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On October 08 2011 03:14 Kipsate 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. Don't talk about stuff that you have no idea about.
What makes you think I don't? FYI, I was a BW spectator before I became an SC2 spectator. I can voice my opinion from a spectator standpoint regarding this matter.
To reiterate... There are many things Blizzard did wrong in their transition from BW to SC2, but as I see it, the goal of making the game easier to play wasn't the driving force behind any of these mistakes. I refuse to believe that Blizzard would create a game aimed for spectators, and then remove features important to the spectator experience just to make the game easier to play.
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Even the suits that run Acti-Blizz should be able to grasp the concept that killing the spectator aspect of SC2 would kill the game as a whole. I don't really agree with all the balance changes Blizz makes (or the speed they implement them) but it is reassuring to know that pro players are regularly contacted for input on the matter.
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@Offhand : Not if you win more money by simplifying the game.
@BadBinky : Titan will be avaible in 3-4 years minimum and WoW is already dead for 1-2 years so if Titan would be the reason, the the timing would be really bad !
@Hawk : It's true that people watching soccer / football played it at one point in time but when they watch it it's also because other friends watch it too and that they don't wan't to be rejected of that social group.
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On October 07 2011 20:21 LunaSea wrote:
@unkzz : yes actualy thy did, I know that a lot of players were asked for their opinion.
About PvE, there was also drama in that part of the game (Ex : Ensidia #1 Lich King kill where the guild was banned for some time and the GM quits...etc).
But I don't agree with the fact that WoW never was an eSport. For some years there even was a WoW event at Mlg's !
No, they didnt. I was heavily invested in the WoW arena scene once upon a time, and up untill BC they had done no such thing, wotlk neither afaik. There's a difference asking Serennia if DK's are overpowered and actually accepting help from players to balance the game, SC2 has David Kim who knows his stuff, WoW had nobody except Paragon testing PvE content in cata. The true proof to them not listening to players is just look at the games balance over time, the game has never been close to balanced. Matches are decided more by setup then by player skill, and has been since druids came along in BC. If you don't have a fotm comp, you won't go far in a tournament, its as easy as that.
WoW is the worst e-sport game of all time, it was forced into an e-sport because it was so popular, yet not even the "pro players" felt it was a legitimate e-sport game, it was a joke. And Blizzard hasn't done anything to help it maintain its e-sport status, they made a spectator client, that's all they ever did.
And the game was dumbed down so everyone could experience raid content, even if you had and IQ in the single digits you could do raids. If you played Cata, and did some arena you know what i say to be true since i just have to say resto shamans. They were bad in PvE, walking unkillable caster lockdown gods in PvP. Hell name me any arena season from BC to start of cata and i can name you two or three classes that remained insanely overpowered for several months, that's not an e-sport game, and thats not them trying, sorry.
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On October 08 2011 04:38 Novalisk wrote:Show nested quote +On October 08 2011 03:14 Kipsate wrote: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. Don't talk about stuff that you have no idea about. What makes you think I don't? FYI, I was a BW spectator before I became an SC2 spectator. I can voice my opinion from a spectator standpoint regarding this matter. To reiterate... There are many things Blizzard did wrong in their transition from BW to SC2, but as I see it, the goal of making the game easier to play wasn't the driving force behind any of these mistakes. I refuse to believe that Blizzard would create a game aimed for spectators, and then remove features important to the spectator experience just to make the game easier to play.
Yeah right... i like it when people say something completely wrong and then say "BUT I WATCHED BW" and think people actually believe them, or if it even validates their argument. You have no idea what you are talking about and have never played BW seriously in your life.
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The main difference between WoW and SC2 is that SC2 was designed from the ground up to be an e-sport. WoW was not.
In the beginning PvP was little more than a side game, designed to be a fun alternative to raiding, or in many cases a place to show off best the hard earned rewards you got from raiding.
Somewhere along the line, the community began demanding segregation of PvP from PvE content and when the Arena was born and Resilience came into the game that segregation became a reality that hasn't really gone away. Somewhere in there, the developers got the idea to try out the Arena as an e-sport but I think after a while that idea died once the developers and the players realized that it's impossible to design a game like WoW to be a balanced e-sport when it was never intended to be that.
