|  |  |  | | | | | StarCraft II | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | In this series of StarCraft II blog articles, we will explore some of the more challenging and unusual StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty solo play achievements. While Dr. Hanson desperately tries to find a cure for the zerg infestation, your terran forces are compelled to deal with the rapidly-spreading infection on Haven. It's a Catch-22 situation: To ensure victory, you want to focus on the incoming zerg forces and strike their bases. But to earn the House Call achievement, you must "complete the Haven's Fall mission with five settlements protected on Hard difficulty." The settlements are scattered afield and come under attack by the zerg infesters at a rate of one every five minutes or so. You have two fronts to protect, but only a handful of different units to work with. At this point in the campaign, you only have a limited factory, starport, barracks, and mercenary compound (if you've been hiring mercs). How will you deal with being spread so thin? Has this achievement got you stumped? What strategy do you suggest? You can help others by telling us all about it in the comments below! | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Greetings, citizens of the Koprulu sector! It's been some time since we last submitted a situation report for StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty, but with patch 1.3, we felt that it was a good time to address some of the changes we implemented and our thoughts on them. We've pulled out some of the most notable patch notes to explain our design philosophy and the thinking behind this update. Balance Changes
- Players can no longer hide units by setting them in a close proximity patrol (ex: Viking flower).
There was a core problem with the Viking flower strategy in that there was no way to know how many Vikings were patrolling a specific area. In StarCraft II, scouting armies is already a difficult and important aspect of play, and it was definitely not our intention to make it possible for air units to use this patrol method to disguise their numbers. We consider this case more of a bug fix than a balance change.
Protoss - Units leaving the Mothership's Vortex are now un-targetable and immune to damage for 1.5 seconds.
This was another case that we viewed as more of a bug fix than a balance change. The original concept of Vortex was that it was more than just a stasis or a lockdown. In addition to having the protoss player lock down a part of his or her opponent's army, the spell was supposed to also be about creating situations for enemy interaction with the Vortex.
For example: If I'm playing zerg and half of my army was Vortexed, I may decide to put the remaining half into the Vortex. Conversely, I could choose to simply sacrifice half of my units instead and run with the rest if greatly outnumbered by the protoss opponent. However, there was a bug in which splash units instantly killed everything coming out of a Vortex, preventing the different types of interactions we originally intended.
- Khaydarin Amulet upgrade (+25 starting energy) has been removed.
This is perhaps the 1.3 patch change that was most discussed by the community and we wanted to take some to time to explain the rationale behind it. Ultimately, there were two reasons we wanted to remove this item.
- We felt this upgrade reduced strategic choice. When combined with stalker or charge zealot warp-ins, this upgrade made it nearly impossible to do any sort of harassment attack anywhere there was a pylon. We didn't like the reduction in strategic options, as the opponent could only fight major battles with protoss in the late game.
- We felt late game protoss splash damage was slightly overpowered. This applies both to high templars and colossi. We felt that if we were to nerf both of these units protoss may end up too weak in the late game. Therefore, we decided to adjust high templars first and see how the game plays out. As we've mentioned many times before, we feel it's safer to take small steps in making balance changes than making drastic changes to an entire race.
- Charging Zealots will now hit fleeing targets at least once.
Even after researching Charge, there are times when zealots aren't able to hit the opponent even once and just end up getting kited to death. Although this change will not suddenly flip the relationship in those cases, we wanted to improve it a bit. We want Charge zealots to perform better than normal zealots in as many scenarios as possible.
Terran - Battlecruiser movement speed increased from 1.406 to 1.875.
Although we don't want to see battlecruisers used in every terran late game, we noticed they're hardly ever used at all. To encourage their use in more games, we decided to buff their biggest weakness, movement speed.
- Bunker build time increased from 35 to 40 seconds.
The focus of this change was strictly on reducing the effectiveness of offensive bunkering. With the build time increased, we noticed that there wasn't as much of a change to defensive bunkers, whereas offensive bunkering is a lot more difficult to pull off.
- EMP now drains up to 100 energy instead of all available energy. The effect on protoss shields remains unchanged.
We had three main reasons for implementing this change:
- We wanted ghost EMP to be less effective vs. infestors in the ZvT matchup. Infestors are fairly slow moving and have high costs. We felt that one EMP shutting down multiple Infestors was too much.
- After the high templar change, we noticed the ghost vs. high templar relationship was a bit too much in the ghost's favor.
- Early/mid game sentries are almost a requirement vs. terran. However, there were scenarios at different skill levels where one EMP would manage to luck out and hit every single sentry, making it so that protoss had no chance to stop the mass Stimpack terran army.
- Stimpack upgrade research time increased from 140 to 170 seconds.
It wouldn't be the first time we've heard that there were concerns from players about the use of Stimpacks and there's a reason why; Stimpack timing pushes by terran players can be extremely difficult for opponents to stop without employing effective scouting. We wanted these types of pushes to come slightly later in order to provide more time for opponents to prepare for these attacks and to potentially get scouting units together to effectively scout for these types of pushes.
Zerg - Fungal Growth stun duration decreased from 8 to 4 seconds.
- Fungal Growth damage increased by +30% vs. armored units.
