Dustin Browder Interview - April 12

On April 12 2010 14:41 Lordpen wrote:
Seems very strange how you'd go into designing a sequel to the a absolute classic RTS without any set goals.
This probably explains how all the races have tier 1 - 1,5 tank units which to me makes the races less distinct from each other then in BW.
Starcrafts call to fame was presenting three very different races to play and I can't believe they would go into making a sequel and not having that as a design goal.

On April 12 2010 14:44 shindigs wrote:


The did present the three unique races as the design goal. That was in the OP's quote. They just didn't have balance goals, esports takeovers, etc.

Personally, I think it all ended up alright, so I'm happy with however they chose to design the game.

On April 12 2010 14:36 faseman wrote:
hahaha....wow ---------___________________----------------------------------------------


they tried to make interesting units and they came up with roach/marauder/immortal? YAWN

On April 12 2010 15:23 cartoon]x wrote:
you people bitch way too much. sc2 is awesome.

On April 12 2010 14:32 0neder wrote:
So the siege tank is now more unique because it's totally useless?

On April 12 2010 15:26 j4vz wrote:
Quote from Dustin:
So we're probably going to do some changes to the build time on the upgrade for Warp Gates, just to push that a little bit later in the tech tree so that a lot of the early Warp Gate shenanigans that we're seeing in the beta get pushed back a little bit.

(,,,)

OMFG IS THIS A JOKE ?

Xel Naga should nuke blizzard for this.

On April 12 2010 15:30 lolaloc wrote:

The interview probably happened before the Warpgate nerf.

On April 12 2010 15:37 Half wrote:
Interviews usually take forever to come out on these gaming sites, who save them for the doldrums of info. Don't take it too seriously as a comment towards the current state of the game. Just the overall mentality.

On April 12 2010 15:39 mOnion wrote:


"these gaming sites" is gameinformer, arguably the only video game magazine with any quality left in it these days.

they have a high turnover rate for quality articles, so this interview was recent, most likely within this patch or the the end of the last.

On April 12 2010 15:42 Half wrote:


It isn't mean to be a diss, a lot of interviews conducted in this manner are usually from several weeks ago in general. Its a industry wide trend in gaming media. Very few sites will release not immediately relevant exclusive content on the same week they collect it.

On April 12 2010 15:44 mOnion wrote:
the point is that in all likelihood this interview came AFTER the first warpgate nerf.

On April 12 2010 15:46 lolaloc wrote:
This could be bad news if it were true.

There are definitely players out there who don't want that intensity in their lives. I understand. They're like, "I don't want to lose a game, thank you very much, let alone in the first 20 seconds."

On April 12 2010 15:23 cartoon]x wrote:
you people bitch way too much. sc2 is awesome.

On April 12 2010 16:10 Half wrote:
Yeah I have no fucking clue what Dustin is talking about.

kinda worried now.

On April 12 2010 16:13 mOnion wrote:


i'll hold you if you hold me back. <(,_,<)

On April 12 2010 16:14 Makica wrote:
How can you worry about making cool units first and not entertaining and balanced gameplay? I don't believe this interview is real. THIS CAN'T BE REAL

On April 12 2010 16:14 Makica wrote:
How can you worry about making cool units first and not entertaining and balanced gameplay? I don't believe this interview is real. THIS CAN'T BE REAL

On April 12 2010 16:24 lolaloc wrote:

If they wanted a balanced game FIRST, they shouldn't haved added Zerg in the first place. They seem to have done the right process of whipping out creative units first or else they could have ended up redoing Warcraft 2.

On April 12 2010 16:21 meegrean wrote:
doesn't sound like a good way to design the sequel to the best rts game ever -_-

On April 12 2010 16:27 Doc Daneeka wrote:



don't see why not. most of the units are from sc1 anyway.

