Dustin Browder Hots röportajı + Balance

[Uliking]

Öncelikle çoğunu alıntı yapıcam. Röportaj Gamespot'ta Tl'de ise önemli yerlerine değinilmiş çeviri isterseniz belli bir kısmın yapabilirim.

Başlangıç olarak Dustin Browder kimdir?

He has experience in developing real-time strategy games, most notably as lead designer for Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2 and Command & Conquer: Generals, and as game design director for The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth series.

Şu anda da Hots'un lead designer'ı yani her şeyi bilen adam bir nevi.

Röportajdan öğrendiklerimiz (burayı çeviriyim dedim :))
1. Dustin Browder olaylara hakim yani şu anda oyuncuların neye op dediğini falan biliyor.
2. Terran diğer iki ırka göre daha olmuş.
3. Protoss harass ünitesi kazanabilir. (Bu ne cidden Dt, warp prism her yere warp in void ray phoenix kardeş ne kadar seviyorlar şu toss'u :D)
4. Zerg siege ünitesi edinebilir (Yani bw'den bildiğimiz lurker gibi ya da bu rolü üstlenicek başka bir ünite bana kalırsa lurker'ı geri koyucaklar ama biraz nerf'leyip siege tank'lere yaptıkları gibi)

Ayrıca

"Dustin Browder also talks about the possibility of removing units due to their being lame. He mentions the corruptor and overseer, but we can probably fill the blanks on other units. Hydra? Colossus? "

Çeviri:

Dustin Browder salak saçma üniteleri kaldırabileceklerini belirtmiş overseer ve corruptor gibi. Yeni ünitelerle bu boşluğu dolduracaklarını ve burada colossus? içinde olması corruptor çok gereksiz bir ünite yani colossus çıkarsa yapıyorsun colossus'ları indiriyor ve başka işlevi kalmıyor bu yüzden lame demiş olabilir ve eskisi gibi overlord'lara detection yeteneği kazandırılabilir. Bana kalırsa overseer'ı kaldırıp yerine overlord speed gibi overlord detection upgrade'i koyucaklar.




Balance konusunda:

said:

GSA: What are your thoughts on the latest StarCraft II balances?

DB: It's going well for us. I don't know if the fans agree with that.

GSA: What are the most common complaints?

DB: There's currently a concern with the Zerg Infestor's power fungal growth. I still hear a lot of complaints about the Zerg still not being strong enough, as well as Terrans still being too flexible. The latter's the most persistent one for the longest time. That's almost a design flaw not a balance flaw. We just have too many good units in that race. It's hard to cut units in that race and say, "I know you have a lot of good units, but we're killing two because [your race] is too good." (laughs) That's not going to work. And it's not fun to go, "Hey, you know that unit that was fun and useful? Well, we ruined it, so now your race is balanced." That feels terrible too. Those are some of the hot areas I've heard.

We've fixed a lot of that. The other complaint we're coming back to that was frustrating was the four gate rush in Protoss vs. Protoss. We've done some fixes and it was great. Within the first three days, everyone stopped doing it and it was like, "Arrgh, Blizzard nerfed it! Don't do it anymore." We were like, "We don't think it was that bad." Sure enough, a week later the community was fine with it. PVP was still not as diverse as we wanted it to be; so we'd like to fix that. We're still studying this stuff. Things change so rapidly. We had multiple times now where we've gone and put out a patch. The patch goes through quality assurance and through localization so that it releases throughout multiple regions at the same time.

It's a lengthy process from deciding which balances we want to do to the point where it got live in the community. We've done nerfs to the bunkers and the rushes are no longer in the game by the time the patch goes live. We're like, "Do we need this? Eh…alright, let's just put in what we thought was good at the time and just go with it." The dynamics change so quickly that sometimes it's hard for us to keep up. The fans are still learning so much from the game and figuring out what works. I don't know how much balanced the game is six months from now to a year, but our internal members that checked the win/loss percentage in all regions are very positive except for Grandmaster Korea, which shows an advantage to Terran.

However, we've heard from Korean pro gamers and casual players that this is more of a cultural issue than anything else. Part of the factor is that Terrans do the easiest early-game rushes and they're the most defendable against them too; Koreans do the most rushing when compared to the rest of the world. But I don't know; it could all be lies. It could be, "Oh, it's broken, but did not know that yet." The Europeans, the Americans, and the Chinese haven't figured it out yet.

On the plus side, specifically in the e-sports scene, the win-losses are pretty good in all tournaments. We've seen lots of champions for different races. We've seen Terran, Protoss, and Zerg players win in America, Europe, Korea, Southeast Asia, and China; that's good diversity. If suddenly we get a month of Zerg wins every match, it would be a total disaster. Keep your fingers crossed; things have been going real well for us.

Looking sharp, Kerrigan.

said:

SA: The official SC2 forums stated that there will be a Heart of the Swarm multiplayer beta coming out. What else can you add on that Wings of Liberty's multiplayer has covered last year?

DB: Well, it's tough. The Terrans have enough stuff already, thus it becomes a guessing game to know what to do for them. We have to be careful about what new units we can add to the game. At the end of the day, we still have to add in cool s***. [Players] are giving us their money; we have to give them something cool.

There are some easy things we can do and there are some hard things. If we study the game, for example, you would say that the corruptor is lame. Don't get us wrong; they're useful. If there are a lot of colossi, you need corruptors. If there are dark templars, you need overseers. They have a battle function for a situation, but what new battle strategies and tactics do they add in the game? Compare the two to the mutalisks; a player can raid, harass. They can get board control; they can decimate opponents without antiair. Party, right? Having those guys around changes the match. Corruptors? Meh. You build colossi, I build corruptors; end of story.

There are some units we can upgrade wholesale or remove and replace with something better. That's one easy way to give better gameplay without giving so many options you don't know what's going on while also not compromising balance. There may be other places we can legitimately add. For instance, the Protoss don't really have a great way to raid. To a point; they can kind of raid with Phoenixes with anti-gravs and they can cheese with void rays, but that's not really fun. But we can add in a legitimate Protoss raider that gives a player new strategies.

There are a few places (not very many) where we can do new roles for races that are missing roles. There are definitely units that can die in the fire so that we can replace them with something cool. We're looking to upgrade some units and add a few, but we need to keep the unit list down because we don't know how big it's going to be [at this point in time].

GSA: How about applying the expansion concept of Brood Wars in terms of multiplayer?

DB: In that expansion, we added two or three per race. I don't know what we'll do ultimately. We may add one per race plus tweaks, or we may do two on some, maybe three. Not all races will be given equal treatment; the Terrans are really, really good and it's really hard to do more with them. While the other races currently have an equal opportunity to beat them (except for Korean Grandmasters), Terrans are still more flexible and we don't want to add that.

Ayrıca

said:

We're not ashamed of putting back in. I'm sure they're pretty high on the community request list. They are pretty mighty, since they offer two things to the overall Zerg strategy: the ability to attack while cloaked and the ability to push into a tier-two building. We may have different solutions other than the Lurker, but we're still working on it.

Konu ile ilgili tartışmalar ve yorumlar için:
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=250383

Röportaj için:
http://www.gamespot.com/news/6325853/starcraft-ii-heart-of-the-swarm-qanda-with-dustin-browder

[yvz]

corruptor ve overseer konusunda sonuna kadar haklı adam.