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BW has the same problem like Warcraft III: Blizzard.
AoE 2 came from no scene, almost zero players and forgotten as "g8 but sooooo old" to over 2,6 Millionen HD sells, 2 brand new HD addons and a healthy stream/youtube scene + daily player base. BW and WIII have the same potential, but they have Blizzard.
People, casual or non casual, dont have problems with shit (lets call it old) graphic. Millions of Indi titles sold despite of bad graphics. Neither BW nor WIII look too bad now adays, yes old, but not eye cancer old.
But to be honest, both games have a very small player base. Yes, the BW Pro Scene exists and is even healthy to a certain degree, but it is only existing in Korea (no TLS is not counted as healthy scene) and the player base outside of korea is slim, the content outside of Afreeca is even more slim. Same goes for WIII, the Proscene outside of Korea at least is bigger, thanks to China, while Korea is much smaller. The Playerbase is also not big outside of China, where it had much more players years ago.
How to change it:
You dont have to bring BW HD or WIII in HD in new engines. You would not need that. What you need: 1080p support without stretching UI, but well made UI for 16: 9 HD resolution. Maybe HD sprites, but you dont even need em, you can rework your sprites make em looking better, while not changing game behaviour. They dont have to be uber HD, but a bit better looking. You dont need to port BW to 3D, while WIII is 3D and can be modernised a bit more.
But what you need:
Integration of BW and WIII into the Bnet launcher. A new Battle.net 1.0, hit up with IC Cup and War3 Arena to bring their service all over the world and use their modernisations. They did this in WIII with Netease, but only for China and it is a blast. They could do this for the complete world with both games and integrate it into Blizzard Launcher.
Call it BW HD or WIII HD, invest a little bit in marketing, sell 2 Millions of Copies of each game and have blast. But it is Blizzard, they do it "slow" or never and most likely never, they rather watch their best games die (in hope it would help their new games) then giving their old games fresh air to breath.
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Yeah I agree with you Clonester what you said is likely the most important, other things can have an impact but more secondary and more controversial.
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On February 24 2016 14:52 Jealous wrote:Show nested quote +On February 24 2016 13:38 ProMeTheus112 wrote:
Now MBS and Automine as skill checks, personally allow me to be honest I think that's bonkers. There are much more interesting skills in BW than remembering to remind each probe you want it to mine as it pops out, or doing 5Z6Z7Z8Z instead of 5ZZZZ to build 4 zealots, or having to click every gate individually to make units in mid and late game. The multitasking skill is good, but not when it's a pure mechanical check, it should be a decision as well. So as tempo skills go, you already have to remember when every upgrade, unit or building completes to be on point (choose what to do with it and/or what to produce next). And these are good because they are associated with the follow-up decisions, choices. But the probe is always supposed to mine, and by not mining you are losing resources which is critical. What should be automated is automated, why not this? Does it make a good skill check to have probes lose mining time for as long as you don't come back to look at each nexus and tell it to mine, while there are hundreds of other things to do anyway? I don't think so. What's good is when speed and decision go together. You could add any artificial "skill checks" that forces more speed on you without any decision making.. but it has no place in a RTS. For example, no rally points at all for buildings? Why do probes not automine in Starcraft? I don't have a clue, or maybe they forgot. But I bet if they released the original Starcraft with automine, it would obviously still have been great, and I can't imagine we would have wanted to remove it to add a skill check there. Same for MBS, for the same reasons.
I find it interesting how controversial it is. What do the BW players who transitionned to SC2 say about that? Would they say removing automine and MBS would be an improvement to SC2 ??? :D
I played SC2, and I think, that would be the opposite of an improvement.
