This thread is not about UI changes and it's definitely not about balance or new units. Instead, I want to discuss the expansion from a casual perspective. Also, these ideas would probably be more useful on the US b.net HOTS forums, but I don't have access. So, if you like an idea, feel free to go ahead and steal it. Post it there or anywhere else as your own.
Casuals
Let's be honest, casuals only play a 1v1 when forced to, and probably not on the ladder but against their friends. The games they enjoy are either stuff like Desert Strike and Monobattles (these are hardcore casuals that claim they play and are good at sc2) or, and I think this is a much broader category, they play games like mineralz (you survive wave after wave, and lose if you haven't grinded out levels). Mineralz
Notice that the guys playing have archons, if you'd try Mineralz now, you'd start with a probe. Funny, right? That's because they played countless hours until they unlocked levels that gave them archons. These units have advantages over probes that are simply necessary to even come close to beating the game.
Why do we care about games like Mineralz???
In these games, there's a sensible application for microtransactions! The people that play these games would probably not mind paying a little extra to save time and play their favourite waves over and over again. Or to jump a few leveling steps. Or to have a different style of unit with different advantages that allows for a different game-beating strategy.
If you ask casuals for 10 dollars, they'd never pay. But they might be willing to pay 99 cents if there's a "I'm a poor map maker", next to the safe transaction button.
The "safe transaction buttion" is most important contribution to SC2 casuals can wish for from Blizzard. Currently, map makers cannot profit from their maps. The only monetization would go through external sources - their own website with adds or non-game related services that one can purchase on the website. (Actually, most map makers hope that people go to their website and donate through paypal.)
Microtransactions directly through the Blizzard client should become available. That would drive the map making community that is currently somewhat sluggish (Big Game Hunters took how long to create?). The current map making community is struggling with the arcade, and it's not only because the UI is bad or maps are difficult to find, it's because map makers don't have enough incentive. If people could earn a lot from their maps, they would work harder, promote harder and keep on updating their maps. + Show Spoiler +
High five to all the people that suffered through the Desert Strike updating debacle.
The better the arcade map making, the more casuals will enjoy the true power of the sc2 engine.
BW had a massive casual fan base that mostly played what would now be arcade maps. These people kept playing the game for years because of these mini-games. We want to recreate the same experience for casuals because that will solidify interest in SC2. The game engine is powerful enough, the tools are there, now we need is to add in-client transactions to motivate map makers.
Edit: Here's a perspective I had previously overlooked.
On October 25 2012 01:11 benzcity07 wrote: The micro transaction model I believe is really important to be implemented into SC2 not just as an incentive for map makers but also for Activision.
Through all this drama and noticed apathy by Blizzard I feel there must be something weird going on in the dividing of resources to SC2. How does a multi-billion dollar company not come out with these features sooner. I think it might be because the SC2 branch was not allocated the money or man power to do so by activision. Look at WoW, with a pay to play system they will get patches on the spot in game, constant new content. Look at D3 and all the feature changes they got, (this may also be because D3 sucked and was hemorrhaging players) to preserve they real money auction house where they also are constantly making money. By subscribing to a model that promotes most concurrent players as opposed to just those that buy it once, play the single player, and then move on, you motivate Activision to allocate more resources to constantly improving the features of SC.
thing is nowadays there are websites like armorgames kongregate and stuff that have tons of free pretty awesome flash games that u can play to pass time i think thats why it is harder to make people come play arcade in sc2 just for fun.. and there are lot of great maps in the Arcade and also great maps in the making for the arcade they just dont get much attention
On October 24 2012 20:49 anon734912 wrote: BW and W3's mapping communities both flourished without monetary incentive.
The problem is simply the Arcade interface.
That's simply not true. Or, if it is, then it's a problem that runs much deeper.
