So today while watching proleague (which I do everyday because it's awesome), I said something in twitch chat:
I been playing this game for 14 years my only concern is the quality of the starcraft product and the RTS game gerne overall - SC2 is *** and im not afraid to say that, unlike all the fake people who just ride hype trains and monetize their personalities.
It ended up on reddit for some reason, I don't expect anyone to really care what I say except for those who follow me but I did wanna share some of my thoughts:
As a progamer, it is very difficult to speak about the game. Because I compete in tournaments, play everyday, am always worried about the next qualifier or team match, and recently, lots of losses happening. It's very easy to get frustated and whine about balance, or anything you can find really to feel better about yourself after you've failed. This is something I've done before and do to this day, despite knowing it's detrimental to being a succesfull progamer. So sometimes I'll be harsher than I should be. Come to me at the right time and I can tell you all about how horrible this game is
I obviously don't think StarCraft is shit. I love StarCraft more than most people because this game has literally shaped my life in the most impactfull way possible, the way I make a living. Almost all of my actions in the past 5 years have been StarCraft related in some way shape or form. I owe very much to StarCraft and still play it every single day, with joy. I realize that being a progamer in a videogame is a great honor and it's amazing to be able to play games and somehow people care about your performance and get enjoyment out of seeing you do well. Of course results come into the equasions as well, but I want to leave my personal progaming carreer out of this blog. I just want to express my joy to this day playing this game. I still have moments where Im proud of a move I did, or embarassment if something failed and trying to achieve perfection is something that still motivates me.
Watching proleague has been a great joy for me the past week. Back when I was a semi-professional BW player (meaning I made about 400 euros a month on the side for playing SC) I used to watch proleague everyday. Now I get to see all of these people I used to enjoy watching play SC:BW so much, play SC2 combined with so many other great players that it's been nothing but exciting.
Since my comment did infact say SC2 was shit I have to explain why I feel that way sometimes.
Almost every ZvP has been swarmhost/static D/Brood lord/infestor vs Airtoss with templars and collosus.
There was the Reality/Hydra mech game on Star Station too.
It made me sad having to watch my favourite players play these type of games, that I play on an almost daily basis. Infact ever since Starcraft came out, people have complained about deathballs, some of the mechanics of the units, and how it overall feels to play Starcraft 2 and these kind of games. I still enjoy watching it, because they do it better than I do and I can always learn from watching great players. But there are a lot of people who don't watch games to learn, they watch for pure entertainment. Starcraft 2 has a lot of exciting moments, it really does well in that regard, but some core elements, that lead to undivserse, predictable, undynamic games are still not being adressed.
Last year Blizzard came in with WCS, exploded the scene. Ever since then they made great steps in communicating with the community about WCS, and greatly improved their system. There was a Q&A on Team Liquid, and the people at blizzard seem very in touch with the community as they are always seen at tournaments. 2014 in my opinion looks to be a great year whereas tournament structure, production, quality of overall broadcast and calendar are concerned. A lot of people dissvoled from the scene, it's more compact but much more structurized and hopefully recognizeable for fans. WCS EU has proved to be amazing show last year, GSL is back, Proleague production value is true the roof and they will soon have Moonglade casting!
There are a lot of things I'm really excited about. NASL seems to still have not learned anything from last year. There are professional gamers who devote their life to this game and the qualifier is this messed up - it's almost unbelievable. They do host great live events though, and some day they will learn how to properly run qualifiers. If they provide more shows like the one in Toronto last year all will be forgiven.
It really feels to me like the scene is ready for a fresh start, with a supportive blizzard, less mouths to feed, less hype, just people enjoying watching StarCraft 2. With the ammount of interest, and exposure Starcraft 2 still generates, My hope is going into this next chapter of StarCraft that the community also gets more feedback on the game/balance front. I believe that with a few small changes, a lot of the 'less enjoyable' aspescts of SC2 can easily be fixed, and with an expansion pack ahead, it gives so much oppurtunity to still develop this game. I don't believe there will be an alternative on the 'RTS' front in the next couple of years so this is what I'm hoping for.
In warcraft 3, undead was almost unplayable and Orc was overpowered forever - nothing was done. In WoL, there was very little communication.Problems in gameplay were obvious to the community for a very very long time before adressed, it took 1,5 years to do something about infestors. HotS started out promising. The overal dynamic of the game is improved upon, the units are fun to use and have great diversity. I get the feeling Blizzard wants good things with eSports. It's okay that there are problems with the game. It's incredibly hard to design a game like this. The thing that would make me most happy is the feeling that those problems are being 'worked on', and right now Blizzard doesn't give me that feeling. They give me the feeling they care about WCS which is great because it gives me an oppurtunity, but I'm really hoping they will change this going into 2014. If we're all watching a ridiculously stupid swarmhost / spore / viper game or the terran or protoss equivalent even a little tweet from @StarCraft saying this is silly would go a long way. The feeling that we're not alone this and there is still a desire or to improve upon things.
I talk on skype everyday with friends and other progamers about the things that are silly about the game. For hours and hours we theorize about what could be better how, balance whining barely comes into it, as long as noone just lost a game. I imagine the people in the kespa houses and kespa teams do the same. People who have been in this industry for 15 years with all the expertize required, and plenty of investment into the Starcraft name and Legacy that you have to assume that there must be lots of goodwill to improve the game to help make it bigger in Korea - as long as there are 1 or 2 'Bomber - Scarlett' (ok maybe thats too much that game was sick) or similar type matches a week, I think it will still be appreciated and loved. Since Blizzard does seem to care about SC2:Hots esports, that might be the most frustating feeling.
We can see that they are trying, new maps are being introduced, there is way more communication on all fronts with IEM, DH, NASL, etc. The IPL Staff got hired to do something for Blizzard Esports... The whole community is watching games, talking about this and that, when destiny will get gm, or what new show incontrol be on etc. etc. But the progamers are playing the game day in day out, and are ignored. Noone is talking to them, noone is answering our questions, if you're american you're lucky if you managed to sign up for WCS qualifiers and not be removed by the time it starts. They came out with a set of terrible maps, and still want to improve mech - (??????)
I don't even really know who has any influence on these kind of things but I would love to see someone like David Kim take more of a role like Kim Phan has been doing for WCS. Very much in touch with the community and that leads to a much better product in the end. Which will in turn be better for WCS, Blizzard, Esports and of course all of us that love this game!
In the meanwhile, I will keep enjoying playing this game no matter what and deal with the problems I see to the best of my abilities or use them to my advantadge (even though I will curse at them and call them shit after a loss), as that is the best attitude to have as a progamer.
On January 08 2014 06:21 wingpawn wrote: So... do you have any suggestions how to fix the stuff Blizzard should adress in game balance?
That only matters if the right people would listen. I also don't think progamers should be involved in those kind of discussions, but coaches or ex progamers can be extremely usefull resources. Imagine the possiblities - even something as little as a Skype chat with someone from blizzard and 3 or 4 experienced people - then community feedback, etc. So much could be done on this front with so little, in my opinion
It seems like Blizzard doesn't really have the experience or even the right incentives to deal with these issues. It would be an interesting experiment to turn over balancing and even more basic unit mechanics to tournament organizers. Basically let them figure out which mods create the most interesting gameplay the way Kespa figured out what types of maps create the most interesting games.
Great read, thanks for posting a detailled elaboration on your statement. I have one question though.
On January 08 2014 06:11 Liquid`Ret wrote:My hope is going into this next chapter of StarCraft that the community also gets more feedback on the game/balance front. I believe that with a few small changes, a lot of the 'less enjoyable' aspescts of SC2 can easily be fixed, and with an expansion pack ahead, it gives so much oppurtunity to still develop this game. I don't believe there will be an alternative on the 'RTS' front in the next couple of years so this is what I'm hoping for.
I see almost every pro-player have opinion on what is bad / boring / overpowered / underpowered and everyone is very good at pointing out in what way exactly. However, I see almost no one coming up with a solution for the problems they see themselves. You constantly say yourself that you've been playing this game for 14 years, why don't you suggest changes yourself. If you can get a lot of attention saying that this game is shit, I'm sure you can get a lot of attention explaining why this game is shit and make a change.
On January 08 2014 06:11 Liquid`Ret wrote: It really feels to me like the scene is ready for a fresh start, with a supportive blizzard, less mouths to feed, less hype, just people enjoying watching StarCraft 2.
I couldn't agree more with this part. Lets just enjoy watching some StarCraft 2.
I really REALLY don't understand why all the old top foreigners don't come back and play BroodWar... SC2 isn't going to get any better. If you don't love the game by now, you're not gonna wake up tomorrow and go "Wow, this game is great today!". Yeah, they could move to some shitty MOBA game, because there is a bit of money in that arena, but BroodWar is where the love is.
It might sounds weird but what SC2 lacks the most is a long term busines model that makes money for Activision/Blizzard.
SC 2 is an "old" game, you spend 50 bucks on it and play it as long as you want but it competeds in a world with LoL, World of Tanks and DOTA2 that are F2P and have a constant stream of content. Riot and Valve have a big motivation to make their games better every day because it makes money for them and thats the most important thing. I can imagine that in a "big" company like Blizzard this conversation is possible: DK: Hey manager guy we have some amazing ideas to make the game great, we need 50.000$ for coding and testing. Manager: Thats cool and how does it make money for my next financial report? DK: Well... it doesnt do that but it makes Swarmhosts less boring.
The modern customer just works differently and wants more of constant stream of new things even if they are dumb as the 100th hero that is exacly the same as number 27. or a new hat thats green instead of yellow. F2P would not work in my opinion for SC2 because there aren´t enough things you could sell without destroying the core of the game.
Personally i think an option besides F2P is some sort of Premium like COD or Battlefield has. Some sort of you pay 10$ a month and get something like - Portrais - Models - Observing laddergames directly (The player could get a part of the money from Blizzard, with an option to deny the viewing) - MMR resets - Early access to whatever - maybe some sort of testrealm were Blizzard (or even the community) can throw changes into, test them or just have fun with. So some sort of public editor for dummies.
I personally thought it was exciting to see the reality/hydra game. It was a game between 2 powerful deathball armies, similar to like fights like how transformers fight (or pacific rim). Giant robots destroying ugly monsters!
It was a change of pace and at times I kept looking at hydra's face to see no emotion displayed whatsoever even when he lost his corruptor broodlord army to HSM. I think this type of static defence play will evolve even more in the future so that we will see some really delicate balancing going on (like a chess match right before everything explodes and all the pieces die in 10 turns).
Adding mech buffs has really given terrans the ultimate diversity between aggression (bio) and defence (mech) and I am excited to see both styles and everything in between this up coming year.
To those asking Ret for more concrete examples of how to fix these problems.
The fixes would involve blowing up the utter fundamentals of Starcraft 2: unit movement, spell mechanics, heavy AI changes, complete economy overhauls, tech tree overhauls, interface overhauls and more. As Micro_Jackson said far better, the entire business model, outside of the game, is desperately outdated, especially when you consider we have another $40 expansion to come. People certainly do spend more than $40 on F2P games (I know I have) but as a single upfront payment for a game, the potential market shrinks.
These changes will never take place and can not take place. Those that played through beta and saw these issues coming down the track hoped that Blizzard would listen to feedback. I watched SC2 rabidly throughout Wings and it got stale, very very stale. . And here we are, a year into HoTS and not a single change of any great significance has taken place. Battlenet2.0 is still (again) in need of fundamental change. I'm just happy the BW scene in Korea has picked up again.
I think the biggest problem is that Blizzard are trying to navigate between the mechanically demanding 1v1 game that the pros want and a flashy fun social game that appeals to the majority.
It's a little defeatist to think that streamlined controls are an end-all of good RTS game design. While I agree the unit movement, better worker pathing, and other such things are what make SC2... unique... from BW, I don't buy that we have to go back to control schemes from 1998 to get back the dynamic game we love. Sure some things probably need to improve/change (like the linear economy), but there are tons of things Blizzard can do both on the business model and game play that would make huge strides forward without having to revert some of the modern niceties that help new players get into the game.
Part of it really just comes down to Blizzard listening to players like MorroW and Nony talk about the game. Rather than dismissing their comments in favor of accessibility Blizzard needs to double down their efforts to find solutions or replacement mechanics of the problems they talk about.
Business model wise Blizzard just needs to copy DotA2 in many respects. In game tournament streaming (and ticket sales) alone would go a long way to giving SC2 a lasting business model.
On January 08 2014 07:23 Logo wrote: It's a little defeatist to think that streamlined controls are an end-all of good RTS game design. While I agree the unit movement, better worker pathing, and other such things are what make SC2... unique... from BW, I don't buy that we have to go back to control schemes from 1998 to get back the dynamic game we love. Sure some things probably need to improve/change (like the linear economy), but there are tons of things Blizzard can do both on the business model and game play that would make huge strides forward without having to revert some of the modern niceties that help new players get into the game.
