On April 28 2011 07:02 Sv1 wrote: I enjoy listening to these guys but man, listening to these pros, or any pros for that matter, complain about the balance being done around casual gamers aka non pros is a little tiresome. Blizzard still wanted to continue their legacy as an e-sport game but it's still a game that THEIR livelihood is based around. I would think moving a million units of their game is their concern first before how tournaments are playing out.
Completely agree with this! A huge point that has not been made yet.
This is HUGE. Pros complain that Blizzard is balancing around casuals because their livelihood depends on it... but Blizzard's livelihood depends on it also. If SC2 is not popular due to balance issues, Blizzard could lose money also. How can you blame Blizzard for trying to make the best game for casuals when casuals are the ones funding the entire game and the entire esport?
The NFL is constantly making rule changes to make their game more watchable and more fun for the fans. Blizzard is doing the same thing.
...
There's a huge difference between expressing interests and making judgments. On this issue, I'm expressing my own interests. So I'm saying what I want and why I want it. I might be damn near omniscient on the issue, and know that it'd be better for other people if I don't get what I want, but I still want what I want and I still have reasons for wanting it, so when asked about my opinion then I'll say what I want and why I want it. I'm not going to shoot myself in the foot by saying "here's what I want, but actually here are all the reasons not to do that, and when I look at it objectively, it'd actually be best if I don't get what I want."
You've got progamers on the show to talk about things that progamers know. We can express the things progamers need to express. If there's going to be any anger about us not saying something, it should come from other progamers saying that we didn't express their interests well enough.
If someone is going to make a judgment on something, they better be an expert. No one is an expert both on how to make changes to the rules of the game in the interest of esports and how to sell as many copies of the game as possible. So no one should make a judgment on that. Blizzard has to do the best they can, bringing various experts together, and trying to make sense of it. If they want to know what the progamers think, they can ask them. Or listen to the State of the Game. It's ridiculous to think that you'd tune in to State of the Game to hear a progamer say "these patch notes are reasonable because Blizzard needs to sell as many copies of the game as they can." There are a million other people to say that.
So, recognize the difference between arguing for something and judging something. They are so fucking different that it should be pretty easy now that you know to look for it. If I limit myself to arguing for my side of the issue (because it represents my interests) then it's not an oversight for me to not argue the other side of the issue.
Progamer interests when other forces are involved = generally I'm representing my own interests and arguing from my perspective as a progamer
Issues that are entirely within the field of progaming = generally I'm making judgments on them, unless I'm personally involved, then I might be representing myself. Like you can see perhaps when it's just Geoff and I talking about PvT issues, we have to try to be a little more objective. But when we have PainUser on the show, then we represent Protoss and he represents Terran.
You are never going to get anything that you normally wouldn't get if you don't represent your own interests even when you know there are good reasons why you're not getting what you want. In fact, by staying quiet, you might be making it impossible for anyone to be perfectly informed. Listen to State of the Game to hear what progamers think.
On April 28 2011 07:02 Sv1 wrote: I enjoy listening to these guys but man, listening to these pros, or any pros for that matter, complain about the balance being done around casual gamers aka non pros is a little tiresome. Blizzard still wanted to continue their legacy as an e-sport game but it's still a game that THEIR livelihood is based around. I would think moving a million units of their game is their concern first before how tournaments are playing out.
Completely agree with this! A huge point that has not been made yet.
This is HUGE. Pros complain that Blizzard is balancing around casuals because their livelihood depends on it... but Blizzard's livelihood depends on it also. If SC2 is not popular due to balance issues, Blizzard could lose money also. How can you blame Blizzard for trying to make the best game for casuals when casuals are the ones funding the entire game and the entire esport?
The NFL is constantly making rule changes to make their game more watchable and more fun for the fans. Blizzard is doing the same thing.
But it's a matter of competition vs. exhibition. If you want the best possible competitive game, then you shouldn't balance around low levels of play. In fact, you shouldn't even balance anything until you're satisfied that the people who play it are playing it to the best of each race's ability. Only then can you actually tell what units, strategies, or other things need tweaks or redesigns to help even the playing field. Balancing a game around play that is not optimal is going to hurt the competitive aspect in a way that feels too intrusive, and that's what Tyler was saying. Not only is the WG time change unnecessary for pro-level PvP to move away from 4-gate, but it's also going to change every other Protoss matchup, which is just going to set the development of the game back however long it takes for new builds to be created.
