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Pretty much this.
I never really understood why people blame wcs system, battle.net 2.0, custom games or game difficulty. SC2 is simply not fun and rewarding. Single player campaign is ok. But multiplayer is biggest failure. I believe DK still hasn't got grasp what people really want. I still check TL from time to time, and what I see is 'X' seems strong, we need to nerf. 'Y' seems weak but we wait and see. Whereas he should be fixing fundamental issues like 'Terrible Terrible damage' syndrome and introducing 'soft counter' mechanics to reward micro, tactics and such.
You strike a good point here, but you're contradicting yourself a bit with the jab at DK. I'm not defending the guy, he has definitely his share of shit on the game's fate. BUT - speaking of multiplayer shortcomings, terrible terrible damage and softcounters - Dayvie Kim is not at fault here. Dustin Browder is.
I sometimes feel bad for Kim for receiving all the flak, because the fact is you can balance something with a faulty base all the way you want and there will still be some spot, which is under less pressure, then another. The most common thing I hear when talking about Starcraft 2 decline was that "SC2 was imbalanced for too long". I disagree. It wasn't just imbalance it was pretty much a design fault: for example the whole flashy Warpgate thingy people were so hyped about turn the race upside down pretty much (and many sc veterans were vocal about what it will do even back then).
I was pretty flabbergasted back in 2008 or so when people were cheering at the announcement of Dustin Browder joining Team Two as Lead Game Developer, noting his "great success" with Red Alert 2. I've played the game, it's not bad, but it suffers from the same problem as sc2 - battles are over in a blink and that creates hardcounters with pretty much no way out. I think that the reason people were happy about that back then had a lot to do with the fact that previous C&C, Tiberian Sun, suffered from the exact opposite problem. All units were bullet sponges even the lowliest infantries unless exposed to a flamethrower. In the end I really don't think Dustin Browder was the right man for the job. And come to think about it neither was Christ Metzen on the storyline lol.
TLDR: Kim's work was only balancing: that is fiddle around with the numbers here and there, not to just take the whole structure by fire. That was Dbro's work..
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On August 01 2017 09:49 petro1987 wrote:Show nested quote +On August 01 2017 09:43 -NegativeZero- wrote:On August 01 2017 09:26 [F_]aths wrote:
I agree Blizzard sometimes patched too soon in order to get the balance right and yes, some mechanics always feel out of place.
However I am not sure if the proposition that SC2 died is correct. BW had a very good run in just one country, while SC2 had a run on many countries. Now at the advent of a remastered BW, we might ask why BW is still sought after while the interest in SC2 is declining. But how large is the overall interest in BW?
SC2 did some things wrong in my opinion, for example Protoss building shapes are no longer that unique than in SC1. And the deathball issue is present in both casual and pro games. But I think the memory of BW is much better than it actual was.
I watched the infamous MSL finals via the live stream where there was power outage in the Jaedong vs Flash match. That level of incompetence would be not acceptable today.
What choice did Blizzard have? Not making SC2? I think that the announcement of SC2 rekindled the interest for SC1.
Making SC2 like BW just with a graphic update? That means to make a game which already exists.
Catering only to existing fans seems hardly like a wise business decision. Blizzard tried to bring new players (and viewers) in and succeeded at that for years.
i think blizzard was kind of stuck in a lose-lose situation. bw got a lot of things right purely by chance. so for sc2 they had 2 options: they could either replicate all the units exactly and get criticized by the game reviewers and casual players for lack of innovation, or they could try to add new units and features and run the risk of upsetting bw's delicate balance and unit interactions. Isn't your first option exactly what Dota 2 and CS did? Do you think they have been successful or not? That's exactly what they ended up doing with BWR, btw.
those two got away with it because they aren't full-priced games, notably dota is completely free. sc2 slightly predated the big microtransaction craze, so it got stuck with what you could arguably consider an outdated business model.
and bw remastered is being marketed specifically as a remaster, not a sequel. people know exactly what they're getting.
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I don't think Chris Metzen killed SC2, but God, what was he thinking... (Or what has he ever been thinking)
Really, why is completely retconning/ignoring his own past stories in a given franchise his hole shtick? It's like "remember that epic shit that happened in the last game/before the expansion? Yeah, none of that matters. We're going to have the same characters but on some totally different shit."
