This afternoon we attended a sit down Q&A session with Chris Sigaty (Lead Producer) and David Kim (Game Balance Designer) to discuss Wings of Liberty, Heart of the Swarm, Esports, LAN, Replays and more.
A full video and text transcript will probably be available soon from other community sites - we've selected some of the points/answers that are most relevant to the progaming community. A bunch of guys were recording it, so can get exact quotes etc in the next few days.
Note: Some of this may sound negative/cut and dry. The full Q&A was an hour long but i tried to extract the information that affects us most in day-to-day esports life. In the greater picture, they were more "giving" on other questions about things like separate ladders hots/wol, custom map stuff, Blizzard Dota etc.
"The List" implies features they want but haven't got in yet. They could be patched in, expansioned in, warped in, or never make it in. The list is as solid as a rock and vaporous as a cloud, but they did confirm that it does actually exist.
LAN No Lan. Chris said that he doesn't foresee LAN during the SC2 life cycle (from WoL -> end of life). With regards to esports they are very aware of the issues and see them when they happen (although that doesn't really help the problem ;o). He also said they are more positive about the idea of having some sort of offline server capability for the MLGs, GSLs etc of the world....but they have no current plans to implement one. My question was basically, at what point do the interests of the esports industry start to outweigh the reasoning they've given us in the past for no offline play ("the list", IP protection, business etc). tl;dr: it could happen next year, it could happen in 3 years, but it wont be related to an expansion release.
Clan Support Its on "the list". They want it. They are working on it. Unclear whether it will make HotS - could be released after. But yes, its coming.
Group Replays Its on "the list". They realize the game needs it and in general they want a more meaningful way to distribute replays across battle.net.
HLTV/Dota2 Viewing I asked Chris about the amazing spectating abilities of Dota2 (allows you to jump into a top level game from the client and start watching...even while you are waiting for a game in ladder queue). He nodded intently as i explained how the feature worked and said that its something he really wants at some point (maybe Legacy of the Void). In general they want better ways to bridge the gap from general fans to competitive gaming through battle.net.
Blizzard Arcade The new name for the market place to release premium blizzard content and user content. Blizzard Dota will be the first major Blizzard release which will come around HotS. They will have some ranking/rating features and will have a system to make sure only good user-submitted content is being charged for.
WoL vs HotS Balance Asked David about how he "balances" (sorry LOL) the concerns of balancing WoL vs filling those holes with HotS features, abilities and units. He said he considers WoL to be pretty balanced and that they only want to make tiny changes to fix problems that they see. HotS is effectively a reset on the balance process, but they feel overall it will be an even better game filling many of the issues they saw with the original.
He feels that the beta will give the design team much more substantial data than WoL because there's such a rich pool of pros to work with. He thinks pros will adapt to the changes pretty quickly and be able to give solid feedback.
Saving Multiplayer Games/Reconnect ala LoL/Dota2 etc They have talked about it. They like the idea of it but it hasn't made it in yet (watching group replays is more important to them right now). Didn't commit but its something they are looking at.
As you can see, some of the answers are non-committal, but this is the nature of press conferences. More details on Blizzard Arcade and Blizzard Dota will be released tomorrow.
We will also have a 1 on 1 interview with Dustin Browder at 11am so be sure to tweet me your questions tonight and ill try include some @Kennigit.
On October 22 2011 11:45 Kennigit wrote: LAN No Lan. Chris said that he doesn't foresee LAN during the SC2 life cycle (from WoL -> end of life). With regards to esports they are very aware of the issues and see them when they happen (although that doesn't really help the problem ;o). He also said they are more positive about the idea of having some sort of offline server capability for the MLGs, GSLs etc of the world....but they have no current plans to implement one. tl;dr: it could happen next year, it could happen in 3 years, but it wont be related to an expansion release.
i sorta understand the no lan part even though it makes me sad... they don't want so many people to pirate the game. i mean look at cs 1.6. its in every school library and computer lab basically. im assuming that having the game pirated will get blizzard to lose money
Ugh at the LAN thing, where the hell are the BNet2.0 server emulators that work well enough for Blizzard to not be able to play the "well it prevents piracy see" card and actually give in an add it. Damnit pirating underworld, the one time you're needed to send a message that would help legitimate customers and you go and not get it done in over a year
As someone who was at a 40-50 person lan last weekend that was unable to run its SC2 tournament because the internet took a dump.. the no LAN comment is still incredibly disappointing.
This is great! It sounds like they're focused on the group replays and Blizzard Arcade more than anything now, and seems like they aren't going to implement the DOTA2tv stuff until much later, which is alright I suppose.
So basically "We admit that most other games are light years ahead of us in critical features that players want and expect of a 5A produced game, but have no real plans to implement any of them."
On October 22 2011 11:45 Kennigit wrote: LAN No Lan. Chris said that he doesn't foresee LAN during the SC2 life cycle (from WoL -> end of life). With regards to esports they are very aware of the issues and see them when they happen (although that doesn't really help the problem ;o). He also said they are more positive about the idea of having some sort of offline server capability for the MLGs, GSLs etc of the world....but they have no current plans to implement one. tl;dr: it could happen next year, it could happen in 3 years, but it wont be related to an expansion release.
Fucking stupid.
I don't mind not having lan. It's not 'fucking stupid.'
It's nice that they're thinking of doing a lan-esque thing for the leagues, but for general audience LAN is not needed at all.
Nice little Q&A. I'm happy to hear that their focus is on clan support and replay sharing ^^
I don''t think anyone should have expected any other kind of answers besides the ones they gave. It's typical blizzard but I think it's better to say we'll try to get it done as soon as possible rather than saying oh it'll be done on this date and then not get it done or do it half retardedly
He also said they are more positive about the idea of having some sort of offline server capability for the MLGs, GSLs etc of the world....but they have no current plans to implement one.
As a 'fan' of SC2 as an ESPORT, that's all i want. I don't know how they'd do it, but all i need is to know that a tournament won't have to stop because of the internet. I guess it's a minor positive that they at least are somewhat receptive to the concept.
Everything else sounds about right. It's typical Blizzard, they have lists of things they want to do. It is what it is.
On October 22 2011 11:45 Kennigit wrote: LAN No Lan. Chris said that he doesn't foresee LAN during the SC2 life cycle (from WoL -> end of life). With regards to esports they are very aware of the issues and see them when they happen (although that doesn't really help the problem ;o). He also said they are more positive about the idea of having some sort of offline server capability for the MLGs, GSLs etc of the world....but they have no current plans to implement one. tl;dr: it could happen next year, it could happen in 3 years, but it wont be related to an expansion release.
ITT: People still complaining about LAN even though they know it won't do any good. We won't get LAN until maybe when LotV is being given out on flash drives with the collectors addition of SC3.
So it was kind of a Q&A on how Canessa fucked Bnet up so badly.
And it's not just the LAN thing. Group replays (like the original Bnet had!) and a HLTV service would be amazing.
I wonder if Blizzard will address the huge disparity between Custom games and what's actually possible, because of the silly size and distribution limitations they've imposed on Bnet.
Thanks for the quick writeup though. Looking forward to the full interview and video.
Does David Kim really think pros are going to take part in the beta? Or are they going to provide incentives to get them to play through it for a while?
They are aware of the issues, and notice them when they occur. That's like me saying I am aware of a person being shot in public, and I can see it happening. I am still going to prison if I don't call for help, because I can be seen as an accessory.
Retarded. No substantive changes or progression has been received by SC2 devs over the last year and a half. Saying no to something that every player begs for is pretty much the most dick move in the world.
Man Blizzard seems pathetic. Compared to other companies their support for this game is completely lackluster. So many vital/easy things to implement and their just 'on the list' or 'something we've discussed but don't have plans for yet'. Really disheartening for such a hugely successful company to, well, not really give a fuck about their community.
But I really need to stop reading these things. I keep feeling like I'm getting slapped on the head with the answers they give. Especially their stance on LAN.
EDIT : Oh! And any word if they will let you have multiple accounts? Or is it the same BS with only having 1 account with 1 copy? And Cross region support?
Seriously these two things bother me on a daily fucking basis and it's pissing me off. It just baffles me that they don't exist MORE THAN A YEAR after release =\
As an old Blizzard fanatic from 98, I get a heavy feeling in my chest whenever I read Blizz q&a's like this one which more or less point out how other companies such as Riot, Valve are leaving them in the dust with their interface, user experience and support. And the response is typically something vague like, 'we'll look into it'. #OccupyBnet0.2
Just getting rly fucking annoying hearing the same shit regarding LAN, Its not only needed for the random disconnects. But playing with no MS makes a huge difference in actual gameplay. The response of units and spells are huge.
Did you really have to explain to them how HLTVDota2TV works? It's baffling that they are not updated with that kind of stuff especially coming from one of their rivals/friend company.
On October 22 2011 12:01 emesen wrote: wait... are they charging for blizzard dota now? it's going to be released with / on the marketplace?
they said last year at blizzcon 2010 that all 4 mods, left2die, starjeweled, aiur chef and blizzard all-stars would be released for free...
And they are, you can play them on the custom right now. But it seems that they think they can weasel more money out of you by charging for "high end" custom maps (Which I honestly see being a flop because of the large amount of free quality customs out there).
On October 22 2011 12:01 emesen wrote: wait... are they charging for blizzard dota now?
I wonder if they seriously think people are going to play Blizzard DotA. There shouldn't be any full time staff devoted to it.
DotA 2 is groomed for ESPORTS, which Blizzard won't do and Bnet2 isn't capable of supporting, and LoL is huge and free. It's an oversaturated scene with far more experienced and advanced developers and systems. They should just abandon it.
Overall I'm satisfied with the Q&A it gave me alot of knowledge and nailed my 3 major concerns, for my LAN is more important for GSL/MLG/etc then a public game client so thats good, maybe distribute it to the teams? idk im a little drunk but yeah good Q&A ! Much love! <3
I think it's so odd that so many things are on "the list." Like what's top priority if things like group replays, LAN, and clan support (things the community has been asking for since day 1) are simply "on the list."
On October 22 2011 12:01 emesen wrote: wait... are they charging for blizzard dota now?
I wonder if they seriously think people are going to play Blizzard DotA. There shouldn't be any full time staff devoted to it.
DotA 2 is groomed for ESPORTS, which Blizzard won't do and Bnet2 isn't capable of supporting, and LoL is huge and free. It's an oversaturated scene with far more experienced and advanced developers and systems. They should just abandon it.
I don't think it's being on the Arcade means it's gonna charge you money. I think they put it on the arcade to promote it more than other things.
Also, isn't the Arcade or Marketplace is for Map makers to sell their maps?
This seems kinda silly. Its like "here are the things the community has been asking for" and the response is "we don't have anything definitive to say other than no LAN. We were to busy coming up with the Viper, so we don't have time for what we know you guys want."
I really don't want get why people still think we're going to get LAN. Give it up folks.
They said no, they've said no over and over again. If they were going to implement LAN they'd announce it publicly not hide it under the table. They know full damn well how much the community wants it but they are staunchly against it for good reason.
I'm glad to see they are at least planning to work on the other features mentioned. Hopefully we'll get them before this time next year.
On October 22 2011 12:01 Galaxy613 wrote: Is it possible to tell them we don't freaking care about the marketplace, can you get the group replays working ASAP?
One of those makes Blizzard money, the other does not. I think they are going to focus on the one that makes them money.
Marketplace and microtransactions higher up on "the list" than stupid basic stuff like clans, group replay, and being able to watch pro games on their client? Are they short on cash or something? Why not just release another special edition mount if that's the case?
I really hope more and more companies produce really really excellent games tailored towards eSPORTS. I really feel like the (relative) lack of competition for blizzard is really hurting everyone.
On October 22 2011 12:16 Sinensis wrote: Marketplace and microtransactions higher up on "the list" than stupid basic stuff like clans, group replay, and being able to watch pro games on their client? Are they short on cash or something? Why not just release another special edition mount if that's the case?
I sort of wish Valve would make an SC clone.
And force you to install a store on your computer to play their game?
On October 22 2011 12:16 Sinensis wrote: Marketplace and microtransactions higher up on "the list" than stupid basic stuff like clans, group replay, and being able to watch pro games on their client? Are they short on cash or something? Why not just release another special edition mount if that's the case?
I sort of wish Valve would make an SC clone.
And force you to install a store on your computer to play their game?
On October 22 2011 12:16 Sinensis wrote: Marketplace and microtransactions higher up on "the list" than stupid basic stuff like clans, group replay, and being able to watch pro games on their client? Are they short on cash or something? Why not just release another special edition mount if that's the case?
I sort of wish Valve would make an SC clone.
And force you to install a store on your computer to play their game?
What do you think Blizzard marketplace is?
The exact same thing. I love Steam to death and think it is awesome. I am just pointing out that Valve does a lot of the stuff it does for free because they install a store on your PC and then make money off you buying stuff.
Blizzard is looking for some of that. Money coming in after release means better support for a given game.
So basically, over the year and a half that features community has asked for again and again, Blizzard has yet to implement and have not even begun to implement? WHAT? Meanwhile they do trivial things like change APM to a meaningless number and remove losses from ladder statistics instead of implementing decade-old features that would vastly improve the longevity of the game for people of all skill levels. /smackforehead
^above user
Maybe you don't know this but Blizzard has this game called WoW that 11 million people subscribe to making Blizzard the most profitable developer in the gaming industry. They don't need micro transactions from SC2 to implement features that require minimal resource investment and time investment.
Not impressed with the new units, not impressed that they haven't fixed/removed much of what I don't like about this game (marauders,roaches,colossus, force field, thor, etc), and not impressed with this Q.A..
C'mon Blizzard, you can do better than this Hopefully they have more encouraging developments before HotS drops.
On October 22 2011 11:49 Tropical Bob wrote: Fucking stupid.
Thank you for such insight.
On October 22 2011 11:55 MonkSEA wrote: I don't mind not having lan. It's not 'fucking stupid.'
It's nice that they're thinking of doing a lan-esque thing for the leagues, but for general audience LAN is not needed at all.
Even if it's not opened for the general consumer (But it should be), they should at the very least implement it for tournaments. And seriously, for them to sit there and say 'we know there are huge issues, but we have no plans to do anything about it, no matter how simple, easy, and probably incredibly cheap it would be' is just incredibly insulting to both the community and e-sports. What we're seeing here is Blizzard doing basically nothing in their power to support e-sports at all. And in fact, due to their strict policy on broadcasting rights (Though that's more the fault of stupid US copyright laws) and the whole ad revenue thing, it's almost like they're trying to stifle e-sports on purpose.
have they ever actually stated the reason they won't add lan?
i understand it's probably because of piracy, but have they ever actually admitted that it's all about the dosh? or are we at the stage where they've hyped up bnet 2.0 so much that they actually are starting to believe their own propaganda
I mean all the questions were answered maybe, but maybe not. Its on a list though.
Yeah well I have a list an it says I want so have sex with over 100 girls, travel the world over 30 days and be a spokesman for some of the issues of humanity it doesn't really mean anything though as it may or may not happen.
On October 22 2011 12:24 setzer wrote: So basically, over the year and a half that features community has asked for again and again, Blizzard has yet to implement and have not even begun to implement? WHAT? Meanwhile they do trivial things like change APM to a meaningless number and remove losses from ladder statistics instead of implementing decade-old features that would vastly improve the longevity of the game for people of all skill levels. /smackforehead
^above user
Maybe you don't know this but Blizzard has this game called WoW that 11 million people subscribe to making Blizzard the most profitable developer in the gaming industry. They don't need micro transactions from SC2 to implement features that require minimal resource investment and time investment.
If Blizzard is a smart company, which they are, they will not use profits from one game to fund continued support for another. Software support, patching and new features are time consuming and costly to make. The majority of program is not building the specific feature, it is make sure it does not break.
I still don't see why SC2 (WoL, HotS, LotV) doesn't include LAN capabilities.
The success of SC:BW was in large due to the LAN capabilities it included, making it completely non-dependent on internet, which was actually quite slow way back when. I guess the naturally faster internet speeds have made Blizzard decide BNet is better?
I also wish they would clean up attacking A.I. a bit: (I'm a Zerg player, so I'll use Zerg examples)
"A unit's within sight range and I can attack it? Better 'run' on over to kill it, it's not like I can be attacked AT ALL during that time!" -Queen
"A unit's walled in due to minerals/natural walls? Better charge straight at it with everyone pushing me towards it! LEEEEEEEEEROOOOOOOY! JEEEEEEEEEEENKIIIIIIIIIIINS! " -Zergling
"Oh hey, there's a unit walled in due to minerals/natural walls! OK, I'll go around like you ordered me. Oh hey, there's that same unit I saw, better head ALL THE WAY BACK so I can attack it instead of the unit that was directly in front of me!" -Zergling #2
On October 22 2011 12:16 Sinensis wrote: Marketplace and microtransactions higher up on "the list" than stupid basic stuff like clans, group replay, and being able to watch pro games on their client? Are they short on cash or something? Why not just release another special edition mount if that's the case?
I sort of wish Valve would make an SC clone.
And force you to install a store on your computer to play their game?
What do you think Blizzard marketplace is?
The exact same thing. I love Steam to death and think it is awesome. I am just pointing out that Valve does a lot of the stuff it does for free because they install a store on your PC and then make money off you buying stuff.
Blizzard is looking for some of that. Money coming in after release means better support for a given game.
