Hello there, g'evening, g'nite and g'morning. Depending on where you are in the world reading this. Anyway we've had a lot of people saying a lot of things lately on the topic of SC2 needing help. From fixing balance, to changing UI this has been a hot topic of late.
Blizzard has a small really small team working on SC2 right now. So its really important they know what the community as a whole values the most, so they can get it fixed. From a pro players point of view, I know what is the most important to me. But what I can't know, is what the majority of people want from the game.
So please take a few minutes and THINK (like really think hard, if you are continuing to read after this sentence you should be stopped and thinking!) about the different things you'd want fixed. Here is an easy to use Poll that I'd love you to take part in. And if I missed something in the Poll you'd like to have me put up, please just let me know.
Newest Fixed Slightly Poll
Poll: What do you want to see the MOST changed in SC2
A way to spectate games in client and watch pros with others. (1488)
33%
Simplified Custom games area with individually named games. (Helps map makers too) (927)
20%
SC2 Free to Play Multiplayer. (632)
14%
Please fix XvX matchup and Balance. (372)
8%
Allowing you to watch replays with friends. (367)
8%
Allowing Global play and trying to fix the latency issue that is around. (322)
7%
Changing how ladder works and giving you more stats. (172)
4%
Lan (Although for whatever reason I don't think this is possible) (118)
3%
Other -- Please write a comment. (90)
2%
In game tournament promotion so you can easily see where big tournaments will be. (53)
1%
Name Changing for a price. (22)
0%
4563 total votes
Your vote: What do you want to see the MOST changed in SC2
(Vote): A way to spectate games in client and watch pros with others. (Vote): Simplified Custom games area with individually named games. (Helps map makers too) (Vote): Allowing you to watch replays with friends. (Vote): SC2 Free to Play Multiplayer. (Vote): Allowing Global play and trying to fix the latency issue that is around. (Vote): Please fix XvX matchup and Balance. (Vote): Changing how ladder works and giving you more stats. (Vote): In game tournament promotion so you can easily see where big tournaments will be. (Vote): Lan (Although for whatever reason I don't think this is possible) (Vote): Name Changing for a price. (Vote): Other -- Please write a comment.
Poll that was up for a minute, without a HUGE one I forgot (custom games) REALLY sorry. + Show Spoiler +
Poll: What do you want to see the MOST changed in SC2
A way to spectate games in client and watch pros with others. (73)
38%
SC2 Free to Play Multiplayer. (26)
14%
Allowing you to watch replays with friends. (24)
13%
Allowing Global play and trying to fix the latency issue that is around. (23)
12%
Please fix XvX matchup and Balance. (17)
9%
In game tournament promotion so you can easily see where big tournaments will be. (8)
4%
Changing how ladder works and giving you more stats. (8)
4%
Lan (Although for whatever reason I don't think this is possible) (6)
3%
Other -- Please write a comment. (5)
3%
Name Changing for a price. (2)
1%
192 total votes
Your vote: What do you want to see the MOST changed in SC2
(Vote): A way to spectate games in client and watch pros with others. (Vote): In game tournament promotion so you can easily see where big tournaments will be. (Vote): Allowing Global play and trying to fix the latency issue that is around. (Vote): Allowing you to watch replays with friends. (Vote): Please fix XvX matchup and Balance. (Vote): Lan (Although for whatever reason I don't think this is possible) (Vote): Changing how ladder works and giving you more stats. (Vote): Name Changing for a price. (Vote): SC2 Free to Play Multiplayer. (Vote): Other -- Please write a comment.
Old Poll, where I worded things improperly because I'm a newb + Show Spoiler +
Poll: What do you want to see the MOST changed in SC2
In Client Spectator and Tournament Promotion (210)
34%
Changing custom games to have game names and make it easier for map makers. (117)
19%
Allowing Global play and trying to fix the latency issue that is around. (83)
14%
Allowing you to watch replays with friends. (67)
11%
Please fix XvX matchup and Balance (58)
9%
Lan (Although for whatever reason I don't think this is possible) (29)
5%
Changing how ladder works and giving you more stats. (26)
4%
Other -- Please write a comment (16)
3%
Name Changing for a price (7)
1%
613 total votes
Your vote: What do you want to see the MOST changed in SC2
(Vote): Changing custom games to have game names and make it easier for map makers. (Vote): Allowing you to watch replays with friends. (Vote): Allowing Global play and trying to fix the latency issue that is around. (Vote): Name Changing for a price (Vote): Changing how ladder works and giving you more stats. (Vote): In Client Spectator and Tournament Promotion (Vote): Lan (Although for whatever reason I don't think this is possible) (Vote): Please fix XvX matchup and Balance (Vote): Other -- Please write a comment
(Did you stop and think before you did the poll? I don't mind either way!)
Anywho I want to be able to show a clear list of what is most important to you. I probably accidentally left out a few things that are very important. Hopefully one thing stands out, or several things. If none of those are MOST important to you, then please post what you think IS. Please take just a second and share your thoughts, because in the grand scheme of things I want this game to keep getting better. And because it seems Blizzard wants to focus on one thing at a time, its important we give them something that you really want.
If you can't choose between two, then feel free to put them down. Maybe you think its perfect the way it is, your welcome to say that. If you give a frick, please click.
I think starting with the custom games and UI improvements would be the biggest thing they could do to help SC2 keep/restart growing. As a lot of people have said, unless you already know people playing SC2, it can be a lonely experience.
The same reason we can't simply say we want all of these! Because Blizzard has only a super tiny group of people devoted to SC2 and fixing the issues we want. So while we can secretly want all of these, we must choose to fix only one. You now have the same disadvantage Blizzard has.
On October 24 2012 15:02 Energizer wrote: Wait... Why did you list name change for a price? Why not adding in multiple accts so name change isnt an issue like it has been with WC/BW?
I voted for "Allowing Global play and trying to fix the latency issue that is around". Although I truly want LAN more than any other feature, I don't see it ever happening at this point.
Voted mapmakers one cus I think maps are a crucial part of the game and anything that'll make it easier and more convenient for mapmakers is an amazing thing, but yeah I want all of those things obv >____<
I went for more Tournament promotion in client as I feel the other things are already on the way. However I think that you would need to get more people into the client in the first place for It to be effective so I would also like to ask for a good demo mode for HoTS also, similar to the original SC demo which was awesome (for those of you who don't know it was a stand alone mini prequel campaign. Something like that on the actual in game client and with basic access to some form of Multiplayer like 2v2 etc could really help get people who are on the fence about SC or even people who would not normally be interested in buying SC to actually look again and give It a try.
Custom game thing. I don't have time or the persistence to try to get masters level or w/e in Sc2, and the only reason I still play the game is because I'll play team games with friends or monobattles or some shit.
Allowing Global play and trying to fix the latency issue that is around. (10) Allowing you to watch replays with friends. (5) Changing how ladder works and giving you more stats. (2)
These three are all announced as coming already, seems like a bit of a pointless exercise to just say "well...do these faster"
In Client Spectator and Tournament Promotion (13)
Not sure why this is lumped together, the in-client spectating is more interesting so I can watch my friends ladder or watch them play a team game rather than as another way to promote a tournament, if I wanted to watch a pro player or tournament I can already do this through a stream or a replay because most pro's have the capability and financial incentive to stream their games.
Good initiative Sheth, but there's some stuff lumped together that I think should be separated for clarity, and some stuff that's already officially on the way that seems pointless to get too up in arms about.
"Go Free to play" would also be an interesting option.
On October 24 2012 15:05 jayaiwhy wrote: Spectator client + cute little things like betting feature that gives you points for some cosmetic, etc.
Oooh smart, maybe micro transactions so Blizz gets more money and incentive to do something cool. And betting tis always fun.
On October 24 2012 15:05 Risljaninasim wrote: The pro scene is pretty much there already. We need a bigger casual player base. Although i have no idea how to achieve that haha
Well start small, what would it take to get you to enjoy SC2 more and play some?
global play, then we can avoid latency issues in global tournaments, and have things like mvp invitational and other leagues run more smoothly. plus we can all ladder on korea and get cho gosu
well for once I think clansupport shouod be fixed..... But i would love to see multiplayer being free to play . At least if blizzard could handle all the cheaters,maphackers etc.
I want better interface all around tho - the first thing i did after campaign was notice that i cant delete/remove maps from the huge list of versusAI maps and it blew my mind in a negative way.
Would have also voted free client with select limited-custom games and few more goodies - but that's obviously already coming with blizzard all-stars.
Sheth, would it be good to spoiler the poll results and textually pose the options first? Some people might get influenced by bandwagoning (like me! I just voted on the one that was already #1! Join the winning team!).
I'm really hoping for all of these changes, and more actually (namely the death-ball situation being addressed). I don't think it's too much to ask for ALL of these changes to be included in HotS, as it's ridiculous most of these we not included in the first place.
I think something that would really give bnet more 'flavor' would be the following: -Change the rating system back to BW ladder, none of these arbitrary bronze-master rankings. The gap from low masters to high masters is comparable to 900-1600 on fish, it's massive! -In Client Spectator and Tournament Promotion would just be absolutely amazing -Watching replays with friends (... it almost feels like a joke having to type that out) -It would be awesome to have a ladder profile for each race you play (definitely wont ever make it, $$ is at stake with this one) -Clan support... good god this would be amazing, this alone would bring me back to SC2!
Now, those are all just UI suggestions, I think the heart of SC2's problems are really a matter of gameplay, here are some problems that need addressing: -The deathball vs deathball situation is extremely boring to play/watch -PvZ (enough said, right?) -Multiple building selection (I can dream!) -Unit pathing (again, I can dream!)
There's countless threads dedicated to the problems with gameplay so I'll shut up about it. I realize you were asking for one thing in praticular, and I'm sorry I went off on a tangent. It just feels like there is so much to be done with this game. I spend most of my time these days watching afreeca restreems, just hoping SC2 might be a shred of what bw was.
Fix the design of many units to change the dynamics and flow of a average high level 1v1 game, dynamics that right now makes the game somewhat boring/repetitive (after certain amount of time). Take a chance, and please try to REALLY turn the game into something much better. I'm sure the potential is out there.
On October 24 2012 15:00 Liquid`Sheth wrote: Good question Gremlin119!
The same reason we can't simply say we want all of these! Because Blizzard has only a super tiny group of people devoted to SC2 and fixing the issues we want. So while we can secretly want all of these, we must choose to fix only one. You now have the same disadvantage Blizzard has.
How the hell Blizzard sells four million copies of a $60 game designed around e-sports with the promise of two further premium expansions and gets away with a barebones post-launch developmental staff is beyond me. People may mock the D3 kiddies but at least they know how to raise holy hell and get things fixed. We just take it.
On October 24 2012 15:02 Energizer wrote: Wait... Why did you list name change for a price? Why not adding in multiple accts so name change isnt an issue like it has been with WC/BW?
Start small....
Fair enough, I'm sure one day we'll reach that technology eventually.
Ended up voting for "other" - While I would love to see blizzard focus on tournament capability (IE viewing games real-time from client or in-game tournament structure like wc) I'd much rather see map making changed overall to have better functionality like removal of map cap uploading, cross server uploading of maps, removal of popularity system, etc.. Hopefully it would bring about a better form of UMS and give mapmakers a reason to make cool new maps without worrying of competing with the same games which have been on the first page for... 2 years now?
First and foremost I'd like to see changes to the game itself. Not a big fan of the way Protoss is designed and I wish Blizzard was more willing to take a long look at FF, WG, etc. I perceive more fundamental issues with the game, but its not worth getting into now. Heart of the Swarm could potentially address these core issues, but I honestly doubt Blizzard will bother.
I desperately hope Blizzard implements all of the suggested B.NET 0.5 changes in the poll. You can't really overstate how much improvements like the ones listed would enhance the SC2 experience. Time will tell whether Blizzard decides to finally step up to this challenge or continue on their current path.
Making custom games is more important IMO because just look at the Trail of the Xel'naga and maps like peepmode and mafia . If it was easy to understand and make new maps like these, I wont be sitting on SC2 and thinking about how to win in 1v1 and just relax and have fun.
For me, I think the biggest thing that needs to be fixed is the core design of the game engine - specifically, Blizzard needs to add in dynamic movement, or make unit movement a bit more similar to Brood War. Yes, I know, go play BW and all that, but I feel that most of the "problems" in game design (e.g. certain portions of balance, lack of micro-ability, fights going by too quickly, and a bunch of other things) stem mainly from this problem. I'm not 100% sure if such a change would fix these issues or even work in SC2, but I still feel that it should at least be tried before it's dismissed.
The ingame design of how the games go is what bothers me the most. We need less one battle fights that decide the game and more harassment. But I think that may be too big of a request.
My second one would be somehow making the game more social. They implemented chat channels but from my experience, it didn't help enough.
But game design is what really needs to be changed.
On October 24 2012 15:05 Risljaninasim wrote: The pro scene is pretty much there already. We need a bigger casual player base. Although i have no idea how to achieve that haha
Well start small, what would it take to get you to enjoy SC2 more and play some?
Your asking the wrong question their, RTS as a genre is very difficult to get into and do well at and I dont play much SC anymore but still watch tons of SC either player streams or Tournaments. That's why I suggested an In client Demo that's Free to download with a simple small Single player and some limited access to multiplayer to get people into the game and then couple that with better tournament advertisement and in client viewing services if possible to get people into competitive SC.
On October 24 2012 15:09 Grubby wrote: Sheth, would it be good to spoiler the poll results and textually pose the options first? Some people might get influenced by bandwagoning (like me! I just voted on the one that was already #1! Join the winning team!).
EDIT: I'm suprised watching games inclient is leading at the moment. Is that really something that appeals to alot of people? I really don't think that would add a great deal of interest to starcraft as a whole. not just the pro scene.
I feel like in-client spectating and better custom games (room names, mainly) would go really great together. Imagine some guy logging into SC2 to play some tower defense and footman frenzy and he sees this cool and enticing button that says "DREAMHACK FINALS - WATCH NOW" on the opening screen. Would definitely generate a lot of interest in the tournament scene.
On October 24 2012 15:09 Grubby wrote: Sheth, would it be good to spoiler the poll results and textually pose the options first? Some people might get influenced by bandwagoning (like me! I just voted on the one that was already #1! Join the winning team!).
I like this idea a lot too. I would fix it if I could. However the way TL's polls are set up is so you see the results first. I would love to change it so it won't influence people, but I just can't. The technology isn't here yet.
As much as I'd like to see the functionality of b.net itself improved or at least brought up to par with old b.net, none of it matters if the game itself stays as stale and uninteresting as it is now. Terrans have to play against a ticking timebomb in the non-mirrors and especially against Zerg, Protoss has been all-inning forever against Zerg to keep the matchup winnable, and Zerg has become a turtle into hive race because it's a lot more reliable and likely to work than trying something else. We just had a GSL finals between the greatest Terran (and greatest player) of all time and the current hottest Zerg in the world. It went seven games and the series could've easily gone either way. And even though that sounds like it would be exciting, it was boring. It was boring because the matchup has devolved into an "I get composition X, therefore I win" situation. PvZ is the same way.
I want a better b.net. Lord knows what we have now is a joke compared to the original. But I want a better game first.
I personally want DotaTV-kind of feature. Because I got used to that in Dota and now without it in SC2 I feel like I'm back to the stone age. No, it won't ruin stream revenue, there are workarounds. The ability to jump in and out of game to observe, to follow pro's, to listen to your favorite caster, while you control the mouse in the client as you wish, etc etc. Before using all that, I knew about it, but didn't even imagine the full extent of how it changes the viewer's experience. It's like another dimension of esports, a whole new stepping stone of entertainment.
On October 24 2012 15:16 CaptainTwig wrote: Other; Free to play. (Multiplayer atleast)
Wont happen, the business model of SC2 is based around unit sales and to suddenly start offering a major part of the game for free will cut into the number of sales they have.
If this means being able to watch/join a pro game as an obs as it's happening and not just watching a stream in-client, then this is definitely my top choice. If it just means being able to watch twitch.tv streams in-client, it's not as appealing for me.
Does Tournament Promotion refer to having tournament's like there was in WC3? Or does this refer to being able to move up a division based off of some kind of playoff that would be somehow setup?
Personally I would want guild/clan support to be able to have a community of similar people who you can talk to and be able to play team games or even clan wars with. Communication and a group that helps support you is KEY to not only helping the longevity of the game, but also for new players to feel welcomed into the game. Sorry if this is one of the options, but I didn't see it.
On October 24 2012 15:05 Risljaninasim wrote: The pro scene is pretty much there already. We need a bigger casual player base. Although i have no idea how to achieve that haha
Well start small, what would it take to get you to enjoy SC2 more and play some?
I think unranked games would be huge. That's one of the big draws to me to LoL. I can play serious games against people of my own skill, or take it easy and try new things with people of similar skill in unranked play. Sometimes you really just want to take it easy, but with SC2, it's kind of hard to be competitive while not worrying about losing a game. You either play ladder, or you find a practice partner, or you play a random custom with someone and find out they're in masters and you're silver, or vice versa.
On October 24 2012 15:19 Limniscate wrote: "In Client Spectator and Tournament Promotion"
If this means being able to watch/join a pro game as an obs as it's happening and not just watching a stream in-client, then this is definitely my top choice. If it just means being able to watch twitch.tv streams in-client, it's not as appealing for me.
Agreed. If it is just an embedded stream, then it provides me no value. Since I am selfish I`d rather see them work on things that enhance my experience, rather than just knowing the stream numbers go up.
I think something along the lines of "A proper chat/social system and/or clan support" should be an option on this poll.
Edit:
Another option that I feel is pretty big would be "Supporting Team Games" Team games have been long neglected by Blizzard especially in terms of maps. I quit playing a few months ago, so I don't know if they added new maps by now, but a lot of the team maps were downright trash and just plain old and some remained there even from the beta. Team games were the reason I logged on to play (I played thousands of them) but I guess the shitty maps got old. I got bored and so did everyone I played with.
Voted for the game client tournament promotion and spectating option. Important to note that I'm not sure how DotA2 handles this, but potentially, this could cost tournaments their ad revenue, so I don't know if that's something to consider. Preferably, (and I realize this is highly controversial) you'd get something like twitch ads or something before/after a game or something.
I personally prefer an ad based model waaaaaaaaaaaay more than any PPV model. Seeming money has to come from some where, throw in some ads and then let me do as I please with the camera.
LAN is a no brainer too, but I don't think Blizzard will cave on that no matter how we beg. Even if we see a DDoS at the WCS finals.
I want sc2 to be more anonymous. This might sound funny or retarded, but I'd prefer if every single person had a barcode ID while in a game. This would control the meta better. Alot less blind countering(unless it's a hacker of course). This would change the meta alot. There would be alot less risky play. Just look back not long ago to match of Hyun vs some terran in nasl. Terran goes triple cc macro build, Hyun goes a super fast 2 base muta without even scouting it. Just completely blind. Its like the only build the 2 base muta is good vs. If terran had 2 based he would be ahead even being able to take his third before the zerg if not denying the zerg's third completely. I think that is the major problem. Too much blind countering if you know someone's style. Hence the need for sc2 to be more anonymous. From a spectator point of view what is so interesting about watching someone blind counter another player and roflstomping them? Absolutely nothing. It doesn't really show any strategic insight imo. This is just one example. But yeah, I wish In-game ID's weren't displayed at all as well as I wish players did not know who their opponents were in tournaments. I feel like it would change the dynamic in which the game is played to a certain extent to where we could see more entertaining games. You would literally ONLY be able to use the information available in-game via scouting. No outside information like "o I know this player has been playing a certain way so i'm gonna do "x" strategy/build and play completely tailored to this player". That is my rant. I'd like to hear other players/community member's thoughts on this subject.
Blizzard needs to do something otherwise they are gonna get left in LoL and Dota2 wake, free to play is a cool idea but u know theres gonna be a bunch of people wanting their money back lol
On October 24 2012 15:22 Martijn wrote: Voted for the game client tournament promotion and spectating option. Important to note that I'm not sure how DotA2 handles this, but potentially, this could cost tournaments their ad revenue, so I don't know if that's something to consider. Preferably, (and I realize this is highly controversial) you'd get something like twitch ads or something before/after a game or something.
I personally prefer an ad based model waaaaaaaaaaaay more than any PPV model.
LAN is a no brainer too, but I don't think Blizzard will cave on that no matter how we beg. Even if we see a DDoS at the WCS finals.
The way Dota 2 handles it is that you have to buy a ticket to watch it in game. Could range anywhere from $1 to $6 for the entire season+replay pack.
Someone else said this above, but micro transactions. I want my banelings wearing top hats and my hatcheries to shoot out sperm instead of creep (ok maybe not.) BUT, while micro translations might not change the game fundamentally, it's something that is really fun and usually keeps people playing. People love showing off the little cosmetic they've earned and while portraits and decals are cool, I think Blizzard is missing an opportunity to retain many casual players by not adding more micro transactions or anything like that.
LAN. If Blizzard gave us genuine LAN at this point in time, it would truly demonstrate that their hearts and heads are in the right place and they understand the reality that customer satisfaction is the most important goal. Riot got the message as soon as their big tournament was ruined. Blizzard should have gotten the message 100 times over by now.
It would be wonderful if they also realized that the community understands better than Blizzard themselves what made Brood War special and that SC2 needs to be more BW-like. I don't really know what shape that would take, just that it's not happening now. Start by removing all abilities/units that counter micro. No more Force Fields, no more Fungal, no more Vortex, no more 250mm Cannon, no more Marauder slow. Make the game genuinely good instead of reliant on "gotcha" gimmick spells.
On October 24 2012 15:22 Martijn wrote: Voted for the game client tournament promotion and spectating option. Important to note that I'm not sure how DotA2 handles this, but potentially, this could cost tournaments their ad revenue, so I don't know if that's something to consider. Preferably, (and I realize this is highly controversial) you'd get something like twitch ads or something before/after a game or something.
I personally prefer an ad based model waaaaaaaaaaaay more than any PPV model. Seeming money has to come from some where, throw in some ads and then let me do as I please with the camera.
LAN is a no brainer too, but I don't think Blizzard will cave on that no matter how we beg. Even if we see a DDoS at the WCS finals.
