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Eury:
Perhaps you need to actually read the interview instead of being so sheep-ish about it.
I'm not putting words into his mouth, I'm relaying what he's said. I can't take what he said, flip it around for the outcome that makes me happiest. That's lying. I suggest you not do it either.
In short he, clearly says, more than once, they didn't proceed with a plan, threw spaghetti at the wall, and worked based off what stuck and what didn't.
Also... where did I state how I feel about SC2? I said right now I play more SC1. I also stated I agree with many observations on how out-of-place some units feel. This isn't relative to how much I like or dislike SC2. Right now, as a Zerg-main, Terran seems really appealing. That's how I feel on SC2  .
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Canada11349 Posts
On April 14 2010 16:50 sk` wrote:
In short, the "Roach" thread highlights the problem. A cool unit was made, which created a balance problem, thus units to counter it were needed; however, those too created balance problems and the cycle continues. Had the team started with "Zerg should behave like N and thus need unit X." It wouldn't have been the same.
For example, in BW did anyone every say, "Man, if only Zerg had a short-mid range meat shield unit named after an insect." Hu? No. Effectively, they had that in the Ultra, bringing it down to T1.5 does what for the race?
SC2 has no shortage of examples like that and they all stem from the same point. No plan. Throw it at the wall and see what sticks...
But isn't this simply a problem of in what order did something come about/ a matter perspective. Would not any new unit created become 'a balance problem'? It's a new unit, so it'll need to be balanced. That's a problem, therefore other units are needed to counter it. Now whether they had in their heads which units countered which units at the beginning or whether certain units were created in order to balance that cool unit, we don't know. We can't know from the interview and our argument is only based on assumption.
Had the team started with "Zerg should behave like N and thus need unit X." It wouldn't have been the same. But who's to say they didn't do this? The Zerg maintains their swarm identity so clearly that was a factor when they were creating the units.
You say you can only rely upon what Browder says in the interview. True, but you can also overanalyze what he said to interpret silence on a particular subject, means the opposite is true. Rather then that it was simply not mentioned one way or the other.
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On April 14 2010 17:16 sk` wrote:Eury: Perhaps you need to actually read the interview instead of being so sheep-ish about it. I'm not putting words into his mouth, I'm relaying what he's said. I can't take what he said, flip it around for the outcome that makes me happiest. That's lying. I suggest you not do it either. In short he, clearly says, more than once, they didn't proceed with a plan, threw spaghetti at the wall, and worked based off what stuck and what didn't. Also... where did I state how I feel about SC2? I said right now I play more SC1. I also stated I agree with many observations on how out-of-place some units feel. This isn't relative to how much I like or dislike SC2. Right now, as a Zerg-main, Terran seems really appealing. That's how I feel on SC2 .
Trying things out != Having no planning
What I'm trying to tell you is that trying something; see if it fits; try something else if it doesn't; is how Blizzard operates. They have always worked in a iterative fashion, and this isn't anything they start doing with Starcraft 2. It's also the reason why I'm confident that they will sort out the few things I feel is missing in the game.
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Falling:
But why add units unless there is a need? Usually, needs bring change. Change for the sake of change brings problems. i.e. the Roach problem people have been going on about.
Also, I am reading into his interview a bit, BUT, if he had a root plan but operated loosely (as Eury would wish to believe), then he'd say as much. "We have guidelines and objectives we're working to meet, but we're also trying out many new elements in the process." This, and what he said, are two very different things.
Also, I'm not really sure they maintain their swarm identity, but that's a side discussion.
Eury:
Is that so? Was that the case with War3? WoW? Those are the more recent Blizzard titles and I don't see a throw it at the wall and hope method. Hope is not a strategy.
As ideal it is from the 3rd person view to say "That's how my favorite company works and it's so cool!" - no company works like that. If it only operated on whims it would die.
Either way, the interview content speaks volumes so I'm not sure why I'm replying... I guess because I'm not sure why more people's jaws aren't on the floor.
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On April 14 2010 20:10 sk` wrote:
Falling:
But why add units unless there is a need? Usually, needs bring change. Change for the sake of change brings problems. i.e. the Roach problem people have been going on about.
Also, I am reading into his interview a bit, BUT, if he had a root plan but operated loosely (as Eury would wish to believe), then he'd say as much. "We have guidelines and objectives we're working to meet, but we're also trying out many new elements in the process." This, and what he said, are two very different things.
Also, I'm not really sure they maintain their swarm identity, but that's a side discussion.
