SC2Mapster

Awesome job with the latest map! Some of the best boss fights I have seen. I split my video into 2 parts, with the first one out on Jan 16.

Looking forward to having 2 missions in a row to play!

Looking forward to playing it but I may try to hold off and see if Blizzard fixes the camera issue. Your cinematics are too good to not watch correctly. 

This is fantastic news!

I really hope this gets fixed soon... I miss my Annihilation fix.

@JayborinoPlays: Go

Same thing happened when I played M17. Ally would make it to the main enemy base early on, but later kept attacking the side bases. I get a little frustrated in my playthrough - but that's mostly due to my heroes continuously dying in inopportune times. Thank god for quick-saving though.

@DudkiSC2: Go

Oops yep I just didn't notice the objective. It should've been intuitive anyways though, so my bad.

Just finished M17. Definitely the most difficult mission overall so far, at least for me. The macro section and the boss battle are very challenging, but like you said, the difficulty makes sense for what's at stake. I did read through the changes you made to the boss encounter, and I just have to say I'm happy I waited to play this now instead of earlier. My only suggestion would to be to beef up the Iduran's defenses up a bit - the attacks against your base are frequent enough that I don't think you should have to worry about protecting your allies as well. Or at least have a notification saying that you must prevent their Nexus from being destroyed, as I learned the hard way.

I hope we get a bit of a breather in the next mission though!

The best macro maps allow the player to choose from multiple strategies to complete. Dudki has done a great job with that in the entire campaign, but especially with the last few maps with the amount of unit and upgrade choices available. If he tries to eliminate cheese or exploits entirely, I feel like that just limits the player on options to beat a map. Adding detection to the enemy base to avoid the player from getting a free path to the objective is one thing, but if the player wants to 1 base and rush a map, why not? If they want to mass nuke, let them.

You guys get the point - limiting possible exploits and cheese is limiting the player's creativity. In the end, all of these campaigns are meant to bring the player enjoyment through gameplay and possibly a story that leaves a lasting impact. This is not multiplayer where balance is the goal and competition is key. The only prize in beating a map is personal satisfaction. If cheesing maps helps you attain satisfaction, then cheese the hell out of it.

@DudkiSC2: Go

For the Rhik section, consider, just for the first spawned attack wave, reducing the # of units so you have a chance to lay down a turret. Currently if you don't lay a turret down within a few seconds of starting, you're probably going to lose. I think there was a predator, marine, and marauder in the first attack. Maybe just a marauder? Unless you want the player to learn by losing first. Another thing that might help is panning over the Computer Core and beacons in the cinematic beforehand so the player has an idea of the layout.

Now I'm nervous for M17...

Finally catching up to you with my playthroughs. Completed M16 over the weekend and will be playing M17 sometime this week. M16 is very long and challenging but in a good way. I'm not going to complain about any additional quality content added to this campaign. Having it split into multiple portions (micro/macro/micro/boss/macro/boss/micro) may seem overwhelming to anyone reading this who hasn't played it yet, but it works. If you can't play 2 hours straight, a good place to stop and take a break is the beginning of the 2nd macro section.

• Playing on hard and with the most recent version of the mission, I felt like the final 3 sections were a tad on the difficult side, but fair. Besides heroes dying in the initial push into the ammunition centers, I didn't have to restart that macro section at all on my first playthrough.
• The 2nd boss battle is very unique and once you get the hang of it, not super challenging. My only criticism is that you are given very little time to get used to playing with Rhik and orient yourself with the mechanics (i.e. beacon locations, what beacons do what, where enemies spawn, location of building you have to protect, etc.) before getting attacked. Once you get the hang of it though, I found it very enjoyable since you really have to think about turret/mine placement and timing as well as deciding the optimal time to max out the beacon percentage.
• The final micro section is not too bad if you use Reeve's abilities well. It'll be tough to complete the first try, since Ferring's speed is quite shocking.

@redlerred7: Go

Mission 12 is really the first map of this campaign that you've liked? You are very tough to please..

I just finished playing mission 11. Amazing job! I played on hard and took me about 2.5 hours but I am pretty sure I completed every possible objective. I did not find the 2nd lore relic though. I loved being able to take my time and explore all the possible bonus objectives as well as the beautiful terrain! I've played RPG type maps before in SC2 but the fact that this is part of a campaign and continuing story just makes it that much better! Other things I really enjoyed - the music, cinematics, boss fights, story, and just the gameplay overall.

Just 3 things I want to mention:

1. I think someone else mentioned this but the destructible rocks that aren't destructible possibly could be changed to something that does not say "attack this to destroy it". Very minor though.

2. EivindL mentioned this too, but having the allied units not take any damage was probably the biggest weakness of this map imo. For example, when the zerg are attacking the Executor's Shield (Protoss city), they were all aggregated on a single stalker. So there was 2-3 ultralisks and a number of zerglings, roaches, and hydralisks, all attacking a single stalker. This happened when I was defending the Executor's shield.

3. I agree with DeltaCamidus that this was not the hardest mission by far (your others are plenty hard enough on higher difficulties), but I really don't think this mission needs to be that hard. What is important to me is that it was super fun to play, the story fit it with the campaign and was interesting, and was just something different. I think a lot of people are going to really enjoy this.

@DudkiSC2: Go

Yeah definitely never a bad idea to back up your important work. You could use a cloud storage like google drive or dropbox as well.

So what did you end up doing to recover your map?

@DudkiSC2: Go

I really feel for you man. But if there is a way to fix it I'm sure you or someone else that knows the editor will find a way. Don't give up hope too fast! All your maps have been amazing so far!