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Someone posted already, but with a lacking OP. I thought the interview was quite revealing and gives us a better taste of what's to come in Heart of the Swarm.
GameSpot Asia managed to land a tour around the hallowed halls of Blizzard Entertainment's Irvine campus recently. In addition to checking out one of Blizzard's other long-awaited title (stay tuned next week, by the by), we had a chat with StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm's lead designer Dustin Browder about the expansion's progress and the changes it may bring to the multiplayer scene.
Things we gather from the interview:
1) Dustin Browder isn't totally clueless
2) Terran feels more or less "complete", to put it lightly
3) Protoss may get a harass unit
4) zerg may get a siege unit (not necessarily the lurker, but a similar role)
Dustin Browder also talks about the possibility of removing units due to their being lame. He mentions the corruptor and overseer, but we can probably fill the blanks on other units. Hydra? Colossus?
He also talks new "shoutcasting" features for BNet. Hopefully that's not all!
EDITED not to rip all of GameSpot's hits.
GSA: What are your thoughts on the latest StarCraft II balances?
DB: It's going well for us. I don't know if the fans agree with that.
GSA: What are the most common complaints?
DB: There's currently a concern with the Zerg Infestor's power fungal growth. I still hear a lot of complaints about the Zerg still not being strong enough, as well as Terrans still being too flexible. The latter's the most persistent one for the longest time. That's almost a design flaw not a balance flaw. We just have too many good units in that race. It's hard to cut units in that race and say, "I know you have a lot of good units, but we're killing two because [your race] is too good." (laughs) That's not going to work. And it's not fun to go, "Hey, you know that unit that was fun and useful? Well, we ruined it, so now your race is balanced." That feels terrible too. Those are some of the hot areas I've heard.
We've fixed a lot of that. The other complaint we're coming back to that was frustrating was the four gate rush in Protoss vs. Protoss. We've done some fixes and it was great. Within the first three days, everyone stopped doing it and it was like, "Arrgh, Blizzard nerfed it! Don't do it anymore." We were like, "We don't think it was that bad." Sure enough, a week later the community was fine with it. PVP was still not as diverse as we wanted it to be; so we'd like to fix that. We're still studying this stuff. Things change so rapidly. We had multiple times now where we've gone and put out a patch. The patch goes through quality assurance and through localization so that it releases throughout multiple regions at the same time.
It's a lengthy process from deciding which balances we want to do to the point where it got live in the community. We've done nerfs to the bunkers and the rushes are no longer in the game by the time the patch goes live. We're like, "Do we need this? Eh…alright, let's just put in what we thought was good at the time and just go with it." The dynamics change so quickly that sometimes it's hard for us to keep up. The fans are still learning so much from the game and figuring out what works. I don't know how much balanced the game is six months from now to a year, but our internal members that checked the win/loss percentage in all regions are very positive except for Grandmaster Korea, which shows an advantage to Terran.
However, we've heard from Korean pro gamers and casual players that this is more of a cultural issue than anything else. Part of the factor is that Terrans do the easiest early-game rushes and they're the most defendable against them too; Koreans do the most rushing when compared to the rest of the world. But I don't know; it could all be lies. It could be, "Oh, it's broken, but [the dev team] did not know that yet." The Europeans, the Americans, and the Chinese haven't figured it out yet.
On the plus side, specifically in the e-sports scene, the win-losses are pretty good in all tournaments. We've seen lots of champions for different races. We've seen Terran, Protoss, and Zerg players win in America, Europe, Korea, Southeast Asia, and China; that's good diversity. If suddenly we get a month of Zerg wins every match, it would be a total disaster. Keep your fingers crossed; things have been going real well for us.
Looking sharp, Kerrigan.
GSA: The official SC2 forums stated that there will be a Heart of the Swarm multiplayer beta coming out. What else can you add on that Wings of Liberty's multiplayer has covered last year?
DB: Well, it's tough. The Terrans have enough stuff already, thus it becomes a guessing game to know what to do for them. We have to be careful about what new units we can add to the game. At the end of the day, we still have to add in cool s***. [Players] are giving us their money; we have to give them something cool.
There are some easy things we can do and there are some hard things. If we study the game, for example, you would say that the corruptor is lame. Don't get us wrong; they're useful. If there are a lot of colossi, you need corruptors. If there are dark templars, you need overseers. They have a battle function for a situation, but what new battle strategies and tactics do they add in the game? Compare the two to the mutalisks; a player can raid, harass. They can get board control; they can decimate opponents without antiair. Party, right? Having those guys around changes the match. Corruptors? Meh. You build colossi, I build corruptors; end of story.
