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there are lots of reasons for sc2s lack of growth.the hugely split tournament base ( yeah oversaturation did happen. 185 tournaments a year for 1k are much much worse for the viewer then 3 tournaments for 60k,if i just look at the sidebar now there are 7 or 8 things running that split the viewers and interest), lack of community and just technical features (bnet is the saddest place to be online, reconnect,ingame obsing etc), the game itself just lacking the genius spark that made bw what it is (and it beeing highly frustrating in many situations), a engine that makes the once super popular ffa games just not enjoyable for many,the cost of the game, unfriendly ladder/online modes etc etc.
the game not beeing casualfriendly enough is the least of all of that. since lol was brought up lol like evry dota clone is SUPER HARD to get into and esp for viewers its way way harder to understand things then 2 armies running into each other and one winning. i really think this focuses on a minor problem when so many bigger ones are evrywhere.
ofc alot is blizzards fault. their total lack of support and care hurts. and while starcraft2 did hugely get carried by its name, that wont last forever.
look at me, im registered here since 04. im a starcraft guy. i played and watched thousands of bw games and played over 800 games during the beta of sc2 alone(bought the betakey for 30ish$). but even i got turned off by evrything that went wrong with sc2 and at this point im not even sure if ill get hots. if they cant keep someone like me enjoying the game, how they gonna get and keep new people.
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It feels like Blizzard is trying to shove an Esport into our throats more than a community trying to make an esport of an already fun game.
They seem to be missing the point that the only thing (to a certain extend) that make games good are their communities.
Even single player games like FF7 and Zelda games were so fun just because we would talk about it all the time and share our experiences with those games. We made communities out of single player games, that's how powerful social aspect of gaming is.
They literally killed 90% of their Battlenet community already with 2.0.
They lost so many gamers with their brand new-already dead game of D3.
Sc2 WANTS to be popular from a blizzard point of view but the community jsut wont let that happen so easily just because Blizzard told them that this is esport and this is how it should be.
NO!
The community will decide what is esport worthy, not the companies who makes the games.
Video games companies are the athletes, communities are the judges.
Blizzard is basicly judging their own performance and then telling us the results.
There is a obvious reason why SC2 and D3 are failing to the expectations and are barely the shadow of their predecessors.
Give the power back to the people!!
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Destiny is 100% correct. I sold my gaming pc recently (partly because of bills though I had other options) because I just couldn't bring myself to play sc2 as much as I wanted to. It had gotten to a point to where it wasn't fun anymore. I waited for about 3 weeks to see if I would get lucky and get an invite to the HotS beta but no dice. Either way, after seeing people stream the beta, I was really discouraged and didn't see anything worth waiting for anymore. I found myself playing League and CS:GO with friends rather than wasting my time laddering just simply because I did not find it worth the stress.
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On October 18 2012 03:34 Apolo wrote:
I think there are two main reasons why there's not so much action as people desire:
1) Many spells are too radical and disencourage micro and retreat on battles after they're cast:
- got fungal growthed? too bad, now your unit can't do anything;
- got forcefield trapped? wait for it to go away?
- got phoenix lifted? y, not much i can do about that, except kill the phoenix;
- got concussive shelled? yeah, unless you're zerg or a stalker with blink, good luck escaping;
- got emped? well run away and recharge;
- vortex? pre split or put them all in.
The solution to all of them is very one-dimensional: either you do something before it's cast, or you kill the caster or bring units to protect the affected ones...
2) Battles end too quickly
- Reasons: HP too low, damage too high, existence of many retreat disencouraging spells
- with many units and unit compositions, retreating is barely (if) better than just let your units fight to death. Damage per second (DPS) is so high, coupled with 1) micro / retreat disencouraging spells that while you're retreating you suffer so many heavy loses it's almost not worth it. So people fear that big battle, because just those 10s will decide everything.
This point is also related to deathballs. In the extreme, if units took infinite amounts of time to deliver finite amouts of damage, one should never make a death ball. Player 1 attacks player 2 with many small groups, player 2 decides to go for player 1's base. Since DPS is low, it gives Player 1 time to go back and defend without major loses. He can attack on multiple places without fear of leaving the base because he knows he could always go back and defend without having lost the game already. He can also gain time with those small groups. Even a big deathball must be careful of a few units that survive long enough. Multiple pronged attacks actually do more damage than a big head on attack, because they can be more precise and strategic, to the economy or key buildings than just brute force through the player's base.
