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China6327 Posts
Back at end of July, at ChinaJoy and IEM Shanghai, I was able to sit down with David Kim, Senior Balance Designer of the Starcraft II development team, for half an hour. With him I discussed various aspects of the game including balance and features that Heart of the Swarm brought to the game.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/1rpHpt9.jpg)
Reminder: This interview was conducted before 2.0.10 patch, the recent ladder map pool changes and balance test maps, because of scheduling and other work/real-life commitments I was just able to fully transcript it yesterday, Some information might not reflect the current situation or metagame.
Thanks monk and the TL Strategy team for providing several questions and help formatting this thread!
What's your feeling about the overall balance after the recent Terran changes? Are there any other aspects of the game the team is currently monitoring?
DK: I think it's slightly safe to say the changes are good; initially I think it's decent. The main thing we wanted to address in the Hellbat change was to reduce Hellbat drops in TvT, mostly because while we like to have more harassment options in the game, we don't want to have harassment options like Hellbat drops that are a little too easy to execute. So for example if you see Marine drops executed by the highest level of Terran players versus a average level pro player, you can clearly see the difference, while Hellbat drops doesn't look like that because it's really easy to execute. That's why we want to see less of it. TvT has become a lot better since the change. As for the Banshee we are sort of hoping to see a bit more of Banshee play in HotS since we almost stop seeing it altogether. The reason why we want to see more of it is because of the same reason: Banshee micro is really awesome to watch and I think a lot of Terran fans and viewers will agree so we want to bring that back. Initially, players are trying new builds, so we want to keep a close watch on what they are doing. On top of that we don't really have specific changes we are trying to do any time in the near future. But our general stance is that we want to make sure if there is a race that is over-performing or under-performing, we can quickly identify the problem and deal with the problem in a way that makes the game a lot of fun to watch. So for example say Protoss is a bit weak right now, if that's the case then we want to buff units like the Oracle, or other units that promote you to have more skirmishes through out the game.
We currently have two different map pools for WCS, one for WCS AM and EU and one for KR, what's the reason behind this?
DK: So what we have now is a bit complex: in American and Europe we are using 7 of 9 ladder maps, so we have 9 ladder maps on the pool. Korea is a exception, we tried to include the two maps this season as well, but because of timing issues and we need to fix a lot of bugs on the map, stuff like that, so we couldn't make it into the pool. For Season 3 we are currently working with all the partners to make sure and check if it's viable to have a complete alignment of all the maps on ladder and the three regions. So the current plan is try to work out a list of 7 maps so some maps will include TLMC winners and some maps will include the new GSL maps they are creating right now. Ultimately, the goal is try to have a completely aligned map pool between the regions next season.
Can we expect more changes to the team ladder maps? Players have been asking for it since forever.
DK: We are definitely aware of that feedback. We are planning to include two new team play maps every new season. Next season we're working on a couple of new 2v2 maps, so the season after that we might move on to new 3v3 maps and so on. Every new season we will try to include some new team maps as well as 1v1 maps. But with that said, I don't know how feasible that is because our season is quite short now but we will try our best to make sure to rotate out map pool of every single bracket, not just 1v1.
Will the new team maps come from TLMC #2?
DK: Yeah sure some of them will be coming from TLMC as well as Blizzard maps, but right now I think the only maps that will come to the map pool from the contest are 1v1 maps, but the season after that you can definitely expect some team maps to enter the rotation as well.
In custom games we don't have the game list feature from BW and War3. Can we actually expect a return of that? Not to replace the custom games system we have now, just an alternative.
DK: So we have the open game list feature for both custom games and arcade. Compare to say, Warcraft III, the current open game system will eventually have all games filled and much faster, but you can't make your own customized names in open games. I think this is an area we are definitely looking at, as the ways to improve not only to the open game system but also the custom game experience in general. We don't have anything final right now but we definitely are talking about improvements.
Despite the HotS changes to promote more harassment and multiple engagements, Protoss is still the race that encourages deathball play, especially in PvZ. While the warp prism buff is a step in the right direction, is Blizzard considering any other options to change this often-complained about aspect of Protoss?
DK: Not just Protoss in specific, just across the board every single race should have more harassment options, the more skirmishes there are in a given matchup, I think the better. And the reason is because like back in WoL right before HotS came out, if you take any matchup for example PvT, we saw many very similar games because Protoss players are defending drops so well that both players just macro up and don't fight for like 15 minutes and the game ends in 2 or 3 big engagements, if you watch 10 PvT games even on different maps, you see exact same games over and over again. We don't think that's a good thing, across the board we try to do our best to make sure we have more skirmishes. For Protoss specifically we currently don't have plans to change anything right now, but if Protoss or any race appear to be a little weak, the way we want to buff those races is by adding more options to be more on the aggressive.
Oracles were added to encourage harassment and aggressive plays but still it's a do game-ending damage or nothing at all unit. Though professional players are beginning to employ Revelation more usefully, they still seem somewhat as a dead weight unit if they don't do significant damage in the early game. Compare this to the widow mine, which can act as an early game harass unit, but maintains its usefulness throughout the game. All in all, the concept seems to reinforce the idea that Protoss has either only gimmicky or deathball units. Is this a major concern both for this specific unit and for the overall design of Protoss?
DK: So I think the Oracle right now is the Go-For-It unit if it isn't there already. It's a unit we want to see throughout the whole game, every time you go in with it to harass a worker line, maybe you don't get 20 or 30 worker kills like we saw in the beginning of HotS, the defenses has got a lot of better for all races, you don't see huge Oracle wins but at the same time, we want the unit to utilize its movement speed, just stay as a threat throughout the course of a game. A few months ago we tried a movement speed and acceleration buff for the Oracle, I think that was a good test to see if the Oracle is really difficult to kill. If we have a unit that stays in the game for a long time, just doing small things like scouting, using Revelation to check the army composition but not doing crazy significant game ending damage, then we can create a lot more small skirmishes so that each game is more exciting to watch since there is a lot more action throughout the game.
The Stephano style Swarm host based compositions in ZvP are beginning to feel like infestor broodlord compositions in WoL. The Zerg would often hunker up on 4-5 bases with free units and starve out the Protoss in a split map situation. How big of an issue does the development team see this as?
DK: It's definitely the problem if that's the main way to use Swarm Hosts, right now we seeing two different ways to use Swarm Hosts, one is what you mention, the super boring mass spine, you defend and slowly push using Swarm Hosts. The other I think it's more fun to watch, the Zerg uses Swarm Hosts to send locusts then unborrow them right away, move them to a different location, constantly play this hide and seek game. Depending how it works out, if it becomes the case that the Stephano style is the most useful way to use Swarm Hosts, we will take measures to fix that problem. Right now we are in the process of still evaluating which one is the most prominent and effective way to use Swarm Hosts, but we do agree that stale and boring strategies are not good for the game, our two main reasons to patch HotS right now would be: first, if a unit is too overpowered, second is like you say a unit or strategy is causing the game boring to watch.
In WoL, Protoss could react to mutalisks with either blink/templar or phoenixes. But with the mutalisks and phoenix buffs in HotS, only phoenixes are now viable as a counter, causing PvZ to become very centralized around stargate play. It also complete got rid of the storm vs mutalisk dynamic we commonly found in WoL, which seems counter-intuitive since a stated goal of the design team was to encourage different styles to be viable. Was this focus on phoenix/stargate play the intention of the design team and what do you think about this new mutalisk dynamic in PvZ?
DK: In WoL we really only have the Robo tech and the Templar tech viable. The Stargate was just for making a small number of Phoenixes or Void Rays early on and then you completely forget about it. So in HotS we wanted to make the Stargate as powerful as Robo tech or Templar tech. In this specific case, I agree only the Phoenixes is the best counter to Mutas, but I think you can still defend with Blink Stalkers until you get your counters out. We don't believe when you fight against this specific strategy every tech tree must be viable. We want every single tech tree to be viable in specific scenarios. Against Mutas, Stargate will be the strongest but if someone is going mass Hydras to counter that, going Robo or going Storm will be a lot better. I think as a whole we are at a pretty good space, what's interesting is we buff the tech tree that was never being utilized in WoL, because of that a lot of people feel like this tech path is a lot more OP than it actually is. Say for example if no one uses Robo, no one uses Colossi in WoL, we buff them to be what they are now, a lot of people will be complaining that Colossi are overpowered, when in fact that's not the case right now. So I think it's important to see the big picture and see how viable each tech tree is in that sense I think we are quite successful not only with the Phoenix changes but also with the Void Ray changes as well.
During the Beta I had a interview with Dustin Brower, and he stated that making mech more viable was an important focus of the design process. How successful do you think you were with this goal? How have your goals changes since then?
DK: So I don't think we completely hit that goal but for example in TvT mech is definitely viable, we see a lot bio vs mech and mech vs mech games already. In the other two matchups it's not as viable as bio but I think if we have to choose, mech being viable in TvT is the most exciting because it makes the mirror match-up a lot more diverse than players go to Marine-Tank all the time. As far as we try to explore how to make mech better, we have to be more careful because the balance of the three races are pretty good right now, each match-up is quite fun to watch right now even including ZvZ and PvP. We don't want to make drastic changes just to switch up the current metagame. Like I said before, I think our two main focuses for when we patch HotS is if there is problem with a unit like it's too overpowered or if a strategy is boring to watch. But if you look at bio play, especially in TvZ, it's very exciting. There are so many skirmishes and sometimes you even have game where players fighting over a location for like 20 minutes. So since the game is exciting to watch, I think it's dangerous to touch other strategy or units.
The recent nerfs to hellbat, with the stated goal of nerfing hellbat drops, had the unfortunate side effect of nerfing hellbat-bio compositions in TvP. While the blue flame upgrade is easily accessible in mech compositions, a factor with an attached tech lab is hard to come by in bio-based compositions. This is reminiscent of the snipe nerf to ghosts, which while were intended as a nerf in TvP, caused the unfortunate side effect of nerfing snipes vs zealots and ghost openings in TvT. How heavily did Blizzard consider this side-effect when choosing this particular hellbat nerf?
DK: Sniping on Zealots isn't that amazing even before the Snipe nerfs (blame monk for asking that lol). But that aside, for the Hellbat it's all about player hasn't been used to play that way yet, I think the perfect example is in TvZ: the most popular style is to play Bio-mine, and Terran players don't have problem going Reactor Widow Mines while getting Drilling Claws upgrade, so kinda similar to that, I think when players figure out the best timing to get the blue flame upgrade for the Hellbats, I think Hellbats can still be utilized as before because they are still very powerful units. Their stats hasn't been nerfed and they still dominate mass Zealots and so on. It's just a matter of timing and learning the best time to get the best upgrade and work that into your build order. eventually you'll get Hellbats back to your late game composition.
With all of the effort to make mech TvX a viable strategy in all match-ups, can you explain why the siege tank has been left relatively untouched besides free siege upgrade?
DK: I think that was a huge change because it allows Terran to play a lot diverse openers because the defense is a lot stronger. On Tanks in general we receive a lot of feedback that Tanks needs a buff, most specifically have more damage and lower rate of fire. Doing that we don't think it will do that much in like PvT, because the counters to Siege Tanks are Chargelots and Immortals. If you increase the damage a bit, it won't change much because Immortals and Zealots have a really harsh counter relationship with Tanks; you might be able to kill a bit more of them, but I don't think it will change too much. Our worry is that Tanks are good units in TvT, so what that buff will mean in that matchup? So I think it's difficult to touch units that are useful otherwise in other matchups. And as I said, our goal is not making every unit be as powerful as, say the Widow Mine or Void Ray. The goal for us is to create exciting games to watch and as long as strategies are good, as long as every matchup is diverse, I don't think it's a specific problem to specific units like Siege Tanks. But at the same time, if the metagame evolves into certain spaces that games are boring and dull, then I think Siege Tanks is a good area to improve on.
