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EDIT: Now with reply to Destiny's comment on the Reddit post about this blog at the bottom
Hey guys. I don't normally make posts like this, but the topic has been bothering me so here's my take on it.
First of all; chill out. It doesn't matter what anyone on Reddit or Twitter or any other public internet platform says. SC2 isn't going anywhere any time soon. There's lots of reasons why, but they've nearly all been said already and if you haven't believed any of them yet, hearing them from me won't change your mind. In the end you'll just have to trust me and wait for time to prove it.
Obviously all this drama is born from passion for our game, which is great! I'm happy to see so many people being vocal about the issue. There are a few things that worry me though that I hope people consider.
One of the biggest dangers in all of this is that we poison our ability to like Heart of the Swarm no matter how it's released. From the look of Reddit and TL, etc lately it gives me the impression that some people aren't even ready to give the game a chance at this point. If that's true, that's sad.
A lot of pros are very vocal about their dislike of HotS and that's fine. Blizzard should listen to their concerns. The problem is the way that it's being approached. You can be critical without proclaiming the end-times. The majority of the criticism I see right now is "If you don't do X then the game is screwed" instead of "If you do X, it will improve the game by Y". The first method scares away people and makes the community look immature. Everyone learns fairly early on in school as a child that positive criticism is nearly always better than negative criticism. That philosophy only becomes more important in the real world. Blizzard has opened itself up to more community influence than nearly any other developer has before and if you really want to participate in a meaningful way in this relationship you should try to be professional about it and at the very least mature. Doom and gloom on Reddit and Twitter hashtag barrages really don't have any positive effect. In fact they have exactly the opposite. We want to appear concerned and informed, not whiny and entitled.
But Doa, aren't those people making good points and saying things that Blizzard needs to hear?
Of course they are, but it's not about the content of the post or Tweet. It's about how it's presented. Let's take a second and read one of the oldest examples of why this is the case. From "The Fables of Æsop"
(link to where I blatantly ripped this off from: http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/type0298.html )
The Wind and the Sun were disputing which was the stronger. Suddenly they saw a traveler coming down the road, and the Sun said, "I see a way to decide our dispute. Whichever of us can cause that traveler to take off his cloak shall be regarded as the stronger. You begin."
So the Sun retired behind a cloud, and the Wind began to blow as hard as it could upon the traveler. But the harder he blew the more closely did the traveler wrap his cloak round him, till at last the Wind had to give up in despair.
Then the Sun came out and shone in all his glory upon the traveler, who soon found it too hot to walk with his cloak on.
Obviously this is one of the most overused fables ever, but the point remains relevant. Basically if you want to influence someone then [i[usually[/i] most effective way to do it is with kindness. In the case of SC2 Blizzard already knows the risks they face in their game succeeding or failing. We don't need to convince them to want their own game to succeed. So instead of focusing on worst-case scenarios, why not take time to make detailed, logical, and calm posts about the game. There are definitely some good examples of this out there, but not nearly enough and not as many as there are overly-negative posts. Let's change that.
In the end if we want new people to come into this game as fans then we can't afford to have all this negativity about our scene displayed so prominently on our biggest media outlets. To a certain extent we're our own PR department and it's vitally important that we don't scare away that one fan that might bring in his friends, who bring in their friends, etc or that one fan that ends up being a wealthy individual who decides that they want to invest in esports. Equally important is that one fan who randomly comes to TL or Reddit and simply decides that they like watching Starcraft.
So please, by all means, keep talking about HotS! Keep telling Blizzard what we want, but let's do it in the most effective way and make sure we're not accidentally hurting ourselves more than we're helping.
Destiny replies:
Yes, if we just maintain a positive attitude, we can forget that viewership for SC2 is down 50-60%. We can forget that games that we'd never even heard of before are now 10x larger than what we all thought was the "flagship e-sports" game. If we stop being so darned negative on online forums and just use the channels of communication Blizzard already has open, we can forget that for 3 years we've been without name changes, LAN, or a decent custom game interface.
