So I finally managed to play 5 placements without any lag or drops and got placed into "Division Diamond Goliath Tango." wtf? And turns out one of my friends got placed into "Division Diamond Overlord Mu." Okay then... commence wall of text
Leagues, Divisions, Elo, and Where SC is Headed
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.
The ELO rating system is supposed to help clear this up since a 2200 player from div 1 should theoretically be as good as a 2200 player from div 30. But at the same time, this makes the division separation kind of pointless. When the rank 80 player in platinum div 1 is 1800 and the rank 1 player in platinum div 30 is 1800, saying you are "rank 1" or "rank 80" in your division is totally meaningless. Why have divisions at all when ranks don't make any sense outside your division and ratings don't make any sense when people are more focused on relative ranks?
But now we have a whole new level of obfuscation. Instead of having numbered divisions, we have named divisions. The scheme seems to involve mashing together a starcraft unit name and a greek letter. So now if you're trying to compare a player from Roach Zeta to a player from Marine Bravo, you really don't get any information out of ranks because you have no idea what the relative caliber of players is between the two divisions. Instead you have to look to their ELO rating...
...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.
What this means for the game, the company, and you
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.
I'll grant that Starcraft 2 is still a lot of fun and even I get at least some mild enjoyment out of finishing achievements for vanity rewards. But most of me feels like this isn't the direction video games should be taking. 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.
As time went on, companies realized that easier games would mean more customers and more cash. So by the time Nintendo 64 came out, games were already on their way to easy mode. Finishing a game still meant something, but it was easier on average to do. Instead, gamers could find challenge doing things like collecting all 120 stars (Mario 64) or getting a gold medal on every planet (Star Fox 64) or breeding a GOD DAMN GOLDEN CHOCOBO when you didn't have a guide for it.
Well, nowadays we don't have any of that. There ARE unlocks and achievements but the overwhelming majority of them are incredibly easy to get. XBOX games actually give you an achievement for finishing the tutorial stage... then beating the first level... then beating the second level... and so on. You actually get achievements for doing things you can't avoid doing. And then these achievements get turned into points, and those points go on public display in your profile, and then you have a pissing contest to see who has the most points among your friends, and then you just keep paying your money to the companies who just keep making achievements easier and easier to get because god damn it you need those points, don't you?
Does that sound familiar? Achievement showcase, anyone? Put your 5 favorite achievements on display! Get a decal for spamming games played! Show off your achievement points because it's on display as a big ass font number next to your name when people look at your profile. TELL YOUR FREAKIN FACEBOOK FRIENDS YOU WON FIVE GAMES AS ZERG!!!
Great...
Well, I would gladly turn in all those empty features for a challenging, rewarding gaming experience.
If I'm not as good as another player, give him a CLEAR AND DEFINED reward/rank/rating to indicate that. I'm not 8 years old, I can handle it. If I'm rank 8354 out of 25000 players then that's fine. I'll focus on getting to 8300 then 8200 and maybe I'll get to 8000 some day. At least I know where I stand. Trust me, I won't care about the players up at rank 200. To me, the rank 1 player is the guy at 8000 because he is within the reasonable scope of my ability to defeat.
It's like playing on ICCUP. You straight up get told you are a fucking D player and if you've ever been to school you know D is a pretty bad grade. Well, when you are a D player, do you get depressed about your rank being so far away from A+ players? No. You just focus on getting to D+. To you, the best player may as well be the C- guy because he is within the reasonable scope of your ability to defeat. Nobody's holding your hand or trying to find ways to convince you that you are awesome at the game. You find satisfaction in the slow and steady climb up the ladder, not because the game or the system is giving you achievements and rewards and any external motivation, but because you feel self-improvement as an internal reward.
Lastly, the simplest and most practical reason you should care
Some people just want to play a fun game. They pay 60 bucks for it and want 60 bucks worth of fun out of it. They don't care about being #1 as long as they have a fun time. This means they get lots of great, immersive gameplay with a lot of polish.
Well it turns out this game has a lot of features you don't care that much about. You don't really need achievements to enjoy a game, you don't need to connect to facebook, you don't want 100 portraits or decals, and rank/rating isn't a big deal to you.
Unfortunately, the gaming industry and Blizzard/Activision in particular likes to have those things because they generate more profits (see: World of Warcraft). And those companies have a limited number of employees, and those employees have a limited number of working hours, and those working hours need to be distributed across 100 different features of the game. So when Blizzard has 50 people working on achievements and portraits and decals, that's 50 people NOT WORKING ON THE GAME ITSELF. 50 people not helping to balance the game, test corner cases, find bugs, try to design and detect map hacks, make good maps, design more singleplayer missions, create awesome art, etc etc etc. Then on patch day there is insufferable lag, they have to bring the servers down for 10 hour maintenance... because why? BECAUSE THE FACEBOOK FEATURE DOESNT WORK ANYMORE?!!??!
So yes you might think it's not a big deal that we have messed up leagues, divisions, rankings, ratings, etc. You might think it's not a big deal there are 50 portraits and decals and achievements and useless shits in the game.
Well, I GUARANTEE the next Blizzard game will have EVEN MORE of those things because people bought Starcraft 2 and Starcraft 2 had a lot of that crap in it so hey it must be good right? And then the game after that will have more and more of it, and so on and so forth, until video games are just pretty-looking "dress up and look in the mirror" games.
You'll be happy you beat a game because the game just told you to be fucking happy about it by giving you achievements and rewards. The game wasn't hard, any noob could have done the same thing you did, and you didn't really even have that much fun because it was so easy.
It's like having a shit job. Would you have fun shoveling elephant shit every day? No? Well what if I paid you $100k per year to do it? Hey now it's not that bad is it?
But after a little bit of that, you have to wonder about the guy that gets to go surfing every day you are shoveling shit. Nobody pays him to have a good time and you have more achievement points (er... money) than that guy, so according to the system, you should be having more fun.
Except, of course, you are not.
You are shoveling elephant shit.
A note to beta deniers
I work in the video game industry. I won't say what studio I work for, but I can make one statement of absolute fact about Blizzard's SC2 development team.
If you think "this is just beta and the release game will fix all these problems and be perfect" then
YOU ARE WRONG
No company could possibly fix all the leaks the game has between now and launch. In fact, I'd estimate the developers have known about today's major problems since 2 months ago and have been working on it since then but have failed to find a good non-bandaid solution.
Blizzard is not a magical company with magical developer elves that will swoop in at the last moment and make everything better with their magical game design pixie dust. The engineers are all human and they have stupid bosses who have stupid company executives who like your money and know how to cut costs & development to maximize profits. That's just how it works. Sorry...
tl;dr
QQQQQQQQQQQQQ i miss good video games QQQQQQ
after word
Yes the post is incredibly long. Trust me, I've got nothing better to do right now. And frankly if 1 person reads this and agrees and repeats it somewhere and Blizzard hears 1 sentence of it and just THINKS a little bit more about what they're doing, then that'll be worth the 15 minutes it took to write this wall of text.
I apologize in advance if some of this has been said in other topics, I don't read as much of TL as I would like and I post even less.
edit:
clarifying some confusion
Some readers misunderstand why I said division 1 players are better than division 30 players. Hopefully this clears it up.
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.
I say, fk the noobs its a survival of the fittest. I was also wondering myself how much time was spent on the useless crap bnet contains (ie achievements/portraits/etc.). I think the number one priority Blizz needs to set straight right now is implementing a "host tournament" features. If anyone has participated in public tournaments, you would know how much of a pain it is. as a perk to that, streaming to obs would be rly nice
Haha the divisions do need work, maybe you could climb divisions then climb up to leagues, so if you're in div 78 you strive to climb up to div 77 maybe in that league. Once you reach div 1 you hope to jump to div 99 in the next league.
I agree on the achievements, but some people do enjoy trying to go for them all, at the moment they are way too easy but hopefully they`ll add more difficult ones, maybe win 50 2vs1`s if they can detect your ally had left the game somehow etc...
Sure blizzard won`t fix everything straight away but I`m sure they`ll get there in the end. Patches are still getting released for the original so I`m sure Sc2 will continue to be worked on. If that means they will release new achievements to achieve each new patch when you're tired of playing the ladder to achieve may be something to go for.
Let's just not buy the "Blizz for ESPORTS" thing anymore. If SC2 is indeed designed for ESPORTS, we should have gotten: - LAN - Chat channels - Host tournament (w/ grids and stuff) - Global ladder - No divisions
The achievements shouldn't even be at its current state. The achievements IMO aren't supposed to be "I Win" or "Zerg Solo Streaker". It should be something like "Blizzard SC2 League S1 Champion" or something like that.
On May 23 2010 22:42 lolaloc wrote: Let's just not buy the "Blizz for ESPORTS" thing anymore. If SC2 is indeed designed for ESPORTS, we should have gotten: - LAN - Chat channels - Host tournament (w/ grids and stuff) - Global ladder - No divisions
The achievements shouldn't even be at its current state. The achievements IMO aren't supposed to be "I Win" or "Zerg Solo Streaker". It should be something like "Blizzard SC2 League S1 Champion" or something like that.
I agree with this. If B.net 2.0 was to streamline e-sports, then it should have the functionality that esports has outside of B.net integrated into B.net.
What I don't understand is why they think letting me see my real rank or real elo would hurt in the slightest their hand-holding policy. Fine, put me in Alpha Pink Doggy Biscuit League and shower me with "you built 5 scvs in less than 3 minutes" achievements and Ronald McDonald portraits, I can take it as long as I can see who is NUMBER ONE and exactly where I am in relation to whichever player I want to compare myself with!
i think it is a good thing, that comparing divs is not possible anymore. comparing the ratings was and is the best and only possible way to compare the skill between 2 players. u state that a player in a lower div could have the same amout of points just by mass gaming. this is wrong, mass gaming after your first 100 games will not improve your points and your division does not change anything here. "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." just wrong. better give a reason. btw bonus pool does not give you + points in the long run, because it adds only to the match making ranking points. a 2000 (now 1000) points player in div 1 WAS and IS as good as a 2000 point player in div 100.
