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8 countries in 30 days for work, was extremely tiring, was looking forward to seeing how blizz had progressed in their plans to even up the races in HotS and fix the balance issues. Came back and this is what I see :o

Protoss win rates continue to drop, terran continues to dominate, HotS units have been announced and after all that talk of focusing on the incomplete races and evening out unit numbers, roles and abilities what do I see:

Terran effectively gains 3 units (including a new "form" for a unit that is significantly different), They lose none of their units in return. Zerg gains 3 units and loses one (gain 2 units), protoss gains 3 units, one of which has no attack at all and loses two of their units (gain 1 unit).

I'm not captain maths but it looks to me like the race with the most units, most options and with the most complete range of available playstyles, yet again will get the most new units, without actually losing any, They will have an even greater unit count advantage, an even greater range of options, and be even more complete, hell, from the looks of things they are even making the bioball even stronger with easily intergateable mechs that fit the bioball synergy perfectly, one new unit to tank at the front, and one at the rear with longer range.

"sigh" . . . . . I think I may be done at this rate, 10+ years loving this franchise . . . .not looking too good. Way to deliver on your rhetoric blizzard, you really had me going for a moment there, I actually believed you were serious when you identified that terran was the most complete, with the highest unit count, and would probably not get as many new units as the others. Again, it must be my lack of ability in the area of basic addittion, because my sums keep coming out wrong with terran gaining even more of a unit count advantage than before.

Well, welcome back.

If you didn't know... he who must not be named dropped by.

Did he just? and what did he have to say? Something ribald no doubt?

So whats the community spirit like, continued jubilance from terran crowd I imagine, depression for the rest, although zerg players at least a little happier due to increased win rates over protoss, lack of interest from blizzard? Am I about on the money?

Of course units will be changed/dropped/new units inserted before HOTS actually comes out in it's final form. However if it were to come out as it is now I think most zergs would rejoice. Apparently zerg is massively OP given the stats that were gleaned from blizzcon.

There are custom games created where people have implemented the changes to be released in HOTS and implemented the new units and abilities.

Viper + swarm host = undefeatable.

welcome back fakuna its good to see you back

The terran did get new units without losing any, they are a complete race, but now so are the zerg, and I think, so are the protoss, the new HoTS units for each race present a solution to old problems, the new mechs for terrans will make mech overall a viable style, which pretty much completes the race from a design perspective. (they are going to have serious trouble adding units in LotV) With the introduction of the swarm host and viper, the zerg can now break heavily fortified positions, and actually have a threatening presence even in the face of powerful units, the new upgrades fix the problems with old units (hydra speed, burrow ultra charge ftw!).

For the protoss, the replicant provides a simple, accessible counter to the 1/1/1 and allows the protoss options they never had before (emp'ing enemy ghosts anyone?), the oracle seems odd at first glance, but the entomb ability is much better than people give it credit for, and phase shift allows for both indestructable building walls, and the lockdown of critical enemy tech (lock down a critical zerg structure just as they are about to remax, and you will notice the absence of that unit, if they wait and don't make anything on remax, well, thats some downtime you can use to your advantage), Pre-ordain allows you to scout any tech you want. As for the tempest, it provides a way, in conjunction with other air units, the beat aerial armies in a way the carrier could not (its ground attack isn't bad either).

So while it seems that the terran once again got the best of it, a closer glance reveals they might not be as advantaged as you think.

Of course this is conjecture, and the beta has not been released, all the units and upgrades are subject to change, I suggest waiting until the expansion is figured out before losing faith in the franchise Fakuna.

Reasonable comment there, but they specifically said that that as terran were the most complete with highest unit count etc they should expect fewer new units etc, and then they give them the biggest increase in total unit count, any way you look at it, they are refusing to balance unit numbers and have actually made the situation / gap worse, it is not reasonable to have one race with far greater unit count than the other two, and furthermore to remove iconic units from a race that was already down on unit count while adding even more units to the race that had too many, without removing any.

As for the new units, personally i really dislike the concept of a tiny zerg air unit that can pull a colossus almost instantly, it looks and feels so wrong, especially as an air unit. They could improve it a lot with small things, for example, if it was ground based or much larger, or if it visually put out a lot more tentacles and took longer to pull such a large unit, ie: if the large units got to struggle it wouldn't seem as bad, but right now, function aside, even visually it looks terrible, and makes no sense in terms of physics let alone lore or anything else.

Worse is the replicant, copying zerg units is just plain silly and terran units almost as bad, protoss used to be the strong tech race, but the game has changed so that protoss is now the weakest cost for cost, so much so that the only solution blizzard could come up with is giving protoss terran and zerg units. Why not give the "high tech", "high cost" race high tier units that actually are stronger, but in fewer numbers. They could have fixed the carrier, kept in an iconic unit instead of further increasing the unit count gap, and making terrans already too strong top tier units even stronger, but instead they took away the top tier highest tech protoss units, and let protoss copy the lower tech terran and zerg units?? It just doesn't make sense.

The other units seem o.k. and I will watch and see but so far it is just so dissapointing, and so different from what blizzard were implying. They made a lot of statements that made it seem they were actually aware of how imbalanced the unit counts and number of available options were, only to then take the opposite path, making the existing situation even worse in this respect.

