by hexhaven

- hexhaven

We sat down with David Sum, the Lead Co-op Game Designer, while touring BlizzCon this year and had a chat about the game mode and its future within StarCraft II. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Hey David, thanks for sitting down with us. Let’s get right to it. What’s the most popular Commander in the co-op mode?

Most popular… I think it’s pretty similar to when we released the stats on Twitter. Nova sees a lot of play, Raynor sees a lot of play. Generally the Zergs do pretty well, too. I guess we have a lot of Protoss so they’re a bit spread out. Nova’s probably the most popular.

Are you able to compare a player’s ladder and co-op race choices? Say, if they play a lot of Protoss on ladder, do they also play a lot of Protoss in co-op?

I think we probably have access to that, but personally I haven’t looked at any correlation. I’m more focused on just making cool stuff. I don’t worry too much about the business side (laughs).

What kind of different stats do you have the various maps and difficulties? What’s the hardest map on each difficulty, for example?

We looked this up for GamesCom, because I thought someone would ask, but I can’t remember now. Scythe of Amon personally is really hard if you try to do the bonus objective. The bonus objective seems to be a lot harder than on other maps.

I think Lock & Load was up there. I think the mechanic might be a little tricky for people, because you have to do it all at once. I think that might trap people a little bit.

I think Lock & Load is really surprising because to me it feels really easy, but Scythe of Amon is super hard.

Unless that was the easiest one (chuckles).

(Editor’s note: David Sum confirmed to us later that based on win rates, Scythe of Amon is the hardest map in the game mode and Void Thrashing is the easiest.)

You had this April Fools’ event where you pitted the Commanders against each other. Are you planning on expanding on this in the future?

We’re not looking at that, but we entertained it for a little bit. Obviously this mode and the Commanders weren’t built for that. There’s a lot of other things we would have to look at to make that work. I know some people were really excited about it. I guess it’s always an option that we can look at it in the future, but right now we’re just focusing on Commanders.

How much development time goes into making new maps or Commanders?

They vary, depending on the complexity of the Commanders and the maps. We’re trying to be a little bit more efficient these days. It varies a lot, yeah, so it’s hard to say for each one. I think there was little bit less time between Dehaka and Han and Horner. It’s hard to say.

When you’re designing a new map or a new Commander, what’s your design process? Can you very briefly walk me through it?

On the Commander side at least, we always look — well not always, but sometimes we look at the fantasy first. What is this, what do you think about when you’re thinking about like Stukov. You think about zombies, right. We try to focus everything we do around that central idea. Sometimes we’ll have a mechanic. For Karax we really wanted to focus on using a lot of powers, so that’s kind of how he started. So we go through it from both directions. Fantasy’s a huge part, I think, because we want you to feel like you’re playing that character. It’s like a totally different experience. What if Karax was in charge of the Protoss campaign instead of Artanis? What would that have looked like? Instead of Artanis being the hero, what if Vorazun was the hero of the campaign? You kind of get a glimpse of what her full campaign would’ve been like. I think that’s the fun part of doing a Commander.

What about maps?

For maps we kind of bounced around. Originally we started off with converting campaign maps over. Since then we’ve tried to do some unique ones from scratch. We had the community map, which was awesome. We take a lot of different inspiration from a lot of different places. For now we’re kind of looking at new things. I think we have another campaign one planned.

Are you planning on reworking some of the older maps? If you consider Scythe of Amon and Malwarfare, they’re much more difficult than some of the older ones, so will you make the old maps more in line with the newer ones?

That is on our radar. Some of them are too easy, some of them are too hard. That’s something that we can definitely take a look at. You can let us know which ones are too difficult. Generally they’re not too far off, so it hasn’t been a big focus.

Is there a chance of seeing more user made co-op maps in the future, like an Arcade mode for co-op?

I think that would be awesome.

And the chances of that happening?

Chances of that happening… Can’t say, but that is a cool idea that we’ve been talking about. There’s a lot of things that have to align for that to happen. We’ll put it on a wish list, I’ll say that.

Can you put it at the very top?

(laughs) Probably not at this point.

That’s too bad. What role do you see co-op having in the future of the RTS genre?

Personally for me, I really enjoyed working and playing co-op, because it relieves a lot of that ladder pressure. It still also gives you the ability to play with people and your friends. I think people can say that maybe because I haven’t played StarCraft in a while, because multiplayer is so scary, now I get to play with my friends, and we get to do this every week, try new Mutations. Those kinds of stories really made me happy to hear them. I think there’s definitely potential in not player-vs-player type of RTS. I think they can still be really hard and really engaging. I think that’s an area we should explore further.

Do you feel like the co-op mode is paving a new type of game mode for future RTS games by other companies?

That sounds pretty arrogant, I wouldn’t say that, but if you want to say it, I would be very flattered to hear that. Genre changing? I don’t know about that, but I do think it’s got a whole lot of potential.

How integral is the cooperation part of the co-op mode to its success?

I think it gives you that opportunity to play with friends, and something to talk about. I think it adds a lot versus just single player, and in a different way. So our campaign can do a lot of story telling, can really immerse you, you take your time with the stories and the amazing dialogue. For co-op, it’s more player story than campaign story, so you can talk about “Hey you remember we did this Mutation and it was super hard. At the very end we used an ultimate and barely made it.” So that’s more… being able to create your stories with friends. I think that’s a very powerful part of it.

