13:40 I have to respond to this anecdote here by pointing out that in the related example, the three options were the Destroyer (which was a Void Ray but without any of the stuff that made void rays cool), the Arbiter (which was a fan-favorite from Broodwar but every ability it offered was eclipsed by a top-bar ability you got instead, for free, without worrying about it dying), and the Void Ray (which, when massed, can win every single mission in the game trivially, and that's without taking into account that LotV gave them a conditional range increase that let them outrange defensive stuctures). 98% of people picked Void Ray the same reason 98% of people would pick Superman over their neighbour Doug to cover their back in a streetfight.

Finally, the man we've been waiting to hear from!!

thanks for doing these! im so hyped for this game & the way they are going about their communication with us, its really cool

It's always a pleasure to hear Monk talk about the design and development decisions made for this game.

Monk is a smart guy.

Just want to throw out there that I actually like the map with the siege camp, it’s pretty cool to think about when you can take that camp, like 2-base/3-Rax get medtechs get the catapult and move out, I really like that it adds a timing attack that might otherwise not be as strong

Great interview so far. When was this filmed?

For the "free unit" topic, would it make sense to only allow the free units if enemy units died on the creep (pre-tier 2/3)? I saw an interview with Winter and MaNa where MaNa talked about never using the pylon that spawns creep. I'm just thinking of a way to incentivize it's use more and to tune it backfor early game.

thanks for this video, well said :)

I really like how early Infest interacts with creep, I hope some aspect of that can be kept and possibly extended for other factions. If the Fiend spawn can't be stay, I'd hope Infest could at least net you more Anima for the top bar abilities, because that's also a cool part of the faction design, and it would tie those things together.

Video cuts off near the end.

I think that free units aren't bad per say, more just hard to balance (or rather, a change to free units has a much bigger effect than other changes might). Clash of clans did it decently with witches for th9 - 11 (assuming no siege machines are allowed)

22:45 To 22:54 THANK YOU. Not everyone can be MLG pro. (not to mention the cheese...its one thing to fight a cheese player but what happen when you fight for real? seen you been practice on anti-cheese stuff

❤ time value scout ❤

Pls make high ground meaningful in stormgate. Best thing about BW is their high ground mechanics.

Some feedback from a viewer: * Parts of the game are really well done. Medic and infernal drop ships seem smooth. I like the turrets that change depending on occupation. Engine seems capable. This version improves on the last in many ways. * Style is incongruent. Lancers make no sense. In combat if guns are available humans don't ever fight with swords. * Battles and units are slow and bullet sponges make them boring. I know starcraft 2 had insta-gib for the armies but this has the opposite problem. * Dislike the names luminite and thereum. Are they money? What is the setting? We don't have those on earth and if it's a different planet why does it look so green with trees? Minerals and vespene gas(as an exotic fuel) make sense. Similar issue with the unit names. Wtf is an XO or a Weaver. Demons should be cool AF not boring slow bug things. I think it's ok to call a unit marine or soldier. * Lots of theories from the team, which is good, but they should look at data and react. Alternatively, it's been nearly a decade since alphago. AI/RL should be used to tease out inbalances if possible. * No linux client so I can't actually play. * Art style is ok not great but it all needs polish, which is understandable. We want starcraft 3 not budget starcraft. Hope the team takes their time and works hard to make it actually great even if it takes much longer than initially planned. I am rooting for the team and this game even if my feedback seems harsh.

I hope the 3rd faction or maybe a future faction is an AI-powered structures and units. The main HQ is called the "Hive" shaped like a glowing ball or a pyramid that has complex lights that acts as the supercomputer. The backstory is that they were invented to stop planet invaders but it went out of control and became sentient. The supply depots are called "Servers" and primary unit builders are called "Automaton factory". Anyway, I'm just throwing ideas. All the best to the game.

make high ground great again

5 years from now monk will be saying something like, "the specific problem with the infest mechanic was that it made infernals snowball too hard."

why is there 6 minutes of black screen at the end

@43:45 black screen? 👀

once you get 6 hornets, taking out infernal towers (and then getting free harass) is so easy that im concerned Monk doesn't think they are that good against ground units/buildings

They should just make ‘infest’ an active ability for the gaunt

20% seems extremely low for skill expression. But it does lower the curve for us noobs I guess. Just kinda removes the want to do it at all unless you are in a tourney.

There’s just a lot of things I disagree with and that’s probably why I feel SG feels more like a really mid 6/10 game atm. Free units in sc2 and sg mess up the pathing and AI way too much to be good. They are either non existent like broodlings from buildings or too cost efficient. Lancer being a good example of interesting unit is just weird. Sure maybe it is to the players, but who’s finding lancer an interesting unit to watch? Compare that against a good player with zergling or stalkers,absolute night and day difference . Same thing with the brute split, issue isn’t the split mechanics, it’s just a giant cluster. As for the creep and top bar ability, will be interesting to see how it can balance out and not become a massive snowball mechanics.

I'll come back to check if there's chapters. Just get on with it.

He was specifically talking about Infest and listing what he thought the most important things about it were, which was a bit worrying for me because he didn't talk *at all* about how fiends clutter up visibility or readability by spawning constantly on the front lines. I was also confused why nobody questioned him on why you'd want to make a manual brute split give fiends shroud health rather than just making the manual detonation give you 2 fiends and automatic detonation giving you 1 or something along those lines. Seems far more intuitive to me I also think that the comment on the shadowflyer was silly. The thing wrong with shadowflyer is not how much AoE damage it deals. It has to do with how it just teleports on top of the opponent with no counter-play. Bewildering that the AoE damage would be the first thing one would mention EDIT: Something is buggy with my response to @tuhaggis so I'm just gonna copy paste it - "It would be a 50% increase to the fiend portion of the brute, but given that is only roughly half of the unit (the brute itself being the other half), it would be a 50% increase of 50% of the unit which is roughly an increase of 25% to the unit. Whether that hits the arbitrarily set percentage goal better or worse seems to me to not take priority over the intuitiveness of the gameplay, of which I think lower level players are incentivized to manually split if they know they get an extra fiend (but will not find themselves splitting for an esoteric and abstract notion of getting shroud health). The top bar abilities should never, ever be used to balance the regular attack or movement of individual units. That’s just bad game design and planning for failure down the road"

The reason why free units worked in wc3 is because heroes gain experience. If your free units died there were consequences

What is the deal of demons and space marines fighting on the forest, its goofy

monk attempts to simplify arguments with things like binary or non binary.....unit interactions often surpass even the most intelligent game developers. asymmetrical balance, to keep players interested in a new game, will require a broader and deeper understanding than a linear anecdote, like binary or non binary. scalability is a logarithmic concept, often not easily designed out, once put in. a long road of learning will still exist for Monk. is he like 25?

CANCER audio quality for real