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Morten : "Co-op More Popular Than PvP in Month One"
Hour Long Morten Interview.
https://simplecast.com/s/25c20529
Morten is Lead Producer. Sigaty is the boss.
SC2 in 2016 is treated as "software as a service". Lots more content and releases. Nova Covert Ops over the course of the year. All about Nova.
Morten joined Blizzard in 2014. Worked for Sony, EA, Activision, Victory Games. Worked for Activision in '94.
AAA teams sizes have grown a lot since 1999 when MOrten had his own company. 20 or 30 people could make
a AAA game and now it requires 100, 200 or more.
The SC2 community was asking Blizzard for micro-content unlike the C&C community
Morten arrived when LotV was part way through production. Team was still sharing a lot of engineering with Heroes and my first job was to carve out our own dedicated engineering team. So SC2 has its own Art, Design and now engineering separate from HotS.
Set priorities for new features for LotV and schedule things after LotV release. Gearing the team to micro-content rather than the giant big box release.
Morten has 2016 mapped out. We are talking about 2017 but a lot of those plans depend on feedback this year from players.
NOVA Covert Ops
personal, gritty perspective rather than a giant conflict. bring things back more to an SC1 level of conflict.
traditional RTS campaign content. stealth missions. introduce new gameplay mechanics and new technologies for Nova. SC:Ghost is not related to Nova:CovertOps due
to timeline differences.
Co-Op
in the first month Co-op was more popular than PvP. players want more open-ended content giving Co-op long term play value. We plan on fulfilling that request.
LotV Team Bigger in 2016
we've gone up in headcount after the game shipped due to creating just as much content over the course of the year as if we were making a big box game.
Multiplayer, Co-Op and Campaign audiences are mutually exclusive to a great extent. Morten is curious to see how much of the campaign audience returns when Nova releases. We think of these 3 audiences separately.
March - Nova Release ; April new Co-op Stuff ; May, June - PvP ladder revamp.
fascinating to see how polarized the mulitplayer community was leading up to the launch of the game about changes to macromechanics and we think our compromised approach was the correct response.
lots of debate about the 12 worker start during beta. not much negative feedback after launch about this.
Ladder Revamp
players don't have a sense of their progress. provide more segmentation for each league. Provide exposure to the numerical value of your PvP ranking. Players take a long time to actually improve their numerical value. THe term MMR was never used. A separate match-making ranking PER RACE is on the way.
Western players and Korean players often provide different feedback on PvP balance.
How Do You Keep Multiplayer Fresh?
David and the multiplayer team are open to introducing new units but there are a bunch of conditions attached to doing so.
Skins and VoicePacks later in the year. Memory limits make it tough to add new skins and must change the engine to accmodate this.
Archon Mode is a great way to train for multiplayer. Possibility of griefing made them decide not to have the system match you up with a player you do not know.
Starter Edition name will probably change later in the year.
Will SC2 Go F2P? giant meandering ramble which i can summarize in 1 word. No.
Raynor and Kerrigan are not main characters in the Nova Story.
1st year of LotV esports. Matches have been really great. TL.Net gets a mention for finding your way in the confusing SC2 esports landscape. Super excited to see where the esports scene goes from here.
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United States252 Posts
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This is good and uplifting news. Looking forward to seeing starcraft grow and be great. eSports is life!
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On March 19 2016 13:47 LastManProductions wrote:
Thanks for the write up!
Morten reveals a lot of cool info, therefore, if u guys end up making a better version of this thing feel free to close this thread 
thanks to Tim Morten for doing this interview.
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Fiddler's Green42661 Posts
I'm not surprised. Co-op is basically extra campaign missions and most SC2 players bought the game for the single-player.
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Pls no new units. 90% of the units added in HotS and LotV have been terrible.
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On March 19 2016 14:15 Charoisaur wrote:
Pls no new units. 90% of the units added in HotS and LotV have been terrible.
Hots maybe, but I think the new units + new economy in lotv made the game fresh and much more interesting. Ive been watching GSL now and it looks better than it has ever been imo.
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David and the multiplayer team are open to introducing new units but there are a bunch of conditions attached to doing so
Yes plz,delete Swarm host, cyclone.... if they continue underuse.
