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.
SC2 hasn't grown in a year. The problem was apparent for a long time. It is just that now it is beeing discussed more.
This exactly, it has been in constant decline since Summer at the latest, probably even before then. Every time I feel like watching a stream I mouse over all the streams on TL to see how many viewers are on each and I've observed for quite some time now the numbers going down. Most noticeable was Day9's stream going from something like 20k avg viewers all the way down to 4000. Also Stephano from 12k to about 7k, and I can't think of a single stream whose viewership has not decreased over the past year. The last half of 2011 up till April 2012 (when Stephano peaked at 22k viewers) were SC2's peak IMO.
For me at least as of late the game has grown dull and boring and something needs to be done to reinvigorate it. That being said, for a while it was the best game I've ever played and watched in my life. Have no doubt , friends, it is quite possible to revive this game and even has the potential for attracting millions of viewers far down the road, but major changes are needed.
Slayers disband and we got crissis in sc 2 ? lol , its sounds like fan boy post Other thing is new expansions for WoW always have big hype at begining , its normal , 2-3 months from now it will be less numbers for WoW. Stop compared LoL to Sc2 .. how many more people will do that.. ? LoL is a MOBA game , and moba gendre is now HUGE ! , sc2 is rts , and its not free like LoL
More idiotic sensationalism. None of this drama existed prior to Destiny's wall of text. It's sad that he can cause so much of a stir within the community whenever he pleases despite his overall unimportance. To make matters worse we have people like this coming out of the woodwork making videos in an attempt to capitalize on it..
StarCraft is alive and well. If anything the growth has stagnated but is still at a sustainable and enjoyable level. SC2 doesn't need to compete with LoL/Dota to be successful. Just shut up and enjoy the games, if not go watch LoL.
OP is probably even more accurate to the situation than Destiny's post yesterday.
I agree 100% and have been struggling to put the same thing into words myself.
SC doesn't have a problem now, they have a problem moving forward. They have had these underlying issues for quite a while now, but the game is still quite good.
The thing is, when Blizzard seems to be worried about all the wrong things with their beta, it is not very reassuring that they know how to keep this game interesting.
We really need a redesign from the ground up. These core issues need to be addressed.
Blizzard, the gamers are watching and deciding which game to play. It's your move.
On October 18 2012 21:47 Voreau wrote: More idiotic sensationalism. None of this drama existed prior to Destiny's wall of text. It's sad that he can cause so much of a stir within the community whenever he pleases despite his overall unimportance. To make matters worse we have people like this coming out of the woodwork making videos in an attempt to capitalize on it..
StarCraft is alive and well. If anything the growth has stagnated but is still at a sustainable and enjoyable level. SC2 doesn't need to compete with LoL/Dota to be successful. Just shut up and enjoy the games, if not go watch LoL.
This is the exact attitude that Blizzard has and the exact reason we are having this "drama". People like you say go watch LoL if you don't like SC2. Guess what? That's exactly what people are doing and they aren't coming back.. And if you've listened to anyone actually in the business lately or opened your eyes to what's going on in the scene you'd know that it's not sustainable.
"Blizzard doesn't seem to listen to their communities wishes and most people now feeling defeated and relegated to just waiting for the release date so they can go pick it up and see how it is."
This is the whole reason for this crisis. An example is the Name change, what would a simple free name change cost blizz?
Sorry to all the naysayers, but this has been building up in the community basically since release, it didn't start with Destiny's post.
Hell, I made a post last week about the same subject that quickly got dismissed/ignored. MANY people feel this way about the game. Not everyone needs to agree. As long as the problems exist and enough people are talking about them, the community is doing it's part for the future of the game. The problem has been that Blizzard is sitting in the corner, fingers in ears, saying "LALALALALALA" while they work on turning the Widow Mine into the only unit Terran ever needs to build, ever.
We cry because we love this game, and Blizzard seems hellbent on jumping the shark with StarCraft.
I'd also note that all this horrible BNet2.0 has not come because of SC2 but because they wanted to integrate it with Diablo 3 and WoW. Personally I couldn't give a donkeys balls whether I can talk to the few people I still give a rats arse about in WoW that still play that shitty game. I have Skype for that.
BNet 2.0 needs to go back to being about Starcraft 2.
You have to realize that Team Liquid is a community mostly comprised of very hardcore players or viewers. It doesn't typically represent how "good" a game does in terms of popularity or success. In fact, most of the changes in the game have been to make it better for the extreme hardcore gamer (5+ hours per day) rather than to make the game better and more popular.
That being said, there is nothing wrong with the viewpoint that making the game more popular would make it a worse game overall. It just doesn't allow for innovation and creativity in the game design, so of course it's going to get stale for a lot of people.
So many depressing threads lately- I used to come to Teamliquid and reddit for a laugh or an interesting discussion, but now everyone is just talking like a doomsayer....
It seems like with the recent mass success of LoL and Dota 2 people think SC2 is on the way out the door. While I agree there is a lot Blizzard can do to make the game more accessible to casual gamers like moba games are I don't think that the lack of this will kill SC2. BNet 2.0 obviously leaves a lot to be desired but that won't kill SC2.
