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The multiple tech paths/more unit upgrade idea is ridiculous. And the further suggestion that it's paid is abhorrent.
Not all choices are equal. Thus, the feature would be pay for advantage.
But even if it was not paid it would still be a bad idea because it would be extremely difficult to balance.
A better idea along these lines is Hearthstone's Tavern Brawl feature: Every week there are new rules (e.g. zerglings can leap over cliffs, all units explode on death dealing damage nearby, capital ships have their costs reduce and damaged increased, basic units (marine, zealot, zergling) are removed, vikings are replaced with goliaths, etc.). There would be a separate ladder for games with these special rules, and the rankings (percentiles) are revealed at the end of each week, including separately for each race to account for balance concerns.
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On June 30 2015 00:38 paralleluniverse wrote:The multiple tech paths/more unit upgrade idea is ridiculous. And the further suggestion that it's paid is abhorrent. Not all choices are equal. Thus, the feature would be pay for advantage. But even if it was not paid it would still be a bad idea because it would be extremely difficult to balance. A better idea along these lines is Hearthstone's Tavern Brawl feature: Every week there are new rules (e.g. zerglings can leap over cliffs, all units explode on death dealing damage nearby, capital ships have their costs reduce and damaged increased, basic units (marine, zealot, zergling) are removed, vikings are replaced with goliaths, etc.). There would be a separate ladder for games with these special rules, and the rankings (percentiles) are revealed at the end of each week, including separately for each race to account for balance concerns.
So like the paid items, you may be against, but i'd be for it. I don't really care as much about balance for a casual ladder.
As far as the tavern brawl idea, i'm not familiar with it, so maybe that could me something you could elucidate more. My idea does seem a bit cumbersome and maybe yours would be better in the long run.
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My wish list!:
1. WOW Style Factions:
- Race War and Faction War Seasons on ladder! Add all normal ladder win/loss points to the Race or Faction total pool, display total pool prominently in hub screen for Race and Faction pride! i.e this week the Overmind zergs are have more points than the Kerrigan zergs  Clans can exist within or across factions/races. People can role play they want, recruit for Raynor's Rebels! Take down the Dominion!
- Faction Ideas:
Protoss: Khala vs Shakuras
Terran: Dominion vs Raynor's Rebels vs UED
Zerg: Kerrigan vs Overmind
- Faction Based Skin Rewards: As you level up within a faction, (just the normal 105 levels will do, no need for new system), you can unlock faction specific skins, such as a cooler hydralisk skin for the Kerrigan faction!
- Faction Based Login Screen Background: i.e. If you belong to the Khala, your login screen background is golden themed, vs Shakuras faction login screen is dark/void themed.
- Faction Based News Delivery: Same News delivered to you by your Faction specific leader portrait. i.e. The Overmind tells you all about the new patch coming through.
- Zero impact to game balance, but creates a sense of belonging to something bigger, like Alliance vs Horde, or within the Horde, Forsaken vs Orcs. I would love to join the Kerrigan faction and show those Overmind zergs how "real" zergs play ZvZ lol.
2. Diablo Style Loot (skin) Generator:
- Armor System (purely cosmetic): Each unit get a few pieces of armor slot, (i.e. new Spikes on the head of a Roach, new Rifle for a marine). Have a armory screen like the Campaign, where you can go in and add cosmetic armor for each unit.
- Loot can be generated randomly on any ladder win, or with restrictions: i.e. may be you can only get that badass new Sniper Rifle for your Ghost through TvZ victories.
- Zero impact to game balance, but creates a whole new level of incentives to grind the ladder. Show off your better looking units to your friends and enemies! A Legendary Psy-Blade drop for your Zealots anyone??
- Potential in-game micro transactions for unique cosmetic armor pieces? MOBAS all have it, why not add to Starcraft 2. I bought the Collector's Edition HOTS purely for the Ultralisk skin
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Hey Tokinho,
I agree that there needs to be more discussion on the interface and that the game can definitely be more social and have us connect with others, whether that be progamers, tournaments or regular joes.
Warcraft 3 had a pretty good interface but even that can be tempered to be much more social. League of Legends and Dota are more up to date versions of games that really get the players immersed in the whole game culture.
