EPTQ & A With David Kim - Page 7
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Jimmy Raynor
902 Posts
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Danglars
United States12133 Posts
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whodat92
United States48 Posts
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FeyFey
Germany10114 Posts
Was crazy how strongly abused the golds were on antiga and dual sight, just before they removed them. | ||
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Defacer
Canada5052 Posts
On December 16 2011 12:00 Zergrusher wrote: david knows how to l2p dustin actually has a bachelors degree in english litterature, i dunno how he got into game making....... but he is a good spokesperson, player.. eh not so much, atleast davvy kept in GM for 3 seasons and he was a formor pro Sc1 and BW player and played WoW quite actively He's a white guy that looks people in the eye while talking emphatically. (just kidding. sort of) | ||
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FidoDido
United States1292 Posts
On December 16 2011 12:07 Andreas wrote: Decent answers for the most part... The only one I'm really upset about is that removing gold minerals in the GSL worked out because in Korea, Terrans are doing so much better, and because non-Korean tournaments with gold mineral maps don't have a large amount of Terran top finishes, it isn't necessary to remove them. Either the game is balanced and gold patches can stay no matter how well Terrans are doing (this would simply mean there are more good Terran players) or the game isn't balanced and gold minerals need to go so Terrans don't have an unfair advantage. I thought this would be fairly obvious to a balance designer... even though other races complain about mules. the day they take out mules, terrans will start doing very poorly in tournaments everywhere. | ||
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Ownos
United States2147 Posts
They always say that. Why would they say otherwise? They'd lose face. | ||
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YMCApylons
Taiwan359 Posts
Put MULEs on a 30-second cooldown, or something similar, so Terran can't spam 8 MULEs on a naked gold base. "I'm almost afraid to look at the income tab" is a common caster quote because everyone knows its embarrassing to see a Terran income of 3000 from a single gold mining base. | ||
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FlukyS
Ireland485 Posts
2. People's complaints about the gold bases weren't specifically about mules being dropped on them its just that gold bases favor the race of terran a lot more than Zerg or Protoss because of planetary fortresses being very good specifically against zerg. Its a huge investment to be able to deny the gold if there is a pf on it with turrets surrounding it. 3. He didn't talk about how neural parasite isn't at all being used because of the range nerf. They need to return it to its previous form asap because its entirely useless now, thats not an exaggeration. There is no way you can np a colossus without getting your infestors killed, there is no way you can np a tank without getting your infestors killed. All in all the only thing np is good for at the moment is maybe nping a probe and making the enemies units or maybe a high templar if they dont feedback them right away since that costs barely anything to cast and then they can turn it into a perfectly useful unit. 4. The removing the golds from the GSL has only happened recently and going by the GSL format there is never all that much change right away it happens over 2-3 seasons so they were never going to see huge changes for a little while. It has helped the GSL in the fact that a Zerg was in the last final and it wasn't just because leenock is great it was because of the gold bases being removed. If they weren't everyone would have said right away that GSL is going to be another TvT final. Id predict right away next year its going to be pretty even in terms of race distribution in the GSL at least more than previous seasons anyway. To be honest I get what he is saying about looking at the raw numbers he doesn't see much of a problem at the moment but if he listened to a lot of the players like on state of the game or day9 they would hear them joke about how np is bloody useless now. | ||
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Rexeus
78 Posts
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Soet
Sweden66 Posts
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Ryder.
