The most successful non-Korean player, Stephano, retired last year at 20. At the Red Bull Battlegrounds tournament in New York, I met a player, Golden, who was retiring at the ripe old age of 19. I used to wonder if this was mostly a by-product of the games relative newness-though it's the elder statesman of esports, Starcraft only came out 16 years ago.īut Starcraft 2 has continued to be, with apologies to a growing minority of female players, a young man's game.
There aren't too many old Starcraft 2 players in the professional circuit-and by old, I mean past their early-20s. They make better use of hotkeys-short cuts for commanding armies-thanks to a familiarity with the game's interface. They use less evolved and complex units, which demand more complex commands to target opponents. Older players have the advantage of experience, which the study suggests helps them hold their own. Turns out those latencies start getting longer as players get older, and can really start to add up.Ī typical Bronze player at the age of 39, equal in all other respects to a 24 year-old adversary, can be expected to be around 150 milliseconds slower in their typical looking-doing latencies, costing about 30 seconds over a typical 15 minute Bronze game containing 200 looking-doing cycles. The team examined “looking-doing latencies”-the lag between when players move their view-screen and when they interact with what they find. The chilling results, published in PLOS One, reveal that cognitive decline begins at just 24 years old. And, perhaps most advantageous for research, every game is recorded.īy examining games played by American, Canadian, German and British players, the researchers were able to track just when the body's cognitive-motor decline begins and you start to lag.
It's a game that's based on strategy and speed-to get all RTS-nerdy on you for a minute, it's not easy on your brain to keep your macro and micro game in perfect harmony. It's a rich, demanding, and “ecologically valid domain” that players are willing to lose themselves in for many hours per week. What do you guys think about these new units? Which one is your favorite? What about you least favorite? Let us know what you think by leaving a comment below.Starcraft 2 is a pretty ideal way to perform a study on cognitive-motor skills outside of the lab. Hopefully there will be a public beta released sometime soon so we can get some hands on time and see how major these changes are.
It will be interesting to see how the pro scene and the metagame shift with the changes Blizzard has made. Lastly Ghosts Cloaking has changed, it now spends a specific amount of energy and lasting for a certain period of time as oppose to the on/off system in place now. Reapers have lost their D8 charge attack but gain a new HP recovery skill.
Also you can only have one Thor at a time. Thors are now 600 minerals, require a Fusion Core, no longer hit air but have the ground area of effect attack from the single-player. Terran is also getting some pretty major changes.
Apparently Blizzard has also increased the Hydralisk move speed, Banlings can more while Burrowed (potentially an upgrade like Roach Burrow Movement), and Ultralisks now have a Burrow Charge ability.
Other important changes include new Nexus abilities Arc-shild which grants an “anti-light weapon” to and structure and Mass Recall which was formerly a Mothership spell. For Protoss, both the Carrier and the Mothership have been taken out of the game, while Zerg is losing the Overseer. On top of these new units, Blizzard has also removed several units from the game (at least in the current build of HotS). Now that Blizzcon has officially kicked off, its time to finally see what’s being added to the Terran, Protoss and Zerg arsenals.Īs you can see from the images above it looks like there’s going to be some real game changers. In the weeks leading up to Blizzcon, Blizzard Entertainment teased StarCraft II fans by releasing silhouettes of the new units that will be added in the first expansion Heart of the Swarm. StarCraft 2 Heart of the Swarm Units Revealed BY Andrew Miesner / October 21, 2011