EPTDustin Browder, you are doing it wrong. - Page 8
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Count9
China10928 Posts
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IotaSC
United States91 Posts
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KULA_u
Switzerland107 Posts
On October 27 2011 06:00 MCDayC wrote: Bullshit. The corsair's main purpose was discovered in 2007. 9 years after the game came out. And there's no way that people instantly saw the lurkers (amazing) capabilities. A unit that cannot move while attacking, and can only attack while burrowed, which makes it invisible? Your last point I actually agree with. Cool sounding things sound cool. Yes, Starcraft 2 could do with more of that. But that's not Dustin Browder's game design. That's a shoddy sound department. Bullshit yourself. Corsairs were always used the same and it WAS extremely obvious what they wrre useful for: scouting, mutas, overlords. it doesn't really matter wether they were used in compination with reavers, DTs or otherwise. The Bisu just perfected their use. | ||
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BurningSera
Ireland19621 Posts
New units introduced in a highly-anticipated expansion pack is supposed to provide excitement and anticipation, not confound everybody who sees the unit. When Brood War was coming out and I saw the Lurker, or the Corsair, or the Medic, there were some extremely obvious potential uses for these units. They seemed simple, powerful, exciting, like units that make you go "oh! well of course these units should be in the game! I can see tons of things you can do with all of them". When I saw the HotS units, the only thing I thought was "well, I guess when I get the game I'll build a bunch of them and see what happens." THAT!!!! while i'd consider myself as a HUGE fan of zerg, all these updates of HotS didnt bring any excitement to me, that said alot eh. all i want is some balance and strategically useful units. balance = FUN. SC2 is a mess. | ||
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IotaSC
United States91 Posts
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dementrio
678 Posts
The vessel and the arbiter were not simple. I'll go as far as to say that you could consider the lurker a gimmick. If bw came out yesterday we would be discussing how spider mines are a gimmick. The dark archon is, even today, a gimmicky unit, not because it's any more complex than the defiler, but because the very intricate gameplay that emerged with the interaction of all other units has no place for it. When bw came out, were you thinking "of course the dark archon makes sense, I could see a ton of uses?" Was its introduction, retrospectively, a step in the wrong direction? Was anyone able to immediately see that the lurker was the greatest idea ever and the dark archon was inconsequential? Your critique of the marauder is the most common unit design critique, but it has nothing to do with simplicity or gimmicks. The marauder is very simple, as simple as the marine (and it fulfills just as many roles). The colossus was no doubt designed to be a cool unit. It just happens that what emerged is not cool. | ||
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BurningSera
Ireland19621 Posts
On October 29 2011 05:16 IotaSC wrote: new lurker, new flying reverse-defiler. those are strategically useful and more like BW feel zerg to me. they aren't balanced though, and have a few too many gimmicks 'new lurker' has a weird cool down attack animation and unless it can be evolved from roachers (which is completely retarded if it did but we have no other low tier unit choice....), it cant be as strategic useful as lurker. 'new lurker' is basically a tank translated from terran to zerg..... 'flying defiler' is obviously either extremely OP or completely useless, hint: it can fly now. and no way they can make good balance from these gimmicky units (plus judging from their balance work so far.....). Blizzard, just fcking fix MARINES and DUSTIN STOP THINKING you are making another C&C!!! | ||
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IotaSC
United States91 Posts
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Newbistic
China2912 Posts
On October 29 2011 05:55 dementrio wrote: I think your argument has some inherent beauty in it, and so it comes out as very agreeable. But I also think that, ultimately, it is invalid. The vessel and the arbiter were not simple. I'll go as far as to say that you could consider the lurker a gimmick. If bw came out yesterday we would be discussing how spider mines are a gimmick. The dark archon is, even today, a gimmicky unit, not because it's any more complex than the defiler, but because the very intricate gameplay that emerged with the interaction of all other units has no place for it. When bw came out, were you thinking "of course the dark archon makes sense, I could see a ton of uses?" Was its introduction, retrospectively, a step in the wrong direction? Was anyone able to immediately see that the lurker was the greatest idea ever and the dark archon was inconsequential? Your critique of the marauder is the most common unit design critique, but it has nothing to do with simplicity or gimmicks. The marauder is very simple, as simple as the marine (and it fulfills just as many roles). The colossus was