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I must say: I love SC2. It's a great game and I look forward to the expansion.
However since Blizzard has joined Activision the company slowly began to change. Maybe it's just a feeling but somewhat the quality delivered by Blizzard has decreased significantly. It's one of the rare cases where I 100% agree with the author on a subject like this.
1) Community Feeling in chat - sorry, what is so hard to just plainly copy the look and feel of the chat of WC3? I really don't get it. Clan channels, moderators, whispering, and and and.... where is that? Why do we get a crap Facebook implementation that is not required at all? I barely know anyone having that feature used.
2) Automated tournaments - where are those? In WC3 it was fun.. oh look, tourney coming up, greeeat. People of leagues matched againt each other. Sure it lacked a tourney grid (which would have been awesome). I really thought Blizzard would implement that. Maybe they could have done more that people could setup tourneys by themselves in bnet. Paypal integration whatever. What did Blizzard do: nothing - just removed the whole concept. Wow.
3) Clan implementation - i thought after WC3 they would allow people to create clans (like guilds in WoW). You could administer your clan members, have a separate clan Tag (without the need to change the whol name/id of the player). Maybe even banners in their clan-chat, links to their external clanwebsite etc.. Facebook integration would then even begin to make sense somewhat (I still dont need that crap but hell...)
4) Replay watching together. This just makes me utterly sad. We have microphone implementation in the game and still cant talk to others while watching replays, analysing etc..
I have bought since Diablo every single game of your company. You were always passionate, you stood for quality. The games always were FUN to play and also whilst interacting with the community. Now this has changed. Yes you delivered a quality product (the game itself is nice, pretty balanced) but you didnt deliver the whole package. There is more to just the game itself.
You will earn your $$$ in short, but long term you are not doing good. I feel sad Blizzard... really.
Sincerely one your former biggest fans of the company.
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On February 05 2012 02:53 MichaelJLowell wrote:
One of the company heads is on the record as stating that they would have rather spent the money used to develop StarCraft II someplace else. Not with the free-to-play game model flourishing, which is why Diablo III is focusing so heavily on the Real Money Auction House and basically acting as a lead-in for Titan, which will ramp those microtransactions up to eleven. That they focus heavily on the RMAH is just an assumption. I don't see that they focus heavily on it, they rather offer it since people would otherwise resort to illegal websites.
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On February 06 2012 20:46 [F_]aths wrote:Show nested quote +On February 05 2012 02:53 MichaelJLowell wrote:
One of the company heads is on the record as stating that they would have rather spent the money used to develop StarCraft II someplace else. Not with the free-to-play game model flourishing, which is why Diablo III is focusing so heavily on the Real Money Auction House and basically acting as a lead-in for Titan, which will ramp those microtransactions up to eleven. That they focus heavily on the RMAH is just an assumption. I don't see that they focus heavily on it, they rather offer it since people would otherwise resort to illegal websites.
As much as i heard / seen RMAH is finished already in beta, they dont delay the game becouse of that
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Wow, I never experienced the WC3 interface, but looking at the video of Husky I can see the flaws of B.net 2.0 in much better perspective. I'd love to see all these things implemented in Sc2!
My personal solution is to just launch the game from steam and use that overlay to talk to friends. They could be playing LoL from steam, they could be playing any steam game or just be online. Steam allows me to talk to pretty much everyone. I hope Blizzard does a better job in HotS. As for now Valve is my nr.1 customer friendly company. 
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I agree with every point. Especially the chat is lackluster.
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On February 06 2012 20:45 Gigaschatten wrote:
However since Blizzard has joined Activision the company slowly began to change. Maybe it's just a feeling but somewhat the quality delivered by Blizzard has decreased significantly. It's one of the rare cases where I 100% agree with the author on a subject like this.
Everyone says this, but the truth is that Blizzard acquiring Activision while spinning off from Vivendi (which is really what happened there) just happened to take place at a time when Blizzard was growing enormously because of the huge and unexpected success of WoW.
