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I have the privelage of attending a talk by Rob Pardo, hosted at UCI. Rob is Executive VP of Game Design at Blizzard, and worked on BW in his earlier days, and then worked on WC3, WoW, SC2, and now Diablo III.
Unfortunately, I don't believe there is a VoD of the talk but I'd thought I'd share some really interesting points that give insights to Blizzard's design philosophy. I'll focus mostly on SC2 stuff. These are in no particular order.
When designing a game, determine if it will be an ESPORT
Rob stressed that if one was aiming to design an multiplayer or competitive game, you have to decide from the get-go that this is the type of game you're going for. Tacking on a multiplayer or a competitive aspect after the single player was designed can cause major design challenges later on that may never be fixed.
Rob cited WoW Arena as an example to this issue. WoW was never designed to be competitive, but the Arena as added anyway. Because of this WoW undergoes some very strange changes for PvE players because PvP has gotten a lot of attention. This was never the intent of Blizzard.
Uber units aren't good design
Surprisingly, Rob is not a fan of uber units, and neither is Dustin Browder. It's mainly the art department who push for the inclusion of over-the-top units because they like designing really big and massive characters.
Rob admitted that the issues with the mothership had many issues, and that uber units in general can be very anti-climatic for a battle if they are too powerful. Even the Thor was too "uber-unit" ish for WoL.
UI effects balance
Blizzard fought internally while designing SC2, partially because of the 12 unit selection vs unlimited unit selection. They recognized that the 12 unit selection introduced a unique skill set for BW, and they debated back and forth for about a year. They ultimately decided on unlimited unit selection because in game testing, players were frustrated that selecting all their units would only select 12, and it was not as intuitive for a modern game.
Rob cited examples of War 2 vs. BW as the evolution of UI brings a lot of disgruntled fans since it effects many skill sets of the game.
Keep things simple
A lot of games from Valve was brought up as an example of very well done games with very minimalist design decisions (TF2 pre-hats). Rob was a big fan of Valve's work, as he said they have the ability to keep things very minimal but still create very ground-breaking games.
While designing SC2, the team would constantly make tradeoffs if they were adding more abilities and units. Adding a new unit would mean removing an old unit from the game (WHY MARAUDER WHY).
Also, units should not have too many crazy abilities. Too many spells can cause too much noise and ambiguity to what is going on while spectating.
Rob brought up a cool example he heard from a former Pixar employee who know works in Blizzard Cinematics. Essentially, each movie/scene/game you make gives you only a limited amount of Popsicle sticks, and each stick represents a special effect, character, environment etc. You have to work within these limitations and try not to over extend the scope of the project, and this is what produces some of the best work in the industry rather than trying to do many things at once. Reminded me of Day[9]'s agenda for the Funday Monday (placing limitations on gameplay to explore new strategies).
Art is critical part of game design
Not only does art make your game look pretty, but its another read that you can give to the player. Rob talked about how units should have visible upgrades and abilities. Ironically, even with the inclusion of Zergling wings and marine shields, a lot of abilities in SC2 are still "hidden" to players (marauder concussive, storm, blink).
Valve came up again as an example of integrating art directly into game design, as in TF2 the characters have very distinct silhouettes and weapons so the role is obvious just at a glance.
Keep game times short
Rob was a fan of having people enjoy many games over a short period of time, and he cited Counter-Strike as a prime example of a game that had short round times, high competitive skill, and was well received by the public.
Rob cited DotA as a game that had long round times, and very frustrating to beginners who had to stay in an hour long game per match.
This necessarily doesn't mean that one should 6 pool every game or designing short rush maps, as Rob stated that a professional player should be able to easily beat someone of lower skill quickly and decisively. It's not fun for any player to stick in a game longer than they have to, even if they won or lost. That was probably a better way to word this design philosophy. I thought this was the most insightful actually as it touch on issues of introducing notions of skill into the game, and having it effect game design in a positive way.
Positive incentives are better received rather than punishments
A more WoW related example. In WoW, Rob introduced a rest system to encourage some players to take a break. If a character didn't get a lot of "rest", that character would gain "Less XP" when they went to level. This was poorly received by WoW players.