no doubt designed to be a cool unit. It just happens that what emerged is not cool. You're missing the point (argh, so many replies I make in this thread start with this I'm starting to sound like a broken record). I only compared SC2 to Brood War because it was the most convenient. I'm not arguing for SC2 to be a copy of Brood War, or that Brood War is better than SC2. But that is what YOU are arguing. Here's the thing: when Brood War came out, it wasn't designed specifically to be an e-sport. Nobody knew it was going to be so balanced that thousands would play competitively to entertain millions. Brood War as a competitive game was an accident. That some of the units are gimmicky is because they were designed solely to twist the game play, not to hone the balance to a razor's edge. The corsair, medic, and lurker just happened to have inherent traits to change the game balance in ways that promoted competitive gaming, and that's what I was pointing out in the OP. On the other hand, SC2 is designed WITH the goal of competitive gaming in mind. Therefore, its design process must place a much higher premium on units being simple and obvious and not gimmicky. There is a difference between how HotS should be designed and how Brood War was designed. I feel that Dustin Browder is not taking this consideration into mind as much as he should, hence the OP. And the marauder argument, see the other replies I've made in this thread, I must have addressed it 2 or three times. I believe the first reply was on page 2 if you don't want to browse. | ||
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dementrio
678 Posts
But I failed to express my main point, which is: you can't decide, now or when designing, what is a gimmick and what is not. If we didnt know any better, we'd say that the burrow mechanic is a gimmick. It just turns out that it has defined matchups and strategies which are not only cool to see and play, but incredibly deep and complicated. Browder is ultimately trying to find similar things, he genuinely wants a great game that is not bw version 2. But there's no way to go about this if not trying things out; keep it simple sounds very sensible, except that if you go down to it "simple" is synonymous with BW. Otherwise we would be playing Risk. Browder himself mentioned creep spread as an example of a gimmick turned legit. There's no particular reason to find creep tumors simplier than the viper's d-web. But it is a cool thing because it turns out that it's important enough that strategies need to count for it, and it has become to define zerg. Colossi are as simple as a bioball and do the same thing. So both are boring. | ||
The_Templar
your Country52797 Posts
No, this guy is serious. I seriously barely won a 2v1 once against this guy who was probably E- level because my ally went mass DA and mind controlled our opponent's mass battlecruisers. And seriously, they need to nerf SCBW nukes, they actually kill stuff. :p | ||
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Newbistic
China2912 Posts
On October 29 2011 10:02 dementrio wrote: I read your response explaining how the marauder is not simple because it fills too many roles. That's just as true for the marine. The reason we don't like marauders is that they are dragoons, and every race has a dragoon in sc2; nobody found the dragoon a particularly exciting unit in bw, but they had a protoss "feel" because only protoss had them. But I failed to express my main point, which is: you can't decide, now or when designing, what is a gimmick and what is not. If we didnt know any better, we'd say that the burrow mechanic is a gimmick. It just turns out that it has defined matchups and strategies which are not only cool to see and play, but incredibly deep and complicated. Browder is ultimately trying to find similar things, he genuinely wants a great game that is not bw version 2. But there's no way to go about this if not trying things out; keep it simple sounds very sensible, except that if you go down to it "simple" is synonymous with BW. Otherwise we would be playing Risk. Browder himself mentioned creep spread as an example of a gimmick turned legit. There's no particular reason to find creep tumors simplier than the viper's d-web. But it is a cool thing because it turns out that it's important enough that strategies need to count for it, and it has become to define zerg. Colossi are as simple as a bioball and do the same thing. So both are boring. You are right that both the marine and the marauder fulfills many roles. But I would argue (and try to do so without sounding naturally biased towards the marine) that the marine is a far more interesting unit from a competitive RTS standpoint. The marine is a great all-purpose unit for Terran. They're cheap, have massive DPS, are ranged, and attack both air and ground. But they also have a massive weakness, their low hit points. This makes the marine a very exciting and dynamic unit. They are very fun to build a lot of, their gunfire sounds quite nice when in massed groups, and their 0 start-up attack makes stutterstep very fun to use. If you force people to choose whether they want to keep the marine or the marauder, people will definitely choose marine. And the gimmick point, I disagree. I think it's perfectly possible to create new and simple units with