Dustin Browder, David Kim Interviews - Page 16

Wax Angel: Hey, we're here with David Kim game designer for starcraft 2
I'm just going to start out with questions I don't know, I don't do this lead in stuff well.

So in America or in the west a lot of people, the fans they point at Dustin Browder as the guy to blame all their balance complaints, and in Korea they all blame David Kim for some reason, so i think it would be good to just point out what exactly you do on the balance side, so we can clarify this stuff, is all this deserved?


David Kim: we actually work on a team, it's not just me and Dustin that work on the balance we actually have a group of multiplayer game designers that work on the balance. I just think those two names are more well know, it's kinda cool seeing Dustin Browders face and funny comments like the comment about rocks that we saw yesterday so it would be kinda cool if my face was there instead.


Wax: In the community there are these jokes, some jokes and some serious, like "blizzard doesn't pay attention to the games, they don't know what they're doing" so you know, take this as a chance to clarify some of that stuff things like "how many people are on the team and what kind of tournaments do you watch, how often do you watch them, with what kind of thoroughness" put some confidence in these people.


DK: Well we have a few people working on the multiplayer game and we actually try to watch every single major tournament so when ever there is a major event going on we try watch as many games as possible and we try to talk about what we observe. For example last week there was red bull battlegrounds we watched that pretty heavily too, so i guess we're watching almost every single major tournament around the world and we do try our best to listen to our community, sometimes we don't react as quickly to certain suggestions, but that's just the nature of it. We not only look at the community feedback we also look at pro feedback, we also look at the various different data that we have, so it's really difficult sometimes if all those three things disagree in terms of what they're saying so we cannot promise we will act on every single major complaint that the community has, but at the same time we try to analyze to the best of our abilities and really look into every issue.


Wax: So let's talk about that a little bit in detail so you say you look at pro feedback and that's actively talking to the pro's asking them for their opinions?


DK: Yes, but there's ups and downs to every method of feedback especially right, the pro's are generally a little more biased then not because they play one race, they have to win all the time, so they probably feel the most pressure so we do take that into account whenever we get pro feedback.

But on a similar side we don't just gather the verbal feedback that the pros give but also there are a lot of people within our company and outside the company that watch the game a lot, very heavily, so those people generally have a good unbiased view of the game. I think in terms of pro feedback whenever we say that we not only mean the actual pro feedback that the pro players are giving us but also we do have a bunch of people both internally and externally that are really good at analyzing the game, and the feedback we get from them is just as important as the feedback that we get from the pros.


Wax: Okay and another thing we hear as a complaint a lot from the community is that blizzard's making these changes because they want to cater to these silver league players, gold league players and they don't care about ESPORTS top level play. So obviously you have to cater somewhat to lower level play, at the same time us at team liquid we would love it if your main focus was on the highest level play.

DK: So, we do cater try to every single person who plays starcraft 2 but with that said, I think the most important is the pro level, and the reason for that is because that level not only affects the players that are playing at that level, but also so many people that are watching pro's play too. So we do think that is the most important but at the same time if there are completely broken things, so for example in the past we have made a lot of changes for the lower leagues, so for example a lot of the bunker nerfs that we did, or the warp gate nerfs that we did, we were seeing that at the lower levels of play it was pretty difficult for those guys to block those all-in rushes so we did take care of those problems, but these days we're actually not seeing a lot of low level issues. So the last patch for example none of those changes I don't think have a huge impact on the silver level but for a pro the 2 range difference is pretty crazy huge right (referring to the queen range change) or even the observer build speed, we reduced it by 10 seconds, that probably has almost no impact on a silver level player but for a pro who really measures timings that matters alot. So we've been kind of trending towards catering to the pro level not because we don't care about the lower levels but because of we're not seeing issues that are as prevalent as we were seeing before.


Wax: So you said that you look at stats a lot in terms of balance, and obviously stats don't tell the entire story so when you're looking at stats like win rate across the board but you also have to look at if the way the game is being played in a way that you think is balanced. What is a case that stats have said something is even but in terms of gameplay you didn't think it was actually working out the way it should be?

