On May 24 2010 01:52 Thaiming wrote: I completly agree with everything you wrote. It's sad to say that the exact same things that made me quit WoW is implemented into sc2. Blizzard made it quite clear with their "evolvement" of WoW that they don't give 2 fucks what the core players of the game want. They will keep making games easier and more "noob-friendly" so that more and more ppl buy their stupid game, because it's so damn easy that even they can play it.
I really long for a video game company that does not exist purely to make money.
Seriously, are you saying it's easy to play like Idra, TLO or Sen? Are you as good as them? I can't hear that stuff anymore. Making a ladder system where it's possible for casual players to get a competitive feeling because they don't get totally raped in every single one of their first 30 games doesn't make being good at the game easier and it certainly doesn't change anything of the game play itself. So if this game is so easy why is it that I haven't heard of you winning tournaments and stuff?
Dude, don't put words in my mouth. I did not imply anything of what you wrote. I never said anything about sc2 being easy to master or anything like that. What I meant with what I wrote is that handing out achievements and rewards like candy does not make the game more fun or exciting, it does the opposite.
Of course this is where you err. It does make the game more exciting for a lot of people. Not for you, perhaps, but for the majority that matters. See, it's the same philosophy as they had in WoW, and it's highly successful. In WoW, after a while, you just play to get the next big thing. It can be an item, an achievement or whatever, it matters not, as long as you're willing to work for it. It's basically a question to us, the audience:
"Are you willing to spend hours and hours doing something boring if we give you a pixel reward you can show off afterwards?"
The audience, overall, has answered, and the answer is a resounding YES
If anything, this should make you worried about humanity.
Of course you'll be excited at first seeing there's some new cool ranks or w/e to get by doing something. But eventually you'll find that when you achieve the achievements you've been working for you won't feel more satisfied or happier then you were before you got it.
Why do you think Internazionale were so happy last night when they won Champions League? It was not because FIFA gave them an award ceremony every time they succeded a corner kick, or made three passes in a row.
And similarly you become really happy when you win a big tournament in SC2. Comparing achievements to winning Champions League is a mistake. Compare achievements to dropping by your friends and scoring a couple of goals instead.
How many people are going to win Champions League or similar cups? How many people win SC2 tournaments? Yes, winning something that was hard to win is a very rewarding experience, but since most of us can never win a tournament or even get close, they need to find some other way to reward us to make us happy. It has proven to be a very effective way to keep people playing your game. It wouldn't surprise me if more people would play football if that could have built-in achievements as well.
Now you might think that's an argument to make a few really hard-to-get achievements, but most people lack the skill and/or dedication to get those, just like they can't win the tournament, and so instead they try to create achievements for everyone, every step of the way. Everyone can win those. They won't be as happy as if they had won a tournament, to be sure, but happy enough to go for the next one. WoW and X-Box Live are perfect examples of this at work. It works. Blizzard has hired psychologists to figure these things out.
Yes, the sad thing is that it works. But they way blizzard is going with their achievements is not even almost equal to scoing a goal in football, it's more like being able to pour a glass of water. They make achievements too easy just because they know that then they can reach out even to 8 year olds who gets a rush of gettin a colourful picture added to their game.
Im not saying in any way that it's not effective for their business. I know that it is, but it also destroys the game for those who truly understands it and plays it at more competetive levels.
I know you can argue the fact that they can just add harder achievements too and make the more competetive gamers happy but the truth is that they will always focus on the big crowds, where the profit lays. And that is what ruined WoW. It's no coincidence that alot of the more hardcore WoW players have left the game lately.
It's sad that those who gets to suffer from the evolution of video games is those who supported it in the start, those who made it to what it is today, the nerds.
EDIT: Also what I wanted to say with "Why do you think Internazionale were so happy last night when they won Champions League? It was not because FIFA gave them an award ceremony every time they succeded a corner kick, or made three passes in a row." was that rewarding ppl for almost nothing at all takes the meaning out of rewards. If you can get them by doing almost nothing, then how special are they?
