What's Coming?

As I am now adjusted to the new patch, I look to the future and wonder what is next. I loved v10.0, but there are some imbalances that need addressing, such as the Tesla Coil's power and versatility and the ease of the new victory option. And I am sure you have some other additions and tweaks in mind as well. Could we see what the future holds? We know that anything you would post is a work in progress. General ideas and additions would be ok, but the more specifics the better!

This next patch is going to be mainly about balance - the protoss attackers will be getting several tweaks, and I'm going to try to polish up several things, such as a small addition to auto-cast restorers.

After that, I have a content patch planned that adds:

-A new way to win
-Upgrade buildings (three of them)
-A few new zerg creatures

and maybe more, depending on how development goes.

Nagnazul wrote: ...After that, I have a content patch planned that adds:...

I can point at a few more things that require fixing:

1. Objectives:

Main Objectives
[] Use the Ship Restore skill to restore your energy
[] Kill 10 Zerg units with your Shoot skill [0/10]

Bonus Objectives
[] Harvest 100 Minerals before sunrise [0/100]

Actually, this is very misleading and set's wrong goales. People were asking what was that and what for: I couldn't answer. Can anyone?

Is benefitial to fulfill those objectives? I would say: "No, they are completely pointless."

There is no need to copy so called "objectives" from the main body of StarcraftII. They give gamers virtual "acomplishement" and hitch it up to gamers accounts. In case of "Stranded on Crydon" gamers attention is trubbled and mislead from the real goals of survival. I mean: fresh gamers; I never take care about "objectives". I worried about real things: finding Factories and exploration of area.

"Objectives" in their current form just give newbies wrong hint to stay at the base a dig it out at the day time and lose the night, when it is dangerous to explore; actually, people are tricked by objective "[] Harvest 100 Minerals before sunrise [0/100]".

Futhermore, gamers start thinking that "[] Kill 10 Zerg units with your Shoot skill [0/10]" is the goal. They wounder arround, shoot Spine Crowlers, waist their time...

The only important information that people can get from objectives is: "[] Use the Ship Restore skill to restore your energy". This is a good hint and something specific for this map. Similarly, would be good to reduse the number of offered kills to just one - to give a hint that this skill is present.

More useful objective would be to request finding buildings, dig minerals enough for:
a)Turret
b)Buildind Mule for hurvesting
(with indication: "Building is found by... now you can build mules"(so everyone is aware that we already have building and can build mules); "Now you have minerals enough for Protective Turret"; "Now you have minerals enough for bulding Mule-helper.")(Many times I saw newbies who were trying to dig minerals on their own, without Mules)

2. Text on the "loading page".

The information there needs to be updated: "...to build Resque Beacon is a MUST..." is not a current information any more.

There could be something like):
"The planet is flooded with Zergs. You can save youself
1 By forcing your way out by Building Saving Ship;
2 By calling in powerfull Terrain Fleet (you need to build Saving Beacons to establish communication with the main planet)"
3 At last, you can try to overpower the hords of Zergs and stay alive throughout all the waves, including the final and the Protosses' inspection.

To build you defence and Saving Beacons or Saving Ship, you need to find abondoned buildings on the map and hurvest minerals and gas.

(Hint: long living Mules, that you can build for help in hurvesting minerals, can be set to autorepair by right clik on the repair icon in their meny)

Sure, these are just ideas, I am not even a native speacker...

3 Ship Restore scill still "cures" minerals.

4 What happens if someone leaves the game?

The SVU left behind behaves in two different ways:

one way - I can control it and use for building my structures and for accompaning my SVU and double shoot; however, it can not repair, like mule;

another way - I can not control it, but program sences an extra player (there was left SVU behind in addition to our 2, but Infected Terrains did not come at second and third wave); in this case we have to wait till they are killed by Zergs...

5 Heal Bots bug.

Being sent with Predators somewere, they just stop running once anyone gets hit. Stop and stay behind and get easily killed. I would rather lost a Predator, but the Heal Bots are those who are always behind and tend to stop once attacked. In addition, they get comletely out of conrol once they sence anything is hit. I can't even move them once they stopped and being attacked (by Ultralisk, e.g. - that was the quickest death) And their speed allowed them easyly escape! Very, very upseting...

I am not sure if I misinterpreted this, but my SVU also some kind slowed down when being healed by Bots. (SVU did not have enogh speed to run away from Ultralisk???) Well, and died again, so this time I had to send Mules to repair my SVU. This time it worked out.

Another definite bug that I obcerved was that Heal Bot run far OUT of protected perimeter in order to heal some structure deep INSIDE of perimeter, right at the pleace where the Bot run out from. Such a nonsence - and I also couldn't remove it from under attack untill it finished the action of healing...

Yes, now I always put them in the "keep position" mode, but...

6. Is it intended that Mules are not able to hurvest gas, only minerals? I thought this was just herittage of the main StarcraftII game, where Mules can only hurvest minerals.

7. You made a change that one Collection Storage can be used by everybody. What do you think about Heyzer Collectors still available only for their builders? (Just want to draw your attention.)

The balance patch is needed, and will clean things up, but I'm really looking forward to the content patch.

New way to win - awesome, IF balanced. I assume that it is an offensive method. But it is already easy enough to kill off all the Hatcheries - players oftentimes do that already. Something more will be needed.

Upgrade buildings - Hell yes! Can't wait to see what we can get! But don't dramatically drop the number of the other buildings out there to make room. With the more aggressive Zerg and no scanner, it is harder to find buildings on normal, and REALLY hard to find ANY on Brutal. And you are even more desperate for a Factory on Brutal because Weaponized Bunkers are a huge help.