DK: I guess we have the perfect example of that right now, so just yesterday we checked the... there's the popular complaint among our forums that protoss vs terran in the late game, terran has no chance so we actually pulled up those numbers, we checked the highest level of GM players, only on Korea, and in the past 2 weeks of all their games and the win loss ratio across the board, at the 5 minute mark it was even, 10 minute mark same thing all the way up to say like the 45 minute mark it was all pretty close to 50% but we're actually not seeing that, just the like how our players are not seeing that also right, so that's an example where the actual stats vary depending on what we're seeing in tournaments right. And I think there are many reasons for that but one of the main reason I can think of is that the tournament experience is different from the ladder experience so while we can't just look at the tournament results alone, I think there are just pluses and minuses for every different stat we can look at.


Wax: So wait you think that, in tournaments, there's another aspect of the game compared to when laddering endlessly there's like the preparation so you could say protoss is more powerful with preparation than terran or something like that?


DK: I wouldn't say that, but what I do think is that you have more prep time against a specific player rather the whole race whereas on the ladder you don't know who you're going to play against next right? And also you only play 1 game against that opponent, maybe 2, maybe 3, but in a tournament setting you almost always play a best of 3 if not more right? So I think those kinds of minor differences actually make a much bigger difference in terms of the stats that we're seeing.


Wax: So you think that those differences they aren't applied equally to the races? Like they can make protoss more powerful than terran somehow?


DK: They could be yeah, but just overall what I think we're seeing at the top of the ladder is pretty solid, and in tournaments right now especially in the GSTL Zerg is performing pretty well but just overall when we look at the last 8 major tournaments around the world that's also looking pretty solid as well. So I wouldn't say that tournaments and ladder are completely different games I would say that they have their minor differences and we just have to pay attention to both numbers.


Wax: In the case of monitoring tournaments, there's obviously a hazard of falling into like looking at smaller numbers or looking at single players and making decisions based on that. How do you get around that? Are you very cautious about that? Because fans speculate that you see cases where something is happening because of one tournament or one player, does that really happen?


DK: Not really. We try out best to not do that, so when we watch tournaments we tend to look at the small picture so what we do to get around that problem is that I try to send out a report to our team on a weekly basis of say like the past 3 months of tournament results as well as the race makeup in those tournaments, as well as the winners, so in that sense we try to look at the bigger picture regularly so that we're not just focusing on one player, or not just focusing on one event.


Wax: So this is a more philosophical question that naz (Ed: Nazgul) wanted to ask, so, the metagame will shift on it's own and players will adjust to perceived imbalances and like within 4 months, 6 months time it will change so do you believe that the balance changes you're making now are just like not necessarily things that you have to do for the long term for the game to return to balance but things you're just doing to make sure things balance faster, they're like more short term fixes?


DK: I think how players play and their skill actually has a huge impact on the balance, I know a lot of people disagree but the way we're thinking of it is for example right, say marine spread on the Terran side is not as good and it will never be as good as it is now then banelings will perform a lot better than they are now so naturally if we never nerf it saying people can actually micro it a lot better and counter this a lot better then the game will be imbalanced all the way up to that point so I think we sort of have to do a bit of both, so sometimes we make fixes to make sure that something is okay until the players are able to use it, and other times we say okay we'll wait on this issue because we think they're getting there so we'll just wait and see. And if they never get there, say in a matter of months then we may make a move over there as well.


Wax: So you'd be okay say making a move, buff, and if it doesn't work out nerf again and back to status quo?


DK: I guess so, but that hasn't happened yet, but every time we make a patch there's a lot of... I guess for this last patch there's a lot of comments from both pros and players saying the queen buff was too much. So we are looking at that very closely and if that turns out to be flawed like people are saying then we will revert that.

Wax: Going into heart of the swarm you've added a lot of new units, you've changed a lot of abilities etc etc so In general are you happy with the state of the match-ups in wings of liberty and these are things you're adding to just change or add more variety? Or do you think there were problems with the way matches played out asides from balance like you didn't like the meta so you introduced this to change it up?


DK: So back in wings of liberty when we put in new units all we did was we said "Is this a fun unit? Does this unit create fun strategies?" but this time it's a little different because starcraft 2 is a game that everyone's playing right now so we do have to make note of the current meta-game and as well as the potential of how things will turn out, right? So some of the new units that we're putting in like the battle hellion, they're just going in to fill holes that we see in our game currently but overall we try to do a bit of both, we try to create new strategies that are fun to use and at the same time we want to be able to fill the holes that are existing in the game using the new units.

(Off Camera): We're at 12 minutes.