We still have an amazing competitive scene and there are more tournaments going on right now than any one person can reasonably keep up with. SC2 as a whole continues to grow and expand and the next logical step is some governing body over the entire scene. Something like an NFL or NBA that handles team interactions, matches, tournaments and such. Obviously SC2 isn't conducive to a full on replication of either of these leagues but we are in desperate need of a centralized body of power that everyone can look to in order to keep up with the scene.
Right now viewership is so divided between all of these tournaments that it makes the scene seem smaller than it actually is. I for one love watching SC2 and I've watched every season of the GSL since it's inception. I've also watched and attended many MLG events as well as tried to keep up with events like Homestory Cup and Dreamhack. But in all honesty I have barely touched NASL, ESL, WCS, any of the ASUS tournaments or any of a huge number of other tournaments.
There's just too much content out there. Streamlining the money in the scene into a major league (global or continental based) would give us a more professional looking product and hopefully stabilize the money flow for some of these teams that are spread too thin right now while also making it easier to follow.
The way I kind of equate this in my head to fields sports like football is, okay the NFL has a lot going on but what if there were 20 different NFL's that all had separate schedules and teams that overlapped in some but not others. It would be chaos and extremely difficult to follow and keep up to date.
Anyways, this has become much more wordy than I initially intended. My point is that it seems like Valve and Riot have taken this role on themselves a bit more whereas Blizzard had just thrown another event it an already overly populated event schedule so we really need someone to take that role on for SC2 as the next step in our scene. Just my $0.02.
On October 18 2012 21:30 pallad wrote: Slayers disband and we got crissis in sc 2 ? lol , its sounds like fan boy post Other thing is new expansions for WoW always have big hype at begining , its normal , 2-3 months from now it will be less numbers for WoW. Stop compared LoL to Sc2 .. how many more people will do that.. ? LoL is a MOBA game , and moba gendre is now HUGE ! , sc2 is rts , and its not free like LoL
To me personaly , your thread makes no seanse.
I'm sorry but ur post doesn't make any sense except that people shouldn't compare sc2 and LoL that i agree with.
A title with the word crisis is just trying to incite fear in the reader. I hate when the national news does it and it's irresponsible to use the word here too. The world is not at its end. No one's life is in danger of being lost.
Now I did read what you wrote and you just summarized all the bad facts of 2012. But there is a lot of positive going on right now for SC2. Kespa joined the SC2 ranks. GomTV had it's 2 year anniversary. The current GSL has shown the most exciting games yet. WCS has been exciting to watch. MLG is still hosting great tournaments. So while I believe HOTS has a long way to go, SC2 in its current WOL state is doing great.
As both a League of Legends player AND a StarCraft II player, I have to say the fanbases for these games and the amount of hours that people spend on these games tells the real story. League of Legends is the most played PC game with a growing community. StarCraft peaked for the first few months after release and have been declining ever since. Even with the future release of HotS, I know there are plenty of people that simply won't invest any money into it simply because they feel it will be a rehash of the same old thing.
Looking at it from a gameplay standpoint, it's hard to get that social feeling in StarCraft II compared to League of Legends. Working as a team to capture objectives, communication, and focus are all required to win any League game. It's far easier and almost required to play with friends if you want to play at any competitive level. With regards to StarCraft, 2v2, 3v3, and 4v4 game styles are simply not competitive and completely overshadowed by the dominance of 1v1, where it's you alone playing with another individual you've probably never met before (and probably isn't interested in communication). Custom games, while somewhat enjoyable from an entertainment standpoint doesn't give off that competitive feel. League has somehow been able to combine both a social and competitive gaming atmosphere in one.
Finally, barriers to entry is another important aspect to League's success. League has been able to monetize the sale of skins and champions to a point that anyone that has played League for more than 50 or more games doesn't feel taken advantage of when dropping $10-15 to add a bit of flair. Some of my best friends that are not interested in StarCraft II have spent over $400 combined simply because "they had to have it". If you want to compete in the StarCraft 2 scene, you need to pony up $40-60 before you really get a taste of what it's like. Sure there is the Starter Edition, but it's so limited in what it provides the users. There's very few ways in which Blizzard could monetize StarCraft II if they incorporated a free-to-play model simply because of the nature of the game. Not having all the champions in LoL doesn't make you unable to play nor does it greatly hinder your experience. Not having the Collosus or the Archon as Protoss would probably ruin the entire game and ruin all competition.
I remember thread like this popped up long time ago then dissapeared and now it comes again. It will show up once in a while I guess. Thanks for reminding me that SC2 will die soon. Don't forget to remind me again next year.
I really don't see the sense in this redundant thread which just offers another opinion that SC2 is doomed. The Destiny thread is filled with opinions that SC2 is doomed. Is this opinion worthy of a new thread simply because the OP summarized the history of SC2 which made his post really long? The only real reasoning in the Op in support of a claim for crisis is 1) there isn't much hype for hots right now (even though the beta invite threads are crammed full of people raging that they didn't get an invite because they're dying to play) and 2) Dota and LoL are doing better. Neither of those things preclude the SC2 scene from being stable right now.
Also I love how so many people are referring to declining stream numbers, and then the only examples they can give are IdrA and Stephano. They then cite insanely high previous viewer numbers like "12k" when those two were only getting those numbers because 1) they hadn't streamed much if at all in the past, 2) they weren't streaming often and 3) theyre the two most popular foreigners. Their inflated numbers declined because their novelty wore off.
EPT
