Bêta : Legacy of the Void
David Kim, Senior Game Designer chez Blizzard et responsable entre autres de l'équilibrage sur Starcraft II et sur la future extension de Legacy of the Void, s'est exprimé sur les dernières évolutions prévues dans le jeu, sur les retours qu'elles avaient suscités dans la communauté et l'évolution vers laquelle elles tendent.
Cette semaine plusieurs points sont abordés :
- les mécaniques de macro supprimés .... sont de retour, mais sous une forme différente. Les mules et les chrononoboosts ne coûtent plus d'énergie, et les larves sont produites automatiquement par 3. Toutefois, le chronoboost, dont l'efficacité temporelle est réduite, est affecté de base au Nexus, avec possibilité de le changer de bâtiment. Les mules ont un taux de minage plus faible, sont en production automatique, mais possèdent maintenant un rayon de déploiement où elles sont actives, ce qui oblige à placer le stations orbitales à proximité de la zone de minage. Les coûts du Scan et du Dépôt additionnel seront augmentés pour compenser la gratuité des mules. Pour les zergs, le nombre de larves générées automatiquement est de 3, mais les taux de propagation et de déploiement du mucus sont augmentés.
- Le coût des Adeptes repasse de 75/50 à 100/25. La modification des procédures de Transfert devrait retarder assez leur apparition et éviter leur trop grand nombre.
- La Révélation des Oracles, la nouvelle capacité mise en place, permet de remplir des rôles différents de ceux de l'Observateur, notamment dans la détection d'unités enfouies. Une possible amélioration de sa portée à 12 est envisagée, pour permettre une survie plus longue des Oracles.
- Le Tempête, qui avait été largement modifié, voit son design revenir à sa version de HotS, pour lui permettre de redevenir le contre aux unités volantes de type Prote-Nefs, Seigneur-Vermine,...
- Les dégâts causés par le Zélote en mode charge, actuellement à 30 vont être diminués prochainement.
- D'autres sujets sont testés aussi, sur les points les plus rapportés par la Communauté. Ceci inclut la mise en place d'un délai de 0,75 secondes avant le premier tir d'un Tank transporté en mode Siège. L'amélioration du Transport de Dominant pourrait être déplacée au niveau du Terrier. La portée du Colosse amélioré pourrait passer de 8 à 9. La capacité Bile corrosive du Ravageur est toujours en test, de même que la valeur de la Surcharge photonique du Noyau de Vaisseau-Mère sur des pylônes.
David Kim sur Mise à jour sur les retours de la Communauté (Source)
Hey everyone - here is an update on a lot of what's been being discussed over the last week:
Macro Mechanics
Overall, the coolest thing we’re seeing is the freed up clicks going to more interesting parts of the game, and our worry of some of the races becoming too easy to play doesn’t seem to be the case. We agree with the Korean pros/community on this point - that because Starcraft 2 is already one of the most difficult games to master by far out there, and LotV added much more skill needed to play, helping out on this end looks to be the correct move. With that said, there are definitely issues we’d like to improve:
- Terran’s mineral income rate in the early/mid game especially took a big hit.
- Scan has become so frequent that it doesn’t look to be as interesting for the game since Terran can play while seeing so much more than before.
- Protoss lost a potentially cool choice in terms of what specific thing to Chronoboost per situation.
- Zerg choice between Queen and additional hatcheries became a bit more muddy, because Queens cost less for less larva per time now.
However, these are the things that we’d like to try to keep going forward:
- Reduced clicks per race surrounding macro mechanics
- Potentially increasing both players’ interaction with creep spread more (now that - Zerg players can more easily dedicate more effort in this area)
- Bring back some of the necessary components of each race, but not go all the way back in strength per mechanic.
- We like the fact that there can’t be 10~20 mules in the late game quickly mining out future bases, and would like to keep this component.
After trying various solutions that hit the points above on both what we’d like to keep and what we’d like to address, here’s what we’re currently looking at internally:
Protoss
- Chrono boost is back, reduced in effectiveness per time, no longer costs energy to cast, and starts defaulted to being cast on the Nexus.
- Protoss players will be able to switch the Chrono Boost on a Nexus to any building of his or her choice, and until it’s switched out again, it’ll remain on that building forever.
This way, we bring back the interesting choice part of Chrono Boost in a slightly nerfed state, while having minimal number of clicks. And for newer players who never even click once, they would still benefit the whole game from each of their Nexus always being Chrono Boosted.
Terran
- Mule is back, reduced in harvesting rate, no longer costs energy to cast, has a cooldown equal to the time it takes to generate 50 energy, and is autocast on by default.
- Mule will have a casting range, and will only be usable within that radius, so that in the late game, the Orbitals themselves have to move closer to the mining bases in order to drop multiple mules there.
