In the Heart of the Swarm leveling system, players earn experience while playing Blizzard matchmaking modes and custom games on Blizzard maps. You’ll earn XP for the race you’re playing with each unit you build or destroy. Experience is awarded at the end of the match, and accumulates as you level up from 1 to a maximum level of 20 for each race.
The Leveling system is how you will earn most portraits and decals in Heart of the Swarm. We’re creating a multitude of new images for players to collect and display. Your cumulative (Protoss+Terran+Zerg) level will also be displayed right next to your player portrait, so others will be able to easily see how far you’ve gone in mastering the races of StarCraft II.
What do you guys think? Good, bad, not a big deal either way? You can read the full article here if you're interested. Those of you who are in the beta will get to try out the new system in the upcoming patch.
Pretty cool, makes it easier to gauge the skill of players however I am assuming points earned will be factored by the length of the match given the fact that most matchs last less then 10 minutes in the event someone 6 pools or something and kills drones, probes, perhaps a zealot or a marine. Not to mention the butt load of experience gained from killing swarms of zerglings, locust, interceptors amongst other things. If they can balance things then its cool.
It's probably based on point count of each unit. If you happen to meatgrind a whole worker line of drones every game in 10 seconds, well, they probably won't balance that. But zerglings will not awards as much points as carriers, most likely.
I think it's a good idea. It will be an incentive for people to play more ladder and not feel as bad when they lose because you still get something out of it. Gives people long-term goals as well.
I think its a very good idea, but as per blizzard it would be not be fully implemented to its fully potential or rather won't accomplish the actual goals that its suppose to. It looks like a decent replacement for the achievement system that allows pros to get the top end portraits quickly (as requested kinda of like how portraits being locked to ranking), but still allows the noobs to grind out games to get them. However in its current setup without some type of decay its will shortly die off quickly again after the first month as everyone gets them or gives up. Worse i fear it to become as meaningless as the current system. Including custom melee is nice as i know even personally i play a lot of the custom melee maps because of my friends all have the starter version and can't see any merit to grabbing the full game at the sad state its in.
With the current state of how blizzard is trying to make the game more noob friendly by making it always look like your gaining something i think i'd rather see the ladders visual system changes. Showing players loosing points is really negative and seeing as blizzard removed leauge losses to keep players from getting depressed, i can't see why they wouldn't just have a decay system that as long as your playing you don't loose anything and just play again.
This system have been working since 2006 in another online rts - Rise of Legends. It was ok. Ppl like to levelup things they associate with themselves and show it to everyone by switching to new earned portraits.
I think it's good that Blizzard has listened and are making improvements. But that almost all the new AAA games must have this kind of system to keep players motivated symbolizes something quite sad about the way games are going; Low effort and high award to keep the casuals entertained. Wouldn't worry about StarCraft becoming 'casual' per se though, already proven to have a high skill ceiling and depth, unless they screw that up.
I like the fact that it's still possible to work your way to the rewards, even if you are a noob like me.
I think it should be possible to choose a background or game-loading screen as well. There seems to be a lot of space in the new UI: perfect for a scenery. With blizzards Soon(tm) going on, I suspect there will be a lot of time until the next release. During the past couple of years, it would have been nice to have a customizable game loading-screen. I'm very tired of staring jim raynor in the eyes every time I open the game, as I know that there is so much more concept art that could be used instead.
So, if you ask me: add a third type of reward: fullscreen images. It's ok if it's not super pixel perfect like the portraits seems to be, just something varying. I guess the campaign might change the looks of Kerrigan, but that will be tiresome after some time.
They could be rewarded at level 5, 10, 15 and 20 etc.
What do you guys think? Good, bad, not a big deal either way? You can read the full article here if you're interested. Those of you who are in the beta will get to try out the new system in the upcoming patch.
Pretty cool, makes it easier to gauge the skill of players however I am assuming points earned will be factored by the length of the match given the fact that most matchs last less then 10 minutes in the event someone 6 pools or something and kills drones, probes, perhaps a zealot or a marine. Not to mention the butt load of experience gained from killing swarms of zerglings, locust, interceptors amongst other things. If they can balance things then its cool.
@Michaelknives:
It's probably based on point count of each unit. If you happen to meatgrind a whole worker line of drones every game in 10 seconds, well, they probably won't balance that. But zerglings will not awards as much points as carriers, most likely.
I think it's a good idea. It will be an incentive for people to play more ladder and not feel as bad when they lose because you still get something out of it. Gives people long-term goals as well.
I think its a very good idea, but as per blizzard it would be not be fully implemented to its fully potential or rather won't accomplish the actual goals that its suppose to. It looks like a decent replacement for the achievement system that allows pros to get the top end portraits quickly (as requested kinda of like how portraits being locked to ranking), but still allows the noobs to grind out games to get them. However in its current setup without some type of decay its will shortly die off quickly again after the first month as everyone gets them or gives up. Worse i fear it to become as meaningless as the current system. Including custom melee is nice as i know even personally i play a lot of the custom melee maps because of my friends all have the starter version and can't see any merit to grabbing the full game at the sad state its in.
With the current state of how blizzard is trying to make the game more noob friendly by making it always look like your gaining something i think i'd rather see the ladders visual system changes. Showing players loosing points is really negative and seeing as blizzard removed leauge losses to keep players from getting depressed, i can't see why they wouldn't just have a decay system that as long as your playing you don't loose anything and just play again.
This system have been working since 2006 in another online rts - Rise of Legends. It was ok. Ppl like to levelup things they associate with themselves and show it to everyone by switching to new earned portraits.
I think it's good that Blizzard has listened and are making improvements. But that almost all the new AAA games must have this kind of system to keep players motivated symbolizes something quite sad about the way games are going; Low effort and high award to keep the casuals entertained. Wouldn't worry about StarCraft becoming 'casual' per se though, already proven to have a high skill ceiling and depth, unless they screw that up.
I wonder if we can create custom avatars as rewards on custom maps?
@zeldarules28: Go
Add fullscreen images as a reward type
I like the fact that it's still possible to work your way to the rewards, even if you are a noob like me.
I think it should be possible to choose a background or game-loading screen as well. There seems to be a lot of space in the new UI: perfect for a scenery. With blizzards Soon(tm) going on, I suspect there will be a lot of time until the next release. During the past couple of years, it would have been nice to have a customizable game loading-screen. I'm very tired of staring jim raynor in the eyes every time I open the game, as I know that there is so much more concept art that could be used instead.
So, if you ask me: add a third type of reward: fullscreen images. It's ok if it's not super pixel perfect like the portraits seems to be, just something varying. I guess the campaign might change the looks of Kerrigan, but that will be tiresome after some time.
They could be rewarded at level 5, 10, 15 and 20 etc.