There are some units we can upgrade wholesale or remove and replace with something better. That's one easy way to give better gameplay without giving so many options you don't know what's going on while also not compromising balance. There may be other places we can legitimately add. For instance, the Protoss don't really have a great way to raid. To a point; they can kind of raid with Phoenixes with anti-gravs and they can cheese with void rays, but that's not really fun. But we can add in a legitimate Protoss raider that gives a player new strategies.
There are a few places (not very many) where we can do new roles for races that are missing roles. There are definitely units that can die in the fire so that we can replace them with something cool. We're looking to upgrade some units and add a few, but we need to keep the unit list down because we don't know how big it's going to be [at this point in time].
GSA: How about applying the expansion concept of Brood Wars in terms of multiplayer?
DB: In that expansion, we added two or three per race. I don't know what we'll do ultimately. We may add one per race plus tweaks, or we may do two on some, maybe three. Not all races will be given equal treatment; the Terrans are really, really good and it's really hard to do more with them. While the other races currently have an equal opportunity to beat them (except for Korean Grandmasters), Terrans are still more flexible and we don't want to add that.
Read full interview: http://www.gamespot.com/news/6325853/starcraft-ii-heart-of-the-swarm-qanda-with-dustin-browder
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It's an interesting interview, and as others said in the closed thread it shows that the Blizzard team has a better understanding of the game than they are reputed to have. Nonetheless, I have to take issue with this comment:
We're not ashamed of putting [the Lurkers] back in. I'm sure they're pretty high on the community request list. They are pretty mighty, since they offer two things to the overall Zerg strategy: the ability to attack while cloaked and the ability to push into a tier-two building. We may have different solutions other than the Lurker, but we're still working on it.
In my opinion, the main purpose of the Lurker is neither of the above. Rather, it is the ability to zone the map (in the same way that siege tanks can). That ability, which is currently achieved somewhat clumsily by mass spine crawlers, would add a lot of tactical possibilities, as it did in Broodwar. Burrowed banelings don't quite work the same way due to their lack of ranged attack. It doesn't necessarily have to be the Lurker, but I would be interested to see a unit that fills that role.
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I can see how there are problems with Lurkers in SC2. Just from the way the SC2 Zergs tech tree is structured there are difficulties.
In BW Hydras were a hatch tech unit, so you could pop your lair and start your Lurker research right away. In SC2 you'd have to get a lair, then get a hydra den, then get Lurker tech. Having Lurkers before your opponent could have siege tanks or colossus or detection even if you rushed straight for them simply wouldn't happen.
In all honesty, Lurkers would probably make more sense for SC2 if they morphed from Roaches.
But anyway, neat interview. I'm pretty excited to see a HotS beta. I'm sure everybody is. I hope they'll have some more concrete multiplayer stuff for us by Blizzcon.
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Nice interview. It's always good to get an insight on what the developers think about the current situations. Personally, I hope Zerg get any kind of Tier 2 siege unit, even if it's a brand new one. I don't think that Protoss have problems with harass units, seeing as they have DT's and Phoniex's, but if they could make a nice harass-based unit for Protoss that isn't too powerful and doesn't take too much time to tech to, I'd be interested to see it. As for Terran, just give them more Blue Flame! 
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I like the idea of removing some units that just suck such as the corrupter, seeing all those useless things floating around if a P tech switches is a huge waste since they have to sack them anyways. Reapers are ok but I think they need to tweak that idea a bit as well. If they bring back something similar to Lurkers I am totally race switching to Z though, that would be so sweet to have a siege style unit to hold ground with.
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On August 02 2011 11:10 whatthefat wrote:It's an interesting interview, and as others said in the closed thread it shows that the Blizzard team has a better understanding of the game than they are reputed to have. Nonetheless, I have to take issue with this comment: Show nested quote +We're not ashamed of putting [the Lurkers] back in. I'm sure they're pretty high on the community request list. They are pretty mighty, since they offer two things to the overall Zerg strategy: the ability to attack while cloaked and the ability to push into a tier-two building. We may have different solutions other than the Lurker, but we're still working on it. In my opinion, the main purpose of the Lurker is neither of the above. Rather, it is the ability to zone the map (in the same way that siege tanks can). That ability, which is currently achieved somewhat clumsily by mass spine crawlers, would add a lot of tactical possibilities, as it did in Broodwar. Burrowed banelings don't quite work the same way due to their lack of ranged attack. It doesn't necessarily have to be the Lurker, but I would be interested to see a unit that fills that role.
burrowed banelings are also, what you can say as "one hit wonders", and don't really provide space control/("zone" as you say) as lurkers did in BW.
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On August 02 2011 11:31 RaLakedaimon wrote:
I like the idea of removing some units that just suck such as the corrupter, seeing all those useless things floating around if a P tech switches is a huge waste since they have to sack them anyways. Reapers are ok but I think they need to tweak that idea a bit as well.