1117 Posts
On December 16 2011 12:00 Zergrusher wrote: david knows how to l2p dustin actually has a bachelors degree in english litterature, i dunno how he got into game making....... but he is a good spokesperson, player.. eh not so much, atleast davvy kept in GM for 3 seasons and he was a formor pro Sc1 and BW player and played WoW quite actively Heaps of people end up in careers very different from what their first bachelor degree was, he probably got that degree over 20 years ago... Not much specific info but it's nice to know they are aware of the community's concerns. | ||
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Humanfails
224 Posts
On December 16 2011 13:35 Ghola wrote: The reason there are forced mechanics in SC2 is because Blizzard rightly realized that with multiple building selection, no unit selection cap, automine, and smartcast, the mechanical skill cap for Starcraft 2 would be too low. Especially for Zerg, whose units all come from the same building. you realize what you're saying is that blizzard made things easy by purposely doing so, and as such lowered the skill cap, so they brought it back up by bringing in what are confounding variables in game balance, things that only detract from the game, and inject is actually extraordinarily hard to maintain while ALSO trying to micro . give me back brood war mechanics. remember, this is the same balance designer who gave oprotoss a fast cycle firing splash unit that fires concave death lines, a 3 range anti-bio unit, and now a +1 range immortal that rapes roaches while being invincible, as NP was -1 range at the same time. I'd like a unit comp other than lingfestor please. Look at this. Tanks worked in brood war, where there was no smartfire. Reavers existed, and reavers with 125 (!!) damage were balanced because you could micro your zerg army to sac some units and keep killing the reavers until you got through. Unlike colossus which can walk over its own army to retreat to safety, can walk up cliffs to retreat, does far less damage, and yet manages to wipe out zerg armies with ridiculous ease. So, tanks worked in brood war, even with the overkilling via lack of smartfire. Smartfire was added to the game. Why? What did it bring to the game? It made tanks overpowered, and tanks had to be nerfed. Instead of removing smartfire, tank damage was nerfed. tanks still slaughter roaches, when roaches were supposed to be the main go-to unit for zerg. they were. dont deny it. Zerg main unit in brood war: hydralisk. 75m25g. 1 supply. roach in beta. 75m25g, 1 supply. Smartfire makes them very poor choices without great unit control, burrow move,etc. zerg army was cut in half when roaches were made 2 supply. nothing has been added or changed to replace them. roaches were overpowered as 1 supply 2 armor. but their role was to soak damage, and possibly always be built but in equal numbers with lings to be damage soaks while lings attacked. This theoretical does not work out duiring actual gameplay, and this should've been noted by playtesters before the beta. Look at the theoretical swarm host that spawns units at enemies every so often. The game video showed a completely optimal scenario for the zerg spawning and the terran player was trash, and it did very little to nothing, unlike the terran area denial unit that raped everything. I recall browderhead saying that "we put things in a little overpowered, and we like to tone it down later". Well, the terran unit lived up to that, the zerg unit looked like it needed to be toned UP. Lets look at terrans now. Firebat. 16 damage, could stim to do quite a bit more, good splash, forget the range but 4 of them in a bunker could wipe out droves of lings or zealots. hellions? Cool in concept, turned out to be too much. and too little at the same time. had to be nerfed because of runby, but takes no gas, unlike any other splash unit in the game. versatility increased. smartfire, especially for tanks. versatility increased. no more micro required for aiming tanks. medivac. medics were already tough as shit. it's difficult to deal with terran bio at all until lurkers in brood war. the main reason was they made stim and go cake. Lurker shut that down. Drops with medics either were heal light or dps light. Now drops are DPS heavy and heal medium. Remember, lurker was removed and baneling added. A unit must be made over and over to counter a unit thats very cheap, synergizes with mule, and can be made over and over the same way. thats not hard counter. thats soft counter. anyone who's read Sirlin (google) would be familiar with the concept. Look at all that versatility added intentionally. And then DB comes out and says terrans have too much versatility. Of course, because they were designed to be that way. The took what worked with Terran, and improved on it. could the same be said for zerg or protoss? All the Terran qq about nerfs, those nerfs would be unneecssary if Z and P had instead both gotten buffs, to keep their MU equal to each other and themselves, and to raise their MU to equall evel with T. Questionable decisions, bad logic, faulty logic, every step of the way. I'm not going to say someone could've done better, but someone could've done better. What was a problem with TvZ? bunker rush and reapers. star queens with 50 energy, so 1 inject and 1 creep tumor immediately. increase creep tumor spread radius 1. what was problem with TvP? 1-1-1. Immortal shields reduce incoming range damage by 66%. instead of down to 10. Now they're short range tanky units with high DPS, not busted by marines or banshees as much. PvZ, now that immortal is like that? Doesn't really change. Immortals will be out front to get neuraled and ling'd and hydra'd. And never getting 1 range means