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On October 23 2012 04:51 Sabu113 wrote:Show nested quote +On October 23 2012 04:16 mathemagician1986 wrote:
I've never had the feeling that Blizzard doesn't listen to the SC2 community. Au contraire, I think them taking out warhounds was a panic reaction to the overzealous mob screaming "IMBA!!!!!".
Blizzard should just let the game balance itself. It worked for broodwar. The warhound was a terrible terrible unit. How does something that mobile make for interesting game play? Just the very idea around it was insane. It seems like the recent defense of it is more of an instinctual response to defend SCII than a thoughout response. WoL is a mediocre successor with serious problems. Everyone has bleated on and on about how the expansions were going to fix xyz and that hasn't happened. Now every one of these threads defending bliz sound like a kid yelling SHHH to hide a secret from the teacher.
In BW basically every unit was imba. It's sort of a choice in how you design a game: do you tame everything down to boring level (i.e. SC2) or do you keep crazy shit in there and see how pros manage anyway(i.e. BW)?
I remember reading a really good post about how you can counter OPness with similarly imba units, I wish I could find it.
I'm not defending Blizzard at all, I'm criticizing them for having no backbone and carving in the moment the mob roars.
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Well put DoA! You have brought something to the table that almost nobody have during all this drama.
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Presenting your thoughts calmly and not like a dick, on the internet? impossible. In all seriousness, I completely agree with every point and sincerely hope people will take this into consideration(pros, community, casters, everyone). Get your point across, but don't be a self-entitled douchebag about it.
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Great points DoA, thank you so much for taking the time to write this, there's not much for me to comment about, everything that's been bothering me regarding the recent threads is taken care of in your post!
On October 22 2012 14:54 papaz wrote:Show nested quote +On October 22 2012 13:46 Grumbels wrote:
I think it's unfortunate, but it has always been the case that the community throwing a fit and 'mindlessly' and 'negatively' complaining about Blizzard is the best way to get results. Unfortunately I have to agree. More than becoming a big developer Blizzard in recent years (something imo that clearly could be seen with D3 development) has had the attitude "you will play the game like we tell you to and you will enjoy it beacuse we tell you to". I'm not saying that they should do changes on the fly based on forum trends. But in both SC2 and D3, whether you call it vocal minority or majority, the community have screamed for features and pointed at other developers features/success (Riot games support of LoL and Dota2 UI to name a few) and hardly any reaction from Blizzard. Not until their playerbase is getting smaller they show any reaction to "constructive" criticism. Unfortunately, in terms of Blizzard, screaming and being vocal seems the only way to go so although Doa brings good points I like the community being vocal and dramatic.
But can you support that claim by showing that they've never taken initiative to improve something without the community screaming at them? I don't think you'll be able to, but if i'm wrong then please go ahead.
Also, just because they don't show "any reaction" to an issue, it doesn't mean they haven't already looked at it internally. You don't have to tell the community every single thing you're working on. Why do you think people like interviews? So you can get answers out of people that they may otherwise have had no incentive to give out.
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Its approaching 2 years and Blizzard still hasn't fixed any of the problems existing since day 1. Why should we give Blizzard our money for a $60 expansion when we have no evidence it will fix any of the many problems people have brought up over and over again. They've turned the most successful esports franchise in history into a sham that can't even compete with a WC3 mod.
People have been "calmly" talking about SC2's issues for years. Blizzard hasn't done jack shit. You really think they care about SC fans' constructive criticism?
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.
If we want new people to come into this game, the game has to be better. Simple as that. LoL has one of the worst communities of any game but is thrashing SC2 in the esports scene.
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I would think that DoA's advice would be good for the internet in general. Consider the following:
I probably should respect your right to have an opinion.
I probably should respect your right to express your opinion however you want.
But this does not mean that I am in any way obligated to respect your opinion.
Contrary to popular belief, the value of your opinion does not 'speak for itself.'
Rather, you speak. And you deliver to your audience reasons why your opinion is important and should be heeded, respected or considered in any serious degree.