These are all valid concerns as I did allude to in my blog. Nobody is telling you to forget any problems the game has. I didn't.
Also it's not reasonable that we should expect any single game to be dominant forever. Just because it has the capacity to or has been previously doesn't mean it will continue to be dominant or even deserves to be. Brood War was as popular as it was for so long because it was a great game and nobody could topple it. Not many games or companies really tried as esports wasn't as important to developers back then. Starcraft 2 is my favorite game by far and has obviously succeeded over the last two years in being the "flagship game" that's lead us into a new age of esports. That's great! It's not logical though to think that Starcraft 2 is entitled in any way to keep this title. That's going to be mostly on Blizzard. We can only influence it so much ourselves. If prominent community members and progamers only talk about how bad everything is then it certainly won't be dominant again. That's a sure thing.
Don't worry, bros, our passion will carry all of us into success! In 2 years when Tasteless is casting LoL fulltime, the MLG finals are getting 15k viewers and the foreign scene is dominating the Korean scene because every Korean has switched to LoL, we'll all know that our game is the bestest and we're all positive rainbows unicorns yeah!
Again you use sarcasm to try to prove a point through appealing to raw emotion instead of logic. Humor is another method you like to use. It's entertaining, but also distracting in a serious conversation. You make fun of the passion of the community (or maybe my passion. not sure), but an appeal to pure emotion and passion is more or less what the rhetoric (i.e. the part of what you say that tries to influence someone's opinion) of your posting usually consists of. This last paragraph is a great example of that in fact. You try to scare fans with the supposed loss of Tasteless to LoL. You don't know him personally and don't know what his plans are so why make those predictions other than to stir people up and simply get them to blindly agree with you? Any real esports commentator is going to do multiple games anyway. Sometimes even at the same time, believe it or not. You include yet another "doomsday" scenario at the end as well. This type of thing doesn't help anyone. As passionate or emotional as we might feel about Starcraft 2, this is a time for calm, rational discussion because that's what will work the best. Being negative causes stress, which in turn can impede rational thought. I can't speak for you, but that's not a condition I want to be in when I'm trying to help the game I like. It's counterproductive and that's really the main point of a lot of this blog: helping Starcraft in the most effective way possible while not undermining your own love for the game.
I'll say this again because I feel it's important. I think you make a lot of great points about the game, but the way you make them isn't productive and frankly it's harmful at times. It's your style to be edgy and sarcastic, but you've actually got a lot of influence and you should be careful about how you use it if you really do want the game to do well.
 
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it's great that you point this out doa.
there are exetly SO many people who yust don't get it. which is kinda sad. but sometimes bad things ARE needed to froce change.
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Hong Kong9148 Posts
Basically if you want to influence someone then usually most effective way to do it is with kindness. In the case of SC2 Blizzard already knows the risks they face in their game succeeding or failing. We don't need to convince them to want their own game to succeed.
I appreciate the sentiment and where you are going with this, but it seems to me the community is exercising pent-up anger at this point. There are a number of issues that have plagued StarCraft II since release, and all kind tips towards fixing these issues with kindness have been ignored or shelved indefinitely.
The negativity is an economic signal to Blizzard at this point. It is equivalent to: "If you do not fix your game, no one will play it." This marks a substantial hit in sales figures, which might be the only language Blizzard speaks in at the moment.
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Being overly positive and nice only makes it easier for people to walk all over you. Sometimes you need to get angry and start yelling to get shit done.
We tried being nice and Blizz has not done anything to help fix obvious issues with their game.
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I just want the pillars to come back.
Where is chill? Where is the old school, who know what this website was meant to be? Why are the forums filled with these garbage threads? Starcraft is so much bigger than it ever was, why are we all so unhappy.
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I think the big point is that people are adressing blizzard since sc2 beta about issues and nothing has happened yet.
I dare you to prove me otherwise.
