Blizzard just released the first patch to the game since they opened closed beta. Here's a list of the patch notes...
StarCraft II Beta - Patch 1 (version 0.3.0.14093)
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StarCraft II Beta - Patch 1 (version 0.3.0.14093)
BALANCE CHANGES
TERRAN
Viking
The armor value for this unit in Fighter Mode has decreased from 1 to 0.
The damage done by this unit in Fighter Mode has changed from 6 (+8 armored) to 10 (+4 armored).
Reaper
The damage done from D-8 Charges has decreased from 40 to 30.
The delay between attacks for D-8 Charges has decreased from 2.5 to 1.8.
Orbital Command
The build time for this upgrade has decreased from 50 to 35.
PROTOSS
Observer
Gravitic Boosters: The cost of this research has decreased from 150 minerals and 150 vespene gas to 100 minerals and 100 vespene gas.
High Templar
Phase Shift: This ability has been removed from the game.
New ability: Feedback - Drains all energy from the target unit and causes damage equal to the amount of energy drained.
Colossus
The building pathing radius for this unit has decreased from .75 to .5625.
Mothership
Vortex: The energy cost of this ability has increased from 75 to 100.
Vortex: The target radius of this ability has decreased from 3.0 to 2.5.
Temporal Rift: This ability has been removed from the game.
Wormhole Transit: This ability has been removed from the game.
New ability: Mass Recall - Teleports all of the player's units in the target area to the Mothership.
Nexus
Chrono Boost can no longer target allies.
Gateway
The build time of this building has increased from 50 to 65.
ZERG
Infestor
Fungal Growth: The damage done by this ability has decreased from 48 to 36.
Fungal Growth: This ability now prevents affected units from burrowing.
Neural Parasite: Functionality changed - The Infestor now channels this spell, which lasts 10 seconds or until the Infestor is destroyed. You can now target all units with this ability.
Terran Infestation: The ability’s energy cost has reduced from 50 to 25 and Infested Terrans now spawn 1 at a time.
BUG FIXES
Addressed an issue causing people to receive an “Internal Battle.net Error” message with their game client.
Muting your microphone will no longer cause your microphone to be turned off in the operating system once the program has exited.
Please note that the voice chat functionality has only partially been implemented. There are many known issues with voice chat that we expect to address in a future patch.
The “Medium” graphical settings were reconfigured to work better on appropriate machines. The video settings “auto-detect” functionality has been reset as a result.
Added a frame rate limiter to the game menus to prevent some graphics cards from running at higher frame rates than necessary.
So why is this significant?
Because Blizzard is listening to the players. We've noticed several unbalanced mechanics and reported it. We've lemented that certain units were either not feasible or too overpowered in gameplay. And they made intelligent changes. Changes that are starting to make this game's balance as good as Starcraft I is currently balanced.
SC2 still has quite a ways to go before it gets as evened out as SC1, but it took years to get SC1 as balanced as it is now. It's looking like Blizzard has learned from the past.
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Monday, February 15, 2010
A gamer's renunciation - why NCSoft has lost my business
I play a lot of games.
This probably doesn't come as a shock to anyone who knows me. In addition to playing a lot of games, I also play a wide assortment of different kinds of games. Shooters, espionage, strategy, adventure, platformer, music.... the list goes on. But my all-time favorite games belong to the fabled Role-Playing Game genre. And within this genre is the hugely popular MMORPG - Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game. I'm sure you're familiar with them: World of Warcraft is by far the most notable of these, but Everquest, Final Fantasy XI, Warhammer Online, and Runescape also come to mind. While these games boast different mechanics and each have their own merits and strengths, the ultimate goal behind these games is the same: to provide an immersive, enjoyable alternate world.
NCSoft is a company that deals primarily with producing Korean MMORPGs and collecting subscription fees for playing these games. Games that they have produced include Guild Wars, City of Heroes, Lineage, and Aion. Now, down to brass tax - what's my beef with NCSoft? Was I jilted? Jaded? Did I suffer some horrific experience at the hands of the masters who held my free time in the palms of their hands? Not really.
I've been having a bad taste left in my mouth from NCSoft for a while now, and I've never quite placed the source of this feeling until now. Basically, NCSoft games all seem to suffer from the same problems, which I have outlined:
1. NCSoft games suffer from a clunky, clumsy User Interface.
This is a flaw that seems like it should be easy to fix, but has plagued virtually every single NCSoft game to date, with the only exception perhaps being City of Heroes. You can expect a UI that ranges from blocky and slightly unpleasant to downright fugly. Aion - a game that is otherwise very beautiful - has an extremely mediocre UI, and the parts of the UI that feel natural are blatantly cloned from WoW. Now, poor UIs are excusable if the game is otherwise solid. But if I'm paying $15 per month to play a game, there is no excuse for a user interface that makes my eyes hurt. Not when I plan to be staring at it for a couple of hours a day.
