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On October 25 2011 11:47 DeltruS wrote:Show nested quote +On October 25 2011 10:36 aksfjh wrote:On October 25 2011 09:57 DeltruS wrote:I don't really like how: - He said "We don't want unfinished community maps on ladder" when the community made maps are often better than Blizzards own maps by far.
How do you determine if the map is "better"? You may think it looks better, or prefer how they use rocks, but many times map preference is just that, preference. For example, plenty of maps get a chance on GSL, and many maps there end up being vetoed for balance concerns. [*]He said that the game can't change its pathing, and that they are adding new units to get players to split up units. People in plat-mid diamond can't even split their units, and AOE is extremely strong. We don't even see how bad AOE damage is in pro games because the pros have already adapted to the crazy imba-ness of AoE, so they can side-step it. He's talking about splitting up units for different attack paths. If AoE gets to the point where turtling gets too strong, as long as it isn't very mobile, you would be able to out econ your opponent anyways. It's just something lower skilled players would have to deal with. [*]He says that LAN isn't coming because it is too much work, when there is a community made LAN that can't be used in tournaments because of Blizzard. Whatever, I don't really care as long as they can set up a server with 100 ms default ping so it is similar to practice conditions. It is too much work to turn it into a product. For something they're not even thrilled about in the first place, adding in the infrastructure to support a professional interface both online and offline is a lot of work. Can I as a novice programmer create apps for simple, personal use? Yes, but it sure as hell isn't something I can sell to a customer.
Whenever he got to a question that was really important to the community, he just downplayed it, and then eventually just said "no". I really hate how they do that. Companies like Valve acknowledge what the community wants and implements them even though their games (dota 2 for example) are in alpha.
Still, thanks DB for the interview. I enjoyed it.
If you think this is the case, then go play DotA 2 and TF2. Nobody is bending your arm to pay attention to their response to the community. You obviously care enough about what they've done already with that same attitude to buy and participate in the SC2 community, but by all means go worship Valve if you think their approach produces better games. I consider many community made maps to be better because they actually receive testing from pros and are analyzed by teams which have been making maps for years. By not accepting the community maps they are removing all motivation for mapmakers to make good maps and are also creating a divide between tournaments and ladder. They should at least create a system where pros can directly influence how a map is made. Your last point is pretty bad. They are different games, and I can play both. Why should the customer have to make a compromise? The concept of supply and demand doesn't work here; if Blizzard decides to only provide some features, it won't die out or get forced to change due to other people switching to different games. Blizzard has a monopoly on good RTS games, so it is only the player base that gets screwed if they make a bad decision. They always say that they take in feedback, but I haven't seen them implement any of the things that are really important to the community, other than their chat channels.
I don't really think he downplays his answer when he says "no", I think he was just answering a question that he has been asked hundreds of times. At least in this interview he goes on to state that adding in LAN is just not doable because it would require a heavy change in infrastructure. Also, I guess you could consider Valve more accommodating to their community, but really, valve and blizzard are more similar than you think. These "accommodations" you refer to involve what? Making their game free to play because they realized they would make more money on micro transactions? Steam and Battle.net operate very similarly, all the games you purchase on steam you don't really own, you are just renting them for the duration of your account, similar to SC2. And blizzard does take feed back from the community, they just act rather slowly. It is much harder balancing starcraft 2 then you believe. Aside from being unable to predict how balance changes will impact the metagame, blizzard is also unable to tell whether there is truly imbalance or whether its just the metagame evolving. One thing that is awful about the SC2 community (all 3 races) is that we are too quick to call imbalance, and do not even take into account metagame shifts (for example the answer to the protoss deathball was neural parasite, even though NP was not buffed in any way, it was just discovered because of increased infestor use).
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Kennigit asked some pretty good questions with good flow and on top of that was very succinct about it. I like.
I don't watch many interviews/presentations by DB, but this one showed his passion for the game and what he does. Overall the interview was pretty interesting, especially seeing their balance mindset.
Everything that comes out of TL is really well done. Whether it be super serious business kennigit or troll hot_bid, all of it is entertaining. Props TL staff!
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I fucking love Dustin Browder. His answers are so complete and thoughtful.
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On October 25 2011 09:44 Faggatron wrote:
No lan, but I'm at least glad that the reason seems to be that it will require rewriting the entire game, rather than just bli$$$$$$$ trying to stop pirates by punishing everyone else.
Sounds like a load of crap to me.. Just an excuse.. Blizz is rich enough to get it done. They just like the control and I've come to accept it. Besides the 'bunker' part it was a pretty decent interview.Kennigit is awesome!
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Man, DB is such a good interview, riiight?
But seriously, I love how frank he is.
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Awesome interview, but I hate how he replied to some questions by saying "Go play Brood War."
