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On October 26 2011 13:25 Hattori_Hanzo wrote:
I also think the design team are idiots.
As a writer, it is highly insulting and disrespectful to take an establish canon and shit on it.
A design perspective of "what is cool" is excellent start when developing a new franchise of intellectual property. Some of the most legendary IP are character driven/constrained.
Lord of the Rings trilogy, Old Testament Exodus, Harry Potter, etc
All world changes are the result of decisions based on what those characters perceived. The Urukhai would never have been bred to challenge the world of elf, dwarf and man, if Saruman felt the current Orc abilities were sufficient. Same with Lord Voldemort, etc.
The design team must ask themselves,
"what would I, one of the many defense contractors on Tarsonis present to Emperor Mensk to win that multi-billion credit contract?".
"What strains must I, the swarm, acquire and/or evolve now that Kerrigan is gone?"
"What must I, Chief of the design tribe of Shakuras, do to once again see the sun rise over Auir?"
Do this and history dictates that SC universe will reach the legendary status of Starwars, LotR and Harry Potter. Or continue the current direction of "What cool and lore doesn't matter, we'll just design around that shit" and be a forgotten footnote like the Battletech Universe, TA Universe, Masters of Orion series and many others that fell to mediocrity.
While I understand your point, I think I speak for the vast majority of the competitive community when I say "I could care less about lore."
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On October 26 2011 12:52 TheNessman wrote:
i can't believe OVERSEERS are the unit he calls out to be OP. wow.
omg, some people really don't listen to what is being said.
He didn't say they were OP, he was saying that the unit was fundamentally flawed because it gives you food and has spells. Therefore they couldn't make the spells do anything without breaking the game, he was saying that to make the Overseer a good unit, it would be fundamentally OP. Therefore they removed it because it was flawed design.
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On October 26 2011 13:41 Mehukannu wrote:Show nested quote +On October 26 2011 13:25 Hattori_Hanzo wrote:
I also think the design team are idiots.
As a writer, it is highly insulting and disrespectful to take an establish canon and shit on it.
A design perspective of "what is cool" is excellent start when developing a new franchise of intellectual property. Some of the most legendary IP are character driven/constrained.
Lord of the Rings trilogy, Old Testament Exodus, Harry Potter, etc
All world changes are the result of decisions based on what those characters perceived. The Urukhai would never have been bred to challenge the world of elf, dwarf and man, if Saruman felt the current Orc abilities were sufficient. Same with Lord Voldemort, etc.
The design team must ask themselves,
"what would I, one of the many defense contractors on Tarsonis present to Emperor Mensk to win that multi-billion credit contract?".
"What strains must I, the swarm, acquire and/or evolve now that Kerrigan is gone?"
"What must I, Chief of the design tribe of Shakuras, do to once again see the sun rise over Auir?"
Do this and history dictates that SC universe will reach the legendary status of Starwars, LotR and Harry Potter. Or continue the current direction of "What cool and lore doesn't matter, we'll just design around that shit" and be a forgotten footnote like the Battletech Universe, TA Universe, Masters of Orion series and many others that fell to mediocrity.
That is great and all, but Blizzard is making a game for e-sports not any story driven game like planescape to make the starcraft universe bigger.
There's no need to sacrifice story for e-sports. A great example is Warhammer 40K interestingly enough given Blizzard's shared history (Blizzard built SC engine to pitch to Games Workshop).
There are many competitions that are story driven, the Marathon race is another one. It began to commemorate the legend of Pheidippides, a Greek messenger. Who legend states that he was sent from the battlefield of Marathon to Athens to announce that the Persians had been defeated in the Battle of Marathon (in which he had just fought), which took place in August or September, 490 BC.] It is said that he ran the entire distance without stopping and burst into the assembly, exclaiming "Νενικήκαμεν" (Nenikékamen, 'We have won.') before collapsing and dying." -See wikipedia
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On October 26 2011 13:44 IPA wrote:Show nested quote +On October 26 2011 13:25 Hattori_Hanzo wrote:
I also think the design team are idiots.
As a writer, it is highly insulting and disrespectful to take an establish canon and shit on it.
A design perspective of "what is cool" is excellent start when developing a new franchise of intellectual property. Some of the most legendary IP are character driven/constrained.
Lord of the Rings trilogy, Old Testament Exodus, Harry Potter, etc
All world changes are the result of decisions based on what those characters perceived. The Urukhai would never have been bred to challenge the world of elf, dwarf and man, if Saruman felt the current Orc abilities were sufficient. Same with Lord Voldemort, etc.
The design team must ask themselves,
"what would I, one of the many defense contractors on Tarsonis present to Emperor Mensk to win that multi-billion credit contract?".
"What strains must I, the swarm, acquire and/or evolve now that Kerrigan is gone?"
