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On January 08 2014 09:46 kimaphan wrote:
David Kim has mentioned this before in interviews, but I can confirm that he does talk directly with a lot of pro-gamers and coaches on a regular basis. It's just one of many ways the team gathers information about game balance to figure out next steps. Some of that includes ladder and pro-match statistics, and watching and discussing pro-level games and tournaments constantly. David doesn't spend a ton of time engaging directly on the public forums because his focus is on the game. We have a community team that's dedicated to reporting feedback, which includes gathering it publicly when we publish proposed changes and test maps on PTR. They read the forums every day.
The interaction takes place more than you all realize and with many professional players who are highly skilled and have a history of providing useful feedback. It's not possible for the team to interact with every professional player in the scene, nor is it productive or efficient to crowdsource the process from start to finish. But I assure you discussions take place every time before we make a change, even if it's something small as a forum post on a hypothetical change.
Hi Kim, thanks for always talking to us  . I really enjoyed your wc3 casts back then too btw!
Can I ask you, if Blizzard is willing to make more fundamental changes to the game, as the ones Lalush talked about in his micro video just for example? Or will they stick to number patches as reducing photon overcharge's duration by 20 seconds etc.
Also why does Blizzard not name the pros and coaches they are talking to? I follow basically ever sc2 pro there is on twitter and never have any of them mentioned this. After every patch they are like "what is David Kim thinking?"  . I don't see any reasons why the community shouldn't know, who some of the people Blizzard asks for feedback are.
Thanks for your great work with WCS, keep it up!
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The thing that would make me happy would be if you could use the customize observer UI's ingame when playing. I don't see the reason to have 1/4 of the screen with junk =(
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On January 08 2014 09:46 kimaphan wrote:
David Kim has mentioned this before in interviews, but I can confirm that he does talk directly with a lot of pro-gamers and coaches on a regular basis. It's just one of many ways the team gathers information about game balance to figure out next steps. Some of that includes ladder and pro-match statistics, and watching and discussing pro-level games and tournaments constantly. David doesn't spend a ton of time engaging directly on the public forums because his focus is on the game. We have a community team that's dedicated to reporting feedback, which includes gathering it publicly when we publish proposed changes and test maps on PTR. They read the forums every day.
The interaction takes place more than you all realize and with many professional players who are highly skilled and have a history of providing useful feedback. It's not possible for the team to interact with every professional player in the scene, nor is it productive or efficient to crowdsource the process from start to finish. But I assure you discussions take place every time before we make a change, even if it's something small as a forum post on a hypothetical change.
From an outsider looking in the process whereby information is being garnered may seem ambiguous. While you have a community team that read forums and posts and take said information as community feedback it is difficult to ascertain what information you find pertinent towards upcoming patches. The same goes with the times you talk to players, it can be difficult for some players to articulate what they are thinking into words. A think-tank or open thought group would work better to refine ideas either new ideas or honing of existing ones.
I am pretty sure people understand that you have your discussions before a patch but maybe the more pressing concerns are not being addressed first?
If you think what you are doing now is enough then that is fine. But if you think you can do better than the last 2 years then the only time better than 1-2 years ago is right now.
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I think that you bring a valid point and I feel that, even though Blizzard has done a great job, there is so much more they could be doing to help the game in a number of ways. Balance does need a fix in my opinion, not too drastic, but a slight fix, and there is so much lacking in terms of observing/watching/casting games and interface wise. Looking at Dota 2 where you can pay a little to watch almost any tournament or match or LoL where you can buy all these irrelevant things that people love (I am guilty of buying CS skins for weapons) where SC2 right now feels a bit harsh where you can choose between "arcade games with people leaving whenever" or "hardcore ladder where you will get BM'd and told that you suck". I for one love the game and would never dream of casting something else, but I can absolutely see why all my friends that play a ton of other games play one game and then never come back.
