competitive sc2 during the HotS era so this is a wonderful way to find out that i've lost even more of my loving memory. I think they tended to be a little less oppressive in the Korean scene (when it was absolute dominant over the rest of the world's efforts), but I have vivid memories of, like, Snute and Stephano in particular going 40-60 minutes fairly regularly. Honestly some of the games were kind of impressive from a stamina and "who's going to break first" tension angle, even if the minute to minute engagements kind of sucked to watch.
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Feb 10, 2024 17:17
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Maybe it's just that this is an incredibly uncharitable place for the LP to cut, because it gives absolutely nothing about post transformation Kerrigan so speculation is free and disproving it would be invoking spoilers. To be clear, these are the kind of takes I'm arguing with:Tenebrais posted:(since this is basically just putting her back where she was before after learning nothing) BisbyWorl posted:
gohuskies posted:All those missions we spent in WoL turning Kerrigan into a human feel like a super productive way to have spent our time now that she's been turned right back into the Queen of Blades again! Like, it's pretty clear from the context throughout this game that it is not just going back to the same of Queen of Blades we fought in WoL. There is no suggestion that she's losing Kerrigan's will anywhere in anything anyone's said to or about her. The character's motivations are primarily revenge, rather than the broader push for power and survival that the QoB was going through. Plot aside, it's a video game and she's colour coded differently so you know she's not on the same old side. Like, this undoes the surrender of her scary powers, and it undoes the bit where Jim can have sex with her, but in terms of who she is, this new Kerrigan is far more like the humanised one than the QoB. There's plenty to dunk on here (the zerg heels and boobs, the laziness of keeping the model, Blizzard's whole corruption obsession, the general concept of the primal zerg, the puddle as a reinfestation vector, the mission design itself), no need to make stuff up.
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Feb 10, 2024 21:28
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James Raynor, you must turn your girlfriend into a human again or the universe dies!
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You missed the impaler trick in the evolution mission, where there's a check to make sure you actually have hydras to morph, which happens slightly after getting the ability to morph them, so if you do your existing hydras quickly enough it'll spawn a bunch more and you get double impalers, which is completely useless but it's fun to stunt on the terrans. Impalers and lurkers are both pretty useless imo, the campaign just doesn't really have much defensive action and their siege capabilities aren't really worth the effort you need to burrow micro. The impaler range is nice but I'd usually rather just have units that can walk and talk. Lurkers get a better showing in co-op, at least.
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Feb 18, 2024 13:55
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I'm usually too lazy to do all the micro that air Swann requires, so I go for the superior strategy of just building a fuckload of goliaths and third and a-moving them towards whatever needs to die. The other trick, which is particularly good with p1s buff, is to use your first factory as a spotter for the drill. A cheap and reasonably hefty flying thing is basically perfect for getting vision on a contested base or an attack wave to start working on them before you've got the whole army up, and if you do get it blown out you can churn out more no problem His turret prestige enabling aggressive static defence is a playstyle you don't really get in the campaign or 1v1, and really only one other commander in co-op. Overall, he's probably one of my least favourites to play, his most interesting tools are very easy to gently caress up with and the rest is just slow and dull. Amazing to get paired with though, there's so many cool armies that aren't really viable without the bonus gas.
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Feb 22, 2024 13:31
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She really loves making banelings. The protoss robbed her of the pleasure by killing it at the zergling stage and had to die for their crime. Alternative post: she believes the baneling begins the moment the zergling is morphed.
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Feb 26, 2024 15:33
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Zomborgon posted:Baneling Host Which host evolution is best for this?
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Feb 27, 2024 15:01
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I like soldier of fortune, because a lot of the time the optimal composition basically ends up being massing one unit, usually ghosts or goliaths, and it's quicker to run them up like that. Miner Evac can be a pretty rough mission, that first ship can be tricky for some commanders, the number of infested and especially the volatiles can overwhelm someone who's early unit are mostly melee, or single target, or just slow to get out. On brutal, you don't get that first ship right by your base, its one of the ones slightly further away, which makes it even tricker to reinforce sufficiently. Those bonus objectives don't gently caress around either, Blightbringer's got a hefty health pool so van keep you occupied for a long time, and his aoe acid pool can do work if you're not paying attention. The eradicators are more fragile but do even more damage and will happily melt even some late game armies if you stand in the wrong place.
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Mar 14, 2024 09:06
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Cythereal posted:I treat hellbats as another mineral dump call-in for Nova. If they accomplish something before they die, so much the better. Yeah hellbats (and marines) are just stuff to throw in while waiting for the gas and charges to build my actual units. Spend minerals I'm probably not using (because I always forget airstrike exists), do some damage, absorb some bullets that might otherwise find their way to something I like.
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Mar 14, 2024 21:18
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As established, she's a psycho who enjoys killing and revenge. It's way more satisfying to do that with your own bare
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Mar 30, 2024 12:49
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Rifts to Korhal is a particularly awkward map because it has an attack wave that spawns extra early, some enemy comps will hit before 3:00, which can be pretty brutal depending on your commanders and player competence. H&H have a bunch of fun ideas, but more than probably anyone else they're very situational as to how good they end up being - it can be pretty punishing if the prestige doesn't line up with the map, ally and any mutations you might snag. When they do work, though, it's a lot of fun. They do explosions really, really well.
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Apr 10, 2024 14:48
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RevolverDivider posted:Yeah I was a little wary about the Moebius mod due to it being set to Nightmare when I played it but it felt very fair as long as I leveraged the tools the game gave me. Yeah the thing with co-op commanders is that they're broadly insanely powerful compared to what you have in the campaign or skirmish. Any mod that didn't make the game more difficult would be a cakewalk, and nightmare is a pretty good base for upping the difficulty and keeping it engaging.