And this is very bad spectator-wise. Who wants to watch a build up of tension for 15 minutes, while to see it ended in 5s? Well you could compare that to an orgasm and foreplay, but well i don't think the battle is remotely as good, and really not worth the hassle. Also i could compare it to football, only the most popular sport in the world, which has tension from beginning to end (unless its 3-0 and the final minutes of the game or some boring *cough Real Madrid* teams). When one team keeps defending and defending and the other attack and attacking almost on the verge of scoring a goal, and everyone is on the edge of their seats all the time. If only SC2 could manage that, but right now it's far from it. A good comeback in SC2 is a very rare thing to see, and generally it's because one player made serious mistakes. As soon as we see that supply drop a bit and see the direction the game is heading, the result is defined for the next 15 minutes and one might as well turn off the stream "What you do when you're ahead? you get more ahead" expresses this very well.
Really some great points, 100% agree about spells being way to controlling. I don't really agree about fungal since they are really expensive and you need to tech into them (yes i am a zerg player) but FF is really stupid when you watch some games. Its not uncommon for toss to have around 5 full energy sentries and just FF the entire map. Its not fun to watch.
DPS being to high is something i 100% agree with, just look at marines in starcraft bw. They felt like a tier 1 unit but SC2 their dps with stim is the 2nd highest in the game (1st is carrier) Because they are so strong they break the game, banes are suppose to counter marines but splitting ( while fun to watch) ends up causing problems where its just mass tier 1 and a move.
For any non SC1 fans, most of SC bw was like sc2 tvt. Huge army lines drawn and you got to see amazing macro and multitasking. Drops, macro'n expansions and strategically holding positions and controlling space.
SC1 had units in each race that controlled space , terran tanks, Zerg lurkers and toss reaver. Your not going to a move into those.
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/agree
... in a way. While I don't share Destinys view on everything, I DO agree, that it is Blizzard, who can change a lot.
A strategy game has it's appeal to the general community. Possibly even more so than a MOBA game! It's easier to convey an "real-time-chess" image to people than most other genres of games. However, I have to agree that their marketing (or better sayed, promotion of certain things), and development have been bad in many cases.
Also, I have to voice what possibly others have voice in this thread already, that HotS is not exciting or appealing as much as WoL is. + Show Spoiler [HotS rant continued...] +The new units are becoming wierder and wierder and are not as exciting. Also, why I understand that Blizzard focuses mainly on new units, and doesn't like for what-ever reason to reincorporate BW things - I think this approach is very bad from them. BW had many units that were way more interesting than their HotS (or WoL) counterpart, and if imprelemnted - they would solve (at least I think) many WoL issues. Lurker, for one; way better at the area-control element than SwH, BW Carrier as the other, it would be a solution to the Zerg Infestor/BL death march, in a way the Tempest is being designed to be (12-14range unit, with micro, decent front-load damage).
And the list of HotS (and WoL) issues not being adressed just goes on and on.
(I admit, that these thoughts may not be the best solutions)
But, yeah, I have to agree that aproaching the casual gamers is a part of the way foreward. I hope Blizzard picks it up.
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On October 18 2012 03:34 Apolo wrote:
DPS being to high is something i 100% agree with, just look at marines in starcraft bw. They felt like a tier 1 unit but SC2 their dps with stim is the 2nd highest in the game (1st is carrier) Because they are so strong they break the game, banes are suppose to counter marines but splitting ( while fun to watch) ends up causing problems where its just mass tier 1 and a move.
For any non SC1 fans, most of SC bw was like sc2 tvt. Huge army lines drawn and you got to see amazing macro and multitasking. Drops, macro'n expansions and strategically holding positions and controlling space.
SC1 had units in each race that controlled space , terran tanks, Zerg lurkers and toss reaver. Your not going to a move into those.
Marines arent broken. I couldn't play terran for over a year due to not having the APM to split. If you can split vs banes, you deserve to live. Its hard for 99% of players.
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a more or less identical relaunch of BW with new game engine probably would be way more successful. keep existing playerbase and get new players by hyping.
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The biggest issue for me is how the core game is designed.
You can support the game all you want, attract a ton of eyes into it with fun UMS maps, make the game free even... But when you gather tons of viewers and all you make them see are boring units like marauders, colossus, infestors, corruptors, and more, then you can't act surprised when interest in the game dwindles.
