Game design and the sunk-cost effect

The sunk cost-effect or the sunk cost dilemma is a theory of economics and game theory. The basics of the problem is that as projects keep going, it's more and more expensive to change your current implementation but you keep on working on it instead of starting over because of all the time already spent. Since most game developers seem to be working iteratively, all the fast iterations are in the beginning of a project and that's when most of the big scrapping of design happens. Most of the testing in a development cycle still happens near the end though, after all the modelling, animations and sound effects are already close to finished. After that, only minor details are changed to fix things like game balance and timing.

This is where I feel the cost-effect really start kicking in. Starcraft 2 is nearing it's development cycle now with beta phase 2 launched and only two weeks until full release. Blizzard's MO has always been (officially) to only release a game "when it's done". But is it really done?

In my own humble opinion, there are still several units that could use a change. It's just not going to happen. I expect the game to release mostly as it is now, with only one or maybe two minor balance patches. I had high hopes for the patch between the two phases of beta but it didn't really do much.

There are three units that I feel have the biggest issues in the game as it is now: the corruptor, reaper and ultralisk. The corruptor and the reaper have problems since their roles are so narrow they don't allow for any creativity. Now that the corruptor has even lost its corruption ability (given to overseers), it doesn't quite live up to it's name.

Since it has extra damage against massive targets and a long range, the corruptor seems to be intended as a counter to the tier three air units as well as colossi. As of right now, ninety percent or more of my games played don't last long enough to get any tier three air so the only reason to ever get corruptors is to kill colossi. After your opponent's big walkers are all dead, your heavy investment is basically only useful as extremely expensive scouts. Once games start lasting longer, the corruptor might be useful to great to get air dominance, until then I feel like it could have something like Brood war's Devourer, a small aoe that makes your units do more damage.

The reaper's main problem is that it costs a massive amount of gas, enough to not be cost-effective against anything else than workers and zealots in low numbers. They are also fragile to the point of dying near instantly to anything with a ranged attack. While this makes sense because the reapers have excellent mobility and decent damage versus light units, it also makes them worthless (except as scouts, jumping up on a ledge) after around five minutes of a game. If we compare the reapers to other tier 1 (or 1.5) units, there is the marauder, the stalker and the roach, which are all viable throughout most of a game.

I would like to see something that makes the reaper be a bit more useful later on, like allowing the combat shield upgrade to give additional health to reapers as well as marines, maybe even allowing them to stim and be a sort of anti-light part of a unit composition. This would allow a terran to micro better against banenings while having really expensive units up front, making for an interesting dynamic.

The third and biggest unit is the ultralisk. While Blizzard has said they would work on ultralisks for the beta 2 patch, the only changes have allowed them to no longer be stunned by Thor 250mm cannons and have less health, which I guess evens out. The purpose of the ultralisk seem to be as an anti-mech counter as well as base destroyer instead of cracklings but they are still terrible as tanks. The biggest problem with ultralisks is that they are simply too big.

The other expensive units like colossi, thor and tanks all have the benefit of having a ranged attack which means they don't need to be close to the unit they're damaging. It also means they can use a choke to their advantage while ultralisks need big, open areas. Most of the maps in the current active pool have really few open areas to fight in, meaning the zerg player will have to be extremely active with creep and try to flank and pincer their opponent, which is a lot trickier than a-moving. Just letting ultralisks walk over zerglings would fix a whole lot of problems.

All in all, the zerg feel a bit stale. They have a couple fewer units than the other two races which means they have fewer options to be creative with strategies. They're not bad and the balance feels pretty good. But I played 300+ games as zerg in the beta and I've decided to switch to terran for release which should say something, I'm just not a satisfied customer. The protoss are the only ones with no units I could find to complain about and they're also the ones who have the most viable unit compositions in my opinion. They also have storm, drops and warp gates which allow for excellent mobility and interesting games.

Do I expect Blizzard to go back to their drawing board and change any of the units? Not at all, the game has just come too far to stop but people have been talking about the ultralisks since patch 7 and that was three (?) months ago. The cost has just been put into the game and there is no going back, the game will be released as-is.

Is it ready? I don't think so.