Interview w/Dustin Browder on SC2 Beta

[TerranUp16]

Link

While this was just posted online pretty recently, as you can see it is from GameInformer so I presume it was in the magazine a few weeks before being posted. Either way, the interview is from before March 12th as far as I can tell because Dustin Browder talks a lot about Warp Gate rushing at one point and that was more or less fixed in Patch 5 by a massive nerf from 60 seconds research time to 140 seconds research time.

Anyway, I've been following the StarCraft 2 Beta pretty closely, playing it a fair bit, watching and reading a lot of coverage on it, partaking in discussions on it, etc... As a developer and particularly a designer, it's very interesting to watch this game take shape as it is the successor to the most successful eSport of all time and one of the greatest games of all-time- and that game was originally designed largely on napkins (not to mention being massively redesigned after a poor showing at E3 practically a year before release). Duly noted that diligent patching that stretched to 2001 and beyond are what brought the game to become a palatable and durable eSport, but the basis of it was established well before then.

So, bringing this conversation back to the specific interview linked to at the start of the post, the answer to the second question makes me reel back in horror. Now, if I were sitting here and just reading that answer before having played the game or having much experience with it in any other way, I would probably just cringe and then shrug, taking an "if it works..." attitude although still viewing the comment negatively. However, having played the beta a fair bit and having read and watched tons on it and of it, I have to say that the approach Browder described is very, very bad- or, at a bare minimum, very bad for SC2.

Dustin Browder Wrote:We didn't set out with any goals in mind, and I'm sure that this will upset the fans terribly. What we did instead was that we said, "We want to make a bunch of cool units, and we're going to make each unit as cool as we can possibly make it, and then we'll see how it all works together, and we'll tune as necessary from there." So it was never our intention specifically to do anything exactly with the races. Our goal was to make the units as interesting as possible and as different from one another as we possibly could.

Bad, bad, bad, bad, bad! So, let's evaluate this and why it's bad and why it's turned out to be bad. Factions have roles that must be fulfilled by units. No matter how you design your units, in order for a faction to be balanced and to function properly, these roles must be suitable fulfilled. However, when you concentrate primarily on designing the units before you consider filling the roles and how a race deals with its roles, you destine your "unique and awesome units" to eventually be crammed into these roles. When that happens, they often start to lose their uniqueness and, as well, you may be cramming less than ideal units into these roles.

So, looking at StarCraft 2, the best two examples of units having a severe issue with this problem are the Roach and Marauder.

The Roach started as a pretty interesting and rather unique unit. In fact, had it gone through into the beta as it was originally designed, I think it could have been a really interesting, unique Tier 2 harass unit for the Zerg that could also prove an interesting solution to breaking enemy static positions because of the combination of its burrowed movement, strong damage (although long cooldown), and high armor and sizable hp regen (aka very good for durable hit-and-run; somewhat similar to the Lurker that it arguably replaces in that it's one of the few Zerg units that might still be expensive to field and might still need to be fielded in sizable numbers but it's not completely expendable nor is it a caster). However, when Blizzard integrated the Roach into the game, for some reason they had a burning desire to move the Hydralisk to Tier 2 and to shove the Roach into Tier 1. As such, the Roach then needed to be massable. Because it now became massable its original vision was no longer balanceable in its given role. Therefore it has been continually nerfed to have mostly regular regeneration unless burrowed (although that doesn't really kick-in until Organic Carapace in Tier 3), its hp has been (well, at least seemingly) buffed sizable so that it can tank a fair bit of damage but keep its armor relatively low so that Tier 1 units can deal with it (and as of the last patch its armor is even lower now), and finally its burrowed movement has been nerfed to a point where it just isn't too useful. It's become a rather boring unit because it has been molded, kicking and screaming, into a role.