On May 23 2010 23:50 Huxii wrote: Okay first of all I want to state that I do agree with some of this. But really most of this is just plain wrong. If you do work in the videogame industry, you should know that "the 50 people working on achievements", cannot be working on game balance or whatever. You should know that there are different kind of employees in a video game company as well as any other company. Some are coders, some art designers and other lore writers and whatnot, so the 50 people working on achievements are not qualified to work on game balance anyways.
I'm a player that plays the games for the game content itself. I want a good and polished game. But if I have to be honest I like the idea of achievements and portraits. It is not the reason I play the game, but it gives me some "bonus fun". And really I expect these kind of thing from a title of the caliber of Starcraft. I know that this is not and have never been Blizzards main priority when developing the game. Blizzards main focus is of course the game play itself.
The statement that games get easier and easier doesn't make a lot of sense to me. It might be that single player games lately have had a tendency to get easier, but this is a multiplayer game. How do blizzard make this easy? Isn't the difficulty level of a multiplayer game defined by the skill level of the people playing it? And some people might think they are good because they earn a lot of money shoveling shit, or that they have a lot of achievement point, but what do you care? You know that this isn't true. You know what defines the skill level of a player, the amount of points the person have. Same thing goes for the fact that some people think that the division rank is defining of your skill level. Why should you care? You know it is not. And honestly it isn't Blizzards fault that people think this anyways, people should be able to understand the system and realize that division rank doesn't say anything about your skill level.
Anyways do agree with OP in many ways. I do think that there should be a global ladder, but many of your arguments seems none legit to me.
The problem is the game ISN'T polished, or good. And the fact that Blizzard is worrying about facebook integration or nerfing achievements when they should be worrying about the game itself is akin to trying to water the plants while the house is burning down. (can't remember who said that..)
And starcraft 2 is so much easier than starcraft 1. While difficulty in multiplayer games is based on player skill, the game itself tries really really hard to make sure it's impossible to play badly.
On May 24 2010 01:52 Thaiming wrote: I completly agree with everything you wrote. It's sad to say that the exact same things that made me quit WoW is implemented into sc2. Blizzard made it quite clear with their "evolvement" of WoW that they don't give 2 fucks what the core players of the game want. They will keep making games easier and more "noob-friendly" so that more and more ppl buy their stupid game, because it's so damn easy that even they can play it.
I really long for a video game company that does not exist purely to make money.
Seriously, are you saying it's easy to play like Idra, TLO or Sen? Are you as good as them? I can't hear that stuff anymore. Making a ladder system where it's possible for casual players to get a competitive feeling because they don't get totally raped in every single one of their first 30 games doesn't make being good at the game easier and it certainly doesn't change anything of the game play itself. So if this game is so easy why is it that I haven't heard of you winning tournaments and stuff?
Dude, don't put words in my mouth. I did not imply anything of what you wrote. I never said anything about sc2 being easy to master or anything like that. What I meant with what I wrote is that handing out achievements and rewards like candy does not make the game more fun or exciting, it does the opposite.
Of course this is where you err. It does make the game more exciting for a lot of people. Not for you, perhaps, but for the majority that matters. See, it's the same philosophy as they had in WoW, and it's highly successful. In WoW, after a while, you just play to get the next big thing. It can be an item, an achievement or whatever, it matters not, as long as you're willing to work for it. It's basically a question to us, the audience:
"Are you willing to spend hours and hours doing something boring if we give you a pixel reward you can show off afterwards?"
The audience, overall, has answered, and the answer is a resounding YES
If anything, this should make you worried about humanity.
Of course you'll be excited at first seeing there's some new cool ranks or w/e to get by doing something. But eventually you'll find that when you achieve the achievements you've been working for you won't feel more satisfied or happier then you were before you got it.
Why do you think Internazionale were so happy last night when they won Champions League? It was not because FIFA gave them an award ceremony every time they succeded a corner kick, or made three passes in a row.