Come on blizzard, again it feels like al the thought went into terran, replicant is a shining example of this, you didn't make a protoss unit, you made them look pathetic, too weak as a race to stand alone so just give them copies of the enemies more advanced tech seems pretty soft to me.

11/07/2011 04:27 PMPosted by Fakuna

Reasonable comment there, but they specifically said that that as terran were the most complete with highest unit count etc they should expect fewer new units etc, and then they give them the biggest increase in total unit count, any way you look at it, they are refusing to balance unit numbers and have actually made the situation / gap worse, it is not reasonable to have one race with far greater unit count than the other two, and furthermore to remove iconic units from a race that was already down on unit count while adding even more units to the race that had too many, without removing any.

I think they will bring the carrier back, the amount of feedback for its removal is immense, but time will tell, as for the terran, they are the most complete, but from blizz's point of view, they might not be entirely complete, I do find it odd that they are giving 3 new units, but technically, one of them is a transformation, to give an old unit a new use, a way for hellions to be used in stand-up fights.

11/07/2011 04:27 PMPosted by Fakuna

As for the new units, personally i really dislike the concept of a tiny zerg air unit that can pull a colossus almost instantly, it looks and feels so wrong, especially as an air unit. They could improve it a lot with small things, for example, if it was ground based or much larger, or if it visually put out a lot more tentacles and took longer to pull such a large unit, ie: if the large units got to struggle it wouldn't seem as bad, but right now, function aside, even visually it looks terrible, and makes no sense in terms of physics let alone lore or anything else.

I have to agree on the visual look of the abduct ability, it doesn't look right at all.

11/07/2011 04:27 PMPosted by Fakuna

Worse is the replicant, copying zerg units is just plain silly and terran units almost as bad, protoss used to be the strong tech race, but the game has changed so that protoss is now the weakest cost for cost, so much so that the only solution blizzard could come up with is giving protoss terran and zerg units. Why not give the "high tech", "high cost" race high tier units that actually are stronger, but in fewer numbers.

This was my explanantion of protoss reasoning behind the replicant, it may not be correct, but I feel it is sound:

Its the same with the Replicant really, most view it as odd that the protoss with all their tech would copy an infererior race, but from a different perspective it can be seen as such:

The protoss identified units from the other races that could aid their cause, so they copied them, not only to survive, but to show that they could use such technology (even if it is primitive) far better than those who created it (this is shown through the fact that the upgrades are already researched), from my perspective it seems like the protoss are saying, "we are beating you at your own game, with 'copies', problem? *cue troll face*"

Despite this, I am still hold sentiment towards the carrier, I hope they bring it back...

that explanation was not for the replicant, it was for the tempest i suspect.

edit. oops, no saw the second part, but i dilike the explanation more than your tempest explanation, i assume your troll tag at the end was because you agree that the explanation is fairly stretched?

It was for the replicant, the tempest was just discussed in the first half, sorry about that

There, edited out the tempest part ^_^

Community hatred is a strong force.[/ul]

you guys are so !@#$ing @%@%! lol

11/07/2011 04:47 PMPosted by Fakuna

edit. oops, no saw the second part, but i dilike the explanation more than your tempest explanation, i assume your troll tag at the end was because you agree that the explanation is fairly stretched?

No it was put their because of the way the protoss are doing things, their pride has cost them dearly before, their home planet infact, they have learned from this, and so I assume they are discarding pride, anyway, the point of the troll face was that the protoss identified stuff they could use, even though it is essentially beneath them, and so they 'take it'. The troll face is them insulting the other races because they are proving superiority by showing the other races they can win with 'copies' of their technology (Superior 'copies' with already researched upgrades)

I did a search, I can't find the thread where that guy showed up, was it fun, is the thread still there?

11/08/2011 04:21 AMPosted by Fakuna

I did a search, I can't find the thread where that guy showed up, was it fun, is the thread still there?

The thread is still there, but he deleted his posts after giving up being the hyporitical prick he was being.

It was disguised as a "Help me with TvZ thread" but he just used it as a cover for QQing about how terran takes twice as much skill and that zerg a-move ling/bling is OP when the game is zerg 4 base vs terran 2 base for 18 minutes.

For me, it was less than enjoyable trying to read through his horrible spelling, puncuation and grammar in the form of QQ. I was going to try to be reasonable with him at first and explain nicely why he lost, but I threw away that plan after reading about 2-3 more posts of his nonsensical reasoning.

Just be thankful that you don't need to read through the slurs of rubbish he posted since he deleted them. ;)

People may flame me for this but:
http://sea.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/171277191

Most of what he said was quoted anyway

Oh, I thought you meant the real he who must not be named, Z-man, maybe I am showing my age. O.k. i'll have a read through that, was it really the highlight of my month away?

Hi Dax, how can we best contribute to HotS, what would the devs really like at this stage?

Also if you feel like commenting, how do we get back to that whole "some races are more complete than others, so those races will not get the same number of new units approach?" or if that is gone, why so? It really does seem like the unit and ability count imbalance is shifting in the opposite direction at the moment from what we were hoping for.