In an interview that looks to the old WoL days and the HotS future, Greg "IdrA" Fields talks about his performance through the years, what he thinks is done wrong in the new game and where he sees himself in a few years' time.
- "Everything was new [right at the start] so there was the fun of figuring everything out and learning something new after grinding away at Brood War for years," answers IdrA when he's asked when was the game most fun for him, and continues:
- "I feel that competitively I had a better run in the fall of 2011 and that for zerg gameplay was the easiest in the last few months of Wings, but I was personally burnt out during that run and while broodlord infestor zerg is very powerful and easy it's incredibly boring. I despise long, boring games and over time SC2 has definitely moved in that direction as people figure it out more and more, I've found it less and less enjoyable to play over time."
IdrA continues to talk about the past and mentions how "the combination of winning game 7 under those conditions vs Boxer, then beating Bomber, laughing at HongUn, and almost beating MC" made MLG Orlando his fondest WoL memory; how and why going back to the US was a questionable decision; why MVP stands out as the best player in SC2; and who he thinks is the only foreigner that deserves a nod for going toe to toe with dominating Koreans.
Of course, one cannot remember the past without looking forward to the future and IdrA shares his thoughts on Heart of the Swarm: how it nevertheless inherited some of the design flaws of WoL, what can be tweaked and what cannot and how much balancing does the game actually need.
- "I think the tempest is the standout design flaw. I've said since the beginning that a relatively fragile, expensive unit with really long range is a horrible unit design. It encourages stagnant play. If you heavily out-range your opponent with a mobile damage dealing unit you are encouraged to establish a very strong defensive position and then just pick at them until they tilt and attack you. That is the proper way to play to a long range glass cannon's strengths, so if they make the tempest strong enough to be a relevant unit, that is the kind of boring terrible gameplay that every protoss should aim for. Beyond that there's plenty of little balance things that should be addressed, I think reapers are a pretty dumb unit specifically, but those will change or fluctuate in and out of the metagame. Everything else is tweak-able, but I feel the tempest is a stupid idea."
The full interview can be found on Monster Energy Gaming.
