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.
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.
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 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...
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.
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.
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. . .
"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.
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.
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...
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.
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?
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.
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.
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?
Ive gotten maybe half my practice partners from that thread, just made a post a few days after retail, and ppl contact me every week about it. The other half i get from striking up a friendly conversation after a good game, asking for a rematch or just asking if he/she wants to do some practice.
btw, how was this any better in BW?
Edit: I'm sure there are PLENTY of master league practice chat channels in game.
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?
Get practice partners or join a clan, both of which are fairly easy through TL.
the reason i don't play ladder, cause the map pool kinda sucks, and i dissagree practice partners arnt hard to find, but bad blizzard, 30 map pool would make things interesting
On February 12 2011 20:05 Nightfall.589 wrote: All of the problems in the OP would not be addressed by changing anything on the ladder.
They would be addressed by fixing the gawd-awful custom game system.
How so? As the ladder is used for tourney invites and such, you're encouraged to play on it as much as possible, so if you want to be competitive, you have to play the ladder, allot. If you want different maps, well that's just too bad, you need to keep playing to remain competitive in the top200 scene.
Blizzard ladder is a wonderful system. You will not get anything out of the game if one game you get a bronze who doesn't know how to build probes, and next game against #32 player in your server. That is what happens if you get rid of Blizzard ladder and random matchmaking.
Allowing a second account is a whole another matter, completely unrelated to the ladder
I'm a protoss player, and it seems from the first GSTL that the new, bigger maps heavily favor protoss. If you allow untested maps into the ladder, you might suddenly see game drop heavily into one races favor.
Personally I don't like the idea of choosing maps. I guess that is personal preference.
But my overall point is, Blizzard is not slow, Blizzard is careful. This game is more volatile than you might think. Increasing range of a single unit by +1 might break the whole game. This applies to allowing random maps to the pool.
About the "lack of features", well I doubt that Starcraft 2 development team is that big. I mean, it doesn't really generate any revenue. People pay once and then it's free.
Blizzards approach to games has been proven to be the right one. I trust Blizzard to do the right thing this time too. Give Blizzard some time. Ladder is not hurting Starcraft 2.
I think that adding custom ladders or something like that so you can play with your buddies and have a long-term ranking against them. That would make the game a whole lot more fun. Also; if Blizzard were to higher some top players to balance the game or give advice on the maps the game would go further.
I think that the largest thing that people are over looking when it comes to the ladder is that blizzard is the company behind balancing not just WoL, but also the future expansions, and I think that it is 100% fair for them to be in charge of what maps are on the ladder. They want to make the changes themselves and see what works and what doesn't for them so they have a better idea of what they need to change regarding the races, expansion units and how they design maps in the future. Once they get Legacy of the Void out and the game is pretty much balanced, then I think that they will start changing the way the ladder works, if not earlier (read HotS). The community needs to be a little more patient with this.
Another thing that I want to note is that I don't like it when people say "we've had the same maps since the start of beta", or the same X since Beta. While that is true, I feel that the beta shouldn't be taken into consideration when talking about the competitive life of the game. I doubt Blizzard knew how competitive people would play in the beta, and I don't think any game in the world has been under as much scrutiny since the beginning as SC2 has. The focus of the beta was to stress test the units and such more than the maps, but even then they still released maps (Incineration Zone in the beta, then Delta and Xel'naga, followed by Jungle Basin and Shakuras) and removed maps that people pretty much refused to play on and/or they felt were imbalanced (Incineration Zone, Desert Oasis and Kulas Ravine).
Now, 6 months (ish) since release, Blizzard is late on the ladder reset (I believe it was supposed to be with patch 1.2), which will probably come out after they have gotten some new maps like the ones on the PTR ready to replace things like steppes and such. In saying that, Blizzard said that they want to change most of he maps every season (which should run 3-4 months).
I'm not saying that I disagree with you necessarily, people need to remember that they are supporting E-sports and they do want ladder to be an important part of everyone's gaming experience. Both pro and under, and I have no doubt that given some more time, it will. The game is not going to die because Blizzard isn't using GOM's maps (which were made for the GSL and high level play as opposed to ladder play, which is for everyone).
When it comes to match picking on the ladder, that could cause problems unless they overhaul the design of the ladder completely. I could be amazing at TvT for example and terrible at other match ups, and filter it so I get more TvTs than other match ups, and on maps that I like/better at, and then have a 70% win rate when I should only have about a 55% one. Ladder is about variety and less about specific practice. Practice partners are the opposite and are less about variety and more about specific practice.
BNet 2.0 is still young. I believe that it was one of the main reasons why the beta for the game was pushed back (talk was that it was supposed to be December to January, but I could be wrong). It will be improved more and more when the expansions and major patches are released. Blizzard won't charge for maps and that. It's not their style. They might charge for things like Blizzard DotA, but that's different than ladder maps.
TL:DR (I hate these but whatever.) The game is young, we have a ladder reset coming with new maps and there will me more new maps/resets more regularly in the future. The maps will get better. Blizzard cares about the map pool and has removed maps that are imbalanced (I.Zone, Desert oasis, Kulas) and added new maps (I.Zone, Xel'naga, Delta, Basin, Shakuras). Match/map picking on ladder will lead to problems unless they change the ladder completely.
Overall, we need to be patient with this a lot more. Blizzard has a lot of time to remedy any mistakes, and they will. The game is less than 6 moths old (retail, don't count beta) and will get better.
I don't think you can critiscise until you know EVERYTHING that needs to be done on Blizzards end to input all the thing he is saying is wrong with it, and on you're end all you need to do is be nice to some randy on ladder that is the race you want to practice against and ask them for some matches.
I don't even like the GSTL maps and I hope they don't get put in because I'm fine playing the maps atm and I'm fine watching them be played in tourny's.
On February 12 2011 20:10 Greentellon wrote: Blizzard ladder is a wonderful system. You will not get anything out of the game if one game you get a bronze who doesn't know how to build probes, and next game against #32 player in your server. That is what happens if you get rid of Blizzard ladder and random matchmaking.
No it isn't? Did you ever play on iCCup? You start at D rank, work your way up playing D/D+ player, gaining points until you get promoted to D+ then could start playing C- player, and kept working. You never had D players playing A/A+ players. Just because you don't have the random matchmaking doesn't mean you have no structure within a ladder. And I'm not saying random Matchmaking needs to go away, you could just choose to use the random system if you didn't care, and it'd be the same as it is now.
gotta love the people that always return to one game. They ignore any flaws of their favorite game, but a little flaw in the game they are currently testing out and they are like: "everything is going to end !" have alot experience there. And if they get into a new game the old game is just so old and bad and everything is evil there. Listening to them is just so much fun.
Anyway the ladder isn't hurting sc2. Since bnet2 just sucked in its first version it seemed they completly remade it from the scratch while WoL was at 90% done. If they would wait until bnet 2 is completly ready we would have the sc2 beta next year. and diablo 3 would also need to be delayed because selling 2 masterpieces at the same time is a bad thing. So as it goes for me i prefer an unfinished menu and enjoy the game. And more people would rant at blizzard if they would use their custom games for a ladder were you have to search your opponents yourself. (and those would post in at blizzard and not at tl )
PS: compared to other games sc2 has a really little amount of returners (those that return to their former game) but this is mostly because the hype is still there a little so i think not everything they did is wrong . PPS: people love to pay money for special services, thats why f2p mmpogs are so much more money then p2p xD, so its the fault of this people that you will have to pay for everything. Add a unit to sc2 that costs 10 dollars to have it in multiplayer you will see alot of people with this unit (even the people that would flame about it would have it hehe)
On February 12 2011 20:05 Nightfall.589 wrote: All of the problems in the OP would not be addressed by changing anything on the ladder.
They would be addressed by fixing the gawd-awful custom game system.
How so? As the ladder is used for tourney invites and such, you're encouraged to play on it as much as possible, so if you want to be competitive, you have to play the ladder, allot. If you want different maps, well that's just too bad, you need to keep playing to remain competitive in the top200 scene.
If you want to practice your TvP on Metalopolis, you'd be able to do so fairly easily if they just kept the WC3/BW custom games system.
If you wanted to play new maps, you'd be able to do so as well.
Many tournaments do not invite based off ladder rankings - and if serious play shifted from ladder to custom games, even fewer of them would.
On February 12 2011 20:18 minimat wrote: I don't think you can critiscise until you know EVERYTHING that needs to be done on Blizzards end to input all the thing he is saying is wrong with it, and on you're end all you need to do is be nice to some randy on ladder that is the race you want to practice against and ask them for some matches.
I don't even like the GSTL maps and I hope they don't get put in because I'm fine playing the maps atm and I'm fine watching them be played in tourny's.
That's obtuse. Is it OK to say "Well, as an Egyptian citizen, I don't like all the stuff our leader does because he's looking out for western interests, not ours, but I don't know all the stuff that the government has to do, so I guess I just need to accept it."
No. Obviously it's weird to be connecting world politics to sc2, but the same concept applies, accept it because they work really hard, or you don't understand what they have to deal with. "Apathy is the glove into which evil slips it's hand" is an old saying that encapsulates this well, if you're not questioning things, you've doomed yourself to complacency.
improvements to matchmaking, ladder, clan system, cross-realm play... if blizz put all these things in the game right away, what would they have expansions for? It's simple as that, many people fail to realize that. Just look at wow and it's expansions, and the improvements in every one.
On February 12 2011 19:53 Phanekim wrote: ladder system is something i Actually like with New bnet. my issues are with Game design. :-/.
Well, the auto matchmaking is great but the ladder design itself is poor for all of the reasons outlined in the OP. I feel like if Blizzard wants to run the ladder system then they should at least commit to it fully and do it right. They should redesign the ladder system to make practice more feasible (like thumbing up maps) and get an official team together to create new maps and rotate them into the ladder. And don't be afraid to take community maps into the pool if they're good.
It makes sense from a business perspective. Starcraft is the type of game you'll play for ten years, and sales will continue as new people will wonder what all the fuss is about. Hell, if Starcraft 2 becomes successful as an esport it will be like a giant continuing advertisement for the game. New people will come across tournaments like the TSL 3 or something and enjoy it so much that they'll just have to buy the game to check it out. So it makes sense for Blizzard to do everything in their power to provide a great practice environment and ensure that competitive players want to keep playing. But if you let the ladder stagnate (and do not allow the community to create their own ladder) people will eventually abandon the game. I doubt this game would ever completely die, even if we're playing on Steppes for the next ten years, but its popularity will certainly be massively diminished.
Given that there are two more expansions coming out, I hope Blizzard will realise this gives them a perfect opportunity for a redesign of the ladder system. They see how popular the game is becoming just from esports. Perhaps they didn't fully realise this when creating Wings of Liberty, but after watching GSL I'm sure they see the full potential of the Starcraft franchise now. They just have recognise how to tap into it by fostering a good competitive environment.
Your friend seems to be affected by some unfounded elitism. Practice partners, specific maps and overall custom games are an integral part of the training process for any pro, better yet for anyone pursuing an improvement. You can't have them served on a silver platter.
Ladder system is fine as it is, the only major flaw is the bonus pool. The longer it runs the more it separates the actual value (MMR) from point ranking.
But then again, who cares about ladder ranking, it's what you do in the tourneys that matters.
I agree maps are old but they are stable to some extent.
On February 12 2011 20:05 Nightfall.589 wrote: All of the problems in the OP would not be addressed by changing anything on the ladder.
They would be addressed by fixing the gawd-awful custom game system.
How so? As the ladder is used for tourney invites and such, you're encouraged to play on it as much as possible, so if you want to be competitive, you have to play the ladder, allot. If you want different maps, well that's just too bad, you need to keep playing to remain competitive in the top200 scene.
If you want to practice your TvP on Metalopolis, you'd be able to do so fairly easily if they just kept the WC3/BW custom games system.
If you wanted to play new maps, you'd be able to do so as well.
Many tournaments do not invite based off ladder rankings - and if serious play shifted from ladder to custom games, even fewer of them would.
Blizzcon, one of the biggest tournaments (money-wise) outside of korea bases invites solely off ladder, and if players want a shot at blizzcon (and possibly future blizzard sponsored events) they need to be constantly on that ladder.
On February 12 2011 20:30 marconi wrote: improvements to matchmaking, ladder, clan system, cross-realm play... if blizz put all these things in the game right away, what would they have expansions for? It's simple as that, many people fail to realize that. Just look at wow and it's expansions, and the improvements in every one.
Expansions should be for new content. New units, new mechanics, and in general stuff that is in the game. It shouldn't be about fixing things outside of the game that have nothing to do with the actual game. Maybe you're crazy about Blizzard making the system sub-par and dangling that "we fixed the ladder!...for $49.99" carrot in front of your face, but I'm not. Why hold back things to improve the ladder until and expansion? The answer, really is to make as much money as humanly possible, which is the goal of a buisness, but in the meantime, they're only hurting their game.
On February 12 2011 20:32 debasers wrote: Bnet is an awesome casual tool, put when it comes to competitive play it really sucks.
The ladder doesn't need to be competitive. There are tournaments for that.
How do you think competitive players practice for tournaments? Unless you're on a pro-team, it's probably the ladder. So how does playing in a non-competitive atmosphere help you at all, then? Do you see baseball teams just playing catch in practice, and only worry about competitive play in games?
i think heart of the swarm will implement either cross realm or lan support, so people will definitely buy it, and legacy of the void will implement the other one. sales numbers are the no.1 priority for a company like activision blizzard, not the whine of the users. that comes in second
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..
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. . .
Anytime someone talks about scBW ladder they're talking about the iCCup ladder.
The ladder reset is long overdue. In this interview they talk about wanting to change the entire map pool every 3/4 months. With all the balance patches, bug fixes, and general launch hitches they have been hardpressed to get good community feedback and apply that to balanced map making. New maps will come.
most of the people take the ladder too seriously,the ladder is designed to get you ranked among other people,to see how good you are and other things,but i know so many people that are scared of losing on a ladder.It shouldn't be like that because it's not designed to be for earning money or anything with it,it's purely for practice,so you can get better and have some satisfaction with it,when you climb the top of master league(top 200) then you can start talking about that ladder sucks and other things about it.
I can't say anything that's not said but ill tell you guys that this game compared to broodwar is like a young turtle to a old turtle(fucking 200 years difference). And i honestly think that in 6 more months,everything will settle down so good that all whiny little boys which require new maps every week(not saying that i don't but im not thursty for it like some of you are)and other whiny little crap.
-There are balance issues,and there are things that need to be implented - Clan system,Free name changes every 2-3 months,Clan lobby's and ingame webpages would be nice(like an interface). All of this may/will come,better or worse it will,just give it a goddamn break.
-TL;DR Starcraft 2 can't be compared to BW because bw is older then your grandma's teeth,in 6 months most of the things you guys desire will get settled.- Wisdom have spoken. -shutup
People as always with any game, tend to forget how new SC2 is. BW has been around for 10 years, while SC2 not even 1 yet, have some fucking patience? It's the same in the MMO scene, since WoW came everyone is comparing EVERYTHING to WoW... They dont care that a new game cant have the same flow as one who has been around with 11 million subs for 6 years.
Mentality like this is just ignorant. Either gt in touch with Blizzard and voice your concerns in a normal manner with solid points or shut the fuck up?
Uh.. the ladder system is pretty much the ONLY thing better about b.net 2.0. If the map rotation were more frequent it would be much better, but that is only a maintenance error. Everything else took a giant shit.
On February 12 2011 19:26 Arisen wrote: 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.
I'm pretty sure that if we checked the numbers of Starcraft 1 players on BNet and ICCup since the release of Starcraft II Beta, we would realise that they are pretty much continuously plummeting. This is how you find out general trends, you get the facts first, you don't just pretend to have asked 2 random guys at your college.
On February 12 2011 20:32 debasers wrote: Bnet is an awesome casual tool, put when it comes to competitive play it really sucks.
The ladder doesn't need to be competitive. There are tournaments for that.
How do you think competitive players practice for tournaments? Unless you're on a pro-team, it's probably the ladder. So how does playing in a non-competitive atmosphere help you at all, then? Do you see baseball teams just playing catch in practice, and only worry about competitive play in games?
im pretty sure top masters counts as competitive environment
I have to pretty much agree with most of what's been said in the OP. I really think SC:BW became what it is now, because the community had so much control over stuff like Maps and the Ladder-System in general and we've seen how bad Blizzard handles the ladder and the Maps being played on the ladder when we look at WC3:TFT, so why don't they give the community more options and support them? I mean, it's not like the community doesn't make a huge effort about new Maps; ICCup has been making great Maps, getting the community aware of them and at the same time playtesting them with very good players for Months now. They've also made an effort to communicate with Blizzard and major Tournament-organizers for quite some time, but we have yet to see Blizzard reacting to this.
Even after the huge success of the GSL-Maps, Blizzard kinda slaps the community in the face by giving us a preview of more Blizzard-Maps on the PTR. They're clearly better than most of the older Maps and it's a step in the right direction, but to me it just looks like a stubborn child saying: "I can do it myself!", when there are lots of ppl willing to help and already made a huge effort to do so.
I am really disappointed with the way Blizzard handles this whole Topic and tbh, I'm already really frustrated to play on the Blizzard-Maps and it has even gotten so far, that I don't really wanna watch one of the biggest European Tournaments with very good Players (I'm talking about Assembly Winter 2011) just because they're using the old Blizzard-Maps.
I'd say that you should just give it some time, and provide feedback to blizzard of your feelings on the ladder. Their feelings probably mirror yours somewhat, but they refuse to make major changes until they're sure it's for the better. Blizzard just don't want to risk making their game worse.
i really enjoyed the automated tournaments for Warcraft 3. If they brought that back, they could use that to try new maps and keep people interested outside of the ladder itself. that's one thing i can't understand why they didn't bring across... maybe soon...
Good post which kind of turned into an anti-blizzard rant towards the end. The stuff we see on Bnet2.0 leans towards social networking in gaming I think. Facebook integration, cross game friends systems, your account being an extension of you and exclusive to you. I don't think this is the correct move as it hurts bnet as a practice tool. Being able to thumbs up maps and matchups would be a huge improvement, also give the community some choice over what maps should be included in the pool. Using maps like Steppes with a straight face is just ridiculous in some matchups.
On February 12 2011 21:36 Zips wrote: I do wish i could control the maps and matchups... That just seems like a basic thing that you should be able to influence.
Maybe they should add a practice ladder, where you can fine tune the match ups to what you specifically would like to work on.
This is pretty much exactly what I was thinking. No reason they couldn't hammer this out.
On February 12 2011 21:36 Zips wrote: I do wish i could control the maps and matchups... That just seems like a basic thing that you should be able to influence.
why is it basic? can you influence maps and matchups in tournaments?
can you influence subjects when you have a test?
no, but you can prepare for anything you are not confident on.
anyone who wants to practice a single race, and avoid a matchup everygame (like a mirror)... unless you are training for a specific match in a tournament like GSL.. well other than that, its retarded.
Reminds me of the ICCUP people who got to B+ or A- without playing one single mirror game. Thats not a real ladder ranking. MATCHMAKING that places you vs any race/player, shows real ranking.
Blizzard's system is frustrating just because of the point gain/loss is so messed up, with the addition of bonus pool and all that.. but the underlying fundamental MMR system is the best system you will get for a ladder... much better than ICCUP or PGTOUR or anything, which was easily abused (hello TSL2??)
If ICCUP was abused for people in TSL2 to get in the top 16... where its very likely they would get caught (which they did).. imagine how many people abused the normal ladder, with very very slim chance of being caught, just to say "Im A-, im better than you".. Along with the avoiding matchups things.. You cant get 4000 Masters in SC2 by avoiding matchups and freewinning.
i feel like blizzard has to decide at some point if theyre gonna balance the game for these new long ass macro maps or these short ladder maps. aslong as blizz doesnt puls these crappy maps out of the ladder pool and the tournaments keeps using these new better maps: 1) everybody will start playing these better maps and the ladder will die 2) it will cause some balance issuses cause the newer maps need a different kind of balance than these small ones!
so i hope that blizz will start putting these new maps in the pool and balance the game accordingly!
I personally like the ladder/matchmaking system, and as people point out it certainly is possible to find practice partners after a good ladder match or on the practice partner retail thread.
The lack of control over matchmaking on the ladder is good, your ladder ranking is an unbiased measure of your skill at the game of Starcraft 2. If you could control the map and matchup you would play on the ladder, some people would just stick to their best matchup and map, and their ladder ranking would not be a measure of their overall skill at SC2.
One feature that Blizzard could implement on Bnet 2.0 that would make competitive SC2 more accessible would be a practice matchmaking system. You could specify the matchup you are looking to practice along with a map (or not specify anything), and then the matchmaking system would pit you against another person who wanted the same matchup on the same map.
Of course, then you can only get so specific with what you want to practice. You can't get all the practice you really need out of a system like this. At some point if a certain build is giving you a lot of trouble, you really need to have a specific practice partner who can do that build against you over and over until you have figured out a good solution.
An alternative to 'practice matchmaking' would be to improve the way you search for custom games. It would be cool if you could filter based on map, matchup, or even ladder ranking. I don't even understand the way it works now.
Right now, the onus is on the player to set up practice partners and practice games.
I wonder why there is such a huge factor with maps for sc2, than bw. People played Hunter, LT, Python for years on bw.
There was always new and interesting maps, but the majority of players played on those maps for the majority of the time and still play to this very day.
On February 12 2011 22:39 shaladdle wrote:The lack of control over matchmaking on the ladder is good, your ladder ranking is an unbiased measure of your skill at the game of Starcraft 2. If you could control the map and matchup you would play on the ladder, some people would just stick to their best matchup and map, and their ladder ranking would not be a measure of their overall skill at SC2.
You could design a system that gives diminishing returns on points for playing the same match-up and map over and over again. That way if you want to practice on something specific it's still possible, but if you want to be on top of the ladder you'll have to play properly.
The matchmaking is incredible. I can instantly find an even matchup just by hitting one button. Also I love people not having the choice of maps, because you would just see people constantly play Python and nothing else in BW. Also if you could pick your opponent people would be using it to game the system
SUmmary - your friend can do everything he said he wanted to do in custom games. The only issue is that the GSL maps should definitely be on the ladder
people constantly whine about things like no maps when right now the balance of the game is top priority. Putting out new maps dosn't solve anything right now being as custom games give you tons of maps to play anyways. Just typing iccup in the custom games will give you tons of maps. Right now let Blizzard worry about balance and then things like maps will come. SC1/Broodwar wasn't balanced in a day, yet people seem to expect SC2 to be released as such.
On February 12 2011 23:19 IamAnton wrote: people constantly whine about things like no maps when right now the balance of the game is top priority. Putting out new maps dosn't solve anything right now being as custom games give you tons of maps to play anyways. Just typing iccup in the custom games will give you tons of maps. Right now let Blizzard worry about balance and then things like maps will come. SC1/Broodwar wasn't balanced in a day, yet people seem to expect SC2 to be released as such.
The problem with this post is really that map design ties directly into game balance. If you're balancing the game around horrible maps, the game is not going to be balanced for good maps.
You should add a poll to your OP and ask if we think that Blizz is hurting the ladder.
One of the reasons BW has retained its popularity is because most games tend to be long macro games with plenty of action and interesting tactics. There are multiple battles/harassment going on around the map since the maps are HUGE. Games in general are just better in my opinion because of the bigger maps.
Now Blizz would be doing themselves a favor in trying to replicate the same type of experience that both the players and the audience gets in SC2 as they did in BW if they want to try and make their game last for a long time and draw a lot of the BW spectators from BW to SC2.
I think that by trying to recreate the same type of play style in SC2 as there is in BW it would boost the popularity of SC2 not only in Korea but everywhere.
If people had the choice to pick maps, they would pick the map that benefited their race the most: there would be a flood of "TvZ Steppes" or "ZvX Shakuras" etc.. and then the ladder would be even more messed up than it is now. Climbing ladder playing only a specific MU isn't going to help the ladder, and if you thought the ladder was broken anyway, then why not go play customs? You can pick any map you want, play vs any race you want..
The laddar isn't the problem - Brood War is simply a much better game. Games are decided by skill to a much greater extent. I feel that Sc2 games are much more often decided by imbalance, spawning positions and build orders. Not because the game is imbalanced (well, not JUST because the game is imbalanced) but because micro and macro in a lot of situations (early game) is too easy and advantages not related to skill are allowed to decide the game.
On February 12 2011 23:19 IamAnton wrote: people constantly whine about things like no maps when right now the balance of the game is top priority. Putting out new maps dosn't solve anything right now being as custom games give you tons of maps to play anyways. Just typing iccup in the custom games will give you tons of maps. Right now let Blizzard worry about balance and then things like maps will come. SC1/Broodwar wasn't balanced in a day, yet people seem to expect SC2 to be released as such.
The problem with this post is really that map design ties directly into game balance. If you're balancing the game around horrible maps, the game is not going to be balanced for good maps.
the game should be balanced around all variations of maps, not just python. and thats what the current map pool does.
No cross realm is literally the worst part about this new bnet,usually when someone is tired of 1v1ing on the same server due to whatever reasons(cheese/bad attitude/no competition), they can't try out another one to learn more or get interested in the game again, unless they want to fork out money for another copy, which is ridiculous. Even then foreigners have literally no chance of buying a Korean copy of the game unless they have some sort of Korea contact willing to let them use their ID number to buy the game. This is going to be a big problem in for the community years after the last expansion, when there are fewer players dedicated to the competitive aspect of SC2, but for now Blizzard just won't care. This was what happened to BW and WC3 but they survived because those games allow international competitions across multiple ladder realms.
You're mad you have to.... learn to play on a myriad of maps against random opponents... As opposed to running the same map and same matchup over and over...
How is that not stagnant. SC2 has so many strategies that work, it's a lot of build order losses and slight economic gains.
People that complain, no offense here, all seem to be lower level players. It's silly. Check iccup page at top BW players. It's like 75% of games on 1 map. That's it.
Not to mention these new iccup maps that are HUGE with small chokes, massive middle grounds, and no towers aren't SC2 maps... they're bitchy zerg player maps that want to play BW2 not SC2. The new maps I've seen and played are so horrible to me.
Also -- it's not even been out a year... lol SC2 is very very new still.
I love everyone bitching for new maps. So you can cheese and not have to play SC2 the way it's meant to be played, and play it like broodwar? There's a myriad of maps, and each has specific builds and strategies you can run, and not run. The better you get, you learn that. And you stop trying to 15 hatch on delta quadrant, or 1-1-1 on scrap vs a 3 gate vr toss.
In short -- learn to play the game. Stop taking some 'friends' (fake) words for the reason the game is 'bad' The game is great. Get goood, and have practice partners, and play on those maps you want. Simple as that. Ladder can't institute new maps that haven't been played on massively, because all that does it cause new imbalances and people get mad that you can't win xxx on xxx map. Ladder is meant to be competitive. The map pool is just fine for how long the game is out.
