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On April 18 2011 13:25 ploy wrote:
I think the points in the OP are valid and all... but so many people on this thread are talking/acting like SC2 is terrible or doomed or something. Couldn't we argue that it's already bigger than BW ever was on a global scale?
As indicated from my post count, I am obviously part of the "new audience".
Admittedly, I am a "pure spectator". Neither do I play the game myself nor am I uncapable of grasping it. I find this thread highly interesting, coming from heavy theory-craft strategy and simulation games.
Economical success and userbase don't quite correlate with good game design though. From an outsider's view, I think many responders have misunderstood OP's intention (to the point of not even bothering reading the excellent posts of LaLush). There is reason to be concerned about SC2 (as with all businesses) burst its own bubble.
I have been following SC2 since the beta. And for what it's worth, I find myself more often feeling that the game may hit its ceiling soon.
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Maybe we should give SC2 a change to expand in a different direction? It might be that in the future watching games will be exciting for a completely other reason instead of "Lots of stuff is happening, oh god their control is amazing".
Maybe we'll see more intricate strategies being pulled off now that some things are more automated?
There are plenty of issues with the game as it stands, but I'm not going to judge on it harshly before all of the expansions are out. It would only be fair to wait.
Most of my teenage life was defined by Brood War, I was never very good, but I watched OSL vods and eventually the GOMTV tournaments, and I can agree there's something missing as it stands. The game just needs more time to develop.
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I agree with most of this stuff. Something that will help most of this movement to the brand new game is the Expansions. The original Starcraft was being discovered. Right now we get excited over things like 3gate stargate, new plays everyday etc. But soon enough there will be things rare in things such as PvP builds that counter the 4gate and then expand right after and have each things. There could be things in new match-ups in the later future, you said the game is young and i agree  We need more people such as Spanshwa -- People who bring new strategies, new elements to the game. It will be exciting how the game develops. Only time will tell
All i can say is in expansions ahead(Legacy of the Void, and Heart of the Swarm) there will be new units, strategies etc. I can see them bringing back some of the old units and new harassments. it will be fun and entertaining. I hope they make it as amazing as sc1.
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On April 18 2011 13:49 rotegirte wrote:Show nested quote +On April 18 2011 13:25 ploy wrote:
I think the points in the OP are valid and all... but so many people on this thread are talking/acting like SC2 is terrible or doomed or something. Couldn't we argue that it's already bigger than BW ever was on a global scale? As indicated from my post count, I am obviously part of the "new audience". Admittedly, I am a "pure spectator". Neither do I play the game myself nor am I uncapable of grasping it. I find this thread highly interesting, coming from heavy theory-craft strategy and simulation games. Economical success and userbase don't quite correlate with good game design though. From an outsider's view, I think many responders have misunderstood OP's intention (to the point of not even bothering reading the excellent posts of LaLush). There is reason to be concerned about SC2 (as with all businesses) burst its own bubble. I have been following SC2 since the beta. And for what it's worth, I find myself more often feeling that the game may hit its ceiling soon.
you might be right
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One more thing.
May be it's an utopia, but what would be great is if Blizz give the community right to make balance-concerning decisions. Of course with their own right to veto. I think we could find about 10 people who does really understand what this game is all about, like TLO, Jinro, Dimaga etc...
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I think one serious issue was the preservation of the unit complexity from BW whilst simultaneously increasing the game's AI capabilities. While units like the dragoon, zergling or zealot had no real special strategic role(relative to a unit like the HT), they still added depth due to the excellent control needed to use them effectively.
Similar units were added to SCII(examples are things like the marauder, zergling, zealot, hydra) that do not really require very much special micro or difficult control to use effectively. So we essentially have a unit which is not good for much more than A-moving. This could be ameliorated with some effort by Blizzard to make these units more complex(by adding abilities or so forth.)
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sc2 is missing "less expectations." the expectations are too high for a game that will have two expansions. Hoping for 50% win rate against each race before these expansions is unrealistic. In other ways though, sc2 seems to be doing really great as an e-sport.
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On April 18 2011 13:08 junemermaid wrote:Show nested quote +On April 18 2011 11:04 aztrorisk wrote:
I still have hope for SC2
Heart of the Swarm is going to be released. I hope blizzard makes necessary additions. It's not going to happen in HotS. There is a clear disconnect between the current market for gamers and the market ten years ago. I mean, just look at recent releases & expansions for games and you get a clear picture. Games are being streamlined, easier to play, and more appealing for a wide variety of audiences. This means that content gets diluted such that more casual gamers are still interested for future investments. I want to see SC2 succeed, but given the current mindset of publishers and the gaming market, it seems very very unlikely that SC2's expansions are going to make the game better in the sense that it raises the skill ceiling. It might balance the game more, but to make the game more complex alienates too many people to be a successful financial endeavor. EDIT: What's best for blizzard as a business and whats best for SC2 as a game are not necessarily linked. I mean, what sells more? Flashy lasers & big damage units/abilities or fine tuned units that require finesse? I hope I'm wrong.
