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On March 13 2014 06:35 andrewlt wrote:
Not sure why SC2 team is like this when all other Blizzard teams view expansions as a hard reset starting from BW. BW, LoD, TFT, all WoW expansions and RoS contain drastic changes. HotS had fewest changes of any Blizz expansion pack to date, aside from the Sierra created Diablo 1 xpac. BW/TFT had major e-sports scenes so it's not like SC2 is unique in this regard.
I'm tempted to agree with you, but at the same time I'm not. WoW, Diablo, etc. aren't really solid comparisons because RTS games are different, but as far as WC3 is concerned...
TFT did bring a lot to RoC (one hero for each race, racial shop, some maps I believe, the EXP threshold on creeps, etc..) but the core elements of the game were the same. I wouldn't go as far as to call TFT a hard reset of RoC, but it was definitely an astonishing improvement that quickly let TFT become competitive. It's true that HotS was nowhere near that.
The sad truth is, Blizzard was never a company known for making bold changes. Don't get me wrong, SC, BW, RoC and TFT were all revolutions in their own rights in terms of gaming, but even in those games, Blizzard never made any major change to the core gameplay post-release. The same is happening with SC2, and while people were already whining on WC3 about Blizzard not making big changes, it is becoming a bigger issue now because you have other popular games doing huge tweaks to their gameplay to keep the players interested and to freshen things up.
DK once again didn't really provide any interesting answer. It's rather clear now that they do not intend to do any sort of overhaul, SC2 will stay vaguely the same. It's truly weird, as when you compare it to WC3, the expansions really do not hold up in terms of improvements and changes... I feel like Blizzard has grown too cautious, and wishes to stay away from unexplored grounds as much as possible.
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On March 13 2014 07:01 Ctone23 wrote:Show nested quote +On March 13 2014 06:56 Zealos wrote:
I like it. Basically it can be summed up: We hear your complaints. We are not changing anything. DKim has worked his ass off for years on SC2, give the guy a break. They made a judgement call on forcefields, SH, what have you, it is what is. He can't come out and say definitively what the next expansion will have, or what the plan is, it's way to early. At least he isn't slamming the door on potential ideas.
They can make mistakes, we are all human. But instead of owning up to their screw ups and fixing them, they choose to act like their shit don't stink and provide indirect band-aid fixes instead.
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On March 13 2014 07:02 vidium wrote:
Guess they cant change the core mechanics because of the players and the players want changes in the core mechanics...just great, things are moving forward i see, at Blizz HQ.
Anyways, nothing new, and something new wont be implemented in this expansion, kinda sad panda.
These AMAs are so disheartening. Until there's a legitimate RTS competitor Blizz can just do whatever they want. As much as I do not enjoy playing SC2 right now, I still play the game plenty. I just don't have another option.
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On March 13 2014 07:05 Esper wrote:Show nested quote +On March 13 2014 07:02 vidium wrote:
Guess they cant change the core mechanics because of the players and the players want changes in the core mechanics...just great, things are moving forward i see, at Blizz HQ.
Anyways, nothing new, and something new wont be implemented in this expansion, kinda sad panda. These AMAs are so disheartening. Until there's a legitimate RTS competitor Blizz can just do whatever they want. As much as I do not enjoy playing SC2 right now, I still play the game plenty. I just don't have another option.
Play starbow, they have a ladder client now. Go here to sign up for it:
http://starbowmod.com/
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Also, the danger of doing something like this is that it's not as easy as just changing something. We know the ins and outs of how this game works through years of experience. It would be very difficult to simply change a core part of the game to something completely different, and still have it as polished as what we have now.
I feel that the majority of players know that taking ff out would be a huge change and it would cause ripple effects across the balance of the game. But I feel people are ready to see/hear what that could look like.
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On March 13 2014 05:42 davidjayhawk wrote:
Yes free units can have a place in RTS, and free doesn't mean it's OP. There's a cost to using Locusts and it's not completely free. You still need to make Swarm Hosts. Say the damage of Locusts went down to 10% of what it is now, even though yeah it'll still be true that X number of Locusts will be able to kill units for "free," Swarm Hosts/Locusts will not be used much due to how cost inefficient they are.
This is by far the most infuriating part of these AMAs and DK in general... which is saying a lot because there's almost never cause for optimism. I cannot stand how he uses hyperbole to justify concepts. And on top of that he uses numbers to justify design, as per usual. I really wish people who have an actual voice would speak up about how apathetic Blizzard's actions are. It was refreshing when basically every pro called BS on the proxy-tempest PTR notes.
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On March 13 2014 07:05 Esper wrote:Show nested quote +On March 13 2014 07:02 vidium wrote:
Guess they cant change the core mechanics because of the players and the players want changes in the core mechanics...just great, things are moving forward i see, at Blizz HQ.
Anyways, nothing new, and something new wont be implemented in this expansion, kinda sad panda. These AMAs are so disheartening. Until there's a legitimate RTS competitor Blizz can just do whatever they want. As much as I do not enjoy playing SC2 right now, I still play the game plenty. I just don't have another option.
RTS are so difficult and time-consuming to develop that there probably will not be another one for a long time.
Face it, SC is great as it is, whether or not it could be better.
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Thank god Starbow doesn't require LotV, it doesn't sound they are gonna change any design related issues from the core game. 
Too bad, but I wasn't having high hopes anyway.
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I think SC2 is in a really good spot right now, but the way David Kim scream satisfaction of the game, it doesn't seem like they're trying hard to make it 'even better,' but more just trying to preserve it.
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Typical answers from him like from every interview since 2010.
Q: "X is op, are you going to do anything about it?"
A: "We are looking into and and we feel we need to see more games so we can actually say that is op." - after something being broken for more than 6 months.