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On January 08 2014 09:46 kimaphan wrote:
David Kim has mentioned this before in interviews, but I can confirm that he does talk directly with a lot of pro-gamers and coaches on a regular basis. It's just one of many ways the team gathers information about game balance to figure out next steps. Some of that includes ladder and pro-match statistics, and watching and discussing pro-level games and tournaments constantly. David doesn't spend a ton of time engaging directly on the public forums because his focus is on the game. We have a community team that's dedicated to reporting feedback, which includes gathering it publicly when we publish proposed changes and test maps on PTR. They read the forums every day.
The interaction takes place more than you all realize and with many professional players who are highly skilled and have a history of providing useful feedback. It's not possible for the team to interact with every professional player in the scene, nor is it productive or efficient to crowdsource the process from start to finish. But I assure you discussions take place every time before we make a change, even if it's something small as a forum post on a hypothetical change.
hey kim, thanks for the info, much appreciated
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On January 08 2014 10:15 Musicus wrote:Show nested quote +On January 08 2014 09:46 kimaphan wrote:
David Kim has mentioned this before in interviews, but I can confirm that he does talk directly with a lot of pro-gamers and coaches on a regular basis. It's just one of many ways the team gathers information about game balance to figure out next steps. Some of that includes ladder and pro-match statistics, and watching and discussing pro-level games and tournaments constantly. David doesn't spend a ton of time engaging directly on the public forums because his focus is on the game. We have a community team that's dedicated to reporting feedback, which includes gathering it publicly when we publish proposed changes and test maps on PTR. They read the forums every day.
The interaction takes place more than you all realize and with many professional players who are highly skilled and have a history of providing useful feedback. It's not possible for the team to interact with every professional player in the scene, nor is it productive or efficient to crowdsource the process from start to finish. But I assure you discussions take place every time before we make a change, even if it's something small as a forum post on a hypothetical change. Hi Kim, thanks for always talking to us . I really enjoyed your wc3 casts back then too btw! Can I ask you, if Blizzard is willing to make more fundamental changes to the game, as the ones Lalush talked about in his micro video just for example? Or will they stick to number patches as reducing photon overcharge's duration by 20 seconds etc. Also why does Blizzard not name the pros and coaches they are talking to? I follow basically ever sc2 pro there is on twitter and never have any of them mentioned this. After every patch they are like "what is David Kim thinking?" . I don't see any reasons why the community shouldn't know, who some of the people Blizzard asks for feedback are. Thanks for your great work with WCS, keep it up!
I would also like to know how willing and inclined Blizzard is to make the kinds of large, fundamental changes to the game that have been discussed recently.
The scale of the things that are being talked about seem so much larger than the changes we've seen implemented in the past. Worker scaling, deathballs, the super specific micro mechanics in LaLush's video... These would all require bigger changes than any we've seen so far.
Also, as ret said, it would be great if some of the SC2 designers and people involved with balancing the game were as proactive and communicative with the community as Kim Phan is on the esports side of things. I think just opening the discussions up a bit could be a great step.
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On January 08 2014 09:46 kimaphan wrote:
David Kim has mentioned this before in interviews, but I can confirm that he does talk directly with a lot of pro-gamers and coaches on a regular basis.
And he's said this in many interviews, so most of us know about it. But the problems are as follows:
Not enough communication. Blog posts are far and few, and it's a one way discussion. Usually what we hear are none of the concerns about the current balance and always something being changed that no one asked for. Right now it's the turtle play, but let's buff mech air and protoss some more (?), even the hint at that worries me to no end.
Inability or unwillingness to look at current issues sooner. They/he has repeatedly said they'd rather sit and watch a situation unfold for 6+ months to see if it "sorts itself out" and that has rarely been the case. Immortal sentry is still there, it's just one of many viable allins and it's still common to see a well practiced pro lose to it as if he was a bronze leaguer, and players well below pro find it much harder to defend than execute.