Eury:
Is that so? Was that the case with War3? WoW? Those are the more recent Blizzard titles and I don't see a throw it at the wall and hope method. Hope is not a strategy.
As ideal it is from the 3rd person view to say "That's how my favorite company works and it's so cool!" - no company works like that. If it only operated on whims it would die.
Either way, the interview content speaks volumes so I'm not sure why I'm replying... I guess because I'm not sure why more people's jaws aren't on the floor.
Operating on whims is your poorly made interpretation of what Dustin meant, and how they work. They work by repeating things until they are happy with the result, they did the same thing when thy did Warcraft 3 and WoW.
Here is an article with notes regarding game design for WoW from a lecture that was made by one of their lead designer. It applies pretty much for SC 2 also.
Plan on too much content; then prioritize best. Iterate and polish
In other words they create a ton of content, tries it out, and then cut it out if it doesn't work.
For an example units for Starcraft 2; they made a ton of units for each side - then they started to remove all units that felt unnecessary, or didn't fit, until they found a balance they were happy with.
Now, if they removed too many units (which some claims is the case for Zerg), then based on feedback they might add or change units until they are happy with the result.
This is called an iterative process, something Blizzard is master at and something they like to do. This is also the reason why their games take ages to get released, and why most gaming companies don't operate in that way.
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Oh for f sake.
Get off each other's balls. Dustin Browder is a big boy and I'm sure when the time comes he can defend himself accordingly. He's a nice guy in person, but stupid shit comes out of his mouth sometimes.
I see him as a Team Manager more than anything else because that is what he's good at; managing people.
You see this all the time. CEOs and managers come from all sectors. This doesn't mean they know anything about the product or service they are selling. He's there to get everyone on the same page.
Their process however -_-
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On April 14 2010 20:56 bEsT[Alive] wrote:
Oh for f sake.
Get off each other's balls. Dustin Browder is a big boy and I'm sure when the time comes he can defend himself accordingly. He's a nice guy in person, but stupid shit comes out of his mouth sometimes.
I see him as a Team Manager more than anything else because that is what he's good at; managing people.
You see this all the time. CEOs and managers come from all sectors. This doesn't mean they know anything about the product or service they are selling. -_-
You clearly don't understand what the title "lead game designer" means. What you are talking about is more of a producer than anything else,.though that varies depending on company. Lead game designer is closer to what a director is for a movie than being some kind of CEO, just so you know.
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This approach seems very familiar to me, and I'm afraid some of you are understanding it the wrong way. I'm an industrial design student, and besides the engineering/marketing part, there's the completely open phase where you brainstorm for different possible solutions to a problem or even brainstorm for possible problems to solve in the first place.
The most effective approach is to generate as many ideas as you possibly can, not even necessarily within the range of feasibility or even physical possibility. Then distill from that huge pile of ideas.
Limiting yourself early on in a creative process like this is hell. It restricts the range of your ideas and prevents 'cross-pollination' of ideas. Most often, the result is the most obvious answer, while another less obvious solution might be way better in the end.
Let me explain.
Blizzard, being the creative bunch that they are, can undoubtedly come up with all kinds of mechanics and roles for new units. The only limit to what they can think up is how much coffee, time and motivation they have.
Let's say during this process employee A comes up with the Terran Lone Ranger unit, a cowboy on horseback that can throw a lasso and draw in units from the opponent's army, so that the player can use this ability to break enemy positioning. This idea could have originated in a random brainfart, it could have been derived from the redneck nature of Terrans, it could have been a random image the employee saw on TV, it could have been anything.
This is a completely unfeasible idea of course and very out of place in the lore of SC2.
The point is, though: however 'wrong' this idea might be, it does serve to maybe inspire employee B (or even A itself) to think about units that emphasize positional play more.
Abilities like Sentry Force Field or the Phoenix's Graviton Beam could have originated in this way.
This effect is further amplified when creatively working in larger teams. The cross-pollination often happens in your head if you work on something alone, but pooling ALL ideas, not just the good ones, serves the purpose of accelerating the creative process immensely, as well as broadening its scope.
Had Blizzard immediately limited themselves by stating that Terrans are the positional players while Protoss are the hightech powerhouse race, this forcefield or graviton beam might not ever have existed, or it might have taken a lot more time to develop.
TL;DR: "Throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks" is a cross-industry standard way of handling creative processes.
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Creating a complicated system of interacting units according to a pre-conceived set of ideas as to how you want things to work is a likely means of creating a contrived, boring, and possibly ineffectual product. There are multiple approaches to the creative process, and the game on our hands right now contains both complex qualitative and quantitative factors.