2. NCSoft games offer dull, generic worlds with very little emphasis on lore or backstory.
When I play any RPG, I expect to be drawn into the story. In every NCSoft game I've played yet, the story starts out relatively strong and cohesive, and while you're playing through it, you're thinking to yourself, "Hey, this game is pretty cool. I like where this is going." Well, savor it while you can, because once you get over the initial starting area XP grind and quest-fest, you will feel abandoned. Not being driven by a central plotline would even be acceptable if the worlds that NCSoft offers didn't feel so uninteresting and cold. NPCs, both friendly and hostile, seem robotic and generic. Areas do not feel unique and exploration seems like a fruitless endeavor. Aion seems to be an exception to this, as exploration seems rewarding (at least to me), but its inhabitants didn't seem to have much character. Enemies in particular were uninteresting.
3. NCSoft games follow the same formula - grind.
I don't mind grinding. I come from the days of hardcore gaming, where we weren't coddled through our levels. It was the school of hardknocks, and if you played poorly in the early game it could have had dire consequences later on. So difficulty is -not- the issue when it comes to grinding.
The problem with grinding in NCSoft games is that it is boring. And not just normal boring, like average grinding. Mind-numbingly, sanity-tearing boring. Killing NPCs does not feel rewarding, and there aren't many different places to do it. At least in other MMOs you can generally choose between multiple areas for levelling. Lineage is perhaps the most infamous for requiring too much grind time.
4. NCSoft games lack innovation and inspiration
Let's face it - WoW changed the face of MMORPGs forever. NCSoft is NOT the only company that blatantly copies how WoW does its thing. But when you charge a subscription fee for playing your game, you had best come up with something original and innovative to keep your players around. With the exception of City of Heroes, NCSoft games seem to all be WoW clones - from the way skills and spells are used right down to the UI. Why should I pay the same price that I would pay to play WoW to play a WoW clone?
Can NCSoft ever redeem themselves? Maybe. But they've got a high bar to reach. Blizzard has outdone all of its competitors when it comes to customer service, generating new content, and keeping their game updated and stable. Until I see that NCSoft has decided to actually produce original, stable, quality content, I will not pay to play another one of their games again.
This probably doesn't come as a shock to anyone who knows me. In addition to playing a lot of games, I also play a wide assortment of different kinds of games. Shooters, espionage, strategy, adventure, platformer, music.... the list goes on. But my all-time favorite games belong to the fabled Role-Playing Game genre. And within this genre is the hugely popular MMORPG - Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game. I'm sure you're familiar with them: World of Warcraft is by far the most notable of these, but Everquest, Final Fantasy XI, Warhammer Online, and Runescape also come to mind. While these games boast different mechanics and each have their own merits and strengths, the ultimate goal behind these games is the same: to provide an immersive, enjoyable alternate world.
NCSoft is a company that deals primarily with producing Korean MMORPGs and collecting subscription fees for playing these games. Games that they have produced include Guild Wars, City of Heroes, Lineage, and Aion. Now, down to brass tax - what's my beef with NCSoft? Was I jilted? Jaded? Did I suffer some horrific experience at the hands of the masters who held my free time in the palms of their hands? Not really.
I've been having a bad taste left in my mouth from NCSoft for a while now, and I've never quite placed the source of this feeling until now. Basically, NCSoft games all seem to suffer from the same problems, which I have outlined:
1. NCSoft games suffer from a clunky, clumsy User Interface.
This is a flaw that seems like it should be easy to fix, but has plagued virtually every single NCSoft game to date, with the only exception perhaps being City of Heroes. You can expect a UI that ranges from blocky and slightly unpleasant to downright fugly. Aion - a game that is otherwise very beautiful - has an extremely mediocre UI, and the parts of the UI that feel natural are blatantly cloned from WoW. Now, poor UIs are excusable if the game is otherwise solid. But if I'm paying $15 per month to play a game, there is no excuse for a user interface that makes my eyes hurt. Not when I plan to be staring at it for a couple of hours a day.
2. NCSoft games offer dull, generic worlds with very little emphasis on lore or backstory.
When I play any RPG, I expect to be drawn into the story. In every NCSoft game I've played yet, the story starts out relatively strong and cohesive, and while you're playing through it, you're thinking to yourself, "Hey, this game is pretty cool. I like where this is going." Well, savor it while you can, because once you get over the initial starting area XP grind and quest-fest, you will feel abandoned. Not being driven by a central plotline would even be acceptable if the worlds that NCSoft offers didn't feel so uninteresting and cold. NPCs, both friendly and hostile, seem robotic and generic. Areas do not feel unique and exploration seems like a fruitless endeavor. Aion seems to be an exception to this, as exploration seems rewarding (at least to me), but its inhabitants didn't seem to have much character. Enemies in particular were uninteresting.
