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On April 13 2010 05:34 w_Ender_w wrote:
I'm a little bit confused about how he believes most Zerg units are microable? Especially in regards to his comment that you can overcome counters by microing them? Reminds me of a comment I heard on LzGamers stream. I think someone said, "Sure, like you can micro Mutas against Thors. You can take the Mutas and hide them in the corner. Hah! I beat your build, your Thor will never make it here!"
There's a pretty good chance that this interview was taken pre-Thor buff.
It should also be noted that the Thor had AoE air attacks several times in its history. So this isn't the first time they've tried this.
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This interview is awesome
I love to hear that the dev team is scared shitless >
seriously though pretty good answers by dustin
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wow. possible warp gate nerf. wonderful /sarcasm
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On April 12 2010 21:00 LunarC wrote:
Designing anything without a general direction or overarching purpose either turns it into an incoherent mess or turns it into something with a very homogeneous texture, so to speak. Hence, Protoss is no longer the most expensive/slow-to-produce race, Zerg is no longer the mass-units-quickly race, and Terran is no longer (viable as) the mixed bag of ultra-mobile glass-cannon bionic and slow-moving, powerful mech.
Instead, each race is composed of the basic unit (thankfully still characteristic of each race's ORIGINAL vision.) and mid-tier tank units, siege units, harass units, and anti-air units. Great, except they forgot something. They forgot to preserve each race's original vision in designing the units. They forgot to encourage armies that work through SYNERGY. Can you believe that they redesigned the Roach because fighting against it produced drastically different results if the units were microed versus if they were not microed? I thought micro was supposed to be a game-changing factor, not an afterthought? What went wrong?
No design template, that's what went wrong.
Not only do you end up with a lack of synergy between units in a race, creating a "mishmash" feel to each, but you also end up with units in hard and fast roles, completely inflexible in their use.
Take the reaper for instance. This is a unit that was clearly designed by the "make it cool" philosophy Browder laid out in the interview (let's give a marine a jet pack -- super cool!). The result is a unit with a single, hard and fast role - harassment - and no other use. Such a thing was virtually unknown in SC1. Some units were better at harass than others, but they were always adapted to that role, and they always had other roles they could fill as well. No so for the reaper - you would be foolish to try and work them into your main army after they are done harassing.
This design philosophy they have chosen has been visible from day 1, and is the fundamental problem with the game. (Almost) all the other issues people have with SC2 flow from it.
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I think people are looking more into that statement than necessary.
My interpretation of it was basically: "The community will explore the game more in depth than we could ever hope to, so instead of trying to force a design plan and possibly hurt the strategic depth, let's just create a bunch of cool units and see how much depth they have when the players try them out, and tweak accordingly."
I don't really see it as a bad thing because personally I think it's better when the players make their own strategies rather than developers trying to force players into a certain strategy. People keep saying that the races in SC2 have no feel, but I find that to be utterly false. The only units in SC2 that don't really fit in are the Roach and Marauder.
The only real problem with this design philosophy is mostly due to the fact that Blizzard often has a lame sense of what's cool. I still don't see anything that's cool about the Mothership, or the way the Hellion looks, and let's not forget the infamous Soul Hunter. Maybe Blizzard should just pay more attention to what the community at large sees as cool rather than just themselves.
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On April 13 2010 05:34 w_Ender_w wrote:
I'm a little bit confused about how he believes most Zerg units are microable? Especially in regards to his comment that you can overcome counters by microing them? Reminds me of a comment I heard on LzGamers stream. I think someone said, "Sure, like you can micro Mutas against Thors. You can take the Mutas and hide them in the corner. Hah! I beat your build, your Thor will never make it here!"
Just because massed unit A can't beat massed unit B in a straight up fight doesn't mean that you can't over come a counter.
In BW a common response to a terran going mech was to mass mutas, even though goliaths are a counter to mutas in a straight up fight. they did this because the mutas had an insane mobility advantage and could beat a terran if you had good micro.
There is probably no way to micro mutas to beat thors straight up, but that doesn't mean it makes for an uninteresting fight.
Besides, in what situation would you mass mutas and not get a good number of zerglings and/or roaches? The existance of Thors does not neutralize mutas, despite them having a huge advantage in a fight.