Are there any plans to try to further integrate creative content from outside sources other than Blizzard, directly into the client? Is this something you've looked at with the beta desktop client?
DK: Recently we released the WCS Portal. It's a place to check standings, schedules, and stuff like that. But like you said, there could be improvement like the in-game client, but for now our focuses is getting WCS right, getting the portal as best as possible, and then after that looking at other resources as well. For the desktop client, I have no idea actually haha. We are still in beta, so it's really hard to say but we wouldn't rule anything out in the future.
In Valve's Dota 2, they instantiated a system that places reported individuals in a low priority pool as a sort of penance for their maligned actions. Can you comment on what you think the value of this kind of system is in deterring what would be flagged as unwanted behavior? Would a similar system have value in SC2's environment?
DK: I don't know if the reporting system is the best for Starcraft II, but we do believe that improvement can be made for average players' playing experience, especially in team games. It's a thing we are looking into right now, and in the future hopefully we'll have something that really fits our game and make improvement to Battle.net that way.
Previous Blizzard titles have in the past had a simple but very effective hotkey setup to help with semi mouse-less navigation within their respective clients (battle.net). As your player base gets more and more accustomed to the Battle.net UI, do you have plans to further add to this existing functionality beyond what's already been implemented (such as adding [Tab] or [Enter] into the design)?
DK: We currently are more focusing on features rather than polishing issues like that. Because our focus is heavily on creating so many different features like training mode, matchmaking vs AI, leveling system and watch replay with others. The polish part is a bit neglected I guess. I think going forward if all these systems turn out to be pretty good, then the next step can be looking at how to make our systems easier to navigate.
Before we end, can you say something to our Chinese players?
DK: I think Chinese players are doing good in WCS right now, in particular I'm cheering for Jim and MacSed, I really hope one of them wins the whole thing! Hope you guys not only play the game, but also watch esports and cheer for your favorite Starcraft II players.
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+ Show Spoiler +Despite the HotS changes to promote more harassment and multiple engagements, Protoss is still the race that encourages deathball play, especially in PvZ. While the warp prism buff is a step in the right direction, is Blizzard considering any other options to change this often-complained about aspect of Protoss?
DK: Not just Protoss in specific, just across the board every single race should have more harassment options, the more skirmishes there are in a given matchup, I think the better. And the reason is because like back in WoL right before HotS came out, if you take any matchup for example PvT, we saw many very similar games because Protoss players are defending drops so well that both players just macro up and don't fight for like 15 minutes and the game ends in 2 or 3 big engagements, if you watch 10 PvT games even on different maps, you see exact same games over and over again. We don't think that's a good thing, across the board we try to do our best to make sure we have more skirmishes. For Protoss specifically we currently don't have plans to change anything right now, but if Protoss or any race appear to be a little weak, the way we want to buff those races is by adding more options to be more on the aggressive.
May be some day they'll realize that the way to get more skirmishes is to reward more expanding and spreading yourself out as prescribed in the thread "Breadth of Gameplay in SC2." Tinkering with unit stats is not gonna cut it.
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China6327 Posts
It's not a translation, I interviewed him myself one on one and transcript the recording, it's not that press conference and talk party.
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Bosnia-Herzegovina261 Posts
No mention of Zergs 
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Good interview and good questions. Their answers about mech are quite infuriating to read. Especially this part:
"If you increase the damage a bit, it won't change much because Immortals and Zealots have a really harsh counter relationship with Tanks..."
So they recognize no matter what they change with Terran mech...the main issue is the immortal being an extreme hard counter to mech/tanks TvP..soooo...how about they do something about it 
Whoever the interviewer was, props to you for actually knowing your shiot about the game and asking amazing questions.
edit:
On August 24 2013 14:42 digmouse wrote:It's not a translation, I interviewed him myself one on one and transcript the recording, it's not that press conference and talk party.
aha, good stuff
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On August 24 2013 14:42 digmouse wrote:It's not a translation, I interviewed him myself one on one and transcript the recording, it's not that press conference and talk party.
OK. You really asked some great questions, especially the mech ones.
No buff to tank because of TvT? Oh Mr Kim...
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China6327 Posts
On August 24 2013 14:56 larse wrote:Show nested quote +On August 24 2013 14:42 digmouse wrote:It's not a translation, I interviewed him myself one on one and transcript the recording, it's not that press conference and talk party. OK. You really asked some great questions, especially the mech ones. No buff to tank because of TvT? Oh Mr Kim...
Praise the almighty lord monk for some of the great questions! And blame him for saying snipe on Zealots lol.
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Integrating ghosts into the mech composition is ridiculously good, especially against immortals. But considering how gas-intensive mech is, it isn't that easy to find the sweet spot of producing ghosts. Well at least Terrans have something to counter the immortals, so I personally am willing to see how things develop in the long run, especially with the new possible change coming to Terran upgrades.
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Great questions!
The mech hate is incredible especially given all the HOTS marketing and promises.
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28083 Posts
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"We do believe that improvement can be made for average players' playing experience, especially in team games. It's a thing we are looking into right now, and in the future hopefully we'll have something that really fits our game and make improvement to Battle.net that way."
Thank you! Finally, they are focusing on improving the experience especially with team games! Good to see that Blizzard is not primarily focused on balancing.
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Nice interview. When i read "Oracle is the unit to go for that we see all game long" i was oh so sad T_T
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good interview. i hope they do something about the arcade.
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So he recognizes that tank damage in TvP isn't the problem but rather the hard counter relationship tanks have with Zealots and Immortals.
Do they plan on ever DOING anything about that?
It's a fundamental problem that came with SC2 that has never been solved. Hard counters suck. It's as Day9 put so eloquently in a daily a long time ago, you don't make Immortals to counter Tanks, you make Immortals so that the Terran stops making Tanks. (original quote regarded Roaches)
It's a dumb, dumb dynamic.
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ZvZs improved and fun to watch?
Must be the new swarm host vs swarm host style.
Very entertaining alright.
On August 24 2013 18:02 Vindicare605 wrote:
So he recognizes that tank damage in TvP isn't the problem but rather the hard counter relationship tanks have with Zealots and Immortals.
Do they plan on ever DOING anything about that?
They already said that not before LotV.
And even then all that can happen is adding a hard-counter to immortal.
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Italy12246 Posts
On August 24 2013 14:53 avilo wrote:Good interview and good questions. Their answers about mech are quite infuriating to read. Especially this part: "If you increase the damage a bit, it won't change much because Immortals and Zealots have a really harsh counter relationship with Tanks..." So they recognize no matter what they change with Terran mech...the main issue is the immortal being an extreme hard counter to mech/tanks TvP..soooo...how about they do something about it Whoever the interviewer was, props to you for actually knowing your shiot about the game and asking amazing questions. edit: Show nested quote +On August 24 2013 14:42 digmouse wrote:It's not a translation, I interviewed him myself one on one and transcript the recording, it's not that press conference and talk party. aha, good stuff
The questions came from the TL Strategy staff 
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Vatican City State431 Posts
This guy thinks the best indicator for skill is spamming forcefields..It's a joke. SC2 will never be a good game as long as this guy will be in charge.
PS: I hope hellbat will never come back. It was a stupid unit in the first place.
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great questions, awful answers
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On August 24 2013 18:02 Vindicare605 wrote:
So he recognizes that tank damage in TvP isn't the problem but rather the hard counter relationship tanks have with Zealots and Immortals.
Do they plan on ever DOING anything about that?
It's a fundamental problem that came with SC2 that has never been solved. Hard counters suck. It's as Day9 put so eloquently in a daily a long time ago, you don't make Immortals to counter Tanks, you make Immortals so that the Terran stops making Tanks. (original quote regarded Roaches)
It's a dumb, dumb dynamic.
Thats why they created the a hard counter to immortals called.. warhounds! except this unit was like a ranged pre-nerf hellbat lol They really need to go back to the drawing boards, and realise that hard counters need to be toned down in return for being generally more effective against everything else.
I hope one day they really re-design immortal and the colossus. The latter especially, should have some sort of a weakness on a similar level as the siege tank.
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Despite the HotS changes to promote more harassment and multiple engagements, Protoss is still the race that encourages deathball play, especially in PvZ. While the warp prism buff is a step in the right direction, is Blizzard considering any other options to change this often-complained about aspect of Protoss?
DK: Not just Protoss in specific, just across the board every single race should have more harassment options, the more skirmishes there are in a given matchup, I think the better. And the reason is because like back in WoL right before HotS came out, if you take any matchup for example PvT, we saw many very similar games because Protoss players are defending drops so well that both players just macro up and don't fight for like 15 minutes and the game ends in 2 or 3 big engagements, if you watch 10 PvT games even on different maps, you see exact same games over and over again. We don't think that's a good thing, across the board we try to do our best to make sure we have more skirmishes. For Protoss specifically we currently don't have plans to change anything right now, but if Protoss or any race appear to be a little weak, the way we want to buff those races is by adding more options to be more on the aggressive.
I just... buff gateway units so they don't get totally decimated by bio/zerg and nerf colossi/hts. Then protoss doesn't need to deathball. Protoss is just way to reliant on their power units to bring the pain while the gateway units are mostly just to tank. Sadly nothing will be done until LotV at first
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And not a single word on economy, which is at the heart of everything turning into deathballs in the end. What is he expecting if the natural counter to a strategy doesn't exist with the current combination of economy model and map size? Wasteful, production/momentum-oriented Sauron-style play just can't exist the way things currently are.
The SC2 econ model can give that natural Sauron > Turtle > Harassment > Sauron style wheel of strategy, but for that to happen the maps need to be more oldskool (SC2 oldskool that is): 2 bases "standard" instead of 3, third farther away and needing the player to stretch to defend, smaller games mean the 200 cap isn't hit that much which then allows for Sauron style drowning people in production.
The moment 3 bases is something that is expected instead of being greedy, the SC2 economy breaks down and the strategy-level counter to deathball play ceases to exist. All these caster-style units surely don't help because they further enable trading mana for money.
It's hilarious that they still can't accept that the oldschool lobby system works and that they should use it. But hey, new's better right?
On August 24 2013 18:49 Zarahtra wrote:Show nested quote +Despite the HotS changes to promote more harassment and multiple engagements, Protoss is still the race that encourages deathball play, especially in PvZ. While the warp prism buff is a step in the right direction, is Blizzard considering any other options to change this often-complained about aspect of Protoss?
DK: Not just Protoss in specific, just across the board every single race should have more harassment options, the more skirmishes there are in a given matchup, I think the better. And the reason is because like back in WoL right before HotS came out, if you take any matchup for example PvT, we saw many very similar games because Protoss players are defending drops so well that both players just macro up and don't fight for like 15 minutes and the game ends in 2 or 3 big engagements, if you watch 10 PvT games even on different maps, you see exact same games over and over again. We don't think that's a good thing, across the board we try to do our best to make sure we have more skirmishes. For Protoss specifically we currently don't have plans to change anything right now, but if Protoss or any race appear to be a little weak, the way we want to buff those races is by adding more options to be more on the aggressive. I just... buff gateway units so they don't get totally decimated by bio/zerg and nerf colossi/hts. Then protoss doesn't need to deathball. Protoss is just way to reliant on their power units to bring the pain while the gateway units are mostly just to tank. Sadly nothing will be done until LotV at first
You do that, gateway pushes will become unholdable. The insane logistical advantages warpgates are already the actual core thing that makes those pushes strong: give stronger gateway units to toss and everything will go to hell. The buffs also have to be upgrade-type things that happen later on in the game, early game Marine-Stalker balance is already hanging on by a thread for example. But something could be done, yes. It's a different matter entirely if the devs are willing to, because doing anything would necessitate giving Protoss a solid foundation. Fundamentals instead of gimmicks and all that.