People don't like backdoors. Or the cliffs and rocks on kulas. Or the towers to sight maps and rushes. It's the way to game is meant. Backdoors and cliffs add a dynamic to the game. Zergs hate LT because a thor drop? Play a good zerg. I thor drop, they roach drop my main and win in 9 minutes.
In short -- I think it's a low level player complaining problem. People that play professionally? Sure, I can see them getting tired of the maps as they've all played 5000+ games. For me, average 2800 master level joe with under 600 solo games -- I love it.
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?
Custom games is also retarded. If you host on a map that isnt popular no one can see it.
Basically yes, 2 worst things in sc2 is custom games by popularity (i mean...join should be joining someone's game...) and the ladder that doesn't tell how good you are...
The ladder does tell how good you are. Just hold it with a grain of salt. Looking for people around your level? There are threads for that. Or, ladder, and people you enjoy'ed games with, or the race you need practice with, you ask them to add you.
Most of my practice partners are from 2.3-3.2k masters, and I'm only 2.8. Stop being whiney, and make an attempt to find people at your level to play with. Simple as that.
No cross realm is literally the worst part about this new bnet,usually when someone is tired of 1v1ing on the same server due to whatever reasons(cheese/bad attitude/no competition), they can't try out another one to learn more or get interested in the game again, unless they want to fork out money for another copy, which is ridiculous. Even then foreigners have literally no chance of buying a Korean copy of the game unless they have some sort of Korea contact willing to let them use their ID number to buy the game.
Again... How many times in a row do you really lose to cheese? If you're any good, it's a sliding scale. Unless you play the SAME person over and over, no two people run the same game the same way. Again, I fall back to, in my mind, low level players that take no strides to learn. They copy builds they see, the greedy greedy econ builds we all run at higher levels (usually) and can't seem to understand why they lose to a mm rush, or a 4 gate, or a 7RR into slings. Well, duh. You have no leg to stand on with game play. You're a copy cat, and you have no mechanics to make you able to over come a build order loss like going 1 rax fe vs a 4 gate.
What you want is to be able to smurf, and dominate low level players to make yourself feel good that you can beat a platinum player with mass reapers. This 1 name per account is golden. It forces people to stick to one name or buy another (only reason is for another realm, otherwise you're kinda sad IMO) I was the KING of smurfs in TFT. Never had a 150 win icon, ever. Now, this system changed it all for me. Started in gold, about 20 games I'm diamond. Learn to play the game and not base off replays or tournaments and professional players for your own opinions. If you suck, admit you suck. Don't say it's the game or the maps or the imbalance.
Also -- fucking cheese. What is cheese? Something you lose to is ALWAYS cheese to people. Cheese is a 6 pool. A proxy 4 gate. Proxy VRs. Proxy barracks marine scv all in. It's a game winning or losing strat with no way out if it's countered or scouted. That's cheese.
A plain cut and dry 4 gate is by no means cheese. It's a stong strategy that with scouting, is even still hard to hold off. The 3 roach -> sling rush vs toss isn't cheese, it's a well timed and executed all in attack that wins because you try to play greedy and they make you pay for it.
I agree with almost everything your friends said, I dont ladder cause its... well, i just dont feel like doing it. Its like doing homework... i have to, but i dont want to. I cannot play against an specific race cause in the chat everyone is quiet (which is scary) and you are forced to play against random races in random maps all the time.
"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 can. It's called "go into a chat room and call out for practice partners". Maybe Blizzard can consider an option for custom games which allows you to filter potential opponents by rating and race. Elsewise, it's fine. The ladder is about rating the player base under equal conditions. Cherrypicking individual matchups doesn't allow the ladder to do that.
On February 12 2011 19:26 Arisen wrote: "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."
The lack of more than one account is an issue on its own that needs to be resolved. And no, I don't really consider "allowing players to buy a second 'account' for their Blizzard game account" that answer.
Keeping in line with tournament maps I can get behind, but being able to pick map+match up in a ladder match would be a terrible idea and should be stuck with custom games.
I feel like allot of people are just ignoring the basic premise behind the specific map/race point. The point isn't to play only metalopolis all the time because it's my best map, the point is to create unique styles of play based on a map and perfect it through the ladder, as well as to provide specific practice in a competitive setting. It's almost impossible to do this with practice partners as developing a build that is effective requires you to play against multiple stratagies to see if the build can handle them in a competitive setting betwixt a large range in skills (create against worse players, perfect among strong players).
As to the people saying that you'd end up with a ton of ZvX on Shakuras/Scrap, PvX on steppes, etc, how is that any different from now? Esentially the map pool atm is Metal, Shakuras (maybe). LT (maybe) blistering sands, and xel'naga. Why? Because those are the only maps not completely thumbed down by a race (and in the case of LT and Shakuras, many do). I don't know a zerg who doesn't have Steppes and Delta thumbed down, and as a result, you don't see games v zerg there almost at all.
I must be misreading some of these posts because it looks like you guys want to pick what matchup you play on ladder... which obviously defeats the whole purpose of ladder.
Edit: to the post above me, doesn't it really lower the integrity of the ladder if you allow people to choose what map and what race they play against?
Blizzard ladder is fine. Randomness is what makes it fair and not 1-dimensional.
Multiple accounts would be a horrible idea. Ladder Rankings would be flooded so many smurf accounts and ruin things like being in top 10% or being top 1000 in your server. You'll never be able to determine this (or come close). It would be like taking 2v2 (preset teams)'s rankings seriously--too many teams. The correct solution would be able to use their ladder system for unranked games.
Also, people have been QQing about these same issues for a year now.
The game JUST came out! Starcraft 1 took a good while before it became the game it is today. Most people probably wouldnt care about the maps if pro's didnt say anything. Community maps dont NEED to be in the ladder yet because they arent extensively tested out yet. We havent been playing the maps for almost a year as there has been maps put in and removed. They cant change the map pool every month because it would be to hectic for tournaments. Tournaments arent event using custom maps fully yet.
-Choosing a map/opponent in ladder would be dumb because that pretty much takes away the entire ladder experience as ladder is supposed to be random. Ladder helps more with tourneys because you dont know every map and opponent your gonna face.
-More accounts would just clog up the ladder divisions with tons of people that didn't play. So yes you will pretty much have to suck it up and get your ass handed to you a bunch of time as your skill just wouldn't be where its supposed to be or join a custom game. Playing against a computer to get down timings is fine if you have to worry about what the opponent is doing.
Well I never did iCCup but how often do they change the map pool? Every 5~6months? If they do it that often switching to BW for (or partly for) that reason is valid, however if not it's kind of unfair to change game using that reason. Since blizzard is already experiment with new maps. (Maybe they're still the same as beta, could be, but that was BETA not the actual game, I wasn't lucky enough/didn't try enough to get a beta key if they'd changed the map pool after 2months i'd feel WTF why do they change the map pool so damn often, possibly together with a bunch of other people who never had beta. What I mean is there are two parties involved, not just people who play since early beta days.)
Some extra options like "find custom game vs.Y map: A" Would be amazing though to practise specific match ups. However could get you in an endless waiting line if there is no Y that is also looking for a custom game on map: A. (not likely with the player base sc2 has) Would be great non the less, and i'd love to see that implanted. Now i think about it, that would greatly improve the game online experience/quality.
I however think for laddering that random opponent, random map is the only way to go. Else playerX can just play MapA he likes a lot, vs race Y (his best match up) all day and be 'at the top' in no time, without actually being good.
I'm also big in favor of having 1 'off-account' attached to your main account, so you could mess around a bit with other races/lower leagues. I am in favor though, that you could see in a players profile that it is an 'off-account' or 'main-account' together with a link to the players main/off-account profile. To 'avoid' people who go to low lvl leagues to just get easy cheese wins, and then lose on purpose for 50times just to stay in bronze, that's no fun for low level players either.
I feel your friend makes a big mistake comparing all the good things a 12year old game has gotten over it's life spam to a half a year old game.
I just don't see how they are "supporting E-sports"...
Okay a lot of people need to realize something: Blizzard is an entertainment company, NOT an eSports organization. In my opinion, anything they do for eSports is more than they're 'obligated' to, because that's NOT the reason their company exists. We should be grateful that they're listening to the competitive community and attempting to better eSports.
Also, I think we have to wait. I think a lot of these issues will be fixed in the future. Hell, some of it might not even be that far away. The PTR is testing five new maps right now, we could see some of those in the near future. This game is young. Release was July right? That's six months, and we've had progress since then.
Basically, give it some time, and don't feel entitled that because you play SC2, Blizzard is required to listen to your every whim.
I'd say yes, mainly because how the game is balanced right now. Being inaccessible and frustrating to new players.
Also while i guess most of you are fine playing 1v1's over and over again, but a little variety would'nt hurt. More official game modes with MM and ladders would be oh so cool for casuals. It might get figured out by modders pretty much and many awesome UMS will prosper but i understand matchmaking is impossible without blizzard implementing it for custom games.
Generally Sc2 feels so beta'ish. Anyways fingers crossed for Hots.
The problem with the ladder will be more pronounced in a few months; GSL maps will likely be more widely established, perhaps some of the ICCup maps will see more use too given they're already in play in the ESL and Blizzard is itself introducing new maps in the PTR that will be yet another different set for people to play. Now you'll have three map pools, of which the one that is most irrelevant for e-sports is the only one you can have automatic matchmaking for.
The best solution is probably to just add all those maps to the ladder map pool and then maybe design a more sophisticated system for which maps you don't want to play on, or do want to play on. An alternative might be to let people create seperate ladders: create an interface a map needs to have to rank players participating in it, and then you can just select several of those maps for a ladder for people to play on that uses the Blizzard matchmaking. If Blizzard is afraid of there being too many ladders, they could limit it to organizations such as GSL, team liquid, ESL.
On February 13 2011 01:16 raf3776 wrote: The game JUST came out! Starcraft 1 took a good while before it became the game it is today. .
How many times does this need to be posted? Can't we just ban this statement? Firstly it didn't 'just come out' and secondly it should BUILD on what Starcraft did. They are not going from scratch here at all. This stupid fucking comment posted in every thread should be banned, seriously it's stupid.
Practicing on specific maps and specific match ups is nice, unfortunatley, due to the nature of their ladder they can't really do that because of the league system. You may be 3500 masters on metal v terran but 2500 diamond on LT v zerg or something, and the system wouldn't know how to rank you without an extremely complex algorithm. To get this I feel like you would have to not want specific rankings.
I just don't see how they are "supporting E-sports"...
Okay a lot of people need to realize something: Blizzard is an entertainment company, NOT an eSports organization. In my opinion, anything they do for eSports is more than they're 'obligated' to, because that's NOT the reason their company exists. We should be grateful that they're listening to the competitive community and attempting to better eSports.
Maybe it's BLIZZARD who needs to realize this then, and let actual eSports companies control the proscene? Why should we have to suck up to Blizzard because they say something about supporting eSports now and then, wheres their actions to back up these words? I'd prefer they just keep out of it completely. Balance your game, fix Bnet and leave it be. Leave the proscene to be run by others. I think we'd all be much happier if there was already SC2 proleague and MSL2/OSL2 and divisions for SC2 in each major proteam, but it was Blizzard who decided they wanted more of the pie than completely free mass promotion and advertisement. Other companies would kill to have their games played professionally on TV regularly as promotion, yet Blizzard decides that isn't enough for them.
If you had people able to choose maps and races to play against there would be no games. Terrans/Protoss would only choose maps they are favored on and Zergs would only play cross position meta and shakuras/scrap. It would pretty much mean mirror matches all the time. Pretty terrible Idea imo
also
How many times does this need to be posted? Can't we just ban this statement? Firstly it didn't 'just come out' and secondly it should BUILD on what Starcraft did. They are not going from scratch here at all. This stupid fucking comment posted in every thread should be banned, seriously it's stupid
You clearly did not play SC1 at all in the first 2 years of its exisitance. Or were old enough to realise it. SC1 was barely playable competitively until Brood War and subsequent patches came out (over a year later). Yes I agree they should of built on that system, but clearly they didnt. So getting your panties in a twist over the timeframe to fix all the issues and bashing people who mention the relative short timeframe of SC2's lifespan isnt helping anyone.
On February 12 2011 19:36 blith wrote: 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"...
They are supporting Bobby Kotick's wallet. It's kind of a joke that these things aren't implemented yet to be honest. And yes the SC2 ladder demotivates me from playing the game lately. We need better maps first of all.
I just don't see how they are "supporting E-sports"...
Okay a lot of people need to realize something: Blizzard is an entertainment company, NOT an eSports organization. In my opinion, anything they do for eSports is more than they're 'obligated' to, because that's NOT the reason their company exists.
I don't have any links to a source, but I'm 100% sure I've heard Blizzard saying they want SC2 to become an e-sport, they even have an e-sport team working...
We should be grateful that they're listening to the competitive community and attempting to better eSports.
Really? REALLY? hahaha hahaha
Blizzard needs SC2 to become an e-sport. To become that SC2 needs to be competitive. The community is their best source to model SC2 as it should be.
I'm just gonna chime in with the chorus here. The ability to choose different race/map combos, or play against opponents you deem as not at your level, is available via chat channels, clans, and the custom game interface. Sure, it's not optimal, but it's also not really functionality that the bulk of users are clamoring for.
The multiple accounts concept is one that I think more people care about, but you mention and then totally ignore smurfing, which I think is Blizzard's main fear with this. Sure, there's something to be gained from playing against people below your normal level, but again that's something you can accomplish through custom games. If you can't find any platinum players who want to be walked all over by someone in high masters, I don't think Blizz should be building in functionality to let you beat up on newbs without them having a chance to say no. I think there is potentially a case for a limited (I've thought maybe 1 per race) number of accounts (or even just separate ladder rankings) per key as a way to allow people to off-race without leading to excessive smurfing.
Generally, I think all the posts like this are coming from people who are very serious about the game and they tend not to consider that Blizzard is trying to balance the competing interests of many different user groups here. Sure, they want to make the best game possible for serious professional level players, but not at the expense of making the multiplayer experience awful for lower level players with an excess of smurfing (see PA comic below). Similarly, the new custom game interface isn't really optimal for serious players trying to grind out practice games, but if WC3 is any indication there's a whole community of people whose entire SC2 multiplayer experience will be a few practice league games and a billion custom games, and this new system might be just right for them.
As to the maps, I suspect (well, really just hope) they'll be releasing more in time, and will start including fan favorite custom maps and GSL/other third party maps. It's also possible that as time goes by and the percentage of players who are playing competitively goes up, Blizzard's priorities will change and we'll start to see them focus more on designing just for top-tier players, but I think they're still trying to attract new players at this phase of the game's lifecycle, rather than worrying about keeping old ones.
So now 7 months after release people complain once again about features or lack of features that we knew about before the game was even release yet they still bought it. The ladder in SC1/BW was also completely terrible compared to what we have now, and smurfing? All that did was make the WC3 ladder worse, you never knew who you would get matched up against, and it was common for people to just constantly play 50-100 games and then start a new account. Plenty of pros have already switched races with nothing but a small and non-permanent drop in rating, if that is too painful for you, then spend the $60 for a new account. It is so childish how some of you guys deride Blizzard for actually wanted to make money. Maybe you should take a look around, how many game companies actually still make a esports quality game? It's almost always yearly releases of horseshit, if Blizzard cannot make money with this model, then it is bad for all of us. Unless you don't care about new releases, and in that case, why aren't you still playing BW?
How long must this go on until people either stop playing or stop complaining?
The current ladder system is far from the best; I agree. But at the same time, I think the matchmaking system is a much bigger blessing than a lot of people realize.
When I go back and play BW, one of the worst things about it is trying to find a suitable game on b.net (none of my friends play anymore, and I can't really play on Iccup since I have a mac). With SC2 it is just SO easy to jump on and find a game in seconds, which I love.
Ideally, it would be awesome to have a mix of BW ladder and SC2 ladder. Able to set up games with any maps and play against whoever you want, but also be able to use a matchmaking system. I'm sure there are plenty of problems with that system (i.e. map pool of custom games vs map pool of matchmaking games), but I still think they could find a nice middle ground between that and the current system.
I just don't see how they are "supporting E-sports"...
Okay a lot of people need to realize something: Blizzard is an entertainment company, NOT an eSports organization. In my opinion, anything they do for eSports is more than they're 'obligated' to, because that's NOT the reason their company exists. We should be grateful that they're listening to the competitive community and attempting to better eSports.
Also, I think we have to wait. I think a lot of these issues will be fixed in the future. Hell, some of it might not even be that far away. The PTR is testing five new maps right now, we could see some of those in the near future. This game is young. Release was July right? That's six months, and we've had progress since then.
Basically, give it some time, and don't feel entitled that because you play SC2, Blizzard is required to listen to your every whim.
It always makes me happy to see that there are still sane people left in the world.
Also, all you iCCup people did this to yourselves-- Blizzard doesn't want to lose control over SC2 the way this did over BW. That's life.
Basically comes down to this, Activi$ion doesn't give a crap about the more serious gaming community, all they want is money. Guess what, that's just how big companies work, they need to make a profit. Now you wonder: "well isn't activi$ion afraid they'll push it too far and alienate their customers?" No, one single incident last year proves that the majority of the gaming community is a complete and utter joke. They released some dumb pet with wings on WoW FOR 25 DOLLARS, HELLO!!!! and literally hundreds of thousands of people bought it within an hour. They made MILLIONS within a couple of hours. Really, if everyone's this stupid you deserve to have your wallet sucked dry. People who can see through this ridiculous marketing strategy are in a very minor minority and they'll still make millions from all the other idiots buying, I dunno, a female marine for 200 bucks (a month). It doesn't matter what you do, you lose because idiots with their parents cash to burn are in the majority.
I think the reason they don't allow 2 accounts is because some diamond league person or better could just lose all placements and start abusing some noobs... just the way I see it
For those of you that think bnet2.0 is a downgrade, I'd like for you to go play some BW on bnet again. 2.0 may not be all rainbows and butterflies yet, but it certainly is an upgrade, and programming the new battlenet will take some time. You can't write this stuff over night.
2.0 is worth it if for nothing else we have a good match making system. And yes, it is good even if you can't understand it. The best are at the top, the worst are at the bottom, what else do you want?
Can we just be satisfied for a few moments? It's not like they threw their hands in the air after release and said they were done. It's an ongoing project.
I'm not blindly in favor of every move blizzard makes, but give them some time - geez, they have, after all, given us several of the best games ever made.
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."
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.
First of all, I agree with all the issues that I deleted in the OP. I think it represents the feeling a lot of players, including me.
But this one point seems problematic to me. The ladder is constructed to allow the best players to advance. If a laddering player could now choose to play one single matchup or on one single map, he could probably advance fast because he figured out all the details of this matchup or this certain map. Problem is this doesn't make him an overall better player in comparison to those with the same rank. It seems kind of exploitive if there were the possibility for a player to focus on such a small part of the game and advancing on the ladder on such low effort only. A player who only plays one map and one matchup might get an insane win ratio there, but he's not really a better player than those who earned their advance in the ladder by playing all matchups and maps. Those are the ones who might have a chance in tournaments and those are the ones who are considered the better players and are therefore awarded with a higher ranking. I read the op well, and i know that is not the intention of your friend. He doesn't want to be able to exploit a thumbs up on maps and matchups to abuse this system to advance on the ladder; he rather wants specific training and improvement. And I agree that playing a lot of games in a row on a certain map in a certain matchup helps your play a lot. But you gotta keep in mind that if this possibility is allowed to all players to have ranked games on one map and in one matchup, this fact is unfair to those who play all matchups and maps. It is one of those changes that could mean an improvement to most players but would open it to abuse by a few. My advice is: just get a practice partner and play games with him. That's what Day9 often advises and it makes sense. Custom games aren't ranked (which is a good thing considering the possible abuse), but you can practice as much as u want.
-First off it's a lot*. -Second if you're going to abbreviate StarCraft 2, it's SC2, NOT star2. That's just gay. -Plenty of other blatant spelling, puntuation, and grammar errors makes this look less professional :/ -Learn effect vs. affect etc, how to properly compare contrast, how to create an arguments not solely based on a discussion revolving around just you and your friends, etc.
------------------Actual Problems With Your Thread-----------------------
The conversation lasted all of 5 or so minutes, but it has really go me to thinking as to the longevity of sc2.
-Five minutes of two noobs is not a good balance discussion. Discussing SC2's longevity is nearly pointless. We're all still playing after a year, there are two more expansions to be released, and contrary to what you think Blizzard does in fact listen!
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.
-Blizzard DOES have plans to adopt community maps in the future. How annoying would it be if we had maps switched on us every two weeks! 3-4 months per map rotation is a good thing.
-ICCUP was a joke in that you only had to know one map with one race to be good. No citation needed. It may have had more maps to choose from, but was far from having current/new maps. + Show Spoiler +
On February 13 2011 02:40 Antoine wrote: People always say no new maps is the problem compared to ICCUP, but ICCUP maps are majority old. like, really old. Python, HBR, and FS are 3 of the most played maps, if not the most played, and all are 18+ months old, and python is 4 years old.
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?
On February 13 2011 02:24 Spekulatius wrote: First of all, I agree with all the issues that I deleted in the OP. I think it represents the feeling a lot of players, including me.
But this one point seems problematic to me. The ladder is constructed to allow the best players to advance. If a laddering player could now choose to play one single matchup or on one single map, he could probably advance fast because he figured out all the details of this matchup or this certain map. Problem is this doesn't make him an overall better player in comparison to those with the same rank. It seems kind of exploitive if there were the possibility for a player to focus on such a small part of the game and advancing on the ladder on such low effort only. A player who only plays one map and one matchup might get an insane win ratio there, but he's not really a better player than those who earned their advance in the ladder by playing all matchups and maps. Those are the ones who might have a chance in tournaments and those are the ones who are considered the better players and are therefore awarded with a higher ranking. I read the op well, and i know that is not the intention of your friend. He doesn't want to be able to exploit a thumbs up on maps and matchups to abuse this system to advance on the ladder; he rather wants specific training and improvement. And I agree that playing a lot of games in a row on a certain map in a certain matchup helps your play a lot. But you gotta keep in mind that if this possibility is allowed to all players to have ranked games on one map and in one matchup, this fact is unfair to those who play all matchups and maps. It is one of those changes that could mean an improvement to most players but would open it to abuse by a few. My advice is: just get a practice partner and play games with him. That's what Day9 often advises and it makes sense. Custom games aren't ranked (which is a good thing considering the possible abuse), but you can practice as much as u want.
-If you want to practice a single map vs a single race you CAN play custom maps! TA-DA!! Doing this in ladder however would be too abusable. Also by Blizzard so called forcing you to play more than one map, it allows Blizzard to test for balance issues across a wide range of maps. (Imagine if we only played on 2-3 maps and got all our statistics off those maps)
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...Suck it up and get my ass handed to me a bunch?
-Yes, if you are a competitive player you probably will have multiple accounts. You mistake your friends casual play as someone who competes in tournaments for a living. Before I went inactive I was in the top 200 fairly often, and I never felt the need for a smurf account, except for when I was bored. (Imagine how ridiculous it would be if we have one person with 10 different accounts in the same ladder! Too much clutter.)
I really didn't want to commit this much time to one article, but I think a lot of people will jump on your bandwagon without properly thinking trough the arguments. :[
edited with other peoples points to make arguments more sound/explained.
On February 13 2011 02:17 danl9rm wrote: For those of you that think bnet2.0 is a downgrade, I'd like for you to go play some BW on bnet again.
Look, I don't mean to be rude, but has anyone on this forum ever played Warcraft III and used its iteration of Battle.net, or does everybody just pretend it never existed?
2.0 may not be all rainbows and butterflies yet, but it certainly is an upgrade, and programming the new battlenet will take some time. You can't write this stuff over night.
You're correct that they can't write this stuff overnight. According to news articles written during the development of Starcraft II, the game was delayed approximately nine months so Battle.net could be overhauled.
Blizzard attributed the delay to needing additional time to produce the new version of Battle.net, its online gaming service. Though few details are available on the new portal, Activision CEO Bobby Kotick likened it to Xbox Live in its combination of gameplay and social networking features.
"Over the past couple of weeks, it has become clear that it will take longer than expected to prepare the new Battle.net for the launch of the game," said Blizzard in a statement.
Added the company: "The upgraded Battle.net is an integral part of the StarCraft II experience and will be an essential part of all of our games moving forward. This extra development time will be critical to help us realize our vision for the service."
That's why people are disappointed with the service. They didn't delay the game so the service could be superior to anything out there. They delayed it so all future Blizzard games could be routed through the service a la World of Warcraft. We were also told that the service would be so good that we wouldn't want LAN.
“While this was a difficult decision for us, we felt that moving away from LAN play and directing players to our upgraded Battle.net service was the best option to ensure a quality multiplayer experience with StarCraft II and safeguard against piracy.” – Bob Colyaco, Blizzard Public Relations Representative
I just turned this into a Battle.net 2.0 pissing match, didn't I? Dammit so much.
People always say no new maps is the problem compared to ICCUP, but ICCUP maps are majority old. like, really old. Python, HBR, and FS are 3 of the most played maps, if not the most played, and all are 18+ months old, and python is 4 years old.
On February 12 2011 19:51 Resolve wrote: 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...
Yes, if we could name custom game. I'd even be a lot happier if they added a league qualifier 1v1 lost temple - diamond.
I think people forget what b.net 1.0 really was like. 2.0 is far from perfect, but I being able to queue up a game and get matched up against similarly skilled opponents is awesome!
Regarding multiple accounts, I bet within the next 6 months we can add accounts - for a price...
On February 13 2011 02:36 KillerPlague wrote: -First off it's a lot*. -Second if you're going to abbreviate StarCraft 2, it's SC2, NOT star2. That's just gay. -Plenty of other blatant spelling, puntuation, and grammar errors makes this look less professional :/ -Learn effect vs. affect etc, how to properly compare contrast, how to create an arguments not solely based on a discussion revolving around just you and your friends, etc.
------------------Actual Problems With Your Thread-----------------------
The conversation lasted all of 5 or so minutes, but it has really go me to thinking as to the longevity of sc2.
-Five minutes of two noobs is not a good balance discussion. Discussing SC2's longevity is nearly pointless. We're all still playing after a year, there are two more expansions to be released, and contrary to what you think Blizzard does in fact listen!
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.
-Blizzard DOES have plans to adopt community maps in the future. How annoying would it be if we had maps switched on us every two weeks! 3-4 months per map rotation is a good thing.
-ICCUP was a joke in that you only had to know one map with one race to be good. No citation needed.
On February 13 2011 02:24 Spekulatius wrote: First of all, I agree with all the issues that I deleted in the OP. I think it represents the feeling a lot of players, including me.
