Starcraft II

[Cthulhu]

Spoiler

She lost her Zerg heels, but she kept her rasta spines.

X

Might be explained by

Spoiler

the transformation the other way 'round not being completed yet (as she still had more traces of it when she's first put into view after activating the artifact), and by the creators not wanting to portray a bald chick, . Pretty sure the transformation back is complete.

Also pretty sure the mutation enhanced her psionic powers and such. She gained stuff like Psionic Storm etc after the transformation in the first Starcraft, and before that only templars did that shit.

That said, there does have to be some sort of criteria outlined somewhere and some sort of appeals system, maybe?

Not yet, apparently. But I think those are to enforce good balance between all sides - I'm pretty sure that it'd be kinda easy to make a map look symmetrical but to actually have little tactical differences on one starting area, giving the user in that area an unfair advantage.

Of course, Blizzard has to police the maps a lot more, considering they're the ones giving people positions in the various leagues.

 

[X-SOLDIER]

Spoiler

Most of that actually came about when she infiltrated the Amerigo and removed the neural inhibitors that the Confess gave her. Also- Heart of the Swarm seems to be about her, based on what was discussed and being the Zerg campaign, she'd need some way to control them. Not to mention the rather interesting revelation that the Overmind created Kerrigan to allow the Zerg to act under free will, since it was being manipulated to create the Hybrid race, which is the opposite of what the cycle is supposed to accomplish for the Xel'Naga.

X

 

[Cthulhu]

And now for something completely different. Just started to play online, 5 out of 6 games won in the practice league, . Pretty sure I'm automagically being put against people of around my skill level though, as I lost the last one, and the second-to-last one only because the other guy lost his connection or something.

this is getting hard.

 

[Interslicery]

I suck completely at online, I tend to build huge armys of 1 or 2 units and get slaughtered while I'm building them, or the other person has a variety of units so I get slaughtered

 

[Hisako]

Well, at least you know how you lose.

I'm still having a bit of practice with bots, because honestly I don't have my game down enough right now.

 

[Rumpelstiltskin]

Middle of an online match i built my usual defence at the neck of the map and then amass my entire army.
The guys im going against sent an army of just terran soldiers against my defence and wondered why their entire army was decimated before reaching my army and then their camps were engulfed between siege tanks and an assortment of heavy air and ground troops.

Safe to say the next match i went into i got my arse handed to me within seconds

God damn you auto-match!

 

[Cthulhu]

For you newbies: watch the I Suck at Starcraft II series. I did, and learned a lot of things to keep in mind online from that, as well as some tactics .

Second, if you lose, watch the replay to see what you did wrong or should do next time. For example, when playing against terran, get some ranged units out as soon as possible to thwart an early reaper rush (especially on novice maps, as those have rocks that prevent early rushes with anything but those). Dunno what rushing strategies can be used when playing against Zerg or Protoss though.

Seven matches, five won. I think. Could be eight / six though.

I lost the last one, terran vs terran. I tried an early marines / marauders rush, he got into my base with some reapers but didn't do too much damage. Thing is, the trip to his base took rather long, so by the time I arrived at his base with a considerable force, he had air units (including a battlecruiser), and my attack, while doing some damage to his expansion and main base, was largely ineffective.

Now, I saw he had a battlecruiser and I was unable to destroy his air factory thing, so I should've spammed Vikings like crazy at that point.

However, I didn't, I panicked, spammed more marines / marauders to get back in there as fast as possible... but that wasn't nearly enough at that time. So, a while later, he comes in with five battlecruisers, and I was done for.

Lesson learned: When playing terran, either try an early rush with marauders then follow up with marines / marauders (and medivacs if you have 'em). If not that, go for air factory asap and build both Vikings and Banshees, making sure you get the cloak upgrade for that too. With Vikings you can defend against an air attack, with Banshees you can defend against most ground attacks - especially those involving siege tanks, which almost lost me another match if it wasn't for the fact the other guy lost connection, .

Anyways, last guy thought I was "exp", so I guess I'm not terrible at least. That's what you get from watching youtube for a bit. Still not nearly good enough for my own tastes though - it goes well in the early stage of the game, building first supply depot and SCV's etc by the book, but later on I grow somewhat chaotic, so I don't play optimal anymore.

Any hints for playing Terran?

 

[Dana Scully]

I find with Terran it's best to build up a strong defense and then start cranking out the troops. I tend to build bunkers at choke point/2 in the base itself, turrets along the perimeter, and while I start building my army (I usually go for banshees + vikings) I crank out a siege tank or 2 to help defend as well. This has worked well for me so far - but I've only played 2 online games, so

 

[Rumpelstiltskin]

I used to really be a protoss man when i played the first but i have a new appreciation for terran with the new models and such.
Siege tanks and such are always a fav, battlecruisers are a must and once you amass a considerable force of air and upgrade weapons and armour your pretty much set for almost any eventuality.....
i say almost!


When that fails i just terran the fuck out of people, my own lil slice of zerg rush!