I made a pretty lengthy post over in the blogs section on non-balance changes, if you want you can post there or take some ideas from there into your thread: http://www.teamliquid.net/blogs/489043-fixing-lotv-the-ultimate-guide
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United States4883 Posts
1) In game rewards:
Yes, I agree on all the points here. At the beginning of HotS, they promised skins and icons and all kinds of neat things to unlock, but they stopped supporting that area as soon as the game was actually released and they got their initial money from the game. As I've said over and over again, Blizzard really can't afford to continue on without a marketplace for micro transactions. Otherwise, LotV will follow the same footsteps as its predecessors: the game is released, Blizzard makes a big chunk of money, and then drops development because there is no incentive. The leveling system is also a joke; I reached 105 in the HotS beta. For comparison, the level system in League of Legends is very important because you have to level up to max level (30) before you're allowed to play ranked games, which takes around 80-100 games.
2) Clan Play:
I come from a WC3 background, and the strongest pull for having a clan was that we could have our own private chat channel which we could moderate. The lack of easily accessible chat channels all but kills this need, and there's simply no need to join a clan if you already have a group of people you communicate with consistently over Skype, etc. Also, the ability to see how your clan ranked in comparison to other clans based on wins/losses in WC3 was pretty neat ^^.
3) Sponsorship and Tournaments:
Yeah, SC2 could work on improving viewship by adding more to the in-game menu. Dota 2 actually does this very well by broadcasting live tournaments in the main menu and giving you a direct link to the stream. There are also several chat options that allow you to talk with other people about what's going on in the tournament at that moment. SC2 has small announcements, but having an entire page dedicated to searching for a game isolates the player and kills a lot of opportunity for Blizzard to advertise news/tournaments/etc. I mean, even looking at WC3, they moved the "searching for game" icon after the beta to the top of the screen just so it wouldn't interrupt the chat windows.
Those are just some general thoughts ^^. You wanted me to give some, so there they are!
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+ Show Spoiler +On July 02 2015 00:16 SC2John wrote:
1) In game rewards:
Yes, I agree on all the points here. At the beginning of HotS, they promised skins and icons and all kinds of neat things to unlock, but they stopped supporting that area as soon as the game was actually released and they got their initial money from the game. As I've said over and over again, Blizzard really can't afford to continue on without a marketplace for micro transactions. Otherwise, LotV will follow the same footsteps as its predecessors: the game is released, Blizzard makes a big chunk of money, and then drops development because there is no incentive. The leveling system is also a joke; I reached 105 in the HotS beta. For comparison, the level system in League of Legends is very important because you have to level up to max level (30) before you're allowed to play ranked games, which takes around 80-100 games.
2) Clan Play:
I come from a WC3 background, and the strongest pull for having a clan was that we could have our own private chat channel which we could moderate. The lack of easily accessible chat channels all but kills this need, and there's simply no need to join a clan if you already have a group of people you communicate with consistently over Skype, etc. Also, the ability to see how your clan ranked in comparison to other clans based on wins/losses in WC3 was pretty neat ^^.
3) Sponsorship and Tournaments:
Yeah, SC2 could work on improving viewership by adding more to the in-game menu. Dota 2 actually does this very well by broadcasting live tournaments in the main menu and giving you a direct link to the stream. There are also several chat options that allow you to talk with other people about what's going on in the tournament at that moment. SC2 has small announcements, but having an entire page dedicated to searching for a game isolates the player and kills a lot of opportunity for Blizzard to advertise news/tournaments/etc. I mean, even looking at WC3, they moved the "searching for game" icon after the beta to the top of the screen just so it wouldn't interrupt the chat windows.
Those are just some general thoughts ^^. You wanted me to give some, so there they are!
Thanks SC2John!!! I appreciate it. I wish i would have played wc3 to truly understand what people refer to in terms of the community model there.
My microtransaction model and casual ladder need work but thanks for taking the time to look at my 3 main opinions on how to improve community and to a lesser extent my diversity model to increase strategy and include microtransactions.
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didn't read the whole thing) I think adding micro transactions will be good to make players have a goal and play more.
This Idea is pretty much exactly the same how (Dota/CSGO) works and focused more on aesthetics.
1. Units and Buildings Skins/Themes - As a CSGO player from its early days I kinda go bored playing (casual) it after a year, the thing kept me playing it continuosly was when they introduced skins, it doesn't affect gameplay but something that keeps the game to feel/look fresh from time to time. "New contnent" . Imo collecting those are pretty fun and can somewhat lessen stress after losing when you get rewards.
How will it work: After End of a Match (from Ranked/Unranked) both/all have a small chance to get a crate or something that contains the skins (pretty much like how dota and csgo works). The drop rate is very low so to avoid quitting on purpose. You can open it by using a key that can be bought in a Blizzard Market (i will discuss it later) or trade it from other players that has it.
