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The LotV forum right now is filled to the brim with threads about what is right and/or wrong with the way Blizzard is developing LotV. Everywhere people make suggestions for changes, polls, post (more or less) constructive criticism or try to defend Blizzards decisions in the developement of the beta.
Whether you like the way things are going or not, there is one thing that I would claim to be a fact: The community is divided on many aspects of the game and there is a vocal part of the community that is displeased with how LotV is turning out.
But there is an alternative to complaining and hoping; there is always the possibility for a balance mod made by community members. A few custom balance mods are already out there, the most prominent being StarBow I believe. But there are others too, like Starcraft Improved (by BlackLilium) or SCynergie (by TheDwf) and others.
What I would like to know and discuss is what your opinions are about balance mods in general.
- Do you think mods can ever become big?
- If you are not playing any mods right now, what are the reasons?
- What would a mod need to be worth playing for you?
- What would need to change for mods to get more attention?
- What are the big "no-no's" for mods?
- etc...
Please also take a second and vote in the poll below to tell us about your readiness to play and support a balance mod.
( the "I am already playing a mod..." options are meant to be understood as: "I am (mostly) playing a mod instead of the original game". )
Poll: What is your opinion on balance mods?I like SC2 as it is and I am not interested in playing a mod (35) 24% I like SC2 as it is but I would still try a mod (5) 3% I am not entirely happy with LotV but I would not want to play a mod either (66) 45% I am not entirely happy with LotV and I would like to play a mod instead (38) 26% I am already playing a mod and I dont want to try any other (2) 1% I am already playing a mod but I would try a different mod too (2) 1% 148 total votes Your vote: What is your opinion on balance mods? (Vote): I like SC2 as it is and I am not interested in playing a mod
(Vote): I like SC2 as it is but I would still try a mod
(Vote): I am not entirely happy with LotV but I would not want to play a mod either
(Vote): I am not entirely happy with LotV and I would like to play a mod instead
(Vote): I am already playing a mod and I dont want to try any other
(Vote): I am already playing a mod but I would try a different mod too
Thanks for your time.
Please try to keep actual balance discussion, or bashing / defending of blizzard, out of this thread, thanks.
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By the way, it would be nice if people who would not like to play a mod could tell us why in a reply. I am just curious.
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If a mod becomes big and can sustain a competitive scene, I may have interest in it. Until then I'll only play the main game, except if LotV is really bad -but Blizzard won't let that happen, hard though they may seem to try.
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A huge part of it is comfort of finding people to play with.
Logging in and clicking on "Find Match" is simply more comfortable and motivating than having to first get into a chat group, find a player in my skill range and then crossing fingers he isn't AFK and we can actually play. And even if I was to do that, so many others won't do it naturally decreasing the amount of players to choose from. And thus making it harder and harder for me to find players.
If mods would get machmaking, that'd be an entire different story for me.
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On September 21 2015 04:36 KeksX wrote:
If mods would get machmaking, that'd be an entire different story for me.
I agree. If mods would get matchmaking, I would definetely give them a good chance.
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On September 21 2015 04:42 Robzi wrote:Show nested quote +On September 21 2015 04:36 KeksX wrote:
If mods would get machmaking, that'd be an entire different story for me. I agree. If mods would get matchmaking, I would definetely give them a good chance.
yeah I'd include that criterion as part of being reasonably competitive.
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On September 21 2015 04:01 [PkF] Wire wrote:
If a mod becomes big and can sustain a competitive scene, I may have interest in it. Until then I'll only play the main game [...].
Isnt that a circular argument? If everybody thought this way it could never happen.
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On September 21 2015 04:46 RoomOfMush wrote:Show nested quote +On September 21 2015 04:01 [PkF] Wire wrote:
If a mod becomes big and can sustain a competitive scene, I may have interest in it. Until then I'll only play the main game [...]. Isnt that a circular argument? If everybody thought this way it could never happen.
