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Honestly, SC2 needs to calm down with the money. Everything is getting out of hand. Yes players need to be paid well, but they are already paid well. We don't need huge players leaving their teams just for a bigger paycheck. We don't need everyone going everywhere in search of money. We need everywhere to focus on themselves and build their own communities. Korean doesn't own Starcraft anymore. ESL and DreamHack need to buffer themselves and become the pioneers for building Europe, moreso than they already are. It's cool when Koreans come to other countries to compete etc, but it doesn't help their skill, it just helps their pockets. European players need money in their pockets too. Let European players and teams develop massive team houses with good funding to sustain themselves completely and allow them to create a healthy and competetive enviornment.
The same goes for NA, there seems to be a lot of money in NA, but none of it is going to the NA community. IGL, NASL, and MLG are all NA tournaments giving all of their money to Koreans/Europeans.
Make less huge tournaments, spread the money out so that more players have more opportunities to play as well as more prize money in their pockets every month. Less huge tournaments, but bigger huge tournaments. Have one or two huge MLG's, and a whole ton of smaller ones. Have them in so many places that communities everywhere are benefited, and so many more people are able to participate. Expand the competition, and give us more players to watch prove themselves.
Right now everyone is just focused on taking all of the money for themselves because everyone is giving them money for the worse of eSports. We don't need a massive amateur scene with everyone earning under $500 a month along with a very small amount of people making over $4000 a month. The small amount of people making $4000+ a month are also making $70,000 a year, whereas everyone else is making less than $6000 a year. Sorry, but games don't last if people can't play it. Make it a sport that all skilled players can play at a high level. So many skilled players don't even try because it's not realistic for them to play extremely well just to lose the one big tournament they play in in the first round vs Mvp, and thus make no money. Have so many more tournaments to the point where top players can't play in all of them, so that a much broader public ends up making the money and making careers more possible.
In other words, in terms of real economics, lower the lower class, make a huge middle class, and a small upper class.
If eSports smarts up, the lower class (economically speaking, not skill-wise) will lessen dramatically, and the middle and upper classes will reap the rewards of a stable career and a stable future.
More jobs will open up, more organizations will come into existance and actually be able to sustain themselves, and so many more people will have futures in eSports.
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On October 18 2012 17:45 klniceajer wrote:
Of course Dota 2 can't be changed .
What crack are you on anyway ?
And how the fuck does people thinks LoL is the whole new game to look out for ?
Dota still have their shrine in China with devotees who are still loyal .
It would be just the matter of time that LoL dies fast .
LOL is getting really big in China, riot is purchased by a Chinese company and has been growing bigger and bigger.
It won't die anytime soon, almost no chance at all.
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On October 18 2012 19:01 ETisME wrote:Show nested quote +On October 18 2012 17:45 klniceajer wrote:
Of course Dota 2 can't be changed .
What crack are you on anyway ?
And how the fuck does people thinks LoL is the whole new game to look out for ?
Dota still have their shrine in China with devotees who are still loyal .
It would be just the matter of time that LoL dies fast . LOL is getting really big in China, riot is purchased by a Chinese company and has been growing bigger and bigger. It won't die anytime soon, almost no chance at all.
Well when Dota 2 finishes its beta stage and it's open to all ... well .. I don't know, pick the original game with nice graphics or pick the cartoonish clone of it ?
That will be the real test for LoL not the artificial SC2 vs LoL duel.
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On October 18 2012 18:07 ShadowDrgn wrote:Show nested quote +On October 18 2012 17:22 ineversmile wrote:
LoL is going strong in terms of popularity, but that game is still 99% about snowballing and they only ever play on one map. It's a fad. LoL was released 3 years ago, and their player numbers have done nothing but accelerate. Their last season tournament prize pool was 5 million dollars. SC2, on the other hand, has been out for 2 years and has seen fewer players every season on ladder. Tournament prize pools have remained stagnant since release. DotA is like 10 years old and has been played on that same map the entire time, too. It's not an issue. It's not a fad.
We'll see what happens in a year when the effects of having 100+ different champions starts bringing diminishing returns, and when people finally realize that all the pro-level games are exactly the same.
DotA only stayed popular because they kept adding new heroes and flip-flopping the balance of the game, just to change things up.