Yeah i definitely think there should be a spectating option similar to what they have in LoL. LoL will have a display of 5 games currently going on(high elo players) with the players listed and you could click any of them to watch. I think this would attract more casuals to the pro scene if they had the ability to dabble in some high level spectating. Not everyone has heard of team liquid or gosugamers or any of the huge tournaments. This would be a great way to connect the casual community to the pro community. It could only grow from there.
I would really enjoy having the ability to watch replays with a friend/group.
Would be a real simple thing to implement really -- just a custom game lobby with AI playing a scripted game and X number of observers.
Would also be a cool way for Blizzard to highlight special replays that the community would want to see (big event finals, etc) On a more practical level, it would be great for reviewing a friend's replay to help them learn.
Also, some form of practice league or a practice partner search feature. A simple feature to toggle LookingForPractice status off or on, with specific filters for league and/or race. Would be huge.
Other - I would like to see the game built from the ground up with similar units, but keep things simple for the first 8min (no forcefields, warpgates, macro mechanics). Hopefully that would allow a BGH type scene to emerge. Also have 3v3 money maps part of matchmaking as a separate mode. Basically promote a fun team mode where people can mess around with friends. However make the midgame crazy like Broodwar where you can come out with overpowered game changing stuff that is fun to use, like spider mines, reavers, and lurkers. That's what I want. I want my friends to not quit the game because they have to spend tens of hours sharpening their skills before the game can be fun for them.
The second thing I want is literally 100 times as many achievements.
On October 24 2012 15:06 Dingobloo wrote: Allowing Global play and trying to fix the latency issue that is around. (10) Allowing you to watch replays with friends. (5) Changing how ladder works and giving you more stats. (2)
These three are all announced as coming already, seems like a bit of a pointless exercise to just say "well...do these faster"
In Client Spectator and Tournament Promotion (13)
Not sure why this is lumped together, the in-client spectating is more interesting so I can watch my friends ladder or watch them play a team game rather than as another way to promote a tournament, if I wanted to watch a pro player or tournament I can already do this through a stream or a replay because most pro's have the capability and financial incentive to stream their games.
Good initiative Sheth, but there's some stuff lumped together that I think should be separated for clarity, and some stuff that's already officially on the way that seems pointless to get too up in arms about.
"Go Free to play" would also be an interesting option.
Yea, this is really interesting. Ok, let me adjust the poll a bit!!
The most important thing to improve is optimization, there are a lot of people who starts their games at 0:03, there are a lot of people who have errors and issues since 1.5 patch... I can't believe there is no option for this in the pool
On October 24 2012 15:26 theqat wrote: LAN. If Blizzard gave us genuine LAN at this point in time, it would truly demonstrate that their hearts and heads are in the right place and they understand the reality that customer satisfaction is the most important goal. Riot got the message as soon as their big tournament was ruined. Blizzard should have gotten the message 100 times over by now.
It would be wonderful if they also realized that the community understands better than Blizzard themselves what made Brood War special and that SC2 needs to be more BW-like. I don't really know what shape that would take, just that it's not happening now. Start by removing all abilities/units that counter micro.
I don't think blizzard should put out lan since it would make sc2 easily pirated. However, I do think for any major tournament there should indeed be a lan edition available to avoid technical difficculties if they should arise. Pretty much what riot did for LoL.
On October 24 2012 15:23 ReachTheSky wrote: I want sc2 to be more anonymous. This might sound funny or retarded, but I'd prefer if every single person had a barcode ID while in a game. This would control the meta better. Alot less blind countering(unless it's a hacker of course). This would change the meta alot. There would be alot less risky play. Just look back not long ago to match of Hyun vs some terran in nasl. Terran goes triple cc macro build, Hyun goes a super fast 2 base muta without even scouting it. Just completely blind. Its like the only build the 2 base muta is good vs. If terran had 2 based he would be ahead even being able to take his third before the zerg if not denying the zerg's third completely. I think that is the major problem. Too much blind countering if you know someone's style. Hence the need for sc2 to be more anonymous. From a spectator point of view what is so interesting about watching someone blind counter another player and roflstomping them? Absolutely nothing. It doesn't really show any strategic insight imo. This is just one example. But yeah, I wish In-game ID's weren't displayed at all as well as I wish players did not know who their opponents were in tournaments. I feel like it would change the dynamic in which the game is played to a certain extent to where we could see more entertaining games. You would literally ONLY be able to use the information available in-game via scouting. No outside information like "o I know this player has been playing a certain way so i'm gonna do "x" strategy/build and play completely tailored to this player". That is my rant. I'd like to hear other players/community member's thoughts on this subject.
90% of why the GSL is the hardest tournament in the world is the amount of prep time you get to face certain players. If people can blind counter you due to your 1 dimensional play then that's your fault and your weakness as a player. We shouldn't allow people to hide behind anonymity to diversify play. Also, I have no idea how you'd possible implement this in any tournament setting especially as you get farther in the tournament.
Other : I wish Blizzard accepted to engage into more courageous REDESIGN (not balance, design), to make the game more fun and spectator friendly. Fix the lack of map control, fix the design of P and Z by whatever mean they can, and add something to T to refresh a bit the gameplay.
Geez, this is a nice outlet for people to voice their thoughts, rather than create many many many threads about it.
Socially-oriented things like a much improved custom system, ability to make public chat channels, public games, cross region play, custom tournaments, clan support, group replay watching, in-client streams (deals could be worked out with stream providers!) and accompanying stream chat... essentially things that build community and interaction within the client itself are among the most important things to get right right now. Comparatively speaking, very few people played on the ladder/iccup in BW, many many more played custom games, sat in channels etc. These are things that are most likely to be implemented.
i voted for naming custom games and easier for map makers from the list of options, but i think their are even bigger things more important here ( the easier part for map makers ) is easily solved by having the open game lobby list the premier and only list the masses use to find custom games. The trick is to improve upon the foundation the warcraft 3 custom game scene left off. Which is to actually have name filters within the open game lobby list and genre filters for certain map types. That way the biggest problem of the warcraft 3 custom game list that even blizzard themselfs love to project all the time as a problem for warcraft 3 custom games (always seeing DOTA DOTA DOTA DOTA DOTA POPULATE THE LIST) would be solved.
The problem with the current custom game system is that they actually think custom maps can thrive in an environment where maps are sorted by popularity. I disagree, popularity is a system of dog eat dog, where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Popularity systems are more suited for games that are paid for, or any product that is receiving money by trying to beat out the competition. In a system where everything is free after you pay for the game, This will literally kill map maker motivation, They already do this shit for free, Now the editor so much harder than warcraft 3 own AND you going to tell them that there is actually a really high chance their map wont even be played because it does not appear on the first 2 pages of custom game list? come on GTFO.
Sc2mapster.com , the biggest custom game community sc2 has right now is a fucking ghost town. If blizzard thinks this popularity system is the future, then good for them. They will support a ghost town and are likely to blame it on other aspects instead of their incompetency. There is a reason the custom map scene is a mess, AND ITS BECAUSE of the popularity system.
I know, i made a very popular map (zealot frenzy) that has held page 1 for 1 year, its now on page 2 for last couple of months due to me not updating. But i know exactly why the custom game scene is a mess. I interact with other mappers, There is no motivation to create maps because of this system.
It is with no doubt in my mind this is the number 1 problem with the custom game scene, because if the map makers arent making maps, What is the community going to play when they get bored of the already top 10 maps? . I know what they do, they stop fucking playing because its impossible to get no popularity maps played.
There is going to be some guy who replys to my post with "well blizzard has open game lobby list now, your point is moot". I'd say, anyone that thinks it has solved anything is foolish. Be honest with yourself, The way how the open game lobby list is presented ( couple rows down from the spotlight list). It is clear to me blizzard does not want the open game lobby list where the masses looking for custom games go to first. I know what the masses use , they use the SPOT LIGHT list to find custom games, And thats the problem. The spotlight list is a popularity list.All they did in the 1.5 patch was change the names,Its still the popularity list. When the majority of masses are still using the spotlight list, the 1.5 custom map arcade patch is basically a pointless update that only changed the UI without fixing the core problems.
You could disagree all you want, the evidence is there. the custom map sc2 scene is in a mess. And its only getting worst.
I've gone with 'Other' and I'm going to see its the addition of Free to Play pricing model.
I can't think of anything at all that would increase the game's popularity to the same degree of just having people download it for free.
I don't think even unranked play matters much, because casuals play team games anyway, and I don't think they care about their rank there. It's lovely its being added, but that might help you retain like...5% more people?
Every other idea is about Retaining players who have bought the game. I think we need something to increase that player pool initially.
On October 24 2012 15:26 theqat wrote: LAN. If Blizzard gave us genuine LAN at this point in time, it would truly demonstrate that their hearts and heads are in the right place and they understand the reality that customer satisfaction is the most important goal. Riot got the message as soon as their big tournament was ruined. Blizzard should have gotten the message 100 times over by now.
It would be wonderful if they also realized that the community understands better than Blizzard themselves what made Brood War special and that SC2 needs to be more BW-like. I don't really know what shape that would take, just that it's not happening now. Start by removing all abilities/units that counter micro.
I don't think blizzard should put out lan since it would make sc2 easily pirated. However, I do think for any major tournament there should indeed be a lan edition available to avoid technical difficculties if they should arise. Pretty much what riot did for LoL.
Whatever, as long as no more tournaments get ruined by this stupid business decision.
I honestly cant see how the in client spectator thing would work, unless you disabled messaging while in it or added a long delay to prevent cheating. I really want to watch replays with friends and LAN support, but we all know it isn't going to happen. Unless blizzard is a troll and releases it with HoTS so it seems like they really do love us
I feel custom game improvement should be top priority. They have been making changes but it still has a long way to go. The editor changes are really nice and have really opened up a lot of opportunities for maps but getting people to play these maps is a nightmare. Free to play is definitely a good option though Blizzard will need to find a good way to monetize. Perhaps in-game advertising from in-game streams/tournaments? Or perhaps opening up the custom games marketplace... Picking one is very difficult overall so I hope Blizzard focus on implementing at least the top 3 or so poll results.
It's so hard to choose, but if I had to pick I would go with other: automated tournaments WC3:TfT style. Those were awesome and wanting the tournament only icons kept me playing.
On October 24 2012 15:06 Dingobloo wrote: Allowing Global play and trying to fix the latency issue that is around. (10) Allowing you to watch replays with friends. (5) Changing how ladder works and giving you more stats. (2)
These three are all announced as coming already, seems like a bit of a pointless exercise to just say "well...do these faster"
In Client Spectator and Tournament Promotion (13)
Not sure why this is lumped together, the in-client spectating is more interesting so I can watch my friends ladder or watch them play a team game rather than as another way to promote a tournament, if I wanted to watch a pro player or tournament I can already do this through a stream or a replay because most pro's have the capability and financial incentive to stream their games.
Good initiative Sheth, but there's some stuff lumped together that I think should be separated for clarity, and some stuff that's already officially on the way that seems pointless to get too up in arms about.
"Go Free to play" would also be an interesting option.
Yes! Global play is a must, replays with friends- not sure why this wasn't here from the start, And yeah i would like to see my ladder stats vs which race % wise and how i'm doing aside from the "o i've won x games and lost y games".
I also think there should be some sort of refer a friend option for sc2. It would give incentive to spread the word about sc2 if a current player got something out of it. This would help the player base grow alot. What could they get? Maybe some sort of special icons or skins for your units or whatever.
How small is the Sc2 team? These all seem like things that should already be in the game. Were you on the team the that Mr.Bitter and Catz put together?
Still not sure, going to sleep on it and vote when I wake up tomorrow.
On October 24 2012 15:31 Resonance wrote: I honestly cant see how the in client spectator thing would work, unless you disabled messaging while in it or added a long delay to prevent cheating. I really want to watch replays with friends and LAN support, but we all know it isn't going to happen. Unless blizzard is a troll and releases it with HoTS so it seems like they really do love us
Dota2 (and presumably LOL) have two-minute delay for live spectators.
I changed the poll a little bit just to make it clearer. Shouldn't have had tournament promotion + spectator client together. And added F2P model. Thanks for the advice guys.
On October 24 2012 15:31 Resonance wrote: I honestly cant see how the in client spectator thing would work, unless you disabled messaging while in it or added a long delay to prevent cheating. I really want to watch replays with friends and LAN support, but we all know it isn't going to happen. Unless blizzard is a troll and releases it with HoTS so it seems like they really do love us
With riot's spec mode they have a 2-3 minute delay from when the game started. So say the game pops up for spectating, it has already been going on for 3 minutes, but you are able to view it from the start. This prevents people from messaging the players what is going on in game. Sure someone could message them but it would be stuff they already knew which doesn't change a thing due to the delay.
In my opinion the most important part is to get ingame client where you can watch tournaments and maybe even manage observer tools by yourself, like you could for example check players apms and players vision when ever you like. For me it would make tournaments alot more enjoyable.
In addition i would also like to see "custom ladders" ingame. Like anyone would be able to make custom ladders in game for a small cost. Like for example ESL could make their own ladder where the winner at the end of the season would get some price money. I dont know if its possible but imo it would be cool .
I hesitate to complain about balance, as I'm not good enough to have a useful opinion, but PvZ is just lame to play. Even watching mech in EVERY TvP in BW was more exciting than sc2 pvz right now. Purely from a fun factor outlook.
I honestly don't care about the other options. Though having F2P so I could have different accounts for different races...
Please fix some of the issues with Protoss (PvZ, gateway units being incredibly weak for their cost, etc...) I think a lot could be done to make the race more interesting overall.
For lan sheth, I think you should have said "Lan at major events" that has similar feel to how it feels online. At least that way the events can be ran as smoothly as possible. That's what we all want isn't it? I don't think they'll ever release public lan functionality, but I don't see any reason to NOT give the MLG's, GSL's, Dreamhacks's, and ESL's a lan client for their players to reduce crashes and game restarts because there's no real way to continue from where the game crashes atm.
I also feel that there should be some sort of in-game tournaments goign on at all times. It would be much easier to sign up for tournaments. In-game brackets and all. This would further competitive play even further. People could host tournaments. People could join tournaments. Link it with paypal somehow and you are all set. Buy-in tournaments for a small fee would be cool too like they do in online poker sites. Blizzard would take a small % and the rest would be distributed amongst say topp 4 or top 8 depending on how many players are in the tournament.
I voted in client viewing as think it'd be a really awesome reason to log into Bnet2.0. At the moment the only reason for that is tournaments / laddering.
It's already been discussed by so many people but "micro transactions" are a way of making TONS of money from a game and keeping people interested in playing SC2 casually as well for a LONG time. Blizzard want copies sold, what's better than selling a 60 dollar game? Selling a 60 dollar game and getting the same amount again from the one user from micro transactions. It could end up lowering the cost of buying the game completely, it could lead to "multi player versions" being free, it would definitely be something nice to have.
Things that I see as legitimate micro transactions (already mentioned but will list anyway); skins, portraits, banners, name changes (hehe) and "make-your-own" clan banners / insignias in HotS.
EDIT: In client Blizzard held tournaments would also be amazing, they were so good for WC3. This would be a 3rd choice for me.
Voted other. I want a faster/more thorough rotation of maps (GSL maps would be nice) fix close positions Entombed/Antiga, have a really diverse map pool (we can use our vetos if we find some to be too weird/imba), and put depots on ramps.
While I am bored of how stale a couple of the matchups more, I'm mostly bored playing the same maps over and over again. Wasn't Metropolis supposed to back, btw?
On October 24 2012 15:23 ReachTheSky wrote: I want sc2 to be more anonymous. This might sound funny or retarded, but I'd prefer if every single person had a barcode ID while in a game. This would control the meta better. Alot less blind countering(unless it's a hacker of course). This would change the meta alot. There would be alot less risky play. Just look back not long ago to match of Hyun vs some terran in nasl. Terran goes triple cc macro build, Hyun goes a super fast 2 base muta without even scouting it. Just completely blind. Its like the only build the 2 base muta is good vs. If terran had 2 based he would be ahead even being able to take his third before the zerg if not denying the zerg's third completely. I think that is the major problem. Too much blind countering if you know someone's style. Hence the need for sc2 to be more anonymous. From a spectator point of view what is so interesting about watching someone blind counter another player and roflstomping them? Absolutely nothing. It doesn't really show any strategic insight imo. This is just one example. But yeah, I wish In-game ID's weren't displayed at all as well as I wish players did not know who their opponents were in tournaments. I feel like it would change the dynamic in which the game is played to a certain extent to where we could see more entertaining games. You would literally ONLY be able to use the information available in-game via scouting. No outside information like "o I know this player has been playing a certain way so i'm gonna do "x" strategy/build and play completely tailored to this player". That is my rant. I'd like to hear other players/community member's thoughts on this subject.
90% of why the GSL is the hardest tournament in the world is the amount of prep time you get to face certain players. If people can blind counter you due to your 1 dimensional play then that's your fault and your weakness as a player. We shouldn't allow people to hide behind anonymity to diversify play. Also, I have no idea how you'd possible implement this in any tournament setting especially as you get farther in the tournament.
Well if anonymous playing was implemented you would still have to prepare just as hard. You would be playing the game rather than the player if you know what i mean. It's not about being 1 dimensional. You could still have a variety of builds but i feel like in the long run it would take more skill than just doing "x" because the other player likes to do "y" which isn't hard at all nor does it take much prep work either. As far as implementing it in a live tournament setting, yeah that would definitely be a challenge. I'm sure it can be figured out how to be implemented given enough thought.
Other: I want to see Blizzard Tournaments added like they had in Warcraft 3. Add unique portraits, decals, unit skins (IE: 25 Tournament Wins would reward a special Siege Tank skin like the ones in the campaign), etc...
This would make it worth logging in again. It also makes the casual player want to log in to try and get new decal, special decal or unit skin. It would also give the average player a feel of what a tournament feels like.
Though this is more of an addition, I guess it could be a considered a change to the average ladder player who wants to still play a ladder like game, but for different stakes.
In-game top-player watching ... - does not help "spectator only" fans, who watch Twitch.tv - might even take away a source of revenue for streaming players & casters, who help a lot to make SC2 more popular by providing great entertainment that is readily available for anyone that is online
Thus, I voted for the custom games / custom maps issue.
On October 24 2012 15:04 CryMeAReaper wrote: Voted mapmakers one cus I think maps are a crucial part of the game and anything that'll make it easier and more convenient for mapmakers is an amazing thing, but yeah I want all of those things obv >____<
Yes, the custom map scene is entirely what's missing from SC2 to keep less competitive players engaged. Why was this poll option removed from the new one?
I don't think tournament streaming in client is anywhere near as important. We can already watch streams online. Spectating in game would be cool but I don't think it really gets more people interested compared to those who already watch streams.
Balance does not affect 99% of players.
Global play is already coming for HotS, they've confirmed it.
LAN they've said they will never do, there's no way they're giving up control over the tournament scene, they don't want to risk another KeSPA situation.
Ladder stats, honestly who cares. They're bringing back winrates and more stats in HotS, that's good enough, and tools like SC2gears will tell you way more information anyway if that's what you want. And like I said, probably at least 50% and most likely closer to 80% of the player base has stopped laddering.
I think Blizzard needs to focus on keeping people engaged. The only way to do that is to give people lots of things to do in SC2. I guess spectating helps for that but I don't think that's engagement. Give us a proper marketplace for custom games (I think that's also Soon (TM)). Do a rotating section of new exciting custom games each week, actively search out interesting new games so that people actually have a chance of having people play their game. Look at the mobile app store model, it's working wonders for Apple/Google. Don't have an iOS device but on Android Google keeps a lot of lists on the market, such as most downloaded, top new, top paid, etc, but they also do little features on specific types of apps (eg. camera apps, games). Blizzard can do this, hire two random interns to do it, heck, make a Youtube channel and do video reviews. The amount of engagement that would produce for the cost would be enormous. People will actually start making custom games again because they'll know that there's a chance someone will actually see the game that they spent countless hours on.
Also, give melee map makers attention! Right now what little attention they've given to custom maps is on UMS type/arcade maps. Melee maps are what keeps the ladder interesting. If you can't keep the map pool fresh yourself let the community do it for you. One (TPW) map maker I was talking to on reddit said that he wouldn't care if he got paid or not, but the fact is that right now no one will ever play your maps unless you're extremely lucky. The community will make ladder maps for you for free, so stop making subpar maps and let us do it.
Above all, harness this community! This community has so many great creative, intelligent people that are willing to do so much to further the game we all love, but it feels like even now Blizzard is just ignoring us for the most part, and responding to random minor complaints as if by doing that they'll get us to feel good because Blizzard listened.
On October 24 2012 15:47 Xantos wrote: In-game top-player watching ... - does not help "spectator only" fans, who watch Twitch.tv - might even take away a source of revenue for streaming players & casters, who help a lot to make SC2 more popular by providing great entertainment that is readily available for anyone that is online
Thus, I voted for the custom games / custom maps issue.
Lol, my rant was well timed to appear right after yours, well said. This is exactly why I think in game spectating is pointless.
Oh, the other thing I forgot was automated tournaments a la war3. For the semi-competitive players I think this would keep people engaged so much more. I guess personally I'm somewhat casual, somewhat competitive (competitive enough to know that I suck beyond words, I guess). I probably would not play custom games unless they were mostly related to regular melee maps (eg. Monobattles, micro tournament, etc) but I would play the shit out of automated tournaments. Something about a tournament really motivates you a lot more than ladder.
I very much dislike the ladder in it's current form. Without meaningful statistics, or the ability to share/watch replays with friends it can be difficult to tell if you're improving. From my experience, sharing/watching a replay with a friend becomes more of a cumbersome chore than a meaningful feedback session.
I would like to see more information given to me regarding my play that I can use to help me improve. As it stands, I have an accumulation of worthless points, and a ladder rank/icon that is designed to make me feel warm and fuzzy inside but does not contribute to my end goal of not sucking balls at starcraft. Personally, I don't need motivation or incentive to play ladder games. I enjoy playing ladder because I'm a gamer, and the concept of playing competitive, difficult games to me is fun.
One thing that was not mentioned on the list was auto-tournaments within battle.net like in WC3. I would also like to see something like that. Just my $0.02.
On October 24 2012 15:47 Xantos wrote: In-game top-player watching ... - does not help "spectator only" fans, who watch Twitch.tv - might even take away a source of revenue for streaming players & casters, who help a lot to make SC2 more popular by providing great entertainment that is readily available for anyone that is online
Thus, I voted for the custom games / custom maps issue.