I agree it is but I don't have the spare time to invest into a mod that doesn't already have a community surrounding it. I leave that to younger and more energetic people 
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It's too hard to find matching opponents in mods. Even starbow with all the hype never got that problem under control.
Additionally many mods to me feel like either 1step forward, 2steps back. Or just try to make a different game to begin with, which I would only find interesting if they actually scraped the whole starcraft-concept.
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I am not very happy about what blizzard is doing with LotV currently so I would play a mod. Definitively!
But there is no really chance to play it:
- no players
- no in-game ladder
I tried starbow here and there, and when another player was available it was always a pleasure to play this mod.
But mostly I wanted to play no opponents were available.
So I had to go back to HotS or LotV-beta, sadly...
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I think it's the biggest problem. The player base is already pretty small in SC2 in general, so for a mod to really get going you would virtually need everyone to start playing it. It doesn't seem possible atm...
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dota sometime was a "balance mode" to Blizzard game WC3...now icefrog (who was final game (mod?) designer of dota) working on dota2 which gives much money to Valve and got big community...Guy who started dota -> Guinsoo, switched, and created League of Legends with RIOT...Wich is super big too....
So i think sometime, maybe one of this guys who making sc2 improved and StarBow will get to a company like "Evlav" or "TOIR" and create "THE SUPER BALANCE. GREAT RTS"
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Well the main game has buffed warp gate with 2 second warp ins and has the silliest pylon overcharge idea. The trailer highlighted a pylon and warp ins, 2 of the things that i hate most about the beta. At least there is a way to slow down warp gate, sniping the warp prism, but its so hard to kill the stupid thing and it too easy to win games with protoss at the moment. I don't understand why blizzard is so obsessed with having mass armies warp in to someone's base while building mass aoe armies. There is absolutely no reason to play the other races at the moment. Preventing banking so much chrono doesn't change much. Blizzard gives feedback now which basically says, we'd prefer to stick to what didn't work in the past. (I.e. we(blizzard) believe the changes took away from the core design of the races and didn't want to change) What was the point of showing us something that people liked, only to take it away and say we don't care if you liked it. I was having fun and preordered LOTV only to cancel my preorder after being so frustrated with the big FU they gave us in the most recent community feedback.
I have no friends that play starcraft and I have in the past few days lost nearly all interest in playing it as the redesign of the protoss race did not happen. The tournament games now are all gimmicky protoss wins like lilbow, rain, classic, hero, MC. It is not going to change. I don't see many players coming back/staying with the game. That is the biggest problem i have with making mods in sc2. I would prefer that the mods be made in the valve hammer environment. I would definitely try them there and I feel that the map making community would be dumb to make mods in here, that Blizzard would not support, and in contrast Valve would be willing to support.
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How to fix LotV, save the RTS genre, and revive Starcraft eSports in two simple steps (nepotistic developers hate him!).
#1 copy Starbow
#2 paste Starbow
4Head
No but for real.
If I ever get back into SC2, it'll be with a redesign mod.
The argument that Blizzard can't just make a huge change because it's so soon before release is laughable: we have plenty of examples of radically alternative and superior design made by much smaller teams of people. Perhaps they're just too big and bureaucratic for that to happen.
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I don't know about other mods, but the reason I never played Starbow was the lack of a match-maker inside the SC2 client. It is just too much of a hassle for me to find a match on a site and then make a custom game. Plus I got put off by how long they took to release the thing (it's still in beta, no?).
I guess I'm just lazy. I don't play much anymore anyway. I've become mostly a spectator. HotS is just too frustrating. I enjoyed playing WoL pre BL/Infestor and HotS early on. But it seems every time I load up a HotS game, a proxy Oracle flies into my base, followed up by another all-in. And my micro is too weak from inactivity to play a macro game vs. Zerg (can't split well enough on creep and don't like playing mech). So I just don't enjoy the games, win or lose.
