Starcraft II

Starcarft II GSL Season II Finals!

DarkAstraea — Sat, 06 Nov 2010 10:38:11 GMT

It has been an awesome turn out this season! HopeTorture, runner up for season 1 made it into the semi-finals but was knocked out by BoxeR (no, not SlayerSBoxer). SlayerSBoxer also made it into the semi-finals but was knocked out by zerg korean player NesTea. So now the finals will take place on Saturday the 13th with NesTea(zerg) vs BoxeR(terran).

You can view the brackets hear!

I was sad to see FruitDealer get knocked out early by BoxeR, but o well. Now we have another zerg player at the top! NesTea!! Mmm...

David Kim Blizzcon Interview

DarkAstraea — Sun, 31 Oct 2010 04:46:11 GMT

Here's an interview with David Kim, game balance designer for Starcraft 2 at Blizzcon.

1. Community Feedback
Pros: All players may participate.
Cons: Issues can become exaggerated (opinion swings).

2. Progamer Feedback
Because of the skill level of Korean pros, we try to pay a lot of attention to this. We observe focusing our attention on a specific player. Also, we look at a lot of tournament replays. But the fact that progamers play only one race can be a drawback.

3. Tournaments
Many people tend to focus on the results, but we try to focus on the process (of the game) instead. The fact that FruidDealer won does not necessarily mean Zerg is strong, as the fact there was a high ratio of Protoss doesn't necessarily mean Protoss is strong. We focus on the content of the games. But since there is a range in skill depending on brackets and placement, it's difficult to get accurate [information].

4. Excel Statistics
We record the timings of a specific race and look at the statistics. However, it's hard to see certain game elements such as unit size and micro.

5. Battle Tester
We have a tool that lets us create unit mixes that lets us pit armies of corresponding cost against each other. For example, we can test how a mix of Roaches, Hydras, and Ultras fares against certain Protoss unit combinations. But we cannot know the timings. A Roach/Hydra combo with 5 Roachs or 10 Roaches will have different timings in-game, but we cannot know this with this tool.

6. Statistics by Race/Win:Lose Ratios in Matchups
In North America, we feel that ZvT/ZvP are balanced. Protoss seems to be favored in PvT with a 60% win percentage.

The reason why Korea is so important is the fact that there are a lot of gosu gamers in Korea. Also, strategies tend to be developed first in Korea. Even in beta, Korean zergs were sweeping the floor in ZvP with a 70% win rate, while in NA/Europe, the opposite was true (70% win rate for toss).

When we analyzed the games, we learned that Korean Zergs' strategy was different. They were easily defeating protoss with a spine crawler+mutalisk combo, and this strategy was never used in NA. After 1~2 weeks, NA players started copying the strategy. By the end of the second week, the Win rates became the same as in Korea, and we were able to make our decisions regarding ZvP balance.

ZvP balance is still good. In PvT however, top-tier terrans have a 6% win rate advantage over protoss. We generally don't see a difference within 5% as a balance issue, but 6% is a little bit outside that range. As in the past, Terran may become more powerful once Korean strategies make their way to other regions. We are keeping an eye on it at the moment.

Also, if we look at the case of PvT, we've never before had pros send us such varying feedback. When we asked 5 pros for feedback, MakaPrime said PvT was balanced, whereas 2 others said Protoss could never win, and the remaining 2 thought Terran could never win. Normally, 70-80% of pro gamers give us the same opinion when asked for feedback. This time, the opinions are so varied that we are wondering if it's an inherent issue with TvP.

In the early game, Terran has an advantage with stimpack, micro, and medivac drops, but the late game protoss has a lot of powerful units such as high templars with upgrades casting storm immediately after warping in. The Phoenix+Collossus combo of NEXGenius has also been giving Terrans a hard time.

What we want isn't a game where one side has an advantage in the earlygame and the other in the lategame, but rather a game where both sides have opportunities in both the early and late game. We will continue to balance out these issues as we find them.

Lately we've been working to accuarately analyze balance in TvP. We don't think there is an issue with stimpack, but we are looking into it closely in order to accurately understand the issues at hand.

Q. There are opinions that Carriers and Mothership are not being used often
A. Foreign gosus are making good use of them in PvT. We do not think they are useless. We don't think all units need to be seen at frequently in top-tier play. Even if we see battle cruisers in only 1 match out of 100, we don't think this in itself is the problem. A lot of the focus with StarCraft II is about eSports, but we are making a game for all gamers. But if gosu players come up with new strategies utilizing these units, we expect it would be very fun to watch.

