Rob Zacny

Episode 331: Starcraft 2: Legacy of the Void

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Three Moves Ahead 331:

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Starcraft 2: Legacy of the Void
Rob, Sean Sands, and Kotaku's Jason Schreier take a comprehensive look at Starcraft 2: Legacy of the Void. The campaign is coming to an end as long-remembered friends from the original game are back to complete the story of Starcraft. The crew discusses the current state of multiplayer, Archon mode, and how to have the most fun in the game.

Starcraft 2, Legacy of the Void

Jason Schreier's review at Kotaku

Jason's Kotaku Podcast: Splitscreen

Rob's LotV Review

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I was luke warm about Legacy of the Void but I'm warming up to it after this show. I especially like the sound of the co-op stuff... but as a near-complete online loner (and with bugger all gaming time available) I doubt I will ever actually play that mode.

 

One thing that interests me is that Legacy of the Void sold 1 million copies in a day. This surprised me - with the Starcraft 2 doom and gloom I just didnt expect such a large number. Not that I'm really paying that much attention though.

 

Also, with the number of games on the go at any point (for any Starcraft 2 version) being in the tens of thousands I just feel that a lot more people want single player rather than multiplayer. At least for Starcraft. Restores a bit of hope for me for story driven campaigns in general..

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Two things.

 

Thing 1: I really like your show. Strategy games don't get a lot of time on my PC but I still find your show fascinating as a deep dive into one aspect of gaming culture and it is almost always interesting even if I don't have a clue what game you're talking about. Keep it up!

Thing 2: What streams, videos, or tutorials would you recommend I watch as a good introduction into the SCII scene? I have zero grasp of things like hotkeying production and the difference VS Micro and Macro. I bought Wings of Liberty when it came out because I played the original back in the eighth grade and wanted to get on board with 2. I finished the campaign then gave up on it quickly once I realized I couldn't hack it online.

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I think Rob overstated how easy it is to follow a SC match for someone that doesn't play the game. I started watching pro matches recently (thanks E-Sports Today!), and while I can understand things like, "oh this player is attacking those worker units and not being contested, he is winning", or "that large army blew up that other large army" trying to understand the nuances of the engagements is actually just as incomprehensible as League or DOTA matches for someone unfamiliar with the game. In other words, sure the big picture details are easy enough to parse out, but there's a lot of interesting stuff underneath that that I'm not really grasping. And I think that's just inevitable. One of the most complex sports I can think of is American football, and I think most competitive multiplayer games are a good deal more complex than that so this idea of the game that non-players can watch and enjoy is still probably elusive for now. Rocket League could have been the solution, but I haven't heard about anything happening really since the game first launched and MLG had that $500 tournament.

 

Anyway... co-op mode sounds really cool! I had only heard about archon mode which didn't really interest me, but the co-op mode definitely sounds like it could be the right kind of game mode for me so I should probably pick up LotV before I get too distracted by all the amazing games that are coming out in 2016.

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Yeah, I hear that. As a Canadian who didn't grow up with football, American or Canadian (the distinction is another conversation entirely), putting an NFL game on is like watching something from another planet. It seems boring and slow but I understand that there is an incredible amount of strategy and depth behind that. I think to watch an E sport you need a certain amount of buy-in of the aesthetic, if not the fiction, of the game. 

 

 

I think Rob overstated how easy it is to follow a SC match for someone that doesn't play the game. I started watching pro matches recently (thanks E-Sports Today!), and while I can understand things like, "oh this player is attacking those worker units and not being contested, he is winning",... One of the most complex sports I can think of is American football, and I think most competitive multiplayer games are a good deal more complex than that so this idea of the game that non-players can watch and enjoy is still probably elusive for now. 

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I finished the campaign the first week and loved every bit of it. Now, replaying all three chapters, from the start on harder difficulty.

The over-the-top Protoss monologues between the missions reminded me of Shiny Entertainments

, for some odd (sentimental? nostalgic? voice-acting?) reason. It sounds also like the Greek or Roman Gods, quarreling amongst each other over the fate of mortal humans.

