Anyone getting SC2 LotV?

[Malcador]

 

Kind of funny that there's this rift housing the Xel'naga resting place and it seems to be some big no-go area and Terrans, Tal'darim and Zerg just kind of show up there.

 

 

I am also beginning to wonder how easy Easy is, perhaps you can win with probes.

[Blarghagh]

You mean the casual mode? You can generally win the mission just with the units you get at the start of a mission.

[Malcador]

Hah, that's a bit insulting I am rather enjoying

Fenix from the Spear of Adun

, works as a brilliant shock troop or for hit and fades.

[Blarghagh]

What, that it's so easy or that it is literally named casual mode?

 

EDIT: Allied Commanders mode is okay, it's literally playing harder versions of campaign missions with a friend. Only one friend though - apparently, it's two players max. Not sure about that decision. It'd be better if it was four players and scaled with the amount of people.

Edited November 13, 2015 by TrueNeutral

[Malcador]

Well that it is that easy. Casual shouldn't be THAT simple. Then again, Hard is a challenge for me (I admit I just want the story and am too lazy). Normal is nice in that hordes of Void Rays and zealots win the day.

 

They really like the mission design of "defend this node while destroying/capturing these nodes", I am noticing.

[Blarghagh]

Yeah, that specific mission mode appears a bit much - even the last mission is "destroy x number of node, except this time the nodes MOVE". I would have preferred more things like the rising lava or collecting resources from Wings of Liberty.

 

EDIT: Side note, said Purifier spoiler character? Yeah, he's fantastic. He only lasts 30 seconds, but don't let that hold you back. He destroys armies by himself. Saved lost cause battles for me more times than I can count. By far the best ability in his row.

Edited November 13, 2015 by TrueNeutral

[Malcador]

They should have not bothered with that epilogue. Also, Void Ray spam ftw.

[Darkpriest]

Are you using classic void rays or the red ones?

[Blarghagh]

Void Ray spam can also basically win every Allied Commanders mission.

[Darkpriest]

well...... to be honest the game would be a lot better without the epilogue campaign... the story in it and ending is just "wut?" I'd rather have it in memory with the Protoss main campaign end.

[Malcador]

Are you using classic void rays or the red ones?

Classic ones. Managed to get 34 on the last mission, was just this big lightsaber melting things, hah.

 

I was close in my snarky guesses, it was sort of Hyjal 2.0

[Darkpriest]

I have to admit that I am pleased by their design approach. I love the fact that each campaign is detailed, has various unique units and buildings. I mean. I was really scratching my head, when I was leading protoss, do i want my army to be pure Auir toss or do i want to mix in various other unit types... i mean a choice between carrier fleet with arbiters, or corsairs with void rays or red void rays with mirages and mothership i mean.... sooo many options...

 

it is definitely a high quality product with tons of replay value and one can only be amazed by what people can do with this game and the editor attached to it... I had my doubts after Diablo 3 that Blizzard can deliver a solid and fun prodcut, but seeing all parts of SC2, decentish Heroes of the Storm, and what seem to be an interesting game - Overwatch, they regained my trust. I just would love to see a new warcraft RTS instead of that MMO ... i just do not like MMOs... and Warcraft was also a cool setting up to the Frozen Throne

[Blarghagh]

Hell, even Diablo 3 is also really fun now, with the changes that Reaper of Souls and subsequent patches added.

[Darkpriest]

Hell, even Diablo 3 is also really fun now, with the changes that Reaper of Souls and subsequent patches added.

 

yeah, i re-installed Diablo 3 last night and noticed a ton of changes even to vanilla RoS, which still was not so great.

 

I still feel they put the focus on gear dependency too far, but maybe it will be an enjoyable experience with various ladder seasons etc.

 

I do not like that weapons are just for aesthetics, that skills power is derived 100% from gear, that your levels mean basically nothing (until paragons), and a few more things.

 

I'd still rather play Diablo 2 than Diablo 3. Speaking of which, I wonder if they will just facelift it to play well on high res or will they actually release modernized in a new engine. Probably the former but one can always hope.

Edited November 15, 2015 by Darkpriest

[majestic]

My CE finally arrived on friday, now I'm finished with the campaign on normal. I agree that normal is way too easy, the only time I had to actually reload was in the second epilogue mission where I for some reason was overrun rather handily beause of not paying attention.

 

Now for the fun part:

 

 

Oh dear god the storyline is stupid. I thought it can't get any worse than the retcon hell of WoL and HotS where they conveniently moved the homeworld of the Zerg from Char to Zerus so Kerrigan can become an uncorrupted queen of blades and made Raynor a whisky swilling emo boy. I mean that the hell for why why WHY did they turn Kerrigan into an *angel* of all things?

 

Zeratul dying after he turned into a prophetic baboon in Wings of Liberty kind of failed to have the planned impact. It's nowhere near losing Fenix in Brood War. The Keystone functions as negative space wedgy in a box and deus ex machina device conveniently capable of doing just about anything the plot requires to be moved forward. Gee, thank god Raynor assembled it.

 

Speaking of Fenix... poor guy was turned him into an action figure. Push here to hear Fenix say an assortment of silly one-liners.

 

Aside from turning Kerrigna into an angel, who wrote that epilogue? I CHOSE FREEDOM FOR ALL! Yeah. Uhm... huh? And then "I WILL ALWAYS HAVE THOSE MOMENTS JIM! I threw up in my mouth. Oh, well, that would have been okay if this was Twilight pre-teen fanfiction but alas, it's not. We're talking about Blizzard here who at some point used to be able not only to *tell* stories (SC2 is undoubtably awesome at that part) but craft stories with love and care... and some talent.