In other words, sometimes its better to build things from the ground-up, sometimes its better to build things from the top-down.
- If you build things from the ground-up, you have a chance of encountering problems where the individual pieces don't fit perfectly together and need some adjustments (or even additions and deletions).
- Building something from the top-down carries a risk of systemic flaw compromising the quality of the entire product if certain principles employed in development contribute to a flawed product. Warcraft 3 was designed with a top-down mentality (let's implement Hero units that control the flow of the game, concentrate on having less units that die slower to encourage extensive micro wars, minimize base management, etc). While I think War3 was a fun game, it took a hell of a long time to balance well and fix some somewhat fundamental issues because they were intrinsic to its design.
I think they were wiser in developing the pieces first and now working to tweak them rather than potentially ruining the entire game by having everything abide by a broad and pre-supposed set of ideas. There's less potential for disaster, and the pieces will be weaved together into a very coherent whole eventually. I think we are well on our way right now!
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On April 14 2010 21:03 Eury wrote:Show nested quote +On April 14 2010 20:56 bEsT[Alive] wrote:
Oh for f sake.
Get off each other's balls. Dustin Browder is a big boy and I'm sure when the time comes he can defend himself accordingly. He's a nice guy in person, but stupid shit comes out of his mouth sometimes.
I see him as a Team Manager more than anything else because that is what he's good at; managing people.
You see this all the time. CEOs and managers come from all sectors. This doesn't mean they know anything about the product or service they are selling. -_- You clearly don't understand what the title "lead game designer" means. What you are talking about is more of a producer than anything else,.though that varies depending on company. Lead game designer is closer to what a director is for a movie than being some kind of CEO, just so you know.
Clearly someone doesn't know how to read. I'll say it again. I said, "I SEE HIM, DUSTIN BROWDER, as a TEAM MANAGER more than anything else."
I know his role at the company you douche. Managing people is what he's good at; not as the lead designer. I guess some people are born stupid or just don't take everything in before they start flapping their gums.
User was banned for this post.
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On April 14 2010 21:05 DarQraven wrote:
This approach seems very familiar to me, and I'm afraid some of you are understanding it the wrong way. I'm an industrial design student, and besides the engineering/marketing part, there's the completely open phase where you brainstorm for different possible solutions to a problem or even brainstorm for possible problems to solve in the first place.
The most effective approach is to generate as many ideas as you possibly can, not even necessarily within the range of feasibility or even physical possibility. Then distill from that huge pile of ideas.
Limiting yourself early on in a creative process like this is hell. It restricts the range of your ideas and prevents 'cross-pollination' of ideas. Most often, the result is the most obvious answer, while another less obvious solution might be way better in the end.
Let me explain.
Blizzard, being the creative bunch that they are, can undoubtedly come up with all kinds of mechanics and roles for new units. The only limit to what they can think up is how much coffee, time and motivation they have.
Let's say during this process employee A comes up with the Terran Lone Ranger unit, a cowboy on horseback that can throw a lasso and draw in units from the opponent's army, so that the player can use this ability to break enemy positioning. This idea could have originated in a random brainfart, it could have been derived from the redneck nature of Terrans, it could have been a random image the employee saw on TV, it could have been anything.
This is a completely unfeasible idea of course and very out of place in the lore of SC2.
The point is, though: however 'wrong' this idea might be, it does serve to maybe inspire employee B (or even A itself) to think about units that emphasize positional play more.
Abilities like Sentry Force Field or the Phoenix's Graviton Beam could have originated in this way.
This effect is further amplified when creatively working in larger teams. The cross-pollination often happens in your head if you work on something alone, but pooling ALL ideas, not just the good ones, serves the purpose of accelerating the creative process immensely, as well as broadening its scope.
Had Blizzard immediately limited themselves by stating that Terrans are the positional players while Protoss are the hightech powerhouse race, this forcefield or graviton beam might not ever have existed, or it might have taken a lot more time to develop.
TL;DR: "Throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks" is a cross-industry standard way of handling creative processes.
Yeah, people are just stupid.
How else can you make a fun diverse game.. There is no template you can follow..You must try different things and refine things that work and scrap other stuff.
You cant predict how the game is gonna be played when its in hands of gamers..
Units from sc are the same.. How else can you come up with something like arbiter that cloaks and transports you troops..
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On April 14 2010 21:22 bEsT[Alive] wrote:Show nested quote +On April 14 2010 21:03 Eury wrote:On April 14 2010 20:56 bEsT[Alive] wrote:
Oh for f sake.
