Starcraft 2 Blizz employee in community - Page 10

On May 22 2007 16:54 mnm wrote:
Please tell Blizzard that if they sold any gear such as tshirts, they would sell like hotcakes, plus its cheap advertising.

On May 22 2007 18:08 LordofAscension wrote:


zomg... they'd make a mint off me alone.

~LoA

On May 22 2007 06:11 MyCube wrote:

Pillars is what Bo Jackson was to sports.
Pillars was probably the most successful RTS player of all-time before he retired (besides them koreans like Midas and Skelton who played Kingdom under Fire and Warcraft 3 before they switched/left to Brood War).

From an interview I found 3 years ago (http://empires.heavengames.com/press/interviews/interviewpillars.shtml)


Pillars, along with Grrrr... and Maynard, were the original pioneers in competitive StarCraft.



EDIT: I sound like carlodajin in this post -.-

On May 22 2007 11:46 Fallen wrote:
Whoa, It's nice to see some old name popping up in this thread

I'm very glad to know that you (Pillars) are working on the SC2 project. I'm pretty sure you will make one hell of a game along with the other really great blizzard employees.

I used to play you player haters all the time on the starcraft ladder. I was X'ds~fallen.. I doubt you remember me, but I'm sure you remember the tag

On May 22 2007 19:09 Rekrul wrote:
Hi Pillars. Do you remember me?

On May 22 2007 14:37 Raist wrote:
hi Pillars thanks for all the responses, really cool you're doing this for our little community

I've a major concern that I've never seen brought up. Pardo mentioned in the Gamespy report that they want to avoid extraneous units that never get used, but in the original Starcraft there are some race matchups where only a few kinds of units ever get used. For example I believe Starcraft could have been a lot more enjoyable to both play and watch had Barracks units been more useful in TvP and TvT, and had other units besides only zerglings/mutas/scourge been used in ZvZ. That is why I believe people enjoy ZvP and PvZ so much, because there are so many unit options that also allow for more strategies and varied types of play. Is this kind of concern something on the designer's mind for Starcraft 2?

One other concern I've not seen mentioned, is that while the team is watching closely to make sure the special effects and graphics do not obscure vision in battles, sometimes certain colors in Starcraft looked too similar and when in a mirror matchup it would often become hard to differentiate between units when observing a game, especially when watching VODs of the proleagues. This was much worse in Warcraft 3, since there were many kinds of colors with the larger 16 max players. With Starcraft 2 probably going to have at least 16 players if not more I'm assuming, how are the designers going to deal with this issue? One solution I can think of is to program it so it tries to give players very differentiable colors if possible, unless there are a large number of players in the game.

There is one problem to what Artanis said... If you have high level competitors playing it out in a beta, one guy having a slump can result in an unnecessary nerfing of a unit/race/ability. If Nada and Bisu fight it out and Nada is having a bad day, there goes Toss' cost of whatever Bisu used to win, doubling...

Of course, lower level ranking mostly depends on luck. I hope through rigorous testing, and debugging (such as Terran Wall-In, not complaining, just stating), that you can find a healthy balance between races, while them being COMPLETELY different. The thing that made me love Starcraft from AoE was that the races were completely different. Not everyone had "archers" or "phalanx" (so to speak).

Here's to my hopes and wishes to you being able to relay this idea to the right people and get SC2 down without a hinge. Remember your testers are human.

P.S. - Not coming from me, and I really hate what this guy suggested to me, but it might come of use. Through calculus I've been told one can predict the min/gas gain a minute/second, and cost efficiency of units/tech and what not. Though, I don't want you to do that, just to understand what CAN be done. If you are REALLY anal about balancing the game, you're going to end up with AoE4 with a racial bonus. ='( Don't give much credit to the PS. Having P>T>Z>P is fine with me really, as long as it's not impossibly hard to win a matchup, it's all good. Look at Bisu, it's P<Z but he 3-0ed Savior with a strat out of nowhere! =D

P.P.S. - I had alot of ideas, this might take 2 reads to fully get. It would be shorter if I had more time.

On May 20 2007 11:26 Bill307 wrote:

*waves harder than FA*

On May 22 2007 19:11 Pillars wrote:


Die.
Hi Rekrul.
You're that famous foreign RTS player that stormed into Korea and dominated every Starcraft tournament between 2003 and 2006, right?

...

:D

On May 22 2007 19:17 Pillars wrote:


Absolutely. This is actually an area where I've been able to help out a lot. One of the primary design goals is to ensure that every unit has a legitimate place in every racial match-up. That kind of balance is *extremely* hard to achieve, but the more effort you put into it the closer you're going to get to that goal.



A few people have actually mentioned this already. It's something we're aware of and are actively attempting to control. Gameplay always comes first.

On May 22 2007 19:34 Tiamat wrote:


I would rather Blizzard focus on making sure each unit has a good solid role in the game, support or mainstream, rather than making sure each unit is viable in every matchup.

I guess what I am trying to say is that I'd rather see the Scout, Ghost, Queen Infested Terran etc. have an actual role to fill in the game rather than trying to make marines good against Protoss or Terran. I believe the problem the above units don't get used is because there are better options to perform what they are supposed to do.

IE , A scout is a captial ship killer, but Corsair and Storm combined can fill that role much better and they also can perform other uses like peon raiding and dweb as the scout cannot.

Same thing with the ghost, Its two purposes were to disable capital ships and crack fortified positions but its job is performed more effectively by the Goliath with its long anti air range and the Long range of the Siege Tank.

Besides, you can still use marines against Protoss, its just that Protoss has way too many cost effective ways to kill em in mass, but imagine if EMP or lockdown (against reavers) were a viable solution then volia marines/firebats work nicely against Protoss troops.

On May 20 2007 20:08 Pillars wrote:

I know that our community team is aware of the most active SC community sites still in existence, though.

On May 22 2007 23:38 nagash wrote:
It's impossible to make all units equally valuable/useful. There will always be some things that are just better/more bang for your buck, it's impossible to avoid and players will always deviate towards these units.

Look at SC, WC3, every other RTS.

Diablo II and WoW - certain character builds just work better then others (not to mention items).

Look at CS, how many guns really get used?
Quake, why use a Rocket Launcher when you have a BFG?
Every other FPS also has varying degrees of this.

Sure, the not so popular things sometimes have their uses, but it's impossible to make all things equal. This is basically global across any genre of gaming.

Hell, even in real life. Why walk 10km's when you can drive? Why drive 3000km's when you can fly? Sure, some people do it occassionally. But it's just not a majority.