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On October 18 2012 04:03 M,J,Y wrote:Show nested quote +On October 18 2012 03:34 Apolo wrote:
I think there are two main reasons why there's not so much action as people desire:
1) Many spells are too radical and disencourage micro and retreat on battles after they're cast:
- got fungal growthed? too bad, now your unit can't do anything;
- got forcefield trapped? wait for it to go away?
- got phoenix lifted? y, not much i can do about that, except kill the phoenix;
- got concussive shelled? yeah, unless you're zerg or a stalker with blink, good luck escaping;
- got emped? well run away and recharge;
- vortex? pre split or put them all in.
The solution to all of them is very one-dimensional: either you do something before it's cast, or you kill the caster or bring units to protect the affected ones...
2) Battles end too quickly
- Reasons: HP too low, damage too high, existence of many retreat disencouraging spells
- with many units and unit compositions, retreating is barely (if) better than just let your units fight to death. Damage per second (DPS) is so high, coupled with 1) micro / retreat disencouraging spells that while you're retreating you suffer so many heavy loses it's almost not worth it. So people fear that big battle, because just those 10s will decide everything.
This point is also related to deathballs. In the extreme, if units took infinite amounts of time to deliver finite amouts of damage, one should never make a death ball. Player 1 attacks player 2 with many small groups, player 2 decides to go for player 1's base. Since DPS is low, it gives Player 1 time to go back and defend without major loses. He can attack on multiple places without fear of leaving the base because he knows he could always go back and defend without having lost the game already. He can also gain time with those small groups. Even a big deathball must be careful of a few units that survive long enough. Multiple pronged attacks actually do more damage than a big head on attack, because they can be more precise and strategic, to the economy or key buildings than just brute force through the player's base.
And this is very bad spectator-wise. Who wants to watch a build up of tension for 15 minutes, while to see it ended in 5s? Well you could compare that to an orgasm and foreplay, but well i don't think the battle is remotely as good, and really not worth the hassle. Also i could compare it to football, only the most popular sport in the world, which has tension from beginning to end (unless its 3-0 and the final minutes of the game or some boring *cough Real Madrid* teams). When one team keeps defending and defending and the other attack and attacking almost on the verge of scoring a goal, and everyone is on the edge of their seats all the time. If only SC2 could manage that, but right now it's far from it. A good comeback in SC2 is a very rare thing to see, and generally it's because one player made serious mistakes. As soon as we see that supply drop a bit and see the direction the game is heading, the result is defined for the next 15 minutes and one might as well turn off the stream "What you do when you're ahead? you get more ahead" expresses this very well. Really some great points, 100% agree about spells being way to controlling. I don't really agree about fungal since they are really expensive and you need to tech into them (yes i am a zerg player) but FF is really stupid when you watch some games. Its not uncommon for toss to have around 5 full energy sentries and just FF the entire map. Its not fun to watch. DPS being to high is something i 100% agree with, just look at marines in starcraft bw. They felt like a tier 1 unit but SC2 their dps with stim is the 2nd highest in the game (1st is carrier) Because they are so strong they break the game, banes are suppose to counter marines but splitting ( while fun to watch) ends up causing problems where its just mass tier 1 and a move. For any non SC1 fans, most of SC bw was like sc2 tvt. Huge army lines drawn and you got to see amazing macro and multitasking. Drops, macro'n expansions and strategically holding positions and controlling space. SC1 had units in each race that controlled space , terran tanks, Zerg lurkers and toss reaver. Your not going to a move into those.
yeah the deathball... funny how imrpoved pathing hurts the game so much. but it makes sense. you dont walk 500 soldiers around closely hugging eachother so 3 shells kill all (aoe). thats not how war works. thats not how bw works. thats not how sc2 should work.
On October 18 2012 04:11 Schnullerbacke13 wrote:
a more or less identical relaunch of BW with new game engine probably would be way more successful. keep existing playerbase and get new players by hyping.
with a proper battlenet where you dont feel lonely as fuck? propably yes.
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On October 18 2012 04:13 Novalisk wrote:
The biggest issue for me is how the core game is designed.
You can support the game all you want, attract a ton of eyes into it with fun UMS maps, make the game free even... But when you gather tons of viewers and all you make them see are boring units like marauders, colossus, infestors, corruptors, and more, then you can't act surprised when interest in the game dwindles.
This is misleading.
