StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm

By Lyric
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Grand Master

PGHammer

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For the later arrivals, here's a mini-FAQ of sorts -

1. While Heart of the Swarm is an *expansion/extension* of the Starcraft II series, it does NOT require Wings of Liberty to be installed first.

2. If you HAVE Wings of Liberty installed and up to date, Heart of the Swarm will use the same client; however, if your client is outdated, installing HotS will update your client as well. (This also applies to the Starter Edition.)

3. Other than client updates and a new skin, Starter Edition is largely unchanged. It still includes the same *teaser* of the WoL campaign - it does NOT include any missions from HotS..

4. All versions (including Starter Edition) include access to Arcade Mode - the various minigames based on the Starcraft II engine.

Grand Master

Yusuf M. Veteran

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Oddly enough, the game actually crashed to the desktop for me. My screen froze but I was still able to talk to my cousin via voice chat. On his end, it showed that I was dropping from the game but on my end... I didn't see anything at all. I've played Wings of Liberty before the launch of Heart of the Swarm and it has never crashed like this for me. :/

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_neutrino Veteran

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very smooth gameplay so far (most likely due to the fact it is an expansion set rather than a full new game) Loving the new missions it feels fresh. I am also impressed with how smoothly the digital upgrade went. Just signed in and it streams each mission as they begin without me having to download a huge chunk to get started. load times for missions are about 30 seconds do to the downloads though. but the game is fantastic so far. It feels more polished than WoL did.

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Andre S. Veteran

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Did anyone watch the MLG this weekend? Looks like balance-wise we're returning to some of the earlier issues in WoL, namely reapers seem overpowered early game vs Zerg. Zerg had a 30% win rate during the tournament, with the notable exception of Life who just stomped everyone.

Anyhow I'm overall quite excited with the changes in HoTS which should make the game more dynamic and fun to watch. Faster mutas and heavily nerfed infestors will mean more fast-moving harass and less careful positional play. Medivacs were made much more agile to offset that, which should mean more drop play (as opposed to slow-moving tank-thor based armies). The redesigned reaper and the mothership core give terran and protoss interesting new harass options early game. Faster hydras will also mean a more dynamic late game vs protoss, at least I hope so. Late game ZvP was the least dynamic thing imaginable in WoL so it wouldn't be hard to improve on that. :p

It's of course very difficult to balance for early game harass units as the lack of information at that point can lead to rock-paper-scissor dynamics where if a player chooses the wrong build it's an auto-loss. It'll be interesting to see how balance evolves over the following months, but the pessisimist in me predict fairly one-sided competitions until the dust settles.

  • 3 weeks later...
Grand Master

PGHammer

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Did anyone watch the MLG this weekend? Looks like balance-wise we're returning to some of the earlier issues in WoL, namely reapers seem overpowered early game vs Zerg. Zerg had a 30% win rate during the tournament, with the notable exception of Life who just stomped everyone.

Anyhow I'm overall quite excited with the changes in HoTS which should make the game more dynamic and fun to watch. Faster mutas and heavily nerfed infestors will mean more fast-moving harass and less careful positional play. Medivacs were made much more agile to offset that, which should mean more drop play (as opposed to slow-moving tank-thor based armies). The redesigned reaper and the mothership core give terran and protoss interesting new harass options early game. Faster hydras will also mean a more dynamic late game vs protoss, at least I hope so. Late game ZvP was the least dynamic thing imaginable in WoL so it wouldn't be hard to improve on that. :p

It's of course very difficult to balance for early game harass units as the lack of information at that point can lead to rock-paper-scissor dynamics where if a player chooses the wrong build it's an auto-loss. It'll be interesting to see how balance evolves over the following months, but the pessisimist in me predict fairly one-sided competitions until the dust settles.

And there is now something NEW that you have to start planning around - weather as a battlefield condition.

Until the beginning of the SC II cycle, the biggest differences between maps/battlefields were presence/absences of resources or staging areas, obstacles - that sort of thing. Weather was not a worry - neither was the environment, really.

Wings of Liberty brought environmental hazards to maps; now Heart of the Swarm does the same with weather hazards (initially, extreme cold). I shudder to think what will happen when community mapmakers get the weather mutators to play with.

And what about maps with environment AND weather nastiness? Possible? Heck - it's LIKELY, now that HoTS is out. Some units will thrive in certain weather extremes, but fail otherwise - for other units, the reverse is true.

Start thinking like a real sandbox general - unit mix is about to get critical all over again - just not for the usual reasons.

Grand Master

Andre S. Veteran

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Wings of Liberty brought environmental hazards to maps; now Heart of the Swarm does the same with weather hazards (initially, extreme cold). I shudder to think what will happen when community mapmakers get the weather mutators to play with.

And what about maps with environment AND weather nastiness? Possible? Heck - it's LIKELY, now that HoTS is out. Some units will thrive in certain weather extremes, but fail otherwise - for other units, the reverse is true.

That's an interesting thought. I highly doubt time-based weather events would make it into the ladder pool, but perhaps a perpetual freezing zone could make sense.
  • 1 month later...
Grand Master

PGHammer

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That's an interesting thought. I highly doubt time-based weather events would make it into the ladder pool, but perhaps a perpetual freezing zone could make sense.

Not perpetual; however, time-based weather nastiness is a real possibility for mapmaking (that is what is shown in the first cold-weather map in HotS, in fact). *brrrrrr*

I'm having a different problem though - I'm trying to get through the "Leggo my Eggo" campaign mission (Char) in HotS. (I'm actually concentrating on the campaign, instead of sticking strictly to skirmish, like I did with Wings of Liberty, and I'm paying for it now - I have no real experience playing Zerg, and "Eggo" is Z v. Z.)

How have some of you tackled this nasty piece of work? (There are three objectives - collect 100 eggs before your opponent, make sure they CAN'T collect 100 eggs at all, and take down the Infested Command Centers.)

Grand Master

Andre S. Veteran

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I'm having a different problem though - I'm trying to get through the "Leggo my Eggo" campaign mission (Char) in HotS. (I'm actually concentrating on the campaign, instead of sticking strictly to skirmish, like I did with Wings of Liberty, and I'm paying for it now - I have no real experience playing Zerg, and "Eggo" is Z v. Z.)
You mean Domination? Rule of thumb, start all missions by looking for nearby expansions, and take them asap. Zerg is worthless on one base. Once you saturate these bases with drones and constantly pour all your money on reinforcements, you should have well enough units to beat any mission fairly easily even on Brutal. Case in point, there's a small expansion to the right of your starting location in this one.

I don't remember that one presenting much of a challenge; IIRC you should ignore the command centers until you have a large army and can easily deal with whatever Zagara throws at you. Zerglings are incredibly mobile so stay on the move constantly, you can basically be everywhere at once with zerg and that's the main strength of the race.

Experienced

Lyric

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I'm in the same boat. I've yet to pick it up.....I've kinda moved on out of highly competitive gaming due to my wife and son as I like to put in 100% effort when I focus on something and I don't want to neglect them. I sold off my gaming computer, but I'm thinking of building a new one, not sure yet when that will happen.

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