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Time exists as a dimension to many parts of the game, and it's important to establish this framing: that in general if you contract time, you lose something of your ability to react or respond to your opponent's actions. Maybe this is vague, but I think that TheDwf was talking in prophetic terms: that Blizzard foolishly ignored a fundamental rule and will have to pay the consequences.
Except you could argue that the more time you give players to react the easier it becomes to make the right direction. As an example, I can probably calculate in my head what 28*36 is if given enough time, but I can't calculate it in 5 seconds. Only skilled math-guys can.
It simply doesn't make sense to argue that less time as a general rule reduces skill. There are lots of other variables that matters here. It must instead be analyzed on a case-by-case basis.
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On April 08 2015 06:07 Grumbels wrote:Show nested quote +On April 08 2015 05:50 The_Red_Viper wrote:Jesus christ this escalated quickly. Sry but all your "blizzard is so incompetent" posts are posts i would expect at /r/starcraftcirclejerk. most game designers are hacks with little education and talent Yeah i am sure that's the case... I know it sounds very cruel, but if you think about it it's quite obvious. Most games have very familiar stories and are based on existing tropes, with game design based on a million previous games. It's not like the past anymore, when you had to create new genres and come up with actual new designs. Nowadays your job is to appeal to the market, not to have some sort of artistic independence. Furthermore, in virtually every single instance where I followed game design (examples being World of Warcraft, Starcraft 2, Diablo III, Planetary Annihilation) I could see just really uninspiring decision making by people that honestly couldn't really do better. There were also game designers I liked. For World of Warcraft I liked most of the designers, but the writing was atrocious, for example. The Starcraft 2 writing is similarly bad and over the years they had too many unforced errors in the game design department. Show nested quote +On April 08 2015 05:58 Hider wrote:I never know how many people at Blizzard are actually working on SC2 multiplayer design and balance full-time and whether it represents Blizzard's top talent. I do know that David Kim works as balance designer for the Heroes team as well and that he's also responsible for single player balance. Furthermore, given his set of responsibilities it should not be impossible to find him giving an intelligent answer about game design in an interview. I don't buy the argument that he's consistently saying meaningless things because that's Blizzard's policy, it seems more likely he just doesn't know what he's talking about. It actually is a good point. If you really had this super intelligent developer-team who knew alot more about gamedesign than anyone realized, wouldn't you make that apparent? Wouldn't you write very detailed articles explaining everything. Yes that would take time, but it would also function as an advertising/credibility tool. People would link to the article and say "hey these starcraft developers are so intelligent". It just doesn't make sense that you would downplay all the time with simple arguments. This did actually happen in WoW, you had developers constantly answering questions on forums and engaging with the community. But you'll note that in WoW business incentives lined up to force the developers to care, so more was asked of them and they had to rise up to the challenge. That's quite different from Starcraft 2 where the developers largely seek to remain elusive and dodge community questions and seemingly no one knows who's actually working on the game and in what capacity.
They also got questioned on every tiny little thing they did, a lot of times getting lots of abuse and stuff hurled at them. So they stopped.
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Dwf post on contracting time according to his car speed illustration applies only to the actual game speed, not the pace of the game.
The changed economy creates two notable changes:
1) It decreases the idle time in the beginning of the game, making the game faster paced. But game speed is not affected.
It's like Baseball. If you decrease all the idle time in the game of baseball by not allowing batters/ pitchers to partake in their stupid habits. This decreases the time between pitches,and so it increases the pace of the game.
This is a good thing for SC2. The game should try to decrease any idle time of waiting with your army in your base doing nothing but macroing (like currently PvP). Action should be constant. Players forced to micro constantly, while of course macroing. This would be ideal. And currently LotV is headed more in that direction, and games are more dynamic.
2) As Destruction pointed out, it reduces the consequence of taking a fast expansion, and that strategic important decision-making to take a risk when going for an expansion. In Hots, if you take a fast expansion, you are risking the the possibility of a one-base all in. (or two base all-in if you take a fast third) But currently in LotV, one base all-ins are seemingly rare, unless more top Koreans play and show us some crazy all-in builds/ timings.
