Wing Zero
lol just as planned
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Havent read it all yet. if any would like, i will in the future, try to put up the Blizzcast portions of SC2 on youtube since the uploads here dont work the way they shouldCommunity Q&A 2 Mike Heiberg (Senior Game Designer on StarCraft II),
David Kim (Associate Game Balance Designer on StarCraft II)
Bornakk: Up next we have some Starcraft II questions, to help answer them in their first appearance on BlizzCast we our Associate Game Balance Designer David Kim and one of our Senior Game Designers Mike Heiberg here to help us. Welcome to BlizzCast guys!
Mike Heiberg: Thank you.
David Kim: Thanks.
Bornakk: The first question is from D10 at teamliquid.net – What is the reason for the decreased mineral collection by workers? (It goes from 8 to 6 per round.) Is it better worker A.I. or a more economy heavy game maybe?
Mike Heiberg: The harvest rates for classic and Starcraft II are basically the same -
David Kim: It feels faster though, the minerals anyway.
Mike Heiberg: It feels faster at certain points, certainly more so mid to late game but it kind of depends on the race and the expansions and stuff. I think that’s a matter of when you cap out on three per mineral field, just how much income you get versus – like in Starcraft a lot of times you get up to like two per mineral field and you couldn’t quite tell if you were capped out or not because there’s a lot of guys moving around and a lot of times you have an empty mineral field for a few seconds here and there.
When we did the original Starcraft harvesting numbers they were just pulling back way too much minerals because the units path so much better and they don’t do the strange harvesting A.I. that classic Starcraft did. But yeah, that’s why when we put in the original numbers they were harvesting way too fast and we had to take it down a notch. We first tried – we tried a lot of things – we tried bringing their movement speed down, then we had a lot of problems, with an SCV moves slower that means you can’t scout as quickly right, you can’t run away from certain threats, you can’t like dance around and avoid a zealot anymore. You know same thing with some of the other slower units but we tried other things like the acceleration, tweaking how fast they accelerate and decelerate, that got really tricky with how good the unit feels when you’re moving him around. So then we tried how much time they spend at the mineral field, which is actually still in there, right now a unit will bring back 6 per trip instead of 8, but at the same time he will spend a little less time at the mineral field. So overall the amount of time that he spends going back and forth he comes out to about the same harvesting rate as a single SCV in the original Starcraft.
Overall we’re trying to make the feel of the harvesting about the same as it was in classic Starcraft where you really have to think about how much money you have and the minerals-gas ratio and what you can afford to do. How do you think it’s feeling for the whole?
Bornakk: Yeah- does this affect overall units and how they move? I’ve heard the pathing for StarCraft II has been much improved since the original StarCraft.
David Kim: Okay the pathing is actually pretty interesting because a lot of the tier 1 units, especially the zerglings and the zealots perform a lot better because they can get into places easier.
Mike Heiberg: We have tried to tweak some of the interaction of some of the earlier units with respect to pathing and create a lot of interesting gameplay with not just the types of units that you’re mashing together but the ways that they’re meeting each other on the battlefield. Where in classic Starcraft you could throw a couple zealots on your choke and zerglings coming in would have a hard time getting past them just because you can only fit so many zerglings up against the zealots right? Now you have a similar thing but at the same time out in the field if you have zealots versus zerglings the zealots have trouble because the zerglings wrap around them, start devouring them. Sometimes it helps to even back up your zealots against a wall or a cliff edge and reduce the amount of wrap around that the zerglings can pull off.
David Kim: Yeah and the wrap around itself is a little easier to pull off I guess because the A.I. takes care of some of that for you but you do still need the micro if you want to get the maximum out of your melee units.
Mike Heiberg: Yeah the pathing of zerglings, will instead of just going around and finding some place they can fit on the other side of the zealot they’ll actually try and nudge up a little closer to the other zerglings so they can fit more of them in which is just kind of something that we got with the updated pathing.
David Kim: We also have the difference in deceleration. In our game the unit knows when it’s going to stop so it starts decelerating at the exact right moment so that it stops at the exact spot that it’s ordered to go to. Whereas in the original it didn’t check as frequently so even if you told it to go somewhere it might stop a half an inch past it or a half an inch before it.
Mike Heiberg: Right, a lot of times you’d be floating your guardians in to take out some spore colony or something and they’d float a little too close and you’d be like “Whoa!” and you’d have to back a couple of them out. They’re a little more intelligent now about not floating directly into danger when they don’t have to.
David Kim: So all in all you can give more precise orders and the units will do exactly what you want to instead of just doing whatever they wanted.
Bornakk: It will be a little more consistent?
David Kim: Yeah it will be more consistent.
Mike Heiberg: Yeah for a game like Starcraft we really want a lot of consistency in how units behave when you tell them to do something because you know this is a game that we hope to be played at a very pro level where people want very precise control over everything that their units are doing. I tell a guy to go there he should go exactly there, I tell a guy to attack over there, he should attack to exactly that point and not roughly what I was telling him to do. So basically trying to fine tune the behavior that you get what you expect out of the unit when you tell him to do something is definitely one of our goals.
