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On February 18 2011 23:51 Endorsed wrote:Show nested quote +On February 18 2011 23:25 Phenny wrote: Oh what the hell, I thought everything would be staying the same in the expansions as far as multiplayer and ladder were concerned. A different ladder is ridiculously unnecessary when they could make it so that WoL people could play with HotS people on the same ladder. I thought the expansions were purely campaign based, ugh desperate for more money... There will also be more units in the multiplayer/different maps. How could you play those at the same time.
A change of the map pool or units wouldn't be HotS dependent though. They have the ability to do this already.
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On February 18 2011 23:35 thesideshow wrote: It's also a safety net if HoTS is so horribly imbalanced that tournaments can't use it at all, so I think it's probably the best option.
I question if there are going to be any significant balance changes anyway. I think the new Blizzard team realised that changing only little things can have unforeseeable changes over time.
If there are new units however, they better be designed with the same thoughts the BroodWar guys had behind it. The medic for instance wasn't this super cool marketable unit, it was a very specific unit to get terran out of the static and defensive bunker play. I hope we don't just see cool units for the sake of looking cool.
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Just wondering what will it be of the tournament scene? we will get pro gamers specialized on a single ladder expansion? kinda strange imo and doesnt suit the organization we currently have, since i cant imagine top pro-gamers transitioning expansions because blizzard decided to split the game in pieces.
Would like it to be a single ladder for everyone so we dont get more balance discussions and comparisons between players that are top on each expansion for the rest of our lives.
Also attending to how deep and delicate it is to bring new patches into the current game, i can only imagine having to patch 3 different games looking for the best balance possible on each of them.
Peace.
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I don't see what else they could do besides have a separate ladder assuming it is going to add new multiplayer units.
On February 18 2011 23:57 Jayson X wrote: I hope we don't just see cool units for the sake of looking cool.
Fortunately since they've already shown that they are willing to completely separate the single player from the multi player they are in a great position to not do this.
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I quite clearly remember when blizzard announced their 3 part strategy that they would only be selling single player content and that the multiplayer would be updated via patches to maintain a global ladder.
EDIT: I was wrong here is the original statement
source: http://pc.ign.com/articles/918/918895p1.html
+ Show Spoiler +Pardo explained that the multiplayer remains relatively unchanged; each StarCraft II game will have a fully functioning multiplayer suite with all three races playable. "[In] the shipping product, all three races will be fully featured and balanced in gameplay and also in content," he said. We asked whether that meant the multiplayer suite in each game would be exactly the same, and he said, "More than likely, the successive products will add multiplayer content; we haven't decided right now what that is." That brought up the question as to how multiplayer would work if some players only buy the first game while others only buy the second or third games. He said that they haven't made any determinations yet as to how that would work.
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On February 18 2011 21:31 emythrel wrote:Show nested quote +On February 18 2011 16:07 ProtossGirl wrote:On February 18 2011 15:54 Combine wrote:On February 18 2011 15:46 ProtossGirl wrote:On February 18 2011 15:33 AndAgain wrote:On February 18 2011 15:24 ProtossGirl wrote: I dont understand why people would even consider supporting multiple ladders.
Fragment the community Dead ladders left behind Extra cost to participate
This is not a positive thing for any player. It's fucking positive for blizz balance sheet, but not for us.
Why are people supporting this? How is it possible to have 1 ladder for both games? I work full time, i'm not worried about paying the price they determine is suitable for the game i spend 1000's of hours upon. It just strikes me as daft that as a multiplayer community, everybody seems content with having dead ladders, and a game structure that places needless boundaries to access for its multiplayer features. in 3 years time, little timmy wants to play some starcraft 2 online, he buys the game.. hits find match, 20 minutes later still no player found  . He tells his parents he needs the 2 expansions as well, he gets a smack round the head for being daft "we already bought you that game timmy" "but daaaad... i need to be playing on the only ladder still left alive by the odd corporate decisions to leave 2/3rd's of the game without a community" "no son, we're not letting you get dragged into this corporate scheme" "i'll go back to cod then... " By then there will be a battlechest with all the games bundled for a cheap price. Each game will probably go down in price as the next comes out. WoW has 12 million subs with three expansions to it. It's not the first game to have expansions, everyone knows how they work and they make it pretty apparent you need the later ones to be up with the current players. Shame WoW costs like $100 to get into now. WoW has 3 expansions, and you dont have to buy all of them if you dont want, you can also buy them as you need them to advance in level. WoW might cost $100 but you are getting 4 complete games for that. There is literally hundreds if not thousands of hours of content for each expansion, and expansions are nothing new. Hell I remember having to pay FOR PATCHES. When I first bought Duke Nukem 3D I had to pay for the Plutonium pack, which was basically what we would consider a patch now, not an expansion by any standards, even those of the times. All it added was 2 new maps and updated bug fixes etc...... before the plutonium pack (which was 1.4 or 1.5 if i remember right) you could buy 1.3. When plutonium arrived, you could skip the 1.3 disc and just use the 1.5 disc. These were literally patches and you had to pay nearly the price of a full game for them....... they added vrirtually nothing new and were just bug fixes, yet we paid because it was what you had to do.