Let's just not buy the "Blizz for ESPORTS" thing anymore. If SC2 is indeed designed for ESPORTS, we should have gotten: - LAN - Chat channels - Host tournament (w/ grids and stuff) - Global ladder - No divisions
The achievements shouldn't even be at its current state. The achievements IMO aren't supposed to be "I Win" or "Zerg Solo Streaker". It should be something like "Blizzard SC2 League S1 Champion" or something like that.
I've read every word of this and wow, this is a great read. I really hope Blizzard will take a look at this and think long and hard about the direction that they want to take. Casual gamers did not make SC1 what it is, it was those who wanted the challenge.
nice rant and all but is there really a correlation between division number and the skill level of the players? can't get myself to read more with this question lingering in my mind.
well... they think we're mostly idiots who want to play because we think we're awesome at video games... of course... people on teamliquid are more competitive than the average person who will play this game... and I must say... the majority of people are really. fucking. retarded.
anyways... yeah... I would much prefer it if when they launched they instated the iccup ladder system, but this ladder isn't bad for beta testing... I mean... if the system encourages mass gaming... that's what blizzard wants right?
I'm pretty sure win/loss ratio is the best way to determine the skill between players... a player winning 70% of their matches and a little bit lower in rank is going to be better than a person with a 50% win ratio and a higher rank...
anyways... they don't seem to understand what's good for esports since they seem to be basing it on warcraft3 and who cares about that game? then again... kespa is screwing things up in the finals of their starleagues so who knows what's going on anymore... maybe we're just not supposed to have esports...
I have to say as the patches have gone on things are just not looking good the slightest...
I agree with pretty much everything you said. Release and the months after are going to be very interesting, I sort of want SC2 to flop just so modern games developers start to get their act together.
"Everyones a winner" completely ruined WoW and it will do the same to SC2 if they continue on the current course.
The game itself is good but not great. Battle.net is just abysmal on every level possible. I find it very hard to believe many people at Blizzard actually played BW or even WC3 on the original battle.net. The hope that they are waiting to release something big... some key part that brings everything together is fading fast.
I don't agree. Divisions and bonus pool are great because it gives worse players an incentive to play more, which means that they could eventually develop a competetive attitude and not just give up at a certain (iccup did lead often to beginners just giving up fast).
Well, achievements and decals really are kinda useless... They really are just for the terrible players that dont give a shit about getting better or playing competetively. As you say, achiements really are just a way of increasing profit. The facebook feature is fucking shit. Makes me rage very time... These things indeed probably hindered the developers work on actually usefull features.
On May 23 2010 22:51 Werezerg wrote: i think it is a good thing, that comparing divs is not possible anymore. comparing the ratings was and is the best and only possible way to compare the skill between 2 players. u state that a player in a lower div could have the same amout of points just by mass gaming. this is wrong, mass gaming after your first 100 games will not improve your points and your division does not change anything here. "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." just wrong. better give a reason. btw bonus pool does not give you + points in the long run, because it adds only to the match making ranking points. a 2000 (now 1000) points player in div 1 WAS and IS as good as a 2000 point player in div 100.
What i understand from the OP is "Because there are achievement and all those 'community features' the game is flawed because it takes work power out f the other side of the game". This is is nonsense, even more from someone who claims to actually work in the videogame industry. If the game is flawed (and I don't think it is, will get to this later), this is because of bad design decisions, and not lack of man power on some important feature, not on Blizzard's SC2, come on !
Also i'm really sorry but the goal of making a game is to be enjoyable for as many people as possible. This game is not made only for 'competitive players' (what is that supposed to mean btw ? ), you want casual guys (you those jerks who only spend 3 hours a week playing SC2) to be able to log on to Bnet and find enjoyment. Which means playing among similar guys (you know being able to play the game without being rushed by any 8 poolers), having a sense of progression, getting some 'easy' rewards, that kind of stuff. And i don't see how anybody would have the right to say : "No Starcraft is for us and not for your kind". Especially as the game cares also about the whole range of competitive way of playing, up to very very top players as we can see in matches like the Zpux vs Dayflight one i'm watching while writing this (props to day[9] & Gretorp, great comments as always folks )
And this is what the League/Division system is about : keeping people with similar style of play (and time spent of the game) together, and allowing people to enjoy the game at their level. There is like nothing wrong with that, and actually it's better for Esport, for those of you that are interested/worried on its future. Put simply => More ppl playing Sc2 equals sponsors more interested in investing in the game. Simple as that.
Ok don't want to produce much more text right now, but please people try to be a little less narrow-minded
-Kerm
ps : Anyone has sources on the fact that Division 1 contains better players than Division 2, because in my mind it's more like Division 1 was created before Division 2 and that's it.
On May 23 2010 22:21 joolz wrote: A note to beta deniers
I work in the video game industry. I won't say what studio I work for, but I can make one statement of absolute fact about Blizzard's SC2 development team.
If you think "this is just beta and the release game will fix all these problems and be perfect" then
YOU ARE WRONG
No company could possibly fix all the leaks the game has between now and launch. In fact, I'd estimate the developers have known about today's major problems since 2 months ago and have been working on it since then but have failed to find a good non-bandaid solution.
Blizzard is not a magical company with magical developer elves that will swoop in at the last moment and make everything better with their magical game design pixie dust. The engineers are all human and they have stupid bosses who have stupid company executives who like your money and know how to cut costs & development to maximize profits. That's just how it works. Sorry...
I love this part so much I want to have sex with it, marry it, and raise a family of small well written truths with it
awesome article joolz <3
On May 23 2010 23:19 Kerm wrote: Ok don't want to produce much more text right now, but please people try to be a little less narrow-minded
-Kerm
Yeah people being narrow-minded is something we should strive to avoid! -Kerm
On May 23 2010 22:42 lolaloc wrote: Let's just not buy the "Blizz for ESPORTS" thing anymore. If SC2 is indeed designed for ESPORTS, we should have gotten: - LAN - Chat channels - Host tournament (w/ grids and stuff) - Global ladder - No divisions
The achievements shouldn't even be at its current state. The achievements IMO aren't supposed to be "I Win" or "Zerg Solo Streaker". It should be something like "Blizzard SC2 League S1 Champion" or something like that.
Good post. I rarely bother reading so long threads, but this was well worth it.
It really is a problem as you said. I'm very worried about what Blizzard is turning into. It feels like they are more concerned about making money rather than making a good game. They really need to delay the release date if anything.
On May 23 2010 23:13 aznhockeyboy16 wrote: I'm pretty sure win/loss ratio is the best way to determine the skill between players... a player winning 70% of their matches and a little bit lower in rank is going to be better than a person with a 50% win ratio and a higher rank...
if the players play enough games (and most players will play enough games, because the resets will stop in the final version) this is complet bullshit. in the long run EVERYBODY (exept maybe the best 2%) will have 50% win ratio. so the question is, against what opponents they played which is equal with their points (again after enough games). you guys should read the thread which explains who the ranking is working, and not just guess a lot of stuff. mass gaming DOES NOT give you more and more points. and the bonus pool DOES NOT give you extra points in the long run. u state that this system would reward mass gaming (which is wrong) but you didnt complain about the icc system? this is strange, icc system was a lot more about mass gaming and abusing.
I think that part of the problem is that the metric for success of a video game these days is skewed by subscription-based games (MMOs and the like). For these games, and viewing game development as a business, the 'most successful' ones are the ones that keep people subscribed the longest and therefore make the most profit. So then the question of how to make a successful game (not neccessarily a goo game even) is to simply make a very long one, or simply put, make the longest game of things people dont hate doing.
To this end, achievements must seem like a god send - your average gamer tends to like customisation, character development (or as is often manifest, profile development), and also the ability to show just how awesome they are at the game in question (good old epeen).
The problem is when this same strategy gets applied to a non-subscription based game. Yes, you can add achievements, and yes you can therefore get people playing your game for longer than any other, but it will be for entirely the wrongs sorts of reasons. And for what? you have already sold the game, what does it matter if the customer plays it for 1 hour or for 6 hours a day? At the end of the day the only thing you want is for the person to think "yeah, this game was good [however any individual defines this] and so next time that company release a title i'll consider buying it".
Hell, I would even argue that by adding so much to do in a game as achievements can sometimes make it seem, you are actually deflating your future markets by making your game more like a chore and less like a relaxing/fun activity.
I think there is something *very* fundamentally wrong about trying to lengthen a game by the addition of an achievement system. I am not saying not to include one neccessarily, but make them small, not a list of 1000 things to do that will take you 3 years of effort.
Take original starcraft (and BW) as an agreed standard of a great game (I doubt ill find argument about that here). Well, I think to date that I have played them through 3-4 times since their release, and probably will again. And each time I do so, its not because I am going for a new high score, nor some hard to gain achievement or title (or any other 'epeen enhancer'). It Would be because of the simple wish to replay something that in my memory was an awesome game with much fun to be had.
Now to the subject of ladders and their seemingly decipherable rankings.
Here too I agree with the OP. There needs to be a more or less unambiguous way in which to compare the abilities of two players if a ladder system if to have any meaning whatsoever. Sure, the most simple of these is a simple numerical ranking from 1 (best) to 9999... (worst). I think it is a pretty weak excuse not to do this if you are afraid people will reject the system if they can't attain a high ranking. People who choose to engage in such a system will generally do so regardless of if they are an awesome player or a complete novice - most probably wish to at least find out which they are by their very participation.
However, here I am also willing to make a concession in my argument. If you wish to divide your ladder into divisions (platinum, gold, silver, bronze and copper), and further subdivide these (with the number of the division), this is fine. In my opinion it is even of slight benefit as it more easily shows players who they are directly competeing with. But if you do this, you have to still allow people to compare two players and estimate their relative skills. It must be possible to decide whether a Gold div 140 rank 2 player is a fair match vs a plat div 238 rank 78 player or not. Even if the process for sucha determination is slightly convoluted, it still must be possible and within the player base's knowledge of how to do so.
