EPTHoN Developer: Pirates killed LAN - Page 17
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scorch-
United States816 Posts
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semantics
10040 Posts
On June 23 2011 10:02 scorch- wrote: So, what the companies are offering is a better experience than LANning with your friends. I don't know about anyone else, but I would be real fucking bored if I could only play HoN on LAN. Matchmaking ladders are a big reason why people buy the MP game. If you can't make that experience good, you don't deserve to sell the game in the first place. when you have a lan setting you can set up a server to emulate a network and wala you can play games with people like you would on battle.net garena is a prime example of that, although hamachi was first. If lan was just restricted to people playing in the same room there wouldn't be an issue. | ||
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eggs
1011 Posts
On June 23 2011 10:01 jinixxx123 wrote: again, iccup was possible BECAUSE OF LAN mode. when a game includes lan, it basically gives the code out on what is required to EMULATE battlenet. LAN does not always mean LAN. programs like garena /iccup used the lan mode to hook up to these online programs. You said it yourself, you ddint have to buy sc1 to play in iccup, And where did you get the audacity to say Blizzard doesn't care cause the game was 10 years old, where did blizzard say that? I am not saying ICCUP was wrong, I even admit im a pirate in previous posts. Im just pointing out common knowledge here on why sc2 has excluded LAN. BECAUSE OF PIRACY. nothing more nothing less. you cannot defend piracy cause its not possible to defend stealing, even if its morally right ( robin hood) . At the end of the day its still wrong, and because of that, i perfectly understand why blizzard has not included LAN. it sucks for tournaments, but thats just something everybody is going to have to live with. what? a lot of games have no LAN mode and people make private servers all the time. MMOs definitely have no LAN mode, and i've seen tons of private servers for MMOs. there are WoW private servers. they suck. anyone who seriously wants to play WoW buys the game and subscribes to Blizzard. but somebody that initially played for free on a crappy private server because the WoW free trial is a joke (capped at level 10 or something stupidly low and with limited ability to interact with other players through messaging, partying, or the auction house) and realizes the game is really polished is more inclined to buy the game and escape the stupidity of buggy, imbalanced private servers. | ||
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Motat
315 Posts
I know for myself, alot of games I have played have been pirated or tried on in an not real way. As in Private Servers for WoW. I started playing like that then got hooked and transfered over to the real thing. Same thing with DOTA for wc3, and ALOT of other games. I think the guy the OP quote's statement is invalid because he doesn't know anything about how deep this goes. No one does. | ||
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eggs
1011 Posts
On June 23 2011 10:08 Motat wrote: From what I have read about how Brood War got popular, it was mostly because of the LAN. Brood War wasn't so popular in the beginning, but because it was so easy to get for free ALOT of people started playing which led to more people eventually buying it (to be official) and to lead it to what it is today. And also, ultimately, lead into the great success of SC2 right now. I know for myself, alot of games I have played have been pirated or tried on in an not real way. As in Private Servers for WoW. I started playing like that then got hooked and transfered over to the real thing. Same thing with DOTA for wc3, and ALOT of other games. I think the guy the OP quote's statement is invalid because he doesn't know anything about how deep this goes. No one does. yea it's incredibly ironic actually. DotA itself became hugely popular because of LAN. now the DotA-clone is saying LAN would hurt the game. | ||
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Phaded
Australia579 Posts
On June 23 2011 10:04 semantics wrote: when you have a lan setting you can set up a server to emulate a network and wala you can play games with people like you would on battle.net garena is a prime example of that, although hamachi was first. If lan was just restricted to people playing in the same room there wouldn't be an issue. You know that HoN released a free to play version of its game on garena right? | ||
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flowSthead
1065 Posts
On June 23 2011 10:01 Vandal_heart wrote: A flawed argument for what? The number of people pirating the game =/= the number of lost sales. Nobody is saying people are pirating the game and also paying for it, therefore all the other piracy is ok. An analogy is comparing 2 similiar circumstances. I dont see that these situations are that similiar, its like a wee version of godwins law. The fact that I notice the difference of scale between piracy and manslaughter shows something about my perspective. At no point did I endorse piracy for the sake of not paying for things. Over a hundred games on steam, shelves of games and dvd's, shelves of books, I have no issue with paying for things. At no point did I say that piracy is ok because something worse exists. My point was that the person Onslaught quoted made an estimate of lost sales based on number of times SC2 has been pirated. Onslaught responded with the idea that not all pirates are lost sales, and no other points. And I have seen other people saying that not all pirates are lost sales as an idea that companies shouldn't worry about pirating. My point was that this argument was flawed because some pirating is lost sales. I already explained how the situations are similar. Here I will explain it again. Drunk driving and pirating are [negative actions]. Injury from a car crash and lost sales are [negative result]. The situation is that not all [negative action] will lead to [negative result], but some of the time [negative action] DOES lead to [negative result]. I am arguing that because it happens some of the time, we should be trying to curb [negative action], not ignore it because it happens all the time. The analogy between the two works even better because both actions are illegal, and I would also argue immoral under a standard set of societal morals. Just because one negative action is worse than another, why would that make it a poor analogy? | ||
