If you recall the Fansite Q&A With Browder, we are now back to interview the same man, but not in a group of people. Stressing between all the press-related stuff we found Dustin Browder, Lead Designer of StarCraft II, and talked about his favourite subject: Game Design! Seeing as we are fansite crew, we were not afraid to bring him in to specifics on things like the Map Editor, map protection, modding, extra races, the complicated Mothership, the Queen and much, much more. One of the more interesting pieces of information is that the Map Editor possibly could be released before the game!
As with all Blizzard developers, they are warm, open and humorous (I mean, some even play in the Blizzard metal band L80ETC!), and Dusting is no exception, despite being the "newbie" among the bosses of the company. His attitude to the game is healthily no fanatic, and will probably be able to make better gamemaking decisions for it. Let's continue with the interview:
A question about replays, with StarCraft and WarCraft III they always have the problem with a new patch the old replays are not working. How do you consider on handling that with StarCraft II?
Dustin: There is a problem and we've talked about it. I don't know what the answer is yet. That's not the answer that you want to hear, but we know about it, we understand that its real and it's a challenge for us to obviously to make it work since the data would be out of sync. If we could have done it already we would have in previous games but I know that we've just been talking about it so we'll have to see what can be done. But we do take it seriously and it is a problem. If we can't get it done then it couldn't be done but we want to try harder to make it happen.
You mentioned in one of the Q&A sessions with Kevin that you're hoping to have some integrated map protection for map authors.
Dustin: That's all Battle.net stuff, I don't know what the final deal on that will be yet but we'd love to. Obviously map authors are a huge part of Battle.net right now; we've even hired guys out of the mod community to work on our team. So we really want to continue to support the mod community as best we possibly can and the kids need to flaunt their style.
We have a pretty cool map editor which is coming along really well right now; I can put a unit together in about 10 minutes. It's very very powerful right now but I don't know how user friendly it is at the moment. But very very powerful so I'm going to ship that with the game as well.
We also do make a lot of conscious decisions on the team when we talk about any new feature or anything we want to add to the game, like; "how can this be used to support the modders?" If it's something that we could convert easily from one version to another and we often just go back and re-do things because we know that; "that works for our needs for a solo play mission but if we put in another couple of hours work then that could be something that modders could use across the board."
The modding scene has quite decreased in the last year. There was some really cool mods which made new units and things like that. Now the modding community is just looking at the Project Revolution mod from WarCraft III that converts Warcraft III to StarCraft I. So when will the Starcraft II editor become available to modders?
Dustin: I don't know yet, it'll certainly be shipped with the game but I don't know the answer to whether it will be earlier. That would be cool though.
The WarCraft III map editor is pretty involved and it can be daunting for anyone who doesn't know programming and stuff. Is that something you are aware of?
Dustin: It's definitely going to be a trade off between usability and power. Anything that seems more powerful is ultimately going to be a little bit more daunting. I know that it's pretty easy, I've done it myself with little to no training at all, I just jumped into the WarCraft III editor and made multiplayer maps and that's easy. That's sort of the basic level we expect players to be able to do to a certain degree, with a little messing around they can eventually do up a map.
Advanced mods are going to be advanced and we can do whatever we can to make them easy for people to do, but the end of the day if you want to do some crazy stuff, you're going to have to make a little bit of effort. That's what separates the great modders from the not-so-great modders.
Will there be that same level of skill required to make that same type of conversion?
Dustin: I don't know for sure, but I guess, let me put it this way. I don't know that a full conversion like that really is going to be easy. I don't want to promise that. I mean, it's not really a full conversion but it's a lot of work. So we're definitely going to do what we can to make it easier, but still if you're going to make a really complicated mod, then it's going to be a complicated mod. That's how it's going to work.
Concerning 3D graphics, what's tools do you need? In StarCraft it was just using paint and opening it and just adding new units. What 3D do you consider for modders? Will you be giving your own editor for the graphics?