The current interface is Great for any map in the top 10. It's hugely visible and anyone who wants to play a top 10 map has multiple easy ways to play them. Yet, the top maps are also often poor. Desert Strike is number 2, and yet it had major updating problems. Day9 Monobattles might be high, but you cannot even change it into random since SC2 patch 1.5. There's a few maps there that are popular, but the map makers have long since lost interest. And newcomers cannot compete because it's difficult to get into the market (how do you get 8 players available for each match on a new map, anyway?) so why bother.
Now, if there were monetary incentives, it would be worth the trouble to update an old map and to put in the effort of making/marketing new interesting maps.
On October 24 2012 22:24 HeeroFX wrote: you should define casuals. Because I play 1v1 only when i get to play but I don't play every day.
That's what I tried to do But by your description I would not consider you a casual. You still play 1v1 while the casuals I have in mind would rather not. They find other types of games more fun. I actually think even people that prefer monobattles are not true casuals. But that's roughly where the line is. Hope it helps.
On October 24 2012 20:49 anon734912 wrote: BW and W3's mapping communities both flourished without monetary incentive.
The problem is simply the Arcade interface.
That's simply not true. Or, if it is, then it's a problem that runs much deeper.
The current interface is Great for any map in the top 10. It's hugely visible and anyone who wants to play a top 10 map has multiple easy ways to play them. Yet, the top maps are also often poor. Desert Strike is number 2, and yet it had major updating problems. Day9 Monobattles might be high, but you cannot even change it into random since SC2 patch 1.5. There's a few maps there that are popular, but the map makers have long since lost interest. And newcomers cannot compete because it's difficult to get into the market (how do you get 8 players available for each match on a new map, anyway?) so why bother.
Now, if there were monetary incentives, it would be worth the trouble to update an old map and to put in the effort of making/marketing new interesting maps.
How can you say that there is no problem, and then proceed to describe the problem in great detail? This is the exact problem. If you are in the top 10, you will probably stay there, no matter what you do, even if you completely abandon the map. If you are not in the top 10, it is incredibly hard to get there. This is a bad system if you want innovation or improvement of the existing maps, since popularity is decouple from quality, and only linked to already existing popularity.
Ever since they added the open games list, I personally no longer blame Blizzard but the users for continuing to just play the same games over and over. While it is probably true that the popularity-only system in place for the first couple years deterred away many mapmakers and made players used to searching by popularity, now that we have the option of an open games list, I mainly blame the other players for not exploring more!
I think that having a "safe donation" option where blizz takes 5% or something would be a fantastic idea- you get to show total donations, and blizz has incentive to make it if they are getting paid too. I think it's way better than the premium maps idea because the players who do pay still have lots of other players to play with, and people aren't resentful about being forced to pay more.
Doing it for bank file progress is a bad idea, though- it would cause animosity if it gave an in-game advantage. If done only for visual differences it would be fine, but blizzard wouldn't be able to monitor what donations would do for each map, so that would be best not implemented at all. Besides, bank files can be edited/hacked anyways, so most of the people with those benefits probably would not even be donors.
The micro transaction model I believe is really important to be implemented into SC2 not just as an incentive for map makers but also for Activision.
Through all this drama and noticed apathy by Blizzard I feel there must be something weird going on in the dividing of resources to SC2. How does a multi-billion dollar company not come out with these features sooner. I think it might be because the SC2 branch was not allocated the money or man power to do so by activision. Look at WoW, with a pay to play system they will get patches on the spot in game, constant new content. Look at D3 and all the feature changes they got, (this may also be because D3 sucked and was hemorrhaging players) to preserve they real money auction house where they also are constantly making money. By subscribing to a model that promotes most concurrent players as opposed to just those that buy it once, play the single player, and then move on, you motivate Activision to allocate more resources to constantly improving the features of SC.
On October 25 2012 01:11 benzcity07 wrote: The micro transaction model I believe is really important to be implemented into SC2 not just as an incentive for map makers but also for Activision.