If you think doing things for the "watchability" of a competition is a good thing, then you're not really supporting the competition aspect. Unfortunately, this change doesn't even do that; the 4-gate "nerf" isn't necessary for PvP to change at a high level (as Tyler explained), it's only supposedly necessary for casual players who complain about it without trying to figure out a reliable way to beat it. Balancing around players who don't have the game knowledge to counter a build so commonly used or even to appreciate the detail-oriented way PvP is played in general is just a horrid idea.
Blizzard is making a change to the fundamental aspect of all Protoss builds a year after the game's been out and it's for bad reasons. If Blizzard wants competition to flourish, they shouldn't do this.
EDIT: Also, it's pretty obvious that people who watch SC2 aren't going anywhere any time soon. Viewer numbers for leagues are huge. The only real justification is that low-level PvP is a 4gate fest and that somehow deters people from buying the game, which seems to be a non-sequitur because there are 2 other races to play that don't get 4gated NEARLY as often. Even if that was true, the competitive aspect is where the money in SC2 is, and it would be kind of stupid to lose any of that just to sell a few more copies to casual players.
It's not anywhere near as good as it could be. I'm strongly against companies purposely making their products worse because of piracy.
Just to add on to this, it's not like NASL or GSL making their VODs impossible to download has stopped piracy in any way, it just kind of made it a little more of a hassle. You can't stop piracy, and there's no excuse to give your paying customers an inferior product just because some people are going to steal it. The people who bought the season pass weren't going to illegally download NASL if they'd made VODs downloadable; if anything, more people would have bought the pass. The people who want to pirate NASL are already doing it.
I have plans to get the stolichnaya, but I don't think it's pretty.
I've never seen the zubrowka in my city, and this last one neither (and it's ugly too =P)
are you just getting for the pretty bottles? i was mainly going for tasty lol.
Well I can drink the delicous ones, but I want to collect only the best looking ones, otherwise I'd have one hundred 3$ 97% alcohol level bottles in there =P
So I tend to buy the ones I want to collect before wasting money on the ones I will throw away. (I'll buy the stolichnaya eventually, I just need to get some others that are "in line" before haha)
On April 21 2011 17:37 Koshi wrote: 1) I don't want to get spoilers. Especially when you can see if the Bo3 will take 2 or 3 games simply by seeing the time. 2) I want to fastforward or slowfmotion or even go back without the damn buffering system. 3) I want clean timemarks. Like in the GSL you can click on a set and the game starts, the analysis can be skipped because it is always in the end of a VoD.
I am sorry, but I am curious to see yet one streaming service that even provides 1 and 2. It's like asking NASL to set up a whole new industry standard of content delivery backend. Not to mention how to jump without some sort of timeline.
I guess the bottom line is that on demand video sucks. TSL2 had torrents on TL.net's tracker and it was awesome. Now TSL3 has video on demand via youtube, and it's not as awesome. At least their web interface at http://www.pokerstrategytsl3.com/vods is spoiler free, but you can still see the length of the video. You're still stuck with the shitty youtube video player, which has nowhere near the options of something like VLC's video player. And you can only access the video in places that you can access youtube, which is less convenient for some people than having the file and being able to access it anywhere you can watch a video file.
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NASL's first season shouldn't have been hyped at all. This is standard knowledge for any experienced folks in the scene. Before you talk and hype and make promises, it is a million times better to JUST DO IT and let your work speak for itself. Once you're making a good product, then you can start promoting it. If your product's success depends on people blindly following hype and unsubstantiated promises, then you have a piece of shit product. So yeah, you can go for all the marbles by promoting it before you have it, and if it turns out you do have a great product, then you benefit from your premature promotion, and everything is great. Or you can avoid that unnecessary risk, because if you have a great product, things will work out.
You can see a million bad examples on TL if you look for them. Someone starts a blog "hey I want to do a weekly show, how much interest is there for this and this and this" or they say "I'm gonna start a weekly show, here are all my hopes and dreams for it, and I'm just gonna blog my process as I get started." NO! Do the show how you want to do it. Do it the best you can. Take feedback once you have something and improve. Generate interest by putting your product out there, not by asking people what product they want and promising to make it. Don't get people excited about something that you might not 100% commit to. Do it or don't do it. Either way, don't go public about it until you've done it.