"What must I, Chief of the design tribe of Shakuras, do to once again see the sun rise over Auir?"
Do this and history dictates that SC universe will reach the legendary status of Starwars, LotR and Harry Potter. Or continue the current direction of "What cool and lore doesn't matter, we'll just design around that shit" and be a forgotten footnote like the Battletech Universe, TA Universe, Masters of Orion series and many others that fell to mediocrity.
While I understand your point, I think I speak for the vast majority of the competitive community when I say "I could care less about lore."
Of course, you don't. That's none of your business, why should you care?
The Dustin could introduce space cardboxes unit for the Terran and you'd still play it if it was fun enough, no?
Your paycheck does not come from the faithfulness to the lore.
The designer's job does. How far will SC2 go if it starts feeling, looking and playing like any other RTS on the market. There goes Blizzard's competitive advantage.
Lore gives anything a sense of depth, purpose. If I called you a someone who wastes his time playing games compared to IPA, son of Peter, aspires to be a professional gamer, has yet to win any major tournament but is a force to be reckoned with, you suddenly became interesting. And suddenly, you're hot property.
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Good interview but could've been much better. Was expecting Kennigit to show some hard hitting journalism, but DB got off with such easy questions.
The first half of the interview was generic questions like "what are your processes", "what have you learnt"....
Would've preferred hard questions like:
- Do you think warpgates broke Protss (refer to TL post)
- Why are some powerful spells a passive ability (eg. concussive shells)
- How do you plan on increasing the skill ceiling with HotS
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On October 26 2011 17:11 Highways wrote:
Good interview but could've been much better. Was expecting Kennigit to show some hard hitting journalism, but DB got off with such easy questions.
The first half of the interview was generic questions like "what are your processes", "what have you learnt"....
Would've preferred hard questions like:
- Do you think warpgates broke Protss (refer to TL post)
- Why are some powerful spells a passive ability (eg. concussive shells)
- How do you plan on increasing the skill ceiling with HotS
I can answer all of them:
1: You don't like it? Go play SC/BW hurrdurrderp.
2: Go play SC/BW if you don't like autocast hurrdurrderp....
3: Lol, you really think we want that?
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Such a great interview, annoyed it took me so long to find it >.< I think this would really benefit from a front page spotlight/news article or something.
I'm sure it took some balls for Browder to say some of the things he did (re: deathballs, or that they are not actually that in tune with the metagame when designing new things) other than that the answers were basically what was expected.
It's a good reminder really that Blizzard are only human, and while there's hundreds of thousands of screaming fanboy's making posts about how this is broken, or that is not good enough, or how we need this or that...
They are doing their best to add new exciting things while keeping the game as balanced as possible.
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Much <3 to you Kennigit for highlighting the map making community! <3 <3
- we really needed that. -Kinda shocking to see Dustin Browders response! Seems like he wasn´t aware that there even is a serious map making community.
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I notice that Mr Browder is wearing a Terran shirt. Everything finally makes sense.
This is a great interview and it's really good to see Dustin off-stage, seeming more like a regular dude and less like a colossal douche  .
♥ 2 Kenniget & DB
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On October 26 2011 13:44 IPA wrote:Show nested quote +On October 26 2011 13:25 Hattori_Hanzo wrote:
I also think the design team are idiots.
As a writer, it is highly insulting and disrespectful to take an establish canon and shit on it.
A design perspective of "what is cool" is excellent start when developing a new franchise of intellectual property. Some of the most legendary IP are character driven/constrained.
Lord of the Rings trilogy, Old Testament Exodus, Harry Potter, etc
All world changes are the result of decisions based on what those characters perceived. The Urukhai would never have been bred to challenge the world of elf, dwarf and man, if Saruman felt the current Orc abilities were sufficient. Same with Lord Voldemort, etc.
The design team must ask themselves,
"what would I, one of the many defense contractors on Tarsonis present to Emperor Mensk to win that multi-billion credit contract?".
"What strains must I, the swarm, acquire and/or evolve now that Kerrigan is gone?"
"What must I, Chief of the design tribe of Shakuras, do to once again see the sun rise over Auir?"
Do this and history dictates that SC universe will reach the legendary status of Starwars, LotR and Harry Potter. Or continue the current direction of "What cool and lore doesn't matter, we'll just design around that shit" and be a forgotten footnote like the Battletech Universe, TA Universe, Masters of Orion series and many others that fell to mediocrity.
While I understand your point, I think I speak for the vast majority of the competitive community when I say "I could care less about lore."
I assume you meant to say "couldn't"? in that case you're probably right and it makes me a little sad. any crap will sell as long as it's flashy enough. same thing with movies, music, clothes, technology, anything really. I sort of expected more from blizzard, but I guess I was wrong. I mean they already raped the warcraft universe in wow. it's just that their older games just felt so good...