Makes a lot of sense. I think twitch has a way of working their code into games to allow them to embed the twitch stream in game though. I could be completely wrong on this. However that could fix all of the problems that you brought up, and help players revenue a lot. Hey I can dream right? :D
On October 24 2012 15:47 Xantos wrote: In-game top-player watching ... - does not help "spectator only" fans, who watch Twitch.tv - might even take away a source of revenue for streaming players & casters, who help a lot to make SC2 more popular by providing great entertainment that is readily available for anyone that is online
Thus, I voted for the custom games / custom maps issue.
It's not really an issue for LoL. The players are constantly shuffled. There are 5 or 6 games going on at a given time that you can spectate. It would also provide more exposure for lesser known skilled players as well. What if someone hasn't heard of one of the players but that player streams frequently and the spectator likes the play and decides to search to see if that player has a stream? That would grow a players viewerbase thus increasing income or possibly getting them enough viewers to get a contract with twitch. While it might not help the people that already watch players on twitch, it could be an avenue for growth in other areas.
And for the already established gamers I can't see how this would even affect them. Ok you are able to watch 1 game of them in the sc2 client because of how frequently the players are shuffled around. Chances are I'd probably want to watch them more and then tune into their stream. It wouldn't be a case of being able to constantly watch that player at all times.
Let me specify, In LoL 5-6 games are listed on what is called the "home page". You can also spectate any of your friends on your friends list. For sc2 I think just having 5-6 games listed for spectating at any given time with top mmr players (these could be established pros or no names but high mmr regardless). I don't think there should be spec mode for anyone on your friends list as you can add anyone at any point via id.character code which could then affect streamer's revenue directly if they could watch them at all times in game. Now if blizzard made the friend add thing just like LoL to where Its a request to be added no matter what, no just a blind friends add then we could also have spec mode for anyone on your friends list without people's revenue from streaming being in jeopardy from this idea.
On October 24 2012 15:47 Xantos wrote: In-game top-player watching ... - does not help "spectator only" fans, who watch Twitch.tv - might even take away a source of revenue for streaming players & casters, who help a lot to make SC2 more popular by providing great entertainment that is readily available for anyone that is online
Thus, I voted for the custom games / custom maps issue.
I'll never believe in game client spectating would ruin streams. Take LoL for a second. you get a handful of pros on the popular spectator feed and some of those guys stream. For instance people like hotshotgg has shown up on the spectator list and he still easily gets 15k viewers everytime he streams.
People would rather listen to him explain his train of thought and decisions than trying to figure it out themselves unless the players don't talk at all (or doesn't speak english) then it wouldn't really matter.
Barracks units are so god damn powerful against gateway units early and mid game since stim is way faster to get and/or research. I feel the need to rush for blink/charge in order to not get kited by conc. shells. However rushing for charge/blink means no observer and i'm extremely vulnerable to cloak banshee opening.
Seeing as all the terrans block their ramp with supply depots and a barrack there's no way for me to scout what they're doing.
Also, Immortals should not be affected by conc. shells.
On October 24 2012 15:31 Resonance wrote: I honestly cant see how the in client spectator thing would work, unless you disabled messaging while in it or added a long delay to prevent cheating. I really want to watch replays with friends and LAN support, but we all know it isn't going to happen. Unless blizzard is a troll and releases it with HoTS so it seems like they really do love us
Spectators are only allowed to see his/her friends view.
On October 24 2012 15:47 Xantos wrote: In-game top-player watching ... - does not help "spectator only" fans, who watch Twitch.tv - might even take away a source of revenue for streaming players & casters, who help a lot to make SC2 more popular by providing great entertainment that is readily available for anyone that is online
Thus, I voted for the custom games / custom maps issue.
Makes a lot of sense. I think twitch has a way of working their code into games to allow them to embed the twitch stream in game though. I could be completely wrong on this. However that could fix all of the problems that you brought up, and help players revenue a lot. Hey I can dream right? :D
If twitch could pull this off it would be so sick, but to me it seems like some amazing type of magic.
Every single person I have ever met that I have tried to introduce to Sc2 said they WILL NOT play it because of the price tag.
Change that and then you have the effect of people playing because their friends play. If I bring 2 friends to play, then they bring 2 friends, those 2 friends bring 2 friends, so on and so forth.
On October 24 2012 15:47 Xantos wrote: In-game top-player watching ... - does not help "spectator only" fans, who watch Twitch.tv - might even take away a source of revenue for streaming players & casters, who help a lot to make SC2 more popular by providing great entertainment that is readily available for anyone that is online
Thus, I voted for the custom games / custom maps issue.
Makes a lot of sense. I think twitch has a way of working their code into games to allow them to embed the twitch stream in game though. I could be completely wrong on this. However that could fix all of the problems that you brought up, and help players revenue a lot. Hey I can dream right? :D
They announced something of that sort recently, yes. I think it would be a good compromise but it's still technically nicer to have in game spectating that you can control, but that's a lot harder technologically speaking, and I don't think it's worth the effort when they could be doing other things.
If they implement spectating, they should partner with twitch for some sort of embedded content delivery thing such as showing the player's webcam on top of the spectator view, and embedding ads. Although I think it wouldn't really kill Twitch outright if they don't involve them at all because I imagine a lot of people watch streams in places where they can't just fire up the game (eg. at work, library, etc).
i think the poll would be better suited to a TOP 3 vote instead of one.
For instance i'd vote on (and they are equally needed)
1)Chat Rooms as the background instead of a mini chat box ( that mini chat box is better suited for personal messages or party chat)
2)Fixed custom game system that revolves around the open game lobby list with the ability to name maps
3) and lastly, probably the most important right now, is actually making big changes for the melee gameplay for HOTS. If the game looks more or less the same as WINGS and people are fine with it that, Then you are basically saying you are fine with HOTS being how wings is right now. Just sorta stagnant and not really growing. Not dead by any means, but the clock is ticking because there is not a ton of new people coming in to replace the amount leaving. Every game is going to have leavers no matter what. Its about how good the game is at drawing in new blood. Blizzard needs to change their model for how they update ESPORT games if they want them to survive . This shit about only giving big updates in expansions wont work. If 7 months after HOTS has released and blizzard has found a new unit that is just not working out. The reply should not be, lets wait till Legacy of the void to fix it. Its lets fix it right now ( removing and replacing brand new units). Other things blizzard can do to keep the game fresh is, simply disagreeing with how the metagame is. If a metagame has resulted in a terrible matchup even if its balanced. A change should be put in. Look at riot, they came off a really successful season just now, They dont actually have to change their game, But they arent like that, they want to change the meta game because they dont agree with it. This is a big risk, that isnt actually needed. But this is the sort of design approach sc2 needs to stay relevant for years to come. We all know how bored people get when there havent been patch notes in a long time, chances are they might try a new game and thats it , We lost them.
Being from Warcraft 3 i have seen a game die. It was not able to draw in new blood for the melee game side of things. Fixing the casual game scene like the arcade and stuff is nice, but thats not going to result in bigger esport tournaments.
. Broodwar was not able to draw in new blood for the melee game side, It died (say what you want about korea, broodwar died outside of korea sooooooooooo long ago).
Ultimately for the esport scene, Number 3 is the most important..
I voted other. I'd like to see more versatility within each race; something to make playing the game fun for us lower level (masters and below) folks.
I doubt we'll see that though, so I doubt I'll buy HotS. There's no real reason to when playing the game isn't enjoyable and you don't need the game to watch a GOM stream.
On October 24 2012 15:06 Dingobloo wrote: Allowing Global play and trying to fix the latency issue that is around. (10) Allowing you to watch replays with friends. (5) Changing how ladder works and giving you more stats. (2)
These three are all announced as coming already, seems like a bit of a pointless exercise to just say "well...do these faster"
On October 24 2012 15:47 Xantos wrote: In-game top-player watching ... - does not help "spectator only" fans, who watch Twitch.tv - might even take away a source of revenue for streaming players & casters, who help a lot to make SC2 more popular by providing great entertainment that is readily available for anyone that is online
Thus, I voted for the custom games / custom maps issue.
Makes a lot of sense. I think twitch has a way of working their code into games to allow them to embed the twitch stream in game though. I could be completely wrong on this. However that could fix all of the problems that you brought up, and help players revenue a lot. Hey I can dream right? :D
This wouldn't really solve anything though, streaming is still resource intensive for the person wanting to stream, it's a huge barrier to have someone watch your games through a stream but it's only worth it for high level players.
A proper spectating system like LoL or Dota 2 solves so many issues, I can watch my friend play ladder on a delay because the game gets networked traffic mirrored on delay on blizzard's servers, and it's just multiplayer game traffic, it's not 720p video, suddenly laddering isn't as lonely.
SC2 already has a spectator mode but it's limited to 4 players and they join the game direct. The HLTV model, is that a HLTV client joins one of the regular spectator slots, and just mirrors the data out so lots more people can watch without causing issues to the game in progress, it's feasible to do this to EVERY game running on the service whether pro or not and it's an amazing experience to be able to jump into any in progress game to spectate on delay.
On October 24 2012 15:47 Xantos wrote: In-game top-player watching ... - does not help "spectator only" fans, who watch Twitch.tv - might even take away a source of revenue for streaming players & casters, who help a lot to make SC2 more popular by providing great entertainment that is readily available for anyone that is online
Thus, I voted for the custom games / custom maps issue.
Makes a lot of sense. I think twitch has a way of working their code into games to allow them to embed the twitch stream in game though. I could be completely wrong on this. However that could fix all of the problems that you brought up, and help players revenue a lot. Hey I can dream right? :D
This wouldn't really solve anything though, streaming is still resource intensive for the person wanting to stream, it's a huge barrier to have someone watch your games through a stream but it's only worth it for high level players.
A proper spectating system like LoL or Dota 2 solves so many issues, I can watch my friend play ladder on a delay because the game gets networked traffic mirrored on delay on blizzard's servers, and it's just multiplayer game traffic, it's not 720p video, suddenly laddering isn't as lonely.
Hm you mean riot/valve's servers? I don't completely get your last point. However I do definitely love how in Dota you can watch your friends games. I'd LOVE to see this in sc2. A proper spectating system is what I was trying to imply with that option. Sorry if I wasn't clear or if I've miss phrased it.
Sheth. You could possibly add an option on the poll about changing how the game feels such as unit pathing, DPS, and unit clumping etc. Just an idea. :>
Change it from the wasteland. Clan support that could help people find practice without juggling between client, browser, mIRC and VoIP client. Support for in-game tournaments for players within and between said clans, maybe also open.
This is not a console game. This is not a tablet game. It is a PC game. Battlenet 2.0 takes it's functionality and esthetics from the former two, wasting all the potential of a mouse and keyboard controlled PC platform.
On October 24 2012 15:47 Xantos wrote: In-game top-player watching ... - does not help "spectator only" fans, who watch Twitch.tv - might even take away a source of revenue for streaming players & casters, who help a lot to make SC2 more popular by providing great entertainment that is readily available for anyone that is online
Thus, I voted for the custom games / custom maps issue.
Makes a lot of sense. I think twitch has a way of working their code into games to allow them to embed the twitch stream in game though. I could be completely wrong on this. However that could fix all of the problems that you brought up, and help players revenue a lot. Hey I can dream right? :D
This wouldn't really solve anything though, streaming is still resource intensive for the person wanting to stream, it's a huge barrier to have someone watch your games through a stream but it's only worth it for high level players.
A proper spectating system like LoL or Dota 2 solves so many issues, I can watch my friend play ladder on a delay because the game gets networked traffic mirrored on delay on blizzard's servers, and it's just multiplayer game traffic, it's not 720p video, suddenly laddering isn't as lonely.
Hm you mean riot/valve's servers? I don't completely get your last point. However I do definitely love how in Dota you can watch your friends games. I'd LOVE to see this in sc2. A proper spectating system is what I was trying to imply with that option. Sorry if I wasn't clear or if I've miss phrased it.
This would be relatively hard to code though, dropping in and out of a game as a random observer would be a bit strenuous on the latency if you were a popular player. And considering how long it's taken for name changes ...
On October 24 2012 15:47 Xantos wrote: In-game top-player watching ... - does not help "spectator only" fans, who watch Twitch.tv - might even take away a source of revenue for streaming players & casters, who help a lot to make SC2 more popular by providing great entertainment that is readily available for anyone that is online
Thus, I voted for the custom games / custom maps issue.
Makes a lot of sense. I think twitch has a way of working their code into games to allow them to embed the twitch stream in game though. I could be completely wrong on this. However that could fix all of the problems that you brought up, and help players revenue a lot. Hey I can dream right? :D
This wouldn't really solve anything though, streaming is still resource intensive for the person wanting to stream, it's a huge barrier to have someone watch your games through a stream but it's only worth it for high level players.
A proper spectating system like LoL or Dota 2 solves so many issues, I can watch my friend play ladder on a delay because the game gets networked traffic mirrored on delay on blizzard's servers, and it's just multiplayer game traffic, it's not 720p video, suddenly laddering isn't as lonely.
Hm you mean riot/valve's servers? I don't completely get your last point. However I do definitely love how in Dota you can watch your friends games. I'd LOVE to see this in sc2. A proper spectating system is what I was trying to imply with that option. Sorry if I wasn't clear or if I've miss phrased it.
This would be relatively hard to code though, dropping in and out of a game as a random observer would be a bit strenuous on the latency if you were a popular player. And considering how long it's taken for name changes ...
HLTV has done this since like 2001 and it's what DOTA TV was built on, it takes 1 regular spectator slot and it just mirrors out the network traffic to any number of players who join the server, if that server gets overloaded it can drop from the game, none of the outside observers actually ever join the game in progress, they're just being shown mirrored network traffic.
I know people give Blizzard all kinds of shit for being glacially slow, but if they can't take the time out of their schedule to implement a service that their two biggest competitors have, that is essentially a mirroring of their already existing observer data out so that multiple people can join it, then what the hell is the point of this poll? I don't even think this is aiming that high, LoL didn't even have a regular spectator mode when they started implementing their system. Valve is already iterating in innovative ways with integrated casting, replays hosted on the servers with permanent URL links, triggers for item drops based on events observed in game, if they don't get this stuff in they will be SO far behind.
It just has so many benefits, you can give your friends tips and just in general makes a very 1v1 focused game so much more social.
Thanks so much for making this poll Sheth! I keep thinking that all the complaining is focused in too many different areas, and that there's too high a chance Blizzard will see the number of things people want and be like "we can't implement ALL of those".
I am not a high level player so I may be biased, but I feel like my biggest problem here is definitely Battle.net, not design/balance. TBH what I really want is my friends to start playing more SC2 again, and that won't come from making PvZ more exciting, for instance.
I voted for the Custom Map thing, as I know that is great for keeping casual players in the scene. In the end I couldn't decide between that and F2P multiplayer, but I figured that short term the custom map situation is more realistic to fix.
On October 24 2012 15:08 rift wrote: Fundamental game design.
Could you explain it a little more clearly?
I'm on a phone so I'll be concise: Unit pathing. "Terrible, terrible damage" syndrome. Uninspired units and broken abilities/spells. Limited avenues of micromanagement. An absence of positional play, map presence and defender's advantage. Macro mechanics that rocket players up in supply. Game-ending single engagements.
In an interview at MLG, Flash, Stork and the like were asked what the biggest difference was now that they were playing Starcraft 2. They almost unanimously answered it was the difficulty in making a comeback after a battle.
I know everyone wants in game spectating, but that's actually a fairly nasty thing to implement.
Particularly the data that is sent over the network for starcraft is actually user input, not state updates for every object. This is required because so many units can be in the game at once, so doing updates for every object in the screen is expensive particularly it woukd require increasing bandwidth for increasing # of units, where as in Dota it has better bounds. This would create syncing issues for joining a game to observe. You would have to repeat all of the actions played up to that time, which would mean that faster computers could catchup fairly quickly whereas slower computers could take much longer. Obviously this can run a bit faster than playing a replay, since you don't have to render, but starcraft is actually a more CPU limited game.
It'd be much more reasonable to ask for something like what Tribes has with in client Twitch/Own3d streams embedded.
SC2 multiplayer has to become free2play , otherwise sc2 is going to die. And of course two very important changes: 1, ingame specat just like CS 2, clan support
On October 24 2012 15:08 rift wrote: Fundamental game design.
Could you explain it a little more clearly?
I'm on a phone so I'll be concise: Unit pathing. "Terrible, terrible damage" syndrome. Uninspired units and broken abilities/spells. Limited avenues of micromanagement. An absence of positional play, map presence and defender's advantage. Macro mechanics that rocket players up in supply. Game-ending single engagements.
In an interview at MLG, Flash, Stork and the like were asked what the biggest difference was now that they were playing Starcraft 2. They almost unanimously answered it was the difficulty in making a comeback after a battle. It struck me that winning or losing a game of Starcraft shouldn't come down to one moment.
I think they covered the potential issues with giving the ability to spectate in-game on State of the Game, didn't they?
Personally, these, in order of most desired, are what I want or believe are important.
1. Group Replay Viewing and Replay Resume* 2. Casual Play. I'm not sure what's economically suitable for F2P in StarCraft, but it seems to help anything. Make Ladder free but customs premium? What do people think about more modes of play? The only casual play my friends and I have all been able to do—since we're all drastically different leagues in the ladder—is to play MonoMonobattles: everyone gets to make one unit, the same unit; DT's was the most fun. As well, I've made a map—Song Khala, in the forums—whose goal was to try and spread things out and maybe add new meta, but it's still quite standard (and unrefined as of now), but I've also had ideas for other modes of play. What if there were maps that were still fundamentally played by the same sorts of control/micro, but in the later stages of the game your income becomes based on control of the map. In my idea, the map is a small city and the sections' decorations reflect the bonuses, such as a vespene-rich area of the city gives you more vespene. 3. Name Changing. Because this is important to Teams and their Sponsors. Extra: Unlockables. One thing that is known to be a great way to keep people playing, despite community issues is unlockables. I'm not entirely sure how this could be played out. StarCraft 2's current unlockables are far too elite and insignificant to keep more casual people invested, in my mind. I had considered the idea of bringing a Research/Evolution/(LotV Upgrades) tree to multiplayer, giving you added bonuses for things you use most, but I'm not sure how that might affect balance—balance which I currently believe is quite fair; I think most temporary advantages are meta-based, but I might go as far to say Protoss has a slight advantage right now beyond meta. Other ideas for unlockables/micro-transactions would just be skins; if it were more achievement based, you could earn things like the Merc skins because you've achieved XX marine micro achievements.
*Features I believe have been said to be in the works.
On October 24 2012 15:47 Xantos wrote: In-game top-player watching ... - does not help "spectator only" fans, who watch Twitch.tv - might even take away a source of revenue for streaming players & casters, who help a lot to make SC2 more popular by providing great entertainment that is readily available for anyone that is online
Thus, I voted for the custom games / custom maps issue.
Makes a lot of sense. I think twitch has a way of working their code into games to allow them to embed the twitch stream in game though. I could be completely wrong on this. However that could fix all of the problems that you brought up, and help players revenue a lot. Hey I can dream right? :D
This wouldn't really solve anything though, streaming is still resource intensive for the person wanting to stream, it's a huge barrier to have someone watch your games through a stream but it's only worth it for high level players.
A proper spectating system like LoL or Dota 2 solves so many issues, I can watch my friend play ladder on a delay because the game gets networked traffic mirrored on delay on blizzard's servers, and it's just multiplayer game traffic, it's not 720p video, suddenly laddering isn't as lonely.
Hm you mean riot/valve's servers? I don't completely get your last point. However I do definitely love how in Dota you can watch your friends games. I'd LOVE to see this in sc2. A proper spectating system is what I was trying to imply with that option. Sorry if I wasn't clear or if I've miss phrased it.
This would be relatively hard to code though, dropping in and out of a game as a random observer would be a bit strenuous on the latency if you were a popular player. And considering how long it's taken for name changes ...
HLTV has done this since like 2001 and it's what DOTA TV was built on, it takes 1 regular spectator slot and it just mirrors out the network traffic to any number of players who join the server, if that server gets overloaded it can drop from the game, none of the outside observers actually ever join the game in progress, they're just being shown mirrored network traffic.
I know people give Blizzard all kinds of shit for being glacially slow, but if they can't take the time out of their schedule to implement a service that their two biggest competitors have, that is essentially a mirroring of their already existing observer data out so that multiple people can join it, then what the hell is the point of this poll? I don't even think this is aiming that high, LoL didn't even have a regular spectator mode when they started implementing their system.
True that re: DOTA TV, could be a very viable solution.
Re: the last part about Blizzard being slow and point of this poll. Chill friend, I was only being half serious in my post. This is absolutely something that's doable and I agree that they should be doing it. Wouldn't be surprised in the slightest if they are already working on something similar. Blizzard may be slow but they aren't stupid.
On October 24 2012 15:47 Xantos wrote: In-game top-player watching ... - does not help "spectator only" fans, who watch Twitch.tv - might even take away a source of revenue for streaming players & casters, who help a lot to make SC2 more popular by providing great entertainment that is readily available for anyone that is online
Thus, I voted for the custom games / custom maps issue.
Makes a lot of sense. I think twitch has a way of working their code into games to allow them to embed the twitch stream in game though. I could be completely wrong on this. However that could fix all of the problems that you brought up, and help players revenue a lot. Hey I can dream right? :D
This wouldn't really solve anything though, streaming is still resource intensive for the person wanting to stream, it's a huge barrier to have someone watch your games through a stream but it's only worth it for high level players.
A proper spectating system like LoL or Dota 2 solves so many issues, I can watch my friend play ladder on a delay because the game gets networked traffic mirrored on delay on blizzard's servers, and it's just multiplayer game traffic, it's not 720p video, suddenly laddering isn't as lonely.
Hm you mean riot/valve's servers? I don't completely get your last point. However I do definitely love how in Dota you can watch your friends games. I'd LOVE to see this in sc2. A proper spectating system is what I was trying to imply with that option. Sorry if I wasn't clear or if I've miss phrased it.
This would be relatively hard to code though, dropping in and out of a game as a random observer would be a bit strenuous on the latency if you were a popular player. And considering how long it's taken for name changes ...