 

[Hisako]

Whenever someone pushes a ton of air units towards you, if you're a terran no matter what the air unit is, Vikings should be the hard counter to pretty much every air unit.

Sometimes I think Protoss draw the short end of the stick a lot, especially against particular strategies like Reaper Rush. Of course, going as fast as possible to pumping out Stalkers is the solution, but honestly it feels a little less definite playing with Protoss units, especially with less siege capability than before.

 

[Cthulhu]

Note that a good force of vikings and banshees is not very effective against a large force of Zerg Corruptors.

I won my last match against a Zerg, scouted and saw the dude had little to no air defense, so spent quite some time building up an air force. Turns out he was going for an all-out ground attack with a couple of Ultralisks supported by Hydras. Turns out they're not very good against a force of Vikings and Battlecruisers, .

I should try doing a quick cloaked banshee raid early on next.

 

[Hisako]

Note that a good force of vikings and banshees is not very effective against a large force of Zerg Corruptors.

Corruptors are just plain fucking retarded. But still, they aren't the end of the world (or in this case, the game).

 

[Cthulhu]

Corruptors are just plain fucking retarded. But still, they aren't the end of the world (or in this case, the game).

They were for me, .

As is a superior economy (5 bases) and someone spamming battlecruisers.

 

[Interslicery]

yay my first real win

I gotta stop being gun shy, I went at him with 4 colossi, 6 stalkers, 6 phoenixes, and a void ray, and decimated him, I only lost 2 units.

plus there was a funny bit where my void ray was harassing his reapers, so he brought in a medivac, so I sent a phoenix, so he decided to attack my base with his remaining reapers in that group (7), and they died .5 seconds after jumping into my base cause 2 of my colossi were waiting.

twas a good feeling

 

[Hisako]

Reapers aren't much use against anything except for hit-and-running infantry, tbh =/

I've generally been refusing to build Colossi on some irrational unconscious level, but generally I've come to accept that they're pretty damn important.

 

[Max Payne]

Can someone find some good quality shots of the marine's suits in detail? I kinda wanna do some fanart now

 

[Ghost X]

No can do, but is the game as short as everyone is saying? I know its supposed to be episodic, and more will be released in future, but does it feel incomplete in a way? I think games shouldn't feel incomplete, even if they are episodic =P.

 

[Hisako]

I wouldn't say it's incomplete, that's for sure.

Like all of the other episodes in the original game, it has a pretty definitive ending that absolutely reeks of To Be Continued, that's all.

EDIT: Looking up http://starcraft.wikia.com/wiki/CMC_Powered_Combat_Suit will solve most of your issues, Dacon. As a sidenote, I really like the original CMC-300 aesthetic more than the new one, to be honest, as well as the original gauss rifle. Rifle looks more like "grunt's standard issue assault rifle" rather than "futuristic space pew pew pew".

 

[Cthulhu]

Oh shit. Just discovered Tower Defense games.

Pretty awesome things they managed to do in relatively short notice (unless the map editor was out at the beta too), I just played a bit of a sidescroller game. Although it wasn't really awesome as there's input lag, it's still rather neat.

 

[Hisako]

... speaking of, I still want Blizzard to churn out a Starcraft: Ghost game.

 

[Max Payne]

... speaking of, I still want Blizzard to churn out a Starcraft: Ghost game.

It was never officially cancelled, so we might still get it. I heard the MP beta was awesome.

I'm still hoping for a Gears of Starcraft featuring Jim Raynor and his Raiders. That would be sooooooooooo awesome.

 

[Max Payne]

Also, this is fucking awesome

 

[Hisako]

MP was pretty much Unreal Tournament, except with individual character classes ala Battlefield.
tbh releasing Starcraft Ghost as-is would be pretty crappy, because most of the elements of the game were pretty much completely covered by other games of the same genre afterwards. Which is a pity, because when the videos of Ghost were released they were coming up with mechanics that were pretty solid (and perhaps even ahead of most other games) of the time.

Making a decent current-generation game of Ghost would require quite an overhaul of the original assets, and unless they got really creative with what they have, it wouldn't be a great release compared to if it had come out the several years earlier like it was supposed to. If Activision hadn't axed most of the creative direction in favour of money-whoring via WoW.

Y'know, anything of the Starcraft universe that's released in a game that isn't an RTS would be nice. I'd like to see Blizzard broadening their horizons and trying something new for themselves aside from the RTS/MMO/RPG loop they've caught themself in for their 3 core franchises.

 

[Max Payne]

I never said release it as is

It would have been great if it had been released back on Ps2, but obv standards have risen to new levels.

 

[Hisako]

I remember watching the E3? gameplay videos and there were all these snide comments on how the controls were unwieldy and it was a terrible shooter, but all I got out from the videos was that there was a decent use of cloaking devices, slick stealthy takedowns, dragging bodies out of sight, acrobatic movement and tactical manoevering by opening automated doors by quietly tapping the door buttons using feet (which created distance between Nova and the doorway esp. with infested terrans hiding just behind it), etc. etc.

All these little things just really made it stand out for me and I ignored the fact that the guy playing in those videos just sucked at console shooters.