We caught up with Dustin at BlizzCon who took time with us to speak about the ingame things of StarCraft II. We met him the day before at the RTS Summit (see more in my blog post from day one) but at the time didn't get to record what was said. We met up today again and went straight into the details of the game.
GosuGamers: You added the salvage function, sort of also C&C3ish, aren't you afraid of a bunker rush possibility that'd make it imbalanced?
Dustin: It is a little bit, the initial idea was to find a way for players to feel excited about being able to build their bunkers and give them a little more flexibility in their strategy. We haven't really decided if this is something we're going to stay with. Its only been in the game for the last three weeks or so. We've mostly focused on getting these two races ready for BlizzCon. We kind of left it in to see what the fans thought and how it plays. The C&C way of selling buildings is really about recycling some of your buildings in case you went out of whatever resource they're using in C&C depending on the game. In this game, you receive 100% of the resources in return when you sell the buildings. It's really a different mechanic and a way for you to move your base defenses around the battlefield. If a base defense doesn't become relevant anymore, if it's in the back of your base and that mineral line is now gone and you don't want to defend it anymore then you might as well recycle those minerals. Its not something I think a lot of the average gamers are going to use, they usually have three to four thousand minerals in their store anyway, so it doesn't really matter. But for the pro players who are keeping their mineral count under two hundred or a hundred, you know, an extra hundred resources for an unused bunker can be an enormous swing in their favor. But when we try it out we'll see how it goes.
GosuGamers: Doesn't that open up for a lot of cheesy things? Like moving to the island if your base is down, just float over it with all the buildings and whatever you've got left you can sell.
Dustin: You know it takes a certain amount of time to sell a building. If the buildings are destroyed you're obviously not going to get the money back. We haven't really seen that in our 1on1s or 2on2s, I mean no more than they've been escaping before. But usually when the enemy is racing in and blowing up your stuff, with anything that resembles a good amount of stack, you're not going to have time to salvage a lot. You can sell a little bit towards the back. But really, we'll see how it goes.
GosuGamers: What about the bunker rush? We were talking about tower rush in WC3 and that was a main problem and the AoE's rushing with buildings, you think that's going to be a problem?
Dustin: It won't be more of a problem than it was in the original StarCraft. We're not really going back to WC3 for our balance or design, we're going back to the original StarCraft so. Whatever problems that were in the original StarCraft are the problems we'll have to tackle here. The relationship to, I think, the WC3 tower rush, not really, did you have a huge bunker rush problem in the original StarCraft?
GosuGamers: No, but now you can sell it!
“
GosuGamers: Okay. Now this makes the Terran an even more dynamic race as you can have moving buildings and armies and there by push more easily. So now you can easily surround someone and then just move around and be totally flexible. Is that anything we're going to see for the other races too?
Dustin: I don't know exactly of course but our goal is to have the races as different as possible. The Terran are more of a nomadic race which was also kind of true for the original StarCraft. But its an idea we've been kind of running with to make them even more nomadic than before. So you certainly will not see a similar level of flexibility as that would violate our core goal to make the races as radically different as we possibly could.
GosuGamers: And we haven't seen much of the Zerg. There's been a lot of balance talk between the Terran and Protoss. When we spoke yesterday you mentioned a slight advantage for Protoss.
Dustin: I think so. I'm not a 100% sure but if you'd push me to the corner right now I'd probably choose Protoss for that five or ten percent edge. We tested in the office, skill difference won and it didn't matter if you played Protoss or Terran. But obviously we have a real limited pool of people who are playing there. So I don't feel like it's horribly unbalanced now but I think there are a few issues still that we can hammer out, yeah.
GosuGamers: What about the laserish feel to the game?
Dustin: Laserish?
GosuGamers: Yeah with all the effects, the Colossus etc.
“
GosuGamers: One issue that is very interesting for the hard core gamers is one of the issues we talked about earlier, I know you mentioned it at the web page too, is the unit control and the max units being selectable? We spoke about that yesterday too but could you give a comment on that?
Dustin: What we're hoping with unlimited selection, the really large amount of selection we have right now, is to give the players more and allow even the hardcore gamers to have more micro control over the units, so we're trying to introduce more micro opportunities for players. We've seen a little bit of this with the blink with the game and there are a few other units that have had a micro opportunity. I wouldn't say we're there yet, I'd say there's still not quite enough of that stuff in the game right now to really make it feel like we're being true to StarCraft in that sense and its something we are trying to push. At the same time we don't want you to be struggling with the effects too much, we want you be clever with the things you can do with the unit and really to focus on the micro of the unit in the battle while maintaining an economy, while building your base, and doing all the crazy insane things you can do in StarCraft.