I really agree with this, and nowadays there is more and more a feeling of blizzard and the community working together, I don't see why it couldn't be achieved!
I'm glad you wrote this post, Ret. It is a really healthy explanation of what a large segment of the community has been feeling, without balance whine, without rage. Just a calm, cool, collected explanation of what is wrong.
On January 08 2014 06:21 wingpawn wrote: So... do you have any suggestions how to fix the stuff Blizzard should adress in game balance?
It's been discussed ad nauseam, hundreds if not thousands of pages written. This is not the place for a 500 page game design tutorial.
For me it's the combination of incomprehensible design decisions, an apparent inability or unwillingness to learn from mistakes/understand given feedback and an almost total lack of communication. I have no idea if any senior developer on the SC2 team is even aware of what is being discussed, or if they are being told by a choir of yes men that everything about the game is awesome all day long. The sheer stubbornness being displayed in regards to certain aspects of the game is both baffling and infuriating.
I think the problem is very clear, now that we are more than 3 years after SC2's launch: David Kim MUST be fired. He's a nice guy and all, but he is clearly not the one for the job. Look at the flaws we see in the game and you'll have to agree with me.
Really nice article Ret, i really love starcraft but i hate how blizzard takes balance/design stuff sooooooooooo damn slowly. if we want to have the best game ever, blizzard needs to invest more money and time into that. But we dont know if they will ever change that mindset and we dont know what is keeping blizzard out of a more proactive stance towards game design and balance of the game like all this new companies like Riot or even guys like IceFrog with Dota.
I've been thinking about the same things a lot, and it frustrates me daily. With how many resources Blizzard spends on WCS it's really sad to see how little they've done to improve the game itself. Just small tweaks could make a huge difference. I love Proleague, its one of my absolute favorite tournaments to watch, but when I see 2-4 turtlefest games a day it leaves me with a very bad feeling.
Right now we know lotv is coming, and with it the potential for big changes, but I fear once lotv is released and potentially new game issues arise people will lose all faith in the game if Blizzard has never tried to fix these outside expansions.
My personal opinion is that Blizzard isn't really trying to "fix" the game itself anymore. At some point, they realized that the business model of Starcraft 2 (pay upfront) aswell as the gameplay itself would take too much effort to change. Instead they did a clever move; they pump money into the scene (WCS) to keep enough people around to still make a profitible release of LotV. I think with the units they introduce in LotV, they will try to circumvent the whole stale deathball kind of gameplay to make the game more exciting, that's exactly what they did in HotS. I doubt that they will change any core parts of the game like unit movement/ unit clustering though.
something like this might be worth temporarily messing around with..
There are a million ways to discuss changes or patches, there is no one solution readily available - what matters is that there are plenty of people out there willing to give feedback and want to see changes for the better, we need to find a way to cooperate with blizzard and see if we can make a positive influence on where the game is going.
On January 08 2014 06:11 Liquid`Ret wrote:My hope is going into this next chapter of StarCraft that the community also gets more feedback on the game/balance front. I believe that with a few small changes, a lot of the 'less enjoyable' aspescts of SC2 can easily be fixed, and with an expansion pack ahead, it gives so much oppurtunity to still develop this game. I don't believe there will be an alternative on the 'RTS' front in the next couple of years so this is what I'm hoping for.
I see almost every pro-player have opinion on what is bad / boring / overpowered / underpowered and everyone is very good at pointing out in what way exactly. However, I see almost no one coming up with a solution for the problems they see themselves. You constantly say yourself that you've been playing this game for 14 years, why don't you suggest changes yourself. If you can get a lot of attention saying that this game is shit, I'm sure you can get a lot of attention explaining why this game is shit and make a change.
Many top players have made very detailed analyses of SC2, what is wrong with it and how to fix it. Many people agreed with these top players, and many people went to Blizzard asking for change. Change never came. Ret's seeming defeatism on the matter makes sense; Blizzard needs to change their mentality towards these issues before we ever even contemplate real change happening.
On January 08 2014 06:52 ninazerg wrote: I really REALLY don't understand why all the old top foreigners don't come back and play BroodWar... SC2 isn't going to get any better. If you don't love the game by now, you're not gonna wake up tomorrow and go "Wow, this game is great today!". Yeah, they could move to some shitty MOBA game, because there is a bit of money in that arena, but BroodWar is where the love is.
A genuine and optimistic, even grateful!!?! blog about the state of sc2. I have tears of joy.
Thank you Ret. Well said.
You and TLO are great for this community in terms of equanimity and thoughtful contributions. Golden has also been really making great things happen recently
I really REALLY don't understand why all the old top foreigners don't come back and play BroodWar... SC2 isn't going to get any better. If you don't love the game by now, you're not gonna wake up tomorrow and go "Wow, this game is great today!". Yeah, they could move to some shitty MOBA game, because there is a bit of money in that arena, but BroodWar is where the love is.
This is myopic, in my opinion. SC/SC:BW went through a number of iterations and patches before it became the game people think of today. There is absolutely no reason to think that SC2 cannot improve. That its maps, strategies, and design cannot continue to develop. HotS is much better than WoL, and things can and will continue to improve.
blizzard needs to take the same approach as they have to hearthstone
one thing above all others; make sure the game is FUN
Who cares if the winrates are 50-50 if the game is like it is now. From a spectator point of view the current meta gets boring extremely fast. Of course, this is not just blizzards fault. From day one we had people screaming about only having long macro games and the winrates must be exactly equal no matter what. What we ended up with was a balanced game... with little to no variation.
On January 08 2014 06:52 ninazerg wrote: I really REALLY don't understand why all the old top foreigners don't come back and play BroodWar... SC2 isn't going to get any better. If you don't love the game by now, you're not gonna wake up tomorrow and go "Wow, this game is great today!". Yeah, they could move to some shitty MOBA game, because there is a bit of money in that arena, but BroodWar is where the love is.
Cause Ret's an exception, most of the top foreigners came from WC3 (Naniwa, Grubby, the Duran brothers) or weren't progamers before SC2. (Scarlett) It's silly to tell foreigners to go back to BW when most aren't from it in the first place.
Also BW was never successful outside of Korea, so if SC2 mysteriously disappeared overnight, the foreign scene would go back to WC3, which actually had a large non-Korean tournament circuit.
On January 08 2014 08:40 nkr wrote: blizzard needs to take the same approach as they have to hearthstone
one thing above all others; make sure the game is FUN
Who cares if the winrates are 50-50 if the game is like it is now. From a spectator point of view the current meta gets boring extremely fast. Of course, this is not just blizzards fault. From day one we had people screaming about only having long macro games and the winrates must be exactly equal no matter what. What we ended up with was a balanced game... with little to no variation.
watch pl if you want variation. almost half of the games aren't standard and some new maps are really cool.
Although I don't think it's his responsibility to do so, in writing this out clearly and plainly, Ret once again shows why he's a great player and addition to the scene. Only someone who cares so much would bother responding in such a humble, honest way.
On January 08 2014 09:10 sparklyresidue wrote: Although I don't think it's his responsibility to do so, in writing this out clearly and plainly, Ret once again shows why he's a great player and addition to the scene. Only someone who cares so much would bother responding in such a humble, honest way.
Trouble is these kind of posts come out infrequently and there almost needs to be a combination of posts with a really focused vocal backing from other people in the spotlight so that it picks up traction. Too many voices can drown out the importance of the message. Not that Jos would want it but you do need a line of communication open from the players/fans/teams/media people to Blizzard. All the information prioritized and funnelled through a person with a clear message. I dont think the communication is there yet.
Zergs are struggling to hold aggressive openers when they play greedy-as-fuck? Oh I know, let's buff an economical unit's attack range so that it can easily hold early game Hellion, Marine, Reaper and Gateway aggression, so that Zergs can focus their entire time on getting 80 drones and not need to play reactively in the slightest.
David Kim's logic for buffing the Queen (so that aggressive openers like 2 rax and hellion expand are obsolete vs the greediest possible Zerg opener and the standard TvZ and PvZ meta becomes greedy play) is so stupid that I am shocked everybody has forgiven and forgotten the days of late-WoL.
There's also the fact that the changes were only done to 'slight adjust play at the pro level' when it actually broke every aspect of the game.
I don't think the problem is communication. I think it's outright ignorance of professional player opinion and logic.
Great read, nice to see you are still motivated and positive . And I also agree that Bunny is doing a great job with WCS, we just need someone from the design/balance team to be in close contact in the community and especially the pros/coaches etc. Then as long as they are still willing to make changes and improve the game all will be good I think.
What worries me the most is, that iNcontrol once said that he heard from Blizzard that they basically look at the multiplayer as complete. Apart from simple patches they don't want to change anything really and not even with LotV. No new (or old) units, no changes to the economy or the micro aspects. I hope this info proves to be wrong.
On January 08 2014 06:52 ninazerg wrote: I really REALLY don't understand why all the old top foreigners don't come back and play Brood War... SC2 isn't going to get any better. If you don't love the game by now, you're not gonna wake up tomorrow and go "Wow, this game is great today!". Yeah, they could move to some shitty MOBA game, because there is a bit of money in that arena, but Brood War is where the love is.
I agree 100% with NinaZerg.. but I also understand that you have an awesome thing going with team liquid and you really love what tl is about. Maybe you would feel like you're abandoning them if you switched. But as long as you can find any enjoyment in SC2 keep a hold to it... Brood War will never go away.
David Kim has mentioned this before in interviews, but I can confirm that he does talk directly with a lot of pro-gamers and coaches on a regular basis. It's just one of many ways the team gathers information about game balance to figure out next steps. Some of that includes ladder and pro-match statistics, and watching and discussing pro-level games and tournaments constantly. David doesn't spend a ton of time engaging directly on the public forums because his focus is on the game. We have a community team that's dedicated to reporting feedback, which includes gathering it publicly when we publish proposed changes and test maps on PTR. They read the forums every day.
The interaction takes place more than you all realize and with many professional players who are highly skilled and have a history of providing useful feedback. It's not possible for the team to interact with every professional player in the scene, nor is it productive or efficient to crowdsource the process from start to finish. But I assure you discussions take place every time before we make a change, even if it's something small as a forum post on a hypothetical change.
The biggest problem is communication with blizzard.....they are slow as hell......ppl have been saying this stuff about mining,static defense etc since Wings......but here we are 2 years later with the same problems.......
Only thing we can do (except posting on TL,reddit etc) is to make custom maps to try out changes ourselves instead of just waiting around for years and praying that they will fix it for us....
Zergs are struggling to hold aggressive openers when they play greedy-as-fuck? Oh I know, let's buff an economical unit's attack range so that it can easily hold early game Hellion, Marine, Reaper and Gateway aggression, so that Zergs can focus their entire time on getting 80 drones and not need to play reactively in the slightest.
David Kim's logic for buffing the Queen (so that aggressive openers like 2 rax and hellion expand are obsolete vs the greediest possible Zerg opener and the standard TvZ and PvZ meta becomes greedy play) is so stupid that I am shocked everybody has forgiven and forgotten the days of late-WoL.
There's also the fact that the changes were only done to 'slight adjust play at the pro level' when it actually broke every aspect of the game.
I don't think the problem is communication. I think it's outright ignorance of professional player opinion and logic.
The patch was obviously a huge mistake, but mistakes can happen. However, the real problem is that he didn't do jack about it for 1.5 years after the patch, even though it was clearly breaking the game.
Back on topic: I mostly agree with what Ret said. Deep down I will always love sc2, but it's just really painful to see the game suffer from obvious design issues that could definitely be fixed with a healthy feedback<->patch cycle. The community is alive and there are plenty of experts with insane amounts of experience walking around that could provide invaluable input. If only Blizzard put their mind to it, this game could be amazing ;_;
I hardly care about sc2 anymore, really only because it took a large chunk out of bw which I loved and shaped my life as well, and I know saying this now doesn't really add anything nor can anything be done about it but I think the pro players and other community figureheads invited to blizzard during alpha-beta stages should reflect on things they coulda done to shape the game from the beginning.
By this I mean that anyone invited to Blizz HQ and was clearly offered an opportunity to give feedback should've stood firm TOGETHER and put the foot down and say we aren't playing this game if all these mbs/economy/deathball [ take your pick. the blatant problems like miss chance uphill or the huge discoveries made by lalush and others about the mining efficiency ] Obviously that's hyperbole but look at what Sonic has done and I think deep down any semipro broodwar player and lover can't help but smile at that and realize that their heart was in that game while sc2 is just borrowing the name. Jangbi, Bisu, Jinro, Nony, etc. Inertia and inevitability was making everyone switch to the ' new game ' but think about how different it might have been.