Activision Blizzard revenue: $4.768 billion per year (US dollars per year) (trailing 12-month value as of June 30, 2011)
On October 22 2011 11:55 MonkSEA wrote: I don't mind not having lan. It's not 'fucking stupid.'
It's nice that they're thinking of doing a lan-esque thing for the leagues, but for general audience LAN is not needed at all.
Even if it's not opened for the general consumer (But it should be), they should at the very least implement it for tournaments. And seriously, for them to sit there and say 'we know there are huge issues, but we have no plans to do anything about it, no matter how simple, easy, and probably incredibly cheap it would be' is just incredibly insulting to both the community and e-sports. What we're seeing here is Blizzard doing basically nothing in their power to support e-sports at all. And in fact, due to their strict policy on broadcasting rights (Though that's more the fault of stupid US copyright laws) and the whole ad revenue thing, it's almost like they're trying to stifle e-sports on purpose.
So yeah, it's fucking stupid.
I don't see the urgency for them to add lan, even for tournament play. If it's not available anywhere else other than tournies, then pros will be practicing in different conditions which makes their overall gameplay suboptimal. No one wants that. No one. If they can't practice in latency-free conditions, I don't want them to suddenly switch for a few days and see their skill drop from practice. And no, you can't just get used to having no lag when all you've practiced on is inherent bnet latency. If they one day public lan, then I will welcome lan for tournies with open arms.
On October 22 2011 11:58 gulati wrote: They are aware of the issues, and notice them when they occur. That's like me saying I am aware of a person being shot in public, and I can see it happening. I am still going to prison if I don't call for help, because I can be seen as an accessory.
It's more like seeing someone drowning and having a float in your hand but refusing to throw it to him.
On October 22 2011 11:49 Tropical Bob wrote: Fucking stupid.
Thank you for such insight.
On October 22 2011 11:55 MonkSEA wrote: I don't mind not having lan. It's not 'fucking stupid.'
It's nice that they're thinking of doing a lan-esque thing for the leagues, but for general audience LAN is not needed at all.
Even if it's not opened for the general consumer (But it should be), they should at the very least implement it for tournaments. And seriously, for them to sit there and say 'we know there are huge issues, but we have no plans to do anything about it, no matter how simple, easy, and probably incredibly cheap it would be' is just incredibly insulting to both the community and e-sports. What we're seeing here is Blizzard doing basically nothing in their power to support e-sports at all. And in fact, due to their strict policy on broadcasting rights (Though that's more the fault of stupid US copyright laws) and the whole ad revenue thing, it's almost like they're trying to stifle e-sports on purpose.
So yeah, it's fucking stupid.
I don't see the urgency for them to add lan, even for tournament play. If it's not available anywhere else other than tournies, then pros will be practicing in different conditions which makes their overall gameplay suboptimal. No one wants that. No one. If they can't practice in latency-free conditions, I don't want them to suddenly switch for few days and see their skill drop. And no, you can't just get used to having no lag when all you've practiced on is inherent bnet latency.
Having no brood war knowledge at all, I'm curious what the pro's from SC1 thought of all this. Did they have a hard time? I can certainly tell when I'm lagging badly and it negatively effects my play, but never am I like, "damn...game is just to smooth."
On October 22 2011 12:16 Sinensis wrote: Marketplace and microtransactions higher up on "the list" than stupid basic stuff like clans, group replay, and being able to watch pro games on their client? Are they short on cash or something? Why not just release another special edition mount if that's the case?
I sort of wish Valve would make an SC clone.
And force you to install a store on your computer to play their game?
What do you think Blizzard marketplace is?
The exact same thing. I love Steam to death and think it is awesome. I am just pointing out that Valve does a lot of the stuff it does for free because they install a store on your PC and then make money off you buying stuff.
Blizzard is looking for some of that. Money coming in after release means better support for a given game.
Activision Blizzard revenue: $4.768 billion per year (US dollars per year) (trailing 12-month value as of June 30, 2011)
Valve's isn't half of that.
Ok, so they would like to continue making money. There is nothing wrong with that. We just have to wait for the other features that do not provide them with revenue.
Oh wow same answers as always. "We want to add that, it's on the list but we can't promise a date." Super. Too bad they shat on the community by cock blocking LAN apparently permanently. What the hell do we have to do to get that?
I'm very skeptical of "some sort of offline server capability for the MLGs, GSLs etc of the world". Unless they add some form of fake latency it's going to be very different from a player's practice environment. Just like controlling units in single player mode vs AI feels very different from controlling units in multiplayer mode vs AI.
The response time of units in single player is so much better and LAN latency would make micro battles far more intense and interesting.
On October 22 2011 12:16 Sinensis wrote: Marketplace and microtransactions higher up on "the list" than stupid basic stuff like clans, group replay, and being able to watch pro games on their client? Are they short on cash or something? Why not just release another special edition mount if that's the case?
I sort of wish Valve would make an SC clone.
And force you to install a store on your computer to play their game?
What do you think Blizzard marketplace is?
The exact same thing. I love Steam to death and think it is awesome. I am just pointing out that Valve does a lot of the stuff it does for free because they install a store on your PC and then make money off you buying stuff.
Blizzard is looking for some of that. Money coming in after release means better support for a given game.
Activision Blizzard revenue: $4.768 billion per year (US dollars per year) (trailing 12-month value as of June 30, 2011)
Valve's isn't half of that.
Actually Valve doesn't release their sales numbers from steam, etc. It's up to them if they want to release it.
You guys don't understand. They can't give tournaments LAN because then they lose control, which is the reason there's no LAN in the first place. Without bnet0.2 as a leash around the neck of every tournament there's nothing stopping an organization like kespa from taking complete control of SC2 as an esport and cutting off Blizzard from their dirty cash.
On October 22 2011 12:42 Achaia wrote: Oh wow same answers as always. "We want to add that, it's on the list but we can't promise a date." Super. Too bad they shat on the community by cock blocking LAN apparently permanently. What the hell do we have to do to get that?
You never getting it. Blizzard is never adding it, because they don't want to. They do not want the game to be pirated more than it already is and do not feel the need to assist with the process.
you guys really need to understand that lan = private pirate servers ofcourse blizzard will try to avoid it to be completely honest before buying the game i was looking or it has private servers because if it has i would never pay for the game wich can be free
On October 22 2011 12:46 proxima_ wrote: the thing about LAN is like, how fucking hard could it possibly be to implement it
Easy, but Blizzard is never going to add it. It is a feature that will only lose them money and control over their game. The only reason to add it is because "the community wants it". The problem is that the share holders don't want it.
Yes LAN will increase piracy but piracy is also one of the reasons why SC:BW became so popular and so profitable over the last 11 years. In certain cases piracy can help a brand more than damage it, with starcraft this is the case. it sounds insane and against everything that a company believes in but its true...
Blizzard can certainly take a hit in the short run to profit off of the community and game success in the long run, they'd just rather keep their investors and shareholders happy by showing large sales numbers while hindering the capabilities and needs of this game by refusing to add features that would only improve the game.
Theres absolutely no reason why a competitive RTS should have any form of lag or any reason for it's play to be hindered. Almost every major popular competitve game has a LAN function for good reason. Money should never play a factor in improving a game at its core. They're reporting multi-billion dollar earnings but are afraid of losing a couple of million in the immediate short term instead of banking on the fact that a LAN feature would grow the competitive scene ten-fold and earn them so much more years down the road. Seriously, fuck blizzard for flat out refusing to add a feature that would impact the games growth so much more than it is now -_-
Glad to see they are working on their little marketplace thing instead of actually implementing the features the community wants. I had a lot of hopes for this expansion but it seems they haven't learned anything.
LAN No Lan. Chris said that he doesn't foresee LAN during the SC2 life cycle (from WoL -> end of life). With regards to esports they are very aware of the issues and see them when they happen (although that doesn't really help the problem ;o). He also said they are more positive about the idea of having some sort of offline server capability for the MLGs, GSLs etc of the world....but they have no current plans to implement one. My question was basically, at what point do the interests of the esports industry start to outweigh the reasoning they've given us in the past for no offline play ("the list", IP protection, business etc). tl;dr: it could happen next year, it could happen in 3 years, but it wont be related to an expansion release.
Cool, except you can play via LAN using a third party program that breaks the TOS, etc...
Thaaat's coooollll Blizzard.
EDIT: Also I sincerely doubt this is Activision's terrible claws sinking into Blizzard, since Activison recently announced that the PC port of MW3 will have LAN capability.
On October 22 2011 12:46 proxima_ wrote: the thing about LAN is like, how fucking hard could it possibly be to implement it
You don't understand.
It isn't that Blizz CANT implement LAN it's that they don't want to.
Too many people pirated WC3 because of it's lan capabilities. It turned Blizzard off to the idea completely, that and the fact that tournaments have to be played over BNET means that it's literally impossible to have a non-Blizzard Sanctioned Tournament.
Blizzard is using the lack of LAN to police SC2. It's not a popular stance but it's one they aren't budging on, the community should give it up, it's their own faults that we're at this point. If it wasn't for the obscene piracy that plagues internet games Blizzard would probably still have LAN available.
You can see from the picture above that "Local Player" name is hovered.
Yeah, It's not like LAN is some amazing hurdle that's revolutionary or complicated. It's been implemented into games since the 90's. It's just them not wanting to do it because they're greedy scumbags who are afraid of piracy (aka one of the reasons SC:BW is so popular).
On October 22 2011 12:46 proxima_ wrote: the thing about LAN is like, how fucking hard could it possibly be to implement it
You don't understand.
It isn't that Blizz CANT implement LAN it's that they don't want to.
Too many people pirated WC3 because of it's lan capabilities. It turned Blizzard off to the idea completely, that and the fact that tournaments have to be played over BNET means that it's literally impossible to have a non-Blizzard Sanctioned Tournament.
Blizzard is using the lack of LAN to police SC2. It's not a popular stance but it's one they aren't budging on, the community should give it up, it's their own faults that we're at this point. If it wasn't for the obscene piracy that plagues internet games Blizzard would probably still have LAN available.
Don't see how we, the paying customer, have to be blamed for what other illegitimate people do. Other game companies still have LAN included in their games.
On October 22 2011 12:46 proxima_ wrote: the thing about LAN is like, how fucking hard could it possibly be to implement it
You don't understand.
It isn't that Blizz CANT implement LAN it's that they don't want to.
Too many people pirated WC3 because of it's lan capabilities. It turned Blizzard off to the idea completely, that and the fact that tournaments have to be played over BNET means that it's literally impossible to have a non-Blizzard Sanctioned Tournament.
Blizzard is using the lack of LAN to police SC2. It's not a popular stance but it's one they aren't budging on, the community should give it up, it's their own faults that we're at this point. If it wasn't for the obscene piracy that plagues internet games Blizzard would probably still have LAN available.
You do realize SC:BW is so popular due to the fact that kids could download this game illegaly, play it and enjoy it correct? No one knows how many of those kids went down to their local gamestop shortly after and bought a legit copy but one thing we do know is that pirating has not hindered the success of sc:bw AT ALL. If anything, it's one of if not the main reason this game grew to be the juggernaut that it is today.
Pirating goes against everything most companies believe in, but what they dont understand is that if you put out a solid you dont need to worry about piracy because it will eventually pay for itself in the long run. It's an unpopular opinion that most companies arent willing to explore but it's true.
On October 22 2011 12:55 m2e wrote: Yes LAN will increase piracy but piracy is also one of the reasons why SC:BW became so popular and so profitable over the last 11 years. In certain cases piracy can help a brand more than damage it, with starcraft this is the case. it sounds insane and against everything that a company believes in but its true...
Blizzard can certainly take a hit in the short run to profit off of the community and game success in the long run, they'd just rather keep their investors and shareholders happy by showing large sales numbers while hindering the capabilities and needs of this game by refusing to add features that would only improve the game.
Theres absolutely no reason why a competitive RTS should have any form of lag or any reason for it's play to be hindered. Almost every major popular competitve game has a LAN function for good reason. Money should never play a factor in improving a game at its core. They're reporting multi-billion dollar earnings but are afraid of losing a couple of million in the immediate short term instead of banking on the fact that a LAN feature would grow the competitive scene ten-fold and earn them so much more years down the road. Seriously, fuck blizzard for flat out refusing to add a feature that would impact the games growth so much more than it is now -_-
Piracy isn't even a real issue. Pretty much everyone that was willing to pay for SC2 has already bought it. If anything being able to pirate the game easily would only increase sales. The real deal breaker is losing control over tournaments. Remember how Blizzard gets some unspecified % of every tournament's income? If tournaments didn't have to deal with b.net Blizzard would have no way to guarantee that they get that money, aside from international lawsuits that cost a lot of money and they could possibly lose.
On October 22 2011 12:55 m2e wrote: Yes LAN will increase piracy but piracy is also one of the reasons why SC:BW became so popular and so profitable over the last 11 years. In certain cases piracy can help a brand more than damage it, with starcraft this is the case. it sounds insane and against everything that a company believes in but its true...
Blizzard can certainly take a hit in the short run to profit off of the community and game success in the long run, they'd just rather keep their investors and shareholders happy by showing large sales numbers while hindering the capabilities and needs of this game by refusing to add features that would only improve the game.
Theres absolutely no reason why a competitive RTS should have any form of lag or any reason for it's play to be hindered. Almost every major popular competitve game has a LAN function for good reason. Money should never play a factor in improving a game at its core. They're reporting multi-billion dollar earnings but are afraid of losing a couple of million in the immediate short term instead of banking on the fact that a LAN feature would grow the competitive scene ten-fold and earn them so much more years down the road. Seriously, fuck blizzard for flat out refusing to add a feature that would impact the games growth so much more than it is now -_-
Piracy isn't even a real issue. Pretty much everyone that was willing to pay for SC2 has already bought it. If anything being able to pirate the game easily would only increase sales. The real deal breaker is losing control over tournaments. Remember how Blizzard gets some unspecified % of every tournament's income? If tournaments didn't have to deal with b.net Blizzard would have no way to guarantee that they get that money, aside from international lawsuits that cost a lot of money and they could possibly lose.
There's always the option of blizzard creating their own lan-like servers that they fly out to tournaments with a blizzard rep or something. If your a major tournament such as IEM, DH, MLG, GSL or whatever you can pay the fee to rent this server(s) for the duration of your tournament to enjoy uninterrupted play even if internet issues occur. It is a possibility they refuse to explore.
On October 22 2011 12:55 m2e wrote: Yes LAN will increase piracy but piracy is also one of the reasons why SC:BW became so popular and so profitable over the last 11 years. In certain cases piracy can help a brand more than damage it, with starcraft this is the case. it sounds insane and against everything that a company believes in but its true...
Blizzard can certainly take a hit in the short run to profit off of the community and game success in the long run, they'd just rather keep their investors and shareholders happy by showing large sales numbers while hindering the capabilities and needs of this game by refusing to add features that would only improve the game.
Theres absolutely no reason why a competitive RTS should have any form of lag or any reason for it's play to be hindered. Almost every major popular competitve RTS has a LAN function for good reason. Money should never play a factor in improving a game at its core. Seriously, fuck blizzard for flat out refusing to add a feature that would impact the games growth so much more than it is now -_-
I can see the share holder meeting now:
"Gentlemen. We have a new plan to make Starcraft 2 and its expansion. We will let it be pirated. I know what you are thinking. 'Why would we do that?' Well I will tell you. It is for the community. They want lag free gaming at tournaments and hate micro transactions. We feel buy supporting them, they will purchase more copies of our game.
Also, we see strong numbers showing that the reason BW was so popular is Korea is that it was easy to pirate. Yes, that is not good. But if the game becomes popular enough, we will start of make that money back. How you may ask, since the the copies are being stolen? Well let us turn this chart here"
Chart is opened up:
Step one: Add LAN. Let get be pirated and people run private servers.
On October 22 2011 12:55 m2e wrote: Yes LAN will increase piracy but piracy is also one of the reasons why SC:BW became so popular and so profitable over the last 11 years. In certain cases piracy can help a brand more than damage it, with starcraft this is the case. it sounds insane and against everything that a company believes in but its true...
Blizzard can certainly take a hit in the short run to profit off of the community and game success in the long run, they'd just rather keep their investors and shareholders happy by showing large sales numbers while hindering the capabilities and needs of this game by refusing to add features that would only improve the game.
Theres absolutely no reason why a competitive RTS should have any form of lag or any reason for it's play to be hindered. Almost every major popular competitve RTS has a LAN function for good reason. Money should never play a factor in improving a game at its core. Seriously, fuck blizzard for flat out refusing to add a feature that would impact the games growth so much more than it is now -_-
I can see the share holder meeting now:
"Gentlemen. We have a new plan to make Starcraft 2 and its expansion. We will let it be pirated. I know what you are thinking. 'Why would we do that?' Well I will tell you. It is for the community. They want lag free gaming at tournaments and hate micro transactions. We feel buy supporting them, they will purchase more copies of our game.
Also, we see strong numbers showing that the reason BW was so popular is Korea is that it was easy to pirate. Yes, that is not good. But if the game becomes popular enough, we will start of make that money back. How you may ask, since the the copies are being stolen? Well let us turn this chart here"
Chart is opened up:
Step one: Add LAN. Let get be pirated and people run private servers.
Step two:
Step Three: Profit
So your saying that piracy had no role in how we view SC:BW today and it's growth over the last 10 years? Yes, short term they will lose money but in the long term it will be gained back in other forms.
