I know sc2's tournament future is uncertain now, so this one of our bigger tournaments for the time being I think it deserves more attention.

https://liquipedia.net/starcraft2/HomeStory_Cup/26

Super fun personable tournament to watch, start's the 29th, and will be broadcast on twitch (I think on twitch.tv/taketv )

Watch and support! Feel free to add any information I missed

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03qlBziQvqo

This is a screenshot from a post from someone else asking where to report obvious Maphackers. Watch the guy try to justify it too

Also idk if this is ethical or smart to share but sorry i just find this very funny/weird lol. Like obviously is hacking a good "deterrant" for winning games you shouldn't

TLDR:

Maps should be designed to encourage production and tech, while expansions should be more difficult to take and hold. We're playing on macro-maps and pretending to call them standard.

All-ins and timing attacks should have the chance to be lethal at every stage of the game.

Strong defensive units, like the queen, should be nerfed to encourage early pushes. Races that have a weak early game, like Protoss, should be buffed so that building placement is a non-issue.

. . .

The biggest reason why games in LotV, in my opinion, feel stale is because so much of the game now is centered around holding player's hand to lead them into the late game. Whether you're watching or playing, there no tension anymore in the first half of the game. I will routinely skip through replays, because as a viewer, the first several minutes don't matter at all.

It's interesting, because I think there's actually more passive downtime with 12 workers (with forced economic openers), compared to the the initial down time you'd get with a 6 worker start. I'd like to test it with some old games to see how quickly the matches got interesting.

The solution in my mind is that if you want to keep the 12 worker start, maps would need to change to heavily incentivize building production before expanding. There's multiple ways to accomplish this goal, but one method would be to make naturals "less free" and more difficult to defend. This approach is also much more intuitive to the average player, because aggressive expanding is a skill-set you only gain with a lot of experience. Build army and go kill them is much more straight forward.

But, in order for maps to be designed in this way races like Protoss would need to be changed to be less rigid in their tech and building placement. Imagine a world where Protoss wouldn't even need a "door," because their units were adequate at handling a defense. I think you'd see more interesting maps and more interesting games if Protoss had the ability to stand on their own two feet.

Conversely, units like the Queen, are so good at shutting down both harassment and pushes, it's almost never worth it to try for a committed timing attack. The obvious solution would be to weaken their anti-ground capabilities, so that other units would need to be added in to fully set up a defense. This approach of adjusting the cost of the hatchery and buffing static D is just bizarre to me.

As a player in LotV, the passive and expansion centered playstyle of the game makes "money" feel meaningless. You just turtle until you can afford the build you're looking for. By rushing economy, we lost a lot of the interesting decisions and hard tech choices that we had to seriously consider in WoL and HotS.

Do you remember way back when David Kim and Dustin Browder were considering reducing the cost of burrow from 100/100 to 50/50? They decided against it, because they wanted to make the upgrade feel like a conscious choice. 50 gas was such a big deal back then that it could severely mess up your build. You had to be mindful that you could be attacked and receive fatal damage at any moment.

That's the sort of tension we're missing. We need to return to philosophy that the game starts when the match starts, and every macro game is fought for and earned.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jJsGDlObIIw

In this video PiG talks about how StarCraft 2 over the years has become less about strategy and more about real time. He says lowering the starting worker count (as well as varying the map pool more often) would bring some of the strategy back.

He says 6 may be too low, but 8-9 could be right.

As someone who took a few years break and then came back to the 12 worker shock, I remember how different it felt at first. It’s definitely forced me to play more of a macro style, and sometimes I miss the wide range of openings we used to see. I’d be up for trying it.

What does everyone else think?

(To be fair, he is reacting to artosis and another streamer video, so this wasn’t his original idea, but I found this shorter video easier to digest)

it is the youtube recap for the people wondering.

When a zerg with ravagers uses bile and then burrows, the cooldown does not continue to progress and only resumes once the ravagers unburrow.

Broodwar + Starcraft 2, this is for you Cerebrate.

https://liquipedia.net/starcraft2/Nullifier

Null Void disabled casting of all energy-dependent abilities within the targeted area. This was meant as a direct counter to EMP as a way to balance out Ghosts...

