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[KojiKnight]

Yeah, it was a terrible mistake on my part. I still feel all my criticisms were valid for Normal, since most people would play on that difficulty, but goddamn, Hard is the REAL Normal. Lol.

Seems Blizz kinda dumbed down the whole normal experience, including making all of the achievements way easier to get. Luckily enough, the achievement server was down half the time I played so if I feel like it they are there to try again... yay.

 

[Jinaar]

Shit. SC2 HOTS is patching and it sits at 22% (correction) only downloaded and has stopped. Checking online has only shown people with the same situation.

Has anyone had this issue today and resolved it somehow?

 

[duckroll]

Seems Blizz kinda dumbed down the whole normal experience, including making all of the achievements way easier to get. Luckily enough, the achievement server was down half the time I played so if I feel like it they are there to try again... yay.

It's the console bug. Once you're bitten by it, all your difficulties drop one tier automatically!

 

[Wunder]

Seems Blizz kinda dumbed down the whole normal experience, including making all of the achievements way easier to get. Luckily enough, the achievement server was down half the time I played so if I feel like it they are there to try again... yay.

Just do the mastery achievements if you're bothered by it

 

[mbmonk]

Shit. SC2 HOTS is patching and it sits at 22% (correction) only downloaded and has stopped. Checking online has only shown people with the same situation.

Has anyone had this issue today and resolved it somehow?

This might help.

https://us.battle.net/support/en/article/sc2-patch-troubleshooting

Good Luck.

 

[SlaughterX]

when they say install, they're also downloading it me thinks.

Yeah it must... I went over a GB on my phone's data cap installing it. It's hard being a PC gamer with no home internet access.

 

[f0rk]

People who watched/played WoL competitively since launch - was it balance changes that made fast expansions so much more prevalent or people getting better? In the first year or so I don't remember seeing as many of them at all, especially at lower levels.

 

[Deadman]

People who watched/played WoL competitively since launch - was it balance changes that made fast expansions so much more prevalent or people getting better? In the first year or so I don't remember seeing as many of them at all, especially at lower levels.

A combination of balance changes, map changes and player skill.

They nerfed the most extreme rushes, the maps got bigger so rushes take longer and people got better at holding them off.

 

[Jinaar]

Thanks for the link! I actually shut down Bittorrent, even though it wasn't downloading or uploading and now I got to 40% downloaded, so it's moving again. The link you gave did have that suggestion to shut down applications that may conflict, so that did help. Cheers, mate!

This might help.

https://us.battle.net/support/en/article/sc2-patch-troubleshooting

Good Luck.

 

[f0rk]

Oh yeah the maps are quite a lot bigger now that strikes me as the biggest change.

 

[mbmonk]

Thanks for the link! I actually shut down Bittorrent, even though it wasn't downloading or uploading and now I got to 40% downloaded, so it's moving again. The link you gave did have that suggestion to shut down applications that may conflict, so that did help. Cheers, mate!

NP. I am glad you got it running again.

 

[StayDead]

Just finished campaign.

Maybe it's my blind fanboyism, but I bloody loved every second of it and...

Spoiler

Stukov being in it as an infested terran was the icing on the cake. I love his character

 

[Vodh]

Collectors edition owners - how is the art book? Is it mostly slimy zerg or is it cool technology?

I'd say about 40% is slimy (but cool) zerg, 20% is cool landscapes, 20% is cool techy terran, 10% is super cool protoss and scattered around the last 10% is 'who the fuck put it here is it even 640x480?!' and that bit is not cool. Overall, it's a great artbook and even tho it's a bit worse than WoL, I'd still say it justifies buying physical CE over digital version.

 

[KojiKnight]

Just do the mastery achievements if you're bothered by it

Yeah, I'll just do that on campaign... oh wait

I'm not really big into achieves so it's not a real issue for me. Just general complaining.