Simply because you speak does not mean that anyone is obligated to listen.
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For some peculiar reason, when you're attempting to actually engage in productive, constructive discussions about topics, having incoherent rage, incoherent walls of text or overly liberal use of capital letters or expletives is counter-productive.
It's almost as if coming across as a ranting, raving person tossing out extreme opinions unsubstantiatable by evidence nor showing the willingness to explore and deeply understand the multiplex complexity of matters will flag you and your opinion as being of little value.
Anger and discontent as sentiments, while somewhat informative to the other side, are not particularly insightful. The kind of constructive feedback one would need to move towards a solution involves being able to articulate both the reasons for and the balm to these feelings
I'm uncertain whether this is true or not in the internet world, but in the world of real-person interactions, there's this thing called decorum and rhetorical tone that act as the vehicles for your opinions. I'm uncertain just how common civil conversation is on this internet thing, but in non-virtual space, conversations are something other than a collection of empassioned opinion spouting.
When engaging in actual, productive conversation, one of the most important things is to be able to accurately state what the position is of the other side. If you cannot do this, you might come across as being embroiled in a battle with strawmen, or worse, with nonsense.
Could Blizzard be more upfront and transparent with the rationale behind the decisions they make? Probably.
Can posters be a little more considerate about their mode of presentation? I sure hope so.
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Did anyone watch the recent State of the Game?
I opine that when they were talking about the lack of Bnet UI updates, QXC made this amazingly insightful comment about how maybe the coding of Bnet is incredibly idiosyncratic, and it is not actually a simple matter to institute large-scale changes. Or, the Wings of Liberty programming team might be really small at the moment.
It's not good argumentative or rhetorical practice to simply presume or take for granted things such as 'Blizzard is an enormous company with infinite resources' or 'changing code is so easy.' To then proceed to deride or rage at Blizzard for being unable to perform the 'simple solution' for a situation that simply isn't real would come across as rather poor.
Does anyone know for sure whether QXC is correct? No, and that's beside the point.
The mere fact that we do not know does not entail that we can conclude that QXC was incorrect.
At best, all we know is that we don't have sufficient evidence to decide one way or the other beyond mere conjecture.
You would come across as being rather immature if you leapt to wild conclusions based on such poor evidence.
The more powerful your claim, the more powerful your evidence must be. As you approach certainty in the claim you advance, you had best be sure that your evidence supports it really well and that it also refutes alternate explanations as well.
This is part of what it means to engage in good argumentative practices and means that you're doing more than 'just stating your opinion.'
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For another example, take Liquid'Nony's post on the carrier. To use DoA's words, Tyler took the "time to make detailed, logical, and calm posts about the game." He was articulate, informative and demonstrative. In a manner of speaking, he literally 'came to terms' with the problems of the SC2 carrier, insofar as he actually was able to put the problems into terms. And the response that it got was, relatively speaking, really good on a number of important measures.
Since the beginning of SC2, people have sort of intimated that the SC2 carrier sucks compared to the BW carrier and some vague hand-gesturing towards 'no micro' was brandished about. There were even lots of threads and players about the carrier. And there was a fairly general consensus about how the carrier was, to use MC's words, "trash."
Despite the seemingly-obvious shortcomings of the carrier, the carrier's flaws did not 'speak for themselves.'
The discontent of players about the carrier also did not 'speak for itself.'
When someone actually speaks about it in a way that people will listen to it the odds of other people actually listening go up dramatically. And if you also happen to have a constructive solution, that might be heard as well and might even accomplish something.
Then again, maybe I just don't get this whole internet-social media thing. Maybe somehow reasoned and cordial discussion has been supplanted in efficacy by large populist movements.
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tl;dr: If there's something important being said, the odds of it being expressable in short, snappy statements is extremely low.
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Good guy DoA, at it once again 
Need more voices like you to point out the good of all of this!