Maybe it just doesn't matter. The underlying reason why all of these constraints can qualify as a skill check is because they cost you an invisible resource: attention. The way that you spend less of this resource is speed, and the way you spend it more efficiently is multitasking, as you said. There come moments in a game where most of us who are not 300 APM Pro Koreans, and even them at times, are forced to decide between making workers + sending them to mine, making units, microing an army, scouting, etc. If you have all of your Nexii as 0 and you can do 0pppppp whenever you feel like it, all of your Gateways as 9 and do 9zzzzzddddddtttkk and rally them all with one click, then how is your attention being divided? You don't even have to look away from your army for that, ignoring of course the possibility that the enemy is doing some two-pronged attack. If we oversimplify the game, it won't force you to make decisions like "is this battle important enough that I have to focus on microing perfectly without smartcast and unlimited group hotkeys, or can I go back to my base and do some production real quick." I think it's safe to say we've all had those engagements where we think everything will be okay if we look away for a second, so we go to our production facilities and make a new round of units, maybe set rally. Then you look back at your army and it's toast because you underestimated your opponent's force, or he got the first round of spells/abilities off before you did. Or, two Protoss armies collide, and one player heard the attack notification and decided to finish his macro round because he figured he has the bigger army while the other sent the first volley of Storms, killing essential High Templar, which led him to steamroll the opponent. One person correctly assessed the situation, while the other did not - that is skill. You're right in that the game could be even more demanding in this regard. If I remember correctly, WarCraft I had a group selection limit of 4 and no hotkeys. WarCraft II had group selection limit of 9. However, I feel that StarCraft hit that sweet spot where there is just enough dividing your attention without being ridiculous and not simplified enough for you to be able to do everything with two hotkeys. Because of this balance, we can appreciate a player's macro in Brood War in the lategame with awe, because we know the effort they went through in order to achieve it, or a player's army movement, or their ability to Storm perfectly during an engagement, so on and so forth. It is because those tasks are mechanically trying that their achievement can be appreciated, their exceptional execution lauded. No one bats an eyelid when someone moves a massive ball around the map in StarCraft II, or when they have perfect macro off 16 Warp Gates in different bases. As for your last question, I think that the answer is highly subjective. The amount of people that switched fully from BW to SC2 AND vice versa are testament to that. Show nested quote +On February 24 2016 14:45 404AlphaSquad wrote:
Lets be honest, if Blizzard would make a BWHD exact same game engine and playable in bnet2 without the need of portforwarding, only a few BW players would switch anyway. Thats how elitist they are.
Now imagine the outcry if they only implemented the tiniest change like implementing automine/mbs. Because you know those were the things that made BW great (lol). We could of course also just implement the wc2 patch where you cant set a rally point in BW.
Seriously now, BW players know they are playing the best RTS but many love it for the wrong reasons imo. BW wasnt great solely because of lack of mbs/automine but because of the units/positional/micro/tactical/strategical play. I touched upon some of what you said above, but to go more in detail, I think that if BWHD had the same game engine in a superior online gaming service, a lot of people would at least try it out. Switching fully would be a subjective course, like switching from BW to SC2 was for many players. It would also depend on what the major competitions, like the various Korean tournaments, decided to do and what the Afreeca streamers decided to stick to. You make assertions like you know it to be a fact, and drop the overused "elitist" term like you see the hypothetical future, when in reality it is impossible to put an entire gaming population under the same blanket. That's pretty damn ignorant.* Automine/MBS is definitely not a tiny change. That is a huge change. It changes the way the game is played. I don't think anyone loves the game because there are none of these control features. They love the game in spite of it not having them and think it's superior to games that do have them. However, all of the things that you list "but because of..." would probably be diluted if the same ease-of-use controls were implemented in Brood War. EDIT: *I guess it makes sense, seeing as you haven't posted in a Brood War thread in at least a year, and I just didn't bother to look further into your history to see if you've ever posted in Brood War at all: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/search.php?q=&t=c&f=-1&u=404AlphaSquad&gb=dateYou probably don't read that many of them either, so how are you to know? Like the great TL poster WhuazGoodNjaggah once said, you're "throwing stones at something you don't understand."
Meh I just dont like to post in the BW forum as much, because I generally do not like the attitude of alot of BW players. So knowledge about a community is according to you equivalent to how many tl posts I have?
Yes elitist/purists etc are overused terms, however they do turn up every time BW is mentioned outside of BW forums and even in this thread. So there may be some truth to that no?
I dont think it is unreasonable to doubt this community would switch to a remastered version. Yes it would get attention but mostly from non-BW players.
Ofc mbs/automine would change the game, and I know change is automatically assumed to be bad in this community. But wether its good/bad you dont attract people with bad UI because its not the strength of BW. A game can still be hard if it has not those artificial limitations in it.
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pretty much agree 100% with 404AlphaSquad too^^ elitism is a dangerous thing, I come from a shoot'm up community that has/had a lot of elitism, it's a bad thing, super reluctant to any change and disdain of outsiders. It seems when games become more niche they tend to have a more elitist community, I think it has to do with people having a good place in that community not wanting to lose it 
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BW with MBS automine and lack of certain bugs and glitches would be terribad. I can't imagine how players with a good understanding of the game can argue otherwise. Ofc it might attract players, but would we be happy about it? It wouldn't be the same game anymore.Clonsters suggestion is sensible though.
