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On April 18 2017 07:48 Grumbels wrote:
Balancing is just a trick, if you have seen it once you can do it over and over again. By now the pitfalls are all very well known, and David Kim didn't have to invent the wheel. Even so, he made plenty of mistakes over the years.
nah, the relationships between units as simple and Marines and Banelings are balanced only up to a certain APM. And the Designers have no idea how far pro players can take things. At 10,000 APM the relationship between Banelings and Marines is completely different from the balance at 100 APM with no real way to know how things will look until someone starts innovating in unimaginable ways.
which is why diverse race RTS games are rarely balanced.
Furthermore, DK was the lead multiplayer designer. Not just a balance guy.
David Kim did a great job. Blizzard knows how to hire, nurture and develop game design talent. If he sucked as much as some people in this thread are saying he'd be gone from Blizzard in months.
When Blizzard starts making lousy games i'll stop believing in their management team. So far, all their games are great.
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On April 18 2017 11:32 JimmyJRaynor wrote:Show nested quote +On April 18 2017 07:48 Grumbels wrote:
Balancing is just a trick, if you have seen it once you can do it over and over again. By now the pitfalls are all very well known, and David Kim didn't have to invent the wheel. Even so, he made plenty of mistakes over the years.
nah, the relationships between units as simple and Marines and Banelings are balanced only up to a certain APM. And the Designers have no idea how far pro players can take things. At 10,000 APM the relationship between Banelings and Marines is completely different from the balance at 100 APM with no real way to know how things will look until someone starts innovating in unimaginable ways. which is why diverse race RTS games are rarely balanced. Furthermore, DK was the lead multiplayer designer. Not just a balance guy. David Kim did a great job. Blizzard knows how to hire, nurture and develop game design talent. If he sucked as much as some people in this thread are saying he'd be gone from Blizzard in months. When Blizzard starts making lousy games i'll stop believing in their management team. So far, all their games are great.
I completely agree with you.
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so do we know who´s the new game design leader now?
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On April 18 2017 11:32 JimmyJRaynor wrote:Show nested quote +On April 18 2017 07:48 Grumbels wrote:
Balancing is just a trick, if you have seen it once you can do it over and over again. By now the pitfalls are all very well known, and David Kim didn't have to invent the wheel. Even so, he made plenty of mistakes over the years.
nah, the relationships between units as simple and Marines and Banelings are balanced only up to a certain APM. And the Designers have no idea how far pro players can take things. At 10,000 APM the relationship between Banelings and Marines is completely different from the balance at 100 APM with no real way to know how things will look until someone starts innovating in unimaginable ways. which is why diverse race RTS games are rarely balanced. Furthermore, DK was the lead multiplayer designer. Not just a balance guy. David Kim did a great job. Blizzard knows how to hire, nurture and develop game design talent. If he sucked as much as some people in this thread are saying he'd be gone from Blizzard in months. When Blizzard starts making lousy games i'll stop believing in their management team. So far, all their games are great.
This example hardly proves the point, because in fact Blizzard, along with the rest of the community, did not anticipate the development of marine micro changing the relationship with banelings. And we did end up with a lengthy period of terran domination before the infamous queen range buff that heralded the dawn of the infestor era. And the infestor is another example, where Blizzard initially considered changing the unit to something approaching its current strength, but decided not to because they didn't want to nerf zerg at a time when they were weak.
But trying to do the right thing and caving under community pressure, or failing to anticipate a development alongside the community hardly proves that Blizzard is smarter than us. I'll believe they're smarter than the Reddit Hivemind, but that's not saying much.
In any case, your example does illustrate why I said balancing was a repeatable trick. Blizzard, as professionals, ought to have known that unit relationships drastically change depending on various execution thresholds, and they ought to have monitored this possible development and evaluated how this would affect the balance long-term, and they ought to have incorporated in the design some structural aspects to make the balance of terran vs zerg more robust in light of future trends.
But that's what we can say in retrospect, and this seems an unfair standard to hold them by. Nevertheless, we are talking about late 2010 here, giving Blizzard ample time to learn and adjust their future methodology. I myself learned a lot from this, so that from this point on I analyzed every future unit suggestion for the potential for this sort of dynamic. If people on TL can do it, then so can Blizzard, and actually you frequently saw David Kim coming with similar comments about how they would keep a close eye on certain developments to see whether this or that race would improve their responses etc. And you would hear Blizzard talking about how offense is easier than defense, and how to take this into account when balancing and prioritizing certain things over others.