Right not it seems the standard for something the overwhelming majority of the community believes needs to be improved upon (infestor broodlord, rocks at the 3rd, rush maps, ledges above your natural protoss can blink on to ...now turtle styles and raven/oracle storm airballs leading to long 50-180 minute games that are frustrating to both play and watch, which were maybe 1/10 games and are now steadily becoming the norm, which is really alarming as a player and a spectator) take at least 6-18 months to be updated. And you wonder why viewers have dropped dramatically and pro gamers are leaving the scene in droves because they are vocally frustrated with the way the game plays. We love the game, we love playing it, we love watching it, it doesn't mean we have to like it. How weird does that sound? No game in the world right now does what Starcraft does, and that does make it the hardest game in the world to make decisions for balance wise.
The faster you allow yourself to make changes Blizzard, the faster you can allow yourself to undo those changes if they've proven to much. Lots of nayasers on the queen buff, glad you didn't take that off, but entrenching yourself on changes (warhound not withstanding) only because you make them so slowly does nothing to help anyone.
A single set of 2-3 balance changes every 6 months on the public test map is still far to infrequent. After all, people can simply publish their own maps with your proposed changes if you didn't do it publicly (in regards, to balance, at least) to test out and play with.
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Well, if you're interested in a rework of sc2 to fix some of the fundamentals I'd be glad to help, I've always wanted to do one, and had a lot of plans for how to fix them, but the problem is I can never get enough people to test anything to get useable data.
I remember posting back on the beta boards, blizz wasn't listening that much then either.
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On January 08 2014 08:42 Cheren wrote:Show nested quote +On January 08 2014 06:52 ninazerg wrote:
I really REALLY don't understand why all the old top foreigners don't come back and play BroodWar... SC2 isn't going to get any better. If you don't love the game by now, you're not gonna wake up tomorrow and go "Wow, this game is great today!". Yeah, they could move to some shitty MOBA game, because there is a bit of money in that arena, but BroodWar is where the love is. Cause Ret's an exception, most of the top foreigners came from WC3 (Naniwa, Grubby, the Duran brothers) or weren't progamers before SC2. (Scarlett) It's silly to tell foreigners to go back to BW when most aren't from it in the first place. Also BW was never successful outside of Korea, so if SC2 mysteriously disappeared overnight, the foreign scene would go back to WC3, which actually had a large non-Korean tournament circuit.
Are you kidding me dude? More people in NA, Europe, China and South America have played BroodWar than SC2. But I'm not even talking about this 'e-sports' bullshit, I don't care what's "big" and where, so I don't care about the top foreigners in SC2. I'm talking about people who played BroodWar; those top foreigners.
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Hmm... on second thought David Kim is pretty fucked. He is caught between a rock and a hard place in many respects. For example, there are tens of thousands of people who think that pro players should figure out solutions to balance problems instead of waiting on Blizzard to fix them... and there are tens of thousands of people who think that balance problems should be solved by Blizzard.
DK is often accused of not communicating well with the community, but have you seen the sheer level of hatred and vitriol he has to endure? Even largely beloved or unknown video game devs have to be shielded from the community to protect their mental health. Imagine what the face of Blizzard's balance must endure. He is the effigy you can burn to salve your ego whenever you die to a marine parade or cloaked banshees because your shitty gold ass forgot to scout. Every loss streak, every embarrassing failure on your part, every strong strategy or fan favorite's early defeat in a tournament can be blamed on David Kim. He is the perfect psychological punching bag for the hundreds of thousands of people who play the most stressful, competitive and ego-crushing game in the world. Hell, his email inbox probably has so much flame-filled hatemail it melted his laptop the last time he checked. Even team liquid, the most civil SC2 forum by a good margin, has a shit-ton of people spewing venom at DK.
There really aren't many people that can keep it together when this many people hate you so much. Right now, he should be either freaking out, having everything that reaches him filtered by community managers and the like, or he just doesn't care any more.
Oh, more issues people are happy to crucify David Kim over no matter what he does: imitating BW vs. bringing in good game mechanics, changing the fundamentals of the game vs. months of horrendous game balance, protecting the casuals vs. feeding the competitive fires of the hardcore players, never making a change vs. making it years late and basically telling everybody that you were severely compromising the game's entertainment value for years because of your "huge ego".