Get off each other's balls. Dustin Browder is a big boy and I'm sure when the time comes he can defend himself accordingly. He's a nice guy in person, but stupid shit comes out of his mouth sometimes.
I see him as a Team Manager more than anything else because that is what he's good at; managing people.
You see this all the time. CEOs and managers come from all sectors. This doesn't mean they know anything about the product or service they are selling. -_- You clearly don't understand what the title "lead game designer" means. What you are talking about is more of a producer than anything else,.though that varies depending on company. Lead game designer is closer to what a director is for a movie than being some kind of CEO, just so you know. Clearly someone doesn't knwo how to read. I'll say it again. I said, "I SEE HIM, DUSTIN BROWDER, as a TEAM MANAGER more than anything else." I know his role at the company you douche. That's what he's good at. Not the latter. I guess some people are born stupid or just don't take everything in before they start flapping their gums.
Well you are wrong in your stupid assessment for what role Dustin Browder have. He isn't the team manager even though obviously he have to do some of that considering he is in a leadership position. Chris Sagaty is more of a manager than him.
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You still don't get it. Good job. Class is out. No bribes will change your grade. Perhaps you should read the edit as it should be more clear considering how slow you are.
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On April 14 2010 16:50 sk` wrote:You can never predict how things will pan out; however, that has nothing to do with your original plan (at least, for something like an RS). Those minor things can be addressed in patches (and are). However, the concept of "Zerg should play like N, in order for them to behave like N they will need units like X,Y, and Z. Units like X,Y, and Z will have balance issues if P,Q, and R, therefore..." and it goes on and on.
In another very notable reference to Dawn of War 2, it released with significant MP issues, from balance to UI (not so much control but rather presentation of information) to gameplay. In particular though, the gameplay issues (among those that melee combat was not powerful enough and thus not sufficiently different in feel from ranged combat as well as that Tier 1 did not last long enough as well as game flow on the whole not being quite where it should be). Basic point though is that DoW 2's MP was quickly dismissed as being flawed and not very good- many even pointed to its "lack of basebuilding" as the primary issue despite that actually had nothing to do with it as future patches later proved (DoW 2 wasn't blessed with a site like TL where thousands of intelligent, knowledgeable players can sit around and pinpoint specific issues with a game's design such as many of SC2's "it doesn't seem to have the micro potential that Brood War did" actually boiling down to that Roaches and other mis-steps have caused for many severe nerfs that have destroyed the original identity of such units).
Long story short, Relic released a steady stream of patches from 1.0 to 1.4 to add content to the game, update the UI to convey more useful information, and to fix balance. However, the game still wasn't feeling up to par, so they developed patch 1.5 "There is Only War" where they basically rethought major elements of the game's design, making significant changes to how units handled, effectiveness of melee, game flow, tech tree location of units, etc... They even cobbled together a couple of "new" units and tons of new abilities. They released a beta 1.5 patch and took in the community's relatively positive feedback on these new changes and then followed through. Up until the 1.5 Beta, DoW 2 was, to me, a failed game. However, playing the 1.5 Beta was a completely new game and I found I liked it a lot and gave DoW 2 a second chance and was really happy I did- but the fact is, most people didn't and still haven't. SC2 could well face the same issue.
Rest of the DoW 2 story is that they continued to refine the game and add content from 1.5 to 1.9, fixing a lot of the balance they broke because of their bold reinvention of the game with 1.5, and then with the Chaos Rising expansion they made more tweaks to existing units and tech trees while adding units as necessary (and being very bold with their additions- the Weirdboy is a kind of caster I don't expect outside of Blizzard games yet Relic nailed it amazingly) and of course adding another race. All of these tweaks made the game even better and more fun to play but devastatingly broke balance and it took a little under a month for some of the most glaring issues to be brought in line (as it stands now there's still a lot of little tweaking that needs to be done but I have no qualms with ladder play currently as skill rather than balance imo is the deciding factor atm whereas I didn't feel it was that way pre-patch in high-level play), but as mentioned it was perfectly ok because the game was more fun and balance will be fully fixed over time. But still, DoW 2 is perceived by many as a black sheep because of its initial issues.
On April 14 2010 17:18 Falling wrote:But isn't this simply a problem of in what order did something come about/ a matter perspective. Would not any new unit created become 'a balance problem'? It's a new unit, so it'll need to be balanced. That's a problem, therefore other units are needed to counter it. Now whether they had in their heads which units countered which units at the beginning or whether certain units were created in order to balance that cool unit, we don't know. We can't know from the interview and our argument is only based on assumption.
