David Kim: 'We hope not to repeat<br> any balance mistakes from the past'

Let’s start with a simple question: are you happy from all your work so far?

Yes, I think all the new units are coming along pretty well. Of course, these are not final-final units that are going to the beta or the actual game but as of today we feel very strong about them and of course after this MLG event we’ll have many people that have played it and a lot of people that have watched the battle reports, people that have read up on the new units so I think a lot of things will be shaken up internally, but as of right now I feel pretty confident.

When we talked to Dustin just a few minutes earlier, he mentioned that the Widow Mine gave you guys the most trouble. Which was the second most troubling unit for you?

I don’t think there has been any easy unit to develop, to be honest, but the Warhound changed a lot from Blizzcon to up until now. It had so much overlap with the Thor as well as the Goliath from StarCraft 1 and Thors are such key units right now, especially against zergs that use mutalisks, so I we tried many different versions of the Warhound and now we’re at the tenth plus version of it so I guess maybe that was the second hardest.

Are there any units that you had in your mind but could not execute due to different issues?

Usually, the way the development process works is we have a group of multiplayer game designers, including myself, and we usually bounce different ideas off of each other. So let’s say I bring in an idea, and someone else improves it a little bit, someone else improves that a little bit and then I improve it a little bit. So it gets lost whose idea the final unit actually is.

There are a lot of units that we try and fail and it’s either me bringing up an idea and someone shooting it right there as he has something really smart to say about it; or we talk through it in detail for a week, we implement it and in the actual gameplay it feels completely different to how we imagined it.

So we go through a lot of units but as far as what is my specific idea is really hard to say.

Currently, Wings of Liberty is in a very good state balance-wise. Aren’t you scared that launching Heart of the Swarm with so many new units can temper with that?

Yes, of course, but we have experience from balancing in the past, using Wings of Liberty beta as well as learning lessons throughout the course of the game. So we feel pretty confident that we can do just as good of a job in short time because of the lessons learned and we hope not to repeat any mistakes from the past.

We saw a lot of new campaign units such as the raptor evolution of the zergling. Why are they not put into the multiplayer?

Putting units into the multiplayer is a lot more strict than putting them in the campaign, the main reason being in the campaign you just play by yourself against the computer so a lot more things can be overpowered, a lot more things can work. But on the multiplayer side, we have to make sure that when you put a new unit, it’s needed for that race. O of our biggest goals in HotS development was make sure to locate certain problems within a race. For example protoss vs terran late game, terran does not have a straight-up counter option against mass charge zealots, so what they have to do right now is use heavy micro on their marine/marauder to kite and do hit and run tactics. So one of the new units we are introducing in HotS is the battle hellion and that option will actually let you go toe-to-toe against mass zealots and come out ahead for cost.

Aren’t you concerned that in this case marine/marauder will become less used because now the battle hellion goes head-to-head with the zealots and is easier to control than bio?

Mech in HotS has its advantages and disadvantages. One of the latter is that it’s a lot harder to use for harassment as compared to marine drops or marine/marauder stim attacks onto undefended locations. A mech-based strategy will be a bit more solid, defensive, whereas bio will be similar to what it is now – you will be able to move around, attack different bases around the map and we think that now the two strategies will be viable and it’ll be a player’s choice about which strategy to use.

More generally, are you already working on the next step or are you focused on fixing Heart of the Swarm first?

We are just focusing all of our effort to make HotS as best as we can, we haven’t started working on Legacy of the Void yet. But once we release the game and once we check how the units are actually playing out, and if they are playing as intended or better than intended and after several patches maybe we can start working on LotV.

What do you think put WoL in that balanced state, because literally a few patches ago, one race or another was heavily favored: first we had a lot of terrans, than there was zerg domination, and now protosses are coming forth to balance it all out. Which were the most important step that brought you to this fine balance?

I think it’s a mix of everything – from the patches that we do to as well as feedback and suggestions from the community. It also has to do with pro-players and how they improve the game. So for example we still see new units and strategies being utilized at the pro level even though no changes have been done to them. So I think it’s a combination between everybody working hard in that direction as well as pro players leveling up their skill to fix other problems. It feels pretty cool that everything’s working out for the better so far.