However, it was very insightful to see what he had to say about the new units. They're basically brand new and can be deleted or changed dramatically. It should prove to be an interesting beta, but I'm concerned about ESPORTS during the HOTS beta. It seems that tournaments will either change to HOTS beta for a very crazy game or stay WoL and testing on HOTS will be limited. I suppose having a temporary imbalanced ESPORTS scene won't be too bad because most players are secured by teams/contracts so they won't need to worry about winning as much.
I'm on the fence about his solution to the deathball. I like the approach to remove food from the deathball, but I don't see that being an entirely satisfactory solution. They'll either have to make the "non-deathball" units really good, or find another way to discourage deathballs. I hope they consider making it dangerous to clump up (due to splash, spells, ect.) because a spread and micro intensive deathball vs deathball with "non-deathball" harass units could possibly make SC2 on par or even harder than BW with a bigger emphasis on big-army micro rather than economy.
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Kennigit gave a great interview, really interesting to watch. Thanks TL!
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It's obvious to me that the design team has been told by higher ups in blizzard/their mother corporation to not add lan, dustin seemed annoyed by the question, I'm sure a lot of the design team aren't happy with taking the flak from the tournament lag.
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Great interview. DB effectively answered my burning curiosity re: LAN for tournaments. In fact, the only unsatisfactory part was the bit about maps. I didn't get the impression that the SC2 team was thinking the right way about good/balanced tournament maps being used on the ladder. Why would there be a problem with allowing ladder players to play the same maps as the professionals they love to watch?
As far as I can tell, the only reasons top pros ladder are PR, metagame scouting and streaming revenue. Without being able to play "real" practice games on ladder, laddering can't be taken too seriously.
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great interview browder seems to stay on point(as much as hes allowed to  )
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I just wanted to say that this is such a terrifically fantastic interview.
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Great interview, I could not have been so calm and diplomatic about some of those issues, well done!
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On October 25 2011 12:07 MrDudeMan wrote:Show nested quote +On October 25 2011 11:47 DeltruS wrote:On October 25 2011 10:36 aksfjh wrote:On October 25 2011 09:57 DeltruS wrote:I don't really like how: - He said "We don't want unfinished community maps on ladder" when the community made maps are often better than Blizzards own maps by far.
How do you determine if the map is "better"? You may think it looks better, or prefer how they use rocks, but many times map preference is just that, preference. For example, plenty of maps get a chance on GSL, and many maps there end up being vetoed for balance concerns. [*]He said that the game can't change its pathing, and that they are adding new units to get players to split up units. People in plat-mid diamond can't even split their units, and AOE is extremely strong. We don't even see how bad AOE damage is in pro games because the pros have already adapted to the crazy imba-ness of AoE, so they can side-step it. He's talking about splitting up units for different attack paths. If AoE gets to the point where turtling gets too strong, as long as it isn't very mobile, you would be able to out econ your opponent anyways. It's just something lower skilled players would have to deal with. [*]He says that LAN isn't coming because it is too much work, when there is a community made LAN that can't be used in tournaments because of Blizzard. Whatever, I don't really care as long as they can set up a server with 100 ms default ping so it is similar to practice conditions. It is too much work to turn it into a product. For something they're not even thrilled about in the first place, adding in the infrastructure to support a professional interface both online and offline is a lot of work. Can I as a novice programmer create apps for simple, personal use? Yes, but it sure as hell isn't something I can sell to a customer.
Whenever he got to a question that was really important to the community, he just downplayed it, and then eventually just said "no". I really hate how they do that. Companies like Valve acknowledge what the community wants and implements them even though their games (dota 2 for example) are in alpha.
Still, thanks DB for the interview. I enjoyed it.
If you think this is the case, then go play DotA 2 and TF2. Nobody is bending your arm to pay attention to their response to the community. You obviously care enough about what they've done already with that same attitude to buy and participate in the SC2 community, but by all means go worship Valve if you think their approach produces better games. I consider many community made maps to be better because they actually receive testing from pros and are analyzed by teams which have been making maps for years. By not accepting the community maps they are removing all motivation for mapmakers to make good maps and are also creating a divide between tournaments and ladder. They should at least create a system where pros can directly influence how a map is made. Your last point is pretty bad. They are different games, and I can play both. Why should the customer have to make a compromise? The concept of supply and demand doesn't work here; if Blizzard decides to only provide some features, it won't die out or get forced to change due to other people switching to different games. Blizzard has a monopoly on good RTS games, so it is only the player base that gets screwed if they make a bad decision. They always say that they take in feedback, but I haven't seen them implement any of the things that are really important to the community, other than their chat channels. I don't really think he downplays his answer when he says "no", I think he was just answering a question that he has been asked hundreds of times. At least in this interview he goes on to state that adding in LAN is just not doable because it would require a heavy change in infrastructure. Also, I guess you could consider Valve more accommodating to their community, but really, valve and blizzard are more similar than you think. These "accommodations" you refer to involve what? Making their game free to play because they realized they would make more money on micro transactions? Steam and Battle.net operate very similarly, all the games you purchase on steam you don't really own, you are just renting them for the duration of your account, similar to SC2. And blizzard does take feed back from the community, they just act rather slowly. It is much harder balancing starcraft 2 then you believe. Aside from being unable to predict how balance changes will impact the metagame, blizzard is also unable to tell whether there is truly imbalance or whether its just the metagame evolving. One thing that is awful about the SC2 community (all 3 races) is that we are too quick to call imbalance, and do not even take into account metagame shifts (for example the answer to the protoss deathball was neural parasite, even though NP was not buffed in any way, it was just discovered because of increased infestor use).