Wax: Okay, cool I can ask you about each match-up then So lets just go through match-up by match-up, and see what you like about it now and what you don't like about it now and what you might have changed to make it more, I dunno, more entertaining. So lets say start TvZ. What do you feel about the situation, like the meta now, and why you made the changes you made?


DK: So TvZ we feel that the defense on the Terran side is a little too strong, so we wanted to introduce, you know especially the siege tanks right, not just siege tanks in your base but also if you have siege tanks set up at the watch tower or in front of the zerg base it's really difficult for the zerg to crack that. So that's why we have units like the swarm host or the Viper that are good at dealing with siege tanks specifically. And on the Terran side, not just in the TvZ match-up, but Terran in general don't have as solid of a mechanical Terran game as the more biological Terran right? So the issue we're seeing with the biological Terran is that you're forced to harass constantly. And I think that's one of the complaints in TvP also. So if you are not a player that is good at using the drop ships and you don't harass throughout the whole game you're not as successful as the other races. So by adding the three new mechanical units we focus more-so on having solid units that you can just mass up in your base you don't have to harass the enemy base and you can go head to head against a zerg army or against a protoss army. So I think those were the main focuses in that match-up


Wax: Well if I had to make a criticism, that sounds a lot like you're making the death ball a requirement even more so than it is now.


DK: Actually I'm not saying that, I'm just saying it would be cool to have a choice of the two right? Because I think biological terran will be strong no matter what because it's already strong and because Terrans are doing the best out of the three races in all the major tournaments right? So it's not a weak strat and I'm not saying the new mechanical style will be stronger then that strat, I'm saying if you choose to play a more harass type of gameplay you can go that strat, and if you choose to go a more protoss like strategy then you go mechanical or you can go a mix of both. I think just adding more choice to the players on the Terran side is cooler than just having one way to play.


Wax: So you're saying that, like, In broodwar you could only play mech in TvP and you could only play Bio in TvZ and you would rather things work out where you have more choices in each match-up?


DK: Yeah for sure. Because we know that the marine marauder drops based strategies work in both match-ups, well, all 3 match-ups pretty well so by adding this new strategy hopefully we'll keep the existing strat as strong as possible, as strong as it is now, and just provide new options. We don't necessarily want per match-up for Terran's to only have one option in terms of unit composition that they use.


Wax: Okay so how about PvZ then, how do you feel about it now and what kind of changes are you trying to make?


DK: So in PvZ, I guess protoss in general, don't have a lot of ways to harass with, their only options are early on with a stargate which a lot of pros are using currently and the other thing is harassment using warp prisms which is kind of all or nothing because whatever you warp in at the enemies base if you warp in more than 4 things those are all wasted, right? And just harassment units in general in Wings of Liberty they all harass by killing workers. So marine drops, templar drops, hellion run bys all those things harass the enemy by killing their workers. So for the protoss we wanted to create something that you can constantly use throughout the whole game if you're good enough and while you're not killing their workers it's still a strong method of harassment. So if you take a look at the oracle in the battle report that we did in the PvZ battle report, I think that shows our intent pretty well. I'm not saying that's how pros are going to use it 100% of the time or anything but because that unit has really fast movement speed and all you need to do is tag the mineral patches once and get out of there if you're paying attention to that harass it would be really easy to not lose that unit throughout the course of the whole game and just constantly harass the enemy mineral line without killing a single unit but at the same time you're actually doing a lot of heavy damage.


Wax: How about Zergs position in that match-up? Do you like how it's working out, because right now it's works out in a way that at lair you can get owned by forcefields and colossi and then you have to work your way up to hive to have a chance. You've said before you don't mind the dynamic where certain races are better in a certain period of the game but what are you trying to change with Zerg in Heart of the Swarm?


