The Starcraft Crisis - Page 6

On October 18 2012 20:07 SupLilSon wrote:
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.

On October 18 2012 20:24 Kleen-X wrote:


This is a good and precise explanation of how i feel about the process of SC2. I could not have described this better myself. You should be sure someone from Blizzard reads that, since it's written in proper tone without directly insulting Blizzard all the time. I know people write aggressively because they are frustrated, but the tone should be like your post.

On October 18 2012 18:24 Fueled wrote:

Husky posted this 4 hours ago on Twitter:


And wasn't it TB who said on Real Talk that Starcraft 2 was suffering on Youtube? (Don't quote me on that)

Now this is Youtube and I don't keep up on how tournaments are doing viewer wise, but what Husky posted is pretty concerning. Hopefully come HoTS this will all be a thing of the past.

On October 18 2012 20:42 AlternativeEgo wrote:


I don't think that the youtube decline matters as a whole. I mean does anyone really watch it anymore with all the massive stream content nowadays? I watched games on YT in the beginning but I don't have a need for that at all now, there are always live games to be seen. Hell, it's almost too much to watch. :p

On October 18 2012 18:46 Nabes wrote:


football is played on 1 map, so i guess that it is also a fad, right? Stay delusional.

On October 18 2012 20:30 Psychobabas wrote:
Anybody into retrogaming or grew up with the Atari2600 etc would know that in the early-mid 80s there was a massive videogame crash. Why? Because the market was oversaturated with tens of different kind of consoles, each one of poor quality and with utter trash games. So the public was just disinterested in videogaming and there was the so-called videogame crash of the 80s. Until Nintendo appeared with the NES/Famicom and provided top notch quality games and hardware for the time.

This is pretty much what is going on in the SC2. Oversaturation of tournaments, players, leagues. Great instability in team rosters, practice groups, practice schedules, teams shutting down here and there but also appearing for no apparent reason like mushrooms.
So now we, the public, are just not interested, we dont buy the season tickets, we dont watch the streams. Same principle.

We basically need a "NES" for the SC2 scene.

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.

On October 18 2012 20:54 d00p wrote:


Speak for yourself dude. A lot of people are interested in tournaments still. Of course it's natural to lose interest over time and some people will move on but with the big profile release of HotS SC2 is going to attract new audience to replace them. The video game crash comparison is pretty off. There is no such oversaturation. The video game industry is actually moving into the complete opposite direction with huge blockbuster titles. They release fewer games but everything rides on the success of those titles -> quality games.

On October 18 2012 20:35 Psychobabas wrote:


I totally agree with this. But I would also like to point out that back in the early Starcraft 1 days, it was a different environment and situation:
a. A lot more people were into PC gaming. Mostly due to the fact that no console could even touch the capabilities of the PC at that time. [Voodoo 3dfx anyone? ]
b. Online gaming had just started. Starcraft 1 was one of the first to go straight into a multiplayer experience.
c. Battle.net so very user friendly it basically won the battle for Blizzard singlehandedly. You didn't have to use third-party programs to play multiplayer, which was groundbreaking and attracted a great deal of players.

On October 18 2012 20:58 Psychobabas wrote:


You misunderstand me. I compared only the SC2 situation with the game crisis of the 80s, not the whole present videogame industry which is of course a multibillion industry with insane growth.