2009-03-30

More Units = Varied Matches = Better E-Sports



Suggestion:
    Each Race should have 2 Units for every Technology Tier and Combat Role. i.e. There should be 2 "Trees" for each race.

  • They should have the same prerequisites (i.e. the structures needed,) the same role (ground-to-air, or air-to-ground, or support, etc.) and cost the same ratio of resources (i.e. 1:0 Minerals:Gas or 2:0.5 and so on)
  • The only difference between them should be the statistics (attack, armor, speed etc.) and any special abilities.


Example:
  • When you build a Barracks, you will have that obvious option of recruiting Marines, but there'll also be a different ground-to-ground/air ranged unit, costing 75 minerals. Let's name them Strikers.
    They'll be slightly faster than Marines, but have a shorter range of slower ground-to-ground attacks ("Personnel Handgun") OR an even slower but long-ranged G-G/A attack ("Sniping Rifle") and the damages they both do would be roughly the same.

    Now I'm not asking that there be such a unit, but this's just for a rough idea of an alternative unit.

  • Similarly, for the Protoss, simply constructing a Gateway would let you call, say, Martyrs in addition to the Zealots; ground-to-ground melee attackers that die (when killed, not at will lol) in a small explosion of splash damage, and cost 150 minerals.

  • They'll all be distinct units in their own right; Abilities researched for one will not affect its alternative.


Rationale:
    At very high-levels of skill, i.e. the "pro scene" there is precious little variation in overal strategies or build-orders. It tends to boil down to who can click and hotkey faster, becoming like some real-time version of Chess what with all those identical openings and their responses, on symmetrical maps.. >_>
    I know this may be an over-simplification begging for flames, but you get the idea; it can be Dull as Damn to watch, pretty quickly.

    Let there be some redundancy in the portfolio of units for each race. Let units overlap!

    Okay, in Heart of the Swarm if not in time for Wings of Liberty, but stop worrying about issues like not allowing 2 units to share the same damage type (i.e. Splash, which the Siege Tank and a cancelled Battlecruiser ability used to have)


2009-03-29

suggestion: Map Contest for SC2 Beta Keys



so Blizzard has all these contests that employ skills which have very little to do with a StarCraft beta, yet you can win keys to it from them.
Why not something that's more relevant to the game?

Hold a contest for making Brood War maps, Blizzard, and let the players vote on the best!

Here's a start;


2009-03-27

The Colossus Solution: Dual Attack Modes



Over the course of SC2's development we've seen several units go through a variety of attack types, most notably the Colossus, which has being unable to decide between a "sweeping" laser attack and the laser "spray" attack...
Well, both attacks look pretty awesome, and it'd be a shame to drop one of those in favor of the other.

I'm aware that the Colossi's attack always did splash damage, but it didn't make sense for their targets to receive damage at the same time before the laser had time to glide over them, so they changed it into an instant burst of multiple lasers.

It'd be a lot more cool to have some sort of toggle-switch for the Colossus, and other units, to manually change their mode of attack or type of weapon.

For the Colossi the options'd be something like this;

  • Focused Laser: Once the Colossus begins to attack something, you can choose a different target and the laser will "slide" towards it from the first target, highly damaging anything in its path. This provides you a very precise level of control, preferable for a small group of strong units, i.e. Immortals or Tanks. A complete attack would be enough to destroy a single Crucio Tank if focused on it for its entirety.

  • Laser Burst: This will of course be the more convenient option of hitting everything around the targeted enemy in a short radius, for crowd-control effective against masses of weaker, faster units, i.e. Zerglings or Marines. 2 such bursts would kill a targeted Marine, and 3 would kill the Marines around it.


2009-03-26

Races for StarCraft III



OKAY time to fantasize about completely new races, for SC3 or the SC2 Expansions. I'm a bored nerd hoping for the beta and this's somethin to kill the wait with. k so here is

The RACES OF STARCRAFT III...

  • The XEL'NAGA
      They'll of course be a fully playable enhancement on whatever we get to see of them in SC2. So I can't make up anything until we've seen how Blizzard presents them.