I did finally beat the campaign tonight and I will say this. For me, personally, there was some magic missing. WoL I enjoyed every second of... HotS I played just to see the cutscenes, of which were marred by Sarah's VA inability to emote... seriously, I've seen fan dubbing do better yelling/angry voices.

Luckily the worst is over though, bring on the protoss campaign.... in 2-4 years!

 

[Wunder]

Just finished campaign.

Maybe it's my blind fanboyism, but I bloody loved every second of it and...

Spoiler

Stukov being in it as an infested terran was the icing on the cake. I love his character

That was my favorite part too, I can coming round to the story a bit now - but still feel weirded out by it.

 

[TheExodu5]

Was getting ready to choose the zergling straing. Jumping up cliffs + leaping vs. fast 3 unit spawn...thought it would be a tough decision. And then I see the former also gets +2 damage? Well that's an easy decision...

 

[antitrop]

I capped and cropped a shot of Kerrigan in pretty much the maximum detail reasonably possible, Extreme settings, downsampled from 2880x1620, with 4x MSAA and 4x SGSSAA injected through Nvidia Inspector:

She needs some TressFX.

 

[KojiKnight]

Spoiler

Stukov is cool

and I'm glad to see Brood War get a lot more nods (mentioning

Spoiler

Daggoth

and such) but

Spoiler

Stukov

just didn't feel right... he just kind of felt thrown in, almost like it was a last minute decision.

Is it bad that the part I enjoyed most was

Spoiler

playing as the Hyperion

?

 

[Wunder]

Spoiler

Stukov is cool

and I'm glad to see Brood War get a lot more nods (mentioning

Spoiler

Daggoth

and such) but

Spoiler

Stukov

just didn't feel right... he just kind of felt thrown in, almost like it was a last minute decision.

Is it bad that the part I enjoyed most was

Spoiler

playing as the Hyperion

?

Yeah

Spoiler

His reveal was SUPER underplayed... I wish they did more with him. I missed the Daggoth nod though.

I also feel like they

Spoiler

just went crazy with the killing and killed fuckin' everyone. Warfield, Narud, Ancient One. RIP dewds

 

[J2d]

Matchmaking seems slower in hots, I had to wait about five minutes for every team game today. Maybe most people play unranked but I don't see the point of that when it comes to team games =/

 

[KojiKnight]

Yeah

Spoiler

His reveal was SUPER underplayed... I wish they did more with him. I missed the Daggoth nod though.

I also feel like they

Spoiler

just went crazy with the killing and killed fuckin' everyone. Warfield, Narud, Ancient One. RIP dewds

Spoiler

Daggoth

was mentioned in one of the mutation missions... I think for the lurker, but I'm not positive.

As for

Spoiler

killing everyone off... Most of those killed were characters from WoL so it wasn't a big thing.

More surprising to me was that despite the fact that SC2 (WoL and HotS) held your hand through absolutely every single plot point, they only heavily hinted at what we knew all along that Narud was

Spoiler

Duran. I was actually expecting much more of a pay off to this as well... Kerrigan had a pretty good bond with him throughout brood war, so the fact that it was never fully revealed to Kerrigan or that they had any true conversation aside from "Oh noes! Don't foil my plans!! Bad Kerrigan bad!!" was also very disappointing.

 

[TheIronChancellor]

Slowest installation of all time.

 

[Moff]

Spoiler

Daggoth

was mentioned in one of the mutation missions... I think for the lurker, but I'm not positive.

As for

Spoiler

killing everyone off... Most of those killed were characters from WoL so it wasn't a big thing.

More surprising to me was that despite the fact that SC2 (WoL and HotS) held your hand through absolutely every single plot point, they only heavily hinted at what we knew all along that Narud was

Spoiler

Duran. I was actually expecting much more of a pay off to this as well... Kerrigan had a pretty good bond with him throughout brood war, so the fact that it was never fully revealed to Kerrigan or that they had any true conversation aside from "Oh noes! Don't foil my plans!! Bad Kerrigan bad!!" was also very disappointing.

Spoiler

does kerrigan even know that they are they same?
well maybe they are not, maybe there will be another one called undar. or ardnu.