HLTV has done this since like 2001 and it's what DOTA TV was built on, it takes 1 regular spectator slot and it just mirrors out the network traffic to any number of players who join the server, if that server gets overloaded it can drop from the game, none of the outside observers actually ever join the game in progress, they're just being shown mirrored network traffic.
I know people give Blizzard all kinds of shit for being glacially slow, but if they can't take the time out of their schedule to implement a service that their two biggest competitors have, that is essentially a mirroring of their already existing observer data out so that multiple people can join it, then what the hell is the point of this poll? I don't even think this is aiming that high, LoL didn't even have a regular spectator mode when they started implementing their system.
True that re: DOTA TV, could be a very viable solution.
Re: the last part about Blizzard being slow and point of this poll. Chill friend, I was only being half serious in my post. This is absolutely something that's doable and I agree that they should be doing it. Wouldn't be surprised in the slightest if they are already working on something similar. Blizzard may be slow but they aren't stupid.
Oh I'll make one comment on the custom game system. I think the biggest thing they need to do is make it simpler.
It's pretty confusing right now, there needs to be a "make game" and "join game" buttons. New players have no clue what arcade is and all this stuff they just want to find the way to play games.
Also go optimize your code. Not everyone has 80Mb/s line, the custom game system is incredibly sluggish for me. I have somewhere between 0.3-5Mb/s most of the time if I'm in my dorm. Browsing games is a pain and half the time the pages just decide not to load and show a blank screen instead.
Everything outside of the main game feels like it's coded in Flash. Stop doing that please, it's really stupid that my replays and the single player maps take forever to load. I want the interface to feel snappy. Maybe make the noises better for clicking on stuff to give a better feeling of responsiveness.
Everyone should boot up BW for a bit and feel what it's like to use an interface that feels snappy. It's part of what makes iPhones so popular too. Everything just "feels" smooth and fast.
On October 24 2012 15:47 Xantos wrote: In-game top-player watching ... - does not help "spectator only" fans, who watch Twitch.tv - might even take away a source of revenue for streaming players & casters, who help a lot to make SC2 more popular by providing great entertainment that is readily available for anyone that is online
Thus, I voted for the custom games / custom maps issue.
Makes a lot of sense. I think twitch has a way of working their code into games to allow them to embed the twitch stream in game though. I could be completely wrong on this. However that could fix all of the problems that you brought up, and help players revenue a lot. Hey I can dream right? :D
This wouldn't really solve anything though, streaming is still resource intensive for the person wanting to stream, it's a huge barrier to have someone watch your games through a stream but it's only worth it for high level players.
A proper spectating system like LoL or Dota 2 solves so many issues, I can watch my friend play ladder on a delay because the game gets networked traffic mirrored on delay on blizzard's servers, and it's just multiplayer game traffic, it's not 720p video, suddenly laddering isn't as lonely.
Hm you mean riot/valve's servers? I don't completely get your last point. However I do definitely love how in Dota you can watch your friends games. I'd LOVE to see this in sc2. A proper spectating system is what I was trying to imply with that option. Sorry if I wasn't clear or if I've miss phrased it.
This would be relatively hard to code though, dropping in and out of a game as a random observer would be a bit strenuous on the latency if you were a popular player. And considering how long it's taken for name changes ...
HLTV has done this since like 2001 and it's what DOTA TV was built on, it takes 1 regular spectator slot and it just mirrors out the network traffic to any number of players who join the server, if that server gets overloaded it can drop from the game, none of the outside observers actually ever join the game in progress, they're just being shown mirrored network traffic.
I know people give Blizzard all kinds of shit for being glacially slow, but if they can't take the time out of their schedule to implement a service that their two biggest competitors have, that is essentially a mirroring of their already existing observer data out so that multiple people can join it, then what the hell is the point of this poll? I don't even think this is aiming that high, LoL didn't even have a regular spectator mode when they started implementing their system.
True that re: DOTA TV, could be a very viable solution.
Re: the last part about Blizzard being slow and point of this poll. Chill friend, I was only being half serious in my post. This is absolutely something that's doable and I agree that they should be doing it. Wouldn't be surprised in the slightest if they are already working on something similar. Blizzard may be slow but they aren't stupid.
Valve did it 10 years ago with HLTV. Its ridiculous this is not available on a game that is "all about e-sports"
You could connect an HLTV directly into the game and have people connect directly to that server or setup 10000000x relays from different locations that had more bandwidth and serve as many clients as you wanted. SC2 even has integrated voice communication, you could cast a game directly from the in-game client if you really wanted to.
So, basically blizzard adds an option that says "allow people to watch my games" to the options screen with a checkbox and each sc2 account gets an "broadcaster id" that is customizable say.... liquid-sheth-987444. He proceeds to give this information to the public and they can subscribe to this broadcaster ID, whenever that ID starts a game with the previous option turned on (for security reasons they could even have this option default to off whenever you start your sc2 client) all the subscribers get notified and they can hop in and watch.
Take the same approach to say.. Artosis, he joins the game as spectator, people join off his broadcaster id and on top of being able to watch the game the voice data gets broadcasted directly to the clients from blizzard.
Obviously major tournaments would use their own setups and broadcast off twitch or own3d but the option would still be there.
I wish Blizzard would put a bit more focus on 2`s 3`s and 4`s. It sucks never getting new maps and getting ignored when they could have map making contests with people who`d love to get their maps on the ladder.
One thought I have on the top topic is what incentive would a person have to watch a pro stream which is a big part of their revenues if we could watch them ingame. Is personal interaction the only real thing you could get extra with it because i sure cant think of any.
You know actually all of these things that we want would be fulfilled if the game's free to play? Free = more people have access = more people developing tweaks and tools.. Just like what happened with Warcraft 3, there are so many tools, even bots..
Seriously, I think if you could allow your friends to watch your replay's and vice versa, it would be pretty sick because you could have each other out on games you lost and such :p
On October 24 2012 16:27 mrtomjones wrote: I wish Blizzard would put a bit more focus on 2`s 3`s and 4`s. It sucks never getting new maps and getting ignored when they could have map making contests with people who`d love to get their maps on the ladder.
I agree. However, there's a huge imbalance problem in 2's, 3's, and 4's. My friends and I have discovered that 2-3rax + 2base ling (+ 4gate if 3 people or more) just wins. Period.
On October 24 2012 16:27 mrtomjones wrote: I wish Blizzard would put a bit more focus on 2`s 3`s and 4`s. It sucks never getting new maps and getting ignored when they could have map making contests with people who`d love to get their maps on the ladder.
I agree. However, there's a huge imbalance problem in 2's, 3's, and 4's. My friends and I have discovered that 2-3rax + 2base ling (+ 4gate if 3 people or more) just wins. Period.
Imbalance will always be an issue in 4`s since the game is not balanced for it but having new maps would keep people playing more often I believe. I see no way beyond making bigger maps or longer rush distances to avoid the early rush imbalances anyways so I dont expect them to fix them. I almost never rush and do well so it is fine with me
On October 24 2012 16:34 Big J wrote: I want an easy to use editor. Isn't on the list
Only a certain ammount of topics I could add to the poll. I don't even have chat channels up there atm.. Anyway sorry about it not being on the list. Thanks a lot for posting that you wanted it. Maybe the post about helping map makers out, is as close as I got. Anyway.. thanks!
Asking people already using TL you will most probably get an answer which would pretty much appeal to people already engaged in the community. Its already quite evident from the poll with:
"A way to spectate games in client and watch pros with others. "
is leading with almost 40% of the votes.
I just imagined that the bigger problem with starcraft II now is holding onto the casual gamers so maybe having easier and more accessible custom games would be a more important thing to do first before incorporating in a way to spectate "pro's" playing video games.
ESPECIALLY since the people starcraft developing team is really small at the moment
hmm ok, I dont really understand the high vote count for being able to watch a pro in the game. While a cool feature, and something that def should be added, if the gameplay isnt fun or fun to watch anymore, who is going to care? Actually, if all people can watch in the sc2 game itself, how will pros run commercials? how will companies promote their products through streams now? I guess the best thing would be they pay blizzard, but will that money actually be spent on improving Starcraft? We could only hope...
I think the most important one is the custom game area. If 1v1 never becomes the game we all imagined and wanted it to be, then atleast with a good support for custom games we can still make something work. There some potential for mods to attract a bigger playerbase. Most of the suggestions on 'how to fix the game' have their maps dedicated to them in the custom section. Being able to get more people to play then might spark interest somehow.
While we all want the 1v1 to be or become the awesome game we want it to be, it might not happen, and that is something we have to keep in mind aswell.
I really think making ladder free to play would be the most beneficial. Brings in a wide variety of talent from many different places.
I know tons of dedicated gamers who would join any game as long as its free. Its mostly due to their society, being in a third world country. People like to play with friends, if their friends can't afford it even though they can, they still won't buy it. Majority of the countries that play SC2 are from first world countries.
I want more Community Integration in a way, that is possible to find training partners on an easy way. I imagine something in the following way: - you can create yourself a training partner profile, where you describe how you play your race (typically builds for each matchup you use or unit compositions etc.) - others can search then for training partners, currently available, in range of their MMR, with a specific race. Then you also can chose a guy from a list, who plays 3gate robo opening and zealot heavy or whatever if you like. - you then can go in a lobby with your training partner and discuss with him what you like to train and afterwards watching the replay together for analysis should be possible
On October 24 2012 16:27 mrtomjones wrote: I wish Blizzard would put a bit more focus on 2`s 3`s and 4`s. It sucks never getting new maps and getting ignored when they could have map making contests with people who`d love to get their maps on the ladder.
I agree. However, there's a huge imbalance problem in 2's, 3's, and 4's. My friends and I have discovered that 2-3rax + 2base ling (+ 4gate if 3 people or more) just wins. Period.
Imbalance will always be an issue in 4`s since the game is not balanced for it but having new maps would keep people playing more often I believe. I see no way beyond making bigger maps or longer rush distances to avoid the early rush imbalances anyways so I dont expect them to fix them. I almost never rush and do well so it is fine with me
I agree, I think they can definitely make better maps for 2s, even though there is a greater potential for early attacks to be dangerous. At least back when they had Twilight Fortress you could get some macro games, just because the map was so long. Warpgates ruin that a bit but I think it's still possible to at least make 2v2 maps a little less rush intensive and more varied and interesting.
On October 24 2012 16:50 nzkb wrote: The free to play multiplayer seems pointless. Just buy the game. I mean they spend time working on it. It's not like LoL. It has a campaign.
For ladder changes i'd like to see numerb one: a 1s league for each race, and two have the ability to choose to redo all the placements every season.
As for the watching part. Being able to watch/convert replays outside of client is a gue necessity instead of do it the fraps way with the game running.
I still think the most important thing is to completly redesign protoss (reworking warpgate and sentries), and to some extent balancing the zerg race in such a way that it's not too reliant on the infestor/brood combo. UI changes are also necessary, but for **** sake, I know the sc2 team is relatively small but come on, it's not an indy company and sc2 sold quite well, I think at this point it's their responsability to offer something that is at least on par with their competition. Honestly I feel like their is a real problem with the way decision are made in blizzard, looks like bureaucracy took over, the name change thingy is a symptom of this. Unfortunately I can't remember the exact source, but someone from the industry said that blizz e-sport manager left for riot because he felt his hands were tied in blizzard (i think it's djwheat who said so in one of his shows, he quickly retracted it because it was not meant to be public, but I think it shines some ligth on the way blizz is working).
While I'd love to see some reworking of basic racial mechanics on some levels, I think that having an in-game ability to view tournaments and games (preferably with in-game casting audio a la DotA 2) would be awesome. I know it would be my most used feature as I love observing games.
Free to Play is the easiest option for Blizzard to get people playing their game, period. It's just a question of whether or not they can get money by doing so - RTS isn't exactly suited for microtransactions like MOBAs or MMOs are. The more people playing, the larger communities can grow and more custom maps, etc can be made and played. The more people play, the more people will get interest in the pro scene and more viewers and money means more delicious ESPORTS funding. It's just about whether or not such a huge move is financially sound for Blizzard itself.
This might be a bit off topic but I want more Audience microphones during major tournaments. Nothing beats the chills/goosebumps you get when something insane happens during a match and you feel like cheering because you hear the audience going crazy as well.
An example would be that epic Dota 2 "Turn-around" moment a while back where half the reason it was so epic because of the audience view where we got to see everyone go crazy and feel the epicness of the moment.
Maybe a view of the audience every time isn't necessary but I think a mic would help.
A way to spectate games in client and watch pros with others.
But not just for pros, also for my friends. From time to time, when I enter SC2, I see friends playing in a game. I would like to join that game and spectate (with delay, so I can't help them using skype or anything). This way, I am entertained and I know when he is available to play some team games!
They are 65mins in and everyone gets lag and has to dc, admins just exit the game and recreate it and load the save, boom everyone is back in and the game continues.
On October 24 2012 15:47 Xantos wrote: In-game top-player watching ... - does not help "spectator only" fans, who watch Twitch.tv - might even take away a source of revenue for streaming players & casters, who help a lot to make SC2 more popular by providing great entertainment that is readily available for anyone that is online
Thus, I voted for the custom games / custom maps issue.
Makes a lot of sense. I think twitch has a way of working their code into games to allow them to embed the twitch stream in game though. I could be completely wrong on this. However that could fix all of the problems that you brought up, and help players revenue a lot. Hey I can dream right? :D
This wouldn't really solve anything though, streaming is still resource intensive for the person wanting to stream, it's a huge barrier to have someone watch your games through a stream but it's only worth it for high level players.
A proper spectating system like LoL or Dota 2 solves so many issues, I can watch my friend play ladder on a delay because the game gets networked traffic mirrored on delay on blizzard's servers, and it's just multiplayer game traffic, it's not 720p video, suddenly laddering isn't as lonely.
Hm you mean riot/valve's servers? I don't completely get your last point. However I do definitely love how in Dota you can watch your friends games. I'd LOVE to see this in sc2. A proper spectating system is what I was trying to imply with that option. Sorry if I wasn't clear or if I've miss phrased it.
oh, didn't realize this was what was meant in the OP. I am definitely 110% for this
They are 65mins in and everyone gets lag and has to dc, admins just exit the game and recreate it and load the save, boom everyone is back in and the game continues.
Save States, do it Blizzard.
I was pretty sure "resume from replay" or something similar was announced along with clan support to be coming with HotS?
EDIT: Ah more like it's being worked on. Seems like it's meant to be out around HotS time.
On October 24 2012 15:22 Martijn wrote: Voted for the game client tournament promotion and spectating option. Important to note that I'm not sure how DotA2 handles this, but potentially, this could cost tournaments their ad revenue, so I don't know if that's something to consider. Preferably, (and I realize this is highly controversial) you'd get something like twitch ads or something before/after a game or something.
I personally prefer an ad based model waaaaaaaaaaaay more than any PPV model.
LAN is a no brainer too, but I don't think Blizzard will cave on that no matter how we beg. Even if we see a DDoS at the WCS finals.
The way Dota 2 handles it is that you have to buy a ticket to watch it in game. Could range anywhere from $1 to $6 for the entire season+replay pack.
See, that works and all, but I'd very much prefer to have ads running than to have to pay. I watch.. a lot.. of starcraft, obviously. If I had to pay for every tournament I'd watch, I'd have to invest so much. I'd definitely watch less, not more.
Now it's not like this functionality means that streams suddenly won't happen anymore, but obviously I'd like the benefits of in game camera control and casters (like dota2) and still support tournaments/players through getting ads rather than paying in a PPV model.
What I would like to see is a fix of the mess that is the game client and battle.net (so everything apart from balance I guess)
That includes: Replay watching with friends, in client replay sharing, in client streaming, automated tournaments, tournament lan, improved custom games system, paid name change
Fortunately some things I have not mentioned are coming in HotS already, like global play, clans, etc. The reason I think this should be priority number one is because the game would benefit so much from it and its basically only a matter of programming. No game to create from scratch, no brainstorming ideas (its already clear what needs to be done), just improving a client.
So: Little effort and a huge benefit.
Once this is done they can go ahead and balance multiplayer again (something which is hardly ever final and takes much longer and more effort)
I am not sure which of the points fits my opinion most, the poll is a bit strange... or are you really telling me they can't do both paid name change and watching replays with friends? I am no expert by any means but I imagine even a single Programmer would be able to implement both of those things in maybe a month's time?
On October 24 2012 15:08 rift wrote: Fundamental game design.
Could you explain it a little more clearly?
I'm on a phone so I'll be concise: Unit pathing.
I almost missed this. What would you want different when it comes to pathing? I'm doing my master thesis on crowd simulation and path planning, so I'm very comfortable in the theory and would welcome the discussion.
I would like to see Protoss and Zerg redesigned completely Units like infestor and sentry shouldn't be in the game, as from a spectators point of view, units that eliminate micro from the game really take away from the spectacle. I'd have a much more enjoyable time watching pros play if there were more units that they could show off their superior skills with.
Allowing Global play and trying to fix the latency issue that is around is my vote. I mean, this issue hasn't even been commented on even tho it was one of the first issues we all wanted to fix.
On October 24 2012 15:08 rift wrote: Fundamental game design.
Could you explain it a little more clearly?
I'm on a phone so I'll be concise: Unit pathing.
I almost missed this. What would you want different when it comes to pathing? I'm doing my master thesis on crowd simulation and path planning, so I'm very comfortable in the theory and would welcome the discussion.
I'm actually curious about this as well. There was a post by Dustin in the forums that they had experimented with the unit pathing that had been demonstrated and their conclusion was that at the vast majority of levels there wouldn't be a noticeable effect because the units would be rallied to a point and then from there when they are moved they would still be in a blob.
On October 24 2012 17:18 blabber wrote: if sc2 wants any hope of catching up to LoL, it needs to go free 2 play
I can only agree with this. In my school there are plenty of people who don't see a point investing a single dollar into a game. It's sad, but you can easily download all singleplayer games for free and to someone without the need of competition there is no reason not to play just singleplayer games. I even know some people who want to buy FIFA, and instead of buying the newest FIFA 13 they buy FIFA 11, because it's not that expensive. (I'm talking about consoles, where you can't download everygame for free so easily)
The only fucking reason LoL is that successful is because it is free-to-play. You can try it out for free, you don't have a major disadvantage over players who bought something. The game itself isn't really good compared to other games.
There is no chance for Starcraft 2 to ever catch up with this game anymore and the longer they wait the harder it will be. LoL is still growing and Starcraft 2 is shrinking more and more. They have to change this asap or Starcraft 2 will not stand a chance in competitive E-Sport anymore, because why would you sponsor a tourney with 20k viewers when you can sponsor one with 60k viewers at the same time.
For me the number 1 thing i want to see done is increase the skill cap somehow, i want consistent champions, i want to think "oh that zerg is really good with his army control", instead of "that zerg is about as good as the average zerg". I dont really care for the leading 2 options in the poll, however it would be fun if your friends could join your ladder game, only see from your perspective and then you can talk with them about it.
On October 24 2012 16:45 []Phase[] wrote: hmm ok, I dont really understand the high vote count for being able to watch a pro in the game. While a cool feature, and something that def should be added, if the gameplay isnt fun or fun to watch anymore, who is going to care? Actually, if all people can watch in the sc2 game itself, how will pros run commercials? how will companies promote their products through streams now? I guess the best thing would be they pay blizzard, but will that money actually be spent on improving Starcraft? We could only hope...
There's ways. Allowing for instance banners to be set by the person hosting the game in the popular locations (preferably we'd have some presets so it's easy to get a tournament display on there) and hell, it wouldn't be that difficult to play something like a twitch ad when you join a game as a spec or when the game ends. It'd even stop adblock from costing players revenue.
If anything I think the bigger hurdle is implementation. There's a good reason why you can't just join/rejoin sc2 games. There's no equivalent of keyframes as far as I'm aware, so you'd have to sync the game from start.
Depends if you mean what I want for myself, or what I think would be the best for the game/community overall. Personally nr1 balance/design rework and nr2 ingame spectating. Best for the community overall would probably be way better custom games and social stuff on nr1 and again ingame spectating on nr2. f2p sounds good at first, to get a lot of new players, but I don't think it's viable to suddenly rework their entire businessplan for the game. They might make it f2p a year after the last expansion or so, when the game will be dead anyway.
On October 24 2012 16:22 Ender2701 wrote: Everything outside of the main game feels like it's coded in Flash. Stop doing that please, it's really stupid that my replays and the single player maps take forever to load. I want the interface to feel snappy. Maybe make the noises better for clicking on stuff to give a better feeling of responsiveness.
Actually, I think the UI is coded in Flash lol. Yeah, the whole UI has a ridiculous amount of latency for no apparent reason. Look at any web application, people spend months trying to get the response time of their site down to milliseconds, and Blizzard's local game UI takes seconds to render what has to be kilobytes of data at best. WTF Blizzard, WTF. Even just embedding Chromium or a similar HTML5 engine and rendering everything in HTML+Javascript would certainly be faster.
I would like the ingame spectating. Just an option to enable it, so friends or depending on the option everyone can pop into my game and watch me ladder. Just my camera view nothing fancy. I don't stream often no sense since I would get 1 or 2 viewers but if it is in-game I would get more people to watch and it would keep other people longer in the game. I can invite them to play a match afterwards and there is something to do for me if I don't really feel like playing at that moment.
The other thing I would like is a way to have resume from replay from pro matches. So I can be Teaja for once and play out the last big battle with my friend. See if I have it to micro my way out of a seemingly un winnable situation.
Damn if they could fix the latency issues I wouldn't care about anything else.
Since 1.5 I haven't been able to play terran in 1v1's because it seems like every other game my latency can't handle marine stutter stepping. Every now and then I even have latency issues with stalkers shooting and moving, but that's rare.
On October 24 2012 15:08 rift wrote: Fundamental game design.
Could you explain it a little more clearly?
I'm on a phone so I'll be concise: Unit pathing.
I almost missed this. What would you want different when it comes to pathing? I'm doing my master thesis on crowd simulation and path planning, so I'm very comfortable in the theory and would welcome the discussion.
I'm actually curious about this as well. There was a post by Dustin in the forums that they had experimented with the unit pathing that had been demonstrated and their conclusion was that at the vast majority of levels there wouldn't be a noticeable effect because the units would be rallied to a point and then from there when they are moved they would still be in a blob.
