What wrecked SC2? - Page 5
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skzlime
Hungary462 Posts
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404AlphaSquad
839 Posts
I wont get into an argument defending sc2 or BW, but let me just say that everyone in this thread who states that one game or the other one is "objectively" better looks stupid, because its only subjective. By saying that one game is objectively better than the other one, you must automatically assume that: -Everyone agrees on what makes a game good. -Everyone agrees that more of these things are in one game than its counterpart This is just not the case, because everyone has a different taste on what makes a game good. Therefor the logic that one game is objectively better just sounds silly. What game is harder is also very debatable. I know there are many BW veterans in this forum who belittle sc2 players unskilled and get away with it without a warning, so I wont spend too much time on this topic otherwise this posts gets reported by triggered elitists. But believe it or not, sc2 is still a hard game, just in different ways than BW, which might be why it is for some BW players not their cup of tea. Now on my personal opinion: I have played both BW and SC2 for a decent amount of years. And even though I was way better in Sc2, BW is my favorite game of all times. Do I enjoy the design decisions in sc2 by Blizzard? No, frankly I think they are horrible. Do I enjoy the deathballing and snowballing mechanics, lack of defenders advantage, non-stop aggression worker-killing game? No. Luckily for me I don't have to play it and play BW instead. But there are plenty of people who do enjoy the game and like that it is so punishing for little mistakes. And that's fine. Trying to talk shit about the game just to stroke your e-penis is just really pathetic and miserable | ||
Hadronsbecrazy
United Kingdom551 Posts
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Ancestral
United States3230 Posts
On July 27 2017 05:49 Hadronsbecrazy wrote: hasnt this argument been done to death alreadY? On the one hand, yes. On the other, all such threads show people have different reasons for their positions and hence the threads are useful for data mining anecdotes. I actually do have faith that once SC2 stops getting patched the scene will stabilize. Even if smaller, it will consist of people who really enjoy it. I also think game complexity preferences ebb and flow. For example, the original Wizardry games were complicated as all fuck. And then Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy came out and took over the market. So it is with RTS vs. MOBA. BW and SC2 are both complex, and though there's a lull in the pereference for such games right now, it's just the current trend. On the other hand, I do think BW is just so much more iconic and better than SC2 and that Blizzard has made serious missteps T_T | ||
RWLabs
Korea (South)273 Posts
For the competitive scene to thrive, you need a health dose of casuals. BW's UMS was highly developed, and culminated to EUD. SC2 on the other hand was relatively hostile towards new UMS. There was a stylistic change between the two games. BW was dark and gritty, whereas SC2 was a fucking WoW inspired game. Everyone is hypermasculine, the big plot is "we need to unite to defeat the big bad", the Protoss are clones, and to top it off they decided to add a fucking prophecy to a SCIENCE FICTION game. Both of these factors greatly neglect the largest playerbase- the casual one. | ||
merz
Sweden2760 Posts
But then thats just what makes it so much more e-sport friendly (which I realized after I quit). Compare it to regular popular sports, how many are individual? None. Sure some are quite big but they still cater to a smaller crowd than the big team games. Would anyone argue against that Basketball, Football, Hockey, Baseball, American football etc. is less popular than an individual sport? All of these sports can be enjoyed at amateur level with friends and its quite an enjoyable experience even if you are not very good at it. This in return naturally means the very same people will prefer to watch that over anything else. They can identify with the game and understand the complexity of whats going on to at least some degree. 2. SC2 is too unforgivining. This has always been SC2s biggest flaw in my opinion. Like some have pointed out, the pacing of SC2 and the fact that everything just hard counters everything means there are no room for minor mistakes or blunders. People might think that is a good thing and I dont fault them for that, to each their own. But personally I feel like a game shouldnt centre around this, humans make error in judgements daily and this means the game is too volatile. Had the room for error been higher and had mechanics actually been that big of a seperating factor then that would have made for a lot more interesting games. I remember always being nervous in group stages or qualifiers because I knew I couldnt just brute force a mechanical win if my opponents were decent enough. I also knew that one error in judgement could lose me the game instantly. Compared to BW I would never be nervous because I knew even a slip up here and there in decision making could be repaired if I just outplayed my opponent mechanically. I really dont think its more complicated than that. E-sports follow the same path as regular sports. Games who are team based, easy to learn but harder to master, will always be more popular. DOTA2, League of Legends, CS:GO are to e-sports what football is to sports. SC2 is like.. tennis? I guess. | ||
