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On July 08 2010 21:02 Entropia wrote:
One hundred thousand farmville players in the ladders dont't hurt you neither!
Ok let's make a comparison with football (somehow reversed):
You don't like watching football on TV, and you don't care if Spain beat Germany yesterday. But it is probably thanks to the millions watching football that you can play the local tournament in your school or find a playing field to play in with your friends. Notoriety is always a positive thing, no matter is for sports, games or people.
I just don't see any reason why it would be detrimental, as long as the game is not changed and features like chat channels will be added (organising tournaments is a must IMO, but this is a different story...)
People are angry about the mentality with which Blizzard is approaching this game as a whole. B.Net 2.0 and this decision are both products of that mentality, which obviously has not changed for the most part since the only way to force concessions on their part, it seems, is to throw a community-wide temper tantrum. The fact is that depending on what you view as "beneficial" for a game, one hundred thousand Famville players entering it can certainly be detrimental. The problem is not so much the players themselves, but the fact that this game from the start is being molded to attract these players and accomodate them. And yes, it has had a very real effect on the game itself, not just the superficial frills.
It's not secret that Starcraft 2 has a much lower skill ceiling and is much more "newb-friendly" than Starcraft 1 ever was. While one can argue whether this is actually an improvement or not, the plain fact is that Starcraft 2 is the easier game and it's largely due to the fact that the high skill ceiling required for Starcraft 1 was perceived to be detrimental to attracting casual players. It's only natural that the non-casual players in the competitive community would be upset by their loyalty to the product being abused rather than appreciated. Instead of Blizzard giving the loyal fanbase what it desires, it is taking their continued loyalty as a given and ignoring them to instead pursue a larger consumer base and one that happens to be in a direct conflict with the existing fanbase. Whether this makes a game "better" or "worse" is completely in the eye of the beholder.
Some people would argue that Checkers is a far better game than Chess because it's more accessible, simpler, and can be played casually without much thought. For others, Chess is the far superior game because it is more challenging, requires much more thought, and because of the variety of moves and strategy one must employ. Both sides are right in their own minds, but if every single company started making Checkers-like games rather than Chess-like games because Connect Four has a larger audience and the Chess players would be forced by limited options to buy it anyway, is that something positive for the gaming community as a whole?
This is a much deeper problem than just having no chatrooms or having your identity exposed on the forums. These are all symptoms of an underlying mentality that fundamentally conflicts with the current fanbase. Until Blizzard decides to start listening to that fanbase rather than simply ignoring it as much as they can without inciting riots (which seems to be their current course of action), then people are naturally going to be upset and issues like this will naturally arise repeatedly. The simple fact is that Blizzard has grown disturbingly out of touch with the people they claim to be making their product for and we need to let them know how out of touch they really are or else they won't wake up from it. Either that or the people who they claim to be their target audience isn't in fact, their target audience, in which case Blizzard needs to stop lying and just be honest that they don't care about the competitive gaming community or putting quality and creativity above all else.
I personally don't agree with the "wait and see" people. When it's implemented and the game is released, it is much more difficult to get a company to rethink things than it is during the development and testing stages. It's foolish to wait out and see how it all works in the months or years following release before you make a complaint about it. This applies to everything from chat channels to in-game balance. Balance is supposed to exist upon the game's release and evolve to suit the evolution of the game. If people aren't playing today the way they will 10 years from now, how can you possibly presume to balance the game looking 10 years down the road? If people buy the game and then quit after a few months because of the lack of chat channels and feeling alone despite playing a multiplayer game, do you think they're going to be inclined to give the game another shot in a few months when chat channels do arrive? I can tell you right now that once people quit once, they generally don't go back no matter what improvements are made. That's why a good release is so important to a successful game.
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I don't mean to sound rude, but isn't this just a "I know a guy who knows a guy who heard from a guy that this is happening inside blizzard"?
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sooner or later Kotick will get threaten or attacked for the things he puts on millions of players all over the planet
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People are getting quite passionate in posts based on hearsay(sister of a friend of a friend is a gm at blizzard? wow).
