Community Feedback Update - March 8 - Page 14

On March 10 2016 18:28 Grumbels wrote:

afaik David Kim has a bachelor in CS and he worked at balancing Dawn of War before being hired by Blizzard. I think that for a long time Blizzard has been in a position where they do not have to hire people without experience in the industry. For instance, multiple members of the SC2 team have their roots in C&C games. Because it was obvious that they needed someone to balance Starcraft II, Blizzard looked around and discovered two people with previous experience balancing a well received multiplayer RTS game in David Kim and Matt Cooper, maybe the only two people in the world with this background.

source:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthew-cooper-42b9388
https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-kim-90b45a6

By the way, I don't think that being the lead multiplayer designer for Starcraft 2 for the latter half of the development taxes one's creative ability that much, especially if you take into account the community feedback and suggestions that arise and can substitute for original ideas. If you think of a spectrum ranging from on one end: creative, artistic and intuitive temperament and on the other hand rigorous, analytical, logical temperament, then I'm sure that the role of balance designer draws heavily on skills and mindsets associated with the latter end of the spectrum. For instance, I've often thought that Blizzard should pick a random person with a PhD in theoretical physics to balance their games. And maybe that's slightly excessive, but at least it proves high analytical ability.

On March 09 2016 08:20 coolman123123 wrote:
I think that when you don't seperate Bio and mech, every game will be 90% MMM with a few extra units splashed in. Just like protoss, there is no unique or differing strategies, just a ball of units consisting of varying amount of the same shit. No diversity.

On March 11 2016 11:38 Cyro wrote:
@"He has only shown to be very good at balancing numbers and statistics."

We've had some pretty awful stats in the last 4 months

ZvP: 70-35 (66.7%)
ZvP: 22-16 (57.9%)
ZvP: 71-53 (57.3%)
ZvP: 79-74 (51.6%)
ZvP: 40-39 (50.6%)
ZvP: 53-55 (49.1%)
ZvP: 94-107 (46.8%)

From TLPD.

This includes before and after the map changes, since it's a pain to filter them out right now and makes sample size a lot smaller.

3 of those maps within any reasonable margin for error. Zerg won 1.13x more overall.

Those extra wins disproportionately come from the three zerg favored maps where they're winning 1.34, 1.38 and 2x more

I'm interested in before/after stats for the maps if anyone has them

Obviously, if there is a clear balance issue, we would definitely have to address it, but

On March 11 2016 08:35 Spyridon wrote:
He has shown absolutely no plan as to where he wants to bring the series in to the future. If he did, then people might be willing to put up with phases of the game not feeling satisfactory, as it is simply growing pains while transitioning to the final destination that will be much better in the end.

But he doesn't have a plan. Hell, he doesn't even know what he wants to do with anything he has mentioned in the community updates lately. He doesn't know what to do with medivac - balance-wise or design wise. These types of mechanics would be very easy to make a decision if there was a direction plotted out, as you can simply say "does this mechanic fit what we want SC2 to be in the future?". But without that, it comes down to whether its "cool" or "fun to watch" - things that a designer should NOT be putting ahead of whether the game is FUN or not.

He can say how he thinks it's "cool" that 9 different map types offers various type of gameplay. But what is his plan on balancing around that? He hasn't even stated a balance perspective on that. It's common knowledge that maps favor certain races, and BW has proven maps have a drastic enough effect on balance that you can balance the game simply on maps alone. But you can't do that with 9 different archetypes of maps like the image they showed recently! Will it be statistically acceptable to him if Zerg is OP on some maps but weak on other, as long as it totals 50% win in the end?? Does anyone think that will be well-received by players at all? Or that it will feel fair that player have to gamble with map choice, and have that in the back of their mind if they lose a tournament due to a map they are weak on?

Something like balancing numbers of units, or making gateway stronger vs bio - those type of things is where David Kim has shown some skill at. But many of the units in the game currently have severe design issues. Cyclone, SH, etc, even Hydra have had issues ever since WoL (except in ZvP). Those type of changes require the actual design to be changed to provide them more of a fitting purpose in the metagame.

All of these go beyond balance, in to design issues. That is not a place that David Kim has a history, nor has he shown any skill in that area. He can make a unit balanced, but he doesn't know how to make a unit fun. It needs to be fun, then you can balance it. If it's not fun without being OP, then there's a fundamental design issue.

He has only shown to be very good at balancing numbers and statistics. The person in charge of SC2 needs to be skilled in improving the design of the game... then let David Kim do his job with what he is given by the design lead. David Kim shouldn't be at the helm.

On March 12 2016 01:07 JimmyJRaynor wrote:


your complaint about being directionless is all apart of the Blizzard philosophy of total anarchy and confusion. Hence their chosen names Chaos Studios and Blizzard Entertainment. People are great a ripping to shreds every form of communication DK creates. The rob pardo method is to not communicate at all. Blizzard's chaotic development methods are vulnerable to harsh criticism and Pardo's decision to keep the lid shut was a good one.

how much of a design background does Greg Black have? how much design background did Pardo have when he started with Blizzard? Blizzard is great at recognizing and nurturing game design talent. if he were Jay-Wilson-bad he'd be long gone.

there is no money to pay a guy of Pardo's calibre to work on the game. so David Kim is what we get and he just ain't as good as Rob Pardo and no amount of complaining is going to change that fact. SC/RTS is Blizzard's #6 priority .. the franchise is 18 years old and has yet to generate a billion dollars.

Look for Blizzard's next big exploration/investment into the SC Universe to be outside of the PC-RTS genre.

On March 12 2016 01:28 Spyridon wrote:


First off, Jay Wilson isn't gone, he was moved to another project which is still unannounced.

Second, their name has no indication of how their business actually performs.

Third, yeah Blizzard has had some great designers in the past. And they lived up to expectations. What expectations has DK lived up to?

Noone wants to change the fact - noone can change DK. But if you could plainly see DK simply is not very good, then management should also be able to see this, and should take steps to correct the problem.

You keep saying the franchise has yet to generate a billion (which can't even be proven), but keep leaving out the fact that if you consider their eSports performance rather than their sales figures alone, they have generated well over a billion.

Regardless, SC2 alone has made hundreds of millions of dollars. They can easily hire a designer worth a damn if they decided to.

On March 12 2016 01:28 Spyridon wrote:
You keep saying the franchise has yet to generate a billion (which can't even be proven), but keep leaving out the fact that if you consider their eSports performance rather than their sales figures alone, they have generated well over a billion.