What people who were at Blizzard through the period from 2000-2010 say is that the big challenge for the company has been going from a small but successful game company (in the WC3 days) to an enormous, dominant game company (now.) In terms of the effect on each individual person working for them, the scaling up from a hundred or so to over a thousand people is a much bigger issue than this or that shuffling of ownership at the very top.
The truth is that they've made good and bad game design choices through that time, but the WoW expansions, SC2, and now Diablo 3 are all very solid, well-designed games that any company would be proud to have out under their name. That they've handled that kind of growth and stayed reasonably consistent is a huge success -- few companies that grow like that survive.
Me, I'm a little more relaxed about what they're producing. I play all their games and I offer my feedback as thoughtfully and carefully as I can, but it's way too easy to be shrill about it when just doing what they do day to day is a challenge because of their rapid growth.
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Good points here. However I'll say that for me personally literally the worst part is your second category: "Simply playing the game can be hard at times". Lots of things can be irritating but when they get to the point where it actually makes it frustrating to even play then people will stop playing.
Some of the custom games if you go browsing are great. Nobody is playing them beacuse its sorted by popularity. So the popular games stay on the front page and the less popular never even get looked at pretty much. I've toyed around with some great custom games. But you never find anyone else playing.
Even that is minor compared to the AT vs RT thing. I've only just started to play team games a bit because I'm finding its an amazing way to relax if I'm getting stressed by 1v1 laddering. Frankly I've only come across it once or twice but its annoying as hell when it happens. W40k: DoW2 had exactly the same problem of arranged teams playing against random teams, although it was far more of an epidemic over there and it was just a nightmare. Ironically the community's defence of it when people complained was "it'd fragment the community too much to separate random teams from arranged teams". The result of which I basically don't play DoW2 multiplayer anymore; and I know a few others who felt the same.
Thats literally the kind of issue that drives people away from a game. People stop playing because of getting constantly stomped by arranged teams, then everyone else uses the low population playing that game type as an excuse for having to have the situation in the first place. Its just ridiculous and I have no idea why they thought that was a good idea for SC2 considering Relic already made that mistake about a year and a half before SC2 was released.
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I really just want the lan and I'd be fine however shitty the interface is.
Please blizzard please
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On February 06 2012 20:45 Gigaschatten wrote:
I must say: I love SC2. It's a great game and I look forward to the expansion.
However since Blizzard has joined Activision the company slowly began to change. Maybe it's just a feeling but somewhat the quality delivered by Blizzard has decreased significantly. It's one of the rare cases where I 100% agree with the author on a subject like this.
1) Community Feeling in chat - sorry, what is so hard to just plainly copy the look and feel of the chat of WC3? I really don't get it. Clan channels, moderators, whispering, and and and.... where is that? Why do we get a crap Facebook implementation that is not required at all? I barely know anyone having that feature used.
2) Automated tournaments - where are those? In WC3 it was fun.. oh look, tourney coming up, greeeat. People of leagues matched againt each other. Sure it lacked a tourney grid (which would have been awesome). I really thought Blizzard would implement that. Maybe they could have done more that people could setup tourneys by themselves in bnet. Paypal integration whatever. What did Blizzard do: nothing - just removed the whole concept. Wow.
3) Clan implementation - i thought after WC3 they would allow people to create clans (like guilds in WoW). You could administer your clan members, have a separate clan Tag (without the need to change the whol name/id of the player). Maybe even banners in their clan-chat, links to their external clanwebsite etc.. Facebook integration would then even begin to make sense somewhat (I still dont need that crap but hell...)
4) Replay watching together. This just makes me utterly sad. We have microphone implementation in the game and still cant talk to others while watching replays, analysing etc..
I have bought since Diablo every single game of your company. You were always passionate, you stood for quality. The games always were FUN to play and also whilst interacting with the community. Now this has changed. Yes you delivered a quality product (the game itself is nice, pretty balanced) but you didnt deliver the whole package. There is more to just the game itself.
You will earn your $$$ in short, but long term you are not doing good. I feel sad Blizzard... really.
Sincerely one your former biggest fans of the company.