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..The goal for us is to create exciting games to watch and as long as strategies are good, as long as every matchup is diverse..
I swear david kim is playing a different game than the rest of us 
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I read digmouse‘s article in popsoft since i was a child.
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Italy12246 Posts
On August 24 2013 18:49 Zarahtra wrote:Show nested quote +Despite the HotS changes to promote more harassment and multiple engagements, Protoss is still the race that encourages deathball play, especially in PvZ. While the warp prism buff is a step in the right direction, is Blizzard considering any other options to change this often-complained about aspect of Protoss?
DK: Not just Protoss in specific, just across the board every single race should have more harassment options, the more skirmishes there are in a given matchup, I think the better. And the reason is because like back in WoL right before HotS came out, if you take any matchup for example PvT, we saw many very similar games because Protoss players are defending drops so well that both players just macro up and don't fight for like 15 minutes and the game ends in 2 or 3 big engagements, if you watch 10 PvT games even on different maps, you see exact same games over and over again. We don't think that's a good thing, across the board we try to do our best to make sure we have more skirmishes. For Protoss specifically we currently don't have plans to change anything right now, but if Protoss or any race appear to be a little weak, the way we want to buff those races is by adding more options to be more on the aggressive. I just... buff gateway units so they don't get totally decimated by bio/zerg and nerf colossi/hts. Then protoss doesn't need to deathball. Protoss is just way to reliant on their power units to bring the pain while the gateway units are mostly just to tank. Sadly nothing will be done until LotV at first
You can't do that without making 3-7gate timings with blink or charge overpowered as hell. It's a much more complex issue.
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United Kingdom12022 Posts
The goal for us is to create exciting games to watch and as long as strategies are good, as long as every matchup is diverse,
You mean... like TvP which has been stale since the release of the game? Damnit T_T Why do people find TvP entertaining.
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On August 24 2013 18:49 Zarahtra wrote:Show nested quote +Despite the HotS changes to promote more harassment and multiple engagements, Protoss is still the race that encourages deathball play, especially in PvZ. While the warp prism buff is a step in the right direction, is Blizzard considering any other options to change this often-complained about aspect of Protoss?
DK: Not just Protoss in specific, just across the board every single race should have more harassment options, the more skirmishes there are in a given matchup, I think the better. And the reason is because like back in WoL right before HotS came out, if you take any matchup for example PvT, we saw many very similar games because Protoss players are defending drops so well that both players just macro up and don't fight for like 15 minutes and the game ends in 2 or 3 big engagements, if you watch 10 PvT games even on different maps, you see exact same games over and over again. We don't think that's a good thing, across the board we try to do our best to make sure we have more skirmishes. For Protoss specifically we currently don't have plans to change anything right now, but if Protoss or any race appear to be a little weak, the way we want to buff those races is by adding more options to be more on the aggressive. I just... buff gateway units so they don't get totally decimated by bio/zerg and nerf colossi/hts. Then protoss doesn't need to deathball. Protoss is just way to reliant on their power units to bring the pain while the gateway units are mostly just to tank. Sadly nothing will be done until LotV at first
Its like they want to solve the "passiveness" by giving you more and more harassment tools.. but all this does is make the defender X times more paranoid and more turtley.
Its quite sad that they dont realise the problem with the passiveness is actually a combination of the macro boost mechanics + the econ system + the 3 base standard maps + high ground mechanics + lack of zone control units.
If getting more bases actually meant something instead of being capped at 3 bases.. would result into -> less income -> less units -> getting bases very important -> more skirmishes to defend/gain bases because now its more important as ever.
Also if high ground meant = bonus to those units vs lower ground, there would be an incentive to start capturing those critical ramps/hills/area (that links bases) and move out (so the battles now occur in the middle of the map NOT at the natural/3rd which is always the case in SC2, - its very weird to see lots of engagements mid map). But SC2 has zero to none zone control units and instead you need half or more of your army parked there.
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On August 24 2013 18:56 Teoita wrote:Show nested quote +On August 24 2013 18:49 Zarahtra wrote:Despite the HotS changes to promote more harassment and multiple engagements, Protoss is still the race that encourages deathball play, especially in PvZ. While the warp prism buff is a step in the right direction, is Blizzard considering any other options to change this often-complained about aspect of Protoss?
DK: Not just Protoss in specific, just across the board every single race should have more harassment options, the more skirmishes there are in a given matchup, I think the better. And the reason is because like back in WoL right before HotS came out, if you take any matchup for example PvT, we saw many very similar games because Protoss players are defending drops so well that both players just macro up and don't fight for like 15 minutes and the game ends in 2 or 3 big engagements, if you watch 10 PvT games even on different maps, you see exact same games over and over again. We don't think that's a good thing, across the board we try to do our best to make sure we have more skirmishes. For Protoss specifically we currently don't have plans to change anything right now, but if Protoss or any race appear to be a little weak, the way we want to buff those races is by adding more options to be more on the aggressive. I just... buff gateway units so they don't get totally decimated by bio/zerg and nerf colossi/hts. Then protoss doesn't need to deathball. Protoss is just way to reliant on their power units to bring the pain while the gateway units are mostly just to tank. Sadly nothing will be done until LotV at first You can't do that without making 3-7gate timings with blink or charge overpowered as hell. It's a much more complex issue.
I know, hence warp gate is a stupid mechanic too. That's ofcourse one of the basis of buffing the gateway units, it's removal(hence LotV hopefully)
I wonder if they never thought of the hidden cost of warp gates when they were designing WoL. That the 30-50 sec cut "commute time" would just mean that the units would be weaker and those that weren't combat ready after those 5 sec warp time(or 30-50 sec walk time) would be the ones to pick up the slack of the protoss army.
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On August 24 2013 19:04 Zarahtra wrote:Show nested quote +On August 24 2013 18:56 Teoita wrote:On August 24 2013 18:49 Zarahtra wrote:Despite the HotS changes to promote more harassment and multiple engagements, Protoss is still the race that encourages deathball play, especially in PvZ. While the warp prism buff is a step in the right direction, is Blizzard considering any other options to change this often-complained about aspect of Protoss?
DK: Not just Protoss in specific, just across the board every single race should have more harassment options, the more skirmishes there are in a given matchup, I think the better. And the reason is because like back in WoL right before HotS came out, if you take any matchup for example PvT, we saw many very similar games because Protoss players are defending drops so well that both players just macro up and don't fight for like 15 minutes and the game ends in 2 or 3 big engagements, if you watch 10 PvT games even on different maps, you see exact same games over and over again. We don't think that's a good thing, across the board we try to do our best to make sure we have more skirmishes. For Protoss specifically we currently don't have plans to change anything right now, but if Protoss or any race appear to be a little weak, the way we want to buff those races is by adding more options to be more on the aggressive. I just... buff gateway units so they don't get totally decimated by bio/zerg and nerf colossi/hts. Then protoss doesn't need to deathball. Protoss is just way to reliant on their power units to bring the pain while the gateway units are mostly just to tank. Sadly nothing will be done until LotV at first You can't do that without making 3-7gate timings with blink or charge overpowered as hell. It's a much more complex issue. I know, hence warp gate is a stupid mechanic too. That's ofcourse one of the basis of buffing the gateway units, it's removal(hence LotV hopefully) I wonder if they never thought of the hidden cost of warp gates when they were designing WoL. That the 30-50 sec cut "commute time" would just mean that the units would be weaker and those that weren't combat ready after those 5 sec warp time(or 30-50 sec walk time) would be the ones to pick up the slack of the protoss army.
It's just not the commute time. It's the frontloaded production screwing up reinforcement dynamics and allowing the construction of production buildings way, way late (compare gate=>tranform=>get unit to getting the first units out of a reactored rax or getting a hatch up and having the first inject wave finally spawn), it's the ability to proxy nearly everything for 100 without leaving your base defenseless, it's not being able to ambush reinforcements or camp production. It breaks just about every fundamental logistics-side thing games like this are built upon, and that cause things to make sense.
I don't think they thought about any of that. I think they went with "this is cool and fun to do", which is exactly what you should be doing with singleplayer design. But if they intend to make a highly competitive multiplayer game, let alone one people are to play as a job, the task of design needs to be approached with much more gravity than they've been willing to do thus far. They want the glamour, they want all the fun of designing crazy things with none of the responsibility. Same damn thing happened with Diablo. Stuff done haphazardly when real money was at stake? Seriously?
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What I really do not undestand why SC2 have to have that mach mechanic component. It takes about 100 apm minimum only to produce, build, research resonably well. Which majority of non proffecionals have less then that apm, It greatly reduce enjoyement of game for non profecionals. So, why not reduce Mechanic APM needed? It is relativelly simple to do.
Example: Make quied units use no resources untill they are in production. Make it possible to autocats production. Add easy priority order of spending resource. For zerg, make injects and creep autocast, but do remove infinite range creep.
Make SCV, probes autocats. Add easy way to see total amount scv/probe drones we have. I am sure there some way to automate zerg production too.
This few changes will reduce mechanic for non profeccionals, makes game more fun for them as they will be able to spend more time doing fun stuff, like micro there units. Pro can still execise there A and S fingers.
For mech, I believe simpel reduction medibac volume of tanks to 2 and hellions to 1 will greatly increase mech mobility, making them more valible in all mach ups and do not change T-T too mach.
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sad to see him talk about buffing harrassment for all races if a race is weak while not doing anything to nydus, ovispeed for drop or burrow movement. maybe in the future.
otherwise nice interview and love them going from deathball or boring play to aggressive, all-over-the-map play.
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On August 24 2013 19:19 Mutineer wrote:
What I really do not undestand why SC2 have to have that mach mechanic component. It takes about 100 apm minimum only to produce, build, research resonably well. Which majority of non proffecionals have less then that apm, It greatly reduce enjoyement of game for non profecionals. So, why not reduce Mechanic APM needed? It is relativelly simple to do.
Example: Make quied units use no resources untill they are in production. Make it possible to autocats production. Add easy priority order of spending resource. For zerg, make injects and creep autocast, but do remove infinite range creep.
Make SCV, probes autocats. Add easy way to see total amount scv/probe drones we have. I am sure there some way to automate zerg production too.
This few changes will reduce mechanic for non profeccionals, makes game more fun for them as they will be able to spend more time doing fun stuff, like micro there units. Pro can still execise there A and S fingers.
For mech, I believe simpel reduction medibac volume of tanks to 2 and hellions to 1 will greatly increase mech mobility, making them more valible in all mach ups and do not change T-T too mach.
autocast for buildings is a bad idea. you might as well have a computer play for you.
i have an idea for the warpgate: units created from gateways require 5s (or some other number) less than warpgate (overall time, including the cooldown. warpgates will still warp in units faster, this would give some defender's advantage in pvp as well as give incentive for people to revert to gateway mode.
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On August 24 2013 19:19 Mutineer wrote:
What I really do not undestand why SC2 have to have that mach mechanic component. It takes about 100 apm minimum only to produce, build, research resonably well. Which majority of non proffecionals have less then that apm, It greatly reduce enjoyement of game for non profecionals. So, why not reduce Mechanic APM needed? It is relativelly simple to do.
Example: Make quied units use no resources untill they are in production. Make it possible to autocats production. Add easy priority order of spending resource. For zerg, make injects and creep autocast, but do remove infinite range creep.
Make SCV, probes autocats. Add easy way to see total amount scv/probe drones we have. I am sure there some way to automate zerg production too.
This few changes will reduce mechanic for non profeccionals, makes game more fun for them as they will be able to spend more time doing fun stuff, like micro there units. Pro can still execise there A and S fingers.