Err, what? Plutonium PAK added new weapons, maps, and the alien queen with three tits.
As for Blizz, there really anything out there to indicate the game will be priced at higher than 40$. They seem to be treating it like every Blizz developed expansion pack (BW, TFT, LOD). New content, new maps, new campaign, separate ladder. It seems as if anything Blizz does will get people giving them static.
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I wonder why people are so suprised at this news. This is normal. next?
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I don't understand why Blizzard is taking heat for this. The singleplayer campaign is an important product for Blizzard but so is the multiplayer. Considering we're basically getting two games when we buy HotS, it would be crazy for Blizzard to give the multiplayer game away for free (i.e. by letting WoL owners play on the HotS ladder without purchasing HotS). They'll keep supporting the WoL ladder so nobody is forced to buy HotS if they want to keep playing SC2, but if you want the new units, etc. you'll have to pay up. Seems fair to me. Besides, we all knew it would be like this years ago when SC2 was announced as a trilogy.
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On February 18 2011 12:59 LoLAdriankat wrote: Hasn't it always been like this for Blizzard RTS? Not really surprising.
That`s what I was thinking too. I thought it was fairly obvious and I agree with bob. I will fight to the end to be the last remaining player! O;
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releasing expansions on a yearly basis which will most likely drasticly alter the metagame seems kinda detrimental to having SC2 remain viable as an e-sports game. I think they should make all the new units availble on the multi ladder without having to purchase HOTS and force people to opt out of the new ladder. Probably not the best from a business perspective immediately but they should be thinking a little more long term imo.
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I remember very clearly (but I dont have the source at hand), during blizzcon or something, blizzard actually told the crowd that SC2 was becoming insanely huge, and they ASKED the crowd if they prefered to wait longer and have a kinda shrinked version of the original story in only 1 game, or divide the entire huge thing into 3 seperate games. The crowd cheered at the idea of 3 games. Following that, there was some information about how people wouldn't need to buy everything, they're not supposed to be expansions etc etc. Some interviews even asked blizzard what they planned on doing for the other 2 games to make them more worth buying since, technically, if we buy the first one we can play online with anyone and we shouldn't need to buy the other games to have all the same stuff. It was stated that the main point of the 3 games instead of 1 was mainly for campaign.
Unless what they meant was "you can still play WoL all alone there will be 2 ladders once HotS comes out". I was expecting new units and maps to come in a big patch, for everyone, once HotS comes out. Buying the game would give us the second part of the campaign and probably some new game mode or whatever mainly for single player or a little extra custom something online for HotS exclusively.
I personally don't mind, I'm pretty sure I'm gonna buy them all anyways, I liked the campaign in WoL and there's enough content to make it worth buying (if you compare to most single player games that come out, they're usually more expensive with less play time). I just think it's lame to change their original plans like that.
It's like saying they're making an awesome stealth game based on starcraft, show off some great stuff, images and shit then suddenly throw everything out the window...ow..ow..... oh wait.
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On February 19 2011 00:05 Escapist wrote: Just wondering what will it be of the tournament scene? we will get pro gamers specialized on a single ladder expansion? kinda strange imo and doesnt suit the organization we currently have, since i cant imagine top pro-gamers transitioning expansions because blizzard decided to split the game in pieces.
Would like it to be a single ladder for everyone so we dont get more balance discussions and comparisons between players that are top on each expansion for the rest of our lives.
Also attending to how deep and delicate it is to bring new patches into the current game, i can only imagine having to patch 3 different games looking for the best balance possible on each of them.
Peace. People are going to move on to the expansion pack regardless of how "balanced" the content is, because:
1) Balance should always take a back seat to a diversity of game strategies. And if you don't believe that, you can go back to November of 2003 and play Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos, where all four races were essentially balanced around their win-all caster/Dryad/Ghoul armies. Adding new units has increased the amount of diversity in every Blizzard strategy game because the unit additions are typically used to address race weaknesses and plug holes rather than redefine the way the race plays (and if Medics give Marines completely new life in matchups such as Brood War's Terran vs. Zerg, then it's a bonus). Half a dozen new units, new maps, and new strategic points are not going to break the game and, if they do, Blizzard will have ample time during the beta to make sure they simply bend the matchup. 2) "Splitting the community" only happens in new games with overhauls of the game engine itself. It did not happen in Brood War. It did not happen with The Frozen Throne. This is ridiculous. A major portion of a Western Starcraft community that made a seamless transition from Brood War to Starcraft II is now concerned that the community may be split in two by an expansion pack? Come on. The only time communities get "split" is when a new game engine is introduced or modified, i.e. "all the little nuances and glitches in Super Smash Brothers: Melee are supplanted by a Super Smash Brothers: Brawl that didn't replace those nuances and glitches with additional interesting game mechanics".
