brownbear

Now onto the new design patch. Noteworthy nomenclature there, I thought when they first announced it they called it a plain old Balance Update. I may be remembering wrong.

Design patch goals: adjust end-game units, ensure upgrades are interesting, encourage mid and late-game encounters, and reintroduce exciting compositions from the past.

For the last point: specific mentions of bringing back mutalisk play and restoring the old cyclone.

DT upgrade improvement called out as one of two Protoss highlights. Interesting, I personally focused more on other Protoss changes but I wonder if a lot of players are interested in it.

Going forward, big yearly patches aren't the goal - only want to update as warranted. Balance as needed and respect player time investment.

DeepMind developer is talking now. Discussed the community and platform they and Blizzard have built for developing StarCraft bots. Now comparing the difficulty of StarCraft for AI compared to Atari games and Go.

Talking now about the minigames they built for AI awhile back, like collecting mineral shards or building marines. Noting this was a good learning experience for the dev team.

Now showing footage of the AI playing. A year ago: built random buildings, didn't build units.

Past few months: playing against the bots built into the game (the procedural ones). DeepMind worker rushed the Insane AI and beat it. Showed how easily the procedural bots can be exploited.

Video is now showing the agent defending a cannon rush, pulling workers successfully and then sending workers back to mining.

Now showing the agent's first person perspective in a recent game. Noting that it looks like a player playing. It's also playing decently: decent macro, using chrono boost, etc.

Timeline for playing against humans: dev team wants to do more research. When the dev team has more to say they will let us know, they know how excited we are to try playing against the bot.

OK, now's the question and answer section.

Q: any more story content coming? A: devs love it, but not as replayable as, say, co-op. For now emphasizing co-op over additional missions.

Q: if I can't watch streams live, am I still able to get skins in the new Warchest? A: for now just live streams, not VODs. also you can play the game to unlock stuff, I'd guess similar to previous Warchests.

Q: tech question about DeepMind and what they will be open sourcing. A: they open sourced something last week. I didn't catch the specific library name.

Q: any plans to make co-op more difficult than Brutal or Mutations? A: co-op commanders already so powerful, hard to just add units or make units more tough. Unlikely to add a Brutal+.

Q: any plans to deal with trolls in co-op? A: if we take the ability to attack an ally's units away, community will find new creative ways to troll. Will continue looking into it.

Q: some question about the models in the demo. A: demo is outdated but developer will double check.

Q: ultra-widescreen support? A: would like to hear more from the community. Some competitive considerations (more screen real estate).

Q: question about new co-op commanders. A: running through major lore characters. No end in sight for creating commanders. Selendis is a popular suggestion. Tosh too. Can add characters too.