To be honest, I think everyone in this thread needs to step back and realize how good everything is actually going and how spoiled we sound right now. We have the privilege of seeing one of the most well-made games of all time BEFORE it's release, and we bitch about the fact that it's unfinished on the BNET 2.0 side. We're acting spoiled because we didn't have everything we wanted right away, when its obviously a better choice to focus on the game and get it good and polished, and that the BNET system is one of the last things to get it's finishing touches in development.
Blizzard's history for all the self-admitted non-followers, has been to Release an IMPERFECT GAME that they make AWESOME through CONTINUED PATCHING AND SUPPORT. Everything we still want in the game is coming. I won't consider the game fully done until at least 5 post-release patches come out.
I trust Blizzard, regardless of Blizzard having to answer to Activision for pretty much only budget purposes. You don't make 4 of the 5 best selling PC games OF ALL TIME by being stupid, but by maintaining them well after release.
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Just like to comment on the Farmville comparisons....
1. Farmville is free
2. People don't spend many hours on Farmville
3. Only your friends know you play Farmville
4. If someone Google's you, they will not see whether or not you play Farmville
5. Farmville only requires a browser
6. Farmville is perceived as much less geeky than Xcraft
Long story short, the type of people who play Farmville won't play Xcraft.
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On July 08 2010 22:31 Fyrewolf wrote:
People are getting quite passionate in posts based on hearsay(sister of a friend of a friend is a gm at blizzard? wow).
To be honest, I think everyone in this thread needs to step back and realize how good everything is actually going and how spoiled we sound right now. We have the privilege of seeing one of the most well-made games of all time BEFORE it's release, and we bitch about the fact that it's unfinished on the BNET 2.0 side. We're acting spoiled because we didn't have everything we wanted right away, when its obviously a better choice to focus on the game and get it good and polished, and that the BNET system is one of the last things to get it's finishing touches in development.
Blizzard's history for all the self-admitted non-followers, has been to Release an IMPERFECT GAME that they make AWESOME through CONTINUED PATCHING AND SUPPORT. Everything we still want in the game is coming. I won't consider the game fully done until at least 5 post-release patches come out.
I trust Blizzard, regardless of Blizzard having to answer to Activision for pretty much only budget purposes. You don't make 4 of the 5 best selling PC games OF ALL TIME by being stupid, but by maintaining them well after release.
They also didn't make 4 of the 5 best selling PC games of all time while merged with Activision.
Just sayin'. 
Also, I think most of the complaints (at the very least mine) aren't about the missing features in Bnet so far, they're about the direction Bnet is headed.
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On July 08 2010 18:31 Psychopomp wrote:Wait, so they won't interfere with Blizzard's game design, just superfluous stuff outside of the game itself? I'll probably catch some flak, but in that case I don't fucking care.Edit: Show nested quote +Oh, sure, you'll always have the ability to play Starcraft II in peace and quiet the same way you can have a facebook with everything turned off - most people just aren't going to fucking bother with the additional trouble. I think you overestimate how much of the community as a whole actually cares about stuff like this. The people who post on forums are a tiny minority, and the people who actually go through on the threats of quitting are even smaller. People will put up with a tremendous amount of bullshit. The sales and subs they'll lose from any of this will be negligible, even disregarding sales they stand to gain.
This.
I honestly don't give a damn how they do their advertising.
As long as they let Blizzard produce the same quality of product (which they seem to be doing) they may as well collect money for it. As far as I'm concerned I am buying the games (the SC2+expansions, Diablo 3, never liked WoW for personal reasons and advertising won't change that) regardless and advertising consequently doesn't concern me.
If they feel like using facebook as publicity and connecting with a very large audience, good for them, let them recruit customers, that's what the marketing division is payed for.