(A few good examples: pretty much everything JoshSuth does. Of course, now he's working for complexity, so it's like, his job and stuff, but still! He just did stuff and put it out there and that got him a job! And now he continues to do stuff! Also, the fucking State of the Game podcast. I don't know how JP started it with WoW or whatever, but he had to start over with SC2. So he just did it and posted it. And now he's doing that with SC Center and numbers are rising for that.)
So, how do you promote it without promoting it so that your first broadcast doesn't have only 5k people? Well, NASL actually knew the answer to that. Clash of the Titans. It's a little preview for your product. I think IPL is doing the same thing with this first $5k tournament. They announce "a series of tournaments" and throw $5k at a quick 16 man invitational. If that product is good and they then announced a $100k prize (I have no idea what IPL's future plans are -- I'm just saying this is what NASL could have done) then they will have a hell of a lot more people than 5k lined up. Problem was with Clash of the Titans, it actually wasn't a preview for their product. It was worse than their product, so they kind of disowned it, but then it ended up kind of being a preview for their product anyway.
And all business outside of the ESPORTS world works similarly, although the previews for products might not be in public. You make a product, you show it to investors or buyers, you sell them on it and then the promotion starts for its public debut. Or you get people who have made good products before that say "here's our new idea and here's our past work" and you pretty much know what you're gonna get. Once you've earned that status, you can do that. If djWHEAT or Day[9] announced that they've decided to start work on a new show, then that's fine. We know they'll do it and do it well.
So, most people at NASL know this now. Geoff 100% knows this. He probably knew it 6 months ago and just got too excited. I probably would've done the same in his position. I'm not trying to give feedback to them at this point, especially since they can't go back in time anyway. But there are people who don't understand why people are so critical of NASL. Well, the people who can't understand the negativity toward NASL probably didn't buy into the hype as much, probably never got the sense that NASL was really proud and in some sense arrogant before they even began their work. They somehow felt like NASL actually was a from-the-community startup, and not an alien entity that plucked people out of the community and decided a bunch of things and did a bunch of things privately and without any community input.
Unprecedented rules with team requirements and team limits and public video applications and $250 deposits etc, an oddly rigid player schedule for an online tournament, an announcement event that wasn't a product preview but then kind of was, a launch web site that wasn't a preview of the real site but then kind of was, the theme of "korea isn't unique! we're bringing esports to north america", the theme of "we're professionals and we need the players to be professionals too" while unprofessional debacles were happening and their base of operations was another league's web site's forums, a teaser video of their studio and their crew practicing (implying that AV was gonna be all set, 24 hour drill for editing would be routine, everyone would be comfy in the studio for day one, etc), not broadcasting live implying that everything will be smooth and crisp, turning down an outpouring of support/volunteers with a "nope we've got all the crew we need, but we'll let ya know"
Those are some of the components of the perfect storm leading up to week one that made people want to criticize NASL for failing to be completely awesome. In retrospect, everything that happened before NASL started broadcasting makes almost no sense. If they had an awesome debut week, it'd make sense. All along it was like "trust us, gonna be awesome. oops, sorry, yeah that rule actually isn't so great, we'll change it, but trust us, gonna be awesome. oops yeah, the production value is gonna be way better than that, trust us, it's gonna be awesome." and then it wasn't awesome. And unforeseen new problems happened (broadcasted spoilers, wrong map versions).
For some idiots on the internet, this is enough reason to eternally hate NASL. For people with an ounce more of rationality, it's enough reason to write scathing criticisms. As for me, it just made my first experience underwhelming.
If that's all you heard was that a new league was happening, and then you saw they had a bumpy start, and you heard them apologize for all the bumps and saw that they immediately started fixing things as best they can, then you probably can't understand where other people are coming from.
I will say that their willingness to listen to the community and improve is absolutely wonderful. In some ways that's a more important quality than having a good start. NASL will easily maintain enough interest so that when they have improved everything and have a great product, the masses will know and will watch. So yeah, I guess it's a wag of the finger for what NASL has done up to this point, but a tip of the hat to what they're doing now. However it is regrettable to think of the new faces whose first experience watching SC2 was week one of season one of the NASL. It certainly will not go down in history as one of the best presentations of competitive SC2.
i know that answer is a bit late but do you guys (especially tyler) know that you can download videos directly from youtube pretty easy? :o
i think thats a good way if you want them as a file to watch in you favorite movie player :O
It's not anywhere near as good as it could be. I'm strongly against companies purposely making their products worse because of piracy.