DK: So on the Zerg side, as you said, I think the reason that force fields feel so strong in the mid-game is that zerg doesn't have long range options so unless they bring out units like the broodlord, I guess that's the only one. So we're introducing the swarm hosts, and you can actually counter the locusts pretty well using forcefields, but at the same time I don't really feel bad because those are free units that I have, right? I guess that's a pretty good counter to the forcefields in the mid-game. And in the late game with the viper, the main goal for that was zerg in the late game if they don't bring ultras or broodlords out, I guess against protoss you don't really use ultras but you do use Broodlords. If you don't get broodlords out in the late game your 200 pop composition is not as strong as the protoss army so we wanted to create a new unit that can combo well with existing units such as roaches, zerglings or hydras. That's why we included the speed upgrade on the hydralisk and the viper combos really well with fast moving units naturally because if you're trying to pull things and catch them off-guard in that moment you don't want slow units because when you pull something it will get away if I can't chase him down. So like in the battle reports the viper actually combos really well with the new hydralisks and we're seeing in our internal playtests that's not only the case with the hydras but also with zerglings and roaches the vipers are really strong. So we're kind of hoping to create a different sort of option in tier 3 where you can go the mass zerg style army and use vipers to compliment that and you can still go the old ultralisk or broodlord based army.


Wax: So you're saying that you didn't think it was ideal that the only way that zerg could play was to like make a giant gas heavy army of all infestors and broodlords all the minerals you just dump into spines or whatever.


DK: Yeah, I just think that's one cool way to play and just yesterday we saw a ZvZ between Leenock and Violet where both of the players made like 15 ultralisks each and I think those moments are really cool but I just think if Zerg players to go that or the mass swarm army, that would be cool also.


Wax: So mostly the changes are about giving people more than one ideal composition at various points of the game right?


DK: Yeah for sure


Wax: Okay so let's move on to TvP, Where do you think the matchup is at right now and what are you trying to fix?


DK: In TvP I guess that's one of the biggest complained about match-ups right now so we naturally need to look at the terran strength in the mid-game as well as the protoss strength in the late game. So in the mid game the terrans biggest strength is that they can harass multiple locations at once right? So by introducing the mothership (core) and the purify ability you'll be able to take care of at least one spot fairly easily compared to before while your army takes care of another spot but what we're not trying to do, is we don't want the harassing to stop altogether. So the goal for purify is to find a point where harassment attacks from the Terran side are a little easier to stop, but it's not so dominantly strong that Terran players don't want to drop anymore. So that we're hoping that protoss will have a better time in the mid-game and in the late game the unit composition that Terran's struggle the most with is the mass zealot archon strategy right? So that's why we introduced the battle hellion which is very strong against charge zealots specifically. So while we keep the terran strength in the mid-game, and the protoss strength in the late game we want to make that gap a little smaller So that it's not as seemingly all or nothing as it is now.

Wax: So this is a kind of question about just overall. You talk a lot about controlling space, and giving zerg a ranged option etc etc, do you think it's maybe homogenizing the races like the tools they have? I guess the obvious comparison is Broodwar not all the races had those tools but they were forced to make do with the tools they did have?


DK: That's just something that we have to watch out for right? So what we tried to do when creating the seige unit on the zerg side is that we didn't want it to feel like the colossus or the siege tank because both those units kind of feel similar, you know aside from the fact that the siege tank has to set up to do damage those two units are actually pretty similar units. And what those units have in common is the high damage burst splash damage combined with the siege range. So with the swarm host what we wanted to do was the complete opposite which is they constantly spawn these little guys that do small amounts of damage but over time you wear the enemy down. So this new zerg option is a whole different way to siege your opponent compared to before. So that is something we are looking out for all the time and we do try to make really asymmetric differences even when we're trying to make something that do similar things. And I guess the oracle is another good example right? Terran harasses using marine drops that kill workers but the oracle harasses the mineral line but doesn't actually kill anything.


Wax: So that's another, you mentioned the battle hellions, and I know this is a kind of weird complicated question but you introduced something like the battle hellions and the warhound, and those are kind of 1-a counter this unit units, like battle hellions destroy melee and warhounds destroy mechanical units you just 1-a them. And yet you introduce a unit like the window mines and that's like a very micro intensive, to counter it you have to do a lot of clicks so it's kind of an interesting thing I thought in some cases you have units that reduce the amount of micro you do and some units that increase the amount of micro you need on both sides significantly.


DK: So on the Terran side we tried to create some very attack move friendly units because all of the units they have now you need a lot of micro right, so even the existing hellions right now right if you have terrible micro you're not going to get the full effect out of that unit. So on the Terran side we tried to introduce more of the easy to use units but at the same time we didn't want to create just easy to use units that's why we created the widow mine also and on the protoss side for example a lot of their existing units currently are good at attack move so both of the new units we created are pretty positional dependent, pretty difficult to use and depending on your micro you're going to get bigger results.