GosuGamers: For Korean progamers, what do you have with StarCraft 2 that will make them sort of adopt the game, because I know you've been trying hard to maintain the same feel so that their hours that they've put in can be used in StarCraft 2? I mean we already saw the pro gamers beat everyone else.
Dustin: The progamers are really doing great, which is what you expect of course, these guys are practicing for years and years and the game, as is, has a lot of similarities to the original. So from our point of view, if we make a great game that feels like StarCraft, while giving whole new tactics and strategies, then I think people will come and play and that's what we're focusing on. We're not doing anything really special, say, "here's exactly what we're going to do to put in that game or that game", no, what we're trying to do is a really fun game. Put some new tactics in and we really thought hard about the legacy of the original game. We think that will bring the gamers back. We hope it will.
GosuGamers: Yeah, you guys have a lot of responsibility now with the hardcore gamers, like on GosuGamers, and the new ones.
Dustin: Yes. The responsibility for this development team, to bring this game to the world is enormous and people's expectations are huge and rightly so. We're absolutely aware that we have a gigantic responsibility to make this game as good as it can possibly be. Everybody from the development team is working as hard as they can to deliver on the fans' expectations, absolutely.
GosuGamers: And you're only 40 people!
“
GosuGamers: You took back the Carrier all of a sudden.
Dustin: Yeah, it was something we tried out to see if it works. And we asked around, we saw some feedback from the fans. When we were looking at the favorite Protoss units, the Carrier was always number two or three, sometimes number one, on peoples' list. The mechanic that we were trying with the Tempest didn't really work for us 100% so we said, "hey, lets go back to the carrier and that's what we did."
GosuGamers: I spoke to Testie who mentioned the Zergings and the bombs and things. Are we going to see a lot of suicide units for the Zerg?
Dustin: I certainly hope not. I think we'll only have the one. That would sort of go against the philosophy. We obviously make the races different and the same with the units. For instance, I don't know what's going to happen, we will work on the Zerglings in the future but I will be nervous if they were not very different in how they played, like having the Baneling and the Zergling in the game. They're both suicide units and work in the exact same way, very small units, that'd have to really be the reason we'd have both. I don't know yet but we don't want to have a lot of units that are the same on one side, or even across the game.
GosuGamers: Will there be a tier system for the Zerg?
Dustin: Yes, there will be. They'll have units that are different levels and obviously the Baneling and Scourge would be in radically different positions in the tech tree but still, it's for a feel thing, nothing we'd like to embrace. We'd like to make it very unique in the way it fights, the way it attacks and does damage.
GosuGamers: Then you'll have it very unique, even more unique than in StarCraft?
Dustin: Yes.
GosuGamers: Then we're talking about even more balancing work?
Dustin: Yes.
GosuGamers: So we're talking patches for how long?
Dustin: I don't know. [Laughs out loud]. As long as it takes! It will have to get to a place where it's really clear and smooth.
GosuGamers: Okay. Anything you'd like to say to the members of GosuGamers and fans of SC?
Dustin: I'd say that the response of the game has been overwhelming and the team will absolutely do our best to deliver to the expectations and do everything we can to give you as much information as we can and get it as quickly as we possibly can and get your feedback to see what you think of the game.
GosuGamers: Thank you very much!
Dustin: Thank you!
Dustin and I also spoke earlier about the Command and Conquer feeling to the game of StarCraft 2. He disagreed with the points many had been making, and actually clarified that neither of the things he is accused for bringing into the game was introduced by him. The mothership, the goldish minerals and salvage ability, for example, were not introduced while Dustin was working with the project, but when Rob Pardo was Lead Designer for the game. Dustin, all through the interview and the whole event, has been acting very professional and been extremely enthusiastic about our feedback and really aware of the many different angles on many of the things discussed. More interviews later on!
Salvage - Selling Terran Buildings
GosuGamers: You added the salvage function, sort of also C&C3ish, aren't you afraid of a bunker rush possibility that'd make it imbalanced?
Dustin: It is a little bit, the initial idea was to find a way for players to feel excited about being able to build their bunkers and give them a little more flexibility in their strategy. We haven't really decided if this is something we're going to stay with. Its only been in the game for the last three weeks or so. We've mostly focused on getting these two races ready for BlizzCon. We kind of left it in to see what the fans thought and how it plays. The C&C way of selling buildings is really about recycling some of your buildings in case you went out of whatever resource they're using in C&C depending on the game. In this game, you receive 100% of the resources in return when you sell the buildings. It's really a different mechanic and a way for you to move your base defenses around the battlefield. If a base defense doesn't become relevant anymore, if it's in the back of your base and that mineral line is now gone and you don't want to defend it anymore then you might as well recycle those minerals. Its not something I think a lot of the average gamers are going to use, they usually have three to four thousand minerals in their store anyway, so it doesn't really matter. But for the pro players who are keeping their mineral count under two hundred or a hundred, you know, an extra hundred resources for an unused bunker can be an enormous swing in their favor. But when we try it out we'll see how it goes.
