Zusammenstellung von HotS Beta Blue Posts

[Exekutor[NHF]]

Entsprechend zu der News dachte ich, kann man hier ja recht gut eine Übersicht über die Blue Posts machen [die Anmerkungen hab ich für diejenigen, die etwas mit ihren Englischkenntnissen straucheln, gelassen]. Diskutiert werden kann hier auch gerne, wenn es zu sehr um einzelne Einheiten/Fähigkeiten/Mechaniken geht wäre ein eigener Thread natürlich sehr sinnvoll.

Also dann:

Die SC2:HotS Beta läuft nunmehr seit einer Woche und Blizzard hat sich die Zeit genommen, im Battle.net-Forum einige Anmerkungen zu zukünftigen Plänen und heiß diskutieren Themen zu hinterlassen.

We are unlikely to ever open it to "everyone" but we will be putting out more and more invites to players in the weeks to come. We invite players in small groups at first to make sure the service is stable with a small group of people before we invite larger and larger groups.

Feedback from all of our players (of every skill level) is very important to making sure the game is as good as we can make it.

Es wird also keine, oder nur in einem sehr unwahrscheinlichen Fall eine open Beta geben. Zunächst soll die Stabilität der Beta mit einer kleinen Gruppe getestet werden, die dann immer mehr erweitert wird. Wann es zu größeren Einladungen, gerade für die Teilnehmer der Opt-In Möglichkeit, kommen wird, ist nicht bekannt.
Über die Häufigkeit der eingespielten Patches hat Dustin Folgendes zu sagen:

I hope we can get one out before the weekend. No promisses. Seriously, I'm not promising.

We are going to patch a lot more often in beta than we ever would in a live game. If we want to patch twice a week we can and will.

Es bleibt also abzuwarten, wann der nächste Patch kommt, auch wenn dies natürlich die Hoffnung verstärkt, dass dies noch vor dem Wochenende - das viele Gamer natürlich unter Anderem zum längeren Spielen nutzen wollen - geschieht.

We have the tools to make Entomb more painful if you don't leave some troops at home. Right now (according to our tests) it costs roughly 200 minerals if you have your workers immediatley attack and clear the entomb. That's a meaningful loss of resources for little risk for the Protoss who is unlikely to lose his Oracle in the raid. We could make a buff to the ability to make that loss much more significant (if we need to), causing enemy players to leave behind more and more troops to protect their mineral lines.

Your point about your vulnerability if you go Stargate is real enough. We'll have to see how the beta develops to know if there are ways Protoss can survive with an early Stargate tech choice at a variety of skill levels or if they will struggle too much and we need to make further changes.

We agree that the Oracle's spells are are too similar to one another. We are going to make a change as soon as we can to provide more variation in abilities. This should also create more strategy/choices within the unit.

Zum Thema Oracle gab es verständlicherweise viele Diskussion, da diese neue Protoss-Einheit im Fokus vieler Spieler ist. Nicht nur wurden die Fähigkeiten als zu ähnlich angemerkt, auch ihre Stärke wurde deutlich diskutiert und wird Blizzard-intern weiter getestet und sehr wahrscheinlich angepasst.

We are a little nervous about the potential power of Recall early in the game. The ability to make an attack (with units with shields) with little risk could become a problem at high level play. Recall is the primary reason why we don't have multiple Cores. Obviously the energy boost would also become an issue but if we felt like we needed multiple Mothership Cores but we could cut that ability if we needed to.

I think we can balance the Mothership Core successfully with the tools that we have. Buffs don't seem unreasonable at this point.

Die Diskussion, warum man nur einen Mothership Core haben darf obwohl dieser deutlich schwächer als sein größere Pendent (das Mutterschiff selber) ist, wird mit Verweis auf die Nutzung des Recalls beantwortet. Bei zu vielen Mothership Cores wäre es zu einfach für einen Protoss, seine Truppen immer wieder schnell in Sicherheit zu bringen. Eine Verstärkung des Mothership Cores ist natürlich nicht ausgeschlossen und kann durchaus genutzt werden, um die Einzigartigkeit weiter zu rechtfertigen.

We are very aware of a variety of concerns with this very early version of our beta for Heart of the Swarm. We are going to address design and balance issues as quickly as we can.

Protoss and the Warhound have been the focus of our discussions over the last few days. I expect we will patch soon to try some more stuff with the Protoss and the Warhound. This will certainly include balance changes but may also include design changes.

We are not discussing removing Warp Gates or making any changes to the Sentry. Sorry.