After all, anyone participating in a ladder of any type is already someone who has bought the game.
ELO is / should be the only means of comparing 2 players. If ELO in a given League is not indicative of skill/ability/level then the ELO system is flawed and needs to be corrected.
I don't see what you're crying about.... blizzard is adding those community, and extras to target people who appreciate that sort of thing.
As far as ladder goes, I don't see what you're crying about that either, if you want competition just wait for release. It wont be long till ladders like iCCUP get going.
If anyone at blizzard reads this it will most likely be the people with stupid bosses who have stupid company executives, who will then shoot down every idea they might have to make the game better even if they read this and try to fix it.
On May 23 2010 23:31 JreL209 wrote: I don't see what you're crying about.... blizzard is adding those community, and extras to target people who appreciate that sort of thing.
As far as ladder goes, I don't see what you're crying about that either, if you want competition just wait for release. It wont be long till ladders like iCCUP get going.
I think the OP is more a general rant towards the trend of adding `features´ such as facebook, easy/unavoidable(free) achievements. 'Casual vs. hardcore'; in black/white terms.
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.
The problem is that this isn't true. Division number was more a case of when you played your placement matches or if someone from an early division had dropped out recently so there was an open space. The early divisions did tend to contain more really good players since they were more likely to play their placements quickly as they played more. If the division number mattered, there would need to be someway to change the numbered division as you got better which noticeably doesn't happen. If anything this proves why changing to names was a good thing because people confused this number of the division as meaning something.
On May 23 2010 22:21 joolz wrote: Well, I GUARANTEE the next Blizzard game will have EVEN MORE of those things because people bought Starcraft 2 and Starcraft 2 had a lot of that crap in it so hey it must be good right?
I won't buy Starcraft 2, because of the issues you mentioned and because of the overall strategy that Blizzard seems to be headed. It's a shame considering what great quality we were used to get from Blizzard games we have liked so much and played for such a long time.
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.
The problem is that this isn't true. Division number was more a case of when you played your placement matches or if someone from an early division had dropped out recently so there was an open space. The early divisions did tend to contain more really good players since they were more likely to play their placements quickly as they played more. If the division number mattered, there would need to be someway to change the numbered division as you got better which noticeably doesn't happen. If anything this proves why changing to names was a good thing because people confused this number of the division as meaning something.
That's exactly what i thought, but i was not sure, thanks for bringing this up and answer the question in my former post.
In the hour I have been following this thread the common theme of a lot of questions is based around the correlation (or lack thereof) between division number and player ability.
I would just like to say that the very fact that there seems so much confusion about this issue (ie no one seems to unequivocally know one way or the other) is a bad thing. Players want to be able to know how good they are relative to other players. This is true of playing just about any sport (if i can liken video games to sport) at just about any level: whether you are a world champion or just playing in your local area's social competition (ie hardcore vs casual gaming) doesn't matter - I believe both sorts of people strive to win and be competitive, just at different absolute levels.
To this end if you want to disguise player comparissions with division colours, division numbers and then a division rank, as opposed to just a global rankings list of every player is fine, so long as there is a way to get from the former to the latter. Then people who want to know (your stereotypical hardcore gamer) can do the calculations and find out, and the stereotypical casual gamer who doesn't care can go on be pleased about being ranked 5th in division happy dog simling face omega..or whatever they are called now.
Good read. But you know, as FA said, as soon as we the community come up with an alternative (like with pgt and iccup) i'm off that thing anyway. I dont trust Blizzard to handle the competitive market anyway and i'm hugely annoyed that they want to have their hands in everything.
If they can't make it, we break it, and recreate it.
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.
On May 23 2010 22:42 lolaloc wrote: Let's just not buy the "Blizz for ESPORTS" thing anymore. If SC2 is indeed designed for ESPORTS, we should have gotten: - LAN - Chat channels - Host tournament (w/ grids and stuff) - Global ladder - No divisions
The achievements shouldn't even be at its current state. The achievements IMO aren't supposed to be "I Win" or "Zerg Solo Streaker". It should be something like "Blizzard SC2 League S1 Champion" or something like that.
great OP, and this pretty much sums it up maybe post the thread on battlenet forums?
What bothers me the most is that we are considered too childish by Blizzard to know the rules. I'm not gonna try to compete in a ladder with hidden rules, what's the point to play if you don't know like "ok, if I win 3 more games I'm gonna be promoted to this league". This whole bnet 2.0 is a huge huge fail.
The engineers are all human and they have stupid bosses who have stupid company executives who like your money and know how to cut costs & development to maximize profits. That's just how it works. Sorry...
I've been saying this forever but constantly get flamed by Blizzard fan boys who think everyone at their company is their best friend. It usually goes something like this:
"Oh, I went to the company HQ and everyone there was so cool."
Well yea of course their PR reps and everyone else they have deal with the public are going to come off like saints, but like every other company in the world they want more than anything to get money. If this means adding in useless features like easy achievements and Facebook sync then they are gunna cut development time and work on it so that more casual people will buy it. This is the same reason the game wont be truely balanced for years... after most people have already bought the game, then they can focus on creating a proper ESport and thus continue the revenue flow.
For a long time I've also been suggesting that blizz builds a 60-minute delay 'live' stream of big events into the GUI of the game. I mean basically what us people are saying is that blizzard promised a game that would take its place as THE e-sport and even evolve the concept. This doesn't seem to be their current agenda.
This is the same reason the game wont be truely balanced for years... after most people have already bought the game, then they can focus on creating a proper ESport and thus continue the revenue flow
I have to say that was very well said and saves me the trouble of making that last point.
people are still butthurt about the facebook thing? It's a bit cooler than anticipated and doesn't really change much.
Oh and let's not forget achievements were (most) praised in the CoD series for XBOX, which coincidentally was created by Activision, not that I'm really complaining about the achievements system.
I understand actually the reasons for divisions in the context of the hinted end of season tournaments. I know it isn't perfect, but the fact that they intend for some end of season tournament including the top 8 of every division makes sense to me. It feels more accessible than a giant ladder where the top 128 or whatever are chosen to participate. This way at least makes you feel like you might have the opportunity a little more in your grasp.
I am in support of a global ladder, but I also know the limitations it had (i.e. if you were not at the top, being rank 1014562 meant nothing, especially when you jump up 75 ranks every win, yet in the higher circles it is great.)
On Leagues:
I think the leagues were a great idea borrowed from ICCup's playbook. It instantly can give you a general idea of a player's skill level and gives a player some concrete feelings of accomplishment and progression beyond simple numbers. I do however wish they approached it in a more percentile based system instead of what seems to be linear.
The logic I have for this is if you make it linear you will have what we have now, a system where the top league is going to eventually be flooded with people and the meaning of Platinum (or now diamond) becomes less and less meaningful. In a percentile based system, where diamond divisions are created, but designed to be exactly for the top 0.5% of the player-base and so on downward to Bronze, you will actually see a very cool occurrence in the long term where being a Diamond payer will actually become harder and harder to do with stronger competition. You may even add new leagues later for newer players so they don't have such a horrible barrier to entry. I think this makes the competitive nature that drives laddering feel much better than in a few years where any player who's been playing online for more than x months will likely be in Diamond and then no progression from thereon out.
On Facebook: I am honestly surprised by the amount of crying about facebook. Like it or lump it is has become a staple of the online experience. Battle.net 2.0's Real ID system is designed to be a social network of all your friends online and offline who play Blizzard games, any blizzard games from SC to Diablo to Warcraft. What easier way to find the most amount of friends for the most amount of people than to sign up for a deal with Facebook, the same deal Facebook has been making with many other sites and services. There are issues with the friends list, but the facebook integration is benign leave it alone.
On Friends:
Honestly, this new system for friends list is a bit of a cluster!@!@, but I can see why it happened and the logic behind it. I think Blizzard will see the huge negative reaction here and find a new way to fix it.
Blizzard is trying to find a workaround to this social network and eliminating the unique naming requirement that in the years to come will result in wonderful names like StorkFan35i578463563534846756735735. I think this was to facilitate the same connection to your chosen name (since you can only make one) that many associate with the Korean pro-scene today. (Flash, Stork, Jaedong). They tried using identifiers, and people *@!@@ed, honestly I thought the idea worked and I would prefer identifiers to this but whatever. So instead of using identifiers as a background uniqueness database tag, they use a Battle.net email which is a big privacy issue when making online friends who aren't real life friends. Honestly, I would prefer the compromise of the name.identifier scheme they had before, and while some people didn't like it, I think it was a strong compromise for famous players who didn't want to be harassed, ensuring names are unique, and that names and emails can be private if you so wish. It was a little annoying with people impersonating others, but it was the best solution for pleasing the most people and I think that most people were grudgingly accepting the name.identifier system.
On the Descent of Gaming:
I had a talk once with a nameless progamer and he basically explained that with the market trends and the fact that game studios have needed to dumb down their games to keep in the black means that most games can no longer be hard enough to be competitive anymore. But I do have to say, that out of all the games I've seen, SC2 has to be the best attempt at trying to make an accessible but competitive game, and I really commend them for it.
I think that competitive gaming's future might have to rest on indie titles that cater to this exact demand or we might see a death of really competitive esports in the long term future.
On May 23 2010 22:42 lolaloc wrote: Let's just not buy the "Blizz for ESPORTS" thing anymore. If SC2 is indeed designed for ESPORTS, we should have gotten: - LAN - Chat channels - Host tournament (w/ grids and stuff) - Global ladder - No divisions
The achievements shouldn't even be at its current state. The achievements IMO aren't supposed to be "I Win" or "Zerg Solo Streaker". It should be something like "Blizzard SC2 League S1 Champion" or something like that.
couldn't agree with you more
EDIT: Dimond league can be obtained with a 4/1 ratio this is just complete garbage. Even if you place 5/0 you should not be placed into Dimond. How is it special being placed into the top league by going 5/0 ? 5/0 should earn you a spot into platinum, from there you can work your rating up the ranks and earn your spot into Dimond.
this is really a good read and I agree 100%... sadly tho, as you mention your self, it's all about the $$$, and wow just showed Blizz how to make that, so why do anything else... sad but true
Why have divisions at all when ranks don't make any sense outside your division and ratings don't make any sense when people are more focused on relative ranks?