That's not quite true. If you're planning out your races in advance of creating the units that populate those races, you are already figuring out what the strengths and weaknesses of each race are going to be and you're going to be able to use that information to design units accordingly. If you've done a good job of planning and designing your races, the units you design to fill those plans should automatically fall into place with no Roach-like issues.
So for example, let's say we're considering the Lurker. We're looking to give the Zerg a siege unit with fairly good range and that can devastate light/weak units (this ends up being Terran bio looking at ZvT; you'll note that Lurkers are useful in ZvP as well though). We're also going to have this unit burrow to do its attack, so it can be used to ambush enemies or force them to be more cautious. Our goal is to allow the Zerg a strong mechanism of defense, but also to give the Zerg a unit that can force their opponents to leverage higher-tech units before Tier 3.
The inherent weaknesses of this unit though are that while its range is good, it's not amazing and so it can be outranged and furthermore to attack it must be completely immobile, so this range issue is significant. Forcing it to burrow/unburrow to attack/move also induces a set-up/take-down time that can allow enemies to catch it off-guard, and therefore it forces the Zerg player to use this siege unit in a calculated manner. Because of its potency against ground units, we don't want it to be able to deal with air so it should be vulnerable to that. While it is a Zerg unit and therefore should be produceable in in sizable numbers, it is also a powerful Zerg unit and we don't want it to be too easily spammed nor do we want to make it too easy to use without significant investment. Finally, Zerg should not be able to deny terrain to opponents with only a few units, therefore the attack of this siege unit should be designed in such a way that proper micro can deal with a few of them but that a critical, Zerg-y mass will produce the desired result without the opponent bringing forth a more substantial counter.
Notice that we haven't yet designed the Lurker nor have we designed any other unit that might counter it. We've simply stated that we want a Zerg siege unit and in order for it to be properly "Zerg-y" it needs to fit the above requirements. When we look at those, we can see that any armies facing this unit will need to have viable alternatives to light units- we consider the Terran and Protoss and we find this to be perfectly fine as our plans already call for both races to be able to field these. We see perhaps a potential problem in Zerg mirrors though. We can also see that any army facing this needs sufficiently reliable detection. Here, all armies are planned to have this. We have also defined that this unit, alone, is vulnerable from air to ground assaults. If we consider our plans for the Terran and Zerg races, we find that Terran are not planned to have substantial air to ground capabilities until a fair bit later in the tech tree than this unit will pop out and then we further find that our plans for a cheap, suicidal air to air unit for the Zerg race should make that high tech tree air to ground unit very infeasible for Terran. However, we have noted previously that Terran are already planned to have mid-tech units that will be able to deal with this siege unit and that, furthermore, Terran are planned to have their own siege unit with superior range (we don't need to consider values for the range, simply that a given range may be massive, long, average, short, etc... if Unit A's range should be "massive" while Unit B's range should be "long", then the numeric values do not matter because when we actually create numeric values, we will follow our relative dictates and ensure that Unit A's range > Unit B's range), and thus this is not an issue. For Protoss, we have similar issues with ground to air but recognize that the majority of the Protoss army is generally not "light" and should have some chance at dealing with Lurkers- failing that, we have designs for a Protoss siege unit that should, like the Terrans', outclass this one. Looking at the Zerg mirror, we see that we have relatively strong plans for Zerg ground to air, including an air to ground siege unit, and this should resolve our prior concerns with this siege unit's role in mirrors (although we might be concerned that this unit could force an undue focus on aerial superiority). And finally, this siege unit will be expensive and thus high-tech counters will be feasible and viable.
We can then go in and fill in that the unit is the Lurker and that it is in Zerg T2, its tech needs to be researched from the Hydralisk Den, then once that is done it can be morphed from a Hydralisk. This ensures that it appears in mid-game tech and will allow the opponent to get heavier units out and also ensures that the unit is sufficiently expensive and not overly spammable. We then further fill in that it has a linear attack which can be devastating but if only a few Lurkers are used they can be taken out by the very units Lurkers should be helping to defend against given proper micro. Etc.
