In recent years, the term ‘rebalancing’ has become synonymous with the act of changing the stats of various elements in MOBAs to completely shake up the game. These big metagame changes excite players, and is often considered a big event. It’s an approach Blizzard has never taken with Starcraft II, instead making the same changes over and over in an attempt to strive for true balance perfection.
But why doesn’t Blizzard just screw around with stats to bring an entirely new angle to Starcraft? It’s because Starcraft’s plan is all about the long-run, and not short little seasons.
“There are two different philosophical rituals and historically Starcraft is really focused on ‘how do we change the balance to make the best possible player experience?’” says Tim Morten, Lead Producer on Starcraft II: Legacy of the Void.
“I think there are other games where it’s about constantly having new and fresh ideas to maintain their balance, but I think balance is something that Starcraft already had a lot of.”
Morten isn’t against borrowing the odd idea though, and points to the beta as a place where there are more drastic changes than Blizzard traditionally implements. “I would say that recently we’ve done some thing that are a little more evolutionary… so we don’t have a hard cast rule that we wont change anything. But we have always done balance patches and have tried to tune the game for the long run.”
That ‘long-run’ is something important: Blizzard want players to know exactly where they are with Starcraft II. “We don’t want to just overreact. A lot of pro players play Zerg units, so we take a really strong look at the issues. We’re making sure that when we make a change its the right change, and that we don’t just make a change as a habit and then it becomes a ripple effect,” says Morten.