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Apr 12, 2024 14:24
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The problem with Tychus is that he's the kind of OP that makes the game less fun. He's broadly so simple and powerful that there's just not that much to do a lot of the time. Lone Wolf is cool for the multitasking aspect, but it is absolutely miserable to be the ally and have someone else handily soloing the whole map at once. The single combined command card is really great though (aside from LW, where its a bit pointless), and I hope more games pick it up. My only slight issue is when I choose different build orders from one game to the next and start hitting the wrong hotkey.
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Apr 18, 2024 12:02
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In starcraft 3 (lol) she will just be a floating set of boobs.
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Apr 25, 2024 15:41
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I think it's an overstatement to say Kerrigan is too tough, she'll still die in seconds if she does start taking hits. That just doesn't often happen because HotS is just generally forgiving in enemy placement and attack wave size, so she tends to be able to wipe stuff before actually getting hit. And hey, if you do gently caress up, she'll be back before the next engagement anyway. I get why mods tend to just remove her, but I think it would be interesting to explore ways of limiting her use, so she can still be the Koprulu sector's Queen poo poo of gently caress Mountain occasionally, just not everywhere all the time. Just brainstorming, "Kerrigan must not die" would be a basic step, but you could also give her longer cooldowns (maybe with a charge system), or adjust the AI to crank up her target priority, add attack waves that target her specifically, or (I have no idea if this is really possible) have the AI dynamically respond to her deployment - scale them with her damage dealt, for example. In concept I like the idea of having her as a powerful hero unit, but there's a lot they could (should) have done to increase her skill ceiling, and incentivise and reward considered use.
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Apr 25, 2024 20:28
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anilEhilated posted:I think Isza points out one of my bigger issues with this story: it's not about the Zerg, all the Zerg characters are minor and in the background. This is a Terran game played with Zerg units. Yeah, although I kind of get it - hive minds as a concept are fixed to having essentially one perspective, and it's very difficult to write a story about only one character. You'd either have to introduce non hive mind zerg (like Stukov, and the Primals, which have both made the thread very angry by their mere existence), or you're left with subordinate cerebrates/queens who can quip and chatter but the premise requires them to either have no real agency or to get stomped on immediately. I think the best solution might have been to have Kerrigan run into more resistance re-uniting the swarm - perhaps in her weakened state she's not capable of dominating in the same way and needs to force smaller groups to join up, although that might get repetitive if you make too much of the game about it. Either way, I think ultimately the source of conflict and progression for a hive mind is going to come from their engagement with wider regional events and characters. Otherwise you're not writing a story, you're just writing lore codex entries. Like, look at a story summary of SC1/BW and tell me that the zerg sections aren't still mostly about the Overmind/Kerrigan dealing with what the Protoss and Terrans are doing. Same reason that despite churning out fifty billionty books by a range of often very questionably talented writers, Black Library still hasn't really managed to do anything with the tyranids.
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Apr 28, 2024 15:32
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I think it's been made pretty clear that Kerrigan cares about Mengsk because she too is a petty arsehole. There's basically no existential threat to Kerrigan at this point, she's just getting revenge on the guy who she holds responsible for all her misery. I mean, I guess it's not that petty to want revenge on the guy who abandoned you to the zerg, tried to kill you when you got rescued, tried that again later, kidnapped the person you loved, told you they were dead, causing you to have to go back to the version of you you hated, only to discover that that very act caused the person you love to hate you. I'd set the lings on Mengsk too.
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Apr 29, 2024 14:47
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I wish I vibed with Mengsk. Terran's never really been my thing, but even then his toolkit just doesn't really do much for me. Trooper armies mostly feel like worse Raynor bio comps, and his royal guard units are just mostly rear end - I have never ever got good use out of the blackhammers and whatever the vikings are called, the prides are just too expensive to get much use out of. The marauders are pretty boring too. Tanks are really the only one that stands out to me, and even then their coolest trick, the medivac thing, just isn't very good. Earthsplitters are great when they work but really limited in a lot of situations - they do very little until you hit a critical mass, so you need a competent ally (lol, I solo queue) and a map you can get a fast expansion on, and they're pretty bad against air comps, and they're a bunch of faff to keep up and moving on a bunch of larger maps, especially ones where you tend to start right in the corner. Also this is a skill issue on my part but there's a pretty big targeting delay and I really struggle to reliably snipe attack waves, which quite often gets me wiped because it's not like I've been investing in any actual army or defences. I haven't got P3 though and you guys are making it sound cool, so maybe I'll move that up my list of prestiges to aim for. And since we've now done Tychus and DoN, this is the point where I'll say that Blaze's spreading flames combo is loving amazing here. The infested are dense enough that he'll take out massive sections of the assault with no effort at all, and if you move him into an actual infested structure area, you can burn out the entire thing at once, with the help of the handy thing that structures spawn dudes when they get attacked to keep it spreading. Also, it all happens in the fog of war so you can light some guys right at the start of the night and watch the counter keep ticking down, or do what I do and forget that happened and then go in during the day and see empty wasteland and go "what the gently caress happened he - oh my ally is tychus, duh" and then win on night 2.
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May 7, 2024 20:24
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You touched on it with the chrono boost but one of the reasons the prologue is a bit weird, gameplay wise, is that it's built on the HotS version of the protoss, since the LotV changes weren't ready when they were making it.
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May 11, 2024 08:44
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