What Blizzard managed with their campaigns is to swing my attitude towards their factions. I never liked playing the Zerg, but then "Heart of the Swarm" came out and Blizzard made me play the Zerg, introduced me to their "one new unit, one new trick" campaign mission structure, making me understand the unit ... and making me fall in love with them.

The same happened now, with the Protoss. I used to not care about "PvP" matches (in Starcraft slang: "Protoss vs. Protoss"). I thought of them as utterly boring. But, again, with the way they set these units up, giving everyone a story/lore element, I once again, fell in love with these Starcraft units. I started to understand the unit abilities and (meta) gameplay better.

How the different play styles of each faction is a reflection of the underlying lore and even art-style is a testament to the series. Blizzard knows how to 'package' their game for their audiences. 

I watched this years BlizzCon and found it quite ridiculous,
But, playing the campaign, alone at home, I found myself suddenly cheering in the same way (although not out loud. Not THAT crazy).

 

Another great aspect of Starcraft 2 has to deal with Blizzard's commitment to introducing new players to the game. If you click on Multiplayer you will find the Training section, which step-by-step teaches you how to become a better player, for each faction. It holds you by the hand. It tells you what to build next. It detects when you build a new building earlier than recommended. It allows you to get in the groove, to establish a flow of (early) game management. It is as if you are

. You get to understand the pace of the game. It makes you feel prepared before jumping to random multiplayer matches. And there are also so called 'Challenges' in the Campaign section to further improve your righteous clicking.

As for watching Pro-Starcraft. It takes not too much time to understand the basics? If you watch the World Championship Series, you can get the gist of it in a few hours, thanks to the professional commentary. As for understanding the nuances and complexity of the game .... this can take a lifetime! I am watching American Football for four decades now, and with each game and each season, I am learning a new thing or two! (Ok, with almost each game).

I find Starcraft eSports very 'watchable' and more often than not
! I also watch Dota 2 games, while never ever having played a multiplayer match of Dota 2 and can - after 10 hours of watching - follow the game and understand the metagame concept in Dota 2. I have now watched 100 hours of Dota 2 and would still not be able to understand which player is going for which build to counter a mid-game strategy of the other team, or how many hit-points which spell is taking to be effective against the opponents combo (like commentator Synderen does), etc, etc, but with the professional commentary offered in pro-leagues and at big events, I can
as a viewer. The game loses me when the fights break out. It is too fast for me to follow, but the Dota 2 client allows to rewatch replays in slow motion and one can study the game.

Sadly, though Starcraft 2 also has the 'Replay' functionality, their game client does not provide the same depth you can find in Dota 2. I keep wondering, if the popularity of Starcraft 2 would be higher, if Blizzard would have managed to build the same level of in-game functionality (easy replay downloads, real time live in-game viewing, etc). But, compared to Dota 2, Starcraft is a much 'easier' game when it comes to complexity.

Overall, it will be interesting to see the longevity of Starcraft 2 after this 'last' installment. It is also ironic, while Starcraft 'invented' Lords Management, to see this game fall to it's own blade, it's own creation.

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Two things.

 

Thing 1: I really like your show. Strategy games don't get a lot of time on my PC but I still find your show fascinating as a deep dive into one aspect of gaming culture and it is almost always interesting even if I don't have a clue what game you're talking about. Keep it up!

Thing 2: What streams, videos, or tutorials would you recommend I watch as a good introduction into the SCII scene? I have zero grasp of things like hotkeying production and the difference VS Micro and Macro. I bought Wings of Liberty when it came out because I played the original back in the eighth grade and wanted to get on board with 2. I finished the campaign then gave up on it quickly once I realized I couldn't hack it online.

 

Watching high-level tournaments are always good both because you can see what "ideal" play looks like, and they also have the best commentators who really know how to break it down for both new viewers and veterans. The premier tournaments are the GSL and SSL for Korean individual leagues, WCS (World Championship Series) which is Blizzard's official tournament for players living outside of Korea. There is also Proleague, which is a team-based format based in Korea.

 

As far as tutorials go, I haven't really seen much LotV-specific content, but Day9 and Apollo had really good tutorial videos. I'm sure they're still quite relevant, but you just need to be mindful of the economy changes and the in-game timer change (in-game timer now reflects real time rather than being 1.4x faster than real time) between HotS and LotV. Apollo's youtube channel is here: https://www.youtube.com/user/dignitasApollo 

 

Day9 did stuff for years and years and I'm not 100% sure exactly which videos are better for new players, though he did have a "newbie tuesday" series that was specifically aimed at new players.

