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On October 07 2011 21:02 Novalisk wrote:Show nested quote +On October 07 2011 20:42 Trumpet wrote:On October 07 2011 19:56 Novalisk wrote:
If Blizzard started making the game easy to play it would indeed be bad for eSports, but you failed to show any pattern suggesting this could happen in the future. What changes have Blizzard made to SC2 for the sole purpose of making the game easier? Blizzard already did "excessively simplify the gameplay / mechanics." It's called SC2, and it's been pretty damn successful. I never said "excessively simplify the gameplay / mechanics". I also asked for changes made to SC2, not the SC franchise as a whole. The mechanics in SC2 were simplified because as Blizzard figured, the BW mechanics contributed very little to the spectator experience. The game has a very high skill ceiling without them, and Blizzard made the change so the players could focus on activities more engaging to the spectators. This is different from making the game easier solely for the purpose of making it easier.
Wow are you kidding? In BW there are terms such as 'Jangbi Storms' SC2 will never have such a term because of smart casting. You are wayyyy off base here.
What changes have Blizzard made to SC2 for the sole purpose of making the game easier?
This has been discussed to death since beta but i'll bite.
Removal of micro intensive units. Lurkers, Defilers, Science vessels, Reavers etc.
Addition of 'anti-micro' functionality. 1a, MBS, Smart cast.
Removal of defenders advantage (No uphill miss chance.)
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Good read! Kept me interested throughout the post.
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On October 07 2011 21:02 Novalisk wrote:Show nested quote +On October 07 2011 20:42 Trumpet wrote:On October 07 2011 19:56 Novalisk wrote:
If Blizzard started making the game easy to play it would indeed be bad for eSports, but you failed to show any pattern suggesting this could happen in the future. What changes have Blizzard made to SC2 for the sole purpose of making the game easier? Blizzard already did "excessively simplify the gameplay / mechanics." It's called SC2, and it's been pretty damn successful. I never said "excessively simplify the gameplay / mechanics". I also asked for changes made to SC2, not the SC franchise as a whole. The mechanics in SC2 were simplified because as Blizzard figured, the BW mechanics contributed very little to the spectator experience. The game has a very high skill ceiling without them, and Blizzard made the change so the players could focus on activities more engaging to the spectators. This is different from making the game easier solely for the purpose of making it easier.
Seriously?? Wow... just wow...
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You understand wow didn't get any simpler going from tbc to wotlk, people just started to get better at it? There is also a limit to how many times you can do the same action and not become better at it, both with pvp and pve in that game. Hence why the game is almost dead now (in terms of pvp) because you can't do anything new/creative.
The game NEVER had the support of the wow community, if you consder about 5% of the community actually did arena, and then the good ones where like 0.1-0.2% of that 5%. It could never ever sustain as an esport because it was never made to be an esport, nor did blizzard ever have any plans to help with it. It's was a mmo, with a sub game inside it, that is all.
You can't put wow logic to sc2, the games are beyond different, one is made PURELY for a casual gamer that enjoys what an mmo brings, one is an rts, which has huge support for the esport scene, which blizzard intended.
Your whole post is pretty pointless and wrong :/
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On October 07 2011 20:42 Trumpet wrote:
Overall, I think yall are giving game companies way too much credit. Blizzard didn't do anything to make BW an "esport," the community did. From maps, to tournaments, to teams, to sponsors, to this very site were all community driven.
Yes, but I have to remind you that there are no LAN features for SC2 + the fact that there was no real eSport BW. Sure there were some tournaments like the one Artosis, Tasteless and Day9 participated but it was not clos to the scale yu have now. Only Korea had real eSport in BW.