But this one point seems problematic to me. The ladder is constructed to allow the best players to advance. If a laddering player could now choose to play one single matchup or on one single map, he could probably advance fast because he figured out all the details of this matchup or this certain map. Problem is this doesn't make him an overall better player in comparison to those with the same rank. It seems kind of exploitive if there were the possibility for a player to focus on such a small part of the game and advancing on the ladder on such low effort only. A player who only plays one map and one matchup might get an insane win ratio there, but he's not really a better player than those who earned their advance in the ladder by playing all matchups and maps. Those are the ones who might have a chance in tournaments and those are the ones who are considered the better players and are therefore awarded with a higher ranking. I read the op well, and i know that is not the intention of your friend. He doesn't want to be able to exploit a thumbs up on maps and matchups to abuse this system to advance on the ladder; he rather wants specific training and improvement. And I agree that playing a lot of games in a row on a certain map in a certain matchup helps your play a lot. But you gotta keep in mind that if this possibility is allowed to all players to have ranked games on one map and in one matchup, this fact is unfair to those who play all matchups and maps. It is one of those changes that could mean an improvement to most players but would open it to abuse by a few. My advice is: just get a practice partner and play games with him. That's what Day9 often advises and it makes sense. Custom games aren't ranked (which is a good thing considering the possible abuse), but you can practice as much as u want.
-If you want to practice a single map vs a single race you CAN play custom maps! TA-DA!! Doing this in ladder however would be too abusable. Also by Blizzard so called forcing you to play more than one map, it allows Blizzard to test for balance issues across a wide range of maps. (Imagine if we only played on 2-3 maps and got all our statistics off those maps)
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...Suck it up and get my ass handed to me a bunch?
-Yes, if you are a competitive player you probably will have multiple accounts. You mistake your friends casual play as someone who competes in tournaments for a living. Before I went inactive I was in the top 200 fairly often, and I never felt the need for a smurf account, except for when I was bored. (Imagine how ridiculous it would be if we have one person with 10 different accounts in the same ladder! Too much clutter.)
I really didn't want to commit this much time to one article, but I think a lot of people will jump on your bandwagon without properly thinking trough the arguments. :[
edited with other peoples points to make arguments more sound/explained.
umadbro? Seriously though, you're a tool. You don't know my friend, or me, or any facets of our play, yet your write us off as though you do. Also, really, "that's gay?" I hear gaybashing is cool. But seriously, though, allot of people call it star2 (IdrA off the top of my head), I have no idea what your problem is. So many of your presumptions are flawed. I wasn't making an argument, I was posting a conversation between my friend and I that I found interesting, and posted it to see the communities opinion. If iCCup was such a joke, why are many pros today dissatisfied with bnet 2.0 vs. the iccup ladder then? There are so many points in your post that are just flawed/crass rantings of a douchenozzel who gets off on trying to appear intellectually superior to someone else over the internet.
ppl need to stop using the excuse "the game is still young" this game is NOT young. on the contrary, it is 13 years old. starcraft TWO is exactly what the name sugguests: A SEQUEL 12 years of "testing" with starcraft 1 should have given blizzard ample time to customize sc2 to its full potential
I agree Blizz should give pro scene more love about all the things OP said but at the same time not make things worse for casual. I'm casual player and this game is perfect for ppl like me. All the things OP is listing (ladder, low amount of maps etc) are perfect for casuals. And as casual I like about the idea of all the pros playing the same ladder as me although I might never play against them.
On February 13 2011 03:02 lilky wrote: ppl need to stop using the excuse "the game is still young" this game is NOT young. on the contrary, it is 13 years old. starcraft TWO is exactly what the name sugguests: A SEQUEL 12 years of "testing" with starcraft 1 should have given blizzard ample time to customize sc2 to its full potential
On February 13 2011 02:50 DusTerr wrote: I think people forget what b.net 1.0 really was like. 2.0 is far from perfect, but I being able to queue up a game and get matched up against similarly skilled opponents is awesome!
I think allot of people are making this argument, but, no one is contesting bnet 1.0 is better than bnet 2.0. There are several people, however, that feel that iCCup was superior to bnet 2.0, as bnet basically died when custom ladders (I believe PGtour was the first) hit the scene. These ladders similarly allowed play against people of the same relative skill level, while allowing custom maps, and several other features (custom games were much easier, lobbies, etc.
I just feel that blizzard should have been building on the successes of iCCup, not the failures of Bnet 1.0.
On February 13 2011 02:36 KillerPlague wrote: -First off it's a lot*. -Second if you're going to abbreviate StarCraft 2, it's SC2, NOT star2. That's just gay. -Plenty of other blatant spelling, puntuation, and grammar errors makes this look less professional :/ -Learn effect vs. affect etc, how to properly compare contrast, how to create an arguments not solely based on a discussion revolving around just you and your friends, etc.
------------------Actual Problems With Your Thread-----------------------
The conversation lasted all of 5 or so minutes, but it has really go me to thinking as to the longevity of sc2.
-Five minutes of two noobs is not a good balance discussion. Discussing SC2's longevity is nearly pointless. We're all still playing after a year, there are two more expansions to be released, and contrary to what you think Blizzard does in fact listen!
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.
-Blizzard DOES have plans to adopt community maps in the future. How annoying would it be if we had maps switched on us every two weeks! 3-4 months per map rotation is a good thing.
-ICCUP was a joke in that you only had to know one map with one race to be good. No citation needed.
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?
On February 13 2011 02:24 Spekulatius wrote: First of all, I agree with all the issues that I deleted in the OP. I think it represents the feeling a lot of players, including me.
But this one point seems problematic to me. The ladder is constructed to allow the best players to advance. If a laddering player could now choose to play one single matchup or on one single map, he could probably advance fast because he figured out all the details of this matchup or this certain map. Problem is this doesn't make him an overall better player in comparison to those with the same rank. It seems kind of exploitive if there were the possibility for a player to focus on such a small part of the game and advancing on the ladder on such low effort only. A player who only plays one map and one matchup might get an insane win ratio there, but he's not really a better player than those who earned their advance in the ladder by playing all matchups and maps. Those are the ones who might have a chance in tournaments and those are the ones who are considered the better players and are therefore awarded with a higher ranking. I read the op well, and i know that is not the intention of your friend. He doesn't want to be able to exploit a thumbs up on maps and matchups to abuse this system to advance on the ladder; he rather wants specific training and improvement. And I agree that playing a lot of games in a row on a certain map in a certain matchup helps your play a lot. But you gotta keep in mind that if this possibility is allowed to all players to have ranked games on one map and in one matchup, this fact is unfair to those who play all matchups and maps. It is one of those changes that could mean an improvement to most players but would open it to abuse by a few. My advice is: just get a practice partner and play games with him. That's what Day9 often advises and it makes sense. Custom games aren't ranked (which is a good thing considering the possible abuse), but you can practice as much as u want.
-If you want to practice a single map vs a single race you CAN play custom maps! TA-DA!! Doing this in ladder however would be too abusable. Also by Blizzard so called forcing you to play more than one map, it allows Blizzard to test for balance issues across a wide range of maps. (Imagine if we only played on 2-3 maps and got all our statistics off those maps)
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...Suck it up and get my ass handed to me a bunch?
-Yes, if you are a competitive player you probably will have multiple accounts. You mistake your friends casual play as someone who competes in tournaments for a living. Before I went inactive I was in the top 200 fairly often, and I never felt the need for a smurf account, except for when I was bored. (Imagine how ridiculous it would be if we have one person with 10 different accounts in the same ladder! Too much clutter.)
I really didn't want to commit this much time to one article, but I think a lot of people will jump on your bandwagon without properly thinking trough the arguments. :[
edited with other peoples points to make arguments more sound/explained.
umadbro? Seriously though, you're a tool. You don't know my friend, or me, or any facets of our play, yet your write us off as though you do. Also, really, "that's gay?" I hear gaybashing is cool. But seriously, though, allot of people call it star2 (IdrA off the top of my head), I have no idea what your problem is. So many of your presumptions are flawed. I wasn't making an argument, I was posting a conversation between my friend and I that I found interesting, and posted it to see the communities opinion. If iCCup was such a joke, why are many pros today dissatisfied with bnet 2.0 vs. the iccup ladder then? There are so many points in your post that are just flawed/crass rantings of a douchenozzel who gets off on trying to appear intellectually superior to someone else over the internet.
Thanks to all the constructive posts, though.
bahaha point well taken. perhaps i do get overly annoyed at minor details. iccup was actually a great design, but SC2's ladder makes it near obsolete in that it automatically finds someone near your level, quickly, and displays your ranking in a fairly obvious manner. A-D system wasn't bad, but it seemed as though 90% of the population was C- or below... As far as problem I have, I just highly disagree with you and your friends opinion. Everyone is quick to criticize, but nobody is willing to offer any better suggestions. Pointing to a ICCUP and saying "do that instead" isn't exactly constructive /signed douchenozzel
1. "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."
2. "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."
3. "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."
1. everyone avoided mirrors, everyone only played 1 of the featured maps. That was quite horrible in BW, it was so incredible hard to find someone willing to ZvZ on iccup. Also it was quite hard to get a game on monthy hall because noone like that map. I think its a good Idea that you cannot choose your matchup also its a good idea that you cant only play on specific maps/mu - just think about terrans only playing vs Z on steppes of war.
2. Another huge ass problem in BW were smurf accounts, think back if you ever player BW D tournaments were a lot harder than C-C+ tournaments were just because you could make an account within a minute. Yes i agree that there should be 3 different rankings for each race one (random counts to the race u spawned as) so you can easily offrace without your top position endangered.
3. Blizzard wont ever charge anything for lan latency or map packs - thats not like blizzard works. They rather charge horrific amounts for an expansion pack to give you 1 more units in multiplayer.
On February 13 2011 03:26 clickrush wrote: guys if you really think that the ICCup system is better than bnet2.0 then freaking make one for sc2. complaining doesnt get you anywhere.
That's against the TOS, so it's illegal to create one. iCCup was as well, but blizzard had long since stopped caring about BW, so they never pursued legal recourse.
1. The game is super new, I'm quite certain there are countless things people aren't even trying yet because they're too stuck on copying the brutal korean builds (read as "14 expand", "gas pool for ling speed", "4gate", and "Marine expand") to try similarly brutal things like infestor ling drops (this kills mineral lines faaaaast).
2. Yes, people hate the maps. I, personally, don't thumb down anything, because winning as zerg on steppes or delta makes me feel like a badass. But we've been hearing this for a while, from everyone. Sooner or later blizzard will give us awesome maps like Crevasse and Terminus
On February 12 2011 19:51 Resolve wrote: 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
I'm absolutely dire at both games. I prefer being matched with opponents that aren't ridiculously better or worse than me. The ladder system suits me perfectly. Before my placement matches i played a lot of customs on standard maps just to get better and not lose all of the placements (which i didn't but still ended up being bronze lolol). I'm pretty sure blizzard make games that will sell, the lobby (or whatever the system in BW) was horrible. Even if a lobby someone made had 1 latency bar, they still ended up being thirdies with 1 kB/s uploads and it's just not fun to play laggers or lag as a result of the host's crap internet. The fact is, this is a new game that blizzard want to go mainstream, by making it more streamlined for noobs to pickup and play, they ensure that the dollars will keep coming.
At the end of the day, no one is forcing you to ladder. If you hate the ladder system so much go create a league where you look for opponents yourself or just deal with it.
The reason multiple accounts are an issue is because of this region lock bullshit. If you truly want to play in an international competitive scene, you'll need KR, EU, and NA (or SEA), which means you'll be buying 3 copies of SC2 (that's $180 dollars!).
I will laugh when this game finally gets cracked and private servers can be used. DRM and closed sourcing hurt SC2, there's no denying it. It'll be like Spore, where the hacked versions will be more flexible and better compared to legitimate copies. Blizzard/Activision killed themselves trying to combat piracy.
Also, just the sheer amount of apologists here on TL, wow. "Omg blizz is trying hard as they can" and "u cant build bnet 2.0 in a day". Companies get graded on results, not effort. And so far, they have failed to deliver. This shitty, memory-leak ridden interface is precisely why I will not purchase Diablo III. Alt-tabbing is glitchy. Maps encourage 1/2base all-ins. Blizz didn't include clan chats until overwhelming complaints. Even then, it's buggy as hell. When people say "shut up blizzard can't build this in a day, look at BW", well guess what? It's no longer 1997, when feedback is scarce and resources are limited. It is 2011, with feedback like this everywhere. Blizzard even has the previous interface in BW! Is it that hard to just recycle the old bnet? Blizzard even managed to fuck up custom maps!
Issues with custom maps: -Popularity system is bugged (used to cap at 18 hours due to short integer mistake, noob programming by blizzard) -No search function: If I want to play nexus word wars, I have to scroll past 80 pages of "Lagless 1M zealots" and other trashy maps -"See more" function: If I want to go to a less "popular" map, I have to keep pressing this button, instead of just scrolling down, issue is compounded by lack of search feature -No titles (i.e. no NR20 anymore) -Autocountdown-What's worse is when you get trapped, when your opponent quits and the game starts up with only you in the lobby. Complemented by the inability to boot people in games you are hosting and start the game at your own volition -No LAN: random drops due to bnet's shitty server happen all the time.
Issues with Ladder: -Region locked -MMR/Points system is confusing, you'll never know how truly skilled you are. I can mass games and have more points than idra while lacking his skill -Leagues are broken: Massive disparity between low and high masters (kinda like D to D+ lol) -Unreliable server=frequent drops for no reason -Poorly matched opponents -No customization, instead only play on blizzard's shitty 1/2base maps
Issues with Blizzard: -Greedy -Noob programmers -Don't give a shit about feedback -Caters to casual players, not hardcore players. After all, casual players probably don't know much about clan chats and map issues anyways -Feedback on forums goes silenced, marked as "trolling" -No longer the same company
I won't even go into gameplay/balance...
If we want a change, I suppose we'll all have to boycott the expansion packs (but that's not going to happen, is it?)
On February 13 2011 02:50 DusTerr wrote: I think people forget what b.net 1.0 really was like. 2.0 is far from perfect, but I being able to queue up a game and get matched up against similarly skilled opponents is awesome!
I just feel that blizzard should have been building on the successes of iCCup, not the failures of Bnet 1.0.
Why would Blizzard copy the model of something thousands of people played over the model of something millions of people played?
1. "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."
2. "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."
3. "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."
1. everyone avoided mirrors, everyone only played 1 of the featured maps. That was quite horrible in BW, it was so incredible hard to find someone willing to ZvZ on iccup. Also it was quite hard to get a game on monthy hall because noone like that map. I think its a good Idea that you cannot choose your matchup also its a good idea that you cant only play on specific maps/mu - just think about terrans only playing vs Z on steppes of war.
2. Another huge ass problem in BW were smurf accounts, think back if you ever player BW D tournaments were a lot harder than C-C+ tournaments were just because you could make an account within a minute. Yes i agree that there should be 3 different rankings for each race one (random counts to the race u spawned as) so you can easily offrace without your top position endangered.
3. Blizzard wont ever charge anything for lan latency or map packs - thats not like blizzard works. They rather charge horrific amounts for an expansion pack to give you 1 more units in multiplayer.
1. That's why I'm suggesting a dual system, where you could participate in one or the other, or either. As it is, though, it's very hard to get good practice on a specific map using custom games (no lobbies, named games, etc), and near impossible on the ladder, as you'll most certainly not get the same match/matchup multiple times in a row on ladder, where you can be sure you're playing someone on your general skill level and facing diverse play.
2. I'm not saying smurfs weren't a problem, but not being able to drop your level down to practice and perfect a new style of play is also a problem, as this is where allot of great strategies came from in BW.
3. Do you work for Blizzard, and can put that in writing? Have you seen some of the things they charge money for in World of Warcraft? Did you know there are allot of people who are already asking for a new copy of star2 with LAN latency and are willing to pay for it?
On February 13 2011 02:50 DusTerr wrote: I think people forget what b.net 1.0 really was like. 2.0 is far from perfect, but I being able to queue up a game and get matched up against similarly skilled opponents is awesome!
I just feel that blizzard should have been building on the successes of iCCup, not the failures of Bnet 1.0.
Why would Blizzard copy the model of something thousands of people played over the model of something millions of people played?
Because popularity =/= quality. And the fact that most people who ever played BW never even heard of iccup and played nothing more then custom UMS on bnet 1.0
I started out agreeing with your points, but ended up disagreeing with some of them as well.
Stagnant/Imbalanced map pool and Blizzard's stubbornness over it - Agreed.
"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 one I disagree. The ladder system was constructed to rank people based on their overall abilities and although it has its flaws like the bonus pool and people just brute massing games their way to the top, it's a whole lot more reliable than if it lets you choose specifically which map you want to play on and which race you want to play against. Should I be able to choose to play every single ladder game on Steppes of War TvZ?
On that note, I do think that they should allow which race you want to play against in random custom games. I don't like the current map popularity system.
"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.
Just find a few practice partners. It's been much easier to do since the chat channels were implemented and things like 1v1 obs games became popular. I would indeed be concerned about the smurfing getting out of hand and I think the cons outweigh the pros if you allow for multiple accounts. One suggestion I have for Blizzard on this issue is maybe creating a separate "ladder" system where you don't gain or lose any points, but maintain a separate MMR, so that you get consistently matched up with people around your skill of whatever race you are practicing.
"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."
It is really too bad that there is no LAN, but I'm sure Blizzard will not budge an inch on this issue because Activision really wants an absolute control over their game and not allowing LAN is one way to reduce piracy. Notice I said reduce, not completely prevent.
On February 13 2011 02:50 DusTerr wrote: I think people forget what b.net 1.0 really was like. 2.0 is far from perfect, but I being able to queue up a game and get matched up against similarly skilled opponents is awesome!
I just feel that blizzard should have been building on the successes of iCCup, not the failures of Bnet 1.0.
Why would Blizzard copy the model of something thousands of people played over the model of something millions of people played?
Because that thing thousands of players played was what was left after 13 years of trial and error? Sure, more people played in bnet 1.0 because that's when the game was new/popular. When the actual fans of BW kept playing, the dumped Bnet as soon as possible. Why would they if bnet1.0 was a superior system to custom ladders?
I don't know if any of you guys or gals (or both) have had the same problem, but my friend and I are in bronze 2v2 and somehow we get pitted against Plat/Diamond ranked players frequently. I only really feel that they should have a more balanced way of deciding teams for 2v2.
I'm also heartbroken about the loss of players on iCCup. </3
I liked the idea that there would be a much larger mappool and instead of voting down, you vote up like 6-8 maps or something. I think that would be a much better system.
Though I honestly don't expect major changes to bnet before HotS...
On February 13 2011 03:43 Sein wrote: This one I disagree. The ladder system was constructed to rank people based on their overall abilities and although it has its flaws like the bonus pool and people just brute massing games their way to the top, it's a whole lot more reliable than if it lets you choose specifically which map you want to play on and which race you want to play against. Should I be able to choose to play every single ladder game on Steppes of War TvZ?
Why not? If that's the map/match up you like to play, go for it. Good luck finding more than 2 or 3 zergs who will play you on steppes though. At the end of the day, things like maps of the week prevent someone who only plays one match up on a certain map from getting to the top, as well as the community. If that one guy is just godly at this match/match up, but that's all he does, you'll just see players not play him, and he'll be forced to diversify.
god, go back to broodwar then!!!!! its a fantastic game and why WOULDNT you go back. except that the graphics are muddy and horrible and the ai is so bad that playing the game is 90% overcoming the shortcomings of your unit ai and 10% strategy. dont get me wrong, i LOVE bw but sc2 is far superior in terms of gameplay.
On February 13 2011 03:50 IntoTheheart wrote: I don't know if any of you guys or gals (or both) have had the same problem, but my friend and I are in bronze 2v2 and somehow we get pitted against Plat/Diamond ranked players frequently. I only really feel that they should have a more balanced way of deciding teams for 2v2.
I'm also heartbroken about the loss of players on iCCup. </3
your mmr is mostly likely equal to that of a plat/diamond player and you just havnt played enough 2v2 games to be propperly placed.
i mean this is pretty obvious.
also..... about iccup, maybe if you love it, you should just let it die peacefully. and if it comes back then cherish it, but if not. then that is that.
On February 13 2011 03:31 Ghost Prototype wrote: 1. The game is super new, I'm quite certain there are countless things people aren't even trying yet because they're too stuck on copying the brutal korean builds (read as "14 expand", "gas pool for ling speed", "4gate", and "Marine expand") to try similarly brutal things like infestor ling drops (this kills mineral lines faaaaast).
2. Yes, people hate the maps. I, personally, don't thumb down anything, because winning as zerg on steppes or delta makes me feel like a badass. But we've been hearing this for a while, from everyone. Sooner or later blizzard will give us awesome maps like Crevasse and Terminus
agreed, its just too bad crevasse and terminus arnt that badass lol well i guess well see what they have in store.
On February 13 2011 04:03 charlie420247 wrote: god, go back to broodwar then!!!!! its a fantastic game and why WOULDNT you go back. except that the graphics are muddy and horrible and the ai is so bad that playing the game is 90% overcoming the shortcomings of your unit ai and 10% strategy. dont get me wrong, i LOVE bw but sc2 is far superior in terms of gameplay.
maps will come in time
PLAY CUSTOM GAMES!!!!!!!!!!!!!
LOL don't post if you don't know a fucking thing about bw. 10% strategy my ass.
As for the topic, I feel a healthy rotation of ladder maps is all thats necessary to improve the ladder experience, however if we are still laddering on maps like Steppes and Delta Quad when HOTS comes out, I may lose all hope and faith in Blizzard.
I think that blizzard's ladder system is fine EXCEPT for the fact that they have control over the map pool. Blizzard probably won't want to change the map pool as quickly as say, ICCUP used to, because most people on the lowers levels wouldn't like it I think.
while reading this thread, I have found that I think the biggest issue is that it is impossible to face a certain matchup on a certain map, so I thought, isn't this relatively easy to fix?
what if there was an additional button in the ladder where you can say: I want to play on this map in this matchup, and the matchmaker would find a suitable opponent for you. what about farming of points? you might say, well, what if the matchmaker just gives you a tenth of the points you should have gotten, and conversely, lose a tenth of the points you would have lost, while the other player loses/gains the normal amount of points.
(or for that matter, you might not gain/lose any poins at all, that would work too)
this way, you would be able to practice against a random opponent without much fear of losing points while you cant reach master through only playing a single matchup on a single map.
Really it just comes down to the SC2 custom game system being terrible. Fix that, and you will fix 90% of the problems the players have with the game as it is ^.^
On February 13 2011 04:58 Jonoman92 wrote: I think that blizzard's ladder system is fine EXCEPT for the fact that they have control over the map pool. Blizzard probably won't want to change the map pool as quickly as say, ICCUP used to, because most people on the lowers levels wouldn't like it I think.
Browder said that he wished the map pool changed more frequently (every three months or so) I'd imagine once they fix some of the kinks with balance, which is more of a priority imo, and they get on a better schedule thy will do ladder seasons abstract new maps every 3 months.
same maps do gets boring but you can choose what map to play on, use custom games. maybe the custom games system could use a few improvements. but it is possible.
Definitely agree with OP: Maps are a big problem, specially 1v1 ones. Either too small, or with glaring favoring of races. It's a big turnoff of 1v1 for me. Some team games maps could be better, but i feel i enjoy some of them somewhat more than most 1v1 blizzard maps.
It's posts like these that just help fuel the people who say "SC2 sucks, bnet 2.0 sucks". You're just pointing out all the bad things about it without explaining everything.
For example, Bnet 2.0 sucks yes, but remember it's most likely Activision that handled it. I'm sure Blizzard is trying to convince them and/or change it to the way they want it, etc.
No LAN? We already know why (or at least a good reason). It's not because they're against eSports, but because they don't want an organization like Kespa to take "control" of their game.
Also, saying that Blizzard doesn't care about the mappool and won't use user created maps is just wrong. Just because it hasn't happened yet doesn't mean they won't do it. It's just a matter of time. Blizzard still has many other things to work on. If they focus all on us team liquid competitive players, which is only a small amount of the players in SC2, what happens if the casual players lose interest and quit? Isn't that bad for the future of SC2? Now, what if us competitive players be more patient, and let Blizzard fix things up such as clan features, tournament features, a better custom game feature, etc., and work on other things to appease the casual players? In the end they keep a much bigger player pool, and then they can concentrate more on the competitive nature of the game.
Like in an interview, Browder said he wanted map seasons of 3-4 months with map changes. How does this show that Blizzard doesn't want to add new maps? He also said the current ladder reset has been postponed much longer than he would have liked.
And again, remember Blizzard doesn't have full control of the game. Activision does. Activision has let Blizzard handle the gaming aspects, but that means that Blizzard does not necessarily have control of the other aspects, such as Bnet 2.0, having only 1 character per account, or even the game being split into "three" (which really is just 1 game + 2 expansions, but everyone keeps putting words into Activision's mouth by claiming each installation will cost $60).
So anyways, just be patient people, and try to avoid complaining about things without doing some research first (not accusing, just a friendly reminder for everyone).
I went back to broodwar recently because the game is so much faster.
In sc2, you can macro for 80% of your game and then move out for a couple battles.
In broodwar, my first game, I won to my surprise, and looked the replay over. Yet another surprise! The game only lasted 13 minutes, and it felt like 5. I played some more, and I just loved the speed and flow - more micro and playing.
Just seems like there is a lot more to broodwar than sc2, but when the expansion comes out, sc2 will probably take off and stay 'the ultimate' RTS for a long long time, like broodwar did.
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?
This is not a bnet 2.0 problem. If you don't have any friends in masters, make some friends in masters. Get on chat channels or IRC and find a practice game.
Of course its hurting SC2. I quit SC2 mainly because of the points your friends made. The main problem with the ladder is that i cant play the game the way I want to play it. I'm forced to play the game Blizzard wants me to play it, and if I don't want to? Then they have implicitly told me to go and fuck myself cause they ain't changing anything. Trying to find good practice games in that ladder is impossible. And specially after playing like 10 mirror matches in a row you just want to tear your heart out. There is simply no other way to play the game and the amount of effort to find some good practice games wasn't simply worth it.
ICCup ladder was the perfect way of playing SC/BW and such a thing simply can't exist in SC2. The fact is that there isn't anything they can do to at least get me back to the game, to late for that. The ironic thing is that they wanted to cater the causal player with it. But they failed miserably with catering the casual "amateur" player (Serious hobby players). Players like me that like to spend hours gaming, getting good at it, getting some e-penis but with no ambition to win any tournaments or go to Korea. For me and people like me (if there are others??) this title offers honestly nothing but frustration, mainly because of the battle.net.
If I had a nickle for every time one of these threads showed up....I'd be swimming in fucking nickles. You can join custom games for a reason nobody is forcing you to play on the ladder.
On February 13 2011 02:50 DusTerr wrote: I think people forget what b.net 1.0 really was like. 2.0 is far from perfect, but I being able to queue up a game and get matched up against similarly skilled opponents is awesome!
I just feel that blizzard should have been building on the successes of iCCup, not the failures of Bnet 1.0.
Why would Blizzard copy the model of something thousands of people played over the model of something millions of people played?