On April 12 2010 16:30 mOnion wrote:


actually sc1 units are a minorty

5/12 for toss
4/9 for zerg
3/12 for terran

EDIT: holy shit thats weird to think about o.o

On April 12 2010 16:35 lolaloc wrote:

Terran (5)
SCV
Marine
Ghost
Siege Tank
Battlecruiser

Zerg (8)
Drone
Overlord
Zergling
Hydralisk
Mutalisk
Ultralisk
Broodling
Infested Terran

Protoss (7)
Probe
Zealot
High Templar
Dark Templar
Archon
Observer
Carrier

On April 12 2010 16:30 mOnion wrote:


actually sc1 units are a minorty

5/12 for toss
4/9 for zerg
3/12 for terran

EDIT: holy shit thats weird to think about o.o

On April 12 2010 16:45 Doc Daneeka wrote:
like they just arbitrarily pulled unit designs out of their asses and called it a game?

On April 12 2010 15:39 Zelniq wrote:
that explains the changes to roach/hydra this patch

although i dont think those changes were really the right way to break up that roach/hydra combo..it's still really widely used.

On April 12 2010 16:53 Half wrote:
Where else would you suggest they get unit designs from besides "Out of their asses" (aka: Their head). Think up ideas, keep what works conceptually, scrap what doesn't, balance the numbers.

On April 12 2010 17:45 Caphe wrote:
SC2B now is like Math, This>that and no random factor of high ground or anything. And even Math has x, y,z those unknown element, but SC2B is now going to the 2>1, 3>2 direction.

On April 12 2010 17:57 Attica wrote:
It really irks me whenever I read that they were trying to make every unit diverse. Zerg feels like an attack move race. Every cool ability/tool that they had initially has been nerfed to the point that most people don't even use it anymore. Nydus canal used to be cool and was useful for surprise attacks. I've yet to see it since the nerf from a pro player. Anything to do with burrow has been nerfed to the ground so it is slower to get and less useful. Muta harass has been nerfed indirectly with Thor buffs and static defense buffs. Infestors were used for a week and were immediately nerfed to the point of uselessness.

Feels like blizzard is doing nothing but streamlining zerg to 3 or 4 units. Their answer to roach/hydra being core to the matchups was nerfing them and not making the other units more useful. Leaves me scratching my head honestly.

On April 12 2010 18:16 Makica wrote:
So wait, were convinced this is a real interview? I'm still in denial that he said this. Can we get a confirmation?

On April 12 2010 18:18 zomgzergrush wrote:

You won't believe it until Terrible, Terrible Damage has been done, huh?

On April 12 2010 18:13 zomgzergrush wrote:

The changes are to "make other zerg units, like the infestor used moar" of course! That's exactly why they nerfed everything useful to the point of complete uselessness.

You silly goose you.

This is exactly the reason why day9 should have headed the sc2 project instead of dustin.

On April 12 2010 18:32 Funchucks wrote:
Some element of rock-paper-scissors belongs in the game, but there needs to be a stable base that keeps the advantage gained by winning each round of pure RPS small enough to keep the overall result from being completely random once a basic level of skill is achieved.

On April 12 2010 18:38 lolaloc wrote:

What the f is an RPS?!!!

Revolutions per second?
Renewable portfolio standards?
Raytheon polar services?
Railway pension scheme?
Really powerful SHARC?
Reversible pilot seat?
Real property system?
Real person slash?
Requested payment service?

On April 12 2010 18:42 zomgzergrush wrote:

An RPS is a...

Requested payment service for the Raytheon polar services that is a real property system implemented on top of the railway pension scheme that recently switched to renewable portfolio standards because their rotating folder organizer with a large number of revolutions per second caused a really powerful SHARC to complain about his reversible pilot seat so he began to real person slash.

On April 12 2010 18:29 [DUF]MethodMan wrote:
I love how even low postcount users are complaining. Seriously, this can't be real.

On April 12 2010 19:15 Titanidis wrote:
all of you criticising the way of blizzard development methods have you played the game?

I mean, sure its not balanced yet but its surely more entertaining AND more balanced than sc1 vanilla was in beta. This of course is a result of the evolution of rts gamers and ts knowledge but still...