Piracy didn't stop SC+BW from becoming the best selling RTS franchise in history and it didn't stop WC3+FT from becoming the second (I believe) highest selling RTS series in history. DRM measures have never stopped pirates from getting their hands on the game and there is no conclusive evidence that to support any theory that having DRM enables companies to profit more. What everyone can agree on, however, is that DRM has harmed the paying customer more than the pirates themselves.
when i was a kid, we would go to LAN parties, share the fun, and perhaps even persuade some friends to buy the game to play from home. it was an awesome experience. its just sad that none of us can do it for this game. hopefully they can find a way to bypass the piracy problem. but that will take a lot of time. which is probably why he said it could take nearly forever to implement.
On October 22 2011 12:01 GetToDaChopa wrote: As an old Blizzard fanatic from 98, I get a heavy feeling in my chest whenever I read Blizz q&a's like this one which more or less point out how other companies such as Riot, Valve are leaving them in the dust with their interface, user experience and support. And the response is typically something vague like, 'we'll look into it'. #OccupyBnet0.2
... Riot? Really?
Riot STILL doesn't have replays. At all. They still have a buggy pvp.net that crashes all the time. Riot is like THE WORST possible example you could have come up with, don't know why you would even try and compare the two.
With that being said, some type of LAN mode and an sc2TV would be sick. Hope Blizzard actually follows through with this stuff before LoV.
I am surprised they have not developed a tournament client for major tournaments (GSL/MLG as a minimum). Seems like it would be so easy to have a closed server system. I know you can't do it for every tournament (even on the IPL/NASL tier), but it just seems logical. Imagine MLG Dallas with internal client not reliant on local internet. Such a different experience.
On October 22 2011 13:18 tritonice wrote: I am surprised they have not developed a tournament client for major tournaments (GSL/MLG as a minimum). Seems like it would be so easy to have a closed server system. I know you can't do it for every tournament (even on the IPL/NASL tier), but it just seems logical. Imagine MLG Dallas with internal client not reliant on local internet. Such a different experience.
Exactly. It seems like they are absolutely set on not developing this or fixing it somehow, its fucking insane how close-minded they're being.
On October 22 2011 12:55 m2e wrote: Yes LAN will increase piracy but piracy is also one of the reasons why SC:BW became so popular and so profitable over the last 11 years. In certain cases piracy can help a brand more than damage it, with starcraft this is the case. it sounds insane and against everything that a company believes in but its true...
Blizzard can certainly take a hit in the short run to profit off of the community and game success in the long run, they'd just rather keep their investors and shareholders happy by showing large sales numbers while hindering the capabilities and needs of this game by refusing to add features that would only improve the game.
Theres absolutely no reason why a competitive RTS should have any form of lag or any reason for it's play to be hindered. Almost every major popular competitve RTS has a LAN function for good reason. Money should never play a factor in improving a game at its core. Seriously, fuck blizzard for flat out refusing to add a feature that would impact the games growth so much more than it is now -_-
I can see the share holder meeting now:
"Gentlemen. We have a new plan to make Starcraft 2 and its expansion. We will let it be pirated. I know what you are thinking. 'Why would we do that?' Well I will tell you. It is for the community. They want lag free gaming at tournaments and hate micro transactions. We feel buy supporting them, they will purchase more copies of our game.
Also, we see strong numbers showing that the reason BW was so popular is Korea is that it was easy to pirate. Yes, that is not good. But if the game becomes popular enough, we will start of make that money back. How you may ask, since the the copies are being stolen? Well let us turn this chart here"
Chart is opened up:
Step one: Add LAN. Let get be pirated and people run private servers.
Step two:
Step Three: Profit
So your saying that piracy had no role in how we view SC:BW today and it's growth over the last 10 years? Yes, short term they will lose money but in the long term it will be gained back in other forms.
Hard to comprehend? I hope not
I think SCBW and Blizzard in general got big partly because of piracy thats for sure. It gave blizzard exposure. But now Blizzard kind of don't need extra exposure anymore. Everyone knows them. I. Everyone already knows what the game looks like and how it plays etc. There is just no return for them in letting the games be pirated anymore. It might work for smaller game developers like minecraft ( who is a big advocate of NO DRM) but not for blizzard.
On October 22 2011 12:42 Achaia wrote: Oh wow same answers as always. "We want to add that, it's on the list but we can't promise a date." Super. Too bad they shat on the community by cock blocking LAN apparently permanently. What the hell do we have to do to get that?
You never getting it. Blizzard is never adding it, because they don't want to. They do not want the game to be pirated more than it already is and do not feel the need to assist with the process.
I know we're not going to get it from Blizzard because they're clearly being very stupid about the whole situation. There is already a hacked version that allows LAN so it's not like it's even going to get pirated much more if LAN is available. Here's the thing, it makes me want to just get a pirated version so I can have LAN play for weekly LANs that I have. It sucks hard that we have to rely on internet when there's 10+ people sitting together in 2 rooms.
I'm afraid that Blizzard is risking turning their loyal fan base into pirates because they want the best play experience. If they provide servers for major tournaments so they can have LAN play you think the pros are going to practice on BNet? I would be willing to wager that they'll be playing pirated LAN versions as well. You can't just go from net latency to lan latency at the flip of a switch. Players will want to be comfortable playing with the LAN latency before they go into the tournament and if Blizzard isn't providing it for anyone outside of the tournament hosts I'm guessing that the players will find "alternate" methods of achieving that practice.
At any rate, it's bad for the game and community. I know that Blizzard gets to play LAN for their internal testing. I wonder if they had to do all of their testing through BNet servers rather than LAN if they would be more inclined to allow it? It seems a bit unfair that they expect their customers to have a worse gaming experience than them.
I'm going to keep repeating this until people realize it: Blizzard Entertainment is never going to put a Local Area Network function or offline multiplayer capability of any kind into any of their products unless there is a significant change in management or the company collapses outright and patches the game so control of the servers and multiplayer scenes can be ceded to its player base as a "goodwill gift". The latter is unbelievably unlikely and nothing suggests the former is happening any time soon. Morhaime and Kotick are in control.
The entire goal and purpose of Blizzard Entertainment is to consolidate intellectual property rights through their Battle.net 2.0 service and route all of the game software through that service. It creates a market for custom content that previously didn't exist, it creates rules that competitive gaming organizations have to play by in order to use Blizzard products for their events, and it eliminates most relevant software piracy (eliminating it to the point where it remains mostly underground) so that consumers can't protest this service en masse by downloading Blizzard games and setting their own rules for the use of the software. Yeah, there's a hack for Local Area Networks. Big deal. It's not being posted on this web site or any Blizzard fan site that wants to protect their site from the iron hammer of Blizzard, and that's precisely the idea. Blizzard has set up a system for their games where any infraction (thanks to their pissing match with Michael Donnelly and his WoW Glider software) can have the wrath of the Blizzard legal team incurred upon it. And unless Warren Buffett is out there writing hacks for Blizzard games, it's safe to say no individual is going to have the money to compete with Blizzard's lawyers.
At the expense of creating new customers, this allows Blizzard Entertainment to gradually increase the amount of money that the company can make by milking the existing customer base. That means restrictions on what you could previously do on Battle.net ("name changes" and "region changes" require the player to pay out of pocket for new game licenses) to go with new forms of monetization (custom content for a price, in-game economies that allow the use of real money, etc.). So pretty much everything you hear from Sigaty here is a bunch of plop. The company is going to continue dodging the question until the existing consumer base is reasonably comfortable with the ramifications and any new players (who may have never played any computer video game on a local network of any kind) drown the old guard out.
There is no realistic situation where this changes and continuing to demand that Blizzard implements a Local Area Network function is going to fall on deaf ears. It's not happening. This "always connected" approach (client-side input interacting with server-controlled game variables) is essentially the compromise that the video game industry is going to make until they can completely remove the player's control of any game code through some use of a cloud-based gaming service, whether it's OnLive or a competitor that we don't know about or doesn't exist. And right now, seeing as the two most popular video games on the personal computer are World of Warcraft and League of Legends (which both use this client-server programming), they're winning.
Guys, you can already play with LAN using a third party program that breaks the Terms of Services, something that a pirate doesn't give a shit about. They can play via LAN because they stole the game, we can't because we paid for it.
Blizzard is pretty much shitting on the community, and I wish I could say it's Activision's fault, but it isn't.
On October 22 2011 12:46 proxima_ wrote: the thing about LAN is like, how fucking hard could it possibly be to implement it
Easy, but Blizzard is never going to add it. It is a feature that will only lose them money and control over their game. The only reason to add it is because "the community wants it". The problem is that the share holders don't want it.
Okay so here's how we make them implement LAN get 1-2 million of us to buy their stock so we the people become majority share holders, and then we demand them to implement LAN or else we tank their stock.
You know having 2 ladders is going to be wacky especially if the balance is reset. I dunno why major tourneys would switch to HotS as both the skill level is going to be worse and its going to be much less stable with major patch changes like WoL
This is going to be a mess especially if you are protoss and zerg to a lesser extent.
I'm not going to buy any blizzard game at all until sc2 gets LAN. I hardly have any time to play anyway but I usually buy games I like anyway. I'm seriously going to skip all blizzard products from now on cuz they obviously doesn't care about the community. It's said to see blizzard ruin something that could have been so great.
How crazy is it that Blizzard, the creator of the legendary e-sport StarCraft, is also the Starcaft community's largest enemy.
I dunno how much more of this crap i can take. We just get jerked around constantly because they know that they don't need to do anything; we'll buy HotS no matter what they do. The least they could do is actually respond to our questions rather than just sidestepping them like they've been since sc2's inception.
The whole no LAN thing is a DRM thingy I think, their lawyers probably don't want them to do it.
Personally I think it all sounds pretty good, hoping that they do fix the problem with protoss just spamming zealots and being unkillable in TvP once charge finishes, the battle hellion will be a big boost, and the reaper buff is also quite neat, will give terran some rechargeable harass and much better scouting (run reaper through once, it comes out with 2hp if you're lucky, now you can run it through again to get more intel, and you'll be able to continuously poke the zerg's front until speed finishes.
On October 22 2011 11:45 Kennigit wrote: LAN No Lan. Chris said that he doesn't foresee LAN during the SC2 life cycle (from WoL -> end of life). With regards to esports they are very aware of the issues and see them when they happen (although that doesn't really help the problem ;o). He also said they are more positive about the idea of having some sort of offline server capability for the MLGs, GSLs etc of the world....but they have no current plans to implement one. My question was basically, at what point do the interests of the esports industry start to outweigh the reasoning they've given us in the past for no offline play ("the list", IP protection, business etc). tl;dr: it could happen next year, it could happen in 3 years, but it wont be related to an expansion release.
Stupidest thing I have read in awhile. It's nice that they at least are thinking about making some kind of Tournament LAN, but the fact that they straight up REFUSE to release one for the casual crowd is simply inane and shows a lack of knowledge about their clientele.
On October 22 2011 12:55 m2e wrote: Yes LAN will increase piracy but piracy is also one of the reasons why SC:BW became so popular and so profitable over the last 11 years. In certain cases piracy can help a brand more than damage it, with starcraft this is the case. it sounds insane and against everything that a company believes in but its true...
Blizzard can certainly take a hit in the short run to profit off of the community and game success in the long run, they'd just rather keep their investors and shareholders happy by showing large sales numbers while hindering the capabilities and needs of this game by refusing to add features that would only improve the game.
Theres absolutely no reason why a competitive RTS should have any form of lag or any reason for it's play to be hindered. Almost every major popular competitve game has a LAN function for good reason. Money should never play a factor in improving a game at its core. They're reporting multi-billion dollar earnings but are afraid of losing a couple of million in the immediate short term instead of banking on the fact that a LAN feature would grow the competitive scene ten-fold and earn them so much more years down the road. Seriously, fuck blizzard for flat out refusing to add a feature that would impact the games growth so much more than it is now -_-
i have a good internet and i never had any lag so thats internets problem not the bnet
On October 22 2011 14:34 CatNzHat wrote: The whole no LAN thing is a DRM thingy I think, their lawyers probably don't want them to do it.
Personally I think it all sounds pretty good, hoping that they do fix the problem with protoss just spamming zealots and being unkillable in TvP once charge finishes, the battle hellion will be a big boost, and the reaper buff is also quite neat, will give terran some rechargeable harass and much better scouting (run reaper through once, it comes out with 2hp if you're lucky, now you can run it through again to get more intel, and you'll be able to continuously poke the zerg's front until speed finishes.
yah its really nice that you will be able to scout all ins now
interesting to hear the perspective of these guys. Especially interesting to see how they feel like LAN is a completely untouchable issue.
Pity that that's the case, but it's their game. If they don't want to release lan, then they won't release lan.
But more or less what i expected in terms of commitment. "It's on the list" and "that's something we'll definitely look into" were the two stock answers i assumed we'd receive on just about everything.
Lame answers. It's like they spell out fuck you to the community considering we've already been waiting over a year. Hope you can pull something meaningful out of Dustin.
On October 22 2011 11:53 Sisko wrote: So basically "We admit that most other games are light years ahead of us in critical features that players want and expect of a 5A produced game, but have no real plans to implement any of them."
That's basically what I got from this. I don't know why Blizzard is so adamant in refusing to try to ACTUALLY be competitive with other game makers. You can only ride your branding and the success of previous products for so long before your consumers catch on and ditch you...
Sorry, Im pretty fortunate to have internet. But in the area I live in, I may not in the future. And I like having my friends over with pizza/soda/beer and battling till we need eye drops and sleeping the entire next day. BW brought us all together (literally in one room ), SC2 has torn us apart.
Nice work Kennigit! Some interesting points, no LAN is obviously not popular :/ I sort of figured if they were ever to work on LAN it'd be for tournaments,then we wouldn't hear anything about it til an update years after LotV.
what a bunch of disappointing responses... especially about lan.. it's not even on their radar or any sort of to do list? they want starcraft to be a goddamn esport and dont even put lan for major tournaments on a fucking to do list?
im sure the sc2 guys have no say in the matter. the suits who run blizzard put the kibosh on LAN and that's that. nothing david kim or dustin browder can do about it. at least thats my assumption. lol
On October 22 2011 11:45 Kennigit wrote: David said he considers WoL to be pretty balanced and that they only want to make tiny changes to fix problems that they see.
On October 22 2011 15:28 Geosensation wrote: im sure the sc2 guys have no say in the matter. the suits who run blizzard put the kibosh on LAN and that's that. nothing david kim or dustin browder can do about it. at least thats my assumption. lol
I'd like to stress that in likelihood, Browder and Kim and Sigaty are just following orders. I don't consider them the least bit culpable for the design of StarCraft II or Battle.net. (Though I will say, Greg Canessa did an incredible job of botching the blueprint for Battle.net 2.0 that was presented in front of him.) None of my blame goes on those guys. This is coming from Morhaime, and Tippl, and Kotick, and anybody else at the top of the Activision-Blizzard food chain, and it's important to be cognizant of that. Don't shit on the game designers because Local Area Network play isn't in the game. They have no control over that. Blame management.
Thanks Chris and David. We appreciate you taking time to answer to the angry mob, and hope that in the long run, everything will work out for Blizzard and eSports in the long-term.
So a "No" for something the game needs, some "Maybe...yah...we're thinking about the possibility" on stuff that would make BNet considerably better, and the only "Yes, for sure! We're super excited! We've been working hard on this and it's almost ready" is on implementing micro-transactions so they can milk us for money. Sounds about right.
well - no LAN. And Blizzard is firm on that stance...while many of you see nothing but negativity, I see a positive, and that's a consistent message. The worst thing they can do, is waver on their stance and give false hope when there shouldn't be.
you guys know as well as i do, that if there a version "just for tourneys" ever is released which HAS LAN, that it'll be uploaded to bitorrent instantly within nanoseconds. So no go, and we all know this.
Balance/Appealing too much the casual market/other stuff only bother me a little bit. My biggest issue is how crappy bnet and other features are, especially compared to previous OLD OLD iterations. It's very telling when the newest version is outclassed, and there are only slow, indefinite plans to improve upon it.
On October 22 2011 16:44 aimaimaim wrote: I don't understand these talk of prevention of piracy when infact there's already a pirated version of WoL with LAN on it.
I find it funny and pathetic at the same time.
DRM and always-online have always been about keeping people from loaning games to each other and playing over LAN thus resulting in less sales, it has never been about stopping piracy, seeing as most things are cracked within days/hours. And that reason probably came from higher up than the creative people at Blizzard.
nothing new, really, only announcing a bunch of stuff they have on "the list". I'll cheer for them when they will actually incorporate the features that the community wants.
On October 22 2011 16:44 aimaimaim wrote: I don't understand these talk of prevention of piracy when infact there's already a pirated version of WoL with LAN on it.
I find it funny and pathetic at the same time.
DRM and always-online has always been about keeping people from loaning games to each other and playing over LAN thus resulting in less sales, it has never been about stopping piracy, seeing as most things are cracked within days/hours. And that reason probably came from higher up than the creative people at Blizzard.
Well that didn't made me pay for this game because regardless of DRM and it being online, if people wanted to share, they will share it to friends and family and try the game.
Also, I don't know about that created people at Blizzard. Look at WoW now .. lol
But that's just me. Please, enjoy your Blizzard products.
On October 22 2011 12:55 m2e wrote: Yes LAN will increase piracy but piracy is also one of the reasons why SC:BW became so popular and so profitable over the last 11 years. In certain cases piracy can help a brand more than damage it, with starcraft this is the case. it sounds insane and against everything that a company believes in but its true...
