EPTDustin Browder, David Kim Interviews - Page 8
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IshinShishi
Japan6156 Posts
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hagrin
United States278 Posts
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tyrless
United States485 Posts
Although I am sad that he seemed to both "get it" and "not get it" at different points in the interview with regards to how important it is for SC2 as an e-sport that it be watchable. If the goal is to make it a legitimate e-sport, it needs to be fun to watch first and foremost (for a mainstream audience, NOT angsty teenagers who post on TL). Well actually first they need to actually do something about the hacking but so far they are totally outclassed on that front. So anyways he was right when he talked about how there needs to be big moments that CAN happen that will totally change the course of the game, that tension is huge. But then he talks about how the Tempest is a better alternative to the Carrier, and yet a unit like the Carrier will always be more fun to watch than the Tempest, both because of the art and how it affects the battlefield mechanically. The Tempest is another classic boring unit (like the roach, or marauder) that does little to spice up the viewing experience. It's very good that they are keeping the Mothership and Thor (so far at least), because people love to watch those units (they are very memorable even to non-players). As far as the interviews, the DBro one was too short and the interviewer w/ David Kim was...awkward. | ||
Teoita
Italy12246 Posts
edi: also it's annoying how they don't realize that the reason the Carrier is so popular, are that it was a much much better unit in BW, that took a lot more skill to use than the current sc2 Carrier. | ||
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phar
United States1080 Posts
On June 13 2012 12:13 iTzSnypah wrote: I'm a sad panda. 99% of the time TL does written interviews. 100% of the time I'm on 56k Dialup. WHY TL WHY! Transcript of interviews PLEASE. Dustin Browder interview. Don't have time to do David Kim's, it's 3x longer: (transcriber’s notes: Most errors are from the speakers. Bear in mind that spoken English is very different than written English, so don’t read into the excessive filled pauses, broken sentences, etc. That’s how almost everybody talks off-script. this is actually TL interviewing, right? I have no idea. Also ****ing hell Dustin Browder talks really fast) Anonymous Team Liquid Interviewer: Hi guys we're here at MLG Anaheim day 1 with game director of SC2 Dustin Browder, how are you doing this weekend? Dustin Browder: Very good, it's a very exciting place to be this weekend. TL: It is, uh, and we just had a conference with you where we saw a lot of the new units and saw some of the new changes. And before we kinda go into that stuff I wanna roll back a little bit and start talking about the stuff we've been experiencing from the community side. So let's talk about the balance changes you guys have made recently. Um, a lot of pro players have been humming and hawing about zerg, and with those changes you guys rolled out for the queen, the range on queen specifically, how do you guys feel that went over, now that it's been live for awhile? You know, what did you think of the feedback, statistically, and from the pros? Where do you see this going in the future? DB: Statistically we're still looking really good on that, but we'll wait and see. Any time we make any kind of change like this, there's usually a bump, for a lot of our players that requires them to adjust to the changes in the game. We're not sure 100% yet how that's gonna go, like I know it's been a little while, but it hasn't been long enough I think at this point. So we're gonna wait and see and see how things settle down at this point. We're certainly seeing terrans win a little bit less, which is exciting for us to see. Um, and we don’t know. You know, you don't know what's going to happen in the near future, so we're still watching that one very very closely. TL: What are your thoughts on the metagame overall? Players the pro level have complained about things like, uh, late game ZvP where you have this dynamic that if you can neural parasite a mothership, you can just change the game. Um, and it's not something where, uh... a lot of Starcraft is based on the idea that you can kinda come back from situations. But this is one of those situations where you know you can just lose your entire army or destroy his entire army in a couple actions, so what are your thoughts on that? DB: It's funny, I had not heard that about neural parasiting a mothership. I have not seen enough motherships in play, um, to think that was a serious concern, you know in the GSL that we were suddenly going to see neural parasited motherships. There has always been a concern with neural parasite that it would push units out of the game, you know, that we would because of that the unit, because of that ability to see that kind of switch, that motherships would simply never be built. So I'm a little bit surprised to hear that that's the biggest concern