What is more fun: Being ranked nr. 10304/32194, maybe moving up to rank 10109 after a match. OR, being ranked nr. 30 in your division and moving up to 29? The latter is more encouraging imo.
But now we have a whole new level of obfuscation. Instead of having numbered divisions, we have named divisions.
I think a lot of people where confusing rank and division number, e.g. thinking division 1 was better than division 10. Using names removes any confusion.
Well, nowadays we don't have any of that. There ARE unlocks and achievements but the overwhelming majority of them are incredibly easy to get.
I'm not a big fan of achievements and I agree that they are often too easy to get - many games just seems to spam you with achievements. I'm for less achievements that are more significant to get. And I would like other players too see the achievements, so I can show off (I thought the unlocking portraits was nice).
Nobody's holding your hand or trying to find ways to convince you that you are awesome at the game. You find satisfaction in the slow and steady climb up the ladder, not because the game or the system is giving you achievements and rewards and any external motivation, but because you feel self-improvement as an internal reward.
Maybe it's a matter of preference but my gratification comes mostly from competing/comparing with others and not with myself. I want to beat my friends and I want to be the best player in my region, my division and league and so on. It gives me steady goals that are clearly defined and I have a clear way of seeing progress. Moving up from being the 10040340 best in the world to being the 10040120 best is not very encouraging and the number does not feel as meaningful.
I think the ladder and rating system is far from perfect but I also think it is easy too loose perspective. How many games even have a ladder/ranking system? How many games takes achieving balance seriously? How many games have features for replays and making commentaries? I think Starcraft 2 have done many things right.
Generally i dont visit the forum cause I hate whiners and crying in long walls of text but this time I have to agree.
These rewards - I won 5 or 10 games as race X are incredibly stupid. Dont know how SC bnet was but war3 bnet was 100000 times better... There you could see who has how many wins:losses in solo, what level he is based on his wins/losses, all were on ONE ladder not some stupid divions on stupid meta metal metal metal mineral (dimanond) names without some stupid 'I won 5 games' acheivement
What is an achievement? Winning 5 games, getting rank 10 in noob division 50? Wtf Blizzard. I say make achievements only to winners of tournaments and make them somehow this option available this is an cheivement not the upper bs./
And I will add: STOP SAYING 'This is just beta'. I hardly keep myself from bashing those at beta forums. In the past many were saying 'Beta is over in may. game is out in may no need beta' all the time this and what? Beta is over in may but game ISNT out in May just big talkers.
Same here. Stop saying this is just beta cause whatever you see here wont change much in release
People that have only played SC1 need to realize that times have changed, and it's not changing back anytime soon. Every game will be like this from now on.
I agree 100%. As being a chess player, dividing a ladder into divisions is just absurd! So it is in ANY competetive environment/sport. I'm by far no pro gamer and I'm fine with being #93407 in the world (or whatever). But being Top 10 in Gold means NOTHING to me because I can't figure out what the hell that means. In chess you have an ELO number so can quite well compare to other chess players. Sure i can beat another player of 200 points higher. But in general that is the exception. And dividing into more different leagues which are being further divided into divisions falsifies these ELO numbers.
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.
Yes btw Divisions are since beta day 1 but so what? They are really silly idea, just give us a single ladder, no1 gives a shit that one is ranked 1st in division Z50
On May 23 2010 22:21 joolz wrote:I work in the video game industry. I won't say what studio I work for, but I can make one statement of absolute fact about Blizzard's SC2 development team.
I like the easier achievements not because I'm bad but because I think they're pointless altogether. Having something like a 10-win streak badge won't really do too much for good players, but it will encourage mediocre/kinda good players to throw games then stomp on bronze players for the achievement. Smurfing in SC1 is already a huge problem for casuals no need to make it worse.
That being said, the division system is horrible but I guess it sells. I mean... the Wii sells...
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.
You have a rating. Ratings are directly comparable to every other person in your region as long as you play enough games to get to your hidden matchmaking rating (this is when you start to lose as much as you win in points for games typically). Just don't pay attention to the divisions.
If you can't make it to the top league (diamond now), you are below ~1200 in the top league, and the league you top out at is a good indication of skill level (ratings below these levels are not very accurate anyway because players perform more variably in each game at lower levels--since game changing mistakes are very common).
If you care about the information, it's quite easy to figure out where you stand. A large majority of the complain posts about the ladder are very misinformed and reveal large misconceptions.
Also, displaying an overall ranking list based on rating is a really, really easy change. It could be added as an afterthought by Blizzard at any point really (it's already basically been done by people online) so this has absolutely no bearing on "the game can't be fixed by release".
This, honestly, is the reason that I don't play WoW anymore. It just didn't mean anything anymore. If the game is really easy, then it's impossible to improve because it doesn't do anything. Nothing really felt "epic" anymore, just easily getting everything I wanted.
But don't worry! Eventually people will get tired of those games, and they won't sell anymore. After that, if video games don't just die completely, then innovation will sell. Grinds and meaningless objectives for cookies will die out, because they are just part of the same old stuff.
On May 24 2010 00:46 Brad wrote: People that have only played SC1 need to realize that times have changed, and it's not changing back anytime soon. Every game will be like this from now on.
The days of things being 'simple' are over.
Correction. The days of simplicity is progressing more and more.
On May 23 2010 22:21 joolz wrote:The engineers are all human and they have stupid bosses who have stupid company executives who like your money and know how to cut costs & development to maximize profits. That's just how it works. Sorry...
And that's exactly why making Blizzard "think about it" can not possibly do any good. The managers have thought about it for years and we see the product of this process. And it's not just Blizzard and it's not just the gaming industry. It's everything around you. The next time you hear someone dissing capitalism or economical neo-liberalism, that's what they are actually talking about: achievements in StarCraft 2.
"they nerfed the solo/team crusher achievements... LOL"
My only comment here is note the name is solo/team BETA crusher.
Is it not possible that they nerfed requirements because they reset achievements and there was less than two weeks left to play?
Assuming these are strictly beta achievements, it would be near impossible for most people to get even close to having both of them in less than two weeks. So reducing requirements makes some sense to me at least.
Other than that, I'd have to agree with you on most of it.
As long as blizzard adds chat channels and adds a way to view a global ranking system (or at least datamine it easily) it would seem half the problems people have would be gone. Both of these things should be very easy to impliment, chat channels will pretty much be a garuntee before launch. But I do fear that a global ELO system ranking will get left out, which should not be the case.
Balance issues, unless grossly so are not something that are that big of deal. Simply put this game will be balanced over years, it can get a good place in beta but if you honestly expect it to be good out of beta your insane.
On May 23 2010 23:06 Onea wrote: Let's just not buy the "Blizz for ESPORTS" thing anymore. If SC2 is indeed designed for ESPORTS, we should have gotten: - LAN - Chat channels - Host tournament (w/ grids and stuff) - Global ladder - No divisions
The achievements shouldn't even be at its current state. The achievements IMO aren't supposed to be "I Win" or "Zerg Solo Streaker". It should be something like "Blizzard SC2 League S1 Champion" or something like that.
Hosting tournaments on bnet and the achievments would have gone hand in hand. Does anyone fucking care about "Zerg solo streaker?" How bout "Silver league get better faster tournament ro8"? That would be loads better.
On May 24 2010 00:47 SubKaiser wrote: I agree 100%. As being a chess player, dividing a ladder into divisions is just absurd! So it is in ANY competetive environment/sport. I'm by far no pro gamer and I'm fine with being #93407 in the world (or whatever). But being Top 10 in Gold means NOTHING to me because I can't figure out what the hell that means. In chess you have an ELO number so can quite well compare to other chess players. Sure i can beat another player of 200 points higher. But in general that is the exception. And dividing into more different leagues which are being further divided into divisions falsifies these ELO numbers.
So as a chess player you may start out playing against friends and relatives, you get to a point where you beat them consistently and you decide to join the chess club at your school, you work your way up until you win some tournament and start competing against chess players from other regions. And at some point you start competing in the global arena. This is similar to how the leagues and divisions work.
You're saying it means NOTHING to be the top player in your school/division. Of course it means something, it means that you are the best player in your school/division. If you want to know your skill compared to players in other divisions there is the rating (correct me if I'm wrong but the rating does apply to the league not to the individual division). I don't see anything wrong with this.
they need to make a single ladder and remove the division crap!! Show wins, losses and one ladder where you may be UNRANKED if not top 1000, so hard? JEeebus Blizzard
Division numbers do not reflect someone's skill, it simply reflects the time you entered that specific league.
Lumping everyone up into one league would make it way too cumbersome and annoying, splitting it up promotes more competitiveness.
Why are people so obsessed with arbitrary numbers anyway? It's not like you earn any rewards for being number 1 in your division.
I will certainly agree that not all the problems the beta has will be fixed, but I've played far worse betas. World of Warcraft on release was terrible, and arguably still is depending on who you talk to.
I agree with this. If B.net 2.0 was to streamline e-sports, then it should have the functionality that esports has outside of B.net integrated into B.net.
This game is catered to a more broad audience. TL as a community is a minority in the grand scope of Blizzard/Activision
Also I don't know how blizzard's tournament thing will work, it's supposed to be the top 8 from each division, right? But considering there were over 200 divisions for each league (before patch 13), that will be a LOT of people, especially since there will be far more players once the game actually comes out. 32,000 man tourney! Yay!
I don't understand why people get so worked up about the achievements being unnecessary or 'casual friendly'. They have absolutely no impact on game play. If you don't care for them, you don't have to look at them. Lots of casual gamers do like them and if it means they play more, then so be it. Building a large player base will never be a bad thing even if you consider some of them 'noobish'.