Blizzard can certainly take a hit in the short run to profit off of the community and game success in the long run, they'd just rather keep their investors and shareholders happy by showing large sales numbers while hindering the capabilities and needs of this game by refusing to add features that would only improve the game.
Theres absolutely no reason why a competitive RTS should have any form of lag or any reason for it's play to be hindered. Almost every major popular competitve RTS has a LAN function for good reason. Money should never play a factor in improving a game at its core. Seriously, fuck blizzard for flat out refusing to add a feature that would impact the games growth so much more than it is now -_-
I can see the share holder meeting now:
"Gentlemen. We have a new plan to make Starcraft 2 and its expansion. We will let it be pirated. I know what you are thinking. 'Why would we do that?' Well I will tell you. It is for the community. They want lag free gaming at tournaments and hate micro transactions. We feel buy supporting them, they will purchase more copies of our game.
Also, we see strong numbers showing that the reason BW was so popular is Korea is that it was easy to pirate. Yes, that is not good. But if the game becomes popular enough, we will start of make that money back. How you may ask, since the the copies are being stolen? Well let us turn this chart here"
Chart is opened up:
Step one: Add LAN. Let get be pirated and people run private servers.
Step two:
Step Three: Profit
It actually is true to some extent. The first time I played BW it was a burnt copy from my friend- it got easier when we found the no cd patch. I can guarantee you I'd never have picked up Starcraft otherwise- I was into fantasy/medieval RTS not sci-fi. However, after awhile I went out and bought the game. Not true for everyone, but one of the best advertisements to a game is by actually playing it. It goes back to the old hotseat, or borrowing a friends game or going to their house to play.
But the main issue is this fear of piracy is over-ruling tournament's needs. Furthermore, it's not super noticeable, but the unit movement is always a little uncomfortable when I switch from iCCup to SC2. I can't explain it, but it always feels a tiny bit sluggish.
if they make it possible to watch replays with more persons, i send them a cookcage, if its only share replays over bnet 0.2 i send them a putrescent fruit, so be aware ^^
On October 22 2011 17:12 Spacedude wrote: No LAN? No buy then.
Even if HOTS will be a totally awesome game, I value my principles higher, sorry.
(limited LAN box for tournaments, at least)
.... you surprised ? sc2 has no lan they said it WILL be no Lan, the only Reason for guys who are not high end tournament players to have lan is to pirathack them so i dont see any reason in a lan (for me personal it always worked perfect on lans with playing over internet ... who lanparty on earth have no internet)
@m2e yes sc2 was popular NO it was not profitable ... they wanna make money on the first place there is no reason to allow piracy there !
That was pretty much useless. It's the same story they've been telling us since release, they commit to nothing and at most respond with "We are looking into it and it's on the list". It's a shame that there isn't another game out right now to compete with SC2 so that these guys actually get something done rather than leading us on.
At least they gave a straightforward answer on LAN, even if it's not what we want to hear. Thank you for that small bit of straight up truth.
I feel sorry for all of you in parts of the world with no internet connection. Sucks to be you.
Where I live we do have internet so the lack of lan is not an issue, so if they just implement this offline solution for tournaments soonish, I really don't mind.
On October 22 2011 17:24 Longshank wrote: I feel sorry for all of you in parts of the world with no internet connection. Sucks to be you.
Where I live we do have internet so the lack of lan is not an issue, so if they just implement this offline solution for tournaments soonish, I really don't mind.
It's not about you. It's about players having lag issues at big events which has happened in the past.
I have this theory tho.. Would it be possible that Blizzard are maybe going to introduce LAN AFTER all the expansions ? They obviously don't want LAN because they dont want people pirating the game, but a lot of people already bought it and they will probably buy the expansions too, and since after the expansion packs there won't be much to make money from (except maybe microtransactions which won't suffer either way), they might as well release LAN?
Since there's no real reason to hope for LAN when there is no announcement I'd rather just not buy the game. As many people have been saying here, if there is no LAN then for some of us it's not a game worth supporting.
Many things in broodwar were possible only because the game was played on a LAN in tournament settings. With the lack of input lag things like muta micro vs archons, scourge dodging, and amazing marine splitting were possible. High level play should not be limited by input lag, and with Internet even a relatively "low" ping of 100 ms or lower is still a tenth of a second of input lag that would mostly be gone with LAN.
Incredibly bad support by company for game that costs 60euros and has active eSports scene that demands features, this shows companies "greed". To who ever says that any of these features are hard to add, even if u consider it hard its extremely easy to do for company like Blizzard, and for things such as clan support, free name changing, multiple ladder accounts, replay watching and all that is extremely easy, as for LAN it already got hacked so it would only help.
On October 22 2011 17:24 Longshank wrote: I feel sorry for all of you in parts of the world with no internet connection. Sucks to be you.
Where I live we do have internet so the lack of lan is not an issue, so if they just implement this offline solution for tournaments soonish, I really don't mind.
It's not about you. It's about players having lag issues at big events which has happened in the past.
Yes, as I said, if they hurry up with offline support for big tournaments I don't have an issue with no LAN. This support doesn't have to(and won't) be LAN related.
I hope this game continues to be exciting to watch competitively with the expansion, but I don't think I'll be buying from blizzard again if they continue to neglect the community this badly.
On October 22 2011 17:19 CoR wrote: if they make it possible to watch replays with more persons, i send them a cookcage, if its only share replays over bnet 0.2 i send them a putrescent fruit, so be aware ^^
On October 22 2011 17:12 Spacedude wrote: No LAN? No buy then.
Even if HOTS will be a totally awesome game, I value my principles higher, sorry.
(limited LAN box for tournaments, at least)
.... you surprised ? sc2 has no lan they said it WILL be no Lan, the only Reason for guys who are not high end tournament players to have lan is to pirathack them so i dont see any reason in a lan (for me personal it always worked perfect on lans with playing over internet ... who lanparty on earth have no internet)
@m2e yes sc2 was popular NO it was not profitable ... they wanna make money on the first place there is no reason to allow piracy there !
No, I'm not 'surprised'. You know what a principle is? I have my own reasons, thank you. Also, my views of 'non-LAN' have changed since I brought WOL. I personally wont further support a system directly that takes basic options away from the players. Too bad that most people will sell their principles to get to the tasty 'carrot'.
On October 22 2011 17:47 LionKiNG wrote: Incredible bad support by company for game that costs 60euros and has active eSports scene that demands features, this shows companies "greed". To who ever says that any of these features are hard to add, even if u consider it hard its extremely easy to do for company like Blizzard, and for things such as clan support, free name changing, multiple ladder accounts, replay watching and all that is extremely easy, as for LAN it already got hacked so it would only help.
If they work like modern companies do, they focus a whole team on a selected set of features a time, with short cycles and daily builds. That means that things on the list are just things on the list until they actually work on them, but then they might show up surprisingly fast. Its not like one guy in the corner is slowy tapping away at his keyboard hoping to churn out clan support one day :p
On October 22 2011 17:21 LagT_T wrote: Will tournaments lose a significant amount of viewers if Blizzard allows easy spectating ingame?
I guess some amount of viewers will prefer to spectate themselves, or watch first person view of players they want to watch instead of being dependent on an observer.
However, i enjoy the shoutcasting so i'll keep watching streams (or watch first person of my favorite players, while at least listening to the stream).
ps. not sure how it goes with paid subscriptions for GSL or MLG orso though.
It's ridiculous they didn't include group viewing replays to begin with. Same with clan stuff and having terrible custom game lay outs. Old battle.net for brood war was much better than the crap they have now. No faith in the current development team
I'm wondering since months and going to ask now: Will there be consequences?
I mean Bnet was bad and hated even before the game was out. Millions of things were on their 'list'. There are monthly issues in tournaments because of missing LAN.
Nothing is done, just lots of talking. But like in politics there comes the election time. You can vote with your wallet.
Will you (basically everyone who bought WoL) just keep on talking and complaning or will there be consequences?
I'm asking, as for my part, I definitely won't buy Starcraft HotS and most likely no further Bnet controlled games. I bought WoL and was hoping for the promised and even more as I couldn't believe they were serious about this Bnet thing and they would fix it soon. I read complains over complain. An endless stream of issues. I feel the same way but never wrote about it. I just made my decision over the past months.
Will you buy HotS and just keep complaining or do you have something else in mind?
I'm just wondering if I'm the only one that actually acts and everyone else just keeps talking but agreeing to everything by voting with their wallet. Or if there are lots of people acting and just not talking about that they are.
On October 22 2011 18:49 Hellbourne wrote: Hell yeah, Clan Support. May I ask is there are more exact information about the HotS beta? When will it start, how can you participate and so on?
Months, not years, they said so no exact date. You opt in for the beta at your battle.net account page as usual.
This name change / clan support I dont get how hard that is to do I really dont. War3 had it the first day it was out pretty much... and none for sc2 yet.. still makes no sense we wont see this for years.
On October 22 2011 11:49 Tropical Bob wrote: Fucking stupid.
Thank you for such insight.
On October 22 2011 11:55 MonkSEA wrote: I don't mind not having lan. It's not 'fucking stupid.'
It's nice that they're thinking of doing a lan-esque thing for the leagues, but for general audience LAN is not needed at all.
Even if it's not opened for the general consumer (But it should be), they should at the very least implement it for tournaments. And seriously, for them to sit there and say 'we know there are huge issues, but we have no plans to do anything about it, no matter how simple, easy, and probably incredibly cheap it would be' is just incredibly insulting to both the community and e-sports. What we're seeing here is Blizzard doing basically nothing in their power to support e-sports at all. And in fact, due to their strict policy on broadcasting rights (Though that's more the fault of stupid US copyright laws) and the whole ad revenue thing, it's almost like they're trying to stifle e-sports on purpose.
So yeah, it's fucking stupid. I don't see the urgency for them to add lan, even for tournament play. If it's not available anywhere else other than tournies, then pros will be practicing in different conditions which makes their overall gameplay suboptimal. No one wants that. No one. If they can't practice in latency-free conditions, I don't want them to suddenly switch for a few days and see their skill drop from practice. And no, you can't just get used to having no lag when all you've practiced on is inherent bnet latency. If they one day public lan, then I will welcome lan for tournies with open arms.
I totally agree! AoE spells like fungal, storm or ff are practically trained w/ lag since the beta! If nobody can expirience lag free games, LAN is a useless feature (even for the pros). In the Beta i watched an ESLTV cast with Filly and an old german BW Progammer and he complain about the missing LAN support but at the same time he said he had problems in BW playing lag-free after training for month over a normal shitty internet connection!
On October 22 2011 18:40 (Max 20 chars) wrote: I'm wondering since month and going to ask now: Will there be consequences?
I mean Bnet was bad and hated even before the game was out. Millions of things were on their 'list'. There are monthly issues in tournaments because of missing LAN.
Nothing is done, just lots of talking. But like in politics there comes the election time. You can vote with your wallet.
Will you (basically everyone who bought WoL) just keep on talking and complaning or will there be consequences?
I'm asking, as for my part, I definitely won't buy Starcraft HotS and most likely no further Bnet controlled games. I bought WoL and was hoping for the promised and even more as I could believe they were serious about this Bnet thing and they would fix it soon. I read complains over complain. An endless stream of issues. I feel the same way but never wrote about it. I just made my decision over the past month.
Will you buy HotS and just keep complaining or do you have something else in mind?
I'm just wondering if I'm the only one that actually acts and everyone else just keeps talking but agreeing to everything by voting with their wallet. Or if there are lots of people acting and just not talking about that they are.
The unfortunate thing is that there's so many people that either don't care about LAN or will buy it anyway (Like seriously progaming teams, tournament organizers, etc.) that there's basically no way to convince enough consumers to make a large enough dent in sales to convince Blizzard to take our suggestions and demands seriously.
So despite my desire to persuade Blizzard in one way or another, I'm going to buy it anyway. I'm a realist. There's enough idiots out there that my vote literally doesn't count either way.
i still hope the new units beeing implemented into the multiplayer is a huge trollolololololol from blizzard the new zerg units just appear way to overpowered
On October 22 2011 12:01 emesen wrote: wait... are they charging for blizzard dota now?
I wonder if they seriously think people are going to play Blizzard DotA. There shouldn't be any full time staff devoted to it.
DotA 2 is groomed for ESPORTS, which Blizzard won't do and Bnet2 isn't capable of supporting, and LoL is huge and free. It's an oversaturated scene with far more experienced and advanced developers and systems. They should just abandon it.
I'm pretty sure they are just aiming Blizzard Dota as something you can play while logged into b.net.. a silly custom game.
On October 22 2011 18:40 (Max 20 chars) wrote: I'm wondering since month and going to ask now: Will there be consequences?
I mean Bnet was bad and hated even before the game was out. Millions of things were on their 'list'. There are monthly issues in tournaments because of missing LAN.
Nothing is done, just lots of talking. But like in politics there comes the election time. You can vote with your wallet.
Will you (basically everyone who bought WoL) just keep on talking and complaning or will there be consequences?
I'm asking, as for my part, I definitely won't buy Starcraft HotS and most likely no further Bnet controlled games. I bought WoL and was hoping for the promised and even more as I could believe they were serious about this Bnet thing and they would fix it soon. I read complains over complain. An endless stream of issues. I feel the same way but never wrote about it. I just made my decision over the past month.
Will you buy HotS and just keep complaining or do you have something else in mind?
I'm just wondering if I'm the only one that actually acts and everyone else just keeps talking but agreeing to everything by voting with their wallet. Or if there are lots of people acting and just not talking about that they are.
The unfortunate thing is that there's so many people that either don't care about LAN or will buy it anyway (Like seriously progaming teams, tournament organizers, etc.) that there's basically no way to convince enough consumers to make a large enough dent in sales to convince Blizzard to take our suggestions and demands seriously.
So despite my desire to persuade Blizzard in one way or another, I'm going to buy it anyway. I'm a realist. There's enough idiots out there that my vote literally doesn't count either way.
Same reason I don't care about politics.
I think I didn't make myself clear. I don't intend to make Blizzard change anything with not buying the game.
It's as you say: Be realistic. Blizzard won't change Bnet dependency and all the flaws within that system. All the complaining is useless and at the end just some sort of generic regulars' table talk. They won't change things but more likely extend them. They made their point clear over and over again.
That's why I won't buy it. Not to pressure someone. It's not about sending a message. It's just a bad product and I don't support that product and the idea - as most people I guess. That's the reason. It's simply a logical consequence not to buy it. I feel people still buying HotS lose every right to complain about Bnet related issues as they comfort Blizzard with their money to leave it as it is.
And that's why I asked. To find out if people are serious about their complains or if this is all more just generic talk and complain because we are humans and like to complain about everything but at the end still vote in favour.
He feels that the beta will give the design team much more substantial data than WoL because there's such a rich pool of pros to work with. He thinks pros will adapt to the changes pretty quickly and be able to give solid feedback.
Can't wait until Blizzard stops messing with SC2 after all the expansions and the community takes over making (probably more like salvaging) the game into something much much better.
to all you "Y NO LAN!?" people. if you really want esports to grow, stop being so pissy about this. the things that are pushing esports is a passion _AND_ money. just passion doesnt go very far in the world we live in. blizzard will lose money if they implement lan mode, and that will take away motivation to continue developing and improving already released products.
@blizzard; thank you for everything, i look forward to paying the full amount for HotS aswell.
Well if there was a lan spport. They would loose TONs of casual players aka TONs of money, because they would just download it and play with friends through LAN using tungle,gamranger and all that shit so i understand it.. I think LAN will get out after the last expansion pack
On October 22 2011 18:40 (Max 20 chars) wrote: I'm wondering since month and going to ask now: Will there be consequences?
I mean Bnet was bad and hated even before the game was out. Millions of things were on their 'list'. There are monthly issues in tournaments because of missing LAN.
Nothing is done, just lots of talking. But like in politics there comes the election time. You can vote with your wallet.
Will you (basically everyone who bought WoL) just keep on talking and complaning or will there be consequences?
I'm asking, as for my part, I definitely won't buy Starcraft HotS and most likely no further Bnet controlled games. I bought WoL and was hoping for the promised and even more as I could believe they were serious about this Bnet thing and they would fix it soon. I read complains over complain. An endless stream of issues. I feel the same way but never wrote about it. I just made my decision over the past month.
Will you buy HotS and just keep complaining or do you have something else in mind?
I'm just wondering if I'm the only one that actually acts and everyone else just keeps talking but agreeing to everything by voting with their wallet. Or if there are lots of people acting and just not talking about that they are.
'The best argument against democracy is a five minute discussion with the average voter' - Winston Churchill.
That applies no matter the standing you take, no matter the beliefs you uphold, no matter which side of the political (or buying/not buying in this case) spectrum you lie, the majority of the people who decide are, in respect to the subject being 'voted' on, idiots.
That's not to say you're an idiot if you don't buy HotS, or that you're an idiot if you do, just that actual reasoning, logic and proper argumentation for a particular standpoint wont sway the idiotic majority.
[Paraphrasing] 'Wise men do not debate with fools, as from a distance it is difficult to tell which is which'.
Those two quotes sum up politics, or the majority of all debates, for me today.
Anyways, some pretty expected answers, we might do it..... eventually. All we can really expect. Is there a 'fixed' date for the HotS release being announced at Bcon? I know it wont be actually fixed but something to look forward to.