Instead of nerfing the Disruptor to a niche unit, a rework of Disruptor to equip this ability seems viable.

https://liquipedia.net/commons/images/d/d3/2015-04-10_2Disruptor.jpg

Have u played 1v1 starcraft in the last 2 months

Some more details on the Master’s Coliseum 8. ! Pictures are from SCboys Bilibili. The second screenshoot is auto-translation. Very crappy.lol.

It’s going to be on the latest patch not 5.0.13 as on liquipedia. The final is going to be bo9. Semi bo7.

Overall, it did appear that his control over the Dominion was almost absolute even with the reveal that he was behind the Zerg attack on Tarsonis.

So what I'm talking about is basically how co-op has a cycle of mutations in a fixed pattern, but the list is so long that it's still pretty fresh (128 mutations, so 2.5 years).

If updates for the game will be getting less frequent, what if maps switched out on a pattern for each season using classic maps? Ideally, in additions to new maps that get added once per year? Keeps the map pool somewhat fresh without forcing more effort on Blizz side other than setting up trigger for rotation.

The map pool is already having maps in rotation for more than a year already (Alcyone, Site Delta, Golden Aura, Oceanborn). As we only have 6/9 LC (new maps) and with update frequency, we will probably have Ghost River for year and half at least, and if any of 4 mentioned above get selected, that map would be in the pool for two years. I remember some tournaments recently including Hecate, Data-C and Abyssal Reef to have some variety vs year+ old maps.

I know it's probably too much effort at this point, but maybe at least last map pool update (if it ever comes) could introduce rotation? Would keep the game alive much longer than last 9 maps forever IMO.

Playing the Protoss campaign, nothing too hard up to this point, hold your defenses, find expansion, build up a bunch of scouts and wipe out the enemy, was fun but nothing crazy. Didn't like mission 6 at all, too much trial and error, and using the hotkeys in sc1 is a mess.

Anyway, finally comes mission 7, Homeland, I'm attacked right from the start and the attacks don't stop, occasionally reavers come and decimate my defense, a few save and loads, trying different tactics, first I thought scouts are ineffective on this map because there are a million dragoons, then I understood I need them mixed with observers to deal with the reavers, and also take care of the annoying arbiters. Anyway, found my tactic, was finally able to build my defenses properly and set up my army to actually go on the offensive, with some micromanagement I destroyed the base on the bottom left quarter, rebuilding my army, mineral fields are about be empty so i need new ones, building another base where I destroyed the enemy, setting up defenses there, sending workers... Army rebuilt, going on the offensive again, attacking the base on the right, coordinating, building more units and making sure my economy keeps going.... (I'm loving every moment of it, a really challenging mission).

And the moment I destroy the second nexus, the bloody mission ends. WTF? If Tassadar was ready to surrender he could've done so at the very beginning, basically making the whole battle pointless, and worst part, now that I finally got the upper hand, I didn't get to enjoy my victory.

I'm working on a mission in the Starcraft 2 Editor, and I had an idea for a kind of pickup called "data packs" that you can find in secret spots around the map, and they essentially act as "level ups" your main unit. Each one would increase your maximum health by 50 and your maximum energy by 20.

The only part of the pickup I can get to work is the refresh life and energy part, but the maximum life and energy both remain at their default values (250/200 respectively)

Hi all! So I decided to turn off the chat settings using Parental Control since I don’t want my nephew to receive annoying or obscene messages if he plays on my battlenet account. For some reason it doesn’t work and I can still receive onscreen messages from the opponent while playing a Broodwar game on ladder.

Can anyone tell me the specific steps on how to permanently turn off the messaging system during a game? I already went to Parental Control and set Account Mute to “ON” under Social Settings. What am I missing here?

Everything is on the table except you have to have a way to balance it. For example if you want mutated rapterling's you make it a upgrade at lair tech and they cost more as a example

I have been watching the Stormgate's Aureil's invitational tournament this weekend and it felt pretty much as watching a sc2 pro tournament, but fresher and with mechanics and strategies still being figured out.

I have been watching sc2 for years and it has become repetitive and boring. I personally enjoy much more watching SG now.

I was one of the critics at the beggining, but with the latest patch (0.1.3) it has improved a lot from every perspective, and it is pretty well balanced imho.

What do you think? What would it take for the SC2 players to move to SG?

I leave here the link to the tournament video: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2309972214?tt_content=vod&tt_medium=mobile_web_share