Workers Auto Start in HotS!

Yay, my computer is fixed and I finally had a chance to sit down and play -- to really play the new Heart of the Swarm Beta. For whatever reason, my new PC is immune to the “Client version not recognized” bug that plagued my old PC.

Now, I’ve been out of practice, so one of the first things I noticed was the addition of a simple check box: Play as Ranked.

This checkbox is quite dear to me, as I’ve previously posted on Blizzard’s forums asking for the free game feature. After hearing some bullshit answers from them, saying how maybe it would be a feature to be released in HotS, I eventually pointed out that it was trivial to program. I said, it’s only a checkbox.

Now, said checkbox has arrived. However, I am once again reminded that Blizzard has almost certainly intentionally left out a feature that would normally be kept in the game, for the sole purpose of leaving it for the second purpose of the same game. What cool features are they leaving behind for third time they make us buy StarCraft? Only time will tell.

Remember that I play as random, and my worst race is definitely Terran. So imagine how I felt when my first game wound up being a TvT. The second game I played was a RvR, which almost wound up being a TvT. My third game? A TvT. This left me wondering if there might not be some kind of a bug in the software. I mean, I enjoyed practicing my Terran play, and I definitely got to get a feel for how the new widow mine works. But enough is enough. However, I shaln't complain. Never complain about random numbers. Or, the nerd in me wants to be technically correct and say pseudo-random numbers.

One thing about the widow mine that I hadn’t noticed before -- it only attacks ground units. I had placed one by each of my opponent’s probably expos and was a bit disappointed to see that he managed to get his expo up anyway. I had my mine positioned in such a location where I was sure it could attack the command center being constructed. It simply didn’t, because it only attacks ground units. How that SCV managed to construct the thing without dying, I’ll never know. Maybe it was luck, or maybe the mines don’t target building SCVs, I’d have to watch the replay to be sure.

The other thing that really freaks me out is how the SCVs now automatically start mining. The game also starts with your rally point set to the minerals. While this makes sense on so many levels, it takes a bit of getting used to. Nearly every game I play starts with a loooooong load time. And after that, a bit of lag just at the start of the game. Just enough to make me wonder wtf is going on when I see all of my workers going for the minerals by themselves.

I would be curious to learn why Blizzard decided to start the game with the workers already mining. After so many years of us having to tell the works to do that. Did they decide that they wanted to eliminate the mindless repetition aspect of the game?

A factor that comes into play here is, what I might call for lack of a better phrase, The pro split. I always just tell the workers to head straight for the closest mineral patch. But pros always send three workers to one side, and three to the others. They might even take the time to set two workers to sync on the closest mineral patch. A technique I’ve heard called cloning. And while the pros seem to be able to do this without a problem, I never have. If you mess up, you’re way behind, and if you do it perfectly, what do you gain? I’m sure a pro would know exactly how much they gain, but I’m also sure that it’s a very small amount, in the 5 to 15 mineral range.

Still I applaud the decision for an unpopular reason. Etiquette. Without the ritual of sending your workers to the mineral line at the start of every game, our fingers are now freed up to type a proper greeting to our opponents. And I’ve always found that StarCraft players are among the most rude on the entire internet.

So if one day, you happen to have a HotS game against Maulakai and you see me type “May the best man win.” Be a doll, and cast your APM to the wind by typing back something. Preferably less BM.