Dustin: I think we may ship the art tools but you still have to have a 3D program, there's no way around that. And you can check with Samwise and Chris in terms of what format we support and that sort of thing, I don't really know the details on that but we'll see.
We're also going to include a lot of the art into the game that we're not using in the multiplayer experience so we'll include some of the old units that didn't make the cut for the multiplayer so they can be used as well and anything else lying around. You get the idea. If it wasn't good enough for StarCraft II then we'll put that in the editor so you can still have access to it.
You mentioned this as well when we [referring to that Leord and Dustin talked at BlizzCon '07] talked at BlizzCon and you said that perhaps those things that are early in development might not really be compatible with the stuff you have now, is it a lot of units that are not compatible?
Dustin: I don't know the volume actually; I often forget them because they are usually out of my head, right [smiling]? I'd have to check with the data before I can answer that one for you, that's more of a complicated question.
I was asking Chris Sigaty about the inclusion of Hero classes in StarCraft II, and he said he wanted to separate the game from WarCraft III and he wanted to make a more straight RTS game. Did at any point consider taking this any further? I would tend to view WarCraft III as quite an opposite from the original games, as it incorporated more RPG elements.
Dustin: Yeah, it was definitely very different.
Well, StarCraft seems very... "conservative" would be a good word I suppose. Were there any other concepts that you discussed at the beginning of the development process that you ended up scrapping because you felt; "no, we want it to be like it was"?
Dustin: Some... By the time I started working on the project three years ago the team really wanted to make a game that was true to the legacy of the original StarCraft. So in terms of "are we being too conservative or not?" We talked about that every day. It was a constant discussion.
It seems to be the key to your success - being conservative. I mean, look at WarCraft and the other games.
Dustin: So looking at what we're trying to do with the game at this point on the design team, I don't really thinking in terms of "conservative or not conservative?", I'm thinking "fun or not fun?". We know we want to make a game that stays true to the legacy of the original StarCraft. We want to make a game that you can look at and go "OK, I played StarCraft and loved it. Oh good, I feel like I'm at home. I'm into this game" and at the same time we ask ourselves: "Are we doing enough units and tactics? Are there enough new strategies? Have we ended up dumping something that players really love that we shouldn't have gotten rid of?" That's still an ongoing battle, that's the line we're still trying to walk.
Did you ever consider dividing the core gameplay? The current trend in RTS games seem to move towards that the strategy will take place on a more arbitrary level, more turn based and then diving straight into the tactics when you do the actual combat. Did you ever consider that?
Dustin: I think if we were making a brand new game from scratch, we might have, but for StarCraft II we didn't really think it would work out that way. We really wanted to make sure that when you came to a game that, especially a multiplayer game that it was already 'even', you shouldn't say: "oh, he got more guys then me".
Since it is such a multiplayer focused game that's sort of how we started out. So with the solo play you'll see there's a little more top level strategy, not so much that it's a strategy map, but certainly because of what we're focusing on.
Especially for the Terrans and around the mercenary force with Raynor, but certainly in terms of the technologies you can purchase, the kinds of missions and players you're going to choose to work for. It does create a little of a higher level game-play but it was really based along the story decision.
Will there be anything like that at all in the multiplayer or will you always have all the stuff from the start with?
Dustin: You will always have all the stuff at the start in a multiplayer game.
Someone asked you before about the storyline, I suppose you cannot go into details about that, but were you able to say if you can play as all three races in the story?
Dustin: We're still trying to figure out how we're going to structure that exactly, there's been a lot of stuff up in the air lately and we've looked at it and tried to assign some interesting ideas for it but I don't know what exactly is going to happen with the overall structure.
Talking about the races, did you at any time consider including the Hybrids into StarCraft II?
Dustin: We've definitely talked about possibilities for additional races but pretty early on the team really decided they wanted to focus on the three core races and the thinking behind this was in a sense the core design success of the game is about how these races play so differently from one another.