In practice we then see that the unit is unique, "Zerg-y", but balanced despite its impressive stats because it is not so spammable that a sufficient amount of Irradiates cannot decimate it, that just a few Siege Tanks cannot prove problematic for it, etc... Our planning even took into account the utility of Psi Storm to a degree as we made provisions for that small amounts of Lurkers should be killable by unit types they "counter" with proper micro and in doing so we also specified that groups of Lurkers should be more effective than lone Lurkers and thus as Psi Storm is a high-tech ability that deals a lot of damage to an area and thus is good at killing groups of lower-tech units (or even mid-tech units if sufficient Storms can be targeted upon them, and the relative immobility of Lurkers makes this possible). We also did not specify that the Lurker should be an excellent harass unit via drops and etc but ths is an acceptable and arguably natural byproduct of the aggressive, offensive use of siege units (for example, Siege Tanks pounding a worker line do pretty damn well too  ) and again it is acceptable because we have ensured that the Zerg's opponent will have methods of dealing with the Lurker and on a parallel design thread we have also ensured that there are ways of preventing drops/harassment.
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On April 14 2010 15:24 BanelingXD wrote:Browder is the man that ruined Starcraft. "We didn't have a plan" FAIL edit: Looks like more nerfs for Toss are on the horizon too. Guess they won't get any AA till their expansion. Browder sucks. 
So you are the guy that will chop a quote to pieces and then use it to prove your point. I really didn't think people like this actually existed.
Don't be an idiot, they had a plan. They have a very complex plan but they started by just seeing what cool units they could make and then they made the game balanced. Is there something wrong with that? Maybe they should have just copy pasted Terran twice to make all three races, that way it would be more balanced.
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Like many posters pointed out "throwing shit at the wall" is a common occurrence, and even needed, in the creative process. Pre-production meetings are all about that.
What Blizzard do, that differs from most other game developers, is that they aren't afraid of testing (throwing) things further into the production than most other developers. For an example the beta should be completely feature locked, but Dustin Browder have himself said that they won't hesitate to add or remove units if necessary. Now, that is something extremely unusual in the gaming industry due to obvious reasons, like increased cost in manpower, time, money etc.
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@TerranUp16: The process you're describing is basically what you do AFTER and DURING the process I described.
In addition, the method I detailed in my previous post (and that I perceive Blizzard used here as well, to some degree), does not state anywhere that you should just plop all your ideas into the game and call it a day.
Critical assessment of units, what role they play, what roles are really needed per race, whether a certain unit is too useful, etc... all that can be discussed and tweaked after you've had your massive explosion of different ideas, and it is those criteria that you use to distill the pool of ideas into concrete units or solutions. Bring originality and fun into the game first, balance comes later, for the simple reason that balance can be mapped, explored and tweaked. You can't engineer fun.
The problem with the method you're describing is that you are assuming up front and accurate knowledge about the rest of the game.
"We want a Zerg siege unit with good range that can devastate light units" sounds very logical in the context of what we know now, but when you've basically got a blank canvas in front of you, it takes excessive amounts of planning to even recognize the need for a Zerg siege unit, let alone its specific role.
Furthermore, planning this far ahead is ignoring one factor: mistakes, uncertainty.
That one unit that didn't turn out so well, even though you planned its role in great detail, is going to have a devastating effect on the rest of the game's balance.
1. You'll need a replacement. Back to the drawing board (as opposed to using one of many tweaks suggested by the large pool of ideas you'd have using 'my' method), restarting the creative process costing valuable time and effort on something that could have been achieved already. Resource logistics are not a factor to ignore.
2. Because this unit is not fun to play with, removal is necessary, and this might trigger a chain reaction of other units that now fulfill no clear purpose. If we simplify drastically and say that the Observer's sole purpose was to spot Lurkers, the removal of Lurker would invalidate your painstakingly planned Observer unit as well.
3. To prevent removal and its chain reaction of disaster, you might try tweaking the unit or changing its function/role. However, this would completely negate the effort you'd already put into the planning of everything.
The result of this, in practice, is that planning can only take you so far. Of course it's not a bad idea to have some idea of where you want to go, but taking the planning phase too far too early in the process will restrict your options later on.
I know I, were I a game developer, would greatly prefer a game with 24 semi-useful and slightly chaotic but tweakable units per race than one where the unit count has already been boiled down to 10 more or less set units per race without any testing to speak of.
Ingame metaphor: Designing a game into that sort of detail before you've ever tested any of it is like designing a build order without knowing unit stats. Even if you make a bloody detailed game plan, it can and will fail because you cannot know how your units will behave up front without having played around with them. Creative design is a cyclic, trial-and-error process. You're describing it as if it were a linear task, a checklist of sorts.