a lot of potential, while a) not turn SC2 into Brood War and b) not blindly trying things out. Otherwise, are you arguing that all competitive games were designed by accident, and it's not possible to consciously design a competitive game? Sure Counter-Strike and Street Fighter 2 were accidents, but Quake 3 and TrackMania aren't. The latter two are designed specifically with balance in mind. I know Dustin Browder cares about SC2, but I don't think he is taking the right approach to the game. And you are right, creep spread turned out to be a legitimately good Zerg mechanic. But why would Browder admit that it was initially a gimmick? I'd rather he establishes a more concrete approach to unit design than just tossing gimmicks into the game and go "whew, well I'm glad that worked out". The fact that he's doing something similar for HotS means that he still hasn't learned the key lessons to what makes a good competitive game. As Dustin Browder has shown, he's willing to remove units from WoL while adding new units for HotS. This should allow him to potentially alter the game even more radically than ever before. I certainly hope he knows what he's doing enough to make concrete progress towards the goal of making HotS an even better game than WoL. My writing is really turning to shit now, so I'll stop here. | ||
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aZealot
New Zealand5447 Posts
I think I read somewhere that DB had never played BW. I think this was a mistake, surely if you are making a sequel to the greatest RTS ever made, you should play the original and learn more about the game you are attempting to recreate in a new and, hopefully, better way. Perhaps DB just did not want his creative processes to be affected by an older (and perhaps intimidating) game? Whatever the merits of that approach, I am not optimistic with regards to HoTS, but will give it a go in the hopes that I am wrong. I have enjoyed WoL though, that must be said. | ||
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Cyber_Cheese
Australia3615 Posts
If this isn't fixed by LotV, I hope some other studio designs a proper BW successor. | ||
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IotaSC
United States91 Posts
On October 31 2011 19:31 Cyber_Cheese wrote: Oh man, if only. If this isn't fixed by LotV, I hope some other studio designs a proper BW successor. It'll be analogous to the Super Smash Bros. pro scene XD Melee is amazing (BW), Brawl lost important fundamental balance concepts (SC2 kinda), and people independent of the game's creator are designing a port of melee physics onto the brawl characters and game engine called Project:M. Here's hoping for Project:BW 2014 :DDDDDDD | ||
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SoFool
Malaysia96 Posts
If I had a time machine, I would travel back in time to prevent blizz signing dustin. Anyone with me? :3 | ||
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Sawamura
Malaysia7602 Posts
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bgx
Poland6595 Posts
after 7-8 years of not playing bw i immedietly recognised 90% of voices and soundtracks of the game, i could probably do the same with warcraft2, hell the distinguish overloard zergling or muta was easy, now i cant really imagine half of the voices of sc2 i played yesterday, yes i would recognize them, but they are olny a little present in my memory they are not hard-coded, also i muted the music in sc2 year ago and to this day i didnt unmute (i just listen mp3s in background). your CS analogy also works great, i was semi-pro CS player, and the first thing that stood out was ak/awp sound(ah the newbie fear of AWP shots), headshots, hearing footsteps, wallbanging all the Unique features that made the game awesome i still hope that current ideology in game making will look at past and revert to the roots, | ||
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BLinD-RawR
ALLEYCAT BLUES50646 Posts
On October 31 2011 19:31 Cyber_Cheese wrote: Oh man, if only. If this isn't fixed by LotV, I hope some other studio designs a proper BW successor. 5 years from now...trust me...I know something. | ||
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spajn
34 Posts
marine firing in bw sounds so much more powerful than sc2. I also miss the crisp sound of a tank in bw sieging up. another thing that is easily fixed is map lighting.. why is so many maps dark? blistering sands was an awefull map but the desert theme looks so much better than that xel naga caverns darkness that almost every map has. BUT THE WORST THING ABOUT SC2 is the unit clumping.. Dustin browder says making unit pathing worse is not worth it but i disagree.. however good news DB you dont have to make pathing worse just make units take up more space. Then it would be less coinflippy to split your army since chokes would work a lot better. Also if they would make unit pathing more like war3 the armies would look better.. I just cant stand seeing 50 marines huging so hard and moving around like they where genetic clones. I also think lowering all dps of all "move and shoot" units a bit would be nice so we could have a little bit more micro involved. DONE!!! with all those changes apm would mean a lot more and automining would never again come up. | ||
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