EPTAlso, be aware that money changes everything, especially if the admins know the donors. I'm not sure if that's going to be a fine atmosphere.
Next SC Patch: The Good, The Bad, The Worse - Page 3
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GeckoXp
Germany2016 Posts
Also, be aware that money changes everything, especially if the admins know the donors. I'm not sure if that's going to be a fine atmosphere. | ||
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B-royal
Belgium1330 Posts
This game is too perfect to not provide the opportunity to people to play it against each other in a comfortable manner. Reading all this information about the ICCup server, staff and administration is quite disheartening and leaves one to wonder how amazing ICCup could be for starcraft... | ||
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Wrath
3174 Posts
On March 16 2016 19:07 mca64Launcher_ wrote: mca64Launcher also wont be updated What do you mean won't be updated? | ||
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deus_073
Romania187 Posts
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GeckoXp
Germany2016 Posts
Against money: - Admins tend to do biased decisions once money is involved, even more than they do either way - probable legal problems with Blizzard Entertainment incoming, it's a pirate server after all (note how ICCup is an area which laughs at IP laws) - it gets super sisserious and people get the wrong idea of being entitled to service Against Teamliquid: - I'm all for diversity, the more pages, the better - Teamliquid does only support English and is quite American. Most of the players are from different areas and have a different mindset entirely. Not sure if that won't clash sooner or later. - Teamliquid has the tendency to be super sisserious about things, which has its ups and downs - Teamliquid has the tendency to focus on Korea for most parts, whereas I'd like to have foreign admins target foreigners only - for the same reason most TL staff people are most likely more interested in Korea, not sure they'd spend as mch time on foreign issues, which are a lot more boring Against ICCup: - Rule 6, developer is lazy - is good Russian architecture, monument to MS Frontpage, yes yes please note, none of the points is targeted against Teamliquid or their members, nor against the BW admins of ICCup. Also, there are no "fragile beginnings", ICCup already exists. If anything, the fragile beginnings are to be expected on Teamliquid or any new platform, because of stuff you have to test in reality. Literally the only reason to keep ICCup is that the system works. It's incredibly hard to build a working server, else Birdie would have had success a few years back in no time. | ||
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Cele
Germany4016 Posts
On March 17 2016 02:57 deus_073 wrote: I agree the current TL community may not be that big, but the potential is surely here. I'm confident TL has a lot more traffic than iccup. The chances of growing the player base are much higher here. @Cele, I highly doubt that. Even if that were the case, you're saying moving the server here and raising money for dedicated staff wouldn't be a solution? @deus: for the last year (or so) we as ICCup have been very active in cooperating with TL.net for various events. We support their TLS Champs, we did support the TLS Cups in smurf checking, providing casters etc. From that, i think i have some impression of how the structure of the TL staff is. I don't mean to talk bad about it; in fact im a big fan and friendly with many of them. But my impression is: TL staff is set up to achieve, what their focus is: providing coverage and articles as well as some tournaments. They do that gloriously and we are happy to give them a platform in ICCup to host events, but i think there's not to many people who have a great deal of experience with hosting a server and dealing with everything that comes along with it (tech support, anti hack, ladder support etc). ICCup is well structured in that regard, but as previously pointed out, we lack two very important things: - manpower to pursue all the projects we want to pursue - the amount of access to the main code to make meaningful adjustments, since, the Server is run with a Dota 1 focus and by a crew of russian dev's who, perhaps rightfully so, see ICCUP BW not as their prime concern. Let me explain something about the foreign userbase: despite all the meaningful discussions taking place on this page, the vast majority of users does not frequent TL often or at all. Many russian, former CIS states, and southamerican users do not use TL, in fact the amount of users who is very active here and plays a lot on the server is quite limited. This means that a server hosted by TL will not reach the amount of users we would wish for and would risk to produce a split community, where some users still use the ICCup server and some use the new TL server. What we should do: If the described scenario comes up and im not sure it will tbh: We need to make a unified effort to make a new server a sucessful project. That would include the currently very dedicated ICCup admins, tech savy persons who have done a lot for this community like xboi, MCA, Birdie and others. But i can not stress enough that a new server can only florish if it a) does not neglect the non english users b) is not run in competition to ICC, but as it's sucessor Well, that's my perception of the issue at least i don't claim to have certainty on this subject as that would actually be quite foolish :> | ||
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Cele
