EPTTL interviews Dustin Browder at Blizzcon - Page 15
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quaffle
United States249 Posts
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ahw
Canada1099 Posts
I'm kind of bothered by the overall defensiveness by the guy, as he comes across like some of these questions are personal attacks. But at the same time he's got to deal with the starcraft community, so its understandable. the map-making question seemed to go over his head and the root problem of where the ladder maps are coming from didn't really get touched. i'm actually happy with the new units in trying to un-blob the game. gimping the patching has always been a terrible idea because it makes the game less accessible and it forces a handicap. if the new additions are mostly map-control and harassing units, then hopefully we'll see smaller armies in multiple locations instead. shredder, recall on nexus are two good ideas that come to mind. | ||
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Lexpar
1813 Posts
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dredd276
United States80 Posts
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Pinnacle55
Singapore173 Posts
Community Maps can't just be put into the ladder overnight - half of the maps are untested and may prove to be even MORE unbalanced than Delta Quadrant. Would you pay money to play on a map that's ultra imbalanced and that Blizzard has no say on? Like say, for example, a map that was high ground on only one half and low ground on the other half? That's like saying, "Here, play on this arcade machine. Oh by the way, I'm not sure what the Control Setup is like and I can't change it. Too bad." It's a terrible compromise. If you say, "Well, take only the maps that are good!", then how do you decide what's good or not? Where do you draw the line? What's a good number of bases? 10? 12? You can never know, and there will never be a definitive way that we can ascertain the basis of a good map. Blizzard is already taking the initiative and hosting tournaments like the TL Mapmaking Competition, and this is already a good step in the right direction. Sure, it isn't a giant leap or anything like that, but I wouldn't want to fault Blizzard for treading carefully at this point. | ||
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Fishriot
United States621 Posts
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aethereality
Canada62 Posts
Honestly, to the people saying that they are careless with the balance process, specifically: + Show Spoiler + On October 25 2011 09:34 Bartimaeus wrote: First of all: mad props to the interviewer - that guy's questions were spot on and addressed many prominent issues without provoking Browder or bringing up balance too often. He did a great job and I'd love to see more interviews from him. To start on Browder: Negative: His shirt is a Terran shirt. Awesome lol. He talks about ways the Replicator would be removed (one of them already being in the alpha play [no massive]) . . . before its even in the game. He says the drawback of Terran is that you are . . . too complete? too good? This is, imo, a little ridiculous as even the person who designed Terran can't find a drawback to the race - as he is the one who should know the race better than any other. His inability to find a strong flaw is astounding and revealing. He's saying that he doesn't want to fix the pathfinder because he believes it will still be ball-on-ball action, just slightly smaller - his option is to take food out of the balls, which is essentially doing the same thing - making the balls smaller? He's crossing his fingers and saying "Maybe!" when he's talking about a unit (Swarm Host) he's going to throw into this game that will affect the income of many pros in varying ways. He dismisses the option of Lan by saying that it is a lot of work for them - not by saying that it would affect them negatively financially. I'd wish that he chose the other option because saying that it will be hard for them to do is almost taunting us, saying that he just doesn't want to work on it. Positive: I'm glad that he could at least admit that the map issue was a problem instead of just dismissing it like the question about the drawback of playing Terran. I liked that he admits that he realizes the gravity of his decisions (later in the cast, after the Swarm host finger crossing). I'm happy that he admits that some problems exist, such as PvT in Korea. Overall the person interviewing Browder was flawless, and I'm disappointed with Browder's responses on a majority of the issues he spoke on. How do you think they come up with units in the first place? You can't magically and instantly know whether or not a unit is balanced. That's just the nature of game design; there absolutely will be flaws in units, but as Mr. Browder stated, they will be fixed through the balance design process. That's why he mentioned the HotS beta (even the WoL beta) as a method for them to fix balance issues without affecting peoples' finances. You have to remember, as well, that Blizzard is a business, not a charity. I'd like to think that Mr. Browder has an idea about what he is doing, as the C&C series is