Exactly how I feel... Let's all hope they pull their heads out of their asses and actually take the criticism and FIX battle.net 0.2
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I agree with just about everything the OP said; but what should we do, what CAN we do now to make things change? Given that Bnet 2.0 is in fact Bnet 0.2, what's the step we have to take to become an active force in changing it? Let's hope we'll get what we want AND deserve.
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On February 06 2012 23:59 NyKaL wrote:
I agree with just about everything the OP said; but what should we do, what CAN we do now to make things change? Given that Bnet 2.0 is in fact Bnet 0.2, what's the step we have to take to become an active force in changing it? Let's hope we'll get what we want AND deserve.
All we can really do is get ourselves out there, make ourselves heard. Go post on any forums possible, especially the bnet forums. Here is a link to the US forum
http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/3988232669
This thread has been on the front page all weekend and is one of the better threads I have seen regarding Battle Net. Please contriubute to your respective Battle Net forum.
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On February 06 2012 23:59 NyKaL wrote:
I agree with just about everything the OP said; but what should we do, what CAN we do now to make things change? Given that Bnet 2.0 is in fact Bnet 0.2, what's the step we have to take to become an active force in changing it? Let's hope we'll get what we want AND deserve.
not buying the game. i mean, if u like the game and think it makes up for b.net 2.0 and the interface, buy it. if u don't care about b.net 2.0 the interface, buy it. but if you care enough to post here and try to find a way to make blizzard implement all the stuff u want, don't buy the game, period. its easy, logical and consequent. if you care that much, that it makes playing the game less fun for you, don't buy the game. if nobody buys hots, lotv will have all the features we want...
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United Kingdom16710 Posts
Does anyone know if Blizzard has mentioned working on Bnet 2.0 as part of the HOTS expansion? or have they only talked about the new gameplay content?
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On February 07 2012 00:19 Telcontar wrote:
Does anyone know if Blizzard has mentioned working on Bnet 2.0 as part of the HOTS expansion? or have they only talked about the new gameplay content?
pretty sure they talked about custom maps, the marketplace, and blizzarddota.
edit: and of course they said to basically all suggestions "we would LOOOOOOVE to do that, but who knows when if ever"
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On February 06 2012 20:45 Gigaschatten wrote:
I must say: I love SC2. It's a great game and I look forward to the expansion.
However since Blizzard has joined Activision the company slowly began to change. Maybe it's just a feeling but somewhat the quality delivered by Blizzard has decreased significantly. It's one of the rare cases where I 100% agree with the author on a subject like this.
1) Community Feeling in chat - sorry, what is so hard to just plainly copy the look and feel of the chat of WC3? I really don't get it. Clan channels, moderators, whispering, and and and.... where is that? Why do we get a crap Facebook implementation that is not required at all? I barely know anyone having that feature used.
2) Automated tournaments - where are those? In WC3 it was fun.. oh look, tourney coming up, greeeat. People of leagues matched againt each other. Sure it lacked a tourney grid (which would have been awesome). I really thought Blizzard would implement that. Maybe they could have done more that people could setup tourneys by themselves in bnet. Paypal integration whatever. What did Blizzard do: nothing - just removed the whole concept. Wow.
3) Clan implementation - i thought after WC3 they would allow people to create clans (like guilds in WoW). You could administer your clan members, have a separate clan Tag (without the need to change the whol name/id of the player). Maybe even banners in their clan-chat, links to their external clanwebsite etc.. Facebook integration would then even begin to make sense somewhat (I still dont need that crap but hell...)
4) Replay watching together. This just makes me utterly sad. We have microphone implementation in the game and still cant talk to others while watching replays, analysing etc..
I have bought since Diablo every single game of your company. You were always passionate, you stood for quality. The games always were FUN to play and also whilst interacting with the community. Now this has changed. Yes you delivered a quality product (the game itself is nice, pretty balanced) but you didnt deliver the whole package. There is more to just the game itself.
You will earn your $$$ in short, but long term you are not doing good. I feel sad Blizzard... really.
