[SC2 Forum]
1. Does the Zergling vs. Zealot ratio remain at 4:1 or has it changed in the latest builds?
One zealot can usually take out two, and sometimes three zerglings. However, the ratio is mainly based on positioning and micro-controlling. As the number of zealots grows, it will take more zerglings to win the fight since the zealots can clump up and reduce the attacking surface area. Smart use of terrain, such as a choke or backing up against a wall, will also help a protoss player reduce this attack area. Zerglings have to secure a good surround around the zealots to keep the ratio close.
[SC Legacy]
2. In World of Warcraft pvp they found an issue over time that it was "very unsatisfying" to the player when they lost control of their character as it limited their ability to do their job or role. There is a noticeable increase in stuns and immobilization in Starcraft 2, which was barely present in Starcraft 1. From your experience in testing, do you feel abilities, which limit unit control, provide more dynamic game play so far or are you noticing more concern?
First of all, there were actually some abilities in the original StarCraft that could cause players to lose control of units. These abilities include the ghost’s lockdown, the corsair’s disruption web, and the dark archon’s mind control. It may be premature to suggest at this point that there’s a “noticeable increase” in stuns and immobilization in StarCraft II.
To address the comparison anyway, in World of Warcraft, you control a single character, unlike RTS games where you manage multiple units and bases. The difference in the World of Warcraft is when you lose control of your character you simply have to wait it out, assuming you don’t have any control breaks. However in StarCraft, when units in your army are being controlled, you can still issue orders to the rest of your army, manage your base, build new units, etc. There are a lot of options and we happy with the diversity it brings to gameplay at this point.
3. What is the current status of the Mothership? What niche does it fill at this time, and if the unit were removed, would there be a reason to fill that niche with a different unit or would protoss still be fine?
Currently the mothership has a passive cloaking field for nearby units and buildings, wormhole transit, temporal rift, and vortex as its abilities. We are happy with the state of the mothership at this time, and would like to hear feedback from the players once beta starts.
4. What is your overall goal for the Infestor? The units have had and removed so many abilities, are you trying to focus into a support role, or disruption and harassment, or just to have a wide variety of spells so it can be a quick response unit?
It is intended to play more of the disruption/harassment role. They are meant to burrow and move up ahead of the swarm to soften up their opponent’s forces.
5. Is EMP dodgeable, or there's some sort of indication that it's going to be launched? And does this cause a problem with Immortals?
It’s possible to dodge EMP, but it is difficult to do. Your options include anticipating your opponent will be casting an EMP by seeing the ghost or its shimmer and predicting it; being near the edge of the EMP range and moving out quickly; or using the stalker’s blink ability.
[Vile Gaming]
6. Map/mod to site communication – Will there be support for map/mod makers to bridge a connection between their map/mod to their site? For example, if a person wanted their map/mod to submit scores/results to the site, and vice-versa the map/mod could pull the highest scores from the site and display it in the game.
It is possible for players to make their own custom score screens but there are no specific plans to bridge map data to web sites via Battle.net.
7. Launcher support – Will maps/mods be able to have their own "launcher" (ala WoW’s launcher), as in shortcut or start icon from the computer outside of StarCraft, and have their own screens, after a Battle.net authenticating screen (ala Twitter’s, or Facebook’s, application authentication).
There are no plans to allow maps and mods to have their own launcher. However, making a loading screen or launch screen is still possible.
As we approach StarCraft II beta, we will be doing several exclusive Q&As with fan sites in StarCraft II's fan site program. These Q&As have the intention of getting everyone on the same page in regards to StarCraft II's current status. I'm happy to announce that our first batch of these have finished, starting with TeamLiquid.net.
1. Not all potential players of StarCraft II have played the original StarCraft before, thus they might encounter problems with the understanding of the story. Is it possible to play the campaign of StarCraft II without knowing anything? Will you come up with some things that happened in the original StarCraft and Brood War again – just so that people not familiar to the story get more information?
We plan on having story elements that will bring players up to speed on the most recent plot developments and prepare them for the StarCraft II storyline. We also plan on having a plot summary of what transpired in the original StarCraft and Brood War during the installation process. However we feel that regardless of your familiarity with the original story, all players will be able to enjoy the story developments in StarCraft II.
2. You have already announced that you are going to record various stats when playing StarCraft II with the new Battle.net 2.0 – but how detailed will those statistics be? Will one be able to see how many units of a certain kind (for example Marines) one have build or even killed so far?