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Dustin is a great! He shows such a nice character in the interview and the questions was almost perfect! Thanks for the interview!
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Great interview. Thanks Kennigit !
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On October 26 2011 14:16 Hattori_Hanzo wrote:Show nested quote +On October 26 2011 13:41 Mehukannu wrote:On October 26 2011 13:25 Hattori_Hanzo wrote:
I also think the design team are idiots.
As a writer, it is highly insulting and disrespectful to take an establish canon and shit on it.
A design perspective of "what is cool" is excellent start when developing a new franchise of intellectual property. Some of the most legendary IP are character driven/constrained.
Lord of the Rings trilogy, Old Testament Exodus, Harry Potter, etc
All world changes are the result of decisions based on what those characters perceived. The Urukhai would never have been bred to challenge the world of elf, dwarf and man, if Saruman felt the current Orc abilities were sufficient. Same with Lord Voldemort, etc.
The design team must ask themselves,
"what would I, one of the many defense contractors on Tarsonis present to Emperor Mensk to win that multi-billion credit contract?".
"What strains must I, the swarm, acquire and/or evolve now that Kerrigan is gone?"
"What must I, Chief of the design tribe of Shakuras, do to once again see the sun rise over Auir?"
Do this and history dictates that SC universe will reach the legendary status of Starwars, LotR and Harry Potter. Or continue the current direction of "What cool and lore doesn't matter, we'll just design around that shit" and be a forgotten footnote like the Battletech Universe, TA Universe, Masters of Orion series and many others that fell to mediocrity.
That is great and all, but Blizzard is making a game for e-sports not any story driven game like planescape to make the starcraft universe bigger. There's no need to sacrifice story for e-sports. A great example is Warhammer 40K interestingly enough given Blizzard's shared history (Blizzard built SC engine to pitch to Games Workshop). There are many competitions that are story driven, the Marathon race is another one. It began to commemorate the legend of Pheidippides, a Greek messenger. Who legend states that he was sent from the battlefield of Marathon to Athens to announce that the Persians had been defeated in the Battle of Marathon (in which he had just fought), which took place in August or September, 490 BC.] It is said that he ran the entire distance without stopping and burst into the assembly, exclaiming "Νενικήκαμεν" (Nenikékamen, 'We have won.') before collapsing and dying." -See wikipedia
Fair enough, but you can already see that blizzard really is not focusing on the story. Even their team consist of about 10 people from what I have heard, which all of them are focusing to make the game competitive and the story in WOL isn't all that great either, but still it's a trilogy so, I guess I can't really judge it by looking 1/3 of the whole story.
Yeah, I remember that legend about Pheidippides when my teacher told the legend about him when I was at elementary school. To think someone can run such a long distance without resting at all. Truly, that is a an inspiration to us all.
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I sort of agree. Starcraft is more of a feel-based game, so if units do not have an exactly fitting origin story that's okay, they just have to be believable in the universe. To me the warhound is only believable as a design if for whatever reason Mengsk had a Mech Warrior fetish. Obviously a multiplayer game is totally implausible, what with the symmetrical maps and the neat configuration of minerals, but here it is easy to see how gameplay trumps story. You simply could not have a strategy game without this.
Calling the design team idiots because of your personal opinion that story should have priority over gameplay is very much indefensible and ruins your point though. Yes, we should try to have the races be designed so that they fit the theme, but you generalize and claim a great story could have people be interested in an e-sports strategy game. (??)
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I liked the interview and Dustin Browder came off as a very smart individual.
I agree with the mentality of having to take risks and make seemingly rash decisions. Once you begin adding units, the balance that they achieved in WoL is going to be shot. Might as well try to fix structural problems and add cool new things at that point.
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Gameplay should take precedent over story in all videogames, you can enjoy a game with good gameplay and weak story but it's not nearly so in the opposite case. Either way videogames have never been know for very good stories
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On October 27 2011 17:15 Zeroxk wrote:
Gameplay should take precedent over story in all videogames, you can enjoy a game with good gameplay and weak story but it's not nearly so in the opposite case. Either way videogames have never been know for very good stories
Plenty of amazing video games have weak gameplay but a great story. You take just as much an extreme as Hattori_Hanzo where he says that story has to take priority over gameplay, by claiming the exact opposite. Isn't a more realistic alternative that there are trade-offs between gameplay and story that need not always exist, but are sometimes inevitable and that in such a case it's more of a judgement call what side to pick, all depending on the exact situation, the projected audience, your goals and personal backgrounds as game designers?