On October 18 2012 18:46 Nabes wrote:Show nested quote +On October 18 2012 17:22 ineversmile wrote:
LoL is going strong in terms of popularity, but that game is still 99% about snowballing and they only ever play on one map. It's a fad. football is played on 1 map, so i guess that it is also a fad, right? Stay delusional.
You're from Canada, so maybe you're talking about soccer or maybe you're talking about Gridiron Football. I don't know anything about soccer because I never have enjoyed playing or watching that sport, so if you're talking about soccer then your comment goes right over my head. But if you're talking about Gridiron football variants like American Football and its more audible-friendly Canadian Football, then you're dead wrong. Some stadiums are outdoors, and some are domes. Outdoor stadiums use grass, have precipitation and wind from weather, and have different acoustics than domes. Most domes use AstroTurf instead of grass, they don't have precipitation or wind, and they tend to have louder acoustics.
In the case of grass versus astro turf, that completely changes the way in which cleats interact with grass. This means a completely different feel to players as they run and turn on the field, as they sit in their stances, and as kickers do their thing.
In the case of rain/snow and wind, that makes an enormous difference in the game. Anybody with a decent arm can through the football in clear weather. It's a whole new game when you're trying to throw through thick snow, when steam is coming off of guys' heads as they take their helmets off on the sidelines.
In the case of acoustics, louder stadiums mean a home team advantage for their defense, since offensive plays are mostly called verbally and it's almost impossible to audible with a silent snap count.
So maybe you were talking about soccer, which I'm sure is also affected by the weather and temperature, but if you were talking about American Football or Candian Football...well, good luck with that.
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Stagnant map pool -> Stagnant gameplay.
Also, Protoss turtling on 2 bases or 3 bases for dozens of minutes, because the game is broken in that respect.
I am accustomed to thinking that the popularity of the other 2 big games, LoL and DotA, doesn't really matter for SC2. It's like comparing Tennis with Football. We need to develop our own community, our own game, and in time, if it so be, it will shine through delivering us back to the spotlight in the esports world. But for now, the place in the sun is given to others who've done a better job developing their game.
The main problem for the past 9 months has been the stagnant map pool. New maps please. Even goofy ones, so that the gameplay is forced to change. HotS release will get us a lot of interesting stuff, but eventually it will be the map pool that will decide how good our tournaments will be. I have a hunch that Blizzard is committing all of their resources to HotS right now, and neglecting the existing game. Otherwise we would have seen the game evolve more.
EDIT: A very encouraging aspect of the last 3 or so months is how clean the professional gameplay is becoming. Unforced errors are fast becoming extinct and we can expect to have, in not too long, a professional scene of players whose gameplay will look.. unfathomably good.
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United Kingdom14103 Posts
It's to do with a series of bad decisions by Blizzard: removing the cool micro features that people found, no chat channels, clan support, deathballs, etc.
It's all just leading to a bad game.
How did you manage to go backwards in your UI Blizzard?!
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I am sad about this, but i have to agree with you. SC2 will die (or atleast decrease in popularity) soon but i don't think Blizzard can stop it now, they could have prevented it if they had tried it and started 1 year ago. I don't think they have the time to completly redesign SC2 with HotS (but we have to if SC2 should remain succesfull) because LoL gets ahead of Sc2 (and even Dota 2) every day a little bit more.
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For SC2 to grow as an esport, multiplayer must become f2p. Time and time again, this business-model proves to be the most successful.
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Blizzard basically needs to change their mindset about unit design. Currently, for a unit to see the light of day, blizzard asks the following questions:
1. Does it contribute something significant to the metagame?
2. Is it balanced?
What the requirements should be:
1. Does it contribute something significant to the metagame?
2. Is it fun to watch and play with?
3. Is it balanced?
In other words, units like the Marauder, Colossus, and Corruptor need to be remade entirely to be more in line with units like the Baneling, Hellion, and High Templar.
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On October 18 2012 19:18 Atlan___ wrote:
I am sad about this, but i have to agree with you. SC2 will die (or atleast decrease in popularity) soon but i don't think Blizzard can stop it now, they could have prevented it if they had tried it and started 1 year ago. I don't think they have the time to completly redesign SC2 with HotS (but we have to if SC2 should remain succesfull) because LoL gets ahead of Sc2 (and even Dota 2) every day a little bit more.