we have in the metagame right now. I know we've got a lot of concerns I've heard, you know concerns about um, zergs, uh, against protoss being able to do mass roach strategies. Stephano did a build like this. Um, you know we've heard concerns about the tvz matchup with the queen change, but I hadn't heard that neural parasited mothership was biggest problem in the game right now at this point. TL: Well it's not the biggest problem, but it is a problem, well, you can debate whether or not it's a problem or not, where it's just a, it's not a coinflippy situation, but it's a situation where the game just dramatically change either way. DB: (interrupting) totally turns on a dime. And we certainly see that, I would argue we see that throughout the game. You know, certainly we see that with emps and high templars, where there's really a couple of moments and a couple of clicks that can make a very significant deciding factor in this outcome. Would we want to smooth those out some (emphasis in original)? Ahh, it's a line, right? Have we gone too far? Have we not gone f... you know, where are we at on it? I certainly feel like if I were to pick a moment that I would be more upset about it would certainly be the high templar ghost moment where I feel like it's very very close. And there is some good dancing that our players have learned to do with that so it's not quite so crucial. Splitting up their ghosts, or moving their high templars apart and that kinda stuff, but it's still hangs on a couple of clicks in some cases. But, it is part of the game at this point, right, that's not something that we can easily just wipe out that whole concept. We can certainly look in fixing infested mothership because I had not heard that feedback, that's not one that from this conversation I would take all that seriously. I haven't seen enough motherships for that to be viable, but there are places like what you're saying, that's a very viable question. Um, and I think at this point and some of that is real. It's a question of a line for us, and we do allow some of that, especially when it gets towards the end game, it can now get really crucial, right, at those moments, and we do like that tension we think it is fun to watch, it's not always as fun to play. But it is fun to watch those really tense moments, and that's certainly true of almost all sports, right, when it comes down to a couple of inches here will determine the course of the whole game (emphasis original). Right, and we feel like that is a valid part of an eSport. But it is a line, I don't know if we've crossed it yet or not. TL: And uh, are you happy with the way balance is overall right now, is there anything you're looking at particularly? DB: We're always looking at everything that's going on all the time. You know, every time we hear a complaint we're always checking stuff out, like you say, we are watching right now zerg versus protoss very carefully, we're continuing to watch this change to the queen's range, to see how that's affecting tvz specifically. Um, we made that change primarily because we felt like zerg were too easily contained by just like a handful of hellions. We wanted them to be able to protect their tumors, more easily protect their bases. A lot of terran players were just trading hellions for drones at some point in the game. And there was not a lot that zerg could seem to be able to do about it, we kinda thought that was legitimate, that there really wasn't much they could do about it. They weren't gonna learn something at some point down the road here, this was real. And so we felt like we had to try to do something. It will upend that matchup a little bit. It means the terran player's gonna work a little harder um, in terms of the numbers, we're still seeing really good numbers, but that can change at the drop of a hat. You know, we looked at the numbers this morning, coming down here, you know we were going to get these kinds of questions, obviously. Um, we are within 1% win-loss across the world, everywhere. Um, masters, grandmasters, everywhere else. Except for North America, zerg versus protoss, where the zerg have an advantage right now. Um, and so I want to see if that spreads. Does that go to Korea and Europe? Does it stay in North America? Does it get destroyed in North America and we go back to stability there? Don't know. Um, so we're watching that very closely as well. TL: Um, I'm gonna switch topics a little bit, and, it's to an issue that's affecting a lot of players and a lot of pros right now, and it's kinda a big conversation. It's about kinda the state of battle.net and hacking, and I know you're obviously not battle.net security. Um, but, you know with the world championship this weekend, you know, we have a 98% chance that there's two guys we kinda confirmed were hacking that qualified, and of course that didn't get picked up by Warden. And so, a lot of pros are saying, "yea this is something I deal with on a day to day basis." Whether it's that camera locking thing, or the blink stalker hack. Um, so can you, is there you know on the Blizzard end that they're working on to kind of alleviate this? DB: