As Life and sOs prepared to go head to head in the finals at BlizzCon, theScore eSports had the opportunity to sit down with Tim Ismay, a Design Producer for StarCraft 2. We discussed plans for the eSports scene in 2016 and the new features coming to the game itself.
How is SC2 going to be balanced with other titles, now that Blizzard is pushing Hearthstone, Heroes and eventually Overwatch as eSports as well?
The cool thing is actually, we’re going to be building our eSports team – we already have – a ton. Way back in the day when I started at Blizzard, we didn’t have an eSports team. We only had a couple of people that helped out, sometimes, at eSports when it was needed. Eventually we hired professionals, we started getting some people dedicated. And the team has grown and grown. We have a huge team already, and we’re planning to expand it even more.
The reason why we’re expanding it, is that we don’t want them constantly switching focus and having to worry about 15 things. We have a lot of guys that are dedicated to just StarCraft – we have a couple of guys that oversee everything and make sure that there’s interaction, but there’s people who are looking at just StarCraft, at how can we make StarCraft become bigger. Not just overall, not just how we can get more people watching it, or make it more exciting to watch at the pro level, but what can we do to make it spring up regionally, to get people involved with their local players. And it allows their local players to be successful, and go to championships. We all love watching the competitive level of the extremely advanced Korean players, they’re awesome, but there’s something particularly cool when you have your own homegrown hero, who’s on stage competing. So we want to support that, we want to make that successful.
We absolutely are finding ways to grow Hearthstone, as an eSport, grow Heroes as an eSport, WoW as an eSports, but we’re doing that with separate groups that are focused on those. And yes, they all come together here at BlizzCon, but they all have their own champions within the company, as each particular eSport grows.
One of the unique aspects of StarCraft is that it has an enormous single player base that doesn’t always translate into an eSports audience. Are there plans to integrate the two groups in LotV?
I don’t think I would say integrate. Those are two groups that we really care about. They can be very distinct, sometimes they’re not. So sometimes we get players, they’re super passionate about the campaign, they’re super passionate about multiplayer, they’re awesome - they get great value when they buy the game. But we have a lot of people that just play the campaign, and never play multiplayer at all. And we still want to give them a great experience when they buy this game. Then we have guys who just play the multiplayer, and obviously eSports is already awesome for them.
For us, we are playing with a lot of new things, to give you more, different options. I don’t know if you’ll see complete crossover – that would be awesome – but we have this, new mode, Co-Op missions, which is all about “I’ve played the campaign, I love this objective-based map. Can I play with my friend on an objective based map?” Its multiplayer, but its not competitive. So you know, we get together, we PvE, we both grow in power and we can challenge ourselves more and more. Its an awesome experience, but it isn’t technically PvP.
For some people it might be a stepping stone. It might be enough to say “you know what? I’m more comfortable with this, its very challenging and I’m used to playing with other people, maybe I’ll try multiplayer.” But ultimately that’s not the goal of that mode. Ultimately we just want the campaign guy to have a new, fun way to play the game.
But, if you are a multiplayer person and you want a way to challenge yourself, what are fun ways that I can have new experiences in Void, we totally want that too. That’s what birthed both Archon Mode and the automated tournaments for us. Automated tournaments, specifically to our WCS fans. People that love watching eSports love the idea of “oh man I play StarCraft and its a blast, I watch these other guys and they play at a level I can barely comprehend” we want you to have the feeling of being that eSports pro player. That’s what automated tournaments is. You sit down for a couple hours and you’re not just matching against a random guy you’ll never see again, you’re placed into a bracket. You see everybody who’s gonna play and if you win, you move up that bracket. And if you can make it to the end, you win a trophy. Its the WCS experience. Its a mini version, you’re not going to be world famous for it, but you still get to play in an eSports way. We’re hoping that this actually will build engagement with the gameplay and allow you to progress in a way that feels more meaningful.
