Waxangel:You've never done such a sweeping patch before. Is this because LotV is the last expansion?

David Kim: Because Legacy of the Void was the last expansion and we wanted to take a pass at it, we decided to do a major patch. Originally we were thinking maybe it would be as big as a multiplayer-only expansion type of thing. But when we tried adding new units and stuff, it didn’t turn out so well. We’re approaching the limit of max unit count per race already [note: At the SC2 community summit, David Kim explained how Blizzard had tested out adding new units, and how they ended up overlapping significantly with existing units.], so we just decided to do a major patch like this.

Can we expect this every year after BlizzCon? What’s the plan going down the line?

David Kim: So the plan originally was to get everything in the right place design wise, and to do balance patches after Legacy of the Void. But, as we know, there were a few major things we could address, so we decided to do this pass.



But going forward, it’s hard to say. If we get everything right with this patch, then probably only balances patches in the future. But if we don't get everything right, then yeah, we can do it again, maybe around the same time frame next year. We really don’t know yet, because we really want to address the issues we have right now.

What do you think is an ideal state for the game? Do you think it can be "finished" per se?

David Kim: Yeah, that’s what we’re working towards. And I think ideal is having each match-up in a good place, with good diversity in different match-ups, especially on different maps. We want the game to be in a place where major changes aren’t happening, but… ...you know how maps get rotated out every season? If we just do that, the strategies change per season, the game stays very diverse, it’s fun to play, fun to watch, things like that. That’s what we’re kind of working toward.

So as a designer, someone who looks at games as art, that’s an ideal end goal: a game that’s “done” and doesn’t have to be iterated upon.

David Kim: It depends on the game I think, but for StarCraft, yeah, we believe that. But for say example, HearthStone or Heroes of the Storm, they have very different goals, because the goal there is to always bring in new updates so that the game stays fresh that way. But StarCraft is obviously not a game like that so, that’s what we think for StarCraft.

You're a huge fan of real time strategy, with it being your favorite genre. Looking around the competitive games landscape, do you feel that it's inevitable in the future that RTS will have to be constantly updated?

David Kim: I don’t think so, like we saw with StarCraft 1. We’re definitely putting in a lot more work, especially together with community members, together with progamers, so I think we can get there with StarCraft 2. But I don’t think that’s the only way games can be good, right? That’s not the only way competitive games can be good.



But for StarCraft 2, we believe that we can get there, and I think that we are getting there. We're definitely heading in the right direction with HotS changes as well as LotV changes, so maybe we’re 80%, 90% there. And because we have been going forward incrementally like that, we believe that the end is somewhere near, but we don’t know exactly when that will be.

I’ve been reading some of the community feedback. Western feedback is positive, or takes a wait-and-see stance. I feel the Korean feedback has been very different. It’s a very ironic situation where the West is asking for things to be more like Brood War while the Koreans say that the game is too hard.



What do you think about that situation? The Korean community is especially critical of the fact that there are too many active abilities and that harassment is too forced, making the game very hard for new players to get into.

David Kim: What’s funny is that it’s not just the Korean community that says that, it’s also the pro players. When we meet with KeSPA—for example, our producer just went to Korea to meet with KeSPA around last week. I wanted to go also, but I had this event so I couldn't. One of the main feedback there from the KeSPA coaches was that the game is too hard [for pros].



We thought that was very interesting, because that’s not what the WCS pros say, right? Because they say the game should be HARDER so that no one can master it, in which case I think we're in a pretty good state there, but… ...I think the main goal for us is to have that game that is the most impossible to master in the world in StarCraft 2, because that’s what we’ve been working toward. And obviously there will be people who think, "I spent this much time as a pro player, maybe I should have perfectly mastered it." But the fact that they haven’t I think is kind of a cool factor. At the same time we don’t want to make it more difficult.



And I think for active abilities, I don't think it's right to say just because there’s an active ability it makes the game harder. For example, it really depends on the active ability. For example, the Disruptor shot is very hard to master versus Void Ray attack. Anyone can do it. A bronze-silver level player, I think their favorite unit, especially in team games, through what we see in stats, is the Void Ray. It’s definitely not hard to use, because all you do is: engagement started, press one button, everything powers up, and I can kill everything. So it really depends.