We're al..., we're always chasing these guys, right. Every time that they, you know, are trying to break into it, we're updating Warden, we're doing everything we can to make sure we stomp out these hacks. And it all just depends, we have different points in time where sometimes we're ahead of them and sometimes they're ahead of us. But it's a constant battle waged behind the scenes, the secret war between Blizzard and the hackers to try to make this stuff go away. But we're very serious about it, we're very committed to it, we know it's terrible. Like we know when those things happen, I've been hacked. You know, I've been in games where you know I have a guy who you know is looking at my base and he hasn't scouted me yet. In the first five minutes. It's like, you're map hacking dude. You know, um, and so it's always you know frustrating when those occur, but we're doing everything we can you know to get on top of these, but I don't know specifics. You know about what hacks are currently in... I don't even know if I would tell you if I knew, like I don't want these guys to know. We'll do everything we can to keep fighting these. But I hear the complaints, we agree with the complaints, the complaints are real, right, and we'd like to do better with this. (transcriber's comment: from the perspective of the computer security world in general, everything Dustin says here is spot on fucking accurate. The never ending battle is true everywhere.) TL: Sure. And do you think with the world championship, because it's uh, been opened up to pretty much everybody. You're dealing with a lot of online qualifiers where, you know. DB: It's a risk. TL: Yea it's a risk. DB: It's a risk, and it's a concern, and it's something that the guys that are running the tournaments are gonna have to very aggressively deal with. And make sure that they find players that won legitimately. And that's going to be an absolute concern for us. TL: Um, so let's switch to a nicer subject, which is Heart of the Swarm. Um, so you uh, you talked a little bit about some of these new units. Um, can you go over a little bit more about uh, breaking up the ball. Because that's a big dynamic in uh, Starcraft 2 right now. That players complain about is, protoss deathball, zerg deathball. DB: There's there's two big sort of philosophical complaints that we heard. And there was many many more of course so I don't want to discount anything. But there's two big philosophical complaints that we've heard that we totally agreed with. One was, the death balls can get a little complicated and a little too big. There's obviously at some point there's gonna be a big mess of units, right. But how weird and diverse it is, and how much the composition matters was a legitimate complaint. And the second complaint was there was not as many sort of... Siege tank is totally a board control unit. Right, they can sort of force you to think, “Ok, I can't just push into that, it doesn't matter how much I have. I can't push into that. Um, how do I go around, how do I maneuver against that.” And that, that was really the one race that had that ability, right. So we're trying to add more of that kinda stuff. We're trying to give you know the protoss, or excuse me the zerg the ability to create areas of control with the swarm host. We're trying to create things like the widow mine and the oracle, that pull resources away from the main army. Um, and distribute those resources elsewhere on the map, so there's more opportunity for combat all over the map, and more small engagements that are occurring. And I think we've done a pretty good job with that with things like drops, but still we want to try to better. So it's a goal, how much can we succeed with that it's impossible to say. Obviously players, while they don't want that, it's the easiest way to play is with the death ball. Right, that would be the way players will always try to get back to that if they can. Right, how can I get everything into one spot so I can just kill you, right, that would be awesome (emphasis originial). Right, and so we're trying to find ways to, um, to make that less attractive. And certainly you know things like abduct on the viper, and blanketing cloud on the viper, can provide additional ways to sort of mess with the other guy's death ball, and make it a little less attractive to just clump up, and try to spread out a little bit more, might make himself a little bit more effective. But, we'll see, those are sort of two main goals. Reasons to go around, and reasons to spread out, would be thigns we would like to try to achieve. At the end of the day, if we just end up creating a bunch of cool new strategies, that would be awesome. But these are sort of the high level philosophies we'd also like to address. TL: Um, so, with that idea of you know breaking apart that death ball, one of the units you'd introduced previously was the shredder, which is no longer in the game. Um, and for those who don't know, of course it was a unit that you could drop and it had like an AoE attack that would damage units. What was it about that unit that you guys found just wasn't gonna work? DB: