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The Meditations of FREEloss: The Catastrophe of Starcraft 2
Hello again. Here's some thoughts I've had brewing in my mind for a while in regards to Starcraft 2, and thought I'd share. This won't follow any form of MLA essay structure or anything, I'm typing it as the thoughts come to me. I'd also like to add I do not have the time tonight to go over it all and edit. Lets begin.
This game scares me. It stands poised, ready to destroy this amazing community and e-sport that has spent the last ten years growing into what it is today. And now, just over the horizon, change is coming. Basically, a fix is being applied to something that isn't broken; that "something that isn't broken" is the Starcraft E-Sports scene in korea, and the flourishing community that has grown both within South Korea, and internationally; Team Liquid alone is bigger than it has ever been, while at the same time foreign Starcraft as a whole has diminished; The foreign clan community (namely on US West and East) is fractional to what it once was. Albeit, as the community has dwindled and diminished over the years, what few stragglers remain have taken refuge in Team Liquid, and essentially the "community" (of course with the exception of UMS and Fastest Players) has grown, while the game has only gotten less popular.
With the release of Starcraft 2, we're going to see a massive wave of new players; There's going to be us (the community), the players who once loved Stacraft that moved onto shinier toys, and every other gamer looking for something new (WoW players, Counter-Strike players, Console players, etc; we're going to see every kind of gamer buying this game). The starcraft community as we know it now is going to be dwarfed by the size of the "majority". These players aren't going to be competitive like the "community" player, while at the same time will make up the majority, putting Blizzard in a tight spot. Who are they going to cater to? Who's going to be paying the bills? Blizzard has proven that they'll go with the latter merely through WoW; A game that was once great - full of experienced MMO players and fans of the Warcraft series. The game was epic on so many levels, but once they hit around the Four million subscribers mark, the game went down hill. Now, at Ten million subscribers, the game is child's play compared to its once former glory. It's disgraceful when the majority of players can't answer the question, "Who is Grom Hellscream?". And that's one thing I fear about Starcraft 2: The game is going to be played by people who don't play Starcraft.
The first signs of this submission by Blizzard became evident to me with the introduction of MBS and automine. We spend a lot of time bickering about such topics (and I don't plan to with this blog), but have any of us taken a minute to really let that sink in? Automine. AUTO. MINE. The function conditioning your mind to form a routine habit of centering your screen over your production building and then selecting a peon that has just finished being constructed and then right clicking on mineral patch. Apparently this task is too difficult and time consuming. Apparently this is a skill (albeit, one of the basic skills anyone with >60 brain cells should have down pat in Starcraft) that will be too menial for the average Starcraft 2 player. I fear this fellow designing this game has his eyes set in the wrong direction, and is gradually walking off the straight and simple path that is Starcraft Brood War, and is following not only his own Agenda (which I'll get to later), but that of Blizzard's money hungry executives.
They want this game to cater to those who are paying the bills, and I fear they're going to dumb it down so that "everyone can play". Talk is cheap, "easy to play hard to master" was never Starcraft's original motto. It was never easy to play, it was a challenge from the first time you log onto B.net, with your only experience being what you learned in the Single Player campaigne (More proof money might be their #1 concern; 3 expansion packs? Are you for real? I'm sorry, but I feel that many of us are following and accepting every word these developers say like sheep, blinded by the many emotions the words "Starcraft Two" envoke within us). So, they're trying to make this game "easy to play" so everyone can pick up this game. That's fair I supposed. But don't toss me a bone - "But it's hard to master!" - like I'm some retarded dog that'll settle for anything the man in the fancy Blizzard T-shirt will say. This lead developer needs to get off his cloud and go back to making Red Alert games.