As for the first name issue on forums, my first (and probably only) reaction was to make myself unsearchable on facebook. I have a lot of friends who have ditched it, I hardly use it at all, it is by no means essential to anything I do (whether university which I am just out of or professional life, if I have a few people I want to invite and keep in touch with, I can still do that).
On the other hand I think it could have the good consequence of cleaning up the forums a little. As for the people bitching about invasions of privacy because they put half their lives on facebook and post on the blizzard forums well ... wither stop posting on those forums, make yourself unsearchable on facebook, or if you are really paranoid create a fake RealID (get a gmail of JD.Whyte@gmail.com, create a facebook account if you want, and post on forums as John Whyte, you now have a very nice facade for your online interactions with no connection to your real life).
Damien (Woot you know my first name !!!)
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Oh boy.
First of all, being newbie-friendly and having a low skill ceiling ARE NOT THE SAME. Chess is much more newbie-friendly than SC is, and some would say that it has a higher skill ceiling. People keeping throwing out the two ideas in the same sentence as if it was obvious ("Everybody knows that SC2 is..."), without offering any proof. If you are not a top-tier player, you cannot make judgments of the 'skill ceiling', period. Even if you are, you need some damn good arguments.
Those people saying 'Farmville players will never be competitive gamers' are missing one very important point: people change. You were not born a hardcore gamer. When you were playing in the sandlot with your kindergarten friends you had no idea Richard Garriott was making Ultima or whatever. You probably started out playing Tetris, found you liked it, played Mario, found you liked it, and so on. Saying that casual players will never become hardcore players is incredibly stupid - though an incredible stupidity that most of the hardcore community seems to be sharing. You could find enormous pleasure from playing squash, become the best squash player the world has ever known, but with that narrow-mindedness you'll never know.
RealID is pretty stupid though, can't contest that. I still think it's the Korean law bit that caused that one.
Edit: after reading some other threads I'm raging a bit, so I just want to emphasize again that a game can be both competitive and casual-friendly. Soccer! Soccer is competitive and casual-friendly! Jesus, was that so hard?
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On July 08 2010 18:59 Santriell wrote:Show nested quote +On July 08 2010 18:43 Psychopomp wrote:
While I myself and basically untrackable ....and that the last IP you used on irc is a fake one ? .
Ever heard of bouncers?
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On July 08 2010 22:38 DarQraven wrote:Show nested quote +On July 08 2010 22:31 Fyrewolf wrote:
People are getting quite passionate in posts based on hearsay(sister of a friend of a friend is a gm at blizzard? wow).
To be honest, I think everyone in this thread needs to step back and realize how good everything is actually going and how spoiled we sound right now. We have the privilege of seeing one of the most well-made games of all time BEFORE it's release, and we bitch about the fact that it's unfinished on the BNET 2.0 side. We're acting spoiled because we didn't have everything we wanted right away, when its obviously a better choice to focus on the game and get it good and polished, and that the BNET system is one of the last things to get it's finishing touches in development.
Blizzard's history for all the self-admitted non-followers, has been to Release an IMPERFECT GAME that they make AWESOME through CONTINUED PATCHING AND SUPPORT. Everything we still want in the game is coming. I won't consider the game fully done until at least 5 post-release patches come out.
I trust Blizzard, regardless of Blizzard having to answer to Activision for pretty much only budget purposes. You don't make 4 of the 5 best selling PC games OF ALL TIME by being stupid, but by maintaining them well after release. They also didn't make 4 of the 5 best selling PC games of all time while merged with Activision. Just sayin'. Also, I think most of the complaints (at the very least mine) aren't about the missing features in Bnet so far, they're about the direction Bnet is headed.
He's right. I worry less about if there's chat channels than if Battle.net is gonna be a social networking thing. It's called BATTLE.net for a reason. I don't want to see my elementary school friends when i'm opening cans of whoopass on SC2. Read the great OP in this thread and you'll see how evil, but smart businessman Kotick is.
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=128252
With Activision owning 52% of the shares, it has control over a lot of stuff Blizzard does. Since Kotick is in love with subscriptions, I wouldn't be surprised if they went milking us for a monthly fee.