 

[-COOLIO-]

damn, the spoiler thread gets no love.

 

[Zerokku]

Not to add to the ridiculous amount of black bars, but maybe someone can help me. On the mission

Spoiler

Hand of Darkness

trying for the

Spoiler

Shattered Command

achievement and can't seem to find the second

Spoiler

command center

. I've destroyed one near the top by the !PLOTSPOILERS!

Spoiler

Hybrids

, but can't seem to find the second.

Edit: And found it. Right next to my starting position >.>

 

[King Boo]

didn't get the game yet. i thought spoilers were predictable, so i read what you guys typed. the only thing that caught me off guard was

Spoiler

STUKOV IS BACK. I THOUGHT BLIZZARD RETCON HIM OUT OF THE STORY (like they did with aldaris, the player characters in sc1, etc). So i'm happy he's back, but sad that now i know. fortunately that's all i know, and will stop looking at spoilers.

all the other story stuff can be figured out by anyone.

 

[KojiKnight]

Spoiler

does kerrigan even know that they are they same?

Spoiler

Before the mission, all of Kerrigan's zerg friends make heavy heavy hints at it, Stukov also does all but say it directly... Would have been great too for Stukov and Narud to have some conversations... since you know, Duran utterly F*** him over many times, including leading to his death and the destruction of the earth fleet

but no no, the two don't so much as pass a single line of dialogue between them. I'm convinced

Spoiler

Stukov

was a super late addition and more likely than not only added to finally finish off that dangling thread.

 

[Technosteve]

some one explain to me why it takes forever to load a campaign map, loading saves are also super slow.


This is all on a SSD

 

[fallagin]

Was getting ready to choose the zergling straing. Jumping up cliffs + leaping vs. fast 3 unit spawn...thought it would be a tough decision. And then I see the former also gets +2 damage? Well that's an easy decision...

Oh shiett.. hmm now Im kind of regretting going spawnling. They already seem darn fast, so mixing adrenal glands in there could do some serious damage. Ill have to try that next time.

Actually master archives makes trying it out really easy. They should add that back into wol campaign.

 

[jschreier]

Wow, this campaign is MUCH more fun on Hard. I just did the mission where you use the creep tumors. It was actually challenging, and rewarding when I learned to play better. Yum!!!

I beat the game on Hard and found it way too easy. :/ Gonna try Brutal next run.

 

[antitrop]

I beat the game on Hard and found it way too easy. :/ Gonna try Brutal next run.

I'm still playing through on Hard right now, but my brother is doing a Brutal playthrough right now (he already finished on Hard) and he said it's noticeably easier than WoL Brutal.

I thought WoL Brutal was a bit too difficult in the first place, it never really felt fun. I have a fairly extensive amount of mechanical skill and it was more often frustrating and grinding than enjoyable and rewarding. It was almost like a puzzle in that there was only so many ways to tackle the mission. Deviating from the optimal strategy even just slightly would force a checkpoint reload at best. I finished it, but I didn't enjoy it.

If that has been even slightly addressed in Heart of the Swarm, I will consider it for the better.

My brother and I are both Master League, him Top 8 even, and we both agree that Brutal in Wings of Liberty was poorly balanced.

I'm finding Hard right now to be fairly enjoyable, but yes, far, far too easy. If Brutal is balanced properly in HotS I may very well enjoy it.

 

[JLeack]

I beat the game on Hard and found it way too easy. :/ Gonna try Brutal next run.

Do you main Zerg? I play as Protoss and I find Hard to be moderately challenging since I'm not used to the Zerg style.

 

[Zzoram]

Brutal isn't very hard for most missions.

A lot of the achievements related to side missions are nearly impossible on Brutal though, so just do those achievements on Normal or Hard before or after beating the level on Brutal.

 

[Vodh]

As someone who bounced between Gold and Plat in WoL (but I played only for a few months after release), the campaign on Hard is pretty sweet. It's challenging enough without being completely overwhelming, especially since I like to go around the map and try to kill stuff that isn't necessary for main or side objectives.