Sincerely one your former biggest fans of the company.
If you add the in-client stream viewing then you have a complete package and something at Blizzard's level. This 'thing' we have now it's very low quality.
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I agree with these concerns. Shared replay watching + added clan functionality is a must. (Clan tags, clan rooms with mods, fullscreen pages)
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After watching Husky's WC3 UI video, I am even more pissed off. They got some guy from consoles do design the UI, right? It needs to go. All of it.
Just give us Battle.net 1.0 for SC2 and save the the Xbox Live crap for people who think serious gaming involves a controller.
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Just looking at the Skyrim UI we should realize once and for all that THE INDUSTRY DOES NOT CARE about a useful UI with decent features. The only thing they want is making money while following "their vision". In the case of Skyrim it is "console gamers shouldnt be penalized for handicapping themselves with a limited amount of buttons"; in the case of Blizzard it is "we want control and want to eventually have monthly fees for BNet accounts and not only WoW and we try to excuse these measures with piracy and offer Facebook integration as appeasement (and cheap ad space for us)."
Luckily there are alternatives to falling into that trap and those are pretty cheap; just watch others play your favorite game on the internet instead of buying and playing yourself. There are quite a lot of good entertainers out there who are able to make a "dull game" rather interesting to watch and who provide much longer entertainment than you might have had if you bought and played the game yourself. Sure you might have to wait for an episode, but there is also SC2 and the huge number of tournaments and regular events. Watching those has at least as much entertainment compared to playing yourself (if you are Average-wood-league-Joe like me).
We dont have to buy games on launch and not doing that might give us more power as a consumer base. Sales managers are looking at those and might give feedback to their bosses which might get heard. Criticism like the current "good ideas we already had two years ago" will not make it into the game ... ever, because the company is beyond caring. In the case of SC2 we still have two expansions, but if the number of preorders are abysmally low the managers might start to realize the danger of ignoring their customers. I wont buy HotS but will watch the campaign on Youtube.
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On February 06 2012 14:54 hmunkey wrote:
BW and WC3 did not have good interfaces despite what you keep saying. Sorry.
And why do so many people seem to think the esports aspect of SC2 is something Activision-Blizzard actually cares about? You realize it's not very profitable for them, right? Esports is great and it's awesome that people enjoy watching SC2, but the fact is they don't make very much money off it and SC2 is still magnitudes less popular than many (most?) of their other major titles. It sucks, but it's true. What do you think the sales are? 3 million? What were the latest Call of Duty's sales? And the one before that? And keep in mind that CoD games take far less time to develop, don't require constant attention (re-balancing and the likes), and can be put on the market relatively back-to-back. And then there's WoW, where they get a monthly subscription fee on top of original sales.
TL;DR: SC2 isn't that profitable nor is it a big deal to Acti-Blizz. I'm sure they think the whole esports thing is cool, but at the end of the day it doesn't really matter than much. Stop pretending they don't know what they're doing and they're stupid for not focusing on the game.
You're right and I'm sure SC2 seems like small fries compared to the cash cow that is WoW or the less demanding (in terms of continuing support) Diablo franchise. However I think Blizzard are starting to be won over by the amount of interest lan events like mlg, gsl and of course blizzcon are generating. There's definitely money to be made its just a question of how much blizzard are willing to invest in esports.
On February 06 2012 13:30 craz3d wrote:Show nested quote +On February 06 2012 10:26 CallousCarter wrote:
What the hell would that do? Activision isn't the problem. Blizzard just fucked up. I see the same thing on bioware forums where people with no idea about the decision making procedures involved in the companies blame anything they don't like on evil EA corporate idiots and praise bioware for anything they like.