Starcraft 2 won't be dieing anytime soon, but yes, it will decrease in popularity. The game has problems that have been brought up time and time again and yet have gone unfixed. These problems do need to be fixed as other eSports games are adding or fixing what Starcraft 2 lacks, making those games more appealing and thus decreasing Starcraft 2s popularity.
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Who are all those Ecnomics Professors who were lurking TL for this moment to step up and present their half cooked semi-knowledge about a market which isn't even one?
Who are those people claiming to have the facts and numbers to say sponsors are backing off and that SC2 is "doomed"?
Where were all those intelligent beings six month ago?
Why is it that NOW simply ... after Destiny made a thread, step up and share their omni-knowledge in markets and businesses?
To all those guys, why is it that eSports is GAINING viewers and not losing them?
Why is it that eSports gets more cultural accepted?
Why is it that in general we gain more attention than we lose as a community?
And why the hell do you guys keep telling that SC2 is going to die without backing it up with ANY facts?
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On October 18 2012 19:32 bluQ wrote:
Who are all those Ecnomics Professors who were lurking TL for this moment to step up and present their half cooked semi-knowledge about a market which isn't even one?
Who are those people claiming to have the facts and numbers to say sponsors are backing off and that SC2 is "doomed"?
Where were all those intelligent beings six month ago?
Why is it that NOW simply ... after Destiny made a thread, step up and share their omni-knowledge in markets and businesses?
To all those guys, why is it that eSports is GAINING viewers and not losing them?
Why is it that eSports gets more cultural accepted?
Why is it that in general we gain more attention than we lose as a community?
And why the hell do you guys keep telling that SC2 is going to die without backing it up with ANY facts?
So you do have the facts and numbers? Care to share them? I'm not being spiteful here, see my post one page back. I think it would be nice to have this discussion based on something more than a gut feeling, if only to end it because it's been shown that there's no need to have a discussion.
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On October 18 2012 19:08 Leru wrote:Show nested quote +On October 18 2012 19:01 ETisME wrote:On October 18 2012 17:45 klniceajer wrote:
Of course Dota 2 can't be changed .
What crack are you on anyway ?
And how the fuck does people thinks LoL is the whole new game to look out for ?
Dota still have their shrine in China with devotees who are still loyal .
It would be just the matter of time that LoL dies fast . LOL is getting really big in China, riot is purchased by a Chinese company and has been growing bigger and bigger. It won't die anytime soon, almost no chance at all. Well when Dota 2 finishes its beta stage and it's open to all ... well .. I don't know, pick the original game with nice graphics or pick the cartoonish clone of it ? That will be the real test for LoL not the artificial SC2 vs LoL duel.
if you think Lol is a simple cartoonish clone of Dota you are dead wrong.
I used to flame a lot about LoL before it even hit a big beta release, especially about the cartoon design as well as the free town portal spell.
However, after trying it for months, LoL is a lot more fun and different than what you would expect.
No runes but buffs from neutrals.
Scaling Spell damage with items.
Customise Champion spells and runes (which opens up even more discussion on stats that old dota fans loved on forum).
Invisible near bushes
Most of my friends who didn't play dota are addicted to LoL.
whenever I meet some new Chinese friends and talk about the gaming habit, they don't ask "you play dota?" anymore, they ask if you play LoL and the elo nowadays.
The dota 2, successor of the original, might be attractive to old fans, but LoL is taking tonnes of old dota fans away as well as built up a whole new fan base (followed by a huge cosplay scene as well as fanart scenes across all asia, especially Korea. So it might appear that the dark theme of Dota is not as attractive as you would like)
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On October 18 2012 17:18 FrogOfWar wrote:
[...]
Bottom line: there is a dominant attitude that everything should be played by the book, which means, according to expectation. I see very little on-the-fly creativity, little need to adapt to unexpected scenarios, and little appreciation for a player's ability to do so. I'm not sure why that is. We probably don't want to go back to the cheese-fest tournaments of the first six months of SC2, but with games being too predictable, watching them becomes boring and pointless. Maybe it's just that the nuances that top players change in their planned out builds and ingame adaptations, while being highly intriguing for experts, are just too subtle for the average viewer to grasp. This would be a real dilemma we face with the idea of SC2 going mainstream and trying to appeal to a general, non-expert audience.