How do you calculated the time before you start to feel that changes need to be made? Because in the past we’ve seen strategies being invented by pro-players and fixed in the next patch – like thors were fixed really quickly – but then again there are things that many fans and pros consider as OP but stay for a long time as they are and do not get changed.

In the beginning of StarCraft 2, a lot of people were complaining that marauders were OP. I think it’s on a case by case basis and sometimes we get it wrong. Sometimes we think this is only a temporary thing and that problem will work itself out as payers try different strategies or improve their micro skills. But we do try our best to make sure that certain problems will last a certain duration and if so we try to react quicker.

But generally speaking because the state of the game right now is pretty solid – for example this morning I checked the highest ranking KR grandmaster – and all the matches were actually looking pretty solid. And that’s probably the closest data to the pro-level that we can get from the ladder and we’re also looking at major tournaments around the world and when we examine the last eight major tournaments, the race make-up is pretty even as well. So if the balance is OK, we’ll try not to make super quick judgments but rather we’ll wait a little longer and we’ll wait for player-based solutions a little more than if the numbers weren’t looking so even.

Still on that, are you looking into balancing units or are you fixing deeper strategies as well?

We are looking into deeper strategies as well, especially when proplayers suggest that there’s an issue. Even though the match-up is good, certain strategies might be problematic. For example, one of the things we looked closely recently was the PvT issue that was brought up both by the community and the pros. They say that in the mid-game, terran has a huge advantage and protoss almost has no chance, and in the late game it’s the opposite. So we looked into it in great detail and it was true that terran had the mid-game advantage but only about 10% so it’s 60% chance to win mid-game and in the late-game it’s flipped the other way.

So we’ve been looking into this for a few weeks and just today we’re not seeing that all of a sudden, and we made no changes which means that probably the players have found a way around that issue – maybe they’ve found different timings – but we will continue to follow this issue on a regular basis to make sure that this is not problematic and if it is we’ll try to take measure to address it.

Which of the new units are you most proud of?

I guess the units that really change up how the strategies work impress me the most. For example, the tempest has 22 attack range, there’s nothing that even comes close to that, and if we can actually make that work within the game that would be really cool. And I’m sure people that are not used to it think it is pretty crazy – and to us it seems pretty crazy too – but I’m sure we can balance it out and if we succeed that would be really great, because it will be a totally new strategic option that we provide to the game.

I think in the earlier builds of Heart of the Swarm or Wings of Liberty, the tempest itself had several special abilities, and now it doesn’t seem to be the case anymore. Why is that?

We tried to make the tempest similar to the carrier, but better. Both units attack both plains, both have siege range, but what makes the tempest better than the carrier is that it has 22 range, which is over double the range of the carrier. So in this build, we removed the carrier, put the tempest in and tried to match the roles as best as possible so that we can test out if there’s an area that the carrier misses and the tempest can fill.

In our interview with Dustin, we mentioned that the tempest is very light on damage, but there’s also the possibility of this 22 range essentially becomes a disadvantage as the unit is very far way from everything, not just from the enemy but from your army as well. Because a Stalker has what, 6 or 7 range, and the tempest has 22 and is a very light unit and needs to be protected. So basically he will have to move with your army and that eats from that 22 range and effectively it’s not a 22 range. And if you let him go alone, he’ll just be eaten by Vikings and corruptors, of which in the late game there is aplenty.

So what we see in internal games is that if you bring the tempest, you can start using them solo until the enemy brings out air units, because nothing on the ground can actually reach the tempest. And even when the air units are out in play, the tempest can actually be used solo nonetheless because of the recall on the new mothership core. And one of the other major uses is you set up your whole army in a choke point, let’s say in 20 range of your enemy base or army, and you defend that location using force fields, splash damage units, you chip away at enemy units and that’s a very core use as well. So it’s true that the difference between the ranges of your army and the tempest is very big, but you are getting significant advantage by damaging their tanks, or immortals or other core units.