Or whenever there was a chance at an interview with DUSTIN BROWDER or DAVID KIM. If interviewers just refused to let go of questions and get in their face a little bit about how awful something obviously was [ again take your pick from WoL and beta like early protoss warpins for example ] and let them not move onto any other questions until they directly answered it, I think that would've done infinity times more for the ' game ' than what we ended up doing which was essentially pussyfooting around to write some community website article thats long forgotten or to just be amazed that you got to tour Blizz HQ or whatever. ' Hey why don't we have chat channels and bnet 1.0 capability BEFORE FACEBOOK INTEGRATION? In the year 2010+ mind you '
If you compare fighting game interviews or hell even real life journalists with developers or community managers its way different than sc2 was. Like hey, you fucked up the frames of this character while purportedly wanting to keep the ' gameplay ' the same. You fucked up. That's why nobody wants to play that character/your game. Thoughts?
On January 08 2014 09:46 kimaphan wrote: David Kim has mentioned this before in interviews, but I can confirm that he does talk directly with a lot of pro-gamers and coaches on a regular basis. It's just one of many ways the team gathers information about game balance to figure out next steps. Some of that includes ladder and pro-match statistics, and watching and discussing pro-level games and tournaments constantly. David doesn't spend a ton of time engaging directly on the public forums because his focus is on the game. We have a community team that's dedicated to reporting feedback, which includes gathering it publicly when we publish proposed changes and test maps on PTR. They read the forums every day.
The interaction takes place more than you all realize and with many professional players who are highly skilled and have a history of providing useful feedback. It's not possible for the team to interact with every professional player in the scene, nor is it productive or efficient to crowdsource the process from start to finish. But I assure you discussions take place every time before we make a change, even if it's something small as a forum post on a hypothetical change.
Hi Kim, thanks for always talking to us . I really enjoyed your wc3 casts back then too btw!
Can I ask you, if Blizzard is willing to make more fundamental changes to the game, as the ones Lalush talked about in his micro video just for example? Or will they stick to number patches as reducing photon overcharge's duration by 20 seconds etc.
Also why does Blizzard not name the pros and coaches they are talking to? I follow basically ever sc2 pro there is on twitter and never have any of them mentioned this. After every patch they are like "what is David Kim thinking?" . I don't see any reasons why the community shouldn't know, who some of the people Blizzard asks for feedback are.
The thing that would make me happy would be if you could use the customize observer UI's ingame when playing. I don't see the reason to have 1/4 of the screen with junk =(
On January 08 2014 09:46 kimaphan wrote: David Kim has mentioned this before in interviews, but I can confirm that he does talk directly with a lot of pro-gamers and coaches on a regular basis. It's just one of many ways the team gathers information about game balance to figure out next steps. Some of that includes ladder and pro-match statistics, and watching and discussing pro-level games and tournaments constantly. David doesn't spend a ton of time engaging directly on the public forums because his focus is on the game. We have a community team that's dedicated to reporting feedback, which includes gathering it publicly when we publish proposed changes and test maps on PTR. They read the forums every day.
The interaction takes place more than you all realize and with many professional players who are highly skilled and have a history of providing useful feedback. It's not possible for the team to interact with every professional player in the scene, nor is it productive or efficient to crowdsource the process from start to finish. But I assure you discussions take place every time before we make a change, even if it's something small as a forum post on a hypothetical change.
From an outsider looking in the process whereby information is being garnered may seem ambiguous. While you have a community team that read forums and posts and take said information as community feedback it is difficult to ascertain what information you find pertinent towards upcoming patches. The same goes with the times you talk to players, it can be difficult for some players to articulate what they are thinking into words. A think-tank or open thought group would work better to refine ideas either new ideas or honing of existing ones.
I am pretty sure people understand that you have your discussions before a patch but maybe the more pressing concerns are not being addressed first?
If you think what you are doing now is enough then that is fine. But if you think you can do better than the last 2 years then the only time better than 1-2 years ago is right now.
I think that you bring a valid point and I feel that, even though Blizzard has done a great job, there is so much more they could be doing to help the game in a number of ways. Balance does need a fix in my opinion, not too drastic, but a slight fix, and there is so much lacking in terms of observing/watching/casting games and interface wise. Looking at Dota 2 where you can pay a little to watch almost any tournament or match or LoL where you can buy all these irrelevant things that people love (I am guilty of buying CS skins for weapons) where SC2 right now feels a bit harsh where you can choose between "arcade games with people leaving whenever" or "hardcore ladder where you will get BM'd and told that you suck". I for one love the game and would never dream of casting something else, but I can absolutely see why all my friends that play a ton of other games play one game and then never come back.
On January 08 2014 09:46 kimaphan wrote: David Kim has mentioned this before in interviews, but I can confirm that he does talk directly with a lot of pro-gamers and coaches on a regular basis. It's just one of many ways the team gathers information about game balance to figure out next steps. Some of that includes ladder and pro-match statistics, and watching and discussing pro-level games and tournaments constantly. David doesn't spend a ton of time engaging directly on the public forums because his focus is on the game. We have a community team that's dedicated to reporting feedback, which includes gathering it publicly when we publish proposed changes and test maps on PTR. They read the forums every day.
The interaction takes place more than you all realize and with many professional players who are highly skilled and have a history of providing useful feedback. It's not possible for the team to interact with every professional player in the scene, nor is it productive or efficient to crowdsource the process from start to finish. But I assure you discussions take place every time before we make a change, even if it's something small as a forum post on a hypothetical change.
I wonder if he feels the same now.... although to be fair the Dawn of War community was very immature and the game had massive balance issues that most Starcraft players just wouldn't comprehend.
On January 08 2014 09:46 kimaphan wrote: David Kim has mentioned this before in interviews, but I can confirm that he does talk directly with a lot of pro-gamers and coaches on a regular basis. It's just one of many ways the team gathers information about game balance to figure out next steps. Some of that includes ladder and pro-match statistics, and watching and discussing pro-level games and tournaments constantly. David doesn't spend a ton of time engaging directly on the public forums because his focus is on the game. We have a community team that's dedicated to reporting feedback, which includes gathering it publicly when we publish proposed changes and test maps on PTR. They read the forums every day.
The interaction takes place more than you all realize and with many professional players who are highly skilled and have a history of providing useful feedback. It's not possible for the team to interact with every professional player in the scene, nor is it productive or efficient to crowdsource the process from start to finish. But I assure you discussions take place every time before we make a change, even if it's something small as a forum post on a hypothetical change.
Hi Kim, thanks for always talking to us . I really enjoyed your wc3 casts back then too btw!
Can I ask you, if Blizzard is willing to make more fundamental changes to the game, as the ones Lalush talked about in his micro video just for example? Or will they stick to number patches as reducing photon overcharge's duration by 20 seconds etc.
Also why does Blizzard not name the pros and coaches they are talking to? I follow basically ever sc2 pro there is on twitter and never have any of them mentioned this. After every patch they are like "what is David Kim thinking?" . I don't see any reasons why the community shouldn't know, who some of the people Blizzard asks for feedback are.
Thanks for your great work with WCS, keep it up!
I would also like to know how willing and inclined Blizzard is to make the kinds of large, fundamental changes to the game that have been discussed recently.
The scale of the things that are being talked about seem so much larger than the changes we've seen implemented in the past. Worker scaling, deathballs, the super specific micro mechanics in LaLush's video... These would all require bigger changes than any we've seen so far.
Also, as ret said, it would be great if some of the SC2 designers and people involved with balancing the game were as proactive and communicative with the community as Kim Phan is on the esports side of things. I think just opening the discussions up a bit could be a great step.
On January 08 2014 09:46 kimaphan wrote: David Kim has mentioned this before in interviews, but I can confirm that he does talk directly with a lot of pro-gamers and coaches on a regular basis.
And he's said this in many interviews, so most of us know about it. But the problems are as follows: Not enough communication. Blog posts are far and few, and it's a one way discussion. Usually what we hear are none of the concerns about the current balance and always something being changed that no one asked for. Right now it's the turtle play, but let's buff mech air and protoss some more (?), even the hint at that worries me to no end.
Inability or unwillingness to look at current issues sooner. They/he has repeatedly said they'd rather sit and watch a situation unfold for 6+ months to see if it "sorts itself out" and that has rarely been the case. Immortal sentry is still there, it's just one of many viable allins and it's still common to see a well practiced pro lose to it as if he was a bronze leaguer, and players well below pro find it much harder to defend than execute.
Right not it seems the standard for something the overwhelming majority of the community believes needs to be improved upon (infestor broodlord, rocks at the 3rd, rush maps, ledges above your natural protoss can blink on to ...now turtle styles and raven/oracle storm airballs leading to long 50-180 minute games that are frustrating to both play and watch, which were maybe 1/10 games and are now steadily becoming the norm, which is really alarming as a player and a spectator) take at least 6-18 months to be updated. And you wonder why viewers have dropped dramatically and pro gamers are leaving the scene in droves because they are vocally frustrated with the way the game plays. We love the game, we love playing it, we love watching it, it doesn't mean we have to like it. How weird does that sound? No game in the world right now does what Starcraft does, and that does make it the hardest game in the world to make decisions for balance wise.
The faster you allow yourself to make changes Blizzard, the faster you can allow yourself to undo those changes if they've proven to much. Lots of nayasers on the queen buff, glad you didn't take that off, but entrenching yourself on changes (warhound not withstanding) only because you make them so slowly does nothing to help anyone.
A single set of 2-3 balance changes every 6 months on the public test map is still far to infrequent. After all, people can simply publish their own maps with your proposed changes if you didn't do it publicly (in regards, to balance, at least) to test out and play with.
Well, if you're interested in a rework of sc2 to fix some of the fundamentals I'd be glad to help, I've always wanted to do one, and had a lot of plans for how to fix them, but the problem is I can never get enough people to test anything to get useable data. I remember posting back on the beta boards, blizz wasn't listening that much then either.
On January 08 2014 06:52 ninazerg wrote: I really REALLY don't understand why all the old top foreigners don't come back and play BroodWar... SC2 isn't going to get any better. If you don't love the game by now, you're not gonna wake up tomorrow and go "Wow, this game is great today!". Yeah, they could move to some shitty MOBA game, because there is a bit of money in that arena, but BroodWar is where the love is.
Cause Ret's an exception, most of the top foreigners came from WC3 (Naniwa, Grubby, the Duran brothers) or weren't progamers before SC2. (Scarlett) It's silly to tell foreigners to go back to BW when most aren't from it in the first place.
Also BW was never successful outside of Korea, so if SC2 mysteriously disappeared overnight, the foreign scene would go back to WC3, which actually had a large non-Korean tournament circuit.
Are you kidding me dude? More people in NA, Europe, China and South America have played BroodWar than SC2. But I'm not even talking about this 'e-sports' bullshit, I don't care what's "big" and where, so I don't care about the top foreigners in SC2. I'm talking about people who played BroodWar; those top foreigners.
Hmm... on second thought David Kim is pretty fucked. He is caught between a rock and a hard place in many respects. For example, there are tens of thousands of people who think that pro players should figure out solutions to balance problems instead of waiting on Blizzard to fix them... and there are tens of thousands of people who think that balance problems should be solved by Blizzard. DK is often accused of not communicating well with the community, but have you seen the sheer level of hatred and vitriol he has to endure? Even largely beloved or unknown video game devs have to be shielded from the community to protect their mental health. Imagine what the face of Blizzard's balance must endure. He is the effigy you can burn to salve your ego whenever you die to a marine parade or cloaked banshees because your shitty gold ass forgot to scout. Every loss streak, every embarrassing failure on your part, every strong strategy or fan favorite's early defeat in a tournament can be blamed on David Kim. He is the perfect psychological punching bag for the hundreds of thousands of people who play the most stressful, competitive and ego-crushing game in the world. Hell, his email inbox probably has so much flame-filled hatemail it melted his laptop the last time he checked. Even team liquid, the most civil SC2 forum by a good margin, has a shit-ton of people spewing venom at DK. There really aren't many people that can keep it together when this many people hate you so much. Right now, he should be either freaking out, having everything that reaches him filtered by community managers and the like, or he just doesn't care any more.
Oh, more issues people are happy to crucify David Kim over no matter what he does: imitating BW vs. bringing in good game mechanics, changing the fundamentals of the game vs. months of horrendous game balance, protecting the casuals vs. feeding the competitive fires of the hardcore players, never making a change vs. making it years late and basically telling everybody that you were severely compromising the game's entertainment value for years because of your "huge ego".