On October 22 2011 18:24 babo213 wrote: It's ridiculous they didn't include group viewing replays to begin with. Same with clan stuff and having terrible custom game lay outs. Old battle.net for brood war was much better than the crap they have now. No faith in the current development team
We're talking about a Battle Net that had no real chat channels at first. Realise it guys, this company is not about leading the industry with strong base features and innovative ideas, it's about squeezing you out.
We're living in times were companies decide to not release SDKs and make you pay for maps and hats. Communities are being treated with "utmost importance" as long as they don't "settle". The Activisions and EAs don't want games that last 10 years with a strong community and with a market other non-company related companies profit.
This list is nothing more than a list. A would-be-nice-to-have, but does it generate revenue? As long as the answer is no, it stays on the list. I have long lost my hopes for the new Blizzard...
Don't see how it would be hard to make a "Tournament Server Edition" or something and charge a lot of money for it. MLG, IEM, IPL, NASL would only have to buy it once and could make accounts that would only work for that server and only offline for their tournaments. Selling only to trusted people and organizations and have them apply for it. Personally i've yet to be bothered by SC2 only being online.
On October 22 2011 20:25 starrrrlight wrote: to all you "Y NO LAN!?" people. if you really want esports to grow, stop being so pissy about this. the things that are pushing esports is a passion _AND_ money. just passion doesnt go very far in the world we live in. blizzard will lose money if they implement lan mode, and that will take away motivation to continue developing and improving already released products.
@blizzard; thank you for everything, i look forward to paying the full amount for HotS aswell.
What's so difficult about clan-support? Just save little lists of users somewhere, who get their clan-name added in brackets in front of their names and are auto-joined in a private clan-chatchannel or something. Give the clan-founder the right to kick and to grant or revoke clan-invite privileges etc. and that's it.
But knowing Blizzard, they won't be satisfied before they have drowned the feature in stuff like "clan-achievements", "clanwar-calendar-iOs/Android-synchronization" or other nonsense.
Blizzard's stance on LAN makes sense from a corporate standpoint, at least to a certain extent. As long as their sales are strong and there aren't any boycotts of their game (in regards to esport-tournaments, which at the moment looks like the opposite), they can stomach some occasional bitching from the community. Doesn't mean that we shouldn't complain about it, lack of LAN-support in a tournament-esports-game is disgraceful.
So they basically promised nothing concrete. Only precise anwers were the ones saying that some feature (like LAN) is not going to be made in the forseeable future. Oh and they are looking with interest at other games' features. Very insightful. So what was the goal of this whole session again? (Maybe listening to the whole record will shed some light, I hope).
And the balance stuff - WoL is pretty balanced (no need to fix anything but few minor issues), but HoS will fix the general flaws of the original. I don't get the logic behind it either.
Standard fucking answer. Other companies implement things such as group replay watching with minimum effort. Blizzard, who make 50x the money with the same effort, can't give us half decent features.
I HAAAAATE the fact that there is no other RTS that has scene like Starcraft 2's becaues Blizzard are doing a terrible, terrible job.
He feels that the beta will give the design team much more substantial data than WoL because there's such a rich pool of pros to work with. He thinks pros will adapt to the changes pretty quickly and be able to give solid feedback.
Why don't they hire pros in the first place?
Pros are playing in tournaments and training for the game now not would it could be like in a years time. Also they need a big player base to actually get data, 1/2 really won't help.
EDIT: I love how all the anti blizzard hate comes out. They said there will never be lan at the beginning don't act like this is news to you please.
I don't have high expectations. If they were anywhere near implementing these features they would say so. Most of their answers are simply the diplomatic way of saying "no".
On October 22 2011 11:51 Fandango wrote: Ugh at the LAN thing, where the hell are the BNet2.0 server emulators that work well enough for Blizzard to not be able to play the "well it prevents piracy see" card and actually give in an add it. Damnit pirating underworld, the one time you're needed to send a message that would help legitimate customers and you go and not get it done in over a year
there is a lan crack since summer if thats what you re reffering.
i am dissapointed in general with how blizz treats the community.
I can see why they don't add LAN: Lan = ability to play the game without having to buy the game. Just install the game with a disc from a friend and then play LAN allday everyday.
Edit: Also, why the fuck is everyone so angry at Blizzard? They have to work on Starcraft 2, WoW: Mists of Pandaria and Dota 2 and you all whine about them not working on whatever little thing you want fixed?? If you don't like the game then just don't play it and stop your goddamn whining?
ofc they don't add lan support... cause no-one would buy the game anymore (thinking of them i suppose) what about adding kind of on-the-fly-VPN so that u can route the game in the smallest way, e.g. LAN but still need be logged in into BNet which would be perfectly fine, in most of the cases. At the other points of like having no save-feature and stuff like that, there is no f-ing excuse, shame on u blizzard! Better make some more stupid wow-animals and blizzard-dota ~~ QQ.
On October 22 2011 22:35 kedarking wrote: I can see why they don't add LAN: Lan = ability to play the game without having to buy the game. Just install the game with a disc from a friend and then play LAN allday everyday.
Edit: Also, why the fuck is everyone so angry at Blizzard? They have to work on Starcraft 2, WoW: Mists of Pandaria and Dota 2 and you all whine about them not working on whatever little thing you want fixed?? If you don't like the game then just don't play it and stop your goddamn whining?
QQ moar.
God forbid people discuss things on an internet forum.
HLTV/Dota2 Viewing I asked Chris about the amazing spectating abilities of Dota2 (allows you to jump into a top level game from the client and start watching...even while you are waiting for a game in ladder queue). He nodded intently as i explained how the feature worked and said that its something he really wants at some point (maybe Legacy of the Void). In general they want better ways to bridge the gap from general fans to competitive gaming through battle.net.
Does DOTA2 really have this ? I would LOVE if this happened ever comes to SC2 it would make my life so enjoyable when I'm not in the mood of watching relpays nor playing.
I can imagine this implementation as a total win for new players and for those who want to improve.
On October 22 2011 11:45 Kennigit wrote: WoL vs HotS Balance He said he considers WoL to be pretty balanced and that they only want to make tiny changes to fix problems that they see.
Thank you for asking about this. I've been wondering what Blizzard's stance on overall balance has been for awhile.
On October 22 2011 11:45 Kennigit wrote: WoL vs HotS Balance He said he considers WoL to be pretty balanced and that they only want to make tiny changes to fix problems that they see.
Thank you for asking about this. I've been wondering what Blizzard's stance on overall balance has been for awhile.
Now I suppose I can make the switch the Terran.
Are you sure you want to do that? I heard terrans have quite a few...opinions on the new HOTS stuff
Not that I believe that stuff. I will reserve my judgement for beta.
On October 22 2011 11:49 McFeser wrote: No Lan is just wierd
No its not, in today's age of piracy/copyright infringement Blizzard are only trying to protect their IP.
I cant blame them, and neither should anyone else. Games today mean mega bucks. Any company who doesn't protect their IP is doomed to failure. Look at CoH, poor example I know. But on patch days they would have 300k downloads of their patch and with 150k copies sold or something (not sure of the exact number but it was around that ratio)
Blame the ass-holes who are too cheap to spend £30 on a game, not Blizzard. By protecting their copyrights they are ensuring the future of e sports. Yes it sucks for professional play, but outta the 12066 active people on this forum right now, this affects like 20 maximum in a substantial way.
Its just the way its gotta be.
PLUS if we had a LAN option we would never have the ultimate meme "Chill, GET OUT!"
It's sad to hear that the only thing holding back the game of Starcraft II, when it's all said and done, will be the developers. LAN can offer the game so much, better connectivity, higher skill ceiling through better unit control, tournament stability. Every time I read about Blizzard's attitudes regarding LAN multiplayer I really want to stop watching SCII and go back and play Brood War, a game that Blizzard took their hands off of at an appropriate time and let the community develop the game and the scene surrounding it.
On October 22 2011 11:45 Kennigit wrote: WoL vs HotS Balance He said he considers WoL to be pretty balanced and that they only want to make tiny changes to fix problems that they see.
Thank you for asking about this. I've been wondering what Blizzard's stance on overall balance has been for awhile.
Now I suppose I can make the switch the Terran.
Haha smart move to be honest, from seeing the new units added etc I should maybe also consider it, I mean Terran units seems extremly solid and benefitial. It's easy to see which units are needed and not.
And he said nothing about maps? Some of ladders maps drive me crazy with imbalance. I used to like all maps, except for Steppes of War, now I have 4 maps that I absolutely hate and I can't thumb down all 4. Nezarim, Abyssal Cavers, and Antiga shipyards are total bullshit for ZvT. I played a game today on Antiga ZvT close positions and got so mad I ended up beating up tiles in the bathroom, cursing David Kim to hell.
Why don't they make maps like in BW where there is room to maneuver and play? I feel like they are fucking about with these small narrow maps on purpose to piss people off. Maybe it's some kind of social experiment.
These are good questions, but I really didn't find anything useful in the answers whatsoever. I'm not expecting Blizzard to start doing any of the things we think are important any time soon.
Basically what they are saying is that NOTHING is fixed at all with HOTS. HOTS is a new game with new units but none of the things they hinted on fixing for WoL during the HOTS release would be implemented. This is what the community should be raging about.
A lot of the answers can be summed up with : "Thats a really good idea. We have no plans to add them at this point. But its on the 'list'."
Just to put things in perspective, namechange has been on the list for more than a year and its still no where in sight, even though its clear the base implementation is already there.
On October 22 2011 23:45 tree.hugger wrote: These are good questions, but I really didn't find anything useful in the answers whatsoever. I'm not expecting Blizzard to start doing any of the things we think are important any time soon.
This man speaks the truth. The PR non-answers are in full-effect here. Which is both common and expected.
No LAN I expected. I'm saddened by it being made absolutely explicit, but that's simply a question of me not wanting to face that particular reality rather than the reality not being apparent.
The non-answer on private servers for MLG and GSL was annoying, however, as it's not implausible from a business stance for them to do so. They honestly just don't give a fuck about e-Sports. Nor do they have any real reason to. MLG's going to keep paying. Every tournament's going to keep paying, and so long as their bottom line is unaffected, Activision-Blizzard will not sink an hour of man-power into it.
Is it short-sighted? Yes. Pretty much everything Activision does is short-sighted. Now excuse me while I play Guitar Hero MCCCXVI. Wasn't that an enjoyable genre before it was killed.
Its funny they feel that replicating an scv, building a CC, a supply depot, then a barracks, THEN an OC is OP in competitive play because of scans and mules....
I'm not doubting their numbers or testing, but its funny they came to that conclusion.
I really hope a more detailed transcript is provided, so we could maybe see some of the nuances of their explanations.
As it stands now, it basically says they won't add LAN, and the game is "pretty balanced." This is endlessly annoying and frustrating for fans to hear without a good explanation.
But it's encouraging to see them say they want to add offline options for tournaments - it doesn't necessarily need to be LAN, there just needs to be a way to provide a lagless/perfect game between players. There has to be a way to utilize battle.net server such that you've logged on, and then rely on a local connection thereafter, if that's really the issue (and a way for blizzard to monetize, of course).
Clan Support Its on "the list". They want it. They are working on it. Unclear whether it will make HotS - could be released after. But yes, its coming.
Why is simple shit like this taking so long to implement? Its not like clans have never existed before, like its some brand new idea that they're not sure how to even possible begin to code. You're telling me its gonna take another year plus to put in something as simple as having a changeable word that appears before you're player name?
I think my two biggest concerns would be the lack of viewing replays with friends as well as this "Custom game" list with the popularity bar, as opposed to just having a "Games created" list with 1v1, 2v2, Custom etc tabs.
Maybe It's just me due to all the broodwar I used to play but these two things should have been implemented at the get-go. I find it really disheartening that they didn't include some of the very simplistic things that Sc1 had.
From my POV it seems like they took a giant leap forward and then 5 more backwards and just said "Lets wait a few years before implementing X Y and Z."
EDIT: Oh and don't forget the whole ID change. "Planning on joining a team/clan? Gonna have to wait for a name change or pay for it" So theoretically it seems as if you have to pay some sort of "fee" to join a team/clan -_-;
On October 22 2011 22:35 kedarking wrote: I can see why they don't add LAN: Lan = ability to play the game without having to buy the game. Just install the game with a disc from a friend and then play LAN allday everyday.
Edit: Also, why the fuck is everyone so angry at Blizzard? They have to work on Starcraft 2, WoW: Mists of Pandaria and Dota 2 and you all whine about them not working on whatever little thing you want fixed?? If you don't like the game then just don't play it and stop your goddamn whining?
QQ moar.
Whoa calm down son. The amount of people who will pirate SC2 will be pretty insignificant. There's like 3 million accounts. A couple thousand pirating the game is more important than a very large part of your customers?
Group Replays Its on "the list". They realize the game needs it and in general they want a more meaningful way to distribute replays across battle.net.
It's on "the list"? Well great, it wasn't like it was that damn hard to do it for BW, honestly when you're raking in almost a billion a year gross (or is it more now?) it should take like a weekend to make a patch to implement it.
It seems like group replays functionality would take a few skilled software engineers like 5 hours of programming. The game is already set up to have multiple spectators. They had it in Brood War 12 years ago. Just give the host control of the replay and everyone else spectating has no control bar. The game is already set up to have replays. Just combine those. A little work of course, but that vs an entire market place?
The reconnect a la LoL better not force you to sit there until the game is finished before you can start a new one. It would basically make lagging out a non issue in high level tournaments. How many high level games have we seen where one player is slightly winning but then lags out and it's awkward trying to decide the winner? With this, you'd just pause and allow the player to restart the computer and log back in or something.
I gotta say the LAN upgrade would be a great addition to Sc2 HotS. Its so frustrating when major tourneys are being played and players get dropped. That looks so bad for Blizz and is kinda lol for us Esports fans. So plz Blizz This xmas I want u to work on servers for MLG/GSL etc!
didnt know the Dota2 viewing capabilities. That would be awesome to spectate say GM league within SC2 client. I would even pay specially for that feature.
On October 23 2011 00:47 flanksteak wrote: I really hope a more detailed transcript is provided, so we could maybe see some of the nuances of their explanations.
As it stands now, it basically says they won't add LAN, and the game is "pretty balanced." This is endlessly annoying and frustrating for fans to hear without a good explanation.
But it's encouraging to see them say they want to add offline options for tournaments - it doesn't necessarily need to be LAN, there just needs to be a way to provide a lagless/perfect game between players. There has to be a way to utilize battle.net server such that you've logged on, and then rely on a local connection thereafter, if that's really the issue (and a way for blizzard to monetize, of course).
I just don't see this NO LAN policy help them against piracy. It's hurting E-Sports and there is already a cracked SC2 WoL w/ LAN and it's the one reason why people doesn't want it. And people actually believe this NO LAN policy helps against piracy, it's all about money and it would be better if Blizzard would just tell it outright instead of hiding under its oh so protected IP title.
I think that at the very least Blizzard should sell a LAN version of the game, but reserve it for only tournaments. Obviously I'd love to have LAN, but if people are playing the game professionally, I think the very least Blizzard could do is add in a LAN feature. Even if it was a variant of the game that was reserved for GSL, MLG, IEM, and other Premier tournaments, it would still be better than not having it at all.
Also, (and I honestly can't imagine that this would be horribly difficult for them to do) Blizzard should scale their map pool with the skill level of the players on ladder. So if you're in Bronze League, then you play on maps that are easier to understand, even if they might have some imbalances (such as Xel'Naga Caverns). Then, the higher and higher you get, they should start implementing MLG variants of maps and adding in maps that have special features such as gasless or rich gas expansions or fixed starting locations and also making the maps more aimed for the later stages of the game. Obviously this hasn't been something that they talked about, but I can't imagine it would be horribly difficult for Blizzard to do and it would make ladder "fun" for lower league players and also make it a tool to practice for higher level players.
Its sad that features that were in SC:BW and that have been in other games for quite some time now, is just being realized by blizzard and wont be implemented for quite some time.
What I expected. Press conferences are never positive. They are just a way of appeasing us when in retrospect we don't get any real answers. It amazes me how much Blizzard is against LAN, considering the money they make regardless of how they give in to the community's desires.
I seriously am starting to wonder what they actually do at blizzard. Seems like they have a huge list of things to do that they have acknowledged, a huge list of things they need to do but won't and nobody working on any of them.
That was pretty lame answers, Its like. Yeah, we're working on that. It will get here "soon" But no lan tho. You need alot more Dc's then that for us to do anything about it.
why are so many people unhappy? it was clear from the beginning that lan was not going to be in sc2, and two of the most requested features, group replays and clan support, are on their way.
i'm pretty happy with the info regarding updates to bnet.
Benefits aside, I'm okay with no LAN because it encourages online interaction and Laddering, and Ladder is a great way for amateurs to get noticed. LAN, on the other hand, only segregates players by encouraging in-house play, as it's preferable to train with other pros and with 0 latency.
IMO, LAN is the third largest reason (next to KesPa and BW's broken ladder system) why BW's pro scene has stagnated, with its top 25 players hardly changing over the last 3-4 years. I don't want that for SC2.
I mean, I love the game and I don't buy into the Blizzard hatemobile, but it seems really strange that features which should have been in the game from the start - a game developed over 7 years, no less - still aren't there.
Group Replays Its on "the list". They realize the game needs it and in general they want a more meaningful way to distribute replays across battle.net.