For reference, if I played a few games right now I'd get placed in high plat/low diamond. Used to be just a smidgen below masters and beat a fair few.
LotV is a mess beyond all imagining. Just like HotS I suppose, but more obvious. Pretty much every change made in HotS has been nerfed/removed from the game/made the game worse.
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On September 21 2015 05:59 tokinho wrote:
I have no friends who play starcraft nor have any interest in playing it after release.
This is exactly how it is for me. All my friends left a couple months after hots. I mean, yeah i guess i can make new friends online, but they can't replace real life friends that also play sc2.
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Usually what happens in mods is that they have a few totally brilliant, yet simple ideas that should really be no-brainers as far as adding to the game, but then they make a bunch of changes that I cannot agree with without being shown it working in practice. And I rarely enjoy how their pet ideas work in practice. There was this amazing mod recently that instituted Hot Mineral Harvesting and a couple other things I thought were really wise, but then they started getting cute and removed Mutalisk regeneration and made a few other changes with distinctly negative consequences, and a bunch of posters made arguments that they were discrete improvements to the game, rather than trade-offs with some rather significant sacrifices.
There were a number of changes in OneGoal that were really brilliant, but either weren't pushed for the most recent edition, or left out some significant issues that could have been addressed with more ambitious changes. And of course, while I'm rather so-so on Starbow as a whole, some of their ideas are absolutely killer and would significantly improve the base SC2 game.
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On September 21 2015 04:36 KeksX wrote:
A huge part of it is comfort of finding people to play with.
Logging in and clicking on "Find Match" is simply more comfortable and motivating than having to first get into a chat group, find a player in my skill range and then crossing fingers he isn't AFK and we can actually play. And even if I was to do that, so many others won't do it naturally decreasing the amount of players to choose from. And thus making it harder and harder for me to find players.
If mods would get machmaking, that'd be an entire different story for me.
This is a circle argument indeed, but only because of blizzard's policy.
Blizzard will NEVER add matchmaking to the arcade to help mods UNLESS a lot of people are playing such a mod and demand blizzard to do so. And even then it might take forever (more than 9 deckslots in HS anyone?). But a mod cannot generate a lot of players without such a feature, so blizzard is kinda making sure this will never happen.
Maybe if Kespa adopted a mod and said all future proleauges will be played on it, I dunno.
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The current state of Starbow saddens me deeply.
The ladder is effectively dead, and the forums have not had activity in weeks. And it isn't for lack of quality.
The fact is that once the influx of new players back at the start of summer had faded, the activity entered a negative spiral. Fewer players meant worse matchmaking, worse matchmaking made more players leave. Queue times skyrocketet and even the core playerbase gave up on laddering.
This wouldnt be as bad if it was like OneGoal or Starcraft+... mods that tried, but didn't have what it takes to make a lasting impact. Despite the apperant failure, people are still talking about Starbow. People liked Starbow, and many would love to play it still. But the fact is that the SC2 arcade is not built to encourage such a mod. The entire game is built up to support and focus players on the main ladder. Everything else is secondary, and disemphasized by the very design.
This doesn't just kill projects like Starbow. Fun BGH like games, wacky custom game modes and ordenary casual play is swept under the rug by this intense focus on being competetive and "hardcore". Many people are exited for the Starcrafts mod... but if Starbow is any indication it will only be a novelty for a few months, then fade to being a nice memory.
Still, there is hope. Blizzard have promised improvements to the arcade, and a functioning matchmaking system would be top of that list for me and many others - followed immediately by a better access to current open lobbies. BW didn't survive so long on the competitive aspect alone - the ease of making both quick open matches and strange ums games did much more work that it has been credited for.
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So I take it the general opinion is, that no matter how good the mod is, as long as there is no build-in ladder there is no point in playing it? (because: too much trouble to find decent opponents of similar skill)
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EPT