Because popularity =/= quality. And the fact that most people who ever played BW never even heard of iccup and played nothing more then custom UMS on bnet 1.0
Popularity does, however = money. Blizzard is a company. They like to sell their wares. They also like to retain their IP rights. When people get that through their heads and start trying to work through Blizzard instead of in spite of it, maybe these threads will stop cropping up.
On February 13 2011 05:37 Fdragon wrote: If I had a nickle for every time one of these threads showed up....I'd be swimming in fucking nickles. You can join custom games for a reason nobody is forcing you to play on the ladder.
Sorry man. Thats only a half truth. The full truth is this:
*Join custom game *Game starts *Find out that the player you are playing is Diamond while you are Bronze or the other way around. *Try to quit game cause nobody will enjoy that game *You cant, alt + F4 or wait (the old 30 second countdown) 10 seconds for game to start, then leave. *Repeat process.
SC2 Battle.net has been alienating players since day 1. It will continue to do so. What i don't understand is why so many players are accepting it.
I mean, the "infrastructure" around the game is just as important as the game itself. With out a good way of playing a good game, the game itself becomes almost unplayable.DOTA is the prime example of this. Such a strong game, but is severely hindered by the "infrastructure" around it and thus playing it on battle.net doesn't work... And so on, you know where the point is going.
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 also dont have a problem with the ladder at all.
SC2 Battle.net has been alienating players since day 1. It will continue to do so. What i don't understand is why so many players are accepting it.
Because the smart ones have figured out that playing against better players is a learning experience, and that, if nothing else, playing against worse players allows you to practice basic macro skills.
The only things I think they need to change are adding custom maps to the pool, as well as LAN support. Everything else seems to be ok as far as the ladder is concerned, maybe a few tweeks to the matchmaking system tho.
If we can choose who we play, then our ratings will not necessarily be representations of out skill. We could be winning 70% of ZvTs and losing every ZvZ and ZvP, and as long as you vs terran, you can make it to diamond when in reality you suck. I think the maps are the only problem. They should be rotated. I like the smurf idea, but in reality people may use that so that you can give a free account (in a way) to ur friends.
If Blizzard makes these changes to ladder games they're basically admitting that their ladder isn't really a ladder. I think keeping the ladder the way it is is fine, and I would personally not agree at all with being able to select the matchup or map you want to play in a ladder game. I don't know about you but I wouldn't think it would be appropriate for a player who can only play, for instance, ZvZ on Metalopolis, to be ranked highly on the ladder. As far as I'm concerned the ladder isn't really where you should practice ... if it's supposed to be a ladder, its only real point should be to figure out how good you are compared to everyone else. (How well it displays that information is a different story and has been discussed elsewhere but that's a separate issue from what the OP is suggesting here).
(I would agree with having separate MMR/rankings for different races and that the map pool should change periodically).
What Blizzard should add is some sort of actual matchmaking for non-UMS-style custom games. Maybe have it use your MMR to match you up with an opponent, but the games should not affect your ladder rank at all, and in exchange you can select the map and the matchup you want to play. This creates something like a usable practice environment where you're matched up against the same competition you'd find in a ladder game. The biggest problem I'd see with implementing this is that it may be unpopular and have long queue times. (And obviously still keep the ability to make an open-to-everyone custom game).
The 2 big problems at the moment are maps and cross region play. I am still wondering why didn't they implement cross region play , I mean how can that hurt? That will only make the game better with a bigger and more united community and for alot more reasons.
This thread seems to have expressed something I have been feeling for a while now. While I love watching the tournaments I myself have not felt the urge to play on the ladder. Staleness of the maps is one very big reason. Its blizzards overwhelming control on the game that may be killing it. it seems in line with how business seems to be done in the US, where companies want to control everything to get assured revenue sources to show to their share holders. Blizzard is in for the money which I support but they are going about it the wrong way and bnet 2 is one of them. There is already evidence from the social media sites that the most successful companies are those which allow lots of freedom for their users and blizzard does not seem to believe in this. If I was blizzard I would have invested on the following from day 1 - Community controlled ladders and map pool. - Custom map/replay store where there are free/paid custom maps. Blizzard gets a percentage of the revenue. Also this encourages the next dota to be formed. - Implemented a SC II tournament edition which allows LAN play. Instead of having everyone buy broadcast rights, sell them the tournament edition for a subscription fee. This will allow major lan events (GSL/MLG etc) to run without gotchas and I'm sure they will pay up the fees money for it if means a tournament without embarrassing gotchas. In short Blizzard could have made more money from just opening everything up instead of this. They have to remember than people don't mind paying for good stuff.
Here is the problem. The game isn't finished, not by a lot. So what happened? Blizz is like "Were gonna release it in 3 parts! Here is part 1, now wait 2 or 3 more years for parts 2 and 3." Of course the community is like "Alright, lets play competitively! OMG things feel incomplete and perhaps the game aint balanced!"
Basically, the game we have right now, while its being balanced by Blizz, and while they encourage us to play it competitively, isn't complete. So blizzard is focusing on the expansions, which wont come for years. So maybe they felt that they needed to fix something, but then they agreed that it would be better to focus on the expansions and fix the problems there. I'm not saying Blizz is greedy or mean or anything, it just makes sense to focus on that stuff first and have the overall product be good and balanced instead of just part 1. I'm fairly sure that once all 3 parts are released, Blizzard will be on top of everything, making changes for better gameplay and such, but first the expansions must come out. Spending insane amounts of time trying to balance a game, only to release an expansion and then mess it all up is probably not worth it, which would explain why they only have 2 people doing the balance.
Should SC2 be played competitively right now? Yeah! Its great to watch and good for the game. But is the game incomplete? Yes, and before Blizzard gets on top of everything and focuses on balance and maps and fixing the ladder and all that nice stuff, they're probably gonna focus on the expansions. Although I agree that it would be nice if they could just put some fixes in to make the ladder better NOW, bet you all that is coming in HotS. :/ Im sad at how long i have to wait for this game to REALLY be out.
The ladder is actually the saving grace right now when you think of it, because really the custom system is god awful, the game just autostarts, (xel-naga/steppes/lt), and you need to wait 30 fucking seconds to have the game load and end it. the popularity system is also retarded and without the ladder you would essentially need to have all the organizing on teamliquid or other sites just to find a damn game against someone close to your relative skill level. ///heres a little graph i made about peoples complaining "PFFF AUTO LOSS FOR CLOSE POSITIONS!" + Show Spoiler +
My only gripe with the current ladder system is that Blizzard is forced to make new maps and cater to what the players want and there's too much variety in that notion because different level players want different maps and play styles. This means that when Blizzard releases the next x-pack for SC2 they will go "Diablo 2" on the vanilla game and stop adding content.
Why not just make it possible for people to submit to a vote for maps for the pool, maybe add a feature to the higher leagues where community made maps for competing can be added. I don't know, but I am getting pretty bored as well with the ladder and not having a ton of friends to custom with isn't helping.
On February 13 2011 05:57 TheDominator wrote: If we can choose who we play, then our ratings will not necessarily be representations of out skill. We could be winning 70% of ZvTs and losing every ZvZ and ZvP, and as long as you vs terran, you can make it to diamond when in reality you suck. I think the maps are the only problem. They should be rotated. I like the smurf idea, but in reality people may use that so that you can give a free account (in a way) to ur friends.
This could easily be fixed by adding a % for TvZ, TvP, and TvT along with the overall win-loss ratio. Not that big of a deal.
Also, giving you'r friends a free account wouldn't really work because even with multiple account's it's the same game key and only one person can play at a time.
I absolutely HATED the choosing maps/opponent aspect of iccup. That's great for practicing if you want to do some non-rated games, but to choose your opponents race and the map in a ladder setting?? I still cringe every time I see "Python C+/B- you T." But it was the result of the poor ladder system we were all stuck with because of Bnet 1.0.
Now Bnet has been improved to a point where we don't have to use an outdated custom game system for ranked ladder play, and we're whining about wanting the old system back?
There were good things about Bnet 1.0, the ladder system... Not one of them.
Nothing about Bnet 1.0 should be copied as it is all outdated, of course, but I think they could make Bnet 2.0's chat channels and custom game searching a little more similar to Bnet 1.0's system, while still updating and improving it.
And as for the the conclusion, it just seems like a completely made up, meaningless assumption.
The problem is this: balance (no not game balance)
People making the point that if it was like ICCUP, than people would climb the ladder only playing on their fav maps/matchups ect. And if someone insanely good makes a smurf than that would be dumb if both were in the top 200. And I am in agreement of keeping smurfing down, it was insane how many people would join a "C" only game, only to find out after getting obliterated that they were an A.
BUT
Not having any choice is also a problem. Im fukking tired of people saying: Just play custom games. Well, ya sure, but blizzard has put so much focus on climbing the ladder: that only people who are on top of the ladder will get an invite to Blizzcon? That is outragous bullshit. I think incontrol on sotg made that point. Players and teams need private, organized practice. And that takes quite a bit of time from laddering. Who would you rather see at Blizzcon 2011: Idra, or Katari? Now combine the shit maps that a fly wouldnt take a second look at let alone play on, and whala.
And also, I really have a hard time playing a game that blizzard is trying to "balance at all levels". Balance was, is, and always should be from the top down. Period. You are a complete troll and a dumbass if you argue against that simple and true fact.
I dont have the solution. I hope so much that Blizzard is really doing their best to remedy the situation. I cant argue that SC2 plays much better than BW. However if Blizzard wants (and im sure they do) SC2 to have the competitive long lasting play that BW had and still has even over a decade later: They gotta make changes.
On February 13 2011 06:00 Xswordy wrote: The 2 big problems at the moment are maps and cross region play. I am still wondering why didn't they implement cross region play , I mean how can that hurt? That will only make the game better with a bigger and more united community and for alot more reasons.
On February 13 2011 05:15 Yoshi Kirishima wrote: It's posts like these that just help fuel the people who say "SC2 sucks, bnet 2.0 sucks". You're just pointing out all the bad things about it without explaining everything.
For example, Bnet 2.0 sucks yes, but remember it's most likely Activision that handled it. I'm sure Blizzard is trying to convince them and/or change it to the way they want it, etc.
No LAN? We already know why (or at least a good reason). It's not because they're against eSports, but because they don't want an organization like Kespa to take "control" of their game.
Also, saying that Blizzard doesn't care about the mappool and won't use user created maps is just wrong. Just because it hasn't happened yet doesn't mean they won't do it. It's just a matter of time. Blizzard still has many other things to work on. If they focus all on us team liquid competitive players, which is only a small amount of the players in SC2, what happens if the casual players lose interest and quit? Isn't that bad for the future of SC2? Now, what if us competitive players be more patient, and let Blizzard fix things up such as clan features, tournament features, a better custom game feature, etc., and work on other things to appease the casual players? In the end they keep a much bigger player pool, and then they can concentrate more on the competitive nature of the game.
Like in an interview, Browder said he wanted map seasons of 3-4 months with map changes. How does this show that Blizzard doesn't want to add new maps? He also said the current ladder reset has been postponed much longer than he would have liked.
And again, remember Blizzard doesn't have full control of the game. Activision does. Activision has let Blizzard handle the gaming aspects, but that means that Blizzard does not necessarily have control of the other aspects, such as Bnet 2.0, having only 1 character per account, or even the game being split into "three" (which really is just 1 game + 2 expansions, but everyone keeps putting words into Activision's mouth by claiming each installation will cost $60).
So anyways, just be patient people, and try to avoid complaining about things without doing some research first (not accusing, just a friendly reminder for everyone).
Here's the problem with that. If the community doesn't like some feature (maps, etc), if they're not being vocal, they're condoning things staying the same. The thing that's going to pressure Blizzard to pressure activision enough to implement the changes is constant pressure from the community. You're not going to have a long lasting experience like in BW if Blizzard is unwilling to work with people on things that need to be implemented, most people are just going to give up and say "fuck it".
Also, the problem with the competitive scene sitting back and letting the casual scene get developed, is that that's killing the competitive scene. All sorts of tourneys are getting new map pools, and where does that leave potential players trying to bust into the competitive scene? Fucked, if they don't have a lot of really good practice partners (and I mean a whole lot of REALLY good players. If you're hoping to breach your first MLG and they have a custom map pool, realistically, you're not going to have anywhere near the level of practice players from pro teams will have. You're not going to get iNcontroL, or Ret, or one of these fantastic players to be your practice partner, they're withdrawing into their own team to practice, and you're left looking for some 3k masters jobber to be your practice partner, which is better than nothing, but your play is so limited in this fashion. This sort of thing is beginning to happen now, and it's only going to get worse over time, until you're not going to have any new faces. Weather it's comfortable for blizzard/Activision or not, they need to get on their horse and go, because the longer they pussyfoot around this subject, the more they hurt the competitive scene, one of the biggest draws to Star2.
Blizzards apparent refusal to use maps made by decent map makers on the ladder is one of my biggest problems with sc2; it's right up there with the lack of LAN and inability to watch replays with other people. Basically everything about bnet2.0 is this biggest problem with sc2 right now imo.
Now that being on topic is out of the way:
On February 12 2011 19:26 Arisen wrote: [I'm in college] ...Allot... ...allot... ...allot... ...allot... ...allot... ...Allot... ...allot...
On February 13 2011 14:31 Yotta wrote: Blizzards apparent refusal to use maps made by decent map makers on the ladder is one of my biggest problems with sc2; it's right up there with the lack of LAN and inability to watch replays with other people. Basically everything about bnet2.0 is this biggest problem with sc2 right now imo.
I haven't laddered in ~6 months for pretty much the same reasons your friend listed (though I did get 1 win after the patch last month to get my master's league promotion ). If the ladder pool rotated in the GSL / iCCup maps, I'd almost certainly start laddering again. Until then, I'm just not really interested; I'd rather watch GSL, read TL, or play some BW on fresh, new maps.
I really miss the ability to focus on 1 map/matchup vs. a lot of opponents on iCCup. I still remember this one Saturday where I played ~40 TvPs on Match Point working on a specific build order and style. It stands out in my mind as one of the most interesting and useful practice sessions I've ever had; I don't think I've ever had that sense of "flow" with SC2 laddering. I realize though that this system messes with matchmaking and can lead to some ladder abuse, which is unfortunate, and I can understand why Blizzard won't implement it.
Hmmm. Maps on BW were pretty much the same. LOL iv played on Python/fighting spirit for as long as ive played bw and it isnt boring. It might be something else besides maps that make your friend want to play bw.
Because i don't play competitively, i actually don't mind that some maps are imbalanced. Like if i play zvt on LT then i know this is hard mode and i'm on a disadvantage and it is just so rewarding to do so. In other maps like Scrap, i know i have the advantage. This makes pretty exciting to ladder imo. Kinda when you queue for game and then you are left wondering what map it's gonna be.
For pro point of view, they have their own clan mates and a wide array of friends to custom with. EG has their daily training sessions and i'm sure every other clan has as well.
For the part about blizzcon, the real pros can get invited to blizzcon very easily due to bonus pool. See how Huk goes up to 4k in just 4 days ( from 1000+ if i'm not wrong?) so i really think if the pros want it then they will. Infact, this year's US Invite from Blizzcon was HuK and Select ( hardly scrubs no?). SEA and KR had qualification tournament. Taiwan had Sen. China had Loner. So everyone who were there were top players from their region.
I'm not sure about you guys but I think that most of these problems aren't because Blizzard is doing but that Activision is doing a lot of pushing toward these "money hungry" ideals. Like not being able to have multiple accounts, no cross realm play and the game being released before it was really super polished (which is not Blizzards MO). And that last point, I would not be surprised that they would start charging for map packs as well as LAN support i.e selling a "tournament" version of the game for a higher price. I would really hate to see the Blizzard that we love turn into an Infinity Ward like company where they just get raped of their good ideas to make cheap games and a lot of money.
On February 13 2011 15:21 dtz wrote: For the part about blizzcon, the real pros can get invited to blizzcon very easily due to bonus pool. See how Huk goes up to 4k in just 4 days ( from 1000+ if i'm not wrong?) so i really think if the pros want it then they will. Infact, this year's US Invite from Blizzcon was HuK and Select ( hardly scrubs no?). SEA and KR had qualification tournament. Taiwan had Sen. China had Loner. So everyone who were there were top players from their region.
HuK and Select were merely the head of the ladder. While I would contest that HuK is probably the best protoss from NA, I believe there were allot more deserving players than select for that other slot. IdrA, possibly the best non-Korean player out there (some might argue Jinro), plays on Korea, so he has a relitively short time to ladder up, and dealing with good players, he's far from assured to get a spot. EGMachine doesn't ladder allot becuase he likes to do custom games, would not a change to allow custom games on the ladder help a player such as him? IdrA, HuK, Jinro, TLO, Ret; All great players who I would say probably deserve a slot at blizzcon probably don't have a shot at it beause they play a different server. I'm not trying to take away from Select, there are few people who can multitask as fast as him on his level, but I don't necissarily think he's a better player than some of these guys like IdrA, and Jinro.
True, but it is a bit annoying but I guess I'll have to deal with it.
True again, although they should definitely also cater to the casual gamers. Right now I'd say their "balance" on the focusing of different kinds of gamers is off .
@pzea469
Totally agree, although it was probably more Activision that decided to split it into 3 parts. But Blizzard's reason seemed legit so may be it was Blizzard's call.
Also, I don't think the expansions will take years and years... HotS is probably already very far in development. It'll probably come out next year, although Browder said he'd like to have it at the end of 2011. So that'll only be about 2 years, which seems reasonable to me.
Also the having 2 people on balancing... tbh you don't need that many to balance. I mean, this is their job. It's not like TL where we have a few hundred regulars talking about strategy with about 1% of our time daily or so.
Anyways, David Kim, one of the balancers (haha just in case no one knew) is one of the top ladder players in the US. On top of that, he plays Random! So I do believe the balance team (or at least David Kim) knows what he's doing. He is probably better than 95% of the population in TL assuming almost all of the top 100s use TL. I'd say it's safe to assume he has a good game sense too, probably also around 95% better than everyone else's on TL. And when you take into account the fact that he plays random and probably spends just as much time in Starcraft 2 as a progamer, he could very well be on par with the top Liquid players like Jinro in terms of game sense and knowledge. I hope people realize this! :D
I think this post will be lost in the middle of this thread but heres how I see the ladder suggestion from someone who played all blizzard RTS
Forcing the ladder upon the players is not really the best way to dictate the experience.
There should be several ladders, a community should be able to have its ladder, a TL ladder, or a ladder for a specific tournament.
Also, you could have begginer ladders with 2v2s and whatnots.
In sum, I think mandatory global ladder way that blizzard is doing right now is decent, but its lack of flexibily and community involvement in everyday ladder games are greatly staggering the games, its what made BW great, and it could make sc2 the best game of all times.
give us the power to create our own ladders (even if its only the mighty ones) iccup would make a ladder ingame and you wouldnt have to worry about maps.
The whole point that makes blizzard ladder bad, is that altho they have a decent data system behind them, they dont really use it to no good when it comes to keeping the ladder spicy, and people with that desire to get into game and have a good time playing SC2
Most of my friends see sc2 as a boring grind, and I think the way the ladder works is a big reason of why so many people feel like not playing, the system just imposes itself on you, and custom interface is kinda weak (no names), you should always feel like you have a place where you can sparr with good random people, but its not really counting on the big leagues.
your friend is correct in everything. Part of the reason I quit playing sc2 was because all that crap. Maybe once they fix all or most of that I may come back.
On February 13 2011 16:49 SpoR wrote: your friend is correct in everything. Part of the reason I quit playing sc2 was because all that crap. Maybe once they fix all or most of that I may come back.
When I quit something I don't generally put time into talking about it on the internet, so you'll forgive me if I don't quite believe you.
On February 13 2011 23:01 Antoniuss wrote: Erm, this is sc not wow. People will stop playing it, and in some time, only the biggest fans will stay. And in my opinion, people are truly spoiled.
just like in bw,wc3,counterstrike,quake etc aight?
dont think you understand that some people enjoy the competive aspect of a game instead of a endless carrot on a stick.
the ladder system is really not bad at all tbh, the only huge huge problem is the stagnant map pool. getting pitted against people whose skill is not literally leagues (more than 1 league) different from you with the slightly favored and favored balance system (or at least an attempt at balance) for adjusting points allocated is quite OK. not sure about 2v2s, because they're, to be brutally honest, unimportant. and about comparison to iCCup, im not sure if you can really compare it that way. in SC2, one can really master a build against an enemy of a certain race, repeat it on maps that favor that build really well all the way and hit diamond or masters easily. terran MMM against zerg on any map you like for example, learn a timing push or an expand build and thats it. for iCCup, you cant 3 hatch hydra your way to C- from my experience, and for the non professional level its really really being particularly good in a matchup. is it really possible to be able to be B- in a matchup and not C in another? BW strategy is so frickin' standard, win/lose dependancy on luck has been reduced and is still reducing as professional competition goes on. and the most funny thing is that diamond climbing to masters is barely D+ climbing to C-, and <140 APM player who is not D- probably does not exist. in other words, ladder system by blizzard for SC2 fixes the manipulation, while it is not needed in iCCup simply because the average skill there is too scarily above SC2. things are quite in order still. besides, there are builds you can drill in to get to diamond. 4gate, 3 roach and speedling all in etc.
Personally, I think the biggest problem with the ladder is the scoring system. With the exception of the very highest levels, and players who're (for whatever reason) massively mis-ranked, it is essentially a time sink thanks to the "quantity over quality" situation that exists for anyone with a bonus pool. The whole thing (don't get me started on the quick match "achievements"...) appears to be geared up purely to cater for volume.
In a way, issues such as maps and "balance" (for everyone other than pros) are, in my opinion, a sideshow, as they're all fixable without the need for major u-tuns on Blizzards part, whereas re-orienting the ladder away from quantity and towards quality would involve going back on the core design objectives of the current ladder system - ie. to obfuscate ratings to the point of banality, then create the illusion of player success via the bonus pool.
"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."
No dude. That's what practice partners and custom games are for. Being able to choose specific maps and matchups on the ladder would totally fuck everyone's rankings! You could just play on Steppes of war forever, doing terrible cheese and winning 80% of your games, rising quickly to higher leagues when your real overall skill sits somewhere between bronze and gold. Trust me that's a fucking terrible idea.
"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."
No dude. That's what practice partners and custom games are for.
Agree. Nevertheless the custom games system is horrible, even RTS one decade ago were better on this aspect. The person responsible for designing this ridiculously bad system should really be hit with a stick, the first time logging in I seriously was like "what is this even".
So the OP is partially right in that there should be a system (heck, why not make it a 2nd ladder?) where you can choose everything. Maps, race of opponent, skill-level of opponent and so on for practicing purposes.
I think one huge problem is that you can't make custom games the way you could in Brood War. Just giving us the option of custom games with custom names on whatever map we want displayed in some huge long list (complete with the obvious filters) would do SC2 a world of good.
I just don't see how they are "supporting E-sports"...
Okay a lot of people need to realize something: Blizzard is an entertainment company, NOT an eSports organization. In my opinion, anything they do for eSports is more than they're 'obligated' to, because that's NOT the reason their company exists.
I don't have any links to a source, but I'm 100% sure I've heard Blizzard saying they want SC2 to become an e-sport, they even have an e-sport team working...
We should be grateful that they're listening to the competitive community and attempting to better eSports.
Really? REALLY? hahaha hahaha
Blizzard needs SC2 to become an e-sport. To become that SC2 needs to be competitive. The community is their best source to model SC2 as it should be.
@Second part:
Read the rest of my post. Just because they don't do everything everyone wants (which is frankly 100% impossible) doesn't mean they aren't listening to the community. Changes are happening. Even if Blizzard has an eSports team working, that's not their first priority.
On February 13 2011 16:35 D10 wrote: I think this post will be lost in the middle of this thread but heres how I see the ladder suggestion from someone who played all blizzard RTS
Forcing the ladder upon the players is not really the best way to dictate the experience.
There should be several ladders, a community should be able to have its ladder, a TL ladder, or a ladder for a specific tournament.
Also, you could have begginer ladders with 2v2s and whatnots.
In sum, I think mandatory global ladder way that blizzard is doing right now is decent, but its lack of flexibily and community involvement in everyday ladder games are greatly staggering the games, its what made BW great, and it could make sc2 the best game of all times.
give us the power to create our own ladders (even if its only the mighty ones) iccup would make a ladder ingame and you wouldnt have to worry about maps.
The whole point that makes blizzard ladder bad, is that altho they have a decent data system behind them, they dont really use it to no good when it comes to keeping the ladder spicy, and people with that desire to get into game and have a good time playing SC2
Most of my friends see sc2 as a boring grind, and I think the way the ladder works is a big reason of why so many people feel like not playing, the system just imposes itself on you, and custom interface is kinda weak (no names), you should always feel like you have a place where you can sparr with good random people, but its not really counting on the big leagues.
Ive actually never thought of that as being a possible solution. I like it!
The ladder is hurting Sc2 because of the map pool.
Some maps are clearly unbalanced and not fun to play on. While on the more balanced 4 player maps, excluding DQ, you winning or losing can often be dictated by spawn positions, and the fact that spawn positions can dictate that so heavily needs to be addressed.
Jesus Christ, give it time. Blizzard already obliged when we wanted chat. I'm sure Bnet will improve in coming years. To be honest, the ladder is one of the best introductions to competitive play I have ever seen in gaming. Rankings are pretty damn accurate, they let casual players play at their level while giving incentive to improve. Sure some sort of clan support would be nice, but figuring out the logistics and implementing it takes time and for now there are great communities (like the one we're using right now) that allow you to meet and practice with similarly competitive players, so long as you put in a modicum of effort. Blizzard's not after your grandmother's pension so chill out about that. They have a fully supported map maker where anyone can make custom content. How does that point to some kind of Blizzard map monopoly? I just don't see where all this Blizzard hate comes from. Just play the damn game and be patient about all the changes. Blizzard patches frequently and is actually very responsive and respectful to the community. Give it time.
"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."
No dude. That's what practice partners and custom games are for. Being able to choose specific maps and matchups on the ladder would totally fuck everyone's rankings! You could just play on Steppes of war forever, doing terrible cheese and winning 80% of your games, rising quickly to higher leagues when your real overall skill sits somewhere between bronze and gold. Trust me that's a fucking terrible idea.
What? No, did you even think through your post? If some guy is choosing SoW over and over cause its his strong side, I could also choose SoW being the receiving end, practising against this person, to refine my defence against it, and I would be thankful for this person, and would not give a rats ass about his rating. You seem to care too much about epeen, and too little about growth as a player, which this thread is about. Growth, not epeen. I dont see a problem with this guy doing terrible damage rising too the Masters league doing something OP on a map. If noone wants to play vs that MU on that map, he will sooner or later be forced to play something else which will place him down a bit. Nestea practised 200 games over and over vs 2 rax marine all in, and look at him, so fucking good at defending.
I think this is a very good idea, and I would love to have some custom laddering going on.
"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."