Through all this drama and noticed apathy by Blizzard I feel there must be something weird going on in the dividing of resources to SC2. How does a multi-billion dollar company not come out with these features sooner. I think it might be because the SC2 branch was not allocated the money or man power to do so by activision. Look at WoW, with a pay to play system they will get patches on the spot in game, constant new content. Look at D3 and all the feature changes they got, (this may also be because D3 sucked and was hemorrhaging players) to preserve they real money auction house where they also are constantly making money. By subscribing to a model that promotes most concurrent players as opposed to just those that buy it once, play the single player, and then move on, you motivate Activision to allocate more resources to constantly improving the features of SC.
People cheat more than you would believe on custom maps. Especially on the RPG maps. They hack bankfiles, make backups and restore & use bugs blatantly. To me it just doesn't make sense. It just shortens the life span of the fun you can have on the map. I talked to one cheater his motivation to cheat was so that he wouldn't have to play... WTF that's just so god damn retarded =) He even spent the time and effort to make a program that could create a custom bank file with whatever you wanted.
The people who would rather pay to cheat than just cheat I think is miniscule.
This would be awesome, but if you want Blizzard to see this, someone has to post this in the HotS beta forums, or at the very least the battle.net/sc2 general forums.
blizzard has long stated that commercial maps were a possibility, i have no interview source atm but im sure its out there.
there's some problems with the model 1) there's no arbitrary 'copyright' model in the system. so you have a bunch of TDs, and one is free, and the other costs a buck. which do you think people will flock to? granted there is no guarantee on quality of the free map, but you can't immediately assume its going to be shit. and there's no stopping other people from essentially copying the gameplay of the paid map into a free map. 2) you can only play with other people who have bought the map, and that even extends to melee maps as well.
i think your judgement on the passion of map makers is misplaced. mappers, of both customs and melee, love what they do. its like creating art. money is not an incentive for them, just having people play and praise your map is one single achievement everyone wants, and all the motivation stems from that.
On October 25 2012 02:17 a176 wrote: blizzard has long stated that commercial maps were a possibility, i have no interview source atm but im sure its out there.
there's some problems with the model 1) there's no arbitrary 'copyright' model in the system. so you have a bunch of TDs, and one is free, and the other costs a buck. which do you think people will flock to? granted there is no guarantee on quality of the free map, but you can't immediately assume its going to be shit. and there's no stopping other people from essentially copying the gameplay of the paid map into a free map. 2) you can only play with other people who have bought the map, and that even extends to melee maps as well.
i think your judgement on the passion of map makers is misplaced. mappers, of both customs and melee, love what they do. its like creating art. money is not an incentive for them, just having people play and praise your map is one single achievement everyone wants, and all the motivation stems from that.
You make good points, but I think we don't disagree much.
I don't think there ought to be a copyright. The source code of maps can be kept secret which means that there is no simple copy/paste way to make the same map. If someone is willing to take a very good map and copy every detail for free, well, good for the community. But it's a lot of work to figure out all the triggers, movement patterns and more. And all they would get for it is the credit of making it free. The paid map would have still made money for the preceding period and can always switch to a different payment model (in-game perks or cosmetic changes) which mitigates the value of the free map map. I personally think that if Blizzard merely introduces an in-game transaction system, there will be a large number of different financial models invented by the community. So even if paid maps have major issues, fremium models have considerably less issues.
As for passion, I have a ton of experience to agree with you - people do their best work out of love and pride, not for money. Yet, I was surprised how strongly the community reacted to possible ways to monetize gaming - in D3 the real money auction house and in SC2 with streaming. In the end, having a monetary incentive and passion is not mutually exclusive, and having another aspect - thinking of new interesting transaction models - only adds to the creativity of a map maker.
The bottom line is that the maps situation has issues, and no-one has a solution. This includes me. What I propose is to add incentive to the community to figure out a solution.
EPT
But by your description I would not consider you a casual. You still play 1v1 while the casuals I have in mind would rather not. They find other types of games more fun. I actually think even people that prefer monobattles are not true casuals. But that's roughly where the line is. Hope it helps.
