Q&A Batch 54

http://forums.battle.net/thread.html?topicId=20462449519&sid=3000#0

[SC2 Forum]
1. Does the Zergling vs. Zealot ratio remain at 4:1 or has it changed in the latest builds?
One zealot can usually take out two, and sometimes three zerglings. However, the ratio is mainly based on positioning and micro-controlling. As the number of zealots grows, it will take more zerglings to win the fight since the zealots can clump up and reduce the attacking surface area. Smart use of terrain, such as a choke or backing up against a wall, will also help a protoss player reduce this attack area. Zerglings have to secure a good surround around the zealots to keep the ratio close.

[SC Legacy]
2. In World of Warcraft pvp they found an issue over time that it was "very unsatisfying" to the player when they lost control of their character as it limited their ability to do their job or role. There is a noticeable increase in stuns and immobilization in Starcraft 2, which was barely present in Starcraft 1. From your experience in testing, do you feel abilities, which limit unit control, provide more dynamic game play so far or are you noticing more concern?
First of all, there were actually some abilities in the original StarCraft that could cause players to lose control of units. These abilities include the ghost’s lockdown, the corsair’s disruption web, and the dark archon’s mind control. It may be premature to suggest at this point that there’s a “noticeable increase” in stuns and immobilization in StarCraft II.
To address the comparison anyway, in World of Warcraft, you control a single character, unlike RTS games where you manage multiple units and bases. The difference in the World of Warcraft is when you lose control of your character you simply have to wait it out, assuming you don’t have any control breaks. However in StarCraft, when units in your army are being controlled, you can still issue orders to the rest of your army, manage your base, build new units, etc. There are a lot of options and we happy with the diversity it brings to gameplay at this point.

3. What is the current status of the Mothership? What niche does it fill at this time, and if the unit were removed, would there be a reason to fill that niche with a different unit or would protoss still be fine?
Currently the mothership has a passive cloaking field for nearby units and buildings, wormhole transit, temporal rift, and vortex as its abilities. We are happy with the state of the mothership at this time, and would like to hear feedback from the players once beta starts.

4. What is your overall goal for the Infestor? The units have had and removed so many abilities, are you trying to focus into a support role, or disruption and harassment, or just to have a wide variety of spells so it can be a quick response unit?
It is intended to play more of the disruption/harassment role. They are meant to burrow and move up ahead of the swarm to soften up their opponent’s forces.

5. Is EMP dodgeable, or there's some sort of indication that it's going to be launched? And does this cause a problem with Immortals?
It’s possible to dodge EMP, but it is difficult to do. Your options include anticipating your opponent will be casting an EMP by seeing the ghost or its shimmer and predicting it; being near the edge of the EMP range and moving out quickly; or using the stalker’s blink ability.

[Vile Gaming]
6. Map/mod to site communication – Will there be support for map/mod makers to bridge a connection between their map/mod to their site? For example, if a person wanted their map/mod to submit scores/results to the site, and vice-versa the map/mod could pull the highest scores from the site and display it in the game.
It is possible for players to make their own custom score screens but there are no specific plans to bridge map data to web sites via Battle.net.

7. Launcher support – Will maps/mods be able to have their own "launcher" (ala WoW’s launcher), as in shortcut or start icon from the computer outside of StarCraft, and have their own screens, after a Battle.net authenticating screen (ala Twitter’s, or Facebook’s, application authentication).
There are no plans to allow maps and mods to have their own launcher. However, making a loading screen or launch screen is still possible.

 

Is it just me, or are these batches getting more crappy each time? Oh well. At least I got a good laugh out of the second question. Blizzard failed hard by ignoring that there now is an unit that stuns with its standard attack. Marauders, anyone? The guy who asked that question actually has a valid point in my opinion.

Thanks for posting this, by the way.

Edit: Did somebody eat the equipment they used to make podcasts with?

 

w8 till I read and I'll tell u...

Update: Aren't there any decent questions to be answered or is Blizzard just playing with our patience?

 

All the most important questions have already been asked before in previous batches. Now we just get ... the crumbs of improvized questions.

 

These sort of ''updates'' are exactly why I'm ignoring StarCraft 2 until the beta is released; what's left to discuss after we've discussed everything? Protoss mating and other rubbish.

 

Nope, I remember at least 2 threads about that as well. Lmao.

 

-.- blizzard ignored the "And does this cause a problem with Immortals?" part >=(

 

Its safe to assume that EMP will reduce 100 shield and energy damage to a protoss regardless if its an immortal. Though they maybe giving a thought about immortals being unaffected by EMP but in the shields description it say that it will only activate if the received damage is more than 10 points of damage, thus neglects the EMP effect because it is not a physical type damage ability.

 

Damage abilities always ignore shields, afaik. Plague, anyone?

 

If the EMP is supposed to follow logic found in real life then it doesn't matter whether or not the shield is on for it to be damaged. However, I can see them doing something like this because they've had to do maaany illogical things before to keep gameplay smooth.

 

Psi storm damages shields. So does Yamato Cannon.

 

Ah. I only play Zerg, so don't judge me.
Last time I properly played them was in my first run through the campaign. Always used cheats for Terran and Protoss after that. Only cared for their story, haha.

 

I remember myself cheating with terrans alot and with zerg in a mission I was bored like hell.. the kel-morian combine when you were supposed to mine all that minerals..

 

Is it just me or is this the first batch with a question answered from our SC2forums?
And other forums got entire batches for their questions. And we got one whole question. Whoope do. Mind you I think our question is the best of the lot. Something I might have asked too.

 

That was just a normal question from our monthly report. We're still due on our own Q&A. Although I'm going to have to update the questions before it happens.

 

It seems that our community has less success in comparison to the other forums. Shame on us ! Maybe if I leave this forum it will get better ... ?

I'm joking folks ! I'm joking ... I don't like the other forums. *coughS*

Seriously, I didn't know we could dodge EMP missiles in SC.

 

Blizzard seems to dwell on answering very small questions and obscure questions. Still in internal alpha? Will the beta ever come...they never cease to disappoint.

 

"Hell, it's about time." It was in 2007 already. Not in the beta stage yet ? OMG !

Most of the important questions have already been asked before. I don't know what question we can ask.
Huh ? yes, one .... when will we get Q&A batch 55 ?

 

after 10 years

 

I notice the SC2 devs team makes so many changes to SC2 from its original show in 2007 to what we can see today that this game becomes far more different from the original game we had seen before. Understood ?

All the original aspects (like the entrance of the Mothership, or the construction of the Thor out in the battlefield)and charme of SC2 of 2007 have disappeared now. All that to give the place to a balanced game for all the races. Here it is a good point for the balance, but the charismatic original SC2 is being dead.

More the devs team developes SC2 more this game becomes like SC1. Hope that you see what I mean. There are less originality. Of course the reaper jumps from hill to hill and the Colossus cliffs the mountains and can be attacked by the Terran Turrets. But other original aspects have disappeared.

Hope that the lost aspects and originalities of "the first SC2" I would say will come back just in the solo campaign, if not in multiplayer.

EDIT : We are still far from the end of the development of this game. I will be surely disappointed by some changes, but I will surely be admirative to some aspects. I am writing this to show you that I don't give free critics, but some critics. I have been waiting for this game for so long so I am attentive to the result.