BlizzDavidKim

oh hi guys

• The most important thing we realized was feedback we get both from ourselves and from pros need to be weighted depending on skill. For example, I personally have a hard time playing Terran compared to the other two races. And back then because I was one of the players who was playing at the highest level, I took this personal experience as a bit too much of an important factor. In the hots Beta, I was also struggling the most as Terran, but this seemed correct for the balance of the game. And sure enough, all the major tournaments that happened so far, all three races balance is looking solid, many Koreans are also saying Terran is the strongest, and overall just gauging my skill level vs. how the game should be more correctly this time around is working out much better.

• Maps on the ladder are something we felt could use a huge improvement. We are planning on trying our best to change up the map pool at least once every couple ladder seasons. Right now, our rough initial plan for future season is: two 1v1 maps and two 2v2 maps for Season 2, two 3v3 maps and two 4v4 maps for Season 3, and we will try our best to continue this sort of process all throughout HotS.

• Our current plan is to work more closely with tournaments in 1v1 maps. This not only means we will be using more tournament maps on the ladder in HotS, but also the maps we create will have significant tournament input as well. For example, the two new 1v1 maps we have planned for season 2, we're working closely with multiple major tournament organizations to improve and fix before releasing them.

• Balance issues can definitely be fixed with new maps but not overdoing it is important. In Wings, one of the things we learned was that because all the maps were so similar (not just ladder maps but tournament maps as well), there was 1 best way to play per matchup. We're hoping to have much more diversity in map pools in HotS in order to get around this problem. This is why we have super rush friendly maps like Korhal City, really expand friendly maps like Aklion Wastes, or more standard maps like Daybreak on the ladder for season 1.

• We will definitely continue doing Situation Reports. Things we talk about in the Sit reps are not always what some people want to hear, but we try to be as honest as possible in our current thinking of the game.

• Personally, HotS beta has taught me something really interesting about our players. Most of the top pros clearly showed that they are mostly focused on mechanics to be successful and it's up to other players to teach them the good strats that they could mechanically master. So players who can think for themselves AND are also mechanically awesome are my favorite players. Current favorites are Marineking, Violet, TLO, Whitera, and Parting.

• There hasn't been a lot of tournaments in HotS so far, but IEM this week has been awesome, GSTL was really cool, and MLG has been as amazing as ever.

Speaking funny stories....

A few weeks ago, our multiplayer design group was just having a casual meeting at my desk about something while I was just working on something else. Unintentially, I wasn't really listening and I wanted to talk about what I was working on so i said "Yeah I know, but what do you think about this?" And everyone started laughing so hard.

Supposedly, what one of our tech designers said right before I started talking was something along the lines of "Well I completely suck at this game and will never improve."

It was pretty embarassing, but we know each other so well that he knew exactly what happened.

Also would like to point out at the highest levels of play this isn't what we're seeing. Sure there are strats that revolve around maximizing on only 3 bases and doing a push that kind of loses you the game if the one engagement goes badly for you. But for the most part all the pro tournament games we're seeing players want to take as many expansions as possible, and the players who are on more than 3 bases generally has the advantage (with the exception of specific strats mentioned above).

We do see, however, on the ladder players prefer 3 base play more so than pros. This issue is definitely something that we continue to talk about internally like Dustin points out, but we think this isn't as major as people think at the moment due to our experiences in watching pro play.

We think the strength of reddit is because of the point system the most popular issues always surface to the top. We try our best to follow gameplay feedback in all the forums, but reddit actually seems to be one of the easiest for us to get feedback from.