And similarly you become really happy when you win a big tournament in SC2. Comparing achievements to winning Champions League is a mistake. Compare achievements to dropping by your friends and scoring a couple of goals instead.
How many people are going to win Champions League or similar cups? How many people win SC2 tournaments? Yes, winning something that was hard to win is a very rewarding experience, but since most of us can never win a tournament or even get close, they need to find some other way to reward us to make us happy. It has proven to be a very effective way to keep people playing your game. It wouldn't surprise me if more people would play football if that could have built-in achievements as well.
Now you might think that's an argument to make a few really hard-to-get achievements, but most people lack the skill and/or dedication to get those, just like they can't win the tournament, and so instead they try to create achievements for everyone, every step of the way. Everyone can win those. They won't be as happy as if they had won a tournament, to be sure, but happy enough to go for the next one. WoW and X-Box Live are perfect examples of this at work. It works. Blizzard has hired psychologists to figure these things out.
In many ways it's like training a dog. You want to reward your dog, but it needs to do something to earn the reward, right? If your dog is really talented, you might get it to dance a salsa with you or something, and you reward it for that, but most of the time people will simply reward their dog for sitting down when asked to do so, because that's the extent of the dog's talent. This makes the dog happy, and we want our dogs to be happy. Of course the dog probably doesn't realize the degrees of talent required to sit vs dancing a salsa, but the analogy gets the point across.
haha so good comparison, i was thinking the same xD playing and winning a tournament in your neighborhood is maybe like being rank 1 in silver, it feels good to be the #1, its a good goal and a motivation, i really dont understand how people cant see it. and only one team of the millions out there win the champions league, BUT THERE IS A DIFFERENT MOTIVATION FOR EACH ONE, obv inter players dont care at all about scoring goals in a street match, but i care a lot. so i think its a REALLY good move from blizzard to make the ladder this way, it doesnt affect competetive gaming AT ALLLLL, the better players wins the tournaments, like internazionale in futbol
On May 23 2010 22:21 joolz wrote: ...which now starts at 0 instead of 1000. My guess is they just fished the WOW Arena people out of their cubicles and had them copy paste their code here because now the rating systems are practically identical. The rating system was not zero-sum to begin with (due to bonus pool) so it already encouraged players to play extremely large numbers of games. You could go 3-5 and your net rating would actually increase. At the lower leagues/divisions, the rank 1 player could actually have more losses than wins but just have an astronomically high ELO rating because they had 400 games played.
So if you have a rank 1 player at 2000 rating in division roach zeta and a rank 1 player at 2000 rating in division marine bravo, you STILL don't get enough information about the players because it's possible the former has a W/L record of 50-10 and the latter has a W/L record of 400-500. Clearly the first player is better than the second player but neither rank nor rating would indicate that. Now starting the base rating at 0 instead of 1000 just encourages spamming games played even more, making relative player strengths even less clear.
The division numbers were confusing for ~20% of the posters in this thread, including the starter of this thread, joolz. Division x is not better or worse than Division x+1. You can only compare rating points, but not divisions by themselves. That's why I think it was a good idea to change the division numbers to division names.
@Joolz, @Mods: Could someone add a disclaimer/warning to the OP, that the opinion posted in the OP about comparing divisions is, don't let me say wrong, but at least controversial?
Of course, everyone should be able to express his opinion, even if it is most likely wrong. But that way, by keeping this in the OP, an urban legend is read and further spread within the community, which I think should be avoided.
While I agree with the original op whole heartedly there isn't, and will never be any thing we can do about it. That is just the way it is and if that bothers anyone they might want to think about doing something else. Sadly pro gamers or even someone who just takes the game very seriously are in the VERY VAST minority these days and the other problem we face is that WE'LL STILL PLAY even if it is focused on casual shitties. Where a casual scrub WILL NOT play if he just get's stomped by better players all day, has his character killed off, gets greifed in any fashion, and so on.
