http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/legacy-of-the-void/491453-community-feedback-update-july-31st
This week, we’ve mostly been focusing on iterating on a few specific topics
through various meetings, discussions, playtests, and new idea generation.
Warp Gate changes
In last week’s Protoss update, we brought up some potential changes that we
were looking at for Warp Gate. We tried a large number of different changes
in this area, and where we are currently at is this:
Units take 2 seconds to warp-in at Pylons that have Warpgates touching their
pylon power.
Buff to defensive case.
Units take 16 seconds to warp in at Pylons not “connected” to Warpgates.
Huge nerf to the offensive case.
Warp Prism power fields take 2 seconds.
Players will need to tech to Warp Prisms in order to offensive warp in well.
Due to the smaller warp-radius of the Warp Prism, players may require several
to effectively warp-in offensively with their army (this is countered
somewhat by the fact that the offensive warp-in case is much stronger than
before).
We tried many different designs in this area that have ultimately similar
results, but this design seems to be the most clean in terms of added rules.
With the offensive early warp-ins being less of a threat, we wanted to buff
the defensive case and the Warp Prism case. We also felt that it’s ok to
have a much stronger Warp Prism because players have had to commit to that
tech in order to have access to its strength.
Disruptor
We still agree with you that the current version in the beta is not good,
because just being invulnerable for so long doesn’t have the interesting
micro and the potential for cool interactions. With that in mind, we’ve
actually been focusing heavily on trying out various community suggestions
and also branching off our own ideas from your suggestions. We’ll have a
better update for you on the Disruptor next week, since we’re not quite done
playtesting the various versions and forming conclusions on this area yet.
Alt control group for 1v1
We noticed some players were asking for the new alt control group feature to
be added to 1v1, so we wanted to clear up some confusion and make sure that
everybody knew that this feature is not specific to archon mode and can be
used in any mode of StarCraft 2!
Macro Mechanics
Macro mechanics are something we’ve absolutely seen the community discuss in
the past. With Legacy of the Void becoming more difficult to play due to our
main goals - more action, micro on both sides during engagements, less
downtime, etc. - we have been exploring areas that we can make easier. For
these, we’re trying to locate areas that are difficult to manage but aren’t
really easily noticeable. For example, as a player doing larva inject, it’s
somewhat difficult for me to tell how well I’m doing in a given game.
Further, my opponent really has no idea how well I’m doing it either. In
esports matches, this is also something that viewers can’t tell either.
Because macro mechanics are an area that’s difficult to do, and not many
people can really tell how well someone is doing it, we’ve been exploring
potentially cutting them or making them less important.
Currently, we’re looking at two options here.
Option 1:
Spawn larva is autocast by default, but spawn only 3 larva.
Mule efficiency is nerfed by 20% or so.
Chrono boost cost increased to 50, and efficiency not quite doubled.
The thought here is that because efficiency is nerfed overall, it’s not as
big of a deal to not do these mechanics spot on all the time.
Option 2:
Cut chrono
Cut mule
Spawn larva is autocast by default, but spawn only 2 larva
The thought here is just do away with these added clicks, we do lose a little
bit of strategy and decision making but we wonder if that’s ok, and have a
clean version where players don’t need to do the extra clicks.
With that said, keep in mind neither of these versions are final, they’re
just one of two potential directions we can go in this area.
Shoutouts
Finally, we also wanted to give a shoutout this week to the various Archon
mode tournaments going on, as well as the MSI 2015 WSL tournament.
We saw a lot of excitement around the Redbull Archon tournament especially in
the TvT series last weekend. BasetradeTV also had many cool moments, and one
that was really memorable to us was the situation where a Korean team lost to
a new Terran strategy from a foreign team. Then, in the following series, a
different Zerg team countered the same strategy using Ravagers. In truth,
seeing the more innovative teams performing better than the more “skilled at
HotS” teams was pretty awesome.
For HotS, we really enjoyed the first matches of the MSI 2015 WSL. Although
the games weren’t the highest skill like we’re used to seeing these days,
the more casual and different type of environment was a cool change of pace
and very entertaining to watch. Lastly, we wanted to also shoutout to
Hungryapp TV for trying something new and fun.
In conclusion, thanks for all the continued feedback on Legacy of the Void.
Let us know what you think of these changes and we look forward to hearing
your thoughts!