The whole story arc of StarCraft is basically what I'd imagine a StarCraft fanfic by a 13 year old would be based just on having seen the multiplayer. It's an awful mess.
The most coherent narrative is vanilla SC, which is the only one where he isn't the sole writer.
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On August 01 2017 14:32 Arrinao wrote:Show nested quote +Pretty much this.
I never really understood why people blame wcs system, battle.net 2.0, custom games or game difficulty. SC2 is simply not fun and rewarding. Single player campaign is ok. But multiplayer is biggest failure. I believe DK still hasn't got grasp what people really want. I still check TL from time to time, and what I see is 'X' seems strong, we need to nerf. 'Y' seems weak but we wait and see. Whereas he should be fixing fundamental issues like 'Terrible Terrible damage' syndrome and introducing 'soft counter' mechanics to reward micro, tactics and such. You strike a good point here, but you're contradicting yourself a bit with the jab at DK. I'm not defending the guy, he has definitely his share of shit on the game's fate. BUT - speaking of multiplayer shortcomings, terrible terrible damage and softcounters - Dayvie Kim is not at fault here. Dustin Browder is. I sometimes feel bad for Kim for receiving all the flak, because the fact is you can balance something with a faulty base all the way you want and there will still be some spot, which is under less pressure, then another. The most common thing I hear when talking about Starcraft 2 decline was that "SC2 was imbalanced for too long". I disagree. It wasn't just imbalance it was pretty much a design fault: for example the whole flashy Warpgate thingy people were so hyped about turn the race upside down pretty much (and many sc veterans were vocal about what it will do even back then). I was pretty flabbergasted back in 2008 or so when people were cheering at the announcement of Dustin Browder joining Team Two as Lead Game Developer, noting his "great success" with Red Alert 2. I've played the game, it's not bad, but it suffers from the same problem as sc2 - battles are over in a blink and that creates hardcounters with pretty much no way out. I think that the reason people were happy about that back then had a lot to do with the fact that previous C&C, Tiberian Sun, suffered from the exact opposite problem. All units were bullet sponges even the lowliest infantries unless exposed to a flamethrower. In the end I really don't think Dustin Browder was the right man for the job. And come to think about it neither was Christ Metzen on the storyline lol. TLDR: Kim's work was only balancing: that is fiddle around with the numbers here and there, not to just take the whole structure by fire. That was Dbro's work..
Well, I don't really know historically what DB and DK did before SC2. And who exactly implemented SC2 multiplayer as it is.
As far as I know, here are the facts:
- DB worked on whole game including Single player, which was a lot of work btw.
- DK presented first 1v1 battle report.
- DK was always presented as a guy who is responsible for multiplayer in panels, interviews etc.
- DB left to make Heroes of the storm, which is a good game btw, and stands strong eventhough competition is harsh.
- DK had whole 7 years to change multiplayer game
- DK changes stats and numbers of units
- DK had a chance to make major overhaul in LOTV. Which he somewhat did, but in wrong direction.
- Gameplay, at least for me, didn't improve one bit for me. And judging by popularity I am not only one who lost interest.
As you can see my blame is not baseless. So, you'd ask, why don't they replace DK, well from business perspective I get it. SC2 made $$$ as it was expected (due to huge legacy of BW). Blizzard is more involved with their most recent projects, and SC2 was put on low priority. Therefore DK is still there, game is not improving, small groups of unsatisfied people like us are not important enough to make drastic changes.
Am I raging or mad? No. I am just critisizing. Why don't I leave the game? I left it. Why do I discuss? Because people are social beings and want to share their ideas and viewpoints.
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Looking through this thread, I am still not sure what you guys wanted from SC2. It seems that every small deviation the creators from BW could have done would have ended up criticized anyway. But some people also dislike the graphics, claiming that BW's superior, so a 3D-remake of faithfull BW gameplay also wouldn't be universally welcome. So what should SC2 have been? I get that you like BW, but the game didn't magically cease to exist upon SC2's release, so why are you so upset that SC2 is different?
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for me basically I would have loved SC2 if it had comparable depth in tactics and strategy as bw or preferably better, and with comparably great sound/music/art or better. Better is what I would expect from it really, I think it's totally possible so. upset that SC2 is different? well because for terrible marketing reasons, its simply way inferior, etc
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On August 01 2017 15:18 opisska wrote:
Looking through this thread, I am still not sure what you guys wanted from SC2. It seems that every small deviation the creators from BW could have done would have ended up criticized anyway. But some people also dislike the graphics, claiming that BW's superior, so a 3D-remake of faithfull BW gameplay also wouldn't be universally welcome. So what should SC2 have been? I get that you like BW, but the game didn't magically cease to exist upon SC2's release, so why are you so upset that SC2 is different?