I guess it's just something we have to deal with, and hopefully it doesn't compromise the actual game -that much-. I've never needed an excuse to try and get better at a game, I play if it's fun enough and of course to become better, so what if I'm unlocking silly achievements along the way. Some people need achievements and other things for motivation though and their dollars do help make the game. It's why even first person shooters have level ups and new perks / equipment that become available now which I find just incredibly sad. I guess one way to look at it is would you rather have sc2 with some silly achievements, blend all the divisions in, and overall make the basic level of play super easily obtainable or have no sc2 at all? Or maybe no expansions?
Gone are the days of games like counter strike where you scrimmed and pubbed the same 5 maps for years straight with hardly any changes to the games game play and that was PERFECTLY FINE. It was fun and very challenging which caught so much attention from the hardcore gamer. Any one remember hardcore mode in Diablo II? Where your character is just fucking done if you die ONE time. Not to mention this was way back in the day when the internet / connections weren't stable at all.
Gaming has been commercialized but it happens with every thing, that is our "great" capitalist system in action. From Mcdonalds, to Best Buy, and now to gaming, every thing is meant to be obtained incredibly easy with as little effort as possible to the masses. It's hard to imagine it getting worse then adding a buddy to your friends list being an achievement but here is a cute video of who gaming companies HAVE to appeal too to be successful.
Kid actually tries to shove a remote control up his ass... That'll teach you mom...
Nice post and I agree with the OP but this is just something about gaming in general. It's a different generation in the past your satisfaction came from beating a game, when you could not beat it well get better or drop it. Same went for ladders if you are low ranked either you don't mind it or suck it up and get better.
SC2 does have a top of players but it seems to put to much accent on making every one a winner. Regardless that the game is good I still expected more after so long from the game play and battle net.
Just a disappointment to see how much resources they wasted on junk instead of some old good features and such.
That said I still think this approach is more appealing for the new generation of gamers and the casual gamer. The whole pissing contest description is what people like just look at a game like WOW and see gearscore. The minority of the gaming community wants a hard challenging game with a ladder that shows you are good,mediocre,bad or just a freak of nature. They majority just wants to be rewarded even if they are being treated like a bunch of dumb shit monkeys, they love it and can hold a pissing contest with their points.
There will still be a top in SC2 and their is a skill cap though I think it is less in BW game play wise the same goes for the ladder system. As for blizzard they go for what gives money and that is catering the new gen gamers. Might be wrong but when I look at SC2 it reminds me more about WOW then SC1/BW and that's a bad thing imo.
I think the OP has some good points to it, that it seems that they want to comfort people who are bad at the game by making them feel better about themselves for being rank 1 at their division and hiding the fact that there are more people who are in fact better than them.
On May 24 2010 03:05 Xenocide_Knight wrote: The problem is the game ISN'T polished, or good. And the fact that Blizzard is worrying about facebook integration or nerfing achievements when they should be worrying about the game itself is akin to trying to water the plants while the house is burning down. (can't remember who said that..)
And starcraft 2 is so much easier than starcraft 1. While difficulty in multiplayer games is based on player skill, the game itself tries really really hard to make sure it's impossible to play badly.
sheesh. It's been TWO DAYS, there have been basicly no severe problems in the beta until the last patch and you are whining about the house burning down?
And Impossible to play badly? You basicly need the same skills as in starcraft 1, the game mechanics are almost identical. Perhaps even harder than starcraft 1 because of the hard counters.
And plz stop whining about facebook integration already.
On May 24 2010 00 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting 24 2010 00 end_of_the_skype_highlighting:55 Waltchelg wrote: I read most of the OP and skimmed some replies...
Why do you people care so much about a ladder that is implemented in the game? There are always going to be flaws with and and honestly being at 2200 ELO doesn't mean you're the best in the game. You're not going to see the 'pro' players spamming ladder games except to try out random new BOs and other wacky things. They're going to be playing custom games.... if you want exposure play in tournaments and stop worrying so much about ladder. It's not the end of the fucking world if the ladder in game doesn't tell you you're in the "Top 10" especially when even that is a lie due to the best players not even competing.