For mech, I believe simpel reduction medibac volume of tanks to 2 and hellions to 1 will greatly increase mech mobility, making them more valible in all mach ups and do not change T-T too mach.
I think everything should be autocast. Blink autocast so they blink behind allied units when in red health.
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On August 24 2013 19:30 29 fps wrote:Show nested quote +On August 24 2013 19:19 Mutineer wrote:
What I really do not undestand why SC2 have to have that mach mechanic component. It takes about 100 apm minimum only to produce, build, research resonably well. Which majority of non proffecionals have less then that apm, It greatly reduce enjoyement of game for non profecionals. So, why not reduce Mechanic APM needed? It is relativelly simple to do.
Example: Make quied units use no resources untill they are in production. Make it possible to autocats production. Add easy priority order of spending resource. For zerg, make injects and creep autocast, but do remove infinite range creep.
Make SCV, probes autocats. Add easy way to see total amount scv/probe drones we have. I am sure there some way to automate zerg production too.
This few changes will reduce mechanic for non profeccionals, makes game more fun for them as they will be able to spend more time doing fun stuff, like micro there units. Pro can still execise there A and S fingers.
For mech, I believe simpel reduction medibac volume of tanks to 2 and hellions to 1 will greatly increase mech mobility, making them more valible in all mach ups and do not change T-T too mach. autocast for buildings is a bad idea. you might as well have a computer play for you. i have an idea for the warpgate: units created from gateways require 5s (or some other number) less than warpgate (overall time, including the cooldown. warpgates will still warp in units faster, this would give some defender's advantage in pvp as well as give incentive for people to revert to gateway mode.
What about adding aditional seconds/time for warping in units depending on the distance between warp in location and warpgate? Which means they need longer to materialize at the warp in location.
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Italy12246 Posts
On August 24 2013 19:19 Mutineer wrote:
What I really do not undestand why SC2 have to have that mach mechanic component. It takes about 100 apm minimum only to produce, build, research resonably well. Which majority of non proffecionals have less then that apm, It greatly reduce enjoyement of game for non profecionals. So, why not reduce Mechanic APM needed? It is relativelly simple to do.
Example: Make quied units use no resources untill they are in production. Make it possible to autocats production. Add easy priority order of spending resource. For zerg, make injects and creep autocast, but do remove infinite range creep.
Make SCV, probes autocats. Add easy way to see total amount scv/probe drones we have. I am sure there some way to automate zerg production too.
This few changes will reduce mechanic for non profeccionals, makes game more fun for them as they will be able to spend more time doing fun stuff, like micro there units. Pro can still execise there A and S fingers.
For mech, I believe simpel reduction medibac volume of tanks to 2 and hellions to 1 will greatly increase mech mobility, making them more valible in all mach ups and do not change T-T too mach.
Because sc2 is a mechanics-based rts game.
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Why autocats building bad idea? Do you believe it is a good when beginers are advised NOT to micro there units and spend a few a lot of time train just to produce SCV's and units? It is still true that one can get to gold with 0 micro, just macro?
Where there thinking when a Lot of game is just to remember to press production key every XZsecond? Where fun in that?
I do not think it is wrong to do everything possible to reduce repetitive, mechanic component of SC2. It is nothing have to do with making computer play for you. Making Micro decisions, positional decisions are mach more fun.
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On August 24 2013 19:46 Mutineer wrote:
Why autocats building bad idea? Do you believe it is a good when beginers are advised NOT to micro there units and spend a few a lot of time train just to produce SCV's and units? It is still true that one can get to gold with 0 micro, just macro?
Where there thinking when a Lot of game is just to remember to press production key every XZsecond? Where fun in that?
I do not think it is wrong to do everything possible to reduce repetitive, mechanic component of SC2. It is nothing have to do with making computer play for you. Making Micro decisions, positional decisions are mach more fun.
You should try out Total Annihilation. It has exactly what you want.
http://zero.tauniverse.com/
Its a great mod that improves TA ever further.
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On August 24 2013 19:40 TaShadan wrote:Show nested quote +On August 24 2013 19:30 29 fps wrote:On August 24 2013 19:19 Mutineer wrote:
What I really do not undestand why SC2 have to have that mach mechanic component. It takes about 100 apm minimum only to produce, build, research resonably well. Which majority of non proffecionals have less then that apm, It greatly reduce enjoyement of game for non profecionals. So, why not reduce Mechanic APM needed? It is relativelly simple to do.
Example: Make quied units use no resources untill they are in production. Make it possible to autocats production. Add easy priority order of spending resource. For zerg, make injects and creep autocast, but do remove infinite range creep.
Make SCV, probes autocats. Add easy way to see total amount scv/probe drones we have. I am sure there some way to automate zerg production too.
This few changes will reduce mechanic for non profeccionals, makes game more fun for them as they will be able to spend more time doing fun stuff, like micro there units. Pro can still execise there A and S fingers.
For mech, I believe simpel reduction medibac volume of tanks to 2 and hellions to 1 will greatly increase mech mobility, making them more valible in all mach ups and do not change T-T too mach. autocast for buildings is a bad idea. you might as well have a computer play for you. i have an idea for the warpgate: units created from gateways require 5s (or some other number) less than warpgate (overall time, including the cooldown. warpgates will still warp in units faster, this would give some defender's advantage in pvp as well as give incentive for people to revert to gateway mode. What about adding aditional seconds/time for warping in units depending on the distance between warp in location and warpgate? Which means they need longer to materialize at the warp in location.
It still leaves in issues like frontloaded production and risk-free, cheap proxying. Or, if the time is long enough, turns the warpgate into a trap option that's never beneficial and could just as well be removed from the game. Which is incidentally a good idea because the game would make more sense and you wouldn't have to worry about esoteric corner case usage for an otherwise-useless ability with a crapton of potential for brokenness.
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Now that Stephano retires, they don't have to worry about upcoming imba strats :D Good god I'm gonna miss him
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On August 24 2013 19:49 Coffee Zombie wrote:Show nested quote +On August 24 2013 19:40 TaShadan wrote:On August 24 2013 19:30 29 fps wrote:On August 24 2013 19:19 Mutineer wrote:
What I really do not undestand why SC2 have to have that mach mechanic component. It takes about 100 apm minimum only to produce, build, research resonably well. Which majority of non proffecionals have less then that apm, It greatly reduce enjoyement of game for non profecionals. So, why not reduce Mechanic APM needed? It is relativelly simple to do.
Example: Make quied units use no resources untill they are in production. Make it possible to autocats production. Add easy priority order of spending resource. For zerg, make injects and creep autocast, but do remove infinite range creep.
Make SCV, probes autocats. Add easy way to see total amount scv/probe drones we have. I am sure there some way to automate zerg production too.
This few changes will reduce mechanic for non profeccionals, makes game more fun for them as they will be able to spend more time doing fun stuff, like micro there units. Pro can still execise there A and S fingers.
For mech, I believe simpel reduction medibac volume of tanks to 2 and hellions to 1 will greatly increase mech mobility, making them more valible in all mach ups and do not change T-T too mach. autocast for buildings is a bad idea. you might as well have a computer play for you. i have an idea for the warpgate: units created from gateways require 5s (or some other number) less than warpgate (overall time, including the cooldown. warpgates will still warp in units faster, this would give some defender's advantage in pvp as well as give incentive for people to revert to gateway mode. What about adding aditional seconds/time for warping in units depending on the distance between warp in location and warpgate? Which means they need longer to materialize at the warp in location. It still leaves in issues like frontloaded production and risk-free, cheap proxying. Or, if the time is long enough, turns the warpgate into a trap option that's never beneficial and could just as well be removed from the game. Which is incidentally a good idea because the game would make more sense and you wouldn't have to worry about esoteric corner case usage for an otherwise-useless ability with a crapton of potential for brokenness.
True. It was just an idea in my mind. There wont be any fundamental changes anyway.
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On August 24 2013 18:57 Qikz wrote:Show nested quote + The goal for us is to create exciting games to watch and as long as strategies are good, as long as every matchup is diverse, You mean... like TvP which has been stale since the release of the game? Damnit T_T Why do people find TvP entertaining.
Because the best terrans just own on it.
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I still think the main problem with balance are the race specific mechanics added with sc2 (mules/injects/chrono, and warpgate I guess). They complexify the game way too much to balance units easily (can you really scout and anticipate all ins well when depending on where your opponents spends chrono / how he uses injects it can vary vastly?) and they make the greedy and mass powering strategies possible (you wouldn't be able to get a super early 3rd without mules, you couldn't get super early upgrades without chrono, and couldn't shit tons of units as soon as your bases are saturated without spending on macro hatches if not for injects).
I'd really like to hear the dev team talk about that. But I guess they won't talk about that nor change anything until sc3... So we'll still see stupid comebacks that shouldn't be possible, 11mn maxes, instant remaxes, 15mn 3/3 timings, pre 10 mn 2 base all ins, games where T loses all his workers and still has income... and so on
And lol@ the propositions about how to make the game easier to make it fun and how 100apm is unreachable for casual players. It's not true at all, it's a muscle memory thing, if you enjoy the game, you'll be able to play and get used to hit production and such. I've got very casual friends that are totally able to macro decently.
Broodwar was extremely popular in korea while being way harder mechanically than sc2.. I for one got interested in sc2 because of the mechanical difficulty. This has never been the problem, changing the fundamentals of what starcraft is since it exists to appeal to more players would be the dumbest thing ever in my opinion, because that would mean losing all the current ones and the spirit of the game. What would be important now is to try to please the people that loved broodwar and don't like sc2 as much because of some dumb mechanics or units.
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What would be important now is to try to please the people that loved broodwar and don't like sc2 as much because of some dumb mechanics or units.
That will never happen, because they wont change the fundamental flaws. (my oppinion)
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On August 24 2013 19:47 TaShadan wrote:Show nested quote +On August 24 2013 19:46 Mutineer wrote:
Why autocats building bad idea? Do you believe it is a good when beginers are advised NOT to micro there units and spend a few a lot of time train just to produce SCV's and units? It is still true that one can get to gold with 0 micro, just macro?
Where there thinking when a Lot of game is just to remember to press production key every XZsecond? Where fun in that?
I do not think it is wrong to do everything possible to reduce repetitive, mechanic component of SC2. It is nothing have to do with making computer play for you. Making Micro decisions, positional decisions are mach more fun. You should try out Total Annihilation. It has exactly what you want. http://zero.tauniverse.com/Its a great mod that improves TA ever further.
And simular replyes, try to change topic and attack me personally. It has nothing to do with me, but with what I believe is best for starcraft. About existing players leaving, why? It change nothing on high level. If you macro preciselly yourself you will have mach betterr control on that units you need now, then automated macro. All it will do is to make game mach easier to get into, atract more beginers to have fun and not get dissapointed by boring aspect of the game. All of you long time players forgetting that magority of money come from NOOBS. Success of game depends on how mach it is noob friendly. It can have a lot of depts and fun at the end, but if it does not atract and retain noobs they will never come to that level. There a lots of interesting deep games that have very stable and small niche market but never become really popular.
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Amazing questions but typical DK answers...
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On August 24 2013 20:36 Mutineer wrote:Show nested quote +On August 24 2013 19:47 TaShadan wrote:On August 24 2013 19:46 Mutineer wrote:
Why autocats building bad idea? Do you believe it is a good when beginers are advised NOT to micro there units and spend a few a lot of time train just to produce SCV's and units? It is still true that one can get to gold with 0 micro, just macro?
Where there thinking when a Lot of game is just to remember to press production key every XZsecond? Where fun in that?
