Qxc's Thoughts: Recent Community Feedback Text by qxc Graphics by lichter



Everything in this article is my opinion unless otherwise stated. As a progamer for several years now, I have a wealth of personal experience and observations to draw upon. That said, sometimes I have to speculate.



Source:



Blizzard’s statement in summary: They are mostly reverting macro mechanics to HotS. Where they eventually end up is hard to tell. The adept’s strength has dropped off a bit with the most recent patch so they want to wait and see before making any changes. They are noticing some issues with photon overcharge being too strong defensively and want to tweak it slightly. They’ll be testing overlord drop requiring an evolution chamber to research rather than lair. They’re testing a less gas intensive version of the disruptor so that it can be integrated into more compositions. Finally, they’re taking a hard stance on maintaining significant map diversity. Blizzard doesn’t like how stagnate Starcraft has been in the past when all the maps are ‘standard’ and so is going to maintain a larger variety of maps and be more experimental with features in maps.



My Thoughts in Summary:



I am a big advocate for reducing the macro mechanics in Starcraft. I’ve always felt like macro was a burden required to get to the more interesting parts of the game. I’ve been enjoying not having to drop mules. Regardless of how it ends up, the most important thing for me is that Blizzard is willing to experiment not just with balance but more fundamental design like macro mechanics. The longest standing issues in Starcraft have come from Blizzard ignoring problems until they fester. I’m confident that Blizzard will find the right balance for the various issues raised in the beta. They are listening to the community more and incorporating their feedback more heavily as well as communicating their work, plans and thoughts on a regular basis. Blizzard has taken a much more aggressive role in developing Starcraft and it’s already showing. LotV, while flawed on a number of levels, is already shining through much more fun than HotS. With each iteration, some of those flaws go away and the game gets a little bit better. Below are Blizzard’s thoughts with mine below them.



Next step for macro mechanics



Our team’s been a close to a 50-50 split on whether or not we should revert the macro mechanics to be the same as Heart of the Swarm or continue pursuing this direction. After many discussions, we realized that, at the root of it, it boils down to this: Are we chasing the best design for each of these mechanics or is taking away a skill that players have been practicing for years better for the game in the long-term?

Let’s take a look at each of the macro mechanics:



Terran Mule



After testing various versions, we’ve realized that we’re not really making mule macro all that much easier, since it was already fairly easy to execute in HotS. In terms of design, however, we believe losing the energy tension with the Orbital Command spells is not a good thing. Therefore, both in terms of saving clicks and in terms of better design, we believe the HotS one is better, and we’d like to go back to it .

For the late game mule spamming issue, if we were to go back to HotS, we would need to do something about it. The current thought is to not have Mules overlap with other Mules on patches so that the Mule dropping in the later stages of the game doesn’t get so out of hand.



I agree that late game mules have always been a little silly. The situation they want to address appears to be the one of dropping 10+ mules at a given time on a base. This situation rarely even occurs in LoTV as turtling strategies took a big hit due to the reduced resources at each base. The tension now is that you have a very limited number of scans so you’re not deciding between scan and something else usually but deciding when it’s appropriate to use the few scans available. The current tension doesn’t feel better or worse than before. Reverting to HoTS won’t change much from how LoTV is being played in this patch, although for the sake of micro over macro I prefer the auto-version.



Protoss Chrono Boost



With the version currently in the beta, chronoboost is cast by the Nexus closest to the target, and there are suggestions to change that to other methods. One thing we’re noticing here is there’s really no ideal way to handle how we move the Chrono Boosts around - no matter which rule set we go with, we haven’t found a way to always guarantee an optimal use case. Therefore, we believe it’s best to just increase the cooldown of the ability so that it’s easier to not make a mistake in terms of the same Nexus recasting Chronoboost on multiple things in quick succession.



One other thing to note here is that one of our core design values in StarCraft II is to only make changes that are significant improvements. The reason is that if something is only a slight improvement to an existing thing, we don’t believe it warrants players having to relearn that mechanic. Therefore, for Protoss, it’ll be a question of exactly how much of an improvement this new version would be versus the old one.



I really like the new chrono boost. It feels more intuitive and obvious in its functionality and result. It’s also easier for new players to use which is a plus. I hope that they find a way to leave it as it is as this one feels like a definite improvement over the HoTS version.



Zerg Spawn Larva



This mechanic is the most difficult because, design-wise, the current version is arguably better, however players are losing a skill they’ve been practicing for years, which isn't ideal. Internally, we’re testing a different version for Zerg. We currently have autocast removed, but it is possible to queue Spawn Larva on a Hatchery. E.g. I can cast Spawn Larva three times on the same Hatchery at the same time, and after one pops, the next one will begin. This might be closer to what we’re looking for: For a top-end pro player to gain the maximum effect of Spawn Larva, he’ll need to be as precise with the casts as he needs to be in HotS, but lower-level players who aren’t close to mastering this technique will have a much easier time with this version.



