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//: StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm |OT| Like Riding a Bike

S

SamuraiX-

Member
But you know what... hard to stay mad as I'm just walking around this venue. That majestic Intel/IEM blue illuminating the arena is something to behold in person. I hope IEM comes back to the bay area again.
 
S

SamuraiX-

Member
Snute really does seem to have herO's number. Fantastic game sense by Snute in both games. He'a refined his Swarm Host style so much. At least herO is keeping it action packed but he needs to try to kick back and tech to Tempests. Not sure why he went for Archons...

Edit: Snute definitely getting ahead of himself but herO has played phenomenally well with so much multi-pronged harass in Games 3 and 4.

Bomber 3-0 Revival!!! Rain vs Bomber semifinal! :-D

But honestly, Rain will probably be Bomber's first legit opponent aside from herO who 2-0'd him. Dat KeSPA Cup rematch. Should be a sick series.
 
S

SamuraiX-

Member
The Dong is in another level right now. I don't think I've seen him look this determined since BlizzCon 2013.

Drawing energy from the crowd like Goku launching spirit bombs.

herO vs JD and Bomber vs Rain semifinals = kreygasms to the power of infinity. :O

Gaiz i'm sad. My camera died. I might have to skip on most/all of the first semifinal series to get that sucker charged so I can paparazzi the shit outta Bomber/Rain.
 
K

kasane

Member
SamuraiX- said:
The Dong is in another level right now. I don't think I've seen him look this determined since BlizzCon 2013.

Drawing energy from the crowd like Goku launching spirit bombs.

herO vs JD and Bomber vs Rain semifinals = kreygasms to the power of infinity. :O

Gaiz i'm sad. My camera died. I might have to skip on most/all of the first semifinal series to get that sucker charged so I can paparazzi the shit outta Bomber/Rain.
Click to expand...

thats why you always carry power banks

:(
 
S

SamuraiX-

Member
Good lord. All ins just don't work against GuMi. JD's probably gonna try SHs again but I think GuMi knows better than to try and fail with mech for a third game in a row.
 
D

demosthenes

Member
From my friend (Eidisi):

gumiho.jpg
Click to expand...
 
S

SamuraiX-

Member
Too

Much

Fucking

HYPE

The way JD came out of that booth... this crowd ERUPTED! So many people jumping out of their seats.

Damn I hope him or Bomber win this thing.

Edit: back with my charger right outside on an outlet near the doors into the stands. Only missed Game 1. Taking peaks inside whenever I hear action going on. :p
 
S

SamuraiX-

Member
;_;

Bomber looked incredibly bummed about that one. Crowd cheering him on but he kept his head down all the way offstage. :-/

Welp, gogo Rain! Snute, Harstem, Apollo, Rotti and Day9 making rounds through the crowd right now.
 
S

SamuraiX-

Member
Shook herO's hand, got his autograph. Feels awesome. :-D

Also, got a direct confirmation from herO himself that he'll "maybe" win a GSL next season. :p

Damn what a weekend. Feels like I just went through a once in a lifetime experience. Again, if any of you ever have a chance you absolutely have to attend one of these live. I swear you won't regret it. :)
 
K

kasane

Member
SamuraiX- said:
Shook herO's hand, got his autograph. Feels awesome. :-D

Also, got a direct confirmation from herO himself that he'll "maybe" win a GSL next season. :p

Damn what a weekend. Feels like I just went through a once in a lifetime experience. Again, if any of you ever have a chance you absolutely have to attend one of these live. I swear you won't regret it. :)
Click to expand...

mine still takes the cake

i saw flash win

i was kreygasming all the way home
 
H

Hazaro

relies on auto-aim
SamuraiX- said:
Shook herO's hand, got his autograph. Feels awesome. :-D

Also, got a direct confirmation from herO himself that he'll "maybe" win a GSL next season. :p

Damn what a weekend. Feels like I just went through a once in a lifetime experience. Again, if any of you ever have a chance you absolutely have to attend one of these live. I swear you won't regret it. :)
Click to expand...
Oh yeah that was today wasn't it
 
U

unknownstranger

Member
Thinking about it more, instead of lowering the amount of minerals in each base, just reduce the amount of bases on each map to shorten games. 4 additional bases on each side of map (instead of 5 like how it has been) on two player maps and 2 additional bases by each spawn point on 4 player maps (splitting the map in half would give each player up to 6 bases instead of the 8+ it is currently).
 