A simple addition to SC2 would help the whole experience so much: tournament modes. I bet that 1 Blizzard programmer is capable of develop this in less than a month. With the new clan events system coming in the patch 2.1 it would be even a smaller task. Also, imagine how much it would help WCS.
On January 08 2014 06:52 ninazerg wrote: I really REALLY don't understand why all the old top foreigners don't come back and play BroodWar... SC2 isn't going to get any better. If you don't love the game by now, you're not gonna wake up tomorrow and go "Wow, this game is great today!". Yeah, they could move to some shitty MOBA game, because there is a bit of money in that arena, but BroodWar is where the love is.
Good blog. I feel that Blizzard should reach out even more to the community when it comes to balancing the game. Kim in his post above mentioned that they talk to progamers and that's how they make changes but there is no transparency at all. Back when I played WoL, BL+infestor rained supreme and it never got fixed by the time HoTS came out. I mean, how hard is it to state that the combination was OP and test out possible changes to either unit to see if they have the intended effect? Worried that progamers will have problems adjusting? What about those that have to make a living and have to play against this combo? Either way, I haven't played HoTS as much as I was playing WoL, mostly since I got bored lol and now play a game or two of HoTS and some BW every once in a while. I think being more transparent is the best step for starters and then giving reasons as to why some of the changes that have been suggested aren't implemented would be a good second step
On January 08 2014 11:19 AnachronisticAnarchy wrote: Hmm... on second thought David Kim is pretty fucked. He is caught between a rock and a hard place in many respects
Thank you for posting this, it's exactly what I've been thinking for months. Thing is, the reality of any actual change they make to the game can never live up to the unachievable fantasy some people have in their minds about what they wish the game could be like. The reason is that nothing is ever perfect -- and seeing and playing an actual implementation of a change gives people time to learn to hate its limitations, whatever they are.
On January 08 2014 06:52 ninazerg wrote: I really REALLY don't understand why all the old top foreigners don't come back and play BroodWar... SC2 isn't going to get any better. If you don't love the game by now, you're not gonna wake up tomorrow and go "Wow, this game is great today!". Yeah, they could move to some shitty MOBA game, because there is a bit of money in that arena, but BroodWar is where the love is.
$$$$$$$$$$
SC2 was supposed to be a magical game of no mechanics where foreigners could outsmart Koreans and take their money. With that dream dead it's logical to look for something to blame, why not SC2 itself?
While true that it's a hard position to be in; and nothing is ever perfect; that doesn't mean it couldn't have been done better. While there will always be haters; the % of them could be lower; and with a better game I believe they would be.
On January 08 2014 09:46 kimaphan wrote: David Kim has mentioned this before in interviews, but I can confirm that he does talk directly with a lot of pro-gamers and coaches on a regular basis. It's just one of many ways the team gathers information about game balance to figure out next steps. Some of that includes ladder and pro-match statistics, and watching and discussing pro-level games and tournaments constantly. David doesn't spend a ton of time engaging directly on the public forums because his focus is on the game. We have a community team that's dedicated to reporting feedback, which includes gathering it publicly when we publish proposed changes and test maps on PTR. They read the forums every day.
The interaction takes place more than you all realize and with many professional players who are highly skilled and have a history of providing useful feedback. It's not possible for the team to interact with every professional player in the scene, nor is it productive or efficient to crowdsource the process from start to finish. But I assure you discussions take place every time before we make a change, even if it's something small as a forum post on a hypothetical change.
If this is true then I'm sure you've gotten tons of feedback with concerned fans that will never see Bisu play SC2 again? Does your post confirm that LoTV will indeed make Sair/DT a viable SC2 strategy and the zealots will have the "Leg Enhancements" upgrade researchable at the Twilight Council? If so, I can't wait for the expansion!
Here's a picture of Bisu. I recommend this one be printed out and go in your wallet in place of your children's photos. They'll understand.
On January 08 2014 07:42 ( bush wrote: I think the problem is very clear, now that we are more than 3 years after SC2's launch: David Kim MUST be fired. He's a nice guy and all, but he is clearly not the one for the job. Look at the flaws we see in the game and you'll have to agree with me.
It's so easy to point out the negatives of something. I think if we were to list pros and cons of starcraft balance, we would find ourselves with many, MANY more pros than cons. Lets not get ahead of ourselves.
There is no need to get out the torches and go looking for witches. One carefully placed match will light the fire we need.
Another poster before you stated that Blizzard doesn't have the experience/expertise for this.. I ask that person then WHO? Tournament Organizers could get us started, but it's a helluvah lot more complicated to balance a game than tweaking a few numbers.
The biggest hurdle that anyone has in testing balance changing is just that.. TESTING it. It's hard enough to get someone to play with custom settings, let alone an entire group of people let alone pros.
On January 08 2014 12:00 zlefin wrote: While true that it's a hard position to be in; and nothing is ever perfect; that doesn't mean it couldn't have been done better. While there will always be haters; the % of them could be lower; and with a better game I believe they would be.
That's why Blizzard shouldn't be making these decisions. Kespa didn't care that everyone except the Zergs hated Battle Royal. They could experiment to their heart's content and just told their slaves players to suck it up.
Blizzard should make the game highly customizable and let the tournament organizers fiddle with it until they find something that works well. Eventually the tournament organizers would agree on some common rules, like they did in most major sport, perhaps with some minor differences (like the differences between NBA and Wolrd Basketball Association rules).
On January 08 2014 12:00 zlefin wrote: While true that it's a hard position to be in; and nothing is ever perfect; that doesn't mean it couldn't have been done better. While there will always be haters; the % of them could be lower; and with a better game I believe they would be.
That's why Blizzard shouldn't be making these decisions. Kespa didn't care that everyone except the Zergs hated Battle Royal. They could experiment to their heart's content and just told their slaves players to suck it up.
Blizzard should make the game highly customizable and let the tournament organizers fiddle with it until they find something that works well. Eventually the tournament organizers would agree on some common rules, like they did in most major sport, perhaps with some minor differences (like the differences between NBA and Wolrd Basketball Association rules).
The game is already extremely highly customizable blizz gave us the map editor for free.
I'm not sure what you're saying but as far as I know the tournaments could make whatever changes they want (even adding or removing units completely).
The problem is what you touched on.. there has to be consensus...that players and fans have to support the changes. As long as blizzard is keeping the game 'up to date' or until there is a large initial following, you won't see a mass shift to support such things.
Unless I don't understand what you're recommending.
On January 08 2014 09:46 kimaphan wrote: David Kim has mentioned this before in interviews, but I can confirm that he does talk directly with a lot of pro-gamers and coaches on a regular basis. It's just one of many ways the team gathers information about game balance to figure out next steps. Some of that includes ladder and pro-match statistics, and watching and discussing pro-level games and tournaments constantly. David doesn't spend a ton of time engaging directly on the public forums because his focus is on the game. We have a community team that's dedicated to reporting feedback, which includes gathering it publicly when we publish proposed changes and test maps on PTR. They read the forums every day.
The interaction takes place more than you all realize and with many professional players who are highly skilled and have a history of providing useful feedback. It's not possible for the team to interact with every professional player in the scene, nor is it productive or efficient to crowdsource the process from start to finish. But I assure you discussions take place every time before we make a change, even if it's something small as a forum post on a hypothetical change.
If this is true then I'm sure you've gotten tons of feedback with concerned fans that will never see Bisu play SC2 again? Does your post confirm that LoTV will indeed make Sair/DT a viable SC2 strategy and the zealots will have the "Leg Enhancements" upgrade researchable at the Twilight Council? If so, I can't wait for the expansion!
Here's a picture of Bisu. I recommend this one be printed out and go in your wallet in place of your children's photos. They'll understand.
Never change.
Also, this thread was pretty uninteresting until Kim came in and saved it for me. I like that she dispels the myth that Blizzard doesn't talk to progamers. They just talk with the ones that provide useful feedback. Aka, the ones who don't say "buff tank, make it more like BW. Ruin the pathing to make it harder."
On January 08 2014 06:23 StutteR wrote: I don't know how any Zerg can watch those games and say, "That's the race I want play."
Maybe we don't want to play like those "make swarm hosts and sit there" Zergs, and like to play the tech switch and overrun style of Zerg. Maybe you shouldn't generalize everybody who plays a race into one style.
On January 08 2014 12:00 zlefin wrote: While true that it's a hard position to be in; and nothing is ever perfect; that doesn't mean it couldn't have been done better. While there will always be haters; the % of them could be lower; and with a better game I believe they would be.
That's why Blizzard shouldn't be making these decisions. Kespa didn't care that everyone except the Zergs hated Battle Royal. They could experiment to their heart's content and just told their slaves players to suck it up.
Blizzard should make the game highly customizable and let the tournament organizers fiddle with it until they find something that works well. Eventually the tournament organizers would agree on some common rules, like they did in most major sport, perhaps with some minor differences (like the differences between NBA and Wolrd Basketball Association rules).
The game is already extremely highly customizable blizz gave us the map editor for free.
I'm not sure what you're saying but as far as I know the tournaments could make whatever changes they want (even adding or removing units completely).
The problem is what you touched on.. there has to be consensus...that players and fans have to support the changes. As long as blizzard is keeping the game 'up to date' or until there is a large initial following, you won't see a mass shift to support such things.
Unless I don't understand what you're recommending.
I meant letting tournaments customize unit build times, health, damage etc. Even some of the hidden variables that control turning radius or how units clump up.
How much does David Kimm actually listen? I feel like he has his own vision and very little sways his idea of unit design. I personally think 3-4 of the units are just not good for the game ( like the ones ret pointed out ), and we need to make everything a little less of a hard counter.
First I clicked on the pic, and then I saw your new sig for the first time... LOLed pretty hard. -----
Anyways, only part of the problem with SC2 is balancing. Even if if the game was perfectly balanced, it is still lacking in many key factors that would make it entertaining for players and viewers. In order for any significant improvement in these areas, fundamental changes to the gameplay mechanics, would need to be made. Probably not viable at this point. Lessons to be learned though, for the future.
On January 08 2014 13:24 DooMDash wrote: How much does David Kimm actually listen? I feel like he has his own vision and very little sways his idea of unit design.
My guess is he listens a lot. We just only see the one decision made, which inevitable can only please some people.
On January 08 2014 13:24 DooMDash wrote: How much does David Kimm actually listen? I feel like he has his own vision and very little sways his idea of unit design.
My guess is he listens a lot. We just only see the one decision made, which inevitable can only please some people.
Listening != Acting upon.
DB and DK made an okay game, NEEDS a lot of improvement if they want to catch up to BW.
On January 08 2014 09:46 kimaphan wrote: David Kim has mentioned this before in interviews, but I can confirm that he does talk directly with a lot of pro-gamers and coaches on a regular basis. It's just one of many ways the team gathers information about game balance to figure out next steps. Some of that includes ladder and pro-match statistics, and watching and discussing pro-level games and tournaments constantly. David doesn't spend a ton of time engaging directly on the public forums because his focus is on the game. We have a community team that's dedicated to reporting feedback, which includes gathering it publicly when we publish proposed changes and test maps on PTR. They read the forums every day.
The interaction takes place more than you all realize and with many professional players who are highly skilled and have a history of providing useful feedback. It's not possible for the team to interact with every professional player in the scene, nor is it productive or efficient to crowdsource the process from start to finish. But I assure you discussions take place every time before we make a change, even if it's something small as a forum post on a hypothetical change.
If this is true then I'm sure you've gotten tons of feedback with concerned fans that will never see Bisu play SC2 again? Does your post confirm that LoTV will indeed make Sair/DT a viable SC2 strategy and the zealots will have the "Leg Enhancements" upgrade researchable at the Twilight Council? If so, I can't wait for the expansion!
Here's a picture of Bisu. I recommend this one be printed out and go in your wallet in place of your children's photos. They'll understand.
This is a good post. I can confirm Bisu is an extraordinarily handsome man and anyone's wallet would be vastly improved by having pictures of him sporting one of his many poses.
On January 08 2014 12:38 gkshriram wrote: Lets go from controlling 12 units at a time to infinite units at a time. Why are they massing death balls?
You're so wrong.
The difference between 1a and 1a2a3a4a is negligible. The reason Protoss doesn't just go 1a2a3a4a in Brood War isn't because players can't press that combination of keys, it's because it's dumb to 1a2a3a4a in to things like lurkers under dark swarm, siege tanks behind spider mines. and another Protoss army with superior positioning. You have to do more than simply attack move. It is more effective to move your army in such a way that the Zerg has to continuously reposition his lurkers, which creates small holes in his positioning that you can use to snipe stuff, and to create a better engagement for yourself, which leads to better psionic storms and better concaves. And so on.
There's a lot of micro, with reavers and shuttles in your main army, sniping lurkers with dragoons, and so on. That's another reason you don't just 1a2a3a4a - that there's more to do with your army, even if we don't consider the positional space-controlling aspects of the game.