Balancing might be an art, but if it was someone's job to balance the game there is enough material there to fashion some sort of systematic approach. It's not like it requires extreme creativity, it's not like actual game design. RTS games might be complex, but you're hardly balancing against the entire game, your purview is merely the differences between races. In SC2 the races are still very similar, with similar economic models, similar upgrade paths and so on. That's all inherent in the design, it's hardly the same complexity as, idk, economic regulation and redistribution in complex societies.
Basically, to do a decent job at balancing (which DK did), requires just some awareness, common sense and dedication. And he has legions of time, he can constantly change the game if he wants to, revert previous changes, experiment with stupid changes on the PTR. The community would hardly notice if DK would go on holiday for a month while the win rates are slightly off, and in fact DK did spend a lot of time on balancing Heroes afaik without serious averse affects on SC2.
But like I said, the community (and to a certain extent Blizzard) has a myopic obsession with parity at the pro-level, since that's the most visible part of the balance, and that is what I'm talking about for the most part. An expanded concept of balance, which is separate from, but deeply integrated with, game design, and which also includes strategic diversity, depth, low level players, robustness of design etc. is of course much trickier to manage. But here I don't think DK necessarily did an amazing job, so that's a moot point.
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and to add, I want to mention one more aspect that I never talked about explicitly: the difference between playing in isolation versus a relatively stable metagame developed by constantly evolving competitive players. If you want to know the main difference between any of those other RTS games and Starcraft 2 it's this. If you travel back in time, even if you're armed with all sorts of tools and knowledge, you can not by yourself develop modern society, no matter how smart you are. There are almost no examples of scientists coming up with some sort of remarkable discovery completely in isolation, and every time some counter example is cited you'll find that there were some predecessors you just weren't aware of. For instance, calculus was developed by Newton, but was concurrently developed by Leibniz, proving the idea was "in the air", so to speak, and required an awareness of developments in mathematics. There is a similar example with Darwin and Wallace. And great artists always incrementally improve on their forebears, there is a reason that any music expert will be able to almost instantly date the era some piece of music was written, and that's because all music written in a certain time period shares certain commonalities.
The point is, virtually no one can achieve very much in isolation. But that's what happens when you have a game without a very notable online presence, you have people trying out strategies in isolation, wildly different approaches that can clash and produce unpredictable and unrepeatable results. I can name more effects: a lack of competitive drive meaning that people's fundamentals aren't very well developed, people constantly drifting in and out of the scene, all of this causing strategic trends to be essentially arbitrary and dependent on personal choice. Probably the most significant aspect of this is that most players don't even bother to play to win, they have no conception of what it means to play to win because they are burdened by things that served them well in the campaign, or by favored strategies or races.
Imagine that there is no professional scene, no serious ladder, and you just have people play Brood War as a hobby. This can be witnessed in the first few Korean tournaments: it's just bad maps, bad control and stupid rushes. There is nothing to balance, because people just do random things and win based on some sort of personal charm or intuition which is hardly repeatable.
But a mature, stable metagame is not like this at all. Anyone who has followed the scene knows this difference very well, that it's basically impossible to seriously balance the game without a large pool of good players with good fundamentals playing for money against each other over and over again. This is why all the recent popular multiplayer games are relatively well balanced, it's because when you look at games you can actually reason about them and infer some sort of generalized conclusion about the state of the balance. You can see that this or that hero is highly popular and always dominant late-game, and you know this is meaningful because talented professional players haven't found some sort of counter resource given a couple of months, so you come up with a targeted tweak to its late-game strength.
It's just a much more powerful model, because you have data to work with and your judgement is less likely to be off. To balance a game which is "underplayed" is unfathomably more complex, and to a degree almost meaningless.
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I have not always agreed with the decisions of David Kim but overall i think he did a very good job considering the terrible design decisions made by the original lead game designer Dustin Browder. If the game still has a significant fallowing to this day, it is thanks to David Kim and his team for all the efforts they made in to turning a fundamentally flowed game in to a decent one. I believe the if he were in charge from the beginning , SC2 would have looked very different today.