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I don't see it as elitism as much as it's people who know Brood War really well. It's a beloved game, of course people who know it well are going to like it and know a lot about it.
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On February 24 2016 22:52 ProMeTheus112 wrote:Show nested quote +On February 24 2016 14:52 Jealous wrote:You're right in that the game could be even more demanding in this regard. If I remember correctly, WarCraft I had a group selection limit of 4 and no hotkeys. WarCraft II had group selection limit of 9. However, I feel that StarCraft hit that sweet spot where there is just enough dividing your attention without being ridiculous and not simplified enough for you to be able to do everything with two hotkeys. Because of this balance, we can appreciate a player's macro in Brood War in the lategame with awe, because we know the effort they went through in order to achieve it, or a player's army movement, or their ability to Storm perfectly during an engagement, so on and so forth. It is because those tasks are mechanically trying that their achievement can be appreciated, their exceptional execution lauded. No one bats an eyelid when someone moves a massive ball around the map in StarCraft II, or when they have perfect macro off 16 Warp Gates in different bases.
As for your last question, I think that the answer is highly subjective. The amount of people that switched fully from BW to SC2 AND vice versa are testament to that. You made fair points about attention. In my opinion BW would still be highly demanding in that attention resource management with automine and MBS, because there are a ton more things to do. I mean, MBS makes a significant difference to that, but automine doesn't really, so I understand this argument for MBS (only by testing would we know how demanding BW would be in attention resource management with MBS, in my opinion it would still be very demanding in a smarter way : it's not like we spend 20% of the time in game producing units, and it's not like there aren't a ton of other things to do and even I think things we actually don't do at all because there is too much to do :D it's good to relieve that, especially for the less hardcore players, but actually for everyone, imo), but not for automine : it's clear to me automine would not impact this significantly. Can't put MBS and automine in the same box, I guess. As for SC2, I think reasons why player have left have more to do with the bad pathing or the design of units etc etc. That's why I left (very fast), definitely not because of MBS or automine
The point is that knowing where to give your attention is what distinguishes good players from the greatest. Giving MBS and automine would take away the hard decision making on what to focus your limited apm to. This decision making takes place every single second, while you simultaneously have to do strategic decisions. The skill ceiling is reached in SC2 in so far that you don't need to do that decision making each second since macro is perfectly executed without too much effort and always optimal, so that you only need to do strategic decision which in so far are even in this case not as deep as in BW since it is usually only strategic, and not in the case of BW also tactical. That is, BW has also the tactical component of positioning, flanking, high ground advantage which takes place dynamically in the game as the game evolve in a series of mutual tactical decision with the opponent. This has a lot to do with the 12 unit limit which emphasizes this tactical play. If you implement infinite unit selection, its only going to be deathball vs deathball. Not these fine tactical plays, but rather back and forth who can outmuscle who better. It's not chess anymore but tug war. What is left is, as for SC2, the strategical component which is emphasized because everything else doesn't matter as much in winning the game. Artosis said that SC2 is more strategical. This is wrong. It emphasizes strategy just more but in the end doesn't have the strategic depth of BW of which tactics is just the 'dynamic strategy' which adjusts.
If you take away high skill ceiling from BW, you will eventually end up with SC2 which first bores the viewer due to every game feeling the same. Also it will bore the players since every game feels the same and also that you cannot distinguish oneselve from 'lesser' players as much, since strategy will be emphasized, which is often determined in the very early game in as such is very random. Emphasize this inherent randomness of strategy and you will basically have a game which more likely resembles a game of coin-flipping than an actual game. No one will want to play this game since improving your coin-flipping-prediction skills is not very desireable. However, if you emphasize tactics which is most important in the mid to late-game, it gives more room for a non-random component of the game, where the most-skilled can influence and win the game the most.
Most importantly what it does for a player is that he feels more fulfilled when winning, and less ragey when losing when he feels that despite losing, he made good decisions and generally played well and just lost because the opponent was better. In a game which focused on the randomness of strategy, this is not the case since winning or losing is usually determined by basically the build, or in the case of SC2 also when two deathballs go against each other. How is a win in this case fulfilling? How can you ever feel good even you are losing? How can the viewer ever appreciate the skill of a player when he already knows the outcome is predetermined in the early game by basically a coinflip, or in the late game by a coinflip. To me, SC2 basically boils down to a stretched out BW zvz game, where the early game is usually determined by the build which is basically random, and the end which is also pretty random except when it is clear that one has the much bigger mutaflock.