Because of the 200 food cap, you could use some pretty complex methods. For the moment ignoring 4v4 which could become some what of a hindrance seeming that's 1600 food count potentially ;p To give people an idea, in game right now as far as I can tell (and this really is pure speculation seeming I have no idea who at blizzard I could ask about this), there's A* for global pathplanning and some social forces for local planning. We've seen ECM corridors and potential field approaches work for crowds of 10k+ on pentium 4s, so really, there's a lot of complex stuff you could implement. I had an email correspondence with the lead engineer on Red Alert 3 a few years back, and surely since then we've come a long way, but there's still much more we could do.
Now if only I knew who to bug about path planning and unit behavior at blizzard ;p
Shameless plug to the section of the Day9tv launch party I did back around release on the topic of pathing and unit behavior.
- Change unit collision behavior away from current unit blobs to a more spectator friendly unit spread, and adjust balance accordingly - Automated tournaments on Battle.net, perhaps for small rewards like ladder points, achievements or something - Clan features like a appending a changeable clan tag to your name in a different color
All things in this pool are pretty important but also easy to implement at the same time. So I want as many of them as possible. The thing I would like to be changed in SC2 has been already sounded in a manner. It was said about possibility to comeback etc. As I see it, a comeback is hardly possible because players don't have many ways to rule the game. Now players just take early 3rd and get 200/200 very soon. What sense to harass with prism if damage will be almost nothing considering your opponent's income. What sense to micro each unit carefully, if you have 16 gateways and 3k/2k resourses in reserve? Midgame is very important and very interesting part of the game, but now it almost skips. Especially in the TvZ. When I win 1v1 ladder games I usually think something like "I chose right BO and did no rude mistakes so I won". Or when I lose "I did well during 19 minutes, but that 2 fungles did too much damage so I lost". I mean, how games are going now? You macro during 14 minutes, after that you do timing attack and if you fight badly, you lose. Because you have only one timing attack for all game. If there was midgame, the game wouldn't be so one-mistake-dependent. You would have more timings, harass would have more sense (because at this stage you don't have very-very high income), careful micro would give you tangible benefits etc.
I think SC2 is on its right way with HOTS, however i feel that bnet 2.0 was bad from the begining and even tho some things have been fixed, there's still a long way to go. Here's just a short list of what i think are vital things to focus on and some suggestions that might inspire thinking in that direction.
1: Bnet UI - looks nice but it takes away alot of the social aspect, the chat / channel windows are minimalistic (even tho you can make them bigger it doesn't feel intergrated) What we could've had is something similar to the old bnet where the Chatroom actually feels like a part of the game, My suggestion would be to have a seperate page similar just like multiplayer / arcade has, where the chat is in the center of the screen with tabs so that you can be in diffrent channels etc.
Also you can still keep the old chat system for PM's, since it gives that "msn" or "skype" feeling which is kind of nice. but the channels feel somewhat dead as it is now, you always have the multiplayer screen in the background which is kind of dull, instead there could be an dedicated channel/chat page with intergrated minigames next to chat channel such as battle ship or tetris.
2: Clans - alot of people have been waiting for this and its really boring that its not around yet, clan tags should be presented in a good looking manner such as [ASdF] or similar before the name tag itself, and you could go alot further, for example you could have clan leagues, giving clans an extension to the multiplayer option, Where you could compete in 1v1 and 2v2 for your clan. an individual league wich would make competitive gaming bigger. reward top clans at the end of each season with stuff like profile pictures and beta keys, invitations to events or good deals in blizzstore..something atleast. Clans could have a max-member cap but could be able to have an A and B squad, something monitored and organized by the clan leader. which in its turns could have rules such as you "you cannot transfere a player from a squad to another more than 1 time per week" etc.
Clan channels are also important imo, and there should be more futures than chat 2012, you should be able to organize inhouse tournaments with brackets intergrated in bnet, you should be able to enable players voice communication in the chat channel so that you can have a channel where you can sit and talk to you clan mates even if your in a game and so. Similar to a skype call but intergrated and where the channel admin can mute or allow mic on people in the channel. Clans should be able to have a "clan page" with a custom logo, statistics and roster information, a hang out for clan members where you can gain archievements and work for rewards such as profile pictures, decals, diffrent ingame UI's, Character models and so on. For example an archivement for the clan could be "nuke em" and have the objectivs "In clan league games build and nuke 5000 units" and the reward could be a diffrent model of the nuke itself without making it look redicilus ofc. or why not diffrent win diffrent unit portraits ingame or maybe win a diffrent voice like tastosis going "not enough minerals, man" there's tons of things that could be done.
3: if you play solo - 2v2, 3v3 or 4v4 and you meet a really nice guy/girl that you'd like to continue to play with, why not make it easy, at the end of the game couldn't there be an option like "want to quene with your current ally?" with a yes / no box, if both hit yes then automaticly set them in a party and quene for them. or something similar, just throwing it out there.
4: why not have a tournament tab? - I mean its a competitive game where we want to embrace e-sport but we have no online tournaments intergrated? its soon 2013 guys. Here's how it could work: Blizzard could monthly (one day before the ladder reset) host 1 tournament for each and every league where players just hit the "play tournament" button and get quened up as a qualifier, during qualifiing rounds there could be single elimination before after winning x-ammount of games u get thrown into an bracket, Your then enrolled in the tournament the game will automaticly start when both players hit "ready", you have 5 minutes between each new match to hit ready before W/O and 2 minutes to hit ready between the games once you already play an oponent (say in a best of 3). the tournament should be fast phased and designed to be played in one evening. with a 30 minute break at some point. Games could automaticly be decided if the game would continue for over x-ammount of time(1 hour or so), looking at army value, income and units / buildings killed or w.ever and summing them up. to keep the phase of the tournament up
It could then be posted on your page as "tournament statistics" with individual rewards and perhaps some hardware for the winner, i mean something like a mouse or signed mousepad. maybe a collectors edition figurine or w.ever. No punishments for w/o or leaving players but instead embrace those who stay and fight and reward them.
The same system could be used for Partners/sponsors that want to host tournaments, each and every tournament could get an page with information and a place for a banner or so. Basically intergrating tournaments into the bnet engine.
5:The names - I am one of those people that dont like the fact that my nick cannot be unique. I dont know why we can have the same names but its really redicilus seeing "15 HuskY" and so on. it has always worked fine with unique names even in sc/bw. why change this? imagine in WoW if 200 people were named Executer running around, i mean it takes alot of fun out of the game because in one way you are gaming for your REP, being someone, even if its just being known for being friendly and not a good player its still worth being unique in my opinion. U dont want to end up in a final seeing 3 people with the same name has already been eliminated from a tourney you won, or someone with the same name as you sit and shout "N*gger" in the chat.
6: Intergrated streams - would be nice and the option to set up your stream in the game would be even better. What i mean is for example you could have a "Stream" tab in "settings" where you can enter your justin.tv adress and if you go online sc2 would autmaticly sense this and add you to a streamer list. Also when it senses that your online, there could be a video recorder icon on your name in the chatroom, then people could just right click you pick "View stream" and it could be shown in the intergrated stream player. People could be able to report streams as innapropiate and you could shut down the rights of them using the intergrated stream system. also you could have a license agrement that you dont take responsibilty for what's being streamed when people choose to open the stream player for the first time. also the mature language option is obviously needed.
Thanks for reading,
And please remember its only suggestions, i am not saying that it should be like this and that, i just want to get people thinking and maybe even finding a better solution.
On October 24 2012 17:55 Tailss wrote: If you were able to spectate other people in client, wouldnt that hurt streaming a lot?
Short answer, you could have audio from casters ingame. They could potentially add ads and banners to make sure this functionality is revenue neutral (unlike some 20% tax cuts *snorts*). The only thing that straight up wouldn't work anymore is camera views and lets face it, much of the joy of watching DH comes from the amazing production..
On October 24 2012 17:55 Tailss wrote: If you were able to spectate other people in client, wouldnt that hurt streaming a lot?
That is a potential problem, but if they implemented something similar to League of Legend's system I don't imagine it hurting the streams that much.
In LoL, you can spectate people that are (in SC2) mutual friends with you. Additionally, Riot generates a series of "high level" games that people can spectate. Thus, unless you are friends with TLO for example, you wouldn't be able to consistently watch his games, and so instead would go to his stream to both see his play first hand and listen to the music that he enjoys (sick playlist).
On October 24 2012 17:54 Justone wrote: 4: why not have a tournament tab? - I mean its a competitive game where we want to embrace e-sport but we have no online tournaments intergrated? its soon 2013 guys. Here's how it could work: Blizzard could monthly (one day before the ladder reset) host 1 tournament for each and every league where players just hit the "play tournament" button and get quened up as a qualifier, during qualifiing rounds there could be single elimination before after winning x-ammount of games u get thrown into an bracket, Your then enrolled in the tournament the game will automaticly start when both players hit "ready", you have 5 minutes between each new match to hit ready before W/O and 2 minutes to hit ready between the games once you already play an oponent (say in a best of 3). the tournament should be fast phased and designed to be played in one evening. with a 30 minute break at some point. Games could automaticly be decided if the game would continue for over x-ammount of time(1 hour or so), looking at army value, income and units / buildings killed or w.ever and summing them up. to keep the phase of the tournament up
It could then be posted on your page as "tournament statistics" with individual rewards and perhaps some hardware for the winner, i mean something like a mouse or signed mousepad. maybe a collectors edition figurine or w.ever. No punishments for w/o or leaving players but instead embrace those who stay and fight and reward them.
The same system could be used for Partners/sponsors that want to host tournaments, each and every tournament could get an page with information and a place for a banner or so. Basically intergrating tournaments into the bnet engine.
Ok i'm kind of mad. People are still insisting for a priced name change.
This is such a basic feature it's just incredible that it's not already in the game. But what boggles my mind even more is that people ask to PAY for that. It mak es me mad because if people are asking themselves to get ripped of think of what companies can get with, paying for gamemode, even for a race, whatever.
like real chat channels, clan support, bnet tournaments like wc3, support to ladder vs a certain race when u dont find people to custom against (like u want to play vs race x but only find y on ladder and have not one to custom against) and make it that when i log in i am not feeling like...oh boy i am alone T_T
ladder maps should be looked at and maps who are not in tournaments should not be in the map pool, if gsl has like xyz in the pool, ladder should adapt for example
On October 24 2012 17:55 Tailss wrote: If you were able to spectate other people in client, wouldnt that hurt streaming a lot?
That is a potential problem, but if they implemented something similar to League of Legend's system I don't imagine it hurting the streams that much.
In LoL, you can spectate people that are (in SC2) mutual friends with you. Additionally, Riot generates a series of "high level" games that people can spectate. Thus, unless you are friends with TLO for example, you wouldn't be able to consistently watch his games, and so instead would go to his stream to both see his play first hand and listen to the music that he enjoys (sick playlist).
Well in that case it becomes useless imo, because most people don't have pro friends, and I don't see the point of watching your non pro friends playing (except for the fun maybe)..
Great topic! What i would like is an in-game team system that allows you to create and manage teams, chat with your teammates, practice with them and maybe have tournaments with other teams. All without leaving sc2 for a second. Being a silver player, i don't think it would benefit me the most, but i believe that it would make sc2 more social and all around enjoyable.
On October 24 2012 17:55 Tailss wrote: If you were able to spectate other people in client, wouldnt that hurt streaming a lot?
That is a potential problem, but if they implemented something similar to League of Legend's system I don't imagine it hurting the streams that much.
In LoL, you can spectate people that are (in SC2) mutual friends with you. Additionally, Riot generates a series of "high level" games that people can spectate. Thus, unless you are friends with TLO for example, you wouldn't be able to consistently watch his games, and so instead would go to his stream to both see his play first hand and listen to the music that he enjoys (sick playlist).
Well in that case it becomes useless imo, because most people don't have pro friends, and I don't see the point of watching your non pro friends playing (except for the fun maybe)..
Yeah, I personally don't really see the advantage of having a method viewing your friends in game. We all have a friend or two that are really good and its fun to watch them, but why not just watch the best?
Even tournament games, being able to spectate the game yourself takes so much more energy than just enjoying the game being played out and casted.
On October 24 2012 18:13 Die4Ever wrote: I still don't see the appeal of in client streaming...like at all, I would put it last out of this list
It's like that feature that you can immediately say should be included but then once its introduced, you realize that it probably didn't live up to what you were expecting.
The only in client streaming that in my mind makes any scene were the DotA2 ones during their Invitational that awarded prizes to fans that were spectating the game on their team's side. But even that can be implemented without having to use a similar feature.
I should have voted for free multiplayer. I think that's the best way to grow spectatorship. Viewers need to be able to play the game to understand and appreciate it
I don't understand why so many people voted for in game way to view professionals. Who would honestly really use that? I know me and the 20-30 people that play/used to play certainly wouldnt use it or care about it. Theres plenty of streams and Starcraft shows for you to do that with. I think people should think way more carefully.
Personally I'm torn between better customs and sc2 F2P multiplayer.
More than anything I just want all my friends to be playing sc2. And those 2 are the things that have the best chance of achieving that.
Give us a seperate ladder for each of the four race options (yes random included) so that we can have Zerg by diamond Terran be gold and so on...
Also give us the option to restrict what race to play against so if we want we can play Protoss. Yes this will increase queue time, but if we want this will allow us to practice using the ladder.
I would LOVE to see in game tournaments hosted through Battle.net in client
Finally it would be kinda cool to be able to sign up for a best of 3 match in ladder as well.
On October 24 2012 17:55 Tailss wrote: If you were able to spectate other people in client, wouldnt that hurt streaming a lot?
That is a potential problem, but if they implemented something similar to League of Legend's system I don't imagine it hurting the streams that much.
In LoL, you can spectate people that are (in SC2) mutual friends with you. Additionally, Riot generates a series of "high level" games that people can spectate. Thus, unless you are friends with TLO for example, you wouldn't be able to consistently watch his games, and so instead would go to his stream to both see his play first hand and listen to the music that he enjoys (sick playlist).
Well in that case it becomes useless imo, because most people don't have pro friends, and I don't see the point of watching your non pro friends playing (except for the fun maybe)..
It is actually a very useful feature in DOTA 2.
Let's say that you want to learn a new hero, Dark Seer for example. You can read guides and such, you can practice with him, but if you like you can also watch live games of people playing that character. Watch a few games (with 5 minute time delay of course) and see what more experienced players are actually doing with him, awesome!
There's obviously also the ability to watch pro tournaments from within the client itself, even buying tickets and team pennants from inside the game. Way better than watching a stream on Twitch, even though that's also generally made as a free alternative to what's in the DOTA 2 client. Paying to watch from within the game client (complete with commentary) is so much better than paying extra for a 1080p stream.
Back on SC2, let's say that you're a gold level Protoss who wants to advance to platinum and then diamond. Watching pro streams is useful, but you feel it might also help to see how "normal" people at those levels are playing. Well, in-game viewing would be a great learning tool for this. Rather than going to a website to dig around for uploaded replays you can instead find a game in progress filtered by league and maybe even matchup (ie - I want to watch a diamond level PvT).
It is a good for both learning and for entertainment. I think it would only be a positive feature for SC2 if it could be implemented.
Simplified Custom games area with individually named games. (Helps map makers too) this is pretty important I would like to add if I could a subnote in there for custom match making that is unranked such as I want a PvT on Entombed Valley and it will such for a terran player who wants a game or something to that effect.
I voted for other. I think the most important thing are the little things they can change to make you feel like SC2 isn*t such a lonely game. Maybe more 2v2 3v3 4v4 achievements, separate ladder for party teams(so I don*t get crushed when playing them while random), name change so you can be on the same team as your friends, better maps, nice HOTS units( not removing units because they are not yet balanced). Anyway, I realise this isn*t one thing but do things so the casual player doesn*t feel so alone in the game. Stats would also help, I*m ok with seeing 2 wins 15 losses PvZ but not knowing how much I Iose really sucks, makes me not want to play ladder. I really want to play ladder but every time it just feels like you are in this weird silent game and you get plus or minus whatever points and that*s it. I don*t care about points and leagues, I care about having fun with SC2 whether it is ladder, custom or whatever games. I LOVE the pro scene and watch it A LOT but I know I don*t want to be a gamer, I just want to have some fun with SC2 and watch the pros do the amazing micro things. If I could have fun with SC2 it would be just awesome. Love TEAM LIQUID!
None of the items on the list are "must haves" for me.
I'd like, in order of priority: 1) An inclusive, social, Starcraft 2 team league for all skill levels (akin to joining your local tennis club or something). We don't need Blizzard to make this for us, but they could do it.
2) More training tools vs AI, like blink micro, or practising against an AI opponent who will do a particular timing attack like 2 port banshee, 4 gate, 7 gate blink, etc. This is better done by the community as the game evolves, but perhaps Blizzard can make it easy for us in some way, eg a tool to design, save and share build orders for the AI to execute against me.
3) Ladder maps to be drawn from regular community engagement. eg 1 new Crux map, 1 new ESV map every season.
4) Separate MMR for each race in 1v1.
5) Nerf forge expand PvZ because I think it makes boring games. Buff something else to make it balanced. Perhaps mothership core achieves this already.
6) Easy clan nametags
7) When ladder matches me up against someone, it would be fun to know if I've played them before, and possible what the record is. eg rather than RoboBoogie vs Sheth (strongly favoured), it might say RoboBoogie (0) vs Sheth (8). Something to feel more connected to others on BNET.
My (unrealistic) wishlist. Wanted to make a new thread but too many of these popping up lately. So I post them here instead.
CHAT CHANNELS - The user list needs to be more compact. The rows should not be much larger than the font size for the player name. Otherwise the user list becomes very uncomfortable to use for channels with more than 10 users. - Option to display timestamp for messages (you have a cog wheel in the top right already). Alternatively display the timestamp when hovering over the text. Uses: Need to track time on messages like "brb in 10 minutes" and need timestamp in screenshots of chats as proof in online tournaments. - There need to be owners, moderators and possibly other privileged users of chat channels. Big public or tournament-organizing channels are not possible otherwise. - Have internal chat rooms with a whitelist or password protection - Have something like a chat-centric mode where the chat channel is the main element of the UI (and not some popup that you have to tediously resize to an appropriate size)
LOADING SCREEN - Resolve the breakdown of Random players on the loading screen. There is no situation where the concealment of this leads to a better, more strategic game. - Mark possible spawn position combinations on the map OR mark them ingame on the minimap.
PROFILES - Allow name changes in reasonable, regular intervals. Not being able to play with your correct name (due to a clanchange) is a unnecessary burden for players. - Allow profiles to be customized with user content (gallery, tweets, VODs, live streams, replay of the week). Possibly charge money from user for this (Blizzard provides the space, checks that content is appropriate and charging for it to stop trolls from uploading trash). Makes it possible to enhance visibility of players and makes profiles more valuable which other people actually want to see. - Allow to create "clubs", e.g. TeamLiquid fanclub, Thorzain fanclub, Sad Zealot fanclub. Can subscribe to news, tweets, facebook statuses, replays that can be placed in various places in the UI. Have club chat channels. Encourages people to gather up and hang around. - Allow to browse profiles from other regions. Allow to view ladders (especially the Grandmaster ladder) from other regions. Makes the battle.net more connected. Hey, MarineKing is in the same battle.net as I am, let's check his profile and see how he is doing!
CUSTOM GAMES - Host game should be the default setting or make it more distinguishable to joining a game. Worst case is that you want to host a game and accidently join a game instead where the countdown starts instantly. This never happened before 1.5 and in other games. - Being able to cancel game on countdown. The only way to do it now is to logout from Battle.net during the countdown. It is frustrating but its a lot worse to quit after the game starts. - Indicator for ping (latency and latency variance) to host. If it is not there, players will instead make up a crude estimate of it. - Allow to choose the region for the server (US West, US East, Europe, ...). With the introduction of global play, something like this will be integrated. There will probably be an automatic selection, but let the players override it if necessary. Especially the ability to choose between US West and US East with the introduction of SC2.
TOURNAMENT INTEGRATION - Allow tournament hosts to organize their tournament via Battle.net. They upload their ruleset to a format recognized by Battle.net. Then, brackets can be viewed ingame. Support various map selection modes and do the map selection process via the UI. - Game outcome can be automatically determined and uploaded back to the tournament host, replays are automatically saved. - Eligibility constraints can be determined by the tournament host. - Also, Blizzard organizes its own tournaments. - Allow not only cups, but also full-fledged leagues. 1on1 sunday tournaments! Bronze League tournament! Silver League tournaments! Clan leagues! - This will increase the number of players playing in tournaments, adding exciting thrills outside of the ladder play. It helps tournament organizers that support your game. - Some kind of tournament tracker. Players just need to use the tournament tracker and sign-up for tournaments ingame.
ARCADE/MAPMAKING - Open game list with filter options. The arcade system is a good idea but it needs to be complemented with a simple open game list! Reintroduce gamenames (make games joinable by invite or gamename). - While the flexibility is great, common tasks as modifying abilities, changing unit stats or adding units to a building should be as easy in the WC3 editor. - Should be able to easily publish a map for every region. - Decouple your matchmaking services from SC2 and allow it for arcade games as well (what would have happened if DotA had its own integrated ladder in WC3?). - Documentation.
WATCHING AND CONTENT - Building tab, etc. - Being able to observe ingame (a la HLTV, WTV, DotA2). Ingame advertising to create an incentive for players and tournament organizers to provide their games to the public. "This marine split is presented to you by Mareeen Insurances". - Starcraft Radio. Hey, let's listen to the last State Of The Game episode while I ladder. Of course, this is already possible with the audio player in the background, but Battle.net could be the platform for people that never knew about this in the first place. - Place Twitch/own3d streams where appropriate. - Export game status data! In The International, you can check on the website of game status (Heroes and equipment) while the game is going on. Allow this for SC2. Tournament organizers can find crazy new ideas with it to enhance the stream experience with various overlays. - Have an additional site to find the "Highlight Match Of The Day" and current games. Then you need only one click to follow live action. - Can do a lot of stuff combined with the point TOURNAMENT INTEGRATION.
