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Someone called Teflon posted this on battlenet and wanted it posted here. I agree about the stuff about the top casters not using their platform to get improvements for the game -personally, I gave up all hope of the casters helping when they started saying Starcraft 2 was the best game ever - as though Broodwar had never existed!
Anyway, here's the post:-
(I would respectfully ask that people read through the entire thing before l making responses. My fellow gamers (insert Mengsk-voice) - I come to you in the wake of recent events to issue a call for reason AND to provide you with something new to consider.
1. Introduction - the answer to the Incontrol-question
All right. I won't even introduce myself since that is not important. What is important is what has been happening lately. I have seen a few, long and badly written posts here and on TL.net made by people who want to save Starcraft II as a pinnacle esport but which sadly degenerate into balance whine and suggestions But posts like that are needed. We need more posts like them ON BATTLE.NET and on Reddit.
A while ago Incontrol wanted to create discussion on the subject of what we can do for Starcraft II. I propose a new approach, which in a nutshell goes as follows - Starcraft II community must die faster in order to bring about a better game. THIS POST IS NOT ABOUT WHAT KIND OF CHANGES SHOULD BE MADE. We are in this together - we have all seen the slow decline of Starcraft II, hence, we, as players of this fine, fine game, agree in spirit that something must happen to maintain the current form of the game and viewership. I am analytically trained enough to realize that 1v1 game can never beat team-games due to multiple reasons (reasons Khaldor summed best by saying "whatever goes wrong, you can blame someone else) - I am not here asking for a miracle that will bring back the BW-era viewership in Korea, I am simply answering the question posed by Incontrol.
2. Someone has to step up (sorry Strelok, you aren't a big enough name)
All of the current community personalities keep saying how Starcraft is still in good shape but as long as major personalities wont take the risk of shouting onstage for Blizzard to change the game, nothing will change. Big companies understand only one thing. Power through publicity. What we need is more well-thought bad publicity. The game doesnt need pointless balance whining. Balance whining wont bring about a bigger playerbase (although it will help). We dont need forum trolls saying that Starcraft II is dying. We need well-articulated posts illuminating how bad the game is. For Starcraft II to change, the community must stop typing random, pointless Blizzard-hatred and instead, make a genuine stand. MC and Strelok have made long posts on TL and at least Strelok made on Battle.net as well about the state of the game - WE NEED MORE. We need more players who love the game truly shouting out their dissappointment.
Most professionals are content with the state of the game or aren't speaking up. But a few content professionals will not keep the game afloat. Hence, I am really putting my faith in the ability of people to complain intelligently online. Good thing I am not betting money on this.
3. It is not dying fast enough
A lot of people saying Starcraft II is dying. Not really - the player-base outside Korea is still huge. And as such, it will take a long time for it to die. Too long time. What I am saying here is this - if Starcraft II and the community around it dies too slowly, Blizzard will consider that the profit they will get from not changing the game at all with Legacy of the Void is still worth the investment. The game and the community needs to start dying faster so that it will be un-economical for Blizzard to simply shovel another bland expansion our way.
We must force Blizzard to actually realize that without radical changes in the multiplayer, all the work that has already been put into the last expansion will not be a positive number they can present to the people who expect their games to make profit.
4. Personalities, I am calling you out
I really hate that the community figure-heads, like Artosis, Day9 and such keep saying how much they love Starcraft II without really risking anything for its future. I love pretty much every caster and content-guy involved with Starcraft II, their hard work and their passion. But they need to use all the publicity they have gained over the years. Yes, its a risk that they will have some problems about making such a statement since their income is directly linked to being PR-guys of Starcraft. But consider this - if the current trends continue, this game and the community around it will die and they will be out of jobs anyways. Sure, they might find jobs at some other esports venture. But they would be the people who abandoned Starcraft II without truly giving it their all.
5. TL;DR / Conclusion
I have here tried to provide an alternative way of viewing the current slow decline of Starcraft. I am not calling for people to start spamming TL.net with idiotic forum-posts. I am calling for those who have the means to make a true impact to step up and try to make changes happen.
(and yes, I will be flamed for this. I expect that. Every flaming post defending the personalities will bumb this thread higher, every bumb will make this thread read by more people. So go ahead, flame away. In the end, by flaming me you are saving esports)
[and one last thing - since I've been a lurker @ TL.net for a million years, well, five and my original account died years ago and since my new one cant post in the general section - if someone has the balls, post this there - this isnt balance whine/changes-discussion, this doesn't break any of the forum rules]
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You don't really say anything apart from "famous personalities need to tell Blizzard what needs to be done to improve the game".
Short of a radical re-imagining of how SC2 plays I don't think there'll be much difference. SC2 is not as popular as LoL because it is way, way harder for low skilled players to play the game and have a good time. SC2 is a very demanding, taxing, low reward, punishing game, whereas LoL can be enjoyed by low skilled players.