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Even if it's standard to do this, it still sucks for me who doesn't give a crap about single player to actually buy 2 more full games just to be able to keep up with the ladder and online gaming. Because when the last part of the triology comes out I will have two useless games that I could play ~ 1,5 years or how long it will be between the games. And when part 3 is out, will that the be it? Can we then stop waiting for other expansions we have to pay up for and just focusing on many many years of gaming as with BW?
Also, they should just shut down WoL ladder so people won't be like "WoL is better than HotS!!!" that would prevent the scene from splitting up as in other big games like Counter-Strike, Call Of Duty etc.
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The most apparent problem for me, which has been stated a few times already in this thread, is that not only one expansion is to be released, but two.
having two ladders when the first expansion is released is probably ok, but when the second expansion is released, that would make three ladders which is too many in my opinion. That's even assuming the second expansion requires the first expansion as well as the vanilla game. In the worst case scenario (neither WoL nor HotS required for LotV multiplayer) seven ladders would be used for the seven possible combinations of games you can have installed.
Also, the majority of players, especially good players, will be playing on the ladder with both expansions used (I sure hope that you'll be able to apply both expansions at the same time). If you were to get into Starcraft 2 at that point, you would pretty much feel obligated to buy both expansions to play on a decent ladder. This would probably make a quite high initial cost which in the worst case will scare people away from playing at all. I do wish, among with many others around here I guess, that as many people as possible were to pick up and play SC2.
I can't really think of other RTS games that have released more than one expansion, but even if they exist I don't think it's easy to do it without these drawbacks. Especially not for a highly established game like SC2. I can't really see WoW as a good example since that's an MMORPG, and those are generally huge money drains in my opinion anyway. I don't say that Blizzard have done anything horribly bad. It was kind of expected to have just an additional ladder for the first expansion like this. What I'm stating is that they'll probably run into some hurdles as they release the second expansion. I'm interested to see if they'll find a way around the problems, assuming they care for more than solely the income from sold LotV-copies.
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This is not a surprise at all, but I hope they do a good enough job on the expansions to make upgrading the natural choice. I don't want "HotS vs LotV" to be the next "BW vs SC2".
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In relation to the accusations of Blizzard money grabbing: look at the service, support and sponsorships they are providing for a game which they generate absolutely no subscription income from. It is completly unparalleled in the gaming industry.
"Haters gonna hate" springs to mind.
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Why is this a surprise? Why are people going crazy over this? This is how they've always done it. It's going to be $40 for the expansion and they will split the ladder.
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I dont understand people saying you should be able to ladder without expansions with those who have it. Do you WANT to play vs a player who can make units u dont even have? Thats retarded.
This is like any other game, an expansion is realesed and u need it to stay relevant. It's like that in ANY game.
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You buy the expansion and original, you get both. You buy the expansion, you can't play without the original. You buy the original, you can't play the expansion. That's how it has always been done.
If you want to be professional, you play the most updated version, or the most balanced version. That will be decided once the expansion(s) are up.
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On February 18 2011 21:54 SpoR wrote:Show nested quote +On February 18 2011 13:40 Turgid wrote:Historically, it hasn't been the case that the release of new ladders(or areas, in the case of WoW) has significantly cut into the playing population. WoW has actually gotten pretty expensive and their battle chest system is pretty bad(it never includes the most recent expansion) but I imagine some time after LoV is released the package you will be able to buy will include both expansions. But yes, historically, people have just bought the expansion and moved on. I remember playing a little bit of Vanilla hardcore D2(by choice) a couple years after the release of LoD and there being a fun little 10 person community. They all owned LoD they just wanted to play with the smaller community. edit: On February 18 2011 13:26 Jotoco wrote: Blizzard said we wouldn't need to buy all 3 games to play multi-player. Guess Activision got in the way of that.
Way to keep your promises, Blizzard... Yeah, how dare they keep the exact same system from every other game with expansions they've ever released. it's possible that you don't need to buy the game, just some DLC.
I'm sure it'll cost the same either way. I'm not too worried about it, even if it turns out to be $60. I'm just kind of perusing this thread with bewilderment that there were people who are somehow surprised or angry that this is what's happening, considering that there has never been anything different. Imagine if I went to the same restaurant 9 times in a row, and I disliked the food each time. Now imagine I came back to that same restaurant a tenth time, disliked the food for the exact same reasons, and in the exact same way, but this time, I screamed about the restaurant's new ownership. Bobby Kotick ruined my beef flambe! How insane would that be?
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