I made a blog about how I'd like to be able to access the NASL archive with a torrent RSS. I can set a filter to download only protoss games, the download would occur while I'm sleeping so I never have to wait for it or deal with reduced bandwidth, the files would be properly labeled and placed into folders by NASL and my torrent application, so I can wake up the morning after NASL and all the games I want to watch are properly archived on my hard drive ready to play from any device on my home network (TV in bedroom, iPhone in any room, laptop in any room, my PC in my office).
Paying them and then doing half the distribution work yourself is not cool. When the only reason that they don't distribute videos better is because it'd be giving better distribution to pirates too, I gotta say fuck that.
By the way, GSL is in the same boat. This is not an NASL exclusive thing. It's a thing where you run a league that lasts for weeks or months, instead of a tournament that lasts for one weekend, and the logistics of providing content outside of your broadcasts go crazy. TSL doesn't charge the viewer for anything, so they get a pass in my book. Also IPL is giving free access for now. But TSL, IPL, GSL and NASL all provide on-demand video that's essentially accessible only through streaming media players embedded into web pages and you have to inconvenience yourself to convert it into the format you actually want it. I really don't like that!
It's not even just a Starcraft thing though... Television and movie services all use various streaming software and the idea usually being that if they offered the video file directly they lose control over the Piracy and whenever any of them discuss the introduction of some form of DRM they get shot down hard.
However most streaming services have to deal with various other entities... NASL only has to deal with making it's own service viable. I think they could make something really kick ass where you could pay to have access to files that are well sorted and all... but this would likely have a fairly high base cost and if a bunch of sites crop up with easy access to the same files for free who are the suckers that NASL is going to convince to actually pay? The reasoning I'm guessing they have now is that at least they aren't doing the pirates a service.
Torrents and ads would cut the cost to NASL, but would also make it feel a whole lot less convenient. IMO they would have to make something that is both well priced and super convenient in order to convince enough people that it's worth paying for the service ... and I just don't think they have the man power yet.
On April 28 2011 07:02 Sv1 wrote: I enjoy listening to these guys but man, listening to these pros, or any pros for that matter, complain about the balance being done around casual gamers aka non pros is a little tiresome. Blizzard still wanted to continue their legacy as an e-sport game but it's still a game that THEIR livelihood is based around. I would think moving a million units of their game is their concern first before how tournaments are playing out.
Completely agree with this! A huge point that has not been made yet.
This is HUGE. Pros complain that Blizzard is balancing around casuals because their livelihood depends on it... but Blizzard's livelihood depends on it also. If SC2 is not popular due to balance issues, Blizzard could lose money also. How can you blame Blizzard for trying to make the best game for casuals when casuals are the ones funding the entire game and the entire esport?
The NFL is constantly making rule changes to make their game more watchable and more fun for the fans. Blizzard is doing the same thing.
1. Public opinion is fickle. Today everything is "ew, pvp = nothing but 4-gate all the time, plz fix!". Tomorrow, people might be clamoring for 4-gate as much preferable to 1-gate robo every game (purely guessing, think nothing of this). Biases like nostalgia make it easy for people to clamor for things that, as it turns out, they don't actually want (or even understand the rammifications of).
2. I doubt the pros are arguing that Blizzard will make more money by leaving protoss alone. I'm fairly sure that the argument is that changing protoss doesn't result in a better game. Some of the devs (though most likely none of their bosses) still care about this. Most people don't develop games because it's easy to make money developing games. They do it because they love games.
3. The NFL is really making very small changes to the game of football. Saying that this year you can't make helmet-to-helmet contact with the quarterback is a change analogous to a change like "Dying workers carrying gas or minerals will now credit their player with the resources they were carrying" - sure it affects play in some games, but it certainly doesn't affect every game, and the number of games decided by this distinction is very, very small. Saying that now the 3 core units of Protoss will build 10-15% faster for the opening 7 minutes of each game is like suddenly requiring 8 men to be on the line at the snap of the ball instead of 7 - it doesn't just affect which stategies work, it affects which strategies are even possible. I guess what I'm saying is that these patches are nothing like the NFL putting out new rules, especially since the feedback the NFL is getting about the game isn't from forums full of people saying silly things like "Defense needs at least 20 people on their side to balance the game" or "Football would be so much better if the ball was actually a live cat".