Lazare1969
United States318 Posts
On July 27 2017 06:01 RWLabs wrote: You mentioned a few, but here are a few more. For the competitive scene to thrive, you need a health dose of casuals. BW's UMS was highly developed, and culminated to EUD. SC2 on the other hand was relatively hostile towards new UMS. There was a stylistic change between the two games. BW was dark and gritty, whereas SC2 was a fucking WoW inspired game. Everyone is hypermasculine, the big plot is "we need to unite to defeat the big bad", the Protoss are clones, and to top it off they decided to add a fucking prophecy to a SCIENCE FICTION game. Both of these factors greatly neglect the largest playerbase- the casual one. Warcraft 3 had by far the best UMS system until 2009 when spambots (empty game host bots) ruined it by spamming the games list with DOTA and advertisements to websites. This along with the release of SC2 caused a mass exodus from the game. Blizzard could have saved the scene by releasing a patch to add a filter that hides spambots by default but they had no interest maintaining the game any longer and their forum had no moderators at the time and basically functioned like 4chan or youtube comments. | ||
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ProMeTheus112
France2027 Posts
On July 27 2017 06:20 Lazare1969 wrote: Warcraft 3 had by far the best UMS system until 2009 when spambots (empty game host bots) ruined it by spamming the games list with DOTA and advertisements to websites. This along with the release of SC2 caused a mass exodus from the game. Blizzard could have saved the scene by releasing a patch to add a filter that hides spambots by default but they had no interest maintaining the game any longer and their forum had no moderators at the time and basically functioned like 4chan or youtube comments. sad | ||
castleeMg
Canada757 Posts
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Espers
United Kingdom606 Posts
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Charoisaur
Germany15868 Posts
On July 27 2017 04:35 letian wrote: It is objective because ppl who you claim enjoy SC2 more are the ones who didn't play BW enough to understand it. This is like comparing chess to checkers and there have been numerous posts why, covering both the game mechanics and social aspects. There are plenty of activities in the world that are undeservedly more popular just because they are more accessible for average Joe. Have you asked yourself what if BW had been remastered and received all that Blizzard sponsorship money SC2 did in the first place? I bet my pants there would be nothing to argue about right now. I guess Stats and INnoVation (who openly admitted they enjoy sc2 more) just didn't play BW enough to understand it. | ||
KungKras
Sweden484 Posts
On July 27 2017 03:56 Chef wrote: I don't like SC2 and didn't find watching it very interesting, but there's no way it was a failure or didn't work. I don't know what your baseline is. A lot of people liked it, played it professionally, made money off it, broadcast it, etc. The main difference between SC1 and SC2 is Blizzard was hands-off with SC1, comparatively, with just a couple of patches that mostly just fixed bugs after the first year or two. So the pro-scene, the cool tools the community developed, the growth of understanding how rts works and how to design maps had a much greater sense of ownership. With SC2 Blizzard was all over it all the time, controlling its direction and growth and dictating how it would be played and experienced. As it turned out, a lot of people don't care and did watch SC2, and it doesn't really matter that their experience was manufactured. I think the big thing to realise is that BW was more than its mechanics and gameplay. It was mostly a blank canvas that seemed to always have more areas to fill out. The experience with current Blizzard is that they're going to fill in that canvas for you, and if there are blank spots in the canvas, they're going to control how they get filled. I couldn't agree more with this | ||
Charoisaur
Germany15868 Posts
On July 27 2017 06:07 dignitas.merz wrote: 2. SC2 is too unforgivining. This has always been SC2s biggest flaw in my opinion. Like some have pointed out, the pacing of SC2 and the fact that everything just hard counters everything means there are no room for minor mistakes or blunders. People might think that is a good thing and I dont fault them for that, to each their own. But personally I feel like a game shouldnt centre around this, humans make error in judgements daily and this means the game is too volatile. Had the room for error been higher and had mechanics actually been that big of a seperating factor then that would have made for a lot more interesting games. I remember always being nervous in group stages or qualifiers because I knew I couldnt just brute force a mechanical win if my opponents were decent enough. I also knew that one error in judgement could lose me the game instantly. Compared to BW I would never be nervous because I knew even a slip up here and there in decision making could be repaired if I just outplayed my opponent mechanically. This is true. But I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing. SC2 at the highest level is pretty similar to a knife fight with the 2 players constantly pressuring each other and taxing each others multi-tasking until 1 player makes a mistake and falls apart. And the top players got really fucking good at avoiding making those game-ending mistakes so beating them is really tough unless you're similarly good at it. I understand that people dislike it that a single mistake can decide the game but at a high level those mistakes only happen when a player gets heavily pressured into making it. The scene may be more volatile than BW but upsets where a player who seems to be completely outclassed beats a superior opponent happen very rarely, especially not in bo5/7. Once again I totally understand people disliking this aspect about sc2 but it has its own flair. | ||