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I think Rob overstated how easy it is to follow a SC match for someone that doesn't play the game. I started watching pro matches recently (thanks E-Sports Today!), and while I can understand things like, "oh this player is attacking those worker units and not being contested, he is winning", or "that large army blew up that other large army" trying to understand the nuances of the engagements is actually just as incomprehensible as League or DOTA matches for someone unfamiliar with the game. In other words, sure the big picture details are easy enough to parse out, but there's a lot of interesting stuff underneath that that I'm not really grasping. 

 

Why did Terran win over this Zerg? He had bigger guys and bigger army. And he did something smart like striking artillery from afar. Why did he have a bigger army? Because he exploted more resources on a map more quickly.

 

Why that strange character killed this strange character? Well you see, the first one has stuns and high DPS shortburst when he's at full mana and all his cooldowns are down. Second guy had effective escape skill but it was on cooldown. He didn't have enough magic defense to survive through the first guy's ultimate ability. Why didn't he have it? Because he was on a line with effective denier and besides he thought that the most dangerous guy on enemy team will be the one with physical attack so he didn't have resources to spare for magic defense.

 

Come on, Lords Managements are ten times harder to comprehend and less spectacular.

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Why did Terran win over this Zerg? He had bigger guys and bigger army. And he did something smart like striking artillery from afar. Why did he have a bigger army? Because he exploted more resources on a map more quickly.

 

Why that strange character killed this strange character? Well you see, the first one has stuns and high DPS shortburst when he's at full mana and all his cooldowns are down. Second guy had effective escape skill but it was on cooldown. He didn't have enough magic defense to survive through the first guy's ultimate ability. Why didn't he have it? Because he was on a line with effective denier and besides he thought that the most dangerous guy on enemy team will be the one with physical attack so he didn't have resources to spare for magic defense.

 

Come on, Lords Managements are ten times harder to comprehend and less spectacular.

If you aren't knowledgeable about Starcraft it won't be interesting. Without knowing more your sentence literally describes any and all games of Starcraft which just sounds boring. Wow the player with the bigger army won again. Oh he's snowballing from getting more bases which he got because he had more army. Ok, in comparison DOTA and co are just a mish mash of stuff happening in comparison.

 

If you aren't very deep into SC2 but know the units the games will still start to repeat themselves since you can't see all the finnesse. Meanwhile DOTA has drafting where you can see a team's general plan for a game or be told of it by the commentators.

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I found this article quite helpful when I suddenly decided to start watching Starcraft.

http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=19923

(It is for complete newbies. But it was where I first understood the whole attack/armour upgrade lingo :)

 

Until today I had never played Starcraft, but after listening to this episode (and having watched professional Starcraft for over a year now) I decided to try out the SC2 demo. The thing I liked the most was that there was a left-handed preset. It's incredible how many RTSes don't even have rebindable keys. (and there's always too many keys to rebind) If only more games had a leftie preset. Maybe I'd even like playing them.

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I've played SCII extremely casually and recently I started wanting to watch it (thanks to Esports Today). Anyway I've found watching streams of review or education minded streamers (like Polt or Winter) works well enough to understand what's going on; both players frequently talk about what they're doing or what went wrong, Winter especially holds nights where he goes out of his way to educate new players. 

Anyway after watching them play I managed to follow this week's Dreamhack Tournament without any troubles. The casters for that tournament were really helpful in explaining what was going on as well.

 

So yeah picking it up can be relatively easy so long as you know most of the units and understand why players need to expand. 

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Until today I had never played Starcraft, but after listening to this episode (and having watched professional Starcraft for over a year now) I decided to try out the SC2 demo. The thing I liked the most was that there was a left-handed preset. It's incredible how many RTSes don't even have rebindable keys. (and there's always too many keys to rebind) If only more games had a leftie preset. Maybe I'd even like playing them.

 

Yes, and there is also grid layout support for Dvorak users! I focus on the keyboard when I beta-test games and got that feature request directly added by a Blizzard employee. :)

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