Monday, April 2, 2012

New age Blizz

"Let's imagine the same design philosophy from D3 patch 13 changes applied to Starcraft 2.

Starcraft 2 1.5.0 patch notes: 

TL;DR
1. Removed unit production buildings. All units made at hatch/nexus/CC.
2. All Units now become available to produce after predetermined #'s minerals have been mined. 15s to switch one of 6 unlockable production slots.
3. Removed purchasing upgrades. Upgrades now earned after XXX minerals mined.
 
"These changes increase flexibility and allow new players to learn the game better and not feel punished for making mistakes." -Blizzard
-all unit production buildings are being removed. All units can now be built from each respective races starting structure. We don't want to force player to make an time and resource investment in building a specific building(s) to produce a unit (aka, putting points/finding/trading for a skill/rune). This change adds greater flexibility and customization to choose ANY unit once a player earns enough resources to unlock it. This allows the player to not feel locked into producing a specific unit because they chose it's structure earlier but now want to change. Greater choice and flexibility.

-players start the game being able to produce 1 unit  (skill/rune) at a time, but eventually after mining a set amount of minerals (around the 12 min mark, aka lvl 60) 6 units can be produced at a time. Which units are currently produced can be switched up COMPLETELY at any time incurring a 15 sec cooldown.  This increases flexibility and customization.

-Instead of choosing which unit(skill/rune) to unlock  via the now removed unit production buildings, players will unlock a new unit type after 500 mineral are mined(this amount increases over time) . Units (skills/rune) are unlocked in a fixed order predetermined to help new players not make big mistakes and ease them into the gameplay.

-all unit upgrade buildings are being removed. The upgrades (aka. runes) will still be available but now they are unlocked at preset levels. Furthermore, we reduced the 3 levels of most upgrades (aka runes) into one level equal to about level 1.714. We believe this increases the 'concentrated coolness factor' of earning an upgrade. We also don't want players to get to minute 30 and be unable to defend the expo they need to afford the highly expensive high end upgrades cause they didn't save enough resources. To solve this, The starting mineral patch and geysers are now infinite. This will help new players enjoy the game better while reducing any advantage a more skilled or experienced player may be able to earn over a new/less skilled player.

We believe these changes alter the game for the better and allow more customization and flexibility allowing new players to more easily learn SC2 gameplay.   We no believe in the philosophy of punishing players who choose to go heavy air for deciding to switch to ground  mid game to counter an opponents heavy anti-air force. These changes will also make it easier for us to balance the game and eventually should improve the balance. We hope you like the changes, please leave feedback on this thread.

 - Sincerely, The 'new' Blizzard

   I don't deny these changes increase flexibility and customization, and reduce to ability to make gameplay mistakes that may punished. But does that really make them an improvement???? Who that has played SC2 could honestly say the above changes wouldn't  completely ruin the game? I pretty much just described Nexus wars, which is a fun sc2 mod to be sure, but nothing compared to SC2 depth and complexity.

   Now I'm aware there are some differences between the games, and I don't think we need old D2 system with no respecs, but something in between. I mean, SC2 has longer lasting build choices that D3! D3 should allow players to make meaningful semi-permenant build choices that last longer than 15 seconds because this increases gameplay depth, enjoyment, replayability, character uniqueness, attachment, and customizability.   For the exact same reasons SC2 benefits above, so would Diablo 3 benefit."


This guy is so freaking right. 

And while you're at it, why not sell marine marauder stimpack upgrade for 10 in game gold huh?

TLDR for the post: Gaming was so much better 10 years ago.

On the other hand I found one of these in the attic today:
 

32MHz processor 2MB RAM and still beats the PS Vita, what do you think?

Source for forum post: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/4081816035