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Blizzard, thou liest amongst the steppes of war, as false as a changeling and deceptive as a buried infestor. Why dost thou toy with mine heart! Mine own sleep I have deprived, simply for the sake of the game. But yet again you have destroyed all hope left inside this heart like an overload sent as a scouting sacrifice. A psionic storm is brewing inside me and I fear it may be too late cancel its wrath. What was once a burning passion for Starcraft 2, stronger than the flames of an infernal pre-igniter have slowly dimmed to meek and lowly candle flame. Thou art nothing but a commercial corporation seeking only thine own monetary satisfaction. Either for sake of obliviousness or carelessness thine owns greatest creations is at the footsteps of destruction, knocking at the doors of death and eternal suffering. Return this game from whence it came, draw back towards the mechanics that made Broodwar timeless. Shun the evil that is Facebook and condemn the REAL ID tag and instead embrace the community that has supported you. Thou focus has been skewed towards numbers, ease of play, and achievements. I implore thee to re-center thine focus on that which is truly important, gameplay and community.
Mine eyes have seen the future and I can say that great wealth and glory lie at hand, but the path you are treading down is straying ever so slowly. I fear that soon the original path and its end goal will no longer be visible. The path thou art following will surely lead to to a death more terrible than banelings raining down from the heavens.
Please, Blizzard, again I implore thee, return to the original path, the path of glory!
Lest I must utter the phrase that has been burning hot inside me like the acid of an infernal roach,
Fare thee well.
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The tools we have to keep a strong in-game competitive community and environment are almost as significant to me as the actual gameplay. Things have so far felt very disconnected in SC2's beta compared to BW, so that degradation is really frustrating to see what with it being 10 years later and all..
It's not secret that Starcraft 2 has a much lower skill ceiling and is much more "newb-friendly" than Starcraft 1 ever was.
Hold on the game's been in beta form for a few months and people are measuring the still-growing skill ceiling and comparing it to a 10 year old E-sport.
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On July 08 2010 18:57 Psychopomp wrote:Show nested quote +On July 08 2010 18:50 Megalisk wrote:On July 08 2010 18:43 Psychopomp wrote:On July 08 2010 18:37 EmeraldSparks wrote:
Okay, here's things that you might care about:
They're want to monetize Battle.net with respect to Starcraft II (custom maps, god knows what else.)
They show tremendous disregard for the wishes of the community, whether chat channels or this.
It sets precedent for more invasions of privacy (would you like your real name as your BNet handle?)
They seem to think that the consumers, as a general rule, are completely fucking retarded. Free new maps are nice, not an entitlement. As long as I'm not forced to buy them to play ladder games, and it's not 15$ for TWO NEW MAPS AND THREE OLD ONES, I honestly have no issue with paying for new maps. I pay 15$ for an album, and 10$ for a movie ticket, I think I can scrounge up a buck or two for a good map. I'll never understand the love for public chatrooms. Whoopee, I get to talk to a legion of retards. The practical use for Starcraft 2 is almost non-existant, and by the time Diablo 3 rolls around we should have them. While I myself and basically untrackable, and I think the threat of internet psychos is completely overblown, I concede the last point. People, namely women and minorities, will be much easier to harass. Edit(AGAIN!): For those okay with the whole real name thing, like I was, RPS raises some good points. Ever made a chatroom to talk with all of your friends in the same place? Its so clunky in bnet 0.2. Chat rooms make everything so much easier. Considering I just run the game through Steam, no I've not. I won't deny the current chat system is clunky, I just don't get the appeal of public chat rooms(At least until Diablo 3 comes out). I hear people say things like "It makes it easier to find games," but why not just use the matchmaking? I'm normally opposed to matchmaking, but it's seriously the best matchmaking in existence. Can someone explain the appeal to me?
Personally, the appeal is to be able to have a back and forth discussion of the game with a group of players. That way I can learn and meet potential teammates and practice partners. How do I do that inside SC2? You simply can't.
