StarCraft II: The Future of StarCraft — Panel Recap
Despite the coming release of Legacy of the Void, the development team will continue to produce content for Starcraft 2
Micro-Content
- Unit skins
- Unit skins will be expanded
- It will allow to choose the appearance of individual units in multiplayer
- The Collector’s Edition skins can be taken as an example for this
- Voice Packs
- This will allow you to change the announcer’s voice in multiplayer
- Example: As a zerg player you can have Abathur instead of the regular Zerg Queen Voice
Starcraft 2 Arcade
- More features for the editor will be added in the future
- To promote the modding community, they plan to do more contests in the future
- The are working on making the first paid content aviable on the arcade made by modders
- These paid mods will be strongly curated and added on a case by case scenario
Mission Packs
- Nova Covert Ops
- 9 mission story arc over 3 mission packs
- First mission pack to come out Spring 2016
- This story focuses on Nova, and similar to Kerrigan, she will be playable in the missions
- Nova’s forces have a Black Ops look and will have access to special tech
- For example, her marines might have a Stimpack that will heal instead of hurting the marines
- Nova will have access to various loadouts like different weapons, goggles, etc.
- This mission pack is set after LotV
- The terran dominion at this point consists of a war-torn people
- The terrans are ready for peace, but there is a conflict of interests with different parts of the population
- Emperor Valerian is a more fair ruler than his father, and gives his people more freedoms, like the freedom of press
- His enemies use these freedoms to attack and question his weaknesses
- Valerian fears that his enemies form alliances
- One faction resulting from that are the “Defenders of Man”
- Interested in protecting people from alien threats
- Because of the events of Heart of the Swarm and Legacy of the Void, they are gaining ground
- Nova will investigate what the Defenders of Man are really planning
Multiplayer
- Ladder Revamp
- Meaningful Ranks
- Accuracy
- Transparency
- Tournaments
- Archon Tournaments
- 2V2 Tournaments
- Separate MMR
- Per Race
- Ranked/Unranked
- Blizzard will continue to make big changes as necessary to react quicker to imbalances
- They’d go as far as adding or removing units from the roster
- Intention to also change the meta by this from time to time to keep things fresh
Coop Missions
- Coop missions will be continued supported
- More missions will be added over time
- One mission that they are working on right now involves a capturing points mechanic
- More commanders will be added
- One example, the next Protoss Commander to be added will be Phase-Smith Karax
- Karax focuses on Spear of Adun Call Down abilities and so he is able to use them more frequently
- Solar Lance
- allows to paint a line to deal damage
- Map-Wide Chrono Boost
- affects whole map, as well as allies
- Purifier Beam
- shots a controlable beam at the ground, dealing a big amount of damage
Handclaw
Helping Hand for Blizzplanet