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Pro Gamer Jared “PiG” Krensel on StarCraft 2: Legacy of the Void

With StarCraft 2: Legacy of the Void just around the corner, we caught up to play with two of Australia’s best StarCraft 2 pros: Jared ‘PiG’ Krensel and Ethan ‘iaguz’ Zugai. Obviously going up against either of these guys alone would be a terrible mistake, but in this instance we had the opportunity to play Legacy of the Void’s new Archon mode. This new mode allows for two players to team up and control the same base, and go after another paired up team. With Archon mode being introduced it allows the game to reach new heights in the competitive multiplayer scene allowing for 2 professional players to combine their skills to display some crazy strategies. But on the other side of the spectrum it also gives new players the ability to learn the game by connecting them with a friend who might be more familiar with what’s going on.

Even with the combined efforts of my other team member we were unsuccessful in taking down iaguz but had a lot of fun trying to have a crack at it. After our game I then sat down with PiG to talk about StarCraft 2: Legacy of the Void and what he’s looking forward to with this latest addition to the series.

Luke Lawrie, Stevivor: From your perspective what do you think is going to be the big focus players are going to look at with this new expansion?

Jared ‘PiG’ Krensel: I think the big changes when it comes to Legacy of the Void will be the scope of the changes in general. If you look at StarCraft 2: Wings of Liberty when it first came out, to Heart of the Swarm, as a pro player for the way you play the game it’s a huge difference. There are enough new units to change things up a lot when you look at Legacy of the Void. You can tell that Blizzard are putting a really big focus on it, you can feel that in the StarCraft 2 community. One which is troubled online community; especially where you’ve got your hardcore gamers – there’s a lot of cynical people. There’s been a lot of negativity in the past but in the last 6 to 8 months there’s been a big turnaround because Blizzard has done a lot of engaging events with the community.

So that’s one of the things that Blizzard is doing, but the big thing with the actual game though is they’ve redesigned the user interface which has always been something that people have had some issues with. They are redoing the Arcade, obviously the custom games in WarCraft 3 and Brood War back in the day were big, and that’s what spawned DotA which lead onto all these MOBA’s. Everyone kind of likes to think about why it hasn’t been as popular in StarCraft 2, I think that reasonably it’s been because the landscape of gaming has changed but it’s now been made more accessible so that map makers can have a bit more incentive.

The user interface is a big change; they are doing a lot more features to make it a bit friendlier for casual players. You’ve Archon mode and you’ve got your Co-op campaigns which will be a bit more social. Generally there’s been a lot of things making it more accessible, which steadily throughout the last few years they’ve added things like where you could get your friend to play for free. In terms of multiplayer the entire economy has changed. Some of the games which were not quite as exciting previously where you would have both players kind of defend for long periods of the game – there wouldn’t be as much action, that’s been made so that people have to be taking more bases. In competitive StarCraft that is an exciting point, when both players need to take more and more bases, and they are clashing on the map with skirmishes. You start to see, even as a casual player who is expanding more and who is getting the edge out. All those features are something which are trying to make it more fast paced and exciting at every moment, even if you not in tune with the fine details.

StarCraft II Legacy of the Void Logo_RS

Stevivor: We just played a match in the Archon mode today. How do you see that fitting into the landscape of the game? Is that something you see the professional players taking up?

Jared ‘PiG’ Krensel:It’s interesting because Red Bull have already been picking up and even now during the beta been doing a whole series of tournaments leading into a big finals later in the year which is just for the Archn mode. It’s kind of crazy because the game is in beta and things are just being tested out, but they are just running with it. What’s exciting is you get to see a lot of potential which is impossible right now to see in a game of StarCraft, because normally you have your macro – on one side you’ve got to be building your units, and then you’ve got your micro – actually getting the most out of your units. Because the game so fast paced it’s impossible to ever do anything close to perfectly so there’s a lot of areas where players don’t try to get the most out of a unit, it ends up being diminishing returns because you’re looking away at everything else. When you look at Archon mode though you start to see that not only can you have a player that is focusing on building units back home and really building the tech and scouting the right way, but the other guy at the same time is getting the most out of harassing other units. I don’t know if it’s an ultimate form of competition, I see it more like doubles in tennis. It’s more fun, there’s more action, and it’s faster paced. It’s something that also makes it a lot easier to introduce people into the game. It’s got potential to make it a lot more accessible and generally it’s a fun and cool way of mixing up the multiplayer.

Stevivor: There are some changes to the micro and macro management in the game that have been pushed through to Legacy of the Void, what’s the response been like from the professional players?