The other one is Archon mode. We have actually consistently gotten feedback from people that say “I love watching WCS, I love watching eSports or StarCraft but it is so daunting to get into the game.” We do a lot with our matchmaking to make sure that you’re playing someone of similar skill level but people are still stressed. Archon mode will help bridge that gap. If you and a friend play, and one is maybe a little bit more skilled, you can share the responsibilities of building a base and fighting. You don’t have to do everything. Combined, you can be a great player.
The cool thing is, this will hopefully breed a new level of expansion on the ladder. Say you and a buddy are gold level, you’re decent players, but you’re never going to touch masters league. As an Archon, maybe you could. The two of you combined are actually really effective. So we’re actually looking to see if you moving up the ladder as an Archon, you’re fighting against people, and you’re matching up against someone who is in masters, just because that's the level you’re at. Maybe you’re way more involved now. You get that experience, you get more involved, you grow the player base. Obviously in the future we’ve already talked about automated tournaments to have Archons facing off against each other. David Kim has even zanier ideas. We’re going to be looking at “what does the community say?” We really care about what the community says they want to watch, what they’re excited about. If they tell us an idea, we’ll look into it.
How confident are you in Archon mode as a “second track” of StarCraft 2 eSports. Are there big plans in the works to promote it separately, or is it more of a “wait and see” attitude?
I think we’re going to be open to it going into 2016, we don’t have any solid plans. Ultimately, we really like the competitive level of 1v1. We aren’t going to mess with that. But we’re looking at the community response and all options are on the table. If people are really engaging with it going forward, its definitely a possibility.
Much of the community points to skins and other micro transactions as a key component of the success of eSports like CounterStrike and DotA. Are there plans to integrate the recently announced skin and voice pack projects with eSports promotion in 2016?
I think that’s definitely a possibility. We haven’t nailed down the specifics yet, we’re actually not sure what the first skins and voice packs are gonna be, we have to do that work. Once we do though, that’s definitely something that's been brought up - its a great way to engage with our community.
Largely, the reason we decided to do skins and voice packs was the huge feedback from our eSports community. Our player base was really passionate about this. They asked if we could make this and we said “Yes, you know what, we can do that.” So 2016, we’re trying to get all that implemented to make that possible. And I think yeah, it will probably end up having integration with something to do with the eSports scene. We haven’t really figured that out yet though.
Many people were worried last year about the Koreans who maintained residency in WCS regions, but we saw that they were nowhere near unbeatable. How do you feel about the strength of the foreign scene moving into 2016?
That’s actually something that I’m very excited about. I love that the other teams have been getting better and better and showing that they can play at that same competitive level. I am optimistic that without us making any changes, things will actually progress pretty naturally to seeing a lot more nationalities represented at the pro level.
I can’t really talk to specifics as to what our plans our, but I know that we really do want to grow the regions. We want them to be successful, so that you can have your own heroes up on stage playing. We are doing a lot around that, but I think Lilbow already showed that you don’t have to be Korean to be successful. Anybody in the world, if they dedicate themselves to it, can do the same things at that high level. Koreans just started taking it seriously a lot earlier. Some of us have some catchup to do but we can get there.
Moving on to balance, how frequently is the team looking to change LotV post-release? Can we expect this to slow, or to speed up once competitive play resumes regularly next year? Especially if something looks broken or OP, how aggressive are you generally going to be with patches?
Pretty frequently actually. David Kim is a really big advocate of making changes as soon as we see a problem. We have the ability to publish balance changes very quickly: we could turn it around in 24 hours if we had to. Because of that, small balance tweaks will be coming constantly, whenever he sees problems. He’s always evaluating the data, sending reports on what the balance is in the live community. So that’s something thats very near and dear to him.