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Gurgl
Sweden308 Posts
On the other hand if someone else would release a equally good strategy game with LAN and overall better multiplayer experience then I think Blizzard would have to re-evaluate their decision because that game would completely take over as an ESPORT. The ESPORT factor of Starcraft 2 is really important to it's marketing and without it I think the game would quickly fall in popularity. I hope someone else manages to make some really good strategy games, and other games, because currently Blizzard is pretty much sitting on a monopoly in several gamegenres just like Microsoft is with windows, they can do whatever they like without worry of competition. | ||
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StarStruck
25339 Posts
On June 23 2011 10:01 jinixxx123 wrote: again, iccup was possible BECAUSE OF LAN mode. when a game includes lan, it basically gives the code out on what is required to EMULATE battlenet. LAN does not always mean LAN. programs like garena /iccup used the lan mode to hook up to these online programs. You said it yourself, you ddint have to buy sc1 to play in iccup, And where did you get the audacity to say Blizzard doesn't care cause the game was 10 years old, where did blizzard say that? I am not saying ICCUP was wrong, I even admit im a pirate in previous posts. Im just pointing out common knowledge here on why sc2 has excluded LAN. BECAUSE OF PIRACY. nothing more nothing less. you cannot defend piracy cause its not possible to defend stealing, even if its morally right ( robin hood) . At the end of the day its still wrong, and because of that, i perfectly understand why blizzard has not included LAN. it sucks for tournaments, but thats just something everybody is going to have to live with. PGTour, WGtour, ICCUP all helped to provide gamers the best possible environments to compete against one another. Not fucking Blizzard. B.Net is still horrible and the Ladder was always a joke. Not to mention the Ping, if it weren't for people like Pat and company perhaps someone else would step in because BW was just that fucking good of a game that people who were playing a decade ago still play it to this day. You see flaws in a system you correct it. If it weren't for the support of the community and the fact we could create the proper third party programs to enhance the experience the game wouldn't be where it is today. Blizzard is already milking SC2 to the fucking bone and it makes me sick. Before, they wanted to have each 'expansion' be a standalone. They only changed their minds within the last few months. Still, with the custom shop and the fact you have to buy more than one copy to play on any given server is excessive. Smart. Hell, there is a reason why Bob Kotick is one of the most hated people in the gaming industry. I'd pat him on the back for the success he's had. I'll give him that. When it's all said and done I would knock Bob on his ass and say, "Don't worry. It's nothing personal. It's just business," and walk away. -_- Whatever the case is, the consumer's opinion doesn't matter and ultimately you hinder the progress of the sport. Nothing you can do about it until people refuse to buy into such rubbish. Too many loyalists and gamers are an easy sell. | ||
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dc302
Australia576 Posts
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Alsn
Sweden995 Posts
I am deeply disappointed in Blizzard for not having LAN, a lot of enjoyment that I personally could have had has been lost due to the feature missing. I will not buy further products from Blizzard after I stop playing SC2(which, admittedly, will probably be for quite a while still). As a paying customer I am appalled that they would value short term gain(which they have no proof that no-LAN has actually increased anyway) over long term goodwill(me and others being happy customers). No matter where you stand on the piracy versus no-piracy issue, the fact remains that their product is worse than it would have been with LAN support, thus directly punishing their actual paying customers. Not to mention the fact that there's no proof whatsoever that adding LAN would actually lower total sales, which is the only thing that counts in the end. Who cares if 5 million instead of 3 million pirate the game if you still have the same amount of sales but higher goodwill for the future of your company? To sum up, I, as a paying customer, has gotten a product that is worse than it would have been with LAN. I could care fuck all about people pirating the game since I, a paying customer along with all other paying customers, is the one who is ultimately responsible for Blizzard employees being paid, and I am a little less happy than I could have been. | ||
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SKC
Brazil18828 Posts
On June 23 2011 09:59 BroboCop wrote: im confused how putting a lan option for sc2 would lower revenue(in any sense) as i will elaborate below. okay lets assume with the lan feature you can create any map (and we will assume no one makes recreations of the campaign as maps). So if your by yourself you can only play vs computers, which isn't much training at all seeing playing against something that gets more minerals per trip, map hacks, and can have perfect macro is never going to happen in a normal game. Now yes, you can play with buddies/family/etc, but that means they would have to bring their rig over to your house or you have a spare computer, which, seems highly unlikely as 2 people playing together over and over and over after awhile should get boring. Furthermore, how are you ever going to become better at the game if you only have a limited number of practice partners, the whole point of playing online games is for the ONLINE community. The whole point of laning is to either: have fun with friends or in off-line competitions. And when you're playing with friends, almost everyone wants to "be the best" so they have "bragging rights" so to speak. And if you want to be the best... you would need to play on a regular basis, and in most cases playing on a regular basis won't be achieved purely through playing in lans and therefore, you would need the game to play ladder in order to get better. And if you need the game, you would have to buy it. As for competitive play [i will use MLG in this example], no