REPLAYS - Don't require you to logout of Battle.net to watch replays of an older version. - Give replays a better default naming scheme (NOT "Daybreak LE (341)) - Integrate basic replay management (see SC2Gears). - It would be cool if some stats could be exported from replays (basically only actions are recorded right now). The community could built very cool stuff from it. Helps people to really dig into replays and analyze their builds. - Can have audio tracks associated with replays. When I skip in the replay, it skips to the corresponding audio part. - Replay Cloud. Make it easy to share replays or make replays public. Why not have a replay of the week section while we are at it?
BATTLE.NET FORUMS - Separate forums by language, not by region and language. Make language switch possible without editing the URL.
There's a couple of things that I would LOVE to be added to this game, some were listed and some weren't. (Listed in order of importance) #1: Rewards For Laddering - At the moment there is no incentive to play on the ladder other than to 'get better'. Even trying to get a promotion is based upon your willpower. All you get at the end of a day is a one-off message that says 'Congratulations, you have been promoted'. This game is very hard to enjoy when you have to motivate yourself to play at all. A good system to add to give some purpose to the endless and lonely ladder grind that is today is to add a visual reward system. Basically, whenever you win, your ladder points that you earned will also be added to your 'BB - Blizzard Balance' (we'll call it that for now), but it is NOT deducted when you lose. The visual possibilities are endless. For Terran, imagine having flame decals on the side of each one, or having a smiley face on top of your Planetary Fortress while it massacres your enemies Marines? For Zerg you could have a fireworks effect when you inject with your Queen, or the SC1 build animation for your structures? For Protoss there's changes to Chrono Boosts, a knife that materialises when you transform a gateway into a Warp Gate and other things. Maybe the hellion decal could change from orange to blue when Pre-Igniter is done? Just a suggestion because it might be unfair to see blue-flame done when they haven't engaged yet.
Colours could be just as good, but in order to do this Blizzard would have to make 1v1's have one green and one yellow, for example. Then other colours could be added in, in case you have tinted green creep and enemy green zerglings walk onto it. This would make it very confusing, but if that factor was removed then you could have all sorts of colour schemes. One particular one I had in mind was having tinted creep, so you could have dark navy blue or deep red. All of these are simple changes that add visual variety to the game, without making it impossible to determine if that is a marine or a marauder wearing an overly massive top hat with a cape and walking stick.
#2: Free to Play Multiplayer - To enable friends to get involved without shelling out 60$ for some 'elite' game they have heard of and looks confusing to them. Not sure how it would be implemented (only able to play one race? Limiting units would be stupid) Outcomes: Attracts a MASSIVE playerbase which will fuel pro gamers and generate interest, which equals more sales. Good for Blizzard and sponsors financially.
#3: Balancing issues - Giving a serious look at each and every single unit in the game. Apply buffs/nerfs so that NO unit is treated as 'phased' or generally bad. Examples of units that aren't used unless in very specific situations; Ravens, Hydralisks, Reapers (being reworked though), Carriers, and Void Rays for example. Some units that could use some reworking; check ItWhoSpeaks' articles on battle.net forums and reddit about tuning the current balance state. Simply changing units will add spice to this already stale game. Sure, 2 or 3 units are being added to each race in HotS, but compared to the other 20+ existing units, this seems very insignificant. If, say, WoL got patched tomorrow where Siege Tanks had less supply and could overkill (used very fast missiles), Terran mech would be significantly changed so that more tanks were utilised, and positional play was dominant again, instead of the more common Terran deathball being seen recently.
There is one issue with this poll imo, the people who are on TL in general are very esports oriented hence it is obvious replay function with friends is on top. However for me, and also possibly the 4/5 people that quit playing the game from what I could get from the reddit thread sees the big problem to CASUAL players is that, there is no way to play casually, with friends, have fun, find new fun exciting UMS maps. Creating some kind of lobby system and chat system functionality tied to it, and make games searchable, where you see number of people in lobbies, can make lobby names can chat around before game starts with randoms, make friends etc would be what we need. Right now Battle.net just feels dead when you log in, there is a ladder button and that's about it.
Kinda sad to see how far down the latency issues are. Yeah all that other stuff would help fans and casuals, but at the end of the day if anyone in the world could play on the korean server with decent latency eu/na meta wouldn't always be weeks, and sometimes months, behind the korean meta which would make foreigner vs korean a lot closer. The fact that a game released in 2010 has a worse netcode/latency than a lot of games released before that (including bw) is really fucking sad and just shows how completely talent free some people at blizzard are.
I don't think we need tons casuals playing this game, that may help blizzard make money and whatnot, but for the game as an esports it's actually better that a lot of people don't play but still enjoy watching. Because eventually a lot of westerners will get tired of LoL, and there is almost no one watching competitive LoL who doesn't play, star 2 will never have that issue.
On October 24 2012 19:08 Lorch wrote: I don't think we need tons casuals playing this game, that may help blizzard make money and whatnot, but for the game as an esports it's actually better that a lot of people don't play but still enjoy watching.
Why is that so, I mean sure in a perfect world it might be so. However, at least for me playing the game, even casually makes it more exciting to watch the game, and it makes perfect sense that being a dedicated player makes for a more dedicated viewer. Being a player does not mean one is not going to watch the game. But, not being a player does increase your chances of stopping to watch the game after some time which is true for many of us. What is the problem with casuals, I know noone who plays the game casuallyish anymore. However, back in the sc1 days most players even in the long run were casuals enjoying the game in public lobbies having fun chatting and ranting at each other.
On October 24 2012 19:08 Lorch wrote: I don't think we need tons casuals playing this game, that may help blizzard make money and whatnot, but for the game as an esports it's actually better that a lot of people don't play but still enjoy watching.
Why is that so, I mean sure in a perfect world it might be so. However, at least for me playing the game, even casually makes it more exciting to watch the game, and it makes perfect sense that being a dedicated player makes for a more dedicated viewer. Being a player does not mean one is not going watch the game. But, not being a player does increase your chances of stopping to watch the game after some time which is true for many of us. What is the problem with casuals, I know noone who plays the game casuallyish anymore. However, back in the sc1 days most players even in the long run were casuals enjoying the game in public lobbies having fun chatting and ranting at each other.
I'm not saying casuals don't help, just that this is not something our scene needs to stay healthy. Of course these are things that would help and no one can argue that a higher player base would harm the game, but tbh I would much rather have them focus on issues that actually affect pro gamers before they worry about casuals.
There are some really long posts with a lot of quality and legit suggestions in this thread. And it is started by a big name in the community. I really, really hope blizzard took their time to read through and note a few of these posts. This "crisis" has really brought the community closer to polish up our beloved game.
Blizzard wanted feedback and suggestions, now it is impossible to browse sc2 related sites without getting that. I'm getting all excited about the future of this game! Wooh~
On October 24 2012 19:08 Lorch wrote: I don't think we need tons casuals playing this game, that may help blizzard make money and whatnot, but for the game as an esports it's actually better that a lot of people don't play but still enjoy watching.
Why is that so, I mean sure in a perfect world it might be so. However, at least for me playing the game, even casually makes it more exciting to watch the game, and it makes perfect sense that being a dedicated player makes for a more dedicated viewer. Being a player does not mean one is not going watch the game. But, not being a player does increase your chances of stopping to watch the game after some time which is true for many of us. What is the problem with casuals, I know noone who plays the game casuallyish anymore. However, back in the sc1 days most players even in the long run were casuals enjoying the game in public lobbies having fun chatting and ranting at each other.
I'm not saying casuals don't help, just that this is not something our scene needs to stay healthy. Of course these are things that would help and no one can argue that a higher player base would harm the game, but tbh I would much rather have them focus on issues that actually affect pro gamers before they worry about casuals.
I'm sure that's personally true for you and alot of other people, especially here. However for the vast majority who don't play 1v1 ladder or such, there is huge problem with this argument. The question that then comes to mind, what is healthy. A small community with people just playing to be as competitive as possible. Or a larger one, where the same amount or more play competitively and an even larger base play the game to have fun, play around and basically play a game.
While the first one indeed can be healthy, it's rather difficult to imagine it being sustainable in the long run, if we count this moment as it being healthy. Just imagine how much bigger grander and healthier it would be in the second situation. While many of the mentioned changes would help sustain the current viewership to a large extent, it would eventually fall off. The second case does not exclude that, especially as the die hard competitive fans will still be in the game as there are no alternatives to begin with and even more would flock to the game as there actually is the option to have fun with the game without being competitive.
I want the default map selection for custom games to be "currently open games waiting for players". That would fix a lot of the problems we as the custom map community are facing. As right now, the custom map scene in SC2 is still dead, while the custom map scene in WC3 is thriving.
I actually just make and account to write my idea. Sorry for my english. Some people just don't play all the day SC2 or they are doing other things like doing homework or working in something... when this happen, some people would like to stay conected in Sc2 just for talk with friends, In thats perspective i dont have a really powerfull computer that can't just have the SC2 program open and use other programas in the same time, but would use sc2 like a launcher windows that can have all my friends, chats, replays, watch other pros playing... its like "this is going on right now, in this moment". and could give the oportunity to stay close for news, online events, the possibility to make like a global (and i mean global, no just na or eu..) network for all the people that we love this game.
I voted for the spectating option, but I'm not so sure considering how lacklustre stream viewership numbers have been recently. viOLet had ~900 viewers with a 1080p stream + webcam and amazing play. Would people really be interested in this? Its cool certainly but will it bring in new players and encourage people to log in to SCII? Perhaps the free multiplayer option might allow the game to become massive in China or something...
I don't care about name changing and I don't know why I should pay for a name change, it seems like a trivial process. I don't care about tournament promotion, it's not gonna make my personal playing experience any more exciting. I don't care about LAN. I don't care about ladder. I'm way too bad for balance to have a serious effect on my game. I'm not interested in watching replays with my friends. Global play would be great I guess. I don't need the game to be free but the features that come with a free 2 play game might be fun, for example, collecting points by playing and spending them in a skin shop might be a good incentive for people to play. I can watch streams and chat with other people all day.
[x] Simplified Custom games area with individually named games.
All day everyday.
Also, for me, there is way too much emphasis on managing a very shallow economy. It's what made me stop playing and it's the reason I will not be playing hots. A real incentive for me to actually play would be to completely revamp the economy managment portion of this game. So many activities in this game are trivial and the only reason they're remotely difficult is because of the quantity of other trivial things I have to take care of at the same time. I'd much prefer for these activities to be qualitatively difficult than quantitatively difficult.
why poll this, every single option you have there and more should have been in the game at the very latest a year after its release, our gaming standards sure have dropped over the past ten years if we've gotten to beg for game features that any common sense developer should put into a game with so much interest, let alone Blizzard, judging by what they used to be capable of once upon a time.
I don't think any of your proposition will help the situation. Games do not succeed based on features, they succeed because of gameplay. Features are built on successful game.
For example: - A game attracts plenty of players and viewers, implement an ingame stream. - Many people play the game competitively, implement a shared replay-watching thing. - People spend a lot of time searching/discussing games, implement a better chatting system. etc...
If no one plays the game, its not because of poor features, its because the actual game sucks.
A part of the problem with sc2/battlenet 2.0 is the feeling you are alone. Small change that would make the battle.net feel more alive would be a post game lobby instead of the score screen. Scores and stats should still be there, but the main focus should be with a simple chat window where all the players/spectators would be after the game. I know I could just chat with the opponent, but that is an extra step that many people are just not willing to take. Additional options like "remake with same players" would be nice. This would make the experience of playing much more social.
I honestly don't care if there is a way to view games in the client. I think it would be cool, especially to introduce people to professional level games that don't usually pay attention to that. I think balance in the 1v1 matchups is most important to me, even though that may not be what's best for the game. I don't see why Blizzard can't accomplish all of these though.
I want BIG CHAT SCREEN to open when I log in, and it has to say example. "Starcraft II FIN-1"... So people who are new could actually ask help from people from same country (everyone doesnt know how to talk english), or you could find 2on2 partner who can speak same language as you... Or you could play custom games with people who are from same country as you... this was on BW and WC3 and it was golden...
I want all features that enable and encourage social interaction in battle.net.
For example:
Clan Support (is coming afaik)
Get a clan ladder, where you search a game with three players and then three 1v1s determine if you win a game as a team
Automated/clan tournament systems
Challenge other players in best-of-threes/fives whatever
Make it easier to coach - Watching replays together - Play specific parts of a replay again (is coming afaik) - Make an ingame coaching section where you can see what coaches are online and you can request an hour (propably a new revenue stream for blizzard?)
Let me watch my friends ladder games ingame with a delay of 5 minutes
A facebookish social dashboard, with - Information about promotions and achievements of my friends - Statistics of my friends (like Player X is on a winning streak with 5 games in a row, or Player Y has 5 wins and 2 loses today in 1v1 ladder) - Link small tournaments and challenges onto the dashboard - Information about what UMS games my friends suggest (like Player Z gave 5 stars to Whatever-TowerDefence)
Improve chat channels (with mods like on twitch)
Get voice chat channels
Get mobile apps that connect you on your phone with battle.net chat, so you can see who is online before starting your pc (steam has such apps and I always check who is up for dota2 before starting the pc / those apps would also benefit diablo and wow)
Get a better report/praise system and show the results on profile (like player x has 5 mentions of good manner and 3 mentions of helpful/coaching..)
Integrate a browser and link battle.net forums, teamliquid, liquipedia, youtube channels and reddit there
Give players custom avatars (I know... not very blizzard-esque but would do good for being an individual in a social group)
There might be much more... Just make it easy to interact with friends and others, so I like being in battle.net and not close it immediately after losing three games in a row because there is nothing else to do besides starting a game.
I don't think any of your proposition will help the situation. Games do not succeed based on features, they succeed because of gameplay. Features are built on successful game.
For example: - A game attracts plenty of players and viewers, implement an ingame stream. - Many people play the game competitively, implement a shared replay-watching thing. - People spend a lot of time searching/discussing games, implement a better chatting system. etc...
If no one plays the game, its not because of poor features, its because the actual game sucks.
No? How the fuck can LoL be successful then? oO It's more about how much it costs actually.
I voted for "Fix XvX matchup and balance" however I did so mostly because it most fits what I want done. What I actually mean is that I want the design of SC2 on a more basic level and the design of the races changed, to such a degree that it alters the way the game is played, for the better.
I'm reluctant to post all my ideas on that because the issue itself is probably deserving of a thread of its own. If there was one idea alone I had to pick though, I say I'd want proper high ground mechanics.
High ground advantage is nearly non existent in the practical sense, it is just vision that becomes nullified due to air units and detectors becoming available by the mid game. This is a huge shame because proper high ground advantage was the one thing that worked against deathballs.
What proper high ground advantage does is allow a smaller sized army to fight against a larger sized army, and free up supply for harass and multi-task. Just the mere fact that you risk losing your whole army in one huge engagement to a lesser force, while you are also getting harassed, should be enough incentive for people to split up their army.
Instead of having huge army vs army engagements that decide the game in one moment, we could have small, medium or large skirmishes all across the maps. Focus shifts to out maneuvering your opponent, not brute forcing him, small incremental successes become larger and stronger benefits over time, but since fights are smaller its easier to come back since you don't lose all your army at once.
I know that people will argue however that this leads to boring gameplay and stalemates, I disagree, though it depends on map design. Take a map like Shakuras Plateau or MetroPolis, those maps, due to the ease of taking 5-6 bases a securing them via one or two narrow chokes, naturally encourage a turtly split map situation, this happens even now in SC2 and has nothing to do with high ground, just with maps.
What proper high ground advantage does though, is force you to attack in a different area. You can't just brute force your way trough a siege line setup on the high ground, so you instead try to walk around it, or drop, or both. In the grand scheme of things the best way to handle such a game will always be to fight for the superior position, and that will always be done by moving around, both for attacker and for defender, its only the slower the less mechanically proficient players that won't be able to keep up and prefer to turtle, but if they do so they give up map awareness and position in the late mid and late game.
However, for this to work, not only would we need new maps with the new high ground mechanic in mind, we would also need proper zone control units. Everyone will instantly think of the siege tank now, but the siege tanks have been heavily nerfed, they no longer fulfil the role of zone control as well as they did, especially against Protoss. But at least terrans have zone control units, zergs don't have any proper zone control units that will synergize with high ground mechanics, and protoss don't have a proper unit either, the colossus is too mobile, has too little range and is much more vulnerable to air for it to count.
Also other races would need to be redesigned for this to fit, but I believe it would be worth it. The reward of redesigning high ground mechanic would be that deathball vs deathball games finally die out for good, and you have only proper games, games where the better player was the one that managed to pull his opponent apart by running circles around him, games where the better player managed to harass on multiple fronts for 15 minutes while also defending his own bases.
Here's my list from what I see the most important to less important. All of them have been talked about at various times, but I feel like they are all worth mentioning over and over until they happen.
1) Revamp the Arcade so when you click on it you are taken the the "open games" section, except people can make their own titles (kind of like UMS games in BW/WC3). This is important to make Starcraft have a bigger replay factor for people that aren't into 1v1 games. It also gives map makers a reason to make maps because people will actually play them. SC2 has an amazing map editor, and it needs to be put to proper use.
2) Make Starcraft social. There should be a huge chat window with people looking for anything from clan recruitment to general discussion. I feel like this would also encourage more people to continue laddering rather than alt+f4ing out of frustration. I know after a bad loss I'd like to talk to people about it or join a custom with randoms.
3) Make non-ranked ladder free to play (and include 1v1, 2v2, 3v3, and 4v4), and charge people to upgrade to ranked ladder, arcade, campaign, or package them together (maybe $10 each or $25 for all three). People have also mentioned skins as a possibility. This might not be the best free-to-play model mentioned, but it at least makes it so you aren't bombarded with map-hackers when dealing with the ranked ladder.
4) LAN Support for Tournaments. This is huge, and I know that it is worthwhile for Blizzard to do just so their fans say "They listened!!!" It's very self explanatory, and fixes most technical problems that occur at offline events.
5) Revamp some of the HotS units. I haven't played the beta yet, so I can't talk about balance, but as far as game design goes the new units are pretty boring (besides the viper/potentially the oracle). The new units that came in Brood War were fucking badass, and made people want to buy the game for them alone.
If you notice, the competitive changes are at the bottom of the list and this is because we don't have a Starcraft e-sports scene without the fans.
TL DR: Bring back UMS from BW, Make the game social with chat/clan support, some sort of F2P model, make HotS units badass so people are interested in the expansion.
Chat channels, for the love of god... Floating around in empty space is desolate and lonely which Blizz refuses to address properly.
After that I'd say screw their terrible custom game system and have people just host games normally like they did in bw. Basically.... make bnet 2.0 like bnet 1.0 but keep the automated match making ladder system.
A way to sell tickets in-game for tournaments so we can watch them in the client would be awesome. I don't mind paying. What i mind is getting lagged out by GSL on HD quality or MLK from 1080p
I voted "fix XvX matchup" not because I think they are imba but I hate to see "modern day" PvZ with winfestor brood vs the mothership. I want to see more back and forth play, not everytime the same boiling down to one vortex. There are other problems which are as severe as this one but I think PvZ is the outstanding example.
On October 24 2012 19:08 Lorch wrote: Kinda sad to see how far down the latency issues are. Yeah all that other stuff would help fans and casuals, but at the end of the day if anyone in the world could play on the korean server with decent latency eu/na meta wouldn't always be weeks, and sometimes months, behind the korean meta which would make foreigner vs korean a lot closer. The fact that a game released in 2010 has a worse netcode/latency than a lot of games released before that (including bw) is really fucking sad and just shows how completely talent free some people at blizzard are.
I can understand why you'd feel that way, but the netcode is in no way "worse" than it was back in the bw days. The only thing they could even hope to do to lower latency is to have more datacenters and even that won't actually accomplish much. They can't reinvent the internet, I took a random korean website off a top10 most popular korean sites list and pinged it. 367 ms. FPS players refuse to play under conditions worse than 80ms. The only way around this is to implement some kind of dead reckoning prediction which would be a nightmare. It would lead to units warping short differences when they're microd and even though you were sure you pulled that marine out of range of that baneling, it'll still melt 1/3rd of a second later.
If you want more a more stable connection, there might be things they can do, but that'll probably make delay worse not better.
For reference, I used kbs.co.kr which is some popular public service broadcaster.
I'm not a high level player so I won't complain bout balance. I just want LAN, it's just scary when someone is lagging during a big big tournament lol.
I am tired of people asking me if i am a turkish singer, or saying удачи or something when the game begins! I want stronger language barriers!
Bring on the koreans! I can take them all!!
Also, i think that global play would heavily benefit people with intercontinental relationships, and would make it easier for them to enoy starcraft together.
On second place i would put watcing replays together,
i would really want 1 ladder per race. I am to afraid to test f.ex. protoss because I would drop really long in the leagues if i did. Seperate ladders/mmr for ur races i would like
I voted other, I'd like to see seperate MMR for diffrent races i like to play terran but whenever i do i feel outclassed as my zerg play is just higher woul add more playability for me.
my second place vote would go for In game tournament promotion this should be higher imo
On October 24 2012 15:00 Liquid`Sheth wrote: Good question Gremlin119!
The same reason we can't simply say we want all of these! Because Blizzard has only a super tiny group of people devoted to SC2 and fixing the issues we want. So while we can secretly want all of these, we must choose to fix only one. You now have the same disadvantage Blizzard has.
is this serious or just an assumption? have a look at bnet2 and for how longs its been out: i dont know what the specialty about bnet2 is or what they want(ed) to improve but i guess they wanted to create a gaming area like steam where people can connect easily eventhough they are playing different games, but im highly disappointed if u consider the is game out for around 2.5years and it still lacks alot. for eg theres still no clan support, no shared replay, no real chat channels and if u dont have friends playing blizzard games u dont feel like playing a multiplayer game, i just remember the great days of diablo2 and wc3 with where u just got pushed into a public chatchannel and the overall layout looked alot more friendly. im just wondering why everything blizzard does, takes like forever eventhough the whole community is begging for it, i know this comparison came alot but just check out valve and dota2: the whole client looks so much more superior and whenever the community wants something implented they are trying hard to bring it in, and ive heard they dont have alot more employees.
but back to your poll: i mostly want ZVP and PVP to be fixed just becuz i feel like theres no multitasking going on and its alot about setting up the right unitmix and turtling up for their deathball.