I feel the need to give him a polite bitch-slap across the face every time he says something like: "uhhh...this unit is really really cool...uhh lots of abilities ...uh for your to MICRO! That's right! Micro!". The fact that he, as well as other members of his team, put so much emphasis on the word "micro" when they're telling us about a unit, strikes me as pure bullshit. They're essentially saying what competitive Starcraft players want to hear. In my opinion, micro isn't something you GIVE a unit, it's something the player learns to do with the unit. It's a discovery of an aspect of the units capabilities, and then a concept that is mastered, and then wielded in deadly ways against your opponent. The only unit that has impressed me is the Stalker. However, I literally laughed out loud when Yellow micro'ed the absolute shit out of their fancy blink ability, making it look absolutely ridiculously overpowered. He killed an entire Zerg army essentially, without losing hardly any Stalkers. It appears to me that the developers don't really know what they're doing, and keep trying to doll up all these fancy units they've designed with special abilities in an effort to "give" the game something that it shouldn't be "given"; something that should exist within it. The first analogy that comes to mind is this: Think of an iPod; it's a beautiful and simple piece of technology. The iPod represents Starcraft; now imagine some other company taking over the rights of iPod and giving it a bigger/fancier screen, more buttons so you can have even more features and more things to do at your finger tips, giving it more outlets to do more things and throwing in a ton of different accessories you have to purchase and use to satisfy different demands - and you have Starcraf 2 - the result being a big, heavy, impractical, annoying-to-use piece of crap. It almost contradicts my earlier idea of them making the game too noob friendly; they're trying to create a balance so both noob and experienced players can play this game, and essentially they're making it too retarded for the good players, but then to an extent, making it overly complex (to the point where they won't have the patience) for the noobs, and these complexities simply annoy the crap out of the experienced players. An example of this is the stupid gas thing the employed, and now these stupid new cooldown'ed abilities to mine faster every now and then. It's like "Well lets make it retardedly simple for the noobs and give them auto mine, but then so the good players aren't left out, lets toss them a bone and give them this GoSu AbIlItY that gives them phat mineral harvesting speed! BUT! Lets put it on a cooldown so they gotta use their GoSu MaCrO every 30 seconds to make it work!!"...........They've taken a respectful girl that's naturally beautiful, and slapped a ton of make up on her and accessories and turned her into a whore that'll do anything to get a $ (lol another random analogy).
Ultimately, they've rittled this game with fancy abilities, have gotten carried away and have lost sight of many aspects of the game; underachieving in many areas, and over achieving in others. It also seems that some of the new units and abilities serve little to no purpose, and only serve to make the game "cool". The Corruptor or w/e unit comes to mind; Why take the time to build a unit with the intention of possessing other units, when one could just macro up a storm, do some fancy micro, kill your opponents army and continue fighting and trying to defeat him. The Dark Archon served this well enough, and did it in style.
In my opinion, they need to remake Starcraft: Broodwar with their new graphics engine and Havok technology and B.Net 2, and then replace the units that are the most neglected with newer and more useful units, and add a couple of new units to each race, creating new 'roles' and fulfilling them with said units. They could also add or replace a few abilities to existing units to essentially further create a couple new roles and purpose that will contribute to overall game play.
Now to what this entire blog post was essentially leading up to. The down fall of e-sports in Korea. Starcraft 2 will be released, and there will be a vast rift dividing the community; players who thinks the game sucks and prefer old Starcraft, and those who really like it. But what if the "divide" is really one sided? The majority like the game, but this majority is made up of players (that I highlighted earlier in my blog; wow this has come full circle almost) that enjoy playing the game, but not to an extent to where they'll play it competitively or buy into an e-sports scene. Tournaments will be divided on whether to host Brood War or Starcraft 2. The E-sports scene in korea could essentially collapse as companies won't know where to invest their money, and the risk will be too high to wager on either option. Players won't know which side to dedicate their LIVES to as a career option, and we'll eventually see the player pool of Progamer hopefuls diminish, and eventually the skill level (as the standards are lowered), and with that, the entertainment value.
The similar effect happened with Counter-Strike. CS 1.6 was a game beautiful and perfect in its simplicity. Sure, the game had bugs, and quirks, and 'unrealistic' aspects to it, but that's essentially what separated the noobs from the good players; ones ability to manipulate, and essentially micro these 'flaws' in the game. The recoil on the AK 47 was quite rediculous, and trying to hit get a headshot with it would never work, because the gun's accuracy didn't work well with the hitboxes programmed on the player frames. But a good player knew just the perfect spot to aim on someone's body, and knew that a 3 burst fire would make the gun recoil in such a way that the 3rd bullet fired would strike the 'head' hitbox. Then Counter-Strike: Source came out, with it's fancy graphics and was completely revamped in every way, shape and form. Any retard could click his mouse button down and aim his cursor at head level and get as many headshots as he wanted until someone doing the same thing got him back. The CS community was divided, people didn't know what game to play, and it was never the same again. Ever.
Thank you for reading if you made it this far.
EDIT: Could a mod please fix the spelling error in the title :D.
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I agree with everything you say 150%. Blizzard is telling us what we want to hear =/
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This is why I hope they don't release SC2 until I've completely lost interest in BW.
I'm very pessimistic about SC2 for the same reasons as you, but there's nothing that can be done.
A bit like crappy movie sequels, the masses love the shit they're being fed so the makers keep doing it.