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On October 22 2012 02:06 m3rciless wrote:
I just want the pillars to come back.
Where is chill? Where is the old school, who know what this website was meant to be? Why are the forums filled with these garbage threads? Starcraft is so much bigger than it ever was, why are we all so unhappy.
because it's boring to watch and repetitive
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Doa the nice guy  . I like your sentiment, but I don't think its necessarily true. Sometimes people and companies do need to hear the harsh truth; sometimes there are elements that really are leading to the downfall of the game. If you "sugarcoat" it in a way, by saying that for example "improving arcade in X way will make the game better" then it doesn't really impart the true weight of the message. Sometimes the truth is hard to hear - and if people truly have come to believe that the arcade and chat channels (etc.) are a major problem that will lead to the downfall of the game, then its kind of important that they have a right to express that sentiment clearly.
I think you're right if you meant that generally people shouldn't be over the top, using pejoratives etc. That doesn't help anyone. But "the wind" in your example does have effects. Remember when Blizzard wanted to force people posting on their forums to use their full names? There was a *massive* backlash, a lot of negative press...and the result was Blizzard changed. Negative and positive statements can both make changes; in both cases its possible to be civil though.
Personally I'm not sure how much of an impact all of this drama and negativity is having. It all seems secondary to how good the game is, and most people forget about balance (mostly) when we're watching a game of Sc 2. I seriously doubt LoL is popular because of how positive/negative the community is, its because the company responds to its customers well (compared to Blizzard forum-wise) and their game is *fun* to play and watch.
To me this drama is a secondary point that's really only in the awareness of those who really care about the game. The majority of people just want a fun game to play, and to know Blizzard is listening to them. But yeah definitely helpful to get people to be nicer, I suppose.
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On October 22 2012 01:57 Glurkenspurk wrote:
Being overly positive and nice only makes it easier for people to walk all over you. Sometimes you need to get angry and start yelling to get shit done.
We tried being nice and Blizz has not done anything to help fix obvious issues with their game.
This is the angry overentitled style that hes referring to I would imagine. Why not people just stop pretending they have any idea how to develop a game with the complexity and scale of a game like Starcraft? The PROS should have input, yes, but other then that, I doubt any change good or bad has been made just because a random average joe had some sort of input.
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On October 22 2012 02:33 Greenhit wrote:Show nested quote +On October 22 2012 01:57 Glurkenspurk wrote:
Being overly positive and nice only makes it easier for people to walk all over you. Sometimes you need to get angry and start yelling to get shit done.
We tried being nice and Blizz has not done anything to help fix obvious issues with their game. This is the angry overentitled style that hes referring to I would imagine. Why not people just stop pretending they have any idea how to develop a game with the complexity and scale of a game like Starcraft? The PROS should have input, yes, but other then that, I doubt any change good or bad has been made just because a random average joe had some sort of input.
Then did you read pros opinions on HOTS ?
What did they say again ?
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Blizzard don't have great programmers. It's been true for a LONG time. Takes them forever to implement simple stuff and it always ends up being subpar. (WoW looked kinda crap next to the first Guild Wars, technology wise even though they released roughly in the same period. Starcraft II's technology isn't anything that eclipses CoH's or SupCom2 which is really sad. Diablo 3 is so inefficient it's not even funny.)
It's not because they don't "listen to the community" it's just because they are straight up bad programmers and they're slow as hell to get anything done. Either they don't manage their people well or they have trouble attracting talent but they do a piss poor job of making quality systems. So yeah, HotS will be kind of disappointing feature-wise. What you will get is a balanced game that's pretty fun to play. A single player campaign with a lot of effort and love poured into it. That's what WoL was and same with HotS.
If you want a developer that doesn't write crap code then you have Capcom, Epic, Dice, Konami, Square-Enix,etc.We chose Blizzard to represent e-sports so we're gonna have to live with bad code and lack of features.