DrunkenSCV
76 Posts
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SchAmToo
United States1141 Posts
I'll give my quick 2-minute dissertation of what killed it for me, a caster of 3 years in SC2 and why I stopped. SC2 WoL was a really aggressive early game mixing into a midgame where victory generally happened, and very rare late-game from most of the matches I played/casted. Towards the end of WoL a lot of weird patches swung win-rates a lot until the Queen 5 range patch. It was a very good patch initially because Zergs were getting killed every game by Hellion run-by's. However, this signaled the community to realize that Blizzard was open to stopping cheese in the most drastic senses and I think started the whole push to what happened in HotS. In Heart of the Swarm is where SC2 lost me. All the mechanics of stopping early aggression made games a subject of waiting. The MSC, the Queen at it's 5 range and Widow Mines for defense basically stopped a lot of aggression in the early game and made it so that the game really didn't start until 10 minutes in. I used to joke every ZvP that I could cast the first 12 minutes blind-folded and that was scarily true. However, Blizzard themselves have noted they designed the games to be 15 minutes long, so my long time problem was that if you push the game to start at 10 minutes, but designed for it to be over at 15 minutes, what now? 5 minutes of action, and if that didn't happen you get into that super weird 200/200 army on both sides stalemate of baiting your opponent into hopefully putting their army in a dumb spot for half a second so that you would win in a second. It was no fun to cast that for me. There was no engaging back and forth unless some really unique stuff was happening. Even though I think the beginning of HotS was the peak of all viewership, it just sucked to play and to cast and so I know thats when a lot of my peers who weren't getting the bigger gigs just left. I liked reading the responses here. Someone put it perfectly, "SC2 is a game of too many checkmates." Army differences are exponential in power, not linear like what I noticed in SCBW. Everything navigates and shoots so perfect that a +10 army supply or +1 upgrade means you get literally slaughtered at every step of the way. Small missteps in any direction is a loss. Anyway, thats what stopped me from casting the game. That and the production tab. | ||
JimmyJRaynor
Canada16425 Posts
On July 27 2017 06:07 dignitas.merz wrote: 1. The game is a solo game and got outmatched by competitive team games.... I really dont think its more complicated than that. E-sports follow the same path as regular sports. Games who are team based, easy to learn but harder to master, will always be more popular. DOTA2, League of Legends, CS:GO are to e-sports what football is to sports. SC2 is like.. tennis? I guess. to add to your point. RTS exploded in popularity during an era when it was impossible to get 10-12 people in a game with low latency. it was tough enough to get 2 people into a game with low latency.. never mind 10. improving technology has slaughtered many genres.... its time to add RTS to the list. | ||
EleanorRIgby
Canada3923 Posts
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Ancestral
United States3230 Posts
So there are layers to everything. Actually another problem is dyed-in-the-wool RTSs could still have 3v3s or 3v3v3v3s or what have you, so it can't just be that they're single player, because they don't have to be. | ||
JimmyJRaynor
Canada16425 Posts
On July 27 2017 09:11 Ancestral wrote: The only problem with the 1v1 argument is Conor McGregor is about to make 7 figures for one fight in a 1v1 sport he has never competed in professionally merely because he's good a shit-talking. So there are layers to everything. the entire UFC is worth billions less than the New York Yankees+Los Angeles Dodgers. There are still another 28 teams. This year's baseball attendance will be over 60 million. MLB is the #3 sport in the USA. | ||
FeyFey
Germany10114 Posts
For what wrecked Starcraft 2. I think Starcraft 2 did really well despite the negative inputs it got, thanks to the unfinished battle net (they scrapped battle net completely 1 year prior. I am happy they didnt store Sc2 for 2 more years because of it) and Kespa trying to sabotage the Korea release, because of money greed on both sides. It actually did so good, that people from other genres swooped in. Genres that were being kept interesting by constant changing of unit balance. And Blizzard decided to side with the camp that made more money heh. But really hard games and constant variable changing rarely go well together. Later some game time limitations came into the mix, because science ! At the end the game just catered to a rather "small" group. It would be a pretty big group actually. But they prefer to ruin team games, they play as if its a solo game ! | ||
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