New Zerg creatures - Awesomeness! The more the merrier! I love all the different strains of Zerg, each has its own strengths and weaknesses.

As another suggestion: people complain that the survival ending is too abrupt. Could you add a visual of buildings (a.k.a. a city) being built? At first show the framework, like when we build Big Berthas, then show an expanding city, probably using models like the Science Facility from Media Blitz, the industrial equipment from the Nova sabotage mission and the mineral-race one with all scrap metal, and lastly show us putting us a comm tower like the one from either the first mission or Media Blitz. Basically, show us setting up our own civilization and then contacting the outside world.

EDIT: Ah, and you left something out! It says on the dev blog that downed survivors will now be able to use their lasgun.

Oh, and just a fun heads-up; the "balance patch" will include a complete re-do of the zerg tech you get when mind controlling drones. Right now mind controlling drones give you access to the standard melee zerg units. After this patch, you'll be able to make:

-Larvamakers
-Slave Drones
-Camelheads
-Crawlieholes
-Venom Cannons

I'll leave you to guess what each one of those is.

-Larvamakers: Basically Hatcheries, but cost less and have less health.
-Slave Drones: Drones! Probably better than Mules, but worse than Probes?
-Camelheads: No idea.
-Crawlieholes: Defenseless Zerg that can burrow, so we can use them as spotters for our shiny new 18-range Siege Tanks? Or maybe they can move underground like Roaches, for long-distance scouting?
-Venom Cannons: Defensive structure!

Start placing bets people!

One of those "survival" maps had a Terran point of view where you can build structures that produces "creeps" that allows you to build on them... Can this idea be incorporated into the game, so you have to expand carefully?

Basically your "creep" consists of Asphalt terrain that generates in a wide radius from a single building, and building structures on it will produce it's own set of smaller but useful sets of Asphalt.

Maybe give them a effect:

Asphalt makes Zerg unable to burrow into your territory, and reinforces all structures with additional armor (since the ground is more stable).

Advanced structures might rely on said Asphalt to be built. Extra ideas consists of "fake" cities (doodads?) appearing when you have a wide area of Asphalt, making it look like a actual base of sorts.

It would be cool if roads appear if you position based on some formula of spaces where there's free space. This can make Terran units travel much faster maybe. Roads essentially changes by itself if something gets built in the way, so if you cut off the road, it will reform in another way...

dra6o0n wrote: Asphalt makes Zerg unable to burrow into your territory

The fact that Zergs are borrowing, other than Lurkers on their terethory, does not affect the game in any way.

This is just the pathetical way for the Zergs to dissapear without players seing it.

I had an accident when Ultralisk came right after I got owned the Fusion Core and started setting some defences with Probe.

Sure, Ultralisk scared me... but borrowed right away.

It stayed underground for a sec (I could not place Photon Cannon over it.) But till the time the first Raven (detector) was spawn, there was nobady underground any more.

But (I am not sure that I remember this right) I still could not place a Photon Cannon on that spot for a while.

Than I left that place, but there was no signal of attack from there.

On Zerg Burrowing - right now, the only burrowing that Zerg units do is when they run away. At dawn, attacker Zerg will retreat to the edge of the map, burrow (if they can) and then remove themselves from the game.

The burrowing animation is just to make it look nice and minimize the amount of Zerg that just disappear into thin air.

Here's a heads-up, just for fun: I just spent the last 8 hours overhauling the protoss event, and it's now become the hardest ending instead of the easiest. The amount of protoss summoned by the Purifiers is a lot more consistent and controllable, and the difficulty changes wildly on brutal.

For instance, I did a test run on Brutal against the Protoss - the Purifiers managed to chew through 5000 gas worth of Big Berthas and 5000 minerals worth of Planetary Fortresses. I died after killing half the Purifiers.

Good luck!

=D Should I cry out in joy or terror? Can't wait... glad to see that it is not just the ending you get when you don't really want to get the others. People will be in for a nice surprise. >=)

And since I'm doing sneak previews, here's another one...

Purple minerals!

What do they do? I'm not telling.

Great, now I won't be able to get any work done all day! -.- =P

Custom resource for upgrades methinks.

I wonder if they will be more like rich mineral patches or scattered in with normal patches.

Barricades can now do something that no other building in the game can do.

It's not flashy or powerful, since they still cost 4 minerals - but they now have their own little unique trick.

Nagnazul wrote:Purple minerals!

Hmm... Havn't seen yet... So, changes hasn't been implemented yet. So, that is why it was that easy on the Protoss wave?

All the changes will implemented at once on patch day. And an update to BARRICADES, of all things...

ME WANT PATCH NOW!!!!

Purple minerals are done, and they look good too.

Shiny...pretty...glowy...

The glowy effect doesn't appear on low graphics settings though. Oh well...

When is v10.1 expected to be out? One week? Two weeks? And v11.0 by the end of January? An estimate, of course.

And is everything mentioned here in v10.1, or will some of it be part of v11.0? I assume upgrade buildings will come in v11.0... and that means that my theory about the purple minerals is wrong, unless those are being saved for v11.0 as well.

10.1 should be coming out soon-ish, hopefully within a week if all goes well. If the tentacles are feeling uncooperative, though, it might take longer than that. 10.1 will have purple minerals, new zerg tech and a number of balance tweaks.

I don't have any estimate for 11.0, but it is a big patch and I expect that it will take a looong time to make.

Tentacles!!! Thanks for the updates.