HotS Q&A With Dustin Browder

[celerisk]

A couple days old already, but since our mod hasn't posted here...

we had a chat with StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm's lead designer Dustin Browder about the expansion's progress and the changes it may bring to the multiplayer scene

Here's a couple quotes, picked at random and fully out of context:


- Fury. Revenge. Hatred.

- She can blow up Thors with her mind and smash a battle cruiser fleet with sheer power

- Bring players into the weird exotic places in the StarCraft II universe.

- Can we go to the forbidden areas where the Zergs were first formed?

- We've seen Terran, Protoss, and Zerg players win in America, Europe, Korea, Southeast Asia, and China; that's good diversity

- The Terrans have enough stuff already

- There are some units we can upgrade wholesale or remove and replace with something better

- We can add in a legitimate Protoss raider that gives a player new strategies

- This would lead to a quality-based mod ecosystem, right?

- The total number of people who worked eight hours on StarCraft is over 150

- We may have different solutions other than the Lurker

- Will probably amount to less money

- Almost really not this year



Do you want to know more?

 

[Jedimindtrixxx]

There are some easy things we can do and there are some hard things. If we study the game, for example, you would say that the corruptor is lame. Don't get us wrong; they're useful. If there are a lot of colossi, you need corruptors. If there are dark templars, you need overseers. They have a battle function for a situation, but what new battle strategies and tactics do they add in the game? Compare the two to the mutalisks; a player can raid, harass. They can get board control; they can decimate opponents without antiair. Party, right? Having those guys around changes the match. Corruptors? Meh. You build colossi, I build corruptors; end of story.

and

There's a chance[laughs]. We're not ashamed of putting [the Lurkers] back in. I'm sure they're pretty high on the community request list. They are pretty mighty, since they offer two things to the overall Zerg strategy: the ability to attack while cloaked and the ability to push into a tier-two building. We may have different solutions other than the Lurker, but we're still working on it.

improving corrupters and maybe adding in lurkers! yay!

i cant wait for this. FOR THE SWARM!!

 

[Sevion]

I want Corruptors to do 20 million damage per hit at Very Fast attack rate with the ability to attack both ground and air.

 

[Slapshot136]

I want Corruptors to do 20 million damage per hit at Very Fast attack rate with the ability to attack both ground and air.

I would be OK with that as long as they had meele range, and had one tenth of their current movement speed - then you could just snipe them - you can even give them permanent invisibility if you want

on a more serious note, I think that the corruption should get a fairly large splash or stack with itself

 

[Nigerianrulz]

needs more casting units for all races is what i want, now most of the game is just A move, with fungal growth, EMP or Storm as like the major spell and pretty much nothing else (although i use mind control extensively ). But i hope they bring in some more casting units.

 

[YourFace]

I still hear a lot of complaints about the Zerg still not being strong enough, as well as Terrans still being too flexible. The latter's the most persistent one for the longest time. That's almost a design flaw not a balance flaw. We just have too many good units in that race.

You don't have to quote me, quote the starcraft community. TERRAN OP.

 

[celerisk]

> with Fungal Growth, EMP or Storm as the major spells

The most used spell in the entire game is neither of those, but Spawn Larva

 

[Jedimindtrixxx]

> with Fungal Growth, EMP or Storm as the major spells

The most used spell in the entire game is neither of those, but Spawn Larva

if we use spawn larvae as an example then we also have to use chrono boost and drop yellow miner thingys as most used spells too

 

[Bloodcount]

I think that the most used offensive spell is the fungal, the most spammed spell though is the force field.

 

[celerisk]

Conclusion:
There's already a truck-load of casting going on. Though it either passes mostly under the radar or is so obvious it goes unnoticed.

Other conclusion:
There are no stats out there anywhere about it...