If we added a fourth race, we'd risk watering down the other three races and we'd be pulling the features from those races and shoving it into this fourth race. If we don't do a fourth race then we can take all of those interesting ideas that would have gone into that fourth race and shove them into those remaining three.
I was a little sceptical at first frankly, I thought "ah, come on guys lets do a fourth race, it'll be fun" -right? However, we've certainly seen how challenging it's been to make the game that we're making now, how hard it is to get the balance right and everything the way you want it to be, so I think it was absolutely the right call and I can stand behind it at least from a creators standpoint. We think: "no, we need to really focus on these three races and make them great". As much fun as it would have been to have a fourth race it would have cost us.
Yeah, you couldn't really do the Rock Paper Scissor match-up?
Dustin: It's not even just that, of the relationships in StarCraft; lot of them aren't even Rock Paper Scissors, which is one of the things that makes the game so exciting. One of the standard RTS paradigm is that we use the Rock Paper Scissors but a lot of the relationships, especially in the early tech tree of StarCraft, are positional based. It's not so much whether I beat you its where do we fight,.
Zerglings will crush Zealots in the open field. They'll just overrun them completely, and these are both the core units. Whereas the Zealots, at the choke, will just kill hundreds of Zerglings based on the Zerglings getting all trapped up behind. So in addition to where you fight there are also the questions of micro that are really interesting.
What we are really worried about are overlapping roles, it's a constant struggle for us, but if you go there and play it now you can find a couple:
Player: "What about these guys"
Dustin: "Yes, I know!! They overlap, oh my god".
But we really try and make sure that if you got a specific unit on one side there is no equal unit on the other. Not just because it has cloak or not cloak but because fundamentally it plays in a different way from other units on the other tech trees and a fourth race would have been a lot more challenging. Maybe not even possible, frankly, to achieve this level quality with the these three races.
Which particular unit has been the most problematic one when working, balance wise, not only for the Zerg but the other races as well?
Dustin: The Mothership - hands down.
What is the problem with it?
Dustin: Well, by its size it doesn't look like a super unit from other RTS games. The problem here with super units is we want every unit to be a decision. There's no point in shipping a unit if the player says: "I have to build that, it's powerful, I should always build that. If I get to this tech level, I build it."
We don't have that in StarCraft II, the games meatier then that; you have to work for everything. So we don't like the "super units"... The Mothership visually seems to suggest that, but at the same time we don't want that to be part of the core gameplay experience so we're continually balancing the ship, we're continually looking for a new spell kit for this unit to make sure there are reasons to build it, really solid reasons, and really solid reasons not to build it.
Today the really solid reasons not to build it, and it's been this way for many months, is the Mothership can't really, cost for cost, defend itself effectively in the air. This means you can't have air superiority dumped on the Mothership. If you already have your superiority, go for it, the Mothership is a good addition, but like I say; "it's been a big pain." It's not helpful that it's located at the end of the tech tree against how fast StarCraft games can be and how brutal it can be. There is a great chance that you can die within the first three or four minutes. So even in our play test process we don't get to see this unit as often as we like:
Designer: "Did you get to play with the Mothership"
Tester: "Well, no, we didn't, we topped out at the Immortals and Stalkers/Colossus"
Designer: "Ok ok ok, play again, play real hard"
Designer: "Did you get to play with the Mothership"
Tester: "No, no, we didn't really get that high in the tech tree"
So once in a while it happens and then we'll get some data but it just makes it a lot more complicated. We get a lot more data obviously on play testing Stalkers, Zerglings, Marines and all these guys because you see them all the time.
Regarding the Anti-Gravity, it's really a cool skill in lifting up buildings etc, how does that affect Sieged Tanks?
Dustin: You can lift them up and they'll be targeted by air attacks which is kind of funny so you can use Phoenixes in combination with this but it does stun the unit that gets picked up so you can't fight back. It can be really strong against units like the Thor as well.
But it won't remove the actual Sieged mode?
Dustin: No, it'll still be in Siege Mode, when he goes back down he'll be back in Siege Mode and fire off a round - if he's still alive.