Asking the last of those questions makes all of the former seem rhetorical but I'll bite.
From SC2, first and foremost I expected very little outside of what made BW be what it is. So immediately I paint myself the "elitist." My range for what was acceptable was isometric view and a familiar dynamic between three races, which includes high ground defensive advantage, discrete group hotkeys, similar unit navigation around the map (no climbing of ledges and no 2-tier units that were both ground and air, not to mention discrete hotkey army movements), static units like siege tanks and lurkers and reavers playing a big role in conjunction with the previous statements, similar spells that were micro-inclusive and not micro-denying and most definitely not "smart" casted, a map pool drawing on the wealth of knowledge and effort and experience that made latter day Brood War what it is, improved graphics for a burgeoning definition market, improved connectivity and reactivity (native LAN settings), B.net equivalent chat channels and account management and clan versatility... The list goes on and on but basically things that were building on the existing model and not as "experimental" as it turned out. As soon as I saw the announce, I knew I would have to flush half of my expectations down the drain.
I played closed beta for the first time at Blizzcon 2009. I started working for Blizzard in January of next year in Austin. Never once did I feel like the game was moving anywhere close to what I expected as a successor for BW. By the time open beta closed, I had given up hope. I still had ample opportunity to play and watch thenceforth, and did so once in a blue moon. But I never found what I was looking for, which I thought were a list of legitimate expectations.
As to your final question, the reason why I am upset about SC2 being different from BW and from my expectations is:
1. It was forced down our throats by every available outlet.
2. It therefore diluted the "final stage" of BW competitive play.
3. It failed to live up to my expectations.
4. It gave jingoists an outlet into a game that should be based on skill and execution to wave their banner and yell loudly.
5. It helped destroy established communities like r/starcraft.
6. It brought with itself a surge of new users I couldn't relate with in the genre for better but in my eyes for worse, with the vast majority of these "kids" not being palatable to my hitherto experience with what was a seasoned, tight, and overall much less commercialized community.
7. I could go on but it is getting late and this is getting tiring from my phone which lags in accessing this page due to TL having to accommodate for peak user levels with ads due to SC2 coming about and increasing server costs.
If I really wanted to write a TL;DR: Life (on TL and in the competitive BW sphere) was different before SC2 came out. Life got worse after SC2 came out. Life is just now returning to some semblance of normalcy, barely and against the odds, in the twilight of SC2. As such, it is very easy to confound causation with correlation when we look at the time line of the perceived rise and fall of both SC2 and BW.
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WoL before broodlord/inferstor meta was very entertaining. However, the further balance changes and new toxic units(mothership,swarm hosts, oracle) ruined the game.
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For me, the biggest reasons why sc2 failed as a esport is that the game was neither fun to play nor to watch, and that Blizzard was very slow in making changes (or rather, waited until the expansions to implement them). The way ladder was designed in the beginning was a chore for many people. There was no unranked. Maps were terrible (steppes of war, anyone?). Arcade was poorly done. Heck, you couldn't even search for open games. Bnet 0.2 was laughable. Coop was added in way too late. As an esport, it was frustrating to watch. WoL had broodlord/infestors and protoss had 1a deathballs. HotS had swarmhosts. LotV had adepts. Units like the Colossus shouldn't be in the game in the first place.
Lack of accessibility for the top tournaments was also an issue, specifically, GSL during the GOM days. GSL was marketed as the place for the best sc2 matches in the world but it was restrictive as hell to watch. GSL airtimes was inconvenient for NA and EU users. Vods were locked behind a paywall. They only offered 140p streams unless you pay for the subscription. Sure, when there was no competition, you could get away with it, but once games like LoL and dota2 came along offering free HD streams, GSL was still stuck to their old business model. Combined with the fact that game was frustrating to watch, the casual viewers moved on to other games.
The thing is that sc2 is still doing well outside of Korea. It just failed to live to the success of BW in Korea.