There are bigger things that happen though, like what we saw with Swarm Hosts. That was not a small change, that was actually a significant change to the unit, fundamentally changing the way it worked. It fundamentally changed the Zerg architecture. It's still important, we still want to get it out, but that’s something that takes a little more time. And that’s what we’re dedicated to going forward. As long as StarCraft is going to be an eSports its not going to stay an eSport unless we stay 100% dedicated to supporting whatever it needs to stay competitive and to stay fresh.
That’s something David has brought up a few times at the convention, that past Void -- a lot of people have gotten the mindset that “this is our Brood War, we’ve perfected the game, and now we’re just going to leave it.” He doesn’t have that mindset at all. It's not going to be that we’re going to leave it, we’re going to do whatever we need to keep it engaging for our viewers and players. Doing that may mean even though we’re not releasing an expansion, if we see an issue, we may create new units. We may put out brand new units, may take out units, we may radically change the way a unit functions.
We think we’re at a very happy place right now, but to be fair, all of our pro players are so focused on WCS right now that we don’t have huge exposure right now for the balance of Void. Once WCS is over and the champion is crowned, they’ll go right into Void. Then we’ll see how balanced it is at the top levels. Confidence is good right now, but we’ll see what happens. We’re going to make sure that next WCS is still highly competitive.
With all the focus on multitasking and micro in LotV, are you worried that the balance between mechanics and strategy will shift a little too much towards a mechanical focus?
I do think that there will be a shift. David Kim had all the goals laid out that we were trying to hit and I think he’s very happy with where we got to, but there will definitely be a shift. Obviously the first part of the game moves forward much faster than it used to. Mechanically, you have six new units, that’s going to throw off the meta - the whole game is changing.
But I think a big part of the focus is making sure that the top level is fun to watch but also that the lowest level is still easy to learn. A lot of the mechanics, the Cyclone is an amazing kiting unit that is really tough to use in its perfect way, but if you’re new it will just auto target. I think he’s been very cognizant of the idea of making the game more engaging at the highest levels without overwhelming new players. A big part is: “is it still fun and different for the new players?” I think it will change things up, but I don’t know exactly where its going to change.
How much have pro players been involved with the development of LotV? Do their goals for the game generally coincide with your own, or differ in some respects?
We’ve actually spoken directly with them a lot to figure out what their preferences are in a lot of areas. We’ve had a couple community summits where we asked in pro players and commentators to see what their opinions. So we actually got a lot of great feedback. They’re vocal in general, but it was good to just talk to them, to have them in a room and ask them what they thought we should be doing.
Obviously our goals and theirs won’t always align but if we hear something that a lot of the players are talking about, we're going to strongly consider it. A lot of the players had interesting things to say, some were even surprising, but they care a lot about growing the StarCraft community. They don’t want us just building the game so its so overwhelming that only pros can play it. I think we share a lot of goals and we’ll be incorporating a lot of things that came directly from the players.
What feature of Legacy are you most excited about?
I’m the type of guy that gets excited about a ton of things that are coming out. I think this is the best expansion released, it blows me away in so many different categories. For me, Day 1, the first thing I’ll be doing is playing campaign. But the thing I’m actually most excited about is Co-Op missions. Its a game mode I’ve wanted to play for as long as sc has existed. I wanted to play it back in SC1. It was talked about for SC2 and then we finally did it in Void and I am so excited for it. The idea of playing an objective based, extremely challenging mission with my friend, using a legendary commander, using crazy call-downs, trying even higher difficulties, is an amazing amount of fun. i can’t wait to play with people in the live community.
What race do you play? What is your favorite unit?
I’ve gone back and forth, but I’ve never been a Zerg player. Zerg is a little overwhelming for me. I’m your typical player, in that I play Terran and get beaten by Protoss, so I just play Protoss. I start playing Toss and then I get beaten by Terran and so I switch back to Terran. I go back and forth a lot. Favorite unit? Right now I’m playing Protoss, so it has to be the Stalker. I’m not a micro king, but I’m good enough that I love doing just the basic attack move and blinking back.
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