As I sit and watch an old OSL game between Bisu and Zero I feel the need to write this to you. I don't know who wins this game, it doesn't really matter to me and actually that's most of the fun of watching the game. Whatever I do know is that this game will be filled with epic battles, turning points, tactics and interesting units. Maybe if I am lucky I will see dark swarms and reavers, lurker contains from a high ground that is actually meaningful in some way, storms that actually look cool and that encourage a positional stalemate break of sorts. Maybe the game will end in some hydra bust that makes Bisu fans cry because PvZ is a delicate matchup. Maybe Bisu will win the game and people will shout for joy. Even I will be impressed because I can recognize talent in the game and have to respect that.
I don't even watch SC2 unless I am truly bored. Even Flash who I loved cannot keep me awake to watch a game with medivacs. Yes, a healing dropship with incredible speed sounds like it will make the coolest drops. Sometimes there even are cool drops. I enjoyed Fantasy v Nestea (that was before incredible speed though.) It's a good idea, I will give you guys that much. But when the 200/200 battle is about to go down and there's 15 useless flying things over the ball of bio about to fight in a world where high ground will be meaningless (really, the maps could be flat after a certain point in game, I don't care what people say) and then the battle begins and there's 15 glowing beams covering the fight with the medivacs just awkwardly floating there over everything as well praying the battle is won and not doing anything but floating there, I am just baffled.
Who thought that was a good idea? When I watch PL and each game is "wow sick macro" or "wow sick proxy", one battle and it's over followed by 10 minutes of commercials and then to come back to a replay (!?!?) of the same boring game I just watched for a couple of minutes, then to further wait until the 2 progamers are ready to get the next boring one battle (short if build orders are crossed, long and meaningless if they aren't) game!? Is there even really a flow to SC2? Isn't it just go for the kill asap pray it works? Yeah BW games STARTED kind of slow, yes you guys were right to try to speed up some aspects of the game, but now nothing even matters. Just fucking balls against balls and floating shit with lame game sounds.
I mean I understand the game being worse, I don't think you did it on purpose and for all I know, just *imo*, but EVEN the unit sounds?! Attack sounds?! wtfffff. Why such a downgrade.
I miss when Bisu would keep a probe alive in a zerg's base for countless hours it seemed like (when I was rooting for Hoejja kekeke) and cursing his name for being so good. Now it's like "oh sorry Bisu, we just added this thing called a queen you can't scout or do anything anymore neither can anyone else, that was too interesting for the viewers"
"Sorry Flash you can't use your famous star scan hack scans anymore because mules > everything else"
"Sorry Jaedong, you just suck now, I guess queens didn't help you"
Oh but Taeja! He beat Innovation. That was fun to watch. But not any BW TvT. And how lucky was that anyways? Oh ForGG advanced from WCS or is it GSL or wtf is Blizzard doing? The WCS European group A. Just call it GSL Europe! Why is it WCS GSL? Did no one want GSL Europe, GSL America, and GSL KOREA?! Now it's World Championship Series Korea so that sounds like each country has it's own individual WCS or something? Is this WCG? Can't it just be GSL Korea because that's where the GSL came from!? Without them there would be no reason to watch anyways because Koreans basically MADE esports? I don't even know. Just don't want to give. Where's the OSL? What the hell happened to smiling crowds large crowds at PL?
I know there's plenty of people who watch SC2. I watch SC2. But I'm not going to pretend any of it is really good or that I watch for reasons other than boredom or to see Flash v Life. Or Stephano v Bisu. But none of those games will be better than the average BW game. Now I don't really try to go out of my way to watch anything.
In conclusion, please actually do something cool for LoV that doesn't make the game a ball vs a ball, where you can't really have more than 3 mining bases, on a map that is flat, with a bunch of flying units that are lame and don't do anything. And colossi.
Do not expect LotV to be the saving grace of SC2, after all it's the same guy with the same ideas from WoL and HotS who will be designing it... In my humble opinion SC2 will always be just like its maps: flat and uninteresting.
I wouldn't mind SC2 at all if we still had the BW Korean pro-scene alive. The football-like crowd, the fangirls and the general feeling of real sports that BW had was simply mind blowing. Hell, you even had korean celebrities attending to important games.
But no, they (matchfixing + Blizzard dick moves on KeSPA + Kpop) took it from us.
SC2 gets some awesome games from time to time. Maru's games vs Soulkey were amazing, not to mention a while back Gumiho vs MMA ended up being some of the best esports games I've ever seen.