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yea I agree with pretty much everything you said too, especially the part about CS 1.6 vs source. When SC2 was first announced I was really excited, but from what I've seen so far I might just keep playing and watching SC1. If SC2 ends up being a horrible competitive game I hope the Korean SC progaming scene doesn't die  .
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I've already decided that i won't play SC2.
Partly because i think it would not be as good as starcraft and partly because I will stop play computergames after this spring.'
I agree with many things. I think Starcraft 2 will be successful only because of the name Starcraft.
But seriously, whats the chance they'll make a game as good as starcraft? It's not like they've done it ever yet (except starcraft itself).
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Well, there's a lot to address here, but let me say, I think this'll spark some good discussion. Let me point out a few things about what you've had to say, as well as some ramblings of my own. Note that I'm not talking out of my ass, and as a game designer I know the industry quite well... Oh and pardon my formatting as well, It's 5am and I don't feel like editing this. =P
First, I have to say that Dustin Browder is a GREAT game developer, designer, project leader, spokesperson, and hero of the RTS genre. He's a personal hero of mine, and I don't think there's anyone who could be doing much of a better job than him in the industry. It's --AMAZING-- that Blizzard even ATTEMPTS to care and appeal to the old school crowd. Trust me, they'll be getting at least 500 new Starcraft fans for every one of us when this game is released. As you said, look at Warcraft 3 vs. Warcraft 2, or Warcraft 3 vs. WoW. I'm not in agreement when you, or anyone else, insults Browder, or Blizzard as a whole, and their ABILITY to produce a quality game. They're freaking amazing. I agree that I would too like a simple 'remake' of the original, but that's highly unrealistic, and wouldn't please many people. Starcraft 2 is going to be awesome. The question is whether or not our 'hardcore' niche community will take to it.
I agree, and am too quite scared of what will happen to the Starcraft scene, on different levels, too. On one hand, we have to worry about the Korean E-sports scene and whether SC2 and SC1 will co-exist, or SC2 will take over, or SC2 will be quickly laughed off like Quake 4 was. My feelings are that it won't be laughed off. Blizzard is too big, and the game will be HUGELY successful in sales. This means the only options are 'co-exist' and 'dominate'. I feel domination is much more likely. If SC2 gets more funding, more attention, and more sponsors, (which it likely will), it will attract progamers, and SC1 will die, or reduce in scale by a large number, basically killing it slowly, or reducing it greatly. On another level, we have to worry about our Starcraft outlet: TL. Will TL become dominated by SC2, when masses of 'foreigners' are playing SC2? (Trust me, even if the game SUCKS (which it won't, but still), it's going to have way more fans than Starcraft currently has.) Will TL stay geared towards SC1 if they co-exist? If this co-existence happens, what will happen when 'SC2 members' outnumber 'SC1 members' 30 to 1? Will us TL veterans stick to SC1 as a niche group? (Even more niche than we are, being 'foreigners' ) All this is quite scary indeed, especially for the many people who spend a LOT of time on TL.
If we don't take to it... Well we're likely in trouble. If some of us do, and some don't... Well we're also in trouble. Hell, even if we all take to it, chances are, things are going to change DRASTICALLY around here, along with Korea. Imean, there's just so many outcomes... Even if SC2 is completely shunned by Korea, and our community here, there's still going to be about 50 billion new TL members who sign up because of SC2. What's that going to do to the community here? (It's already had an impact) It'd take an army of Chills duel-wielding banhammers to ban the masses of incoming commandment defilers. Honestly, I can't see anything turning out well for our group unless the VAST majority of us are willing to shun SC1 and move to SC2. (Which considering the current status of things, that's looking quite questionable.)
Everything is going to be so freaking crazy... I really hope and expect that Korea, Kespa, TL staff, TL members, and community members as a whole will be able to fight through the questionable times and come up even more badass than before. I just hope everybody has a plan and TL doesn't go down the shitter, because honestly, I don't think I could ever follow Korean Starcraft without this awesome outlet.
Any thoughts? Any TL staff care to enlighten us on any battleplans for the future?... Or are you waiting to see what happens with SC2 and Korea to think about such things? What do you expect to happen to TL during the era of Starcraft 2's initial release?
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..What a catastrophe...