3. NCSoft games follow the same formula - grind.
I don't mind grinding. I come from the days of hardcore gaming, where we weren't coddled through our levels. It was the school of hardknocks, and if you played poorly in the early game it could have had dire consequences later on. So difficulty is -not- the issue when it comes to grinding.
The problem with grinding in NCSoft games is that it is boring. And not just normal boring, like average grinding. Mind-numbingly, sanity-tearing boring. Killing NPCs does not feel rewarding, and there aren't many different places to do it. At least in other MMOs you can generally choose between multiple areas for levelling. Lineage is perhaps the most infamous for requiring too much grind time.
4. NCSoft games lack innovation and inspiration
Let's face it - WoW changed the face of MMORPGs forever. NCSoft is NOT the only company that blatantly copies how WoW does its thing. But when you charge a subscription fee for playing your game, you had best come up with something original and innovative to keep your players around. With the exception of City of Heroes, NCSoft games seem to all be WoW clones - from the way skills and spells are used right down to the UI. Why should I pay the same price that I would pay to play WoW to play a WoW clone?
Can NCSoft ever redeem themselves? Maybe. But they've got a high bar to reach. Blizzard has outdone all of its competitors when it comes to customer service, generating new content, and keeping their game updated and stable. Until I see that NCSoft has decided to actually produce original, stable, quality content, I will not pay to play another one of their games again.
A gamer's renunciation - why NCSoft has lost my business
I play a lot of games.
This probably doesn't come as a shock to anyone who knows me. In addition to playing a lot of games, I also play a wide assortment of different kinds of games. Shooters, espionage, strategy, adventure, platformer, music.... the list goes on. But my all-time favorite games belong to the fabled Role-Playing Game genre. And within this genre is the hugely popular MMORPG - Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game. I'm sure you're familiar with them: World of Warcraft is by far the most notable of these, but Everquest, Final Fantasy XI, Warhammer Online, and Runescape also come to mind. While these games boast different mechanics and each have their own merits and strengths, the ultimate goal behind these games is the same: to provide an immersive, enjoyable alternate world.
NCSoft is a company that deals primarily with producing Korean MMORPGs and collecting subscription fees for playing these games. Games that they have produced include Guild Wars, City of Heroes, Lineage, and Aion. Now, down to brass tax - what's my beef with NCSoft? Was I jilted? Jaded? Did I suffer some horrific experience at the hands of the masters who held my free time in the palms of their hands? Not really.
I've been having a bad taste left in my mouth from NCSoft for a while now, and I've never quite placed the source of this feeling until now. Basically, NCSoft games all seem to suffer from the same problems, which I have outlined:
1. NCSoft games suffer from a clunky, clumsy User Interface.
This is a flaw that seems like it should be easy to fix, but has plagued virtually every single NCSoft game to date, with the only exception perhaps being City of Heroes. You can expect a UI that ranges from blocky and slightly unpleasant to downright fugly. Aion - a game that is otherwise very beautiful - has an extremely mediocre UI, and the parts of the UI that feel natural are blatantly cloned from WoW. Now, poor UIs are excusable if the game is otherwise solid. But if I'm paying $15 per month to play a game, there is no excuse for a user interface that makes my eyes hurt. Not when I plan to be staring at it for a couple of hours a day.
2. NCSoft games offer dull, generic worlds with very little emphasis on lore or backstory.
When I play any RPG, I expect to be drawn into the story. In every NCSoft game I've played yet, the story starts out relatively strong and cohesive, and while you're playing through it, you're thinking to yourself, "Hey, this game is pretty cool. I like where this is going." Well, savor it while you can, because once you get over the initial starting area XP grind and quest-fest, you will feel abandoned. Not being driven by a central plotline would even be acceptable if the worlds that NCSoft offers didn't feel so uninteresting and cold. NPCs, both friendly and hostile, seem robotic and generic. Areas do not feel unique and exploration seems like a fruitless endeavor. Aion seems to be an exception to this, as exploration seems rewarding (at least to me), but its inhabitants didn't seem to have much character. Enemies in particular were uninteresting.
3. NCSoft games follow the same formula - grind.
I don't mind grinding. I come from the days of hardcore gaming, where we weren't coddled through our levels. It was the school of hardknocks, and if you played poorly in the early game it could have had dire consequences later on. So difficulty is -not- the issue when it comes to grinding.
The problem with grinding in NCSoft games is that it is boring. And not just normal boring, like average grinding. Mind-numbingly, sanity-tearing boring. Killing NPCs does not feel rewarding, and there aren't many different places to do it. At least in other MMOs you can generally choose between multiple areas for levelling. Lineage is perhaps the most infamous for requiring too much grind time.