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On October 23 2012 10:19 iamho wrote:Its approaching 2 years and Blizzard still hasn't fixed any of the problems existing since day 1. Why should we give Blizzard our money for a $60 expansion when we have no evidence it will fix any of the many problems people have brought up over and over again. They've turned the most successful esports franchise in history into a sham that can't even compete with a WC3 mod. People have been "calmly" talking about SC2's issues for years. Blizzard hasn't done jack shit. You really think they care about SC fans' constructive criticism? Show nested quote +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.
If we want new people to come into this game, the game has to be better. Simple as that. LoL has one of the worst communities of any game but is thrashing SC2 in the esports scene.
It's not a $60 expansion... they have been fixing things, just very slowly.
They have been responding, they do not stick to their pride, they have opened discussions for HotS units, they give situation reports, they are transparent with what they are thinking, they've made the game a lot more balanced than when it was released.
The kinds of claims you make shows that you're not even paying enough attention to have an accurate view of what's going on, or you're simply hating, or being overly exaggerative in rage (which is not very helpful).
Also I think it is very arguable that LoL is not a good game. I'm not going to bash on it, and my language may be harsh, but my view on the game is literally this: shit. It's terrible.
There are other factors that contribute to why LoL is "bigger" in "esports". Amount of players. PR. Watching tournies in the game client. More advertising. Etc. etc.
LoL attracts a huge audience, especially since it's a free game and has cartoony looks so many young kids will play it.
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This is why you are one of my favorite eSports personalities. Always the voice of reason.
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On October 22 2012 01:55 itsjustatank wrote:Show nested quote +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.
This isn't really true thouhg since half of the people who bought SC2 NEVER played the multiplayer game, and alot of the remaining customers might only have tried it a few times so the concerns that are voiced are problems that over half the customers for sc2 don't give a shit about since they are ALL multiplayer things, noone is going around complaining for them to make the singleplayer better.
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Supreme Commander 2 is fun, no doubt about that
But I'm just so dissapointed that they took out everything from Forged Alliance that made ita true strategy game.
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Thanks DoA, a calm and positive attitude is always welcomed. And to spend the time to write such is a great sign of your love and commitment to Starcraft.
However, I am very afraid to say that I feel there was a very long time of positive feedback and criticism of the game. Especially for the first 2 years of the game I feel WoL was very much loved and requests for augmentations in design and UI features were most commonly posted in a positive way. The current events are the release of pent up frustration of not feeling heard.
It is a difficult situation. I am not saying that what people have done thus far is mature or even warranted. Yet, at the same time, I can't tell you how many of my own posts on B.net or Reddit on positive requests for inquiry and hopefully change in the game have been thrown to the bottom of the internet pile unheard. This past SaveHots movement, while negative, is the first real time that I feel any significant notice has been made to such requests.
Thus, I ultimately believe your post to be somewhat misled and disconnected. What I heard was a call for everyone to play nice such that if new people look at SC they won't be discouraged to investigate. This does not resolve the main dilemma. The main dilemma is not that SC is going to die, there are too many people, like yourself and myself, that love this game far too much for it ever to leave our hearts. As such, no matter the scale SC will always have a home. The main dilemma is that people are frustrated and unhappy with the path SC2 has taken and where it is headed in both its game design and UI features. I don't believe calling for people to play nice again will solve such an issue as this strategy has failed in the past. However, if you were to amend or refocus your statement to call for people to become more aware of such positive posts and you yourself offer other positive and creative ways to bring more publicity to such "detailed, logical, and calm posts" then I would be elated to agree and support you.
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On October 23 2012 11:00 Yoshi Kirishima wrote:Show nested quote +On October 23 2012 10:19 iamho wrote:Its approaching 2 years and Blizzard still hasn't fixed any of the problems existing since day 1. Why should we give Blizzard our money for a $60 expansion when we have no evidence it will fix any of the many problems people have brought up over and over again. They've turned the most successful esports franchise in history into a sham that can't even compete with a WC3 mod. People have been "calmly" talking about SC2's issues for years. Blizzard hasn't done jack shit. You really think they care about SC fans' constructive criticism? 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.