To be honest as a squeal to BW, SC2 is a dissapointment. It failed to improve on it in any meaningful way. The big changes were getting rid of annoyances which were cause by technical limitations and updating the graphics to the a 3d engine. Unfortunately the annoyances such as the number of units in control group limit, bad pathfinding, no automining, no building hotkeys had given the game depth and in SC2 they weren't replaced by any new mechanics. So we are left with a game that is still hard as nails and completely devoid of any long term appeal for casual players but now there are less factors to differentiate between the pro players who do dedicate vast amounts of time to the game. The graphics aren't a big improvement either, sure BWs graphics are very dated but they have charm and nostalgic value, SC" on the other hand just looks like a mediocre fps, its art style is pretty generic and it is no longer technically cutting edge.
Then we have things that have actually got worse. Bnet 2.0 is undoubtedly worse than Bnet1.0, it's slow and clunky and lacking a ton of features which were present in a system designed well over a decade ago. There's no lan mode, and the ladder system is overly complex, overly obfuscated and completely fails to do what it was designed for, i.e appeal to casual players and pros. Many pros prefer custom games with team-mates/friends and ladder anxiety amongst casuals is well
documented.
The only reason the esports scene around SC2 has grown is because the foreign RTS community could not compete with the Koreans. The buzz around a new squeal after over a decade and a blizzard title at that generated interest from viewers and many players/figures in esports jumped at the chance for a fresh start and level playing field. Unfortunately the figure of people actually playing SC2 is diminishing quite quickly and that is slowly leading to less viewers for tournaments. This hasn't yet led to less interest from sponsors and companies but if this trend continues it will do and i fear for organisations like MLG and GOMTV who have a big stake in SC2s success.
One of the problems is Blizzard doesn't care about esports enough. Part of the reason BW flourish is because Blizzard stop caring about it and let the community take full control. However with SC2 they're in this awkward middle where they want to keep control over the scene to a certain degree and want to reap some of the revenue esports can generate but they don't want to fully commit to making SC2 work as an esport like Riot (mainly former blizzard employees) is doing with LoL or valve presumably with Dota2.
I'm not trying to call the scene dead but i believe it is in decline. Of course there's still two expansions to go which could completely revitalise the community and generate huge interest in sc2 again. However they have to be good. I think the unit design looks innovative and engaging which is a huge plus, however i hope they bring with it revamped and simplified rating system because ladder just doesn't work on a multitude of levels. Without improving Bnet2.0 and ladder I can't see any longevity in SC2. Just like any other sport or esport SC2 needs an active playing community to make it as an industry. We might sit around reminiscing about the good old times and how Blizzard didn't learn anything from BW's success, but looking at it from a different perspective, they took the parts vital for making money. Think about it: how did BW make so many Blizzard fans for life? It was the competitive aspect of it. You can't argue that SC2 is not a competitive game, where it stands next to its older brother is another question altogether. My point is: Blizzard is doing their best to promote the game as a both an e-sport and a casual game. The casual aspect will ensure more sales, while the sport/competitive aspect ensures long term committal to the game (at least until the next reincarnation of the game comes along). Making the game as competitive as BW would lead to less sales and less people playing in the long term, thereby leading to less loyal/fanatical fans. Of course, none of this excuses the pile of steaming shit that is Bnet 2.0.
I don't think Blizzard is doing the best it could to promote the game either as an esport or a casual game. I understand that esports organisation want a primarily hands off approach from blizzard but there are still things they could be doing like collaborating with tournaments on ladder map pools. It's really not that hard for blizzard to do but everyone keeps humming and haring making excuses for why it's difficult (read: requires some level of effort). They also could be helping bridge the gap between casuals (not that there's any left playing the game) and the esports scene through introducing BNet features and help market tournaments.
However the biggest problem for me is the game fails to have any long term interest for anyone but hardcore games. I consider myself a hardcore gamer as i spend most of my time playing games but even i haven't touched the game in 6 months. It requires a huge investment of time for you to achieve any reasonable level of skill at playing it and the ladder system and pro players are all too quick to remind you of this.
If 2011 was a boom year for SC" esports I fear 2013 could be a bust depending on how HoTS does.
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that husky war3 bnet video hit me with some nostalgia bombs. I can't believe we went from that.. to this.. (sc2).
the only good thing about sc2 ui over war3 is 'join game' off your friends list and the improved MM.
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