Viele Probleme mit dem Balancing wurden und werden bereits im Forum diskutiert und Blizzard ist sich der Probleme bewusst. Besonders was die Einheit der Protoss angeht sowie der Warhound werden sehr wahrscheinlich in den nächsten Patches Veränderungen unterzogen, die nicht nur auf der Ebene des Balancings, sondern durchaus auch am Design der Einheiten vollzogen wird.

Sorry, I don't see it coming back. It was entertaining and certainly seemed like it would open up new strategies when we put it in. But after a short amount of testing it became very clear that it largely shut down strategies. Enemy players became extremely careful in what they chose to build against a Protoss player who had Replicant tech on the map.

Der Replicant wird also auf keinen Fall in der Beta noch einmal auftauchen. Bleibt abzuwarten, ob er den Nutzern des Map Editors zur Verfügung gestellt wird bzw. ob er möglicherweise noch einen Auftritt in der Kampagne erhält.

The Nydus Worm changes we had in mind before the beta began were causing us a large number of balance problems.

We are not planning on putting in anything new for the Zerg at this time. With all the new stuff the Zerg have in the expansion we think the Zerg have plenty of new strategic options to keep the game fresh. Like all design decisions we reserve the right to be wrong, and change our minds later. For now I would encourage you to evaluate the Zerg with what they have in the Beta today and give us feedback based on what you are seeing now

Die anfänglich vorgestellten Änderungen am Nyduswurm werden es also nicht in die Beta schaffen, da es zu viele Probleme mit dem Balancing gab und Blizzard der Meinung ist, dass die Zerg mit den neuen Einheiten bereits sehr viele neue strategische Möglichkeiten haben.

Wir werden auch weiterhin versuchen, euch über Anmerkungen seitens Blizzards auf dem Laufenden zu halten. Über Inhalte der Blue Posts könnt ihr gerne in unserem Forum diskutieren.

[Exekutor[NHF]]

We have heard your concerns. We are on it the case. Our next patch will have lots of changes for Protoss. David is preparing a situation report for you guys that explains all the details. See what you think when he gets it out. Hopefully you will be playing with changes soon and we can see how it goes.

You guys have made a lot of great points in the last week. Balance points and design points. I wish I could say that we shipped the perfect beta and no changes are needed, but it's just not true. Testing in the studio is just not the same as testing on a live service with real players who just care about winning. It is a very informative experience. I can't imagine making a game like this without this type of beta to help create and tune the design and balance.

We have several months of beta in front of us. Please keep playing and giving feedback and we'll do our best to keep up

Kam heute Nacht von Dustin rein. Jetzt bin ich ja sehr gespannt, was Blizzard so mit den Protoss vor hat - wobei ein "situation report" natürlich auch um einiges interessanter als ein einfacher Patch ist, weil man sehen kann, wo Blizzard die Probleme sieht und wie sie versuchen, sie anzugehen.

Das zweite bemerkenswerte ist die Ankündigung, dass die Beta mehrere Monate gehen soll. Ich weiß ehrlich gesagt nicht, warum sie sie dann zumindest ein Jahr scheinbar sinnlos zurück gehalten haben. Naja, Blizzard halt

[Malebolgia]

Etwas interessantes in Bezug auf den Roboschnauzer:

The two units being way too similar in role isn't working out for us.

We're currently looking for ways for the Warhound to have a different role, and good suggestions in this area would definitely be welcome. The current Marauder vs. mech Marauder is not looking to be a very cool Starcraft choice.

Und generell in Bezug auf Terran:

We don't think Terran anti air is lacking, but we are focusing on improving the Widow Mine which should help in this area as well.

For Terran in general, these are our latest thoughts:

1. Warhound is not working out at all
2. Seeing Reapers again early game is cool + we'd like to try pushing it more
3. Widow Mine improvements to bring them more into the Terran army

[Malebolgia]

Krasse Ansage...

Carrier and Tempest are staying for sure.

Warhound is gone. There is no top-secret unit waiting in the wings to jump in. It's out.

I cannot promise that something won't happen later (I am not yet able to see into the future) but currently there are no plans for another Terran unit.

[Salamitier]

Ich muss ernsthaft gestehen: Das finde ich schon ziemlich heftig.
ABER: Goil!