(Say what you want about Square-Enix's games but they are still at the bleeding edge of 3d technology. They make some of the best 3d engines out there. If you tried Final-Fantasy XIV on PC you will understand that their programmers are no joke.)
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On October 22 2012 02:21 Boonbag wrote:Show nested quote +On October 22 2012 02:06 m3rciless wrote:
I just want the pillars to come back.
Where is chill? Where is the old school, who know what this website was meant to be? Why are the forums filled with these garbage threads? Starcraft is so much bigger than it ever was, why are we all so unhappy. because it's boring to watch and repetitive
Yeah but i still want chill to talk about it. I never see chill anymore. I feel like the old strengths of the community are jaded and tired.
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Thank you for telling us the obvious, DoA. Unfortunately, this will change absolutely nothing. The number of QQ threads about how Blizzards "doesn't give a fuck" and "SC2 is dead" is growing every day. Shame.
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Shame most of the posters in thIs thread have already missed your point DoA
Thanks for trying though
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I 100% agree, DoA. It feels like we are hurting ourselves a bit more than helping due to the presentation of our concerns for HotS. It's great that a lot of players are voicing their concerns to ensure that this game can be the best it can, but a lot of the vehemence that surrounds it only makes it harder to understand (are there legitimate concerns, or is this another "Blizz is the devil" thread?) and only ends up causing drama.
While I think the drama won't slow down any time too soon, it does my heart good to see you, Grubby, and Artosis' perspectives on the matter. And thus, I shall take your advice and chill out...
...after a few ladder games :D
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Most people are just too stupid to understand. Reddit is pretty useless site and TL is starting to become less and less constructive. I am all for constructive suggestion thread and people should keep doing it but just don't act like a baby when your ideas are not used. I am also fucking sick of all useless threads.
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On October 22 2012 03:43 Wildmoon wrote:
Most people are just too stupid to understand. Reddit is pretty useless site and TL is starting to become less and less constructive. I am all for constructive suggestion thread and people should keep doing it but just don't act like a baby when your ideas are not used. I am also fucking sick of all useless threads.
They are not stupid but actually pretty smart of admitting flaws in the game. Didn't want to be blinded by false hope from Blizzard. Its useless to get mad at them because there will be increasingly amount of materials dedicated at pointing out the flaws of the game.
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On October 22 2012 03:52 Xiphos wrote:Show nested quote +On October 22 2012 03:43 Wildmoon wrote:
Most people are just too stupid to understand. Reddit is pretty useless site and TL is starting to become less and less constructive. I am all for constructive suggestion thread and people should keep doing it but just don't act like a baby when your ideas are not used. I am also fucking sick of all useless threads. They are not stupid but actually pretty smart of admitting flaws in the game. Didn't want to be blinded by false hope from Blizzard. Its useless to get mad at them because there will be increasingly amount of materials dedicated at pointing out the flaws of the game.
Constructive post that point out the flaws of the game and the way to fix it and let people dicussing it is always good but that's not what I called stupid such as noone really think the recent Grubby's thread was stupid. Read my post again.
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DoA, thank you for writing that.
I can only agree, if people stop whining about balance and emphasize the amount of fun it is to play this game people will come.
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On October 22 2012 03:56 Wildmoon wrote:Show nested quote +On October 22 2012 03:52 Xiphos wrote:On October 22 2012 03:43 Wildmoon wrote:
Most people are just too stupid to understand. Reddit is pretty useless site and TL is starting to become less and less constructive. I am all for constructive suggestion thread and people should keep doing it but just don't act like a baby when your ideas are not used. I am also fucking sick of all useless threads. They are not stupid but actually pretty smart of admitting flaws in the game. Didn't want to be blinded by false hope from Blizzard. Its useless to get mad at them because there will be increasingly amount of materials dedicated at pointing out the flaws of the game. Constructive post that point out the flaws of the game and the way to fix it and let people dicussing it is always good but that's not what I called stupid such as noone really think the recent Grubby's thread was stupid. Read my post again.
grubby thread wasn't adressing the same thing
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