We will be recording a large amount of stats for StarCraft II, but we are still in discussion as to which stats will ultimately be tracked. We will determine how detailed the stat-tracking will be based on what information we think will benefit our players the most to help improve their game.
3. You have already stated that you will support DirectX 10, but what about DirectX 11?
We currently do not have any plans on supporting DirectX11-specific features, but the game will be compatible with DirectX11.
4. How many stats will a Hero unit be able to take? Three like in Warcraft 3 or is there even a limit?
If you create a user-map with heroes, you can outfit them with a large number of stats. However, currently only three stats will be able to be displayed on the UI due to limited space.
5. In lore Protoss warp in their units and buildings from some far planet. Will there be any mechanic that reflects this such as a "warp out" that could act as a refund?
We do not have any plans to include a “warp out” game mechanic. We have discussed the possibility of this in the past, but it felt too similar to the Terran mechanics of being able to salvage the structures.
6. Will there be a converter to convert our favorite original StarCraft maps to StarCraft II maps? I don’t want to lose all of my favorite maps from the original StarCraft when I get StarCraft II.
There will not be a map converter for StarCraft II. Map-makers will have to manually rebuild any of their maps using the new StarCraft II map editor.
7. I'm just going to assume that you will have some sort of window mode in StarCraft II. But I was wondering if you're going to implement a windowed mode like the one that World of Warcraft has? You know where you can maximize the window, removing the borders and enabling fullscreen mode yet providing easy access to the desktop.
You will be able to select both windowed and full-screen windowed modes from the options menu.
-StarCraft II Q&A Batch 54-[SC2 Forum] 1. Does the Zergling vs. Zealot ratio remain at 4:1 or has it changed in the latest builds? One zealot can usually take out two, and sometimes three zerglings. However, the ratio is mainly based on positioning and micro-controlling. As the number of zealots grows, it will take more zerglings to win the fight since the zealots can clump up and reduce the attacking surface area. Smart use of terrain, such as a choke or backing up against a wall, will also help a protoss player reduce this attack area. Zerglings have to secure a good surround around the zealots to keep the ratio close.
[SC Legacy] 2. In World of Warcraft pvp they found an issue over time that it was "very unsatisfying" to the player when they lost control of their character as it limited their ability to do their job or role. There is a noticeable increase in stuns and immobilization in Starcraft 2, which was barely present in Starcraft 1. From your experience in testing, do you feel abilities, which limit unit control, provide more dynamic game play so far or are you noticing more concern? First of all, there were actually some abilities in the original StarCraft that could cause players to lose control of units. These abilities include the ghost’s lockdown, the corsair’s disruption web, and the dark archon’s mind control. It may be premature to suggest at this point that there’s a “noticeable increase” in stuns and immobilization in StarCraft II. To address the comparison anyway, in World of Warcraft, you control a single character, unlike RTS games where you manage multiple units and bases. The difference in the World of Warcraft is when you lose control of your character you simply have to wait it out, assuming you don’t have any control breaks. However in StarCraft, when units in your army are being controlled, you can still issue orders to the rest of your army, manage your base, build new units, etc. There are a lot of options and we happy with the diversity it brings to gameplay at this point.
3. What is the current status of the Mothership? What niche does it fill at this time, and if the unit were removed, would there be a reason to fill that niche with a different unit or would protoss still be fine? Currently the mothership has a passive cloaking field for nearby units and buildings, wormhole transit, temporal rift, and vortex as its abilities. We are happy with the state of the mothership at this time, and would like to hear feedback from the players once beta starts.
4. What is your overall goal for the Infestor? The units have had and removed so many abilities, are you trying to focus into a support role, or disruption and harassment, or just to have a wide variety of spells so it can be a quick response unit? It is intended to play more of the disruption/harassment role. They are meant to burrow and move up ahead of the swarm to soften up their opponent’s forces.
5. Is EMP dodgeable, or there's some sort of indication that it's going to be launched? And does this cause a problem with Immortals? It’s possible to dodge EMP, but it is difficult to do. Your options include anticipating your opponent will be casting an EMP by seeing the ghost or its shimmer and predicting it; being near the edge of the EMP range and moving out quickly; or using the stalker’s blink ability.
