Blizzard: Out of touch? - Page 19

On June 12 2011 23:36 floor exercise wrote:
I think they care a whole lot less about what we think or say and more about what we do, which so far has been buy their game, play their game, and make it a commercial and competitive success

First, we definitely don’t like seeing Thors en masse. Due to the visual size of the unit, as well as a small pathing radius, Thors can obscure the other units in your army too easily. This can be problematic because it's important to know roughly how many units an opponent has when scouting. We want the Thor to be the type of unit that you add to your main army, and we definitely don’t want them to be the core of your army to the point where you strive to build as many as possible.

On June 12 2011 22:56 starmeat_ wrote:
I wish all these whiners comparing SC2 to BW would STFU and just go play BW.

You guys could create some kind of a haven for yourselves and organize in little groups complaining about how bad micro in SC2 is and how at least 15 units in the game are imbalanced.

Correct me if I'm wrong, Browder even posited the idea within the same interview that people are welcome to go back playing BW if they didn't like SC2.

So please go, go away.

On June 12 2011 23:45 Quotidian wrote:
To me - as a terran player - the way blizzard are flip-flopping on so many issues, most recently and most noteably the tvp thor nerf, seems to suggest that they don't really know what they're doing. It at least shows that they're just a bunch of everyman, joe schmo game developers with no particularly deep understanding of their game. They seem to be frantically trying things out, and killing a ton of potential strategies in the process.

Their reasoning for the thor nerf is just weird to me. In the latest situation report, Kim said


http://eu.battle.net/sc2/en/blog/2309985#blog


the first question is, why is it bad that thors are massed? Blizzard's reasoning so far has been "we don't want thors massed." Don't want is the reasoning of a six-year old.
The second question is, why is the thor singled out for visually obstructing other units, when the same can be said for every other massive unit in the game, except for the archon? Blizzard's myopic way of balancing and their inability to think holistically about their game, which forces match-ups like tvp to be extremely boring and stereotyped, basically killed any faith I had in them as developers. The fact that SC2 is as balanced as it is because the balancing team are willing to sacrifice variety in strategies for stereotyped balance (ie, terran HAS to all-in early or go mmm/v/g in tvp), and also due to simple luck. SC2 could easily have been a HUGE mess with these people at the helm.

On June 12 2011 23:49 Reborn8u wrote:
While everyone is busy with this sc2 vs bw silliness, the op missed what I feel is perhaps the biggest issue with sc2 and esports. It's not balance, it's basic functionality. No Lan? I mean seriously is there anyone who calls themselves a fan who doesn't want this? I've literally lost count of how many events have been plagued by disconnects and lag. I can understand not releasing a version with lan to everyone, but Blizzards official partners like MLG and GSL should have some kind of in house server to prevent these issues. It's just a matter of time before the validity of an event finals comes into serious question because of these issues, which is horrible for esports. (see: power outage, or remember TTone vs jinro at mlg?)

Overall, I think highly of David Kim. He seems to have a good grasp of things, even though we don't agree on everything, his opinion has merit (because he appears to use actual logic). Dustin Browder on the other hand, has given enough ridiculous, naive, and misguided responses to questions that I have zero confidence in him. In my opinion, he is completely blinded by his own ego and utterly incompetent. He is the main reason I am filled with doubt that the game design for future sc2 expansions will leave us with a balanced, fun, macro oriented game, when the final patch is laid after Legacy of the void.

In my opinion they don't have the best track record for balancing. When the reaper build was a problem they nerfed reaper speed (by requiring a factory), they buffed roach range (which created drastic changes in pvz), and added the supply depot before barracks requirement. Don't change 1v1 balance because of 2v2.

They nerfed the zealot build time because low level players couldn't stop zealot rushes. God forbid they just learn to scout. "Wow no cybercore and 2 gates, hmmmm wonder what he's going to do?" Is it really harder to stop a zealot rush than a 6 pool or 5 racks marine rush?

They change the bunker in every patch. Do they really think the bunker is central to balancing terran?

The last patch they nerfed pylon radius and warp gate research time to "fix" pvp. Yet 4 gate is still the core of pvp and now protoss is just harder vs zerg (see: roach ling rush to deny 3gate expo) and the pylon radius makes basic building placement problematic, forge expanding is very annoying now.

I think it is almost universally accepted that most of the deadliest rushes and allins out there are 10x easier to execute than to survive. Yet Browder blatantly denies this in his interview?

I learned a long time ago, when you spew B.S. you usually only end up fooling yourself. Dustin Browder, if you think you're fooling us with these kind of responses, then you are lying to yourself and denial can be an ugly thing.

I'd like to see a poll on how many people think Sc2's future would be in better hands if Dustin Browder was fired or moved to another part of Activision and David Kim was promoted to lead design of Sc2.
I have a hunch that I'm not the only one who holds the opinions in this post.

On June 12 2011 23:47 cive wrote:


Ah....

Looking at people like you, maybe it's better that Blizz don't listen to us.

SC2 is as popular as it is now because BW existed. Look back on the day of your purchase... What were you thinking as you coughed up your hard earned money for a copy of SC2? Probably a thought of its highly successful, entertaining and extremely well balanced brother, SC:BW, right?

Did you know most of the units and concepts in SC2 are from BW? We still mine from minerals and gas using workers with saturation limits, have to increase the food cap mechanically until it reaches 200, and pretty much everything we can do in the game is exactly like BW.

The problem is, that they do worse.

Hell, if they could make SC2 better than BW, that would be awesome. It doesn't have to be the same game but you can't call yourself unique just because you are uglier and stupider.

My point is, all the success SC2 achieved thus far would not have been achieved if the title didn't have StarCraft in it. IMO, SC2 is like a little sister that got a nice job for being a sister of somebody highly successful. She dresses sluttier and sluttier each time, appealing to more and more people but she can never get out the title "________'s little sis".

On June 12 2011 23:36 floor exercise wrote:
I think the devs are more or less very pleased with themselves over how SC2 worked out (as in it's not a flaming wreck of a game and has a big competitive scene)

The results is them trying to deflect or dodge as many legitimate questions about the game as they can that would result in acknowledgement of its shortcomings. Dustin especially seems to try to justify a lot of stupid shit and make tremendously dumb comparisons to BW as if he has absolutely no interest in changing anything about SC2.

I think they care a whole lot less about what we think or say and more about what we do, which so far has been buy their game, play their game, and make it a commercial and competitive success

On June 12 2011 23:40 Hekisui wrote:


I think you make a very good point. I saw someone else say earlier that Blizzard people seemed to be very well trained in saying things that would please the TL audience while they didn't at all seem to understand what was meant.

In some cases this resulted in some hilarious things. I still think that the Phoenix ability to attack-move is a result of such a hilarious misunderstanding. It seems to show how decisions are made. Somehow they got the idea that competitive players want something that can attack while moving. So that is what they put into the game.