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On March 19 2016 14:15 Charoisaur wrote:
Pls no new units. 90% of the units added in HotS and LotV have been terrible.
Not for Zerg, they've been awesome .
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This interview is pretty awesome, I'm glad to see that the SC2 team is GROWING and they're commited to SC2 as a service.
I think a ton of people are confusing Ghost and the new Nova missions. I believe the ENTRIETY of Ghost is actually out in Novel form, so I don't think this idea of them forcing the Ghost storyline into the new missions is fair.
On March 19 2016 14:15 Charoisaur wrote:
Pls no new units. 90% of the units added in HotS and LotV have been terrible.
I think thats the idea. There were a lot of units that didn't work out, and maybe they won't work out down the road. Instead of a 2000 mentality of like "There's NO way they're not going to add units unless they can charge us for an expansion". They're basicaly commiting to taking out, replacing, adding units if the game needs it. I think that's a great place to stand.
Maybe a year from now they come to the conclusion the swarm host and the lurker can't really co-exist so they'll give us something new we can actually use. I think that's an awesome posistion, but maybe we'll have to fight with them because the new unit they suggest is ridiculous. ( I always find it silly how most of the units they promised at the HOTS/LOTV reveal did NOT make it into the game)
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Took me half the article to realise PvP didn't stand for protoss vs protoss.
anyway nice article. Cool to see they still have a big team on sc2.
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On March 19 2016 14:15 Charoisaur wrote:
Pls no new units. 90% of the units added in HotS and LotV have been terrible.
I think he mean they will delete retarded units and add new unit to replace its place
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Listening to it at the moment, but already I need to say:
If it is true that they were surprised that coop was/is very popular, then I think there marketing research is really failing somewhere. They made two SC2 games before, each selling millions of copies, while the PvP mode was one of the least played amongst the current competitive games. Very clearly players do not enjoy the SC2 competitive side, but grab every opportunity to play some highlevel RTS content. Such as campaign or coop.
Edit: Though Morten clarifies anyways they see different sorts of players. Dunno why he said they were surprised then...
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Morten views balancing multiplayer as an almost impossible task. Contrast that with many of the junior game designers in various forums acting like they can solve everything in 4 sentences.
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"lots of debate about the 12 worker start during beta. not much negative feedback after launch about this."
translation: 14 players left laddering on a good day, and all of them just love our design decisions.
Despite what he says, I'd be very surprised, if the majority of co-op players had no interest in pvp. They just don't want this pvp. And the guy just confirmed that they are the bigger demographic.
"Western players and Korean players often provide different feedback on PvP balance."
What a lucky coincidence then, that we have meaningful statistics and Blizzard certainly has even better ones. Listening to the community when it comes to game design might be worthwhile, but balancing must be done scientifically not by vox populi.
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Co-op is great but I wish they would speed up the rate of release on new missions.
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On March 20 2016 00:11 iamho wrote:
Co-op is great but I wish they would speed up the rate of release on new missions.
I think creating an editor package that allows you to create a co-op mission map would be the easiest solution here. Mapmakers would love it, players would get tons of content and all blizzard would have to do is playtest a few maps every month and then change the mappool for coop accordingly.
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On March 20 2016 00:02 Aiobhill wrote:
Despite what he says, I'd be very surprised, if the majority of co-op players had no interest in pvp. They just don't want this pvp. And the guy just confirmed that they are the bigger demographic.
there is an entire (2+ player) vs. (multiple AIs) thing going on throughout the RTS genre and those people don't want to go anywhere near PvP. its existed in several Blizzard RTS games and in several RTS games not made by Blizzard. All with the same characteristic of no interest in PvP. Co-op serves that market and I don't think the guy is bullshitting.
from the RTS games i've played it exists in CoH, Brood War, RA3, Kane's Wrath, and SC2.
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On March 19 2016 14:25 phodacbiet wrote:Show nested quote +On March 19 2016 14:15 Charoisaur wrote:
Pls no new units. 90% of the units added in HotS and LotV have been terrible. Hots maybe, but I think the new units + new economy in lotv made the game fresh and much more interesting. Ive been watching GSL now and it looks better than it has ever been imo.
Really not a fan of adding new units. New maps should be more than enough to keep the multiplayer fresh if the game is done well -and LotV is generally working quite alright.
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