On October 24 2012 20:13 weeA wrote: To get a larger user database they need to use the freemium model
The game can be free for the 3 games a day
10 games a day one time pay 10 $
20 + games a day 25 $
or something like this The database of players will improve and make starcraft 2 the biggest E - Sports in ever
That isn't how its done, no one will pay for that, it sounds nearly like a subscription model which everyone hates with a passion, and it isn't even a choice since you'll just play trough those 3 games instantly and then be forced to pay for more. This would hurt and discourage the hardcore gamers the most, the Koreans who train 40 + games per day will now have to pay a portion of the stream revenue just to play the game, it just won't work, its 100% idiotic.
If you want to make SC2 free to play it needs to be done in the following way. After the first year of release, reduce the cost of the game until it becomes free, have the brainiac statisticians at Blizzard study within what time period they make the maximum profit from sales and keep the game at 60 dollars or euro for that time period only, after that window of time expires, start reducing the price until the game becomes completely free. This should have already happened with WoL and this should be done for both HoTS and LoV.
Secondly, add a experience or point system similar to that of DoTA 2. You gain experience/points by playing games, wins will always grant more then losses. As you level up, you gain access to UI customization options, you can chose to add more terran, or protoss or zerg elements to your UI, as well as have various other ways to customize it yourself, and I'm not talking just about in game UI, I'm talking about the SC2 out of game UI as well.
Now, with the experience and/or points you get from playing games you can also buy skin customizations for your units and structures. These are purely cosmetic, they won't affect the stats of your units at all, and you can even chose to turn them off with an option in graphics.
These skins, you can either pay real money for them, or you buy them with points, and optimally there should be a way to allow custom made skins to be uploaded and sold, Blizzard gets a cut of course, but so does the skin creator.
Lastly, from time to time, as a sort of reward, you randomly get a skin for winning a game, leveling up, getting a promotion, unlocking a particularly hard 1 vs 1 achievement, getting a feat of strength etc.
as a P player the way the matchup goes at the moment is just taking the fun out of playing/spectating the game for me. Especially since alot of the players on ladder are zerg its just really frustrating.
I'm also all for being able to spectate games, that would be great.
On October 24 2012 19:49 hefa wrote: I would like to see a post game lobby.
A part of the problem with sc2/battlenet 2.0 is the feeling you are alone. Small change that would make the battle.net feel more alive would be a post game lobby instead of the score screen. Scores and stats should still be there, but the main focus should be with a simple chat window where all the players/spectators would be after the game. I know I could just chat with the opponent, but that is an extra step that many people are just not willing to take. Additional options like "remake with same players" would be nice. This would make the experience of playing much more social.
Post game lobby would be brilliant. Especially for team games.
When you play a long, exiting game that isn't just 4/6/8 maxed deathballs, you might want a rematch or perhaps to play again with the same group (if it was random teams). Currently Bnet makes this damn near impossible.
Team games in general could also use a lot of love. The maps are old and bad... and the map pool for team games really should be larger and more diverse than the 1v1 pool since they don't really need to be balanced, just fun.
I don't think any of your proposition will help the situation. Games do not succeed based on features, they succeed because of gameplay. Features are built on successful game.
For example: - A game attracts plenty of players and viewers, implement an ingame stream. - Many people play the game competitively, implement a shared replay-watching thing. - People spend a lot of time searching/discussing games, implement a better chatting system. etc...
If no one plays the game, its not because of poor features, its because the actual game sucks.
No? How the fuck can LoL be successful then? oO It's more about how much it costs actually.
LoL started adding features when there was big number of players. If you remember earlier versions, it didn't have that many features, graphics weren't that good, game was buggy and crushed all the time. But nevertheless players got sucked in, simply because it was fun. That is my whole point. If game is fun, you're not dependent on features, although they're required when it gets big.
watch replays with friends ... that was , what hold me 10 years to sc1 ... (hey dude i played an INSANE game come here watch it ... and watched some reps 100 times with 100 friends ...)
On October 24 2012 20:40 lem0ncake wrote: Not to be forced to play extremely safe every game just because I play terran and the other races can just all in me by pressing 1a.
troll detected xD its terran that 1a with marauders every other race
Hmm while there are many things I would like in that selection, I think I have to go with fixing the custom game interface. When my friends buy HOTS to play the campaign (probably) I will probably play customs with them but if there is no interface that provides the equivalent to bw/war3 then they will likely stop playing after a couple of months just like with SC2. (admitedly they didn't get SC2 right away and I was actually surprised when they bought it when they normally pirate everything)
On October 24 2012 20:40 CoR wrote: watch replays with friends ... that was , what hold me 10 years to sc1 ... (hey dude i played an INSANE game come here watch it ... and watched some reps 100 times with 100 friends ...)
On October 24 2012 20:40 lem0ncake wrote: Not to be forced to play extremely safe every game just because I play terran and the other races can just all in me by pressing 1a.
troll detected xD its terran that 1a with marauders every other race
I voted for a better (and global ladder) with lots of stats. Second would be spectating games in client. But they're all great idea.
But a question for everyone, what's wrong with the current open lobby system for custom games? Why do you need game names? Doesn't the game mode option already have this covered? The only reason I can think of is to make melee games which with a name that says "pros only".
I'm concerned about map pools in Heart of the Swarm being a repeat of map pools at the start of Wings of Liberty. Having professional players try to win prize money on things like Lost Temple and Steppes of War two years ago was pretty silly, but if something similar happens when the expansion releases then tournaments are going to have some big problems for a few months.
I think a lot of things that you listed are esstenial to making the game more successful, but if I only had to choose one it would be simplified custom game. So many of my friends that I got to buy the game, complain about the hassle of having finding maps and gametypes. It should be something basic and ready to use at the start of the game. It's turning off new players by making the game too hard to manage around.
Well obviously the most important thing is to fix the actual game itself.Doesn't matter if the UI is perfect if the game sucks then it will drop off quick.
Most of the units need a redesign, the units shouldn't clump together like blobs, games should not be so predictable and blizzard should take a hands off approach when new strategies do develop instead of nerfing them as soon as they begin.
The thing i really want them to improve on is the Gamemechanics and Matchfinding itself! I stopped playing 2-3 month ago, because i got bored of every game looking the same. Big Blob A fights Big Blob B, maybe some tried harras before....the non stop feeling of my race getting nerfed nerfed nerfed and more nerfed without getting ever a really usefull buff (terran) while both other races get both buffs and nerfs in good well thought out ways that help them so in my feeling my beloved race gets harder and harder to play while i don't have that feeling for the other races (even it sounds like a lot of balance whine, i think it more in the ways of how you work around with the races, and NO, i do not want to switch races)
Also the Matchfinding, you can not hit the search match button if you are not able to play your best game at that point. Right now there is no way to play a relaxing chill game of SC2 without joining bad chat channels and talk for a couple of minutes to find someone for customs (and when you are below diamond, you usually paly that games vs. an opponent way better than you).
Main reason I'm not logging in much, is Diablo 3 and Wow friends (who are always online) will start chatting when I just want to play a quick game. Often I don't feel like communicating with anyone at that time, thats why I wanted to play sc2 and not dia3 or wow in the first place, just some solo slacking. I don't want to be forced into having to give any expanations why I'm not in their game atm. This makes SC2 for me atm more of a hassle than fun, so I tend to avoid SC2 these days and play other games instead.
But Bliz said they will implement "hide online", probably gonna take months though, so not much SC2 for me until then.
Other - Chat UI/Clan Support + internal Bnet tournaments. As I understand it clan support is in the works, but I am not satisfied with the chat ui. I'd like to be able to maximize my chat into the center of the window rather than have all these massive buttons taking up that space the entire time. Having internal Bnet tournaments ala Warcraft 3 would also be amazing, I loved playing those. If there was a way for 3rd parties to set up tournaments within the client itself that would also be awesome.
Other - An out of client replay viewer, so I can watch replays at work, and dont need to be loading between different patches all the time. Also everything in the post, all good suggestions.
On October 24 2012 15:00 Liquid`Sheth wrote: Good question Gremlin119!
The same reason we can't simply say we want all of these! Because Blizzard has only a super tiny group of people devoted to SC2 and fixing the issues we want. So while we can secretly want all of these, we must choose to fix only one. You now have the same disadvantage Blizzard has.
Yeah well, I'm starting to think that Blizzard-Activision should put more of their in house talents on Starcraft 2 instead of grabbing everyone for their new Titan project. I've never been to the Blizzard studio in Irvine ( I've been to the Paris office, but really there's nothing big there developpement wise ) but I'm sure SC2 having like 30 people working on it is not enough if you want to do toe to toe with Riot and Valve.
I mean, Riot probably have 200 people working on their game !
I rarely post to TL, but I really like Sheth, and an opportunity like this is rare. I'm going to use this comment to push the thing that confuses me most about Starcraft 2. Warp Gates.
I think that there's a lot that could be done to make both the gateway and the warpgate a useful building respectively, rather than gateways being strictly superceeded by warpgates as soon as they can be researched. The obvious one that comes to mind is to make gateway build times less than the refresh cycle on a warpgate, so warpgates can warp in units now and also wherever there is pylon power, but their utility is offset by the fact that their constant production is slower than a constantly producing gateway, which is limited by the fact that its units have to appear where the gateway is instead of in any power field.
This isn't really "game balance" related, or matchup related, it's just a basic race design decision that has confused me since the game came out. Making obsolete options on purpose rather than encouraging diversity of strategy just raises a lot of red flags to my inner amateur game designer I guess.
On October 24 2012 21:08 Zandar wrote: I voted other.
Main reason I'm not logging in much, is Diablo 3 and Wow friends (who are always online) will start chatting when I just want to play a quick game. Often I don't feel like communicating with anyone at that time, thats why I wanted to play sc2 and not dia3 or wow in the first place, just some solo slacking. I don't want to be forced into having to give any expanations why I'm not in their game atm. This makes SC2 for me atm more of a hassle than fun, so I tend to avoid SC2 these days and play other games instead.
But Bliz said they will implement "hide online", probably gonna take months though, so not much SC2 for me until then.
I think you are literally the only person who doesn't log in in sc2 because it's too social.
On October 24 2012 21:08 Zandar wrote: I voted other.
Main reason I'm not logging in much, is Diablo 3 and Wow friends (who are always online) will start chatting when I just want to play a quick game. Often I don't feel like communicating with anyone at that time, thats why I wanted to play sc2 and not dia3 or wow in the first place, just some solo slacking. I don't want to be forced into having to give any expanations why I'm not in their game atm. This makes SC2 for me atm more of a hassle than fun, so I tend to avoid SC2 these days and play other games instead.
But Bliz said they will implement "hide online", probably gonna take months though, so not much SC2 for me until then.
I agree with this too, there are too many people who have me as a friend who constantly message me when I'm laddering asking to play, gets slightly frustrating. Would definitely like the option to appear offline.
I really don't understand why we don't have access to shared replay viewing like we did in BW. Can anyone shed some light on this please? Why isn't this a standard feature, considering it was in SC1? I wish we had that x.x
On October 24 2012 20:40 lem0ncake wrote: Not to be forced to play extremely safe every game just because I play terran and the other races can just all in me by pressing 1a.
Seriously?
Not only is that not even accurate, it's barely even relevant and certainly a balance whine. Come on now.
I would like it if Blizzard would get rid of their inflexible and stupid policies about what constitutes a good ladder map. Their overly strict outlines for what constitutes a good map that were established 3 years ago when the game was first released don't line up with what the players think is a good map. Stop ruining good maps like Daybreak or putting in unnecessary rocks like in Metropolis. Their excuses have always been about the less skilled players, but the unskilled players are facing unskilled players and they're at a point where the maps probably don't matter anyway. One expansion having less mineral fields and/or gas geysers likely doesn't matter to the new players either. Add neutral supply depots. Fuck rocks. They are seriously so frustratingly stubborn about maps.
This is a change that doesn't require any resources or a big team. It just requires Blizzard's Starcraft 2 team to stop being arrogant.
My greatest wish would be to make PvP (or Protoss in general) fun, but I'm not sure if that's even possible.
Pressed the balance options. I think there's certain points in some MU's that really needs to become more interesting and/or fair. While there are so many features I would like I still enjoy the game a lot despite those not being there so just making some MU's better is my highest wish.
I think a more fun and engaging reward system for playing, other then ladder points, would help enormously to retain and grow Starcraft's player base. Achievements and portraits are great but I think this is an area that could be vastly improved and would only reap benefits for the community. I'm sure a lot of people have been put off laddering in the past weather it be anxiety or rage quitting after a string of losses, but if people felt like they were being rewarded, no matter if it was a win or a loss, with say points to attain something cosmetic that sets them apart in game they would be encouraged to keep playing and improving.
It's sad you can only pick one option in tl.net polls. Honestly, I'd just like Battle.net 2.0 to have as many options as the old bnet. That is: * Being able to watch replays with friends (why they continued to leave that one out ever since bw is beyond me) * Automated tournaments (super fun) * Channel rights * Clan support * WaaaghTV (not exactly a blizzard invention, but it worked with the old bnet - would looove to have something like this integrated in bnet 2.0) * custom games with names (being able to name my game "PvZ - me P" or sth would help tremendously in training with random people)
I'm sure I'm missing more stuff. It's amazing how battle.net is still, after such a long time, vastly inferior to the old interface.
I think the biggest gamechanger that would allow the game we all love to grow is FREE MULTIPLAYER. Make micro-transactions possible and as a trade off make the multiplayer F2P, similar way to LoL or Dota 2 or so many other games currently on the market.
Make customizable unit skins available for small charge Make name changes possible for a small charge Make Custom map promotion of some sort available for small charge (or create an auction-like system where the highest bidder wins a placement in a determined environment) Premium clan management tools - make clan support free of charge and only charge small amount for some premium features
I'm sure there're TONS of ideas that could be implemented here.
Bottom line - we need more players/fans/viewers, easiest and fastest way to get it is making this game available for free (at least the multiplayer portion)
I just want a good custom game system back. So many dry custom maps stuck at the top. The rot has set so every new custom map I want to play has me stuck in lobby for a good hour before it completely populates.
a) i want there to be a better social aspect to battle.net, like it used to be in bw basically(sorry if its starting to sound cliche). the chat channels should be the focal point of battle.net so it feels more inviting. i also wish that they would change the background colour of battle.net tt, feels too dark and isolating
b) ingame stream lists so players/tournaments get more exposure
c) this is hots related but i wish blizzard would remove the worker status bar aswell as the ingame timer, these 2 features are extremely useless and remove skill from the game
d) i also wish that they would replace the mothership and vortex with a more creative spell/ability, something that wouldnt promote game ending battles
e)global server so that all the players can play with each other, that way we can start bridging the gap between us and the korean players. that or make it so theres no cross-server latency
f)and minor stuffs such as being able to kick ppl from chat channels, being able to watch reps w/ friends, better/regularly updated maps on the ladder etc etc. theres a bunch of them that i can list but theyre all relatively easy fixes and are already well known
and this
On October 24 2012 22:44 hitpoint wrote: I want units to clump less. However that can be accomplished, I don't care - change in AI, make unit collision larger, whatever... AoE is too strong, so aoe spells have to be nerfed unto blandness. Battles end too quick because of how concentrated ranged dps is. The deathball makes this game worse to play and far worse to spectate.
All the suggestions you put up Sheth are good additions to the game, well done. But they are also all microscopic additions to the game, no body is going to pick up SC2, whether new or returning player because of some shared replay feature, LAN, name changing or any of the listed above
The problem is that the game, in all its depth and beauty is simply too difficult and complex for people who do not have the time to invest in it to become even semi decent so that you can actually have any sort of fun. SC2 is not a "pick-up-n-play" type of game like Call of Duty, League of Legends, Mario Kart or World of Warcraft. The game is thus inaccessible to a large number of casuals, why get stomped in SC2 when you can just dick around in the above games and still have a great time? I played a game of LoL at college today at our 11:30 break and had a good time, i played my Mario Kart 3DS on the train and i might play some Modern Warfare 3 with my buddies tonight, we likely wont "pwn" anyone too hard, but we will all have a good time on Skype while we talk about our day and bullshit around.
SC2 is a better game than the ones i mentioned, because it has more depth and requires more from the individual to do well in, but that is also its weakness.
Perhaps i am too old (27) and have too many responsibilities to invest several hours to SC2 and get good at it, if i was 18 again i would take a giant smelly shit on those games and play SC2 6-8 hours a day and probably wonder why other, lesser games are more popular than SC2 is.
Anyway, keep up the good work Sheth, you are great player but even more important, you seem like a great person.
There are a couple of things that I want which is the broadcasting, but if I understood what twitch is working on correctly, insted of making games just able to broadcast to friends through client, they want to make the client stream it to their site. This would make people without the upload able to stream and friends without the game to watch which is what my heart and low upload speed internet wants.
Also I would like to see less negativity, not that it helps that people who are figures of the sc2 scene go and talk about the future of the game, which turns into a negative shitfest and doesn't reflect well on anything. Negativity is what chases people away from games, if you beat yourself up for losing or just want to play the game for fun a guy bashing on you for no real reason takes away that feeling to play.
Hello. I think more "online persistent progression" features would be very nice to keep people playing. More portraits and unlockable cosmetic stuff. Maybe you could have a parallel ladder (of casual nature), where you unlock units or tech as you progress (like in singleplayer) and then you get matched with people of the same progression level. It could even have a lot more units than the official multiplayer SC2 (like singleplayer, again). Or just put a "vs AI" ladder, where you (alone or with your friends) tackle lots of Blizzard (or approved by Blizzard) custom maps against AI, where you collect points to unlock tech and units. Kinda replicating MMO concept of grinding against AI. I know I would play a LOT of that. Good day to everyone.
I voted "other", because the one thing which annoys me most about SC2 is the inconsistency between BW and SC2. Both are connected through a story and somehow Protoss forgot to make Arbiters and Dark Archons, Terrans forgot all about Goliaths, Medics and their air units and Zerg forgot all about the Lurker. For Zerg you could postulate an "evolution" to explain these changes, but how about Terrans and Protoss? Sudden stupidity and loss of memory? Nope.
The reason why I want the game to be more like BW is simple: As a casual gamer I am overwhelmed by the amount of attention I need to pay to making units and gathering resources. And if I slack in one of them I get overrun easily by a horde of units from another player who doesnt have these problems. Kinda like one of the "Chill 101 challenges" where you were tasked to only gather resources, produce units and then "a-move" them towards the opponent without actually watching.
To make a long story short: production speed boosts and economic boosts are a terrible idea for SC2 for the simple reason that both kick in differently for each race and this gives players of different races an advantage over other races at different times. Thus it is very important to remove these mechanisms for ALL races and to adjust to a slower pacing of the game through less unit production capability.
As a second measure I would like to see tactical defensive play to be possible in SC2, but due to the perfectly tight balls of units with perfectly synched unit movement and the ability to select unlimited numbers of units in one group any defensive structure or unit will fall MUCH faster than it did in BW. Currently the only viable strategy is offensive and that is boring for me as a viewer, because nothing is as challenging as a very secure blockade with bunkers and tanks and turrets and trying to break out of such a siege. The current "max army vs. max army" battles last about 30 seconds and then its over, which is too short to keep my interest. I am not a goldfish!
Would really like them to change the GFX back so i could actually play the game ^.^ sucks not having money to spend on a good laptop/desktop to play the game
None of the options in the poll will save this game. What's a deal breaker for casual players is:
1) the fact that the army they built up for 15 minutes dissolves in 6 seconds in ball vs. ball battles 2) early cheese is overly powerful and excessively frustrating to people just trying to play for fun or learn
You have to fundamentally change how the game plays by at least doubling the HP of all units and tweaking the power of early all-ins. Then you have to release an expansion with SIGNIFICANT additions to get people to give this game a second look. Barring that, I think the scene will continue to shrink.
I think most of all I'd like Blizzard to put some more work into promoting eSports through and around the game. An in game stream showing pro-games and automated tournaments for each league would be awesome.
I want units to clump less. However that can be accomplished, I don't care - change in AI, make unit collision larger, whatever... AoE is too strong, so aoe spells have to be nerfed unto blandness. Battles end too quick because of how concentrated ranged dps is. The deathball makes this game worse to play and far worse to spectate.
Honestly all of this, beside f2p. I just don't like how f2p works. When I buy a game I want to have full content. Not deblocking it by paying weeks after weeks, and then realize I've spent 200€ on the game. And mostly there is always the risk of pay to win.
Anyway all of those feature are bnet 1.0 (wc3 bnet) and with few more features like in game observing, embedded streams, this will be bnet 2.0.
I would like some incentive to log in everyday like how LOL has a first win of the day bonus. At the moment I have no obligation to play everyday because of the bonus pool.
Sorry folks, SC2 by its nature is not friendly to casuals. The only way to make this game widely appealing is to make it easier and less complex, which none of us want. Prettying up the UI and adding in-game spectating will only help at the margins. And I'm fine with that, because I'm a hardcore gamer and I'm in love with the difficulty and depth of this game . If that means the pro scene has to contract, it's unfortunate and inevitable but not the end of the world.
Honestly I just want the game to allow for more micro and allow more skilled players to utilize their advantage. PvZ in particular is shit in this regard I believe.
The main thing I miss from previous blizzard games that I think bnet 2.0 in general is lacking is a sense of community and a long lasting group oriented game.
I feel like WarCraft III did a amazing job with a lot of UI features on battle.net such as being able to make a clan (which had its own designated channel with admin) because it actually created lobbies which does a lot of things for the game but the main one is probably the fact that it creates a relaxed environment to meet people in as opposed to meeting someone as you're beating them or losing to them on the ladder. Literally a lot of my memories of Warcraft III are just from bullshitting and talking with people in those channels. When I used to play Warcraft I would log into the game feeling like a part of a community as I would always talk to people and then play some games. You compare that to what SC2 is today and I log in to the game and I feel like I'm playing single player because I literally am. The community aspect of SC2 actually within battle.net is pretty much non existent. The chat channels blizzard implemented for Bnet 2.0 were a step back in the right direction but definitely lacking in what they had accomplished before.
Now on to the new custom game layout. I don't know if the majority of you feel this way as well but I for one miss the way custom games worked in sc1 and Wc3. A list that refreshes itself every 5-10 seconds with newly created games always coming up to the top of the list. I feel like this system is a great way to get every single custom game exposure because every single game has the same chance as the next to be seen and played. The new system has about 10-15 custom games that make the front of the list that get a lot of traffic and are played a lot. If you try to explore and find new games you find yourself usually joining an empty lobby and just giving up because you're hoping someone else is sifting around page 9 and randomly clicks on the same game you picked. Variety is a good thing and the new custom game layout hardly offers it.
