Seite 5: Starcraft 2 - Exclusive interview with lead designer Dustin Browder

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Inhaltsverzeichnis

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Einleitung

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5

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Terran Thors attack a Zerg base.

GameStar:
So the Thor is the Battle Cruiser of the ground.

Dustin Browder:
Yes. Or if you were mean you could call it the »super goliath«, because it's a very powerful anti-air weapon. I build it for a couple of reasons. I'm using it largely against other Terran players where its all-round nature helps me against marauders and banshees which are a pretty significant threat in Terran versus Terran games. I have also gotten some use out of the Thor against Zerg opponents who go for Roaches and Mutalisks. Because the Thor's powerful cannons can break a roach line and its anti-air-missiles can thrash a Mutalisk threat. But when I'm facing a lot of Zerglings or a lot of marines or a large force of zealots and immortals, I'm not feeling a lot of love for the Thor. Still, it's got a lot of uses. So if you have a lot of factory units and a lot of money, it's never a bad idea to build some Thors.

GameStar:
Another unit that has changed a lot is the Protoss Mothership. Aren't you afraid it will end up too powerful?

Dustin Browder:
We're not seeing that right now. But if we do, we will certainly nerf it. It depends on your skill level how powerful you find the Mothership. At the gold and platinum levels we're not really seeing the Mothership be that dangerous. Though it's quite fun to see it come into play, but it is not built that often. On the silver and lower levels, it's a much more significant threat, but that's true to a lot of our units, for example for Battle Cruisers or Carriers. They're not much of a threat on certain levels of play but on other levels they're very dangerous. So if we find out that the mothership is really ruining some level of play, if all cooper games end with mothership destruction, then it will be nerfed. But we are not seeing that right now.

In Starcraft 2, Firebats will only appear in solo mode.

GameStar:
How does a single very powerful unit fit into the philosophy of Starcraft?

Dustin Browder:
The philosophy of Starcraft is a little bit of everything. We have no core philosophy of »You can't do this« and »You must do that«. Our fans certainly might see it like that sometimes. But Starcraft is a game of hard counters and of muddy counters. In the initial Starcraft I could point to Archons, Ultralisks and Firebats, all of which are really hard counters. I could also point to Dragoons, Hydralisks, Zealots and Marines that are very muddy counters. So the original Starcraft had tiny units like marines that die in dozens. And Starcraft also had very dangerous units like battle cruisers that were very difficult to bring down. So the philosophy for Starcraft is that there is no philosophy for Starcraft. We are just doing lots of different things to keep the game feeling fresh and fun.

GameStar:
Still, there have never been super units.

Dustin Browder:
The question is: Is there room in Starcraft for one race to have a super unit? I think there is. We don't have any other super weapons except for nukes. And even nukes have their rules and are challenging to use. So they don't match the high range and firepower of a C&C super weapon. The same holds true for the Mothership: Compared to the super units in other games this super unit is very easy to kill. It doesn't even have the survivability of a Warcraft 3 hero. So it still fits the rules of Starcraft.

GameStar:
Zerg fans are complaining that you removed the lurker.

Dustin Browder:
The Lurker was removed because there simply were so many other units stepping on its role that it wasn't seeing a lot of use. Though it was used in certain areas, there was too much overlap. The Roach and the Infestor both use the burrow trait in far more interesting ways. And Banelings are used for splash attacks. As we were getting closer to beta the Lurker had been push to tier 3 and it turned into some kind of artillery unit. But his cloak was almost completely ineffective, because at tier 3 there are simply too many detectors in play for its cloak to be meaningful. So on tier 3 he was simply some kind of a funny gun.

Like the Arbiter, the Mothership can teleport troops to its location as well as cloak them. This screen was captured from a replay.

GameStar:
And on tier 2, it was useless.

Dustin Browder:
Exactly. When we moved him back down to tier 2, he was useless compared to the roach and the Baneling. But still the Lurker is an interesting weapon; I love its lying damage. And I miss its ability to stop the game. Like when I'm rushing on the zerg and ... Oh my god, there are three Lurkers, I guess I've to stop and we're all going to tech a bit right now. We are looking into bringing the Lurker back, either at some point in the future or if we felt that it had a role to play. Right now, there are simply too many units stepping on its role. Our goal for Starcraft is not having the maximum number of units possible, but the minimum. We are not trying to make the biggest game, we are trying to make the smallest, best game.

GameStar:
So you're always looking to cut?

Dustin Browder:
Right. For example, the Archon was on the chopping block for a long time. And it still could be on the chopping block if we decide we don't need it any more. That's not the case right now, so the archon is still in.

The Lurker was removed.

GameStar:
One feature that didn't survive the chopping block is the upgrade system of the Battle Cruiser. In earlier versions, you could chose between three different weapons upgrades. Now we've only got the yamato cannon.

Dustin Browder:
Because the upgrades were not good enough. We do not want any stuff that overlaps with other units or is useless to play with. And the Battle Cruiser upgrades were not very useful at the end of the day. They saw some use at the silver and copper skill levels, but to the more advanced players it was yamato or nothing. So we noticed that the upgrades made the unit more complicated but not any better. We threw them out in order to make the Cruiser cleaner and easier to understand. But we keep them for solo play, so you get to use them there. In solo play we are less concerned about making the game really tight because the player has more time to deal with stuff, and we want that level of customization.

GameStar:
One thing we wondered about is that you moved the broodlord upgrade from the mutalisk to the corruptor. Why?

Dustin Browder:
We noticed that the corruptor needed a way to stay in the game after I swept the sky. So if I fly around with my corruptors and kill everybody, what's use are these corruptors any more? The same applies to the Protoss Phoenix: What do I do if I have killed everything in the sky? That's why we added the anti-grav ability to the Phoenix so it remains useful. Without some mechanic to give the unit a way to »recycle« itself, air-to-air fliers become very difficult to use.

The Dark Pylon was removed as well.

GameStar:
If you build too many of them you can lose the game though you have won in the air.

Dustin Browder:
Exactly. After the Phoenix we looked at the Zerg and said: »Oh my god, there is a very easy way for the Zerg to recycle their units as they can turn into something else.« The Mutalisk does not need a way to recycle. If I have 25 Mutalisks, that's really good! If I have 25 corruptors, I can lose the game. So it makes sense to have the Zerg recycle their anti-air unit into something else. And that is the brute lord.

GameStar:
One recent change concerned the Zerg infestor. At the beginning of beta it could drain enemy units to replenish its energy. Now it spawns infested Terrans. What's your guess as to which mechanic will stay in the game?

Dustin Browder:
Maybe it will be the one we have right now, maybe it will be something else. What we have in the beta is the best we have seen yet, but we might learn something new. If we don't like the infestor, we will change it.

GameStar:
Thanks for your time.