SC2 due to the dumbing down of the mechanics tried to introduce macromechanics to raise the skill-ceiling. The problem with that is that it didn't solve the problem at all. Why BW is so demanding and fun to play is because, as mentioned, the way decisions are to be made by the player in every single step, whether it is whether one should emphasize micro your unit at this location, in that location, whether to focus on eco micro, or macro. This way of different emphasize has created vastly different styles of players, which individually differ much in terms of what their emphasize is. July, Jaedong, Iris, Yellow, Boxer etc where micro intensive players, Gorush, Oov, Best where macro intensive players. In SC2, due to the way it is designed, no player can really distinguish themselves in style. Just look at how many players knew about Flashs smurf on afreeca by just playing against him. Sea just immediately knew: "This must be Flash, I can feel it". How many players do you think this would apply in SC2? With the SC2 macro mechanics, you already knew that the solution to the decision making is to always focus on these mechanics because first, they are important, and second they are easy to execute given that there is not much going on. However if in BW in the mid to lategame, one sees idle workers, it doesn't show a bad player necessarily, but maybe a player who knows that idle workers are not important to focus on in the grand scheme of things but other things, such as holding the expansion in here and there, or microing this unit to maximize damage made. The greatest player can of course everything perfectly. It's just ridiculous how when watching Jaedong vods, he never ever had idle workers from 4-5 bases. Taking away idle workers would make lesser B class progamers look like Jaedong so that they can never distinguish themselves. It would also make iccup D look like C players, because the former usually never bothered too much on that. Taking even more mechanics away would make D players look like A players. In the end, you will have scrubs beating progamers occasionally, which happened much too often in SC2 and resembled coinflipping rather than skill. Again, how can we ever justify it? Players don't stick around to play when they see lesser players being able to beat them. Viewers don't wanna watch if they see the game basically being a game of coinflips. It is no coincidence that SC2 never had a Bonjwa.
Don't get me wrong, someone who played BW for a long time would never ever want MBS, automine etc ever, and I don't get the feeling that you have played BW enough. Simplifying the game in mechanics would not create a game which outlives every other game.
Why do you think BW still lives on healthy and in Korea, much bigger than SC2 will ever be in the world combined? It is not because it caters to the casual player. A casual player will play a game for a few months and drop it for the newest shit. This is what blizzard wants. Making quick money from players and not really supporting a game. Rather, BW caters to the fans who see the beauty of skill. Those people stick around for decades. I don't ever see people sticking around with SC2 for much longer since it doesn't reward skill, and viewers cannot see how pros distinguish themselves from other pros since it emphasizes too much randomness. You cannot simply outplay others with simplified mechanics.
The mechanics should be untouched. End of discussion. Any dumbing down would make take away the longevity of the BW scene. What Blizzard can do is create a working B.net, maybe with matchmaking. Since this seems trivially easy to do, but Blizzard haven't done it, one can conclude that Blizzard simply doesn't care about BW. Many incidence in the past confirmed this narrative. Most patches in the past seemed rather as PR gags to promote the narrative of blizzard caring so much about even their old games.
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On top what I said:
Integration in Bnet launcher with native ICCup (War3Arena for WIII) support.
16: 9 support with fitting 16: 9 UI.
Worked sprites, but no new engine or new working things, just reworked spirtes (models in WIII).
Campaign with HD Render Movies, HD cut scenes, HD lobbies (in BW). Or like AoE HD did it with fan made mods formed into a new campaign/Addon.
Elitest would be happy, no new engine, no game changing mechanic, but massive amount of sells. A new, HD campaign would bring casuals and youtubers, the better sprites, a bit of marketing and bnet launcher (with better BNET like IC Cup or W3Arena) bring much more player online.
It is so easy to please casuals and elitists with a fair easy to make product, even when it is named BW HD or WIII HD.
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Yep, I think Clonester is right on the money with his assessment. Major turn offs for brood war are its technical issues and inconveniences before you can even start playing the game.
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On February 25 2016 00:29 duke91 wrote:
The mechanics should be untouched. End of discussion. Any dumbing down would make take away the longevity of the BW scene. What Blizzard can do is create a working B.net, maybe with matchmaking. Since this seems trivially easy to do, but Blizzard haven't done it, one can conclude that Blizzard simply doesn't care about BW. Many incidence in the past confirmed this narrative. Most patches in the past seemed rather as PR gags to promote the narrative of blizzard caring so much about even their old games.