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I like the design approach taken for SC2. Cheers, Blizzard!
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Make no mistake: all the stuff about being newbie friendly and slowly easing them into competitive 1v1 is VERY important for elite level pro-gaming at the highest levels.
The more people that play SC2, the more people will be interested to watch it, the more viewers and money there will be for tournaments and leagues. Furthermore, who knows where the next great RTS gamer will come from? Perhaps he is 10 years old right now and has never heard of Starcraft, but when it comes out he will try it out and get better and one day be a champ. Welcoming beginners widens the talent pool, and will eventually lead to better competition at the very top levels.
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I guess my issue with that design philosophy comes from several years of playing Magic.
If you don't know Magic is a card game with five colors of magic. Every color has a specific 'flavor' and style. You can do things with one color that may not be common for that color but if you do it always costs more mana to do it or it has some inherent weakness.
So things like cheap roaches in zerg seem to violate the philosophy. I like roaches I just don't think they should come so cheaply nor dominate the field of play.
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On April 13 2010 06:01 Spawkuring wrote:
I think people are looking more into that statement than necessary.
My interpretation of it was basically: "The community will explore the game more in depth than we could ever hope to, so instead of trying to force a design plan and possibly hurt the strategic depth, let's just create a bunch of cool units and see how much depth they have when the players try them out, and tweak accordingly."
I don't really see it as a bad thing because personally I think it's better when the players make their own strategies rather than developers trying to force players into a certain strategy. People keep saying that the races in SC2 have no feel, but I find that to be utterly false. The only units in SC2 that don't really fit in are the Roach and Marauder.
The only real problem with this design philosophy is mostly due to the fact that Blizzard often has a lame sense of what's cool. I still don't see anything that's cool about the Mothership, or the way the Hellion looks, and let's not forget the infamous Soul Hunter. Maybe Blizzard should just pay more attention to what the community at large sees as cool rather than just themselves.
I realize that (your interpretation) was the intention, but I'm saying that adding something to a race without taking overall race trends into consideration or overall trends in general into consideration makes for a lot of mixed results. Everyone knows how quickly games in Starcraft 2 can end, and Dustin Browder himself said that this was an unexpected result.
A factor to this is probably the speed at which races can gather resources and produced units that speeds up the game in general, courtesy of the macro mechanics. Sure they are cool and interesting and all, but with what effect? The Marauder and Roach are such hotly debated units that did not originally fill the roles they do today. Why are they forced into the roles that they currently take? Do we really want another "Dragoon" unit for each race?
I think it came to this because this sort of design process fails to consider holes in some areas of army composition that needed to be filled either because of the race or the opposing race. When you hand Protoss something like the Immortal and Warpgates, Terran is left not only outmuscled, but also outproduced. Thus a Marauder type unit is the easiest way to deal with that. Then, Zerg is left to deal with masses of units produced from the Warpgates and Marauders as well. The Roach is used to fill the same sort of role that the Marauder fills.
What SHOULD have taken place was careful consideration of how an element of the game would affect everything else and whether the other races have the ability to hold that element off. The Marauder is too survivable of a bionic unit, and the Roach is too survivable of a Zerg unit. But they are necessary, and that is where something is wrong. They shouldn't be as necessary as they are. This dynamic could have been avoided with more comprehensively thought-out designs, and certainly many of the units do not encourage players to control units to gain the best results so much as to build the right units and roll their opponents with little trouble because that was Blizzard's solution to perceived imbalances. Add advantages to a unit's health or attack instead of giving it a micro advantage without making it too survivable.
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On April 12 2010 21:00 LunarC wrote:
Designing anything without a general direction or overarching purpose either turns it into an incoherent mess or turns it into something with a very homogeneous texture, so to speak. Hence, Protoss is no longer the most expensive/slow-to-produce race, Zerg is no longer the mass-units-quickly race, and Terran is no longer (viable as) the mixed bag of ultra-mobile glass-cannon bionic and slow-moving, powerful mech.