Because this is such a major change, we’ve been going through major iterations during the beta. We’d like to thank you guys once again for the continued discussions, playtesting, and feedback in this area. This really gives a good example of how we iterate and explore various things internally and it’s cool having everyone be a part of this.Please try to focus your feedback on which version is best for the game, and let us know so that we can make a good decision.



This idea seems really interesting. One of the main complaints from top zergs is that there isn’t actually enough to do on the macro end of things with auto-injects. Spreading creep is an intensive task but because almost all the non-creep macro can be done without looking at your base some players felt like there just wasn’t enough going on. This change sounds like a nice compromise between making the mechanic a bit more accessible to new players while ensuring enough activity for top zergs.



Adept



With the stronger Terran and Zerg macro mechanics in the latest patch, we’re not really seeing the same Adept strength that we used to. Also in exploring PvP more, it’s not quite clear to us that mass Adepts are the best composition in the later stages of the game. We will be continuing to test the Adept armored flag change and potential changes to their upgrade internally, but we’d like to continue testing the current version a bit longer in the beta.



We just don’t want to be too quick to judge on the Adept strength at this point, because it’s not uncommon for players to overreact when core units are added. One good example here is when the Marauder was first introduced back in Wings of Liberty, for a very long time, even after the game launched, we were getting so much feedback, especially from Korean players, that Marauders were completely broken and needed to be nerfed. We never did nerf them, but they’ve been seen as well balanced all throughout HotS.





Warp prism + adept. Good times.



The adept is still wrong. The unit is so strong and oppressive that it overshadows many other protoss units and greatly limits what builds the opponent can do. Even if the adept isn’t ending games like it was at Red Bull, it’s still having an excessive effect on how games are played. The adept is a tanky, low cost, early access unit that is strong against every race’s initial units, great at killing workers, can scout/harass and also win head on fights. The adept’s weaknesses against armored, low range and inability to attack air don’t become relevant until later in the game. Balance aside, the biggest issue with the adept is that it’s so good that protoss players aren’t using other units at all early on. It’s not uncommon to see the first 6-15 units out of the gateway be adepts. The zealot is all but dead until charge because of the adept while stalkers see almost no use early on. As the game progresses, the adept becomes more on par with other protoss units as its disadvantages become much more relevant. Making the adept armored may be sufficient to promote greater diversity. I would also like to see how the adept plays out with bonus damage that 3 shots workers instead of 2 shots them, a slight reduction in tankiness or a duration decrease to the shade. It might be reasonable to increase its initial damage but put most of the +damage vs light on an upgrade in the twilight similar to blue flame.



Photon Overcharge



The defensive case with Photon Overcharge in the early to mid -game is too strong right now. It’s too difficult to do both harassment type and frontal type attacks against Protoss in the early game. Obviously, this is not what we want from the new ability, so we’re exploring potential nerfs. We’re thinking of either doing a duration nerf to 10-15 seconds, or a cost nerf to 50. We’re slightly leaning towards a duration nerf at the moment because it is a lot more adjustable going forward as we fine-tune the balance of this ability. Though we currently were not concerned with offensive Pylon rushes, this nerf will weaken this tactic.





HuK builds multiple pylons while he waits for the msc to arrive.





HuK uses aggressive pylons to break my front.



The current version of photon overcharge definitely needs tweaking. It’s even harder to overwhelm early game overcharged pylons than the nexus photon overcharge of the past and allows for some pretty silly rushes/timing attacks that incorporate 2-3 offensive pylons. The intent of pylons seems to be to give protoss a defensive advantage that allows for more counterplay and decision making on both sides. Pylons could have 2 ‘states’ depending on if there is a warp gate or nexus in their power ring that determines how strong the overcharge would be. That would greatly reduce the offensive case while still providing plenty of defensive utility. Regardless, right now it needs to be scaled back a little to allow for more push and pull rather than just the invincible wall of doom that it is at the moment early game.



Overlord transport upgrade



We’ve explored a few different options here, but your popular suggestion of having an Evolution Chamber requirement looks to have worked out well. It’s an additional investment in order to be able to drop early, doesn’t necessarily reduce the timing at when Zerg can drop, and it’s easier to scout and react against. We would most likely try this out in the next balance update. Thank you for your many suggestions.



As a Terran, I was very glad when overlord drop moved to lair. From a pure design standpoint I can’t comment as my bias is too obvious, even to me. I’d rather it stay on lair. Evolution chamber doesn’t seem like a substantial enough tech requirement to stop many of the more annoying plays that this enables.