I do not think it is wrong to do everything possible to reduce repetitive, mechanic component of SC2. It is nothing have to do with making computer play for you. Making Micro decisions, positional decisions are mach more fun. You should try out Total Annihilation. It has exactly what you want. http://zero.tauniverse.com/Its a great mod that improves TA ever further. And simular replyes, try to change topic and attack me personally. It has nothing to do with me, but with what I believe is best for starcraft. About existing players leaving, why? It change nothing on high level. If you macro preciselly yourself you will have mach betterr control on that units you need now, then automated macro. All it will do is to make game mach easier to get into, atract more beginers to have fun and not get dissapointed by boring aspect of the game. All of you long time players forgetting that magority of money come from NOOBS. Success of game depends on how mach it is noob friendly. It can have a lot of depts and fun at the end, but if it does not atract and retain noobs they will never come to that level. There a lots of interesting deep games that have very stable and small niche market but never become really popular.
Not exactly. I love TA and especially TA Zero. If you want a game less mechanically demanding you should try it.If you think iam trolling you i cant help you.
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You know what would be nice. If they would say and do something about the hacking problem....
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if it's too noob friendly, it becomes less spectator friendly. part of why i like watching pro SC2 is because they do things that I cannot. if it's easy for everyone, i won't think the pros are amazing because i can do that too.
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On August 24 2013 14:53 avilo wrote:Good interview and good questions. Their answers about mech are quite infuriating to read. Especially this part: "If you increase the damage a bit, it won't change much because Immortals and Zealots have a really harsh counter relationship with Tanks..." So they recognize no matter what they change with Terran mech...the main issue is the immortal being an extreme hard counter to mech/tanks TvP..soooo...how about they do something about it Whoever the interviewer was, props to you for actually knowing your shiot about the game and asking amazing questions. edit: Show nested quote +On August 24 2013 14:42 digmouse wrote:It's not a translation, I interviewed him myself one on one and transcript the recording, it's not that press conference and talk party. aha, good stuff
you DO realize Terran mech vs Protoss doesn't HAVE to be viable right? You can't have every option available to you, that's making your own race op. Bio in BW vs Protoss wasn't really viable except for few early game cheeses, and TvP in BW was the most balanced matchup we've seen ever.
That's like me complaining I can't go full sky toss vs. Terran.
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all of the "we're looking into it, maybe there will be something in the future" answers are so annoying.
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On August 24 2013 21:34 GhostOwl wrote:Show nested quote +On August 24 2013 14:53 avilo wrote:Good interview and good questions. Their answers about mech are quite infuriating to read. Especially this part: "If you increase the damage a bit, it won't change much because Immortals and Zealots have a really harsh counter relationship with Tanks..." So they recognize no matter what they change with Terran mech...the main issue is the immortal being an extreme hard counter to mech/tanks TvP..soooo...how about they do something about it Whoever the interviewer was, props to you for actually knowing your shiot about the game and asking amazing questions. edit: On August 24 2013 14:42 digmouse wrote:It's not a translation, I interviewed him myself one on one and transcript the recording, it's not that press conference and talk party. aha, good stuff you DO realize Terran mech vs Protoss doesn't HAVE to be viable right? You can't have every option available to you, that's making your own race op. Bio in BW vs Protoss wasn't really viable except for few early game cheeses, and TvP in BW was the most balanced matchup we've seen ever. That's like me complaining I can't go full sky toss vs. Terran.
Except if Mech was viable vs Protoss then SkyToss would automatically be viable vs Mech thus creating a win/win. Just the same as if Mech was viable then it drastically improves the viability of Swarm Hosts and Hydralisks vs Terran.
The reason Mech complaints are so common these days is because Mech is ONLY viable in TvT and even there it isn't as good as it was in WoL.
M^4 is FAR superior in TvZ and Hive Tech has a plethora of hard counters to Mech play and Mech is even less viable in TvP than it was in WoL which I never thought I'd ever find myself saying.
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Aotearoa39261 Posts
Good to hear some of the answers about TLMC good interview.
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I think one of the unique aspect of starcraft is its very hard mechanics. Its what defines this game from the rest of genre; if you're looking for games that focuses less on mechanics you're looking at C&C and CoH (Still needs more multitasking/micro than C&C). Its the steep learning curve that defines this game, and even with hard mechanics this game was very popular in South korea. Mostly because of its pro scene, and probably the custom game scene too.
There are quite a few RTS games out there, but Starcraft is unique among them because it has much harder mechanics. Although I agree that the current metagame sucks (except for TvZ, thats probably the only ones I watch) that can be improved. Starcraft needs to keep its uniqueness.
Also although the questions were really good, the response was shit. So many uncertainty. I haven't learnt a single thing from this interview.
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Hard mechanics, many "ways to go" and units/fights that support pre planning and micro! Focus on that stuff.
hey kind of fixed the Mirrors in a way of not having the same matches as in WoL and PvP goes to more than 1 base now.
I really like marine Tank and i want it to be viable in PvT and TvZ :D
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On August 24 2013 21:42 Sprouter wrote:
all of the "we're looking into it, maybe there will be something in the future" answers are so annoying.
It's the PR Blizzard answer for "No".
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On August 24 2013 21:34 GhostOwl wrote:Show nested quote +On August 24 2013 14:53 avilo wrote:Good interview and good questions. Their answers about mech are quite infuriating to read. Especially this part: "If you increase the damage a bit, it won't change much because Immortals and Zealots have a really harsh counter relationship with Tanks..." So they recognize no matter what they change with Terran mech...the main issue is the immortal being an extreme hard counter to mech/tanks TvP..soooo...how about they do something about it Whoever the interviewer was, props to you for actually knowing your shiot about the game and asking amazing questions. edit: On August 24 2013 14:42 digmouse wrote:It's not a translation, I interviewed him myself one on one and transcript the recording, it's not that press conference and talk party. aha, good stuff you DO realize Terran mech vs Protoss doesn't HAVE to be viable right? You can't have every option available to you, that's making your own race op. Bio in BW vs Protoss wasn't really viable except for few early game cheeses, and TvP in BW was the most balanced matchup we've seen ever. That's like me complaining I can't go full sky toss vs. Terran.
Everything you said is true, but there are still reasons why people want mech to be viable in tvp. It is a unique playstyle that we dont see as much and a lot of people find it fun to watch.
Also people want it to be viable for the same reason that they want hydralisks to be a useful unit or zealots to have a speed upgrade instead of charge or the collossus to go away and for the reaver to come back
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Northern Ireland461 Posts
On August 24 2013 19:19 Mutineer wrote:
What I really do not undestand why SC2 have to have that mach mechanic component. It takes about 100 apm minimum only to produce, build, research resonably well. Which majority of non proffecionals have less then that apm, It greatly reduce enjoyement of game for non profecionals. So, why not reduce Mechanic APM needed? It is relativelly simple to do.
Example: Make quied units use no resources untill they are in production. Make it possible to autocats production. Add easy priority order of spending resource. For zerg, make injects and creep autocast, but do remove infinite range creep.
Make SCV, probes autocats. Add easy way to see total amount scv/probe drones we have. I am sure there some way to automate zerg production too.
This few changes will reduce mechanic for non profeccionals, makes game more fun for them as they will be able to spend more time doing fun stuff, like micro there units. Pro can still execise there A and S fingers.
For mech, I believe simpel reduction medibac volume of tanks to 2 and hellions to 1 will greatly increase mech mobility, making them more valible in all mach ups and do not change T-T too mach.
This is literally the worst suggestion I have ever seen for SC2
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Sweet questions man, people take note of the TL Strat Team!
I always wanted to ask what units would be needed in LotV to really shift the game into a more miltitude of playstyles for each race. I feel Terran need another mech while I'm not quite sure for Protoss
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On August 24 2013 23:15 Torte de Lini wrote:
Sweet questions man, people take note of the TL Strat Team!
I always wanted to ask what units would be needed in LotV to really shift the game into a more miltitude of playstyles for each race. I feel Terran need another mech while I'm not quite sure for Protoss
For Protoss, they lack skirmish potency. A DT redesign would be pretty awesome, or another templar unit. Protoss air will be fixed when Mech gets fixed.
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I think you people just need to accept that if they are talking about the balance of SC2, no sensible Blizzard employee is liable of saying 'We should have built a different game with different core mechanics'. They are talking about how to balance the units, while leaving the fundamental mechanics intact, not about screwing around with the economy until things change. Expecting anything else at this point is kind of useless. And I will say that SC2 is an amizingly entertaining game, and the fact that it isn't BW shouldn't make you angry anytime DK talks about balance without adressing the 'fundamental flaws' keeping SC2 from playing like BW. It just will never happen.
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United Kingdom12022 Posts
you DO realize Terran mech vs Protoss doesn't HAVE to be viable right? You can't have every option available to you, that's making your own race op. Bio in BW vs Protoss wasn't really viable except for few early game cheeses, and TvP in BW was the most balanced matchup we've seen ever.
That's like me complaining I can't go full sky toss vs. Terran.
I've said this before and I'll say it again but this is such a ridiculous stance to take.
Do you not want players to have options? Making mech viable makes agressive toss a lot more viable itself and it gives carriers a place in the game. Why the hell do you want to watch the same game every single game? Atleast in BW there was variation of meching styles, both offensive and defensive worked vs Toss and there was plenty Toss could do against it depending on the map.
There's one bio style that works. It's get a fast natural into third base into attack and hope you kill the toss before he gets all his AOE. It's boring as hell. Why can't we atleast as spectators and players have options?
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You guys are so annoying to read.
Do you have Innovation or Rain level ? No ?
Then mech TvP is viable. That's it. I haven't played a bio TvP for 6 months (master level). Sure I am not GM, but I am having SO MUCH FUN. Can you please stop bitching about David Kim everytime he says something ? You would not even be on this forum if people like him didn't put so much effort into the game.
God damn it.
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On August 25 2013 00:00 Ambre wrote:
You guys are so annoying to read.
Do you have Innovation or Rain level ? No ?
Then mech TvP is viable. That's it. I haven't played a bio TvP for 6 months (master level). Sure I am not GM, but I am having SO MUCH FUN. Can you please stop bitching about David Kim everytime he says something ? You would not even be on this forum if people like him didn't put so much effort into the game.
God damn it.
You do realize many of us are spectators?
We want mech to work to see pros play it not our half assed execution from ladder.
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United Kingdom12022 Posts
On August 25 2013 00:02 pmp10 wrote:Show nested quote +On August 25 2013 00:00 Ambre wrote:
You guys are so annoying to read.
Do you have Innovation or Rain level ? No ?
Then mech TvP is viable. That's it. I haven't played a bio TvP for 6 months (master level). Sure I am not GM, but I am having SO MUCH FUN. Can you please stop bitching about David Kim everytime he says something ? You would not even be on this forum if people like him didn't put so much effort into the game.
God damn it. You do realize many of us are spectators? We want mech to work to see pros play it not our half assed execution from ladder.
This explains my place pretty well. I want to see players like Flash and Fantasy be able to mech again since I always enjoyed watching them mech in BW. Heck, I'd just like to see some fucking variety. Watching BIo/Mine over and over in TvZ and watching MMM in TvP over and over in TvP has made me want to quit watching and playing the game completely almost.
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On August 24 2013 19:18 Coffee Zombie wrote:Show nested quote +On August 24 2013 19:04 Zarahtra wrote:On August 24 2013 18:56 Teoita wrote:On August 24 2013 18:49 Zarahtra wrote:Despite the HotS changes to promote more harassment and multiple engagements, Protoss is still the race that encourages deathball play, especially in PvZ. While the warp prism buff is a step in the right direction, is Blizzard considering any other options to change this often-complained about aspect of Protoss?