If we want new people to come into this game, the game has to be better. Simple as that. LoL has one of the worst communities of any game but is thrashing SC2 in the esports scene. It's not a $60 expansion... they have been fixing things, just very slowly. They have been responding, they do not stick to their pride, they have opened discussions for HotS units, they give situation reports, they are transparent with what they are thinking, they've made the game a lot more balanced than when it was released. The kinds of claims you make shows that you're not even paying enough attention to have an accurate view of what's going on, or you're simply hating, or being overly exaggerative in rage (which is not very helpful). Also I think it is very arguable that LoL is not a good game. I'm not going to bash on it, and my language may be harsh, but my view on the game is literally this: shit. It's terrible. There are other factors that contribute to why LoL is "bigger" in "esports". Amount of players. PR. Watching tournies in the game client. More advertising. Etc. etc. LoL attracts a huge audience, especially since it's a free game and has cartoony looks so many young kids will play it.
I think those comments count as bashing. Maybe the cartoony graphics attract some kids, but the game is also attracting a lot of ex-starcraft pros. Are they so clueless they're just playing a shit game? Or perhaps there is something to it?
Also for the millionth time you couldn't watch tournies in the game client. They were advertised there, but you had to follow the link to watch them.
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Thanks for the story Doa, but you left out the best part. The traveler removed his cloak to reveal that he had two massive weapons and began hunting down all the sc2 naysayers.
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oh DoA you are speaking out what's on my mind - I hope ppl will listen...and understand
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On October 23 2012 10:19 iamho wrote:Its approaching 2 years and Blizzard still hasn't fixed any of the problems existing since day 1. Why should we give Blizzard our money for a $60 expansion when we have no evidence it will fix any of the many problems people have brought up over and over again. They've turned the most successful esports franchise in history into a sham that can't even compete with a WC3 mod. People have been "calmly" talking about SC2's issues for years. Blizzard hasn't done jack shit. You really think they care about SC fans' constructive criticism? Show nested quote +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.
If we want new people to come into this game, the game has to be better. Simple as that. LoL has one of the worst communities of any game but is thrashing SC2 in the esports scene.
This is what angers me. Why do people like you, keep parroting the "$60 expansion" when there hasn't been a Blizzard expansion pack in history, that was ever $60 - or ever more than $40?
How much was Warcraft 2: Beyond the Dark Portal?
How much was Starcraft: Brood War?
How much was Warcraft 3: The Frozen Throne?
How much was each and every World of Warcraft expansion(The Burning Crusade, Wrath of the Lich King, Cataclysm, Mists of Pandaria)?
Show me which of the above expansion packs, at any time, ever cost $60. Great job gathering those numbers! Now show me which of those games were RTS titles.
Done?
OK. Show me your impeccable sources that state in bold letters, that Starcraft 2: Heart of the Swarm will cost $60, when every single Blizzard RTS in the history of forever, never has.
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Thanks for this post. Said a lot of things I would have loved to have said in a way far more eloquent than I could have said them.
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With all due respect, does DoA really think that a thread can change the course of the community? Its like trying to get rid of racism 100%. It will always exist regardless.
We have a community here and most of the time these SC2 celebrities get offended pretty easily.. You see all their fans praising them and all on their streams but there is just this one person who calls out and tries to offend the person and guess who gets the spotlight? Yup its that guy, don't worry about all the fans who just give you good work, the guy who just crap the person crap deserves more spotlight than their fans.
I'd say, you'd best accept the situation of the dramas at hand. So what if theres drama, you can choose to ignore it or put more spotlight on it, its how the organic growth. One person trying to change the communities thinking, now thats arrogant.
Telling to stop caring about it will just never work. I doubt anyone here has that power to change the community that drastically.
You troll one crap to a famous person on twitter and out of all the "Good luck", "I'm a fan" tweets that person just really cares about that "you suck" tweet. Hence I don't bother giving encouragement to any players no more because they only want to reply to discouragement tweets.
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Very good post! About the only post worth reading for a while now, it seems. While I love SC2, the whiny community has really been a turn off as of lately.
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EPT
