BlizzCast Episode 4 is up, this time focusing more on
World of Warcraft, but the cast does contain an interview with Blizzard Senior Designer and Balance Designer (
Mike Heiberg and
David Kim respectively). They discuss some of the resource decisions that have been made and a few tech questions.
Quote:
Bornakk: The first question is from D10 at teamliquid.net - What is the reason for the decreased mineral collection by workers? (It goes from 8 to 6 per round.) Is it better worker A.I. or a more economy heavy game maybe?
Mike Heiberg: The harvest rates for classic and Starcraft II are basically the same -
David Kim: It feels faster though, the minerals anyway.
Mike Heiberg: It feels faster at certain points, certainly more so mid to late game but it kind of depends on the race and the expansions and stuff. I think that a matter of when you cap out on three per mineral field, just how much income you get versus - like in Starcraft a lot of times you get up to like two per mineral field and you couldn't quite tell if you were capped out or not because there a lot of guys moving around and a lot of times you have an empty mineral field for a few seconds here and there.
When we did the original Starcraft harvesting numbers they were just pulling back way too much minerals because the units path so much better and they don't do the strange harvesting A.I. that classic Starcraft did. But yeah, that why when we put in the original numbers they were harvesting way too fast and we had to take it down a notch. We first tried - we tried a lot of things - we tried bringing their movement speed down, then we had a lot of problems, with an SCV moves slower that means you can't scout as quickly right, you can't run away from certain threats, you can't like dance around and avoid a zealot anymore. You know same thing with some of the other slower units but we tried other things like the acceleration, tweaking how fast they accelerate and decelerate, that got really tricky with how good the unit feels when you're moving him around. So then we tried how much time they spend at the mineral field, which is actually still in there, right now a unit will bring back 6 per trip instead of 8, but at the same time he will spend a little less time at the mineral field. So overall the amount of time that he spends going back and forth he comes out to about the same harvesting rate as a single SCV in the original Starcraft.
Overall we're trying to make the feel of the harvesting about the same as it was in classic Starcraft where you really have to think about how much money you have and the minerals-gas ratio and what you can afford to do. How do you think it feeling for the whole?
There isn't any significant new information but still, it's worth checking out!
Source:BlizzCast Episode 4Karune's Battle.net Intro Post