Germany4016 Posts
On March 17 2016 03:27 B-royal wrote: Reading all this information about the ICCup server, staff and administration is quite disheartening and leaves one to wonder how amazing ICCup could be for starcraft... Well, you gotta not mix things up here. Easy answer: ICC BW staff -> very dedicated, hard working nerds who try to make us happy in their free time. ICCup ownership -> more interested in the Dota section then BW, rightfully so, the BW section does not create a lot of income. thus: very limited ability/willingness to change things. | ||
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deus_073
Romania187 Posts
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Cele
Germany4016 Posts
On March 17 2016 04:52 deus_073 wrote: I understand your points of view. I 100% agree this supposed new server should not be in competition. What would be ideal, though not sure if possible, is to keep the current IP so all the non-english users remain on the server. Not sure how that would work, but I agree that most players don't visit these forums that often. Having said that, the power of TL to convert gamers to sc players is undeniable imo. The reverse does not apply. i would support such a project if it was on the horizon and continue my staff work there. Yet, i fail to see who can make Ant an offer for it. looking at our statistics @ icc i have to doubt your second point though. A big chunk of the users here don't play on ICCup regular. A small amount of users have joined us after Tastosis did their 15k viewer cast for VNSL, but you'd be suprised how little actually. | ||
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GeckoXp
Germany2016 Posts
On March 17 2016 04:52 deus_073 wrote: I understand your points of view. I 100% agree this supposed new server should not be in competition. What would be ideal, though not sure if possible, is to keep the current IP so all the non-english users remain on the server. Not sure how that would work, but I agree that most players don't visit these forums that often. Having said that, the power of TL to convert gamers to sc players is undeniable imo. The reverse does not apply. I really don't want to disappoint you, but Teamliquid and most foreign events failed to convert gamers into sc players (doesn't mean they were bad). There are single cases for which it worked, but the major leagues for the best players simply didn't fulfill this goal. I had the benefit to see stats on ICCup for a long time, some of them were disheartening, others were great, yet others didn't do anything. It really depends on the style of events. For instance, the opening and the publicity of the first SSLs had literally no impact on ICCup's numbers whatsoever, leaving out the numbers of downloads for 'professional' replays. It doesn't matter if a Flash, Bisu or whoever returns. People will watch, yes, but not play. Same goes for casts by Tastosis - nice for some, but no impact. People dwell on nostalgia, rather than joining the servers. Especially for Korean events go: Some might try the Fish server, then stop a few days after, as there is no connected community. Then there'd be the fail-events, of which we had quite a few. I remember the ISLs, which were horrible when it came to effects. It sounded great, but it wasn't, especially the first edition. Great viewer numbers, great increase of ladder activity, so what was the downside? Only the already highly active players generated more training matches and that was it. To maintain the ladder event almost all resources were re-focussed on ladder complaints and technical issues. What was left out was the maintenance of the clan league, especially the lower divisions, where the beginners trained, same went for the beginner programme, replay section and in parts the ordinary news and forum support. The focus was to "appear professional", not helping the server catering to players of all ranks and interests. As a matter of fact, even translations for Russian and Korean issues (e.g. updated rules) had been delayed, pissing off 70% of the user base only a few weeks later. This went for a couple of events, most of them being organized by English speakers, the biggest issue being either binding too much admin power for too little pay-off (new players), or colliding with own / other and more effective third party events. Be that as it may, it wasn't TLs fault in most scenarios, and even when there were problems, it wasn't as bad as it was in other cases. The third class of events were organized by the East Europeans, which indeed brought new blood and promoted semi-known people into stars, namely Defiler and Netwars events. Some of the Nation Wars helped, especially the one sponsored by SBWI, even though the effect was temporary. In my opinion, the downside of promoting on Teamliquid is that you activate a ton of nostalgic people, who really don't care much for the existing community. They like to discuss the tales of "back when" and then make out plans for a "recreation of the scene", while being deaf to what's really needed. This can drive you really crazy, especially if some nobody from the SCII forums imposes his thoughts on reality, fighting with the collected power of political correctness. If TL.net can turn this around and come up with a project to cater to those who are genuinely interested (!), there might be a chance. And again, more diverse advertisment for such a programme is a must. TL.net's range is limited, it needs to add other portals, such as the national pages, reddit and god knows where else you could farm for nerds. To just underline my point, Western