With this patch, we definitely should make sure that the game is not harder than it is now. But our goal is definitely not to make the game much easier so that anyone can master the game, or that some number of pro players can master the game. We kind of like the state of the game currently.



How do you address those Korean concerns, though. How do you try to reconcile the different wants of the East and the West?

David Kim: So our thinking is—and we don’t know if it's working super well—is for the non-pro level players, because there’s so much to do and to master, we believe that spending time just mastering a smaller part of the game is the fun of the experience, not necessarily making it so people think "I can do everything that the pro players can do." And we kind of have to make sure that it's something the players are okay with, and if they’re not, then maybe we can look at some changes to lessen the difficulty at those levels without hurting the pro level too much.



What those changes are, I’m not really sure right now, but we can definitely work toward that. And if there’s suggestions, especially from the Korean side, I think it would be better that we work together. You know that we have the weekly updates, where we communicate back and forth with the community. So rather than just saying the game is too hard, that we have to fix everything—if players can actually point out what parts should be looked at, then we can definitely look at it, especially when we start public testing with these major change patches.

How does Korean progamer feedback differ qualitatively from Western progamer feedback? Does one side tend to talk more about specific details on balance, while the other talks about more conceptual design issues?

David Kim: I think we get both from both sides, but I would say the main difference is that Korean players USED to say that we should never patch, and that has changed with Legacy of the Void. Like, up to Heart of the Swarm they were saying things like you should never patch the game, because pros will always figure it out, so just leave everything alone. Versus the non-Korean pros who were the complete opposite, right? They’ve become kind of the same in Legacy.



But just recently, especially with the latest changes that we’ve been talking about, the Korean feedback has been “you don’t have to do this patch because the balance has been very solid in Korea right now.” And that’s why we were a little bit worried about the major patch announcement, because we definitely want to do this patch, but at the same time, the feedback has definitely been swinging a little more toward don’t do any patches.

What do you think changed? Something in the gameplay, or something in the esports environment?

David Kim: I’m not sure. Maybe because the game changed so much with Legacy of the Void, maybe the Korean pros were in the mindset that the changes were SO big that an initial polish patch had to happen for the game to be in a good place, especially with units like the Adept toward the beginning. Now that we’re in a slightly better place, maybe the feedback is going back to what they used to think.



The Korean community complains about the game having too much harassment shoehorned into it. Do you believe aspects of that are true? Also, some people on TeamLiquid say harassment is less impressive because now it's required, compared to back in Wings where if someone could medivac drop three places, it was impressive BECAUSE they were trying very hard to make it work when it wasn’t as easy.

David Kim: So the first part, I think we agree. With the last balance patch we did, we increased the effectiveness of the queen, and what that’s doing is effectively nerfing harassment against Zerg. So we definitely think that we were going a little too far in that direction. And that’s why we took a step back.



And the second part, I don’t know if we agree. Whether it’s a requirement or not, the players who really have mastered that micro, will shine. Like for example, Dark using a zergling-baneling strategy is very different from an average pro player using the same strategy. Or, the Warp Prism use yesterday, when Neeb used it against Scarlett. Clearly, average pro level players would have lost the Warp Prism twice in that engagement but he didn’t. So it’s more about the pro players mastering this specific thing, and I think less about whether this type of strategy is the most ideal or not.



What do you think is the ability of a player base, of pro players, to solve a balance problem over time? Say like, Brood Lord-Infestor, was it fixable, solvable given say three, five, seven years?

David Kim: Probably, but, it’s just always a matter of time. We didn’t think like this back then, but we should have—right now what we think is that we have to gauge the situation to see how bad it is in terms of playing the game or watching the game, because the BL-infestor situation was pretty bad. So even if it's the case that we could wait three years until players can figure it out, we shouldn’t wait because the quality of the games during those three years will be bad.