Especially true these days compared to cs1.6, Melee, third strike and good old BW days. But Blizzard has probably realized that there's a growing slice of the pie - that is esports back in the golden BW era (e.g, Blizzard vs OGN/MBC/KESPA). It should definitely be in their best interests to make it more spectatable How profitable a broadcasting company for esports in the future and how much Blizzard can charge royalties for it is anybody's guess right now. : \
And also that it is probably in the best interests for Blizzard to include more strategic depth and dynamic unit relations (all the technical whiz whaz in OP) rather than 'more fun' units in later expansions so that the casual players aren't completely isolated from the franchise from the first of three games in the trilogy.
Not much players can do right now, but blindly hope on blizzard's long term goals?
EDIT: OP should be updated to include add quality posts - like lalush's. so more people can view them ^___^ and also add polls to as to see what people's insights are on this white elepahtn issue
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Honestly, making sc2 more user accessible, with units and mechanics much easier than BW, they make Sc2 open to a much larger audience. To be at the top of Brood War, you had to be very gifted mechanically, and you had to spend so much more time playing to actually be as high on the ladder as you would have to be in Sc2. There are trade offs, here. This makes the top level play less entertaining, but makes it much more easy for even a casual hardcore gamer, to make it into masters league.
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On April 18 2011 13:25 ploy wrote:
I think the points in the OP are valid and all... but so many people on this thread are talking/acting like SC2 is terrible or doomed or something. Couldn't we argue that it's already bigger than BW ever was on a global scale?
Yet SC2 still has a massive way to go before it catches up to the overall success of BW. BW is still light years ahead of any other game in terms of overall success - it's had by far the largest crowds and the most money dumped into its scene. SC2 has a lot of success because it is very noob friendly - pretty, pretty straightforward, easy to pick up, successor to the best competitive video game ever. This gives it a really easy time getting off the ground. What SC2 needs to do if it ever wants to become anywhere near as successful as BW is to pick up a lot of the things mentioned in the OP - this will give the game LASTING appeal.
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On April 18 2011 14:23 RedDragon571 wrote:
Honestly, making sc2 more user accessible, with units and mechanics much easier than BW, they make Sc2 open to a much larger audience. To be at the top of Brood War, you had to be very gifted mechanically, and you had to spend so much more time playing to actually be as high on the ladder as you would have to be in Sc2. There are trade offs, here. This makes the top level play less entertaining, but makes it much more easy for even a casual hardcore gamer, to make it into masters league.
How come everyone says that SC2 opening to a much larger audience = Less entertaining to watch? I believe that SC2 could be both easy to play yet good to watch.. Actually SC:BW was easy back in those days compared to other RTS... (Honestly I played TA and WC2 and Its so hard to control units)...
A game could be good to watch and easy to play....
P.S forgive me for my english
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Oh damn this thread is so true...
I almost forgot about it but in the beginning of beta i was watching some games and thought
"damn its just boring compared to sc:bw Korea will probably just ignore it"
I think what this tells us is just that sc:bw has still a place in e-sport and noobs may switch to sc2 to have some aktion themselve...
I dont say every sc2 player is a noob but still there gonna be pros playing sc:bw and some playing sc2 and if u are a noob u will play sc2 for sure.
I believe playing is more fun becouse not so frustrating as sc:bw but watching it is still more fun.
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I 100% agree with this. I deffiately think that sc2 is missing something and I enjoyed reading this up.
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Doesn't blizzards MMR system sort of remove any accessibility issues? The game is already simple enough to understand, build units and kill each other. The steep learning curve to become really good at the game would only there for those who want to learn it. The others will be placed in lower leagues and face people of similar MMR.
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SC2 is still good and plenty entertaining. Blizzard can probably eventually fix balance to the point where thigns settle down.
Problem for them is that we're expecting balance to lead to broodwar-like quality. We use bw as the benchmark.
That's probably not realistic with how the game was designed.
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I hate threads like this. These things have been pointed out since beta. The thing that pisses me off is that there are these huge problems, which some people will argue are game-breaking, yet there is nothing to be done. It's quite literally pointless. It makes me NOT want to play SC2.
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We can also hope that when blizzard originally decided to break the game into 3 separate releases, that they also decided to lessen the blow of the learning curve by starting with simple concepts of the game and slowly expanding on that with each expansion.