they cant hide behind stalkers. Theyre meant to be the tanks dammit. stalkers were obviiously meant to be light hp support units that jump into combat and do damage. (personally, I think protoss QQ'd about immortal because they lacked the ability to zealot/stalker hug while using immortals. Or they lacked the ability to just use some zealots, unlike now. its funny the metagame has jumped up to solve exactly the problem protoss had with immortals after immortals were buffed. One person said "my immortals run around in back and do nothing". bad micro is the fault of not enough range, herp). I can't imagine that in 10 years they didn't work out some formula and draw up some tables charts and other stuff to help guide them in creating units and abilities in sc2. Another way to do it, a way that would work infinitely faster,would be for the community of sc2 to take it upon themselves to balance the game. After seeing someone mimic swarm host as it shot out miniature hydralisks, I reasoned that why doesn't the community do this already? create maps that you can tweak onyour own with very little effort, or be tweaked in game immediately, such as hellion speed or damage and damage multiplication. the sc2 community could run its own "patches" of maps released to test specific buffs and nerfs and the community itself could vote as a whole whether its a positive or negative step. Going even further, there could be a joinable group, and people should have to "show their work" when it comes to what they propose to be changed and why. Then those who are serious get their ideas noticed, these ideas get put into a "faux-patch" map that is released, and everyone who wants to get involved can play it and give feedbACk. think of it like starcraft2 balance wiki. Point is, if the gamers really feel there's imbalances, why are we letting two people who obviously cant do it right after 10 years do it for us? sc2 communities already make "balanced" maps for the races. taking it one step further, they could create true balance in far quicker time. As a side note, "balanced" maps... all maps should be balanced ofr all races regardless. If any map has an imbalance, I blame racial imbalance. All races should be equally capable of taking advantage of terrain, or failing that, as we don't want mirror match up chess games all day, all races should have unique advantages of terrain to them and also unique ways of countering other race's advantages with good countering selection. back on the subject of inject. Inject is one of those mechanics that creates a need to halve your attention. Protoss and terran both have this to some degree. But! Zerg positioning is important. Micro is important. I've lost games from going back to inject and letting the A-move happen 1 second too long. I've lost games from playing micro wars and not having enough backup larvae. Anyone who says "Zerg is the remax race" is shortsighted at best. Remaxing only occurs with enough larvae and mineral/gas float. which means zerg has to sit on its army for a while to "remax instantly". This argument is therefore a huge fallacy. i've been getting straight out killed by high level 4 gates lately, and the raeson is that inject actually tkes 69 seconds to pop 8 zerglings, while 4 gate takes 25 zseconds to pop unchrono'd zealots. Z and P have polar opposite army production mechanisms, and lots of people would say warpgte was just a bad mechanic that shouldn't have been added. In a way I agree. remove WG, remove reactors, an d remove inject. Let terrans even keep mule and protoss even keep chrono, hell. Protoss can micro very well (FF and colossus moving isn't that difficult), and make up for any slack created by not using their macro abilities for army. Terran can do the same thing. Zerg cannot. Zerg must macro while trying to micro. failure at one usually means the battle swings in their favor. but then theres how the excess energy gets used. macro hatches are bad because they are economy waste, unless you can make 100% use of them while injected 100% of the time. waste = behind in the unit production/attack scenario. terran and protoss can mule drop and chrono WG their way down to 0 energy in no time and in this way, their mechanics reward superior micro and forgetting to macro. Zerg is not rewarded like this, because an inject lost is lost forever. | ||
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ShotgunMike
Sweden241 Posts
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Falcor
Canada894 Posts
On December 16 2011 16:52 Rexeus wrote: Not complete!! Why do all casters have 3 spells each except the high templar? storm feedback merge? | ||
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Humanfails
224 Posts
On December 16 2011 17:30 ShotgunMike wrote: OK interview. David Kim would make a good politician, all answers sounds quite good at first but the true content to word ratio is pretty low.. how do you know he wrote it himself? | ||
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Fuchsteufelswild
Australia2028 Posts