By the way: "Death balls" exist in Brood War, too. There is nothing wrong with a play style of having a singular, united, powerful army that wants to stay together being viable.You can play that style as Protoss in PvZ and as Terran in TvZ and TvP. But you can also play other styles. And perhaps most importantly: You can play a non "deathball" style vs a "deathball" style. And the "death ball" has micro potential, and is interesting to use and to play against.
On January 08 2014 12:00 zlefin wrote: While true that it's a hard position to be in; and nothing is ever perfect; that doesn't mean it couldn't have been done better. While there will always be haters; the % of them could be lower; and with a better game I believe they would be.
That's why Blizzard shouldn't be making these decisions. Kespa didn't care that everyone except the Zergs hated Battle Royal. They could experiment to their heart's content and just told their slaves players to suck it up.
Blizzard should make the game highly customizable and let the tournament organizers fiddle with it until they find something that works well. Eventually the tournament organizers would agree on some common rules, like they did in most major sport, perhaps with some minor differences (like the differences between NBA and Wolrd Basketball Association rules).
The game is already extremely highly customizable blizz gave us the map editor for free.
I'm not sure what you're saying but as far as I know the tournaments could make whatever changes they want (even adding or removing units completely).
The problem is what you touched on.. there has to be consensus...that players and fans have to support the changes. As long as blizzard is keeping the game 'up to date' or until there is a large initial following, you won't see a mass shift to support such things.
Unless I don't understand what you're recommending.
I meant letting tournaments customize unit build times, health, damage etc. Even some of the hidden variables that control turning radius or how units clump up.
Eh, tweaking balance like this is too much of a can of worms for the scene to handle. Blizzard pretty much has a stranglehold with their WCS system, and any big non-WCS tournament has to abide by WCS rules if they want to be eligible for WCS to stay relevant with players and viewers. It's too much of a risk for any big tournament to challenge this status quo, and any smaller tournament that does runs the risk of being swept away with irrelevancy by bigger leagues.
Plus, while the community sometimes has a general consensus on what's wrong with the game, we almost never can reach the same degree of consensus on specific solutions to these problems. It's a monumental uphill battle to get players, viewers, and tournaments to agree on many changes, let alone organize enough to make a respectable stand against Blizzard.
I find your optimism touching, and I sincerely hope blizzard will do something to make the game less stale, to make map control matter more, to make 4 mining bases worthwhile, and to make units more exciting and require more attention to movement/positioning like in BW... but I just can't imagine that it will ever happen. I was crushed when I realized that I don't enjoy watching or playing SC2 in the middle of 2012, because to this day I still love to watch and play BW (very poorly, with friends). Nothing would make me happier to see some magic happen to SC2 with the next expansion, with AI and tech tree overhauls and a complete redesign of Protoss, but it seems so far-fetched and improbable that I refuse to get my hopes up too much.
But I really feel for the progamers who see the flaws but feel like they can't have a voice due to perceived biases when suggesting large-scale overhaul. Thanks for coming out and saying this, I really hope blizzard will open their ears and re-captivate me with this potentially fantastic franchise.
I wonder if he feels the same now.... although to be fair the Dawn of War community was very immature and the game had massive balance issues that most Starcraft players just wouldn't comprehend.
Holy cow, I didn't know David Kim was a member of Agesanctuary/RTS-Sanctuary =o
I think we all hate the game on some days. We stick around because we love it on more days than we hate it though <3 I just wish Blizzard would listen. Being that kind of non-responsive elitist organisation is a thing of the past and will only hurt them as a brand in the long run. I used to be so excited for every god damn blizzard title from the early 2000's but now I haven't even looked at the new WoW or D3 expansion. I don't have faith in them as a company anymore.
This is why I love valve as a company. TF2 is a game I play competitively and enjoy a great deal. 7 years into release, valve is still releasing content updates for this game. Yes, Brood War was updated but the last balance patch was 1.08. What kept BW going was the new maps, tournaments and players. In TF2, we're still seeing massive item changes to help out not only the competitive scene, but the casual scene as well.
In Fully Charged, a competitive TF2 podcast I listen to, the speakers often discuss various parts of the game which valve could help out in. Valve often adds in these features almost immediately if its simple enough. One competitive map, Granary, had a slight mirroring problem. Very minor but after having it brought to their attention, they immediately patched it in the next update, though it didn't affect any player but the most competitive.
Last year in the middle months or so, Valve got a visit from some of the Fully Charged Podcast group and discussed the game. This included some small issues with maps, minor balance stuff but also about Valve implemented competitive matchmaking within the game itself. Instead of avoiding the question, they were quite straightforward, saying that Valve was focused on updates that would help the majority of TF2 players, not the minority of competitive players. Despite this, they still implemented almost all of the small little bug fixes and changes that the community wanted as soon as feedback was recieved.
Team Fortress is also an extremely user-based product. Almost every new item these days is made by users in steam workshop. New maps are made by users and made official by Valve. New weapons are made by taking the old weapons people didn't use and giving them a fun new spin. Everything Valve does is based off of their users. In comparison, Blizzard shows little interest (in my humble opinion) of the community's real interests. Yes, they will throw us a bone with balance patches but they don't truly understand dynamics that would make the game so much better. We needed the entire community raging about the warhound in beta for them to get rid of it. Lurkers have not been added despite near unanimous agreement that they would improve the game. Despite numerous articles on negative mechanics of the game (no move-shooting, attack animation delay on air units, lack of map control units), Blizzard refuses to acknowledge some of the problems with the core aspects of the game and simply stand pat with a few buffs and nerfs to existing units here and there.
Now, I understand that the way Valve works and Blizzard works are quite different. Valve is a smaller and much more effecient company, and Blizzard I assume is more corporate and covered with layers of bureaucacy. However, if they try to work towards Valve's model and instead of only making small balance changes to the game, listen and UNDERSTAND some of the arguments for altogether different units and game mechanics, I think it would be a big step forward for Starcraft in general.
On January 08 2014 09:46 kimaphan wrote: David Kim has mentioned this before in interviews, but I can confirm that he does talk directly with a lot of pro-gamers and coaches on a regular basis. It's just one of many ways the team gathers information about game balance to figure out next steps. Some of that includes ladder and pro-match statistics, and watching and discussing pro-level games and tournaments constantly. David doesn't spend a ton of time engaging directly on the public forums because his focus is on the game. We have a community team that's dedicated to reporting feedback, which includes gathering it publicly when we publish proposed changes and test maps on PTR. They read the forums every day.
The interaction takes place more than you all realize and with many professional players who are highly skilled and have a history of providing useful feedback. It's not possible for the team to interact with every professional player in the scene, nor is it productive or efficient to crowdsource the process from start to finish. But I assure you discussions take place every time before we make a change, even if it's something small as a forum post on a hypothetical change.
If this is true then I'm sure you've gotten tons of feedback with concerned fans that will never see Bisu play SC2 again? Does your post confirm that LoTV will indeed make Sair/DT a viable SC2 strategy and the zealots will have the "Leg Enhancements" upgrade researchable at the Twilight Council? If so, I can't wait for the expansion!
Here's a picture of Bisu. I recommend this one be printed out and go in your wallet in place of your children's photos. They'll understand.
You really does that a lot do you ?
EDIT : Fuck me lol you did it a SECOND time ... You sir have problems...
I dont understand why Blizzard dont create an official fork of this game, with a different rule set, and different units. They could use units that never made it into the game and remove some that cause issues.
If they made it free to play it could be a permanent beta until it was at the point of being ready to be released for E-Sports.
Most of units are already there so cost wise it would take to much manpower to maintain. This way radical changes could be made and tested thoroughly
On January 08 2014 09:46 kimaphan wrote: David Kim has mentioned this before in interviews, but I can confirm that he does talk directly with a lot of pro-gamers and coaches on a regular basis. It's just one of many ways the team gathers information about game balance to figure out next steps. Some of that includes ladder and pro-match statistics, and watching and discussing pro-level games and tournaments constantly. David doesn't spend a ton of time engaging directly on the public forums because his focus is on the game. We have a community team that's dedicated to reporting feedback, which includes gathering it publicly when we publish proposed changes and test maps on PTR. They read the forums every day. The interaction takes place more than you all realize and with many professional players who are highly skilled and have a history of providing useful feedback. It's not possible for the team to interact with every professional player in the scene, nor is it productive or efficient to crowdsource the process from start to finish. But I assure you discussions take place every time before we make a change, even if it's something small as a forum post on a hypothetical change.
I'd like to hear about some names, if possible... the only notable name I've ever heard was Sen about two years ago and he said he was quite disappointed of the discussion (as if it could be surprising, given the linguistic barrier - but that's just a personal opinion). The only other 'interaction' I recall was Nestea during the famous Nestea VS MVP at Blizzcon (the series with the famous "ghost counter everything" match, if someone remembers), where Nestea stated that the game was definitely imbalanced in the pre match interview only not to be translated by the official translator, who said something more politically correct. And again, I don't think that David has heard anything since the translator said something completely different.
To this day I don't recall a single progamer beside Sen who has stated something along the likes of "I spoke with David Kim, it was incredibly useful/reassuring/depressing/whatsoever becaseu X or Y". Nor do I recall any mapmaker stating anything similar, and given that Blizzard maps are usually my insta ban on the ladder I don't think it will happen in the near future.
Ret is optimistic, and so I want to be... but I'm sceptic because I think that the only concern about Blizzard is about the upper structure of the game (sponsors/tournaments/interaction with personalities like Day9, who are more about putting a good show and be politically correct rather than anything else), as we can see with the constant Blizzard showing up when needed. The moment you showed up during the WCS NA qualifiers of two days ago was extremely needed and I'm really grateful for that. But beside the upper structures, it doesn't look like Blizzard does even want to come close to the real core of the game (mapmakers, Lalush's points that have been dismissed with a couple of sentences, implementation of features that are not a facebook integration). Up until now, I don't think Blizzard will touch HotS in a significative way until Legacy of the Void.
On January 08 2014 20:00 Topdoller wrote: I dont understand why Blizzard dont create an official fork of this game, with a different rule set, and different units. They could use units that never made it into the game and remove some that cause issues.
If they made it free to play it could be a permanent beta until it was at the point of being ready to be released for E-Sports.
Most of units are already there so cost wise it would take to much manpower to maintain. This way radical changes could be made and tested thoroughly
Here's an idea for the community. Make that fork yourselves then talk tournament organizers not involved with WCS that hosting paid tournaments for it would be a good idea. That would cause people to flock to it and gain the mod interest.
2.1 is literally giving you the tools necessary to do this. A SC2 fork released as a constantly reviewed Extension Mod with say... a patch every week or so would be incredible.
But honestly the closest we've come is Starbow and OneGoal.
On January 08 2014 20:00 Topdoller wrote: I dont understand why Blizzard dont create an official fork of this game, with a different rule set, and different units. They could use units that never made it into the game and remove some that cause issues.
If they made it free to play it could be a permanent beta until it was at the point of being ready to be released for E-Sports.
Most of units are already there so cost wise it would take to much manpower to maintain. This way radical changes could be made and tested thoroughly
Here's an idea for the community. Make that fork yourselves then talk tournament organizers not involved with WCS that hosting paid tournaments for it would be a good idea. That would cause people to flock to it and gain the mod interest.
2.1 is literally giving you the tools necessary to do this. A SC2 fork released as a constantly reviewed Extension Mod with say... a patch every week or so would be incredible.
But honestly the closest we've come is Starbow and OneGoal.
Please, the community has tried to make changes of their own but nothing gets done without Blizzard. You may not know it, but a very long time ago, I think mid 2012 a map maker and former mod Barrin, made a very long and detailed Thread about the fundamental differences in economies between BW and SC2, how the 3 bases to max out model of SC2 was promoting the creation of deathballs and uninteresting gameplay, and he made a set of new maps with 6 minerals and 2 gas.
The thread got like 100 pages worth of discussions on the matter and even spawned a small tournament with Ganzi and Rainbow involved. Guess what happened, nothing that's what. People don't have the leverage to get anything done on their own. You can't pitch this sort of idea to a organization like DH, MLG or ESL, because they need to see some return on investment, for hosting your tournament/version of the game, that you can't guarantee. And few people have the capital to run a tournament of their own for a idea that might not even work out in the end.
So stop with that nonsense, the only way we can get things done is with Blizzard's help, at least as far as the SC2 scene goes.
This is why Ret is so disappointed, I for one also echo is sentiments, I love this game, I love playing it and, with the limited opportunities I get, I love competing in it. But at the same time, whenever you see a game like RorO vs Stats or Hydra vs Reality, you can't help but feel a huge sense of frustration build inside knowing that the game has such an ugly side to it and that there is nothing you can do about it, despite all your best wishes.