Does it really matter? If 100,000 people tune in to major SC2 events and 300,000 people tune in to major LoL events, that's great - add Dota 2, FPS etc to the pile and you've got more than half a million people watching eSports. That's freaking awesome. You don't hear people saying a sport is dying because it gets less viewership than another sport. More people watch Football than Hockey - doesn't mean that the hockey community isn't strong and that it isn't as good a game.
Any issues with the game lie way beyond what complaining about balance will achieve. LotV will likely shuffle everything around again, so perhaps after that has been released we can take a look at the future of Starcraft.
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Why would you post this if you didn't even write it yourself? 
On September 16 2013 19:16 Maasked wrote:Show nested quote +On September 16 2013 19:13 Larkin wrote:
You don't really say anything apart from "famous personalities need to tell Blizzard what needs to be done to improve the game".
Short of a radical re-imagining of how SC2 plays I don't think there'll be much difference. SC2 is not as popular as LoL because it is way, way harder for low skilled players to play the game and have a good time. SC2 is a very demanding, taxing, low reward, punishing game, whereas LoL can be enjoyed by low skilled players.
Does it really matter? If 100,000 people tune in to major SC2 events and 300,000 people tune in to major LoL events, that's great - add Dota 2, FPS etc to the pile and you've got more than half a million people watching eSports. That's freaking awesome. You don't hear people saying a sport is dying because it gets less viewership than another sport. More people watch Football than Hockey - doesn't mean that the hockey community isn't strong and that it isn't as good a game.
Any issues with the game lie way beyond what complaining about balance will achieve. LotV will likely shuffle everything around again, so perhaps after that has been released we can take a look at the future of Starcraft. One thing: Hockey gets less and less casted games each year, with shorter seasons and more salary cuts. Just sayin...
With global warming, Ice Hockey is a sport of the past! Next up, lava ball.
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that is such a terrible post...
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On September 16 2013 19:13 Larkin wrote:
You don't really say anything apart from "famous personalities need to tell Blizzard what needs to be done to improve the game".
Short of a radical re-imagining of how SC2 plays I don't think there'll be much difference. SC2 is not as popular as LoL because it is way, way harder for low skilled players to play the game and have a good time. SC2 is a very demanding, taxing, low reward, punishing game, whereas LoL can be enjoyed by low skilled players.
Does it really matter? If 100,000 people tune in to major SC2 events and 300,000 people tune in to major LoL events, that's great - add Dota 2, FPS etc to the pile and you've got more than half a million people watching eSports. That's freaking awesome. You don't hear people saying a sport is dying because it gets less viewership than another sport. More people watch Football than Hockey - doesn't mean that the hockey community isn't strong and that it isn't as good a game.
Any issues with the game lie way beyond what complaining about balance will achieve. LotV will likely shuffle everything around again, so perhaps after that has been released we can take a look at the future of Starcraft.
One thing: Hockey gets less and less casted games each year, with shorter seasons and more salary cuts.
Just sayin...
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Problem is I think the game is fine and has never been better.
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Waiting for the next Expansion doesn't really fix anything it just delays... I agree with most of the post and honestly I blame in great part the personalities of Starcraft for it, I remember when this game first came out with WoL that a lot of this ppl would say the game was prob good and that the players should learn "new strategies" to deal with it and we proceded to have 2 years of top 8 with the format 4-6 Terrans with the rest depending on the time, I have firends that didn't play the game that stopped watching because the game was so incredible imbalanced on their eyes, and if ppl that doesn't play the game notices that there's a problem with race racio in tournaments then I believe there's really something wrong.
My 2 Cents
Bazik
Edit: Just wanted to add this comment from david kim (it's in the team liquid post for Taeja's win at DH.
David Kim: We had 5/5/6 racial distribution in both the Ro16 of Code S AND DreamHack Bucharest. Blizzard should take care that his smugness doesn't grow too large, or it might start distorting time-space around Irvine, CA.
If anyone check the race destribution from the tournament, will see that and the previous round where the only points in the whole tournament there was race equity... This is totally nitpicking and completly stupid.
http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/2013_DreamHack_Open/Bucharest
round of 96: 35 Protoss 20 Terran 37 Zerg
round of 64: 22 Protoss 16 Terran 26 Zerg
round of 32: 12 Protoss 11 Terran 9 Zerg
round of 16: 6 Protoss 5 Terran 5 Zerg
round of 8: 2 Protoss 5 Terran 1 Zerg
round of 4: 0 Protoss 3 Terran 1 Zerg
round of 2: 0 Protoss 2 Terran 0 Zerg
Looking at the numbers it's pretty easy to see that after 4 rounds of tournament Protoss had lost 29 out of 35, Terran 15 out of 20 and Zerg 32 out of 37, so unless David Kim thinks Terran Players are just better then everyone else than that comment is just stupid and obviously not a very well tought response.