What are your plans for the social media team in the future, like releasing small bits of stats and bits and pieces of info? Like how the different maps and Commanders are doing.

Did you guys like that?

Yes!

So you’re saying you want to see more of that?

Yeah, pretty much.

Yeah, I’ll take that feedback back with me and try to work with our community team. See if we can do some more of that stuff. I think giving that stuff out was really fun.

Any reason it was only done once?

Honestly, they approached me, and they said do you want do this stuff? I was like yeah, that sounds awesome. They haven’t approached me again, but I can always reach out to them too. It’s good to hear you guys liked it. It’s something we should try to do more.

The marketing of StarCraft II has been going towards that it’s a very difficult game, and it’s supposed to be that difficult. co-op has a more casual slant compared to the ladder play. As the leaderboards are about to come out, it seems to be maybe moving towards a more competitive style. Do you think there’s a line in the sand that you’re about to cross? From this more casual gameplay to a more competitive environment?

So that’s definitely not the goal. I think the goal is to have StarCraft be a fun game for everyone. So if you’re looking for story and characters and that kind of epic story development, there’s campaign. If you’re looking for the most competitive game in the world, you go to multiplayer. And co-op is kind of more what I was talking about, it’s more player stories with your friends. Just having a drink and playing some StarCraft on a Friday night. We’re not trying to make a co-op a hardcore thing, and that’s definitely one of the things we were thinking about when we made the leaderboards. It’s not supposed to make you feel bad. It’s an opt-in thing. Personally you can look at your own scores and try to improve, but it’s not thing that should make you feel bad. We’re not showing everybody’s scores and you can’t look up somebody’s profile like “Oh, you’re bad at this game, you should stop playing”. That’s definitely not what we’re going for. We’re keeping that in mind as we design how the leaderboards work.

Are you still keeping the option open of having this competitive touch to co-op? Like maybe in the future you have a large player base of casual players, then you have this tiny fraction who are ultra competitive and you have some extra features in co-op mode for them. They have leaderboards, they can look at their stats very in-depth. Like they can try to complete the levels as fast as they can and stuff like that.

That’s definitely what the goal for leaderboards is. For those hardcore co-op players — that might sound like an oxymoron, but it’s not, because people can get really passionate about whatever they’re excited about. This is a way for co-op players to really show who’s best, really practice each commander and every map and those kinds of combinations and really squeeze out an extra hundred points on the leaderboard. I think that’s what we wanted to give. For players to be able to opt-in to that, but also not ruin the casual fun mode. It’s a tricky balance, hopefully we can do it right.

In the past few months, Fenix has gone through many minor changes, which the community has deemed not impactful enough. What is the thought process behind this small step-by-step adjustment instead of just doing a major overhaul at once?

Similar to multiplayer, I think the way you want to look at balance is that you don’t want to make huge changes all at once. In the beginning his win rate was doing pretty well, his play rate was doing well, so we wanted to take a little bit of time and monitor how he was doing. After that there was more community feedback. This whole process has been awesome because the community has really liked giving feedback and having discussions. I think those discussions were really helpful, because people brought up really good points. It wasn’t just name-calling on the forums. That’s the kind of stuff that really helps us. As we took a closer look, we found a couple of bugs, and some things weren’t working the way we wanted to. Like there was a bug where he wasn’t transferring to the closest ‘shell’. There were those things, we looked at some of the balance numbers that would easily and safely change because it was really the way intended it to work anyway. So those were the fast and easy ones we put out. For the bigger changes we wanted to take a little bit more time and make sure they were doing the right thing. Continuing the discussions and making sure he was going in the right direction. There’s definitely a lot more Fenix changes coming in the next patch. Hopefully it addresses a lot of the issues that he had and returns him to the glory that he deserves.

The Mutations have recently started all over again. What’s the reason behind reusing old Mutations, and what kind of Mutations do you have planned for the future?

We shifted focus away from making new Mutation types, so they are on a cycle now. It’s something that we can look at again in the future, but right now we felt like that with the number of Mutations — maybe a cool thing would be to work with the community to create new combinations for people to share and try out. I think there’s so much opportunity there for the community to create more challenges for each other. I think there’s a lot of potential out there still with custom Mutations. I guess another fun stat is that Karax we see used a lot in Mutation challenges, but the winrate is not good. People always think he’s the best, or maybe they just try a lot and fail.

What’s your favorite Commander? What about least favorite Commander?

I don’t have one… They’re all my babies (laughs). Some of my go-to ones for Mutations — I really like Zagara for a lot of Mutations. I really like Karax’s playstyle, because it’s so different from the other Commanders. I definitely try to play all of them. I don’t think I have a least favorite.

It’s a good thing you don’t have a least favorite Commander.

I’d do something about it!

Exactly! Now, if you were stranded on a tropical island, which Commander would you bring with you?

Is it safe to eat infested terrans? Because that’s like a constant supply of food. As long as it’s okay to eat them.

Any new Commanders in the works that you can tease for TeamLiquid.net?

That answer is always about what do you [players] want to see? It really does have a huge impact on what we do, what you guys are excited about. We’re always open. The content is for the community, so we want to know what you guys want to see.

My next two choices would be either Arcturus Mengsk, interesting character, or Amon.

Amon… That would be a cool one! But he would have to fight himself. Stetmann would be awesome too, like drugged Stetmann. Then when you play Mist Opportunities, he could talk to himself, and it would totally make sense, because he’s crazy.

David, thank you very much!

Thank you for coming in!

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