GosuGamers: Doesn't that open up for a lot of cheesy things? Like moving to the island if your base is down, just float over it with all the buildings and whatever you've got left you can sell.
Dustin: You know it takes a certain amount of time to sell a building. If the buildings are destroyed you're obviously not going to get the money back. We haven't really seen that in our 1on1s or 2on2s, I mean no more than they've been escaping before. But usually when the enemy is racing in and blowing up your stuff, with anything that resembles a good amount of stack, you're not going to have time to salvage a lot. You can sell a little bit towards the back. But really, we'll see how it goes.
GosuGamers: What about the bunker rush? We were talking about tower rush in WC3 and that was a main problem and the AoE's rushing with buildings, you think that's going to be a problem?
Dustin: It won't be more of a problem than it was in the original StarCraft. We're not really going back to WC3 for our balance or design, we're going back to the original StarCraft so. Whatever problems that were in the original StarCraft are the problems we'll have to tackle here. The relationship to, I think, the WC3 tower rush, not really, did you have a huge bunker rush problem in the original StarCraft?
GosuGamers: No, but now you can sell it!
“
We've just gotten 20,000 times the testing we've done over the last month just the first hour here with these guys [at BlizzCon]
”Dustin: Yeah but you have to build it right before their guns. The SCV can still be sniped and destroyed, there's a lot possible. It allows me to move more, then I would've done before, so I'm more worried about a bunker push than a bunker rush. So the bunker push still seems reasonably effective and you can definitely use some resources by selling, but I guess it depends on how big the map is, and if I would be selling off four or five times then that'd be making a significant difference. The maps we play right now are not really that big. It's a concern and something we're definitely looking at to find out if its a big factor or not. We'll play with it for a few weeks to do a significant amount of testing, just not near enough than we've seen today. We've just gotten 20,000 times the testing we've done over the last month just the first hour here with these guys, so it will be really interesting to see.GosuGamers: Okay. Now this makes the Terran an even more dynamic race as you can have moving buildings and armies and there by push more easily. So now you can easily surround someone and then just move around and be totally flexible. Is that anything we're going to see for the other races too?
Dustin: I don't know exactly of course but our goal is to have the races as different as possible. The Terran are more of a nomadic race which was also kind of true for the original StarCraft. But its an idea we've been kind of running with to make them even more nomadic than before. So you certainly will not see a similar level of flexibility as that would violate our core goal to make the races as radically different as we possibly could.
Balance and Design
GosuGamers: And we haven't seen much of the Zerg. There's been a lot of balance talk between the Terran and Protoss. When we spoke yesterday you mentioned a slight advantage for Protoss.
Dustin: I think so. I'm not a 100% sure but if you'd push me to the corner right now I'd probably choose Protoss for that five or ten percent edge. We tested in the office, skill difference won and it didn't matter if you played Protoss or Terran. But obviously we have a real limited pool of people who are playing there. So I don't feel like it's horribly unbalanced now but I think there are a few issues still that we can hammer out, yeah.
GosuGamers: What about the laserish feel to the game?
Dustin: Laserish?
GosuGamers: Yeah with all the effects, the Colossus etc.
“
A lot of developers face ... a balance between playability and good looks.
”Dustin: Yeah that's one of the things we're constantly facing and a lot of developers face in a lot of games; a balance between playability and good looks. We're still struggling with it, still trying to find the right mix to make sure that everything is as clear as it could be. I definitely feel like, it will be interesting to see what the fans think today; it's kind of hard to see what's going on but we're definitely going to work on that.GosuGamers: One issue that is very interesting for the hard core gamers is one of the issues we talked about earlier, I know you mentioned it at the web page too, is the unit control and the max units being selectable? We spoke about that yesterday too but could you give a comment on that?
Dustin: What we're hoping with unlimited selection, the really large amount of selection we have right now, is to give the players more and allow even the hardcore gamers to have more micro control over the units, so we're trying to introduce more micro opportunities for players. We've seen a little bit of this with the blink with the game and there are a few other units that have had a micro opportunity. I wouldn't say we're there yet, I'd say there's still not quite enough of that stuff in the game right now to really make it feel like we're being true to StarCraft in that sense and its something we are trying to push. At the same time we don't want you to be struggling with the effects too much, we want you be clever with the things you can do with the unit and really to focus on the micro of the unit in the battle while maintaining an economy, while building your base, and doing all the crazy insane things you can do in StarCraft.