(I don't even want to play the "sc1 was still being balanced years after its release" card)

On April 12 2010 14:32 lolnoty wrote:
The quote in the OP is confusing when you read it and then look at the Zerg.

On April 12 2010 18:29 [DUF]MethodMan wrote:
I love how even low postcount users are complaining. Seriously, this can't be real.

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.

On April 12 2010 21:11 Squeegy wrote:


I can understand that decision because if it wasn't changed, then the newbs would cry about imbalance.

But then again, isn't that precisely what made lurkers so cool?

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.

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.

On April 12 2010 17:45 Caphe wrote:
A long interview but with very little information. I feel like I was reading a advertising article.
Really, Mr. Browder you should read TL. In a long run SC2 is all about competitive online play, so we really do not care much about how you teach people into this game, If someone want to get good at the game, they will find a way to learn it.

So the roaches were too skill-based so they dumbed them down.

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!"

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.

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!"

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.

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 06:01 Ryuu314 wrote:
wow. possible warp gate nerf. wonderful /sarcasm

If one Protoss player goes three Gateways, the other Protoss player needs to go three Gateways to counter or he is hosed.

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.

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.

On April 12 2010 14:55 Badred wrote:
I wonder if that interview was done before or after the change in research time for warp gates, as some of the strategies he's describing do seem to be a few patches old.

On April 12 2010 17:45 Caphe wrote:
A long interview but with very little information. I feel like I was reading a advertising article.
Really, Mr. Browder you should read TL. In a long run SC2 is all about competitive online play, so we really do not care much about how you teach people into this game, If someone want to get good at the game, they will find a way to learn it.

On April 13 2010 08:50 r-eye wrote:
I think some of them are to much "original" and "creative" while all we want is the ultimate balanced RTS...again.

On April 13 2010 09:33 Wintermute wrote:


It's a good thing for Blizzard that they don't take this short sighted view.

On April 13 2010 09:52 Lysis wrote:
I personally am indifferent to the SC2 design team's methods of, well, design. They do what they do and we test it so they can tweak it. Also each race still has their "roles" from SC1. Zerg is the attack-move with a giant mass race (Reason: A lot of SC1 was heavily influenced by Warhammer 40k and vice versa. Take the Zergling for example. It is exactly like the Tyranid player's Hormagaunt: soak damage via mass so the Carnifex (Ultralisk) can get in and really mess up the other guy) Terran can go either mobile or slow push (Like the Space Marines) and the Protoss have a few but powerful units that cost a lot (no exact correlation in 40k but it lies somewhere split between the Eldar and the Tau). I feel that the design team has gotten these roles pretty much down (I still have a problem with the Roach but that's due to gameplay and not from a design standpoint) and that now is the fine-tuning stage of the beta.

Probably the one thing that should be happening is people should cease complaining and start thinking about how to play the game optimally.

On April 13 2010 10:03 OreoBoi wrote:


I see what you're saying, and I mostly agree with you except for one thing:

Your zerg view is completely wrong. Zerg in SC1 was never the attack-move race. There wasn't a real attack-move race in SC1. Some people will say it was protoss, but being good at protoss involved much more than 1a2a3a.
Also, your zergling and ultralisk example is completely wrong. The ultras tank damage for the cracklings, not the other way around. Cracklings do more damage than ultras since they can surround a lot better, but since they are weak, the ultras need to soak up damage.

On April 13 2010 09:52 Lysis wrote:
I personally am indifferent to the SC2 design team's methods of, well, design. They do what they do and we test it so they can tweak it. Also each race still has their "roles" from SC1. Zerg is the attack-move with a giant mass race (Reason: A lot of SC1 was heavily influenced by Warhammer 40k and vice versa. Take the Zergling for example. It is exactly like the Tyranid player's Hormagaunt: soak damage via mass so the Carnifex (Ultralisk) can get in and really mess up the other guy) Terran can go either mobile or slow push (Like the Space Marines) and the Protoss have a few but powerful units that cost a lot (no exact correlation in 40k but it lies somewhere split between the Eldar and the Tau). I feel that the design team has gotten these roles pretty much down (I still have a problem with the Roach but that's due to gameplay and not from a design standpoint) and that now is the fine-tuning stage of the beta.