Isn't that why everyone loves TLO?
I think there is a big appreciation for on the fly creativity. I just think it doesn't win you tournaments.
Right now I see the (pro) metagame as only providing a handful of possible ways to go, because they are really trying to "optimise" every build and to those ways the top pros know already a standard answer so there is no need for on the fly creativity.
My game knowledge is not deep enough to see if Starcraft just doesn't provide enough competitive ways for creativity (e.g. going for certain agression without losing too mutch eco so that it's only playable as an all-in) or that the scene has yet to discover new ways to play the game.
I hope and kinda believe the second one is true, seeing that MVP as a guy that mixes up styles maybe more than any other top player is the one most successful SC2 player.
But if it is the case that SC2 is completely explored now and we have everything just as it is, the game will become boring to watch when everyone can predict how the games are going to go.
Off course an expansion like HotS can break that up and give more possibilities what can only be good.
On the other hand Starcraft simply should have better UI, clan systems, LAN and all the other features.
It cannot be that hard to implement and it would only help the longevity of Starcraft as a top ESport and the number one RTS.
Maybe a big new RTS game from the competition would help breaking this situation where Blizzard can rest on it's monopolist status.
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[B]On October 18 2012 18:53 Goldfish wrote
I'd argue that's nearly impossible (with competition that is) without changing the genre itself. Warcraft III is arguably easier to get into, more casual, and more fun to play casually than SC2 but yet it died off (to guess what, Dota) really just after 2 years or so after The Frozen Throne was released.
WarCraftIII casual scene or team game scene didn't die because of Dota, it died because Blizzard made huge HUGE stupid retarded arrogant mistake to change match-making system. Arranged team matching system was changed to a way alot of good player could no longer find any game even if you search for over 2~3hours. And I'm not exaggerating here WE WOULD SEARCH FOR A GAME FOR 2HOURS NONE-STOP AND OFTEN TIMES MIGHT NOT FIND A SINGLE GAME FOR THE DAY!!! solution to that? Well you need to either make a new account or, have one of your team mate loss abuse to lower your team's MMR(it was called ELL in war3) Offcourse you can say smurfing is a newbie bashing and loss abuse is an abuse, but without either of those we couldn't even play a game we loved on our own account we used for months or even years.
Back in the war3, what alot of team gamers cared was icons you get for winning 1500per race and winning %(% was little annoying but still, it was what people cared) And if you have to smurf(make a new account everytime you play) It just kills motivation of casual players.
To wrap it up, Yes alot of my friends who were team game player had either switched to play Dota or quit. But not because Dota has taken over war3 casual team gaming in terms of fun. It was because Blizz completely ruined and killed war3 casual team game scene.
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Honestly we all know what's happening right now, and we also know that it's all up to Blizzard to do what needs to be done. It's really up to them now.
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I'm really happy to read this and to be honest Artosis has the right mentality.
Let's just hope blizzard makes the best out of HOTS and the only thing we can do right now is wait.
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Hey everyone: starcraft 2 JEREMIADS
I also don't think you can say HOTS isn't attracting attention. It's just poIntless to watch as long as its in such a state of flux, but once it's done, we will all be supa pumped.
Yeah, sc2 has stagnated. I'll give you that. I'm wondering if 2012 will end as epicly as 2012. Hopefully
Even then, HOTS will keep us alive a while
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As sad as it sounds, I think Blizzard missed the ship. They've let their wounds fester for 2 years; the infection has spread and inevitably the organism will die. SC2 won't die out before HOTS, there's just too many people invested at this point. KeSPA just switched and regardless of the doomsday prophecies there is money in the scene. There are people out there who have great ideas and tons of ambition who want to make this thing work. The very fact that this issue is being so heatedly discussed shows that people give a shit. The problem is Blizzard isn't among those people. Since day 1 they've turned a blind eye to the issues and adamantly did everything their way without compromise.