Dude you basically suggested they re-sell Starcraft 1 with a bit of new programming and a new box. Yeah, that will realllyyyy sell and make the years of programming and designing they put into this game worth it -_-
You do realize that starcraft 1 is still going to be around after starcraft 2 right (as in, it will still be popular)? And no, there's not going to be some big catastrophe, or a disaster... Why are you even saying this before the damn game has been released? T_T Starcraft 1 had TONS AND TONS AND TONS of revisions even AFTER it hit Beta. And this game isn't even IN beta yet, there's still going to be a ton of changes and a lot of it will have to do with community feedback (...like how they made Starcraft 1)
Oh and about the CS scene: it didn't have the professional gamer base and sponsor base like Starcraft has now, and also, the teams and competitions were really really scattered all over the world, whereas all the teams and competitions are in Seoul. You could probably attribute that more to why CS faded out than the fact that source was released. Besides, CS 1.6 is still pretty popular. Starcraft has a HUGE sponsor base, and won't die out the same way other games have because of it so don't worry 
Also... These players aren't going to be competitive like the "community" player, while at the same time will make up the majority, putting Blizzard in a tight spot.
You DO realize that this was what Starcraft 1 was very much like when it was released?
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I agree with ya man.
Stupid Mothership!
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I agree with the OP and Mikilatov 200%. I've been thinking exactly the same things for quite some time.
What will be the greatest threat imo is that the community will be poisoned with millions of random ppl who know nothing about esport.
The same people we now mock for their ignorance for competitive gaming, and for which we are proud to call ourselves the Starcraft community, will essentially become the Starcraft community and oldschool SC-ers will become a dying species.
This is the scariest thing imo, and not the imbalances/stupid mechanics that could be patched/adjusted etc.
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A good E-sport is measured by the distance between the men and the boys.
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SC2 will be a shit cake.
Anyone else saying the opposite didn't play any of blizzard's new game since 98.
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My dream would be starcraft 1.5 with the same 2d engine but slightly revamped, better pathfiding, better bnet, higher resolution ( maybe remake some sprites too ? ), fix some annoying pathfiding issues and bugs and maybe... few more units.
+ all the ups of chaos launcher.
That would be definitly awesome. The same game but even better :D.
Sc2 will be good for solo, ums and ffa, but i don't really think it will be a good competitive game...
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I completely agree with the op, on everything Starcraft 2 will not be Starcraft imo. They are changing way to much it will be a whole new game. Basically if they didn't call all the units the same and didn't call it starcraft 2 it would be a completely different game and no one would even make the comparison between starcraft and starcraft 2.
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Your analogies weren't very good but other than that good read. I Agree 200% on your part about micro, how you shouldn't give a unit micro, it should have it already as a unit. I don't think Blizzard intended to give dragoons retarded walking ai, just to 'give' the player some micro.
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Excellent blog. As others have said, I agree fully.
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I think you guys overestimate how big the RTS community really is. Even the most popular RTSs only sell 1 or 2 million tops, and I would assume only 1/2 or 1/3 of those actually played the game online. SC2 is not going to be nearly as popular as WoW, RTSs just don't have a mass appeal like MMOs do (even SC2 is too hard for them).
SC2 will prob. be the biggest RTS since War3, but I don't really see millions of total new people coming in and ruining the scene.
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You got to think about all the poor younglings who never experienced starcrafts release since they were too young and aren't hardcore enough to start playing a 10 year old game.
Also some on this site worships starcraft a wee bit too much. It is kinda how the purist Christians all make a huge fuss every time someone releases a new version of the bible.
I love starcraft and think that it is the best RTS ever, but I do not think that it is a divine gift to humankind made to be worshipped forever.
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my feeling is that after sc2 is released, the sc1 scene will diminish greatly, both in korea and the foreign scene. sponsors will obviously shift to where the money is (ie. sc2), why would they pour money into a 10+ year old game when sc2 has just been released. I think the majority of players will move to sc2, leaving the sc1 servers with a dwindling number of players and reduced competition.
maybe i'm just a jaded warcraft2 player who saw what happened when war3 came out
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On January 21 2009 23:50 Boblion wrote:
My dream would be starcraft 1.5 with the same 2d engine but slightly revamped, better pathfiding, better bnet, higher resolution ( maybe remake some sprites too ? ), fix some annoying pathfiding issues and bugs and maybe... few more units.
+ all the ups of chaos launcher.
That would be definitly awesome. The same game but even better :D.
Sc2 will be good for solo, ums and ffa, but i don't really think it will be a good competitive game...
yes. that's what i hope for too, but you know we won't get it T-T
the final point about CS and CS source is really interesting. All the people who actually played CS at a even slightly competitive level says 1.6 is a lot better of a game than Source. But regardless, casual gamers played source and the community was divided. I really hope this isn't the case for SC and SC II.
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we can hope...but eventually we'll just end up slitting ourselves next to our Brood War CD's. Terrible fat. Bad blizzard. >:O
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EPT