awesome, and we all love SC2 (don't you?). As far as his comments on the metagame go, I think he is mostly right. Even most pros will agree that the game is quite balanced, and people below top masters (including me, I am gold as hell) have no right to comment on it, for the reasons that we've all read a thousand times over. I am certainly glad that their design philosophy is more along the lines of "add it and see if it works" than "I don't think it'll work, so let's leave that out". As the famous Ms. Frizzle always said, "Take chances, make mistakes, get messy!" Honestly, I think balance comes less from the design of the units themselves, and more from professional players at the highest level producing valid strategies using the tools they are given. I have faith in Blizzard to continue improving the game that we all hold so dearly. | ||
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slam
United States923 Posts
Anyone else pickup dusty's tendency to say "riiiiiiight" to the extent where you no longer payed attention to the interview and just waited in anticipation for the next riiiiiight? | ||
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Lysenko
Iceland2128 Posts
On October 25 2011 12:26 alphafuzard wrote: Also, I kind of facepalmed when he couldn't think of a way to have community made maps involved.....like....maybe....put them into the ladder.....or something crazy like that. But that's not what he said he wasn't able to think of. In fact, he pointed out that at least one map that originated in the community (probably referring to Tal'darim Altar) has been added to the ladder pool. What he was unable to answer was how to encourage professional play on unfinished maps to help finish them, when an obviously unfinished map wouldn't be appropriate for the ladder. I know there are some people who will point to various features of the ladder maps to dispute whether they're "finished," but obviously they're not going to put a community map in the map pool specifically to facilitate further development of the map. | ||
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BleaK_
Norway593 Posts
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Takkara
United States2503 Posts
On October 25 2011 12:46 Lysenko wrote: But that's not what he said he wasn't able to think of. In fact, he pointed out that at least one map that originated in the community (probably referring to Tal'darim Altar) has been added to the ladder pool. What he was unable to answer was how to encourage professional play on unfinished maps to help finish them, when an obviously unfinished map wouldn't be appropriate for the ladder. I know there are some people who will point to various features of the ladder maps to dispute whether they're "finished," but obviously they're not going to put a community map in the map pool specifically to facilitate further development of the map. Yeah, exactly. They won't take an unfinished map onto the ladder because the author won't have the ability to edit it when it's already added to the ladder. Perhaps one way around this issue is to allow people to use regular match-making for custom maps so they can get "balanced" opponents on custom maps. | ||
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NoobSkills
United States1588 Posts
On October 25 2011 12:15 Endymion wrote: It's obvious to me that the design team has been told by higher ups in blizzard/their mother corporation to not add lan, dustin seemed annoyed by the question, I'm sure a lot of the design team aren't happy with taking the flak from the tournament lag. What would interest me is the amount of money that Blizzard gets from tournaments that have the prize pool over 5000. With that amount of money is that enough to just put in LAN because the money earned by tournaments outweighs the cost of piracy? I also don't like some of their philosophies about the game as well, but this post seems to be more about the LAN now. | ||
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svefnleysi
Iceland623 Posts
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Kurr
Canada2338 Posts
He has the right idea about unit design (except the fucking Thor). Take something that looks fun and throw it in a beta. No other way to truly test it. | ||
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Itsmedudeman
United States19229 Posts
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Zato-1
Chile4253 Posts
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Fanatic-Templar
Canada5818 Posts
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NB
Netherlands12045 Posts
DB dodging skill: 20/10... Holy shit they hired this guy mainly for interview, not for design the freaking game x(.... | ||
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Daralii
United States16991 Posts
On October 25 2011 13:09 NB wrote: question: 10/10 DB dodging skill: 20/10... Holy shit they hired this guy mainly for interview, not for design the freaking game x(.... Well it's hard to ask good questions when you're distracted by his glowing head and majestic beard. | ||
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Toastmold
Canada207 Posts
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