DK: Not just Protoss in specific, just across the board every single race should have more harassment options, the more skirmishes there are in a given matchup, I think the better. And the reason is because like back in WoL right before HotS came out, if you take any matchup for example PvT, we saw many very similar games because Protoss players are defending drops so well that both players just macro up and don't fight for like 15 minutes and the game ends in 2 or 3 big engagements, if you watch 10 PvT games even on different maps, you see exact same games over and over again. We don't think that's a good thing, across the board we try to do our best to make sure we have more skirmishes. For Protoss specifically we currently don't have plans to change anything right now, but if Protoss or any race appear to be a little weak, the way we want to buff those races is by adding more options to be more on the aggressive. I just... buff gateway units so they don't get totally decimated by bio/zerg and nerf colossi/hts. Then protoss doesn't need to deathball. Protoss is just way to reliant on their power units to bring the pain while the gateway units are mostly just to tank. Sadly nothing will be done until LotV at first You can't do that without making 3-7gate timings with blink or charge overpowered as hell. It's a much more complex issue. It's just not the commute time. It's the frontloaded production screwing up reinforcement dynamics and allowing the construction of production buildings way, way late (compare gate=>tranform=>get unit to getting the first units out of a reactored rax or getting a hatch up and having the first inject wave finally spawn), it's the ability to proxy nearly everything for 100 without leaving your base defenseless, it's not being able to ambush reinforcements or camp production. It breaks just about every fundamental logistics-side thing games like this are built upon, and that cause things to make sense.
While the reinforcement aspect is altered, there is a replacement dynamic of pylon power, which should be fleshed out. If pylon power became more integral, it'd limit the all-innish tendency of Warpgate. If it was good enough, then Planetary Nexus would be unnecessary. Then we can return to Terran and Zerg early aggression against P balanced with the idea of P being able to aggress too.
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On August 24 2013 18:48 YyapSsap wrote:
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I hope one day they really re-design immortal and the colossus. The latter especially, should have some sort of a weakness on a similar level as the siege tank.
like, being able to be hit by air-to-air or something crazy like that ^^
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On August 25 2013 00:08 Qikz wrote:Show nested quote +On August 25 2013 00:02 pmp10 wrote:On August 25 2013 00:00 Ambre wrote:
You guys are so annoying to read.
Do you have Innovation or Rain level ? No ?
Then mech TvP is viable. That's it. I haven't played a bio TvP for 6 months (master level). Sure I am not GM, but I am having SO MUCH FUN. Can you please stop bitching about David Kim everytime he says something ? You would not even be on this forum if people like him didn't put so much effort into the game.
God damn it. You do realize many of us are spectators? We want mech to work to see pros play it not our half assed execution from ladder. This explains my place pretty well. I want to see players like Flash and Fantasy be able to mech again since I always enjoyed watching them mech in BW. Heck, I'd just like to see some fucking variety. Watching BIo/Mine over and over in TvZ and watching MMM in TvP over and over in TvP has made me want to quit watching and playing the game completely almost.
Except mech is life-drainingly boring to play and watch in SC2 (unlike BW) and making it more viable would definitely not improve anything.
But I guess just making it slightly better would be alright, but how would you suggest doing that without messing with the nice balance situation we have going on?
Great responses from DK. But to me, he doesn't even need to be able to have such well thought out responses. Their work alone makes me confident in their ability to keep moving SC2 in the right direction.
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woo TL Strat. Good questions. 
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On August 25 2013 00:50 Cloak wrote:Show nested quote +On August 24 2013 19:18 Coffee Zombie wrote:On August 24 2013 19:04 Zarahtra wrote:On August 24 2013 18:56 Teoita wrote:On August 24 2013 18:49 Zarahtra wrote:Despite the HotS changes to promote more harassment and multiple engagements, Protoss is still the race that encourages deathball play, especially in PvZ. While the warp prism buff is a step in the right direction, is Blizzard considering any other options to change this often-complained about aspect of Protoss?
DK: Not just Protoss in specific, just across the board every single race should have more harassment options, the more skirmishes there are in a given matchup, I think the better. And the reason is because like back in WoL right before HotS came out, if you take any matchup for example PvT, we saw many very similar games because Protoss players are defending drops so well that both players just macro up and don't fight for like 15 minutes and the game ends in 2 or 3 big engagements, if you watch 10 PvT games even on different maps, you see exact same games over and over again. We don't think that's a good thing, across the board we try to do our best to make sure we have more skirmishes. For Protoss specifically we currently don't have plans to change anything right now, but if Protoss or any race appear to be a little weak, the way we want to buff those races is by adding more options to be more on the aggressive. I just... buff gateway units so they don't get totally decimated by bio/zerg and nerf colossi/hts. Then protoss doesn't need to deathball. Protoss is just way to reliant on their power units to bring the pain while the gateway units are mostly just to tank. Sadly nothing will be done until LotV at first You can't do that without making 3-7gate timings with blink or charge overpowered as hell. It's a much more complex issue. It's just not the commute time. It's the frontloaded production screwing up reinforcement dynamics and allowing the construction of production buildings way, way late (compare gate=>tranform=>get unit to getting the first units out of a reactored rax or getting a hatch up and having the first inject wave finally spawn), it's the ability to proxy nearly everything for 100 without leaving your base defenseless, it's not being able to ambush reinforcements or camp production. It breaks just about every fundamental logistics-side thing games like this are built upon, and that cause things to make sense. While the reinforcement aspect is altered, there is a replacement dynamic of pylon power, which should be fleshed out. If pylon power became more integral, it'd limit the all-innish tendency of Warpgate. If it was good enough, then Planetary Nexus would be unnecessary. Then we can return to Terran and Zerg early aggression against P balanced with the idea of P being able to aggress too.
The power mechanic is binary enough to not really matter. You have power, or you don't, so pretty hard to see how that could be used to balance warp gates. And even then, it's just more complications that muddle the very basic rules and heuristics which should be natural.
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United Kingdom12022 Posts
On August 25 2013 01:09 Cereb wrote:Show nested quote +On August 25 2013 00:08 Qikz wrote:On August 25 2013 00:02 pmp10 wrote:On August 25 2013 00:00 Ambre wrote:
You guys are so annoying to read.
Do you have Innovation or Rain level ? No ?
Then mech TvP is viable. That's it. I haven't played a bio TvP for 6 months (master level). Sure I am not GM, but I am having SO MUCH FUN. Can you please stop bitching about David Kim everytime he says something ? You would not even be on this forum if people like him didn't put so much effort into the game.
God damn it. You do realize many of us are spectators? We want mech to work to see pros play it not our half assed execution from ladder. This explains my place pretty well. I want to see players like Flash and Fantasy be able to mech again since I always enjoyed watching them mech in BW. Heck, I'd just like to see some fucking variety. Watching BIo/Mine over and over in TvZ and watching MMM in TvP over and over in TvP has made me want to quit watching and playing the game completely almost. Except mech is life-drainingly boring to play and watch in SC2 (unlike BW) and making it more viable would definitely not improve anything. But I guess just making it slightly better would be alright, but how would you suggest doing that without messing with the nice balance situation we have going on?Great responses from DK. But to me, he doesn't even need to be able to have such well thought out responses. Their work alone makes me confident in their ability to keep moving SC2 in the right direction.
Oh really? I can't wait to see your examples of the best terrans in the world playing a decent mech against the best protoss in the world. MVP vs Dimaga isn't the best Terran vs the best Zerg, but the game he went mech was by far the most entertaining game in that series. Mech is only "boring" to play and watch because where it's so bad, you need to ball everything up or just die. You can't really spread enough.
Having a good balance is fine, but when that balance is based around a never-changing metagame it's going to slowly kill the game as players are going to retire due to either injury or just getting bored of the game and spectators are just going to get bored of watching the same thing over and over. They need to do things to increase both viewership and playerbase and while the game is as dull as it is with a terrible map rotation (maps staying in too long and all maps playing out exactly the same with no defining features) it's just going to keep on shrinking.
Races need more options to keep the game alive. That's not an opinion, it's just plain fact.
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On August 25 2013 00:55 Twinsentwinsen wrote:Show nested quote +On August 24 2013 18:48 YyapSsap wrote:
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I hope one day they really re-design immortal and the colossus. The latter especially, should have some sort of a weakness on a similar level as the siege tank. like, being able to be hit by air-to-air or something crazy like that ^^
An exploitable weakness that is fun to watch. Not "Kill this thing quickly before it kills what you have...quicker".
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If they want to change the tank a bit, how about make it a little faster going in and out of siege mode? Then dmg/hp isn't affected for the other matchups, but it will add more complexity to using it as it's not so much of the set it and forget it. You will not need to get 20 tanks and leap frog 10 over each other. Many, many, times we see that if you catch them in the middle of changing you lose them all because it's difficult IMHO to leap frog them individually. But don't listen to me too much, I'm bronze. I don't really know what I'm talking about.
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Stephano.
Still breaking ZvP from retirement.
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so lets say they make mech viable in tvp,
it would be kinda fun cuz of more options i agree
but would mech really be anything special other than that?
Yes, i would like that option and it could probably be fun to watch from time to time
But compared to bw, is it even 25% of that?
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I should be able to go pure stargate and beat EVERYTHING terran has, but can't cuz marines and vikings exist. NERF marines and vikings, plz.
Yay for more playstyles.
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I generally try to understand DKim's perspective on balance, and I generally accept his explanations, but more and more I wish the emphasis was less on "fun to watch" and instead more on "fun to play." The two are related, but not entirely the same.
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maybe harassment would be viable if you couldn't chronoboost 12 probes back, drop 8 mules from your orbitals, or inject 15 drones in seconds. lol.
at least he is catching on to the swarm host play in zvp, started seeing that a lot at the end of the season and did not like where that was going. Zergs are finally realizing that their static defense is broken as shit.
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On August 25 2013 07:02 fenrysk wrote:
I generally try to understand DKim's perspective on balance, and I generally accept his explanations, but more and more I wish the emphasis was less on "fun to watch" and instead more on "fun to play." The two are related, but not entirely the same.
That's exactly what struck me when I read this interview, he said several times "fun to watch", but as far as I know SC2 is a game before anything else, and giving priority to viewers by making the game balanced only for progamers is shocking, as a consumer and as a player.
I'm starting to be very fed up with Terran right now, TvT is boring, I feel it's very unfair to need twice apm than protoss in TvP to hope for a victory, and when I read such an interview I foresee things won't change before a long time, it's really sad and disappointing :'(
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So much hate for David Kim... Do you all realize that StarCraft is one of the most balanced competitive games in the esports scene right now? It's not perfect, and it probably never will be, but god damn can you all just be happy for what we have? Blizzard is constantly making improvements, and as soon as they do something right, everyone just picks something else to flame them for. I think this community would shrivel up and die if Blizzard ever actually made the game "perfect." You'd all have nothing left to complain about!
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Wish they would just make mech viable so the terran match-ups would actually get interesting enough to watch. Seriously fed up with bio now. I really don't see why blizzard is keeping their head up in their asses regarding the whole mech issues. Bio is really, really boring after you have seen it, oh, like, say, three fucking years. T_T
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On August 24 2013 19:19 Mutineer wrote:
What I really do not undestand why SC2 have to have that mach mechanic component. It takes about 100 apm minimum only to produce, build, research resonably well. Which majority of non proffecionals have less then that apm, It greatly reduce enjoyement of game for non profecionals. So, why not reduce Mechanic APM needed? It is relativelly simple to do.
Example: Make quied units use no resources untill they are in production. Make it possible to autocats production. Add easy priority order of spending resource. For zerg, make injects and creep autocast, but do remove infinite range creep.
Make SCV, probes autocats. Add easy way to see total amount scv/probe drones we have. I am sure there some way to automate zerg production too.
This few changes will reduce mechanic for non profeccionals, makes game more fun for them as they will be able to spend more time doing fun stuff, like micro there units. Pro can still execise there A and S fingers.
