By using this site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. Close
Wyrdness on 07 November 2018
Edit Thread
Marth said:

HotS may started out high but it was also the version that lost the most amount of players.
LotV turned things around and now has a consistant playerbase and growing amount of games games in the 1v1 ladder and that is despite the existance of Coop where most casual players go nowadays.

There were different plattforms only for WoL. own3d.tv died pretty fast. Hitbox.tv achived nothing. MLG dropped their own streaming plattform in SC2 also pretty soon. By the time HotS came around it was all centered on Twitch. LotV now gets a bit of YouTube/Afreeca.tv streams which HotS never had.

Please highlight them. Technically HotS was the most balanced a StarCraft title ever was but it was also goddamn boring/stale to play. LotV fixed a lot of that even if the balance took a small hit.

HOTS lost players because they were going down the route that lead to LOTV fact is LOTV had to go F2P to regain some players, LOTV is consistent but far lower than what HOTS and WOL had. HOTS was streamed on AFreeca for the longest time, Twitch only started becoming the main platform in the later part of the game's life. HOTS was only boring to people who had no fundamental understanding of how RTS games play out balance didn't take a small hit in LOTV it took a massive one, one of the reason HOTS games were long was because of how inept the balance team were with adding units like the Tempest and SH while turning the Raven into a cancerous broken unit, these were units you could attack into when massed so late game became a siege fest. In LOTV the balance team stupidly listened to some of the players and broke the game the only good thing that they added in LOTV was the Lurker.

For a start the 12 worker start skewered the balance as it gave full mineral saturation at the start when the concept of SC2 was designed around that, this lead to builds that never were meant to be viable DeMuslim said it best in a TL balance discussion with players like Special, Neuro, Supernova and the returning MC sharing similar views on their streams about the state of the game in that the early game decisions aren't as strategic because everyone can take a gas and expand regardless of what their opener is it removes the impact scouting has and also reduces the ability to punish players based on the fundamental RTS triangle of aggro, econ and defence.

Then we have the balance team's handling of units and oh boy was a disaster this has been through out LOTV, from 8 armour ultras to burrowed fungal to Liberation no mans land to the Mass Ravens to Carriers releasing interceptors this has been a constant circus of what madness comes next. We already have the economy skewering the balance but we had 2 further busted units add in the Liberator and Disruptor (more units that cause siege situations), it speaks volumes when almost every change they've added to LOTV has had to be reverted with the upcoming changes trying to make the game more like HOTS again. Free units like auto turrets and locust should also not be in the game allowing a player to have a free army when energy builds up and trade with units that actually cost resources at the least the Carrier for all the controversy surrounding it has to use up minerals for interceptors, free units allow players to stay games no matter the damage they're taking going against the tide of how a game is playing out.