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So, I've been talking to some friends on bnet and some buddys from college, and I'm hearing about more and more people going either back or to BW for the first time in lieu of SC2. While BW was/is a fantastic game, I couldn't help but wondering "why?" So I asked a buddy after a lecture one day.
"Well," he says, "It's just getting real old real fast. We've had the same maps, mostly, since beta, and Blizzard doesn't seem to be interested in letting maps they didn't make in the ladder, and the new maps leaked look to be more of the same. If I want to be competitive in star2 without being on a professional team and going out to these big tournaments with custom map pools, I have to play on the Blizzard ladder, and right now that seem's so unnatractive to me. At least I know with iCCup I have some control over stagnation."
The conversation lasted all of 5 or so minutes, but it has really go me to thinking as to the longevity of sc2. My friend, I feel, raised an interesting view-point; Blizzard's inflexibility when it comes to the SC2 ladder is alienating a lot of people. Allot of people (me included) feel that the unwillingness to allow custom maps into the map pool for the ladder is making the laddering experience allot less fun. We've been hitting the same few maps on ladder for close to a year now, and we have community sites like iCCup shoving maps at blizzard and the company remaining resolute with their mapmakers, either for the sake of making their map makers feel better, or because of some financial reason (unlikely, but I'd hate to think Blizzard's doing this to spare their ego).
"Maps," my friend continued on "aren't even the only problem. Why can't I choose to play on metalopolis, instead of getting a random map? Why Can't I choose to play vs. Terran instead of vs a random race? In Brood War, I'd spend entire practice sessions on specific maps on a specific matchup I was having trouble with, and it lead to interesting play. You couldn't do the exact same thing ZvT on python as you could ZvT on Fighting Spirit. The way the ladder itself was structured led to more interesting plays based on maps. Do you know how hard it is to develop a specific style on a specific map in star2 without a lot of very good practice partners? You have to pray that map/match up comes up on the random ladder to get some practice."
Once again interesting. I tend to agree with this sentiment. Why do I have to play vs a random opp race on a random map. I think you'd see allot more interesting strategies pumped out of your average player if there was a better system, like the iCCup ladder in place.
"Why," he exclaimed "can I only have one account per game? If I'm a competitive player vying for top 200 and I want to play around with protoss on the ladder, I'm risking allot of points. Why can't I just have a separate account? What if I'm having allot of problems with a specific map, and I'm really struggling with zvp on one of these new maps that blizz puts out, what am I going to do? Suck it up and get my ass handed to me a bunch? In BW I'd reset my account, play against some D players and really find some timings that I could abuse at those higher levels without being worried all the time about all the stuff those better players could do to me."
Another good set of points, I thought. Allot of people would disagree with the last point, as the whole "smurfing problem" could get out of hand, but to be honest, I think that resetting your account to find these holes and timings you could abuse was such a good way to improve in BW (listen to Day9's old podcast named "Why You should play against worse players") for an overview of the concept.
"It seems," he concluded, "they're just trying to create a situation where they can ream the game for as much money as it's worth. People will clamor for LAN latency for months, then they'll come along and say 'good news, we'll be releasing a patch that implements LAN latency...for a fee'. They'll start selling map packs, or whatever they can get away with. I hope I'm wrong, but that just seems the direction things are going, and if that's the case, I'm fine with going back to BW."
The whole conversation was pretty eye opening to me. I of course, wanted allot of the same things he wanted, but I never stopped to think that Blizzard being so inflexible about providing these sorts of things might lead people to stop playing because they're getting bored with it, or just are frustrated with Blizzard that much. It seems to me like, if these new maps are just more of the same and blizzard continues refusing community maps, how long before casual competitive players (read non-pros) just drop away?
So I thought I'd share and see what everyone thought about the Blizzard Ladder effecting the longevity of the game. Thanks, Peace.
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Wow, I agree with so many things in this post.
I mean battle 2.0 seems like more of a downgrade then an upgrade.
no cross realm play,
no lan,
no clan system,
even chat took a while to implement.
Clan war function woulda be great,
change of map pool- as u mentioned
I just don't see how they are "supporting E-sports"...
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I think this post lacks a conclusion or a tl:dr that just explains your point in as few words as possible.
User was temp banned for this post.
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There could be many resons that people go back to SC:BW but from what I gather, the problem is mostly to do with the maps rather than the actual ladder. These maps are exactly the same as the ones in better apart from Shakuras and maybe Xel'naga (cant remember if this was in beta or not). However, the ladder does seem to be a little easy to climb to be honest. I lost 6 games yesterday and I won 4 and I still gained points even though most of the wins were vs lower ranked players than me.
Even I dont try to claim that this applies to me because im nowhere near this standard, I heard some of the great players think that the game is too easy especially the macro side of things, to these people, this game isnt muc of a challenge so that is why they go back on BW. I personally think that tis could be fixed with an additional macro mechanic for each army (something as simple as people cant rally workers to minerals or cant hotkey buildings).
In my opinion, SC2 is still a new game, so there are bound to be flaws, but they will sort it out in the end. 
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On February 12 2011 19:39 Patriot.dlk wrote:
I think this post lacks a conclusion or a tl:dr that just explains your point in as few words as possible.
see last paragraph?