There was a couple of things that were flawed about the shredder. It was very difficult to find a balance point for that unit that was really effective. It was either way too strong, or way too weak. And we could never find that sweet spot for it. That was one problem with it. Um, the second problem with that unit was it was very confusing. It would turn off if friendly forces got into play, but if enemy forces were nearby, only the enemy force would take damage (emphasis originial). Players, even very high level players, grandmaster level players kept accidentally turning off their own shredders, by actually moving one thing just a pixel too close. It was very fiddly, you know, to use. The last bit that was very destructive is that probably at gold and below, it was just used as a raider, to wipe out the other guy's worker line, and it was annihilation. And, we, we couldn't reasonably feel like we could do something like say, "Well it doesn't affect hover units, but it affects air, but wait, so that means archons can kill it?" You know, it was it was very awkward, you know all the things um, that were problems, and we tried things like, "We'll just make it doesn't affect workers, but it affects everything else." And ok, what is this unit now? It was getting very complicated and very strange, and we were seeing players like literally rush in and kill it with scvs, because workers were immune. But then if you didn't have that you were raiding like crazy. So, it had complexity problems at the end of the day. And we feel like the widow mine removes a lot of those complexity problems, does a lot of the same things, but was a much cleaner and much clearer unit that has more strategy. -- fade in and out TL: One of the points that you made in the presentation was that you'd kind of had a change in philosophy based on community feedback as far as, what, DB: removing units TL: um, the unit you focus in on that you're still debating is the carrier. Um, what is it about the carrier that is making you question whether it should be in or not? DB: Well we have the tempest. And the carrier rarely gets used. And the biggest reason I've heard why the carrier has to stay is 'cus it's cool. Right, well 'cus it's a carrier you can't take out the carrier 'cus it's the carrier (emphasis original). So it's like, ughh, I don't know if that's enough, right? Like everything else we've found an actual mechanical use for, right. Like, oh no wait, they do use the mothership, and they use it in this way and it's really cool. Right, or no, you know what, actually, overseers do find a use in this way, if we do this to the balance, right. We've found ways to make these other units work, and the carrier I feel like we have a legitimate replacement for, that is still a big gold ship, still looks cool, and does more different cooler stuff, hopefully. Um, so in that scenario we're just not sure that it's necessary to do it. But we'd be open to feedback as to why the carrier needs to stay as opposed to having a tempest replace it, other than "Please don't I like it." Um, even that could be enough. You know what I don't know, we're still arguing about it, I'm sort of on the fence to say, "Yea you know what it's dumb, it doesn't have any use, it will never have any use, but we'll just leave it in. And, who cares." Right, um, and that's I guess that's an option to take. And then we'll debate about it and say, "c’mon dude don't wuss out." Make the game tight, make it clean, make it clear, focus on making a quality experience, and don't just give in because it's cool. Give in because it has a really mechanical reason to be there. And those are the two sides of it, right. Should we just let it be there 'cus it's cool, or should we say, "No no, we have something cooler, and it doesn't need to be there, it's time for it to come out." -- fade in and out TL: Last question DB: Sure TL: Uh, you guys had released a blog pretty recently detailing some of these new featuers that you have on a wish list for Heart of the Swarm. Specifically, multiplayer replays, and a reconnect feature, and you guys didn't show anything with that today. Um, can you tell us like what the status is of those and where they are in development? DB: Still totally in progress. We're still working on those, we just spent a ton of time doing this arcade 1.5 patch, I don't know have you seen this yet, but it's up on beta right now. And it was a ton of work for us to get that out, we put that out free to the community for everybody to have. Um, and we feel like that is finally getting us to a slightly better place at least for arcade, but we put a lot of work into that (emphasis original). And now we're able to move on to these other features we've been dying to do for years. And so we'll hopefully have something to roll out to you guys really soon. TL: Great, thanks very much for your time. Appreciate it. DB: Thanks man TL: Thanks | ||
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zhurai
United States5660 Posts
or david kim... MODIFY THE GRAPHICS of the thor -_- zzz | ||
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BrosephBrostar
United States445 Posts