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On April 14 2010 21:05 DarQraven wrote:
This approach seems very familiar to me, and I'm afraid some of you are understanding it the wrong way. I'm an industrial design student, and besides the engineering/marketing part, there's the completely open phase where you brainstorm for different possible solutions to a problem or even brainstorm for possible problems to solve in the first place.
The most effective approach is to generate as many ideas as you possibly can, not even necessarily within the range of feasibility or even physical possibility. Then distill from that huge pile of ideas.
Limiting yourself early on in a creative process like this is hell. It restricts the range of your ideas and prevents 'cross-pollination' of ideas. Most often, the result is the most obvious answer, while another less obvious solution might be way better in the end.
Let me explain.
Blizzard, being the creative bunch that they are, can undoubtedly come up with all kinds of mechanics and roles for new units. The only limit to what they can think up is how much coffee, time and motivation they have.
Let's say during this process employee A comes up with the Terran Lone Ranger unit, a cowboy on horseback that can throw a lasso and draw in units from the opponent's army, so that the player can use this ability to break enemy positioning. This idea could have originated in a random brainfart, it could have been derived from the redneck nature of Terrans, it could have been a random image the employee saw on TV, it could have been anything.
This is a completely unfeasible idea of course and very out of place in the lore of SC2.
The point is, though: however 'wrong' this idea might be, it does serve to maybe inspire employee B (or even A itself) to think about units that emphasize positional play more.
Abilities like Sentry Force Field or the Phoenix's Graviton Beam could have originated in this way.
This effect is further amplified when creatively working in larger teams. The cross-pollination often happens in your head if you work on something alone, but pooling ALL ideas, not just the good ones, serves the purpose of accelerating the creative process immensely, as well as broadening its scope.
I don't really disagree. It really depends on what level you're on and where you're working with the development. So, purely at the unit stage, it's rather fine if I just stop and go, "Ok guys, just go ahead and think of the most batshit-insane stuff you can and we'll whisk through it," but you need to have a plan for test all of that against, even if you aren't testing it against that plan immediately. So taking the example from my previous post where we have the planning for the ground Zerg siege unit. We could take thousands of unit concepts and cull through them to see how they relate to that plan, and we could eventually come across one or more that fit it really well.
Alternately, we could come across some concepts that don't quite fit the role or that stretch it or etc, but we might decide that's ok and we want to check and see if maybe doing it that way is more viable or better- but even in doing so we still want to re-evaluate our original plan and tweak it accordingly so that we can adjust our evaluation criteria accordingly. Because even after finding something we like there's a pretty good chance that we'll like a lot about that thing but it just may not be completely workable so we want to redo our framework so that we can refine future efforts along that course, instead of getting to something and going, "That's frickin' awesome and way better- let's use it!". And then you use it and you find that while it's pretty awesome, it has some pretty big issues and so you try and fix those issues and all of a sudden it's not what you started with. Instead, you could have just figured out that this thing was indeed awesome but that it needed a bit of a redesign or that this thing put you on the right track but you still need something different to get it right.
Anyway, in response to other posts about how Blizzard handles iteration, I... how to put this... "know" (I don't work at Blizzard, but I've read plenty of interviews besides this one and have followed them pretty closely as a developer) how Blizzard handles iteration, that they're perfectly willing to shove a concept into a game and completely scrap it if it's not working in favor of something different. And, I'm pretty sure I've said this before, but that's completely fine when you're consistent with that. When you're consistently willing to scrap what isn't working and completely rework or redesign it or just flat-out scrap it because you realize you don't actually need it, that's fine and it will work (eventually). It takes a lot more time and resources than most studios have to offer for their projects, but Blizzard ISN'T most studios. They're Blizzard.
The problem I have currently and I think the pervasive issue, is not so much that Blizzard's methods are fundamentally flawed, but rather that they are getting to a point where they are abandoning their commitment to those methods. It's completely possible that even Blizzard is running out of time and/or money/funding for this method and they simply can't let it run to its full completion. If so, that's a very strong argument in the direction that Blizzard's iterative method is not fully feasible. Alternately, Blizzard is growing too attached to some of their creations and their hands are growing weak at the executioner's switch.
The significance of the quote then, is the confirmation of the route that Blizzard took to get where they are, and as I mentioned previously, if they really are not going to fully commit to that route, that could prove a palpable issue for SC2.
I think the ray of sunshine though is that they *should* hop back onto that route for the expansions and those should give Blizzard a second and third chance to play that out.