- Scan and supply drop energy costs will be increased to compensate for the free mule cost.
With this version we can solve the issue of Terran early game income rates, solve the end game Terran mule case, and also have no increase in the number of clicks needed to mule effectively in games.
Zerg
- Keep Spawn Larva as autocast, but increase the larva count per use to 3.
- Increase the creep spread rate, and increase the creep decay rate.
The first change is to make the benefit of having the Queen very clear, and now that players have more effort spent on creep spread, we wonder if the creep interaction between players in Zerg games will be more interesting in terms of spreading creep tumors vs. clearing them out on a more regular basis within game.
Adept
We’ve reverted the Adept cost nerf. With both this cost nerf as well as the nerf to offensive Pylon Warp ins, the unit lost too much strength in the early game. We were looking for a minor nerf to help out other races defending against early Adept pushes, and were hoping to keep them still remain strong in the early game, and the offensive warp in nerf looks to be a good start already in this direction. We don’t want to overreact and nerf the unit too much.
However, another thing we’ve been exploring in this area is to have a more interesting upgrade for the Adept other than the health buff. Per your suggestion we’re trying to see if a damage upgrade is more relevant for this unit. We are also discussing other possibilities for this upgrade slot, and we will keep you guys updated going forward.
Oracle Revelation
We’ve been getting feedback around this ability for a long time from our community and one of our favorite casters from South Holland. Overall, it doesn’t compete well with observer detection, and although it is more effective in certain, specific situations such as countering Lurkers or speed upgraded Banshees, it is also a big nerf against certain specific situations such as clearing out Creep Tumors. But because this new way for Oracles to detect fits the unit much better, is a cool difference from how the Observer works, and clearly has some advantages, we’d like to push this version and see if this will ultimately be a good change in how the Oracle detects.
We’re currently trying a version where the Revelation cast range is increased to 12, so that against majority of the threats out there, it’ll be possible to keep the Oracle alive much easier when trying to detect enemy units. For example, when trying to hit Lurkers with Revelation, it’ll be much more difficult for the Vipers to pull the oracle in to kill them, and Vikings will also have a much more difficult time taking Oracles out when they try to come in to detect Terran units. This way, although the strengths and weaknesses of Revelation hasn’t changed, it’ll be possible for Protoss to more reliably use Oracles as detectors more often.
Tempest
It’s pretty clear that Tempests’ role is needed more than ever in LotV due to the units they counter being much stronger such as Brood Lords, Carriers, BCs, and even new additions such as Liberators that Protoss going only ground struggle heavily against.
However, the redesigned Tempest isn’t working out as well as we had hoped. The main reason is that we’ve added an activated ability to replace what the Tempest normally does in HotS, but the ability added isn’t very interesting. There’s no real counter to the ability being cast due to it being a instant 1 click thing where the opponent really doesn’t have many responses to other than “use this unit before it dies.” Therefore, we believe the HotS version is just better for this unit, and a role change to this unit is not a good idea due to the Tempests’ role being more needed than ever in LotV. We’ve decided to revert this unit back to its HotS version.
Zealot damage on Charge
We fully agree with majority of your feedback in that 30 damage is too much. We made a mistake here because there was a bug internally where Zealots were not always dealing damage on charge, which we weren’t aware of until very close to the release of the patch. We fixed the bug right before the patch went out, but forgot to double check to see what that means in actual games. Fortunately, we’re still in the beta so there was no huge issue of players losing tournament money due to this, but even so, we will try our best to make sure things like don’t happen even in the beta going forward.
We’ve been exploring with much lower damage on charge internally, and what we’re finding is something we’ve known and been talking about for long time. It’s very difficult to do a minor buff to such massable tier 1 units, because the impact of a minor buff adds up due to the ability to effectively mass these units so easily in the later stages of the game. We’re not yet sure what the best course of action on this area is, but we’ll continue exploring. For the next balance patch, we’ll greatly reduce this number, but we’re not sure yet if the added damage for this upgrade is correct in the long run.
Balance changes
We’re also exploring some balance changes this week especially on the specific things you bring up often. These include things like:
- 0.75 sec delay before the Siege Tanks in siege mode can fire when being dropped by Medivacs
- Moving overlord drop upgrade to Lair tech
- Colossi upgraded range up from 8 to 9
- Continuing to test the new Ravager Corrosive Bile range upgrade.
- Continuing to test different numbers on Mothership Core Overcharge being on Pylons.
We’re not saying all these things will make it into the beta for certain, but these are some examples of things we’re currently testing right now. We’ll provide an additional update next week that clearly outlines the changes coming to the beta, but we wanted to give you this information as early as possible. Thanks for your continued testing and feedback in helping us develop the best Legacy of the Void possible.