For mech, I believe simpel reduction medibac volume of tanks to 2 and hellions to 1 will greatly increase mech mobility, making them more valible in all mach ups and do not change T-T too mach.
First of all, this is a terrible suggestion. Starcraft II stands apart from other games due to the learning curve and that it actually takes hard work and skill to win. I also like how you pulled that 100 apm number out of your ass. Seeing how you are one of those people that plays at under 100 apm, you have no fucking idea how much apm you need to macro.
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On August 25 2013 09:31 Mehukannu wrote:
Wish they would just make mech viable so the terran match-ups would actually get interesting enough to watch. Seriously fed up with bio now. I really don't see why blizzard is keeping their head up in their asses regarding the whole mech issues. Bio is really, really boring after you have seen it, oh, like, say, three fucking years. T_T
As long as the % are somewhat balanced, blizzard won't gamble with big patches that might turn their very own WCS tournaments into a farce. That's my guess.
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On August 25 2013 10:03 Lukeeze[zR] wrote:Show nested quote +On August 25 2013 09:31 Mehukannu wrote:
Wish they would just make mech viable so the terran match-ups would actually get interesting enough to watch. Seriously fed up with bio now. I really don't see why blizzard is keeping their head up in their asses regarding the whole mech issues. Bio is really, really boring after you have seen it, oh, like, say, three fucking years. T_T As long as the % are somewhat balanced, blizzard won't gamble with big patches that might turn their very own WCS tournaments into a farce. That's my guess.
It runs the risk of becoming a farce as is, however. Where they direct the metagame is their decision, and theirs to screw up, but it shouldn't be difficult to see what needs improvement. I'm surprised that their opinion is so strong regarding the status quo, however, pretty telling for me at least.
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People give David Kim a lot of crap but he knows his stuff
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I think the snipe question was a valid concern. Hell you can't even snipe a zergling any more, that's just ridiculous (and I am zerg) and of course it was much better before against zealots.
But great interview, nice questions and some solid answers from Kim.
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On August 25 2013 10:03 Lukeeze[zR] wrote:Show nested quote +On August 25 2013 09:31 Mehukannu wrote:
Wish they would just make mech viable so the terran match-ups would actually get interesting enough to watch. Seriously fed up with bio now. I really don't see why blizzard is keeping their head up in their asses regarding the whole mech issues. Bio is really, really boring after you have seen it, oh, like, say, three fucking years. T_T As long as the % are somewhat balanced, blizzard won't gamble with big patches that might turn their very own WCS tournaments into a farce. That's my guess.
The bad part about this is that the "balanced percentages" is partly due to the design of the game. We had a pretty boring game in the WCS yesterday which showed that brilliantly. I think it was the game between Taeja and Rain on Whirlwind, where Taeja had a small lead from the start and pressured Raind for a long time and prevented him from getting another base for a long time and basically two full armies danced around each other for 20 minutes. Then there was one engagement and it was over in about 12 seconds. The point is that many games are decided by one mistake and it could be on either player who makes the mistake ... so basically its a game of chance ... a coinflip ... and not fully a game where the skill of the better player determines who wins. This is a fact because the game revolves around the core mechanics of "huge production" and "easy to manage and massively concentrated army with maximized firepower". This makes battles last only a few seconds and because of this people are scared to engage and maybe make a mistake. When they do engage it is all over in a few seconds and whoever made a huge mistake loses; usually both sides make equally sized mistakes and the result is a draw and both remax asap to do it again.
That "aggression at all costs" is really a bad part of the design of the game ... but sadly they dont see it.
On August 25 2013 12:50 tomastaz wrote:
People give David Kim a lot of crap but he knows his stuff
He talks a lot, but there is no "quality control" which really questions their own decisions or else they would have changed their general priorities a long time ago.
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In what way has TvP changed since even the beginning of SC2?
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On August 25 2013 16:34 a176 wrote:
In what way has TvP changed since even the beginning of SC2?
The number of bases both players take has increased.
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it's an absolutely awful response coming from dkim, sure he's a good player, but the way he avoids giving committed answers feels like a cop-out to me.
SC2, especially for terran players, is in danger of no longer being a strategy game. There is a grand total of 1 overarching strategy with slight variations. TvZ is a farce and it's probably the headline matchup of the game (sorry brotosses). Against Z it is biomine and against P it is bio viking.
Compare that to the wealth of TvZ styles we had in BW:
SK Terran (pure bio)
Bio-vulture into Mech transition (late Flash style)
Pure Mech
2 port wraith
Fast vessel irradiate
Valkonic
All of these, to my knowledge, have been viable and used up to 2012. Sure, some are more risky, but with a specialist using them, all are equally deadly on the right maps.
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On August 25 2013 12:50 NewSunshine wrote:Show nested quote +On August 25 2013 10:03 Lukeeze[zR] wrote:On August 25 2013 09:31 Mehukannu wrote:
Wish they would just make mech viable so the terran match-ups would actually get interesting enough to watch. Seriously fed up with bio now. I really don't see why blizzard is keeping their head up in their asses regarding the whole mech issues. Bio is really, really boring after you have seen it, oh, like, say, three fucking years. T_T As long as the % are somewhat balanced, blizzard won't gamble with big patches that might turn their very own WCS tournaments into a farce. That's my guess. It runs the risk of becoming a farce as is, however. Where they direct the metagame is their decision, and theirs to screw up, but it shouldn't be difficult to see what needs improvement. I'm surprised that their opinion is so strong regarding the status quo, however, pretty telling for me at least.
I agree, but we've known the devs and their way of thinking for a long time now, their reaction and passivity should be expected. I reckon things are going to remain stale until Blizzcon/WCS grand final, after that if nothing is done then it's sad :<
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On August 25 2013 01:16 Coffee Zombie wrote:Show nested quote +On August 25 2013 00:50 Cloak wrote:On August 24 2013 19:18 Coffee Zombie wrote:On August 24 2013 19:04 Zarahtra wrote:On August 24 2013 18:56 Teoita wrote:On August 24 2013 18:49 Zarahtra wrote:Despite the HotS changes to promote more harassment and multiple engagements, Protoss is still the race that encourages deathball play, especially in PvZ. While the warp prism buff is a step in the right direction, is Blizzard considering any other options to change this often-complained about aspect of Protoss?
DK: Not just Protoss in specific, just across the board every single race should have more harassment options, the more skirmishes there are in a given matchup, I think the better. And the reason is because like back in WoL right before HotS came out, if you take any matchup for example PvT, we saw many very similar games because Protoss players are defending drops so well that both players just macro up and don't fight for like 15 minutes and the game ends in 2 or 3 big engagements, if you watch 10 PvT games even on different maps, you see exact same games over and over again. We don't think that's a good thing, across the board we try to do our best to make sure we have more skirmishes. For Protoss specifically we currently don't have plans to change anything right now, but if Protoss or any race appear to be a little weak, the way we want to buff those races is by adding more options to be more on the aggressive. I just... buff gateway units so they don't get totally decimated by bio/zerg and nerf colossi/hts. Then protoss doesn't need to deathball. Protoss is just way to reliant on their power units to bring the pain while the gateway units are mostly just to tank. Sadly nothing will be done until LotV at first You can't do that without making 3-7gate timings with blink or charge overpowered as hell. It's a much more complex issue. It's just not the commute time. It's the frontloaded production screwing up reinforcement dynamics and allowing the construction of production buildings way, way late (compare gate=>tranform=>get unit to getting the first units out of a reactored rax or getting a hatch up and having the first inject wave finally spawn), it's the ability to proxy nearly everything for 100 without leaving your base defenseless, it's not being able to ambush reinforcements or camp production. It breaks just about every fundamental logistics-side thing games like this are built upon, and that cause things to make sense. While the reinforcement aspect is altered, there is a replacement dynamic of pylon power, which should be fleshed out. If pylon power became more integral, it'd limit the all-innish tendency of Warpgate. If it was good enough, then Planetary Nexus would be unnecessary. Then we can return to Terran and Zerg early aggression against P balanced with the idea of P being able to aggress too. The power mechanic is binary enough to not really matter. You have power, or you don't, so pretty hard to see how that could be used to balance warp gates. And even then, it's just more complications that muddle the very basic rules and heuristics which should be natural.
Well, it's simple, start to make standing in Pylon power give you something, making the Warpgate timings more limited to Pylon range. The dance of aggression and defending the Pylon is most prominent in PvZ. It is based on a binary objective power or no power, but it still is a reinforcement vulnerability with a complex way of maintaining that objective.
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On August 24 2013 19:19 Mutineer wrote:
What I really do not undestand why SC2 have to have that mach mechanic component. It takes about 100 apm minimum only to produce, build, research resonably well. Which majority of non proffecionals have less then that apm, It greatly reduce enjoyement of game for non profecionals. So, why not reduce Mechanic APM needed? It is relativelly simple to do.
Example: Make quied units use no resources untill they are in production. Make it possible to autocats production. Add easy priority order of spending resource. For zerg, make injects and creep autocast, but do remove infinite range creep.
Make SCV, probes autocats. Add easy way to see total amount scv/probe drones we have. I am sure there some way to automate zerg production too.
This few changes will reduce mechanic for non profeccionals, makes game more fun for them as they will be able to spend more time doing fun stuff, like micro there units. Pro can still execise there A and S fingers.
For mech, I believe simpel reduction medibac volume of tanks to 2 and hellions to 1 will greatly increase mech mobility, making them more valible in all mach ups and do not change T-T too mach.
Your too much ahead of the curve unfortunately. Eventually you will likely be prooven right as the difficulty of the macro element is bad for esport games, however people are too unlogical too see this and thus you are receiving this type of criticism.
But it needs to be a step-by-step thing. It can't be done drastically.
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On August 25 2013 12:50 tomastaz wrote:
People give David Kim a lot of crap but he knows his stuff
Jaedong vs. First. First's Sentries get caught horribly, horribly offguard. Complete surprise, lings already all over them. FclickFclickFclick. Oh, now the lings are dead.
The ability to just flat out turn good positioning and surprise into bad positioning and being dead is horrendous. Knows his stuff, no.
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On August 25 2013 19:23 Emzeeshady wrote:Show nested quote +On August 25 2013 09:59 Billinator wrote:On August 24 2013 19:19 Mutineer wrote:
What I really do not undestand why SC2 have to have that mach mechanic component. It takes about 100 apm minimum only to produce, build, research resonably well. Which majority of non proffecionals have less then that apm, It greatly reduce enjoyement of game for non profecionals. So, why not reduce Mechanic APM needed? It is relativelly simple to do.
Example: Make quied units use no resources untill they are in production. Make it possible to autocats production. Add easy priority order of spending resource. For zerg, make injects and creep autocast, but do remove infinite range creep.
Make SCV, probes autocats. Add easy way to see total amount scv/probe drones we have. I am sure there some way to automate zerg production too.
This few changes will reduce mechanic for non profeccionals, makes game more fun for them as they will be able to spend more time doing fun stuff, like micro there units. Pro can still execise there A and S fingers.
For mech, I believe simpel reduction medibac volume of tanks to 2 and hellions to 1 will greatly increase mech mobility, making them more valible in all mach ups and do not change T-T too mach. First of all, this is a terrible suggestion. Starcraft II stands apart from other games due to the learning curve and that it actually takes hard work and skill to win. I also like how you pulled that 100 apm number out of your ass. Seeing how you are one of those people that plays at under 100 apm, you have no fucking idea how much apm you need to macro. It seems like half the people want SC2 to be easier to play (ala LOL) and half want it to be harder to play (ala BW).
macro is too easy right now, there's no challenge maxing out and what's more, 2 maxed out armies poking at each other is just awful to watch (see TvP).