Es ist meiner laienhaften Meinung einfach so: Terraner sind einfach bereits wahnwitzig vielseitig. Der Warhound hat dem nichts mehr hinzugefügt, er war einfach ein riesiger mechanischer Marodeur. Ich begrüße diese Entscheidung, denn "weniger ist mehr" (=

Der Träger muss einfach drinnen bleiben. Wenn jetzt noch die Spieler dahinter kommen, dass ein Träger seinen Angriff auf die Reichweite von 8 beginnt, sich danach aber bis auf Reichweite 14 zurückziehen kann, bevor die Interceptoren zurückkehren, könnte ich mir schon vorstellen, dass er doch noch seinen wohlverdienten Platz im Spiel findet.

[Infiltrat0r]

Der Träger muss einfach drinnen bleiben. Wenn jetzt noch die Spieler dahinter kommen, dass ein Träger seinen Angriff auf die Reichweite von 8 beginnt, sich danach aber bis auf Reichweite 14 zurückziehen kann, bevor die Interceptoren zurückkehren, könnte ich mir schon vorstellen, dass er doch noch seinen wohlverdienten Platz im Spiel findet.

Ist bekannt, war in SC1 schon so, Crap ist der Carrier trotzdem. Vikings und Corruptors(besonders Vikings) sind einfach zu gut, und die Viper wird mit ihrer Pull-Fähigkeit den Carrier nicht stärker machen.

Terraner sind einfach bereits wahnwitzig vielseitig.

Da kann ich dir leider nur zustimmen

[Malebolgia]

In Bezug auf Mech:

Our latest thinking on HotS mech:

1. All mech revolving around Siege Tanks makes Terran want to sit back and defend for a very long time. We're not sure what the correct ratio of this sort of play would be against how Terran players play now.

2. Mech revolving around a more all round/slightly mobile unit didn't work out with the Warhound.

3. Widow Mine being a more useful option is looking to be a really fun add to mech. We really want to focus on making this unit awesome for now and see where it goes.

4. Battle mode Hellions being built as a separate unit feels good for now due to how different this unit is from the hellion. We've been playing around with Battle Hellions that have Biological flag (can be healed my Medivacs), and are seeing more bio + mech cominations.

So overall, we think it'll be good if players in the beta really focus on the Widow Mines and Battle Hellions in the next couple weeks to really figure out their potential.

Widow mine:

Widow mine is a 160 damage unit that instantly 2-4 shots the strongest, latest tier units in the game. Not to mention you can build them two at a time with a 20 sec build time on each. We don't think it'll be a good idea to have these guys be 1 pop especially for the 200/200 supply cases.

We do agree that the Widow Mine is not at an amazing place right now, but we think fixing the unit itself to be good is a priority than just simply lowering the supply cost to 1.

We have more changes for the Widow Mine this week as well so please check them out, and please note one of our top priorities in the up coming weeks is to have the Widow Mine be a really solid unit.

Overseer:

We tried a bunch of things for the Overseer. Every time we had a good/strong ability, there was always the same problem. You can create an infinite number of Overseers due to them having no supply restriction.

This meant, in order to get the Overseer working correctly with a powerful spell we needed to increase the cost and/or have a supply cost.

Neither sounded good for obvious reasons like:

- If Overseers cost 1 supply you lose 9 supply when you morph one from an overlord (since you lose the overlord)

- Zerg mobile detection is nerfed way too much

- Is the new spell even cool with the tradeoffs/downsides the new Overseer has now?

[UnKnOwN_86]

- If Overseers cost 1 supply you lose 9 supply when you morph one from an overlord (since you lose the overlord)

Was ist das für eine Begründung? Man sollte dann einfach sagen, das wenn ein Overseers gemorpht wird nur noch 7 Supply gibt anstatt 8 wie der Overlord - dann ist der Overseer ein Supply Depot mit Abilities...

[Malebolgia]

Balance in Bezug auf NICHT HOTS Units:

Sorry guys, I have communicated badly in this area. We will rebalance the entire game including the old units. Just not today. We have months left in the beta. We can only do so much in 1 week and trying to do eveything at once is a mistake. You'll have to trust me on that.

We are still making core design changes to some of these new units. Warhound came out, Oracle got a new spell and may get a new spell again. We aren't really liking the last new spell. Widowmine may get some changes. Etc.

I'm not saying "we will never make changes to Thor" or "we will never making changes to Void Ray" I'm just saying:

"For another week or two (depending on how things go) we will be focused on design changes on these new units."

Cool?

[Malebolgia]

Interessante News bez. Detection

Things we're thinking are:

1. We want Widow Mine to be an awesome new unit for Terran that's difficult for other races to deal with.

2. If Protoss needs more options - mothership core gets some sort of soft detection instead of oracle.

3. If Zerg needs more detection early - remove the evo requirement for spore crawlers

All this is still under discussion so feedback is more than welcome. But please remember we do want the Widow Mine to be a powerful new threat that players have to prep against.