I wasn't talking about balancing or LAN. I agree with you, I just think that they could do better if they were more responsive to the community. For example, close positions is universally agreed to be bad for the game, and yet we are still dealing with it a year later. There are maps like delta quadrant too that are plainly bad for zerg at all levels.
That is only maps. They also haven't allowed us to play cross region, name change, clan support etc.
I see things like this every day. I don't want to be too whiny, I just don't agree with some of their perspectives.
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His philosophy is spot on and good to know someone like him is working on this game. Shows that it is heading in the right direction. People like to diss a lot but fail a lot of the time to realize that SC1 was no where near this balanced in its life time as it is in SC2, it's already been 1 year and we have a solid game. In broodwar standards that knocks a couple of years off the old record.
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On October 25 2011 11:56 Cyber_Cheese wrote:Show nested quote +On October 25 2011 09:26 Zozo wrote:
Very nice interview, I was hoping you would ask about tournaments removing close spawns and adding that supply depot near the ramps. 20 minutes well spent, thanks! Yeah shame on the close spawn not getting asked :/ As for the ladder maps thing... Interesting to try to turn it back on us, I wonder how accurate that assessment is, completely objectively.
when dustin said "we owe it to you to have a balanced game", i was hoping kennigit would have chimed in with "so why close spawns?"
and then point to sen getting owned by RNG twice in his match vs MVP.
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Great questions and well delivered Kennigit
On October 25 2011 12:15 Endymion wrote:
It's obvious to me that the design team has been told by higher ups in blizzard/their mother corporation to not add lan, dustin seemed annoyed by the question, I'm sure a lot of the design team aren't happy with taking the flak from the tournament lag.
I got the same impression
Also, I kind of facepalmed when he couldn't think of a way to have community made maps involved.....like....maybe....put them into the ladder.....or something crazy like that.
Edit: Also, I wish they would consider increasing unit collision size to make armies less clumpy. I'm sure it would have to be tested, but I don't think it would impede pathing to any serious degree.
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if anything, I would love them to have a lan version just for the tournaments.
Lan is/will be one of the biggest barrier for SC2 to grow
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On October 25 2011 11:41 FreudianTrip wrote:Show nested quote +On October 25 2011 11:15 Theeakoz wrote:On October 25 2011 10:41 Liquid`Tyler wrote:On October 25 2011 10:25 Theeakoz wrote:On October 25 2011 10:20 Liquid`Tyler wrote:I don't think anyone wants to listen to a person who would provide a link to their comment posted on another forum as a new thread containing a link to the thread they're replying to as a reference. The idea is there, I sent it on reddit because it is easier to get noticed there. Then I provided a link for the redditors in case they don't know what I am talking about. The idea is the important thing, if you want to comment, comment on the idea. Why provide a link to the reddit post in this thread? The idea is not developed at all and not worth responding to in its current form. I imagine you don't have any special knowledge about designing and balancing games, about being a progamer, or about organizing communities and putting community plans into action. But if you do happen to have the relevant knowledge, then make the proposal as detailed as you possibly can before you present it. It seems that the basic problem you are trying to solve is that progamers' knowledge is a somewhat untapped resource for Blizzard's multiplayer design team. I fail to see how your idea suggests a good way to remedy the situation. It seems like you've just recently realized that this problem exists, you were instantly convinced that it actually is a significant problem that really needs to be fixed, and then you sketched out the first scheme that came to your mind. It leaves a million pitfalls and improves nothing. You're mostly right, appreciate your sense of logic. I should have thought and researched more on the subject... well, pro gamers are not designers after all. You've literally just jumped from one extreme to the other.
LOL no that's just how it sounds... I'm somewhere in the middle now :D
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ehh. None of the hard questions were answered, and kennigit's obviously not going to come out and say ladder maps are bad. And lol @ the community maps part. Oh, Dusty..
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I love his flat out
"NOOO... I DON'T SEE LAN COMING"
It's like when you're trying desperately to get back with your x-gf.
"Can you please give me a ... "
"No.. I don't see it happening"
"But what if"
"No.. It's too complicated."
"But I can..."
"I just don't see it happening."
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EPT