I agree that it would be nice if they made the ladder system more transparent and I suspect they might after release. After all, they are still tweaking it. The stated aim of the ladder is to match players with similarly skilled opponents which seems a perfectly good design brief. Perhaps their system is richer than a simple linear scale of 1-N as you suggest? It might take into account match-up and map specific win ratios. Your absolute ranking might not even exist in their system.
As for the general moan of 'games are easier than they used to be'. This strikes me as rose tinted nostalgia. Just because games are hard does not make them any more competitive or more fun. Especially in multiplayer games, the competitiveness of a game is often out of the hands of the developers completely. Case in point: Super Smash Bros Melee. Nintendo set out to make a casual, 'noob friendly' game. Players took it and made it into one of the most competitive beat em ups out there.
I do agree that we need
- LAN - Chat channels - Host tournament (w/ grids and stuff)
You talk as if the ratings on one big ladder would mean anything more than lots of little ones. Ladder play means jack shit, it's only reason for existing should be to help with matchmaking. Who cares if it's broken down it make it more friendly? Do you really think if you went from 50005 to 50000 you've got better at the game? What if you fall down again, did you just randomly get worse? Only you and the people you play against a lot can say if your improving. If you need a ladder number to justify your play you're no different to the 'scrubs' bronze/silver/gold apparently caters to. Same with achievements, who gives a fuck; if people enjoy that shallow reward system, let them have their fun.
There are obvious things that b.net 2 could do better, like an automated tournament bracket system, a game lobby that doesn't go down between games so you can play a series easily, chat channels etc. But in a competitive game, ladder rating systems mean nothing at the highest level, so it doesn't effect the e-sport potential of the game at all. If someone was #1 in the world on this big ladder, I'm 100% sure that guy wouldn't be the best player in the world, probably not even close.
And if you work 'in the video game industry', why don't you just focus on getting the studio you work for to make a 'good video game' instead of picking at insignificant holes in others games.
On May 23 2010 22:42 lolaloc wrote: Let's just not buy the "Blizz for ESPORTS" thing anymore. If SC2 is indeed designed for ESPORTS, we should have gotten: - LAN - Chat channels - Host tournament (w/ grids and stuff) - Global ladder - No divisions
The achievements shouldn't even be at its current state. The achievements IMO aren't supposed to be "I Win" or "Zerg Solo Streaker". It should be something like "Blizzard SC2 League S1 Champion" or something like that.
This is whats need focus!! And to op it was a good read and i fully agree :D you should post this in the bnet sc2 general forums aswell
On May 23 2010 22:42 lolaloc wrote: Let's just not buy the "Blizz for ESPORTS" thing anymore. If SC2 is indeed designed for ESPORTS, we should have gotten: - LAN - Chat channels - Host tournament (w/ grids and stuff) - Global ladder - No divisions
The achievements shouldn't even be at its current state. The achievements IMO aren't supposed to be "I Win" or "Zerg Solo Streaker". It should be something like "Blizzard SC2 League S1 Champion" or something like that.
I really like this list, there is a lot Blizzard needs to fix. In the long run though, I don't think the release will be perfect, however hard they work on it. The truth is with everything they wanted to do and both Activision and public pressure they had to release beta and the game this year. They would have liked 3 more years to work on it if they could. So, when the release comes out i still expect 20+ patches worth of balancing issues.
It's okay though, I'll be busy playing campaign on brutal mode :3
On May 24 2010 01:42 TelecOm1 wrote: i agree with everyone except doubting blizzard. Upon release the game will be alot different, and I disagree, blizzard is full of magic magicians.
i agree 100% with this post, this game and games in general of our time are headed in the wrong direction with making things easy so appeal to masses gets them lots of cash. Only way to prevent is boycott!
ABout the achievments it's nothing but psychological. That's how MMORPG's work. You work for sth, you get rewarded. Then the rewards become bigger and the work needed harder. Can be addicting to a lot of people. I don't know about starting at zero, but there's no reason why starting at 1000 is less accurate, so it can be because at 0, you feel like a zero. Nothing. So you have to work your way up to 4 digits.
Joolz, if you posted that on battle.net forums you might get a little bit more attention from them, since other players that don't come here will be able to discuss that issue...
I can't believe people are still following these obnoxious routines. I think it's obvious that no Rating at all will be able to make it possible to compare the skill of two players without letting them duke it out themselves. Global Rankings mean shit for E-sports in general. A System that makes casual players play more actually does make a difference for E-sports.
On May 24 2010 01:39 Shrewmy wrote: Division numbers do not reflect someone's skill, it simply reflects the time you entered that specific league.
Lumping everyone up into one league would make it way too cumbersome and annoying, splitting it up promotes more competitiveness. .
You clearly havent seen war3 bnet... Also you are from Australia whuch doesnt suggest much competitiveness
You mean the system in which it was possible to play absolutely horrible and still be #1 in Ladder? Which was disregarded of most of the pro-scene for the past couple of years.
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.
On May 23 2010 22:48 Doctorasul wrote: What I don't understand is why they think letting me see my real rank or real elo would hurt in the slightest their hand-holding policy. Fine, put me in Alpha Pink Doggy Biscuit League and shower me with "you built 5 scvs in less than 3 minutes" achievements and Ronald McDonald portraits, I can take it as long as I can see who is NUMBER ONE and exactly where I am in relation to whichever player I want to compare myself with!
I laughed for a solid 2 minutes while reading this... and then proceeded to cry when I realized that its all true
On May 24 2010 00:25 TheElitists wrote: On Divisions:
I understand actually the reasons for divisions int he context of the hinted end of season tournaments. I know it isn't perfect, but the fact that they intend for some end of season tournament including the top 8 of every division amkes sense to me. It feels more accessable than a giant ladder where the top 128 or whatever are chosen to participate. This way at least makes you feel like you might have the opportunity a little more in your grasp.
I am in support of a global ladder, but I also know the limitations it had (ie if you were not at the top, being rank 1014562 meant nothing, especially when you jump up 75 ranks every win, yet in the higher circles it is great.)
On Leagues:
I think the leagues were a great borrowed from ICCup's playbook. It instantly can give you a general idea of a player's skill level and gives a player some concrete feelings of accomplishment and progression beyond simple numbers. I do however wish they approached it in a more percentile based system instread of what seems to be linear.
The logic I have for this is if you make it linear you will have what we have now, a system where the top league is going to eventually be flooded with people and the meaning of Platinum (or now diamond) becomes less and less meaningful. In a percentile based system, where diamond divisions are created, but designed to be exactly for the top 0.5% of the player-base and so on downward to Bronze, you will actually see a very cool occurrence in the long term where being a Diamond payer will actually become harder and harder to do with stronger competition. I think this makes the competitive nature that drives laddering feel much better than in a few years where any player who's been playing online for more than x months will likely be in Diamond and then no progression from thereon out.
On Facebook: I am honestly surprised by the amount of crying about facebook. Like it or lump it is has become a staple of the online experience. Battle.net 2.0's RealID system is designed to be a social network of all your friends online and offline who play Blizzard games, any blizzard games from SC to Diablo to Warcraft. What easier way to find the most amount of friends for the most amount of people than to sign up for a deal with Facebook, the same deal Facebook has been making with many other sites and services. There are issues with the friends list, but the facebook integration is benign leave it alone.
On Friends:
Honestly, this new system for friends list is a bit of a clusterfuck, but I can see why it happened and the logic behind it. I think Blizzard will see the huge negative reaction here and find a new way to fix it.
Blizzard is trying to find a workaround to this social network and eliminating the unique naming requirement that in the years to come will result in wonderful names like StorkFan35i578463563534846756735735. I think this was to facilitate the same connection to your chosen name (since you can only make one) that many associate with the Korean pro-scene today. (Flash, Stork, Jaedong). They tried using identifiers, and people bitched, honestly I thought the idea worked and I would prefer identifiers to this but whatever. So instead of using identifiers as a background uniqueness database tag, they use Battle.net emails which is a big privacy issue when making online friends who aren't real life friends. Honestly, I would prefer the compromise of the name.identifier scheme they had before, and while some people didn't like it, I think it was a strong compromise for famous players who didn't want to be harassed, ensuring names are unique, and that names and emails can be private if you so wish. It was a little annoying with people impersonating others, but it was the best solution for pleasing the most people and I think that most people were grudgingly accepting the name.identifier system.
On the Descent of Gaming:
I sadly do agree with you on this, I had a talk once with a nameless progamer and he basically explained that with the market trends and the fact that game studios have needed to dumb down their games to keep in the black means that most games can no longer be hard enough to be competitive anymore. But I do have to say, that out of all the games I've seen, SC2 has to be the best attempt at trying to make an accessible but competitive game, and I really commend them for it.
I think that competitive gaming's future might have to rest on indie titles that cater to this exact demand or we might see a death of really competitive esports in the long term future.
Excellent, excellent post! Quoting in hope that more people will read this
I agree with anything in this post basically, many of the ideas they had were reasonable, but with the release of Patch 13, everything has just gone down the drain and none of it is working as intended... Like the only thing that still remains working is the match making system, but since the data on patch 13 is so flawed due to massive drops, the skill level is impossible to calculate.
As a result, all the good Blizzard ideas, that usually turns out to be awesome in the end, are currently heading for a massive failure. I'm sincerely hoping they work really, really hard during the beta downtime to fix all this and come up with solutions to the problems created with Patch 13. Else this game will be a massive failure when it ships.
Since Blizzard have hinted that chat channels will be something released on a later date, then I'm not really expecting that to be in, by the time of the release.
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?
On May 24 2010 01:49 Baum wrote: I can't believe people are still following these obnoxious routines. I think it's obvious that no Rating at all will be able to make it possible to compare the skill of two players without letting them duke it out themselves. Global Rankings mean shit for E-sports in general. A System that makes casual players play more actually does make a difference for E-sports.
+1
The leagues and divisions do a good job of encouraging competetive play. Community features draws people in. There is the ELO rating for comparing amongs people in other divisions. There are replay features that encourages commentaries and for people to improve their game. Features are lacking but reading the posts on this thread makes you believe that Blizzard completely neglected competetive play, which is ridiculous.