On October 07 2011 20:42 Trumpet wrote:This risk of companies suddenly pulling out of progaming is funny as well, because it's largely already happened. The companies that are sponsoring pro teams now are companies that have done the research and know what they're doing is a sound investment. When other companies see good investments in "esports," they'll follow with their sponsorship, and not a moment sooner. At the end of the day, Pepsi doesn't care if SC2's gameplay is so bad that it becomes rock paper scissors in the GSL as long as their sponsorship sells drinks. TLDR: calm down, everything will be A-OK 
Yes, it's true that Pepsi doesn't care, but if Pepsi looses 1 Millions $ in investment because some lame new patch came out...well i think they will begin to care ! ^^
It means also that if you have a stable environement more companies will invest in eSports.
Afterall we don't care if they care or not, I mean if they invest, good for us ! it would be better if they carred but you can't have everything ! =)
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On October 07 2011 22:08 ShadeR wrote:Show nested quote +On October 07 2011 21:02 Novalisk wrote:On October 07 2011 20:42 Trumpet wrote:On October 07 2011 19:56 Novalisk wrote:
If Blizzard started making the game easy to play it would indeed be bad for eSports, but you failed to show any pattern suggesting this could happen in the future. What changes have Blizzard made to SC2 for the sole purpose of making the game easier? Blizzard already did "excessively simplify the gameplay / mechanics." It's called SC2, and it's been pretty damn successful. I never said "excessively simplify the gameplay / mechanics". I also asked for changes made to SC2, not the SC franchise as a whole. The mechanics in SC2 were simplified because as Blizzard figured, the BW mechanics contributed very little to the spectator experience. The game has a very high skill ceiling without them, and Blizzard made the change so the players could focus on activities more engaging to the spectators. This is different from making the game easier solely for the purpose of making it easier. Wow are you kidding? In BW there are terms such as 'Jangbi Storms' SC2 will never have such a term because of smart casting. You are wayyyy off base here. Show nested quote +What changes have Blizzard made to SC2 for the sole purpose of making the game easier? This has been discussed to death since beta but i'll bite. Removal of micro intensive units. Lurkers, Defilers, Science vessels, Reavers etc. Addition of 'anti-micro' functionality. 1a, MBS, Smart cast. Removal of defenders advantage (No uphill miss chance.)
On October 07 2011 22:16 fabiano wrote:Show nested quote +On October 07 2011 21:02 Novalisk wrote:On October 07 2011 20:42 Trumpet wrote:On October 07 2011 19:56 Novalisk wrote:
If Blizzard started making the game easy to play it would indeed be bad for eSports, but you failed to show any pattern suggesting this could happen in the future. What changes have Blizzard made to SC2 for the sole purpose of making the game easier? Blizzard already did "excessively simplify the gameplay / mechanics." It's called SC2, and it's been pretty damn successful. I never said "excessively simplify the gameplay / mechanics". I also asked for changes made to SC2, not the SC franchise as a whole. The mechanics in SC2 were simplified because as Blizzard figured, the BW mechanics contributed very little to the spectator experience. The game has a very high skill ceiling without them, and Blizzard made the change so the players could focus on activities more engaging to the spectators. This is different from making the game easier solely for the purpose of making it easier. Seriously?? Wow... just wow...
I'm not saying Blizzard made all the right decisions, I'm saying the motivation behind their decisions was not just "Let's make the game easier so more people play it", but more focused around "Let's remove things most spectators don't pay attention to".
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On October 07 2011 20:59 Thorakh wrote:
Blizzard will never make changes to SC2 that will kill the esport scene.
If they win more money by bringing new customers to SC2 than with the eSport scene why not ?
I mean business wise it's the best decision...
Moral wise I doubt it but that's not the question.
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Actually spectators do pay a lot of attention to mechanics. What make janbi storms amazing to the viewers eyes is the skill needed to pull them out.
Blizzard really tripped there =[
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This is a god awful idea in every way imaginable.
No company would use that label because you're automatically boxing out a huge demographic based on that presentation. The people who give a shit about any given esport are the people who actually play the game, and that doesn't matter what level they're at. Advertisers care about the amount of eyes watching the game, not how hardcore and dedicated those people the very small segment of competitive gamers are.
and I really can't think of a game that's had a patch that decimated the game to the point where it completely died out... and it's not as if companies were to adopt such a dumb label that they'd never patch the game again either.
