EPTExcerpt from the website:
How do you go about designing a new unit or changing a unit to encourage that kind thing in what was a little bit of a stagnant metagame in Wings of Liberty?
Browder: You try to create really solid tools. You don’t know how they’re going to be used or if they’re going to be used, but you have to look at a unit and say, “You know, for its cost, that unit has uses. That could be effective.” An example I would give is the Warp Prism from the end of Wings of Liberty. We started seeing that more and more and more, as Protoss players started to be more threatened by immobile forces, and they needed the mobility to break up the danger.
When the Brood Lords and Infestors are out, it’s dangerous as hell, but it’s not fast. So what they would do, is they would say, “Okay, I’m going to try to spread you out. I’m going to try to pull you away from here by constant harassment with Warp Prism. And it could be very cost effective and very dangerous. We hadn’t changed that unit. But they were starting to use it that way.
So that’s the ideal, is to create the tools so that when they suddenly have the need, they have something they can do which changes the way the game plays. And so it’s this constantly cycling metagame that we’re not even touching.
Browder: You try to create really solid tools. You don’t know how they’re going to be used or if they’re going to be used, but you have to look at a unit and say, “You know, for its cost, that unit has uses. That could be effective.” An example I would give is the Warp Prism from the end of Wings of Liberty. We started seeing that more and more and more, as Protoss players started to be more threatened by immobile forces, and they needed the mobility to break up the danger.
When the Brood Lords and Infestors are out, it’s dangerous as hell, but it’s not fast. So what they would do, is they would say, “Okay, I’m going to try to spread you out. I’m going to try to pull you away from here by constant harassment with Warp Prism. And it could be very cost effective and very dangerous. We hadn’t changed that unit. But they were starting to use it that way.
So that’s the ideal, is to create the tools so that when they suddenly have the need, they have something they can do which changes the way the game plays. And so it’s this constantly cycling metagame that we’re not even touching.
What was the reasoning behind the decision—you guys were kind of pushing against unranked play for a long time, and now it’s finally coming in the expansion. Was that community feedback?
Browder: There was a big concern, and there still is a big concern … if you have ranked play and unranked play, are those two, separate matchmaking pools? And does that damage the matchmaker? Especially in some places in the world … I’m thinking Southeast Asia, there’s a few places where the population of gamers is just not that huge. And our population of players is not that huge. So the matchmaker can struggle in those areas.
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So what we’ve finally said for unranked play is, we’re going to risk it. We’re going to put them into a single matchmaker [with ranked players]. Now, the concern from the community, and the concern internally, is, do people start abusing that system? When I come in unranked, do I say, “Hey, I’m unranked. Don’t worry, I’ll quit out before this game is over. Don’t quit.” Or some silliness. I don’t know. There could be 50 ways to break this. They’ll find a way if they want to find a way.
So if that starts to happen, now this feature is in trouble. If people start abusing it, then that’s why we can’t have nice things. But we kind of felt like the benefits were worth the risk. So ultimately, we’re taking the leap. And we’re saying, I hope our community doesn’t ruin this. I hope a handful of bad apples don’t find a way to make this go bad for us. I hope people play with this system with a little bit of honest integrity, which is a little scary with any online community.
Browder: There was a big concern, and there still is a big concern … if you have ranked play and unranked play, are those two, separate matchmaking pools? And does that damage the matchmaker? Especially in some places in the world … I’m thinking Southeast Asia, there’s a few places where the population of gamers is just not that huge. And our population of players is not that huge. So the matchmaker can struggle in those areas.
...
So what we’ve finally said for unranked play is, we’re going to risk it. We’re going to put them into a single matchmaker [with ranked players]. Now, the concern from the community, and the concern internally, is, do people start abusing that system? When I come in unranked, do I say, “Hey, I’m unranked. Don’t worry, I’ll quit out before this game is over. Don’t quit.” Or some silliness. I don’t know. There could be 50 ways to break this. They’ll find a way if they want to find a way.
So if that starts to happen, now this feature is in trouble. If people start abusing it, then that’s why we can’t have nice things. But we kind of felt like the benefits were worth the risk. So ultimately, we’re taking the leap. And we’re saying, I hope our community doesn’t ruin this. I hope a handful of bad apples don’t find a way to make this go bad for us. I hope people play with this system with a little bit of honest integrity, which is a little scary with any online community.
From your perspective, what is killing eSports?
Browder: [Laughs] I thought I was killing eSports. I thought that was my title. I have the crown! That’s what Twitter keeps saying.
That’s the silliest question, because nothing is killing eSports. It’s growing at logarithmic rates. Did you ever think we would be here, in this, place, two and a half years later? We’re just swimming in pros, and so many events you can’t even keep track of them all. Like, we used to talk about timing patches relative to major eSports events. Now there’s no way.
There is no way for us to patch Wings of Liberty without it hitting an eSport event. We went live with our beta in the US, because we thought that was going to be enough to give us testing. And we have had nothing but feedback from all over the world that’s, “So, when can I run my tournament? I want to run a [Heart of the Swarm] tournament. I’m in Korea, or I’m in Europe. When can I run a HotS tournament?”
It’s just constant. The amount of constant input coming into this studio, “More! More! This! That!” It’s just insane. So, the idea that anything is killing eSports is nuts. eSports is growing out of control. It’s alive and breathing and flying away. I have no idea when it’s going to stop.
And I think the StarCraft community should take some pride and joy in that. They should take some ownership of that, and say, “We did that. We helped build this. We are ground-floor, core contributors to what makes any eSport going forward.” They should, in their minds and hearts, claim some of that. Because they’ve absolutely earned it. They were on the ground floor. They were here when it really started to happen.
Browder: [Laughs] I thought I was killing eSports. I thought that was my title. I have the crown! That’s what Twitter keeps saying.
That’s the silliest question, because nothing is killing eSports. It’s growing at logarithmic rates. Did you ever think we would be here, in this, place, two and a half years later? We’re just swimming in pros, and so many events you can’t even keep track of them all. Like, we used to talk about timing patches relative to major eSports events. Now there’s no way.
There is no way for us to patch Wings of Liberty without it hitting an eSport event. We went live with our beta in the US, because we thought that was going to be enough to give us testing. And we have had nothing but feedback from all over the world that’s, “So, when can I run my tournament? I want to run a [Heart of the Swarm] tournament. I’m in Korea, or I’m in Europe. When can I run a HotS tournament?”
It’s just constant. The amount of constant input coming into this studio, “More! More! This! That!” It’s just insane. So, the idea that anything is killing eSports is nuts. eSports is growing out of control. It’s alive and breathing and flying away. I have no idea when it’s going to stop.
And I think the StarCraft community should take some pride and joy in that. They should take some ownership of that, and say, “We did that. We helped build this. We are ground-floor, core contributors to what makes any eSport going forward.” They should, in their minds and hearts, claim some of that. Because they’ve absolutely earned it. They were on the ground floor. They were here when it really started to happen.