Probably the one thing that should be happening is people should cease complaining and start thinking about how to play the game optimally.

On April 13 2010 09:36 Falling wrote:


I really don't have a problem with Browder's comments at all.

On April 13 2010 09:37 iG.ClouD wrote:
This interview makes me think even more sc2 devs aren't just competent enough to balance this game. The latest patches were pretty self explainatory about that though. Last interview on that german site was even funnier, basically Dustin said he counters Marauders with Thors. Such a beautiful cluelessness

On April 13 2010 10:56 Crisium wrote:
Depressing interview. This is what they get for getting Dustin Browder. The only logical conclusion to hiring him would be Command and Craft 2. Why couldn't Blizzard see this?

On April 13 2010 10:59 FrozenArbiter wrote:

Really? That sounds almost crazy enough to be an error in translation O_O

Marauders are so tiltingly good vs Thors t.t

On April 13 2010 11:02 LunarC wrote:
Now don't rip on Dustin Browder. He's done a good job, considering that there was generally a lack of understanding in how Starcraft 1 was played at high levels. However, throughout the development period they should have had all of the design staff take a look at what made Starcraft 1 tick so that they could incorporate the basic designs and gameplay structure into Starcraft 2. And I'm talking about very general trends, not specifics. If the specifics aligned with the trends, then you could have a different game that functioned similarly to the original.

On April 13 2010 11:02 iG.ClouD wrote:

He said he builds Thors to counter marauder/banshee combo. Cool stuff :p

On April 13 2010 10:59 FrozenArbiter wrote:

Really? That sounds almost crazy enough to be an error in translation O_O

Marauders are so tiltingly good vs Thors t.t

Yes. Or if you were mean you could call it the »super goliath«, because it's a very powerful anti-air weapon. I build it for a couple of reasons. I'm using it largely against other Terran players where its all-round nature helps me against marauders and banshees which are a pretty significant threat in Terran versus Terran games. I have also gotten some use out of the Thor against Zerg opponents who go for Roaches and Mutalisks. Because the Thor's powerful cannons can break a roach line and its anti-air-missiles can thrash a Mutalisk threat. But when I'm facing a lot of Zerglings or a lot of marines or a large force of zealots and immortals, I'm not feeling a lot of love for the Thor. Still, it's got a lot of uses. So if you have a lot of factory units and a lot of money, it's never a bad idea to build some Thors.

On April 13 2010 11:10 FrozenArbiter wrote:

Well, to be fair, if he builds tanks with the thors it's not terrible I mean, it's the only alternative to building vikings >_<

It's annoyingly immobile, but if you manage to scrounge up the gas for some point defense drones it's pretty strong vs that combo~~

On April 13 2010 11:17 iG.ClouD wrote:

Seems quite farfetched yet it's such a late game and complex option I don't really think it was what he was talking about. Anyway of course I hope I'm wrong, but these new patches are just not what we would expect from Blizzard.

On April 13 2010 10:56 Crisium wrote:
Depressing interview. This is what they get for getting Dustin Browder. The only logical conclusion to hiring him would be Command and Craft 2. Why couldn't Blizzard see this?

On April 13 2010 11:08 iG.ClouD wrote:

They just needed to hire great, smart players to balance the game. It just seems they don't understand much of what they are doing. The part where the pylon is the weak point of a proxy gate rush made me rofl so bad. Any above average player would target the gateways unless the probe is dead, which is very unlikely in the vast majority of these games.

This detrimental and often homogenizing effect occurs often when there is no overall design goal to work with.

On April 13 2010 11:52 LunarC wrote:
They should have focused on making the dynamics between each matchup as interesting and varied as possible and then designed units around that paradigm. Instead, they designed interesting and varied units that eventually lost sight of their original design and had to be nerfed or buffed into a different role for the sake of balance.