Looking over at the Marauder now, we see a unit that is individually interesting and a bit unique as it's beefy for a Terran infantry unit and has an attack that can slow enemy units- severely altering how Terran infantry deals with melee units (before it was either sheer numbers of Marines or Firebats, whereas now Marauders' slow could be used to kite enemy melee units), and it's also more effective against armored units so ostensibly it gives Terran bio some late-game staying power. The problem? This proved to fulfill a few too many roles it seems and the Marauder turned into a super-unit. It was literally the only thing in the Terran arsenal that could reliably deal with Roaches and therefore was a requirement in TvZ which further led to it needing to remain beefy to preserve TvZ balance. In other match-ups, it was just all-around beefy and in some ways, sorta out-of-place and definitely going beyond the role that it *should* fill- in fact, it still is really. In the most recent patch, the Marauders' slowing ability was changed to require an upgrade- while in practice this really just delays the usage of mass Marauders slightly, from a larger standpoint it again just makes the Marauder more of a boring unit and actually screws with one of its roles (early Zealot pushes/rushes from Protoss players are much stronger now). Also, in an earlier patch, when Terran players leveraged Marauders' sizable health and armored status to form a wall for their Marines to block Banelings (as Marines die very quickly because Banelings do extra to light armor), Banelings were buffed to do more against armored to break this tactic, again making the Marauder more boring and in the process rewarding less micro depth on the part of the Zerg player. More or less, the Marauder is being systematically morphed into a bland, boring, but necessary unit despite its interesting origins. What would be the best retweaking of the Marauder now for both balance and fun? Probably increase the Marauder's gas cost to be less massable but decrease mineral cost to foment more Marine-heavy bio compositions for Terrans. Meanwhile, leave the Marauder's attack as-is but nerf its hp and add slow back in as a standard ability that does not require an upgrade to use. This then leaves the Marauder as a support unit to Marines that allows for some micro-based kiting ability against enemy melee early on while later giving Terran bio more firepower against heavy units (Ultralisks and etc) but still preserving the fragility of Terran bio.

Another notable example is the Thor, which Browder talks about a bit. However, he does not discuss how the Thor has been retweaked to now primarily serve two roles- ground support for Siege Tanks (specifically, using his Barrage ability to deal with Immortals in TvP) and light armor anti-air, which is really more anti-Mutalisks than anything else (as Phoenixes can just use their special ability to lift Thors up and deal with them easily because Thors are so expensive and decidedly not-massable). An immediate problem that comes to mind is that both of these roles are really only effective against one unit each. Otherwise, the Thor isn't really worthwhile against much else (occasionally useful at acting like a mobile Missile Turret in that his ground to air damage per second can be just enough to allow your Vikings to win an air-to-air fight and/or deter such a fight from ever occurring although a Missile Turret could do the same thing and the Thor isn't that much faster than one xD), as while his ground attack is pretty powerful it's not nearly as devastating as the Siege Tank's and the Thor is just way more expensive and not as massable. Dropping Thors to take out enemy Command Centers/Hatcheries/etc with their special ability is useful but rather cheesy and easily-countered. More or less though, the Thor is a unit victimized by both being tweaked and tuned to fulfill required rolls in a balanced fashion as well as trying not to infringe on what would be the Goliath's territory- that is, Blizzard doesn't want to make the Thor too similar to either the Goliath or the Viking, and this is the core reason why it's not being tweaked to be more massable.

However, speaking of the Viking, it is noteworthy that they are one of the relative successes of this style of design. They are an interesting unit and they actually can and do provide air superiority, while making for nice harass units when not dominating the skies. Their only serious issue currently is that they sacrifice a lot of speed to be able to do this, while gaining a nice bit of range though. The trade-off leaves them extremely vulnerable to Mutalisks when/if caught in the open, but then even Wraiths were not a great counter to Mutalisks when/if they lacked ground support. The only serious issue I have with the Viking currently is that its ground-to-ground attack seems necessary for Terran mech to deal with Immortals and some Zerg threats; again, it infringes on the turf that the Goliath would usually deal with and thus prevents such a unit from being implemented.

Browder's response to the last question on page 2 I find to be excellent and Blizzard's approach here is well ahead of that of most other RTS developers and I feel that other RTS developers can and should learn from Blizzard here. We'll have to wait and see how well it works, but on paper it's great.