That said, this is more for games in general. The exact story doesn't matter so much for Starcraft II multiplayer. Maybe for the single player campaign, but not for the e-sports aspect of it. Creating solid gameplay here is so important that the trade-off between it and story becomes so one-sided you might as well say that story becomes irrelevant, as long as units still seem like they fit a certain race. Players do enjoy the differences and themes that belong to a specific race after all, often that's why they play it, but it's still a one-sided trade off I do think.
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On October 27 2011 23:57 Grumbels wrote:Show nested quote +On October 27 2011 17:15 Zeroxk wrote:
Gameplay should take precedent over story in all videogames, you can enjoy a game with good gameplay and weak story but it's not nearly so in the opposite case. Either way videogames have never been know for very good stories @Plenty of amazing video games have weak gameplay but a great story. You take just as much an extreme as Hattori_Hanzo where he says that story has to take priority over gameplay, by claiming the exact opposite. Isn't a more realistic alternative that there are trade-offs between gameplay and story that need not always exist, but are sometimes inevitable and that in such a case it's more of a judgement call what side to pick, all depending on the exact situation, the projected audience, your goals and personal backgrounds as game designers? That said, this is more for games in general. The exact story doesn't matter so much for Starcraft II multiplayer. Maybe for the single player campaign, but not for the e-sports aspect of it. Creating solid gameplay here is so important that the trade-off between it and story becomes so one-sided you might as well say that story becomes irrelevant, as long as units still seem like they fit a certain race. Players do enjoy the differences and themes that belong to a specific race after all, often that's why they play it, but it's still a one-sided trade off I do think.
This is where some people see problems. TT1 takes it one step further and even says that this is not only true for races, but that there is a specific theme of gameplay that defines StarCraft and that Blizzard is stepping further and further away from it as time goes on. Which begs the question, why call it StarCraft if only the names remain the same? The obvious answer is for marketing purposes, but should that answer really satisfy StarCraft fans, as opposed to people who don't care about the content as long as it plays well?
We know that the people at Blizzard are intelligent individuals, professionals who know how to do their job. But we question their motives, whether they are aligned to our own. And we question them based on what I quoted earlier in the thread
+ Show Spoiler +On October 25 2011 19:22 enzym wrote:Show nested quote +On October 25 2011 09:57 Pyre wrote:
Good interview, worries me how clueless they act on stuff. How can you not think about how the game changes adding new units. Only adding because they are cool scares me. Yes they can be tweaked but by how much? Show nested quote +On October 25 2011 11:12 dtvu wrote:
Great Interview Kennigit. Dustin Browder sounds earnest in his attempts to make SC2 a great game. I think his points regarding the need to change the theme of each race with addition of new units to be lazy. For me Protoss should always be expensive, strong, highly technologically advanced; Terran is hard hitting, medium cost, defensive oriented; while zerg are fast, cheap and in large numbers. I agree with these posts, and what Dustin expressed in the interview is what worries me most about the direction of StarCraft. He said the following: 9:33 "You know, we don't think of the races as really tightly themed... If themes emerge, so be it."9:53 "There's no way to add a new unit to this game without changing it, right? The race will change. It must change if we add any new units. If you want exactly the same game, please go play Brood War... By the very nature of changing units we will change the nature of the race."10:23 "We are not as worried about specific character for the race. That's not what we're trying to do."
and things like this
+ Show Spoiler +On October 25 2011 22:35 dump wrote:The art in this game isn't going to improve. Spontaneity is one thing, but the artists' persistent mediocrity is pretty shocking. They give you an idea of their design process. It sounds like something out of a high school group project. "Here's a great picture of everything you love about terran: it's got fire, it's got a huge cannon, rocket missiles, laser explosions..." "...kinda let everybody contribute to it a little bit so they have some ownership." "We just wanted something cool, we didn't know exactly what it did, just hey, awesome robotic technomagical looking protoss thing... there was no role for it basically in the army, so every time the designers would be like 'hey we're gonna put in this flyer or this caster', I'd be like 'oh dude, c'mon, use this one'... and so finally there's a role for it in the Heart of Swarm expansion; here's a final model." "Now I'd like to say we spent a lot of time on it, there was this huge deliberation and we were very smart about it, but it took about five minutes and we were like, yeah that looks cool, ship it." "It's a robotic unit so we don't need to worry too much about the cockpit or the seating in it or how it all works... I mean, we try to be somewhat form follows function, but this guy just looks cool, like, 'screw it, he looks cool, put him in there'... basically his role, he'll see any other unit on the battlefield and turn into it."
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I agree, by the way. I thought the level of maturity displayed in the Arts panel at Blizzcon was shockingly low. I was hoping for someone to explain the design of a unit like the warhound and battle hellion to me and wasn't happy to learn it was because of the artists thinking that Transformers 2 was the best movie ever. I just think that's more of a case of bad art direction.
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EPT