You people are over exaggerating the implications of a "casual friendly" ladder system such as this. It does nothing to hurt the competitive scene other than make some players who are not as good feel entitled to enter tournaments (WHICH THEY SHOULD ANYWAY - more players = better scene).
^ On that note I wouldn't mind them taking away the division system but its not the end of the world if they do not.
this. stop the QQ my fucking god. what if they want noobs to feel good? no everyone is a nerd who want to improve from 8988/1000 to 8987/1000. it OBVIOUSLY feel better to fight for a rank 1 of a division silver or whatever, then you move for the next division and try to be rank 1 of that (this happened to myself, when i started like 2 weeks ago, it give you a LOT MORE of motivation to climb the ladder in that way). i think its a great ladder system (always matched vs people with similar skill level too). anyways it will be good a paralel general ladder like starcraft2rankings.com for the competitive players to know where they are. but STILL the ELO means and the % wins means who is really good and who is not, also you can see who the better players are in the tournaments. and i really dont understand whats wrong with the accomplishment. WTF MAN WHY U CARE ABOUT THAT, its not gonna change you nothing, if you dont want to use them is OK, NO ONE CARES.
So because you don't want to see what your overall rank is, you don't want to let ME see what MY overall rank is?
Just fyi, the ICCUP system (1000-1999 pts is rank D, 2000-2999 is rank D+, 3000-3999 is C-, 4000-4999 is C, and so on) provides the exact same motivation. Hell, they could even keep the current system, just add an overall ranking IN ADDITION.
On May 24 2010 03:05 Xenocide_Knight wrote: The problem is the game ISN'T polished, or good. And the fact that Blizzard is worrying about facebook integration or nerfing achievements when they should be worrying about the game itself is akin to trying to water the plants while the house is burning down. (can't remember who said that..)
And starcraft 2 is so much easier than starcraft 1. While difficulty in multiplayer games is based on player skill, the game itself tries really really hard to make sure it's impossible to play badly.
sheesh. It's been TWO DAYS, there have been basicly no severe problems in the beta until the last patch and you are whining about the house burning down?
And Impossible to play badly? You basicly need the same skills as in starcraft 1, the game mechanics are almost identical. Perhaps even harder than starcraft 1 because of the hard counters.
And plz stop whining about facebook integration already.
Starcraft 2 is far from "harder than SC1" "The game mechanics are almost identical". Saying that would almost be an insult to SC1 veterans. How much have you even played Starcraft 1?
On May 24 2010 03:50 Merano wrote: The division numbers were confusing for ~20% of the posters in this thread, including the starter of this thread, joolz. Division x is not better or worse than Division x+1. You can only compare rating points, but not divisions by themselves. That's why I think it was a good idea to change the division numbers to division names.
@Joolz, @Mods: Could someone add a disclaimer/warning to the OP, that the opinion posted in the OP about comparing divisions is, don't let me say wrong, but at least controversial?
Of course, everyone should be able to express his opinion, even if it is most likely wrong. But that way, by keeping this in the OP, an urban legend is read and further spread within the community, which I think should be avoided.
You misunderstood my analysis. I realize that there is no inherent aspect to division numbers that makes division 1 players "better" than division 30 players.
However, the players themselves (not the system itself) adds to that dynamic. During the first half of the beta, the lower divisions actually were--on average--populated by better players than the higher divisions. This was simply due to the fact that hardcore players got their placements done very quickly and placed into the first ever platinum leagues. I remember seeing Idra, qxc, and a whole slew of other pros in divisions 1-5, but only a small handful of pros scattered throughout divisions 20 and beyond.
Another factor is that newly-created platinum divisions are fed players from gold league. The players who place directly into platinum (and thus into a low-numbered plat division) are arguably better than the players who get promoted to platinum from gold (and thus into a high-numbered plat division).
