StarCraft: Legacy – We know you’re probably going to get asked this a lot. The Tempest and the Carrier are both capital ships. Why the Tempest over the Carrier, at least in the build that’s on the floor at MLG Anaheim?
David Kim – We just feel like the Tempest does what the Carrier does, but better. Because both are siege range units, both attack air and ground, but the Tempest actually has over twice the range of Carriers. So, we just feel that the Tempest is a better version of the Carrier, but the reason why we only have that in the builds today is because we want to make sure that’s how the players feel also. And we are definitely thinking of possibly reverting or making changes to make sure that this change is what everyone wants, not just what we want.
SC:L – We know burrowed Baneling movement and then some of the other things that were shown at BlizzCon last year are gone. Any reason why they were taken out?
DK – So, for the Shredder specifically, the main reason it got cut was because the Shredder overlapped a lot with the Siege Tank in role. Shredders were pretty easy to use in combination with Siege Tanks, but having more Siege Tanks in that line, versus having Shredders and Siege Tanks, we felt like there was a lot of role overlap. Both were actually doing kind of the same things. So that’s the reason why it got cut.
The Replicant actually is cut mostly based on the feedback that we received at BlizzCon. We received a lot of negative feedback regarding that unit. And internally, we also agreed that, the unit isn’t really adding more choices, it’s actually reducing choices. So, for example, as a Terran player going up against Protoss, I might not want to build Siege Tanks, because he can take over my Siege Tanks now. So for that reason, that was cut.
As far as Baneling movement speed goes, we’ve upgraded a lot of the Zerg late tiers. For example, the Viper is a pretty strong add. We’ve buffed Ultralisks. We’ve added Hydralisk movement speed. So, we felt it was unnecessary to go another step and buff Banelings as well.
SC:L – So, what was the thought process behind – like, a lot of people are going to see MLG, and they’re going to see the Widow Mine and the Warhound, and it’s going to look like the Spider Mine and the Goliath to them. How can you convince those naysayers that say, “Why don’t you bring back the Spider Mine and bring back the Goliath?”
DK – The reason why we didn’t want to do the Spider Mine over the Widow Mine was because we didn’t want to buff the Siege Tank line. And, the Widow Mine right now, is really difficult to use in combination with Siege Tanks. The reason being, if your Widow Mine attaches to a bunch of enemy units, and your Siege Tanks automatically kill them, the damage doesn’t go off. So, we wanted a mine on that race that you don’t combo with Siege Tanks, specifically. We created the Widow Mine for that reason.
As far as Warhound versus Goliath goes, they’re totally different units, because the Warhound, for one, doesn’t even attack air units. And the Warhound is actually really strong against all mechanical units on the ground, which the Goliath obviously wasn’t good at. So the only thing that’s similar thing is that it’s just a medium-sized mech unit. But I don’t think that’s enough of a similarity to affect the game.
SC:L – You guys cut out the Carrier saying it was not that good of a late-tier Protoss option and kind of placed the Tempest in its place as a capital unit. What kind of roles do you think the Tempest fills that the Carrier doesn’t?
DK – So, the Tempest actually has a brand new type of use, which is the extremely long – internally we call it the strategic siege range unit, versus, say, like, the Colossus is just a normal siege range unit. So, in terms of that, you can do stuff like harass enemy peon lines from twenty-two range away, you can also have your whole army protecting a bunch of Tempests so that your opponent doesn’t want to approach. During that standoff, you can actually pick off Siege Tanks or other key units with the Tempest. And both of these things you couldn’t really do with a Carrier. And we felt that anything you can do with a Carrier you can sort of do with a Colossus as well, but probably in most cases a little better, because Colossus actually has splash damage. But, I mean, the Carrier being taken out in place of the Tempest is not a final decision or anything. We’re just trying to test this out and we’re trying to determine the fans’ reactions to this change throughout the MLG event.
SCL – Could it be possible to have both?
DK – Yeah that’s definitely a possibility. We can have some unit role overlaps in the game. So that’s definitely a possibility, but we just wanted to push this as far as possible for the first pass, and just start from there.
SCL – Thank you for your time.