[Zerf]

Protoss are going to get some buffs this week. Hopefully they will make a difference for you. But we are still in beta, so I can't promise they will be enough.

I'm very sorry you don't feel we have been paying attention. We have been reading a lot of threads but it is impossible to read them all. We will try to do better.

Kurz gesagt Blizzard will diese Woche den Protoss ein paar Buffs verabreichen.

Thanks for the post! There is a lot of good detailed feedback here. I don't agree with everything but it's a great discussion. For example I don't believe that "Gateway units are weak because of warp-in." I do agree that Sentry is core to Gateway and that Gateway units are balanced around the use of Sentry. What makes this worse is that Sentries are hard to use. Guardian Shield isn't too difficult to manage, but Force Fields can be very difficult to use correctly. We are talking about ways to make the Sentry easier to use so more Protoss players can get value out of him.

I think that Gateway units can be very, very deadly. It's just a matter of when. Stalkers with blink are very powerful and Zealots with charge are very dangerous as well (even against Stim Terrans). But when I fight with my Gateway units against most Terran players I don't yet have these upgrades.

I believe that most Protoss players (myself included) feel the need to go Robotics first to scout and to avoid cloaked threats. If we give the Mothership Core someway to detect cloaked units Protoss players should be able to open Twilight Council and upgrade their Gateway units very quickly. This might reduce the Terran stim timing attacks and make it less required for Protoss to go Robo or Templar tech as fast as possible to avoid being crushed by an infantry timing.

Though with Widow Mine in the picture I'm not sure how that will change things. Since that is another cloak threat.

We will be looking some at the Void Ray soonish. I don't know what if anything we will decide to do with him but your feedback on this unit has certainly been heard.

Thanks again for taking the time to write this up.

Blizzard hat nicht das Gefühl das die T1 Einheiten der Protoss schwächer sind als die der anderen Rassen, es ist lediglich schwirieger an ihre Upgrades im Twilight Council zu kommen.
Um es den Protoss zu ermöglichen mit dem Twilight Council zu eröffnen, um ebenso starke T1 Einheiten wie die anderen Rassen zu haben, ist man am überlegen dem Mutterschiffkern eine Art von Detektor zu geben.
Das soll die Abhängigkeit von der Roboterfabrik senken.

Just to clarify, we don't mean we're changing Force Fields in any way. We love how the ability works.

What we are thinking currently for the Sentry is what if Hallucination didn't require an upgrade?

This might be good because:

1. Scouting is more important in HotS due to the added new threats.
2. Protoss has a lot of trouble vs. early Widow Mines. (Hallucinations can be a soft counter until detection is ready)
3. Players who aren't able to utilize Force Fields well will be able to use the more expensive Hallucinations to combo with their army.

Please remember all this isn't final decisions, but we're just trying to be as open about our thoughts as possible. Thanks~

Blizzard sagt das sie ebenfalls erkannt haben das Protoss sehr abhängig vom Protektor sind in der frühen Spielphase, was sie allerdings nicht weiter schlimm finden.
Sie geben aber auch zu das Protektoren teilweise sehr schwer zu benutzen sind (richtige Kraftfelder) und überlegen deswegen Halluzination ohne Upgrade dem Protektor zur verfügung zu stellen.
Das soll dem Protoss mehr möglichkeiten zum erkunden, sowie eine leichte Waffe gegen Widow Mines geben und zusetzlich eine Option für Spieler welche nur schlecht mit Kraftfelder umgehen können.

[Zerf]

We've been working hard to address concerns on the Oracle. We've tried many different things on it and aren't completely satisfied with where it's at. We may need to delay the Oracle patch until next week depending on how this goes.

Just to keep everyone updated and to get more feedback on our direction here's what we're thinking:

1. We agree with our community that Entomb is not a spectator friendly ability because it's so easy to execute and is targeted at only 1 location (minerals).

2. We'd like to replace Entomb with a different ability. Something that makes use of the fast movement speed of the Oracle and serves as a constant threat to the enemy base until the enemy destroys the Oracles. This way, there can be a greater difference between amazing use of the Oracle vs. an average use.

3. Void Siphon has clarity issues in terms of how much minerals have been earned through the use of this ability.

4. Revelation we feel is in a good place. It is a powerful late game tool for checking exactly where the opponent's army is. At the same time, we feel this is more of a utility spell.

