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SC2: Heart of the Swarm becoming unveiled tonight at MLG

M

Mr.Awesome

Banned
Really looking forward to what's going on for it. Beta should be in a week or few. Here are the few leaks we have so far:

Ben Nichol ‏@MrBitterTV

Coolest things from my play time with HotS: Swarm host is amazing, and Terran has some incredibly cool new stuff.

Ben Nichol ‏@MrBitterTV

Yes, Terran stuff is much different from last year. Swarm Host might be better than the lurker.

Ben Nichol ‏@MrBitterTV

Similar design, but much better. Swarm Hosts + Detection will be very hard to deal with. @SCButterMeUp


EDIT: Per Mr. Cola, NDA is lifted when the MLG doors open (3 hours?). Don't forget to check out the SC2 tournament tonight too, which starts at 730 Pacific Time.

EDIT2: More stuff:

JP McDaniel ‏@itmeJP
Just saw the new HotS stuff. Holy. Fuck.
Click to expand...

Post on Reddit yesterday:

There's a press presentation tomorrow I'm going to and they will have a B roll video and some screenshots and other information. So there will be a lot of new info flowing out tomorrow for Heart of the Swarm.
We're also interviewing David Kim and Allen Dilling (lead artist) tomorrow afternoon as well. (blizzplanet.com is my site)
Unfortunately we're not allowed to take video or pictures of the game being played.
Click to expand...

Edit3:
@Kennigit 's twitter:

Showing video of multiplayer update. Changing Mothership to "Mothership Core". Tempest attacks air and ground.
Oracle has cloaking ability similar to motherships cloaking ability. Has to stay stationary while casting it it looks like. Widow mines attack air or ground.
Spider mines except they have a timer on them and attach to units (you could probably pull them out of your control group to not get owned)
"Blinding cloud" on viper. Looks like dark swarm from BW
Video showing baneling/line viper vs marine tank. Viper pulls tanks towards them while banelings run in at marines avoiding splash.
Battle Hellion discussion: Late game terran vunerable to charged zealots - this is basic answer. Substantially worse vs banelings. Good as part of a larger army comp late game. Showing Warhound now - 2 weapons: cannon +dmg vs mech and missles - autocast (if you want)
Missles autocast vs mech units. Shoots closest mechanical target - to break up the monotony of TvT. Gives factory option against protoss.
Widow Mine (temp art is a spider mine). Leaps up and grabs ground or air targets. Timer (10 seconds currently). AoE dmg.
Widow Mines trying to break up death balls.
If the unit dies (you kill your own unit). It doesn't do AoE to units around it. Removed bombs from Reaper - added regen out of combat. Attack, retreat, reheal, go attack again.
Viper can drain live off a building to regen energy. Your own buildings.
Ultralisk charge (same as we saw last year). Hydra speed upgrade at hive tech. Has had the biggest impact on gameplay they've seen
Mothership Core - build mothership core from nexus, has to remain attached to nexus. Can tele to any nexus you have. Purify ability makes it into a powerful photon cannon. Can upgrade it to Mothership later. Can mass recall. This is early game unit.
Also sorry if you think this is spam. Should be done in 30 mins. Oracle - raid unit. Preordain ability, cast on nme building and get vision
Can cast on friendly building and turn it into a detector.
AoE cloaking field taken from mothership. Same ability usage wise. Tempest - long range expensive range of 10 upgrade to 22.
Dustin makes scary face ("not sure about that one yet"). 22 is huge. Seeing how bold they can make the unit before nerfing.
Widow mine is factory unit - no tech lab required (can reactor it). Can move them around the map.
Despite what you think of 22 range. They've seen people losing games because they went tempest (its not as strong as you think).
Dustin expects that most pros will never get hit by widow mine splash. Experimenting with friendly splash. Still testing - if it's air, the splash only hits air, if its ground only ground. Range of vipers is 9 - turrets are 7.
Overseer is in. Can throw the changling - they can stick around longer in an army. Easier to hide it in army
Experimenting with creep spreading - not in this build. Mass cloaking is timing and energy based - only lasts certain amount of time.
Carrier is not in current build - they are arguing about it daily internally still. End of Q&A. Thanks for being patient with my spam.
Click to expand...



Edit 4: Trailer + casted matches by day9 and Rob Simpson: http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/blog/6306259/Heart_of_the_Swarm_Update_-_New_Video-6_8_2012#blog
 
V

Venfayth

Member
Deadman said in the MLG thread that JP McDaniel tried to video record some of the HOTS gameplay, but security stopped him. Just felt that was relevant.
 
M

Mr.Awesome

Banned
Really interested see what the Terran stuff is. They seem to be the most complete race, so interesting that they are now very different


Swarm Host should hopefully make ZvZ interesting. Since it can grant position map control, it should.
 
M

Mr Cola

Brothas With Attitude / The Wrong Brotha to Fuck Wit / Die Brotha Die / Brothas in Paris
i heard 200 game stations, well get some footage for sure, not played sc2 for a while but im very excited about this expansion
 
D

Deadman

Member
Interesting that he thinks swarm host is so awesome, i thought it would turn out not so good.

