So to start things off, talking about Legacy of the Void. When you make a new unit for StarCraft do you prioritize balance, the current needs of the race or thematic/lore based considerations?
So on the StarCraft II design team we think of three things as the most important especially when it comes to multiplayer stuff. It's the fun, diversity, and fairness. So when we think of balance we try to think of all these three things together, we don't try to make a call where its like "Because this is fair it's all good, even though it's not fun and it's not diverse." We try to have a good mix of the three in all areas throughout the course of the game.
OK, so it's not really a priority based thing, it's more of a balance between all of them?
Yeah for sure, because sometimes maybe the diversity factor is not as optimal as it could be but because the other two factors are so high maybe it's ok, but other times we just kind of want to keep those three very strong no matter what issue we're talking about.
So the thing that immediately comes to mind is the change to the Swarm Host. It kind of did take a while to come in, because you could say that with the old Swarm Host the game was very balanced but not exactly...fun at times.
So I think that's a good example of that and I think that looking back we should have acted much quicker on it but the reason why we couldn't, or reason why we didn't is because it only happened at this specific region and skill, it was very common in the European skill level and the European region. We were seeing it moreso on the ladder especially and we saw it maybe once or twice per year. We kind of hoped because we didn't see so much of it in Korea for example, we kind of hoped it would lean one way or the other; so if it kind of goes more towards one way (The European style) across the whole pro level, if everyone's using Swarm Host that way then we can react and patch real quick versus if it leans the other way then maybe we didn't have to do anything. We were kind of waiting to see if it would go one way or the other but it didn't and it kind of stayed there for such a long time so it was kind of difficult for us to choose when to step in. Looking back we feel like we should have done something about it much sooner.
It makes sense in hindsight but must have been hard to make the call on the spot
Haha, for sure.
What do you have planned in terms of post-launch Legacy of the Void patching? Will balance changes or maybe even content updates be common?
So we're talking a lot about what to do after Legacy of the Void but there's nothing really set in stone yet because we're so busy just focusing on Legacy of the Void, focusing on the beta and getting that out the door so for now it's very difficult to say what the next step is but we're definitely having discussions around that internally.
So do you ever envision a day in the future when you can just say "the game is done" and no longer requires anything like a balance patch?
I don't think so, not at this day and age because there's constantly new players coming in, new strategies being developed by the pro teams and the pro players who are competing as well as such a robust community on, say like Reddit or Team Liquid, things like that. So all the time, new things are being discovered. I don't think there is a world where we are done and StarCraft II is perfect and we can just leave it be. I think that we have to constantly look at the way the game is going and if there are new issues that pop up because of one or more of these factors then we have to consider those. I do think that there will be a time when patches are much slower because things are being discovered at a much slower rate then they would be right at the start of the game launch or during the beta, but I don't think it will be the case, and it won't be any time soon that the game is just completely done and we can just leave it and move on.
So what do you think was the magic of Brood War where the game was played at a competitive level for years and years after the last balance patch was made.
So that I think was not really by choice; it was just because of how it turned out because back then we didn't have this robust community, we didn't have as big of a pro gaming scene as we do now. For example, it was really big in Korea but outside of Korea how many pros did you really see in Brood War? So the Korean pro scene was kind of left with no support from Blizzard, so they had to do their own thing by altering the maps and balancing the game that way. I don't think that's the most ideal situation but it's very impressive that they did that and the game kept going for so long just by tweaking the balance on maps. We feel like we should look at the game from as many angles as possible and sometimes there are solutions that are much better in implemented the game than through maps and vice versa. So just keeping track of that and working together with those (map making) organizations or the Team Liquid Map Contest is another good example of something like this. If we can just work at it together, pros, organizations, tournaments, community or us (Blizzard), if we can all work together and then make StarCraft 2 last much longer than perhaps Brood War did, I think that's the best case scenario.
So many people in the community are of the opinion that the amount of time it takes for Blizzard to respond to a balance concern is too long. Do you plan on reducing your response time? Why of why not?