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On April 19 2017 03:43 Grumbels wrote:
But like I said, the community (and to a certain extent Blizzard) has a myopic obsession with parity at the pro-level, since that's the most visible part of the balance, and that is what I'm talking about for the most part. An expanded concept of balance, which is separate from, but deeply integrated with, game design, and which also includes strategic diversity, depth, low level players, robustness of design etc. is of course much trickier to manage. But here I don't think DK necessarily did an amazing job, so that's a moot point.
you'll never balance a diverse race RTS game at 50 different levels simultaneously.
i was always better with Race X than Race Y in Brood War no matter how much i practised with Race Y. Blizzard never did balance the game at my level of play in Brood War. Because I really like playing Race Y i just kept on playing and losing to some guys who i could defeat playing with Race X. The game was good enough that i just ignored the imbalance at my level.
Some people refuse to accept the reality of imbalance at their level of play and blame EA, Blizzard, Ensemble, Westwood, and Relic whenever they make a diverse race RTS game.
having played games by all these companies i'd say Blizzard is better at balance than these other companies. EALA came pretty close with Kane's Wrath and RA3... but it still was not as close to balanced as Blizzard's RTS games.
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On April 27 2017 02:12 JimmyJRaynor wrote:Show nested quote +On April 19 2017 03:43 Grumbels wrote:
But like I said, the community (and to a certain extent Blizzard) has a myopic obsession with parity at the pro-level, since that's the most visible part of the balance, and that is what I'm talking about for the most part. An expanded concept of balance, which is separate from, but deeply integrated with, game design, and which also includes strategic diversity, depth, low level players, robustness of design etc. is of course much trickier to manage. But here I don't think DK necessarily did an amazing job, so that's a moot point. you'll never balance a diverse race RTS game at 50 different levels simultaneously. i was always better with Race X than Race Y in Brood War no matter how much i practised with Race Y. Blizzard never did balance the game at my level of play in Brood War. Because I really like playing Race Y i just kept on playing and losing to some guys who i could defeat playing with Race X. The game was good enough that i just ignored the imbalance at my level.
But maybe that is not really an imbalance. Some people "click" with things that others do not. You can like some mechanic a lot more then another and become good at it. Even during WOL when i played mech every game i defeated Protoss players at my level, diamond, while i was playing a "poor" strategy. I liked it a lot and i became rather good at it. Does that mean that had i played bio i would have been top diamond and later masters as it was introduced? NO!. Because i did not like bio and it did not suit my qualities IMO.
Balance is a tricky thing for lower levels because it's about needing people to become good at the things that matter most to the race they play. If you play Zerg and you are a big fan of micro, but are terrible at macro and injecting, then you probably will not have much success. A low level Zerg with decent macro against a low level bio Terran with very poor Marine spliting vs Baneling will look super IMBA.
In BW and to a lesser extent SC2 Protoss is insane at very low level simply because of Zealots. Very poor macro on both sides, Protoss has the stronger basic unit. Is that IMBA? No. L2P basically. It's the same in every game that has different races, classes, etc.
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sc2 WoL was one of my favorite games  i rly liked his work (even when i am not in favor of the new lotv everyone loves)
lets see where he goes next
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On April 18 2017 16:31 KOtical wrote:
so do we know who´s the new game design leader now?
kerrigan obviously
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On April 08 2017 03:57 Musicus wrote:Show nested quote +On April 08 2017 03:56 Nerchio wrote:
I wonder what project he is going into, maybe a new RTS? On to SC:R. He will change the game from ground up!
No god please no lol.
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On April 08 2017 05:06 Meepman wrote:Show nested quote +On April 08 2017 05:03 xTJx wrote:
Hopefuly his substitute will be someone who looks more into the gameplay aspect before the dead even win-loss ratio. let's be real if there isn't a 50/50/50 everyone will complain about how they put gameplay before balance
No one cares if people complain.
Gameplay will always be more important than balance. Look at other games. Or sc2 in 2012/2013. It was far from balanced, but it's where we got huge tournaments and even small tournaments were hyped up! Like Ironsquid etc.
Only at the end of 2014/beginning of 2015 did players quit or retire more and more as the year went on. MC/First/Flash/MMA/JaeDong followed by sacsri/Taeja/MarineKing etc. etc.
Because while balance is important, the gameplay is what gets people into the game.