REVEAL FASTER PLZ.
 
M

Mr Cola

Brothas With Attitude / The Wrong Brotha to Fuck Wit / Die Brotha Die / Brothas in Paris
Deadman said:
Interesting that he thinks swarm host is so awesome, i thought it would turn out not so good.

REVEAL FASTER PLZ.
Click to expand...

He said likely the nda is lifted when doors open, which i think is 3 hours or so?

Either way the swarm host always looked to have great potential, with a year of tweaking im sure they found ways to make it much better.
 
H

Hazaro

relies on auto-aim
Blizzcon build was pretty bad so I'm looking forward to seeing what is new.

Swarm hosts were the 'spend a lot of gas to not die immediately' unit and have 0 in combat effectiveness due to how fast battles play out. And some harass utility.
 
M

Mr Cola

Brothas With Attitude / The Wrong Brotha to Fuck Wit / Die Brotha Die / Brothas in Paris
Hazaro said:
Blizzcon build was pretty bad so I'm looking forward to seeing what is new.

Swarm hosts were the 'spend a lot of gas to not die immediately' unit and have 0 in combat effectiveness due to how fast battles play out. And some harass utility.
Click to expand...

i remember reading that they removed 90% of the non zerg stuff (the additions) because they couldnt balance it :O
 
H

Hazaro

relies on auto-aim
I'll post stuff if my phone decides to work there.
chiablo said:
Is GSL going to adopt the beta, or will they wait until release to shift to the expansion?
Click to expand...
Players get beta, then on release they will switch or have some transition I would think.
Mr Cola said:
i remember reading that they removed 90% of the non zerg stuff (the additions) because they couldnt balance it :O
Click to expand...
Stuff like Shredders were flawed in execution and idea.

The Swarm Host idea is very good. I hope they can make it work.
 
M

Mr Cola

Brothas With Attitude / The Wrong Brotha to Fuck Wit / Die Brotha Die / Brothas in Paris
Hazaro said:
I'll post stuff if my phone decides to work there.
Players get beta, then on release they will switch or have some transition I would think.

Stuff like Shredders were flawed in execution and idea.

The Swarm Host idea is very good. I hope they can make it work.
Click to expand...

"terran needs map control"

The only way that statement made sense is if they stated "since we removed the siege tank, medivacs, and the sensor tower"
 
H

Hazaro

relies on auto-aim
Mr Cola said:
"terran needs map control"

The only way that statement made sense is if they stated "since we removed the siege tank, medivacs, and the sensor tower"
Click to expand...
'We want to move food away from the Terran army'.
Into 6 food killing everything? Ok. Sure.
 
U

ultron87

Member
I am excited to see what crazy Protoss nonsense they replaced the Replicator with. And what they did to the Tempest if they even kept it.
 
M

Mr Cola

Brothas With Attitude / The Wrong Brotha to Fuck Wit / Die Brotha Die / Brothas in Paris
also i have to say ive never had more fun with a singler player campaign that wol, completed it about 10 times, every achievement. The thing that made is so replayable, besides a few standout missions, was the great upgrade system and how you could take different paths to complete missions in different ways. When i saw early hots upgrade system i fucking came.

Bring it on.
 
J

Junie12

Member
Cool, haven't played SCII in forever, it'll be interesting to see how the game will change with the expansion.
 
F

Felix Lighter

Member
Mr Cola said:
also i have to say ive never had more fun with a singler player campaign that wol, completed it about 10 times, every achievement. The thing that made is so replayable, besides a few standout missions, was the great upgrade system and how you could take different paths to complete missions in different ways. When i saw early hots upgrade system i fucking came.

Bring it on.
Click to expand...

I loved that almost every mission had it's own gimmick so you were constantly dealing with new rules and mechanics. Loved the campaign.
 
M

Mr Cola

Brothas With Attitude / The Wrong Brotha to Fuck Wit / Die Brotha Die / Brothas in Paris
Felix Lighter said:
I loved that almost every mission had it's own gimmick so you were constantly dealing with new rules and mechanics. Loved the campaign.
Click to expand...

A great testament is how it even made timed missions ok, though not my favourite, i cant think of a mission that isnt replayable on many different levels.
 
P

Pandaman

Everything is moe to me
9ABbe.jpg

bCdyo.jpg
 
M

Mrbob

Member
Corran Horn said:
Nothing for HotS yet. Its at MLG and there are tons of streams there so I hope they do eventually show stuff off.
Click to expand...

Damn. Are there links to MLG streams online? I've never really checked them out before. Twitchtv?

I remember playing the original Starcraft multi a decent amount, but I didn't get truly hooked into the Brood War expansion. I'm hoping the same thing happens with Heart of the Swarm. Really looking forward to seeing all the additions/subtractions/changes.
 
D

Deleted member 17706

Unconfirmed Member
Awesome. I can't wait to get back into some Starcraft 2.

The scene has advanced so far, that I don't know if I'll be going back to the multiplayer, but I loved what they did with the various challenges for the single player content in SC2.
 
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