There are other possibilities to increase the skillceiling without artificial limitations (and without breaking the game aka sc2 macro mechanics). I believe it is possible to create a difficult and good RTS with MBS and automine (like wc3). Only these two things wouldnt "break" BW.
Also thinking the whole problem of Sc2 is its automine and MBS is ignorant. Having stupid units, attacker advantage and a broken damage system are bigger problems to this game. MBS and Automine arent even mentionned in the sc2 community as a problem. Thats only a point you could bring up in this forum, because noone in sc2 would agree with you.
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If sc2 dies and bw really resurges, I will watch it as much as I watch sc2 right now.
But I know in my heart that I will never play it again. I am too competitive, I would feel bad being subpar, and it would be too difficult for me to get very very good at it again. The game is too hard and I am too old with too much "life" going on :/
My life has been filled with both bw and sc2, and I would have to say that I think BW is the superior game to play but I find sc2 to be the superior game to watch. Just in my opinion.
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On February 25 2016 00:29 duke91 wrote:If you implement infinite unit selection, its only going to be deathball vs deathball. Not these fine tactical plays, but rather back and forth who can outmuscle who better. It's not chess anymore but tug war. What is left is, as for SC2, the strategical component which is emphasized because everything else doesn't matter as much in winning the game.
I don't agree at all with this. Imagine you put 12 unit selection in SC2. You will still have deathballs. People would just put units in groups of 12 and click in a spot a few times then 1A2A3A4A to attack. The cause of deathballs is not unlimited selection, it is the pathing of units that fluidifies unit movement like water and removes obstructions and positionning. If you look at other games that have unlimited selection, they are less deathbally than SC2 : AoE2, Total Annihilation, etc. SC2 is way too deathbally because of its pathing and collision system, it's its worst flaw imo. The deathball effect is not something that BW sees, unless in very specific cases where you want that to happen, because you need space control, distance between units, pathways for retreat, splitting forces, etc. This is due to the mechanics and design of units movement and combat, rather than the 12 unit selection limit.
On February 25 2016 00:29 duke91 wrote:
If you take away high skill ceiling from BW, you will eventually end up with SC2 which first bores the viewer due to every game feeling the same. Also it will bore the players since every game feels the same and also that you cannot distinguish oneselve from 'lesser' players as much, since strategy will be emphasized, which is often determined in the very early game in as such is very random.
In my opinion, MBS and automine would not remove at all a high skill ceiling in BW. But I want to respond, because you said several times that strategy is very random and tactics is deeper, I don't agree with that at all. There are a few coin flips in the game due to fog of war and scout timings or possibilities, but on top of that there is a lot of strategic decision making in the game meshed with tactics. SC2 is lacking in all this compared to BW because of lesser design of units/buildings/techs, and because of lack of defender advantage due to pathing and other things, etc. These are the reasons why SC2 is lacking, not because of automine or MBS or even unlimited selection.
On February 25 2016 00:29 duke91 wrote:Don't get me wrong, someone who played BW for a long time would never ever want MBS, automine etc ever, and I don't get the feeling that you have played BW enough. Simplifying the game in mechanics would not create a game which outlives every other game.
I played Starcraft/BW since like 1999, and I have played it a lot, I'm a good player like B~ level for whatever that means, I have solid understanding of it and am able to win sometimes against very good players. BW has already shown it's pretty much undying (it never died)! But, I agree that simplifying/modifying/updating/whatchawatchawannacallit mechanics is unlikely to be the most important factor in making it shine brighter and longer.
The mechanics should be untouched. End of discussion.
I really think it's good to discuss^^ Seeing how it goes, even if I would personally like to see smart changes being tested and tried, right now I think that probably the best thing to do for safety and not splitting the community is that the mechanics be untouched indeed^^ But it's cool to discuss^^
On February 25 2016 00:29 duke91 wrote:What Blizzard can do is create a working B.net, maybe with matchmaking. Since this seems trivially easy to do, but Blizzard haven't done it, one can conclude that Blizzard simply doesn't care about BW. Many incidence in the past confirmed this narrative. Most patches in the past seemed rather as PR gags to promote the narrative of blizzard caring so much about even their old games.