Both of the Fungal Growth changes were mainly made to address a ZvZ issue with mutalisk vs. infestor, and to make infestors more useful vs. protoss. For mutalisks, we found they were just not useful enough in ZvZ due to the Fungal Growth stun duration being too long. So, the duration was reduced to make them a bit more viable in the ZvZ matchup. This reduction in stun duration means the damage goes in faster. However, we realized that mutalisks suffer mostly due to stuns combined with hydralisks shooting from below. As for infestors themselves, we found they weren't that useful vs. protoss. We wanted to solve both of these issues while keeping infestors as powerful as they are vs. terran. Fungal Growth's damage itself wasn't as big of a problem as the stun, so we decided to go with this change so that the stun duration reduction is somewhat countered by the damage buff.
The +30% armored damage change was more strictly targeted towards stalker-based protoss armies, as well as marauder-based terran armies. We wanted infestors to be more of a core unit in the ZvP matchup while keeping them just as useful vs. terran. The stun duration reduction change by itself didn't allow these two things, so we had to make this damage change as well in order to arrive at the right place for the infestor.
We've made every effort to weigh these types of changes very carefully and will continue to do so in the future. We understand the impact they have on gameplay and want to make sure that when we make a change, it's for the betterment of the game as a whole. The metagame is always changing, and that can make balancing the game a challenge, but we are dedicated to constantly evolving StarCraft II and committed to providing the kind of epic gameplay experience the community expects. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | We hope you enjoyed our April Fools' Day jokes this year! If you missed them, check out this year's pranks: And so, the Blizzard Joke Squad go galumphing back whence they came, hiding amid the slithy toves that gyre and gimble in the wabe, busily plotting and scheming for the future. See you again next year! | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | The first MLG StarCraft II event of the 2011 Season is blasting its way onto the tournament scene this weekend at the Dallas Convention Center. Top players from around the world have flown into Dallas, including: IdrA and iNcontroL from Team EG; root.KiWiKaKi; FXOqxc; Virus.Naama; M.Socke; Naniwa, SeleCT, and SjoW from dignitas; TLO, Ret, and Tyler from Team Liquid, and many more. The event will be covered by your favorite casters, Sean "Day9" Plott, Marcus "djWHEAT" Graham, and JP McDaniel. Watch the event live all weekend long for free on http://www.majorleaguegaming.com. For those wanting higher quality, low-compression video with DVR, rewind, and replay features, a High Quality version is available for $10. If you're in the area and want to see the action in person, you can pick up a spectator pass. The $25 pass gets you full access to watch the competition from kickoff on Friday right through the Championship Final on Sunday. Head out to Dallas and be a part of StarCraft II history in the making, and be on the lookout for the next MLG Pro Circuit Competition in Columbus, Ohio on June 3-5! | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | The upcoming StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty Patch 1.4.11 promises to dramatically change the StarCraft II battlefield forever, and we wanted to give you a taste of what's to come. This patch features adjustments to race balance, notable unit improvements, new Battle.net features, and a variety of bug fixes. Want to learn more? Be sure to check out this special patch note preview on the official forums. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Various competition organizers hold regular online tournaments in which you can compete against other players and maybe even win some prizes! Most of these contests are open to everyone. In addition, there are professional tournaments taking place like the GSL World Championship or the Major League Gaming, which you can follow via video stream. Interested? Take a look at some of the open tournaments coming up in the next days - you can sign up to take part, or simply watch the live streams to get inspired by the players. It's your turn now! | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | We're proud to present the next step in the evolution of the StarCraft series... and Blizzard Entertainment's long-awaited return to the console scene. Check out our new game information page for all the details, and get ready to fight for control of the Koprulu Sector like never before! | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | After years of fevered development and tireless research into the mysteries of the Horadrim, we've finally succeeded in capturing the power of one of Sanctuary's most enigmatic artifacts in a portable, downloadable form…. Behold, the Horadric Cube app for your smartphone or supported mobile device! But beware: great power often comes at a terrible price. Visit our Diablo III Horadric Cube app page to learn more, if you dare. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | We recently deployed a patch for StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty, correcting several minor issues. To update to this new version of the game, please run the StarCraft II Launcher.
StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty – Patch 1.3.1 Bug Fixes - Fixed an issue where, in some situations, players would not be notified they received an achievement.
- Fixed an issue where the Leagues & Ladders showcase boxes were not updated correctly.
- Fixed an issue where, under certain circumstances, the "Return to Game" button in the main menu would not function properly.
- Fixed an issue where the new observer UI features would not function correctly on custom maps.
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | We challenged you to submit your comic creations to the Blizzard Comic Contest, and your entries never fail to amuse and amaze us. The following comic from Helen Li (Hebi) was selected as an honorable mention in our ongoing contest. 
The creator of each winning entry will receive a same-as-cash gift card for their artistic efforts, and you can too! The Blizzard Comic Contest is an ongoing event, so if you've ever wanted to try your hand at sequential art, we invite you to draw a comic of your own. The submission deadline for our next contest judging period is April 28, 2011. You can find the contest rules here. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | We're featuring five new pieces of artwork in our Blizzard Fan Art Section today. Have a look at the many different interpretations of the StarCraft universe forged by some very talented artists. Do you have a unique artistic approach to characters or environments in the Diablo, StarCraft, or Warcraft universes? Submit your fan art now!  
 
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