SC2 is different. From day 1 this game was designed to be a competitive e-sport and in 1 year it's already way more balanced and fun to watch competitively than the short lived wow e-sports scene ever was.
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I don't understand why a game needs to be complex for it to be competitive?
Tennis, golf, basketball, fishing, bowling, chess, car racing... none of these are excessively complicated.
Micro in Starcraft (BW or SC2) has no skill cap achievable by human beings, the game will forever be competitive and playable as an esport. No matter how simple macro is, you will always have tactics, strategy and micro.
WoW died as an eSport because it is not spectator friendly. You interrupted that spell? Cool good for you, but nobody else other people who actively arena a significant portion and are looking out for such things could tell that you did because the user interface of the game is not spectator friendly. There are 6 individual players in an arena all of which have 20+ spells/skills. It is hard enough to spectate an unfamiliar MOBA game when each character has 4 spells maximum. WoW arena was a clusterfuck.
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Canada11379 Posts
On October 08 2011 01:01 Hawk wrote:Show nested quote +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
I would agree with this. The main issue is accessibility for newcomers- good computer and you have to buy the game and hope some of your friends will buy it. Soccer's easy. One person has a ball, a ton of people can play. For the same reason LoL gets such a high count on their streams. Ease of accessibility to the game itself. As long as you have the computer to run it, you can play for free. I started playing and I convinced a few friends to play it too. SC2- with the old demo system, most wouldn't buy it based on word of mouth. I had to lend out my account for longer periods of time to convince them. It's far harder to get friends on board when absolutely everyone has to pay $60 to play.
It's for that reason, I think Blizzard's new demo idea is much better. Actually, for Heart of the Swarm, I think they ought advertise the free-to-play aspect of it (even if it's only one race on a couple maps. LoL you only get 2 maps anyways.) This is the best thing Blizzard can do to promote esports rather than creating an exclusive label. And rather than dumbing down micro-intensive units like the high templar. The easy to learn, hard to master philosophy ought to have recognized that some units, newbies will never use effectively and may not use at all and that's alright. (When you first started, who used high templars or thought vultures were the most useless things in the world ?) And the difficulty of effectively using these units is what makes it interesting. Otherwise it's just a light show. Hard to do and it kills stuff? That's impressive.
Pushing partial free-to-play (which is essentially what the old pirated LAN stuff did in BW) is the best way to push SC2's popularity, not new labels.
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Canada2068 Posts
^ Haha, really true. Who remembers playing the SC Vanilla shareware demo on multiplayer using dial-up internet that gave you a map pool reaching a grand total of 1 map and you were forced to use Terran? Anyone never use vultures, because the mines were too much of a hassle to plant and I didn't like the idea that the mines got used up when every other unit has infinite ammo? (I never used reavers for the same reason)
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Yeah I think that Blizzard didn't want to spend the money to design WoW as an esports. Arena wasn't balanced even at the end of BC and only got worse in WOTLK. Personally I stopped playing because of this. But it's an MMO so people will keep playing and more people will play if its simple.
On the other hand it's important that SC2 be a competitive e-sports or else the game would die down very quickly like most RTS do. If it was simple people still wouldn't play because there wouldn't be that much to do besides the same matchups all the time.
I could go on but basically you can't use the same business model for an MMORPG and an RTS game and in both cases Blizzard have the right approach IMO. Too bad for people like me who enjoyed difficult raiding, but I'm a minority.
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I never took the PvP in that game seriously.
Its endlessness and the need to continually add PvE content, new spells, and more desirable gear is basically the reason why it can never be truly balanced as a PvP game. There are always combinations of classes that are garbage and others that are ridiculously strong. Where's the balance in that?
I think blizzard should continue to dumb down the game to the point where the most casual gamers feel like playing. The more they get, the better. Like that we can enjoy quality games that are worth playing competitively, instead of trying to turn WoW into something it could never be.
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As an esport fan, this thread is making me losing hope in humanity.
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EPT
