The fifth patch has been released, the information can be found below. Some of the concern about early warp gates has been countered with a research time increase while Blizzard has heard some of the concerns within the community regarding Nydus Worms and Hydralisks. The change to Burrow should alleviate some concerns about some hard Roach Burrow techs, allowing some more time to identify it and counter it. Lastly, changes to the Infestor seem to show that they want to focus on Neural Parasite first before addressing the other abilities.
Written by Gradius |
Thursday, 11 March 2010 21:45
Blizzard has a long tradition of leaving things in their games' data files for the fans to ponder over, and such is the case with the StarCraft II beta. SC:L has extracted some information and many images from the beta .mpq files. The game images article contains images of planets, icons, upgrades, decals, portraits, textures and wireframes. The gamestrings article contains previews of the Wings of Liberty tutorial missions.
These as well as our upcoming articles will be in the "articles" section of the StarCraft II Beta sidebar to the left.
VG247 has recently had the chance to interview Dustin Browder, lead designer of StarCraft II:
What level of concurrency to you want to get to before the end of the beta?
Dustin Browder: I think we want to maintain about 10,000. It’s sort of our goal, and we’ve just about hit that at this point. I can see we’re at 9,000-something right now, and 10,000 is the goal. That makes our match-maker really happy, makes it really sing when we’re about at those numbers. If we get much higher than that we’ll just leave it, and if we see concurrency fall off we’ll add more keys until we get back to those numbers.
Are you seeing clicks-per-minute generally increase as you run the beta over time?
Dustin Browder: I’m sorry, I’m able to see it on a game-by-game basis; I’m not able to see it globally. But that’s a great question, and certainly a stat we’d love to have. We have a ton of stats right now, and we’re having a trouble getting at them a little bit. There’s a large volume of data that our business intelligence guys are working very hard to give us access to. What I have access to now is fairly limited. I have access to maps, I have access to win-loss by race and by skill, I have access to certain unit stats, but no, I don’t have access to action-per-minute on a global scale. I’m not able to see it increasing as we go. I imagine that it would.
Certainly, my experience in Call of Duty when it first released was quite terrifying. I’m getting to be in my late 30s. I went to play Call of Duty and I got owned for many days in a row. When I was in my late 20s and early 30s I used to be able to get top stop on a Counter-Strike server with no difficulty, and Counter-Strike’s a pretty fast game. Modern Warfare I was struggling with, but as I played in that first week, I pretty soon got back into the flow of things and I wasn’t losing every head-to-head match-up by half a second. So, I certainly hope that as people get used to the game their actions-per-minute go up, but I don’t have those figures for you, sir. I’m sorry.
Receiving: Captain Serl Gentry, Doctor, Special Research Ops
Captain Gentry:
Have a seat, Private. I can imagine that you're upset after what you've just been through.
Private Ayers:
Upset? Don't be silly, Captain: this wasn't a complete surprise. Nature doesn't just adapt. Nature cheats, changes the rules, and slips out the back door with your wallet while you're still trying to figure out what happened.
Captain Gentry:
I'm not sure I follow.
Private Ayers:
Sorry; those aren't my words. That's from my father, the venerable Dr. Talen Ayers. It's his own special flavor of insight: one part renowned research geneticist and two parts backwoods yokel. Always embarrassed the hell out of me.