The Warp Prism is talked about a lot as being overpowered. Things like that we believe a players can also figure out over a long course of time. But because it’s creating more action, making each game play very differently depending on how the harassment happens, we believe things like that we can wait a little longer. But because the feedback on this specific issue has been so heavily toward nerfing it, we’ve been exploring it.



However, the community is now a bit split with the pro players, with the latest feedback saying you don’t have to nerf or buff anything since the game is in a really good place, versus the community that’s obviously not thinking like that. It's not just the prism, but also things like a slight nerf to the Adept cooldown or shade vision and Ultralisk 1 armor reduction—on all those things it’s very split right now between the pro players and the community, so we’re very mixed on what to do. We’ll see going forward.

Do you feel like something has been lost, since modern games have their gameplay issues actively fixed? I feel like one of the great moments for Brood War fans was when Protoss versus Zerg was "solved" by Bisu after seven years. Even if PvZ was terrible before that, it's a moment where you realized something about the beauty of the game.

David Kim: I don’t think it was completely lost, right? We still see that here and there, for example, the Adept stuff or Warp Prism works itself out—and it may already have according to pros—I think we see a mix of changing the game so things get better, versus pros figuring stuff out so things get better.



But what you’re talking about I think is the end goal for us, though. We want to have the game in a place where changes aren’t coming frequently, so maybe there’s a balance patch once a year or less, at some point. And the pro players just have time to figure that stuff out on their own. I think that’s where we definitely want to get to.



I read an interesting post by an Overwatch designer where he talked about the "perception" of balance. This might just be me reading between the lines, but do you feel like you're forced to manage the community's perception of balance versus what the stats are telling you?

David Kim: Every game is different so I can’t really speak to Overwatch and what’s right for that, but for StarCraft what we think is that the perception is part of the balance. Like, if perception was bad and the data was good, then we would say that a part of balance is bad because community perception is such a huge part of getting balance right.



I have an example when new designers come in and they say like “it’s only about the data, not what people think.” When they say that, my extreme example is “say the numbers are 50/50 but everyone thinks the balance sucks right now—is that a good place to be in?” Obviously not, right? So my response to that is, yeah, then the game’s not balanced.



So we think the community perception is important, data is important, tournament results as well as quality of games within the tournaments are important. It’s all these various factors that make the balance, so in some ways it’s very difficult to achieve a place where balance is really solid across all these different angles. That’s why we work so hard toward making it better over a long period of time. I guess the short answer is that community perception is super important, and it is a part of game balance as well.



Regarding testing, do you believe you can achieve useful testing? Because we talked in the past about how you can have the test maps and you can try to get people to play them, but in the end you kind of just have to throw it out there in Proleague and see what sticks.

David Kim: It depends on what you mean by useful. If you’re saying, is it useful in the sense that can we get the same type of testing that we get on live? Then probably not, because obviously not as many people play test maps compared to people playing live. But if you’re talking about is it useful to polish a little bit more before the changes go live? Then I think it’s very useful. Because if we don’t do that, if we put it out live on Tuesday, imagine how bad the balance would be. Yeah, we don’t get the most ideal number of people participating in testing, but still, it’s better than nothing.



So we definitely think it’s super useful, and we definitely think by the time we go live with these changes, because we have been doing these months of testing beforehand, the game will be in a much better state. But obviously we will have to continue polishing after the changes go live.



Is there anything you want to say to wrap up?

David Kim: The main thing for us is when the matchmaking queue goes in for the test map, we all know that not as many people will play this matchmaking queue compared to live queues. The reason matchmaking quality is so good on live is because there are so many people playing each of the formats.



We really need that to be the same for the balance test map, so the players will to be able to gauge balance the same way that they do on live. So we really want to ask everyone to play as much as they can so that the quality of testing will be much higher than before.



At DreamHack Montreal , David Kim announced an upcoming design change patch that will bring enormous change to StarCraft II. TeamLiquid had a chance to sit down and talk to David Kim about his long term goals for StarCraft II, contrasting feedback from the Korean and Western scenes, and the many elements of balance.