And it frustrates us to no end since what we've talked about are fundamental problems brought up ever since WoL beta, and nothing concrete has been done about it, only band aid fixes that end up causing other problems down the road. Worst still is when Blizzard out of the blue releases a patch like the Queen or Oracle patch, where even the pro gamers are sure its a bad idea, but they still go trough with it. Feels like having salt rubbed into the wounds, makes you question at times not only if they are even in contact with pros but if they even care about their and the rest of the community's opinions.
I'm glad to see Ret is still happy with the game and he still has a positive outlook on this whole situation. I hope he is right and that things will also change for the better in terms of SC2 design and balance.
SC2 is a waste. The only selling value are the graphics and ex-BW/WC3 pros playing it now. Though I agree on the issues on WC3, I do love it more than SC2. Dont know why, but SC2 gives a bad taste in my mouth.
On January 08 2014 06:52 ninazerg wrote: I really REALLY don't understand why all the old top foreigners don't come back and play BroodWar... SC2 isn't going to get any better. If you don't love the game by now, you're not gonna wake up tomorrow and go "Wow, this game is great today!". Yeah, they could move to some shitty MOBA game, because there is a bit of money in that arena, but BroodWar is where the love is.
I couldnt agree more... but i guess its all about the money.
This reminds me of a christian quoting the bible to an unbeliever who thinks the bible was just written by humans
lol
Edit: With the intention of proving that the bible is divine
Hehe yeah, maybe not the most rhetorical thing But if he watches it without ani-sc2 bias, and with a genuine rts interest, I hoped it could be kinda persuasive ^^
On January 08 2014 06:52 ninazerg wrote: I really REALLY don't understand why all the old top foreigners don't come back and play BroodWar... SC2 isn't going to get any better. If you don't love the game by now, you're not gonna wake up tomorrow and go "Wow, this game is great today!". Yeah, they could move to some shitty MOBA game, because there is a bit of money in that arena, but BroodWar is where the love is.
I couldnt agree more... but i guess its all about the money.
At the end of the day, love doesn't pay the bills. I do genuinely believe that a lot of pro gamers still love SC2, but I equally believe that they at times can get very frustrated with it and they wish their voices where heard and something be done. If they didn't love it this much a lot more would have quit and switched by now.
On January 08 2014 06:11 Liquid`Ret wrote: I talk on skype everyday with friends and other progamers about the things that are silly about the game. For hours and hours we theorize about what could be better how, balance whining barely comes into it, as long as noone just lost a game.
What is keeping you and other pro's from having a debate about this? If you can already point out what you think needs to change then we are a good step in the way of fixing it.
To be a bit more blunt.
If I went to the doctor and said: "It hurts". How easy would it be for the doctor to guess what is wrong if thats all I tell him?
If I on the other hand go: "My foot hurt, yesterday I tripped and there was a snap sound from one of my toes." I think its pretty easy to tell that it have broken a toe, and we can then quickly check that out first.
So spill your guts. What have you been theorizing about that go make SC2 a better game? Blizzard can't guess what you want to have fixed. I do agree though that Blizzard could still improve on the 2 way communication.
When MSL, OSL, BW Proleague died and StarCraft I teams disbanded/migrated to other games a part of me died.
To topic, I don't think MBS, smartcasting, unlimited selections are bad or need to be banned in order to create a good RTS like Broodwar. It just takes another approach.
SC2 is like Matrix II or any other sequel of a great movie, it cannot help itself, it cannot surpass it's predecessor and will fade in memory. You cannot create a game where you want to have a part of old game but also want to have new features and new gameplay. It's a failing approach.
What is the problem of SC2? SC2 doesn't produce enough interesting, thrilling games(put any adjective you like) compared to Broodwar. Broodwar produced a lot of different exciting game not only on pro level, but also on D- Iccup Level. Rather we could say the games were all different throughout all D-C-B-A-pro levels, but many of them where interesting.
You see a BW noob can post a blog with FFA or 4v4 game which was super fun... and he wouldn't even have to play 10 games to pick a good one.
Everyone scared of Deathballs and bs like that? Wtf, just create more units with AOE, and there will be instanly more small scale fights and artilery usage. Anyone played KKND2? I mean that game wasn't balanced at all, but it just wasn't easy to win by mass units + attack move.. why? Your units would have got owned by AOE damage, hell even turrets had great AOE damage = gg 50 stacked flying mutas raping bases.
something like this might be worth temporarily messing around with..
There are a million ways to discuss changes or patches, there is no one solution readily available - what matters is that there are plenty of people out there willing to give feedback and want to see changes for the better, we need to find a way to cooperate with blizzard and see if we can make a positive influence on where the game is going.
The idea in that link is a very good - basically it's showing how mapmakers can create maps in such a way that six bases with 12-14 workers would be exponentially better than three bases with 24-28 workers. This is an idea that needs no additional support from Blizzard that they would be forced to incorporate into their own maps if tournaments and players began to adopt - just like Blizzard cut out (mostly) their gold mineral bases when the community began playing on modified versions without them.
Right now, there's not much incentive (for a Protoss let's say) to mass expand when they have a lead - or to continue to try and compound their map control with more bases. In fact, it can detrimental to do such because now you just have more bases to defend and more surface area to be harassed/attacked. If there was a real economic benefit to doing so I think this would open up the game to more guerrilla tactics in order to win/get advantages and there would be less deathballs.
something like this might be worth temporarily messing around with..
There are a million ways to discuss changes or patches, there is no one solution readily available - what matters is that there are plenty of people out there willing to give feedback and want to see changes for the better, we need to find a way to cooperate with blizzard and see if we can make a positive influence on where the game is going.
The idea in that link is a very good - basically it's showing how mapmakers can create maps in such a way that six bases with 12-14 workers would be exponentially better than three bases with 24-28 workers. This is an idea that needs no additional support from Blizzard that they would be forced to incorporate into their own maps if tournaments and players began to adopt - just like Blizzard cut out (mostly) their gold mineral bases when the community began playing on modified versions without them.
Right now, there's not much incentive (for a Protoss let's say) to mass expand when they have a lead - or to continue to try and compound their map control with more bases. In fact, it can detrimental to do such because now you just have more bases to defend and more surface area to be harassed/attacked. If there was a real economic benefit to doing so I think this would open up the game to more guerrilla tactics in order to win/get advantages and there would be less deathballs.
The other side of the advantage is that bases payout faster encouraging people to expand sooner and more often without needing strong defensive options to hold the expansions. With a more efficient economy from having more bases a player can recoup the hatch/nexus/cc cost quicker and be on an even footing (or better) if the other player decides to go aggressive. It not only opens up large map expansion in the mid/late game, but also encourages it as a starting strategy as well.
It also helps to soften the blow of losing things like a 3rd base to early aggression because of the ability for the cc to pay for itself (via increased worker efficiency) rather than having it pay out purely by supporting additional workers in the player's economy (where it takes time to build the workers and pay off their construction cost first).
something like this might be worth temporarily messing around with..
There are a million ways to discuss changes or patches, there is no one solution readily available - what matters is that there are plenty of people out there willing to give feedback and want to see changes for the better, we need to find a way to cooperate with blizzard and see if we can make a positive influence on where the game is going.
The idea in that link is a very good - basically it's showing how mapmakers can create maps in such a way that six bases with 12-14 workers would be exponentially better than three bases with 24-28 workers. This is an idea that needs no additional support from Blizzard that they would be forced to incorporate into their own maps if tournaments and players began to adopt - just like Blizzard cut out (mostly) their gold mineral bases when the community began playing on modified versions without them.
Right now, there's not much incentive (for a Protoss let's say) to mass expand when they have a lead - or to continue to try and compound their map control with more bases. In fact, it can detrimental to do such because now you just have more bases to defend and more surface area to be harassed/attacked. If there was a real economic benefit to doing so I think this would open up the game to more guerrilla tactics in order to win/get advantages and there would be less deathballs.
It's an interesting idea primarily because maps are the one thing that the community more or less controls. If Blizzard is not going to adjust worker AI under the false pretense that they don't want want to have archaic controls in the game (in reality they just can't be bothered finding company resources to investigate it because they don't see the immediacy for changing worker AI to begin with), then you might consider adjusting the maps to enable the desired type of income scaling. But I'm fairly certain that Blizzard would still shut it down if it proved too popular.
Starcraft 2 is a good game, but it's because Blizzard has very high production values (maybe the highest) and because it's patterned on Brood War and therefore can't help but share in some of its qualities. I don't think the contributions to the genre in Starcraft 2 are uniformly competently implemented and/or inspired. Perhaps only half of the time. So that's why TvT&TvZ can be very good match-ups, with other match-ups trailing. It's because the basic framework for the game is very promising, but the execution is inconsistent.
On January 09 2014 04:14 hifriend wrote: I think if someone were to make a new competitive RTS meant for esports, now would be a good time.
I'd play it
Imagine if there was a game as good as Brood War (Or potentially even better than it, if the developers understood Brood War, and decided to improve upon it), with more popularity, automatch, and so on. That would be fucking amazing.
I am satisfied with Brood War as a game, even though it is not perfect (nothing is perfect, everything can always be improved). However, I am not totally satisfied with its features outside of the core game itself.
If only there was the possibility that blizz would seriously rework the game for LotV instead of pulling a HotS with awesome-but-still-bandaid changes.
Well, if we get enough people who would be interested in and willing to test changes here; we could try making a good rework. Though it is quite hard to get enough buzz to get real testing in.
Company of Heroes 2 was recently released. The new Command & Conquer game was canceled though. There is also a new Homeworld sequel in production as well as a Supreme Commander sequel. I don't know if either of them can topple Starcraft though. It's a pity, the game really lacks in competition. At least League of Legends has DOTA2.
But with all of this? What would lower the range of queens and up the hellion dmg again do to the game then? and maybe add a little more speed to zealots + make the attack count as soon as the zealot hit so he can do dmg to kting marines?
On January 09 2014 04:55 Grumbels wrote: Company of Heroes 2 was recently released. The new Command & Conquer game was canceled though. There is also a new Homeworld sequel in production as well as a Supreme Commander sequel. I don't know if either of them can topple Starcraft though. It's a pity, the game really lacks in competition. At least League of Legends has DOTA2.
CoH is a fun series, but for whatever reason they cripple themselves for realism and force a axis vs allies match-up.
Honestly the problem is that very very few people really understand what makes RTS games tick. So few know how to play them as is, but then only a small % of those who know how to play them really understand the underlying mechanisms and how they all intertwine.
Well the other problem is financial incentive. RTS games are at a big disadvantage because they have no real social leverage because it's based on a 1v1 system that's really unforgiving to anyone who isn't trying to play seriously. DotA, LoL, CS, TF2, etc. all get big population bumps by being team games that encourage you to hop online and play with your friends. As much as I love 1v1 RTS I think having a strong casual team play may be a big key to keeping the genre around. Which for all of its accessibility concessions SC2 does a really poor job of as well.
I gotta agree on that; most/all RTS's are designed for 1v1; and while higher numbers are put in, very little of the balance work is done for them. An RTS designed from the start to have good support for teams would be a good idea. Hmm, that'd be an interesting thing to include in an SC2 redesign.
Good and well formulated opinion piece. While the amount of Starcraft I'm playing has lessened to ~ 3/4 hours a week, I still watch the game avidly and love it despite its flaws.
So I read your blog... And I have to say its perfectly understandable the feelings you have... I mean, who would'nt be frustrated with a game they've been fighting a losing battle with since its release? I don't want this taken the wrong way, cause Ret, I think you're cool..! But, maybe it's time to throw in the towel... Lets face it, you've lost your passion and your motivation to truly be top tier. If you love watching proleague and such, why don't you just give yourself some time to do that? Do what you love instead of trying to force yourself into some dreamworld of yours... You can still stream and make content and do whatever you want within e-sports..
I've always been a fan of you even though you've never really delivered.. But i'm more a fan of Liquid and i think its a shame to see so many other (korean) pros retire before you and yet you remain. I'm not sure its fair to the team, cause you're basically an investment that never paid off. I mean, I get it.. getting paid to play video games is awesome!! Who would ever want to go back to the "real world"? But sooner or later you're gonna have to wake up... Less people are interested in Starcraft, the money is going away, teams are disbanding, players retiring.. Sooner or later the prize pools will be a joke, the viewer counts on the streams will be slim to none and your team will no longer be able to afford paying you a salary.. And until thay day comes, Liquid is gonna need all the money they can get to stay in the scene, and honestly it would be a real shame if you kept them from doing that..! Consider your options, go all in or don't do it at all... You can't half-ass this shit any longer...