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One thing I haven't really seen people mention is the fact that Starcraft 2 released with the biggest cashgrab expansion schedule. 3 Expansions all for around the price of a full game. This was made even worse by the fact that games with free2play systems like League of Legends were being released and becoming popular. Why would the average kid with very little spare money buy a game like Starcraft 2 when they can just play League of Legends for free and so can their friends (not to mention lesser system requirements). Brood War was essentially free in Korea considering you only needed to pay for your time at the PC, whereas Starcraft 2 wasn't. I feel like this is one of the biggest reason that after the initial surge the game fell off. It makes sense to buy a game when all your friends are playing it and it's brand new but when most of your friends have left the game it makes it harder to justify buying the game. It makes even less sense to buy a game when you know you're going to have to pay the same amount again in about a year's time just to continue playing online.
I feel like the poor timing of Starcraft 2 coming out as the free2play model was becoming popular really hurt the game's potential to keep people playing on and off or bring in people as the games lifespan continued.
Honestly there are countless reasons Starcraft 2 is not that popular and the Starcraft 2 community seems to be very insecure about it's popularity because it was once the top dog. It's not really something I care about these days but it's definitely a shame that things weren't done differently to give Starcraft 2 the best chance possible.
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as others have said, the game is too punishing. sc2 is hard, but hard in the wrong areas. you need to drink 2 liter red bulls to keep your eyes peeled open because anything can kill your army in 4 sec. had to sneeze in the wrong moment? sorry your entire army is dead.
for example things i can think of right now are ZvZ ling bane or TvT doomdrops.
You can outmicro, outmacro and outmultitask, have the better 'strategy' and still lose in this game.
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On August 01 2017 14:32 Arrinao wrote:Show nested quote +Pretty much this.
I never really understood why people blame wcs system, battle.net 2.0, custom games or game difficulty. SC2 is simply not fun and rewarding. Single player campaign is ok. But multiplayer is biggest failure. I believe DK still hasn't got grasp what people really want. I still check TL from time to time, and what I see is 'X' seems strong, we need to nerf. 'Y' seems weak but we wait and see. Whereas he should be fixing fundamental issues like 'Terrible Terrible damage' syndrome and introducing 'soft counter' mechanics to reward micro, tactics and such. You strike a good point here, but you're contradicting yourself a bit with the jab at DK. I'm not defending the guy, he has definitely his share of shit on the game's fate. BUT - speaking of multiplayer shortcomings, terrible terrible damage and softcounters - Dayvie Kim is not at fault here. Dustin Browder is. I sometimes feel bad for Kim for receiving all the flak, because the fact is you can balance something with a faulty base all the way you want and there will still be some spot, which is under less pressure, then another. The most common thing I hear when talking about Starcraft 2 decline was that "SC2 was imbalanced for too long". I disagree. It wasn't just imbalance it was pretty much a design fault: for example the whole flashy Warpgate thingy people were so hyped about turn the race upside down pretty much (and many sc veterans were vocal about what it will do even back then). I was pretty flabbergasted back in 2008 or so when people were cheering at the announcement of Dustin Browder joining Team Two as Lead Game Developer, noting his "great success" with Red Alert 2. I've played the game, it's not bad, but it suffers from the same problem as sc2 - battles are over in a blink and that creates hardcounters with pretty much no way out. I think that the reason people were happy about that back then had a lot to do with the fact that previous C&C, Tiberian Sun, suffered from the exact opposite problem. All units were bullet sponges even the lowliest infantries unless exposed to a flamethrower. In the end I really don't think Dustin Browder was the right man for the job. And come to think about it neither was Christ Metzen on the storyline lol. TLDR: Kim's work was only balancing: that is fiddle around with the numbers here and there, not to just take the whole structure by fire. That was Dbro's work..
You are quite spot on. I also felt (and still feel) that DB is the responsible for most of SC2's shortcomings. I never liked the units designs (compared to BW) and the terrible terrible damage was deliberately put in the game and marketed as a great addition. It also doesn't help how he seemed pressured about BW's community input to SC2. He even said at one point something to the effect of: If you wanna play BW, then go play BW. To me, it felt like he was deliberately trying to steer the game design away from BW, and not trying to learn from it.
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On August 01 2017 20:42 QzYSc2 wrote:
You can outmicro, outmacro and outmultitask, have the better 'strategy' and still lose in this game.
Isn't this called a 'comeback potential'? Of course given that player's perspective of being ultimately better and doing everything correctly is objectively correct and not illusion. I remember Polt having a lot of success in situations that seemed very dire, but due to Terran mechanics he could hold on.