Bornakk: How do the three races feel right now in terms of their resource consumptions in relation to the more popular strategies seen here at Blizzard?
David Kim: Resource-wise the three races feel pretty similar. Terrans usually have to mix in mineral-only units such as marines or jackals with their army and with Zerg you can do the same sort of stuff you could do in the original just like fast mutalisks, or fast lurkers, but on top of that we also have interesting strategies, like surprise strategies, such as going fast banelings.
Mike Heiberg: Yeah and you know the other races like reapers and banshees and whatnot, but yeah it’s really a tough decision in the early game to choose how you want to spend your gas, do you want to go to one of the rush strategies? Do you want to tech up to the higher stuff that’s more stable? Or do you want to focus on upgrades and pushing with low tier units? Until you expand you really have to choose what kind of options you want to pick from.
David Kim: And also because of that, scouting becomes extremely important because there are more options for each player.
Mike Heiberg: Yeah when you have so many different options to choose from and more raiding options with things like reapers and banshees – scouting, you really have to get out there and see what they’re doing and how vulnerable they are to different strategies and different tactics.
Bornakk: This next question comes from inbroodwar.de – The new infest and corrupt abilities are all time limited. Is there any plan for a spell that changes the owner of the unit permanently like the old Dark Archon mind control?
Mike Heiberg: Well when we were doing the classic Starcraft mind control we were finding that it actually resulted in some pretty big swings in balance where basically you mind control a large unit, say a Battlecruiser, and now the difference in power from the two different armies is like two Battlecruisers because he lost one and you gained one. So seeing as in Starcraft II we have a few more of those high impact units, we have Colossi, we have Motherships, and Queens, that’s a very scary type of spell to be still bringing into the game, I mean we have more opportunities for those large swings in balance.
David Kim: Okay so in Starcraft I the mind control was pretty high tech and difficult to get to so you rarely saw it in actual games.
Mike Heiberg: It was also pretty difficult to pull off for most people.
David Kim: So if we were to make it so that it is more accessible in SC2, there would definitely have to be restrictions such as “can’t mind control the Queen.”
Mike Heiberg: Right and Motherships, you can’t be taking out some of the unique units to each race.
David Kim: Yeah and if that’s the case then we’re kind of diverting away from the original Starcraft mind control mechanic which had no restrictions like that.
Mike Heiberg: What about infestation? The question actually was talking about...
Bornakk: Yeah, I mean infestation also was really hard to pull off, but generally speaking wasn’t too big of a thing in most of the games I’ve seen, so what’s the need for that to be time limited?
Mike Heiberg: Right, in classic Starcraft infesting someone’s command center was really more of an insult.
David Kim: I guess it’s sort of the same thing because it’s tier 3 right now, and you need the infestor pit as well as the infestation research, which means it won’t be that easy to pull off considering at that point of the game.
Mike Heiberg: It’s actually a little higher tech but it ends up being a bit easier to pull off than classic Starcraft infestation - off the Queen. You got to get it down to burning then bring in a Queen and at that point it’s like half the time the building dies anyway before you get it off.
David Kim: But the difference is you don’t actually take over the building it just infests it until it’s cleared out or the duration fades, whichever mechanic we decide to go with.
Mike Heiberg: Right and at the same time you’re not feeding money into it when it’s infested to produce infested marines you’re actually just getting them for free.
David Kim: So it’s definitely more usable and...
Mike Heiberg: It’s one of those spells that basically wasn’t seeing much play at all in classic Starcraft except in the weird cases where you were just trying to make someone feel bad for how much you’re owning them.
Bornakk: Sending a bunch of kamikaze marines at them?
Mike Heiberg: Yeah, like the, “Oh, I’m going to triple nuke you!” type stuff.
David Kim: Yeah and for the Corrupter, I guess we decided on what we decided on was because we get the same feel for the mind control but minus all the balance problems that we have to face.
Mike Heiberg: Right. You get that unit sort of on your side but at the same time you’re not grabbing them and moving them around, performing assaults with them.
David Kim: We also like the interaction between the two players. The guy that’s doing the corrupting can actually focus target the low health units to kill them first whereas the opponent can react by either pulling his troops away or just killing the corrupted unit fast depending on how much health the unit is at.
Mike Heiberg: Right we want to allow those types of little micro decisions where in the middle of the battle: “Should I focus on his guys, his Corrupters? Should I focus on my own corrupted units because I’m not getting them back? Or should I back off and make those basically invalid because there’s nobody nearby for them to be messing with?”.
David Kim: Whereas the original Starcraft mind control mechanic was more all or nothing that doesn’t have as much like immediate player interaction like corrupt does.
Mike Heiberg: Yeah it’s basically, “That unit’s mine, now I try and back my Dark Archon off before it dies.”
Who really thinks infested Terrans will be used?
