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On May 24 2010 05:11 guoguo wrote:Show nested quote +On May 24 2010 04:41 Stargazer wrote:What this basically comes down to is a reflection of Blizzard's (Activision's?) new multiplayer gaming philosophy: "players are children and we should hold their hands as much as possible and try to satisfy everyone at the same time." Why? Because having players spam games played and feel good about their rank/rating means more money for the company. Toss in some easy mode achievements/rewards (they nerfed the solo/team crusher achievements... LOL) and just keep the pacifiers in their mouths.
In the end, players are really experiencing only a superficial level of challenge/reward from Blizzard's new games. They try so hard to make it impossible to lose that winning just means so little. Outside of tournaments, exhibitions, and in-house games (which are currently impossible to set up thanks to the bnet 2.0 geniuses and god damn FACEBOOK), you just don't get that much satisfaction out of winning. Sure it's nice to win games against random strangers, but after a while you realize that beating those random opponents has diminishing returns. Achievements, portraits, decals, rank, and rating all lose their worth when everyone can get them. This is a troubling trend of video games in the last several years. It seems like for whatever reasons, whether companies figure its more profitable to keep people into the game by giving them continual pats on the back or whether that's a reflection of our American culture, which promotes an "everybody wins" mentality at the expense of no real risk or sense of accomplishment. Here's a funny link to what I'm sort of getting at; hopefully if any of you read cracked you've read it before: How karate kid ruined the modern world I feel it's a bit more sinister than that. The achievement system uses a series of methods that are frighteningly close to methods of operant conditioning. Have a quote: Show nested quote +In operant conditioning, organisms associate their own actions with consequences. Actions followed by reinforces increase; those followed by punishers decrease. Achievements are a method of reinforcing the behavior of playing video games. Dispensed intermittently, they reinforce the act of gaming by rewarding the player for playing. It doesn't matter what the player is doing, so long as they are playing the game. Did you die five hundred times? It's okay, have an achievement. By giving players an artificial reward for playing games, developers are training gamers to play more games, which in turn leads to sales in video games.
I definitely agree that operant conditioning, specifically the Skinner Box concept of having players invest time in a game to get a virtual reward repeatedly, is prevalent in video games these days and is certainly in the minds of the Blizzard developers for SC2. Particularly troubling is the powerful compulsion it puts on the player just to reach that next goal. However, it is not dependent on a certain softness in the game and I think this is a related but distinct issue. To condition the players, the developers always give them a way to continue 'leveling up' or always upgrading to something else. This keeps the players constantly running on the video game treadmill.
However, even WoW, the archetype for developers implementing the Skinner Box, saw real competition in both PvP (player vs. player here  ) and raid content. Only recently did they start dumbing the content down in Wrath to make it more accessible to everyone at the expense of lowering the skill cap and marginalizing the hardcore minority. As many people have said, the same thing seems to be happening to SC2, and it is a very troubling trend.
Even in the more hardcore days of Vanilla and BC, they still implemented the operant conditioning of constant reward in different ways to great effect. Heroic badges and profession-made items and enchantments were easy enough to get: "if I run this instance we will get X heroic badges. I need Y badges to get this piece of gear to make my character more powerful." However, they preserved the upper skill cap and allowed for a more global competition by making raid content difficult and meaningful, which allows for a competitive environment that still separates players/guilds by their raid progression.
And so all the achievements, customization in decals and whatnot, and increased rpg "leveling up" elements seems to be finding their way into SC2 (and perhaps not entirely unwelcomely). There is also, however, another issue with the hand-holding they have been doing so far in the Beta, and I for one am not a fan.
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All i have to say is i have around 35-40 apm, won 3-2 in placement and got put in platinum 
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This is definitely the big wall of text I've been waiting for. IT just absolutely makes me sick to my stomach thinking that I'm going to buy a game strictly for just the gameplay. You guys can make a fantastic game, but all these loopholes just to play with friends, just to FRIEND request in general, the non-existant LAN function, the un-relevant ladder...the...oh man, I don't even need to SAY anything anymore because THIS guy has it all right.
BTW, I was drinking water when you said magical developer elves with developer pixie and spit it out on my laptop LOL!!!!
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I think the league/division system is really good except for the top league. It should just converge into one giant ladder at diamond. Also global.
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I think division are a good idea, they just need to be implemented into a grander scheme. Any professional sport has conferences(these could country's overall rating) and divisions within each conference. The best teams(players) in each division are compared by record( or ELO). Then you could have a play-off at for a championship at the end. The NFL does this beautifully, I'm surprised sports aren't a bigger part of making the ratings system. I think soccer sort of like the UEFA league would probably serve as a better model for starcraft 2. Having division ratings and rankings is cool, but there needs to be a way to compare divisions, see all of the division leaders, and the leaders within each conference. This system could easily be implemented into each league as well, and to get into the pro-league you could have all of the Diamond players compete for a spot at the end.
I think what they have is a good start, but it needs a HUGE amount of work that will never be ready for launch day. The division system is a good idea, but they're all their own microcosm. We need to be able to mix these into a conglomerate creating the overall rank between countries, leagues, and divisions. Thus creating the macrocosm we all so desperately desire.
I agree that they are trying to pander to the psychology of the players a little bit too much, and hiding information is very subversive and doesn't really add to the experience. If I wanted to hold on to false information and believe in it so ardently, I'd watch news stations.
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I had to stop reading after "The scheme seems to involve mashing together a starcraft unit name and a greek letter." followed with "Marine Bravo".
/palmface
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Yeah, I have to admit, being at the top of your division isn't exactly rewarding. Once you are there its like... fuck now what? I guess I could enter some tournaments? uhhhhhhhhhh. I'm ok with the damn division thing, but at least give us a freaking global ranking. Or at least give the top league a ladder.... this is retarded. I would love to see some measurable way of seeing myself improve, and divisions are not that way.
