EPTOn July 05 2015 19:29 Grumbels wrote:
I think the similarity of resourcing in Starcraft is a clue to the structural necessity of symmetry. The most extreme form of asymmetry in production capability was the zerg larva mechanic and that was carefully balanced through various methods I won't go into. And look what happened when Blizzard introduced poorly tuned macro mechanics into Starcraft 2.
In Warcraft 3 each race needs to have heroes and staple early game units to interact with. Each hero needs to be able to deal with those units and with creeps. That's a structural reason to have the mirroring in production. You can't have a larva-esque mechanic that gives plentiful production, because heroes would get overwhelmed. For similar reasons you can't go too far in having asymmetrical economy design.
These reasons don't apply to Starcraft as much, because in that game a very powerful army can be defeated by a very powerful economy, so in that sense you can allow both. I think in WC3 you can really allow neither, which is a constraint that heroes place on the game.
There is also a sense that you can't allow race design to force players to concede core strategic objectives by default. Each race needs to be able to fight for map control, have a sufficient late-game army, heal their units, break sieged positions and so on. An inability to do any of this makes the game strategically rote, creating default win conditions as long as one player can, say, reach end-game.
There are lore reasons to have diverse sets of heroes too, you can't give orc just strength heroes not only because of balance concerns but also because players are a priori attracted to races and desire a complete experience. The design of each race needs to be total, they are not content with playing orc for melee based gameplay, they want the option of ranged units too and so on. (I don't know why this reason wouldn't also apply to SC though)
I think the similarity of resourcing in Starcraft is a clue to the structural necessity of symmetry. The most extreme form of asymmetry in production capability was the zerg larva mechanic and that was carefully balanced through various methods I won't go into. And look what happened when Blizzard introduced poorly tuned macro mechanics into Starcraft 2.
In Warcraft 3 each race needs to have heroes and staple early game units to interact with. Each hero needs to be able to deal with those units and with creeps. That's a structural reason to have the mirroring in production. You can't have a larva-esque mechanic that gives plentiful production, because heroes would get overwhelmed. For similar reasons you can't go too far in having asymmetrical economy design.
These reasons don't apply to Starcraft as much, because in that game a very powerful army can be defeated by a very powerful economy, so in that sense you can allow both. I think in WC3 you can really allow neither, which is a constraint that heroes place on the game.
There is also a sense that you can't allow race design to force players to concede core strategic objectives by default. Each race needs to be able to fight for map control, have a sufficient late-game army, heal their units, break sieged positions and so on. An inability to do any of this makes the game strategically rote, creating default win conditions as long as one player can, say, reach end-game.
There are lore reasons to have diverse sets of heroes too, you can't give orc just strength heroes not only because of balance concerns but also because players are a priori attracted to races and desire a complete experience. The design of each race needs to be total, they are not content with playing orc for melee based gameplay, they want the option of ranged units too and so on. (I don't know why this reason wouldn't also apply to SC though)
I cant really follow you on the part about heroes forcing a less explosive economy or less production. Tbh I dont see that much difference between sc2's and wc3's eco design, aside from wc3 being more early game and less expansion heavy. I dont remember enough of wc3 to know if map control behaves similiarily (I believe it did not), but you can just add items into the equation.
Tbh heroes are just another balancing factor, and you can f.e. counterbalance zerg's explosive economy with stronger protoss or terran heroes. If you wanted to have the exact hero feeling of wc3 in sc2 you would definitely have to fit hero lvl growth to the growth of the economy or the growth of the armies, but that should be far from impossible. On the contrary, the fact that you have "only" three races makes the balancing that much easier.
Tbh I think that the hero concept could have been easily applied to sc2, they just decided that they wanted to stick to the scbw-model.