I don't think Reapers need a tweak, but I suppose if Blizzard will tweak a unit, the reaper will be pretty high up there. Just look at the qxc vs Genius game in the TSL. qxc builds like 5 reapers late late game just to go destroy important tech and do scary harass.
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On August 02 2011 11:10 whatthefat wrote:
In my opinion, the main purpose of the Lurker is neither of the above. Rather, it is the ability to zone the map (in the same way that siege tanks can). That ability, which is currently achieved somewhat clumsily by mass spine crawlers,
So true, this is the only problem zerg has really, a unit with long range that can zone in the map. The terran's tank and the protoss collosus or sentry can zone the map pretty good.
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Yeah great interview to know that DB actually understands the game. I also feel that Terran is a much more complete race compared to the other races. Not that Terran is imbalanced I actually think the game is balanced just that Terran has more options. I think with HoTS we will see a much better starcraft especially after reading this interview. I'm kind of thinking they will give overlords detection maybe through an upgrade? I think that would be a good fix to the overseer so they can scrap that unit.
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Take out blue flames and bring back spider mines.
3 free burrowed lurkers per 75 minerals.
It'd make TvT less frustrating right now. LINE EM UP!
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I wonder how the Terran players feel about maybe not getting a new unit in Hots... I for one am excited to see some new Swarm additions :D
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A zerg unit that works like a siege tank if it has enough range so doesn't becomes useless would finally add to zerg some strategic value other than the quick fingers and the "lemme surround your army preferably from more than 2 sides".
I think it would definitely make zerg a less frustrating and more fun race to play.
The only concern i have is how will they balance out the infestors fungaling in this combo. It's going to be a slaughter :D but then again it all depends on the range of this new unit :> .
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On August 02 2011 11:55 Turbo.Tactics wrote:
I wonder how the Terran players feel about maybe not getting a new unit in Hots... I for one am excited to see some new Swarm additions :D
I can't imagine them NOT adding a new unit for Terran, that would just be unfair to 1/3 of the people who play this game.
What would perhaps happen is they might remove a unit (reaper lets say) and add a new one, rather than just keeping everything else the same. I think though that they'll just add 1 unit who isn't really all that special but allows Terran more strategies. Perhaps a unit that requires another building, kind of like the Ghost/BC
I can agree though that adding more than 1 unit to Terran would probably be kind of useless, since there really isn't anything that Terran is lacking in terms of unit roles. Maybe an air unit that can hit air/ground without having to change modes before Battlecruiser? But that seems like it's just making Terrans more powerful and have EVEN MORE options rather than being a simple addition. And I say this as a Terran.
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Protoss harass unit? Awesome!
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Thanks for the info! I hope they balance a few of the issues that I currently have with Protoss and Zerg, while also making Terran even more interesting to play.
The problem I have with Terran currently is their ability to build very powerful and versatile units from only three production facilities. On top of that, their ability to swap add-ons to speed up production as well as quickly vary their composition is quite strong and easily abused by the top players. I actually think this was some excellent design by Blizzard, as they gave Terran very strong potential at high levels of play. But their other races just seem somewhat one-dimensional at times.
For example, Protoss invests into the Robotics Facility and can only produce the Observer and the Immortal from it. The powerful Colossus is not only incredibly expensive, but the tech structure required to build it is also quite expensive. Take into account the time it takes for both the unit and research to finish (even with chronoboost), Protoss is fairly pinned down to utilizing MASS gateway units to either survive or pressure.
I feel like the Twilight Council path is a really good example of strong Protoss design; tech to Twilight, make your gateway units EVEN BETTER while teching to the powerful High Templar. But even still, the Templar Archives is utilized for one (1!) research, however powerful it may be. And then there is the option to go the Dark Templar route, but the Dark Shrine only allows you to build the unit! Nothing else! I understand Protoss was designed to invest into buildings to get big dividends from the units they allow you to produce, but I feel like there needs to be more.
And then there's the Stargate route, the key ending tech path of Protoss vs Terran in the BW days. There are only two viable units from the Stargate currently. Both the Phoenix and the Void Ray are awesomely designed, I love them! But the main reason they are soooo strong, aside from their utility and power, are the fact that there is no need to invest past the production building itself to utilize their strengths. The Carrier and Mothership not only require a secondary tech structure to build, but they take an eternity to actually get a useful amount out (with the mothership only limited to one!). I don't think an Arbiter-type Stargate unit is too much to ask for, as Stasis Field was a very powerful spell in the Protoss' late-game composition while Recall allowed Protoss to transition their play into a harassment phase.
I'm pretty biased for Protoss here obviously, but I do think Zerg needs some work as well. My only suggestion is to give the Roach a morph at Lair tech. Whether it is the Lurker, the Lurker 2.0, or a completely new unit, it doesn't really matter. Simply put, it's similar to the Protoss' issue of not getting enough out of investing into a tech path. Roaches are very powerful in certain phases of the game, but as the game progresses, faster speed and burrow movement just aren't powerful enough upgrades to truly utilize them in a mid-late game army. Giving them a morph that's powerful in both the mid-game while also supporting their late-game units will give Zerg much more consistency and allow their transitioning to flow much smoother.