100% agree. I remember, when WC3 came out, that's when Blizzard stopped maintaining the public servers of BW ^^ It was pretty sad, at this moment it was obvious already the company was only interested in profiting from new products, they launched their own WC3 tourney circuit at that moment through WorldWideInvitational ^^ They used to kill hackers of ladder with infinite points (and repeatedly stated they had an aggressive stance towards it and would keep doing so), at that moment they stopped, they just wouldn't do anything to support the game anymore and the public servers slowly died. That's a very important reason why BW lost more players than it could have imo. You need all the guys who put their Starcraft CD into their computer, launch the game and just connect to Bnet without having ever heard of ICCup find that there is life there and dive into it again. How do you get to know about ICCup or Fish if you only know about Starcraft? It takes way too much work!
Not to mention originally communities of D2, BW and WC3 (and some IRC client, and also freaking WC2 and Diablo haha) coexisted on the same chat which was really really awesome 
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About MBS, in AoE2 the last official fan patch has it , I am not sure if HD has it too?, you can turn it on, and nobody uses it in a rated or tournament game, it is not the "right" way of playing it. Attracting new guys to the game is actually easy, made two new xpacs with campaigns (you dont need to change the mechanics of the game just put some new content), put the HD thing in the name and release a full buggy game like MS made with AoE2:HD. That is the answer too for somebody who was asking why the people dont play the competitive AOE2 in HD: it is because MS butchered the releases and they have bugs that 2 years later havent being fixed,.
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On February 25 2016 01:14 travis wrote:
If sc2 dies and bw really resurges, I will watch it as much as I watch sc2 right now.
But I know in my heart that I will never play it again. I am too competitive, I would feel bad being subpar, and it would be too difficult for me to get very very good at it again. The game is too hard and I am too old with too much "life" going on :/
My life has been filled with both bw and sc2, and I would have to say that I think BW is the superior game to play but I find sc2 to be the superior game to watch. Just in my opinion.
Good, that somebody pointed it out.
BW is very demanding and time consuming to be played competitively. But isn't it because the skill of an average player is already too high and we have too few newcomers? And those who come are mostly thanks to SC2. They show up and get stomped into the ground with humiliating 2-25 record on ICCup. Disappointed they leave and stay passive watchers forever.
However, I still remember how much fun we had with friends on a home LAN, while each of us barely reached D.
What I think could turn the tide is a HD reissue and Battle.net update, as a lot of ppl already said. Afterwards we can have an advertising campaign and new tournaments. Until then we are doomed to watch afreeca streamers getting old.
This is where we are right now, BW either gets an update or dies slow death with old-timers like myself posting sad memoirs every weekend until tl cuts BW section out as they already partly did.
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an important point in this discussion to me is that we can't rely on wishful thinking too much. Whether you think BW just needs a graphic update or whether you think MBS and automine should be included doesn't affect that Blizzard will not put the necessary efforts into the development of a new competitive gaming platform/overhaul for BW.
Why do i say that with certainty? As some have pointed out above, Blizzard cares for their financial surplus in sales and will stop supporting non f2p models rigorously when they don't sell anymore. We have seen that in BW and many other games alike. Now, they may (big question mark) be interested in releasing a graphic overhaul along those points discussed by Clonester, but they will not provide and maintain a valid online platform for it. By that i mean a battle net interface with decent support like modern Launcher, integrated community bugfixes, tournaments, support and hack-free ladder. They are not going to do that simply because it's not worth the investment to maintain this environment for the amount of copies they'd sell.
Now i want to address to second point as well: Clonester has mentioned the possibility of Blizzard perhaps cooperating/supporting ICCup to promote their new enhanced product as it was done with Netease with War 3. In my humble experience as ICCup Admin and from what senior Admin's told me (who worked for ICCup from 2007 onward) Blizzard entertainment has been always very opposed to the idea of cooperating with third party fans and supporting their software and servers. China is a different case, because China is basically a lost market due to the rampant copyright problems, but i don't see this happening sadly for the ICCup and Fish server. At the same time i can assure you that we would be very positive about such an option should it really come up and if the remake would cater to the competitive fans.
I don't want to be the negative nancy, but we need to get real in regards what we expect Blizzard to do for this 18 year old game and show our support for the community effort that has made this game great for the 10+ past years. Broodwar lives because of it's unpaid supporters and it will stop to be healthy when they stop to put in the vast amount of time and effort. I don't spefically talk about ICCup alone, i also mean the people who program bugfixes, organize tours, write great articles and news and all that comes along with it.
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Jeez, sometimes I think, just open source the game like they did with C&C and throw it on kickstarter.
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On February 25 2016 03:34 Cele wrote:
an important point in this discussion to me is that we can't rely on wishful thinking too much. Whether you think BW just needs a graphic update or whether you think MBS and automine should be included doesn't affect that Blizzard will not put the necessary efforts into the development of a new competitive gaming platform/overhaul for BW.