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The comeback potential is severely worse in SC2 than in BW. That is common knowledge in both communities.
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I cant think of a single unit that was introduced in sc2 that made the game better, in fact they all made the game worse, i dont need to name them because imo it really was all of them.
warpgate, mule and inject made the games snowballing even more than the new units.
Simple fixes like queen range fixed one problem (reaper/hellion allins) but introduced several greater problems like broodfestor and almost unstoppable full saturated 3base greedy macro.
unit pathing made deathballs too strong, 1 fight ended the game while in bw its constant action from midgame until lategame when people start with macro builds.
its just a worse game, u cant make a sequel to chess =)
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For me personally, what killed the interest in the game was that the games were a snoozefest, they either ended due to some rush in a few minutes, or they dragged out until 200 vs 200 deathballs which again ended in a blink of an eye (most of the time anyways). Im not a very good expert at SC2 to point out why the games were like this, but I think its due to units having too much damage and things dying too quickly. Could be wrong though.
Another thing which absolutely annoyed me to no end were the premium streams, especially GSL and MLG. At that time Dota and LoL were rising as well, but all their streams were free, the game was free, everything was free and accessible, yet SC2 decided to keep their premium model ...
Third reason were the metas, which barely changed for months on end, so the game felt very stagnant.
Fourth, sorry to say: the snowflake community. Good lord, people cried BM about absolutely everything, expecting players to act like freaking Presidents of countries. That shit annoyed me to no end. I guess I can lump the casters in here as well, most of the time their casting revolved about the bad things players would do, criticizing them endlessly.
After a 3 year break, I started watching SC2 again and I have to say the game feels a lot more interesting than before. Though Im not sure how long is gonna keep me interested, we'll see.
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On August 01 2017 21:42 aQuaSC wrote:Show nested quote +On August 01 2017 20:42 QzYSc2 wrote:
You can outmicro, outmacro and outmultitask, have the better 'strategy' and still lose in this game. Isn't this called a 'comeback potential'? Of course given that player's perspective of being ultimately better and doing everything correctly is objectively correct and not illusion. I remember Polt having a lot of success in situations that seemed very dire, but due to Terran mechanics he could hold on.
its a very dumb comeback though. if i got outplayed by a better player for 60 mins and caught him not paying attention for 2 secs wouldnt feel very rewarding winning either.
The damage on units are just way too high in this game. wc3 didnt have this, and i didnt play bw, but judging by watching the remastered tournament this wasnt the case either. 1 battle didnt decide the game, but multiple ones slowly decided the winner.
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On August 01 2017 22:15 QzYSc2 wrote:Show nested quote +On August 01 2017 21:42 aQuaSC wrote:On August 01 2017 20:42 QzYSc2 wrote:
You can outmicro, outmacro and outmultitask, have the better 'strategy' and still lose in this game. Isn't this called a 'comeback potential'? Of course given that player's perspective of being ultimately better and doing everything correctly is objectively correct and not illusion. I remember Polt having a lot of success in situations that seemed very dire, but due to Terran mechanics he could hold on. its a very dumb comeback though. if i got outplayed by a better player for 60 mins and caught him not paying attention for 2 secs wouldnt feel very rewarding winning either. The damage on units are just way too high in this game. wc3 didnt have this, and i didnt play bw, but judging by watching the remastered tournament this wasnt the case either. 1 battle didnt decide the game, but multiple ones slowly decided the winner.
I feel like we're watching different SC2 versions, I'm pretty sure that we're far from the era of one big battle for the win with LotV. The games are much more spread out and last longer, with more opportunities for players to build. Don't BW matches also end over 1 battle that decides the game? At the very end? Also storm damage in BW is ridiculous. The only thing that balances the Reaver are unintentional bugs. Also Lurkers, with hold position glitch too.
I'd like to see a recent SC2 match that is decided in a single engagement. I tend to agree that burst damage in SC2 could be toned down but it's not bad unless you intentionally stack everything or just go in not necessarily caring about how it happens.
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I think the reason SC2 is not as good of a game as BW is because the probe hotkey isn't permamently set to P.
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On August 01 2017 22:39 Ej_ wrote:
I think the reason SC2 is not as good of a game as BW is because the probe hotkey isn't permamently set to P.
Well, time for BW suffer the same fate then...
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EPT