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On September 16 2013 19:16 Maasked wrote:Show nested quote +On September 16 2013 19:13 Larkin wrote:
You don't really say anything apart from "famous personalities need to tell Blizzard what needs to be done to improve the game".
Short of a radical re-imagining of how SC2 plays I don't think there'll be much difference. SC2 is not as popular as LoL because it is way, way harder for low skilled players to play the game and have a good time. SC2 is a very demanding, taxing, low reward, punishing game, whereas LoL can be enjoyed by low skilled players.
Does it really matter? If 100,000 people tune in to major SC2 events and 300,000 people tune in to major LoL events, that's great - add Dota 2, FPS etc to the pile and you've got more than half a million people watching eSports. That's freaking awesome. You don't hear people saying a sport is dying because it gets less viewership than another sport. More people watch Football than Hockey - doesn't mean that the hockey community isn't strong and that it isn't as good a game.
Any issues with the game lie way beyond what complaining about balance will achieve. LotV will likely shuffle everything around again, so perhaps after that has been released we can take a look at the future of Starcraft. One thing: Hockey gets less and less casted games each year, with shorter seasons and more salary cuts. Just sayin...
When is Hockey 2.0 coming out?
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The premise of your post is that sc2 isnt a good game. Is that a fact? Sure many of us would like to see some changes, even some fundemental changes that would require blizzard to prove that they have some balls. The problem is that there isnt one big change that we all agree is the main issue that blizzard need to adress.
Players and casters, just like us viewers, have a lot of different opinions on what needs to be changed. I dont see how it would help anyone to have known profiles of the game voicing their opinions left and right about what they personally would like to see changed. Calling out that you want a change isnt very constructive unless you say what it is you want instead and to me it sounds like you want people to scream "we dont like it" but when asked what you want the response is just "something else". The closes thing we have had to a consesus balance wise regarding a needed change was hellbats and WoL infestors. But right now I cant see one flag that everyone can join under and stand as one.
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On September 16 2013 19:20 Pandain wrote:
Problem is I think the game is fine and has never been better.
At the very least I fail to see this decline that people speak of. I see the same viewer numbers as I did a year ago for instance.
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What a stupid undirected whine.
First of all the problems with SC2 are not big enough to justify us wishing for the games death. Too much risk of it not recovering.
Second the assumption that Blizzard will change anything about Protoss just because people stop watching the game is stupid. There is correlation between exciting, non-gimmicky gameplay and the viewer numbers. The majority of viewers are not sufficiently interested in the game, too casual, to see or in general have the problems "hardcore" fans have with the game. I would estimate the peak of SC2 to be 2011 - was the game good, compared to nowadays? No, absolutely not. It was worse in almost every aspect.
Third there is not even a convention on what needs to be changed. Some people like an ever-evolving metagame and new tactics because they don't realize that this is not possible, some people even like all-ins for some reason. Some people dislike the current TvZ meta for some reason. Although most people end up at the same point eventually (Protoss is poorly designed) there are always respected people like Artosis or MC which have apparently no problem with 2 base all-in all game every game.
I think SCII is pretty cool as it is, not perfect, but nothing that can't be fixed.
On September 16 2013 19:13 Larkin wrote:Does it really matter? If 100,000 people tune in to major SC2 events and 300,000 people tune in to major LoL events, that's great - add Dota 2, FPS etc to the pile and you've got more than half a million people watching eSports. That's freaking awesome.
Who cares about other games, Starcraft is the shit!
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Austria24417 Posts
I can save eSports just by flaming you? Awesome.
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Blizzard relies mostly on the single player to sell copies of LotV, esport is a small part of the SCII business. And why does so many people think that SCII has to be leading the esports scene, RTS is a niche and will remain so.
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I have basically just read a whole page which does state nothing at all :/
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On September 16 2013 19:36 NarutO wrote:
I have basically just read a whole page which does state nothing at all :/
you aren't missing out on anything :p
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The team-game vs 1v1 argument is true, but don't forget SC2 also has the 2v2, 3v3 and 4v4 modes, so it can also be a team-game. New or casual players will usually stick to these three modes and switch to 1v1 if they ever fell like playing more competitively.
The "Starcraft2 needs to die faster" argument is the most retarded thing I have read on TL in a while. Killing the game won't help it in any way.
And why are some people so annoyed if another game is more popular than SC2? Can't you just play/watch what you like and not care about it?
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the only way for salvation is to die? haha~
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Braavos36374 Posts
This thread is flame bait and even if it wasn't, it doesn't make much sense.
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EPT