Stability, from an advertiser's perspective, has nothing to do with the game itself, patches, etc. It's all about the competitors in that given gaming genre, because the entire gaming industry is just a series of bubbles and trends. If Command and Conquer were to come out with a new game and it was immensely popular and built up a competitive scene, then SC2 has an issue with stability since it's a direct competitor in the genre and will be leeching off players and eyes, even if those gamers are playing both games. Having an older game go up against a brand new game in the same genre is a lot more alarming to an advertiser than a crappy patch, which wouldn't even register on their radar
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With that post i didn't wanted to start a war on WoW vs SC2 or SC2 vs BW.
I just wanted to giva an example (actually 2 examples if you count the one I gave of Counter Strike) of games that had on a point in time an eSport scene (should it be willingly designed like this or not) and where the companies actually decided that they wanted more customers versus having an eSport scene.
I don't know if Starcraft will go this way, I certainly don't hope so but sometimes you have to prevent things from happening. So if you have something like a "eSport status / label" you would inherently block those things from happening.
I also think that developping eSport is a better "long-term" decision than just making the game evolve to something that would attract more customers but that "long-term" decisions are rarely taken by companies like Blizzard because shareholders don't have the same inside that gamers / tournament organisers / casters have, I think that even if the game was created and maintained by designers they wouldn't really know how to make the game evolve even if they they get sometimes infos by pro-gamers.
To take the same metaphor than in the "Social Network" movie where they talked about Facebook and said : "That it is like creating the best party ever and end it at 11" I would say that "It's like organising the best party ever but yourself are going to sleep at 11".
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Isn't the appeal of all sports watching professional athletes continually push limits to the extreme. The viewer is left with a feeling of awe and have a clear understanding that these people a doing things that they themselves could never do. Nobody watches gymnastics and wishes the horizontal poles were more like school yard monkey bars..
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@Haws : Yes, it's true that only a small population is playing competitively but I don't think that it is conceivable to have Starcraft II (or any competitive game) without any casters / tournaments or pro-gamers on it.
Because even if people don't specially care about it they like to see tutorials, competition, good players or just comment on the game even if they don't know a lot about it.
If you look in actual sports most of people watching soccer / football on the Tv don't actually play.
they still root for a team and follow leagues and tournaments.
It's a part of the entertainement culture.
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It would be great to have some comments from Pro-Gamers or Casters and their opinion !
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On October 07 2011 23:42 LunaSea wrote:
It would be great to have some comments from Pro-Gamers or Casters and their opinion !
Hawk is a pro-gamer...
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On October 07 2011 23:10 LunaSea wrote:
@Haws : Yes, it's true that only a small population is playing competitively but I don't think that it is conceivable to have Starcraft II (or any competitive game) without any casters / tournaments or pro-gamers on it.
Because even if people don't specially care about it they like to see tutorials, competition, good players or just comment on the game even if they don't know a lot about it.
If you look in actual sports most of people watching soccer / football on the Tv don't actually play.
they still root for a team and follow leagues and tournaments.
It's a part of the entertainement culture.
'Yes, it's true that only a small population is playing competitively but I don't think that it is conceivable to have Starcraft II (or any competitive game) without any casters / tournaments or pro-gamers on it.' What does even answer in regards to what I said previouslY??
and as far as people watching soccer that don't play: everyone who likes the sport has played it at one time or another, even if it's a bs pick up game at the park, as a kid, on a real team... it's not nearly as simple as take an event, throw it on tv, profit. Soccer is as popular as it is because the barrier for playing is as cheap as buying a ball. Shit, even in dirt areas of Africa, kids make soccer balls by wrapping dried skins and stuff. People, no matter how involved they may be/once were, appreciate a sport much more then they themselves have participated at some point. That is the driving force behind any popular sport.