Europe, the US and Canada combined used to make about 10 - 15% of the active player base. Whereas Russia alone made about 30%, South America another 30% (both scenes don't really read here), the rest was basically Central American countries, Poland, Korea and China (who also mostly don't read here). Now lean back and guess what kind of audience TL.net appeals to and how much it has to convert in reality to just equal the numbers of ICCup. edit: Again, no offense meant to the staff people here, or many people commenting in these forums. The majority is helpful and offers great reads. As Cele pointed out, cooperation is key to really activate new people and recently the most steps seemed to at least have the right intentions. I'm glad all people involved in key positions (namely 2pac and Cele) are incapable of being angry, so that's another stone out of the way :x | ||
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B-royal
Belgium1330 Posts
Since many tournament style of events don't entice people to actually play the game, I think like some other people have mentioned before, a revamp of possibly the graphics and "infrastructure" (automated match making, no color bugs, no crashes, steam integration??,...) similar to age of empires II HD will be the only way to actually get more people playing brood war. | ||
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TwiggyWan
France332 Posts
On March 16 2016 08:12 razorsuKe wrote: The very first thing that needs to be done, if anything, is simply implement Lan Latency so battlenet can be playable without Chaos Launcher or other third party add-ons. Even playing UMS on iccup, more players tend to not have AH on and it's still frustrating to have an input delayed by a full second or more. Are the battle.net servers still operational by the way? I would like to see a "connect to server" option allowing to reach ICCUP, Fish, etc, without needing a special launcher too. | ||
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Probemicro
3708 Posts
On March 17 2016 06:12 GeckoXp wrote: In my opinion, the downside of promoting on Teamliquid is that you activate a ton of nostalgic people, who really don't care much for the existing community. They like to discuss the tales of "back when" and then make out plans for a "recreation of the scene", while being deaf to what's really needed. This can drive you really crazy, especially if some nobody from the SCII forums imposes his thoughts on reality, fighting with the collected power of political correctness. lol also i find it amusing stats means so much to iccup people, you are talking about a 15+ year old game with dated (even vomit-inducing for certain kids) graphics and one of the highest mechanical difficulty of all games that exists. the only games i think that surpass BW in terms of mechanical difficulty are certain rhythm games. not to mention RTS is never a mainstream popular game genre at any point in history with the exception of Korea in the early 2000s, how many people are you expecting to attract again, never mind retain? only just shows how many blind Tastosis fanboys there are, thinking they are magic wands or something smh. also people (especially the same nostalgic and casual sc2-centric people that you abhor!) love to talk about "BW remake" or "HD remake". No matter how many nice new aesthetic features you implement, at its core its still the same difficult game, the retention rate will still be very very low. if you start adding in non-aesthetic, "gameplay improving" features like MBS, automining and other modern conveniences, its not going to be the same game, it will attract a big uproar in the korean/chinese scene and cause divisiveness in all communities. just like in aoe2 where you have the veterans playing vanilla aoe2 on the 3rd party Voobly server and the rest plays AOE2 HD. also you realise, why would blizzard even do that? ask for modern graphics and mechanics and they will just kindly point you in the direction of sc2.. ALSO as time passes on we coming to a new generation of gamers where there are people that think LoL is a difficult strenous game, never mind games like SC. now you ask yourself what kind of retention rate are you expecting again? also on topic since this is only a new technical patch i would think all the servers will eventually (sooner or later) adopt the patch once they fix any 3rd party plugin/s that might break with it. small exception with the chinese VS server, unless the new patch addresses their UDP needs too. not sure about how it will influence the mapmaking community (with all this talk of EUD) but i assume they will adapt as well. so i don't get why this is even a thread. | ||
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WinterViewbot420
345 Posts
On March 17 2016 11:21 Probemicro wrote: the only games i think that surpass BW in terms of mechanical difficulty are certain rhythm games The skill cap is infinite, but mechanically speaking BW is a lot harder than O2Jam, LR2, etc | ||
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Probemicro
3708 Posts
On March 17 2016 12:01 WinterViewbot420 wrote: The skill cap is infinite, but mechanically speaking BW is a lot harder than O2Jam, LR2, etc yeah probably, but i get seriously frightened everytime i look at a pro JP rhythm player. you cannot deny that the amount of practice and talent behind that is any diminished compared to a pro BW player | ||
HaN-
France1920 Posts