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A simple addition to SC2 would help the whole experience so much: tournament modes. I bet that 1 Blizzard programmer is capable of develop this in less than a month. With the new clan events system coming in the patch 2.1 it would be even a smaller task. Also, imagine how much it would help WCS.
Kim if you read this give me a wink 
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On January 08 2014 06:52 ninazerg wrote:
I really REALLY don't understand why all the old top foreigners don't come back and play BroodWar... SC2 isn't going to get any better. If you don't love the game by now, you're not gonna wake up tomorrow and go "Wow, this game is great today!". Yeah, they could move to some shitty MOBA game, because there is a bit of money in that arena, but BroodWar is where the love is.
$$$$$$$$$$
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TLADT24920 Posts
Good blog. I feel that Blizzard should reach out even more to the community when it comes to balancing the game. Kim in his post above mentioned that they talk to progamers and that's how they make changes but there is no transparency at all. Back when I played WoL, BL+infestor rained supreme and it never got fixed by the time HoTS came out. I mean, how hard is it to state that the combination was OP and test out possible changes to either unit to see if they have the intended effect? Worried that progamers will have problems adjusting? What about those that have to make a living and have to play against this combo? Either way, I haven't played HoTS as much as I was playing WoL, mostly since I got bored lol and now play a game or two of HoTS and some BW every once in a while. I think being more transparent is the best step for starters and then giving reasons as to why some of the changes that have been suggested aren't implemented would be a good second step
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United States43 Posts
On January 08 2014 11:26 ivancype wrote:Kim if you read this give me a wink
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On January 08 2014 11:19 AnachronisticAnarchy wrote:
Hmm... on second thought David Kim is pretty fucked. He is caught between a rock and a hard place in many respects
Thank you for posting this, it's exactly what I've been thinking for months. Thing is, the reality of any actual change they make to the game can never live up to the unachievable fantasy some people have in their minds about what they wish the game could be like. The reason is that nothing is ever perfect -- and seeing and playing an actual implementation of a change gives people time to learn to hate its limitations, whatever they are.
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On January 08 2014 11:31 vOdToasT wrote:Show nested quote +On January 08 2014 06:52 ninazerg wrote:
I really REALLY don't understand why all the old top foreigners don't come back and play BroodWar... SC2 isn't going to get any better. If you don't love the game by now, you're not gonna wake up tomorrow and go "Wow, this game is great today!". Yeah, they could move to some shitty MOBA game, because there is a bit of money in that arena, but BroodWar is where the love is. $$$$$$$$$$
SC2 was supposed to be a magical game of no mechanics where foreigners could outsmart Koreans and take their money. With that dream dead it's logical to look for something to blame, why not SC2 itself?
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While true that it's a hard position to be in; and nothing is ever perfect; that doesn't mean it couldn't have been done better. While there will always be haters; the % of them could be lower; and with a better game I believe they would be.
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Bisutopia19307 Posts
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On January 08 2014 07:42 ( bush wrote:
I think the problem is very clear, now that we are more than 3 years after SC2's launch: David Kim MUST be fired.
He's a nice guy and all, but he is clearly not the one for the job. Look at the flaws we see in the game and you'll have to agree with me.
It's so easy to point out the negatives of something. I think if we were to list pros and cons of starcraft balance, we would find ourselves with many, MANY more pros than cons. Lets not get ahead of ourselves.
There is no need to get out the torches and go looking for witches. One carefully placed match will light the fire we need.
Another poster before you stated that Blizzard doesn't have the experience/expertise for this.. I ask that person then WHO? Tournament Organizers could get us started, but it's a helluvah lot more complicated to balance a game than tweaking a few numbers.
The biggest hurdle that anyone has in testing balance changing is just that.. TESTING it. It's hard enough to get someone to play with custom settings, let alone an entire group of people let alone pros.
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EPT
