Starcraft II launches July 27 • Hacker News Board

Re: Starcraft II launches July 27

#71

Post by Psyonic » Tue, May 04, 2010, 10:59 PM UTC

icegreentea wrote: post #69

enterneo wrote: post #40

I have always been AOE follower, I have been observing the hype over Starcraft lately and wondering how is Starcraft different from AOE? (its like is it something huge I am missing)

Totally different style of play. It's very similar to the difference between Halo and UT2k4. Not only do the econs function differently, I always felt that SC was more micro intensive, or at least when it actually comes to combat. SC also used more soft counters compared to AOE with more hard counters. What I mean by that is that in AOE (from what I remember, its been years), counters are more or less put down in sto…

Welcome to SC2, where hard counters make an appearance. Rather than only having damage cuts, like SC1, they now have bonus damage, which can make an ENORMOUS difference. If you're zerg and rolling out a bunch of roaches, you'd better make sure he's not building immortals, or you're in for some pain.

Re: Starcraft II launches July 27

#72

Post by Psyonic » Tue, May 04, 2010, 11:00 PM UTC

slyn wrote: post #67

Psyonic wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That trend may or may not be happening, but Blizzard has always released their games on Mac, so I wouldn't use this for evidence one way or the other.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_(content_delivery)#Mac_OS... "With its release, Valve will include native Mac OS X, OpenGL versions of Left 4 Dead, Left 4 Dead 2, Team Fortress 2, Counter-Strike: Source, Portal, and the entire Half-Life series. Portal 2, due by the end of 2010, will be simultaneously released on both the Windows and Mac versions of Steam." May 12th! Between steam for OS X, SC2, and eventually WoW:…

That is a pretty awesome development. Hopefully other steam developers will jump on board.

Re: Starcraft II launches July 27

#73

Post by light3 » Wed, May 05, 2010, 3:25 AM UTC

hristov wrote: post #12

I think one of the reasons I switched to Linux is to prevent myself from playing this game when it comes out. We'll see if it works. Boy did I waste enough time on battlenet.

It might run under wine, I know warcraft 3 did :P

Re: Starcraft II launches July 27

#74

Post by bittersweet » Wed, May 05, 2010, 10:32 AM UTC

The Mac beta is finally available for users in Europe, I'm currently downloading the 3 GB file, I'm assuming the latest patches are already included because the filesize is significantly larger then on Windows.

Re: Starcraft II launches July 27

#75

Post by cynicalkane » Wed, May 05, 2010, 7:54 PM UTC

mattmaroon wrote: post #53

cynicalkane wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Citation needed. I read that they changed premade ELO adjustments to be negligible for bad players and high for good players. This was like a year ago or around that.

Well, my citation is an email sent to me by Tom "Zileas" Cadwell. I've talked to the Riot guys quite a bit, they actually play our Facebook game. I even got to check my elo :) He didn't get into too great detail though so it's possible I misunderstood and it actually is a sliding scale, though I've seen no evidence of that (and quite a bit of the opposite).

Zileas is a pretty smart dude, and they've been working on this for a while. I can't find the post I was talking about, but this one hints at the adjustments: https://www.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?t=12029

"This bonus is calculated from a bunch of research we did on hundreds of thousands of game results to figure out how much of an advantage being in a team is. We do some behind the scenes adjustments as well for stuff like beginners paired with pros, etc."

Some opaque, out of context statistical data: http://www.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?t=16705

Personally, the matchmaking seems to me to get better and better the more players pick up the game. I still see unbalanced games, but I can't remember the last legitimate curb stomp, where one team was simply outclassed...