No dude. That's what practice partners and custom games are for. Being able to choose specific maps and matchups on the ladder would totally fuck everyone's rankings! You could just play on Steppes of war forever, doing terrible cheese and winning 80% of your games, rising quickly to higher leagues when your real overall skill sits somewhere between bronze and gold. Trust me that's a fucking terrible idea.
What? No, did you even think through your post? If some guy is choosing SoW over and over cause its his strong side, I could also choose SoW being the receiving end, practising against this person, to refine my defence against it, and I would be thankful for this person, and would not give a rats ass about his rating. You seem to care too much about epeen, and too little about growth as a player, which this thread is about. Growth, not epeen. I dont see a problem with this guy doing terrible damage rising too the Masters league doing something OP on a map. If noone wants to play vs that MU on that map, he will sooner or later be forced to play something else which will place him down a bit. Nestea practised 200 games over and over vs 2 rax marine all in, and look at him, so fucking good at defending.
I think this is a very good idea, and I would love to have some custom laddering going on.
It doesn't even have to be on SoW. Someone can just ask for a certain race match-up every single game and not have to worry about anything else. I can assure you that he will not have problem finding games that way.
Unless you are a pro regularly competing in tournaments, ladder isn't for practicing only. It's supposed to rank people roughly based on their skills and allowing people to choose which map and race they want to play will only compromise the already not-so-great reliability of the ladder system even further. Apparently you don't care at all about points and leagues, but a lot of other people do care, and that's why Blizzard implemented points and leagues rather than just hidden MMR for matchmaking.
Also, you said "I could also choose SoW being the receiving end, practising against this person, to refine my defence against it", and then "If noone wants to play vs that MU on that map, he will sooner or later be forced to play something else which will place him down a bit". If there are people interested in using this idea for improvement, then he will find games on that map, right? If no one is queuing up for SoW ZvT, then your argument that people would use the opportunity to pick maps and races to genuinely improve themselves is not very convincing.
Nestea practiced those 200 games against his practice partners. It's not that difficult to find them unless you only want people good enough to compete in GSL.
Starcraft 2 is fine when it comes to the ladder. The real problem is that the community continually compares a 7 month (?) old game to a game thats been around for YEARS.
On February 14 2011 04:54 stormchaser wrote: Starcraft 2 is fine when it comes to the ladder. The real problem is that the community continually compares a 7 month (?) old game to a game thats been around for YEARS.
The game has been around for 7 or so months, but Blizzard has been around for 20 years.
On February 14 2011 04:54 stormchaser wrote: Starcraft 2 is fine when it comes to the ladder. The real problem is that the community continually compares a 7 month (?) old game to a game thats been around for YEARS.
What you fail to see is the framework has already been there. BW was in the dark ages of gaming. SC2 is in the year 2010, with plenty of resources and feedback available.
A 7 month old game released with no LAN? No search function for games? Region locked? Damn, even consoles have more flexibility than SC2.
While the first iPhone wasn't very polished as a phone, it was still ok compared to other phones at the time. If it has come out the size of a room with 64k of memory, then people wouldn't have said "You can't compare the iPhone to phone X, the iPhone has only been out 7 months". Technology as a whole has advanced from then, the ideas already exist, you can't just take steps into the stone age and claim that something is new hence it doesn't need to be very good.
While I agree with the sentiment that Blizzard has taken a step back from ICCup, we have to remember ICCup was never made by Blizzard in the first place. Bnet 2.0 IS a step forward to them, because the old Bnet was useless, hence ICCup. It's just a shame they couldn't rip more features, hopefully they will come with time. The longevity of SC2 would seem to hang on it.
On February 14 2011 04:54 stormchaser wrote: Starcraft 2 is fine when it comes to the ladder. The real problem is that the community continually compares a 7 month (?) old game to a game thats been around for YEARS.
What you fail to see is the framework has already been there. BW was in the dark ages of gaming. SC2 is in the year 2010, with plenty of resources and feedback available.
A 7 month old game released with no LAN? No search function for games? Region locked? Damn, even consoles have more flexibility than SC2.
Once again, and I'm not sure why this has to be constantly pointed out, SC2 lacks some of those features, specifically the LAN, because those features were abused in the original.
I think the lack of them changing maps has been to better help them balance the game. If they're changing the maps a lot then the data they generate may not be due to imbalances in races but maybe map reasons....
I would love a new map pool, the maps are boring, but the game is not balanced yet so this is simply the process.
In regards to everything else, they've sure dropped the ball. Imagine tournament features... Would actually be cool.,
On February 14 2011 04:54 stormchaser wrote: Starcraft 2 is fine when it comes to the ladder. The real problem is that the community continually compares a 7 month (?) old game to a game thats been around for YEARS.
What you fail to see is the framework has already been there. BW was in the dark ages of gaming. SC2 is in the year 2010, with plenty of resources and feedback available.
A 7 month old game released with no LAN? No search function for games? Region locked? Damn, even consoles have more flexibility than SC2.
Once again, and I'm not sure why this has to be constantly pointed out, SC2 lacks some of those features, specifically the LAN, because those features were abused in the original.
It's proof of how DRM kills the game (remember spore and how cracked copies were better than real copies?)
Also, if there's going to be no LAN, at least have servers that don't randomly drop people
I completely agree with the main post, but I haven't read through all eleven pages so forgive me if this has been mentioned before.
The reason I bought a smurf account to play terran on was mainly because of PvP. It's just such a stagnant matchup and it revolves purely around who can A) Who defends/pushes the 4gate better and B) who can get more colossi faster and much less depends on factors such as positioning, unit composition (as both compositions are the same - stalkers, maybe 1 immortal, and as many colossi as possible) and macro as whoever expands first is viable to get crushed by a 2-colossi push.
The maps are horrendous: Blizzard's refusal to accept GSL maps which are clearly better than their current (and projected) map pools puzzles and annoys me, although I'm sure they wouldn't attempt to make starcraft 2 a cash-shop game with map-packs.
I think the matchup of PvP and the current map-pool will be the deciding factor of many to either leave the game (blizzard loses no profit from this as it is not a pay-per-month game) or to buy a smurf account (which blizzard profits hugely from). I believe this is why blizzard invests so little into the features i mentioned in this post.
edit: I would encourage someone with authority to re-post this onto the Battlenet forums so it is viewed by more people
On February 14 2011 04:54 stormchaser wrote: Starcraft 2 is fine when it comes to the ladder. The real problem is that the community continually compares a 7 month (?) old game to a game thats been around for YEARS.
What you fail to see is the framework has already been there. BW was in the dark ages of gaming. SC2 is in the year 2010, with plenty of resources and feedback available.
A 7 month old game released with no LAN? No search function for games? Region locked? Damn, even consoles have more flexibility than SC2.
Once again, and I'm not sure why this has to be constantly pointed out, SC2 lacks some of those features, specifically the LAN, because those features were abused in the original.
It's proof of how DRM kills the game (remember spore and how cracked copies were better than real copies?)
Also, if there's going to be no LAN, at least have servers that don't randomly drop people
On February 14 2011 04:54 stormchaser wrote: Starcraft 2 is fine when it comes to the ladder. The real problem is that the community continually compares a 7 month (?) old game to a game thats been around for YEARS.
What you fail to see is the framework has already been there. BW was in the dark ages of gaming. SC2 is in the year 2010, with plenty of resources and feedback available.
A 7 month old game released with no LAN? No search function for games? Region locked? Damn, even consoles have more flexibility than SC2.
Once again, and I'm not sure why this has to be constantly pointed out, SC2 lacks some of those features, specifically the LAN, because those features were abused in the original.
Yeah, well should they start releasing computers without the ability to access the internet? Because, you know, some people used the internet to look up child porn and steal movies/music.
No. That's stupid.Control the abuse, not the service that's being abused.
On February 13 2011 16:49 SpoR wrote: your friend is correct in everything. Part of the reason I quit playing sc2 was because all that crap. Maybe once they fix all or most of that I may come back.
When I quit something I don't generally put time into talking about it on the internet, so you'll forgive me if I don't quite believe you.
I don't play for a number of reasons. I still like to follow things and see what's new. I've been coming to TL a long time.
I agree with your friends points and preferred the ICCUP system where you could choose your matchup, map and your opponent also.
But I'm pretty sure we had a poll and most of TL prefered the new system. So maybe it's a toss-up but overall I'd say that probably the new system is better overall (even though I prefer the old).
Now the lack of decent maps and decent balance... we'll that's completely unexcusable in my eyes. At least now we have chat channels we can sort out our own games, that's a blessing at least.
I think a way blizzard could implement these sort of things would be the option before hitting find match, to select oppenents race (T,P,Z,random, and any) and map(s). So you could zone in one match up.
Yes blizzard NEEDS to update maps they have been decent at it so far, but I would like to see it better.
as example yes it would be cool i think to have 3 ranks on one account for every race but i dislike to have many accounts. i like how they did it to prevent everyone from smurfing so much like in bw where everyone had 200 accounts and the levels from D to C+ was sometimes so many B players smurfing that it was no fun anymore.
the problem with the maps is a real issue but to train some matchups and some specific maps the custom games is all to do
i would not like if you can pick matchup and map because then some maps/matchups would nearly have no gamers anymore
all in all i think sc2 is on a good way but it needs some progress and ...
when does blizzard allow us to watch reps together its so hard to train without that feature
On February 14 2011 04:54 stormchaser wrote: Starcraft 2 is fine when it comes to the ladder. The real problem is that the community continually compares a 7 month (?) old game to a game thats been around for YEARS.
What you fail to see is the framework has already been there. BW was in the dark ages of gaming. SC2 is in the year 2010, with plenty of resources and feedback available.
A 7 month old game released with no LAN? No search function for games? Region locked? Damn, even consoles have more flexibility than SC2.
Once again, and I'm not sure why this has to be constantly pointed out, SC2 lacks some of those features, specifically the LAN, because those features were abused in the original.
Yeah, well should they start releasing computers without the ability to access the internet? Because, you know, some people used the internet to look up child porn and steal movies/music.
No. That's stupid.Control the abuse, not the service that's being abused.
That is how they control the abuse, smart guy. Blizzard owns SC2. They find that with LAN, people tend to use their games illegally/make their own ladders/use their own maps-- then, when Blizzard challenges the illegal game use, said abusers then claim that their contribution makes the game not fully Blizzard's property.
Why do you think that Blizzard isn't letting SC2 operate like BW? Because of the community, not in spite of the community. Private ladders and KeSPA did this to themselves. Ever wonder why all the iCCup pleas fall on deaf ears? Because Blizzard doesn't want iCCup, or anyone else, to undermine their authority this time. It doesn't matter whether iCCup or anyone else has the intention of undermining Blizzard's IP rights, the fact remains that BW was abused so much that Blizzard isn't going to put itself in that position again.
You can only cut out the middle-man so much before he either goes away or cuts you out-- and guess what happened.
On February 14 2011 04:54 stormchaser wrote: Starcraft 2 is fine when it comes to the ladder. The real problem is that the community continually compares a 7 month (?) old game to a game thats been around for YEARS.
What you fail to see is the framework has already been there. BW was in the dark ages of gaming. SC2 is in the year 2010, with plenty of resources and feedback available.
A 7 month old game released with no LAN? No search function for games? Region locked? Damn, even consoles have more flexibility than SC2.
Once again, and I'm not sure why this has to be constantly pointed out, SC2 lacks some of those features, specifically the LAN, because those features were abused in the original.
Yeah, well should they start releasing computers without the ability to access the internet? Because, you know, some people used the internet to look up child porn and steal movies/music.
No. That's stupid.Control the abuse, not the service that's being abused.
That is how they control the abuse, smart guy. Blizzard owns SC2. They find that with LAN, people tend to use their games illegally/make their own ladders/use their own maps-- then, when Blizzard challenges the illegal game use, said abusers then claim that their contribution makes the game not fully Blizzard's property.
Why do you think that Blizzard isn't letting SC2 operate like BW? Because of the community, not in spite of the community. Private ladders and KeSPA did this to themselves. Ever wonder why all the iCCup pleas fall on deaf ears? Because Blizzard doesn't want iCCup, or anyone else, to undermine their authority this time. It doesn't matter whether iCCup or anyone else has the intention of undermining Blizzard's IP rights, the fact remains that BW was abused so much that Blizzard isn't going to put itself in that position again.
You can only cut out the middle-man so much before he either goes away or cuts you out-- and guess what happened.
Which is why we're forced to use the shitty interface that is Bnet 0.2
On February 14 2011 04:54 stormchaser wrote: Starcraft 2 is fine when it comes to the ladder. The real problem is that the community continually compares a 7 month (?) old game to a game thats been around for YEARS.
What you fail to see is the framework has already been there. BW was in the dark ages of gaming. SC2 is in the year 2010, with plenty of resources and feedback available.
A 7 month old game released with no LAN? No search function for games? Region locked? Damn, even consoles have more flexibility than SC2.
Once again, and I'm not sure why this has to be constantly pointed out, SC2 lacks some of those features, specifically the LAN, because those features were abused in the original.
Yeah, well should they start releasing computers without the ability to access the internet? Because, you know, some people used the internet to look up child porn and steal movies/music.
No. That's stupid.Control the abuse, not the service that's being abused.
That is how they control the abuse, smart guy. Blizzard owns SC2. They find that with LAN, people tend to use their games illegally/make their own ladders/use their own maps-- then, when Blizzard challenges the illegal game use, said abusers then claim that their contribution makes the game not fully Blizzard's property.
Why do you think that Blizzard isn't letting SC2 operate like BW? Because of the community, not in spite of the community. Private ladders and KeSPA did this to themselves. Ever wonder why all the iCCup pleas fall on deaf ears? Because Blizzard doesn't want iCCup, or anyone else, to undermine their authority this time. It doesn't matter whether iCCup or anyone else has the intention of undermining Blizzard's IP rights, the fact remains that BW was abused so much that Blizzard isn't going to put itself in that position again.
You can only cut out the middle-man so much before he either goes away or cuts you out-- and guess what happened.
Which is why we're forced to use the shitty interface that is Bnet 0.2
I don't think it is that shitty, since I mainly just ladder unless I'm playing with friends, but yes. That's why.
On February 14 2011 04:54 stormchaser wrote: Starcraft 2 is fine when it comes to the ladder. The real problem is that the community continually compares a 7 month (?) old game to a game thats been around for YEARS.
What you fail to see is the framework has already been there. BW was in the dark ages of gaming. SC2 is in the year 2010, with plenty of resources and feedback available.
A 7 month old game released with no LAN? No search function for games? Region locked? Damn, even consoles have more flexibility than SC2.
Once again, and I'm not sure why this has to be constantly pointed out, SC2 lacks some of those features, specifically the LAN, because those features were abused in the original.
Yeah, well should they start releasing computers without the ability to access the internet? Because, you know, some people used the internet to look up child porn and steal movies/music.
No. That's stupid.Control the abuse, not the service that's being abused.
That is how they control the abuse, smart guy.
Obviously, and I'm saying its a shitty solution that reflects that they care less about the game and more about profit margins. They COULD have LAN and stop the abuse, but they don't want to put that effort in, and I as well as anyone else who thinks that this is stupid should speak up about it, or it will never get implimented. If you think the game is perfect how it is, that's fine, however there are a LOT of people (including a large number of professional players) who want things like LAN, better custom game support, custom ladders, etc. who can, will, and should keep pressure on Blizzard to change the game.
On February 14 2011 04:54 stormchaser wrote: Starcraft 2 is fine when it comes to the ladder. The real problem is that the community continually compares a 7 month (?) old game to a game thats been around for YEARS.
What you fail to see is the framework has already been there. BW was in the dark ages of gaming. SC2 is in the year 2010, with plenty of resources and feedback available.
A 7 month old game released with no LAN? No search function for games? Region locked? Damn, even consoles have more flexibility than SC2.
Once again, and I'm not sure why this has to be constantly pointed out, SC2 lacks some of those features, specifically the LAN, because those features were abused in the original.
Yeah, well should they start releasing computers without the ability to access the internet? Because, you know, some people used the internet to look up child porn and steal movies/music.
No. That's stupid.Control the abuse, not the service that's being abused.
That is how they control the abuse, smart guy. Blizzard owns SC2. They find that with LAN, people tend to use their games illegally/make their own ladders/use their own maps-- then, when Blizzard challenges the illegal game use, said abusers then claim that their contribution makes the game not fully Blizzard's property.
Why do you think that Blizzard isn't letting SC2 operate like BW? Because of the community, not in spite of the community. Private ladders and KeSPA did this to themselves. Ever wonder why all the iCCup pleas fall on deaf ears? Because Blizzard doesn't want iCCup, or anyone else, to undermine their authority this time. It doesn't matter whether iCCup or anyone else has the intention of undermining Blizzard's IP rights, the fact remains that BW was abused so much that Blizzard isn't going to put itself in that position again.
You can only cut out the middle-man so much before he either goes away or cuts you out-- and guess what happened.
Which is why we're forced to use the shitty interface that is Bnet 0.2
I don't think it is that shitty, since I mainly just ladder unless I'm playing with friends, but yes. That's why.
On February 12 2011 19:36 blith wrote: 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"...
Agreed. Don't forget that even current chat is worse than what it was in WC3. Also don't forget the stupid limitations for map publishers, the limited custom games screen and options for it. Seems like Blizzard wants to control every thing and you can't even kick a player out of a game, that is real sad the direction blizzard is taking.
Bnet 2 is actually bnet 0.2 as so many people have said.
I have a friend like OP's that says, "Starcraft 2 is like starcraft bw but crappier". I love starcraft 2 so I tried to argue against him but.... I honestly had nothing.
Everybody seems a little impatient to me...if people are still whining about the balance of the game, whether it be in units or maps, changing a map pool this early might be pretty bad...blizzard is being pretty safe and making sure they have all the data they need to make an educated, confident decision on how to proceed. The game is not at a stable point.
As for the multiple accounts, this was partly done so that pro players can't make smurf accounts of their own free will to smash lower-level tournies without having to buy a whole freakin' account.
Please, please recognize how delicate blizzard has to be BECAUSE of starcraft 2's huge scene in e-sports. Nothing drastic can be done from patch to patch, things are going to have to evolve slower than we think. BW had about TEN YEARS to get to the point it is now, and people expect a new product to reach the same level in 7 months after release.
I think something that might alleviate some of the problems with the ladder would be to have an unranked, more malleable matchmaking setup, where players can offrace, vote up AND down maps or even matchups to play on, to give people more versatility with one account.
You shouldn't be able to pick your map and matchup on the ladder, because it's supposed to represent a player's skill across ALL maps and matchups, not just the ones you WANT to play on.
I really can't wait til PIMPEST PLAYS 2011, SC2 version. (Hopefully the Pros show us some crazy genius plays)... And I have confidence that they will make things happen, especially after watching the most recent GSTL.
But I think in order for the game to settle down and become a classic, it has to go through the two expansion packs first... (to get the new units and mechanics integrated in there...) Like how SC1 became so much more dynamic after Broodwar. I really don't want Lurkers, dark archons, and vessels though... Would rather see new units.
I'm just sad that it's going to take such a long time
On February 14 2011 09:39 brobear wrote: The game's only been out for 7 months.
I really can't wait til PIMPEST PLAYS 2011, SC2 version. (Hopefully the Pros show us some crazy genius plays)... And I have confidence that they will make things happen, especially after watching the most recent GSTL.
lol pimpest plays won't happen in SC2. All we see are death balls clashing. The only thing that would qualify as pimp would be the emp nuke by tlo
[Nothing drastic can be done from patch to patch, things are going to have to evolve slower than we think. BW had about TEN YEARS to get to the point it is now, and people expect a new product to reach the same level in 7 months after release.
No, they don't. Well, I guess some people do, but the reasonable people expect that the features offered in starcraft 2 would build from its predecessor, not ignore them. A lot of people say that it IS an improvement from bnet 1.0, but, don't assume Blizzard is stupid. It knew about iCCup and its features, and they could have built off that system to create something better, or at least equivalent, but they didn't. The motivation for some things are clear, i.e. lack of LAN support, cross region play, multiple accounts , etc are for maximized profit margins. Things like chat channels, custom game interface, poor social features, etc has no defined motivation, as lack of these features does not lead to increased sales, and frankly, just appears sloppy on their part.
an unranked, more malleable matchmaking setup, where players can offrace, vote up AND down maps or even matchups to play on, to give people more versatility with one account.
The point of offracing is to be as competitive as possible with it. How do you measure your sense of improvement playing unranked? Why not just join a custom game as your offrace if you can't ladder with it? People like to ladder because climbing the ladder gives a sense of accomplishment and improvement. An unranked system lead to no such feeling of accomplishment/improvement, and also, makes unbalanced matchups more possible (Masters v Bronze, etc).
You shouldn't be able to pick your map and matchup on the ladder, because it's supposed to represent a player's skill across ALL maps and matchups, not just the ones you WANT to play on.
No it's not, it's supposed to represent how far they've climbed the ladder. If it doesn't effect your play, why does it matter to you that he climbed only playing ZvT, or just playing Scrap Station? It doesn't, it just hurts your ego. "I worked really hard to get to masters league and this zerg only played scrap station to get here! Gahfaw, Gahfaw, Gahfaw!"
The point in playing the ladder is supposed to be to become a better player. If that guy goes to a tournament he's not going to get very far because every game won't be on scrap, or every match up won't be ZvT. If you play him on the ladder as a Terran and you lose, he played better, why should you give a shit that he can't play v protoss very well? He plays ZvT at a masters level. In truth, there are a lot of people who fit this description. If I'm only good at vT, I can still get to masters because there are allot of terran players out there. My cousin plays zerg, and he's pretty aweful at ZvT and ZvZ, but damn is he good at ZvP. Guess what, he skated his ass right to masters.
It's not like I'm saying you should remove the instant search for game feature, a lot of people like that, including me. BUT, if I want specific practice on this match up on this map, I can't get that with the current iteration of Bnet. The best I can hope for is to find practice partners, but I'll never get the diversity of training through practice partners as I would playing competitively on the ladder.
an unranked, more malleable matchmaking setup, where players can offrace, vote up AND down maps or even matchups to play on, to give people more versatility with one account.
The point of offracing is to be as competitive as possible with it. How do you measure your sense of improvement playing unranked? Why not just join a custom game as your offrace if you can't ladder with it? People like to ladder because climbing the ladder gives a sense of accomplishment and improvement. An unranked system lead to no such feeling of accomplishment/improvement, and also, makes unbalanced matchups more possible (Masters v Bronze, etc).
You shouldn't be able to pick your map and matchup on the ladder, because it's supposed to represent a player's skill across ALL maps and matchups, not just the ones you WANT to play on.
No it's not, it's supposed to represent how far they've climbed the ladder. If it doesn't effect your play, why does it matter to you that he climbed only playing ZvT, or just playing Scrap Station? It doesn't, it just hurts your ego. "I worked really hard to get to masters league and this zerg only played scrap station to get here! Gahfaw, Gahfaw, Gahfaw!"
The point in playing the ladder is supposed to be to become a better player. If that guy goes to a tournament he's not going to get very far because every game won't be on scrap, or every match up won't be ZvT. If you play him on the ladder as a Terran and you lose, he played better, why should you give a shit that he can't play v protoss very well? He plays ZvT at a masters level. In truth, there are a lot of people who fit this description. If I'm only good at vT, I can still get to masters because there are allot of terran players out there. My cousin plays zerg, and he's pretty aweful at ZvT and ZvZ, but damn is he good at ZvP. Guess what, he skated his ass right to masters.
It's not like I'm saying you should remove the instant search for game feature, a lot of people like that, including me. BUT, if I want specific practice on this match up on this map, I can't get that with the current iteration of Bnet. The best I can hope for is to find practice partners, but I'll never get the diversity of training through practice partners as I would playing competitively on the ladder.
I actually agreed with you on a lot of your subjects until i read this. Your view on the ladder is completely wrong. Its not how skilled you are in a specific area of the game, its how skilled you are at the game as a whole. Who cares if you're good at ZvT on scrap when if we play in a tourny and its a Bo3 you're guaranteed a loss in the next two games. And why do you think people off race to be competitive? Sometimes I just want to play protoss for a game, yet it kills my ranking because I play against masters league people when I'm just trying to mess around for a game or two.
On February 13 2011 16:35 D10 wrote: I think this post will be lost in the middle of this thread but heres how I see the ladder suggestion from someone who played all blizzard RTS
Forcing the ladder upon the players is not really the best way to dictate the experience.
There should be several ladders, a community should be able to have its ladder, a TL ladder, or a ladder for a specific tournament.
Also, you could have begginer ladders with 2v2s and whatnots.
In sum, I think mandatory global ladder way that blizzard is doing right now is decent, but its lack of flexibily and community involvement in everyday ladder games are greatly staggering the games, its what made BW great, and it could make sc2 the best game of all times.
give us the power to create our own ladders (even if its only the mighty ones) iccup would make a ladder ingame and you wouldnt have to worry about maps.
The whole point that makes blizzard ladder bad, is that altho they have a decent data system behind them, they dont really use it to no good when it comes to keeping the ladder spicy, and people with that desire to get into game and have a good time playing SC2
Most of my friends see sc2 as a boring grind, and I think the way the ladder works is a big reason of why so many people feel like not playing, the system just imposes itself on you, and custom interface is kinda weak (no names), you should always feel like you have a place where you can sparr with good random people, but its not really counting on the big leagues.
Damn didnt realize my english was that bad ... =O
My point was, we need to privatize ladders, the awesome relationship between community and devs can happen in a equalitary way, that makes everyone happy.
I can't believe people are trying to argue against the OP's points. Are people actually that much of Blizzard fanboys that they can't see that a lot of people are dissatisfied with a huge amount of things they are doing?
I agree with the OP, and I really am tired of Blizzard being just like every other big game company and being so incredibly stubborn and unwilling to change what their original plan was if it no longer caters to their playerbase.
On February 14 2011 11:05 Angra wrote: I can't believe people are trying to argue against the OP's points. Are people actually that much of Blizzard fanboys that they can't see that a lot of people are dissatisfied with a huge amount of things they are doing?
I agree with the OP, and I really am tired of Blizzard being just like every other big game company and being so incredibly stubborn and unwilling to change what their original plan was if it no longer caters to their playerbase.
Nah brah, they're just apologists who ignore what greed/laziness/stupidity has done to blizzard
You know you can just play on ICCup in SC2 right? The is nothing stopping you setting up third party ladders just like BW had, if they are so much better then people would use them. All they are is arranged custom matches.
The ladder is a "Quick Match" function, you click the button you get a game with someone on a comparable skill level in less than a minute. I would kill for a function like that in other games. It is not designed to be a replacement for competitive leagues and ladders, or replacement for organised practice sessions. The ladder provides instant, fun, competitive games with no waiting around and no hassle trying to set things up. The ladder for the most is just a way of matching you against roughly equal level players as fast and as simply as possible.
There is nothing stopping you doing anything you can do with BW, such as a ladder like ICCup (aside from the obvious no lan or cross region stuff).
