StarCraft II Official! (Pictures)

[Negi]

I can't believe how shitty they made hydras

Also, the protoss tripod thingy sucks big floppy donkey dick.  Protoss have no really good building destroyers anymore.

[WB]

I don't think the colossus is supposed to be a building destroyed...

Also, they had a kickass building destroyer, but fans hated protoss surf commandos from Shakuras.

[Lavarinth]

They had building destroyers?

[Meta]

Aren't Warp Rays and Carriers meant to be good building destroyers? 

But yeah, losing the Reaver sucks. The current Colossus looks very weak as well, and I dislike how they downgraded its death animation.

[Marco]

The downgrade is just for multiplayer though I thought, in reference to the animations.  Reducing clutter and all that, which is understandable.

[Lavarinth]

What Desler said. All dynamics are still in play in singleplayer for the more realistic experience while Multiplayer is very stripped down graphically.

[Thalraxal]

What Desler said. All dynamics are still in play in singleplayer for the more realistic experience while Multiplayer is very stripped down graphically.

That's good to here.  I want cool deaths for my units.  Not having them disappear in a sad puff of smoke.

[AA7Dragoon]

Lavarinth, did you get a chance to play with the Protoss Colossus?  From what I've seen in the videos, the unit is awful.  It only fires in one, horizontal direction.  When I saw it firing on a group of zerglings, it hit 2, and missed all the other ones.  It kept missing all the other ones.  How is this unit effective against large groups of enemies that are constantly moving if it only fires in one, slow direction?

[Meta]

Yeah, it didn't look like very interesting at all. It was cooler when it had a scarab-like AoE attack (the second version of the attack, I think; the first one was a single beam); also, it died too fast.

Well, for campaigns we could just give it its older attack and role, but still it doesn't look like a worthy "replacement" for the extremely strategic and mass-killing Reaver.

[IskatuMesk]

What Desler said. All dynamics are still in play in singleplayer for the more realistic experience while Multiplayer is very stripped down graphically.

I'd want to have the effects in multiplayer as well. It should be an option, and not forced either way.

[Hercanic]

The death-parts don't interact with units, right? So why would it matter for multiplayer? Rendering death animations should be client-side, so it will not affect multiplayer. It's the same for ragdolls in FPS games.


Dear WB:
Surfer dude was silly and did not fit the Protoss feel. They could keep the design concepts if they changed the unit appearance, unless there were other balance or gameplay issues at odds.

[Thalraxal]

The death-parts don't interact with units, right? So why would it matter for multiplayer? Rendering death animations should be client-side, so it will not affect multiplayer. It's the same for ragdolls in FPS games.


Dear WB:
Surfer dude was silly and did not fit the Protoss feel. They could keep the design concepts if they changed the unit appearance, unless there were other balance or gameplay issues at odds.

Apparently, some of the "pro-gamers" complained that complex death animations caused clutter, and sometimes it looked like a dead unit was still alive, causing them to waste time and stuff.

[Hercanic]

Of those that are confusing, Blizzard should add simple effects that clarify its state. Texture overlays of burn marks, darken the pieces, break apart the large pieces, use particle effects for fluid and sparks, stuff along the lines of SC1's deaths (Dragoon, for instance) in a 3D environment.

I think Blizzard needs to be wary of being too reactionary. Some feedback is more of a kneejerk reaction to change. Competitive games are the result of hundreds of hours of practice. In that time, pro-gamers would learn how to distinguish dead units from live ones, but they have not had that kind of opportunity with SC2. While there is merit to their impressions, thus demanding more care given to how a unit looks when it dies, completely removing the corpse instantly isn't the best solution (though it's certainly the easiest). Bodies let players know where and when they lost the unit, especially when they are managing multiple locations, not to mention the visceral feeling death animations lend to combat.

[Lavarinth]

Unfortunately I didn't play Protoss, only Zerg and Terran. I agree with Isk, though.

Also- I sent in a Marine to a Protoss base to scout, and a probe came to attack me, I ran around in circles, very small circles, and it couldn't hit my Marine for it's own dear life. It'd go to attack, pause, and by the time the attack sequence initiates, my Marine would be too far.

[WB]

From what I've been hearing from friends and from what I saw the AI was raping most people. Games only lasted like 20 min, since they had a timer on all the games to get the line moving, and it was all 1v1.