L

Lethe82

Banned
Well they want to create incentive to expand and spread out to promote harassment and multiple engagements. Just lowering the amount of bases won't stop you from having a perfect econ on 3 base for pretty much forever.
 
Yoshichan

Yoshichan

And they made him a Lord of Cinder. Not for virtue, but for might. Such is a lord, I suppose. But here I ask. Do we have a sodding chance?
getting nostalgic... going through old pictures... seeing this... man, how things've changed... the passion was real... :(

(day before Dreamhack when MKP was 'confirmed' and then a hours later the dreams were crushed... anyone remember that? FoxeR vs MMA... if FoxeR won, he wouldn't attend Dreamhack. If he lost, he would attend Dreamhack. I wanted him to win... but at the same time truly didn't want him to win... fuck.

iV7QWry9hL2ND.JPG
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Yoshichan

Yoshichan

And they made him a Lord of Cinder. Not for virtue, but for might. Such is a lord, I suppose. But here I ask. Do we have a sodding chance?
guys i'm panicing i can't breathe

smeone please talk to me on steam add me please yoshichangaf
 
L

Lethe82

Banned
So apparently Masters and Grand Masters currently makes up like 1.25% of the population. No wonder I've 'decreased in skill' and am barely facing masters these days.
 
L

Lethe82

Banned
Woo Flash 2-1 over Hyun

Naniwa said:
hey hey guys ^^ ill update things here since u guys are the only real fans i care about since you always made me feel better when i was down. right now im playing quite alot every day and i really have fun when i play again ^^ but unfortunately it seems hard to find teams and get started again so i will just take it slow and play as much as i feel like and see if i can do a "comeback" ^^ nothing set in stone etc. im mostly very interested in lotv
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http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/fan-clubs/208834-naniwa-fan-club?page=561#11220

Also

Creator was late to SPOTV S2SL qualifiers

Jin Air called ahead to SpotTV stating they may be late. Admins held a conference with the managers/coaches on site telling us what happened, stating they would like to let Jin Air play even if they arrive a little late. Jin Air managed to arrive on time. Creator did not. Creator found out what happened with Jin Air and was pleading with the admins for them to make the same exception, he got a little too emotional (As in sobbing/raising voice. Nothing I would have called the police for but enough to disturb the players in the admin's eyes) and mall security was called, then the police on site. He was escorted out.
Click to expand...

http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/sc2-tournaments/473139-ssl-season-1-2015-qualifiers?page=57#1131

I really feel badly for Creator, can't imagine the strain and pressure he must feel under with basically being the one guy carrying Prime now that Marine King is gone (at least they have a sponsor) and getting a spot in S2SL could have helped take some of the pressure off, or maybe it was even somewhat crucial.
 
A

AdventureRacing

Member
Quite a few surprises in the qualifiers, especially the Protoss players. Some big names dropped out. Not sure why the matches were streamed on YouTube, seems like they missed out on a lot of viewers.
 
L

Lethe82

Banned
Fantasy qualifying is a surprise, also like NO zergs. Nice to see that both MKP and Flash made it. So this is a new ongoing league in Korea?

B4kqV1KCUAANWB7.jpg:large
 
L

Lethe82

Banned
Winter directing his minions in a game of Archon Mode (basically acting as a commander). Pretty nifty actually.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9IMnZcNouY

This mode has a lot of potential imo. It's pretty cool to see a commander instruct people and watch the strategies unfold, it adds a layer to everything that makes embellishes the moment to moment tactics that we just kind of tune out, it adds a lot of complexity to thing, obstructing even just 'a move to win'.


Byun will play for Prime in Proleague

3LeS3JV.jpg
 
L

Lethe82

Banned
Rob Pardo, iconic game designer at Blizzard, talks about his career in a two-part interview spanning 5 hours. Pardo was with Blizzard for over 15 years, and had a hand in shaping most of their games.
Starcraft 2 is discussed mostly in the second part of the interview (the part which is linked). SC2 discussion starts at 1:19:00.
Some interesting quotes:

Talking about SC2's early development. WoW's success drained resources from SC2 development:

One of the biggest challenges with Star2, was the team had been going for well over a year, most of that without really any design guidance whatsoever. The idea was: make a new engine and basically make Starcraft 1. That would be a good base to have all the technology and have the editor again, and once I came back onto team we'd then figure out what Starcraft 2 was.