But one can argue this is actually good, since it reduces all-ins, and so maybe reduces the randomness of build-order advantages as well? While it's true that fast expanding is less of a risk since the opposing player is more inclined to expand as well due to the reduced value of the mineral patches, there can still be the factor of greed vs reward. It's just more in the form of 3 or 4 quick expansions now.
So I like the new economy change. It certainly makes the game "seem" faster, but the game speed is still the same. But it does decrease the strategic importance when deciding to go for an expansion.
SC2 is still too fast though. Pros at the highest level still make many arbitrary mistakes which i believe no amount of practice can solve, but that's another topic I won't delve into
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The level of casual contempt on show is beginning to sicken me.
How about this: if you haven't personally used the editor to create a set of great new units that are nicely balanced and fun, you don't get to insult those who are trying.
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United States1079 Posts
I think what most people are noticing within Blizzard development is a consequence of getting too big. When development teams get too big, each person gets a specialized role. Each person usually knows their role quite well, but are often oblivious to the other roles.
When the project is large enough (such as SC2), nobody is responsible for knowing everything. David Kim or Dustin Browder would be the closest guys to that, but then they often don't know the details of certain areas. Neither DK or DB coded the scan range. Most likely, one or both may have been in a meeting at the beginning of SC2 development when it was discussed. The programmer who did the proposal made some logical (but flawed) decisions and DK or DB approved of it. It was then forgotten by DK and/or DB as other more noticeable things became more pressing. Whoever created the scan range code has probably moved onto other projects/companies or else is a mostly unknown person within the team.
For every new unit that is created, the variable for scan range is copied over because it's the default and none of them actually know what it does anyways... they just know that the current variable works. Then someone like Jakatak digs into the editor and finds out what it actually does and how changing it makes the game better. The findings get made public and then DK and DB get caught with their pants down on some obscure variable that they probably said okay to back in 2009 and never thought about again.
That's what's actually happening. It's a consequence of being a large company that created a very complex game.
You can also be reasonably certain that Blizzard is hiring people with very impressive resumes because working for them is one of the dream jobs for every kid who grew up playing awesome Blizzard games. So they get a whole lot of applicants and can afford to be picky. The problem is that a resume does not show true passion. Being an extremely skilled programmer does not make you a good game designer.
Creating a video game is tough. The vast majority flop and you'll never hear of them. SC2 is actually a reasonably good game that many people have poured thousands of hours into and many more have put hundreds into. The problem for Blizzard is that the expectations are so high that it's almost impossible to reach.
As Day9 recently said on reddit:
I really hope Atlas will be cool. The one thing working on a game has taught me is how sickeningly incredible Blizzard is. Making games is fucking impossible. Blizzard makes SO many fun games. I can't quite figure out how.
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Yeah, every time I see someone say something along the lines of "This should be easy, I don't know why they don't just do it" I just sort of sigh.
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On April 08 2015 14:15 RenSC2 wrote:I think what most people are noticing within Blizzard development is a consequence of getting too big. When development teams get too big, each person gets a specialized role. Each person usually knows their role quite well, but are often oblivious to the other roles. When the project is large enough (such as SC2), nobody is responsible for knowing everything. David Kim or Dustin Browder would be the closest guys to that, but then they often don't know the details of certain areas. Neither DK or DB coded the scan range. Most likely, one or both may have been in a meeting at the beginning of SC2 development when it was discussed. The programmer who did the proposal made some logical (but flawed) decisions and DK or DB approved of it. It was then forgotten by DK and/or DB as other more noticeable things became more pressing. Whoever created the scan range code has probably moved onto other projects/companies or else is a mostly unknown person within the team. For every new unit that is created, the variable for scan range is copied over because it's the default and none of them actually know what it does anyways... they just know that the current variable works. Then someone like Jakatak digs into the editor and finds out what it actually does and how changing it makes the game better. The findings get made public and then DK and DB get caught with their pants down on some obscure variable that they probably said okay to back in 2009 and never thought about again. That's what's actually happening. It's a consequence of being a large company that created a very complex game. You can also be reasonably certain that Blizzard is hiring people with very impressive resumes because working for them is one of the dream jobs for every kid who grew up playing awesome Blizzard games. So they get a whole lot of applicants and can afford to be picky. The problem is that a resume does not show true passion. Being an extremely skilled programmer does not make you a good game designer. Creating a video game is tough. The vast majority flop and you'll never hear of them. SC2 is actually a reasonably good game that many people have poured thousands of hours into and many more have put hundreds into. The problem for Blizzard is that the expectations are so high that it's almost impossible to reach. As Day9 recently said on reddit: Show nested quote +I really hope Atlas will be cool. The one thing working on a game has taught me is how sickeningly incredible Blizzard is. Making games is fucking impossible. Blizzard makes SO many fun games. I can't quite figure out how.