Rob fixed this by introducing "rest" as a "bonus", where well rested players gained 200% XP while non-rested players gained 100% XP. In reality, the game just scaled XP gain so 200% was actually the old 100%, and the new 100% XP was actually 50% of what was in place before. Some people tried to call out Blizzard on this change, but since it was perceived as a "bonus", the community in general received it positively.
WAKE UP SHEEPLE
On Brood War
Not much design talk was on Brood War, other than lots of spreadsheets, numbers, and testing was involved. Rob's position at Blizzard was originally temporary during his work on Brood War. He thought it was amazing that an entire industry is now based around his past work. Sorry for the lack of info!
Conclusion
That's all I can remember for now. I'll edit in more if I remember something significant. Most of the talk on SC2 covered a lot of things the community is aware of such as:
-Make sure units have appropriate counters
-The game should have a skill set that can distinguish pros from amateurs
-Design the game to have a diverse amount of strategy
-Make it fun
Also something mind blowing:
Loading bars don't mean anything. Game developers put these progress bars everywhere to give people the satisfaction of seeing something "in progress" or "working".
 
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Also something mind blowing:
Loading bars don't mean anything. Game developers put these progress bars everywhere to give people the satisfaction of seeing something "in progress" or "working".
Are you sure because when I play at home with my brother his slower computer always takes longer as it should in both the loading bar and the game.
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Dammit, I attend UCI and I missed THIS? Thanks for the write-up, it's interesting.
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Good read  Nice to hear a take from one of the "old guard" of Blizzard.
What really frustrates me is how many developers view ESPORTS as its own genre and you have to design it differently then other games, even though most games that are esports now were never designed with that philosophy.
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On November 17 2011 05:43 Energizer wrote:Good read Nice to hear a take from one of the "old guard" of Blizzard. What really frustrates me is how many developers view ESPORTS as its own genre and you have to design it differently then other games, even though most games that are esports now were never designed with that philosophy.
I think the community feedback and assistance definitely put the current ESPORTS to where they are today. For future games, I think it's great, and imperative, that developers are now looking at ESPORTS as something they have to treat carefully. I have a lot of thoughts on traditional games vs. ESPORTS but that'll be my next post!
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Rob was not a fan of uber units, and neither is Dustin Browder.
Adding another unit would mean an old unit would be removed from the game (WHY MARAUDER WHY).
I'm going to leave this blog now but tell you thanks for sharing it.
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Blizzard fought internally while designing SC2, partially because of the 12 unit selection vs unlimited unit selection. They recognized that the 12 unit selection introduced a unique skill set for BW, and they debated back and forth for about a year. They ultimately decided on unlimited unit selection because in game testing, players were frustrated that selecting all their units would only select 12, and it was not as intuitive for a modern game.
That isn't a good reason to allow unlimited selection imho... too bad the wrong side won the internal fights.........
Also a pity there wasn't more on BW, but nice read anyway, thanks!
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Positive incentives are better received rather than punishments
A more WoW related example. In WoW, Rob introduced a rest system to encourage some players to take a break. If a character didn't get a lot of "rest", that character would gain "Less XP" when they went to level. This was poorly received by WoW players.
Rob fixed this by introducing "rest" as a "bonus", where well rested players gained 200% XP while non-rested players gained 100% XP. In reality, the game just scaled XP gain so 200% was actually the old 100%, and the new 100% XP was actually 50% of what was in place before. Some people tried to call out Blizzard on this change, but since it was perceived as a "bonus", the community in general received it positively
I really liked this part. It's just one of those genius moves. Near my residence, there are two grocery stores. Both of them have the same prices for fruit. They both get about the same amount of customers.
However, one of them suddenly up's their prices by a lot, without telling anybody. Then, a few days later, on TV there is an ad from this grocery store informing everyone about their amazing new policy on selling fruit, which results in them lowering their prices on fruit by a considerable amount. They do lower the price of their fruit, but only back to the original price that the other grocery store has maintained for all this time.
But, suddenly the sales of this grocery store goes up! After all, they cut their prices!
It's kind of the same philosophy behind it, very clever stuff, and the kind that most "sheeple" don't think about.