Tyler, so fucking meta with 10 paragraph essays on discussing the game, and how to discuss the game, and when to discuss the game, and who can discuss what parts of the game and consider who else's perspectives on the game.
Too bad no matter how deep you go it's still a bunch of people hoping for the best for themselves. Zergs want balance, protosses don't, and pros don't want their race revamped because they have to learn all new builds.
Your last essay with the door opening analogy had this message: all the time and energy spent whining is less time and energy spent opening doors. Well this patch revealed a lot of doors, so stop with the meta QQ and start opening. Look at it as a chance to get ahead of the other protosses. Preferably on stream.
On April 29 2011 00:42 Talin wrote: There's only one way IdrA can attract people in a talk show environment, and I'm really not sure I want to be around for that (but I probably will be anyway =p).
In all seriousness, I hope I'm wrong though. His presence on SoTG always seems to turn this thread into an imbawhine nightmare for days to come. =(
And every time there is a zerg saying something about P, you are here to whine about the whine lol
IdrA is on the show because he is pretty interesting and people are always waiting for him to speak anyway, even if he is not as insighful as Tyler or Day9.
I would beg to differ on the level of insight. Not to split hairs here, but the difference lies rather in fundamental sentiment than understanding of the game.
One may or may not disagree with the conclusions Idra draws. But if he states X and Y doesn't work out for him, or how he evaluates the power of specific strategies and techniques, it is safe to assume that some solutions might not be as simple as one would think. His advice is by no means less educated than that of other present participants of SotG.
I would like to say I for one extremely appreciate you guys putting your time and thoughts into this show. It really helps to put a finger to the pulse of what is going on in SC2 from a programmers point of view, in which I find I can learn drastically from on how to approach this game in strategy, as a spectator and to have fun.
Oh and you guys are awesome in general.
Constructive critisicm: JP, dont ask your questions so rigidly. You do notice that few seconds of discomfort after almost everytime you ask a question? Its because you make people feel like there on the spot or something...you want them to feel comfortable so they feel easy about opening there mind to you.
Constructive critisicm: JP, dont ask your questions so rigidly. You do notice that few seconds of discomfort after almost everytime you ask a question? Its because you make people feel like there on the spot or something...you want them to feel comfortable so they feel easy about opening there mind to you.
Meh, that's a minor quibble though. Sometimes JP has to jump into a question to change a topic, because frankly, these guys can ramble on or go off on a tangent.
These are opinionated, gregarious guys. I can see why JP has to just cut them off with the next topic from time to time, and sometimes there's no easy segueway.
Balancing for the pros gives a trickle down effect in that soon after they figure out stuff out, people watch and then can stop whatever was giving them trouble. If you balance for the casuals this can make things worse because the pros might go 'Hey wow actually by doing this I can do this and never lose'. The other thing is that balancing for casual players will not net anymore money to blizzard that not balancing for the casual players. They have and will likely sell as much as they will. By not thinking of the lower leagues when balancing they won't stop people from buying the future expansions. They have way too much of a fanbase and following to really worry about that. Balancing to make the games more entertaining to watch can work but again should be based around the pros and not the casuals. People seems to find it less entertaining to watch various cheeses so things are altered slightly to make the cheeses a little harder. This has kind of worked in that many of the "cheesey" plays can still be done but more as a pressure play or a harrass intended to put the other player behind rather than just end the game. Or as something to mix up in a Bo3/5/7 to shake things up. Basically what I'm saying is that there really is only benefits for everyone by looking to the professional players when trying to balance. There is not the same benefits when you look at the casual players or even just the not-casual but less skilled players. The professionals get into the game in a way that almost no one else does. That's why balance whine (while fun to read) is largely not worth it unless you are at the level of Tyler or Idra or Nada. I'd love to see a professional balance thread were only the progamers can come and talk about the balance of the game. Once you filter out the obvious bias it would be really interesting and might show that the issues are minute things to the rest of us but huge to them.
