Sometime soon beta invites will start to go out for Heart of the Swarm, the second game in a planned three-part arc that makes up the complete StarCraft II experience. Along with an all new single-player campaign, Blizzard will also dramatically alter the multiplayer game by adding in new units to the Protoss, Zerg and Terran armies, as well as tweak existing units. The result, according to game designer David Kim, will be a more complex, challenging experience.
He gave an example of what some Zerg players had been doing in internal testing. Against an enemy army, players would set up Swarm Hosts, a new Zerg unit that can burrow and periodically and automatically birth offensive units on the battlefield that roll towards enemies from long range. Players would then move in Vipers to back up the Swarm Hosts, which are flying units that can set down a Blinding Cloud to dramatically reduce the sight range of affected biological units like Marines. They then immobilized part of the enemy army with Fungal Growths from Infestors, forcing the enemy to fight off the Hosts’ units while blinded, and used the Viper’s Abduct ability to yank any mechanical units like Siege Tanks away from the enemy pack in order to focus fire them into oblivion.
“That kind of micro is pretty crazy, right?” said Kim. “But at the same time, we don’t think it’s a requirement to have to be able to use all those things. We foresee players will stick to what they’re good at more so than trying to follow pro players as much as people are trying to do now. For the pro players, the bar is definitely higher. We definitely think a better pro player will be at the top, as compared to someone who just follows other peoples’ strategies. Originality, strategy, mechanics will definitely matter, because the game is harder to play. All those factors will contribute a little more than they did in Wings of Liberty.”
So because it’s going to be such a different experience, what will happen to your Wings of Liberty online rankings? “The current plan is to just wipe everything,” said Kim. “Even the MMR [matchmaking ranking]. Another option is we might be able to bring over your MMR from the beta, because the beta and the actual game are very similar. Wings of Liberty and Heart of the Swarm are pretty different. A diamond player in Wings of Liberty might actually be a masters player, and vice-versa. We’re going to reset that and people will just have to rank up again.”
Heart of the Swarm will also bring in unranked matchmaking, giving you a way to compete without having to worry about hurting your overall ranking. “It is less stressful for most players. And those players who do opt to play in the ranked modes will have an even more competitive experience.” If you do decide to play in leagues and ladders, you’ll also find it’ll require more skill to move up in the ranks. “If you’re fifth place in diamond and I’m fifth place in diamond, I could be way better. You could be way better than me. Because there are different tiers within diamond league. We’re going to flatten that out so that each rank actually matters. The flip side of that is, if you are not a top five percent diamond player, you’d never get there, whereas right now you could.”
Your Wings of Liberty ranking won’t disappear if you pick up Heart of the Swarm when it’s ready, though. “You could choose to play two different ladders. In your Wings of Liberty ladder, you’ll have your MMR still, so if you were masters last season, even after HotS comes out, you play one game and you’re back into masters.”
As Blizzard continues to spread out beta invites, it doesn’t have a set timeline on how long testing will run. “We’re going to spend as much time as we need to, especially on the multiplayer side, really making that right,“ said producer Kaeo Milker. “Wings of Liberty has been so great for multiplayer, the esports scene has been so great, we’re going to very cautiously going to make improvements to that for Heart of the Swarm. The beta is our real proving ground for that.”
Reaching that state of readiness isn’t a scientific process, because during the beta, which will initially offer 1v1 online play, anything could change. Any number of variables, from unit damage to armor to research times for upgrades, could be tweaked, and units could even be cut or completely new ones added in. So when will Blizzard know when to stop tinkering and ship the product? “We don’t really know one-hundred percent. It’s kind of the same as how we develop the game. We constantly change units, we add in new units, we polish a lot. I think if you keep doing it, you kind of get a sense of ‘yeah, it is so much better than before.’ The time it takes to improve further from this point on is just way too long, so that’s when we decide. It’s not one hundred percent perfect, but it’s close. I think that is the point where we say, it is done.”
After that, patches take care of what beta testing didn’t catch. Following the launch of Heart of the Swarm, Blizzard will continue to monitor both it and Wings of Liberty, but Heart of the Swarm will be the focus of the team’s attention. “If there are balance problems in Wings of Liberty we will definitely address it. But probably not to the degree that we will focus on HotS because Wings has been getting two years of attention already, so naturally it’s not going to have as many problems as Heart of the Swarm.”
If the testing period for Heart of the Swarm winds up being similar to Wings of Liberty, chances are it’ll last at least a few months, meaning Wings of Liberty isn’t going to necessarily fall out of favor for a while. Kim seems happy with the current state of the game, which Blizzard recently reassessed after analyzing new data. “The global [win/loss] level [for Wings of Liberty] was looking good for a long time now, it’s fifty percent in every matchup. Every map is very good, especially in the ladder maps. So we did a more focused study on just the pro level games . We took almost fifteen thousand professional games at the highest level tournaments only in the past two years. The graph looks like a constant decrease toward fifty percent, which means we have been on the correct direction. That’s also why we feel confident if any problem arises in Heart of the Swarm because we have that track record.”
Following launch, is there any chance Blizzard might add in another unit through a patch? “We don’t want to confuse players,” said Kim, “by changing the role of a unit completely. Or adding new units or removing units with a patch. That’s only for expansion. When the game goes live, we will not patch in new units, or change up abilities, or change the role of a unit.”
Blizzard says the team is putting the finishing touches on the campaign now, so assuming a beta testing period of four or so months, it seems likely Heart of the Swarm could launch in early 2013…maybe?
Source : feeds[dot]ign[dot]com
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