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Positive incentives are better received rather than punishments.
This is actually an age old truism. If you are asking for something bad, try to find a positive spin. A lot of times you can get people to support things that rationally they should be against. Sales people do this all the time to get you to spend more money.
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On November 17 2011 05:43 LunarC wrote:
Dammit, I attend UCI and I missed THIS? Thanks for the write-up, it's interesting.
it was pretty boring lol.
the free snacks, however, were not
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If he says too many abilities == bad ... why does it seem as if every new unit in HoTS will have 3-4 abilities O_O
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On November 17 2011 06:06 fabiano wrote:Show nested quote +Blizzard fought internally while designing SC2, partially because of the 12 unit selection vs unlimited unit selection. They recognized that the 12 unit selection introduced a unique skill set for BW, and they debated back and forth for about a year. They ultimately decided on unlimited unit selection because in game testing, players were frustrated that selecting all their units would only select 12, and it was not as intuitive for a modern game. That isn't a good reason to allow unlimited selection imho... too bad the wrong side won the internal fights......... Also a pity there wasn't more on BW, but nice read anyway, thanks!
I'm surprised this was a debate at all. Who are the guys in Blizzard who understand where we are coming from? Cause every other interview i saw was nothing like that.
Also from the things you note it sounds like SC2 would be well designed for competitive play... but it's really not. How did they manage to get shit like TvP 5 second battles deciding the game with any of these things in mind.
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On November 17 2011 06:22 Xeris wrote:
If he says too many abilities == bad ... why does it seem as if every new unit in HoTS will have 3-4 abilities O_O
Disagreements with the current design philosophy then 
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very interesting, I'll link this to a friend of mines who is interested in game design. Thanks
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I'm so disappointed they ended up not sticking with the unit selection cap, but it's so awesome that it was a tough decision for them.
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With regard with the unit selection cap, I agree with it from a design standpoint. A player interacting with a modern game would expect as many units as possible being selected when boxing a bunch of them, having it any other way is pretty counter-intuitive for the majority of people.
The problem is that this leads to unit clumping, which I think is something they're trying to address in HotS without reinventing the game or UI.
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decreasing unit selection is the simplest way of fixing clumping and deathballs (and probably the only other way), while keeeping to browder's mantra of not going "backwards" on unit pathing. sadly, this means that we'll always having atrocious clumping and deathballing because i find it pretty unlikely that blizz would decrease unit selection in an expansion.
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The picture that accompanied the "balance" slide during the presentation was a mothership
xD
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On November 17 2011 08:30 rauk wrote:
decreasing unit selection is the simplest way of fixing clumping and deathballs (and probably the only other way), while keeeping to browder's mantra of not going "backwards" on unit pathing. sadly, this means that we'll always having atrocious clumping and deathballing because i find it pretty unlikely that blizz would decrease unit selection in an expansion.
It is indeed the simplest way but I don't think it's worth sacrificing the intuitiveness of the UI design (I speak ESPORTS heresy). I think they just have to incentivize splitting your units up and not clumping, or make deathballs/clumps less effective than they are now. You could still see clumping at lower levels, but you would need to clump less if you wish to rank up.
Perhaps this will just be fixed as the overall skill increases?
I know the shredder is an attempt to break up the Terran ball, but its still a very awkward solution in my opinion.
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On November 17 2011 06:22 Xeris wrote:
If he says too many abilities == bad ... why does it seem as if every new unit in HoTS will have 3-4 abilities O_O
Lots of the points he said don't add up. Dustin is the lead game designer. He should been able to say no to Chris and the rest of the artists when it came down to such units in the multi-player. Keep them in for the single-player campaign. Fine.
-_-
On November 17 2011 07:06 PH wrote:
I'm so disappointed they ended up not sticking with the unit selection cap, but it's so awesome that it was a tough decision for them.
Somewhere I believe they have to find a balance between the two. How many control groups and units can the casuals really produce and control at a time?
If it were me, I would have bumped the control groups up to 24 and judging from how the game is currently played. I would have increased the max pop from 200 to something like 220. There are a lot of players who cap relatively easily with a good amount of bases, I think they could definitely use more units.
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EPT