  • The OMINAR
      Borrowing their name from a race in the excellent old-school RPG, Planet's Edge, they would be the morally-ambiguous "neutrals" of the SC3 story, like a very benign Zerg that seek nothing except expanding and protecting their interests, but not actively out to harm anyone else. I actually posted this during a wave of SC2 fever on the forums back in '05..

      Gimmick: Nano-robotics, Transformation.
      Not so cheesy as it sounds. Their mechanics would be reminiscent of both the Terrans and Zerg, yet wildly different from any other SC race ever..


    OMINAR Base
      They'll start off with a large Borg-like Cube as their base building, and you'd make their Workers by "chiseling" off bits from the Cube - draining its HP - thus each Cube will support a finite number of Workers.

      The Cube will gradually keep regrowing back to a maximum size and regain HP as the Workers deposit resources into it. Additional Cubes may be built, albeit at a cost much higher than other races' expansion bases.


    OMINAR Units
      Any other units, will be constructed by Merging the Workers together; the most basic unit will "cost" at least 2 Workers.

      Units may be constructed anywhere on the battlefield by highlighting a group of Workers and selecting the resulting Merge command, or more conveniently from the Cube by automatically splitting off the required number of Workers and Merging them right away.

      So, an OMINAR base would consist of only the Cube and any defensive structures - there will be no "research" or additional structures pre-required for building any unit; just resources and time.


    OMINAR Abilities: Reconfiguration
      The best part, is that any OMINAR unit may be Broken down to its constituent Workers, and re-transformed into a different unit, at any time and place. The number of Workers regained from Breaking down a unit will depend on its remaining HP, but it will always be 1 less than the number of Workers that were Merged to make it.

      Consider: 4 SCVs (which cost 50 Minerals each to replenish the material lost from the Cube) may Merge into 1 Siege Tank, costing an additional 150 Gas as well, and taking 25 seconds.
      The Tank has 100 HP. If you Break it down right away, it'll turn back into 3 SCVs, taking 10 seconds, but if it has only 50 HP left, you will get only 2 SCVs back.

      Flying units will have to land or dock before they can be Broken down.


    OMINAR Upgrades
      Existing units may be individually made stronger i.e. Upgraded by Merging more Workers into them.

      You may Upgrade an OMINAR unit infinite times, but each Upgrade will cost increasingly more Workers and resources; Level 2 Weaponry will cost 1 Worker and 50 Gas, Lv.2 = 2 Workers 100 Gas, Lv.3 = 3 Workers 150 Gas, and so on, hence there'll still be a practical limit after all.

      Only units at 100% HP may be Upgraded, however; if you Merge a Worker to a damaged unit, it will instead only heal that unit by a small amount.


    So in the end, the OMINAR race will the most exactly adaptable to your playing style and strategic preference.

    OMINAR Music & Visual Themes
      Creepy techno/electronica. Think Star Control 2 music, or a mix of SC1 Zerg & Terran soundtracks. The overall look of the race's units will be very white and plastic, with metallicaly-checkered hulls like Star Destroyers.




  • The XEN'EXA
      With a stupid placeholder name (pronounced ZEN-ecksa) they'd be some sort of cousins (and sworn enemies) to the Xel'Naga; possibly the discarded aspects of their past forms, before the Xel'Naga achieved evolutionary perfection. The very manifestation of Evil Itself, these guys will make the Zerg and the Undead look like CareBears..

      Gimmick: Beings of Pure Energy, Reincarnation.
      Haven't thought it all up yet, but maybe they could "posses" or "haunt" lifeless things and structures to animate them to the Xen'exa's purpose, and whenever their units are killed, they will always be reincarnated after some time into a lesser form.

      Basically, the only unit besides workers that they'd be able to build would be a very agile and deadly melee attacker, like Zealots but stronger, and to progress at all they'll need to destroy their enemies and take over their corpses and wreckage. Think of this as a Zealot destroying a Goliath and entering its wreckage to become a Dragoon.