It's on "the list"? Well great, it wasn't like it was that damn hard to do it for BW, honestly when you're raking in almost a billion a year gross (or is it more now?) it should take like a weekend to make a patch to implement it.
how do you even do that? just hire a bunch of randos to make it?
So the Blizzard Marketplace is coming out with HotS yet we have to wait "until it's done" (i.e. not even on the horizon) for things that will actually affect the game positive; group replays, clan support, LAN support for tournaments.
I don't really like bashing them as they made the game but, jesus, their priorities are so skewed sometimes.
None of this surprises me. For example, the clan support I figured would not be out until (minimally) the release of diablo III.
The group replay should have already been out. In terms of making Sc II even larger and assiting in the development of the game worldwide, it is an essential ability. Going through unnecessary hoops only hinders the game's progression.
Wow, is it just me or is Blizzard basically adding nothing to the UI? Holy fucking shit, they are so behind.
No game rejoining, no LAN for tourneys that are fucking getting *HUGE* now (they are really starting to disgust me), no clan support which back in the day was supposed to be patched into WoL and now is essentialy LoV-status. They are adding a marketplace and implying that Blizz Dota will cost $ (my bets: 10$) for some shitty, undersupported dota clone.
so disappointing. i really think Blizzard needs be called out by IGN/TL/MLG for lack of LAN.
On October 23 2011 04:19 zeehar wrote: why are so many people unhappy? it was clear from the beginning that lan was not going to be in sc2, and two of the most requested features, group replays and clan support, are on their way.
i'm pretty happy with the info regarding updates to bnet.
clan support is as on the way as chat channels were -- when it gets added you know it's going to be as functional as the wc3 clan system and leave you wondering what took so fucking long.
On October 23 2011 04:22 Ghostface_Killa wrote: NO LAN IMO, LAN is the third largest reason (next to KesPa and BW's broken ladder system) why BW's pro scene has stagnated, with its top 25 players hardly changing over the last 3-4 years. I don't want that for SC2.
- Ghostface
This is just objectively untrue. It's not an opinion, you are just wrong.
I like the idea of the group replay watching and clan support, which is standard that they should be working on it. I don't really understand the HLTV/Dota viewing, could you just allow people (or not allow) people to spectate? Because I'm sure some pros don't stream near tourneys because they don't want people knowing their play styles. *shrug*
Blizzard dodges a bullet every time some big tournament is run without internet failure, it's only matter of time before some other RTS that has basic features and will match or surpass SC2 as an e-sport. It's a great game, but Blizz has made so many arrogant, money-based, decisions; it's understandable though since they're a business and looking out for #1. I'd say with LAN it would also be harder for Blizz to take big cuts of ad revenue from tournies, so that's another reason in addition to "piracy".
^ i hope you're not a terran :p But tbh, WoL is just a beta for Hots and hots will be just a beta for LoV so i don't mind if they change a lot of stuff
Well, after this Q&A im pretty sure im not going to buy HotS. Since they dont give a f*** about what the community is asking im not going to waste my money on the game, for me its fine to just watch streams and tournaments, for Blizz is one less costumer.
lol, as if blizzard's main priority is making the game balance. (sigh) .. people taking sc2 seriously as a player, (which is at the end of the day, just another customer) makes me sad..
Their priority is to make sure their stockholders make money, not answering the demands of whiny balance. The more you whine, the more they make money coz you are more intrigued and interested about the game.
Don't get me wrong, I love and support blizzard and sc2 and other games. I play the game and and having fun out of it. Not basing my gaming experience to some shitty balance.
Its just another video game. People saying playing sc2 is their passion. LOL . bunch of hypocrites. Not unless your one of the people behind the sc2 staff, or (as a player) committing 90% of your time training for tourney for big $$$ (which is the so-called pro community).
On October 23 2011 04:22 Ghostface_Killa wrote: NO LAN
Benefits aside, I'm okay with no LAN because it encourages online interaction and Laddering, and Ladder is a great way for amateurs to get noticed. LAN, on the other hand, only segregates players by encouraging in-house play, as it's preferable to train with other pros and with 0 latency.
- Ghostface
When pro players ladder online in Starcraft 2, you would have to actually be crazy to think they are actually trying. For players like EGIdrA, etc, you really only see them ladder to boost mechanics, and by being so inherently better than their competition on the ladder, they win by default. To me, it seems that ladder is a good system that is simply convenient as it is "always there" for them to keep their mechanics fresh. When players are actually wanting to practice strategy and work on builds / develop new builds they do play these while in an "in-house" setting, through custom games. That is why when you see Deezer, CombatEX, or even Destiny, or other 'Matchmaking heroes' if you will, triumph on ladder, they still can't consistently place in a tournament setting like these people on major teams with the in-house training advantage.
With all this said, I actually support LAN-focused practice, because through and through players are able to reach their peak this way. I honestly believe that a Flash, Jaedong, or even Bisu of BW could ever be crafted from a setting which comprises of solely ladder matches.
On a completely separate note, Blizzard's idea of adding LAN support solely for the use of major tournaments: GSL, MLG, etc. is a completely fruitless objective, and I'll tell you why. Does anyone ever have the experience of playing in an online setting in any game and then switching to one in LAN? LAN is beautiful because of the good latency, however, when faced with a good latency when one is used to bad latency on a regular basis, they are now in a new environment. It takes extensive practice to be prepared for an environment, if one wants to be playing while comfortable. If this does get implemented, then the LAN tournament setting's advantage will be with those who frequent tournaments, making the "already good" players have an edge. To me, if a person cannot have practice in the setting in which they will be competing for significant sums of prize money, I vote that the 'limited' LAN system not even be implemented, and as much as I love the idea of a LAN feature, it truly hurts to say that.
I dont give a fuck about LAN to be used on tournaments, they managed so far and will keep doing it. I want LAN because some times i am at some friends summer house and he doesnt have internet there, because of that we still playing Warcraft 3 or BW and i wish we could do some FFA on SC2...
On October 22 2011 11:45 Kennigit wrote:Saving Multiplayer Games/Reconnect ala LoL/Dota2 etc
Being mainly a Ladder player, I see little point to this (would rather Battle.net 2.0 be more reliable). In 1v1, this is 100% useless except in tournament matches (which could be caused by a computer crash or something else as well, so even then it's of somewhat minimal value). Are you going to make your opponent wait more than the already long 1 minute in order for you to finish a 1v1? What if they've already queued up another game while you took the time to reconnect? It seems very pointless.
In team games, more often than not players leave because they are eliminated or are behind or see the game as over. It's pretty rare for a player to actually have been disconnected and dropped. I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but it happens in maybe once per 20+ team games I've played.
In custom multiplayer, it seems to be more important, simply because custom games for one reason or another have a lot of players just getting dropped randomly. In that case, yes - having reconnect options would be good. But to be honest, as it is now, SC2 custom games aren't even remotely worth reconnecting to. WC3 had DotA, and it was a pretty damn good game. I don't see SotIS being anywhere near as good. It's since improved from when I last played it, but it's still a bad game. Of course, when a good mutiplayer game DOES come up, then it'll be nice to say, "thank God we implemented reconnecting like 2 years ago right?"
There's so much fud here about LAN that it's amazing. B.NET is just a matchmaking service, it always has been and it always will be. Actual games are peer-to-peer. Clients need conection with b.net servers but they don't send every command to them. If you play through bnet with a friend that's on your same network, it will use the shortest path to send the packets. That means that if both are on the same network you will have low latency.
That is why there are utilities that permit "LAN" violating TOS, because games are peer-to-peer, not client-server like most FPS games. Otherwise games here on latin america would be horrible, as our latency to the US is huge.
I'm sorry, but this is just straight horse shit. Even horse mascot knows it. Just more typical commitment dodging and refusal to acknowledge serious issues with the game, particularly Battle.net. I... I don't even understand what their problem is anymore! I mean, God forbid a company ACTUALLY LISTEN to its customers for once and try to act on their concerns. It's like they think we're all over-exaggerating and unnecessarily whining about so many different problems just to be difficult. Well I'll tell you what, people wouldn't whine so much if they could see some ACTUAL PROGRESS for a change.
The community WANTS eSports to be huge. The community WANTS enhanced Battle.net features and support. The community WANTS StarCraft 2 to be the "end all, be all" RTS.
But based on Blizzard's actions lately, I think it's obvious that they couldn't care less about what the community wants. They're just a bunch of closed-minded developers who think they know best and claim that they're working on future support, but we still see no results from it.
Yes, you do the hard part, Blizzard. You make the game. None of us could do that. But for the love of God... could it kill you to add a few highly demanded features every once and a while?! Oh yeah, and not just wait every 2-year expansion pack to release them?!!
On October 23 2011 11:24 lugaidster wrote: There's so much fud here about LAN that it's amazing. B.NET is just a matchmaking service, it always has been and it always will be. Actual games are peer-to-peer. Clients need conection with b.net servers but they don't send every command to them. If you play through bnet with a friend that's on your same network, it will use the shortest path to send the packets. That means that if both are on the same network you will have low latency.
That is why there are utilities that permit "LAN" violating TOS, because games are peer-to-peer, not client-server like most FPS games. Otherwise games here on latin america would be horrible, as our latency to the US is huge.
I'm sorry, but your whole post is just factually incorrect. The game data runs through battle.net. If it was actually how you just said, nobody would be complaining.
On October 23 2011 11:30 -Illusion- wrote: will groups be able to watch outdated replays together? just curious.
Considering that there is next to no information on Blizzard's plans for replay sharing, I don't think there are any answers for that question atm.
Under the current system of replay-watching, it wouldn't be possible considering that players have to log out of B.net in order to watch outdated replays. Whatever new system that they're building needs to address this issue.
Dissapointing to see things like the Starcraft Arcade and Starcraft DOTA, when all the little flaws like group replays, clan tags, name change, group chatrooms, etc etc get answers like "it is on the list". Super super uncharacteristic of the Blizzard I grew up with...
How could a company that creates such a wonderful game full of so much potential, be the one to hold it down from progressing into the giant it could turn into?
I love spectating high level matches of this game more than sports or almost any other event, and it sucks to know the creators of said game are the #1 hindrance in that potential being reached.
Yeah definitely not much commitment in these statements by Blizzard although it's really nice to see that they acknowledge lots of the things that the community has been asking for. Hopefully we will get some of these features or at least a compromise in the future.
I'm fairly disappointed in their consistent lack of commitment to any of these issues. Obviously they are adamantly opposed to LAN, while the community could not be more in favor of it. The remaining issues on that list seem to boil down to things on Blizzard's imaginary-list-of-things-to-implement-at some-point-in-the-future-but-actually-probably-not. Sigh.
This basically kills my hope that HotS will be anything other than a moneygrubbing major patch. Where's the commitment to quality? This is not the Blizzard that made sure a Blizzard release was polished and well supported.
I'm pretty sure there are guys in blizzard who would want LAN. Its not like they are just omitting it to piss customers off. I cant nail what it is, whether its anti piracy or what but there is probably a very good reason why they are so against it.
On October 23 2011 17:07 Onlinejaguar wrote: I'm pretty sure there are guys in blizzard who would want LAN. Its not like they are just omitting it to piss customers off. I cant nail what it is, whether its anti piracy or what but there is probably a very good reason why they are so against it.
edit: I am asking about their plans on tournaments the way they were implemented @ Warcraft 3. I see no reason why we would not be able to play for small rewards here and there directly in battle.net. There will be sponsors to help this out for sure
" He said he considers WoL to be pretty balanced and that they only want to make tiny changes to fix problems that they see. HotS is effectively a reset on the balance process, but they feel overall it will be an even better game filling many of the issues they saw with the original."
With regards to LAN, maybe tournaments will start going rogue when server emulator is improved a bit better. + Show Spoiler +
In fact for 1v1 purposes of big games I think they are already pretty good. It currently isn't viable for ALL games to use it though, since it supports very few players, so it requires a bit work to set up and switch players and stuff, which is both a hassle and a challenge for players.
KeSPA and ICCUP were/are giving Blizzard the finger for years... why not do it again?
On October 23 2011 17:47 SoFool wrote: quite contradicting lol oh well
I often talk about two sort of imbalances: 1. Often not what most people call imbalance. For instance in the quote you wrote, they called them problems — they didn't say it was imbalance problems. This type of "imbalance" I like to call non-winrate imbalance, or playability/diversity/fun-factor/mechanics balance.
2. win-loss balance... general traits of a race (across 1 unit or various units) and/or a map which causes a certain race to win more often in a certain matchup, over an average of many games at a certain estimated skill level.
Sometimes the two are kind-of related, such as with the usefulness of some units like the hydralisks. Hydralisks are both a lackluster unit in general to play and use, as well as overall considered to be quite weak. If it was given an ability or something, it would very likely be buffing zerg overall for some (not all) scenarios.
The Blizzcon as a whole has been kind of disappointing this year, so this interview only fits the picture.
I don't know about the rest of you, but back in the days, when they announced the whole b.net 2.0 and what they are planning to do with it, I was really excited. I thought they would continiously be working on it, implementing new features, makeingn changes and patches (non-balance) where needed. Now, over a year after release, it is basically still the same. The best change they have made so far, was the update of the observer interface. Still no clans, still no group replays, at times it feels like nobody is working on it at all. So far, Blizzard has not delivered what they promised, overall it feels like a step back compared to WC3. They have taken full controll of the online-experience of the game, but are simply not able to provide the kind of support that, for past games was mostly provided by creative communities.
On October 22 2011 12:16 Sinensis wrote: Marketplace and microtransactions higher up on "the list" than stupid basic stuff like clans, group replay, and being able to watch pro games on their client? Are they short on cash or something? Why not just release another special edition mount if that's the case?
I sort of wish Valve would make an SC clone.
And force you to install a store on your computer to play their game?
What do you think Blizzard marketplace is?
The exact same thing. I love Steam to death and think it is awesome. I am just pointing out that Valve does a lot of the stuff it does for free because they install a store on your PC and then make money off you buying stuff.
Blizzard is looking for some of that. Money coming in after release means better support for a given game.
Activision Blizzard revenue: $4.768 billion per year (US dollars per year) (trailing 12-month value as of June 30, 2011)
On October 23 2011 19:18 Teradur wrote: I don't know about the rest of you, but back in the days, when they announced the whole b.net 2.0 and what they are planning to do with it, I was really excited. I thought they would continiously be working on it, implementing new features, makeingn changes and patches (non-balance) where needed. Now, over a year after release, it is basically still the same. The best change they have made so far, was the update of the observer interface. Still no clans, still no group replays, at times it feels like nobody is working on it at all. So far, Blizzard has not delivered what they promised, overall it feels like a step back compared to WC3. They have taken full controll of the online-experience of the game, but are simply not able to provide the kind of support that, for past games was mostly provided by creative communities.
Agreed on every point. I still just really can't believe that war3's b.net interface (not matchmaking) was and is much better than sc2. B.net 2.0 has always felt cheap to me honestly and I'm just still amazed that after a whole year there has been 0 progress in basic things that were already implemented into the game.
I'd further like to know why the lack of name changing (especially in absence of a clan tag system). There have been previous threads on the official forum and here, BEGGING blizzard to implement a paid name change system and it still has not been done. I think it's honestly crazy that ppl would be asking to pay money for a service that easily could be free, but either way Blizzard has not moved its ass on this and they've been saying it's been on the way for about a year already... >.<
I don´t get why ppl are still suprised, not to hear substantial Improvements. If you have followed Blizz games for like 15 years or so ( first game that rlly hooked me up was WC1) , it´s hard to realize that a company changes it´s attitude towards their customers so drastically. But from what i have learned on newer products, and decisions concerning them, im not suprised anymore by anything, concerning "Blizzivision". i mean, are you seriously shocked Lan mode isnt coming in HOTS? im not. neither am i shocked that blizz will sell in-game stuff for Diablo III for real money. This company has just plain changed. So for everyone who had high expectations to HOTS due to a dwindling, now overcome, idea of blizzards high credibility, innovativeness, user-friendliness, or something alike, i recommend you try to get it off your head. By doing so, im less dissapointed
They got such a huge lust for money it's kinda depressing, this is not the blizzard from my puberty, where you could buy a game blinded.
You should have asked these questions, instead. -Why you refuse to add lan? If you go into torrent site you are able to find program that allow you to play lan with SC2. - Why are you still asking for time for clan functionalities? Are you trying to find a way to gain money even with clan functionalities? - Why don't you add a lag check at selection screen so games aren't ruined by laggers? - Why don't you add a selection menu when you join custom melee games where you can choose the league which you wanna play with and which race? It is so boring when people leaves at game start or while game is starting, and I'm not claiming I never did it. -Why you, as a major competitive industry don't join on making the prize pool higher on tournaments, but instead you drain the events organizers?
People, be smart. DON'T BUY DOTA FROM BLIZZARD. Do you want an incomplete game? BUY DOTA FROM VALVE, YOU WILL WAIT MORE TIME BUT AT LEAST YOU WILL HAVE A COMPLETE GAME AND IT WILL BE AMAZING.
"the list" sounds like a depressing idea. I don't want to sound super negative, but it's tough to hear them use that excuse for so many new features. Also the complete opposition to LAN even when they see players lagging out in their own tournaments is embarrassing and doesn't make me like them more. I don't know, it's tough because I love this game and most of the time I love Blizzard as well. But sometimes I can never understand their supposed reasoning behind what they do and do not implement.