Why do i say that with certainty? As some have pointed out above, Blizzard cares for their financial surplus in sales and will stop supporting non f2p models rigorously when they don't sell anymore. We have seen that in BW and many other games alike. Now, they may (big question mark) be interested in releasing a graphic overhaul along those points discussed by Clonester, but they will not provide and maintain a valid online platform for it. By that i mean a battle net interface with decent support like modern Launcher, integrated community bugfixes, tournaments, support and hack-free ladder. They are not going to do that simply because it's not worth the investment to maintain this environment for the amount of copies they'd sell.
Since Blizzard is switching to a f2p model (Hearthstone, Heroes), they might consider to overhaul BW and make it f2p and just implement it in their bnet 2. Of course this scenario would be ideal and thus highly unlikely.
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United States4149 Posts
On February 25 2016 00:29 duke91 wrote:Show nested quote +On February 24 2016 22:52 ProMeTheus112 wrote:On February 24 2016 14:52 Jealous wrote:You're right in that the game could be even more demanding in this regard. If I remember correctly, WarCraft I had a group selection limit of 4 and no hotkeys. WarCraft II had group selection limit of 9. However, I feel that StarCraft hit that sweet spot where there is just enough dividing your attention without being ridiculous and not simplified enough for you to be able to do everything with two hotkeys. Because of this balance, we can appreciate a player's macro in Brood War in the lategame with awe, because we know the effort they went through in order to achieve it, or a player's army movement, or their ability to Storm perfectly during an engagement, so on and so forth. It is because those tasks are mechanically trying that their achievement can be appreciated, their exceptional execution lauded. No one bats an eyelid when someone moves a massive ball around the map in StarCraft II, or when they have perfect macro off 16 Warp Gates in different bases.
As for your last question, I think that the answer is highly subjective. The amount of people that switched fully from BW to SC2 AND vice versa are testament to that. You made fair points about attention. In my opinion BW would still be highly demanding in that attention resource management with automine and MBS, because there are a ton more things to do. I mean, MBS makes a significant difference to that, but automine doesn't really, so I understand this argument for MBS (only by testing would we know how demanding BW would be in attention resource management with MBS, in my opinion it would still be very demanding in a smarter way : it's not like we spend 20% of the time in game producing units, and it's not like there aren't a ton of other things to do and even I think things we actually don't do at all because there is too much to do :D it's good to relieve that, especially for the less hardcore players, but actually for everyone, imo), but not for automine : it's clear to me automine would not impact this significantly. Can't put MBS and automine in the same box, I guess. As for SC2, I think reasons why player have left have more to do with the bad pathing or the design of units etc etc. That's why I left (very fast), definitely not because of MBS or automine The point is that knowing where to give your attention is what distinguishes good players from the greatest. Giving MBS and automine would take away the hard decision making on what to focus your limited apm to. This decision making takes place every single second, while you simultaneously have to do strategic decisions. The skill ceiling is reached in SC2 in so far that you don't need to do that decision making each second since macro is perfectly executed without too much effort and always optimal, so that you only need to do strategic decision which in so far are even in this case not as deep as in BW since it is usually only strategic, and not in the case of BW also tactical. That is, BW has also the tactical component of positioning, flanking, high ground advantage which takes place dynamically in the game as the game evolve in a series of mutual tactical decision with the opponent. This has a lot to do with the 12 unit limit which emphasizes this tactical play. If you implement infinite unit selection, its only going to be deathball vs deathball. Not these fine tactical plays, but rather back and forth who can outmuscle who better. It's not chess anymore but tug war. What is left is, as for SC2, the strategical component which is emphasized because everything else doesn't matter as much in winning the game. Artosis said that SC2 is more strategical. This is wrong. It emphasizes strategy just more but in the end doesn't have the strategic depth of BW of which tactics is just the 'dynamic strategy' which adjusts. If you take away high skill ceiling from BW, you will eventually end up with SC2 which first bores the viewer due to every game feeling the same. Also it will bore the players since every game feels the same and also that you cannot distinguish oneselve from 'lesser' players as much, since strategy will be emphasized, which is often determined in the very early game in as such is very random. Emphasize this inherent randomness of strategy and you will basically have a game which more likely resembles a game of coin-flipping than an actual game. No one will want to play this game since improving your coin-flipping-prediction skills is not very desireable. However, if you emphasize tactics which is most important in the mid to late-game, it gives more room for a non-random component of the game, where the most-skilled can influence and win the game the most. It is no coincidence that SC2 never had a Bonjwa. Don't get me wrong, someone who played BW for a long time would never ever want MBS, automine etc ever, and I don't get the feeling that you have played BW enough. Simplifying the game in mechanics would not create a game which outlives every other game. Why do you think BW still lives on healthy and in Korea, much bigger than SC2 will ever be in the world combined? It is not because it caters to the casual player. A casual player will play a game for a few months and drop it for the newest shit. This is what blizzard wants. Making quick money from players and not really supporting a game. Rather, BW caters to the fans who see the beauty of skill. Those people stick around for decades. I don't ever see people sticking around with SC2 for much longer since it doesn't reward skill, and viewers cannot see how pros distinguish themselves from other pros since it emphasizes too much randomness. You cannot simply outplay others with simplified mechanics. The mechanics should be untouched. End of discussion. Any dumbing down would make take away the longevity of the BW scene. What Blizzard can do is create a working B.net, maybe with matchmaking. Since this seems trivially easy to do, but Blizzard haven't done it, one can conclude that Blizzard simply doesn't care about BW. Many incidence in the past confirmed this narrative. Most patches in the past seemed rather as PR gags to promote the narrative of blizzard caring so much about even their old games.