  • 2009-03-25

    StarCraft... 3? Ideas for a Prequel.



    why not.
    Okay, definitely a prequel.

    We'll assume that the state of affairs in the current SC2 universe is wrapped up by the time one or two Expansions have followed, after the original trilogy.

    So SC3 will focus on the eon of the Xel'naga civilization at its peak, and whatever threats brought them to this Galaxy and necessitated the creation of Protoss and Zerg.

    There'll still be 3 races, but no Terrans, Protoss or Zerg at all, obviously. The battles and the entities involved in them would be of an absolutely epic scale; think The Silmarillion versus The Lord of the Rings, with SC3 being like the former; each of the god-like races will have firepower that'd make the Death Star seem like a nerf ball.

    In terms of gameplay, it'll also break all bonds with the previous SC (or WC) games, going for different mechanics where applicable, without the obligation to satisfy any existing players' ecosystem, and thus offering true innovation without cannibalizing SC2.

    It'd have an "open" multiplayer-capable campaign mode instead of linear missions; each online session would spawn an instance of the Xel'naga's home Galaxy, with the players each commanding a single faction from the 3 races, starting from their respective worlds.
    You'd then choose your own path among the stars, managing multiple planets and conflicting with other factions along the way, and occasionally coming up key plot-centric regions which advance the storyline. There'll be different endings depending on which faction completes all their plot-specific missions first.


    suggestion: Optional UI for detailed stats



    Right-clicking or hovering on a unit's portrait or icon should bring up their statistics for attributes such as Mobility, Range of Vision, Range of Fire, Rate of Attack, and so on.

    This could make it more interesting who love numbers :)


    2009-03-22

    Blizzard should launch their own IM service; The Battle.net 2.0 Messenger



    This's something else I posted years before SC2's announcement, and now that they've introduced a single-login system and global accounts for the new Battle.net, it’d be a perfect time to have a Battle.net Instant-Messaging client;

  • The Battle.net Messenger (BNM? BM? BMS?)
    For the next-generation of Blizzard games, like StarCraft II and Diablo III, this'll allow you to;
    • see and chat with all your Battle.net friends, whether they are playing a game or not.
      If they are in SC2 or D3 for example, they would get your messages in-game, unless they choose not to be disturbed.
      and if they're not logged on to a game, the Messenger would act like any other IM client, i.e. Live Messenger or AIM.
    • see all available custom games in a convenient list, and join them with simply a click (or two.)
      For example, even if you don't have the SC2 executable already running, the Battle.net Messenger will launch it and send you straight to the lobby of the custom game you chose, skipping any preceding UI or cinematic whatsoever.

    Also, maybe through integration with the Messenger, a Blizzard game, say SC2, would let you stay in touch with players on other games, like D3.
    This could obviously be used for many other things, including an always-active venue on the users' end for Blizzard to place advertisements on and provide announcements through. :)


  • 4th SC2 Race?



    What do you suppose it'll be?

    The Xel'naga? or the Protoss-Zerg Hybrids?

    My take on this is that it'll initially be the Hybrids, let loose as the ultimate threat to the Koprulu Sector, maybe eventually the entire Galaxy, and near the end of final SC2 installment, the Xel'naga themselves will make an appearance to help get rid of the Hybrids and maybe the Zerg as well, to correct their mistakes.

    Either way, a 4th race would very likely be implemented as the Naga were in The Frozen Throne; maybe you could control some Hybrid units duringHeart of the Swarm, and some Xel'naga units in Legacy of the Void.


    2009-03-18

    suggestion: Zerg Ability: Reabsorb



    http://forums.battle.net/thread.html?topicId=16137220792&sid=3000Just throwing this out there;

    In keeping with the theme of biological super-adaptability for the Zerg race, there could be an ability to Reabsorb Zerg units who were Burrowed in Creep to recover a fraction of their cost in Minerals. The ability should be inherent for all ground units once their Burrowing ability has been researched, and it will only ever return Minerals; never Gas.

    For example, Reabsorbing one Zergling will let you reclaim, 10 or so Minerals.