This is very well said. It's a really good point that isn't very easy to remember when we berate DK and DB. These guys know a LOT about SC2 but knowing EVERYTHING about SC2 is impossible, even as a developer as closely involved as they are.
The economy is another example this applies to. Despite understanding the HOTS economy on a basic level I doubt DK fully understands the implications of the new economic model as well as someone like LaLush does. Not for lack of trying, but because he's got a lot more than JUST that change to worry about.
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On April 08 2015 15:25 Soldier92 wrote:Show nested quote +On April 08 2015 14:15 RenSC2 wrote:I think what most people are noticing within Blizzard development is a consequence of getting too big. When development teams get too big, each person gets a specialized role. Each person usually knows their role quite well, but are often oblivious to the other roles. When the project is large enough (such as SC2), nobody is responsible for knowing everything. David Kim or Dustin Browder would be the closest guys to that, but then they often don't know the details of certain areas. Neither DK or DB coded the scan range. Most likely, one or both may have been in a meeting at the beginning of SC2 development when it was discussed. The programmer who did the proposal made some logical (but flawed) decisions and DK or DB approved of it. It was then forgotten by DK and/or DB as other more noticeable things became more pressing. Whoever created the scan range code has probably moved onto other projects/companies or else is a mostly unknown person within the team. For every new unit that is created, the variable for scan range is copied over because it's the default and none of them actually know what it does anyways... they just know that the current variable works. Then someone like Jakatak digs into the editor and finds out what it actually does and how changing it makes the game better. The findings get made public and then DK and DB get caught with their pants down on some obscure variable that they probably said okay to back in 2009 and never thought about again. That's what's actually happening. It's a consequence of being a large company that created a very complex game. You can also be reasonably certain that Blizzard is hiring people with very impressive resumes because working for them is one of the dream jobs for every kid who grew up playing awesome Blizzard games. So they get a whole lot of applicants and can afford to be picky. The problem is that a resume does not show true passion. Being an extremely skilled programmer does not make you a good game designer. Creating a video game is tough. The vast majority flop and you'll never hear of them. SC2 is actually a reasonably good game that many people have poured thousands of hours into and many more have put hundreds into. The problem for Blizzard is that the expectations are so high that it's almost impossible to reach. As Day9 recently said on reddit: I really hope Atlas will be cool. The one thing working on a game has taught me is how sickeningly incredible Blizzard is. Making games is fucking impossible. Blizzard makes SO many fun games. I can't quite figure out how. This is very well said. It's a really good point that isn't very easy to remember when we berate DK and DB. These guys know a LOT about SC2 but knowing EVERYTHING about SC2 is impossible, even as a developer as closely involved as they are. The economy is another example this applies to. Despite understanding the HOTS economy on a basic level I doubt DK fully understands the implications of the new economic model as well as someone like LaLush does. Not for lack of trying, but because he's got a lot more than JUST that change to worry about.
You overestimate Lalush and underestimate David Kim, I fear. One is...well, what is he exactly nowadays? The other is a senior game designer at one of the most successful video game developing companies ever.
It will take more than a few pseudo-mathish posts on TL about how Broodwar is great and SC2 sucks (what an original claim) to convince me of who has the better credentials.