I assumed this would be obvious but I now realize some people might misunderstand what I meant by the division numbers. No, players can't be moved across divisions so the system doesn't force better players into older divisions. Yes, better players tend to place quickly into the top league while worse players do it slowly or get promoted from a lower league.
On May 23 2010 22:21 joolz wrote: So before patch 13, divisions were just numbered. This was kind of useful since people liked to misleadingly advertise themselves as "top 10 in my division." Well, turns out a top 10 player from platinum div 1 is probably much, MUCH better than a top 10 player from platinum div 30.
This is incorrect, and the exact reason why divisions were changed from numbers to words. The only thing that being in a lower division number meant was that you completed your placement matches quicker than someone in higher divisions. Using your logic, someone who cheesed their way to 5-0 with proxy zealot rushes and wound up in division 1 is more skilled than someone who played five games that were drawn out to later times?
On May 23 2010 22:21 joolz wrote: Remember when just beating a megaman game meant you were the freakin gaming god of your neighborhood? Forget speed runs or any of that other stuff; just FINISHING THE GAME was a huge challenge.
Ha, I was at my 15 year old cousin's house a week ago and he was playing halo, so I told him to play an actually good game (FFT in this case).. Needless to say, he died on the second encounter, said the game was too hard and had terrible graphics, and went back to halo... RIP good video games..
Agree with alot of what you are saying, kinda silly that you make the 'they nerfed achievements' point though, of course they did, there's a week left so encouraging people to play 1000000 games would be a fairly bad precedent, and I think that will be similar when comparing Beta achievements to the post release achievements, look at the Wc3 avatars, 1500 Wins as X. Having said that, I don't even care about them so w/e .
Edit: While I also agree with the 'why the hell are they devoting time to facebook, who would actually tell their real friends who they know well anyway whether they are playing SCII'; it is potentially a huge boost both in terms of game sales and the legitimization of gaming as a past time in general. Clearly the latter may not be in Blizzard's contemplation whatsoever, but people who call for a well funded and thriving Esports scene outside of Korea first need gaming to become alot more 'acceptable' in the West. If people see these things on facebook people will become more aware and this can potentially discourage some more of the stigma around much of 'gaming'. Quite a long-shot but certainly something to consider.
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.
On May 23 2010 22:21 joolz wrote: Remember when just beating a megaman game meant you were the freakin gaming god of your neighborhood? Forget speed runs or any of that other stuff; just FINISHING THE GAME was a huge challenge.
Ha, I was at my 15 year old cousin's house a week ago and he was playing halo, so I told him to play an actually good game (FFT in this case).. Needless to say, he died on the second encounter, said the game was too hard and had terrible graphics, and went back to halo... RIP good video games..
Oh yeah the original FFT was insanely hard. I know the exact fight you're talking about. Seriously took me an entire weekend just to beat that one encounter (I was young and had no RPG experience so that thing raped my chest over and over and over).
FFT Advance (on gameboy advance) was a nice followup. Not nearly as impossible but still had the same depth and got pretty hard towards the end, although there were some pretty cheesy party setups you could do to beat most of the fights.
And I pretty much just finished reading all/most of the responses in the thread. Don't think anyone brought up a point that wasn't answered by another reader (thanks to everyone who took the time to do that), except for some people being confused by what I meant about division numbers. The OP has been edited to address that.
Oh yeah the original FFT was insanely hard. I know the exact fight you're talking about. Seriously took me an entire weekend just to beat that one encounter (I was young and had no RPG experience so that thing raped my chest over and over and over).
FFT Advance (on gameboy advance) was a nice followup. Not nearly as impossible but still had the same depth and got pretty hard towards the end, although there were some pretty cheesy party setups you could do to beat most of the fights.
I know right? I love how towards the end of the original FFT you weren't worried about enemies just killing one of your characters, you were worried about them wiping out 3 or 4 with a single summon.. If one person died it was considered a net gain for the turn, haha! FFTA was also a good game, but the story was a lot worse than the original, still a very enjoyable game though just from the gameplay.
EPT
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