 

On the positive side the missions were fun to play but not very varied. It felt like every other mission had a "<verb> <object> x/y" objective where an intern rolled some dice to determine what said objective would be. It's probably the same intern that wrote the subtitles for the cinematics and in-game cutscenes. "Here, here!" instead of "Hear, hear!", really? *Slayed* as past tense of slay? Xel'Naga constantly written without capitcal letters as if it were an adjective instead of the name of a race?

 

Bruce, do you work at Blizzard?

 

Oh, I almost forgot. Artanis says "Dawn will come" when giving him orders, sometimes. Guess he forgot that he isn't leading an inquisition there...

 

 

PS: John de Lancie for president.

 

PPS: Easily the worst ending since Mass Effect 3.

Edited November 15, 2015 by majestic

[Blarghagh]

I had the same experience with the second epilogue mission. I did not expect the baddies to overrun my allies quite that quickly so I had no defense on that side ready. Should have paid more attention to how they were doing.

[Darkpriest]

I had the same experience with the second epilogue mission. I did not expect the baddies to overrun my allies quite that quickly so I had no defense on that side ready. Should have paid more attention to how they were doing.

 

 The same here. it seemed like the main challenge in that missions was to set up joined defenses and really fast. I was expecting more of a pace from the final Protoss mission and this surprised me a bit, but then again, not being able to warp in pylons and insta warp a decent number of units along with it was also a part of forcing you to change your approach.

[Humanoid]

WoW's had a pretty messed up difficulty curve lately too, where you're expected to do 80-90% of the raid in normal difficulty, then 80-90% of the raid in hard difficulty, then do the final boss(es) in normal, then the final boss in hard. It's stupid but I guess that's the current Blizzard paradigm.

[aluminiumtrioxid]

 

 

 

Oh dear god the storyline is stupid. I thought it can't get any worse than the retcon hell of WoL and HotS where they conveniently moved the homeworld of the Zerg from Char to Zerus so Kerrigan can become an uncorrupted queen of blades and made Raynor a whisky swilling emo boy. I mean that the hell for why why WHY did they turn Kerrigan into an *angel* of all things?

 

 

 

She really got the short end of the stick, didn't she.

 

It's almost painful to see such an amazing character get wasted like that, first in HotS, now here.

[Malcador]

I had the same experience with the second epilogue mission. I did not expect the baddies to overrun my allies quite that quickly so I had no defense on that side ready. Should have paid more attention to how they were doing.

Yep, got burned that way. Tried for roaming Banshees but forgot no AA there so wasn't a stunner.

 

Lancie was good, even if Alarak was a bit too edgy at times. All in all, was ok. Epilogue was some BS, but I did feel a bit down that the saga is done.

 

Metzen still sucks, though

[Malcador]

 

 

 

 

 

Oh dear god the storyline is stupid. I thought it can't get any worse than the retcon hell of WoL and HotS where they conveniently moved the homeworld of the Zerg from Char to Zerus so Kerrigan can become an uncorrupted queen of blades and made Raynor a whisky swilling emo boy. I mean that the hell for why why WHY did they turn Kerrigan into an *angel* of all things?

 

 

She really got the short end of the stick, didn't she.

 

It's almost painful to see such an amazing character get wasted like that, first in HotS, now here.

I dunno, compared to her character in WoL ahe has been vasty improved! She even told a Protoss she had no beef vs Kaldir.

 

Figured she would get off from murdering billions.

[Blarghagh]

 

I had the same experience with the second epilogue mission. I did not expect the baddies to overrun my allies quite that quickly so I had no defense on that side ready. Should have paid more attention to how they were doing.

 

 The same here. it seemed like the main challenge in that missions was to set up joined defenses and really fast. I was expecting more of a pace from the final Protoss mission and this surprised me a bit, but then again, not being able to warp in pylons and insta warp a decent number of units along with it was also a part of forcing you to change your approach.

 

 

To be fair, the final epilogue mission very nearly got me but I had just enough resources left to switch from my ground army to mutas. I didn't realize quite how much ground the big bad would literally remove - my death ball was useless again the void crystals I couldn't reach.

 

WoW's had a pretty messed up difficulty curve lately too, where you're expected to do 80-90% of the raid in normal difficulty, then 80-90% of the raid in hard difficulty, then do the final boss(es) in normal, then the final boss in hard. It's stupid but I guess that's the current Blizzard paradigm.

Indeed. Screw Archimonde, seriously.

[aluminiumtrioxid]

 

I dunno, compared to her character in WoL ahe has been vasty improved! She even told a Protoss she had no beef vs Kaldir.

 

Figured she would get off from murdering billions.

 

 

My problem is that the Kerrigan we got is pretty much the most interesting character of SC2, but that's not an endorsement of her, but an indictment against the rest of the characters.

 

I love the idea of her (if you squint, she's basically transhumanist female Elric!), but the potential has been so very wasted.

[Heijoushin]

 

I had the same experience with the second epilogue mission. I did not expect the baddies to overrun my allies quite that quickly so I had no defense on that side ready. Should have paid more attention to how they were doing.

Yep, got burned that way. Tried for roaming Banshees but forgot no AA there so wasn't a stunner.

 

Lancie was good, even if Alarak was a bit too edgy at times. All in all, was ok. Epilogue was some BS, but I did feel a bit down that the saga is done.

 

Metzen still sucks, though

 

 

I've looked around on the official forums, and surprisingly, Alarak seems to have quite a few fans. I suppose he was refreshing compared to the rest of the Protoss characters, but I'm not wild about him.

 

It's like... apparently Dark Templar weren't dark and edgy enough, so we needed an even darker and edger protoss faction. Alarak looks and acts like a Disney Sith Lord. Because... evil characters must wear black and red, and insult everyone to their faces. 

 

[Darkpriest]

Alarak and his faction reminded me more of Mandalorians than Sith