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Sapphire.lux
Romania2620 Posts
The Carrier stuff is cringe worthy. It's like they made the shitiest interpretation of the unit, spent no time in trying to tweek it, all just to have a reason to ditch it and push forward other ideas "look!! this new original unit is better then the old one, i'm such a good game designer!!". It looks like they are treating mech as the 1a easy to play alternative, instead of the positional play it should be. I'm sad you didn't ask about the siege tank and the simingly ever incresing ways of nullifying it. 1a FTW  | ||
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Snowbear
Korea (South)1925 Posts
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HoriZoNXI
Australia310 Posts
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KanoCoke
Japan863 Posts
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PandaTank
South Africa255 Posts
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Woizit
801 Posts
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cablesc
United States1540 Posts
On June 13 2012 15:37 BrosephBrostar wrote: I think Blizzard makes too many traps for themselves. They want to make "raider" units, but they don't want them to be able to kill lots of workers. They know everyone wants the deathball to go away, but they won't do anything to kill it. I don't see how anything is going to get better with this kind of attitude. That raider not killing workers comment was about adding a different dynamic to the game and Protoss in particular. What's wrong with giving Protoss a different way to harass the mineral line than just killing workers? Also I don't see what's so bad about having deathball compositions in the game, if there are ways for your opponent to counter it and pick it apart. And with stuff like the Viper and widow mines, they're putting those options into the game. | ||
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dezi
Germany1536 Posts
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Snowbear
Korea (South)1925 Posts
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BrosephBrostar
United States445 Posts
On June 13 2012 15:59 cablesc wrote: That raider not killing workers comment was about adding a different dynamic to the game and Protoss in particular. What's wrong with giving Protoss a different way to harass the mineral line than just killing workers? Also I don't see what's so bad about having deathball compositions in the game, if there are ways for your opponent to counter it and pick it apart. And with stuff like the Viper and widow mines, they're putting those options into the game. I was actually thinking about blue flame more than the oracle. Anything that can kill a lot of workers will also be able to kill a lot of regular units, but Blizzard seems adamant about not allowing units that hard counter the deathball. On June 13 2012 16:06 Snowbear wrote: What I like is David Kim his explanation about terran in HOTS: their goal is to let terran choose between bio, or mech, which is actually great. I have to disagree there. I thought the way terrans had 2 unique armies in BW was an interesting feature. The recent trend for terrans to switch to mech compositions against zerg is actually pretty disappointing. | ||
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Snowbear
Korea (South)1925 Posts
On June 13 2012 16:07 BrosephBrostar wrote: I was actually thinking about blue flame more than the oracle. Anything that can kill a lot of workers will also be able to kill a lot of regular units, but Blizzard seems adamant about not allowing units that hard counter the deathball. I have to disagree there. I thought the way terrans had 2 unique armies in BW was an interesting feature. The recent trend for terrans to switch to mech compositions against zerg is actually pretty disappointing. What do you mean? Isn't it great that in HOTS I can say: hmmm, let's play bio now, and the next match I can go mech, and both options are very viable. | ||
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Animzor
Sweden2154 Posts
On June 13 2012 15:59 cablesc wrote: That raider not killing workers comment was about adding a different dynamic to the game and Protoss in particular. What's wrong with giving Protoss a different way to harass the mineral line than just killing workers? Also I don't see what's so bad about having deathball compositions in the game, if there are ways for your opponent to counter it and pick it apart. And with stuff like the Viper and widow mines, they're putting those options into the game. Stop defending Blizzard, they're making shitty decisions. | ||
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BrosephBrostar
United States445 Posts
On June 13 2012 16:10 Snowbear wrote: What do you mean? Isn't it great that in HOTS I can say: hmmm, let's play bio now, and the next match I can go mech, and both options are very viable. I think the way you had to approach each matchup differently was an interesting dynamic. It almost made it like there were actually 4 races instead of 3. | ||
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