The only thing I will say that is hindering the custom game side of SC2 is the poor interface for finding and getting custom maps. A simple "Most popular Melee maps" list would be hugely beneficial, for both players and map makers.
an unranked, more malleable matchmaking setup, where players can offrace, vote up AND down maps or even matchups to play on, to give people more versatility with one account.
The point of offracing is to be as competitive as possible with it. How do you measure your sense of improvement playing unranked? Why not just join a custom game as your offrace if you can't ladder with it? People like to ladder because climbing the ladder gives a sense of accomplishment and improvement. An unranked system lead to no such feeling of accomplishment/improvement, and also, makes unbalanced matchups more possible (Masters v Bronze, etc).
You shouldn't be able to pick your map and matchup on the ladder, because it's supposed to represent a player's skill across ALL maps and matchups, not just the ones you WANT to play on.
No it's not, it's supposed to represent how far they've climbed the ladder. If it doesn't effect your play, why does it matter to you that he climbed only playing ZvT, or just playing Scrap Station? It doesn't, it just hurts your ego. "I worked really hard to get to masters league and this zerg only played scrap station to get here! Gahfaw, Gahfaw, Gahfaw!"
The point in playing the ladder is supposed to be to become a better player. If that guy goes to a tournament he's not going to get very far because every game won't be on scrap, or every match up won't be ZvT. If you play him on the ladder as a Terran and you lose, he played better, why should you give a shit that he can't play v protoss very well? He plays ZvT at a masters level. In truth, there are a lot of people who fit this description. If I'm only good at vT, I can still get to masters because there are allot of terran players out there. My cousin plays zerg, and he's pretty aweful at ZvT and ZvZ, but damn is he good at ZvP. Guess what, he skated his ass right to masters.
It's not like I'm saying you should remove the instant search for game feature, a lot of people like that, including me. BUT, if I want specific practice on this match up on this map, I can't get that with the current iteration of Bnet. The best I can hope for is to find practice partners, but I'll never get the diversity of training through practice partners as I would playing competitively on the ladder.
I actually agreed with you on a lot of your subjects until i read this. Your view on the ladder is completely wrong. Its not how skilled you are in a specific area of the game, its how skilled you are at the game as a whole. Who cares if you're good at ZvT on scrap when if we play in a tourny and its a Bo3 you're guaranteed a loss in the next two games.
EXACTLY. My point was it does not effect anything but your ego. That guy who is playing nothing but ZvT on SS isn't going to be stealing tourneys, he's just ranked in the same league as you, and might be able to take a game off you on that map. I'm not saying "you should only play one match up and get to the masters league!" But obviously that was/is possible on a custom ladder, and that's why some people don't like the idea of custom games on ladder. I'm simply saying that it doesn't matter. The only reason people dislike this is because of their egos. It rubs them the wrong way that they put less effort (in their minds, at least) into it then them. If a few people want to one dimensionalize their play, let them, it's not like it effects anyone else.
And why do you think people off race to be competitive? Sometimes I just want to play protoss for a game, yet it kills my ranking because I play against masters league people when I'm just trying to mess around for a game or two.
If you don't want to face people of your approximate skill level and measure your improvement with that race, play a random custom game. If you do, however, want to play protoss a few games every now and then against people of your approximate skill level and constantly improve, a ladder setting is where that is going to happen.
On February 14 2011 11:08 Kazang wrote: Wow this thread is stupid.
You know you can just play on ICCup in SC2 right? The is nothing stopping you setting up third party ladders just like BW had, if they are so much better then people would use them. All they are is arranged custom matches.
The ladder is a "Quick Match" function, you click the button you get a game with someone on a comparable skill level in less than a minute. I would kill for a function like that in other games. It is not designed to be a replacement for competitive leagues and ladders, or replacement for organised practice sessions. The ladder provides instant, fun, competitive games with no waiting around and no hassle trying to set things up. The ladder for the most is just a way of matching you against roughly equal level players as fast and as simply as possible.
There is nothing stopping you doing anything you can do with BW, such as a ladder like ICCup (aside from the obvious no lan or cross region stuff).
The only thing I will say that is hindering the custom game side of SC2 is the poor interface for finding and getting custom maps. A simple "Most popular Melee maps" list would be hugely beneficial, for both players and map makers.
No, you can't. Custom ladders are against the TOS. Go to iccup right now and find Starcraft 2, don't worry, I'll wait. Here's the link. http://www.iccup.com/
*edit* It's also worth noting that iCCup wasn't legal under BW's TOS either, but Blizzard didn't particularly care about BW after a while, so they didn't do anything about it.
On February 14 2011 11:08 Kazang wrote: Wow this thread is stupid.
You know you can just play on ICCup in SC2 right? The is nothing stopping you setting up third party ladders just like BW had, if they are so much better then people would use them. All they are is arranged custom matches.
The ladder is a "Quick Match" function, you click the button you get a game with someone on a comparable skill level in less than a minute. I would kill for a function like that in other games. It is not designed to be a replacement for competitive leagues and ladders, or replacement for organised practice sessions. The ladder provides instant, fun, competitive games with no waiting around and no hassle trying to set things up. The ladder for the most is just a way of matching you against roughly equal level players as fast and as simply as possible.
There is nothing stopping you doing anything you can do with BW, such as a ladder like ICCup (aside from the obvious no lan or cross region stuff).
The only thing I will say that is hindering the custom game side of SC2 is the poor interface for finding and getting custom maps. A simple "Most popular Melee maps" list would be hugely beneficial, for both players and map makers.
No, you can't. Custom ladders are against the TOS. Go to iccup right now and find Starcraft 2, don't worry, I'll wait. Here's the link. http://www.iccup.com/
*edit* It's also worth noting that iCCup wasn't legal under BW's TOS either, but Blizzard didn't particularly care about BW after a while, so they didn't do anything about it.
If custom ladders are against the TOS then *any* competition would be. A Ladder match is just a custom game with it's outcome effecting a external ranking, you get points on a ladder for playing and placing in the TL Open, is blizzard going to ban that? It's not enforceable unless blizzard ban every account, which it is possible they will do but highly unlikely as it would essentially kill the game.
EDIT: I'm not saying that custom ladders aren't against the TOS as i don't precisely know the wording, but in any case it remains possible to run custom games and record the result and award some kind of points for them, which is what a custom ladder is. Any site running a ladder isn't breaking the TOS, as it's just a list of numbers that are not in any way property of blizzard, only the users are liable. In that case it's a matter of standing up for what you want, if they ban you, kick up a fuss, riot, rage blog the internet, ddos b.net.
Making a thread simply complaining that the ladder is not Iccup is impotent.
On February 14 2011 11:08 Kazang wrote: Wow this thread is stupid.
You know you can just play on ICCup in SC2 right? The is nothing stopping you setting up third party ladders just like BW had, if they are so much better then people would use them. All they are is arranged custom matches.
The ladder is a "Quick Match" function, you click the button you get a game with someone on a comparable skill level in less than a minute. I would kill for a function like that in other games. It is not designed to be a replacement for competitive leagues and ladders, or replacement for organised practice sessions. The ladder provides instant, fun, competitive games with no waiting around and no hassle trying to set things up. The ladder for the most is just a way of matching you against roughly equal level players as fast and as simply as possible.
There is nothing stopping you doing anything you can do with BW, such as a ladder like ICCup (aside from the obvious no lan or cross region stuff).
The only thing I will say that is hindering the custom game side of SC2 is the poor interface for finding and getting custom maps. A simple "Most popular Melee maps" list would be hugely beneficial, for both players and map makers.
No, you can't. Custom ladders are against the TOS. Go to iccup right now and find Starcraft 2, don't worry, I'll wait. Here's the link. http://www.iccup.com/
*edit* It's also worth noting that iCCup wasn't legal under BW's TOS either, but Blizzard didn't particularly care about BW after a while, so they didn't do anything about it.
If custom ladders are against the TOS then *any* competition would be. A Ladder match is just a custom game with it's outcome effecting a external ranking, you get points on a ladder for playing and placing in the TL Open, is blizzard going to ban that? It's not enforceable unless blizzard ban every account, which it is possible they will do but highly unlikely as it would essentially kill the game.
This system never happened, and was designed so that you could play on the beta. You cannot log into an iCCup server to play on.
Perhaps my retort was worded poorly. Yes, custom ladders are allowed under the TOS in a broad sense, that is to say that I can get together with friends and design custom games and form that into a ladder, but a custom ladder in the sense that iCCup was a custom ladder is not allowed.
If you really want an ICCup-like system, that isn't against the TOS (im 100% sure it's possible, perhaps not easy though), you (as in us, the community) will have to implement it.
The ladder is what is, a mass market quick game finder, it is designed to be as simple and noob friendly as possible. All the millions of players that don't even know TL exists are the main target of the ladder. Is that holding back true competition and "free market" system of ladders, yes most certainly. But at the end of the day blizzard can't just change it to a complicated system that alienates a massive number of players, costs them money and potentially opens up a whole raft of huge security problems for b.net. It comes back to control of their product and resource management at the end of the day,
It's the same as the lan thing, I of course would like lan, as i would like custom ladders in b.net, but in reality that isn't going to happen any time soon. And if it does it wont be the result of our words here.
I'm being a little cynical, but this is blizzard-activision we are talking about. Don't hold your breath waiting for them to do anything.
On February 14 2011 12:04 Kazang wrote: If you really want an ICCup-like system, that isn't against the TOS (im 100% sure it's possible, perhaps not easy though), you (as in us, the community) will have to implement it.
The ladder is what is, a mass market quick game finder, it is designed to be as simple and noob friendly as possible. All the millions of players that don't even know TL exists are the main target of the ladder. Is that holding back true competition and "free market" system of ladders, yes most certainly. But at the end of the day blizzard can't just change it to a complicated system that alienates a massive number of players, costs them money and potentially opens up a whole raft of huge security problems for b.net. It comes back to control of their product and resource management at the end of the day,
It's the same as the lan thing, I of course would like lan, as i would like custom ladders in b.net, but in reality that isn't going to happen any time soon. And if it does it wont be the result of our words here.
I'm being a little cynical, but this is blizzard-activision we are talking about. Don't hold your breath waiting for them to do anything.
Here's an interview from Rob Pardo
Many players decide to play on ICCUP, would you allow servers like ICCUP in StarCraft II?
Neu. Because that's one of the reasons we don't have LAN play is because we do want everyone to play Battle.net we want to make sure that is a great experience. If there is a reason why people are not enjoying battle.net we want to correct it there. But we want to make sure people are playing on Battle.net.
They are using a modified version of battle.net, they are actually using your own battle.net, not LAN.
Yeah, which is even worse! That's called a pirate server.
Sorry, you're 100% wrong according to blizzard. No, it's not legal, for iCCup to work, you needed to be in a separate (modified) server. You can't go to a custom server in the first place, not to mention modifying it.
On February 14 2011 12:04 Kazang wrote: If you really want an ICCup-like system, that isn't against the TOS (im 100% sure it's possible, perhaps not easy though), you (as in us, the community) will have to implement it.
The ladder is what is, a mass market quick game finder, it is designed to be as simple and noob friendly as possible. All the millions of players that don't even know TL exists are the main target of the ladder. Is that holding back true competition and "free market" system of ladders, yes most certainly. But at the end of the day blizzard can't just change it to a complicated system that alienates a massive number of players, costs them money and potentially opens up a whole raft of huge security problems for b.net. It comes back to control of their product and resource management at the end of the day,
It's the same as the lan thing, I of course would like lan, as i would like custom ladders in b.net, but in reality that isn't going to happen any time soon. And if it does it wont be the result of our words here.
I'm being a little cynical, but this is blizzard-activision we are talking about. Don't hold your breath waiting for them to do anything.
Here's an interview from Rob Pardo
Many players decide to play on ICCUP, would you allow servers like ICCUP in StarCraft II?
Neu. Because that's one of the reasons we don't have LAN play is because we do want everyone to play Battle.net we want to make sure that is a great experience. If there is a reason why people are not enjoying battle.net we want to correct it there. But we want to make sure people are playing on Battle.net.
They are using a modified version of battle.net, they are actually using your own battle.net, not LAN.
Yeah, which is even worse! That's called a pirate server.
No, it's not legal, for iCCup to work, you needed to be in a separate (modified) server. You can't go to a custom server in the first place, not to mention modifying it.
"Battle.net" and "great experience" does not compute
On February 14 2011 12:04 Kazang wrote: If you really want an ICCup-like system, that isn't against the TOS (im 100% sure it's possible, perhaps not easy though), you (as in us, the community) will have to implement it.
The ladder is what is, a mass market quick game finder, it is designed to be as simple and noob friendly as possible. All the millions of players that don't even know TL exists are the main target of the ladder. Is that holding back true competition and "free market" system of ladders, yes most certainly. But at the end of the day blizzard can't just change it to a complicated system that alienates a massive number of players, costs them money and potentially opens up a whole raft of huge security problems for b.net. It comes back to control of their product and resource management at the end of the day,
It's the same as the lan thing, I of course would like lan, as i would like custom ladders in b.net, but in reality that isn't going to happen any time soon. And if it does it wont be the result of our words here.
I'm being a little cynical, but this is blizzard-activision we are talking about. Don't hold your breath waiting for them to do anything.
Here's an interview from Rob Pardo
Many players decide to play on ICCUP, would you allow servers like ICCUP in StarCraft II?
Neu. Because that's one of the reasons we don't have LAN play is because we do want everyone to play Battle.net we want to make sure that is a great experience. If there is a reason why people are not enjoying battle.net we want to correct it there. But we want to make sure people are playing on Battle.net.
They are using a modified version of battle.net, they are actually using your own battle.net, not LAN.
Yeah, which is even worse! That's called a pirate server.
No, it's not legal, for iCCup to work, you needed to be in a separate (modified) server. You can't go to a custom server in the first place, not to mention modifying it.
Interviews like this really disappoint me. To me it sounds like:
"Neu. Because we prioritize reducing piracy over everything else and therefore LAN? Over my dead body. If there is a reason why people are not enjoying battle.net then we'll just ignore them for a while and if it gets too bad, we'll make a small change after about a year. We need to make sure absolutely everything is under our control so that we don't repeat the blasphemy of organizations like kespa making money without paying us".
On February 14 2011 04:54 stormchaser wrote: Starcraft 2 is fine when it comes to the ladder. The real problem is that the community continually compares a 7 month (?) old game to a game thats been around for YEARS.
What you fail to see is the framework has already been there. BW was in the dark ages of gaming. SC2 is in the year 2010, with plenty of resources and feedback available.
A 7 month old game released with no LAN? No search function for games? Region locked? Damn, even consoles have more flexibility than SC2.
Once again, and I'm not sure why this has to be constantly pointed out, SC2 lacks some of those features, specifically the LAN, because those features were abused in the original.
Yeah, well should they start releasing computers without the ability to access the internet? Because, you know, some people used the internet to look up child porn and steal movies/music.
No. That's stupid.Control the abuse, not the service that's being abused.
That is how they control the abuse, smart guy.
Obviously, and I'm saying its a shitty solution that reflects that they care less about the game and more about profit margins. They COULD have LAN and stop the abuse, but they don't want to put that effort in, and I as well as anyone else who thinks that this is stupid should speak up about it, or it will never get implimented. If you think the game is perfect how it is, that's fine, however there are a LOT of people (including a large number of professional players) who want things like LAN, better custom game support, custom ladders, etc. who can, will, and should keep pressure on Blizzard to change the game.
Once again I will state this so that you understand. There is not a LAN PRECISELY because it has been misused. There is always a way around any sort of software controls, so the only way Blizzard can ensure that they can control the game at a large-enough scale is by not allowing LANs.
All the BW fanboys created this situation-- if they hate it so much, they should start showing Blizzard behavior that won't make Blizzard afraid, rather than continuing to threaten to do exactly what Blizzard is trying to prevent from happening. Blizzard will probably be more lenient if it stops seeing "ZOMG LET'S MAKE OUR OWN LADDER" threads every day.
On February 14 2011 12:04 Kazang wrote: If you really want an ICCup-like system, that isn't against the TOS (im 100% sure it's possible, perhaps not easy though), you (as in us, the community) will have to implement it.
The ladder is what is, a mass market quick game finder, it is designed to be as simple and noob friendly as possible. All the millions of players that don't even know TL exists are the main target of the ladder. Is that holding back true competition and "free market" system of ladders, yes most certainly. But at the end of the day blizzard can't just change it to a complicated system that alienates a massive number of players, costs them money and potentially opens up a whole raft of huge security problems for b.net. It comes back to control of their product and resource management at the end of the day,
It's the same as the lan thing, I of course would like lan, as i would like custom ladders in b.net, but in reality that isn't going to happen any time soon. And if it does it wont be the result of our words here.
I'm being a little cynical, but this is blizzard-activision we are talking about. Don't hold your breath waiting for them to do anything.
Here's an interview from Rob Pardo
Many players decide to play on ICCUP, would you allow servers like ICCUP in StarCraft II?
Neu. Because that's one of the reasons we don't have LAN play is because we do want everyone to play Battle.net we want to make sure that is a great experience. If there is a reason why people are not enjoying battle.net we want to correct it there. But we want to make sure people are playing on Battle.net.
They are using a modified version of battle.net, they are actually using your own battle.net, not LAN.
Yeah, which is even worse! That's called a pirate server.
Sorry, you're 100% wrong according to blizzard. No, it's not legal, for iCCup to work, you needed to be in a separate (modified) server. You can't go to a custom server in the first place, not to mention modifying it.
It would help if they actually took care of it. If they don't the community will take care of itself.
On February 14 2011 04:54 stormchaser wrote: Starcraft 2 is fine when it comes to the ladder. The real problem is that the community continually compares a 7 month (?) old game to a game thats been around for YEARS.
What you fail to see is the framework has already been there. BW was in the dark ages of gaming. SC2 is in the year 2010, with plenty of resources and feedback available.
A 7 month old game released with no LAN? No search function for games? Region locked? Damn, even consoles have more flexibility than SC2.
Once again, and I'm not sure why this has to be constantly pointed out, SC2 lacks some of those features, specifically the LAN, because those features were abused in the original.
Yeah, well should they start releasing computers without the ability to access the internet? Because, you know, some people used the internet to look up child porn and steal movies/music.
No. That's stupid.Control the abuse, not the service that's being abused.
That is how they control the abuse, smart guy.
Obviously, and I'm saying its a shitty solution that reflects that they care less about the game and more about profit margins. They COULD have LAN and stop the abuse, but they don't want to put that effort in, and I as well as anyone else who thinks that this is stupid should speak up about it, or it will never get implimented. If you think the game is perfect how it is, that's fine, however there are a LOT of people (including a large number of professional players) who want things like LAN, better custom game support, custom ladders, etc. who can, will, and should keep pressure on Blizzard to change the game.
Once again I will state this so that you understand. There is not a LAN PRECISELY because it has been misused. There is always a way around any sort of software controls, so the only way Blizzard can ensure that they can control the game at a large-enough scale is by not allowing LANs.
All the BW fanboys created this situation-- if they hate it so much, they should start showing Blizzard behavior that won't make Blizzard afraid, rather than continuing to threaten to do exactly what Blizzard is trying to prevent from happening. Blizzard will probably be more lenient if it stops seeing "ZOMG LET'S MAKE OUR OWN LADDER" threads every day.
No one is asking why they did it, that's clear and has been stated multiple times. People question IF they should have done it and THAT they are unsatisfied. There is a difference between understanding and acceptance.
On February 14 2011 04:54 stormchaser wrote: Starcraft 2 is fine when it comes to the ladder. The real problem is that the community continually compares a 7 month (?) old game to a game thats been around for YEARS.
What you fail to see is the framework has already been there. BW was in the dark ages of gaming. SC2 is in the year 2010, with plenty of resources and feedback available.
A 7 month old game released with no LAN? No search function for games? Region locked? Damn, even consoles have more flexibility than SC2.
Once again, and I'm not sure why this has to be constantly pointed out, SC2 lacks some of those features, specifically the LAN, because those features were abused in the original.
Yeah, well should they start releasing computers without the ability to access the internet? Because, you know, some people used the internet to look up child porn and steal movies/music.
No. That's stupid.Control the abuse, not the service that's being abused.
That is how they control the abuse, smart guy.
Obviously, and I'm saying its a shitty solution that reflects that they care less about the game and more about profit margins. They COULD have LAN and stop the abuse, but they don't want to put that effort in, and I as well as anyone else who thinks that this is stupid should speak up about it, or it will never get implimented. If you think the game is perfect how it is, that's fine, however there are a LOT of people (including a large number of professional players) who want things like LAN, better custom game support, custom ladders, etc. who can, will, and should keep pressure on Blizzard to change the game.
Once again I will state this so that you understand. There is not a LAN PRECISELY because it has been misused. There is always a way around any sort of software controls, so the only way Blizzard can ensure that they can control the game at a large-enough scale is by not allowing LANs.
All the BW fanboys created this situation-- if they hate it so much, they should start showing Blizzard behavior that won't make Blizzard afraid, rather than continuing to threaten to do exactly what Blizzard is trying to prevent from happening. Blizzard will probably be more lenient if it stops seeing "ZOMG LET'S MAKE OUR OWN LADDER" threads every day.
No one is asking why they did it, that's clear and has been stated multiple times. People question IF they should have done it and THAT they are unsatisfied. There is a difference between understanding and acceptance.
And what I am saying is that your acceptance is not required. Not only that, but the continued displays of a lack of acceptance are precisely what causes Blizzard to entrench in its position.
And I believe that yes, from a business standpoint they should have done what they did. They obviously value their IP, so why not protect it? Anything Blizzard gives us is more than they are required to. They have made enough money off of SC2 that it would be perfectly reasonable for them to never touch it again and be happy with the profit, balance be damned. But they are willing to work with the community. The fact that they are so willing to work with the community is amazing, and their encouragement of its development is equally amazing...however, they are willing to work with the community on Blizzard's terms, which I think is perfectly reasonable.
That the community has somehow decided that it is entitled to a certain level of attention from Blizzard is what baffles me, since Blizzard more than meets its obligation to the fans.
i would haveto agree that this game would be better w/o blizzard maps and with cross server, but the game is new and maybe when it has been out for like what 12 years it will be remembered as amazing too.
On February 14 2011 04:54 stormchaser wrote: Starcraft 2 is fine when it comes to the ladder. The real problem is that the community continually compares a 7 month (?) old game to a game thats been around for YEARS.
What you fail to see is the framework has already been there. BW was in the dark ages of gaming. SC2 is in the year 2010, with plenty of resources and feedback available.
A 7 month old game released with no LAN? No search function for games? Region locked? Damn, even consoles have more flexibility than SC2.
Once again, and I'm not sure why this has to be constantly pointed out, SC2 lacks some of those features, specifically the LAN, because those features were abused in the original.
Yeah, well should they start releasing computers without the ability to access the internet? Because, you know, some people used the internet to look up child porn and steal movies/music.
No. That's stupid.Control the abuse, not the service that's being abused.
That is how they control the abuse, smart guy.
Obviously, and I'm saying its a shitty solution that reflects that they care less about the game and more about profit margins. They COULD have LAN and stop the abuse, but they don't want to put that effort in, and I as well as anyone else who thinks that this is stupid should speak up about it, or it will never get implimented. If you think the game is perfect how it is, that's fine, however there are a LOT of people (including a large number of professional players) who want things like LAN, better custom game support, custom ladders, etc. who can, will, and should keep pressure on Blizzard to change the game.
Once again I will state this so that you understand. There is not a LAN PRECISELY because it has been misused. There is always a way around any sort of software controls, so the only way Blizzard can ensure that they can control the game at a large-enough scale is by not allowing LANs.
All the BW fanboys created this situation-- if they hate it so much, they should start showing Blizzard behavior that won't make Blizzard afraid, rather than continuing to threaten to do exactly what Blizzard is trying to prevent from happening. Blizzard will probably be more lenient if it stops seeing "ZOMG LET'S MAKE OUR OWN LADDER" threads every day.
No one is asking why they did it, that's clear and has been stated multiple times. People question IF they should have done it and THAT they are unsatisfied. There is a difference between understanding and acceptance.
And what I am saying is that your acceptance is not required. Not only that, but the continued displays of a lack of acceptance are precisely what causes Blizzard to entrench in its position.
And I believe that yes, from a business standpoint they should have done what they did. They obviously value their IP, so why not protect it? Anything Blizzard gives us is more than they are required to. They have made enough money off of SC2 that it would be perfectly reasonable for them to never touch it again and be happy with the profit, balance be damned. But they are willing to work with the community. The fact that they are so willing to work with the community is amazing, and their encouragement of its development is equally amazing...however, they are willing to work with the community on Blizzard's terms, which I think is perfectly reasonable.
That the community has somehow decided that it is entitled to a certain level of attention from Blizzard is what baffles me, since Blizzard more than meets its obligation to the fans.
You're right, the community has decided it is entitled to a certain level of attention. The reason, is something called economics. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/economics We, as players are what as known as consumers. Blizzard, as a buisness provides a good and/or a service, in this case, a video game, in exchange for payment. Your point would be vailid if Blizzard had not already announced 2 expansions. So, in order for Blizzard to make as much money possible from their 2 expansions, they need as many people who played WoL to want to buy HotS as possible. Each WoL player is a potential sale for HotS. In terms of competitive RTS games, like starcraft 2, one of the major reasons people will want to stay current (and thus buy the expansion) is a the designers willingness to hear concerns and address them, as well as their ability to keep the game "fresh".
Essentially, keeping consumers happy is an investment. Programmers spend time/resources keeping a game balanced in anticipation of future profits (expansion/sequel sales). Online games are unique in this aspect. It's not enough to put out a good game to begin with, as may be the case with other generes, such as RPGs. Future sales are dependant on maintaining a user base. A major factor in keeping that user base is keeping them happy, and keeping gameplay fresh. Thus, we have balance patches, maps, content, etc.
No where will you find a better example than World of Warcraft. After being around for years, it maintains one of the largest user bases in the world of gaming, and they do so by constantly updating the game to better satisfy the users. As a result, throngs of people play $15 a month in addition to $40 once a year for a new expansion. They know that if they keep playing, Blizzard will keep updating things to keep consumers happy. In the world of the competitive RTS, this translates to balance patches, diverse map pools, etc.
If a game developer chooses to ignore feedback, fewer players will keep playing or be willing to buy the expansions/sequel, which hurts future profits. If Blizzard chooses to ignore player feedback and remains in this "entrenched position" then they will sell less copies of their expansion set. So, no, it's not "amazing" that they choose to respond to community pleas, its a smart buisness decision that will allow them to sell more copies of expansion sets. That simple. Future profits hinge on keeping consumers happy. They are already losing players due to some of the problems pointed out, and as time goes on, if they remain inflexible in reaching a compromise, the problem will only compound itself. If they released a game, said "I don't care if there are problems, you already bought it, fuck you" then people just aren't going to continue to buy their products at the same level they did.