On January 09 2014 12:04 MagnuMizer wrote: So I read your blog... And I have to say its perfectly understandable the feelings you have... I mean, who would'nt be frustrated with a game they've been fighting a losing battle with since its release? I don't want this taken the wrong way, cause Ret, I think you're cool..! But, maybe it's time to throw in the towel... Lets face it, you've lost your passion and your motivation to truly be top tier. If you love watching proleague and such, why don't you just give yourself some time to do that? Do what you love instead of trying to force yourself into some dreamworld of yours... You can still stream and make content and do whatever you want within e-sports..
I've always been a fan of you even though you've never really delivered.. But i'm more a fan of Liquid and i think its a shame to see so many other (korean) pros retire before you and yet you remain. I'm not sure its fair to the team, cause you're basically an investment that never paid off. I mean, I get it.. getting paid to play video games is awesome!! Who would ever want to go back to the "real world"? But sooner or later you're gonna have to wake up... Less people are interested in Starcraft, the money is going away, teams are disbanding, players retiring.. Sooner or later the prize pools will be a joke, the viewer counts on the streams will be slim to none and your team will no longer be able to afford paying you a salary.. And until thay day comes, Liquid is gonna need all the money they can get to stay in the scene, and honestly it would be a real shame if you kept them from doing that..! Consider your options, go all in or don't do it at all... You can't half-ass this shit any longer...
I wish you the best for 2014 onwards......
Wow, you have no idea how TeamLiquid works do you...
I've always been a fan of TL posters even though some of them, like you, have never really delivered... but I'm more a fan of the forums and I think its a shame to see so many other (good) posters stop posting before you, and yet you remain. I'm not sure its fair to the community, cause you're basically a poster that never really developed. I mean, I get it.. feeling like you're cool to talk shit about progames is awesome!! Who would ever want to go back to "good posts"? But sooner or later you're gonna have to wake up... Less people are interested in what you have to say, this isn't reddit, a higher quality and less rude of post are required.. Sooner or later the admins will get sick of you.. And until that day comes, TL is gonna need their server load they can to stay with good posts, and honestly it would be a real shame if you kept them from doing that..! Consider your options, go all in or don't do it at all... You can't half-ass these shit posts any longer...
On January 09 2014 12:04 MagnuMizer wrote: So I read your blog... And I have to say its perfectly understandable the feelings you have... I mean, who would'nt be frustrated with a game they've been fighting a losing battle with since its release? I don't want this taken the wrong way, cause Ret, I think you're cool..! But, maybe it's time to throw in the towel... Lets face it, you've lost your passion and your motivation to truly be top tier. If you love watching proleague and such, why don't you just give yourself some time to do that? Do what you love instead of trying to force yourself into some dreamworld of yours... You can still stream and make content and do whatever you want within e-sports..
I've always been a fan of you even though you've never really delivered.. But i'm more a fan of Liquid and i think its a shame to see so many other (korean) pros retire before you and yet you remain. I'm not sure its fair to the team, cause you're basically an investment that never paid off. I mean, I get it.. getting paid to play video games is awesome!! Who would ever want to go back to the "real world"? But sooner or later you're gonna have to wake up... Less people are interested in Starcraft, the money is going away, teams are disbanding, players retiring.. Sooner or later the prize pools will be a joke, the viewer counts on the streams will be slim to none and your team will no longer be able to afford paying you a salary.. And until thay day comes, Liquid is gonna need all the money they can get to stay in the scene, and honestly it would be a real shame if you kept them from doing that..! Consider your options, go all in or don't do it at all... You can't half-ass this shit any longer...
I wish you the best for 2014 onwards......
Wow, you have no idea how TeamLiquid works do you...
I've always been a fan of TL posters even though some of them, like you, have never really delivered... but I'm more a fan of the forums and I think its a shame to see so many other (good) posters stop posting before you, and yet you remain. I'm not sure its fair to the community, cause you're basically a poster that never really developed. I mean, I get it.. feeling like you're cool to talk shit about progames is awesome!! Who would ever want to go back to "good posts"? But sooner or later you're gonna have to wake up... Less people are interested in what you have to say, this isn't reddit, a higher quality and less rude of post are required.. Sooner or later the admins will get sick of you.. And until that day comes, TL is gonna need their server load they can to stay with good posts, and honestly it would be a real shame if you kept them from doing that..! Consider your options, go all in or don't do it at all... You can't half-ass these shit posts any longer...
As long as Ret is here making the TL world proud of his measured tones and enthusiasm--love for fun too--fans will have something great to cheer about. Great blog post.
Kinda sad that there isn't an ascendant RTS game to give Blizzard some competition. Just one smaller studio release that's feature-rich (I should say features done right) with less glitter to stimulate more ideas in Irvine. I can dream at least. LaLush re-doing micro mechanics for lotv mmmm. Sweet Dreams.
On January 09 2014 12:04 MagnuMizer wrote: So I read your blog... And I have to say its perfectly understandable the feelings you have... I mean, who would'nt be frustrated with a game they've been fighting a losing battle with since its release? I don't want this taken the wrong way, cause Ret, I think you're cool..! But, maybe it's time to throw in the towel... Lets face it, you've lost your passion and your motivation to truly be top tier. If you love watching proleague and such, why don't you just give yourself some time to do that? Do what you love instead of trying to force yourself into some dreamworld of yours... You can still stream and make content and do whatever you want within e-sports..
I've always been a fan of you even though you've never really delivered.. But i'm more a fan of Liquid and i think its a shame to see so many other (korean) pros retire before you and yet you remain. I'm not sure its fair to the team, cause you're basically an investment that never paid off. I mean, I get it.. getting paid to play video games is awesome!! Who would ever want to go back to the "real world"? But sooner or later you're gonna have to wake up... Less people are interested in Starcraft, the money is going away, teams are disbanding, players retiring.. Sooner or later the prize pools will be a joke, the viewer counts on the streams will be slim to none and your team will no longer be able to afford paying you a salary.. And until thay day comes, Liquid is gonna need all the money they can get to stay in the scene, and honestly it would be a real shame if you kept them from doing that..! Consider your options, go all in or don't do it at all... You can't half-ass this shit any longer...
I wish you the best for 2014 onwards......
Wow, you have no idea how TeamLiquid works do you...
I've always been a fan of TL posters even though some of them, like you, have never really delivered... but I'm more a fan of the forums and I think its a shame to see so many other (good) posters stop posting before you, and yet you remain. I'm not sure its fair to the community, cause you're basically a poster that never really developed. I mean, I get it.. feeling like you're cool to talk shit about progames is awesome!! Who would ever want to go back to "good posts"? But sooner or later you're gonna have to wake up... Less people are interested in what you have to say, this isn't reddit, a higher quality and less rude of post are required.. Sooner or later the admins will get sick of you.. And until that day comes, TL is gonna need their server load they can to stay with good posts, and honestly it would be a real shame if you kept them from doing that..! Consider your options, go all in or don't do it at all... You can't half-ass these shit posts any longer...
I wish you the best for 2014 onwards......
I know we are on the TL forum, but please, keep your rear end kissing level lower please, you wont get a medal. In some way i agree with Magnu, you either set a goal like for a year, to win something or just let it go and move on. Take a look at Synderen from DOTA2, did exactly the same.
Interesting post, Ret. It's good to see that you are reasonably optimistic about SC2 for 2014. I am a little skeptical about your call for Blizzard, if I have read your post right, to take on board more feedback from the community. "The community", to me, tends to be a rather over-used word usually used by people substituting their opinion on the game for that of everybody else. It's a bit like arguments based on what the speaker takes to be the will or the voice of "the people". It's usually horseshit.
Blizzard is better off ignoring most feedback from "the community". We have little of real substance to add, and no patience to really develop SC2, obsessed as we are with our own ladder games, the OP of the week, and monthly balance statistics from aligulac.
I'd also prefer if they did not communicate as to what they think is cool or not with the game, That is for players to do and show. It is this kind of thinking, Blizzard substituting a personal vision for the game over everyone else's, that lead to the recent Oracle buff and may lead to the upcoming Roach buff. Players reveal the game in all of its shades. This takes time. It's best if Blizzard stays out of this process. If there really is a genuine problem, it will reveal itself by its persistence, In which case, Blizzard may have to intervene. But, I'd rather they mess up once by taking too long than mess up often by jumping in too quickly. So, basically, I disagree with most of what you say.
It's good to hope but people have become really jaded about balance and it shows on these forums as well. Blizzard says they are in touch with the community but still don't correct their shitty actions like adding their own maps into the ladder mappool. It took forever to nerf the infestor even though the whole fucking community cried about it. Add silly and skilless aspects to the game (the mothership core) that pigeonhole the metagame even further.
Good post but I'm still really skeptical about Blizzard making this game work. Three and a half years and there's still tons to improve upon.
Very nice post Ret, I see your point and really appreciate your attitude. I wonder what we as a community can do for this game, but just to have the right mentality and do not rage or blame stupidly will help I think.
Incase you dunno who GhostCrawler is, he was the Lead System Designer of wow until recently, who was very involved with the wow forum and twitter, he would answer question and explain their motives behind WoW design, especially in moments of class changes...
Problem is, that person also garners a lot of hate from the community and becomes a beacon of hate, even when they do good, David Kim is kinda that guy already, so why would he want to bring more angry attention to himself, not everyone is going to be happy with all changes ever and negative opinions are louder than positive ones.
I too would love to see a StaCraft team member step up to the plate and be what GhostCrawler was for WoW, but now that he's gone from WoW, i doubt they'll even get a guy like that for themselves again... Blizzard has been and still is a very stoic company... they dont like to talk until they're ready... it sucks... even Kim Phan with WCS isn't similar to how GhostCrawler was for wow, she is very PR heavy... atleast thats the vibe i get...
But i hope we can get someone like that, I could've seen Dustin Browder being that guy, but he's now both a Sc2 and Heroes dev, i doubt he has the time, let alone the will to read threw thousands of tweets and forum pages...
I agree that it is frustrating that blizzard doesn't adress some of the problems in sc2. It is so blatantly obvious when the game is lacking if you're used to watching/playing BW...
On January 09 2014 12:04 MagnuMizer wrote: So I read your blog... And I have to say its perfectly understandable the feelings you have... I mean, who would'nt be frustrated with a game they've been fighting a losing battle with since its release? I don't want this taken the wrong way, cause Ret, I think you're cool..! But, maybe it's time to throw in the towel... Lets face it, you've lost your passion and your motivation to truly be top tier. If you love watching proleague and such, why don't you just give yourself some time to do that? Do what you love instead of trying to force yourself into some dreamworld of yours... You can still stream and make content and do whatever you want within e-sports..
I've always been a fan of you even though you've never really delivered.. But i'm more a fan of Liquid and i think its a shame to see so many other (korean) pros retire before you and yet you remain. I'm not sure its fair to the team, cause you're basically an investment that never paid off. I mean, I get it.. getting paid to play video games is awesome!! Who would ever want to go back to the "real world"? But sooner or later you're gonna have to wake up... Less people are interested in Starcraft, the money is going away, teams are disbanding, players retiring.. Sooner or later the prize pools will be a joke, the viewer counts on the streams will be slim to none and your team will no longer be able to afford paying you a salary.. And until thay day comes, Liquid is gonna need all the money they can get to stay in the scene, and honestly it would be a real shame if you kept them from doing that..! Consider your options, go all in or don't do it at all... You can't half-ass this shit any longer...
I wish you the best for 2014 onwards......
Wow, you have no idea how TeamLiquid works do you...
I've always been a fan of TL posters even though some of them, like you, have never really delivered... but I'm more a fan of the forums and I think its a shame to see so many other (good) posters stop posting before you, and yet you remain. I'm not sure its fair to the community, cause you're basically a poster that never really developed. I mean, I get it.. feeling like you're cool to talk shit about progames is awesome!! Who would ever want to go back to "good posts"? But sooner or later you're gonna have to wake up... Less people are interested in what you have to say, this isn't reddit, a higher quality and less rude of post are required.. Sooner or later the admins will get sick of you.. And until that day comes, TL is gonna need their server load they can to stay with good posts, and honestly it would be a real shame if you kept them from doing that..! Consider your options, go all in or don't do it at all... You can't half-ass these shit posts any longer...
I wish you the best for 2014 onwards......
I know we are on the TL forum, but please, keep your rear end kissing level lower please, you wont get a medal. In some way i agree with Magnu, you either set a goal like for a year, to win something or just let it go and move on. Take a look at Synderen from DOTA2, did exactly the same.