So we actually get both sides of that argument. There are a huge group of players - especially the Korean players I think generally feel this way - a huge group saying we should never patch, at most there should be one patch every year or every two years because patching kind of invalidates some of the practice that goes into their games. The flipside of it is what you mentioned, so we get both sides of it and I think it's important to kind of mention this because it's not so easy as to just go in and patch so much and everyone is happy because there's that other half that will be very unhappy also so it's a good balance.
But for us, our stance is we want to be a little more conservative with changes in StarCraft II because the skill factor in mastering the game we believe is much greater in StarCraft II compared to other games, compared to the balance changes that might occur (in the other games). In a game like Heroes of the Storm if the skill component is like 50%/50% with balance changes then I think for StarCraft 2 it's more like 80% is the skill and practice of the players and 20% is the game balance that we can tweak. So because of that we generally want to take our time to make sure that this is something that can't be overcome by practice before we go in and patch, so for now I think that this is correct and if there are pressing issues such as the Swarm Host issue that we saw then obviously we will go in and try to act a little quicker on those types of issues. For normal issues we will try to wait and make sure and if we need to do that change then we will.
Ok so it sounds like sort of the common - sometimes you could say "troll response" - to online threads requesting for balance changes is kind of true, just "get better."
It's not really [a troll answer]. I don't think because there is good argument for patching frequently too because the other side of obviously is what these guys are saying. Both sides I think have very strong arguments but for us I think we lie kind of in between those two. We're not doing as few as one patch per year for example which is one extreme, but we're not going to be doing patches every month which is the other extreme. I think we fall somewhere in the middle of those two.
So to get back to Legacy of the Void: the twelve worker start in Legacy seems to be a big factor in the speeding up of the early game, almost to the point where you could say we're catapulted in to the mid game. Was it an intentional choice to limit the number of early game options in Legacy?
So it wasn't an intentional choice to reduce the number of options but moreso I guess a bit of a side effect. At the same time we tried to locate an exact right worker count that we can use to speed up the game as much as possible without reducing too many choices. So for now I think the 12 worker count feels good... yeah it's true that we have gotten rid of strategies such as the six pool, but we have also introduced a new strategy where you can go baneling nest very early on and go all in that way. So while it's true that some choices were lost I think newer choices were added and I think the most important factor here is we cut maybe a minute and a half of downtime in all StarCraft II games and I think that's kind of important because how many times do you have to follow the same initial game build order, whether you're watching or playing the games. We felt like that downtime was not that fun for players so we took a bit of a risk with this change and I think so far in the beta it's turning out ok.
Do you forsee an update in the beta that could give players back some early game options?
I think that will naturally happen too with the addition of new units and strategies. For example Zerg players can now go Ravagers, Protoss players can go pretty heavy Adept harrass, things like that. So I think naturally early game options will appear but because StarCraft is the type of game where players really figure out the ins and outs of the game so quickly. I think what's interesting is not the number of early game options people can do but moreso how can we change the game so we have constant action throughout the course of the whole game, because the early side of things will be figured out fairly quickly compared to the mid or the late types of games. New things will naturally appear, whether we build it in or not, but I think it's more important to have the whole overarching picture of having action through the course of the whole game.
It's a commonly accepted idea that Protoss is punished the hardest out of all the races by the changes to the economy in Legacy of the Void due to the fact that you have to expand faster and spread yourself out more. Do you see this as an issue and how do you feel about Protoss in the beta?
So we definitely agree when it comes to getting your fourth expansion or fifth expansion Protoss has the hardest time in Heart of the Swarm and I think they would currently as well (in the beta) but because so many other factors were added. For example, Adepts are really strong early game; harrassment using Warm Prisms is also extremely powerful, especially when you combo them with Immortals or Disruptors and enemy air units are not out yet. So it's kind of difficult to conclude that Protoss is just weaker because of it, but expansion-wise I totally agree that what you said is the case. I think it will be important to just evaluate the game as a whole, and it's a little bit too early to make that conclusion right now because we're still making changes to the game but eventually we'll have to figure that out and fix it before the game ships.
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