GosuGamers: For Korean progamers, what do you have with StarCraft 2 that will make them sort of adopt the game, because I know you've been trying hard to maintain the same feel so that their hours that they've put in can be used in StarCraft 2? I mean we already saw the pro gamers beat everyone else.
Dustin: The progamers are really doing great, which is what you expect of course, these guys are practicing for years and years and the game, as is, has a lot of similarities to the original. So from our point of view, if we make a great game that feels like StarCraft, while giving whole new tactics and strategies, then I think people will come and play and that's what we're focusing on. We're not doing anything really special, say, "here's exactly what we're going to do to put in that game or that game", no, what we're trying to do is a really fun game. Put some new tactics in and we really thought hard about the legacy of the original game. We think that will bring the gamers back. We hope it will.
GosuGamers: Yeah, you guys have a lot of responsibility now with the hardcore gamers, like on GosuGamers, and the new ones.
Dustin: Yes. The responsibility for this development team, to bring this game to the world is enormous and people's expectations are huge and rightly so. We're absolutely aware that we have a gigantic responsibility to make this game as good as it can possibly be. Everybody from the development team is working as hard as they can to deliver on the fans' expectations, absolutely.
GosuGamers: And you're only 40 people!
“
[Our Team is] all people who've worked years and years on the game at Blizzard.
”Dustin: We're only 40 people. And that's actually can be an advantage for us. They're 40 people but they're 40 great people who absolutely know what they're doing. These are all people who've worked years and years on the game at Blizzard. A lot of them are veterans of the original StarCraft and WarCraft III. This is a team that knows how to do real time strategy games. We're absolutely keeping it small because it allows us to work with nothing but the best.Tempest is out - Carrier is back
GosuGamers: You took back the Carrier all of a sudden.
Dustin: Yeah, it was something we tried out to see if it works. And we asked around, we saw some feedback from the fans. When we were looking at the favorite Protoss units, the Carrier was always number two or three, sometimes number one, on peoples' list. The mechanic that we were trying with the Tempest didn't really work for us 100% so we said, "hey, lets go back to the carrier and that's what we did."
Zerg Ideas
GosuGamers: I spoke to Testie who mentioned the Zergings and the bombs and things. Are we going to see a lot of suicide units for the Zerg?
Dustin: I certainly hope not. I think we'll only have the one. That would sort of go against the philosophy. We obviously make the races different and the same with the units. For instance, I don't know what's going to happen, we will work on the Zerglings in the future but I will be nervous if they were not very different in how they played, like having the Baneling and the Zergling in the game. They're both suicide units and work in the exact same way, very small units, that'd have to really be the reason we'd have both. I don't know yet but we don't want to have a lot of units that are the same on one side, or even across the game.
GosuGamers: Will there be a tier system for the Zerg?
Dustin: Yes, there will be. They'll have units that are different levels and obviously the Baneling and Scourge would be in radically different positions in the tech tree but still, it's for a feel thing, nothing we'd like to embrace. We'd like to make it very unique in the way it fights, the way it attacks and does damage.
GosuGamers: Then you'll have it very unique, even more unique than in StarCraft?
Dustin: Yes.
GosuGamers: Then we're talking about even more balancing work?
Dustin: Yes.
GosuGamers: So we're talking patches for how long?
Dustin: I don't know. [Laughs out loud]. As long as it takes! It will have to get to a place where it's really clear and smooth.
GosuGamers: Okay. Anything you'd like to say to the members of GosuGamers and fans of SC?
Dustin: I'd say that the response of the game has been overwhelming and the team will absolutely do our best to deliver to the expectations and do everything we can to give you as much information as we can and get it as quickly as we possibly can and get your feedback to see what you think of the game.
GosuGamers: Thank you very much!
Dustin: Thank you!
Dustin and I also spoke earlier about the Command and Conquer feeling to the game of StarCraft 2. He disagreed with the points many had been making, and actually clarified that neither of the things he is accused for bringing into the game was introduced by him. The mothership, the goldish minerals and salvage ability, for example, were not introduced while Dustin was working with the project, but when Rob Pardo was Lead Designer for the game. Dustin, all through the interview and the whole event, has been acting very professional and been extremely enthusiastic about our feedback and really aware of the many different angles on many of the things discussed. More interviews later on!