Sorry for the long rant, but Blizzard apologists make my wiener shrink. Blizzard is not an altruistic force of good, nor is it a brooding force of evil, it's a profit seeking venture. It's profits hinge on keeping consumers happy and coming back for more, and if they remain inflexible on some issues, their future profit margins will dip. People who say you have not room to critisize because they're a company looking out for profits aren't really taking into acount more than one facet of the company, and I beg people start looking at things long term. Citing that the game is new as a reason for complacency is a horrible way to think. Be vocal, tell them you want a change, it's the only way a change will be implemented. They listen to feedback for a reason, you know.
The ladder is one of the reasons it's so easy for me to continue playing this game. I can't begin to tell you just how frustrating it was for me to find a game in BW most times because once I'd spent 5 minutes just FINDING a game on the list with a green connection or on the map I wanted to play (or waiting for someone to join my own created game and sticking around long enough for me to click "Start Game"), people would see my record and just ban me from their game either for not being good enough, or being too good, or not playing the right race, or just because they didn't like my screen-name. In SC2, I click "Play Now" and I get to play an entire game against someone else that's approximately at the same level of playing ability as I am...
On February 14 2011 04:54 stormchaser wrote: Starcraft 2 is fine when it comes to the ladder. The real problem is that the community continually compares a 7 month (?) old game to a game thats been around for YEARS.
What you fail to see is the framework has already been there. BW was in the dark ages of gaming. SC2 is in the year 2010, with plenty of resources and feedback available.
A 7 month old game released with no LAN? No search function for games? Region locked? Damn, even consoles have more flexibility than SC2.
Once again, and I'm not sure why this has to be constantly pointed out, SC2 lacks some of those features, specifically the LAN, because those features were abused in the original.
Yeah, well should they start releasing computers without the ability to access the internet? Because, you know, some people used the internet to look up child porn and steal movies/music.
No. That's stupid.Control the abuse, not the service that's being abused.
That is how they control the abuse, smart guy.
Obviously, and I'm saying its a shitty solution that reflects that they care less about the game and more about profit margins. They COULD have LAN and stop the abuse, but they don't want to put that effort in, and I as well as anyone else who thinks that this is stupid should speak up about it, or it will never get implimented. If you think the game is perfect how it is, that's fine, however there are a LOT of people (including a large number of professional players) who want things like LAN, better custom game support, custom ladders, etc. who can, will, and should keep pressure on Blizzard to change the game.
Once again I will state this so that you understand. There is not a LAN PRECISELY because it has been misused. There is always a way around any sort of software controls, so the only way Blizzard can ensure that they can control the game at a large-enough scale is by not allowing LANs.
All the BW fanboys created this situation-- if they hate it so much, they should start showing Blizzard behavior that won't make Blizzard afraid, rather than continuing to threaten to do exactly what Blizzard is trying to prevent from happening. Blizzard will probably be more lenient if it stops seeing "ZOMG LET'S MAKE OUR OWN LADDER" threads every day.
No one is asking why they did it, that's clear and has been stated multiple times. People question IF they should have done it and THAT they are unsatisfied. There is a difference between understanding and acceptance.
And what I am saying is that your acceptance is not required. Not only that, but the continued displays of a lack of acceptance are precisely what causes Blizzard to entrench in its position.
And I believe that yes, from a business standpoint they should have done what they did. They obviously value their IP, so why not protect it? Anything Blizzard gives us is more than they are required to. They have made enough money off of SC2 that it would be perfectly reasonable for them to never touch it again and be happy with the profit, balance be damned. But they are willing to work with the community. The fact that they are so willing to work with the community is amazing, and their encouragement of its development is equally amazing...however, they are willing to work with the community on Blizzard's terms, which I think is perfectly reasonable.
That the community has somehow decided that it is entitled to a certain level of attention from Blizzard is what baffles me, since Blizzard more than meets its obligation to the fans.
I couldnt help myself from reading your post and facepalming, a guy already made a very long post addressing some stuff, so ill just write it more simple and direct, i will not go into the IP stuff since i know its something that has been discussed a lot already all over TL, on the money issue, they have not, and will never make enough money out of anything they own, they will always try and push out more of it as long as they can, common capitalist thinking, nothing out of the ordinary here, but your statement is wrong, they are also, as you can see by reading this thread, not willing to work WITH or FOR the community, since the community is, and from the start, has been asking for stuff that has not been even taken into consideration, nor is going to be implemented until the game profits start to decline, again, usual work policies for any company that sustains a service, and again, proving wrong your argument.
Acti-blizzard has not met its obligations to neither the fans nor the community.
So the things the op pointed out, easilly fixed. A second account? nobody's stopping you from buying another SC2 copy, not so difficult. Playing a specific map, custom game. This is where blizzard should help by adding the option to open to public with conditions (like selecting opponent skill and race). These games should still not count towards ladder MMR. Would take a hell of a lot longer to get games though.
Another issue with being able to play custom games vs specific skill players and races, most of the gameplay would shift towards custom instead of ladder.
If you're a lower level player ladder is great at showing your progress atm while not discouraging play (hey, I'm not 1000000th in the world, I'm 50 in gold). For everyone good, there's always top 200. If you care you're 10000th it's the same as caring if you're 50000 or 100000, still middle of the pack.
The way Blizzard made the game was to entice new players to come in and keep playing and they did a pretty good job at it. Going to an old request, chat channels are pretty much worthless since there's so so so many more systems that will always be better than battle.net, being much older and established, people just like to nitpick and have this stupid nostalgia for something they don't really need that was in bnet 1. Get over it, you communicate with tons of people every day on the internet without using bnet chat channels, do you really need those when you're on IRC servers, gazillion messenger services and a friends list that also has the option of choosing between friend type, as in online sc2 buddy and real person I know and somewhat trust?
I think it's hilarious this guy is in college and still thinks 'allot' is the word he was going for. But other than that, I do agree that a single account and random maps/matchups are lame.
Honestly, one of the reasons I quit ICCUP was that the ladder was so frustrating. Taking 20 minutes to find another D- (I sucked back then ;_;) player, only to get bunker rushed 3 minutes into the game, was not fun.
I think the tools are all there for the community to get a good "ladder" going within bnet. Maybe making a channel called iccupmapdiamond where diamond league players got together to arrange games on ICCUP maps (and iccupmapplatinum, iccupmapbronze, etc). If promoted heavily enough, it could work. The 100-person per channel limit would be kind of a bitch there, though. I suppose really popular ICCUP maps would end up getting their own channel sets, like DiamondTestbug or whatever.
Obviously, it's not an elegant solution, but it's a decent start. And it might be easier to lobby Blizzard for improvements to doing things their way than for something that makes it possible to pirate the game.
Right now, the worst-case scenario of what a "custom ladder" will look like is this: You play the Blizzard ladder to get into a league, which is a decent arbiter of skill. You then go to ICCUP and join their chat channel (if the in-game chats don't work well enough for this purpose). You find a player of similar skill who wants to play on a given map, and you go play him.
The best-case scenario we can realistically hope for is that Blizzard allows for custom divisions, that we can use custom maps to determine ranking in.
the is deffiantly nothing wrong with the actual ladder and being put agaisnt people your own level, that I think is great with the current system, I do wonder why its taking so long to implement clan channels and clans interface into this game, one of the things I really liked in WC3 was this feature.
not being able to play Cross realm is annoying but then again, you can easily by another copy from these regions and im quite happy that you can only make one chracter per copy, I use to love playing as different races ebfore now but I deffiantly see the benefit of making people play on one character and not have to worry to getting smurfed like what use to happen in Warcraft 3.
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." [...] "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. [...]
Well this are some very interesting points I never thought of. If Blizzard would give me (as I can only speak for myself) the opportunity to train specific match-ups without having to find a lots of practice partners I would enjoy laddering much more. I don't mind having no second account to play on, but I really get your point and hope Blizzard might consider changing it in some way (such as 2 or 3 chars per account).
I hope Blizzard will at least change their map system, so custom maps can be played on ladder. As here are so many posts how this could be implemented, I won't comment on that OK, one comment: I don't know the post right now, but someone suggested not blocking maps, but being able to vote (custom) maps into the pool, which I like a lot.
On February 12 2011 19:36 blith wrote: 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.
Yeah I agree with this even though I think this topic is poking a dead horse.
I don't mind if people like BW but BW lobbyist really need to get over it, your game WILL die. Yeah it might take godamn near forever just like CS or perhaps it'll always be there. My point is; BW has lived its glory days. It will never again become bigger than it is now, it will only go down in popularity as time goes by and the progamers become adults and/or can't continue it. It might stay active much longer in Korea but in the rest of the world it wont ever become what SC2 has the potentiall to become.
That said, I think Blizzard are handeling SC2 really really bad.
On February 14 2011 21:15 blackbrrd wrote: Adding and removing a map say, every 2-4 weeks shouldn't be that hard, and would keep the ladder quite fresh when it comes to maps.
Blizzard is aiming to change the map poll every 3-4 months, which is something they're "behind on".
Depending on how many maps they change at a time, that might work out okay.
If, next month, Blizzard took out Lost Temple, Delta, Jungle Basin, and Blistering Sands, and replaced them with Test Map 1, Terminus*, Crossfire*, and...Test Map 2, maybe. That'd be a pretty baller update. I think it's even something that could happen.
*The Blizzard versions. Which are maybe not quite as good as the slightly-modified GSL versions, but still pretty damn good.
1 "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."
2
"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.
3
"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?
Your friend is just ignorant. If you consider his conversation is eye opener, you just got brainwashed.
Before i go on, please consider these 3 points:
1. What does ladder mean to you? 2. If you play a game on ladder, do you expect to win? 3. If you know that playing against certain race on certain map will have a near 80% win rate, would you likely to queue that map more often?
If ladder means nothing to you, then you can play custom games all day and be happy. However, if you are competitive like me, you will make sure that if you play a game, you want to be the winner.
1.
Your friend want to pick his opponent's race on his map's choice on ladder. Maybe your friend has good intention of practicing, but he forgot about other players who wants to advances through the ladder. It is the ladder. Everyone wants to be the winner, no one wants to take a loss. Everyone will queue maps that favor their race. This will lead to a long queue time, which i assure you there will be a outcry how Blizzard is garbage, money-hungry company that make you waiting too long for game. Also, no one will take ladder seriously because it does not prove your skill. It only proves how abusive you can get.
2.
Again your friend is just pure ignorant and stubborn. He wants to off-race and doesn't want to lose ladder points. Is he a fucking retard or what? So he wants smurf accounts, so he can beat up newbies when he offraces on ladder? You need to tell him that he is a selfish bitch. He can offrace fine in custom games. But no, it must be ladder, right? Fucking selfish bitch.
By the way, i am absolutely against smurf accounts. Smurf account is the bane of genuine new player and it is near impossible to gauge one's skill.
3.
Blizzard is not inflexible about implement a community map. There are lot of good community maps. However, it is not wise to implement all of them because it would be way too many maps on ladder. The question is which one should blizzard add? When they add one map, i would be so sure that there will be demand to add another one, and another one, and another one. You get the idea.
On February 14 2011 22:57 Prime`Rib wrote: By the way, i am absolutely against smurf accounts. Smurf account is the bane of genuine new player and it is near impossible to gauge one's skill.
Actually smurf accounts can make it fair, unless of course they are being abused. I have two smurf accounts, my main Zerg (high Plat, demoted from Diamond), my Gold Terran and my Silver Protoss. I got those leagues from playing normally, not losing intentionally. If i'd play all races on one account i'd lose a lot as protoss until i get the hang of it, possibly drop to gold and giving a lot of people undeserved wins on the way down (as their score increases as if they really played against my main race). Then when i'd change back to Zerg i would roflstomp 20 opponents just because the MMR dropped so much that my opponents simply cannot compete, giving them undeserved losses.
Yes, it can be abused, you can lose 100 matches and then just stomp zero point bronze players a few times, but there are always people that game the system. With my terran smurf i checked how long it takes until you play against the higher leagues after losing a lot, and after about 20 losses it took me about 5 games until my opponents where silver, another 5 to gold and a few more to platinum (yes, i gave people undeserved wins and undeserved losses, but well, i was curious), meaning you'd have to lose a lot more than you win to really stay that low and be able to bash "noobs".
Smurf accounts are not that bad, people abusing them excessively are the problem.
On February 14 2011 22:57 Prime`Rib wrote: By the way, i am absolutely against smurf accounts. Smurf account is the bane of genuine new player and it is near impossible to gauge one's skill.
Actually smurf accounts can make it fair, unless of course they are being abused. I have two smurf accounts, my main Zerg (high Plat, demoted from Diamond), my Gold Terran and my Silver Protoss. I got those leagues from playing normally, not losing intentionally. If i'd play all races on one account i'd lose a lot as protoss until i get the hang of it, possibly drop to gold and giving a lot of people undeserved wins on the way down (as their score increases as if they really played against my main race). Then when i'd change back to Zerg i would roflstomp 20 opponents just because the MMR dropped so much that my opponents simply cannot compete, giving them undeserved losses.
Yes, it can be abused, you can lose 100 matches and then just stomp zero point bronze players a few times, but there are always people that game the system. With my terran smurf i checked how long it takes until you play against the higher leagues after losing a lot, and after about 20 losses it took me about 5 games until my opponents where silver, another 5 to gold and a few more to platinum (yes, i gave people undeserved wins and undeserved losses, but well, i was curious), meaning you'd have to lose a lot more than you win to really stay that low and be able to bash "noobs".
Smurf accounts are not that bad, people abusing them excessively are the problem.
Those accounts are not abused excessively because they cost something, in WC3 people would make new accounts constantly just to try and get a better win/loss ratio. So much so it was common for people to have a list of all their accounts in their profile.
I actually like the ladder system. Could do without bonus pool and defiantly would like to see new maps quite a bit more often but i have faith. BW wasnt the wonder it was out the bat either. It took a few year. 2 years after the final expansions comes out is when i play on judging blizzard and this game. Same as it was almost 2 years after SC Vanilla when any kind of real good changes where made.
I actually just kinda think of WoL as basically SC2 Vanilla. I have hope.
It's not the Ladder that's broken. To compete in Ladder you shouldn't be allowed to pick matchups and maps. That is not how a ladder is supposed to work. However, if you wanna use the ladder to practice for tournaments, or feel you don't improve enough playing ladder because the matchup or map you want to improve on comes up too rarely, you need to realize that for practicing there are custom games.
A ladder isn't for practising. It's for competition. But the medium for practicing - Custom Games - is broken in SC2. Check out this thread, it contains the answer I wanted to give here at first until I realized it's its own big story that deserves a new thread.
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?
Search for a community who is at your level and willing to train with you. I don't know... maybe tl.net?
1) Separate MMRs for each played race (T,P,Z and R) 2) Ability to automatically search for an opponent in your conditions: opponent's race and/or map being played. These matches would NOT count for your ladder points. 3) Ability to watch replays along with other people (as in BNet1 IIRC) 4) Periodic map pool rotation. 5) Maybe add a Bo3 or Bo5 ladder/option.
#2 might suffer if there is not enough people giving it a try, but as of now I don't think we are at that low population level yet. #5 would be very nice but would probably take some time to implement/potentially suffer from population problem as well.
These options would not only make a lot of sense, but would also encourage people to diversify their playstyle/race, making strategies evolve at a faster rate. It would provide more variety to fight the stagnation some are starting to feel.
On February 14 2011 04:54 stormchaser wrote: Starcraft 2 is fine when it comes to the ladder. The real problem is that the community continually compares a 7 month (?) old game to a game thats been around for YEARS.
What you fail to see is the framework has already been there. BW was in the dark ages of gaming. SC2 is in the year 2010, with plenty of resources and feedback available.
A 7 month old game released with no LAN? No search function for games? Region locked? Damn, even consoles have more flexibility than SC2.
Once again, and I'm not sure why this has to be constantly pointed out, SC2 lacks some of those features, specifically the LAN, because those features were abused in the original.
Yeah, well should they start releasing computers without the ability to access the internet? Because, you know, some people used the internet to look up child porn and steal movies/music.
No. That's stupid.Control the abuse, not the service that's being abused.
That is how they control the abuse, smart guy.
Obviously, and I'm saying its a shitty solution that reflects that they care less about the game and more about profit margins. They COULD have LAN and stop the abuse, but they don't want to put that effort in, and I as well as anyone else who thinks that this is stupid should speak up about it, or it will never get implimented. If you think the game is perfect how it is, that's fine, however there are a LOT of people (including a large number of professional players) who want things like LAN, better custom game support, custom ladders, etc. who can, will, and should keep pressure on Blizzard to change the game.
Once again I will state this so that you understand. There is not a LAN PRECISELY because it has been misused. There is always a way around any sort of software controls, so the only way Blizzard can ensure that they can control the game at a large-enough scale is by not allowing LANs.
All the BW fanboys created this situation-- if they hate it so much, they should start showing Blizzard behavior that won't make Blizzard afraid, rather than continuing to threaten to do exactly what Blizzard is trying to prevent from happening. Blizzard will probably be more lenient if it stops seeing "ZOMG LET'S MAKE OUR OWN LADDER" threads every day.
No one is asking why they did it, that's clear and has been stated multiple times. People question IF they should have done it and THAT they are unsatisfied. There is a difference between understanding and acceptance.
Actually, I thought Blizzard's official explanation for no LAN is "We're gonna make Battle.net 2.0 so good that you won't want LAN". Highly doubt anyone bought it though.
I think users arent that faithful i mean the supper dupper 3-4k masters from tl are, but the rest actually go play something else when there is nothing new for months. I think the biggest problem with ladder is lack of rewards ....
I agree with everything with this post and I also think Blizzard needs to make it so people can be moderators in channels. Its really annoying having someone you don't like in your channel and not being able to do anything about it. Sure you can ignore/block them but you can still see what they say in the channel. New maps, more accounts per person and ban feature.
On February 14 2011 23:38 Ender985 wrote:1) Separate MMRs for each played race (T,P,Z and R)
I would very much like to see this implemented. Bnet has separate ladder placements for every combination of players that you use for team games. I have half a dozen setups in different team brackets all with their own MMR and placements. I think that it would be great to bring that concept to 1v1. You would have a separate league placement for each race, so you can actually play competitive games with every race via Quick Match.
The matchmaking system seems really good to me as I'm almost always matched up with another player of comparable skill when playing my main race. When I try to offrace on the ladder, I usually get rolled. It's not all that fun for me and likely the other player (even though they get the win.) Separate MMRs and league placements for each race would be wonderful. I understand that custom games can be used to remedy this somewhat, but it would be so nice to just select an offrace and hit the Quick Match button!
Obviously no Lan support sucks, there's no denying that, and different leagues for different races would also be so much better.
Look on the bright side of things however: first off, the game is REALLY young, there's still a lot more to come. Also keep in mind that Blizzard is known for being very good at balancing games, but they also do so -very- slowly. If the game still feels off/the map pool isn't great/whatever, say, by the time Heart of the Swarm is released, then these concerns are valid; however panicking right now is just too early imo. Starcraft 2 is meant to last for at least a decade like its predecessor, so give it some time
1 "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."
2
"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.
3
"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?
Your friend is just ignorant. If you consider his conversation is eye opener, you just got brainwashed.
Before i go on, please consider these 3 points:
1. What does ladder mean to you? 2. If you play a game on ladder, do you expect to win? 3. If you know that playing against certain race on certain map will have a near 80% win rate, would you likely to queue that map more often?
If ladder means nothing to you, then you can play custom games all day and be happy. However, if you are competitive like me, you will make sure that if you play a game, you want to be the winner.
1.
Your friend want to pick his opponent's race on his map's choice on ladder. Maybe your friend has good intention of practicing, but he forgot about other players who wants to advances through the ladder. It is the ladder. Everyone wants to be the winner, no one wants to take a loss. Everyone will queue maps that favor their race. This will lead to a long queue time, which i assure you there will be a outcry how Blizzard is garbage, money-hungry company that make you waiting too long for game. Also, no one will take ladder seriously because it does not prove your skill. It only proves how abusive you can get.
2.
Again your friend is just pure ignorant and stubborn. He wants to off-race and doesn't want to lose ladder points. Is he a fucking retard or what? So he wants smurf accounts, so he can beat up newbies when he offraces on ladder? You need to tell him that he is a selfish bitch. He can offrace fine in custom games. But no, it must be ladder, right? Fucking selfish bitch.
By the way, i am absolutely against smurf accounts. Smurf account is the bane of genuine new player and it is near impossible to gauge one's skill.
3.
Blizzard is not inflexible about implement a community map. There are lot of good community maps. However, it is not wise to implement all of them because it would be way too many maps on ladder. The question is which one should blizzard add? When they add one map, i would be so sure that there will be demand to add another one, and another one, and another one. You get the idea.
First off, I'd like to point out that berating my friend, calling him a "fucking selfish bitch", "ignorant", "stubborn", etc without knowing him is ridiculous. Talk like this makes me think you're probably an insufferable douchenozzle who's going to miss everything cool in life and die angry. Anyway, that being said...
1. Firstly, your underlying assumptions about the ladder are flawed. The ladder doesn't prove who's best, only who is the winner. This "winning is everything" mindset makes it a perfect place to practice, dispite your presumptions. iNcontroL, for instance, on a recent VOD talks about using the ladder as his practice for tourneys because people will do anything to win, cheese, macro, agression, passivity. Everything. Somehow people assume that if you have the OPTION to choose race/map, that you HAVE to. This is not the case, and obviously allot of people love the 1 button game finding, however, players after better practice could choose to play this custom game in the same cuthroat "winning is everything" atmosphere. There are a lot of people who are offended by this type of play being on the ladder because players who abuse the system could get to a higher league faster. My response would be WHO GIVES A FUCK? Don't play these custom games against these players if this is a problem for you. The only thing hurt are people's egos.
2. Besides your obvious personality flaws, I'd like to point out that having to pay for the same game 3 times to be able to enjoy laddering as each race rubs a lot of people the wrong way. If you are competitve, but like to mess around with the other races, you're almost certainly going to lose allot more as other races than with your main race, and thus lose points. Wanting to play on the ladder as an off race is not the same as "lets roll newbs all day long as a masters league offrace and still somehow remain in bronze".
3. Actually, they are. Not one map from the community has made its way onto the PTR, just blizzard maps. There might be a good reason for this, I don't know, I don't work for Blizzard. As a player, however, if these maps are not a reasonable bit better than previous maps, I'm going to be a sad panda, because they're all blizzard maps. There are professional map makers showing new maps to Blizzard all the time, and they are ditching them in favor of their own maps, and if they are not very good, I view it as a sign of things to come, ie. more bad maps. As to new maps making people wanting new maps, well, yes, that's the general idea. You see people want a rotating map pool to keep the game fresh and interesting.
Even though Prime`Rib worded it harshly I do agree with the points he is making. To respond with the 1,2,3:
1. Apparently you do not care if people abuse the option of effectively choosing your map & opponent, but I can tell you many other people will. I would be one of them. The ladder is like the 'official' measure of a player's skill when put against the world (or in this case, his region). The player ranked 1st should be capable of winning in all circumstances, not just in TvZ on LT doing cliff drops and 2 rax marine pushes.
I am not against such an option though, but it should *not* count for ladder points. It should be an option added to the Custom Games, not to League Games...
2. If you want to "mess around" with other races, do so in Custom Games. That's what they are for (among other things). Nowadays I meet mainly Diamonds+ in Custom Games, so that would be good practice for your offrace. Obviously ladder would be even better practice, but apparently your friend values his points too much so then he should simply play CGs. There is no need whatsoever for 3 accounts, that's total nonsense.
Constantly "resetting your account" like he apparently does in BW to bash on newbies is just extremely sad. Apparently he doesn't like losing, so instead he resets his own account to start owning up other people. Do you think they like to lose vs someone who actually played 1000 games already but seems to be new? Smurfs ruin the game for new people, Prime`Rib was right about that.
3. I am not really sure about the map-issue yet. I kinda understand Blizzard for not quickly allowing 3rd party maps into the ladder, but it might be they are a bit too reserved about this. Tough one. He could simply ask around for practice partners (like you) and play the maps in Custom Games.
On February 14 2011 21:18 Krehlmar wrote: I don't mind if people like BW but BW lobbyist really need to get over it, your game WILL die. Yeah
Ok. Its been around for 12 years and still is the most popular esport in the world(as in more people show up for things like the OSL/MSL/ect. than any other esport in the world) and you say definitively it will die. Please.
On February 14 2011 23:38 Ender985 wrote: I think BNet2 needs:
1) Separate MMRs for each played race (T,P,Z and R) 2) Ability to automatically search for an opponent in your conditions: opponent's race and/or map being played. These matches would NOT count for your ladder points. 3) Ability to watch replays along with other people (as in BNet1 IIRC) 4) Periodic map pool rotation.
This.
I want more power regarding my choices as to what map and vs which race I wish to play against. Even if it does not count towards one's ladder rating, I feel that a more customizable matchmaking system would benefit the learning process.
Having trouble vs race X on map Y? Play a few games to brainstorm a solution.
On February 14 2011 12:04 Kazang wrote: If you really want an ICCup-like system, that isn't against the TOS (im 100% sure it's possible, perhaps not easy though), you (as in us, the community) will have to implement it.
The ladder is what is, a mass market quick game finder, it is designed to be as simple and noob friendly as possible. All the millions of players that don't even know TL exists are the main target of the ladder. Is that holding back true competition and "free market" system of ladders, yes most certainly. But at the end of the day blizzard can't just change it to a complicated system that alienates a massive number of players, costs them money and potentially opens up a whole raft of huge security problems for b.net. It comes back to control of their product and resource management at the end of the day,
It's the same as the lan thing, I of course would like lan, as i would like custom ladders in b.net, but in reality that isn't going to happen any time soon. And if it does it wont be the result of our words here.
I'm being a little cynical, but this is blizzard-activision we are talking about. Don't hold your breath waiting for them to do anything.
Here's an interview from Rob Pardo
Many players decide to play on ICCUP, would you allow servers like ICCUP in StarCraft II?
Neu. Because that's one of the reasons we don't have LAN play is because we do want everyone to play Battle.net we want to make sure that is a great experience. If there is a reason why people are not enjoying battle.net we want to correct it there. But we want to make sure people are playing on Battle.net.
They are using a modified version of battle.net, they are actually using your own battle.net, not LAN.
Yeah, which is even worse! That's called a pirate server.
Sorry, you're 100% wrong according to blizzard. No, it's not legal, for iCCup to work, you needed to be in a separate (modified) server. You can't go to a custom server in the first place, not to mention modifying it.
It's funny that blizzard gives ICCUP no credit. Starcraft probably wouldn't be half of what it is without it, but still they want everyone to play on their battlenet on their ladder.
1 "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."
2
"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.
3
"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?
Your friend is just ignorant. If you consider his conversation is eye opener, you just got brainwashed.
Before i go on, please consider these 3 points:
1. What does ladder mean to you? 2. If you play a game on ladder, do you expect to win? 3. If you know that playing against certain race on certain map will have a near 80% win rate, would you likely to queue that map more often?
If ladder means nothing to you, then you can play custom games all day and be happy. However, if you are competitive like me, you will make sure that if you play a game, you want to be the winner.
1.