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I agree with everything but 1 thing is missing the game it selfs doenst feel as good as BW did. A lot of the MUs feel very borin like PvP. I never had this feeling during my 9 year long period of playing BW but I really dont want to play this game anymore it is getting so boring. I just cant force myself to play it so sad...
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On February 12 2011 19:39 Patriot.dlk wrote:
I think this post lacks a conclusion or a tl:dr that just explains your point in as few words as possible.
Well Bnet 0.2 sucks the only thing it really offers is the "play button".
Ive been thinking about the same issue a lot too. Since the beta Ive been saying as soon as theres a way to implant a private sc2 server nobody would really want to play on the official Bnet. It sucks and lacks many basic features. The shouldve copied iccup 1:1. :D. Iirc Bnet was designed by some guy who did the xbox live sytem... .-> stupid console player dont know anything about competitive play.
Just provide enough achievements and people will play it.
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man ppl have no patience today... the game is still sooooo young. Give it 2-3 years and an expansion, then you can start comparing it to broodwar imo.
altho, gief fucking lan support, atleast for tournaments.
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i was under the impression that the ladder was the biggest BNET improvement for SC2 in comparison to BW..
also getting practice partners is probably easier then ever...
The MMR matches you against people around even skill level... just be mannered and ask them if they would like to play some practice games later.
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Last i checked BW didn't have ladder, so you played customs games, OH wait i just remembered something you can still do that. . . If you wanna practice against a certain race on a certain map play custom games with a friend. . .
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On February 12 2011 19:26 Arisen wrote:
"Maps," my friend continued on "aren't even the only problem. Why can't I choose to play on metalopolis, instead of getting a random map? Why Can't I choose to play vs. Terran instead of vs a random race? In Brood War, I'd spend entire practice sessions on specific maps on a specific matchup I was having trouble with, and it lead to interesting play. You couldn't do the exact same thing ZvT on python as you could ZvT on Fighting Spirit. The way the ladder itself was structured led to more interesting plays based on maps. Do you know how hard it is to develop a specific style on a specific map in star2 without a lot of very good practice partners? You have to pray that map/match up comes up on the random ladder to get some practice."
This is what I would really like, personally. Something that was mentioned in one of the more recent State of the Game podcasts that I would love, was the idea allowing players to instead of thumb-down maps in a tournament to thumb-up the maps they would like to play on. I think it would be awesome if the Blizzard ladder had something like this.
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On February 12 2011 19:44 FrostyTreats wrote:
i was under the impression that the ladder was the biggest BNET improvement for SC2 in comparison to BW..
This.
On February 12 2011 19:45 Tedde93 wrote:
Last i checked BW didn't have ladder, so you played customs games, OH wait i just remembered something you can still do that. . . If you wanna practice against a certain race on a certain map play custom games with a friend. . .
And this.
Besides, making balance changes/map changes without giving the meta game some time to unfold would be very irresponsible imo.
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I think the ladder is fine (except maybe the map-pool), it would be lame for it to be called a "ladder" if you can choose your match-up and map... people would just choose the match-up they're best at and the maps most advantageous to their race if they wanted to gain points in the ladder
If you want to practice a specific matchup on a specific map, there is the custom game... BUT blizzard should allow you to name your game instead of this crap we have now...
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I pretty much agree with all of your points. It especially irks me that you can only downvote a few maps instead of picking specific map(s) you want to play on. I suppose Blizzard wants to make it so that you can't become top of the ladder by, say, only playing TvZ on DQ, and they want the matchmaking system to work as quickly as possible, but I really wouldn't mind having to wait more and having ladder rank mean less...it's more important to me that laddering be as useful as possible in improving my skill, which really involves playing certain matchups or situations repeatedly...
Nice post!
On February 12 2011 19:39 Patriot.dlk wrote:
I think this post lacks a conclusion or a tl:dr that just explains your point in as few words as possible.
I don't think the post really needs a tl;dr, it isn't that long and I don't think we need to design OPs specifically for the lazy among us.
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On February 12 2011 19:45 Tedde93 wrote:
Last i checked BW didn't have ladder, so you played customs games, OH wait i just remembered something you can still do that. . . If you wanna practice against a certain race on a certain map play custom games with a friend. . .
Right... and if you are a player in the masters league, and all your friends are in the gold league...how in any sense, would playing custom games with them be helpful?
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On February 12 2011 19:45 Tedde93 wrote:
Last i checked BW didn't have ladder, so you played customs games, OH wait i just remembered something you can still do that. . . If you wanna practice against a certain race on a certain map play custom games with a friend. . .
PGTour? iCCup? Pretty sure there were ladders, just not from blizzard.
As for playing against a friend, sure you can do this, until you realize that you were abusing a weakness in your friends play, and when you face someone much better this build you refined so much is worthless. There's no substitue for the cut-throat environment of ladders to test out new play styles unless you're a member of a pro team where you're sure you're playing against one of the best players possible.
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ladder system is something i actually like with new bnet. my issues are with game design. :-/.
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On February 12 2011 19:40 Cain0 wrote: In my opinion, SC2 is still a new game, so there are bound to be flaws, but they will sort it out in the end.
I have to agree with this. SC2 is insanely new compared to their predecessors. BW / TFT been out for years compared to SC2 months..
Give it time. SC2 has done amazingly well considering its youth.
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im pretty sure they will not charge a fee for map packs or whatever. I think it'll just take time for them to implement new changes as they did with the last patch.
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EPT
