Hello friends I am Kith. AMA

General Discussion
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I’m that guy who likes Game Design way too much and has written a lot of “Review + Rework” threads. Enough of you have come to me for feedback, advice, or to ask me about what Hero I’m going to do next that I figure an AMA thread would be useful.

F.A.Q.

Have you made any games before?
I’ve made more mods than I can count in Warcraft III, but they were primarily experimental or just bad (although in my defense, I was like… 12). I’ve also worked on many mods for Starcraft II, the most noteworthy being Night of the Dead. NOTD is a cooperative survival game that was in the top ten most popular Arcade games for something like four or five years, and it was big enough for Blizzard to write an article about it in 2013. I’m still somewhat active in the SCII Arcade scene, where I do various design-related things for people and make pretty terrain:

Outside of Blizzard-related things, I’ve made a couple RPGMaker games that have been lost to the sands of time and I’m currently working on Crackdown, a Payday 2 overhaul mod.

Do you really think you’ll get hired to work on HOTS?
I haven’t been doing the Review + Rework threads with that specific goal in mind, but I definitely wouldn’t say no if a position was offered. It’s been very flattering to have people say that Blizzard should hire me, though.

Why do you do the Review + Rework threads?
For myself, it’s entertaining. I like doing detailed analysis of a design and I enjoy coming up with solutions for problems. Additionally, it tends to attract people who have very strong feelings about certain Heroes, Abilities, or Talents, which is always good opportunity to learn about different viewpoints or strategies.

Outside of that, I just like making people happy - lots of folks have responded with enthusiasm about my stuff for one reason or another, so I’ll probably keep going until that stops.

Who do you think is the best designed hero in HOTS?
Artanis, hands down. Granted, it took a bit for him to really hit his stride, but modern-day Artanis is the bee’s knees. Muradin comes in close second.

Who do you think is the worst designed hero in HOTS?
Depends entirely on the context.

  • Are we asking which hero has the least fluid gameplay mechanics?
  • Are we asking which hero has the most unnecessarily overloaded kit?
  • Are we asking which hero has the most negative impact on match experience?
  • Are we asking which hero design most badly misses the point of their intended role?

All of these can qualify for “worst designed” and all have very different answers. I don’t think that there’s any overall “worst designed” hero in HOTS because all of them have redeeming qualities, team synergies, counters, etc - but there are definitely heroes that are more badly in need of help than others for one reason or another.

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Did you create all those classes like Assault, Medic etc. for NotD? The terrains, missions etc.?

That is a stupifying amount of effort. I think that track record alone could qualify you as a HotS dev (given HotS is also just a SC2 mod) of some sort.

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Which was your favorite rework to do?

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Yes and no. I helped shape a couple of the class designs as a community member when Wings of Liberty launched and NOTD was in the “just barely a game” stage, but the only classes that I made are the Technician and the Pathfinder. However, later on when I was brought on formally in March of 2012, I would up reworking pretty much every class, boss, and most of the weapons/items over the course of my tenure. I didn’t work on NOTD’s terrain, but I did the terrain for NOTD 2 and several other maps. I’m currently working on the Terrain Textures for Crap Patrol.

I mean, probably. I’ve seen people get hired for less. It’d probably help if I put in an application, though.

Tychus. He’s my favorite hero in HOTS and my favorite character from Starcraft II, so it was a lot of fun coming up with something that does justice to both the gameplay of HOTS and his personality.

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Do we pronounce kith like kit ? Or like kiss? Or like kite?

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Train A left Cursed Hollow at 9:00 AM moving at 120 miles per hour, Train B left Towers of Doom at 10:00 AM at 150 miles per hour heading to Train A.

What time would they collide?

Also you are killing me inside for not using <img>

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Eventually.

They’re hi-res images with a lot of detail. I want them to open in a new window, not get blown up by the forums’ potentially janky lightbox.

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When will you fight SamiSha?

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When someone convinces me to.

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Recording of the fight can be found here.

4.5 range is a real handicap.

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Battle of the HTML5 formatting.

Where me vs kith that learned how to format his threads by me.

So basically myself vs myself

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You didn’t teach me how to format my threads, I’ve been formatting effortposts and design documents for years. I just needed some help figuring out workarounds for not having my usual methods available, that’s all.

Besides, I’d win. You know the science of formatting, but not the art. You’ve even admitted so yourself in the past:

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If you were to put someone with guns into hots, who would it be?

Also if you could make one change and one change only to any hero you want, good or bad, what would you do?

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lol

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Soldier 76, so he can take over Raynor’s role of “extremely basic Ranged Assassin” and Raynor can be remade into something more commander-like.

Since implementation of a design can count as “one change” because it’s being sourced from a complete concept, I’d make my Tychus Rework happen. :wink:

However, if I’m behaving and answering your question as you intended it to be interpreted, I would change Zagara’s Nydus Network. I feel that the Cooldown Reduction Passive that it comes with is too restrictive, so I would make the following change:

  • On the upside, Zagara can now mill cooldowns without Creep and can rely on her summons and her Baneling splash damage to get multiple activations of the Cooldown Reduction at once.
  • On the downside, Zagara can no longer mill cooldowns on Non-Heroic targets and the Cooldown Reduction effect itself is weaker.

Having played both as and against Zagara at Diamond+, it’s just too easy to shut down a Nydus Network user by consistently blowing up Creep Tumors. Zagara already relies so heavily on Creep and the Heroic pushing that reliance even harder doesn’t feel good for either end of the equation - it’s either overpowering or underwhelming, with almost no middle ground.

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Personally I find Muradin very boring to play though, so I dont think he is exactly well designed.

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Muradin’s about as close as you can get to being the perfect Tank. He has (in no particular order):

  • A trait that gives him enormous sustain
  • Hard CC
  • Soft CC (which also happens to be in an AOE, so it’s good for revealing things)
  • Universal Mobility (which also happens to come with some Armor)
  • A Heroic that almost doubles his durability
  • A Heroic that’s point-and-click Hard CC that can be used for picks or peel

And despite all of these insanely useful Nice Things™, they all have reasonable counters or require some level of skill:

  • Muradin’s sustain is out-of-combat only, so he can be bursted down or you can just hit him to knock him out of it
  • Storm Bolt is a Skillshot, so it requires Muradin to aim and allows you to dodge it
  • Thunder Clap doesn’t have much in the way of counters but it’s also not hugely impactful so it’s not that big of a deal
  • Dwarf Toss can be interrupted by Stuns and Roots
  • Avatar only gives Muradin health and locks him out of his second hard CC option, so if you’ve got someone with Health Shred handy it’s not really much of a threat
  • Haymaker requires very specific aim if it’s being used to generate a pick and has a range of 1, so you can easily adjust your positioning accordingly if you see Muradin angling to stand next to you

While Muradin can’t pull outrageous group stuns like ETC or Diablo, he doesn’t have any genuine weaknesses either. He’s also very flexible - if you want to make him into a Bruiser, that’s fairly easy to accomplish and he’s pretty good at it to boot.

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Ok, I see, my definition of well designed is different I guess, for me well designed means fun to play and have various at least semiviable talent builds, the character can be as unintuitive as it gets for example maybe Gazlowe or Stuk9v.

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Do you think a large unit radious is essential to a good tank? I mean o or O this

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