So you have finally realized what some of us have known about for years already. Congratulations. The development won't stop anytime soon and the reason is simple: Achievements is the opium of the gaming masses. The serious gamers willing to improve their game are less reliable than the hopeless achievement addicts, and less numerous than the casual looking for a quick fix.
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.
Blizzard has almost never had success in pleasing both the competitive players and the casuals.
Think of any game, even WoW.. and you will see that Blizzard has no idea how to balance without a ton of player feedback... as there are still only like 3 viable competitive Arena builds, and a lot of it I am sure comes from just having too many spells, etc.. but they put themselves in that situation by giving casuals a whole bunch of sparkly shit that no one competitive cares about.. This is how almost every Blizzard game is, and will ever be.
They were extremely lucky that Korea picked up such a luckily balanced game and went big with it.
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.
So why would they make a lot of the achievements easy? For the same reason Starbucks has different prices on their coffee. If you thought those prices represented costs to make, you would be wrong. It is a way to test your willingness to pay. It is a way to cater to customers of all price-classes. The cheap coffee is there so that the guy with low income can get coffee too, and to improve the percieved value of the more expensive coffee. Coffee would be the achievement, while the price of coffee is time.
I feel confident this community can put a working global ladder system in if blizzard can't deliver the goods. Some smart fucker like R1CH will find some magical way to make lan play work, or at worst we will just run ladder offline where people meet and agree to play ladder games. Then they play the game online, and just report the results on a offline page. Thats the way all the old ladder systems used to work before iccups anyway.
What I dont get about the Achievements is that does anyone actually get excited about winning the "You made a friend" achievement? What the fuck is the purpose of that one. It makes me feel like a loser to win something like that.
Hah, I heartily agree. I feel that Blizzard is a little overzealous with all their special features instead of focusing on the game itself. Blizzard seems to be more focused on making a game that will appeal to everyone instead of a game that ought to continue the Esport tradition of SC1.
When I heard of the ladder/division system I Was thinking increasing difficulty or rising up divisions for a challenge but instead we got a thing so everyone feels happy as if we're 5 yr olds
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?
I think the main point about noob friendly is not the game itself in terms of player skill... but all the features that are designed to please noobs.
Anyway,
- They could give a shit less what the fans think. I'm not sure if it's because their forums have always been a shithole because they can't afford a moderation team or if its because WoW showed them they can do what they want and ignore the vocal minority with no negative effect.
- They can stick their bnet 2 plans where the sun doesn't shine. Here is a huge gaming company at the top of the food chain and they decide to create a cross game platform for communication... for their games only. The advantage? I'll be able to chat with wowtards and see what zone or instance they are in from my f list. Thanks Blizzard, because myself and 99% of the gaming world give a fuck about WoW. Maybe you haven't heard... but many of us have been using steam for our centralized gaming experience where we aren't restricted to Valve games only!
Cross gaming platform exclusive to Blizz games. So arrogant.
- They have not been honest about anything ever. The ambiguous interviews with no answers, the false justification "game delayed to work on bnet for a year." etc etc.
Blizzard is selling out and has been ever since BC was released. Their approach to "competitive" is a joke. They haven't done a thing to promote competition. Just trying to hide stats and ranks (can't browse ladders, stupid division names, hidden ranking system...).
On May 23 2010 23:06 Onea wrote: Let's just not buy the "Blizz for ESPORTS" thing anymore. If SC2 is indeed designed for ESPORTS, we should have gotten: - LAN - Chat channels - Host tournament (w/ grids and stuff) - Global ladder - No divisions
The achievements shouldn't even be at its current state. The achievements IMO aren't supposed to be "I Win" or "Zerg Solo Streaker". It should be something like "Blizzard SC2 League S1 Champion" or something like that.
Hosting tournaments on bnet and the achievments would have gone hand in hand. Does anyone fucking care about "Zerg solo streaker?" How bout "Silver league get better faster tournament ro8"? That would be loads better.
This is what achivements should be about :D i would really want to display such an achivement ^^
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.
I agree with the OP, but there is one big misconception most people have, that blizzard is going to publish a perfect game. In fact every game blizzard published was far from beeing flawless and light-years from beeing balanced. Take BW and think of the first patch or wc3 or wow it was basically a beta you paid for. But blizzard did an amazing job in trying to even out all the bugs and imbalances, ofc it took time and was never perfect in the end. Take bw for example its still full of bugs and flaws and still most of the people on TL think of it as the ideal RTS. Just give blizzard some time, they are only human and most likely have never experienced competitive gaming themselves. I also think blizzard is doing a wrong approach on the bnet 2.0, but we'll have to wait and see afterall its still beta and for the most recent changes of naming divisions and starting with 0 points etc., i think blizzard wants to try something radically different for the last week of beta to gather more information on actual game data and feedback from the community. The only think left is hope that blizzard will sometime in distant future make bnet 2.0 and sc2 into a usefull platform and an awesome RTS.
Front page please. Really well spoken out and spot-on thoughts.
I am so disappointed with blizzard's direction with this game. I'm just glad that I had the chance to experience playing a game made with completely different logic and intentions like sc1 over all those years.
On May 24 2010 02:40 fnaticAugury wrote: I stopped reading after your Division 1 vs Division 30 BS.
How is what you just wrote in any way adding to the discussion? If you want to critique then do so, but don't just write something in style with "you're wrong". Why is what he wrote about the different divisions bullshit?
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.
I'm more worried with the fact that we will have to use 3rd-party tools to determine our overall ranking. It would be a pain to update and rather unnecessary if Blizzard would just implement it. Regarding, clan chat and all the other features, I think that Blizzard will introduce these into the game later on. Balancing will not be completed by the time this game launches. The expansions will add new units that are supposed to add to the gameplay but also fix any needed issues.
On May 24 2010 02:44 vic_gn wrote: I agree with the OP, but there is one big misconception most people have, that blizzard is going to publish a perfect game. In fact every game blizzard published was far from beeing flawless and light-years from beeing balanced. Take BW and think of the first patch or wc3 or wow it was basically a beta you paid for. But blizzard did an amazing job in trying to even out all the bugs and imbalances, ofc it took time and was never perfect in the end. Take bw for example its still full of bugs and flaws and still most of the people on TL think of it as the ideal RTS. Just give blizzard some time, they are only human and most likely have never experienced competitive gaming themselves. I also think blizzard is doing a wrong approach on the bnet 2.0, but we'll have to wait and see afterall its still beta and for the most recent changes of naming divisions and starting with 0 points etc., i think blizzard wants to try something radically different for the last week of beta to gather more information on actual game data and feedback from the community. The only think left is hope that blizzard will sometime in distant future make bnet 2.0 and sc2 into a usefull platform and an awesome RTS.
I don't think a lot of ppl believe that blizzard will release a perfect game ever, but I believe that most of the core players in every game wants the game developers to put their focus on the actual gameplay and not flashy decals or pictures you can achieve.
Blizzard seems to be heading in a direction that isn't exactly Blizzard-like.
Unless they have a fucking ace in the hole that we don't know right now, things are looking grim where bliz may be digging a graveyard for themselves.
They could've tested everything from chat lobbies to clan systems and add in the extra features to stress test and whatnot. They could've even go "Okay guys, we're removing marauders, roaches, colossus, etc etc... in favour of new units like the pirate, the orc, the tauren marine and the Phoenixuar!" to really see how things change and they'd get our direct input on the ideas and can make changes.
But that doesn't seem to be the case.
It feels like Blizz has a set of plans for the future such as "we're going to keep this kind of balancing theory/idea/units/etc etc for Wings of Liberty and drastically change and holdback some unit/balancing for the next expansion Heart of the Swarm!" instead of "making Wings of Liberty the best fucking possible game and make the next expansion new, fresh and even more badass"
I could be wrong.
So much weird decisions, directions and changes such as facebook integration (way to make my real life social thing more nerdier) in favour over...what the essentials such as chat lobbies or even a simple clan system?
You know they're targeting the more casual "people that we didn't hooked in yet" audience. I can see why sometimes but...
if people don't like RTS or StarCraft, leave them be. They aren't your audience and trying to get them to like an genre they don't like or despise will end up making you hurt more I believe since you'll end up neglecting what true fans really want in favour of obtaining an audience that isn't even interested.
And I agree with joolz. Don't even be surprised if what you see in the beta now will be the final retail product of StarCraft 2. 2 months can only do so much for a company like blizzard (again unless they have an ace in the hole). If they can't do anything, they gotta release what they got which isn't exactly great right now but if they pushed the release date further back when it's so close right now, I know it is blizzard but its infuriating to have something taken away when its so goddamn close.
Blizzard is making SC2 like one of those shitty RPG games (like Ice wind dale1) where you are forced into a single path throughout the whole game. If we need instant gratification for (more) casual players, we already have it. Think broodwar: UMS maps! Any person can get a kick out of playing BGH (just ask day9 xD) or Evolves, just in starcraft 2, there's going to much more scope of content in UMS's. At the very least, global rank and such things, should be a togglable option.
It's like playing on ICCUP. You straight up get told you are a fucking D player and if you've ever been to school you know D is a pretty bad grade. Well, when you are a D player, do you get depressed about your rank being so far away from A+ players? No. You just focus on getting to D+. To you, the best player may as well be the C- guy because he is within the reasonable scope of your ability to defeat. Nobody's holding your hand or trying to find ways to convince you that you are awesome at the game. You find satisfaction in the slow and steady climb up the ladder, not because the game or the system is giving you achievements and rewards and any external motivation, but because you feel self-improvement as an internal reward.
<3 Iccup. No artificial acheivments added. No e-penis presevatives. 1 ePiC ladder.
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.