Disruptor



We’re playing around with different cost versions of the Disruptor so that it’s not as heavy of a gas investment. The general idea here is to reduce the gas cost needed so that Disruptors can see more play across the board. We’ll try to finalize the numbers for the next balance update.



Protoss already has a ton of gas dumps, especially if the colossus is viable once again.

Shifting the cost around for the disruptor to be more mineral heavy should help protoss utilize a larger variety of unit compositions and strategies.



Maps in Legacy of the Void



As we’ve done multiple times in the past, we definitely know that if a map isn’t completely standard, a majority of players will initially think it’s a bad map. However, this is one of the areas that we would really like to push back because the positive effects of having a more diverse map pool is just too good for the game. We see this in HotS season 3 and even more so in the various tournaments going on in LotV, in terms of how different each map plays.



Therefore, we will continue pushing a unique and diverse map pool in LotV for now. We’ve clearly seen how stale the game becomes both in terms of playing and watching when we’ve had map pools that everyone agrees is ‘good.’ The matches are all very standard and similar in terms of playstyle, and we want to clearly avoid this from ever happening again. We feel strongly on this point: A truly good map pool for SC2 is one with lots of map diversity, not a map pool that has 7 of the same type of standard maps.



With that said, because we are constantly exploring new things that can potentially be cool for the game, obviously there is a higher chance of making a mistake. Maps such as Daedalus Point are examples of something that we tried that didn’t work out. However, we believe the positives that we gain from pushing map diversity outweigh the negatives. If necessary, it’s easy to remove a map that doesn’t work out mid-season, and we’ve seen from experience this doesn’t happen on a regular basis.



Thank you everyone for the continued help and support during the development of Legacy of the Void. We are looking forward to hearing your constructive thoughts.





#WorkingAsIntended



Map diversity leads to interesting gameplay. Drawing the line between a map being bad and a map being different is very tricky. Daedalus was certainly a different map. What makes it worse than Lerilak or Ruins of Seras for example? I don’t know. One of the reasons that I’ve always been a fan of standard maps is that many of the non-standard maps actually just felt poorly. This last season of HoTS is an exception for me. While some of the maps don’t seem great for Terran, overall they are interesting and unique. I don’t know what separates Dash or Bridgehead from Ruins of Seras, but I would choose the former two maps as being some of the most interesting and unique maps while the latter fall into the boring and imbalanced category.





#FairAndBalanced



Overall, this update is a step in the right direction but leaves some questions unanswered particularly in terms of balance. The liberator, for example, is a unit that will probably need some additional nerfs besides the added tech requirement of researching siege mode (as mentioned in previous community feedback). We may not see any substantial changes for another week or so as Red Bull Battlegrounds Finals are coming up which will showcase some of the highest level LoTV games. From there, Blizzard will probably have enough information to see what really needs to be changed.





Everything stated here is my opinion unless noted and/or cited otherwise. As a progamer for several years now, I have a wealth of personal experience and observations to draw upon. With that said, I sometimes have to speculate due to lack of studies/concrete facts. It’s important to note that this patch is only days old.







Previous installments:

Archon Mode

On Preparation and Build Orders

The Disruptor in Review

Liberator in Review

On SC2's Social Features

Re-thinking the Ladder

The Adept

Thoughts on Macro Mechanics





Source: http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/18596068245?page=1#0 Blizzard’s statement in summary: They are mostly reverting macro mechanics to HotS. Where they eventually end up is hard to tell. The adept’s strength has dropped off a bit with the most recent patch so they want to wait and see before making any changes. They are noticing some issues with photon overcharge being too strong defensively and want to tweak it slightly. They’ll be testing overlord drop requiring an evolution chamber to research rather than lair. They’re testing a less gas intensive version of the disruptor so that it can be integrated into more compositions. Finally, they’re taking a hard stance on maintaining significant map diversity. Blizzard doesn’t like how stagnate Starcraft has been in the past when all the maps are ‘standard’ and so is going to maintain a larger variety of maps and be more experimental with features in maps.I am a big advocate for reducing the macro mechanics in Starcraft. I’ve always felt like macro was a burden required to get to the more interesting parts of the game. I’ve been enjoying not having to drop mules. Regardless of how it ends up, the most important thing for me is that Blizzard is willing to experiment not just with balance but more fundamental design like macro mechanics. The longest standing issues in Starcraft have come from Blizzard ignoring problems until they fester. I’m confident that Blizzard will find the right balance for the various issues raised in the beta. They are listening to the community more and incorporating their feedback more heavily as well as communicating their work, plans and thoughts on a regular basis. Blizzard has taken a much more aggressive role in developing Starcraft and it’s already showing. LotV, while flawed on a number of levels, is already shining through much more fun than HotS. With each iteration, some of those flaws go away and the game gets a little bit better. Below are Blizzard’s thoughts with mine below them.I agree that late game mules have always been a little silly. The situation they want to address appears to be the one of dropping 10+ mules at a given time on a base. This situation rarely even occurs in LoTV as turtling strategies took a big hit due to the reduced resources at each base. The tension now is that you have a very limited number of scans so you’re not deciding between scan and something else usually but deciding when it’s appropriate to use the few scans available. The current tension doesn’t feel better or worse than before. Reverting to HoTS won’t change much from how LoTV is being played in this patch, although for the sake of micro over macro I prefer the auto-version.I really like the new chrono boost. It feels more intuitive and obvious in its functionality and result. It’s also easier for new players to use which is a plus. I hope that they find a way to leave it as it is as this one feels like a definite improvement over the HoTS version.This idea seems really interesting. One of the main complaints from top zergs is that there isn’t actually enough to do on the macro end of things with auto-injects. Spreading creep is an intensive task but because almost all the non-creep macro can be done without looking at your base some players felt like there just wasn’t enough going on. This change sounds like a nice compromise between making the mechanic a bit more accessible to new players while ensuring enough activity for top zergs.The adept is still wrong. The unit is so strong and oppressive that it overshadows many other protoss units and greatly limits what builds the opponent can do. Even if the adept isn’t ending games like it was at Red Bull, it’s still having an excessive effect on how games are played. The adept is a tanky, low cost, early access unit that is strong against every race’s initial units, great at killing workers, can scout/harass and also win head on fights. The adept’s weaknesses against armored, low range and inability to attack air don’t become relevant until later in the game. Balance aside, the biggest issue with the adept is that it’s so good that protoss players aren’t using other units at all early on. It’s not uncommon to see the first 6-15 units out of the gateway be adepts. The zealot is all but dead until charge because of the adept while stalkers see almost no use early on. As the game progresses, the adept becomes more on par with other protoss units as its disadvantages become much more relevant. Making the adept armored may be sufficient to promote greater diversity. I would also like to see how the adept plays out with bonus damage that 3 shots workers instead of 2 shots them, a slight reduction in tankiness or a duration decrease to the shade. It might be reasonable to increase its initial damage but put most of the +damage vs light on an upgrade in the twilight similar to blue flame.The current version of photon overcharge definitely needs tweaking. It’s even harder to overwhelm early game overcharged pylons than the nexus photon overcharge of the past and allows for some pretty silly rushes/timing attacks that incorporate 2-3 offensive pylons. The intent of pylons seems to be to give protoss a defensive advantage that allows for more counterplay and decision making on both sides. Pylons could have 2 ‘states’ depending on if there is a warp gate or nexus in their power ring that determines how strong the overcharge would be. That would greatly reduce the offensive case while still providing plenty of defensive utility. Regardless, right now it needs to be scaled back a little to allow for more push and pull rather than just the invincible wall of doom that it is at the moment early game.As a Terran, I was very glad when overlord drop moved to lair. From a pure design standpoint I can’t comment as my bias is too obvious, even to me. I’d rather it stay on lair. Evolution chamber doesn’t seem like a substantial enough tech requirement to stop many of the more annoying plays that this enables.Protoss already has a ton of gas dumps, especially if the colossus is viable once again.Shifting the cost around for the disruptor to be more mineral heavy should help protoss utilize a larger variety of unit compositions and strategies.Map diversity leads to interesting gameplay. Drawing the line between a map being bad and a map being different is very tricky. Daedalus was certainly a different map. What makes it worse than Lerilak or Ruins of Seras for example? I don’t know. One of the reasons that I’ve always been a fan of standard maps is that many of the non-standard maps actually just felt poorly. This last season of HoTS is an exception for me. While some of the maps don’t seem great for Terran, overall they are interesting and unique. I don’t know what separates Dash or Bridgehead from Ruins of Seras, but I would choose the former two maps as being some of the most interesting and unique maps while the latter fall into the boring and imbalanced category.Overall, this update is a step in the right direction but leaves some questions unanswered particularly in terms of balance. The liberator, for example, is a unit that will probably need some additional nerfs besides the added tech requirement of researching siege mode (as mentioned in previous community feedback). We may not see any substantial changes for another week or so as Red Bull Battlegrounds Finals are coming up which will showcase some of the highest level LoTV games. From there, Blizzard will probably have enough information to see what really needs to be changed. Progamer Designer of Aeon's End