Q. Some people are disappointed at how short the matches are
A. We think this is a problem with the maps. StarCraft 1 (probably typo, means SC2) was developed with to balance the game through the maps. We had match duration for broadcasting in mind, but we made the maps diverse for Ladder play so that a player would, in, say, 10 games, get to play a vareity of games, such as getting rushed early, playing 10 minute games and 40 minute games and so on. I think it would be a good idea for the hosts of the tournaments to make maps of their own. When you're on the ladder, however, you should inevitably get a variety of matches.

Q. Is balance the reason why there are no island maps in SC2?
A. You don't get fun games on island maps. That, and we intentionally included no island maps because it's so early after launch. If there are new units in the expansions that allow island maps to be fun (**to watch, probably) we will release island maps later.

Q. There are a lot of opinions regarding the slow movement speeds of Hydralisks.
A. This was a design choice. If there was a unit that was strong against both air and ground, the other units would inevitably be used less. That is why there was a strong tendency for players to mass hydras in StarCraft 1. We want units with strengths to also have weaknesses. Without being damaged by splash, hydras reign supreme on creep, but their slow speed becomes their weakness off creep.

Q. Do you only pay attention to feedback from within [South Korea]?
A. We take feedback from gosu players everyewhere.

Q. There are opinions that the balance patches (**maybe he means changes) happened too abruptly
A. In this patch, it was just the Roach range getting increased by 1, but we feel that balance has improved. We will be making balance changes with smaller changes in the future.

Q. Do you take progamer feedback on a regular basis?
A. We ask pros for feedback when a few weeks have passed since a patch, we feel the strategies have stabilized, or special situations arise. A while ago, protoss could do a timing push against terran with zealots, sentries, and void rays. We ask pros for feedback when there are issues like this.

Q. Is there a difference between Korean and foreign progamer feedback?
A. Korean players come up with strong, new strategies. There are times when foreign players fall behind, but there is no big difference in opinion worldwide. Also, the feedback from the average player is pretty similar worldwide. Korean players give a lot of feedback regarding Marauders, and so do the foreign players. Same goes for void rays. There is no huge gap at the community level.

Q. There are opinions that the variety in choice of strategies for Terran have decreased due to the recent nerf
A. There were a lot of strategies terrans could use before scouting their opponent. We were planning to decrease the number of possible strategies because we felt they were having a negative effect, and the reaper happened to be problematic in team games so we adjusted the balance with a focus on reapers. In the case of barracks before depot, there were a lot of games that ended before it was even scouted. It didn't happen very often on the pro level, but it was becoming a problem in lower tier play. The main focus is the pro level, but our ultimate goal is for players of all levels to be able to play a fair and balanced game. Barracks first builds were too strong in that regard and created a lot of problems in low level play, which is why we made the adjustments.

Q. Are there any plans to buff terran in the next patch?
A. We are looking at PvT and High Templar's Psionic Storm. It's only been a week after patch, so we are still analyzing how it is affecting gameplay.

Q. Did you schedule the patch to go with GSL?
A. We try to release patches in time for tournaments. Because GSL is the largest, we try to release them in time for GSL. We have plans to create a tournament server unaffected by balance or bugs, but I don't know when it will actually be happening.

Q. Some people say repair is imba
A. We are looking into it, but we haven't made any decisions. We are looking into ways of decreasing the size of Thors further, since repairing them is so effective, or making the AI target repairing scvs with priority in order to kill them more easily. There are no decisions yet, we are keeping on eye on it.

Q. I would like to ask you for your opinions regarding the banshees
A. We're getting a lot of feedback regarding banshees. We don't think it's overpowered at this point in time, and we will make decisions in 1~2 weeks after discussion. However, we've nerfed terran so much that if we do end up nerfing terran, we will do so very carefully. We are trying to avoid nerfing terran if we can.

Q. We are seeing a decrease in cheesy play?
A. We aren't looking to remove cheese. There are cannon rushes and gateway rushes, but we are trying to patch cheeses that are too strong. But again, we are not trying to remove them altogether.

[Rawr]

Starcraft 2 Zerg Build Optimizer

DarkAstraea — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 06:22:19 GMT

Jamie recommends a blog post from software engineer Louis Brandy explaining how using genetic algorithms to evaluate build orders in StarCraft 2 has led to some surprisingly powerful results.