On March 17 2016 06:12 GeckoXp wrote: In my opinion, the downside of promoting on Teamliquid is that you activate a ton of nostalgic people, who really don't care much for the existing community. They like to discuss the tales of "back when" and then make out plans for a "recreation of the scene", while being deaf to what's really needed. And what is really needed? | ||
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WinterViewbot420
345 Posts
On March 17 2016 12:06 Probemicro wrote: yeah probably, but i get seriously frightened everytime i look at a pro JP rhythm player. you cannot deny that the amount of practice and talent behind that is any diminished compared to a pro BW player It just looks a lot harder, it has the same problem that applies to StarCraft in general, including SC2, which is the initial skill jump. Not just because of mechanical difficulty, but it's just so unique. It's not a game you can just pick up, it takes a few days to even read. It's like learning another alphabet and once you get it down you're just fine, whereas with StarCraft your skill slowly increases over several months or years. Source: shit o2jam player, but better than average | ||
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Probemicro
3708 Posts
On March 17 2016 12:12 WinterViewbot420 wrote: whereas with StarCraft your skill slowly increases over several months or years. ohh so instead in rhythm games every beginning players can magically learn how to do an S on an ultra difficult map with just a few weeks of practice? wowww. lol im through reasoning with you. | ||
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WinterViewbot420
345 Posts
On March 17 2016 12:21 Probemicro wrote: ohh so instead in rhythm games every beginning players can magically learn how to do an S on an ultra difficult map with just a few weeks of practice? wowww. lol im through reasoning with you. My point was the mechanical skill required, which you brought up. Improvement in rhythm games comes down to how well you can visually process the notes falling and eventually physical stamina. StarCraft is not like this. It's not a yes or no situation, there are so many variables and so many different ways to do the same thing. | ||
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GeckoXp
Germany2016 Posts
On March 17 2016 11:21 Probemicro wrote: (...) not sure about how it will influence the mapmaking community (with all this talk of EUD) but i assume they will adapt as well. so i don't get why this is even a thread. It's a thread, because xboi, rightfully so, expects that it'll be a problem to adapt for ICCup and other parts of the foreign scene. As for the rest of your quote goes, it boils down to On March 17 2016 12:08 HaN- wrote: And what is really needed? On March 17 2016 11:21 Probemicro wrote: lol also i find it amusing stats means so much to iccup people (...) only just shows how many blind Tastosis fanboys there are, thinking they are magic wands or something smh. also people (especially the same nostalgic and casual sc2-centric people that you abhor!) love to talk about "BW remake" or "HD remake". No matter how many nice new aesthetic features you implement, at its core its still the same difficult game, the retention rate will still be very very low. (...) ALSO as time passes on we coming to a new generation of gamers where there are people that think LoL is a difficult strenous game, never mind games like SC. now you ask yourself what kind of retention rate are you expecting again? I'm not sure I understood you correctly. Stats don't mean much to "ICCup" people. To the owners it matters a lot, like for any other portal. They want to spend their limited resources on what attracts most visitors. This is not Brood War for ICCup. As for the server admins goes, they never really cared what generates the most traffic or attracts the most players. Sometimes this was a stuipd decision, sometimes it wasn't. The leagues still happened and they still do, nobody takes offense in TLS/TLC not attracting players. It might sound as if it did, but it doesn't. I'm myself am happy that at least that league goes on for now. To the rest goes, yes I'm aware that it's incredibly hard to get new people to play the game. Therefore a new patch might really be helpful. In parts the younger players will never touch Brood War, either the genre is not appealing, the mechanics, the looks or whatnot. It's personal preference and I'm fine with them not enjoying BW as much as I did. However, Brood War still is a great game, but it's hard to get it to run properly. If a patch helps with that, fixes color bugs, makes it playable on bigger screens without W-Mode, adds LanLat, Antihack and works on routing issues, it is definitely a chance for the servers to get new people in and re-activate some of the older players. Yet, these new players need a good environment to play and train, simply to make up for the mechanical difficulty that is the game. I really loved the beginner leagues hosted by L_Master and others, these were such a great idea. I also liked that ICCup used to have a training program, which was never extended. Why not build on top of that? As for pages like Teamliquid goes - they should definitely keep up the good work with implementing the re-streams, tour coverage and tournaments. But, maybe, if such low level leagues happen again, they could use their power to advertise them more. Not just tolerate that they were hosted, but link them on mainspace, add some "if you want to play yourself, check this league out" addendum to hype posts. Hurts nobody. There's plenty of other stuff that wasn't done in the past, such as cooperation between pages, but that's really the past. Seems to work to some extent for now. | ||
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