This detrimental and often homogenizing effect occurs often when there is no overall design goal to work with.

As to attacking the Gateways... you're just dead wrong there. Why kill two buildings with 1000 health apiece when you can kill one pylon with 400 health?

On April 13 2010 12:54 eXigent. wrote:


Huh? That just goes to show you are equally as unaware as dustin lol. In sc1 any decent player would ignore the pylon simply because if the probe is alive, he can just make 2 or even 3 pylons next to the one you are killing, and they will certainly morph before you have a chance at doing ANY DAMAGE at all.

On April 13 2010 13:15 Wintermute wrote:


I'm not going to argue with you about what a decent SC1 player would or wouldn't do. A decent SC2 player would kill the pylon if possible.

SC2 pylons don't have as many HP as SC1 pylons, and if he makes 2-3 more pylons, it's still easier to kill all of them than even one gateway. Whether or not he still has a probe nearby is irrelevant.

On April 13 2010 13:21 iG.ClouD wrote:

Killing the gateway ensures it won't be producing anything anymore, while going for pylons won't stop zealot production by any mean. Which one is better?

On April 13 2010 13:54 LunarC wrote:

Only if the probe that can warp in additional pylons is also dead. If not, then you need to target the Gateways.

On April 13 2010 10:59 Half wrote:

Then why is this design philosophy the easily observable antithesis to the unit structure of LoTR Battle for middle earth? (Which he played a heavy role in designing, much moreso then he did in CC in which he played a less major role)

On April 13 2010 14:55 LunarC wrote:


When somebody is committed to proxy gateways, they will continue to produce/cancel pylons as needed. They have a steady stream of minerals and pylons are relatively cheap. They also warp in much faster than Gateways, whereas a couple workers can deal significant damage to a Gateway with sustained attack. Then once your own basic units are out, you can finish off the Gateways relatively quickly. If you are busy going from pylon to pylon and try to take them down instead, the Gateways will warp in at full health, by which point they will start to produce Zealots.

On April 12 2010 19:10 norlock wrote:
Respond to my previous post! please

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.

On April 13 2010 18:36 Eury wrote:
Can people stop being whining cry babies? The game is extremely balanced for being a beta, and the beta isn't even over yet.

So far I'm extremely impressed with what Dustin and co have done, and a ton of people are enjoying the game. If you aren't having any fun then just don't play the game.

Now, if you want to provide constructive criticism then that's fine, but whining about Dustin Browder and Command Conquer should be bannable as it doesn't add anything other than annoying whining.

On April 13 2010 18:45 Klive5ive wrote:

This is a forum and the whole point is to discuss things and voice opinion. Obviously you can go too far when you start having a go for no reason.

I'm enjoying the beta a lot but the truth is it wasn't created for "esports" which is what the majority of TL would have wanted. At least he's honest and admits that, but when you come to look at a lot of the problems with the match-ups they boil down to decisions that just weren't thought through.
"this would be fun" is a good way to make a casual game, but it's not a good way to make a competitive game. Of course they still have time to rectify the mistakes.

On April 13 2010 18:01 TerranUp16 wrote:
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-

.
.
.
.
.

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.

On April 13 2010 19:09 Adama wrote:
How is people complaining about sc2 development process?

They are a group of world class game engineers, programers, artist and thinking tanks. They are a lot of them, they are well payed for what they do, and probably they like what they do. Also, they have been working on this project for years.

How can you dare to question such a basic and fundamental aspect of their work as their methods? Have you produced many videogames? Are you Miyamoto, Kojima, Newell? WTF do you know.

FFS GUYS, think ahead. You need a really strong argument to say "They are doing it wrong", not some forum thesis. The most funy thing, you do it based on 6 lines of Dustin words. facepalm.

On April 13 2010 19:06 Falling wrote:Somehow I feel your post was unnecessarily long...