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I hope you guys know that Blizzard retains their own staff and that Activision is their Parent Company, meaning, Blizzard is an investment to them, they don't actually micro-manage them.
Consider Blizzard a high-yield gold expansion that is fully automated and capable of defending itself. Activision gets the expansion minerals/gas while paying their own SCVs to mine... meanwhile, Activision, as a parent company, goes around "investing" without much micro-management.
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Sweden33719 Posts
On July 08 2010 22:31 Fyrewolf wrote:
People are getting quite passionate in posts based on hearsay(sister of a friend of a friend is a gm at blizzard? wow).
To be honest, I think everyone in this thread needs to step back and realize how good everything is actually going and how spoiled we sound right now. We have the privilege of seeing one of the most well-made games of all time BEFORE it's release, and we bitch about the fact that it's unfinished on the BNET 2.0 side. We're acting spoiled because we didn't have everything we wanted right away, when its obviously a better choice to focus on the game and get it good and polished, and that the BNET system is one of the last things to get it's finishing touches in development.
Blizzard's history for all the self-admitted non-followers, has been to Release an IMPERFECT GAME that they make AWESOME through CONTINUED PATCHING AND SUPPORT. Everything we still want in the game is coming. I won't consider the game fully done until at least 5 post-release patches come out.
I trust Blizzard, regardless of Blizzard having to answer to Activision for pretty much only budget purposes. You don't make 4 of the 5 best selling PC games OF ALL TIME by being stupid, but by maintaining them well after release.
Look, it's not bitching about Battle.net 2.0 not having all the new stuff we wanted - it's about Battle.net 2.0 having LESS things than Battle.net 1.0 - released 12 years ago.
It's about every new feature that gets announced being something that is either directly hurtful to competition (no lan, new division system), or at the very least irrelevant (facebook).
Their promised content may yet redeem them, but with the way they've choosen to announce things, I really don't blame anyone for thinking the sky is falling, cause Blizzard sure hasn't done much to convince anyone otherwise.
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On July 08 2010 23:19 Redmark wrote:
Oh boy.
First of all, being newbie-friendly and having a low skill ceiling ARE NOT THE SAME. Chess is much more newbie-friendly than SC is, and some would say that it has a higher skill ceiling. People keeping throwing out the two ideas in the same sentence as if it was obvious ("Everybody knows that SC2 is..."), without offering any proof. If you are not a top-tier player, you cannot make judgments of the 'skill ceiling', period. Even if you are, you need some damn good arguments.
Those people saying 'Farmville players will never be competitive gamers' are missing one very important point: people change. You were not born a hardcore gamer. When you were playing in the sandlot with your kindergarten friends you had no idea Richard Garriott was making Ultima or whatever. You probably started out playing Tetris, found you liked it, played Mario, found you liked it, and so on. Saying that casual players will never become hardcore players is incredibly stupid - though an incredible stupidity that most of the hardcore community seems to be sharing. You could find enormous pleasure from playing squash, become the best squash player the world has ever known, but with that narrow-mindedness you'll never know.
RealID is pretty stupid though, can't contest that. I still think it's the Korean law bit that caused that one.
Edit: after reading some other threads I'm raging a bit, so I just want to emphasize again that a game can be both competitive and casual-friendly. Soccer! Soccer is competitive and casual-friendly! Jesus, was that so hard?
Yes people can change, but I think your underestimating just how low down on the 'effort required' scale facebook games are compared to starcraft. Same point with competitive vs casual-friendly. There are different degrees to the phrase 'casual-friendly' and farmville is so far away from starcraft (or any multiplayer game) it's ridiculous. They should be going after xbox live customers or something, not social-networked-for-free-advertising bull.
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On July 09 2010 00:05 f0rk wrote:Show nested quote +On July 08 2010 23:19 Redmark wrote:
Oh boy.