The thinking was: that ends up being a really solid design doc for anyone. That way they don't have to ask me questions. They don't have to be going off to the weeds; just make the first Starcraft. The thinking was maybe we'd even release it, kind of like Counterstrike: Source or something like that. Like releasing a new engine.

But... that's not the most exciting thing for game developers to do for a year. So invariably they were trying to do new things and generating design documents and getting attached to ideas. That was one of the biggest challenges when I went back onto the team, is: "OK, which of these ideas are right?". Going back to the drawing board on things and just trying to get the team going in the right direction on some of the stuff.
Obviously it was the right direction for the studio because WoW was really succesful.

But I think it hurt Starcraft 2 a lot. I think it caused a lot of thrash and it was one of the main reasons why the game took so long to make. It was because we spent that year-plus without design, and now we have this team that's going in one direction and now has them going in a different direction. I don't know... It was challenging.
Click to expand...

Pardo was lead designer for a portion of SC2's development:

I was the lead designer on Star2, but I didn't ship it as lead. By then I had to do more overarching responsibilities. I was the lead for probably the first 2/3rds and then I eventually brought Dustin Browder in and he took over. He came in as a senior designer so we were kind of co-designing stuff for the first couple years he was at the studio. Then I promoted him up to lead.
Click to expand...

Pardo pushed for unlimited selection. SC2 team took time to warm up to it:

It made the team very timid, is what it did. I think it made it very hard to try to diverge too much from the original. Because it was so successful, especially in Korea it was this huge esport game. There was so much anticipation, especially in Asia for the game to come out, and the team didn't want to let them down. We used to always call it: it's like trying to make baseball 2.0.

I think what that did was it created a lot of fear. I feel like there was a lot of decisions that were very challenging to push through the team, I'll give you a very micro one that I find kind of interesting:

So in both Starcraft and in Warcraft previously, when you group-selected units, you'd only get a limited number. So in Starcraft you could group-select 12 units max. So if you had 50 zerglings, you'd have to group-select them in smaller groups.

One thing I wanted to change in Starcraft 2 was to get rid of that restriction. My reasoning was that I felt like RTS games in the genre had evolved to a place where users just felt -- it just felt like the UI was broken. People didn't understand why it was there. I think people forgave it in earlier games.

That is one of those decisions, though, where the game is a little bit more tactical because you have that limitation. And you could also argue it even has game-balance ramifications in Zerg versus Protoss, because Protoss has less units and that sort of stuff.

But I didn't really feel like it was that load-bearing. I was like: "You know, it's going to be a little different. But I just think we put this in and we just design the game knowing now we have unlimited selection." But there was all this fear that that was the secret sauce of Starcraft. "We can't undo that"
.
I literally... I was getting pulled into meetings over a period of six months before I finally got them to put in unlimited selection. I mean it was crazy. A little micro decision took months before it went in.
Click to expand...

Why didn't Blizz make a MOBA earlier? Talks about Icefrog:

Soren Johnson (interviewer): I was interested what your thoughts are about MOBAs in general. I remember when we first met, which was probably around 2006, one of the first things you told me is I should download this mod called Defence of the Ancients for Warcraft 3 and check it out. So you guys were obviously very aware of what was going on with it. Why was there not a Blizzard MOBA started back then?

Honestly it was just development bandwidth. We were aware of it. We knew it was getting really popular. I actually did have kind of an official sit-down meeting with the other execs of the studio and said: "Hey, we should really talk about this". And we walked down the path and talked about what it would take. We also actually brought Icefrog out and talked to him a bit too. We made the decision we just couldn't take it on and make it successful at that time.

[They were still dealing with WoW]. Starcraft 2 was already a couple years down the path. [Diablo 3] was another thing that was ready to happen. It didn't feel like at that time we could do a Blizzard-job on a DotA-game.
Click to expand...

The entire interview is worth listenning to. Part 1 is also amazing with a focus on Brood War and WC3.
Click to expand...

Recommend whole thing
https://www.idlethumbs.net/designernotes/episodes/rob-pardo-part-2
 
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