At least dropship november sounds badass.
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Personally I hate facebook, I think it is evil and really they need to do away with it. Saying this the aspect of putting a facebook interface into SC2, and then not put in chat rooms, proper party systems, etc. is just silly.
Right now the hardcore gaming community is finding flaw after flaw with the system, and while yes many of us are looking at BW for a comparison, there are features which should have been included so long ago that it isn't funny.
BNet 2.0 is shambles compared to BNet 1.0, which is shown by the lack of community which is developed. While there is always something to be said about graphics (.... go play FPSs if you really care about that ....) most RTS gamers desire a good game. Something which will actually function, allow them to improve and know how they stand up against everyone else. Right now SC2 doesn't allow the RTS gamers to gain this, and because of this it shows in the community who are beta testing it.
I find it really sad that there are key features which are not present today and these were present 10 years ago. Another gripe is with patch 13 I can't see the profile and therefore rank of the player I played against when I look at the game history tab, which creates an even larger lack of information.
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17050 Posts
One thing that I think people don't always realize is that the current beta testers are likely not going to be the largest proportion of users, at least in the beginning stages of the actual release. As it stands, those who currently have the beta are generally those with some background interest in Starcraft from the BW days, and signed up for the beta because of it. I'm aware that anyone who pre-ordered the game (up to a point) got a beta key, but I think it's generally true that those who have the beta already had a vested interest in competitive Starcraft.
Once the game is actually released, I feel that the community will be inundated with newcomers - not necessarily to RTS, but maybe to the Starcraft franchise. Those players are probably less likely to care about things like global elo because they're so far removed from the competitive scene that it could matter less to them. This casual market, those who want to play the game with friends or enjoy some UMS games every once in a while, are probably those which will appreciate the achievements and decals.
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Lol more wine.
1. Tango and bravo are not Greek letters
2. Ladder was never an accurate measure of skill at top levels
3. Any hardcore player shouldn't care too much for ladder, and competing against 100 peers is a good measure for less hardcore players. If u log on and see ur placed 8627, how will u even remember what it was 2 days later?
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On May 24 2010 15:30 mrkent wrote:
3. Any hardcore player shouldn't care too much for ladder, and competing against 100 peers is a good measure for less hardcore players. If u log on and see ur placed 8627, how will u even remember what it was 2 days later?
There's an fps that has a global ranking system ingame, right next to your kills/deaths. It's called Grank and it works quite well. The way the stats are calculated leans towards higher playtime but that's unrelated. You just check it at the end of every round, see that you are exactly #4634 in the world at this game and continue on. It's really cool playing with a guy with a grank of less than 500 or so, cause they're usually really awesome. They also have a decent stats website with a lot of features, an extra section for supporters and achievements. The game is Dystopia an hl2 mod.
It's really a comforting part of the game for me because I have a decent metric to show my progress even if I'm having a really shit round.
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Russian Federation4235 Posts
Yesterday I managed to play SC2 for the first time in my life. I won 4 of my placement matches and ended up in Platinum. Honestly, I don't think my SC2 skill is Platinum-level, no matter how much I'm flattered. The system is flawed.
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This completely captures my opinion on BNet and modern gaming in general. Well done.
Also having "placement matches" really turned me off, what's the point of a "ladder" when you right away jump to where you're supposed to be? They should call it an "elevator" instead.
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On May 24 2010 05:46 stenole wrote:
My biggest problem with the ladder the way it is is that it is impossible to track improvement. You can't tell if you're doing better than you did last week or if you're more or less as bad as you were before. Also, it's always nice to be able to see who the best players at the moment are. People are saying that ICCUP was such a good ladder, but I think also ICCUP fell into the trap of trying to make everyone feel like winners with maps of the week and more points for winning than losing at lower levels. I also think the ladder reset had a detrimental effect on the ranking, but perhaps not as bad as letting inactive players rule the top of the ladder. I genuinely hope that Blizzard in the end decide to implement a ladder that is transparent, persistent and fair. People are able to handle seeing their rating or rank bob up and down depending on how good they are.
Map of the week is a good thing, it encourages people to play a variety of maps instead of Python over and over again (although people do it anyway).
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^worst idea ever. imagine the top players starting in bronze and having to play 50 games vs terrible noobs until they play another top players. "placement matches" are perfect how they are, not 100 % accurate OBVIOUSLY, but really close. since i started the ladder i always played vs opponents of my skill level (except placement matches) and thats the point. the ladder system is great.
On May 24 2010 14 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting 24 2010 14 end_of_the_skype_highlighting:58 Wr3k wrote:
Yeah, I have to admit, being at the top of your division isn't exactly rewarding. Once you are there its like... fuck now what? I guess I could enter some tournaments? uhhhhhhhhhh. I'm ok with the damn division thing, but at least give us a freaking global ranking. Or at least give the top league a ladder.... this is retarded. I would love to see some measurable way of seeing myself improve, and divisions are not that way.
At least dropship november sounds badass.
there is going to be a top ladder for the top 8 of each division or something like that i think...
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On May 24 2010 16:46 BluzMan wrote:
Yesterday I managed to play SC2 for the first time in my life. I won 4 of my placement matches and ended up in Platinum. Honestly, I don't think my SC2 skill is Platinum-level, no matter how much I'm flattered. The system is flawed.
Same happened to me when I played for the very first time. I won 8 of 10 placements back then and got placements in gold. Then after like 7-10 games they put me down in bronze. The system itself does work quite fine. It's the bullshit around it that kinda sucks.
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EPT