I would not say that I was excluding other methods of creating unique gameplay whether creatively or balanced. I was however, responding to comment that was dismissing Blizzard's efforts to find creative gameplay because supposedly all that matters is balance. Balance does matter, and for a beta SCII is incredibly balanced, but creativity matters too. People seemed to be freaking out that Blizzard was trying to make creative units, whereas I thought it was rather natural, given that they were making a new game.

You could argue that another method is better then Blizzards method (Your very detailed DoW2 example). But I'm suggesting that people shouldn't be freaking out on the specific wording of Browder's comments. He's giving the general arc of their development process, but there would be all sorts of nuances to their development process.

I don't deny that they may hang on to units when they could be axed, but I just don't understand this latest freak out.

On April 13 2010 11:08 iG.ClouD wrote:

They just needed to hire great, smart players to balance the game. It just seems they don't understand much of what they are doing. The part where the pylon is the weak point of a proxy gate rush made me rofl so bad. Any above average player would target the gateways unless the probe is dead, which is very unlikely in the vast majority of these games.

On April 13 2010 21:06 SubtleArt wrote:
Interesting units and the best they came up with was roach / hydra / stalker / marauder / a HEALING DROPSHIP (what were they smoking)?

Nice one

On April 13 2010 22:04 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.

On April 13 2010 22:14 Fizban140 wrote:

Because a unit is balanced it is no longer fun or interesting? So you are saying that for the game to be interesting it has to be unbalanced?

On April 13 2010 22:19 SubtleArt wrote:
He might be referring to the concept where they make everything so imbalanced that the game is balanced

On April 13 2010 22:04 Crisium wrote:The cool is gone, but the units are still there, boring and all.

On April 13 2010 19:23 Lollersauce wrote:


Welcome to the real world, where talent is a rare commodity and not everyone with experience or getting paid well is actually that talented. Dustin does seems pretty clueless.

On April 13 2010 22:04 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.

On April 13 2010 15:03 Wintermute wrote:


It's still not clear to me how the gateways are going to warp in any units when they don't have power. Every time a pylon goes down, that's -100 minerals and a lack of power.

Of course I would attack a gateway that already exists vs attacking a pylon thats still warping in, but given a choice of a full health pylon and a full health gateway, I'd kill the pylon, because even if he has 2-3 of them. they're still easier to kill than gateways, and once they're dead, the gateways are effectively dead until he builds more pylons.

On April 14 2010 03:00 Ryuu314 wrote:
like reaver micro, vulture micro, Bisu's mine-destroying micro (just watched that vod and it's freakign amazing), and every other amazing thing we saw in BW.

So we're probably going to do some changes to the build time on the upgrade for Warp Gates, just to push that a little bit later in the tech tree so that a lot of the early Warp Gate shenanigans that we're seeing in the beta get pushed back a little bit.

On April 13 2010 21:01 Fizban140 wrote:
They have good testers, look at CGM and KHB.

On April 14 2010 03:38 fatduck wrote:


Why would you nerf warp gates to stop 2 gate proxy??? A strat that usually ends the game before the first assimilator gets built?

On April 14 2010 03:14 lolaloc wrote:

Majority of the amazing things in BW was because of the bad UI and unit pathing anyway.

On April 13 2010 19:00 Eury wrote:
Btw how do you think original Starcraft was created? "Fun" is the game design philosophy Blizzard have always designed around. E-sports barely existed as a concept when Starcraft was created, a lot less dedication was paid to the competitive crowd in the creation of Starcraft than in Starcraft 2.

On April 14 2010 09:00 Wintermute wrote:


The problem with SC2 is that instead of looking at SC1, finding the units that were lacking, and replacing them or tweaking them, they thought up a bunch of new "cool" units, then looked for ways to displace existing units to fit them in.

Replacing drop ships with medivacs and warp prisms is a great idea. Drop ships are not cool, but being able to drop units is cool. Turning the queen into an egg laying base defense? Genius. That's what a queen IS, not some useless flying beasty.

Getting rid of the AoE anti air units is fine. Air power was useless in SC1 except muta harass and maybe late game carriers. Banshees, vikings and void rays are all more interesting than what they replaced. Corruptors and Phoenix are sort of lame, but they fulfill their purpose.