Your friend want to pick his opponent's race on his map's choice on ladder. Maybe your friend has good intention of practicing, but he forgot about other players who wants to advances through the ladder. It is the ladder. Everyone wants to be the winner, no one wants to take a loss. Everyone will queue maps that favor their race. This will lead to a long queue time, which i assure you there will be a outcry how Blizzard is garbage, money-hungry company that make you waiting too long for game. Also, no one will take ladder seriously because it does not prove your skill. It only proves how abusive you can get.
2.
Again your friend is just pure ignorant and stubborn. He wants to off-race and doesn't want to lose ladder points. Is he a fucking retard or what? So he wants smurf accounts, so he can beat up newbies when he offraces on ladder? You need to tell him that he is a selfish bitch. He can offrace fine in custom games. But no, it must be ladder, right? Fucking selfish bitch.
By the way, i am absolutely against smurf accounts. Smurf account is the bane of genuine new player and it is near impossible to gauge one's skill.
3.
Blizzard is not inflexible about implement a community map. There are lot of good community maps. However, it is not wise to implement all of them because it would be way too many maps on ladder. The question is which one should blizzard add? When they add one map, i would be so sure that there will be demand to add another one, and another one, and another one. You get the idea.
First off, I'd like to point out that berating my friend, calling him a "fucking selfish bitch", "ignorant", "stubborn", etc without knowing him is ridiculous. Talk like this makes me think you're probably an insufferable douchenozzle who's going to miss everything cool in life and die angry. Anyway, that being said...
1. Firstly, your underlying assumptions about the ladder are flawed. The ladder doesn't prove who's best, only who is the winner. This "winning is everything" mindset makes it a perfect place to practice, dispite your presumptions. iNcontroL, for instance, on a recent VOD talks about using the ladder as his practice for tourneys because people will do anything to win, cheese, macro, agression, passivity. Everything. Somehow people assume that if you have the OPTION to choose race/map, that you HAVE to. This is not the case, and obviously allot of people love the 1 button game finding, however, players after better practice could choose to play this custom game in the same cuthroat "winning is everything" atmosphere. There are a lot of people who are offended by this type of play being on the ladder because players who abuse the system could get to a higher league faster. My response would be WHO GIVES A FUCK? Don't play these custom games against these players if this is a problem for you. The only thing hurt are people's egos.
2. Besides your obvious personality flaws, I'd like to point out that having to pay for the same game 3 times to be able to enjoy laddering as each race rubs a lot of people the wrong way. If you are competitve, but like to mess around with the other races, you're almost certainly going to lose allot more as other races than with your main race, and thus lose points. Wanting to play on the ladder as an off race is not the same as "lets roll newbs all day long as a masters league offrace and still somehow remain in bronze".
3. Actually, they are. Not one map from the community has made its way onto the PTR, just blizzard maps. There might be a good reason for this, I don't know, I don't work for Blizzard. As a player, however, if these maps are not a reasonable bit better than previous maps, I'm going to be a sad panda, because they're all blizzard maps. There are professional map makers showing new maps to Blizzard all the time, and they are ditching them in favor of their own maps, and if they are not very good, I view it as a sign of things to come, ie. more bad maps. As to new maps making people wanting new maps, well, yes, that's the general idea. You see people want a rotating map pool to keep the game fresh and interesting.
I agree that he shouldn't have been so harsh and disrespectful in his post, but your so called counterpoints really don't invalidate anything he said. I actually can't even follow your point in your first counterargument.. it almost seems like your agreeing with him..
I have to say his initial arguments to your OP are really a lot stronger than your counterpoints despite the distasteful tone..
Honestly allowing people to pick the map and their opponent's race on ladder is a horrible idea..
I could go both ways on the whole smurfing thing.. at worst it's a mild annoyance. It's really only a problem for people who are scared to lose their precious ladder ranking and have no other friends to practice off-race with... if you really care about practicing and getting better I would think you'd want to offrace against higher skilled players on the ladder. You can play customs to practice against people who are less skilled if you prefer that. Also if your truly playing to simply practice and get better (and have fun!) you really shouldn't care so much about your ranking that your refusing to offrace in fear of losing points... I mean what are we all top 200 famous players here? (they are the only ones who truly should have a gripe about no smurfing) stop caring so much about your points sheesh..
Agreed *The leagues silver , gold etc are too few and very far apart , its takes a month at least to be promoted between leagues and its easy to feel demotivated and dishearted if ur stuck in the same league for a while. Having iccup style D-,D,D+..A-,A,A+ would be nicer *Ability to pick what map or map race you want to play would be awesome, i can then actually focus on a match and try improve.
On February 15 2011 07:12 dani` wrote: Even though Prime`Rib worded it harshly I do agree with the points he is making. To respond with the 1,2,3:
1. Apparently you do not care if people abuse the option of effectively choosing your map & opponent, but I can tell you many other people will. I would be one of them. The ladder is like the 'official' measure of a player's skill when put against the world (or in this case, his region). The player ranked 1st should be capable of winning in all circumstances, not just in TvZ on LT doing cliff drops and 2 rax marine pushes.
I am not against such an option though, but it should *not* count for ladder points. It should be an option added to the Custom Games, not to League Games...
2. If you want to "mess around" with other races, do so in Custom Games. That's what they are for (among other things). Nowadays I meet mainly Diamonds+ in Custom Games, so that would be good practice for your offrace. Obviously ladder would be even better practice, but apparently your friend values his points too much so then he should simply play CGs. There is no need whatsoever for 3 accounts, that's total nonsense.
Constantly "resetting your account" like he apparently does in BW to bash on newbies is just extremely sad. Apparently he doesn't like losing, so instead he resets his own account to start owning up other people. Do you think they like to lose vs someone who actually played 1000 games already but seems to be new? Smurfs ruin the game for new people, Prime`Rib was right about that.
3. I am not really sure about the map-issue yet. I kinda understand Blizzard for not quickly allowing 3rd party maps into the ladder, but it might be they are a bit too reserved about this. Tough one. He could simply ask around for practice partners (like you) and play the maps in Custom Games.
Agreed completely.
For those of you wanting to pick and choose your ladder games, what would you say about the idea of either allowing it only on the custom games or creating a separate hidden "ladder" where points are nonexistent, but you have a separate MMR to be matched up against players of similar skills?
If you still insist that you want it on the current main ladder system with points, then you are being rather hypocritical for using "I don't care about some cheeser's ladder points" as the root of your argument and yet oddly showing an attachment for your own points.
I think in Beta I saw a post on the Bnet forums and the thread suggest that Blizzard should add a practice ladder kind of thing. It would not effect your ladder score, but you could choose the map and race to play against at your level. I thought it was a great idea, but I don't know is Blizz ever saw it.
On February 14 2011 23:38 Ender985 wrote: 2) Ability to automatically search for an opponent in your conditions: opponent's race and/or map being played. These matches would NOT count for your ladder points.
This is a good idea, it will let people practice a particular matchup but they can't abuse it to get high ladder points.
Also didn't Blizzard say online replays with friends will be coming early 2011? Still waiting.....
On February 12 2011 19:44 Rabbitmaster wrote: 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.
I really have to disagree with that statement as it's a terrible cop-out. If you make a game, especially a sequel to a great game, you have to make it better. Why should people who paid for the game have to wait 2-3 years to get a product as good as one which came out 11 years ago?
For example, Age of Conan and various other games died a terrible death because they came out unpolished and worst of all not as good as World of Warcraft (which is the game you must rival/beat) to get anywhere in the MMORPG market).
Don't make excuses, BW was a fantastic game and SC2 needs to capitalise on that experience but with upgraded graphics and improved gameplay.
When one step forward turns into two steps back, you're obviously worse off than when you started.
Back on subject; I would love an options for alternate accounts or an unranked but MMR based practice ladder system also though. All three races look fantastic and I feel so pigeonholed if I choose just one. Also there's the whole "know your enemy" aspect!
1 "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."
2
"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.
3
"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?
Your friend is just ignorant. If you consider his conversation is eye opener, you just got brainwashed.
Before i go on, please consider these 3 points:
1. What does ladder mean to you? 2. If you play a game on ladder, do you expect to win? 3. If you know that playing against certain race on certain map will have a near 80% win rate, would you likely to queue that map more often?
If ladder means nothing to you, then you can play custom games all day and be happy. However, if you are competitive like me, you will make sure that if you play a game, you want to be the winner.
1.
Your friend want to pick his opponent's race on his map's choice on ladder. Maybe your friend has good intention of practicing, but he forgot about other players who wants to advances through the ladder. It is the ladder. Everyone wants to be the winner, no one wants to take a loss. Everyone will queue maps that favor their race. This will lead to a long queue time, which i assure you there will be a outcry how Blizzard is garbage, money-hungry company that make you waiting too long for game. Also, no one will take ladder seriously because it does not prove your skill. It only proves how abusive you can get.
2.
Again your friend is just pure ignorant and stubborn. He wants to off-race and doesn't want to lose ladder points. Is he a fucking retard or what? So he wants smurf accounts, so he can beat up newbies when he offraces on ladder? You need to tell him that he is a selfish bitch. He can offrace fine in custom games. But no, it must be ladder, right? Fucking selfish bitch.
By the way, i am absolutely against smurf accounts. Smurf account is the bane of genuine new player and it is near impossible to gauge one's skill.
3.
Blizzard is not inflexible about implement a community map. There are lot of good community maps. However, it is not wise to implement all of them because it would be way too many maps on ladder. The question is which one should blizzard add? When they add one map, i would be so sure that there will be demand to add another one, and another one, and another one. You get the idea.
First off, I'd like to point out that berating my friend, calling him a "fucking selfish bitch", "ignorant", "stubborn", etc without knowing him is ridiculous. Talk like this makes me think you're probably an insufferable douchenozzle who's going to miss everything cool in life and die angry. Anyway, that being said...
1. Firstly, your underlying assumptions about the ladder are flawed. The ladder doesn't prove who's best, only who is the winner. This "winning is everything" mindset makes it a perfect place to practice, dispite your presumptions. iNcontroL, for instance, on a recent VOD talks about using the ladder as his practice for tourneys because people will do anything to win, cheese, macro, agression, passivity. Everything. Somehow people assume that if you have the OPTION to choose race/map, that you HAVE to. This is not the case, and obviously allot of people love the 1 button game finding, however, players after better practice could choose to play this custom game in the same cuthroat "winning is everything" atmosphere. There are a lot of people who are offended by this type of play being on the ladder because players who abuse the system could get to a higher league faster. My response would be WHO GIVES A FUCK? Don't play these custom games against these players if this is a problem for you. The only thing hurt are people's egos.
2. Besides your obvious personality flaws, I'd like to point out that having to pay for the same game 3 times to be able to enjoy laddering as each race rubs a lot of people the wrong way. If you are competitve, but like to mess around with the other races, you're almost certainly going to lose allot more as other races than with your main race, and thus lose points. Wanting to play on the ladder as an off race is not the same as "lets roll newbs all day long as a masters league offrace and still somehow remain in bronze".
3. Actually, they are. Not one map from the community has made its way onto the PTR, just blizzard maps. There might be a good reason for this, I don't know, I don't work for Blizzard. As a player, however, if these maps are not a reasonable bit better than previous maps, I'm going to be a sad panda, because they're all blizzard maps. There are professional map makers showing new maps to Blizzard all the time, and they are ditching them in favor of their own maps, and if they are not very good, I view it as a sign of things to come, ie. more bad maps. As to new maps making people wanting new maps, well, yes, that's the general idea. You see people want a rotating map pool to keep the game fresh and interesting.
I agree that he shouldn't have been so harsh and disrespectful in his post, but your so called counterpoints really don't invalidate anything he said. I actually can't even follow your point in your first counterargument.. it almost seems like your agreeing with him..
I have to say his initial arguments to your OP are really a lot stronger than your counterpoints despite the distasteful tone..
Honestly allowing people to pick the map and their opponent's race on ladder is a horrible idea..
I could go both ways on the whole smurfing thing.. at worst it's a mild annoyance. It's really only a problem for people who are scared to lose their precious ladder ranking and have no other friends to practice off-race with... if you really care about practicing and getting better I would think you'd want to offrace against higher skilled players on the ladder. You can play customs to practice against people who are less skilled if you prefer that. Also if your truly playing to simply practice and get better (and have fun!) you really shouldn't care so much about your ranking that your refusing to offrace in fear of losing points... I mean what are we all top 200 famous players here? (they are the only ones who truly should have a gripe about no smurfing) stop caring so much about your points sheesh..
Well, I most definatley am not agreeing with his point, and I don't know why you can't follow the point. The ladder does NOT prove your skill at the game, just how much you win. I'll give an example.
There is a player in high masters league who only 6 pools. Is he better than others around his rating? No, but he wins allot because most players don't know how to properly respond to 6 pools. That's the kind of enviroment the ladder fosters that makes it so perfect for practicing. In last year's dream hack, there was a player just like that, ActionJezus. He 6 pooled almost every game, and won against far better players than himself, such as NonY. The underlying assumption is that the ladder is a representation of your skill, but that is just wrong, the ladder is just a measure of your wins. Winning doesn't make you the best player. A lot of people could take a game off flash or Jaedong, but that doesn't mean that they're better.
So, assuming that allowing custom games on the ladder would tarnish the meaning is just wrong. So many people let their egos guide them, which is why they are offended by this notion. It rubs people the wrong way to think that they worked very hard to get to the level they are at and another person took an easier road to your level than you did. I'm saying that it doesn't matter. IF someone only plays ZvT on scrap, in a game on metal, you're going to smash him, because he never practices it. He's one demensionalized his play, you have not. It's an unfortunate abuse that could happen, but it won't effect ANYTHING but your ego.
As to playing offrace on the ladder, imo, allot of higher ranked players dislike that idea. The ladder is very competitive, and giving up points to play an off race is pobably not the best idea. WIth the current custom game system, its almost impossible to find a good match to play an off-race.
Arisen you are making less and less sense as you go on.
In your last post you say that: "The underlying assumption is that the ladder is a representation of your skill, but that is just wrong, the ladder is just a measure of your wins. Winning doesn't make you the best player."
And then a few paragraphs later: "The ladder is very competitive, and giving up points to play an off race is pobably not the best idea."
So which is it? Very competitive or not a representation of skill? Because the two are mutually exclusive. You say winning means nothing yet the ladder is competitive and people can't off race becasue they might win less. That doesn't make any sense.
The other thing is you seem to stuck on the idea of a privately hosted server(s) or open custom ladders on b.net as the only options. There are many other options. There is nothing stopping people running ladders through battle.net with a external ranking system.
This is extremely common in other games, sites such as ESEA offer solutions that don't require breaking the TOS.
I could make a automatic replay parser and chat bot to facilitate the organisation of a ladder or tournament run through b.net without too much effort, there are tools already available that do this. That's just one idea off the top of my head that I know will be viable and wouldn't violate any TOS. There are many other ways to work it using more complicated methods using active bots which are not technically allowed but would achieve what you want without using a private server and aren't actually preventable anyway. Even an in between system such as using whatever database sc2ranks pulls it's info from to verify results would probably be sufficient, although I don't know enough about that to say for sure. Setting up games could be done through a small app or website, play the game on b.net, results get auto submitted at a certain time.
The only thing preventing you getting what you want, within legal parameters, is effort.
On February 15 2011 16:44 Kazang wrote: Arisen you are making less and less sense as you go on.
In your last post you say that: "The underlying assumption is that the ladder is a representation of your skill, but that is just wrong, the ladder is just a measure of your wins. Winning doesn't make you the best player."
And then a few paragraphs later: "The ladder is very competitive, and giving up points to play an off race is pobably not the best idea."
So which is it? Very competitive or not a representation of skill? Because the two are mutually exclusive. You say winning means nothing yet the ladder is competitive and people can't off race becasue they might win less. That doesn't make any sense.
The two are not mutually exclusive. Just because the ladder isn't a definitive representation of skill doesn't mean it's not competitive. The winner of a competition is not necessarily the better player/athlete. MVP took a game off flash, so was he the better BW player? No. The nature of competition isn't to be the better team/player, it's to be the winner. Was Buster Douglas a better boxer than Mike Tyson? No. But he KO'd tyson for the heavyweight championship in 90' against 42-1 odds. Was the 80' US olympic hockey team better than the SU team? No, yet we have the miracle on ice. The 69' Miracle Mets, Appalachian State upsets Michigan, Superbowl III, Nuggets>Sonics in 94, the list goes on. Lets take a look at starcraft if you're not sports fans. Is MKP better than Jinro, or IdrA? No, but he was in the finals of the last GSL and they weren't. Was ActionJesuz better than NonY? Nope, but he beat him. There would be no point in any competition if the best player/team always won. Would you watch the NFL if the same team trounced every other team every game? Maybe you would, but most wouldn't, because it's no longer exciting, its just one team always winning. You'd never see upsets, or underdogs. The drama behind competition is no longer there. Being the better player/team is an advantage in competition, but doesn't assure victory.
It's human nature to want to reach the top, and there are rewards for doing so, namely tourney invites in this case. If you know you're worse than someone else, are you going to opt not to play? No, because you still could win. I'd wager to say Douglas never thought he was better than Tyson, but he tried his damnedest to win, and he did. Do you think the Detroit Lions think they're the best team? No, they know damn well they're one of the worst teams in the NFL, but they're competitive as hell, and this year, they had a shot at the playoffs. Just because you know you're not the best player in NA, are you going to stop trying to advance in the ladder? Hell no, you're going to cut some throats and try to get to the top.
Instead of qqing, let's consider how we'd go about emulating a custom ladder through bnet using ICCUP maps. Running an online Tournament is pretty simple, as is matchmaking (even if it would require a bunch of channels).
Kazang's mention of automatic replay parsers intrigue me. I'd like to know more about these kinds of things, as I'm a relative noob.
I'd been thinking of using Blizzard ladder rank (which is fairly representative of skill. At least as much as any other system we could use) to get people of similar skill in similar channels so they could play each other. If we could rank people based off how they did on ICCUP maps, then we'd end up with a ladder that was pretty close to the ICCUP one.
But I don't know how to do it. Maybe a chatbot could be told two people were about to play, and look to their battle.net profiles after the game to see who won and who lost? It's a little abusable, but it's a start.
On February 15 2011 16:44 Kazang wrote: Arisen you are making less and less sense as you go on.
In your last post you say that: "The underlying assumption is that the ladder is a representation of your skill, but that is just wrong, the ladder is just a measure of your wins. Winning doesn't make you the best player."
And then a few paragraphs later: "The ladder is very competitive, and giving up points to play an off race is pobably not the best idea."
So which is it? Very competitive or not a representation of skill? Because the two are mutually exclusive. You say winning means nothing yet the ladder is competitive and people can't off race becasue they might win less. That doesn't make any sense.
The two are not mutually exclusive. Just because the ladder isn't a definitive representation of skill doesn't mean it's not competitive. The winner of a competition is not necessarily the better player/athlete. MVP took a game off flash, so was he the better BW player? No. The nature of competition isn't to be the better team/player, it's to be the winner. Was Buster Douglas a better boxer than Mike Tyson? No. But he KO'd tyson for the heavyweight championship in 90' against 42-1 odds. Was the 80' US olympic hockey team better than the SU team? No, yet we have the miracle on ice. The 69' Miracle Mets, Appalachian State upsets Michigan, Superbowl III, Nuggets>Sonics in 94, the list goes on. Lets take a look at starcraft if you're not sports fans. Is MKP better than Jinro, or IdrA? No, but he was in the finals of the last GSL and they weren't. Was ActionJesuz better than NonY? Nope, but he beat him. There would be no point in any competition if the best player/team always won. Would you watch the NFL if the same team trounced every other team every game? Maybe you would, but most wouldn't, because it's no longer exciting, its just one team always winning. You'd never see upsets, or underdogs. The drama behind competition is no longer there. Being the better player/team is an advantage in competition, but doesn't assure victory.
It's human nature to want to reach the top, and there are rewards for doing so, namely tourney invites in this case. If you know you're worse than someone else, are you going to opt not to play? No, because you still could win. I'd wager to say Douglas never thought he was better than Tyson, but he tried his damnedest to win, and he did. Do you think the Detroit Lions think they're the best team? No, they know damn well they're one of the worst teams in the NFL, but they're competitive as hell, and this year, they had a shot at the playoffs. Just because you know you're not the best player in NA, are you going to stop trying to advance in the ladder? Hell no, you're going to cut some throats and try to get to the top.
I honestly don't understand what you're trying to say anymore. Were FD, Nestea, MC, and MVP not the best players in each of the last 4 GSL? Just how are you judging who is the most skilled player then?
A single win obviously doesn't make you the best player, but winning consistently against other top players do make you a very good one for sure. Why do people "cut some throats and try to get to the top"? Because ladder was designed to be a representation of your skill. It's not the most reliable way, but it's a heck lot better than if people were allowed to choose maps and opponent races.
I asked you a question about leaving the ladder alone and making the custom game "customizable" like you say as well as with a separate MMR, but you didn't answer it yet. However, based on what you've been saying, I'm guessing that is not an attractive option for you.
I firmly believe that if the ladder is to be taken as any kind of measurement of player skill, or used for any meaningful purpose, such as Blizzcon invites, players must not be allowed to have any control over whom they play in ranked games. If you could decide what race you wanted to play against on the ladder, then top players vying for Blizzcon invites would be encouraged not only to pick a race and focus on it, as they do now, but play only their best matchup.
A player who has an amazing PvT matchup, for example, could get invited over a much more well rounded player by only playing against Terran while Blizzcon is coming up. This would not be good for the tournament, because as soon as he gets matched against P or Z, he falls apart, and this is neither entertaining nor a good allocation of Blizzard resources.
If the whole community thinks T is overpowered, then everybody chooses only to play against P and Z, and Terran players can't get games, except maybe wtih each other.
If all protoss players hate PvP, then they just won't play it and it will stagnate forever. Every protoss player will be out of practice and more encouraged to cheese, so PvP will never be anything but cheese.
However, if a system of custom games were implemented where you could have complete control over what race you wanted to play against and what map you want to play on, and it was unrated, I think that would be pretty much the best thing ever. Though It would make me ladder less =/
yea realistically you can replicate any ladder match by pming the guy you just beat, adding them and asking for a rematch. Do that for a day and you got a friendlist's full of practice partners and abuse them to your liking. Of course this is from a standpoint of someone who played BroodWar like twice.
On February 14 2011 23:38 Ender985 wrote: I think BNet2 needs:
1) Separate MMRs for each played race (T,P,Z and R) 2) Ability to automatically search for an opponent in your conditions: opponent's race and/or map being played. These matches would NOT count for your ladder points.
I agree so much. I've always wanted the second, and I've always wondered why on earth there weren't already rankings for different races. If I'm a gold level toss and bronze level zerg, why can't I see it as such?
On February 15 2011 16:44 Kazang wrote: Arisen you are making less and less sense as you go on.
In your last post you say that: "The underlying assumption is that the ladder is a representation of your skill, but that is just wrong, the ladder is just a measure of your wins. Winning doesn't make you the best player."
And then a few paragraphs later: "The ladder is very competitive, and giving up points to play an off race is pobably not the best idea."
So which is it? Very competitive or not a representation of skill? Because the two are mutually exclusive. You say winning means nothing yet the ladder is competitive and people can't off race becasue they might win less. That doesn't make any sense.
The two are not mutually exclusive. Just because the ladder isn't a definitive representation of skill doesn't mean it's not competitive. The winner of a competition is not necessarily the better player/athlete. MVP took a game off flash, so was he the better BW player? No. The nature of competition isn't to be the better team/player, it's to be the winner. Was Buster Douglas a better boxer than Mike Tyson? No. But he KO'd tyson for the heavyweight championship in 90' against 42-1 odds. Was the 80' US olympic hockey team better than the SU team? No, yet we have the miracle on ice. The 69' Miracle Mets, Appalachian State upsets Michigan, Superbowl III, Nuggets>Sonics in 94, the list goes on. Lets take a look at starcraft if you're not sports fans. Is MKP better than Jinro, or IdrA? No, but he was in the finals of the last GSL and they weren't. Was ActionJesuz better than NonY? Nope, but he beat him. There would be no point in any competition if the best player/team always won. Would you watch the NFL if the same team trounced every other team every game? Maybe you would, but most wouldn't, because it's no longer exciting, its just one team always winning. You'd never see upsets, or underdogs. The drama behind competition is no longer there. Being the better player/team is an advantage in competition, but doesn't assure victory.
It's human nature to want to reach the top, and there are rewards for doing so, namely tourney invites in this case. If you know you're worse than someone else, are you going to opt not to play? No, because you still could win. I'd wager to say Douglas never thought he was better than Tyson, but he tried his damnedest to win, and he did. Do you think the Detroit Lions think they're the best team? No, they know damn well they're one of the worst teams in the NFL, but they're competitive as hell, and this year, they had a shot at the playoffs. Just because you know you're not the best player in NA, are you going to stop trying to advance in the ladder? Hell no, you're going to cut some throats and try to get to the top.
I honestly don't understand what you're trying to say anymore. Were FD, Nestea, MC, and MVP not the best players in each of the last 4 GSL? Just how are you judging who is the most skilled player then?
A single win obviously doesn't make you the best player, but winning consistently against other top players do make you a very good one for sure. Why do people "cut some throats and try to get to the top"? Because ladder was designed to be a representation of your skill. It's not the most reliable way, but it's a heck lot better than if people were allowed to choose maps and opponent races.
I asked you a question about leaving the ladder alone and making the custom game "customizable" like you say as well as with a separate MMR, but you didn't answer it yet. However, based on what you've been saying, I'm guessing that is not an attractive option for you.
Were the last 4 GSL winners the best players? Not all of them. Did you watch GSL 1? SOO many people believed Rainbow was going to smash Cool, but he choked and played like shit. Ask players like IdrA about Nestea in S2, he'll tell you in no uncertain terms Nestea shouldn't have been able to get to the finals, but no one doubted he'd stomp MKP. MC and MVP, on the other hand, are touted as the rightful winners by allot of people.
Here are some quotes from pros on the subject:
iNcontroL: You keep harping on how the tournement needs to determine the best player, and I think it just needs to determine the winner Day9: A tournement does not determine the ranking of players. Period. It does not do that...we can think of each player as a coin, a 50/50 chance of winning or losing, unless one player is better, in which case he has something like a 75/25 chance of losing. I think you'd agree there is no such thing as a player that has a 100% chance of winning. Probabalisticly, the coin that is more weighted toward winning should win the tournement, but it is not probabablisticaly unlikely at all that a player that has a 60% chance of winning everything could lose to the person who has a 40% chance of winning everything. Day9: It's even difficult to determine your skill based on something like your PGTour or iCCup Ranking.
Once again, the only thing letting a player you think is worse than you in your bracket of the ladder is hurting is your ego.
EPT
)![[image loading]](http://www.penny-arcade.com/images/2002/20020726h.gif)
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/fZqTj.jpg)
its so hard to train without that feature ![[image loading]](http://imageupload.org/dm-712976404110.png)