"shoveling elephant shit" ^ This sir is the best analogy ever.... But on a more serious note I completely agree with the OP. The UI is clogged with so much useless and unnecessary garbage and the sad things is the time could have been well spent fixing/creating much more important things than this bs. This isn't something Blizzard is going to magically fix come launch day. I predict things will be shit. Everyone scrambling to patch and play the game overloading the servers. Lag, crashes, bnet down for ungodly amount of time. Its no way to release a game especially something as highly as anticipated as SC2... I'd rather they postpone the release date to fix things however Blizzard doesn't seem to think anything is broken. Just my .02 cents...
Why would a division 1 plat be better than some other division? Arent divisions just made as people join the game? The only thing division 1 means then is that you started playing early. Well done. I bet the reason they removed the numbered divisions was because people for some reason thought they had some kind of meaning to them.
In SC1 there wasnt even a ladder. For anyone not extremely hard core the ladder score will be a sufficent way to measure someones skill. The pros will be in their own pro league anyway. Some people need to relax a bit and understand that gaming is evolving and is not only for hardcore players anymore, but for a much wider mass of gamers. I dont care that much about achievements, but I think they will be fun, and you can just ignore them if they somehow ruin your gaming experience.
I kind of feel like you are the one being narrow minded here, sticking to the elitist "I played Brood War alot so Blizzard should prioritize my wishes" route.
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.
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:
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.
Sorry OP but you've made a bunch of assumptions based on previous games / rating systems and have failed to understand the way the SC2 system actually works.
Basically it's like a normal ELO system except that your first 50 - 100 games are skewed a bit in an effort to try and get you to your "actual" rating. So when you win you gain more rating than what you lose when you lose. It's also a way to make players feel better about themselves I guess. But you'll notice that the more games you play the more evened your rating gains / losses become.
So theoretically someone with rating 2000 and wins losses 300-300 will be just as good as someone with rating 2000 and wins losses 50-10. But it's hard to compare those players because the second guy hasn't really played enough games to cement his skill level whereas the first guy has found his skill level and is 50/50 with other people at his skill level.
Another reason win loss ratio is not a reliable way of rating a player is because it depends on how that player was originally placed. If he drops a couple placement games due to connection issues then he's going to rip his way through gold / platinum on his way to diamond so he'll have a 20 - 5 rating or something but won't necessarily be as good as someone with that ratio who got placed straight into diamond league.
In saying that my favourite rating system was the one used in Age of Empires 2 which was just straight up ELO. So the average rating of every player was centered around the starting rating - 1600.
On May 24 2010 05:00 Grend wrote: In SC1 there wasnt even a ladder.
Yes there was. I stopped playing for quite awhile, so I'm not exactly sure when they removed it, but I distinctly remember there being a ladder. Your ratings used to show on the icon next to your name in chat channels.
On May 24 2010 05:00 Grend wrote: In SC1 there wasnt even a ladder.
Yes there was. I stopped playing for quite awhile, so I'm not exactly sure when they removed it, but I distinctly remember there being a ladder. Your ratings used to show on the icon next to your name in chat channels.
Oops. My bad then. I just assumed there was not due to the lack of matchmaking, making it kind of pointless. (Probably was matchmaking too, and me just being a skilless bnet user.)
Right now I don't give a shit about any of the achievements or rewards. A new picture?? Great!! Does that increase my actual skill playing this game? No?? Awwww.......
The achievements right now are so easy to get that I don't even care one bit about them. I previously had the 50 zerg win achievement but I still went with the baneling picture just because it looked the coolest. If you start putting portraits at 1 or 2 thousand wins to get then I would actually respect someone that had that, but right now achievements and portraits don't mean anything.
Also I want to know how I rank against everyone in the US and then also how I rank against everyone in the world. Being a higher rank than everyone else in the world is greater than even an achievement that took a thousand wins to get.
Actual skill > achievements and rewards
Starcraft IS NOT WoW!!! In WoW a great majority of the game was just collecting items to show to other people (Rare mounts, legendary weapons, etc) that don't take very much to get other than time. Starcraft is different; starcraft is about game skill.
Much of this anti facebook polemic, invariably thrown in there alongside the Blizzard hates Esports, honestly confuses me
I see so many comparisons to actual sport, but the one thing actual sports have over esports, is extremely large fanbases (global sports at least). People get into sports and following sports via family and friends, how do people get into esports? Currently I'm scratching my head, yet the money has to come from somewhere, put yourselves in the 'casual's' shoes for a moment. The forums are covered with 'Bliz-don't-give-a-fuck just take the casuals' money and let them sod off.' mentality. How exactly do you expect esports to develop without a fanbase any other successful competitive past time has developed?
While it may not be the solution, or even close, and has quite possibly not even crossed the peripherals of Blizzards thought process with facebook integration, development of a larger fanbase for a game like Starcraft 2 has to start somewhere if there is going to be enough money for a reasonably sized scene. Online social network, online 'sport'...hmmmm, take out the online part there and it sounds like something more traditional.
While I completely agree its hard to picture - my friends know I play games, they're fine with it, they just aren't interested because it's not something they do, so I don't impose the fact - the potential for 'casuals' to enjoy Starcraft, enjoy playing it with their friends, using facebook, joining groups, competing with each other and eventually trying to get one up on their friends, in effect legitimizing the whole process in the eyes of the wider community, is something I think may well be being overlooked. Even the mentality of buying a game largely to play it online is a huge huge switch from 10 years ago, and this is something I think Blizzard is actively trying to encourage with Starcraft 2, whether they have implemented it correctly so far or not.
Yes there are a lot of basic functionality issues with Bnet 2.0, and it does, in my eyes, currently, suck. But the whole idea that pandering to casuals in some respects is necessarily a bad thing is just myopic and this whole anti facebook argument is just hyper-cynical. Imo people are being far too subjective about the whole issue.
On May 24 2010 04:06 Pking wrote: 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?
I've played plenty of Starcraft 1, at the time where things like build-orders, scouting, microing and macroing where advanced concepts for the average player (if you where good you knew about attack-move and target focusing). Today these are considered basic skills and if you are new to Starcraft 2 you need to learn them to have any chance of competing. I feel the game is faster paced and I feel you need to multitask more (with the chrono boost, inject larva and mules etc.) to not fall behind. Moreover, you are more prone to get harassed by units such as reapers, void rays, banshees and dark templars. Hard counters makes scouting vital and even with a superior army, having the wrong unit composition can get you crushed. Overall I find it harder than SC1, perhaps veterans will disagree, but I'm speaking for myself.
On May 24 2010 05:00 Grend wrote: In SC1 there wasnt even a ladder.
Yes there was. I stopped playing for quite awhile, so I'm not exactly sure when they removed it, but I distinctly remember there being a ladder. Your ratings used to show on the icon next to your name in chat channels.
Oops. My bad then. I just assumed there was not due to the lack of matchmaking, making it kind of pointless. (Probably was matchmaking too, and me just being a skilless bnet user.)
There was no matchmaking AFAIK, there was just a ladder option for game type, and people made games like "1800+ Lost Temple"
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.
My biggest problem with the ladder the way it is is that it is impossible to track improvement.
Wouldnt moving up rank wise, or getting into a higher league indicate improvement? Granted it does not indicate improvement compared to all other players, but it still indicates whether you improve or not.
A complete ranking as an alternative would be sweet though. Looking around at SCRankings is alot of fun.
i do not see the problem with having some so called useless stuff in a game, i do not work in the game industry but is it not the goal of a game development company to make a game that will get you the greasiest amount of profit possible? in order to do such thing you need to design for more than just one group of people, you can not just make a game for hardcore players because this group of people is the lowest number group of gamers that there are, you need to make a game that the average every day joe will want to buy and play as well as a hardcore player, and this is what it seems to me that blizzard is trying to do.
yeah there is going to be hand holding for the average player, but really there is hand holding in just about every game out there now games are not as hard as they use to be because most people do not want to have to play a game for 5 hours a day for 3 week in order to beat it.
the achievements help give people who need a goal to shoot for something to shoot for it will keep them playing the game longer thus giving them the justification of paying 60$ for the game, which is something that i am sure just about everyone wants if they just forked out 60$ for anything.
and the game is just in the beta phase, other people have said it before and i guess ill say it also it took blizzard 10 years to get StarCraft to where it is now so i think it will take them few years to fix the problems, and of course you can not please everyone, hardcore players will complain about the game being made for casual players but they will still play the game and just deal with it until blizzard makes the competitive part of the game as balanced as they can.
eventually most of the casual players will move on and all will be well with the world.
/signed completely ... omg i am just not able to express how greatly you just formulated all my feelings.
I have to admit i played WoW for quite a while after release and got absolutly disappointed and scared off by everybody-is-a-winner-shit. Since i quit i remembered my time playing Wc3. I was no hero in this game and in fact my stats were not great, but there was this simple motivation to overcome my mistakes and just get better at the game. I so far enjoyed the Sc2 beta very much. Read forums, watched streams and played myself. I can not tell how shocked i am since this -copper +diamond change; feels like the WoW-Virus i was escaping from just caught me. I - am - scared . . .
Oh btw. please please post this article on the Blizzard forums, too. It somehow seemed they pay some attention to teamliquids forum
My biggest problem with the ladder the way it is is that it is impossible to track improvement.
Wouldnt moving up rank wise, or getting into a higher league indicate improvement? Granted it does not indicate improvement compared to all other players, but it still indicates whether you improve or not.
A complete ranking as an alternative would be sweet though. Looking around at SCRankings is alot of fun.
The bonus pool causes your points to inflate slightly, so they are not an accurate meassure of skill which can change incredibly gradually. If you are moving quickly up rankwise or changing leagues, it's not because you are improving, it's because you haven't reached a rank where you are stabilized so that you on average lose and gain the same amount of points over time. It's the same way a progamer doesn't go from D to A because he is improving. He was A to start with, the ladder just didn't know it.
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.
Iccup did the opposite. You had to be pretty fucking manly to keep trainng to get to D+ if you are on 30% winrate. Yeah, maybe this rewarded spamming cheese games too much on the lower levels, because going 10-5 in 3 hours was way better than going 4-1 in 2 hours, but still, the winrate was the deciding factor. Now, no matter how hard you suck you can't have a winrate below 50%.
