On April 13 2010 18:01 TerranUp16 wrote:Show nested quote +On April 13 2010 09:36 Falling wrote:Balancing is easy- just have your corresponding/ mirrored units on either side- like pretty much any other RTS- Warcraft II- Elven Rangers vs Troll Beserkers- one has a slight range advantage in range, the other in damage and healing. But basically the same unit with different art. Age of Empires, you have exact same units on either side, but some tech paths are denied. What's hard is balancing un-mirrored units. So the starting point has to be creativity, not balance.
Their method of going in all directions, having 18 units for the zerg and then trimming it down is simply how the creative process works. The sky is the limit for new ideas, churn them out and see how they works. Once you have the ideas, you can start trimming out the bad ideas/ unworkable ideas. It's the same for pretty much any creative process from writing to art. Ideas first, then revision and editing.
I really don't have a problem with Browder's comments at all.
Eh... You're taking a very specific example and then generalizing it. That is, you're taking the example of where developers want to have a sizable amount of very easily balanceable factions- they don't care too much about the factions being unique and in some ways they don't even want them to be too unique because they want players to be able to keep track of the differences- and then you're saying that is the *only* alternative to Dustin Browder's proposal for designing RTS factions/units. That's rather far from the truth.
The more common starting point for a game that aspires to have a few unique races is to determine defining characteristics of each race- what makes them different and in what ways do they/should they feel unique? This process does generally involve having some basic concept of a generic race that perhaps one of your races will fulfill or perhaps none of them will, but either way this generic race has the basics of what all of your races can have in a rather plain fashion. This race is never detailed, but the broad view of it, the economic methodologies, basic unit requirements, basic tech requirements, etc... are glossed over. From this base, creating your races is an additive, subtractive, and substitutional process.
This is just one method, but we can explore where it leads us for a bit. Taking StarCraft, we can see that all races share the same, basic economic model where there are two types of resources on the map and expensive, command structures allow harvesters/workers to return those resources for usage. In their harvesting roles, the workers are identical. However, workers can also construct buildings, and here they diverge, giving each race a different feel. Drones' sacrificing of themselves to construct structures is offset by their production methodology which allows them to be produced more rapidly (alternately, the sacrificing of Drones offsets Zerg's production methodology to minimize their immediate potential to gain an undue economic advantage). Along parallel lines, Zerg's pruduction is streamlined to their command structures (Hatcheries) to minimize the amount of Drones they need to sacrifice to produce units and tech up. Chicken and egg scenario (shrug). Meanwhile, Terran and Protoss workers have their own construction quirks to further racial identity.
Looking at the first tier of combat units we have Zerglings, Zealots, and Marines. All three are very different but fill the same initial role of being the first combat units out the door, requiring no gas to produce. Terrans prove very different here because their starting combat unit is ranged and it immediately begins to establish their identity as having copious glass cannons (the Medic was added in Brood War to extend the utility of these particular glass cannons beyond the early game). Also noteworthy is that the SCV's extra health was not only to cover for that the SCV was the only worker that needed to remain alive throughout a structure's construction in order to complete, but also because Terrans have no access to a melee combat unit until the Firebat (which requires gas) and by amping the SCV's (non-free-regenerable) health it can be used as necessary to protect the glass cannon Marines at the expense of not being used to mine/construct (so we can already see that the increased health SCVs have is synergistic in three ways- whether this actually happened by chance or by design we don't care because if we're looking at actually designing the Terrans, these are racial identity questions that we want to ask and solve- we want to ask, "How should our workers for this race construct buildings? Should workers for this race be more or less viable in combat than workers of another race? How does this race handle hp regeneration, and knowing that how do we want this unit to handle hp regen?"). With the Zergling, we get a more "standard" starting unit that is melee, cheap, and relatively weak. However, we see that this fits the Zerg race well because it produces quickly and is nicely massable and thus uniquely fills our requirements for the race's starting combat unit. And finally we have the Zealot, which to fulfill the racial vision for the Protoss needs to be expensive but powerful, so it ends up costing twice as much as the "generic" unit here but it has quite a bit more durability and attack power than its cousins. It's quite notable that we could consider a Zealot to be an expensive, suped-up Zergling to which many here will reel with horror again, but that's all it really is when we look at its stats, but when we put those stats in context we find it to be a rather wholly different unit. However, it's not particularly "cool" or overwhelmingly "unique", it just fulfills a role for the Protoss army in a "Protss-y" manner.