Hearing the BW folks like Day9 and Tyler talk about how there wasn't this constant patching and people had to just figure stuff out on their own in BW makes me wish I had been following the scene then. It makes me hope that Blizzard will come out with a policy for one major balancing patch a year, if that.
What stresses me out the most about SotG discussions is not the this race is weakest and why discussion but Geoff and Tyler's consistent bashing of Terran and Zerg players in their methods of adapting. Zerg and Terran have TONS of different ways to play each match up being demonstrated all the time while Protoss have been doing consistent Collosus Death Balls since the dawn of SCII. When Terran do everything in TvP from Massed Air, Massed Mech, Massed Bio and varying combinations of each together against the always used Collosus Ball I find any criticism against Terran player or even Zerg players on their abilities to adapt an utter joke from Protoss players.
Terran isn't the weakest race but it is true and undeniably so that they were the only race negatively affected by the increase in map distances meaning Terran must play that much more harder to compete. Doesn't mean they're really the weakest in any way balance wise but they do have a slight handicap that they need to play harder to overcome. Needing to be the better player doesn't necessarily mean that your race is weakest after all just look at BW where C+ and lower Protoss just had an edge over Terran players easily but at pro level Flash laughs off Protoss players all the time and Terran is by far the most successful race.
Adapting doesn't necessarily mean changing your entire composition, but adjusting smaller things within your build and gameplan. More to the point, you're wrong in your observation altogether - maybe you haven't been watching Starcraft lately, but every PvT is not stalker/colo vs marauder/medivac from either side.
Constructive critisicm: JP, dont ask your questions so rigidly. You do notice that few seconds of discomfort after almost everytime you ask a question? Its because you make people feel like there on the spot or something...you want them to feel comfortable so they feel easy about opening there mind to you.
Meh, that's a minor quibble though. Sometimes JP has to jump into a question to change a topic, because frankly, these guys can ramble on or go off on a tangent.
These are opinionated, gregarious guys. I can see why JP has to just cut them off with the next topic from time to time, and sometimes there's no easy segueway.
Your replying to my post like i siad quickly instead of rigidly. Maybe you misunderstood what Im saying.
He asks his questions with almost no emotion, or setup. He almost sounds demanding at times. Sometimes he doesnt even sound genuinely interested in the questions he asks. How is the person thats answering supposed to be excited to reply, let alone with effort?
Dont get me wrong here, I dont mind Jp at all, I just think from my perspective he could be doing better at what he does, and in return get better conversations going, instead of what at times becaomes a very rigid, sharp Q and A.
Again I love the show, and the ONLY reason Im saying anything is because I think they want constructive critisicm. Be it wrong or not.
On April 29 2011 08:57 Dfgj wrote: Adapting doesn't necessarily mean changing your entire composition, but adjusting smaller things within your build and gameplan. More to the point, you're wrong in your observation altogether - maybe you haven't been watching Starcraft lately, but every PvT is not stalker/colo vs marauder/medivac from either side.
Where you're wrong is, they were discussing compositions. And also aside from Adelscott pretty much every Protoss has been using Collosus Death balls recently in PvT and PvZ, probably more than ever before. This is why all Terran and Zerg based strategies lately are all focused on trying to figure out ways to kill Collosus specifically.
On April 29 2011 07:09 Mommas Boy wrote: because I dont see enough of it in this thread:
I would like to say I for one extremely appreciate you guys putting your time and thoughts into this show. It really helps to put a finger to the pulse of what is going on in SC2 from a programmers point of view, in which I find I can learn drastically from on how to approach this game in strategy, as a spectator and to have fun.
Oh and you guys are awesome in general.
Constructive critisicm: JP, dont ask your questions so rigidly. You do notice that few seconds of discomfort after almost everytime you ask a question? Its because you make people feel like there on the spot or something...you want them to feel comfortable so they feel easy about opening there mind to you.
Honestly can't see trying to balance the game at "various skill levels" being a good long-term strategy from Blizzard it's just gonna be messy :|
As a casual player myself I can live with the fact that certain strategies are gonna be more effective against me then they should be simply because I lack mechanics/understanding of the game.
But I doubt Blizzard is ignorant to the enormous marketing value that having a competitive scene for their game means so I have hope.
EPT
