mLalush

Earlier alpha builds of Starcraft 2 used to – much like Brood War – feature workers which returned 8 minerals per trip, spent more time mining (i.e. didn't relieve eachother more or less perfectly) and were dumber (wouldn't wait politely for their turn if the currently mining worker had less than a defined time limit remaining before finishing).

Your SC2 Engine Development History panel on Blizzcon showed old style workers featuring in alpha builds as late as October 2007. Then, sometime between October 2007 and October 2008, you decided to introduce better worker AI, shorten the time workers spent at minerals and decrease the yield to 5 minerals per trip. My first question is:

1. What happened during this time period that prompted you to change workers? What was your reasoning behind the changes?

The implemented changes to workers in SC2 proved to have some implications to gameplay which – according to my personal opinion – created a tendency for SC2 late games to become stagnant rather than continue provide the continuous trading and action that audiences crave. The reasons for this are according to me twofold:

• There are no diminishing returns in worker efficiency until you hit a saturation of 2 workers per patch (above 16 workers). This effectively caps economic growth beyond 3 mining bases – causing late game economies in SC2 to become symmetrical. Audiences generally find the type of gameplay promoted by a symmetrical economic system boring (it's all about cost efficiency, preserving your army value and posturing).

• SC2 build orders reach their final states and conform to one standard much quicker. There is almost no gain from saturating beyond 2 workers per patch, whereas BW income decreased gradually from 1 worker per patch saturation well into 3+/patch saturation.

My questions relating to the above points are:

2. What are your thoughts on the cap on economic growth in your game? Do you guys at Blizzard at all view your artificial 3 base economic cap as an issue, or is it rather considered a non-issue?

3. In a recent situation report you commented: "We do somewhat agree that Protoss air, in combination with splash damage units, might be difficult for Zerg to deal with during no-rush 15 minute games in which both sides take an equal number of bases. However, we are not seeing signs of this in pro games. We do see Protoss players attempting this strategy often, but the success rate doesn’t seem high enough for us to deem it overpowered".

The issue I take with these answers are that they don't necessarily take into the account the entertainment value of the scenarios but focus on percentages. Do you agree that this still might pose a problem to the "dramatic structure" of SC2 games -- despite it "not being an issue" for progamers to beat the strategy 50% of the time? If SC2 games tend to climax in the later stages of the mid game rather than in the late game, is it then any less of a problem?

Sorry for being so long-winded. I thought these in depth questions required some background for readers of the AMA (despite them being well known to you).

I agree it would be too huge of a change to make for HotS, as it would turn all your balance work on its head.

Though I was secretly hoping you were considering this change before HotS beta was even announced.

However, if you continue to receive the same sort of community feedback/backlash for HotS late game scenarios you would do well in seriously thinking about these changes for LotV beta.

As long as you keep these ideas in mind while assessing HotS gameplay following launch, I will be satisfied!

I have me own links:

Analysis of Macro (February 2011, before infestor buffs and khaydarian nerf)

Starcraft II Brood War (Australian modder MavercK haxxing sc2 editor to implement workers with BW behavior among other things).

I would think the matter of drawing up the new congressional districts would be better handled by a competent congress.

The last redistrictings weren't exactly done in a way that bolstered the competition within districts.

Have you ever brainstormed or thought about MMORTS? Would it be a valid concept/genre? For example linking different regions of a big world together on multiple servers.

I discuss this a lot with a friend -- that it's sort of a natural next leap for the RTS genre. We both agree though it would be a huge technological undertaking for any company, and it'd come with a set of very difficult game design challenges.

Ever thought about this concept?