But at the moment, I have serious concerns about the Roach and Marauder, that they are going to continue to drag down SC2, and I am concerned about the Thor and Mothership continuing to be as stretched as they are from their original concepts and to continue to stretch to the minimal limits of their new roles. I don't really feel that either is an optimum solution for where they are currently, and I also feel that other even if the aforementioned are all addressed, other similar issues lurk but haven't yet been brought to the forefront.
Among those, I really agree that the Zerg in particular just do not feel quite "Zerg-y" enough and while the Roach plays a big role in that, I am going to point my finger squarely at the Queen's mutant larvae macro mechanic because the number one reason I feel the Zerg are not as different as they once were is because they feel less like an infection, disease, plague now because they can fight off roughly equal bases whereas in StarCraft 1 they had to and were encouraged to expand much more and to take control of sizable parts of the map, and as Protoss or Terran you were constantly thwarting a full-on infestation, knowing that if you let it grow too much or get too far ahead of you that it would just overwhelm you. Creep Tumors and creep-shitting Overlords I feel are a very hollow replacement for that. And I'm not really sure that Blizzard particularly intended to remove this element of the Zerg.
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Crisium wrote:
So they make cool units, regardless of the balance. This gets Roaches with rapid healing, Reapers that throw D8 Charges, Mothership with Planet Cracker, etc. Then the plan is to let gameplay and time balance it out. Blizzard seemed to think that balance would be adjusting HP, damage, costs, build time, etc. But instead balancing lead to making the "cool" units very uninteresting. Roach is just a cheap Tank, Reapers D8 is now only against buildings and makes the unit harass only, Mothership is just a big, slow, expensive, powerful Arbiter.
The cool is gone, but the units are still there, boring and all.
I think SC1 took a similar approach, but kept the cool in because they weren't so pressed for balance right away (think 1998). That allowed us to have cool things with crazy micro such as Reavers, Vultures (with and without mines), "invincible" M&M balls vs nearly instant-marine-killing Lurkers. People would cry IMBA today and we would lose them.
Does anyone think Colossus Micro is as exciting as Reaver? Can Hellions even compare to Vultures? They have to stop to attack (balance).
Where are the imba spells of SC1, such as Irridate (delay kill almost any Zerg unit, and splash damage), Spawn Broodling (instant kill many units), and anything the Defiler has. Seriously - consider the Defiler on paper. It's way too good. Sacrifice a few 25 mineral units and you can spam countless Plagues that reduce units with a couple hundred HP to 1. Or spam countless Dark Swarms against Terrans who can only send in weak firebats or use splash damage. These Imba spells do not exist in SC2 because out of the fear of balance. I'd rather they did, because they are cool and can be managed by strategy and/or patches instead of outright removal.
This is absolutely amazing post that is hitting the problem at EXACTLY where it is. They catter to the masses now, they listen to copper/bronze players whining about stuff that at higher level play is totally counterable with some proper micro or anything. If they balanced SC1 same way they are balancing SC2 now we would have totally diffrent game without lurkers, siege tanks, spider mines, reavers, psi storms and anything else bad low tier players could complain about.
Too bad, this game had potential to be great. It's still not too late to be honest but I don't see them going away from their current ,,please the masses,, methods anytime soon.
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On April 14 2010 21:59 TerranUp16 wrote:
The problem I have currently and I think the pervasive issue, is not so much that Blizzard's methods are fundamentally flawed, but rather that they are getting to a point where they are abandoning their commitment to those methods. It's completely possible that even Blizzard is running out of time and/or money/funding for this method and they simply can't let it run to its full completion. If so, that's a very strong argument in the direction that Blizzard's iterative method is not fully feasible. Alternately, Blizzard is growing too attached to some of their creations and their hands are growing weak at the executioner's switch.
Even Blizzard got deadlines. You can't keep on iterating forever, you need to reach a point where you say - that's enough, its finished. Otherwise you get Duke Nukem Forever.
Also you have the psychological factor when it comes to those involved creating the project. Starcraft 2 have been in production for 7 years. Its very draining working on the same project year after year even if you love what you do. You are in risk to burn people out if you keep on going without an end in sight.
Regarding specific design decisions when it comes to Zerg - I guess my solution would be to add Dark Swarm back into the game somehow as a Hive tech, and cap how much larva a Hatchery can sustain even with a queen. That would make Zerglings and Ultralisks much more competitive with Hydras and Roaches. For Terran Hellions need to work under Dark Swarm, and for Protoss Archons have to be buffed to deal with the new Zerg threat.
I'm not a game designer though, so I'm sure others can add better and/or more clever ways to make Zerg more interesting.
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EPT
