STARCRAFT

[Merk]

Of course the day I go out and buy Street Fighter I fucking get into the Starcraft II Beta.

My free time is very limited thanks to work and now I have a conundrum on how to spend it.

[Riot]

Starcraft sucks there is literally nobody that likes it play Street Fighter!

[Amp Divorax]

Street Fighter is for teh noobz! STARCRAFT BITCHES!

[Merk]

Holy balls they changed pretty much everything in this game including the hotkeys. I am so lost now whenever I play and I have no idea what counters what other than Hellions > Zerglings. I concept of the Medivac confounds and confuses me.

There's just so much shit going on now that its a bit daunting to keep track of. I hope this game ends up being as exciting to watch as the original but I guess we'll have to wait and see once build orders and strategies start getting established.

[BigBadOrc]

Yep. All new strats now.

Merk add me: BigBadOrc.bigbadorc

[Merk]

K I am Merk.Muthas

[Merk]

Yeah this game is awesome. Team Liquid people are going to complain nonstop about how this game is different than the original, a game that was released over a decade ago, but whatever fuck 'em. The game's got a good competitive depth and I like the direction Blizzard took with APM not being the sole determining factor in skill level. It's still extremely important and will divide a good player from a great player but I get the feeling this game is going to revolve more on tactics, macro, and scouting instead of who can click really fast.

Anyway, Mike, what's your opinion on TvP? I think it's probably the most imbalanced match-up right now with Terran having the advantage. Toss has pretty much no counter to Reapers without Immortals and if the Terran player sees you massing Immortals he can easily make a switch to Marauders since they come from the same building and use the same tech.

Mike I want your thoughts on this game.

[SoDeepPolaris]

zergling rush toss who don't wall = lol

[BigBadOrc]

Yeah, I think TvP favors terran too. Terran has too many different ways to attack toss, and toss doesn't have many ways to attack. It's like toss has to play defensive. Most terrans just do reaper rush and then like 3-4 barracks mass marauder. Or they can just make a couple marauders real quick and rush with that. But actually what I hate most is banshees. In SC1 a dragoon can kill like 3+ wraiths probably, but in SC2 one banshee can kill one stalker pretty easy. Toss is weak vs air

Some people do barracks gas depot for fast reaper, so i usually do like 11 gateway to get a fast stalker.

I started playing zerg in 1v1 and noticed that Ultralisks kind of suck, but Brood Lords are really good.

[Merk]

Yep, game is still awesome. If you're a fan of RTS games you will absolutely love this game when it gets released - it's a very natural sequel from the first game and there is just enough that is different to make it unique and interesting. Blizzard really does polish the fuck out of their games.

There was some Developers Q&A where they talk about the balance they've seen so far in terms of win/loss in non-mirror matches:

Last Dev Chat, Terran was behind in all 1v1 and 2v2 matchups. How do the racial matchup numbers look now? Any outlier matchups?
A: We have several tools to measure race balance. The simplest is the win loss by race, factored by leagues. In Platinum and Gold leagues the numbers look like this.

* Terrans vs. Protoss 46% – 54%
* Protoss vs. Zerg 51% – 49%
* Terrans vs. Zerg 51% – 49%

I do not have the more interesting numbers that factor for player skill. The last time I saw these numbers Zerg were ahead of Protoss, Protoss were ahead of Terrans and Terrans and Zerg were fairly even.

Obviously there is a lot more work to be done and more beta time in front of us but we are very pleased with the current numbers.

Interesting numbers - shit seems mostly balanced outside of TvP which Mike and I both thought was a bit out of whack but in the other direction. Still, if you can have three races with wildly different play-styles and have a less than 5% edge for any race then you've done something right. GJ Blizz I'm glad that WoW money went towards something that it both fun to play, fun to watch, and fun to think about.

[Merk]

Mike it was fun playing with you yesterday and I'm sorry if I am terrible.

I appreciate our common interest

[BigBadOrc]

"I do not have the more interesting numbers that factor for player skill"

In starcraft 1, TvP was easy for toss among the newbie-mid level player skills, but among experts it was pretty balanced.

[Amp Divorax]

Well, I was gonna buy this, but since they broke the $50 rule I'm not buying until the price goes down and they confirm that I can play single player mode offline. Kind of sad too cause I REALLY was looking forward to this. (Seems like between this and Command and Conquer 4 RTSs have been getting fucked over alot lately.)

Oh....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIkPcMbR ... r_embedded#!

Starcraft II VS Touhou!

[SoDeepPolaris]

Placebo.ohno

[Riot]

Well, I was gonna buy this, but since they broke the $50 rule I'm not buying until the price goes down and they confirm that I can play single player mode offline. Kind of sad too cause I REALLY was looking forward to this. (Seems like between this and Command and Conquer 4 RTSs have been getting fucked over alot lately.)

Oh....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIkPcMbR ... r_embedded#!

Starcraft II VS Touhou!

You sure have a lot of rules!