The hurdle to get into competitive video games is much more considerable. Especially when it's a computer game. And segmenting that further by giving it a label of ESPORTS would only further the gap in a growing industry that needs as many eyes as it can get
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On October 07 2011 18:54 drsnuggles wrote:
You're completely wrong about comparing SC2 to WoW. WoW was never about eSports, even when a small scene formed, Blizzard never had incentives to build WoW into an eSport, whereas with SC2 they have no incentive not to, as it's a great way to get revenue for them (in the long run, they will sell broadcasting licenses to companies).
This this this 100x times
I come from wow myself and even tho i hate them for killing the game wow was a money making machine based of 8 millions ppl playing and about 4 million actual gamers, blizzard must have thought that the "ppl just playing" were going to leave soon ( since there are a lot of ppl who bought the game around the end of vanilla only cuz there "gamer" friends praised the game ) so they decided to sacrifice the gamer part of wow for the "just playing" part of wow due to income, even tho i criticize there decision and i considered blizzard "as worse as EA" since then this won't happen to sc due to the "main stream" of income coming from gamers/spectators not from "just playing to have singel player and bronze league" guys.
Also wow was obviously going to die at some point so you could just as well speculate they were planing to kill it and get the most out of it in cata since there "main team" was working on sc2 and there new mmo ( yes they said the 2 mmo's will coexist but blizzard says many things and they don't always plan on doing as they said )... That is my option about what happened to wow and why it won't happen to sc2... tho i think it is a valid concern for not-esport game that are begging to become a good esport material and then get slamed by the producer like in wow case.
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I daresay SC2 was made primarily with the intent to tap the esport market.
Tournament organizers don't really care that in 6 months or a year the game might die off as an esport because they'll just switch to another game that is popular w/ a thriving competitive scene. If you design the game w/ esports features in mind (spectators, replays, pause), then it shouldn't require a ton of extra effort to implement them and should be offset by whatever tournament fees and free publicity you get from competitive events. If you try to shoehorn the features in after the game has been out for awhile, you'll likely run into a lot of issues and require more manpower to implement them. The whole notion of a special label w/ excess restrictions is entirely unnecessary.
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I agree it sucks when a major patch ruins a tournament however I don't see why Blizzard would kill esports (lol). I don't know whether of not they're "killing WoW" but I can understand if they do since they're making Titan. I haven't been following WoW for a long time and I think the esport side of it was pretty bad anyway. From what I remember they listened to community and buffed/nerfed each spec at some point to please everyone in the end.
I don't like the idea of getting games changed faster. SC2 has had too many balance patches already. Instead I like to see progamers come up with new stuff. Also lol at making changes in agreement with casters whos knowledge of the game is really shallow compared to the biased progamers that actually play in ESPORTS events.
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You can milk from WoW because of the subscription, but you can't milk from SC2 the way you milk in WoW. From the business standpoint, 2 games are completely different.
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Netherlands45349 Posts
On October 07 2011 21:02 Novalisk wrote:Show nested quote +On October 07 2011 20:42 Trumpet wrote:On October 07 2011 19:56 Novalisk wrote:
If Blizzard started making the game easy to play it would indeed be bad for eSports, but you failed to show any pattern suggesting this could happen in the future. What changes have Blizzard made to SC2 for the sole purpose of making the game easier? Blizzard already did "excessively simplify the gameplay / mechanics." It's called SC2, and it's been pretty damn successful. I never said "excessively simplify the gameplay / mechanics". I also asked for changes made to SC2, not the SC franchise as a whole. The mechanics in SC2 were simplified because as Blizzard figured, the BW mechanics contributed very little to the spectator experience. The game has a very high skill ceiling without them, and Blizzard made the change so the players could focus on activities more engaging to the spectators. This is different from making the game easier solely for the purpose of making it easier.
Don't talk about stuff that you have no idea about.
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EPT