We could go through all of the units in StarCraft, but that would be a rather long post
It may be a bit more helpful though to take a brief look at a completely different game. Dawn of War 2 (oh no, more squeals of horror!) homoginizes its races a fair bit more than StarCraft does as DoW 2 (Dawn of War 2) seeks to streamline the macro components of its game mechanics, leaving all races with rather identical macro mechanics and tech trees. This rather harshly simplifies the more overarching elements of racial identity that StarCraft draws from, and thus much more emphasis is placed on the units (on a side note, I will say that DoW 2 has nowhere near the macro depth of SC or SC2, but the macro depth it does have is sufficient for its purposes- the lack of base-building is not much of an issue as it makes up for it in other ways and it does specifically put more emphasis on micro than macro as well as much of its macro resulting from micro)- and the setting is the Warhammer 40,000 universe, so the races really do need to feel and play very differently for the game to have any chance of successfully representing its source material.
DoW 2 solves its problems by keeping a loose structure for the units of all of its races, to the point where Relic really doesn't seem to care that the Predator Tank is more or less present in Space Marines, Orks, and Chaos Space Marines. The loose structure provides a base for balance, as well as base for Relic to craft the method in which each race fulfills its roles. Space Marines have no T1 melee unit (I consider Assault Space Marines T1.5 because they require a sizable amount of power; for those not familiar with DoW 2, power functions somewhat similar to Vespene as the secondary resource that plays a big role in teching and sustaining advanced units) but they compensate for this with a very durable T1 staple ranged unit (Tactical Space Marines) and a fast T1 support ranged unit that can be upgraded to provide substantial microable counters to melee units (Shotguns and/or frag grenades). On the other hand, Orks have a pretty standard T1 set-up with two staple units, the melee Sluggas and ranged Shootas. Sluggas get their twist by being extremely powerful and durable in melee combat and being rather cheaply reinforcable, and they're downright deadly in numbers. Shootas on the other hand are pretty weak ranged units, but in large numbers and well-upgraded they can be dangerous (rarely ever a threat to Tactical Space Marines though) to many units from many races- they represent the wonky kinda glass cannon side of Orks despite that cannon isn't super powerful with enough of them it could be just powerful enough maybe while Sluggas are the more durable, in-your-face side.
However, the remaining three races have a similar T1 set-up, as Eldar have Guardians and Banshees (ranged and melee respectively), while Tyranids have Hormagaunts and Termagaunts (melee and ranged respectively), and Chaos have Heretics and Chaos Space Marines (melee and ranged respectively). The cost differences between these are far less drastic than the cost differences between Zerglings and Zealots, but nonetheless Hormagaunts control, feel, and are used much differently than Ork Sluggas, proving quite less durable but more lethal when they are in a winning battle. Howling Banshees for Eldar are similar in this respect, but more able to stand and fight yet being more expensive and glass cannon-y. The only two unit sets that really feel at all similar are Shootas and Termagaunts and Space Marines and Chaos Space Marines- the latter two are obvious but while they start similarly, they diverge a fair bit in the later game while Shootas and Termagaunts tend to differ a fair bit less on a unit level but diverge more on a racial level as other units and race elements (for example the very powerful Nob leaders that can be added to Shoota squads while Termagaunts rely on ranged synapse to provide this buff; this reflects Orks as still being a somewhat mass-y race but being stronger than Tyranids individually while the Tyranids rely more on thier hive/swarm style) combine to diverge them.
