Chaque semaine, David Kim, Senior Game Designer chez Blizzard et responsable de l'équilibrage sur Starcraft II : Legacy of the Void, fait le point sur le développement du jeu et s'exprime sur les prochaines évolutions à venir et sur les retours qu'elles avaient suscités dans la communauté.
Cette semaine plusieurs points sont abordés :
- Blizzard est satisfait du map pool actuel et envisage de simplement le prolonger pour la saison 1 de 2016. Pour la saison 2, un concours mettra à l'honneur les meilleurs créations de la communauté en les intégrant au nouveau map pool.
- Concernant les Tournois automatisés, Blizzard confirme sa volonté de vouloir ajouter désormais des tournois par équipes.
- Voici les prochains changements qui pourraient être à l'essai dans la prochaine carte de test d'équilibrage :
- Le coût de la Surcharge photonique du Noyau de Vaisseau mère passe de 25 à 50 de mana et sa durée est augmentée pour compenser.
- Le bonus aux dégâts contre les boucliers du Disrupteur est réduit ou retiré.
- Tous les dégâts anti-aériens du Thor sont de base (soit 12 de dégâts au lieu de 6 et 12 contre léger) ou alors les dégâts de base sont augmentés et le bonus contre les unités légères diminué.
- Le temps de transformation des Saccageurs et des Lurkers est augmenté.
- Blizzard va corriger aussi vite que possible le bug d'Enfouissement zerg lorsque plusieurs types d'unités sont sélectionnées, sur la carte de test d'équilibrage.
- Des tests en internes vont êtes effectués quand à un éventuel ajout d'une file ou d'un compteur des injections de larves en cours.
- Malgré les plaintes de certains joueurs, Blizzard se refuse de nerf l'Ultralisk dont la force actuelle est (entre autres) d'obliger les Terrans à diversifier leur composition d'armée en late game afin qu'il ne puissent pas se reposer uniquement sur une composition bio (Marine/Maraudeur/Médivac) du début à la fin. Néanmoins, Blizzard continue de surveiller le dossier Ultralisk.
- En raison de la force actuelle de la Bombe parasitaire de la Vipère (sort de zone anti-air), on recense peu d'échanges aériens. Blizzard réfléchit à un nerf ou une refonte de la capacité (tel qu'ajouter un friendly fire) sans pour autant avoir pris de décision. Blizzard veut simplement rassurer les joueurs en leur faisant savoir que le sujet est en discussions en interne.
Blizzard sur Community Feedback Update - December 11 (Source)
Maps
The Legacy of the Void maps are surprisingly turning out much better than we had hoped. While not perfect, there have not been any major game breaking issues with any of the new maps yet. In the past for example, some new maps have had simple all-in strategies that one race could do in a specific matchup and it would be nearly impossible to stop between two players of equal skill levels. We're definitely not seeing any of that yet.
What we like about the current map line up is the diversity in how the games play out. Having such different maps seems to be a super important fun factor to the game. We wanted to get your thoughts in this area as well, as we've begun to consider just pushing this specific map pool for Season 1 next year. Keep in mind though, that if one of these maps does turn out to be horrible in pro play, we definitely have the option to pull that map and replace with a map that we know works well. The general idea here is the same as it always has been: we want to push map diversity so that the game is more interesting to play and watch due to not every single map having the exact same build orders, attack timings, and strategies per matchup.
For Season 2, our current thought is to get another map contest going with a heavy focus on the map makers' creativity, and continuing to push map diversity in a positive way. We'd like to have a bit more time to evaluate the community maps and really make sure that no new map coming in feels just like another map. The ideal for maps is to be in a state where there is no predefined standard map, but rather many unique maps that continue to arise thanks to community collaboration. Hopefully a map contest will help in achieving this!
Burrow Issue
Thanks for your feedback on the Burrow issue that causes units to not un-burrow properly when multiple Zerg unit types are selected. We have a fix for this and will try to update the balance test map when we update it soon with other balance changes.
Spawn Larva Inject Counter
Thank you for your suggestion. We agree that it could be better to have a counter showing how many injects are queued up. We don't believe this is an urgent and critical issue or anything like that, but we will try to test this internally and hopefully put out a change sometime early next year.
Liberator Upgrade Icon
We agree that the icons displaying the upgraded state and the non-upgraded state do look pretty similar. Our art team will take a pass over this as well. Please keep in mind though that this is also not a game-breaking change or anything like that, so we won't be rushing out a solution. We'll prioritize these changes appropriately, so thanks again for your feedback on this.
Ultralisk
It sounds like there may be a lot of confusion here. We completely agree with those of you saying that Ultralisks weren't underpowered in Heart of the Swarm. However, the goal of this change was to have Terran play be more interesting in the later stages of the game rather than Marine/Marauder/Medivacs being the answer for near all threats Zerg can bring out. We believe this is very important and will make the matchup a lot more exciting compared to how it's been in the past.
Going a bit more into detail on this... When we see suggestions that Ultralisks' total armor needs to be nerfed, we definitely see some examples of that seeming needed. We also see games however, where they are countered well due to counters being out already or players capitalizing on the fact that the Zerg is preparing for an Ultralisk tech-switch and dealing enough damage before the Ultralisks arrive that they remain even or ahead. So we're not sure if there is a clear balance problem here or not, though it is definitely something that we should be keeping careful attention to. We just don't want to be in a spot where we are too quick to nerf something, and the end goal to improve the game also gets lost.
Parasitic Bomb Strength
We agree that due to the current strength of this ability, we're not seeing a lot of air unit interactions that we could. We've been discussing your suggestions as well as exploring potential redesigns such as adding friendly fire so that positioning and counter play is increased more. Currently, we don't quite have a specific alignment on our end on this front, but we wanted to let you know that this is a topic that we're aggressively discussing right now. An issue with Parasitic Bomb is that due to the threat of the ability, we're not seeing a lot of air unit interaction in general, we wonder if the solve is as simple as a numbers nerf to see what happens, and then maybe we can go from there.
Automated Tournaments
We have been exploring your suggestions as well as what we've talked about at BlizzCon within our Automated Tournaments feature team, and we wanted to share our current thoughts on the topic so that we can keep the discussion open with you guys in order to eventually make the correct decision. Between your feedback and the participation data surrounding this feature, we are currently considering whether team tournaments should actually be the next step like we talked about at BlizzCon. We're wondering now if increased engagement of the automated tournaments feature itself would be the best course. You guys have pointed out some ideas already such as: exploring potential viability of BO3 tournament formats, having more prestigious rewards, or re-evaluating how the finals of each tournament is done.
The main reasons we started to explore this route was due to your feedback and how much more difficult it would be to get arranged-team tournaments started. 1v1 tournaments already has barriers because of the set times, which we can't change easily unless many more players play in this system due to potential match making issues.
Balance Test Map
Like we've been discussing over the past weeks, here are the things we'd like to potentially look at in the next balance test map:
- Photon Overcharge cost increased to 50, and duration increased to compensate.
- Disruptor +shields damage decrease and/or removal.
- Thor AA damage change to be flat (or increased base damage and decrease +light damage to have same total damage vs. light)
- Ravager or Lurker morph time increase
These are the items that we've trimmed down to so far, but remember that none of this is final for the balance test map and we would like to hear your thoughts on each of these ideas as well. The reasons for testing these changes are the same as when we discussed them since the release of LotV.
Thanks, and we look forward to hearing more of your feedback!