Q: "Are you going to add normal battle net or daily tournaments that was done 10 years ago in WC3 and SC1?"
A: "I mean we are currently working on it as our priority for next expansion and should be up by 2017, because technology isn't there yet."
Q: "Swarm hosts are op can you fix them?"
A: "We talked to a lot of pros and decided to make completely useless change that doesn't even come close to fixing this problem, because we have no idea what we are doing anyway."
I don't understand how can someone be so clueless and stubborn after 4 years of SC2, every interview same "answers", no solution and no plans for future changes.
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This ama almost reminds me of Codemasters, leaving Grid 2 as it is and using all the feedback&suggestions to lock them in a safe, only to use those ideas in the followup game of the series years later.
For blizzard it also seems these expansions aren't seen as reinventions of the game, but just iterations of the concept they launched in 2010.
So when is Starcraft 3 going to come? 2020 ?
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Force field - we're discussing whether there needs to be more counters, but we believe Force Fields themselves, when used very well, are in a good place.
Units clumping naturally - This really rewards split micro which is one of the coolest micro moments SC2 provides. If units auto spread, marine splitting vs. Banelings won't be as cool to watch.
Players don't need to expand more than twice - We disagree. There's a lot of variety out there whether it's 2 base play, 3 base play, or constant expansion play. Take a look at ZvP: it's extremely common for Zerg to take the 4th base around the time Protoss takes the 3rd
Ok....nothing will change, too much ego
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They have to calm the crowd somehow so that's why they make these AMA. It's like in the medieval when they hang a bunch or random people claiming they were criminals just to calm the population 
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On March 13 2014 06:17 Liman wrote:Really ? WTF ?
Swarm hosts.
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Those Q&A answers might as well have been given 2 years ago, he's still saying the same old crap. He just gives some lipservice about how Blizzard's considering changes, but at the end of the day affirming that they're not going to make any fundamental changes to the core game design.
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On March 13 2014 07:23 ejozl wrote:
I think SC2 is in a really good spot right now, but the way David Kim scream satisfaction of the game, it doesn't seem like they're trying hard to make it 'even better,' but more just trying to preserve it.
It's almost a lose-lose situation for him, no one is ever going to be 100% happy with what he says. If he says what they're thinking to do with certain units, this community will absolutely have a knee-jerk reaction. The game works right now and it isn't so terribly unbalanced, so for him to be proud of the game is not bad. If they were satisfied with how the game is, they (the whole balance team not just David Kim) would not attempt to balance the game anymore, yet they still are. This is all a matter of perspective. They have to think about, what do we do to not completely unbalance the game and have it still be fun for the majority of players. They are walking a tight-rope right now and it's very hard to know when to make/take the right step so they have to tread carefully.
Also people have been asking for an AMA from the people like David Kim. He's done it and people continue to complain. A lot of people already knew that he was going to give broad answers like he gave. While it sucks that nothing is specific, people have to understand why it's not specific, because more than likely they still don't know what the specific answer is. It should be expected that he gave broad answers. It's awesome that he at least did the AMA and more would be better, but at the same time we would still get the same general replies until they knew what they were going to do.
Also for those asking about huge game design changes in LotV, that is a question that will not have a definitive answer until at most a year before the release of LotV.
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Why do people bother to do these? I mean it's nice of DK to take the time, but he never says anything concrete. I don't see the point is such Q&As.
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On March 13 2014 06:22 Xiphos wrote:
I wish people would stop using the word "considering" or "thinking about" when asking questions.
Do it explicit such as "Are you GOING to so and so."
When they confirm that they are considering or thinking about doing certain things asked by the communities. It means jack shit as oppose to actually doing it.
Same shit w/ "like to do this and that" as the answer.
All answers that doesn't state explicitly that they ARE GOING to change for the better are just as futile as not answering in the first place.
Looks like nothing substantial will be altered for LotV after all.
They do say they are going to do things. Its called patch notes. They come out when they release a patch and they have done things.
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"Force field - we're discussing whether there needs to be more counters, but we believe Force Fields themselves, when used very well, are in a good place."
This is the saddest answer of them all. It's been 4 years and we're asking for the exact same thing, and zero things have been done so far. They can "discuss" it all they want, but they're never gonna do anything.It's like they completely choose to ignore all the examples of how FFs are broken as hell and keep spitting the same crap about how they "beleive" in them.
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On March 13 2014 07:02 Survivor61316 wrote:
I wonder how difficult it would be to start a petition to get DK fired/demoted..? He is choking the life out of this game one step at a time due to sheer incompetence. Free units have a cost? 10+ Carriers a-moving isn't fun to watch, but 20+ SH chilling in the middle of the map not moving at all is? They will only put a change through if its "completely awesome" (gotta love corporate buzzwords)??
Honestly, this situation reminds me a lot of how Halo ended up dying as a competitive game and an esports scene.. The developers got all these crazy ideas in their heads that the only way to move forward was to completely change the game from one installment to the next (i.e. Halo Reach) instead of just sticking with tried and true methods. Blizzard seems to be under the same misconception as Bungie was at the end of their Halo career..they think SC is popular because they made it, when in reality they are popular because they made a good game.
About the bolded part: That is something I also adressed in the other Thread. According to DK Locusts are not free cause you have to pay/built the unit that spawns them. While it might be right in a technical way Im not sure what to think about this and how he can come up with something like that. Its like :"To make this you have to built this, No shit sherlock. Some other guy then said above my post that the cost is that you fall asleep on your keyboard  .
The part with the Carriers was a bit surprising but also shocking. Weren´t they more used as a target fire unit in BW? If thats what they think about Carriers what about true A-Move units like Roaches or Marauders?
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EPT