Instead, each race is composed of the basic unit (thankfully still characteristic of each race's ORIGINAL vision.) and mid-tier tank units, siege units, harass units, and anti-air units. Great, except they forgot something. They forgot to preserve each race's original vision in designing the units. They forgot to encourage armies that work through SYNERGY. Can you believe that they redesigned the Roach because fighting against it produced drastically different results if the units were microed versus if they were not microed? I thought micro was supposed to be a game-changing factor, not an afterthought? What went wrong?
No design template, that's what went wrong.
Nice post. I agree. This approach to design is at the root of so many of Starcrafts current problems. Nowhere is this more evident than macro.
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Sweden33723 Posts
On April 13 2010 05:40 NicolBolas wrote:Show nested quote +On April 13 2010 05:34 w_Ender_w wrote:
I'm a little bit confused about how he believes most Zerg units are microable? Especially in regards to his comment that you can overcome counters by microing them? Reminds me of a comment I heard on LzGamers stream. I think someone said, "Sure, like you can micro Mutas against Thors. You can take the Mutas and hide them in the corner. Hah! I beat your build, your Thor will never make it here!" There's a pretty good chance that this interview was taken pre-Thor buff. It should also be noted that the Thor had AoE air attacks several times in its history. So this isn't the first time they've tried this.
Well, to be honest, there's not a lot of micro that could be done against the Thor pre-patch either. Due to its range the only types of micro were:
- Focus fire (lol)
- Keep out of range
But I mean, that's basically exactly the same as the situation against range upgraded goliaths in SC1 so it's not necessarily bad.
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Why are people bitching about roach/marauder/immortal still? I think has been dealt with.
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On April 13 2010 08:38 Pyrrhuloxia wrote:
Why are people bitching about roach/marauder/immortal still? I think has been dealt with.
It's not the actual units themselves so much as how the function within their respective races is turning out that I'm bitching about.
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I think some of them are to much "original" and "creative" while all we want is the ultimate balanced RTS...again.
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On April 13 2010 06:01 Ryuu314 wrote:
wow. possible warp gate nerf. wonderful /sarcasm
This must have taken place a while back.
If one Protoss player goes three Gateways, the other Protoss player needs to go three Gateways to counter or he is hosed.
That hasn't been the case at all since that original warpgate nerf. Sentry defense into robo play rapes 3 gate.
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On April 13 2010 06:01 Spawkuring wrote:
The only real problem with this design philosophy is mostly due to the fact that Blizzard often has a lame sense of what's cool. I still don't see anything that's cool about the Mothership, or the way the Hellion looks, and let's not forget the infamous Soul Hunter. Maybe Blizzard should just pay more attention to what the community at large sees as cool rather than just themselves.
Case in point: Roach.
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On April 13 2010 05:40 NicolBolas wrote:
There's a pretty good chance that this interview was taken pre-Thor buff.
It should also be noted that the Thor had AoE air attacks several times in its history. So this isn't the first time they've tried this.
On April 13 2010 06:02 petered wrote:
Just because massed unit A can't beat massed unit B in a straight up fight doesn't mean that you can't over come a counter.
In BW a common response to a terran going mech was to mass mutas, even though goliaths are a counter to mutas in a straight up fight. they did this because the mutas had an insane mobility advantage and could beat a terran if you had good micro.
There is probably no way to micro mutas to beat thors straight up, but that doesn't mean it makes for an uninteresting fight.
Besides, in what situation would you mass mutas and not get a good number of zerglings and/or roaches? The existance of Thors does not neutralize mutas, despite them having a huge advantage in a fight.
I think both of you gentleman are focusing a bit too much on my joking quote from one of the LZGamers streamers. It's not a particular issue with just Mutas or something (though Thor's do pretty much make a 10-range square on the map a no-fly-zone for any number of Mutas). It's a pervasive issue with the entire race. I can micro my Speedlings because they are quick enough and it's useful. I can micro my Roaches using the burrow mechanic. That's just about it. Hydralisks seem to really fall the flattest, since they used to be a quick main army unit that I could dodge in and out of fire with (the same way Terran players use Marauders now, moving and shooting) but, like many Zerg units, they are so slow now that there is no advantage to micro beyond target fire or "run away, we're all dying!". There just aren't many options to scoot around and gain an advantage with Zerg in a fight (which is coincidently why many players think all Zerg does is a-move).
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They need more Zerg players on their team...
Interesting read, thanks for the link :>
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