You know, as a BW follower, I still come back from time to time to check how SC2 is doing. I followed it when it first came out but then it didnt take too long for things to become boring. It was clear that SC2 was no BW. But many were ok with it, some disagreed and wanted change so I did what I think was the best move - move on (to Dota 2).
But once more, I check back and read how the scene is doing. Have things improved, gotten worse or merely stayed the same? And it seems like it hasnt really changed. If the philosophy behind the game is still same old boring old, then I'll make sure to come back and take a quick peek when the last expansion has come out. Maybe things will be different or maybe not. We will see.
If you're so bored that you consider watching starcraft 2 to be the most boring thing, yet you do it anyway then you need to reevaluate what you are doing with your life. If you don't like it then don't do it.
As long as DB is at the helm expect more of the same in LoV. If you want an interesting esport game to play/follow do what TL staff and others here have mentioned, go to dota 2.
Just wanted to echo your points. BW is way more fun to watch, I hit up snipealot a few times a week and watched the whole ThSL. SC2 just doesn't cut it, man, watching it is soooo boring like 90% of the time. It's such a shame, too. Really tears me up
Also, I understand there are SC2 fans that would say "if you don't like it and you still do it, there's a disconnect there and nothing's wrong." Well, personally I don't watch it anymore. As a SC:BW fan for over a decade, I want SC2 to be a better game, to live up to its predecessor, but to me it's just sub-par.
I agree. I am sick of X ball v Y ball, somewhat spread and fight. From time to time there will be an sc2 game that is good, but I remember more good scbw games. I pretty much play DotA 2 at the moment. Similar risk-reward to scbw. If anything, I still play wc3 from time to time.
Edit: At the moment watch WCS EU, and I have to wonder if there is more than one hotkey being used for army as they group up as one hotkey.
Blizzard will never make the fundamental changes needed to better the game. Why should they? The community really only cares about two things: balance, and more Westerners playing in tournaments. Make the deathballs relatively balanced, subsidize some Western tournaments, and people are happy.
I didn't bother with watching SC2 for months. Didn't watch any BW either. Recently I watched some SC2 again - and I felt like everyone involved was making fun of me. The commentators, the players, Blizzard. Have you noticed how Tasteless and Artosis have so little to say about the game that they talk about completely random unrelated stuff until one of the players hits 100 supply? Then they say "ok back to the game, it's starting to get interesting". The game hasn't even improved at all in the last months. In fact all the new stuff in HotS seems to make it worse. I'm watching BW again. TL Attack is fun though.
I say redo the graphics part, BW is the best game I've ever seen, and if you make some more campaigns the casuals will be happy seeing stuff blow up in HD, and the pros can build a lasting pro-scene. Imagine BW getting the same history as tennis, being played in all countries on earth for dozens of years, every time just getting new SP campaigns and graphics upgrades, while the pros just keep on going... GG BW FIGHTING ^^
SC2 by design is a 300 supply cap game constrained in a 200 supply cap body.
Furthermore, maps (and the game) should optimally have been designed/balanced to be 1½ times the size they are today if Blizzard truly were looking to create the best game possible with keeping SC2's fundamental design intact.
That's all I have to say. The game was created by a bunch of people who knew nothing about esports and of the consequences of their design actions. Some of it they've been able to patch up. Some of it simply can't be patched up. It's admirable that they tried to set their own mark on the RTS genre by redesigning the game. But blindly copying certain facets (supply cap and map sizes) while blindly throwing away other established conventions (whole economic design of BW) is really not the way you go about designing the best competitive RTS possible.
The only one who might have remotely had a clue about competitive gaming in that design team is David Kim. And I don't think he was hired at an early stage, nor do I think he had enough guts/knowledge to speak up about certain things.
Back in the WoW days and before that, Blizzard's game designers actually appeared to have cutting edge knowledge of the game culture du jour. Rob Pardo was a fucking EverQuest addict, a high level guild leader, and that's basically the story of WoW's entire conception.
Dustin Browder and SC2 design team? I'd be surprised if more than a handful people in that team had played any Starcraft outside of the campaign.
D3 design team? They probably played D2, but I'd be surprised if there were many true grinders there.
Blizzard's games actually feel unfinished when they ship them nowadays. It took them until HotS to provide basic battlenet functionality. Let's not even talk about D3.
Hope for their sake that the really talented and passionate designers are working on Titan. If Titan turns out to be just another run of the mill MMO they're in deep deep trouble.
EPT