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On April 08 2015 07:21 Hider wrote:Show nested quote +Time exists as a dimension to many parts of the game, and it's important to establish this framing: that in general if you contract time, you lose something of your ability to react or respond to your opponent's actions. Maybe this is vague, but I think that TheDwf was talking in prophetic terms: that Blizzard foolishly ignored a fundamental rule and will have to pay the consequences. Except you could argue that the more time you give players to react the easier it becomes to make the right direction. As an example, I can probably calculate in my head what 28*36 is if given enough time, but I can't calculate it in 5 seconds. Only skilled math-guys can. It simply doesn't make sense to argue that less time as a general rule reduces skill. There are lots of other variables that matters here. It must instead be analyzed on a case-by-case basis.
It might not reduce skill per se, but it does typically make the game more volatile, random and less strategic. If you were set on case by case analysis you could never make the global assessment that the game is too fast in various ways and that one mighht desire thematic sort of change.
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On April 08 2015 17:52 Grumbels wrote:Show nested quote +On April 08 2015 07:21 Hider wrote:Time exists as a dimension to many parts of the game, and it's important to establish this framing: that in general if you contract time, you lose something of your ability to react or respond to your opponent's actions. Maybe this is vague, but I think that TheDwf was talking in prophetic terms: that Blizzard foolishly ignored a fundamental rule and will have to pay the consequences. Except you could argue that the more time you give players to react the easier it becomes to make the right direction. As an example, I can probably calculate in my head what 28*36 is if given enough time, but I can't calculate it in 5 seconds. Only skilled math-guys can. It simply doesn't make sense to argue that less time as a general rule reduces skill. There are lots of other variables that matters here. It must instead be analyzed on a case-by-case basis. It might not reduce skill per se, but it does typically make the game more volatile, random and less strategic. If you were set on case by case analysis you could never make the global assessment that the game is too fast in various ways and that one mighht desire thematic sort of change.
I believe the only actually way to reward more strategy is to bring in lots of different choices where the best solution isn't obvious. Increasing the time you have to make decisions doesn't increase strategy here. Rather it just gives more time for players to think about strategy. But if the optimal decision is obvious, your just giving "slower thinking" player a better chance to make the right decision.
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Well said TheDwf, I don't want to be hard on blizzard ever, because starcraft has been one of the juggernauts when it comes to intellectually challenging games of our lifetime and for that I will cherish them forever... perfecting this game(if there is even such a thing) is probably an endless journey. But having said that and without even playing it anymore and only being a spectator, it does feel like Jay said "dumbed down and i doubled my dollars". They probably see this endless struggle for anyone to compete with a small ridiculously good korean scene and figure they will even it out a bit.
When it comes to the best of the best, the cream of the crop, these changes are only limiting their ability to put on a intellectually stimulating game for the audience to see develop in real time, these changes are meant to cast a wider net in possible profit by making it more accessible for the middle class to enjoy the game.
Less time and less resources just constraints creativity and possibilities, I guess it would be a good way to start from scratch as these changes should make it easier to find balance withing the game and units.
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On April 08 2015 10:19 Umpteen wrote:
The level of casual contempt on show is beginning to sicken me.
How about this: if you haven't personally used the editor to create a set of great new units that are nicely balanced and fun, you don't get to insult those who are trying.
They're expecting us to part with money to play the game, and want us to watch events featuring it. Of course we get to complain if it's not what we want.
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The more I see of the ravager, the less I think that the ravager is too strong, or even comes too early. From what I'm seeing on streams:
- vs Z: ravagers aren't all that dominant; roaches still carry the army
- vs T: ravagers seem to be a minor factor in the matchup. It's nice to have some in some occasions for zoning, but with flying siege tanks just keep any rush with them in check easily.
- vs P: protoss is fucked early against anything zerg if they can't wall and the ravager is good vs the convenient Protoss walls & canons & forcefields. --> the main problem is that protoss is fucked early against anything zerg. The ravager just - finally - is able to prevent the invincible 2base protoss early game. The much more healthy approach than nerfing the ravager (besides possibly necessary tweaks) is to just make protoss more capable of open field combat. Especially given how fucked up protoss got so far, buffs to protoss seem like the appropriate solution for now.