On October 23 2011 11:26 vSaUCE wrote: I'm sorry, but this is just straight horse shit. Even horse mascot knows it. Just more typical commitment dodging and refusal to acknowledge serious issues with the game, particularly Battle.net. I... I don't even understand what their problem is anymore! I mean, God forbid a company ACTUALLY LISTEN to its customers for once and try to act on their concerns. It's like they think we're all over-exaggerating and unnecessarily whining about so many different problems just to be difficult. Well I'll tell you what, people wouldn't whine so much if they could see some ACTUAL PROGRESS for a change.
The community WANTS eSports to be huge. The community WANTS enhanced Battle.net features and support. The community WANTS StarCraft 2 to be the "end all, be all" RTS.
But based on Blizzard's actions lately, I think it's obvious that they couldn't care less about what the community wants. They're just a bunch of closed-minded developers who think they know best and claim that they're working on future support, but we still see no results from it.
Yes, you do the hard part, Blizzard. You make the game. None of us could do that. But for the love of God... could it kill you to add a few highly demanded features every once and a while?! Oh yeah, and not just wait every 2-year expansion pack to release them?!!
This is so true, this interview gave me nothing.. How effing hard is it to implement something you have made before?!?
On October 22 2011 12:16 Sinensis wrote: Marketplace and microtransactions higher up on "the list" than stupid basic stuff like clans, group replay, and being able to watch pro games on their client? Are they short on cash or something? Why not just release another special edition mount if that's the case?
I sort of wish Valve would make an SC clone.
And force you to install a store on your computer to play their game?
What do you think Blizzard marketplace is?
The exact same thing. I love Steam to death and think it is awesome. I am just pointing out that Valve does a lot of the stuff it does for free because they install a store on your PC and then make money off you buying stuff.
Blizzard is looking for some of that. Money coming in after release means better support for a given game.
Activision Blizzard revenue: $4.768 billion per year (US dollars per year) (trailing 12-month value as of June 30, 2011)
Valve's isn't half of that.
And still Valve makes better games =/
Also, Valve is a much smaller company. Per employee, they make more than Google or Apple -
Blizz q&a's like this one which more or less point out how other companies such as Riot, Valve are leaving them in the dust with their interface, user experience and support.
Ahahah, you did NOT seriously call Riot a company with good "interface" and "user experience"? Battlenet is MILES ahead of Riot interface. LoL has no replay feature at all (unless you use a 3rd party mod!!), pvp.net or game client is crashing or has issues every 2nd day, and they STILL have not implemented observer mode that they have been promising for 2 years - a feature that Guild Wars had already back in 2005!
Not saying League is not an amazing game, because it is, and I love it, but feature wise Riot's system cannot even be compared to battlenet.
Blizzard has done nothing but disappoint me in the past few years (SC & WoW mainly). Their overall quality of games compared to about 10 years ago has been on the decline, and instead they just focus on milking more and more money from their customers while providing the bare-minimum. I really hope that they can go back to their roots to what made them a great gaming industry, but I don't see that happening.
On October 22 2011 11:45 Kennigit wrote: Blizzard Arcade The new name for the market place to release premium blizzard content and user content. Blizzard Dota will be the first major Blizzard release which will come around HotS. They will have some ranking/rating features and will have a system to make sure only good user-submitted content is being charged for.
Haha, oh wow. They were actually serious about charging for maps? Gaming today: Killing fun one micro-transaction at a time.
It's pretty obvious that Blizzard is just trying to do as little work as possible on the game, without losing sales from it, so they can save money by not having too many people working on the game.
They basically know that no one will skip HotS due too lack of some of these features, so they feel no rush implementing them. I personally feel this is a really shitty attitude to have as a company. Not trying to do the best game possible, but instead just try to getting away with doing the "bare minimum"
I used to be a fan of Blizzard. Not just their games, but a fan of the company as a whole. Now though, I have lost all faith in the company, as I feel that Blizzard simply does not give a shit about their customers.
On October 24 2011 01:15 labbe wrote: It's pretty obvious that Blizzard is just trying to do as little work as possible on the game, without losing sales from it, so they can save money by not having too many people working on the game.
They basically know that no one will skip HotS due too lack of some of these features, so they feel no rush implementing them. I personally feel this is a really shitty attitude to have as a company. Not trying to do the best game possible, but instead just try to getting away with doing the "bare minimum"
I used to be a fan of Blizzard. Not just their games, but a fan of the company as a whole. Now though, I have lost all faith in the company, as I feel that Blizzard simply does not give a shit about their customers.
I honestly don't even know where this stuff comes from.
are the perfect no? are the clearly the one of the best companies? yes.
it seems to me they are saying: the general public won't have LAN, and tournaments won't have LAN, but major tournaments will have an alternative that accomplishes the same thing.
example of a "LAN-like" alternative: a private SC2 game server in the extreme vicinity of the tournament which is provided by blizzard itself.
this, in my book, is completely fine.
the general public don't need LAN, and the tournaments will be free of lag, so everyone should be happy.
On October 24 2011 01:15 labbe wrote: It's pretty obvious that Blizzard is just trying to do as little work as possible on the game, without losing sales from it, so they can save money by not having too many people working on the game.
They basically know that no one will skip HotS due too lack of some of these features, so they feel no rush implementing them. I personally feel this is a really shitty attitude to have as a company. Not trying to do the best game possible, but instead just try to getting away with doing the "bare minimum"
I used to be a fan of Blizzard. Not just their games, but a fan of the company as a whole. Now though, I have lost all faith in the company, as I feel that Blizzard simply does not give a shit about their customers.
I honestly don't even know where this stuff comes from.
are the perfect no? are the clearly the one of the best companies? yes.
The reason why people are resenting Blizzard is because they are using such effective, calculated, cost-cutting measures such as this one instead of completely fixing the game like they could have already done.
If Blizzard had really wanted to, they could have pushed players new units through patches to the game, made all the balance tweaks they wanted and had the game perfectly even by now, and even upgraded Battle.net 0.2 to 2.0 and beyond. There's a reason why they haven't. It's green, lightweight, flexible, and you can trade it for just about anything. It's called money. Why have one game that sells for 60 dollars when you can have 3 that most everyone will buy? Why patch things now, when you can include those solutions as part of the package for your other two games, thereby making the deal that much sweeter to consumers?
There is a line, however, that Blizzard is required to walk on in doing this. Keep too much from the consumers, and they will lose interest in the game and leave before the other two games come out. This is why we see constant band-aid patches; it grants them the illusion of making progress on balancing the game when all it does is buy them more time so that they can finish the expansions, and reap the rewards of what they've done.
Make no mistake, the game will eventually be as perfectly tuned and deep skill-wise as Brood War ever was, and Battle.net will become 2.0 instead of 0.2; you're just going to have to shell out 150 bucks for it.
it seems to me they are saying: the general public won't have LAN, and tournaments won't have LAN, but major tournaments will have an alternative that accomplishes the same thing.
example of a "LAN-like" alternative: a private SC2 game server in the extreme vicinity of the tournament which is provided by blizzard itself.
this, in my book, is completely fine.
the general public don't need LAN, and the tournaments will be free of lag, so everyone should be happy.
So lets say EG players should lag while training in order to advance to lagless tournament? What the point? By your logic all high tech gaming gear should be also available only in major tournaments.
They literally didn't say anything. I get a feeling Blizzard is just supporting World of Warcraft and are completely forgetting about Starcraft 2. Blizzard doesn't even seem to care about e-sports either.
Sigh... some people on this world expect too much. Why would they tell you everything or anything you ask them? They don't want you to know too much. If Blizzard tells you everything, some of you will criticize or complain to some of the changes or new ideas they have. Then they might have to work on it again and again, keeping the production going on and on. I know some people would like to know what they buy, but anything you buy should be an investment. They have trial keys for people like that.
Was I disappointed when buying Wings of Liberty? Yes I was, but not enough to shelf the game. Maybe I had too much expectations, because I loved the original Starcraft and Brood War. However, I think Wings of Liberty is a very well produced game. So in regards to Heart of the Swarm, I don't want to know too much or have too much expectations.
On October 24 2011 03:12 Pleiades wrote: Sigh... some people on this world expect too much. Why would they tell you everything or anything you ask them? They don't want you to know too much. If Blizzard tells you everything, some of you will criticize or complain to some of the changes or new ideas they have. Then they might have to work on it again and again, keeping the production going on and on. I know some people would like to know what they buy, but anything you buy should be an investment. They have trial keys for people like that.
Was I disappointed when buying Wings of Liberty? Yes I was, but not enough to shelf the game. Maybe I had too much expectations, because I loved the original Starcraft and Brood War. However, I think Wings of Liberty is a very well produced game. So in regards to Heart of the Swarm, I don't want to know too much or have too much expectations.
The things they did say were the very same things they have been saying all the time since the release, absolutely no new information at all.
On October 24 2011 01:15 labbe wrote: It's pretty obvious that Blizzard is just trying to do as little work as possible on the game, without losing sales from it, so they can save money by not having too many people working on the game.
They basically know that no one will skip HotS due too lack of some of these features, so they feel no rush implementing them. I personally feel this is a really shitty attitude to have as a company. Not trying to do the best game possible, but instead just try to getting away with doing the "bare minimum"
I used to be a fan of Blizzard. Not just their games, but a fan of the company as a whole. Now though, I have lost all faith in the company, as I feel that Blizzard simply does not give a shit about their customers.
I honestly don't even know where this stuff comes from.
are the perfect no? are the clearly the one of the best companies? yes.
There are other companies that care a lot more for their games and actually implement things asap to keep it good. They do not always have the funds though. Shared replays has been on "the list" of a multi billion dollar company for over a year now. Come the fuck on, they could fix that in an hour with their resources. Rule of thumb is that if you can afford advanced space travel and moon landings, you can afford to hire ONE guy to fix these things. The phoenix bug where you had to manually cancel the graviton beam after the target had been killed was live for months.
Blizzard is the best because they're the richest, not because they have people in their higher ups that give one flying f*ck about their games, apart from that they actually sell.0
i understand the no LAN thing. I know it sucks, but Blizzard's been having an issue with people pirating games and i think no LAN is a reasonable way to discourage it. It's not a huge deal to me.
On October 24 2011 04:58 deadhead42o wrote: i understand the no LAN thing. I know it sucks, but Blizzard's been having an issue with people pirating games and i think no LAN is a reasonable way to discourage it. It's not a huge deal to me.
No LAN has nothing to do with piracy. It's about controlling tournaments, and esports-organizers.
I dont see the reason for making this news post at all. I dont think anything in it is even news. Nothing has changed since before the game was released it seems.
Saving Multiplayer Games/Reconnect ala LoL/Dota2 etc They have talked about it. They like the idea of it but it hasn't made it in yet (watching group replays is more important to them right now). Didn't commit but its something they are looking at.
I love that part and hope it gets implemented. Interested in seeing how much more they can/could do with the arcade too.
On October 24 2011 06:24 Mastermind wrote: I dont see the reason for making this news post at all. I dont think anything in it is even news. Nothing has changed since before the game was released it seems.
Seriously what have they been doing for 1.5 years now? Did they take an extended vacation after they implemented those incredible chat rooms? It appears they haven't gone beyond the stage of batting around the idea of maybe implementing stuff in SC2.
On October 24 2011 05:51 Tibbles wrote: LAN doesn't have ANYTHING to do with piracy since you can already play on LAN with a pirated copy, using a third party program.
Also these new units seem pretty dumb. Why would you make a lurker with a killable attack?
never heard of that, as far as I know there were some pirate servers during beta but that's as far as they went. so I think the piracy argument is still valid. plus look at their proposal to build some offline servers, they seriously wouldn't take that route if they could just implement lan without spawning private servers.
I don't really understand something. When I watched the SC2 life cycle video, the game got major, HUGE graphical and every kind of updates in every month during 2006. Now after nearly one and a half year have passed since the release and they still neglecting group replays, clans and such. Why?
On October 24 2011 02:43 eaglesupersonic wrote: They literally didn't say anything. I get a feeling Blizzard is just supporting World of Warcraft and are completely forgetting about Starcraft 2. Blizzard doesn't even seem to care about e-sports either.
If you read the wow forum posts people are saying the same thing about SC2 and Diablo, that blizzard is letting wow take a back seat to those games. Personally I think blizzard does a great job making games. keep it up blizz
On October 24 2011 08:13 valaki wrote: I don't really understand something. When I watched the SC2 life cycle video, the game got major, HUGE graphical and every kind of updates in every month during 2006. Now after nearly one and a half year have passed since the release and they still neglecting group replays, clans and such. Why?
My theory is that it has to do with resource allocation inside Blizzard.
They want to keep WoW big for as long as possbile and Titan (their next MMO) is supposed to be a HUGE project so I think these two teams get more attention (money, manpower etc). They probably have a certain budget/number of people on the team for SC2 and they can only do so much since most of the work goes into the expansions.
I don't have any insider info or anything but I think this could be a reasonable explanation.
On October 24 2011 05:51 Tibbles wrote: LAN doesn't have ANYTHING to do with piracy since you can already play on LAN with a pirated copy, using a third party program.
Also these new units seem pretty dumb. Why would you make a lurker with a killable attack?
never heard of that, as far as I know there were some pirate servers during beta but that's as far as they went. so I think the piracy argument is still valid. plus look at their proposal to build some offline servers, they seriously wouldn't take that route if they could just implement lan without spawning private servers.
Yes you can play SC2 lan with pirate software but its complicated and limited and the community is small, if they had lan support in the game it would be much easier for people to play for free thus they would still loose mega sales
On October 24 2011 02:43 eaglesupersonic wrote: They literally didn't say anything. I get a feeling Blizzard is just supporting World of Warcraft and are completely forgetting about Starcraft 2. Blizzard doesn't even seem to care about e-sports either.
If you read the wow forum posts people are saying the same thing about SC2 and Diablo, that blizzard is letting wow take a back seat to those games. Personally I think blizzard does a great job making games. keep it up blizz
Sure, they make good games. Is SC2 going to be the best RTS of it's time? Maybe, I can't think of another or even a better game suited for esports. However, Blizzard is huge and rich. They mentioned that they can't even come up with things to spend their money on. What bugs me is that they have so much wasted potential. It just feels like it would take such little effort to make SC2 considerably better. Riot can do reconnecting, are they smarter than all of blizzard? Probably not. Riot's pretty rich too but nowhere near as rich as Blizzard. I think everyone feels like saying "If I were in charge of hundreds of programmers and had unlimited money, I would do X, Y, and Z which are really obvious and easy and it would make the game so much better".
The LAN community is probably too small at the moment, but I guess once it takes root in some place like China, it will get so much attention that Blizzard can no longer ignore the issue.
Unfortunately I don't think SC2's going to take off in China spectacularly anytime soon, with most of them still hooked to MOBA games and WC3, which I'd estimate like 99% of them have pirated for free.
On October 22 2011 11:49 McFeser wrote: No Lan is just wierd
No its not, in today's age of piracy/copyright infringement Blizzard are only trying to protect their IP.
I cant blame them, and neither should anyone else. Games today mean mega bucks. Any company who doesn't protect their IP is doomed to failure.
Like Blizzard through their first games, right?
ESPORTS invalidates that limited, incorrect viewpoint. Protecting IP is extremely easy when it's broadcast. As long as sc2 games are broadcast, the franchise will be a cash cow for Blizzard. Remember that they get big 'ole cuts, based on viewership, of tournament-generated revenue, a market that is growing quickly and becoming increasingly annoyed with Blizzard for failing to support it.
Just got back from Blizzcon. Not sure if this has been brought up but I think the demo computers for HotS had some sort of LAN implemented. I don't know anything about this stuff so I may be misusing the term "LAN", but the way the computers were set up, they could only connect to a game with the computer next to them. Hmm....
Lol, they "want" clan support, but I bet one programmer could implement it fairly fine in WELL under a year. And it's been more than a year since release, and people complaining about no support.
Anything that they said was 'on the list' is in the 'probably never happening' category.
The only thing they committed to even a little bit was the clan support. Name changes are not coming because so far people will buy whole new accounts instead. Group replays are not coming for whatever reason. Same with all the rest of the stuff.
But hey, sign up for WoW for a year and you get D3 free! And there's an exciting new expansion where you can play as Samwise's Fursona.
I understand where he is coming from with his answers. It is nearly impossible to give an accurate deadline when stuff will be released. The "What can go wrong, will go wrong" theory is pretty much on spot with most things. Blizzard actually acknowledging people's recommendations and saying they have plans to implement them is a pretty good step to making this game better.
On October 24 2011 13:30 ThaZenith wrote: Lol, they "want" clan support, but I bet one programmer could implement it fairly fine in WELL under a year. And it's been more than a year since release, and people complaining about no support.
They just don't care.
You'd think so, but I'm assuming there is some underlying issues with it. I mean hell, how many people would spend $60 for a name change? Not many. How many people would spend $20 for a name change? A lot. I'd say a paid name changes are much more valuable than clan support for them, but they're not implemented yet.
On October 24 2011 20:05 morlakaix wrote: Am i the only one who was hoping Blizzard DotA was fake or a joke, that looks like a horrible rip off and DotA 2 is going to wipe the floor with it.
blizzard dota has no chance of beating dota2/lol anyway. it will probably be good custom game for sc2 players, something they can play with friends to relax and get away from standard sc2. it just can't beat in moba war because standalone games will always have better support than just 1 custom map + those games have better reconnect feature etc which is extremely important.
I'm certain Blizzard won't do it, but the marketplace would allow them to drop the price of WoL without real consequences to allow it to spread further.