First of all, being newbie-friendly and having a low skill ceiling ARE NOT THE SAME. Chess is much more newbie-friendly than SC is, and some would say that it has a higher skill ceiling. People keeping throwing out the two ideas in the same sentence as if it was obvious ("Everybody knows that SC2 is..."), without offering any proof. If you are not a top-tier player, you cannot make judgments of the 'skill ceiling', period. Even if you are, you need some damn good arguments.
Those people saying 'Farmville players will never be competitive gamers' are missing one very important point: people change. You were not born a hardcore gamer. When you were playing in the sandlot with your kindergarten friends you had no idea Richard Garriott was making Ultima or whatever. You probably started out playing Tetris, found you liked it, played Mario, found you liked it, and so on. Saying that casual players will never become hardcore players is incredibly stupid - though an incredible stupidity that most of the hardcore community seems to be sharing. You could find enormous pleasure from playing squash, become the best squash player the world has ever known, but with that narrow-mindedness you'll never know.
RealID is pretty stupid though, can't contest that. I still think it's the Korean law bit that caused that one.
Edit: after reading some other threads I'm raging a bit, so I just want to emphasize again that a game can be both competitive and casual-friendly. Soccer! Soccer is competitive and casual-friendly! Jesus, was that so hard? Yes people can change, but I think your underestimating just how low down on the 'effort required' scale facebook games are compared to starcraft. Same point with competitive vs casual-friendly. There are different degrees to the phrase 'casual-friendly' and farmville is so far away from starcraft (or any multiplayer game) it's ridiculous. They should be going after xbox live customers or something, not social-networked-for-free-advertising bull.
My mother plays farmville, to give an example.
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On July 09 2010 00:03 Liquid`Jinro wrote:Show nested quote +On July 08 2010 22:31 Fyrewolf wrote:
People are getting quite passionate in posts based on hearsay(sister of a friend of a friend is a gm at blizzard? wow).
To be honest, I think everyone in this thread needs to step back and realize how good everything is actually going and how spoiled we sound right now. We have the privilege of seeing one of the most well-made games of all time BEFORE it's release, and we bitch about the fact that it's unfinished on the BNET 2.0 side. We're acting spoiled because we didn't have everything we wanted right away, when its obviously a better choice to focus on the game and get it good and polished, and that the BNET system is one of the last things to get it's finishing touches in development.
Blizzard's history for all the self-admitted non-followers, has been to Release an IMPERFECT GAME that they make AWESOME through CONTINUED PATCHING AND SUPPORT. Everything we still want in the game is coming. I won't consider the game fully done until at least 5 post-release patches come out.
I trust Blizzard, regardless of Blizzard having to answer to Activision for pretty much only budget purposes. You don't make 4 of the 5 best selling PC games OF ALL TIME by being stupid, but by maintaining them well after release. Look, it's not bitching about Battle.net 2.0 not having all the new stuff we wanted - it's about Battle.net 2.0 having LESS things than Battle.net 1.0 - released 12 years ago. It's about every new feature that gets announced being something that is either directly hurtful to competition (no lan, new division system), or at the very least irrelevant (facebook). Their promised content may yet redeem them, but with the way they've choosen to announce things, I really don't blame anyone for thinking the sky is falling, cause Blizzard sure hasn't done much to convince anyone otherwise.
Well said.
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The problem with your comparison
Starcraft is an incredibly competitive game with a very high learning curve. It doesn't appeal to people who play Farmville at all. makes a little more sense with WoW, but trying to get the "Farmville" crowd with Starcraft II facebook integration doesn't make any sense at all.
Also lol at the all the trolls now angry people will know who they are. You aren't required to post on Blizz forums, I avoid them because they are so awful.
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I really think that the battlenet part or the project was a failure from a management point of view. I believe that battlenet delayed the whole sc2 launch because Activision imposed the implementation of new features that were not planned by blizzard...
If senior talents inside blizzard are so unhappy it is likely that the company as we know it will break apart.
Is blizzard going to be the next Infinity Ward?
Thanks Activision...
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EPT