 

[jschreier]

Do you main Zerg? I play as Protoss and I find Hard to be moderately challenging since I'm not used to the Zerg style.

Nah, Terran. I think the problem is that Kerrigan is way too overpowered. In the final mission I took out basically an entire wing of enemies with just her and Leviathan.

 

[Keikaku]

Kerrigan's ability that allows you to call down a Primal Zerg army is pretty broken. You can crush through most late game missions with those units and just a swarm of lings.

 

[Slayerx]

Looks like HotS will be the first Blizzard game to avoid the meta critic user review bomb in the last 5 years even 4.5 stars on amazon lol.. I guess the initial reaction to splitting the game up and always on was directed at WoL.

 

[Wunder]

Looks like HotS will be the first Blizzard game to avoid the meta critic user review bomb in the last 5 years even 4.5 stars on amazon lol.. I guess the initial reaction to splitting the game up and always on was directed at WoL.

good point, they even said the expansions would be standalone I think but they changed them to be more traditional expacs but no one seemed to mind.

 

[Ketch]

Thinking about breaking my personal ban from PC games to get this...... must resist... grades.. are... important.

 

[Neki]

Brutal on HoTS is much easier because of the evolutions + abilities you get. The stuff you got in WoL for upgrades were great, but not game breaking (like automated turrets on bunkers), but some of the evolutions you get make the game trival. Along with Kerrigan to tank shit and buff your units, makes it much easier.

 

[Pooya]

Beat the campaign on Brutal, woo that was pretty fun, I liked it quite a bit, it's been a while since I played a RTS campaign.

But it sure wasn't worth the ~3 years wait since WoL, I sure hope LoV won't take as long, better have it out by Fall next year, don't think anybody would care about this story in another 3 years, lol.

 

[Bizazedo]

So, hidden / random stuff..

Spoiler

If, on one of the roach evolution missions, you go left through the woods (hidden path, just click beyond it, roaches will path through), you come across a ravine with rainbow crystals everywhere and a cave overlooking it. Out of the cave comes what looks like a girl with two dogs. You cannot attack them.

Wtf was that?

And, on Zeras..

Spoiler

Occasionally a semi-stealthed creature shoes up. It says "Strange Creature" when you put your cursor over it. Looks like it can be attacked, but it burrows to safety.

What is that?!

Anyone else find hidden stuff?

 

[ClovingWestbrook]

Will there ever be in game viewing of live matches? I'm sure that gets asked often, but I certainly haven't following SC2 much, nor do I have any idea if Blizzard is limited to whatever framework they've put in place. Just seems silly that a stream news feed in game would just link to a webpage

I apologize for the noobish question but does dota2 have this feature?

 

[perryfarrell]

^ Yes. Grab Dota 2 (free) and take a look. It's awesome.

 

[ClovingWestbrook]

^ Yes. Grab Dota 2 (free) and take a look. It's awesome.

I have had it for some time and have played a couple hours but I wasnt sure about that feature. Anyhow thanks for the response.

 

[AdventureRacing]

I apologize for the noobish question but does dota2 have this feature?

Yep. Maybe blizzard will get around to adding this in the next expansion (who am i kidding, that ain't ever happening).

 

[ClovingWestbrook]

Yep. Maybe blizzard will get around to adding this in the next expansion (who am i kidding, that ain't ever happening).

Have they offered a reason why they haven't?

 

[TwiztidElf]

I hope if they do they have a delay like on LoL. Live is exploitable to fully scout your opponent.

 

[-COOLIO-]

hellbats are really making me enjoy the game a lot more. mass zealots and zerglings were always the bane of my exsistence in wol. im just....


so...


happy :']

 

[UnluckyKate]

Eu server is down ? Blizzard is saying that I can't connect to it...

I bought the game from my eu account now playing from korea (and will do so for more month) but I was fine yesterday... I'm getting afraid