In addition, Zerg just really needs a better spell caster. The Defiler was a unit that made late-game worth macro'ing to, while the Infestor and the Broodlords simply cannot compare. I don't know what kind of unit one could design for SC2 that could be as strong and as balanced as the Defiler, but I hope they add something to Hive tech to make it really juicy.
TL;DR: Terran's ability to tech while utilizing their transitional tech building is too versatile in relation to the other races. Protoss needs to invest in quite a lot for one-dimensional play, as well as not getting to utilize many of their tech structures past the point of one upgrade. Zerg needs a better mid-game unit, which can be most easily morphed from the Roach, as well as a strong spellcasting late-game unit like the Defiler.
That's my input. Thanks again for the info!
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This is probably biased since I'm a Zerg, however:
They should implement scouts, dark archons, defilers, lurkers, vultures, goliaths, overlords with detection, shield batteries, hydra speed, and a super capital ship for zerg.
They should remove hellions, thors, planetary fortresses, phoenixes, double-usage dropship/medic (medivac reduced to two separate units), warpgates (reinforcement to any corner of the map instantly, really?), banelings (idc if they remove banelings as long as lurkers are back), and supply depot lowering.
They should fix: moving while using auto-repair along with max number of workers per unit (e.g 6 max per mech unit), mules being able to repair, forcefield SIZE (currently 3x3 hexagon, reduce to 2x2?), switch roach and hydra tech tiers (and reduce hydra damage, but increase roach damage), reduce marine range and put in range upgrade, banshee damage, this isn't specific, but the "armored but no armor," or "light but has armor," moving to attack enemy unit priority (especially of queens being baited out immediately after an inject), spine crawlers to sturdier defenses that can't unroot, but are definitely more defense oriented, ling surround ai (especially when marines are dropped into between a mineral patch, and when you actually take the time to micro some lings around, they actually go back all the way around to target that ONE marine in the front), and etc.
This seems more like rant, but meh, it should work out effectively.
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Since when are lurkers siege units? In terms of how they are used 99% of the time i would best describe them as a mobile defense, and tht's exactly wat zerg is lacking- the ability to hold a position (not take one).
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On August 02 2011 12:24 ChoiBoi wrote:
This is probably biased since I'm a Zerg, however:
They should implement scouts, dark archons, defilers, lurkers, vultures, goliaths, overlords with detection, shield batteries, hydra speed, and a super capital ship for zerg.
They should remove hellions, thors, planetary fortresses, phoenixes, double-usage dropship/medic (medivac reduced to two separate units), warpgates (reinforcement to any corner of the map instantly, really?), banelings (idc if they remove banelings as long as lurkers are back), and supply depot lowering.
They should fix: moving while using auto-repair along with max number of workers per unit (e.g 6 max per mech unit), mules being able to repair, forcefield SIZE (currently 3x3 hexagon, reduce to 2x2?), switch roach and hydra tech tiers (and reduce hydra damage, but increase roach damage), reduce marine range and put in range upgrade, banshee damage, this isn't specific, but the "armored but no armor," or "light but has armor," moving to attack enemy unit priority (especially of queens being baited out immediately after an inject), spine crawlers to sturdier defenses that can't unroot, but are definitely more defense oriented, ling surround ai (especially when marines are dropped into between a mineral patch, and when you actually take the time to micro some lings around, they actually go back all the way around to target that ONE marine in the front), and etc.
This seems more like rant, but meh, it should work out effectively.
so you basically want to play BW
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If the lurkers just makes an apperence, I'm totally happy with that. If it becomes a playable/make able unit in multiplayer. I'm never asking for anything more out of this game.
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Wow, Browder and his team are a lot smarter than I thought. Hooray for interviews correcting my ignorance!
Since this seems to have turned into a place to voice our ideas for HotS (who knows, maybe they will read this):
Buff the Carrier.
Add Hydra speed upgrade.
Zerg needs better defense! Either Lurkers or make Spines/Spores morph faster.
Nerf Hellions (yeah I said it). Actually, removing Infernal Preigniter and adding Spider Mines sounds like a pretty fair trade to me, and a lot more dynamic for both players than "Oh look, I just roasted 20 of your workers before your forces could react". If you gave Zerg Lurkers at the same time, it would allow ZvT to become a much more space-control-y game than the current rush-oriented meta.
Protoss needs a space control unit too. I don't have any good ideas for this, but it would be nice to see more games go to 4-base epic winzzz. The Carrier really needs a buff for Protoss to be competitive in the late game, though. Especially since they removed Khaydarin Amulet :/
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EPT