[Vile Gaming] 6. Map/mod to site communication – Will there be support for map/mod makers to bridge a connection between their map/mod to their site? For example, if a person wanted their map/mod to submit scores/results to the site, and vice-versa the map/mod could pull the highest scores from the site and display it in the game. It is possible for players to make their own custom score screens but there are no specific plans to bridge map data to web sites via Battle.net.
7. Launcher support – Will maps/mods be able to have their own "launcher" (ala WoW’s launcher), as in shortcut or start icon from the computer outside of StarCraft, and have their own screens, after a Battle.net authenticating screen (ala Twitter’s, or Facebook’s, application authentication). There are no plans to allow maps and mods to have their own launcher. However, making a loading screen or launch screen is still possible.
-End of Transmission-StarCraft II Fan Site Q&A Series
As we approach StarCraft II beta, we will be doing several exclusive Q&As with fan sites in StarCraft II's fan site program. These Q&As have the intention of getting everyone on the same page in regards to StarCraft II's current status. I'm happy to announce that our first batch of these have finished, starting with TeamLiquid.net.
4/15/9 - Team Liquid http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=91435
4/22/9 - Starfeeder http://starfeeder.gameriot.com/blogs/The-Starfeed/The-Official-STARFEEDER-Starcraft-2-QA
5/1/9 - SC2Pod http://sc2pod.com/news/Fan_Site_QA_3__SC2Pod
5/21/9 - StarCraft: Legacy http://sclegacy.com/interviews/10-blizzard/375-starcraft-legacy-exclusive-fansite-qaa
5/28/9 - StarCraft 2 Armory http://www.sc2armory.com/forums/topic/6974
7/3/9 - StarCraft2.net.pl http://www.starcraft2.net.pl/portal/sc2/36/626/StarCraft_II_Exclusive_Fansite_QampA__StarCraft2netpl.html
-StarCraft II Q&A Batch 55-1. Not all potential players of StarCraft II have played the original StarCraft before, thus they might encounter problems with the understanding of the story. Is it possible to play the campaign of StarCraft II without knowing anything? Will you come up with some things that happened in the original StarCraft and Brood War again – just so that people not familiar to the story get more information? We plan on having story elements that will bring players up to speed on the most recent plot developments and prepare them for the StarCraft II storyline. We also plan on having a plot summary of what transpired in the original StarCraft and Brood War during the installation process. However we feel that regardless of your familiarity with the original story, all players will be able to enjoy the story developments in StarCraft II.
2. You have already announced that you are going to record various stats when playing StarCraft II with the new Battle.net 2.0 – but how detailed will those statistics be? Will one be able to see how many units of a certain kind (for example Marines) one have build or even killed so far? We will be recording a large amount of stats for StarCraft II, but we are still in discussion as to which stats will ultimately be tracked. We will determine how detailed the stat-tracking will be based on what information we think will benefit our players the most to help improve their game.
3. You have already stated that you will support DirectX 10, but what about DirectX 11? We currently do not have any plans on supporting DirectX11-specific features, but the game will be compatible with DirectX11.
4. How many stats will a Hero unit be able to take? Three like in Warcraft 3 or is there even a limit? If you create a user-map with heroes, you can outfit them with a large number of stats. However, currently only three stats will be able to be displayed on the UI due to limited space.
5. In lore Protoss warp in their units and buildings from some far planet. Will there be any mechanic that reflects this such as a "warp out" that could act as a refund? We do not have any plans to include a “warp out” game mechanic. We have discussed the possibility of this in the past, but it felt too similar to the Terran mechanics of being able to salvage the structures.
6. Will there be a converter to convert our favorite original StarCraft maps to StarCraft II maps? I don’t want to lose all of my favorite maps from the original StarCraft when I get StarCraft II. There will not be a map converter for StarCraft II. Map-makers will have to manually rebuild any of their maps using the new StarCraft II map editor.
7. I'm just going to assume that you will have some sort of window mode in StarCraft II. But I was wondering if you're going to implement a windowed mode like the one that World of Warcraft has? You know where you can maximize the window, removing the borders and enabling fullscreen mode yet providing easy access to the desktop. You will be able to select both windowed and full-screen windowed modes from the options menu.
-End of Transmission--StarCraft II Q&A Batch 55-This Q&A batch 56 is the exclusive fan site Q&A series for Starcraft 2 Source from Europe. Hope you enjoy this Q&A batch!
StarCraft II Fan site Q&A series http://starcraft2.4players.de/exclusive_qa_starcraft2_source_en.php