4. NCSoft games lack innovation and inspiration
Let's face it - WoW changed the face of MMORPGs forever. NCSoft is NOT the only company that blatantly copies how WoW does its thing. But when you charge a subscription fee for playing your game, you had best come up with something original and innovative to keep your players around. With the exception of City of Heroes, NCSoft games seem to all be WoW clones - from the way skills and spells are used right down to the UI. Why should I pay the same price that I would pay to play WoW to play a WoW clone?
Can NCSoft ever redeem themselves? Maybe. But they've got a high bar to reach. Blizzard has outdone all of its competitors when it comes to customer service, generating new content, and keeping their game updated and stable. Until I see that NCSoft has decided to actually produce original, stable, quality content, I will not pay to play another one of their games again.
This probably doesn't come as a shock to anyone who knows me. In addition to playing a lot of games, I also play a wide assortment of different kinds of games. Shooters, espionage, strategy, adventure, platformer, music.... the list goes on. But my all-time favorite games belong to the fabled Role-Playing Game genre. And within this genre is the hugely popular MMORPG - Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game. I'm sure you're familiar with them: World of Warcraft is by far the most notable of these, but Everquest, Final Fantasy XI, Warhammer Online, and Runescape also come to mind. While these games boast different mechanics and each have their own merits and strengths, the ultimate goal behind these games is the same: to provide an immersive, enjoyable alternate world.
NCSoft is a company that deals primarily with producing Korean MMORPGs and collecting subscription fees for playing these games. Games that they have produced include Guild Wars, City of Heroes, Lineage, and Aion. Now, down to brass tax - what's my beef with NCSoft? Was I jilted? Jaded? Did I suffer some horrific experience at the hands of the masters who held my free time in the palms of their hands? Not really.
I've been having a bad taste left in my mouth from NCSoft for a while now, and I've never quite placed the source of this feeling until now. Basically, NCSoft games all seem to suffer from the same problems, which I have outlined:
1. NCSoft games suffer from a clunky, clumsy User Interface.
This is a flaw that seems like it should be easy to fix, but has plagued virtually every single NCSoft game to date, with the only exception perhaps being City of Heroes. You can expect a UI that ranges from blocky and slightly unpleasant to downright fugly. Aion - a game that is otherwise very beautiful - has an extremely mediocre UI, and the parts of the UI that feel natural are blatantly cloned from WoW. Now, poor UIs are excusable if the game is otherwise solid. But if I'm paying $15 per month to play a game, there is no excuse for a user interface that makes my eyes hurt. Not when I plan to be staring at it for a couple of hours a day.
2. NCSoft games offer dull, generic worlds with very little emphasis on lore or backstory.
When I play any RPG, I expect to be drawn into the story. In every NCSoft game I've played yet, the story starts out relatively strong and cohesive, and while you're playing through it, you're thinking to yourself, "Hey, this game is pretty cool. I like where this is going." Well, savor it while you can, because once you get over the initial starting area XP grind and quest-fest, you will feel abandoned. Not being driven by a central plotline would even be acceptable if the worlds that NCSoft offers didn't feel so uninteresting and cold. NPCs, both friendly and hostile, seem robotic and generic. Areas do not feel unique and exploration seems like a fruitless endeavor. Aion seems to be an exception to this, as exploration seems rewarding (at least to me), but its inhabitants didn't seem to have much character. Enemies in particular were uninteresting.
3. NCSoft games follow the same formula - grind.
I don't mind grinding. I come from the days of hardcore gaming, where we weren't coddled through our levels. It was the school of hardknocks, and if you played poorly in the early game it could have had dire consequences later on. So difficulty is -not- the issue when it comes to grinding.
The problem with grinding in NCSoft games is that it is boring. And not just normal boring, like average grinding. Mind-numbingly, sanity-tearing boring. Killing NPCs does not feel rewarding, and there aren't many different places to do it. At least in other MMOs you can generally choose between multiple areas for levelling. Lineage is perhaps the most infamous for requiring too much grind time.
4. NCSoft games lack innovation and inspiration
Let's face it - WoW changed the face of MMORPGs forever. NCSoft is NOT the only company that blatantly copies how WoW does its thing. But when you charge a subscription fee for playing your game, you had best come up with something original and innovative to keep your players around. With the exception of City of Heroes, NCSoft games seem to all be WoW clones - from the way skills and spells are used right down to the UI. Why should I pay the same price that I would pay to play WoW to play a WoW clone?
Can NCSoft ever redeem themselves? Maybe. But they've got a high bar to reach. Blizzard has outdone all of its competitors when it comes to customer service, generating new content, and keeping their game updated and stable. Until I see that NCSoft has decided to actually produce original, stable, quality content, I will not pay to play another one of their games again.
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