Wax: Well what's the reason for adding more attack move friendly units to Terran. I guess it falls into the whole "Blizzard is catering too much to casuals" or whatever argument do you have anything to say about that?


DK: I mean, like I said before, the more barracks units on the Terran side are really micro intensive and you need to be constantly attacking all the time so when trying to create a different option of being able to play a little more defensive we just naturally had to include something that's more attack move friendly. And I don't think that's catering to the lower level players only because even on the pro side there are strategies that involve easy to use units but those strategies focus on other aspects of the game such as having a better econ game or being able to attack even MORE locations at once stuff like that right? So I think just having the variety in units is more important. And I wouldn't say just because a unit is more attack move friendly that it's catered more towards the casual players and just because a unit is more micro intensive it's only catering towards the pro-players.


Wax: So I have to ask a little about map balance or how you guys use maps. So obviously you can't try to patch a game or create units for a game without having some kind of idea about what a default map is whether it's like 8 minerals 2 gas, 40 seconds rush between all the bases so generally do you have a concept for what a default map is that you want to make the game move around that or are you more open to like maps totally changing the way the game is played like in Broodwar.


DK: We do try to stick to that rule which is 8 mineral patches 2 geysers at normal expansions and 6 mineral patches and 2 normal geysers on high yield expansions and the reason for that is because we think even as is, it's pretty difficult as a pro player to figure out what your income rate is in a given game vs what mine is at a given point in time so for example say I have 3 expansion you have 2 expansions but you have more probes how much of an econ advantage do I have right? So figuring that out is already too difficult, so we don't want to alter that and make it even more impossible for everyone to figure out. Other than that we try to cater to... It's specifically for the 1v1 map pool as you know we've been using tournament maps only for quite a while now and that's actually working out pretty well. So naturally our game balance leads to those more larger maps that follow a similar formula. So for example maps in the past it was difficult to get your second expansion up but maps these days your main base, natural and second expansions are actually pretty close to each other and easily defend able so those kinds of basic map rules we follow for 1v1 and for team maps we actually try to go as diverse as possible especially in the 3's and 4's format because we believe that those formats are not really for pro players to play tournaments in they're more for the variety and the fun.


Wax: Okay, So we're running out of time here so I'm going to ask you a few quick questions.
Is it true you nerfed thors just because of Thorzain and the Thorzain build?


DK: Of course!


Wax: That one thing?


DK: No. (laughs) We nerfed thors because thors actually suffer from an art issue. As the thor is now the radius of the thor is pretty small compared to the art. So if you spawn in a bunch of thors as well as some marines and marauders together with thors and clump them up it's almost impossible to tell how many marines and marauders are in the field so when we started seeing strategies involving large numbers of thors we felt this was hurting ESPORTS because...


Wax: (laughs)


(laughter is heard off camera)

DK: ... the viewers can't really see what exactly the player has. So we decided to nerf it a little bit so that thors are more viable in smaller numbers but at the higher numbers at the same time people don't build mass numbers of thors.


Wax: Okay, What is your favorite match-up to watch?


DK: I like all match-ups actually, but I guess the non-mirror match-ups have always been more fun then the mirror match-ups but these days I'm actually enjoying ZvZ a lot because I mean it seems to have evolved a lot. Considering even the end of last year all we were seeing was ling baneling wars all the time right? And now that we're seeing a lot of mid and late game scenarios especially the game we saw yesterday where 15 ultralisks went up against 15 ultralisks I think there is a lot more potential for that match-up to evolve and for that reason it's pretty exciting to watch right now.


Wax: And who's your favorite player?


DK : I actually have a lot of favorite players I think my favorite players in general are players that use a variety of strats, so while I respect a player like marine king because his micro is so amazing I do tend to cheer more for players like MMA who try to use different strats in every tournament and even though he's not as successful right now I'm really hoping he does well in future.


Wax: 2 Terrans! Nah, I'm just kidding. alright.


DK: Well I'm wearing the shirt!


Wax: That's true. If you were a player we'd ask you to shout out your sponsors... Blizzard I guess but yeah just say what ever you need to say at the end that someone or what ever.


DK: Thanks for having interest in Heart of the Swarm and during the beta and even before the beta please give us a lot of constructive feedback so we can fine tune all the new units going in to the beta and I'm really looking forward to playing against all of you guys!