APM I think has very little correlation to macro at the top level, flash has 50~ APM lower than JD but no one else can produce armies so fast it feels like cheating. Meanwhile JD devotes more of his APM to micro. 2 different styles, 2 different races, both very dominant. This gives the game depth.
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On August 24 2013 23:48 Qikz wrote:Show nested quote +you DO realize Terran mech vs Protoss doesn't HAVE to be viable right? You can't have every option available to you, that's making your own race op. Bio in BW vs Protoss wasn't really viable except for few early game cheeses, and TvP in BW was the most balanced matchup we've seen ever.
That's like me complaining I can't go full sky toss vs. Terran. I've said this before and I'll say it again but this is such a ridiculous stance to take. Do you not want players to have options? Making mech viable makes agressive toss a lot more viable itself and it gives carriers a place in the game. Why the hell do you want to watch the same game every single game? Atleast in BW there was variation of meching styles, both offensive and defensive worked vs Toss and there was plenty Toss could do against it depending on the map. There's one bio style that works. It's get a fast natural into third base into attack and hope you kill the toss before he gets all his AOE. It's boring as hell. Why can't we atleast as spectators and players have options?
Taeja proved once again very publicly this time that that late game T bio viking ghost can be extremely powerful vs. P. He stomped Rain into the ground. The Whirlwind game especially showed how powerful mass ghost viking can be when played well with constant vision with scans of the Protoss. He made Ghosts look completely broken.
Variety: It should also be mentioned that in that supreme late game scenario it started to play a bit like a tank siege with full on engagements being delayed and delayed while chipping with nukes to inch in.
Next time I would like Rain to use 2 or 3 Oracles to get a similar vision read on his Terran enemy to allow for better movements and potentially HT micro.
Variety: We also saw a nice PvT that went to Tempests (not Taeja vs Rain... First vs. somebody right? I forget). If the Terran had scouted soon enough or been in a better position he could have countered with Ravens, further mixing up the compositions.
Variety: When Taeja was stomping Rain and killing all observers, he perhaps had an opportunity to build and use a couple of cloaked banshees to snipe HTs.
HotS has been out for not even a year. There are a ton more things to be seen as players get better.
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I cannot understand why everyone is crying for Mech in every MU. Imho Mech is extremly boring to watch, and that is what Blizzard don't want to have...
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On August 25 2013 19:56 Coffee Zombie wrote:Show nested quote +On August 25 2013 12:50 tomastaz wrote:
People give David Kim a lot of crap but he knows his stuff Jaedong vs. First. First's Sentries get caught horribly, horribly offguard. Complete surprise, lings already all over them. FclickFclickFclick. Oh, now the lings are dead. The ability to just flat out turn good positioning and surprise into bad positioning and being dead is horrendous. Knows his stuff, no.
There is just nothing he can do without breaking the game
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On August 26 2013 06:22 Akaann wrote:
I cannot understand why everyone is crying for Mech in every MU. Imho Mech is extremly boring to watch, and that is what Blizzard don't want to have...
Mech itself may not be the most interesting but the plays used against mech are quite cool making it fun to have in the game. If anything it would just be nice for diversity.. TvP and TvZ are completely dull at the moment and David Kim is an idiot not seeing this... TvP is just always some sort of FE into MMM with ghosts/viking eventually trying to do damage through drops and multiprongs the variation is just very little, TvZ same thing with mines replacing ghosts/vikings. There may be quite a bit of action (though not really in TvP) but it's still quite stale.
Having mech play would open up possibilities, in TvP for example you'd see heavy immortal armies, blink harassment, stargate play and a cool role reversal where protoss actually wants to harass and force small fights while terran defends more. Plus it's a cool option for lower level players who wish to play more positional/macro intensive instead of the high micro style of bio.
In TvZ you'd get to see roaches, vipers, swarmhosts, overlord doomdrops, nydus etc, many of which are just useless now against bio. Sure mech could be cooler in itself but the fact mech play makes the other race play so much different and more interesting is good enough to have it be a big part. Ideally though mech is made good as real mech with tanks a vital part and thor's just in the role of goliath, only as neccesary AA. At the moment though mech just seems best as mass hellbat with a few tanks and mostly thor, incredibly boring.
David Kim is full of himself though thinking all matchups are really cool now. He doesn't want to do any real changes and not ruin the precious balance. In the meantime basically all hots units are gimmicky except the widowmine (which arguably breaks TvZ a little) and mech is still gone. The only great HotS changes were some of the nerfs to old units removing the dreaded infestor/bl combo from play.
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On August 26 2013 20:35 Markwerf wrote:
David Kim is full of himself though thinking all matchups are really cool now. He doesn't want to do any real changes and not ruin the precious balance. In the meantime basically all hots units are gimmicky except the widowmine (which arguably breaks TvZ a little) and mech is still gone. The only great HotS changes were some of the nerfs to old units removing the dreaded infestor/bl combo from play.
Actually Blizzard is aware that terran match-ups have become stale to spectate.
It's just that they screwed mech so badly it can't be fixed outside of a expansion.
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On August 26 2013 23:01 pmp10 wrote:Show nested quote +On August 26 2013 20:35 Markwerf wrote:
David Kim is full of himself though thinking all matchups are really cool now. He doesn't want to do any real changes and not ruin the precious balance. In the meantime basically all hots units are gimmicky except the widowmine (which arguably breaks TvZ a little) and mech is still gone. The only great HotS changes were some of the nerfs to old units removing the dreaded infestor/bl combo from play. Actually Blizzard is aware that terran match-ups have become stale to spectate. It's just that they screwed mech so badly it can't be fixed outside of a expansion.
What changes are so big that couldn't be done in a HOTS patch?
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On August 26 2013 23:11 Sapphire.lux wrote:Show nested quote +On August 26 2013 23:01 pmp10 wrote:On August 26 2013 20:35 Markwerf wrote:
David Kim is full of himself though thinking all matchups are really cool now. He doesn't want to do any real changes and not ruin the precious balance. In the meantime basically all hots units are gimmicky except the widowmine (which arguably breaks TvZ a little) and mech is still gone. The only great HotS changes were some of the nerfs to old units removing the dreaded infestor/bl combo from play. Actually Blizzard is aware that terran match-ups have become stale to spectate. It's just that they screwed mech so badly it can't be fixed outside of a expansion. What changes are so big that couldn't be done in a HOTS patch?
flipping the immortal, viper and swarm host upside down
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Haters gonna hate. As someone who's much happier with HotS than I was with WoL, and who enjoys pretty much every matchup at this point, I'm glad that they're not looking at any radical redesigns, and I think the game is moving in the right direciton.
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On August 26 2013 23:01 pmp10 wrote:Show nested quote +On August 26 2013 20:35 Markwerf wrote:
David Kim is full of himself though thinking all matchups are really cool now. He doesn't want to do any real changes and not ruin the precious balance. In the meantime basically all hots units are gimmicky except the widowmine (which arguably breaks TvZ a little) and mech is still gone. The only great HotS changes were some of the nerfs to old units removing the dreaded infestor/bl combo from play. Actually Blizzard is aware that terran match-ups have become stale to spectate. It's just that they screwed mech so badly it can't be fixed outside of a expansion.
I don't think mech needs any big changes to be viable. The tools are there, but the tanks suck so bad in direct engagements that is not even funny. The excessive counters from protoss (Immortal) and zerg (Viper/Swarmhost) don't really help mech all that much either.
EDIT: Actually don't think the tempest are an excessive counter now that I think about it.
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On August 26 2013 23:14 awesomoecalypse wrote:
Haters gonna hate. As someone who's much happier with HotS than I was with WoL, and who enjoys pretty much every matchup at this point, I'm glad that they're not looking at any radical redesigns, and I think the game is moving in the right direciton.
Yeah, dropping the S from the RTS is a really good direction for terran match-ups.
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On August 26 2013 23:14 19Meavis93 wrote:Show nested quote +On August 26 2013 23:11 Sapphire.lux wrote:On August 26 2013 23:01 pmp10 wrote:On August 26 2013 20:35 Markwerf wrote:
David Kim is full of himself though thinking all matchups are really cool now. He doesn't want to do any real changes and not ruin the precious balance. In the meantime basically all hots units are gimmicky except the widowmine (which arguably breaks TvZ a little) and mech is still gone. The only great HotS changes were some of the nerfs to old units removing the dreaded infestor/bl combo from play. Actually Blizzard is aware that terran match-ups have become stale to spectate. It's just that they screwed mech so badly it can't be fixed outside of a expansion. What changes are so big that couldn't be done in a HOTS patch? flipping the immortal, viper and swarm host upside down
I think with smart changes they can do it. After all, with just one patch they managed to destroy WOL, now they could use that power for good instead of evil.
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On August 26 2013 23:22 Mehukannu wrote:Show nested quote +On August 26 2013 23:14 awesomoecalypse wrote:
Haters gonna hate. As someone who's much happier with HotS than I was with WoL, and who enjoys pretty much every matchup at this point, I'm glad that they're not looking at any radical redesigns, and I think the game is moving in the right direciton. Yeah, dropping the S from the RTS is a really good direction for terran match-ups.
Anyone who thinks there is no strategy involved in playing Terran at the highest level is an idiot.
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On August 26 2013 23:41 awesomoecalypse wrote:Show nested quote +On August 26 2013 23:22 Mehukannu wrote:On August 26 2013 23:14 awesomoecalypse wrote:
Haters gonna hate. As someone who's much happier with HotS than I was with WoL, and who enjoys pretty much every matchup at this point, I'm glad that they're not looking at any radical redesigns, and I think the game is moving in the right direciton. Yeah, dropping the S from the RTS is a really good direction for terran match-ups. Anyone who thinks there is no strategy involved in playing Terran at the highest level is an idiot.
Let's see what kind of different strategical choices terran has in both TvZ and TvP.
Hmm, seems like it is bio and, oh, more bio. I sure hope my opponent doesn't guess that I am going bio.
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On August 27 2013 00:46 Mehukannu wrote:Show nested quote +On August 26 2013 23:41 awesomoecalypse wrote:On August 26 2013 23:22 Mehukannu wrote:On August 26 2013 23:14 awesomoecalypse wrote:
Haters gonna hate. As someone who's much happier with HotS than I was with WoL, and who enjoys pretty much every matchup at this point, I'm glad that they're not looking at any radical redesigns, and I think the game is moving in the right direciton. Yeah, dropping the S from the RTS is a really good direction for terran match-ups. Anyone who thinks there is no strategy involved in playing Terran at the highest level is an idiot. Let's see what kind of different strategical choices terran has in both TvZ and TvP. Hmm, seems like it is bio and, oh, more bio. I sure hope my opponent doesn't guess that I am going bio.
Unit composition ≠ strategy. For instance, Bomber and Polt don't have the same way at all to play bio in TvP.
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On August 27 2013 00:46 Mehukannu wrote:Show nested quote +On August 26 2013 23:41 awesomoecalypse wrote:On August 26 2013 23:22 Mehukannu wrote:On August 26 2013 23:14 awesomoecalypse wrote:
Haters gonna hate. As someone who's much happier with HotS than I was with WoL, and who enjoys pretty much every matchup at this point, I'm glad that they're not looking at any radical redesigns, and I think the game is moving in the right direciton. Yeah, dropping the S from the RTS is a really good direction for terran match-ups. Anyone who thinks there is no strategy involved in playing Terran at the highest level is an idiot. Let's see what kind of different strategical choices terran has in both TvZ and TvP. Hmm, seems like it is bio and, oh, more bio. I sure hope my opponent doesn't guess that I am going bio.
There's a lot more to strategy than choice of tech tree and composition. 90% of TvPs in BW were mech, that didn't mean no strategy was involved.
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On August 24 2013 18:46 myRZeth wrote:
great questions, awful answers
This
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EPT