Quoting: "One of the reasons build-order optimization is so important is that you can discover openings that 'hard-counter' other openings. If I can get an army of N size into your base when you do opening X, you will always lose. ... a genetic algorithm is a type of optimization algorithm that tries to find optimal solutions using a method analogous to biologic evolution (to be specific: descent with modification & natural selection). Put simply, you take a 'population' of initial build orders, evaluate them for fitness, and modify the population according to each element’s fitness. In other words, have the most successful reproduce. The program’s input is simply the desired game state. In practice, this means 'make N units' to determine some rush build order (but it also allows for other types of builds, like make N workers with some defensive structures and a small army)."

[Clickeh][Optimus Prime]

This is an amazing program! A definite plus for the zerg!

Lead Software Engineer Interview for Starcraft 2

DarkAstraea — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 18:55:54 GMT

The StarCraft 2 team spent most of Blizzcon talking about the map editor and custom games. We spoke with Alan Dabiri, a Lead Software Engineer for Wings of Liberty who worked on the user interface and helped out on the game's integration with Battle.net. He provided some more details about plans for making the map editor more approachable, the coming updates for Battle.net (including chat channels), and a bit about the development of Heart of the Swarm, the Zerg-themed expansion being worked on now. Read on for our conversation about StarCraft 2.

[Read Meh!]

CHAT CHANNELS!!!

MASTER AND GRAND MASTER LEAGUES LAWL!!

SlayerS_`BoxeR` vs. Fruit Dealer @ BlizzCon

DarkAstraea — Sat, 23 Oct 2010 07:14:29 GMT

In what was possibly the most anticipated match of the day, BoxeR, known throughout the eSports community as a strategic innovator and a living legend of the StarCraft: Brood War professional gaming scene, faced off against the universally hailed and extremely skilled champion of the TG-Intel GSL Season 1 tournament, Fruit Dealer (AKA Cool). The RTS Tournament stage was thronged by a roaring crowd full of fans cheering both players, eager to witness the battle between these two titans. Would Fruit Dealer's mad skills and cool resolve be enough to best the legendary BoxeR? Would BoxeR, experienced and respected but relatively new to the StarCraft II scene, manage to take down the reigning champion and emerge victorious? Spoilers ahead!

The showdown started with a match on the Lost Temple. The action was fierce, with both players drawing explosive cheers from the crowd with their world-class play. BoxeR almost took the win early in the match with a brutal, expertly micro-ed marine and marader timing push, but Fruit Dealer managed to eke out a defense and went on to keep BoxeR contained in the south of the map, countering BoxeR's signature inventive play and surprises with almost supernatural skill to finally come out on top.

The second game took place on Metalopolis. BoxeR punished Fruit Dealer's early expansion and almost took the entire match by sealing the zerg into their starting position with a pair of well-placed bunkers. While a move like that might seal the fate of a lesser player, Fruit Dealer broke through, and in an incredibly gutsy move, took the rich mineral patch adjacent to BoxeR's terran base to get back into the game. This match was marked by incredible back-and-forth action, and things looked grim for Fruit Dealer as BoxeR made a heavy mech push with calculated siege tank placement to eventually wipe out Fruit Dealer's game-saving rich mineral base, but yet again, Fruit Dealer managed to take the win with a mix of steely-nerved macro and the liberal application of roaches and banelings drops.

[BlizzCon]

I really wish i could have watched those matches. The way Fruit Dealer plays as Zerg just astounds me. Hope they will show the replays later >.<

Starcraft AI Competition

DarkAstraea — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 16:12:07 GMT

"The StarCraft AI Competition announced last year has come to a conclusion. The competition received 28 bot submissions from universities and teams all over the world. The winner of the competition was UC Berkeley's submission, which executed a novel mutalisk micromanagement strategy. During the conference, a man versus machine exhibition match was held between the top ranking bot and a former World Cyber Games competitor. While the expert player was capable of defeating the best bot, less experienced players were not as successful. Complete results, bot releases, and replays are available at the competition website."

[Clickeh]

Some of us have played against these AI during the beta and now they were put to the test! Truly epic!

Starcraft II GSL Season 1 Over

DarkAstraea — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 16:25:22 GMT

Although this is kind of late, I was waiting for the finals to be put up on youtube before posting here [nevermind they were removed -.-]. It has been posted all over the Blizzard Starcraft II news, and the winner is....FruitDealer, playing as....ZERG!! Yes! a zerg has finally won a SC2 tournament!