First off, SC2 did have a bonjwa, arguably 2-3.
Secondly, why do you think BW is nowhere near as healthy outside of Korea? As what OP was talking about before, Age of Empires/WC3/SC2 is nowhere near as mechanically demanidng as Starcraft yet it still has a healthy playerbase. This idea of IT MUST BE SUPER MECHANICALLY DEMANDING OR IT WILL HAVE NO LONGEVITY/PLAYBERBASE doesn't hold up. I think you're being incredibly arrogant and dismissive of other games' audiences. "how pros distinguish themselves from other pros since it emphasizes too much randomness" How can you even say shit like that?
I totally get that THAT super complex and demanding is the Brood War you fell in love with and shouldn't be touched, I totally get that, but I disagree that it must be complex for it to sustain itself.
Ultimately, with every game, you have to make sacrifices if you want to encourage a new growing audience. Foreign Brood War is not growing at all, that's why myself and others have brought those discussions up.
And I don't think Blizzard patches are just PR gags... they care about their old games. Hell, they went back years after Brood War came out and added replays and other features. That doesn't scream PR gag to me. Meanwhile other RTS games come out and cant keep their servers up for more than 3 years.
On February 25 2016 04:15 404AlphaSquad wrote:Show nested quote +On February 25 2016 03:34 Cele wrote:
an important point in this discussion to me is that we can't rely on wishful thinking too much. Whether you think BW just needs a graphic update or whether you think MBS and automine should be included doesn't affect that Blizzard will not put the necessary efforts into the development of a new competitive gaming platform/overhaul for BW.
Why do i say that with certainty? As some have pointed out above, Blizzard cares for their financial surplus in sales and will stop supporting non f2p models rigorously when they don't sell anymore. We have seen that in BW and many other games alike. Now, they may (big question mark) be interested in releasing a graphic overhaul along those points discussed by Clonester, but they will not provide and maintain a valid online platform for it. By that i mean a battle net interface with decent support like modern Launcher, integrated community bugfixes, tournaments, support and hack-free ladder. They are not going to do that simply because it's not worth the investment to maintain this environment for the amount of copies they'd sell.
Since Blizzard is switching to a f2p model (Hearthstone, Heroes), they might consider to overhaul BW and make it f2p and just implement it in their bnet 2. Of course this scenario would be ideal and thus highly unlikely.
That makes 0 sense. Overwatch/LOTV/WoW/Diablo aren't F2P. They'd sell BW, I think.
On February 25 2016 04:00 letian wrote:
Jeez, sometimes I think, just open source the game like they did with C&C and throw it on kickstarter.
I don't think that'd help. Brood War is notoriously spaghetti code.
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I don't think that'd help. Brood War is notoriously spaghetti code.
Interesting, I didn't know that. And that's why there are so many nice glitches in the game I guess.
I wonder how it would all work out if not for all those random reaver shots...
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On February 25 2016 05:52 letian wrote:Interesting, I didn't know that. And that's why there are so many nice glitches in the game I guess. I wonder how it would all work out if not for all those random reaver shots...
if rvrs always connected on the best target, it would be imba. You'd see them dumb down PvP to a reaver fest :D
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