David Ting leaves Blizzard, SF office relocate to Irvine -…

On January 26 2014 22:53 Liquid`Ret wrote:


yup, this is blizzards outdated vision that doesn't actually work with esports at all.

On January 25 2014 21:07 Plansix wrote:

Translation: what's wrong with wanting someone unable to pay their bills and losing the health insurance?

When you say you want someone fired over balance in a video game, it makes you look heartless and entitled.

On January 27 2014 01:30 BronzeKnee wrote:


Plansix come on man.

Let's imagine you're the owner of a video game company (which is a business . Would you really say "well I can't fire my balance designer despite the fact my game has trash balance because it'd be heartless and entitled"? Really?

Do you know how business works? You don't perform, and you're gone. That's life. Businesses exist to make money, and they do so by releasing quality products. It isn't heartless and entitled to fire people who don't add quality to the product. If you don't add quality, you should be fired because you need to get better.

Should David Kim be fired? Well, the community has said increase Siege Tank attack speed for how long before he did? Said to buff Hydras for how long? Said Warhounds were crap for how long before he did anything? How long was the 1-1-1 imba? How long was the 4 gate a problem? And how bout those Hellbats on release, I remember just about everyone warning him it was BFH 2.0 (especially in TvT) and of course it turned out that way. I can quote posts and the dates. It was months.

He just doesn't get it. The same solutions he implemented were given to him months before he implemented them. Has he thought any amazing or graceful balance solutions? None that stick out to me. Photon Overcharge stopped the 4 gate, but caused more problems than it solved.

Months.

If your competitors are months ahead of you, you go out of business in the business world.

On January 27 2014 02:00 Wingblade wrote:


The design team can't take everything the community says seriously. For every person that has correctly predicted problems or made good suggestions there are 10 who have some ridiculous inane broken idea to give their race free wins. Everything the design people look at from the community has to be analyzed extremely critically and carefully before even putting it into a balance test map. You can't take everything in the community seriously as a designer

On January 27 2014 02:01 BronzeKnee wrote:


Sure. And that's why a good designer can think and weed out bad ideas from good ones. A good designer doesn't even let the idea of the Warhound out of his head, let alone spend money developing it, testing it, and then releasing it to Beta, where people simply say, " why does this unit have no counters... and isn't this just a Factory Marauder that makes Mech play like Bio?" And the design team is like "oh, we didn't think of that, better take it out of the game because we are out ideas for it!" Really? That isn't the sign of a good design team.

A good designer doesn't let the 1-1-1 dominate PvT or the 4 Gate dominate PvP for months, if not years.

And we can qualitatively analyze their decisions, and fact is, they aren't doing well. It be'd one thing if these problems were incredibly hard to solve and thus it took them months to come up creative and graceful solutions. But most of their good balance changes come months after the community suggests them. And after the "great design team" tried things that had failed. That isn't a sign of success.

It is a sign of failure.

On January 27 2014 02:21 ETisME wrote:

many people liked the warhound and wanted tweaks instead of a removal.

It's easy to say that's a bad idea, how could they think of that.
But you need to go back to the beta to see how many things they have tried to make the units good, look at mothershipcore and oracle for example.

You are also forgetting that blizzard tends to act harshly on things that they see as a problem, such as mass snipe and they slow down on some other changes, such as the hellbat nerf.
quite a few people have said 1-1-1 was defendable but only difficult because of the map.
both PvP and 1-1-1 were solved more or less with that very one patch, the immortal buff.

you can see how blizzard know which one they wanted to fix right away and which one they wanted to give it more time to see how it goes while searching for the right way to patch.

On January 26 2014 16:25 XiaoJoyce- wrote:
Who is David Ting? What is so special about him?

On January 27 2014 02:52 BronzeKnee wrote:


Yes many people did want the Warhound tweaked. But Blizzard was incapable of it, because the idea was too terrible to fix. The product of a bad design team.

I didn't even mention when they acted harshly. Or the fact that the map pool saved us from the 1-1-1 (not the Immortal buff) and the Roach max versus Protoss. Maps these days have to support so many features in order to actually balance the game, it limits map design.

I'd say the Oracle was a success, however the MSC is a failure. As a Protoss player, I think is far too strong defensively early. It has to do so much damage because of how tanky early Protoss units are to stop the 4 Gate, but they should have made it only damage shields and air units, slow units, and drain energy. That'd help versus improved drops and Mutas, stop the 4 gate, and generally just be better. The damage it does is too strong early versus the low HP units of Terran and Zerg. It makes the game boring.

On January 27 2014 12:27 Wombat_NI wrote:
How did this go to David Kim bashing?

On January 27 2014 01:30 BronzeKnee wrote:


Plansix come on man.

Let's imagine you're the owner of a video game company (which is a business ). Would you really say "well I can't fire my balance designer despite the fact my game has trash balance because it'd be heartless and entitled"? Really?

Do you know how business works? You don't perform, and you're gone. That's life. Businesses exist to make money, and they do so by releasing quality products or providing quality services. It isn't heartless and entitled to fire people who don't add quality to the product. If you don't add quality, you should be fired because you need to get better.

Should David Kim be fired? Well, the community has said increase Siege Tank attack speed for how long before he did? Said to buff Hydras for how long? Said Warhounds were crap for how long before he did anything? How long was the 1-1-1 imba? How long was the 4 gate a problem? And how bout those Hellbats on release, I remember just about everyone warning him it was BFH 2.0 (especially in TvT) and of course it turned out that way. I can quote posts and the dates. It was months.

He just doesn't get it. The same solutions he implemented were given to him months before he implemented them. Has he thought any amazing or graceful balance solutions? None that stick out to me. Photon Overcharge stopped the 4 gate, but caused more problems than it solved. I just people by their actions. David Kim has done a mediocre job with balance and used foolish logic and excuses, like stating "Siege Tanks are boring" because they promote defensive play, but then he goes ahead and releases the Swarm Host thinking it will allow Zerg to be more aggressive in the mid game and finish their opponents. How is that working out?

Months.

If your competitors are months ahead of you, you go out of business in the business world.

On January 27 2014 13:22 FabledIntegral wrote:


You're saying it was months. Are you kidding? If it was only months, it's a good thing he didn't switch everything everytime someone whined. Because sometimes the solution presents itself. You can't keep changing something the moment something becomes imba. Have you seen SC:BW's winrate trends go up and down?

If anything, your argument only reinforces the point it's good people like you aren't in charge of balance...

On January 27 2014 12:27 Wombat_NI wrote:
How did this go to David Kim bashing?

I'm concerned that this is just the beginning before a full-scaling back of the WCS system and all that entails. Frankly I don't get why they hired so many of the IPL guys only not to use them, but then again the Blzizzard of tyhe modern era are somewhat mystifying to me.