The core of the above point though about DoW 2 is that when looking at even the most basic units, they're all very similar in role, but they nonetheless *feel* different and further the uniqueness of their race.
And the point of all of that in relation to StarCraft 2 is that units do not need to be any less unique because they began their lives as just roles for a faction rather than as completely "unique and awesome units". When starting from the basis of the role, we pretty much know that a unit is going to work, and that it's just a matter of tweaking and tuning that particular unit to feel unique and different and to further the race's identity in a balanced way.
Now, it is also noteworthy that Blizzard's method of creating units first and then slapping them into the races and putting them through a trial by fire can produce the same results, and perhaps even better results because you may find that you can get away with some unique concepts that through a more traditional, "safer" development model you would have discarded. The key though is that you have to commit to this, "shotgun design", as NicolBolas I believe put it. For it to work, you need to accept that it's only a little better than using Random Sort on a list (for those who don't know what that is, imagine that you have all 26 letters of the alphabet in a line but they're out of order and you need to sort them so that they are in the proper order; with Random Sort, you basically just move a random letter to the first slot, another random letter to the second slot from the remaining letters, etc... until every slot has gotten its random letter; you then check it and if you sorted correctly then woohoo you're done; if not you do it again; Random Sort could potentially sort the letters properly the very first time it's run... or it could be run an infinite number of times and never work because it's completely random; shotgun design is slightly better than Random Sort because you are bringing some foreknowledge into your design and that will influence what you do, but it's still not nearly as consistent as coming in with a proper plan; however, like with Random Sort, it could work the very first time you try it or it could take thousands of tries to get it right), and you need to stick with it. If something isn't working, you have to be prepared to completely scrap it and try again.
The problem, again as others in this thread have recognized, is that Blizzard is not really following this method of design. They are putting firing limits on their shotgun and restricting its targets. For some reason or another, they are marking various units as "safe" and are focusing in on trying to balance those units rather than just scrapping them and trying a completely new design. Some balancing is fine and even necessary, but we're literally seeing units such as the Roach, Marauder, Thor, Mothership, etc... being completely transformed in the balancing process. They're really not the same units anymore, and yet in the process of being transformed, they haven't really been crafted to be "unique" or "awesome" either. Instead they've lost a lot of their "uniqueness" and "awesomeness" and this is why, when you're going to be doing a lot of balancing like this, you don't necessarily want the units to be "unique" and "awesome" to start with because it's much easier to add those elements in after the core elements of the units have been balanced. However, as mentioned, Blizzard's design style is *supposed* to sidestep this because the second a unit starts receiving major revisions, it should be completely redesigned and overhauled from the ground-up.
On top of Blizzard haivng taken a liking to the Thor, Mothership, Roach, Marauder, etc... they also seem to be struggling with an identity crisis of trying to make SC2 appear different from SC1 as much as they possibly can without making it too different. This is leading them to plant their heals on issues such as the Hydralisk being in T2 instead of T1/T1.5, which in turn is forcing them to cram what had been a unique unit into a void left by the Hydralisk, to fulfill a decent set of its roles despite that the Hydralisk still exists. Imo, moving the Hydralisk back down to T1.5 and rebalancing it for that as well (for the inevitable complaint about Hellions, consider that you'll be able to get more Hydralisks out earlier and that if you don't over-clump your Hydralisks and that if you leverage Hydralisks' range to force Hellions to move into range of Spine Crawlers in order to attack your Hydralisks [and you consider Spine Crawlers' ability to... crawl... so they can temporarily block ramps as necessary] I think you'll find that you can micro your way out of Hellion harass which I think is what we wall really want since that makes the game more entertaining to watch and more entertaining to play), and then moving Roaches up to T2 and rebalancing them for a less-massable role there would allow Roaches to resume many of their "unique" and "awesome" design elements, but Blizzard seems to refuse doing this and instead is intent on nerfing Roaches into a proper, massable T1/T1.5 role that is completely not what they were originally designed for.
EPT