There are a lots of Units and Buildings x 3 race. So yeah there's a lot to collect. and that's just a for a particular theme.
2. Buyable / Customizable decals - Just like above, players can get a skin or a decal crate which can be unlocked by a key but different from the skin key.
-Customizable decals - Can be bought in the market directly and make a decal of whatever image you like. But you cannot change it once you finalized it.
3. Voice / Sound Packs - Can be only be bought directly at the Blizzard Market. and cannot be traded since its a pretty big file Ithink? And would be complicated for the system for it to be tradeable. ex: BW sound pack
4. Blizzard Market - For the above suggestions to work, ofc Blizzard needs a Market platform just like steam where players can trade / sell / buy stuff. Not limited to SC2 but all Blizzard games.
Tho this may be hard (or easy ) to implement, I think the only con for this micro transactions is a bigger game file size.
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Russian Federation93 Posts
On May 22 2015 01:48 sh1RoKen wrote:The main reasons of incredible popularity of DotA, LoL and CS:GO are social activities and the ability of non-skill ingame development. There are millions and millions of people playing DotA all day at 2k mmr with no intent of improving their skill. Starcraft need those people to survive the battle for sponsors and viewers. The main problem in SC2 in my opinion is the lack of social activity. Playing with your friends is much more interesting than playing alone. I don't want it to be 2v2 or Archon mode focused game but we totally need to interact with our friends while playing 1v1. All described below is for motivating CASUAL players to play the game. Clans are great but we need them to be active and somehow beneficial for a player (not for the best players). What I mean is that all players must be interested in joining a clan and benefit from playing better for a clan and representing that clan somehow BUT without losing the interest because they are not in top of ML. If only the best clans will be profitable, there will be no point of participating in such activities unless you are one of the best players. The number of clan members must be limited to 10-15 members so there will be point in more careful process of choosing clans/members. The main objective of playing ladder should be skill improvement FOR achieving better results in clan activities. And the ladder itself should give something besides useless points, ranks and portraits (but clan activities must be more beneficial). Player must have a motivation of casual laddering even if he doesn't want to improve himself. Show nested quote +On May 21 2015 17:26 Korakys wrote:
5. Make game easier to play.
6. Make game harder to master.
Damn right! The game must became more like "football". From the very first time you touch a ball it must be interesting and fun to play. For two bronze players the game should be like they are in GSL final. Right now it is like "swimming". Do you know how fun is to swim if you can't swim? You have to play 200-300 games very carefully and very straining until it will start to look like a starcraft. You have to freaking WORK for a month to start receiving a fun game experience! And you have to do it ALONE without getting anything but 3 portraits and 1 unit and 1 building skins. And you must pay 60$ to be able to try it.
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They need to fire whoever they have at Blizzard and hire you, immediately.
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It does blow my mind slightly that they haven't leapt on portraits more. It'd be so simple to implement e-sport related portraits right?
I always thought it'd be a really good idea to brinng in "pets". Remember the jokes Tastosis would make about the flying shark, or Automaton 2000? Kinda like those. Players could unlock slots for pets that would spawn somewhere on the map decoratively. Allowing the other player to sometimes stumble onto whatever weird creature their opponent has could be a fun addition to the game that wouldn't effect core game play. Possibility for WoW/Diablo tie ins as well. Also along these lines I believe anything to customise on the battlefield should be a potential micro transaction. Why can't the Hellions have different flame styles pre blue flame? Could do the same with Reaper jetpacks, and I'm sure there are lots of ideas to be found if you go through every unit. Giving players more meaningful rewards that allows them to put their personality into a game they join is a really good way to give players more casual creativity, and also feel more connected to other players inside the game. This is one of the biggest problem areas for casual players in my mind.
I heard this mentioned somewhere else, and am not sure if it goes with this thread, but giving the start of games a countdown. I really think this should happen as there is really no massive downside. The amount of times the loading bar has suddenly caught me by surprise, and I know I can't be alone. Now the games begin faster it would also give lower level players more time to set their hotkeys and camera locations. It might make a lot of casual players feel more comfortable.
My two pennies.
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I quite like the casual ladder idea. I wouldn't give a shit since I'm quite a competitive person and wish SC2 at the highest level was more like chess, very standardized (hell even those skins you can't disable set my teeth on edge), but that may have potential to draw people in.
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EPT