one is going to play unless they: are "good" such as a pro player or would just like to go to have fun (getting "owned" by a pro), but most likely, a person willing to drop $70 on an mlg ticket is already an avid player, spectator, and community-contributing individual and why would they drop $70 to get owned when they could buy the game for $50? For example, I know 20~ people IRL that play sc2 from school etc. 15~ aren't even close to active, so I would never be able to lan with them and ontop of that, there are only 2 of us that are actually good. top master (myself) and GM (my buddy). There is only so much you can do on lan because you have to be on the same network and for "logistical reasons" i don't see people using it as the only medium for playing the game. Yes, there will be exceptions but they will be out-liers, so why worry? Lastly, if your product isn't "pirateable" someone will just pirate something else that is free and play it. They never would pay for it in the beginning, however, with starcraft you can only accomplish so much in a LAN setting, thus if they truly "like the game" after playing with buddies for several weeks or a month they may have the sense to go out and buy it. I would like to see a counter-argument(s) that would prove me wrong but in essence my logic is: people would have never played the game before because it costs $$ -> [assume lan function here]they like the lan which has only limited features due to the "logistics" of how lans work -> said person decides to buy the game because they want to play it more and not be limited by needing to lan. The only forseeable problem I could see is college campuses (where a network would be fucking huge). A pirated game wouldn't be able to run only on actual LAN. There are coutless programs that replicate a "battle.net" where pirated copies can run just fine. Take WC3 for example. I have the original copy, a few of my friends have original copies, NOONE I know has recently played on battle.net, because everyone plays on Garena, or Eurobattle, or whatever the server where piracy doesn't matter. They basically replace battle.net, specially on places where piracy is a lot more common, which is the case of Brazil, and specially China. These servers have several times more people than battle.net. They have ladders, premium memberships and basically make money on the fact that people will play cracked versions online. So no, you don't have to be on the same network to enjoy the benefits of a cracked game, and LAN support, WC3, probally the closest example we can find to draw parallels to SC2, proves that. Blizzard's experience with the rampart piracy of WC3, it's probally the most played game in this kind of servers (not in small part because of DOTA), is probally a big reason there is no LAN in SC2. | ||
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Serpico
4285 Posts
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branflakes14
2082 Posts
On June 23 2011 09:35 Alaron wrote: Think logically. It makes perfect sense from a business standpoint. Pretty much anyone can find a way to pirate a game that has LAN just by googling it. Whether or not a game has LAN has absolutely zero effect on whether or not it's pirated. Starcraft 2 doesn't have LAN but was heavily pirated. Modern Warfare 2 doesn't have LAN but was heavily pirated. Spore doesn't have LAN but was heavily pirated, the list is endless. Not even DRM that forces a constant connection will stop piracy (Looking at you Ubisoft), all it'll do is piss off actual customers which is exactly the wrong thing to do. | ||
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PepperoniPiZZa
Sierra Leone1660 Posts
How about DUAL SCREEN PLAY? Almost every GPU these days supports hooking up 2 screens, implementing such a feature doesn't seem too complicated and since most pros play on the lowest settings anyways, there shouldn't be any problems with the FPS. | ||
Whitewing
United States7483 Posts
On June 23 2011 10:22 branflakes14 wrote: Whether or not a game has LAN has absolutely zero effect on whether or not it's pirated. Starcraft 2 doesn't have LAN but was heavily pirated. Modern Warfare 2 doesn't have LAN but was heavily pirated. Spore doesn't have LAN but was heavily pirated, the list is endless. Not even DRM that forces a constant connection will stop piracy (Looking at you Ubisoft), all it'll do is piss of actual customers which is exactly the wrong thing to do. You're wrong. It doesn't have absolutely no impact whatsoever, it does have an impact, and it is a factor. It just isn't the ONLY factor. Here's how security works: You build a security system to make it sufficiently difficult for anyone to breach that they don't have the time or resources to break it, or want to bother breaking it. It is impossible to make something completely unbreakable, anyone sufficiently determined will eventually manage. LAN makes it much easier to pirate it. Lack of LAN does not make it immune, but it makes it a lot harder. Thus, one can logically conclude, that the inclusion of LAN will increase the rate at which the game is pirated. | ||
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toadyy
United Kingdom179 Posts
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StarStruck
25339 Posts
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branflakes14
2082 Posts
On June 23 2011 10:27 Whitewing wrote: You're wrong. It doesn't have absolutely no impact whatsoever, it does have an impact, and it is a factor. It just isn't the ONLY factor. Here's how security works: You build a security system to make it sufficiently difficult for anyone to breach that they don't have the time or resources to break it, or want to bother breaking it. It is impossible to make something completely unbreakable, anyone sufficiently determined will eventually manage. LAN makes it much easier to pirate it. Lack of LAN does not make it immune, but it makes it a lot harder. Thus, one can logically conclude, that the inclusion of LAN will increase the rate at which the game is pirated. As much as it provides a stumbling block, I'm still yet hear to hear of a major game that hasn't been cracked, leaving pirates playing the game and customers stuck with DRM. Portal 2 has actually broken the 3 million sales mark despite very heavy pirating. Valve don't even consider piracy to be an issue at all. | ||
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toadyy
United Kingdom179 Posts
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