[Blizzard's Tribute to Fruit Dealer][Fruit Dealer Highlights MV]

The finals were awesome if you watched it, the true way to play zerg to its fullest. I'll see if i can upload the finals somewhere.

Blizzard To Require Real First and Last Names For Official Forums

DarkAstraea — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 01:53:57 GMT

"Recently, Blizzard Entertainment implemented a Real ID feature for some of its current games and all of its future Battle.net-based games. Today, Blizzard announced that it intends to require usage of the real names of Battle.net posters for its StarCraft II forums before release, and for its World of Warcraft forums shortly before the release of World of Warcraft: Cataclysm. From the announcement: 'The first and most significant change is that in the near future, anyone posting or replying to a post on official Blizzard forums will be doing so using their Real ID — that is, their real-life first and last name — with the option to also display the name of their primary in-game character alongside it. These changes will go into effect on all StarCraft II forums with the launch of the new community site prior to the July 27 release of the game, with the World of Warcraft site and forums following suit near the launch of Cataclysm. Certain classic forums, including the classic Battle.net forums, will remain unchanged.'"

(Clickeh)

This is the worst news EVAR!! There are gonna be severe consequences to doing this. Not that I care about Facebook or those other social networking crap, but this will leave them in a bind if they post on the forums. They may get spammed numerous invites because of flame wars that happen, people can now find where others' live, etc. etc.

It's the most BS thing ever, what ever happened to "don't display your real information" back in the day, has the privacy of the internet changed so much over the years? I think not.....Blizzard should be ashamed that they are doing this. To stop flame wars and trolling, Blizzard will put the lives of their valued customers at risk.

You can also read all the rage posts on that link/thread, 600+ posts already.

Edit: The most interesting post i found on this was this

Q u o t e:
I just got off the phone with Blizzard's Technical Support (nice gentleman who helped answer my questions by the way) so now I feel a bit more secure about making this post. Also the 30 minute hold time gave me a few moments to gather my thoughts so I can speak thoughtfully without fear or anger leaking through.

Before I voice my opinion I will state that I have a recorded converstion from a Blizzard employee saying that the posts made today and before the new Real ID system goes into place on these forums WILL NOT show our information. Only posts made after Real ID is put into the forums will have this information.

This new system is a horrible idea. There are already well over 80 pages of people stating their ideas on this subject so I doubt what I say will be heared but I will try to present my arguments against Real ID in the hopes that someone will listen.

1. UNIQUE NAMES: Some people (including my husband for one) have very unique names. The linking of a person's real name if you have a common name is less troublesome because that person would be hard to track with a name alone, but if you have a name that is very uncommon linking it to a public forum is very invasive to that person. It could lead to that person being harrassed or annoyed (I will not overreact and use the word stalked) while trying to interact with their hobby.

People play this game for relaxation on their off time. But, for example, if you had a unique name and applied for a job and the potential employer googled your name and found posts on a gaming forum they may not hire you because they have ill conceved notions about gamers. In this exaple the employer may be working off an unfair stereotype but it still would hinder that person getting a job. And FYI without a job that person wouldn't be able to have the money to play WoW. Just a thought Blizzard.

2. COMMON NAMES: For those on the other side of the fence having a fairly common name can also lead to harrassment in a different way. You could be mistaken for someone else entirely and that can lead to confusion not only on the forums themselves but also outside of them.

The last thing I need is someone tracking me down via a google search of my fairly common name, getting my WoW info because I asked a question on a forum about a game I paly for fun, and contacting my character in game, or on the forums to yell at me about alamony payments when I dont have a ex-husband.

3. GENDER: As a female this one bothers me a lot. Not only do I not want to be petitioned by random people for cyberlovin while I am playing a game, but more importantly I do not want to be a target offline. Most males my not understand the fear women have in today's world about this but it is a real and genuine threat that does, sadly, happen. Women are stalked, hurt, even killed every day and we are taught from a young age to be careful and cautious when dealing with the unknown (aka strangers and the internet). It is a terrible reality about our society and I wish it wasn't so but fact is it happens.

I have been occasionaly harrassed while in game for cyberlovin (can not use the real words they use due to being banned on the forums if I do) and I have reported it when it does and Blizzard has never done a thing about it (repeat violations in some cases and their toons are still in the game with no reprocussions). I can't imagine what would happen if more of these perverts knew I was an actual girl. I shudder the think about it.

4. MINORS: Similar to the gender issue. There are minors that play this game and giving out their information to the general public is a bad idea. Even people who are 'adults' aka 18, 19, 20 can still be very impressionable and giving out their real names to the world wide web can only lead to trouble.

