Two New Interviews Up, Information Explosion!

May 11th, 2009

It seems Dustin Browder and Chris Sigaty enjoy answering questions more than we give them credit for, as there is not one but two new interviews that have come online in the last week. StarFeeder conducted an exclusive interview with Chris Sigaty, and GameStar (a German videogaming magazine) spoke with Dustin Browder.

GameStar interview with Dustin Browder, translated by TeamLiquid:

Q: Can your allies use the Nydus channel?
A: At the moment, no. We decided only recently which abilities should affect your allies. The Nydus channel is not on that list. But it’s not excluded that we change our mind. What’s your thought?

Q: One of the units that was changed the most during the past two years was the Thor Warmech of Terran. Recently you could still reconstruct it after it was destroyed. Why did you remove this possibility?
A: In principle it was a cool idea: If the Thor was destroyed, you could spend 200 Gas to activate its repair system. After some time, it would get back up. During reconstruction, all enemies would see where the wreck was and could attack it, in order to knock out the Thor for good. The problem was: This tactic was essentially meaningless. Frequently the Thor would die within the enemy base, so you couldn’t save him. Or he died within the own base. And reconstructing him there was too cheap and too simply. Therefore we removed this ability and gave him the particle cannon ability, which he used to pulverize ground troops. Let’s see if that works.

Q: In paris we noticed that the AI opponents play extremely strong at the highest difficulty setting. Are they cheating?
A: Yes, on the highest setting “insane”, the AI profits from additional resources. On all other settings, the opponents do not cheat. On the 2nd highest level “hard” they act as smart as on the highest, simply without the added resources. This is a notable improvement compared to the first game. As in many other RTS titles, the AI in SC1 would see the entire map and would know exactly where the player’s units and buildings were. In part 2, this does not hold anymore. The AI opponents have to send out scouts to find the players. Only when they find out, what the opponents are building, they adapt their tactics. If you hide units from the AI – on hills or behind bushes – you gain an advantage.

Q: Will there be night battles or weather effects in Multiplayer mode?
A: We are considering it in any case! Weather effects are possible and we are even testing the day-night cycle at the moment. I am worried, however, if everything is easily discernible at night. In the battles, many units clash that have varying size, from the tiny zergling to the gigantic Battle Cruiser. Also, the speed of the game is extremely fast, a bunch of things are happening with rapid speed.

Q: But the day-night cycle and the weather effects wouldn’t have any gameplay effects?
A: We talked about it, and even tested it, but the answer’s: No. We do not want maps with differing rules. Just imagine a snowy area in which ground troops move more slowly. That would completely revert the balance. The Zerg would suffer a lot, since they are highly dependant on their speed. Or imagine rainy maps, on which the sight-range of flying units is reduced. The balance would be shaky and we would have to rebalance the races just because of the stupid rain. That might be an interesting idea for the future, but at the moment we don’t want it.

Q: All maps we have seen so far were symmetrical. Will there be asymmetrical ones at release?
A: Of course. In Sc1 there were also maps with better or worse starting positions, e.g. Lost Temple. If we will use these asymmetrical maps for the automatic matchmaking on bnet we don’t know yet. But it would be unfair to start at a bad spot in a random game. Nobody should enter a game and begin cursing: “Damn it, I play Zerg and I spawned at bottom right – I’m outta here”. Therefore, most of the maps should turn out to be symmetrical. We still try to slightly diversify the starting positions. For example, players could start closer to an observation post than others.

StarFeeder interview with Chris Sigaty:

Q: StarCraft II opt-ins are now available through Battle.net. Does the opt-in process mean that the start of the StarCraft II beta is imminent?
A: We’re getting closer and closer to the start of our closed beta with each week that passes. Several months ago, we expanded our internal testing of the game to the entire company, and we’ve made significant progress since then. We’re looking forward to inviting external testers into the process soon, which is why we’re starting sign-ups now.

Q: What aspects of the game will be available for testing in this beta?
A: As with previous betas for our real-time strategy games, the StarCraft II beta test will be multiplayer only, and players will have access to all three races: Terrans, Protoss, and Zerg and all of their units. We’ll include a selection of multiplayer maps, but they won’t necessarily include all of the maps that will be in the final version of the game. We’re making some great progress on the single-player campaign, but we don’t plan to do a public beta since we want to keep the story under wraps until the game’s out.

Q: Will we be able to try the new Battle.net during this beta?
A: You’ll be connecting to and playing on the new Battle.net in the StarCraft II beta, and you’ll definitely have a chance to play around with a few of the new features — but what you’ll see in the beta is really only a taste of what’s to come.

Q: What updates and changes have you made to the game recently?
A: We’re constantly tweaking the gameplay and balance, and we will be all throughout the beta process, but perhaps the most visible changes have been made to the Zerg. Our art team has done a polishing and iteration pass on many of the Zerg unit models and structures, so players can look forward to seeing a lot more detail there. Compared to the versions you’ve seen before, the Zerg units and bases now look a lot slimier and more sinister.We’re also really looking forward to seeing testers try out the new gameplay mechanics we’ve introduced to each race, like the proton charge for the protoss and the MULE for the terrans that allow them to harvest minerals faster. The zerg also have a spawn larvae ability that gives them a new way to expand their production. We’re hoping these abilities increase the strategic tension for players and force some tough tactical decisions when managing economies and micromanaging battles.

Q: Which regions can join the StarCraft II beta test?
A: Our plan is to include multiple regions and countries in the StarCraft II beta-testing process. We’ll be starting with a North American beta, where testers from the United States and Canada, as well as Australia and New Zealand will be able to join. We’ll then phase in testers in other regions such as Korea, Taiwan, and Europe as soon as we’re able to set up in those areas.

Q: Why aren’t you running StarCraft II beta simultaneously in all regions?
A: It’s more efficient from a development standpoint to phase in each region one at a time. A big part of the beta test involves setting up new hardware and networking infrastructure, which is not a trivial process. If we set up one region at a time, we can more quickly address any issues we run into at the start, and take the lessons we learn from that experience to establish a smoother setup experience for the next region.

We can also implement all sorts of gameplay and balance changes, view the results, and react to what we’ve observed much more quickly in a single test environment, as opposed to getting bogged down trying to push those changes out across several test environments. Once the major issues are ironed out, we can expand the testing to additional regions. Going region by region will also put us in a better position to test localized versions of the beta.

Q: Will testers be allowed to write about the beta? Take screenshots and videos?
A: Yes! Beta testers will be free to write about their experiences playing the beta as well as take screenshots or videos. We’re really looking forward to getting the game into players’ hands so we can hear their feedback, since that will help propel us into the final stages of development and balancing. We’ve been working hard on StarCraft II, and we can’t wait to finally be able to hear what everyone has to say about it.