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Let's say it is the mid-2000s and you basically dictate Starcraft 2's development. You have the gift of foresight and know that MOBAs will become hugely popular, along with games with faster gameplay and gratification in general. You still have to stick to the RTS genre.
What would you do differently with SC2 so that it sells better and gets played by more people?
I think the biggest issue is resource gathering. It greatly affects macro, which is the biggest issue for low- to mid-level players. If it is made more automated (not eliminated completely), it could lower the barrier to entry to the game while maintaining the real-time strategy.
My idea is that any command center, nexus, or hatchery built near resource patches, comes with connected buildings (buildings built on top of the resource patches) that automatically harvest minerals or gas. The connected resource buildings are destructible, repairable, and can be rebuilt just like factory add-ons. For example, imagine a command center connected to a refinery via pipeline. The gathering rate is the same as optimal rates using workers.
Players will be free to focus more on construction, production, upgrading, and unit control (still require plenty of multi-tasking to make SC2 a skill-based game).
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Here's what I'd do:
I'd go, 'okay, my company has a big brand-name with a large, loyal following, and WoW subscriptions are waning, what can I do?' then I'd make SC2. I would definitely rush the product out, and let people beta-test it. This will allow us to create a lot of hype for the project, and then sell millions of copies after an aggressive ad campaign. I'll tell the users that there are two coming expansions, and to get them to buy the expansions, I'll make minimal changes to the original game, but assure users that the new expansions will make the game super-duper exciting. They will believe this because they are gullible. There will be changes, but I'll leave a bit of room for error so we can eventually drop another expansion. With all the money I make from that, I will develop a MOBA game of my own to get a piece of that market share.
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What I would do:
- Make regular trivial balance changes (like bunker build time) to give the illusion that we at Blizzard care. That will make our customers content with the poor state of the released game.
- Hire Micheal Bay to direct all our cinematics' because more explosions means that it will sell better.
- Redesign the whole game to be a total grind. 'Win 500 games to unlock Thor portrait,' Not a chance, more like 'Win 500 games to unlock the ability to produce Thors.' Accordingly adjust stats.
- Make all units fight 1v1. This will prolong battles allowing for more action and less base build watching.
- Force a maximum of 60 inputs per minute. Any input past that will be ignored.
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Pretty much what nina said. Did SC2 not sell well on the planet you live on? Pretty sure Blizzard got exactly what they wanted out of it. Maybe they could have milked more money out of it if they'd done that crazy custom map making subscription / pay per map thing.
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On March 17 2015 22:46 Chef wrote:
Pretty much what nina said. Did SC2 not sell well on the planet you live on? Pretty sure Blizzard got exactly what they wanted out of it. Maybe they could have milked more money out of it if they'd done that crazy custom map making subscription / pay per map thing.
They could have done the pay for custom maps only version. I think I might have gotten that instead of no version at all of HotS. Since that is free they have no content I want to pay for.
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1. I'd make it an actually interesting RTS game (not to sell more copies, 'cause that shit doesn't sell - but because it would be cool)
2. I'd make custom games work like WarCraft III and StarCraft 1
3. I'd make my own DotA style map for the game, advertise it heavily as an officially endorsed map, and let it have its own automatch and ranking
4. I'd make it free to play with micro transactions for alternate unit skins, in the normal game and the DotA map.
I want a deep, difficult, and awe inspiring real time strategy game. But such a game will never be popular. So what we need is a casual community to be the backbone of a hardcore community, like what use map settings was to professional Brood War, and what tower defense, hero line wars, and DotA was to WarCraft III. The casual players and viewers bring in the money. We need them. We need to appease them, so that we can have our hard game.
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sc2 sold really well and was played by lots of people. People on this site still don't realize what a fucking unicorn SC/BW was.
The number of games back then that had anywhere close to the longevity of BW is almost none. Now that companies are actively looking to make annual editions, subscription based games, etc, there is even less incentive to make a game that will still be heavily played 4 years down the road. It doesn't make money for the publisher (unless you have microtransactions or subscriptions), and this is more of my own opinion, but the attention span of your average gamer is way shorter.
I also think RTS as a genre isn't particularly forgiving to newer players, so unless you're one of those sick nerds (like us in this site) who are willing to dedicate a boatload of hours into grinding away strategies, it gets old fast. But if you simplfy that too much, it alienates your core base and no longer become what people expect for an RTS
also eliminating resource gathering would go a huge way towards alienating that core base that would buy a polished turd if it had the SC logo on it. It's far too key of an element in RTS to kill it
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Reducing the amount of roots and slows is a start. When you can't retreat from a fight because your army will have a slow, root or Forcefields it makes engagements which would normally be recoverable into a severe loss which makes comebacks difficult. Compare BW's slows/roots of Ensnare, Lockdown and Stasis which were rarely used or highly situational versus SC2's Forcefields, Concussive Shells and Fungal Growth which are commonly used. Battles could also last longer which gives each side more ability to shape a fight rather than TERRIBLE TERRIBLE DAMAGE deathballs where engagements end in like 20-25 seconds when sustained fights spread across several screens are more interesting to watch and play. And as for the RTS genre, it is just inaccessible for newbies but BW and WC3 solved it with UMS while other RTS brands weren't as APM intensive. Attempts to redefine the genre with no resources and all micro were interesting but haven't done much, and people will play MOBAs instead anyways.
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I look at it the same way as how EA buttfucked Sim City into oblivion. City builder games, just like RTS, are inherently not newbie friendly, and if you try to go that route you start having to remove things that make it so attractive to your core audience in the first place. Those genres are niches, and they attract people who will dedicate hours and hours to perfection. Sports games and shooter games have elite players that perfect their craft four hours, but they're also very accessible to pick up and play for casuals and newbies.
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EPT