5. IDENTITY THIEFT: I know you can't steal a persons ID with ONLY their name but hainvg someone's full name is a great place to start.

6. WoW CRAZIES: Most people who paly this game are what would be classified as 'casuals'. But some people take this game way to seriously. I have been shocked and even fealful of a few of the players I have come across and giving them the ability to track me down and potentally harm me because I beat them in a duel frightens me.

7. INTERNET CRAZIES: Even worse these are the stalkers and child molesters that pray on people on the internet. I dont want then to have access to my full name!

8. SPAMMERS: Giving the internet as a whole your information can lead to spamming and flooding of your e-mail.facebook, exc even more then it is already. Gold sellers are going to have a hayday with this one.

If your name was Jerry Sienfled and you had a wow forum post I bet you ever single variation of your name at most popular e-mail hosters is going to be flooded with fake Blizzard emails. JerrySiefeld@hotmail, @gmail, @yahoo, exc. and now the gold sellers and hackers will have a way to customize those fake mails to your real name! Dear Jerry, We at Blizzard are please to announce you are in the beta! Please visit our fakelink to get your account hacked.

9. SAFETY OF BLIZZARD: Just like giving out a real name to fellow players is a bad idea, giving out the names of all your forum moderators is just as bad or worse! Your poilcy now is to have your phone representatives only use their first names for thier own safety (remember I recorded the conversation) and now you are going to change that! You could have an employee tracked down this way and come to serious harm. Not safe or smart.

So what can you do instead of using a person's full name? How aobut only being allowed to post on one toon? You have to pick a toon and that is that. Or using a set handle? Set up Real ID with this and I would use it in game as well.

And for all the people who say the forums are optional I will remind you that I pay the same subscripion fee that you do and so limiting what I can do with it doesn't seem like the most fair solution. I feel I should be able to use the forums to get information and to share ideas. I agree the trolls are a pain but there has to be a better more secure way then this.

-Quira

Probably one of the best posts. Worth the quote and reiteration.

Blizzard Boss says DRM is a waste of time

DarkAstraea — Fri, 28 May 2010 07:52:34 GMT

Blizzard co-founder Frank Pearce reckons that fighting piracy with DRM is a losing battle. His company — which is responsible for one of the biggest video games of all time, the worryingly-addictive online fantasy role player World of Warcraft — is to release StarCraft 2 on July 27th, and Pearce has told Videogamer that the title won't be hobbled with the kind of crazy copy protection schemes which have made Ubisoft very unpopular in gaming circles of late. StarCraft 2 will require a single online activation using the company's Battle.net servers, after which players will be allowed to play the single-player game to their hearts' content, without being forced to have a persistent Internet connection.

Woot! Go Blizzard!! Finally! Someone who's smart enough to know that the war against piracy is a losing one!

(Clickeh!!!) (Clekeh!!)

Starcraft II Single Player Details Revealed!

DarkAstraea — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 03:10:44 GMT

As Blizzcon approaches, a number of gaming sites were invited out to California to get an early look at the single-player campaign for StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty. Kotaku has a detailed write-up, and 1Up summarizes one of the missions: "... you're on a planet with an alternating day/night cycle (every five minutes, it switches): during daylight, you're safe. You can build forces and go out and destroy structures. At night, the infected Terrans will relentlessly stream towards your base — necessitating a strong defense against the 'zombie horde.'" An interview with some of the developers is available, in which lead designer Dustin Browder says Blizzard will continue their trend of having downloadable maps and other improvements throughout the game's life. BlizzPlanet posted a mission guide for the part of the game they got to see, and new video footage has been released that shows off the single-player mode.

(Click me four Detailed Write Up!) (Spoiler Free Versionz!)

(Click me four day/night cycle!)

(Click me four dev interviewz!)

(Click me four mission guidez!)

Woot Woot!! This is lookin Epic!! XD. Too bad it's been delayed =( I blame Joe and his cynical posts.

Starcraft II

Troop — Sun, 20 May 2007 03:26:14 GMT

Someone call SlayerS_'BoxeR' (the best Terran player ever, who I believe is still serving his time in the Korean military), Starcraft 2 has been announced! www.starcraft2.com

You can go to http://media.pc.ign.com/media/850/850126/vids_1.html for gameplay footage. This game is going to be amazing, and as the marine says at the end of the trailer "Hell, it's about time".