We're playing around with various ideas at the moment, and don't have specifics but our goal seems to be:

Spell 1: Keep Revelation as is as the scouting option.

Spell 2: Strong, repeatable harassing tool that has different degrees of success and makes good use of the fragile but fast movement speed of the Oracle.

Spell 3: Position dependent spell, combo with harassment spell, and/or support spell of some sorts.

Zusammengefasst:
- vielleicht diese Woche kein Patch
- Entomb wird rausfliegen
- Haupaugenmerk liegt gerade auf dem Orakel

[Malebolgia]

Oh Ja, endlich fliegt Entomb raus !!

[Zerf]

We did test out Haywire missile on the Thor yesterday. It has some value, but didn't do all that much because of the cost of the Thor. The unit is expensive enough that it is difficult to get a lot of them into play.

The other concern we had was that it was just a huge burst of damage at the beginning of a fight and not all that interesting. You just know that when you engage a force with a couple of Thors you were going to lose some mech units to start with.

I'm not sure I agree with the others but we will discuss.

Zusammengefasst: Sie haben Ausprobiert die Fähigkeit des Warhound dem Thor zu geben um ihn eine bessere Rolle im TvP zu geben, waren allerdings mit dem Ergebniss unzufreiden.

We cannot know what will happen with the meta-game when Heart of the Swarm ships. But we will try to make as many strategies as viable as possible. I do think there are more things we can do to make Mech vs. Protoss a legitimate choice.

We are testing Siege Tank+Battle Hellion+Ghost (EMP Immortals) today. I failed with it yesterday but my micro was poor. The lack of mobility was also a challenge for me, but my Siege Tank positions were awkward.

If you guys want to try it and report back that would be useful.

Zusammengefasst: Sie versuchen so viele Strategien wie möglich zu ermöglichen, können aber nicht wirklich abschätzen wie sich das "Metagame" entwickelt.
Weiterhin wollen sie aber daran arbeiten Mech zu einer soliden Strategie gegen Protoss werden zu lassen und schauen sich aber ersteinmal an ob Ghost's ein paar Probleme beheben können.

It created too many all-ins early in the game.

The Mothership Core was not the motivator for making this change. We have wanted to make this change for almost two years now and just couldn't justify doing it to a live game.

The Mothership Core did not even exist when we decided to do this in the Swarm Beta. Other posters are correct that the Mothership Core and early Hallucinations would make it even more abuseable in Swarm.

Hier wird nochmal klar gestellt warum in HotS Pylonen keine Energiefelder mehr auf höher gelegenden Ebenen erzeugen und das man diese Änderung auch nicht zurück nehmen möchte.

We tested this internally a week or two ago when we first saw this video (thanks to the author of the video).

It didn't actually change anything. We tried some really extreme values as well to really push it. Since you tend to cluster your units at rally points they tend to move as blobs. Units in this code cluster when the reach their destination the blobbing still occured. Because as a player you rarely make an attack-move action across the entire map, you usually make lots of small atack-moves from place to place the units all blobbed up immediately as you moved around.

We spent several days just trying different versions of this and we never could get something that made a real difference in a live game.

I am of the opinion that pro players can and should spread out their units more by hand. The benefits are enormous. Fortunately we are starting to see this in some games and I expect this trend to continue.

Auf die Anfrage ob man die Bewegungs-KI so modifizieren könnte das Einheiten nicht mehr automatisch so sehr verklumpen antwortete Blizzard, da sie das selbst über ein paar Tage getestet haben und keine wirkliche Veränderung feststellen konnten. Da auch hier in den entscheidenen Situationen immer das manuelle Verteilen deutlich bessere Ergebnisse erziehlt hat.

[Zerf]

Fair enough MPAIznogood.

We are seeing Mothership Core be moderately effective at early harrassment, but that is obviously of limited use with Queens. The current Oracle we are testing almost always denies the Zerg player's 3rd, which is interesting and may help you in applying pressure to the Zerg.

Auf die Aussage das durch Entfernen des Warpten auf höhere Ebenen den Protoss wichtige Werkzeuge genommen werden, um auf Zerg früh Druck auszuüben kommt seitens Blizza diese Antwort.
Sie sind der Meinung das der Mutterschifffkern diesen Verlust ausgleicht und erwähnen das mit dem neuen Orakel sich sogar recht effektiv die dritte Basis der Zerg verhindern lassen würde.

Am Rande, liest das hier auch jemand?
Die Beiträge von Blizzard werden langsam wieder unspezifischer und damit weniger Interessant zu lesen.