I would like to state that I am not a fan of Ret, not back in broodwar, not now. But a post like that guys was complete bullshit. He starts off saying he's a fan, then says all this back handed shit? You don't talk to people like that in real life, so you shouldn't talk to people like that on their blog. Who are we to tell Ret what he should and shouldn't do? He's his own man and makes his own choices. This kid acts like it's a huge financial drain to TL, when in reality he is a great asset to the team. TL doesn't signed players because they are the best, they sign them because of the type of people they are. The only person that decides if a player leaves TL is the player themselves. On top of that, Ret is still one of the best EU zergs and has been apart of TL and the TL community for way longer than most people. He deserves to be treated with the utmost respect, not talked down to like a child.
Don't feed the troll, magnumizer is clearly ignorant of ret's history and decisions. Nobody has more autonomy or awareness of liquid's financial state than ret. He argues that ret's been a financial drain on the team but fails to mention how he chose to suspend his own pay in 2012 temporarily because he felt that he wasn't living up to his own potential. How can someone in their right mind question that kind of integrity and spirit?
He's probably too young to remember the harsh conditions ret endured while on estro's b-team, living as the only foreigner, working relentlessly towards his dreams and aspirations in the face of immeasurable odds with almost no community support. Very few in the starcraft community has more dedication than ret, and that post is at best horribly off-base, and at worst maliciously defamatory.
It's still the best RTS out there but compared to Bw Sc2 is just subpar. I doubt that Blizzard is going to be able to change that. I've stopped watching Sc2 some time ago except for very few matches. But then, I'd probably watch even if Flash and Jaedong were playing minesweeper.
Good stuff Ret, always enjoyed watching your macro style. HOTS is a huge improvement from WOL broodlord infestor and it looks like the full array of units are used. I still enjoy watching the game and hopefully tweaking will lead to more diversity in builds.
There are some very interesting and easy fixes that would make SC2 more enjoyable.
You all know this. They include:
- Making units have bigger spreadout radius - Removing the attack delay - Enabling locking turrets (i.e. tanks shooting backwards) - Modifying the mineral patch placements a bit for many bases to be an advantage
Problem is not really a lack of ideas, it's a lack of unified critique. I believe that if several important figures and players wrote an appeal or something and presented it to blizzard together and then maybe got a big petition going or something along those lines, then it would be a large, unified force that probably could change things up a bit.
edit: btw, I printed that bisu pic and put it in my wallet. Can't wait for his SSL group! :D
Really nice article Ret, i really love starcraft but i hate how blizzard takes balance/design stuff sooooooooooo damn slowly. if we want to have the best game ever, blizzard needs to invest more money and time into that. But we dont know if they will ever change that mindset and we dont know what is keeping blizzard out of a more proactive stance towards game design and balance of the game like all this new companies like Riot or even guys like IceFrog with Dota.
we need to realize that what we want is irrelevant. Blizzard will not spend a dime if they have no way of generating any return on their investment. Even if blizzard did everything the community wants, and starcraft did become the best game ever, blizzard would still lose money in the process.
When your business model is based on people buying, not (necessarily) playing the game, there is very little incentive to improve the game for the people who already bought it. This, combined with the fact that anyone who might be interested in starcraft has bought it by now, means that any changes that would cost them anything to implement (beyond the cost basic of maintenance) will not happen.
On January 08 2014 07:58 JazVM wrote: My personal opinion is that Blizzard isn't really trying to "fix" the game itself anymore. At some point, they realized that the business model of Starcraft 2 (pay upfront) aswell as the gameplay itself would take too much effort to change. Instead they did a clever move; they pump money into the scene (WCS) to keep enough people around to still make a profitible release of LotV. I think with the units they introduce in LotV, they will try to circumvent the whole stale deathball kind of gameplay to make the game more exciting, that's exactly what they did in HotS. I doubt that they will change any core parts of the game like unit movement/ unit clustering though.
the bolded part is precisely correct as far as i can tell.
I think blizzard should have spent way more to make the competitive scene grow, I'm not sure if they realized how big it could have been. Its too late to change fundamental things about the game. We just need bigger and spread out prize pools. (No more $10,000 1st place and $500 4th place etc.)
Incase you dunno who GhostCrawler is, he was the Lead System Designer of wow until recently, who was very involved with the wow forum and twitter, he would answer question and explain their motives behind WoW design, especially in moments of class changes...
Problem is, that person also garners a lot of hate from the community and becomes a beacon of hate, even when they do good, David Kim is kinda that guy already, so why would he want to bring more angry attention to himself, not everyone is going to be happy with all changes ever and negative opinions are louder than positive ones.
I too would love to see a StaCraft team member step up to the plate and be what GhostCrawler was for WoW, but now that he's gone from WoW, i doubt they'll even get a guy like that for themselves again... Blizzard has been and still is a very stoic company... they dont like to talk until they're ready... it sucks... even Kim Phan with WCS isn't similar to how GhostCrawler was for wow, she is very PR heavy... atleast thats the vibe i get...
But i hope we can get someone like that, I could've seen Dustin Browder being that guy, but he's now both a Sc2 and Heroes dev, i doubt he has the time, let alone the will to read threw thousands of tweets and forum pages...
This is hilarious to me simply because 100% of the people in the high end pvp arena community (dont know about other wow communities) absolutely hated Ghostcrawlers guts and wanted him fired for years. WAYYYYY more than people dislike David Kim. Plus the guy was much much more legitimately stupid and clueless about the game.
Incase you dunno who GhostCrawler is, he was the Lead System Designer of wow until recently, who was very involved with the wow forum and twitter, he would answer question and explain their motives behind WoW design, especially in moments of class changes...
Problem is, that person also garners a lot of hate from the community and becomes a beacon of hate, even when they do good, David Kim is kinda that guy already, so why would he want to bring more angry attention to himself, not everyone is going to be happy with all changes ever and negative opinions are louder than positive ones.
I too would love to see a StaCraft team member step up to the plate and be what GhostCrawler was for WoW, but now that he's gone from WoW, i doubt they'll even get a guy like that for themselves again... Blizzard has been and still is a very stoic company... they dont like to talk until they're ready... it sucks... even Kim Phan with WCS isn't similar to how GhostCrawler was for wow, she is very PR heavy... atleast thats the vibe i get...
But i hope we can get someone like that, I could've seen Dustin Browder being that guy, but he's now both a Sc2 and Heroes dev, i doubt he has the time, let alone the will to read threw thousands of tweets and forum pages...
This is hilarious to me simply because 100% of the people in the high end pvp arena community (dont know about other wow communities) absolutely hated Ghostcrawlers guts and wanted him fired for years. WAYYYYY more than people dislike David Kim. Plus the guy was much much more legitimately stupid and clueless about the game.
That's irrelevant to the fact, he told people what the "Team" was doing with the game how they were thinking and the reasons why they made the changes they did, including high end wow PvP changes...
Name a game where the competitive players dont hate the developer in some way, hell if i was a developer for WoW Arenas i'd prolly tell the players i honestly dont care about their opinions if they "hate"me, even a Ret said, you dont really wanna listen to the players too much, they're extremely biased, especially right after a loss... (which oddly coincides with the same time complain posts are made... right after a loss...)
Also calling a developer of a game stupid and clueless, is just plain silly... it you really believe he was too stupid or clueless to do his job, i dont know why im replying to you... he's not the most perfect System Designer ever, but who is? even the best games in the world, totally suck in many ways... and changes you hated in wow might be loved by many other people, you or even a small minority of people who agree with you, are not as important to a developer as you'd like to be...
In the case of Sc2 it is similar, if they implement the Micro changes to add it similar to BW like lots of people want, there might also be a large group of people who hate it... its really fucking hard to please people in the gaming world these days... Its nice to see the thread about David's Thoughts on Sc2 Balance, but i'd love to see a monthly Sc2 Design and Balance AmA with users and players/explayers, just for Transparency.
I may not be a high level player, but it feels to me that a lot of things in sc2 are interconnected (e.g. weaker gateway units but having sentries to compensate, Mothership Core to compensate for weak protoss early game, etc). So I'd go as far as to suggest that the game needs to be redesigned. On the spot number fixes (balance) won't really fix the underlying problems in StarCraft.
For instance, remember when you mess up a few forcefields and you lose the game? I believe the Mothership Core addresses this luck factor, so the Mothership Core acts like a "patch" unit. However, the underlying problem is weaker gateway army. So if we end up with no sentries, no mothership core but having stronger gateway army, that would be a much better design fix imho.
It's still the best RTS out there but compared to Bw Sc2 is just subpar.
You say SC2 is the best RTS and immediately name one that is better? Or did I misunderstand you.
I personally couldn't care less about the perceived lack of balance in SC2. You can't measure balance in complicated games like this. What I care about is SC2 became sooo boring to watch and to play Games are so similar to one another that my favourite SC2 of 2013 was probably cannon rushes in WCS finals. Not that I watched too many in 2013.
It's still the best RTS out there but compared to Bw Sc2 is just subpar.
You say SC2 is the best RTS and immediately name one that is better? Or did I misunderstand you.
I personally couldn't care less about the perceived lack of balance in SC2. You can't measure balance in complicated games like this. What I care about is SC2 became sooo boring to watch and to play Games are so similar to one another that my favourite SC2 of 2013 was probably cannon rushes in WCS finals. Not that I watched too many in 2013.
Ok, I guess I could have phrased that better. Sc2 is the best current RTS game. Current as in mostly played (outside of SK), streamed and tour(na)mented. And yes, Bw was (is) so much more for to watch.
edit: are there even companies trying to make new big RTS titles or is everyone on either the moba or the mmo train?
It's still the best RTS out there but compared to Bw Sc2 is just subpar.
You say SC2 is the best RTS and immediately name one that is better? Or did I misunderstand you.
I personally couldn't care less about the perceived lack of balance in SC2. You can't measure balance in complicated games like this. What I care about is SC2 became sooo boring to watch and to play Games are so similar to one another that my favourite SC2 of 2013 was probably cannon rushes in WCS finals. Not that I watched too many in 2013.
Ok, I guess I could have phrased that better. Sc2 is the best current RTS game. Current as in mostly played (outside of SK), streamed and tour(na)mented. And yes, Bw was (is) so much more for to watch.
edit: are there even companies trying to make new big RTS titles or is everyone on either the moba or the mmo train?
If those are your criteria, then SC2 is the ONLY RTS game. So of course it's the best. It means nothing. It's like being the most delicious thing on a plate of shit (or rather, a plate with nothing else on it).
It's still the best RTS out there but compared to Bw Sc2 is just subpar.
You say SC2 is the best RTS and immediately name one that is better? Or did I misunderstand you.
I personally couldn't care less about the perceived lack of balance in SC2. You can't measure balance in complicated games like this. What I care about is SC2 became sooo boring to watch and to play Games are so similar to one another that my favourite SC2 of 2013 was probably cannon rushes in WCS finals. Not that I watched too many in 2013.
Ok, I guess I could have phrased that better. Sc2 is the best current RTS game. Current as in mostly played (outside of SK), streamed and tour(na)mented. And yes, Bw was (is) so much more for to watch.
edit: are there even companies trying to make new big RTS titles or is everyone on either the moba or the mmo train?
If those are your criteria, then SC2 is the ONLY RTS game. So of course it's the best. It means nothing. It's like being the most delicious thing on a plate of shit (or rather, a plate with nothing else on it).
Pretty much. I just assume that there are some RTS titles out there that I don't know of (and thus must be worse).
On January 11 2014 04:07 mihajovics wrote: absolutely the biggest problem seems to be an aging business model, leaving money on the table by not monetizing the willing crowd of multiplayers
This. Blizzard makes most of their Sc2 money from people who buy the expansions to play the campaign, so their multiplayer team is small and a rather low priority. There is no financial incentive with the current business model to improve the game. There is obviously so much more potential if the game went f2p, both in terms of the quality of the multiplayer and the profits Blizzard could make. Are they willing to put in the time and money needed to change the business model of the game? Probably not, but it seems odd that they would create WCS if they don't have long term plans for SC2, considering Heroes of the Storm and Hearthstone are not being pushed as esports (yet).
Hehe yeah im 344 and know personally number 20 (he has 2nd best int time in the world).
Should probably post something on topic: The biggest problem I have is when someone from the community suggests a nice potential fix to make the game more interesting and better in some way, and they just come up with a transparently bullshit reason why they don't want to add it, usually about making the game noob friendly when really this is not going to make a difference to noobs at all. (Nony's carrier suggestion for example - did this every get implemented??) That just winds me up I don't think they're actually doing such a bad job.
Hopefully they talk to progamers loads before lotv as it seems this is the only time we may get a fundamental change like people suggest.
EPT
. I don't see any reasons why the community shouldn't know, who some of the people Blizzard asks for feedback are.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/vWCeRhG.png)
Games are so similar to one another that my favourite SC2 of 2013 was probably cannon rushes in WCS finals. Not that I watched too many in 2013.