Yeah, yeah... I'm stopping already. Not having access to the beta makes all of what I'm writing bullcrap anyways... 
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I definitely agree that the more correct approach is to strengthen Protoss early game, but I would still like to see Ravager slowed down a bit for how powerful it is. The unit is almost *too* good at everything for its cost/tech. I mean, when you can have 3+ ravagers attacking your opponent's base at the 4 minute mark, that's pretty crazy.
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On April 09 2015 02:38 KrazyTrumpet wrote:
I definitely agree that the more correct approach is to strengthen Protoss early game, but I would still like to see Ravager slowed down a bit for how powerful it is. The unit is almost *too* good at everything for its cost/tech. I mean, when you can have 3+ ravagers attacking your opponents base at the 4 minute mark, that's pretty crazy.
Yeah, it comes out very early and a lair requirment or a 50/50-100/100 roachtech upgrade would probably make sense. But 4mins now, is like 7:00 HotS mins (though the conversion with the 12worker start is of course a false friend, given how it affects tech openings much more than e.g. hatch first). Pretty early, but puts it more into perspective.
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Has anyone discussed how the new Terran unit DKim talked about may only fit into the game if they outright remove the anti-air from Cyclone?
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On April 09 2015 03:08 Tenks wrote:
Has anyone discussed how the new Terran unit DKim talked about may only fit into the game if they outright remove the anti-air from Cyclone?
How so? The Cyclone attack is long range single-target and even more so thanks to the way Lock-On works. The new Terran unit is short range AoE (sounds like it uses fire).
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On April 09 2015 03:23 ZAiNs wrote:Show nested quote +On April 09 2015 03:08 Tenks wrote:
Has anyone discussed how the new Terran unit DKim talked about may only fit into the game if they outright remove the anti-air from Cyclone? How so? The Cyclone attack is long range single-target and even more so thanks to the way Lock-On works. The new Terran unit is short range AoE (sounds like it uses fire).
Hellbat can morph to a FireStorm! Even tanker and deadlier version of hellbat that can be healed, repaired and has combat drugs 
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Has anyone noticed impact to Oracle/DT opening vs Terran? I imagine they are completely dead with the Turret change.
With the Warp-in nerf, Immortal nerf, Colossus nerfs, Oracle/DT opening nerf, Sentry nerf (Ravager breaks FF), I wonder if they should just remove Protoss from the game altogether. Maybe then people will be happy. Sigh.
On a more serious note I can't help but think that anti-Protoss sentiment is driving more of these changes than actual game design. The economy change makes easily massable cheap units really good.. meanwhile Protoss is getting all its crowd control / game pace units nerfed and receiving nothing in the form of early game brawlers to compensate for it.
Disruptors are super expensive and are almost entirely reliant on synergy with the Warp Prism to make them work effectively. At 300 gas a pop it's not something that you can afford to have kill 3 roaches and get sniped. They either look completely OP or useless as fuck depending on who's using them. And that's the last thing Protoss needs... more gimmicky shit that everyone will hate on.
Suggestions:
Remove the Robotics Bay requirement for the Disruptor
Make Warp Prism range an upgrade at the Robotics Bay
This should allow Protoss to get a few Disruptors early to deal with some of the early Zerg/Terran aggression while limiting how early the "imba" Disruptor drops can hit the field. Currently that strategy is played almost every game because it's so good....
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I've honestly been using Oracles for Stasis Ward. Stasis Ward is so cool, I love it for delaying pushes.
I strongly disagree with lowering the Disruptor's tech tier. It's powerful, and it's spot on the tech tree is appropriate. The better way to deal with current Protoss weakness is to simply buff Gateway. Considering all the rest of the changes to the game now, it's the perfect time to try this. And hell, if you make Protoss continually less reliant on Forcefields, we can have more than 2 types of maps, maybe!
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EPT