From the start they should have known there was a massive problem. Korea, the Mecca of Esports never bought into SC2. The densest population of fervent StarCraft supporters and the most robust Esports scene in the world wasn't on board. Right then and there Blizzard should have reevaluated their game plan. IMO SC2 failed the second it failed in Korea. It's been evident since the start that SC2 was lacking the allure that allowed BW to flourish and there's been no shortage of effort to convey this to Blizzard. However, the majority of us shrugged it off and told ourselves that Blizzard would come around. Surely they saw the error in their own creation and would take SOME steps to recreate the elements that made BW so great. Time continued to pass and SC2 seemed to be at a great place despite Blizzard's deafness. The community was really pushing for the game and we saw the explosion of the foreign scene propelled by the fans. Tons of people were tuning into streams and youtube broadcasts. Personalities like Day9 and Husky were making enough money to go full time and even got exposure in the mainstream media. Foreigners were in contention with Koreans and GSL was no longer the only tournament that attracted Korean pros. Blizzard even came out and declared their undying support, "WE LOVE ESPORTS." David Kim acknowledged possible imbalances in the game and design flaws that were being investigated. We got our first glimpse of HOTS and the community was mollified. Any problems with the game would surely be sorted out with HOTS if not sooner. I mean, SC1 didn't take off until BW, right? Esports was expanding in the West like no one could have envisioned. But it was all a facade.
Underneath all this external growth, the heart of the problem was never addressed. The biggest changes since have been the queen buff and the ghost nerf. Neither unit had ever been the focal point of the communities issues with the game. Changes were proposed and then quickly reverted. Other changes went through without any indication why and without PTR. Blizzard would say one thing and then seemingly act on an entirely different whim. One week they said every matchup was at 50% and the next week they were buffing and nerfing. And through all this, the inherent flaws that have been brought up time and time again since the get go were ignored. Numbers began to decline as people naturally lost interest in a game that had largely stagnated. Both playing and watching SC2 had become stale. If you've seen one PvZ, you've seen them all. Watching MMMGV collide with the Protoss deathball gets old surprisingly fast. The realization that Korea would be just as dominant in SC2 as BW began to sink in. Still, people kept the faith. This is BLIZZARD we are talking about, one of the GREATEST game developers of all time. They have put out countless classics and in many people's minds, have never released a bad title. Moreso, we all truly wanted SC2 to succeed and we still want it to succeed. The community rationalized that changes were coming. HOTS was around the corner and Blizzard would make it's big moves with it. Just like BW, HOTS would be the expansion that took a great game and turned it into a great ESPORT.
HOTS Closed BETA began and there was a new reason to watch SC2 again. It was finally here, the expansion that would reinvigorate SC2. Sure the Warhound looked like a fisher price toy. Sure no one believed range 22 could be for real. But that was all trivial, numbers were subject to change, we wanted to see the development on the game itself. How were these new units going to introduce the depth that SC2 needed to emulate BW? Blizzard had made grand claims about "breaking up the deathball" and reintroducing micro to the races that might lack for it and we were all eager to see their progress. Less than a week into the BETA it was evident that these problems were not addressed, in fact they seemed to be intensified. Terran, the one race that lacked a legitimate deathball suddenly had the most 1 dimensional 1-A unit in the game. A week into BETA that entire unit was removed without plans of replacing it. Over a year of development and you remove the Warhound in under a week of testing? How did Blizzard miss this... how was HOTS so far removed from what the community was expecting? Apathy towards their most vocal fans, those of us who take the time to raise a shitstorm here on TL, on Reddit or on the dreaded Blizzard forums.
I know this is long winded and I don't expect many to actually read through it. But I've logged countless hours into SC2, playing each race extensively and it's gotten to the point where I can barely log in. I was the player who played Random because I genuinely liked each race, I've been that way since BW and it's a characteristic that carries over into other games as well. SC is SC, whether you are T, P, or Z and it should be fun no matter what. SC2 stopped being that for me long ago. I switched to maining Terran because I dislike the way Zerg and Protoss are forced to play and I can barely watch SC2 anymore unless it's Korean TvT or TvZ. Am I whining? Yes. Am I right? Probably not. It's 7:00AM, I'm frazzled and I had time to kill since Code A started with a ZvZ and a PvP. If anyone took the time to read this wall of text, I hope you got something out of it.
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On October 18 2012 14:29 kill619 wrote:
I'll never understand how one team disbanding, an expansion that's very early in beta(relative to when it's actually going to be released) not being perfect, and three reddit post in a day warrants so much panic and distress in a community so quickly.
If you think that it's only about those few things you really are clueless.
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