Jared ‘PiG’ Krensel:There’s actually been a really big debate around this and it’s weird because it hasn’t really been decided yet. Basically the macro mechanics which super power your economy,  you need to go back and manage them. The thing is they require a lot more attention on some of the races than others. It’s something that is very tricky to balance. If you just remove them all – which is something they tried, and obviously the beta is all about testing things, so it was crazy. Zerg for instance, they have to put so much attention into managing all of that kind of stuff, and suddenly you take it away and Zerg players were like, “Oh my, I can put all my attention on controlling my units, it’s so easy to do my macro at home.” Normally you would only see the best players in the world like Life – who was the BlizzCon champion last year. He is so amazing to watch because somehow while macroing he would find the time to be running squads of zerglings in, and slip in behind to cut away at their economy. But suddenly you would have a lot of the lower level players who were able to do that with the macro change. That actually got reverted and now they’ve just toned back the macro mechanics a little bit. I think there is still roughly the same focus if you’re the best player in the world then it doesn’t change much, but they’ve made them much more forgiving.

Previously if you missed lava injects with your queens, you would stack up energy and there would be no way to make up for that. Now you can queue them up afterwards. There are a few things like that which basically make everything a lot more forgiving for the casual players without really affecting players in the top tier much. Generally I think it’s a good balance. At first everyone was losing their minds because it was such a fundamental part of StarCraft, but now everyone has seen that it was pretty much just a change to help out the lower level players – and that’s never a bad thing.

archonmode

Stevivor: Looking at the past StarCraft 2 games and the professional scene in Australia, there have been some notable names in there but it seemed like there were a couple of players at the top that stuck around quite a bit like for instance yourself and mOOnGLaDe. How do you see the scene in Australia and how it has evolved over the years, do you see it progressing much further and bringing in new players or will it be the same bunch still currently playing?

Jared ‘PiG’ Krensel:It’s really tricky because I think that the local scene is smaller than it was when StarCraft 2 was the biggest eSport when Esports went into this slump where no one really cared for a few years. StarCraft 2 came out and it was huge, now its games like League of Legends, and CounterStirke: GO. In Australia Dota 2 isn’t really a thing competitively even though it’s massive overseas. StarCraft 2 still has regular competitions and regular events, just not as many. Luckily we have a really good online competition scene so there are still a lot of things for people to play in. But realistically I think the only scene that has brought in a lot of fresh blood throughout the game is in Korea. Even there it’s not necessarily fresh blood, that’s because they have team houses, big sponsors, salaries, it’s on TV, and it’s all in one city. You’ve got it all setup perfectly around Soule. Whereas overseas in America and Europe you don’t have as much fresh blood getting in because it takes years and years in a game as complex as StarCraft 2 to build up the experience. I think a lot of players don’t get the opportunity to commit that, players get invested in it and love playing the game, they get good but the gap from good to being able to compete on the highest non-Korean level, and then another level to the highest Korean level is actually years of experience.

So it’s very hard, which is why it’s really impressive whenever a new player breaks out, it shows that there is potential for it because there are a lot of players still practicing very hard in Australia but it’s not like we expect a new player to pop up and start battling the top guys suddenly. I think historically if we look at it originally the best guys were all Brood War or WarCraft 3 players. mOOnGLaDe, I was one of the new players who came in a little bit later, iaguz used to play a lot of strategy games which is how he got his start. It takes a special kind of dedication but also on the individual to actually put in the hours, it’s not something you can really foresee. The scene has actually supported itself a lot better that America because they have had these huge ups and downs, but we’ve got a really stable online community that runs a lot of tournaments, we have our WCS qualifiers which is supported by Blizzard and ACL, and we also have the ACL circuit around Melbourne, Brisbane and Sydney usually each year. It’s been stable, and with Legacy of the Void I think there will be a few more tournaments but I’m not sure if it will be a huge peak for several years, or if it will be 6 months after release.

Stevivor: For yourself what’s the thing you are most looking forward to in Legacy of the Void?

Jared ‘PiG’ Krensel:Generally I just like that there will be a new game because you get to learn a lot of things from scratch which is pretty exciting. I like the idea of everything being kind of reset, and as a pro gamer you get stuck in perfecting the same thing over and over again. It’s a boxer learning how to throw a punch; it’s the exact same thing here. The thing with StarCraft 2 that makes it interesting as a competitive outlet is that there are always so many different choices you can make in the strategies and so on. Even when a game is figured out there’s always something new that you can do to undermine your opponent, even if they are mechanically faster than you. When a game resets that’s just 10 times what you can do, so I think it just gives a lot of opportunities for smart players, the players who are willing to study the game and actually try and learn it who try to set themselves apart. For me it’s just exciting to see all the new strategies evolve at a crazily fast rate and just to see the entire scene in this state of tumult where no one really knows what the best way to play is.

StarCraft 2: Legacy of the Void is due for release on 10 November.


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About the author

Luke Lawrie

Writing and producing content about video games for over a decade. Host of Australia's longest running video game podcast The GAP found at TheGAPodcast.com. Find me on Twitter at @lukelawrie