What's not okay is the Roach. The roach isn't okay, because to fit it in, you had to turn the hydralisk into a T2 glass cannon. It's not okay, because in order to fit in the roach, you made it move while burrowed, and took out the lurker. It's not okay, because the very existence of a low tier tough as nails tanky unit doesn't fit the personality of zerg, and it forces you to provide hard counters like marauders and immortals. The more "balanced" the roach becomes, the more it looks like a short range, slightly more expensive zealot. Zerg needed zealots, apparently.

Thors, hellions, marauders, immortals are all just bad units. Not bad because they don't have a use in the game but bad because they have done nothing to make the game more interesting, fun, or balanced (in fact quite the opposite, IMO). Bad because they came up with a concept first, then tried to shoehorn it in, rather than allowing form to follow function.

On April 14 2010 09:07 iG.ClouD wrote:

Meh I pretty much disagree with about everything you said. And never ever say again Thor is a bad unit, you make Arnold cry

On April 14 2010 08:12 zizzefex wrote:
Btw if some of you clueless people who think you can make a good game by making 'cool units without any regards to balance'..... download Battleforge. It's free and it sucks (yet another bad EA game).

The graphic designers literally make the units, with completely no regard to current/future balance. They draw/create new units, they puts random stats on them with no regard to balance. There is literally 5 useable units per civilization and only 2 that are good... out of like 50... because there is absolutely no regard to balance at all when they create units! So many overlap and so many are completely worthless. And every expansion they come out with 20-30 units per civ... which the graphic designers created without any regard to balance... most of which are completely useless and leaving you thinking wtf!

But hey... it sells copies.

On April 14 2010 11:01 fatduck wrote:
I'm still trying to figure out how a philosophy of "cool units" leads to "no lurkers" :<

On April 14 2010 11:01 fatduck wrote:
I'm still trying to figure out how a philosophy of "cool units" leads to "no lurkers" :<

On April 14 2010 11:50 _awake_ wrote:why can't people see that the people working on the game aren't the same as the original SC/BW team?

On April 13 2010 18:01 TerranUp16 wrote:


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.

On April 14 2010 16:12 sk` wrote:
Eury:
Aside from Blizzard posting themselves, nobody has perfect facts. This site is already borderline elitist... banning people for that seems a little harsh. More importantly, shouldn't the read confirm things ahead of just casually believing everything they take in?

On April 14 2010 11:50 _awake_ wrote:why can't people see that the people working on the game aren't the same as the original SC/BW team?

Roper served as a Vice President of Blizzard North and was a Director of Blizzard Entertainment from 1994 - 2003. He oversaw and managed all external projects, coordinated internal development teams, and headed Blizzard's project oversight teams where he was instrumental in shaping the direction of the company's games.

Bill Roper worked directly on numerous million-selling games in varied producer positions and played a key role in the success of the Warcraft, StarCraft and Diablo franchises

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.

On April 14 2010 12:24 LunarC wrote:
All the design team needed to do is to create overarching goals that would make for a good, complex, strategically deep RTS game. Things like making sure that races retained their identities while allowing for interesting unit synergy, things like making sure that macro mechanics meant investments rather than spammable abilities, and making sure that all units be balanced around micro and army control.

You know, the elements the make Starcraft 1 one of the most entertaining competitive games to watch and one of the most competitive games to play.

On April 14 2010 16:30 sk` wrote:
Fury:
Well... that's exactly my point... talent is meaningless if it is proceeding without a plan. Best ship in the world won't reach its port without a map.

Browler's interview indicates they left without a map. This explains a lot of what's wrong with the game. If they really want SC2 to surpass SC:BW, then they should bring it back to zero, make the map, and then sail again. I'm willing to wait... so far the beta has yet to light me on fire and I end up playing more SC:BW each night.

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...

Had the team started with "Zerg should behave like N and thus need unit X." It wouldn't have been the same.

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 .

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.

Plan on too much content; then prioritize best. Iterate and polish

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. -_-