You shouldn't look at "boring" units, you should see how they interact with everything.
I think Maruders are really cool because they enable terran to "snipe" buildings/high tech units while being able to endure some damage. Also early/mid game TvP concussive shells is a huge role, as a P army out of position can lose like 7 zealots.
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Holy crap, I look away for an hour and this thread goes up 45 pages!
I'm going to be honest, Destiny just said what pretty much everyone in the Sc2 community is thinking. I really do not care about Destiny at all, and probably have never watched his stream but honestly all this shit has been in our heads since 2010. We all been in denial because we just wished the game would be the same or better than BW. But its not, its worse Blizzard has failed to make sequels of their gaming genres >= the original. Its just sad that we are just really playing for the franchise rather than having Blizzard do something about this issue...
Blizzard really has to step up their games, its just heart breaking when you expect something of the same value as the past, but get something you probably wouldn't be interesting in playing if it was a completely new franchise...
Its funny that I haven't touched SC2 for 2 months and have not missed it, but when I stopped playing BW for a week I would go through withdrawals hoping to get in a game sometime when I'm free. The same goes for Diablo.
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I agree. Blizzard is so afraid of changing anything they have turned the game into a bore. I think a good commentary on it can be obtained from watching "The Guild": people become so worried about criticism they forget that you can't keep everyone happy.
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Kyrgyz Republic1462 Posts
On October 17 2012 16:03 Tyree wrote:
The biggest misconception reading this thread is that super popular online games like LoL, DOTA, CoD and Halo are all popular because they are competitively better and deeper games than SC2, and that the developers who made these games "listen" to the hardcore. You are getting it completely wrong
They are popular because they are easy to get into from a casual point of view, they allow new players to jump in and have fun. That is the core point of what Destiny wrote, they are easy to understand on a basic level. Starcraft 2 is not, its too "hardcore" for its own good, to have fun in SC2 you have to invest months of playing the game just to be competitive, that is work
DotA is easily the worst game imaginable for a newbie. You have absolutely no clue what you should be doing for like 50 first games and everyone will do their best to insult you for not knowing what to do in the worst way imaginable. Then you have 80 heroes with obscure skills that you need to know (well at least the most popular ones) to even understand what is going on on screen.
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BW came at the right time to Korea, that time is obviously gone by now; plenty of games available for every taste and SC2 is too rough for lots of people, but that's a problem for the whole rts genre.
The part about what casual gamers wanted in BW and what they want from SC2 seems completely off to me. I have so many casual nooby friends who like to play 1v1s, they just don't want to be put in "high pressure" situations like maintaining your MMR, which will be fixed in HotS.
I think you just looked at the stagnation in SC2's development as an E-Sport and put everything you know about SC2 in your post, but theres no direct connection in the way you described. Competitive games (where only your own perfomance matters) just aren't as popular in a world where everyone has to compete for jobs and a decent future.
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On October 18 2012 04:15 Pandain wrote:Show nested quote +On October 18 2012 04:13 Novalisk wrote:
The biggest issue for me is how the core game is designed.
You can support the game all you want, attract a ton of eyes into it with fun UMS maps, make the game free even... But when you gather tons of viewers and all you make them see are boring units like marauders, colossus, infestors, corruptors, and more, then you can't act surprised when interest in the game dwindles. This is misleading. You shouldn't look at "boring" units, you should see how they interact with everything. I think Maruders are really cool because they enable terran to "snipe" buildings/high tech units while being able to endure some damage. Also early/mid game TvP concussive shells is a huge role, as a P army out of position can lose like 7 zealots.
Just because it provides balance and dynamics doesn't make it a good unit.
A good unit is a unit that adds something important to the metagame while also being exciting to watch.
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On October 18 2012 03:57 BeMannerDuPenner wrote:
the game not beeing casualfriendly enough is the least of all of that. since lol was brought up lol like evry dota clone is SUPER HARD to get into and esp for viewers its way way harder to understand things then 2 armies running into each other and one winning. i really think this focuses on a minor problem when so many bigger ones are evrywhere.
Depends on how you characterize casual. I don't read about ladder anxiety for the mobas. There's a vid on youtube of JP a couple of months back saying he was playing other things than SC2 because of that. He said after a hard day of work, he didnt want to come home and stress on ladder. He just wanted to play something fun and chill.
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This is pure 100% correct/true.
Props for TT1 or Destiny to make it so freaking clear.