On October 24 2011 05:51 Tibbles wrote: LAN doesn't have ANYTHING to do with piracy since you can already play on LAN with a pirated copy, using a third party program.
Also these new units seem pretty dumb. Why would you make a lurker with a killable attack?
never heard of that, as far as I know there were some pirate servers during beta but that's as far as they went. so I think the piracy argument is still valid. plus look at their proposal to build some offline servers, they seriously wouldn't take that route if they could just implement lan without spawning private servers.
I'm telling you it's real because I had to use it to play an un-published map (which is also retarded...)
It lets you play over a Virtual LAN like Hamachi, which is the only reason the "no LAN because Piracy" argument works. They don't have massive pirate LAN parties, they play over vLANs.
Do they want SC2 to be a game or to become a sport? I think the best thing that they could do would be to release "pro" edition of SC2 with the additional features that tournaments need. I assume piracy would still be a worry, but if they removed single player & b.net from this version (maybe having only one computer in the lan hub connecting to b.net), wouldn't that solve the problem? Am I missing something? Is this a lot of work on the coding side?
On October 25 2011 00:35 price wrote: Do they want SC2 to be a game or to become a sport? I think the best thing that they could do would be to release "pro" edition of SC2 with the additional features that tournaments need. I assume piracy would still be a worry, but if they removed single player & b.net from this version (maybe having only one computer in the lan hub connecting to b.net), wouldn't that solve the problem? Am I missing something? Is this a lot of work on the coding side?
Relative to the amount of programmers and money they have? It's practically free compared to, say, making their map editor or their graphics engine or creating all the 3d models and textures in the game.
"on the list" means they will never add it to the game. It's basically a list of things that wont make or break if the game sells. Therefor they wont be putting any manpower on it.
LAN = Local Area Network. In short its a way of playing multi-player games without using the internet. This means that you are not at the mercy of bad connections from ISPs which are not your fault. See: MLG Dallas.
On October 25 2011 06:19 Fuzzymonkey wrote: LAN = Local Area Network. In short its a way of playing multi-player games without using the internet. This means that you are not at the mercy of bad connections from ISPs which are not your fault. See: MLG Dallas.
Didn't IPL3, NASL finals, and other tourneys suffer from issues, too? From what I remember, MLG had to fork over a bundle to improve their connectivity, too.
On October 24 2011 09:19 fourColo wrote: .....better. Riot can do reconnecting, are they smarter than all of blizzard? Probably not. Riot's pretty rich too but nowhere near as rich as Blizzard. I think everyone feels like saying "If I were in charge of hundreds of programmers and had unlimited money, I would do X, Y, and Z which are really obvious and easy and it would make the game so much better".
This reminds me.. If you work/are close to the industry, you know that everyone thinks he/she is a game designer.
Anyway, unfortunately in a big company like Blizzard adding a feature is not like one guy coding new feature in Minecraft over the weekend and BAM it's there.
You have this battle.net team that handles those million concurrent users and then the SC2 team. Already during development they had disputes on what to do and how (or so i read).
I have no idea how their whole process goes. But looks like it's a pain in the ass to get anything new implemented in the game. Anything except balance changes / unit changes, because they knew from the start that it's a big deal.
And maybe all the core guys are already doing something more important which slows things down. You can't just let some noob programmer implement your group replay system because it requires changes to many places and rewriting some of the code. *speculating*
Anyway, small developers seem to be more agile with these things.
Group replays are most important to me. That will allow me and my buds to share replays and have more in depth analysis of them. I will be able to point out exactly what your talking about and wont have to go through the hassle of e-mailing replays. Otherwise the way my cousin shows me his replays is he comes over to my house and takes along his entire desktop with its monster screen lol.
On October 24 2011 09:19 fourColo wrote: .....better. Riot can do reconnecting, are they smarter than all of blizzard? Probably not. Riot's pretty rich too but nowhere near as rich as Blizzard. I think everyone feels like saying "If I were in charge of hundreds of programmers and had unlimited money, I would do X, Y, and Z which are really obvious and easy and it would make the game so much better".
This reminds me.. If you work/are close to the industry, you know that everyone thinks he/she is a game designer.
Anyway, unfortunately in a big company like Blizzard adding a feature is not like one guy coding new feature in Minecraft over the weekend and BAM it's there.
You have this battle.net team that handles those million concurrent users and then the SC2 team. Already during development they had disputes on what to do and how (or so i read).
I have no idea how their whole process goes. But looks like it's a pain in the ass to get anything new implemented in the game. Anything except balance changes / unit changes, because they knew from the start that it's a big deal.
And maybe all the core guys are already doing something more important which slows things down. You can't just let some noob programmer implement your group replay system because it requires changes to many places and rewriting some of the code. *speculating*
Anyway, small developers seem to be more agile with these things.
That's actually really good insight, I'd never considered that. Even working for a large, non-gaming-related corporation, I can definitely see that viewpoint. Executives aren't flexible at all. SHAREHOLDERS SHAREHOLDERS SHAREHOLDERS, basically.
Anyway, I'm super excited for group replays! What a great avenue to make fun of my scrub friends.
It's easy for us to shake our pitchforks and heap abuse on Blizzard for being uncaring, soulless cashvacuums, but do you know what I actually do when I look for someone to blame? I stand in front the mirror, look myself in the eye, and shake my head sadly in disgust. Because even though I swore I wouldn't shell out $150-200 for a single game, even though I begged my friends to hold off on purchasing Wings of Liberty until there was a price reduction (a pipe dream, in retrospect) -- who was the one who ultimately ended up meekly handing over $60 and saying, "Thank you, Blizzard"? That's right: Me.
At the end of the day, we're all complicit with Blizzard in its handling of these hot-button issues. Sure, we might mumble and grumble and gnash our teeth -- but grumbling never cost Blizzard a cent: our dollars and financial support speak loudest. Why implement LAN at all if including it would surely cost them some sales, but excluding it doesn't lose them a single transaction? Similarly, why include multiple ID support (even though Broodwar had limitless IDs per game copy, if memory serves) when people and teams will happily snap up smurf accounts with nary a complaint?
The power is supposed to be in our hands as the consumers, not Blizzard's. What's the ultimate solution then? I am not certain; but I doubt it was showing up in droves at the Anaheim Convention Center to shower Browder and Co. with thunderous applause! (Where were the pickets demanding LAN, and therefore tarnishing Blizzard's reputation at their very own signature event?)
As for action on my own part, I don't know what to do, though I'm open to suggestions. I have a strong feeling I'll end up caving to peer pressure and becoming Blizzard's (un)willing accomplice yet again with Heart of the Swarm's release. And when that happens, it'll be back to looking at myself in the mirror with disdain whenever I think of why there isn't LAN in Starcraft 2.
working with pros in hots beta is smart. Hopefully our concerns with the new units and balance issues can be solved or at least helped by their presence
On October 22 2011 12:16 Sinensis wrote: Marketplace and microtransactions higher up on "the list" than stupid basic stuff like clans, group replay, and being able to watch pro games on their client? Are they short on cash or something? Why not just release another special edition mount if that's the case?
I sort of wish Valve would make an SC clone.
And force you to install a store on your computer to play their game?
What do you think Blizzard marketplace is?
The exact same thing. I love Steam to death and think it is awesome. I am just pointing out that Valve does a lot of the stuff it does for free because they install a store on your PC and then make money off you buying stuff.
Blizzard is looking for some of that. Money coming in after release means better support for a given game.
Activision Blizzard revenue: $4.768 billion per year (US dollars per year) (trailing 12-month value as of June 30, 2011)
On October 25 2011 20:00 pretensile wrote: It's easy for us to shake our pitchforks and heap abuse on Blizzard for being uncaring, soulless cashvacuums, but do you know what I actually do when I look for someone to blame? I stand in front the mirror, look myself in the eye, and shake my head sadly in disgust. Because even though I swore I wouldn't shell out $150-200 for a single game, even though I begged my friends to hold off on purchasing Wings of Liberty until there was a price reduction (a pipe dream, in retrospect) -- who was the one who ultimately ended up meekly handing over $60 and saying, "Thank you, Blizzard"? That's right: Me.
At the end of the day, we're all complicit with Blizzard in its handling of these hot-button issues. Sure, we might mumble and grumble and gnash our teeth -- but grumbling never cost Blizzard a cent: our dollars and financial support speak loudest. Why implement LAN at all if including it would surely cost them some sales, but excluding it doesn't lose them a single transaction? Similarly, why include multiple ID support (even though Broodwar had limitless IDs per game copy, if memory serves) when people and teams will happily snap up smurf accounts with nary a complaint?
The power is supposed to be in our hands as the consumers, not Blizzard's. What's the ultimate solution then? I am not certain; but I doubt it was showing up in droves at the Anaheim Convention Center to shower Browder and Co. with thunderous applause! (Where were the pickets demanding LAN, and therefore tarnishing Blizzard's reputation at their very own signature event?)
As for action on my own part, I don't know what to do, though I'm open to suggestions. I have a strong feeling I'll end up caving to peer pressure and becoming Blizzard's (un)willing accomplice yet again with Heart of the Swarm's release. And when that happens, it'll be back to looking at myself in the mirror with disdain whenever I think of why there isn't LAN in Starcraft 2.
I think it's positive that they will try to arrange some sort of LAN for the tournaments at least. It's horrible to see a player get dropped or a laging game in a major match!
On October 22 2011 11:55 Dental Floss wrote: Its really weird that they see group replays being less important than the marketplace. Its such basic functionality!
When I read that I thought about the fact that blizzard has put profitability ahead of consumer satisfaction.
It's somewhat sad to see that with how great of a game SC2 is, the Dev team seems to be focusing more on their profitability rather than what the fans and players want from it.
Clan support, Lan support, Name Changes, all of these should be a priority prior to HotS. These things should've been a priority the minute WoL launched and/or the moment it boomed as big as it has.
^ I think a better, more full, competitive, skill-based multiplayer core game is MUCH more important than clan support or name changes.
It really bugs me how people keep claiming blizz is 'just after profit'. First off, they are a company, and making a game that lasts another 10+ years as a competitive esport and as THE RTS game to play for the next decade is side by side with "make mad profit and swim in a pool of cash thats in my yacht". Secondly, you think they are keeping away lan, or clan support... because somehow, this leads to higher profits? Well, I sure hope so, in the sense they can focus on making a better game, but besides that, you think it's some ulterior motive? Like, are you stupid?
I could care less about chat channels, clan name tags, playable replays, etc. I want a competitive game that's balanced, well-rounded out, with races full of units that are full of utility, fun to use, fun to watch, and no gaping holes in the race's ability to deal with specific problems.
These threads are full of people who don't know much, but I think everyone who went to blizzcon left with full faith and trust in the design team at blizzard. They are much more aware of the problems plaguing balance and gameplay, and esports, than you may think.
Get over LAN. Yes, it sucks, but the reason is pretty simple. What happened with the BW ladder? Oh yea, it got hacked and everyone went to 3rd party servers and ladders like iccup. I really don't want the same experience in SC2, and I have yet to run into a hacker or mher yet.
This is an amazing game, anyone thinking you need to bash bliz is just ridiculous. You paid $60 for this game for a reason, and I can't think of a single game out on the market more worth the money. Halo? Call of duty? counter strike? These games aren't nearly as in-depth as SC2. Not to mention the thousands of just... bad games out there.. just so many bad games. I will be playing this game for years to come, and it will definitely be worth the $60. I will gladly buy HOTS, and if it turns out to be a disaster, even the single player will still make it worth the $60 when you compare it to other games (and bear in mind, WoL is the only game I've ever played single player on since Sonic 2, and taht's only because I was worse than bronze when I started and had zero rts experience).
Honestly two things that I don't personally care about but I am constantly surprised to see everyone make a big deal of is LAN support and group replays..
The reason LAN support and group replays are important is because they are essential to the participation in and broadcasting of esports, not because they are vital to the average end user. The average consumer will generally be fine with the Battle.net experience alone, but LAN is completely crucial to the smooth running of tournaments and ensuring the absolute best conditions for professional players. Group replays are a necessity for any casts done from replays. The vast majority of us obsess about these two features as fans and audience members of esports, not necessarily because they impact us personally.
As for LAN support... what does that have anything to do with hacks? People didn't use hacks via LAN; they used them on Blizzard's own Battle.net. Perhaps you'd like to explain how including LAN suddenly makes the game "hackable"? And for the record, as closely monitored as SC2 is, there have been plenty of hacks (autosplit, autoblink, autoburrow, drophacks, and yes, maphacks) available and used for Wings of Liberty.
On October 28 2011 07:48 pretensile wrote: As for LAN support... what does that have anything to do with hacks? People didn't use hacks via LAN; they used them on Blizzard's own Battle.net. Perhaps you'd like to explain how including LAN suddenly makes the game "hackable"? And for the record, as closely monitored as SC2 is, there have been plenty of hacks (autosplit, autoblink, autoburrow, drophacks, and yes, maphacks) available and used for Wings of Liberty.
Not hacks as in autosplit, autoblink, autoburrow, drophacks, and yes, maphacks or whatever.. Piracy of the game is what theyre talking about. Lan allows for players to play away from battlenet. This allows for privates servers which means people don't need to have a battlenet account to play the game. Look at iCcup... You can play for free if you dl the multiplayer only, blizzard doesn't benefit at all from it.. The only reason why its not been shut down is cause the game is so old blizzard couldn't give a flying fuck if people download it anymore..
On October 28 2011 05:03 Belial88 wrote: I could care less about chat channels, clan name tags, playable replays, etc.
You might care less, but it's definitely a bit foolish to watch players like Destiny, or Desrow who are still flying defunct (ROOT) or outdated team tags that have been so for months, on their main/GM accounts. I remember seeing people assuming Desrow was still on vVv based on his in game name, months after he was picked up by another team.
It might not seem so, but in an age when people are being introduced to Starcraft through Husky VODS or watching replays, name recognition goes a long way for esports teams. Ultimately it shouldn't be a massive undertaking for them to have something like this or a payable name change system in the next expansion.
On October 28 2011 05:03 Belial88 wrote: I could care less about chat channels, clan name tags, playable replays, etc. I want a competitive game that's balanced, well-rounded out, with races full of units that are full of utility, fun to use, fun to watch, and no gaping holes in the race's ability to deal with specific problems.
The "I'd rather have this, than that" is a pretty worn out argument when we're talking about a company with the resources that Activision/Blizzard has behind it. Most of the time it amounts to, "Would I rather go to work today, or get the mail?". Why not both? Especially when we're just talking about a clan tag or a name change, and not something absurdly ridiculous like implementing Frostbite 2.0 dynamic physics when my immortal is blowing your Barracks to smithereens.
As an example, I'm sure most people didn't care much for the fact that creep now grows on enemy buildings. That's an intensive change that probably took fundamental graphical updates and modifications to the engine to implement. Or the fact that marines now ragdoll-tumble down a ramp thanks to an improved physics system.
Was that all development time that could've been spent balancing the game or creating fun units? Maybe? Maybe not.
We can't know for sure, but I think it's reasonable to think that in the time it took them to make the graphical enhancements needed for creep to dynamically spread over each unique building model, or make more realistic looking physics effects, they could've probably modified their database to accommodate a simple name change operation. Maybe that isn't a reasonable assumption, I don't know.
Ultimately we can't know for certain and we just have to have faith that Blizzard knows what they're doing. Until then as a community we'll probably continue to provide input on things that are important to us in hopes that Blizzard adapts their priorities accordingly.
Well blizz, if you want me to cough up sixty big ones they better be crossed off that list. Does anyone else get the feeling that blizzard is refusing to implement any more balance changes for sc2 because they want everyone to just forget WoL in favor of HotS?
^Didn't they just release a new balance patch, for a game that besides the changes implemented, was balanced except in those regards?
The idea that blizzard is not putting in things like clan name support because of some ulterior motive is ridiculous. I get it, it's bad that it's still ROOTDestiny, but it's not like david kim is just sitting there doing nothing all day.
Maybe that isn't a reasonable assumption, I don't know.
Right, you don't, and it's completely unreasonable to think there is some shadow reason why blizzard doesn't implement these changes.
On October 29 2011 01:26 Belial88 wrote: ^Didn't they just release a new balance patch, for a game that besides the changes implemented, was balanced except in those regards?
You seriously think WoL is completely 100% balanced because of the very slight EMP nerf? Even Dustin Browder does not think WoL is completely balanced, or else blizz would not be making such radical changes in HotS. Your statement is both ignorant and contradictory, but what else should one expect from the blizzard defense force.
They are making radical changes in HOTS because WOL is so near perfectly balanced right now, that introducing anything new would drastically affect balance. So the attitude with HOTS is 'fuck it' because they know anything new would totally change balance.
Dustin Browder, David kim, most pros... everyone pretty much agrees the game is pretty close to balanced right now. The only imbalances are KR TvP due to EMP, which has been fixed, 1-1-1, which was fixed and the metagame has figured out... and that's really it. Game fixed.
YOUR statement is ignorant. Blizzard defense force? I'm the idiot, because I actually like blizzard? Yea, they are such fucking assholes, now let me go back to playing their games all day! Fuck them! And your comments are so totally skewed too... everyone, the balance stats, it all shows WOL is pretty damn close to balanced. I know you just want an expansion that does nothing, to maintain balance, but eveyrone else wants an expansion that has something in it.
EPT![[image loading]](http://www.teamliquid.net/staff/Kennigit/Blizzcon2011/Blizzcon_QA11Banner.jpg)
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