Were people having trouble reading that Void Ray damage is 6, but 10 vs armoured, or is the complaint that there is no mention of the charged damage? On the Prismatic Beam description, they can simply include the text "Once charged, the Void Ray's damage output is increased by +2 range, +6 vs Armoured and further increased by 20% overall vs Massive units." It would be nice if Blizzard would clarify this 20%, as it could just be a bonus rounded off once that they just called 20%* or a consistent bonus that rounds off to the nearest whole number, which seems likely, because the damage and hit points are stored as floating point numbers by simply displayed as integers, unless it's different from Brood War. I could probably find the 20% in the map editor, but I don't want to bother now.  *Adrenal Glands gives "20%" to attack rate (~18.57% really). There were (may still be) other cases of this rounding off of bonuses to sound neater, like their "20%", one other example being the Fungal Growth damage to Armoured after the initial buff. 36 + "30% vs armoured" would equal 46.8, a lot of people just assumed it was 33% and thought the damage must be 48 to armoured (but never checked), some others thought it was 46 because hey did the calculation and assumed, like in many games, that it would be rounded down and others, like me, thought it was probably 47 and Blizzard wasn't going to bother writing "+30.555%". Some people claimed it was 48 but that the spell was affected by the 1 point of armour many units had. >.> The spell.... Point being, this 20% is a little vague and I at least haven't YET heard anyone state whether or not it does change damage by that exact amount rounding off appropriately every time. I don't see why they can't also mention in the Prismatic Beam description that the range extends to 8 if it chases a fleeing target, seeing as people who are new to the game really should now that before pointlessly attempting to move units away that aren't much faster than void rays (queens on creep, trying to keep it alive but instead just granting the void ray free hits versus that queen). | ||
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ToastieNL
Netherlands845 Posts
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Capiachi
78 Posts
On December 16 2011 16:47 FlukyS wrote: 1. Mules are awesome everywhere and its kinda funny that a terran on 2 base can out mine a protoss or a zerg on 3 easily with mules. They make all ins a lot more effective, they encourage poor play like players never using their energy then going wait I have loads of energy lets drop 15 mules. 2. People's complaints about the gold bases weren't specifically about mules being dropped on them its just that gold bases favor the race of terran a lot more than Zerg or Protoss because of planetary fortresses being very good specifically against zerg. Its a huge investment to be able to deny the gold if there is a pf on it with turrets surrounding it. 3. He didn't talk about how neural parasite isn't at all being used because of the range nerf. They need to return it to its previous form asap because its entirely useless now, thats not an exaggeration. There is no way you can np a colossus without getting your infestors killed, there is no way you can np a tank without getting your infestors killed. All in all the only thing np is good for at the moment is maybe nping a probe and making the enemies units or maybe a high templar if they dont feedback them right away since that costs barely anything to cast and then they can turn it into a perfectly useful unit. 4. The removing the golds from the GSL has only happened recently and going by the GSL format there is never all that much change right away it happens over 2-3 seasons so they were never going to see huge changes for a little while. It has helped the GSL in the fact that a Zerg was in the last final and it wasn't just because leenock is great it was because of the gold bases being removed. If they weren't everyone would have said right away that GSL is going to be another TvT final. Id predict right away next year its going to be pretty even in terms of race distribution in the GSL at least more than previous seasons anyway. To be honest I get what he is saying about looking at the raw numbers he doesn't see much of a problem at the moment but if he listened to a lot of the players like on state of the game or day9 they would hear them joke about how np is bloody useless now. 1. People keep forgetting that when you can drop 15 mules at the same time it means the terran didn't have the economy he should have had earlier. Pooling energy is worse then using it consistently. I wouldn't mind a change on mules, but chronoboost and spawn larvae makes terran need something. 2. Gold bases were just getting some more tactics to them, alot of zergs started taking them again P for example. And Im sure they havn't played around enough with it. I think zerg had a decent way of handling any type of base right now(even planetaries). I think the main problem with golds is that we dont see protoss using them as much as zerg/terran. 4. I think that's a bit extreme, Leenock has shown some awesome play and very irritating baneling mines. His style is pretty "new" and underused. AND it makes terran economy worse. The reason we didn't see Lenoock win GSL was some unfortunete decisions from his side. I'm still very impressed. I will still stand by my reasoning that Zerg is by far the best race, aslong as you know whats going on. There is so much potential in the race that I think once people figure zerg out completly it will very hard to handle. | ||
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Tobberoth
Sweden6375 Posts
On December 16 2011 17:36 Fuchsteufelswild wrote: To me only the first of the first seven questions were worth asking, I don't understand why people think the others are real issues. :S Were people having trouble reading that Void Ray damage is 6, but 10 vs armoured, or is the complaint that there is no mention of the charged damage? On the Prismatic Beam description, they can simply include the text "Once charged, the Void Ray's damage output is increased by +2 range, +6 vs Armoured and further increased by 20% overall vs Massive units." I think it's more about the actual graphical feedback, it being too hard to see how charged a voidray is and how fast it does its damage. | ||
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