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On October 18 2012 03:51 My_Fake_Plastic_Luv wrote:
I have to agree with destiny here. I mean I played age of empires 3 for years just because I liked being in a clan (on the server) and for chats with players in the pre- and post game chat channels. It was also really easy to make "online" friends in aoe. If you play 1s or random team matches you have to seriously go way out of the way to buddy up with them. Also the freaking custom games just start! I mean half the fun of aoe3 was having arguments in the in game chats.
I think blizzard is treating this way too much like a console game. They have to realize that when most people play they are sitting alone by a computer. And battle.net is practically autistic. Even though playing a computer game by yourself is by definition a lonely experience, I think most casual sc2 gamers would like it to be a social one, even if it is pseudo-social. I never played AoE3 but I played AoE to AoE2 online a lot when they were new. With msn gaming zone you just had a bunch of game rooms. Either you clicked one that seemed fitting to join or you clicked an empty room and made your own "topic", like "2v2, high skill" or whatever and after a minute or 3 enough people had joined and the game was starting.
The sc2 ladder feels like both a blessing and a curse compared to that. It wasn't hard to find games at all in AoE 1/2 when I played, if you were new you could just click any "3v3, newbies" room etc, and there were usually many games like that available. If you thought you were good and joined a "1v1, high skill, no experts" game and got stomped you would probably just think you played an elite player that wanted an easy game, which made you not feel that bad about losing, and so on.
It was very different compared to the sc2 ladder, where it's basically impossible to be happily unaware of your actual skill level.
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Good post, and to true.
Starcraft 2 simply needs to tweek the game, add chat, add name/team change identifiers etc.
Then it is a matter of balance and units abilities which are exciting. I feel HotS has some of those units, but is slowly reverting to the stale game play of WoL as units get nerfed, and abilities which change up the game (like energize) get removed.
Not major things to overcome, but make the game FUN to play.
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On October 18 2012 04:15 Pandain wrote:Show nested quote +On October 18 2012 04:13 Novalisk wrote:
The biggest issue for me is how the core game is designed.
You can support the game all you want, attract a ton of eyes into it with fun UMS maps, make the game free even... But when you gather tons of viewers and all you make them see are boring units like marauders, colossus, infestors, corruptors, and more, then you can't act surprised when interest in the game dwindles. This is misleading. You shouldn't look at "boring" units, you should see how they interact with everything. I think Maruders are really cool because they enable terran to "snipe" buildings/high tech units while being able to endure some damage. Also early/mid game TvP concussive shells is a huge role, as a P army out of position can lose like 7 zealots.
no no no. all they do is prohibit micro/encourage one sided micro, punish for no reason and in the end make the game harder to balance and less fun. this isnt good or fun design.
wanna know an example for good design?
bws vulture/mines. now we have spidermines. which alone are exciting cause they make a big boom. then also they can be used very effectively with micro to kill units that counter them (like goons) but then again the enemy can greatly diminish their strength by microing himself. in addition to that they also can be used against the terran by luring his mines into him which creates a whole different layer of skill ,positioning and excitement. then they are used for mapcontrol and a very important positional tool making the game more strategic.
all that while beeing carried by a unit that with good micro is excellent ,with bad mediocre that has a dmg type that owns shields and small but beeing useless vs anything behind the shields except zealots.
THAT is interesting and fun design. not "i used x so you cant move and now just hope you win the fight" like conc shells,forcefields,fungal and all that crap. cause thats one sided micro, one dimensional design and in the end boring.
dont even get me started about the collossus vs the reaver...
On October 18 2012 04:23 Smackzilla wrote:Show nested quote +On October 18 2012 03:57 BeMannerDuPenner wrote:
the game not beeing casualfriendly enough is the least of all of that. since lol was brought up lol like evry dota clone is SUPER HARD to get into and esp for viewers its way way harder to understand things then 2 armies running into each other and one winning. i really think this focuses on a minor problem when so many bigger ones are evrywhere.
Depends on how you characterize casual. I don't read about ladder anxiety for the mobas. There's a vid on youtube of JP a couple of months back saying he was playing other things than SC2 because of that. He said after a hard day of work, he didnt want to come home and stress on ladder. He just wanted to play something fun and chill.
thats a problem of the ladder/bnet. not the game itself. named customs and a nonranked mm would help a ton to give people options outside of the ladder.
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EPT