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On April 08 2017 20:40 DeadByDawn wrote:Show nested quote +On April 08 2017 08:40 Penev wrote:On April 08 2017 08:05 SetGuitarsToKill wrote:
I'm still going to blame David for things, even if they are things he had nothing to do with. He's the new Obama omg imagine the guy who's replacing him Oh f*ck, yeah. Excited, Terran walls are going to be huge, glorious, 40 feet high things that are impenetrable. Making Terran Great Again, and bombing the f*ck out of Syria Zerg. Terran base  Zerg
Terran will have yuge walls! Amazing Walls. Believe me, folks. And Zergs are gonna pay for it. |
(A supply depot built by a terran will now be taken from the zerg's resources)
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On May 07 2017 04:52 killerrj8 wrote:Show nested quote +On April 08 2017 05:06 Meepman wrote:On April 08 2017 05:03 xTJx wrote:
Hopefuly his substitute will be someone who looks more into the gameplay aspect before the dead even win-loss ratio. let's be real if there isn't a 50/50/50 everyone will complain about how they put gameplay before balance No one cares if people complain. Gameplay will always be more important than balance. Look at other games. Or sc2 in 2012/2013. It was far from balanced, but it's where we got huge tournaments and even small tournaments were hyped up! Like Ironsquid etc. Only at the end of 2014/beginning of 2015 did players quit or retire more and more as the year went on. MC/First/Flash/MMA/JaeDong followed by sacsri/Taeja/MarineKing etc. etc. Because while balance is important, the gameplay is what gets people into the game.
How on earth can you say that gameplay was better in 2012/2013 then most eras after that? Don't you remember the broodlord infestor and swarmhost eras?
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On April 18 2017 16:31 KOtical wrote:
so do we know who´s the new game design leader now?
This is what I can't believe we don't know yet. we don't even know who the new Director is when Browder left in November.
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Still no ingame portrait of david kim 
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On May 07 2017 05:42 sabas123 wrote:Show nested quote +On May 07 2017 04:52 killerrj8 wrote:On April 08 2017 05:06 Meepman wrote:On April 08 2017 05:03 xTJx wrote:
Hopefuly his substitute will be someone who looks more into the gameplay aspect before the dead even win-loss ratio. let's be real if there isn't a 50/50/50 everyone will complain about how they put gameplay before balance No one cares if people complain. Gameplay will always be more important than balance. Look at other games. Or sc2 in 2012/2013. It was far from balanced, but it's where we got huge tournaments and even small tournaments were hyped up! Like Ironsquid etc. Only at the end of 2014/beginning of 2015 did players quit or retire more and more as the year went on. MC/First/Flash/MMA/JaeDong followed by sacsri/Taeja/MarineKing etc. etc. Because while balance is important, the gameplay is what gets people into the game. How on earth can you say that gameplay was better in 2012/2013 then most eras after that? Don't you remember the broodlord infestor and swarmhost eras?
I feel like there was a sweet spot during HotS's honeymoon era in 2013 when the game felt entertaining and the scene still rode tons of hype, at least in comparison to the dismal BL+Infestor era that just preceded it. Swarmhost play didn't feel like as much of a problem until later that year, and that didn't climax until Stephano vs Petraeus in May 2014. Early 2012 also felt good as a continuation of 2011, at least before BL+Infestor became more prominent later on that year.
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On May 09 2017 18:07 PinoKotsBeer wrote:Still no ingame portrait of david kim
You sure? I see his picture every time I lose.
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On May 07 2017 04:52 killerrj8 wrote:Show nested quote +On April 08 2017 05:06 Meepman wrote:On April 08 2017 05:03 xTJx wrote:
Hopefuly his substitute will be someone who looks more into the gameplay aspect before the dead even win-loss ratio. let's be real if there isn't a 50/50/50 everyone will complain about how they put gameplay before balance No one cares if people complain. Gameplay will always be more important than balance. Look at other games. Or sc2 in 2012/2013. It was far from balanced, but it's where we got huge tournaments and even small tournaments were hyped up! Like Ironsquid etc. Only at the end of 2014/beginning of 2015 did players quit or retire more and more as the year went on. MC/First/Flash/MMA/JaeDong followed by sacsri/Taeja/MarineKing etc. etc. Because while balance is important, the gameplay is what gets people into the game.
I once heard from a person that "people dont care about design, they just want to have fun".
Worst saying i have ever heard.
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EPT