Steep learning curves create a barrier to the market and too many people will be frustrated and give up. Maybe they have some underlying goal of the three expansions to ease the learning curve and their timing of release is based on the evolution of game in its current state. Once the meta game has sort of stabilized and the races feel on par with each other, then they'll release a new expansion and throw in new units to mix things up. Things will still play sort of the same as before, but the new units might change the dynamics of the game slightly.
For those who can play hours a day, yes this game might feel 1-dimensional. But you represent a small portion of their customers. For those who play only every other day, they're just starting to understand the concepts of unit compositions, macro, scouting, and simple positioning (arcs) to maximize dps. This is a lot for new players to take in.
Blizzard designed this game to become the next eSport. You can't disregard the fact that they've most likely seriously considered the best way to implement the game over its entire lifespan to maximize interest.
C'mon where are the optimistics at?
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I just came to say that I really like Jibba's response on page 3.
There is so much to be improved in game play here. The major difference in my mind between SC2 and BW is that the game is much, much slower. It allows for more complicated positioning and micro battles. Things in SC2 happen a lot faster and this creates a different gameplay flow. There is still a lot to be developed in this game micro wise. Watch pro matches from the beta and just marvel at how bad people were back then. Ability levels have really gone up. I hear a lot of complaining about boring sc2 from BW people, but all those complaints aside, a whole lot of people seem to be watching. That might be saying something.
As far as mechanics go, SC2 is a better designed game, better pathing, better control ui, better ai itself. People can decry the changes that this brought, but I can tell you that I would never have been interested in, or played an SC2 that only let me select 12 units at a time. Nobody would have put up with that.
Also: BW's brilliance is really the result of years and years of time and lot of luck. I don't believe that when Starcraft or even BW were made that Blizzard envisioned what people would be doing with their game 4 years later. The game took on a life of its own. Just because that hasn't totally happened in SC2 doesn't mean it won't.
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On April 18 2011 15:27 Proko wrote:
I just came to say that I really like Jibba's response on page 3.
There is so much to be improved in game play here. The major difference in my mind between SC2 and BW is that the game is much, much slower. It allows for more complicated positioning and micro battles. Things in SC2 happen a lot faster and this creates a different gameplay flow. There is still a lot to be developed in this game micro wise. Watch pro matches from the beta and just marvel at how bad people were back then. Ability levels have really gone up. I hear a lot of complaining about boring sc2 from BW people, but all those complaints aside, a whole lot of people seem to be watching. That might be saying something.
As far as mechanics go, SC2 is a better designed game, better pathing, better control ui, better ai itself. People can decry the changes that this brought, but I can tell you that I would never have been interested in, or played an SC2 that only let me select 12 units at a time. Nobody would have put up with that.
Also: BW's brilliance is really the result of years and years of time and lot of luck. I don't believe that when Starcraft or even BW were made that Blizzard envisioned what people would be doing with their game 4 years later. The game took on a life of its own. Just because that hasn't totally happened in SC2 doesn't mean it won't.
Honestly its amazing people don't do this. I am literally astonished that almost no pro uses more than 2 or 3 hot keys for their armies. Maybe you don't always have to stick with 12, but sticking with a low number of units over 4,5, or 6 hotkeys would make such a difference in fights. It would really reduce the ball vs ball ness, keep your army from clumping, and make it easy as hell to get concaves, flank, and spread your army.
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On April 18 2011 15:04 Razith wrote:
We can also hope that when blizzard originally decided to break the game into 3 separate releases, that they also decided to lessen the blow of the learning curve by starting with simple concepts of the game and slowly expanding on that with each expansion.
Steep learning curves create a barrier to the market and too many people will be frustrated and give up. Maybe they have some underlying goal of the three expansions to ease the learning curve and their timing of release is based on the evolution of game in its current state. Once the meta game has sort of stabilized and the races feel on par with each other, then they'll release a new expansion and throw in new units to mix things up. Things will still play sort of the same as before, but the new units might change the dynamics of the game slightly.
For those who can play hours a day, yes this game might feel 1-dimensional. But you represent a small portion of their customers. For those who play only every other day, they're just starting to understand the concepts of unit compositions, macro, scouting, and simple positioning (arcs) to maximize dps. This is a lot for new players to take in.
Blizzard designed this game to become the next eSport. You can't disregard the fact that they've most likely seriously considered the best way to implement the game over its entire lifespan to maximize interest.
C'mon where are the optimistics at?
can't agree more. hope your thinking is in line with blizzard's. it would certainly make sense if part1 with one dimensional gameplay would be the introduction to more complex rts style like bw. inducing new players to get the hang of sc before adding in higher control dependent units. hope to see the changes in hots, Zerg really need their old position controlling Units like lurkers and defilers
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EPT