On May 23 2010 23:11 d_so wrote: nice rant and all but is there really a correlation between division number and the skill level of the players? can't get myself to read more with this question lingering in my mind.
On May 23 2010 23:11 d_so wrote: nice rant and all but is there really a correlation between division number and the skill level of the players? can't get myself to read more with this question lingering in my mind.
On May 23 2010 23:11 d_so wrote: nice rant and all but is there really a correlation between division number and the skill level of the players? can't get myself to read more with this question lingering in my mind.
Read the bottom of the OP, I realize my wording was confusing so I put something to clear up what I meant.
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.
Iccup did the opposite. You had to be pretty fucking manly to keep trainng to get to D+ if you are on 30% winrate. Yeah, maybe this rewarded spamming cheese games too much on the lower levels, because going 10-5 in 3 hours was way better than going 4-1 in 2 hours, but still, the winrate was the deciding factor. Now, no matter how hard you suck you can't have a winrate below 50%.
That's because the matchmaking system is good enough to match you against evenly skilled opponents so most player's winrate will be around 50%. Winrate should never be the determining factor in assessing a player's skill as it's dependent on the relative skill of your opponents.
On May 23 2010 23:11 d_so wrote: nice rant and all but is there really a correlation between division number and the skill level of the players? can't get myself to read more with this question lingering in my mind.
Division # was just the order the divisions were formed. Being in division 1 only meant that you played your placement matches right after the reset or whatever. It doesn't have anything to do with skill like the OP suggested.
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.
i didnt say that, i said an overall ranking would be nice too, but not neccesary. i mean whats really the point in the ladder?? train or having a good rank just to be pride of that?? does it change something if you are rank 20 overall or 15?? no. the tournaments are the true, the best players are there. or even with the ladders right now if you want to compare with another guy you can just see the ELO for a general idea of the level of the guy. again: an overall ranking in addition would be good, but not neccesary.
They do this rating system for a reason that i don't like.
1. starting at 0 means that you feel the need to get more points thus making you want/need to play more. Also with bonus points it makes you 'feel' like you are improving
2. The rating system they are using naturally converges to your actual rating, so 3-4 months in, expect rating to be mostly accurate
3. After 6-7 months new players are hurt dramatically as experienced players have tons of bonus points built up and are raising the average rating and thus are screwing the results
4. Oh, ratings are out of control, hit the big "new season" button. And go to set 1.
uhh....rank 10 of div 1 was more likely to be better than rank 10 of div 30 because they were the people who had the skill/time to advance there first. However, it didn't really mean that they were definitely better than lower division people. The division number was in no way related to rankings, its just a first come, first served placement.
I definitely agree with the need for a consistent rating. I think it's absurd for me to have the same rating in silver league as a clearly superior player in platinum, even though he beats me every time without effort.
What I don't agree with is that divisions are stupid. I see them like taking part in any non-top level tournament. Are those stupid too because they don't have Flash and Jaedong taking part in them to set all the newbs straight on their skill level?
If you place first in that mid-level tournament, you're still first in that tournament, no matter how hard some professional would own you. Doesn't mean that this is therefore a meaningless achievement - it's relative to the player. A bronze league player managing to beat a silver league player (assuming correct placements) is just as much of an achievement for them as it is for a foreigner to place first in a Korean BW tournament. Conversely, a Platinum player beating that same silver league player is nothing more than expected - which is why they aren't in the same league.
With that in mind, as for a moment assuming there is a consistent ELO ranking system present, I see absolutely no issue with the ladder being split into divisions. I can imagine more transparent systems, yes, or perhaps a system with a more clear sense of progression (for instance, divisions being ranked according to skill, so that Silver #50 < Silver #1 < Gold #100 < ...), but the divisions themselves are not inherently bad.
I'm a d- player myself, so dont get mad about me talking from their point of view. Ok, so why do we need this extra stuff anyway? The answer of the people who say we do is to make people like me feel better about our playing skills. The truth is that if im talking to or playing with someone who is significantly better than myself (Think C+, B, etc.) I want to know about it beforehand so i don't start trying to act like i know more than he does. If the current iccup system didn't exist and instead we were all in leagues like Daimond Tango Goliath Alpha Roach Bronze SCV or whatever, and then i tried to tell him about a new build, etc. that i came up with and then played him and got owned, I would still be able to have some level of credibility because d- means having an apm of ~50 so my loss would be understandable even if my build was good. However, if we do have the new flashy gay leagues instead of the easily recognizable ranks, then i would lose all credibility in a situation like this. Contrary to Blizzard's point of view, i actually want to know who is better and worse than me(even at this low level of play). The game shouldn't cater to 10-year-olds who can't bear the fact that they are not in the top 100 in the world; it should cater to the average consumer. And even if the average consumer would be a d- on iccup there are still d- people who believe that the iccup system was the best possible solution. A proud noob sining out.
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.
You hit the nail on the head, OP.
Blizzard are actively working to hurdle their consumers into the "facebook and flashy achievements stable". At the age of 25, I now have the feeling of being treated like baby cattle when I log on to Battle.net 2.0, and as great as I think certain aspects of the game looks, I don't appreciate being milked. As of further notice, I'm on a complete boycott of this company.
Watch out Blizzard.. you might just get burned if you continue on this route.
On May 23 2010 22:21 joolz wrote: Unfortunately, the gaming industry and Blizzard/Activision in particular likes to have those things because they generate more profits (see: World of Warcraft). And those companies have a limited number of employees, and those employees have a limited number of working hours, and those working hours need to be distributed across 100 different features of the game. So when Blizzard has 50 people working on achievements and portraits and decals, that's 50 people NOT WORKING ON THE GAME ITSELF. 50 people not helping to balance the game, test corner cases, find bugs, try to design and detect map hacks, make good maps, design more singleplayer missions, create awesome art, etc etc etc. Then on patch day there is insufferable lag, they have to bring the servers down for 10 hour maintenance... because why? BECAUSE THE FACEBOOK FEATURE DOESNT WORK ANYMORE?!!??!
I'm a software engineer myself. The company you're working for must be quite weird indeed if you can just grab (for example) 50 network engineers/programmers and tell them to do QA/balance/whatever. Or maybe they are all so good that they can do all these things?
On May 23 2010 22:21 joolz wrote: Unfortunately, the gaming industry and Blizzard/Activision in particular likes to have those things because they generate more profits (see: World of Warcraft). And those companies have a limited number of employees, and those employees have a limited number of working hours, and those working hours need to be distributed across 100 different features of the game. So when Blizzard has 50 people working on achievements and portraits and decals, that's 50 people NOT WORKING ON THE GAME ITSELF. 50 people not helping to balance the game, test corner cases, find bugs, try to design and detect map hacks, make good maps, design more singleplayer missions, create awesome art, etc etc etc. Then on patch day there is insufferable lag, they have to bring the servers down for 10 hour maintenance... because why? BECAUSE THE FACEBOOK FEATURE DOESNT WORK ANYMORE?!!??!
I'm a software engineer myself. The company you're working for must be quite weird indeed if you can just grab (for example) 50 network engineers/programmers and tell them to do QA/balance/whatever. Or maybe they are all so good that they can do all these things?
If their architects laid out the project without superfluous achievements/etc they wouldn't have hired the 50 people to make those things and used those resources to hire more people for the important jobs instead. Is it really that hard to make that logical leap?
I'm a complete newbie to SCII and I have no problem realizing that I'm obviously one of the worst SCII players out there. Of course I'm not as good as Idra, Nony, or TLO. I'm well aware that people have played SC:BW for the past 11 years and are therefore much better at SCII right off the bat.
So, why doesn't Blizzard just tell me where I actually stand? If I'm 25000/25000 then just tell me that so I can get to 24999/25000 and feel better knowing that there's one player I can beat
this fucking system makes it unnessecary to even have ladders in the first place, if the best players cant compete with each other >.<
I love the fact Im seeing more ppl on these forums get more and more dissapointed with sc2 and putting it into good arguements, I've felt this way about a lot of things since the moment I first played the game.
I remember when WOW first came out all those years ago. As gameplay and difficulty go it was probably the pinnacle of the game. However it came with so many flaws, especially in the areas of PVP ladders and grinding, party finding, and communication. Over the last 6 (5-6?) years Blizzard has developed these parts of the game immensely (in some areas detrimentally). On to my point. While I agree with the OP that not much will change between now and the release, and that Blizzard do not have magical pixie dust to sprinkle on SC and make it better, we still have YEARS of work for them to do. Two more expansions, both of which may see their own beta. How many patches will we see between now and then? So many of you seem to be forgetting the amount of time it took SC to actually take off. It wasn't even till about a year after BW was released that we had a "perfect" game. Have some faith and patience in Blizz guys. Ignore the flaws, get better at the game and three years from now laugh at how your clan is watching replays in b.net together while all talking in a private chat room about how friggin awesome you are.
in chess players are put into divisions based on their rating so 600-900,900-1200,1200-1400, 1400-1600, 1600-1800, 1800-2000, 2000-2200, 2200-2500, 2500+
I think it would be ok if they split people among divisions like this if they also included some other factor like location for the lower levels and then bunched everyone into groups of 200 in the top divisions. But with the current system this is not possible.
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.
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:
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.
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!!!!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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).
^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...
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.
EPT
), you want casual guys (you those jerks who only spend 3 hours a week playing SC2) to be able to log on to Bnet and find enjoyment. Which means playing among similar guys (you know being able to play the game without being rushed by any 8 poolers), having a sense of progression, getting some 'easy' rewards, that kind of stuff. And i don't see how anybody would have the right to say : "No Starcraft is for us and not for your kind". Especially as the game cares also about the whole range of competitive way of playing, up to very very top players as we can see in matches like the Zpux vs Dayflight one i'm watching while writing this (props to day[9] & Gretorp, great comments as always folks 
![[image loading]](http://i46.tinypic.com/2j5kjsk.jpg)
) 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.