There are tons of cool new ideas other games have implemented into their products that blizzard could feed off of so I won't go into that, but all I'll say is I am never against a new interesting idea. The more cool features the better but I'll end my post here because I feel like the 2 topics I covered above are 2 of the main reasons you could see a decline in the SC2 fan base.
Sorry if my post sucked I kind of just rambled on as I thought about stuff lol
It is really all about community. Facilitate ways to make friends and be in contact online - whether it's watching replays together, or a total revamping of channel structure... Making the UMS scene as great as it once was...
A game is a game until you make friends playing it. Then it becomes something greater.
On October 24 2012 22:58 Doodsmack wrote: Sorry folks, SC2 by its nature is not friendly to casuals. The only way to make this game widely appealing is to make it easier and less complex, which none of us want. Prettying up the UI and adding in-game spectating will only help at the margins. And I'm fine with that, because I'm a hardcore gamer and I'm in love with the difficulty and depth of this game . If that means the pro scene has to contract, it's unfortunate and inevitable but not the end of the world.
I think it's possible that you could rework the gameplay in a manner that makes it more friendly to casuals without ruining the depth and complexity. If you doubled or tripled the HP of all units, it would make it a bit more like WC3. It would mean the army you've built up wouldn't evaporate in an instant, and you could retreat and salvage what you've got, and it would also allow more time for micro. For casuals, it's very frustrating to engage and see your ball wiped out instantly. Casuals don't know why they lose battles--positioning, upgrades, macro, composition. But right now they're punished excessively because in SC2, you have to commit 100% to an engagement and by the time you've assessed which way it's going, you've already lost the game.
People get too wrapped up in balance and oversee the fact that sc2 has much bigger problems right now. making the game more casual friendly balance wise is a terrible idea over just fixing the currently terrible ui in the game. make the game actually "fun" and not "less challenging"
On October 24 2012 22:58 Doodsmack wrote: Sorry folks, SC2 by its nature is not friendly to casuals. The only way to make this game widely appealing is to make it easier and less complex, which none of us want. Prettying up the UI and adding in-game spectating will only help at the margins. And I'm fine with that, because I'm a hardcore gamer and I'm in love with the difficulty and depth of this game . If that means the pro scene has to contract, it's unfortunate and inevitable but not the end of the world.
By your logic only the most extreme gamers ever played BW.
On October 24 2012 23:18 ROOTViBE wrote: People get too wrapped up in balance and oversee the fact that sc2 has much bigger problems right now. making the game more casual friendly balance wise is a terrible idea over just fixing the currently terrible ui in the game. make the game actually "fun" and not "less challenging"
Even if you have "fun" chat channels, clans and all that, you still encounter maddening gameplay--armies evaporating instantly, powerful early game cheese. I think those things turn off casuals to a far greater degree. And certainly, at this point, those casuals from 2010 and 2011 aren't going to readopt the game because of some UI changes. They've already dismissed the game from their mind.
It's not something I personally want for myself, but I voted for free to play multiplayer. I feel like starcraft 2 is easily one of the best games out there, and the free to play model seems like one of the best possible ways to attract a large audience to try it out and just see how awesome it is.
SC2 suffers from a few problems right now, and I will propose a solution to address two of them.
Some abilities are stronger in the lower league than they are in the higher leagues, this means that certain phases of the game are disproportionately difficult. As a result of this, low league games are often frustrating, and the learning curve is sometimes unreasonably steep. Terran has a higher skill cap than protoss and zerg. This means that whenever terran players like Taeja get really good, the entire race gets nerfed to balance it out. If a protoss or zerg player gets equally good, there's no where to put the skill, so they're still about as good as they would if they were worse players.
I want you to consider AOE spells. The micro required to trade well against AOE casters is not in proportion to the micro required to use AOE casters. There is also very little in terms of mistakes you can make while casting AOE spells. Consequences:
* AOE spells are disproportionately good in the low leagues where unit control is dodgy. * Late game composition tends to feature large numbers of casters in a big blob. Zerg mass infestors, terran mass ghosts against P, protoss mass HTs * AOE spells need to be weak to account for their spammability.
This was not a problem in Brood War. The difference is that SC2 has something called smart casting, means when you cast a spell, the AI selects the closest unit and has it cast it once. In Brood War, all units casted the spell on the same spot. It's a lot like cloak or burrow works on multiple unit selections now.
My solution to the problems above is to revert to the Brood War behavior for AOE spells (fungal, EMP, storm) but not summoning or single target spells.
Wait! Hear me out! Now, most simplification is good. It makes the game easier. I don't want to remove multiple unit selection or command center rallying. Smart casting for AOE spells is a false simplification that actually makes things more difficult, especially for low league players.
So, a consequence analysis
Players of all skill levels can still use the spells. * It is possible to mismicro casters. (Important for the spectator experience) * Micro mistakes are less devstating. (Important for the spectator experience) * It becomes harder to spam AOE spells, and this scales well with skill level: As you learn to spam the spells with the added micro required, the opponent learns to dodge them. In the really high skill levels, the spells work largely as they have always worked. * Storm still works against bio, mutas, lings, what have you, but you can't carpet half the screen in it. * Fungal still works as it used to, but it becomes slightly harder to chain and apply to an entire army (although infestors are so big it's a small change). * EMP still works against casters, but it's harder to EMP an entire protoss army. * The skill cap is raised for all races
To compensate for the increased difficulty of casting the spells, they may require some rebalancing. Probably an increase in radius and a decrease in DPS.
Removing smart-casting for AOE spells would increase the skill cap for all races (spectators go yay!), make mass caster armies less viable (spectators go yay!), make blob armies with a bunch of casters less viable (spectators go yay!) all while reducing the disproportionate amount of micro required to deal with casters in the lower leagues (casuals go yay!)
I'd like to see the units which don't belong in the game removed and replaced with more practical units, including Thor, missile-firing widow mine (make hellions or reapers lay mines), improvement to reaper (build time & others), add another terran unit in place of the Thor, and give them an uber unit for endgame. P needs colossus removed & replaced too. Were all these changes implemented, the races would become perfect.
Besides balance, something to help esports embedded into the game client.
Hi. I voted "global play with little lag". From the list of things to choose from, that's what *I* would choose. I'd love to be able to play against everybody and not just euopeans. I'm already a hardcore starcraft fan though, so if the question really means "what would bring more people to play more starcraft?" I think that's a whole other story. My brother is a more casual starcraft player/user. I see him play custom games (Desert Strike, tower defense, what have you) for 8 hours a day on weekends, but he does not play ladder. Ever. He won't even play me 1v1 custom. When I've asked him why, he says "I'm so bad. I just loose. It's no fun.". I don't know what the answer would be to make him play "standard 1v1", but I don't think that it's either of the choices listed in the poll. At least for me, that's what I'd want - for more people to be able to enjoy the ladder. I don't really care for or see the point of SC2 being a nice engine or platform or whatever for people to play tower defense games on etc. There are specialised games that do that that people can play. That's just my oppinion though and I understand that there are probably many people enjoying the mix of both ladder and custom games.
Okay I have 2 major things that need to be fixed, that would easily increase the player base by A LOT.
First of all we had this amazing custom map scene in BW and WC 3 and most players just played these games for the funmaps. Why isn't that the case anymore in SC2? Has almost nothing to do with the editor, the engine, LAN etc. No, the number 1 reason why this community is just wiped, nearly all the mapmakers left and all of these casuals are long gone (or never joined) is simply the open game list.
With the open game list in SC2 you can't name it, which means you can't specify what people you want in, what are the rules, what community you're from, just how you want to promote your lobby etc. Secondly the standard list is sorted by popularity rather than how recently you opened a lobby. In conjunction this makes it so that you will only ever get enough people to play games that are already popular, meaning you always play the same top maps. And new maps have no way whatsoever to get popular, which again means only the already popular maps are played and you get no new stuff, no variety.
The strength of WC3 custom maps was just that you go to the list and there is soo much variety and stuff you could just try out, play a little here a little there. Mapmakers had a huge incenctive to make new and cool maps and improve all the time. New genres were born and maps being worked on for years until perfection (Dota).
(on a sidenote, as a melee mapmaker I have no way to just open a new map I made and ask for a 1v1 my skill level and expect to get someone to test the map with at all)
Second point is chat channels are ridiculous in SC 2. They're merely an upgrade to the private chat windows we had from the start, they are small and in the corner and really they just lack the functionality and that community feeling of past bnet versions.
tl;dr fixing open game list and chat channels to be much more like WC3 bnet would increase the player base by numbers we could only dream about.
edit: forgot to say, thanks for getting involved Sheth <3 edit2: Oh maybe some small thing about the more hardcore side of things. The removal of highground advantage was one of the worst gameplay design decisions from BW to SC2. Highground becomes utterly irrelevant past midgame, it's only about chokes (small ramps) and the lack of defenders advantage is horrible for the game. Further the lack of highground advantage is so fucking dumb for melee mapmakers, without it especially middle designs will never be what it was in BW, it's very restricting.
however i also said that i wanted something else - that something is ladder tournaments!! i wanna be able to sign up for a league tournament where i can earn points towards in-game shit like portraits, emblems, different skins for my units.
and that brings me to another point. if you want to follow league of legend's lead, microtransactions on skins would make up for a free to play multiplayer!!! obviously if you want campaign youre paying money, but if i want my broodlords to have a different skin, using points earned from the tournament system or some sort of ladder point system OR from my own pocket would be a fantastic way to get more people into spending more time in 1v1!
More than anything I'd like to see the virtual jersey being implemented. That's not so much a developer thing as it is a LAN organizers, but it'd be awesome for encouraging sponserships
Blizzard has a small really small team working on SC2 right now.
Well shoot, whats the point of these kind of threads then? I think we can all agree that SC2 has quite a lot of problems that were left unattended to for quite a lot of time, how the hell would anyone expect a really really small team (what, sub 10 people I suppose?) to address any of the issues the game has?
Not to mention that looking at the poll I can already tell you that even if the top 5 demands are implemented tomorrow it wont make the game any better.
Ingame spectating client,watching games with friends....come on people
it is surprising and funny to me that name changes and chat aren't on the top of the list, seeing everytime this is brought up by a doombringer they mention namechanges and chat.
Is there still a way to make bans work with a F2P model? I like the idea that currently a banned person has to fork out another $20 to get back into the game, with F2P wouldn't they just make a new name like in old WC3 banlistings? Does any game out there with a F2P model have a real enforced restriction of one per person?
On October 24 2012 23:54 Ragoo wrote: First of all we had this amazing custom map scene in BW and WC 3 and most players just played these games for the funmaps. Why isn't that the case anymore in SC2? Has almost nothing to do with the editor, the engine, LAN etc. No, the number 1 reason why this community is just wiped, nearly all the mapmakers left and all of these casuals are long gone (or never joined) is simply the open game list.
We do have great map makers... they just ran away from the intensely tight regulation/dissemination of custom games.
Seriously. There are zillions of people who abandoned this game in 2010 and 2011 for a variety of reasons. Are they really going to come back because of clan channels? They're not part of a clan and none of their friends are even logged into Battle.net anyway. Making the game F2P isn't going to bring them back--they already own the game, and they're choosing not to play it because something fundamental about the game is off-putting.
Either accept the game's marginality, or radically revamp the nature of battles and update the expansion with more than just a small handful of new units.
In addition to many great suggestions in this thread i would like to see these:
i.e. -Possibility to create tournaments on the client. -Automated weekly tournaments(OR something like this), which from you can earn more achievements/portraits or something, that keeps players more interested. -Customizable profiles where you can write stuff (and maybe load picture you like)
Being able to resume disconnected multiplayer games would be my clear #1 pick, but Blizz has already promised to implement that for HotS, so I'll go with multi-replay viewing instead.
Making defender's advantage greater to encourage small-scale engagements around the map is pretty much the only thing I could vote for in good conscience. Other things are convenience factors but that one dictates whether I care about the game at all or not.
Voted other. Incentives such as achievements/skins/profile leveling for ladder. More incentive to play ladder, makes losses less painful when your working toward something. Not everyone is hardcore and only cares about rank/battle points. Feel like this a great way to get people to hit find match button.
I voted for the custom section as that's what will keep people playing if it's done correctly.
After reading through all of the posts I do think that the best way to bring in new players and bring back those that quit playing is to update the Custom games and the UI. Also those ideas of skins you can unlock for playing, genius or heck even the achievments section could work for that but currently the bar is set way way wayyyyyyy too high. For an average of 15-25 minutes per game to have to play thousands to unlock the achivements it's so unrealistic that it's not even worth considering. But casual's like their achievements and skins, heck I wouldn't mind that myself.
The main thing I want as both a player and a watcher is a change to the end game deathballs. Turtle into infestor/broodlord is terrible to watch and play. PvZ is terrible to watch and play. Even late game TvP is crap, basically relying on whether that one money EMP goes off or not. This isn't a balance whine. The game may be balanced, but it's just not all that fun to watch or play these days. I hope HOTS will fix this, because I don't think my interest in SC2 will be be revitalized without a change to how the game actually plays out.
In my, absolute subjective and personal opinion. All I want is for HotS to develop the game further. Giving more layers of depth and/or mechanics into play. And maybe some further attention to the "Arcade" idéa.
simply make all the matchup enjoyable to play and watch, the other point are not that important. I don't care about any feature if the game is not fun in any way.
I really would like to see all of them, its kinda of silly how starcraft is so far behind all the other popular esports games in almost every aspect of the game
Free 2 play multiplayer because that would make sc2 more popular (brings in new players), it would also solve all problems related to no lan and lack of free name changes, as these two are only justified by sc2 being p2p.
here is my problem with "watching game in the client" :
I really enjoy watching pro players stream, because its entertaining and educational, however they do it for a reason.. profit. which is more than fine, if you're good at something never do it for free.
the only way that watching games in client should be viable, is if pros can get something out of it.
I want all features. But that aint gonna happen. so I vote for noone. I rather see Blizz do something that takes sc2 to the next level, rather than all those features. It´s true what Destiny said, "its up to blizz now".
All these constructive suggestions are exactly the kind of discussion we need to have, not drama. Keep em comin, and maybe Blizzard will find some ideas to draw off of.
For the Client: Better Tutorials. I don't see this talked about at all. Part of why Laddering is so scary, is players have no real introduction to Multiplayer through a tutorial, like other games do. For a complex game like Starcraft, introducing players to the idea of simple builds.. when to scout, expand, attack, and defend.. and consistently making workers should be more integrated into the Practice ladder. I strongly suggest to offer a F2P model, with earning/buying model for skin/armor/building decor incentive. This not only offers players return value, but also an identity while they play. Blizzard could add some lore to the Starcraft universe as well through a skins-earning system. Also highly suggested: In-Client Streaming, Tournament Viewing, and/or Replays database. Bnet doesn't need to become a MOBA or anything, it should just learn from them how to keep a casual player coming back. It shouldn't take a lot of resources if they provide a similar model. The key is to let Casual players hang out and watch Progamer-level play, right in the game client while talking to friends. There is no reason the 'peak' of casual gamers has to 'dip', nor LoL/WoW players won't want to give it a try, so long as they are offered a reason to return often. Offer a f2p point-earning/spending system and a way to watch a live game or good replay without leaving the client. Please? We just really want to see the Starcraft II Battle.net Client feel like a more-finished product, one that should not only compete with other modern Online Competitive Games, but be the flagship client, similar to how the actual game is the flagship RTS.
Speaking of the actual Game: It's obvious HotS is on the right track, but needs a bit more for each race. I am hoping this huge change to the Oracle is something useful.. I'd love to see it become more of a core unit. Single-unit/single-building Shield Battery is what I would really like to see, as I feel it would add a lot of interesting decision making to a lot of builds in each matchup. But I am open to anything cool Blizzard can dish up, as long as it's versatile enough. If Entomb stays, I strongly suggest making it cast on individual mineral patches. This adds a forcefield-feel to it, which would require micro and be easier to defend. Void Siphon would be a much better spell if it only drained Vespene Gas. (from any gas geyser in use) Protoss can usually find use for gas in late game, it doesn't create resources out of nowhere (which is OP late-lategame), and is still viable enough to piss people off. Haywire Missles should replace Yamato Cannon. It is too similar a spell to Seeker Missles anyway, if Terran needs a late-game air spell, I'd rather see HSM be made useful. Haywire on Battlecruiser (a nerfed version of it, maybe a slower rate-of-fire or uses energy) would make BCs used a lot more often, which is something that was missing from WoL. Fungal Growth should slow down air units while damaging them, but not root them in place. I think this could be balanced alongside the Viper spells, and would make for a little more micro potential during battles.. also offering other races more help against Brood Lords. Swarm Hosts should get a Burrow Movement upgrade. This is for better stealth-harass, but requires a commitment. Spine Crawlers should require Evo Chamber (now that Spore doesn't). This is due to the queen range upgrade.. since zergs get a lot of queens early, spines requiring evo would make early-game vs zerg somewhat interesting again.
I have done a lot of HotS stream watching, and playing as Random on ladder/custom games, and these are serious suggestions i've considered as to how to make every tech path in the game viable. I believe this is the most important part of the longevity of an RTS, and if Blizzard gets that right in this expansion, I'll be ecstatic. But some extras I suggested above would be a nice addition, so Blizzard can show other communities like LoL and WoW that we have a pretty amazing community along with our intensely gratifying game, and to do that you need to make it easily accessable right on Battle.net. The main reason half of SC2 buyers only play the campaign isn't because they don't want to play multiplayer, it's because it is made too intimidating right away, and doesn't offer a resource to learn, not only watching streams, but just something like ability to create tutorials that can teach specific builds. Players shouldn't need to navigate TL just to learn the game, the game should provide better resources for players to understand how to execute a simple build, and when/where to scout for things like cheese or timings. If blizzard invested in learn-a-build tutorials alone, even if the community could create them, it would get more players interested in multiplayer. I'm staying positive and patient, Blizzard probably knows what they're doing. GLHF!
I voted "Other". Reason: I do think that all of what was suggested is very important but to me, the most important thing of all, is making the game a more social experience by for example upgrading the chat features and idk maybe adding something like a twitch chat in the client if they implement the ingame stream stuff. I'm having a rly hard time wording this, i just want it to be easier to get to know people ingame that's all
Eh, it's the gameplay itself that has grown stale. Nothing in the poll would really address the core issue with sc2, those are all more bandaid fixes. The matchups themselves need to be more exciting.
F2P multiplayer seems meaningless now as I already have bought the game. It might be good to attract new players but on the other hand not all F2P games are doing great. So I had to go with the improved custom games section as the next best choice.
"Blizzard has a small really small team working on SC2 right now. So its really important they know what the community as a whole values the most, so they can get it fixed. From a pro players point of view, I know what is the most important to me. But what I can't know, is what the majority of people want from the game."
Really? Do you have a source for it being a "really small team"?
On October 25 2012 01:16 Quakie wrote: "Blizzard has a small really small team working on SC2 right now. So its really important they know what the community as a whole values the most, so they can get it fixed. From a pro players point of view, I know what is the most important to me. But what I can't know, is what the majority of people want from the game."
Really? Do you have a source for it being a "really small team"?
They interact with high level players on bnet constantly. I'm sure Sheth and the team are probably fairly close by now.
On October 25 2012 01:16 Quakie wrote: "Blizzard has a small really small team working on SC2 right now. So its really important they know what the community as a whole values the most, so they can get it fixed. From a pro players point of view, I know what is the most important to me. But what I can't know, is what the majority of people want from the game."
Really? Do you have a source for it being a "really small team"?
They interact with high level players on bnet constantly. I'm sure Sheth and the team are probably fairly close by now.
There was a PC gamer article from 2007 apparently which described the initial development team for the game being around 40 people. I am not sure how that stands relative to other games, but I can't imagine they kept the whole team on for the last two years as well.
On October 25 2012 01:15 SniXSniPe wrote: Customs were the biggest selling point for BW & WC3. How about making those interesting again somehow?
Perhaps I'm missing something, but how are customs not interesting in SC2? I understand that a lot of mapmakers stopped trying to make SC2 maps when it went so long without an Open Games list, but with the release of the Arcade in patch 1.5, I'm assuming mapmakers are going to come back with the release of HotS. I don't play customs very often, but when I do it takes almost no time to hop in one and get a full lobby and get going, and the ones I have played have been pretty fun. Am I missing something here?
I don't really understand why so many people want to be able to watch players within the game. How is that really a big deal? Is it a cool feature that I would also enjoy? Yeah. Would it really make a big difference? No not at all... it would just be for people who already watch streams, but want to watch first person. Even then most people (as seen in other games) end up watching the stream anyway because they don't need to load the client, they can listen to commentary. I feel like all the people who have been arguing to have it in the game don't really know how little impact it would have, or they just selfishly want the feature because it is cool.
A larger emphasis on community developing tools are more important, whether it be redesigning how channels work so they are more encouraged, adding clans (which they said they are finally doing) improving the custom game interface (many things can be said about that) and even having the game be F2P if possible are much bigger deals. Anyone care to dispute that?
Sheth you're killing me with only letting me vote on one! I had to say the ingame client though. I would love to just stay on starcraft the whole time. Play a 1v1 match, boom switch over to watching my favorite pro play or tournament.
In addition to watching with friend, I would like it to be easier to just watch replays in general. I would love to be able to setup a "replay play list" and let it run as many replays as I want back to back. And most importantly, if they are older than the recent patch, I wouldn't have to log in every time I changed to a new replay! Obviously, there are reasons Blizzard made it so we have to log out/log in, but in honesty, it all boils down to bad design.
In client spectating is probably a bad idea in my opinion. The possibility of being able to talk to the pros while they're playing could end up doing more harm than good. Think about how busy the chat window gets on Twitch when someone's streaming. Could you imagine having that scroll up constantly on your screen while you're trying to play competitively on ladder? And on another note, it would be impossible for pros to practice (let's say for a GSL match) without their opponent watching their games and learning all the strategies they're preparing for the match. That's the advantage of streaming: you can choose when and if you want people watching you play. And to be honest, it's simply easier to open up an online stream as opposed to needing the game up and running to watch someone play.
On October 24 2012 20:13 weeA wrote: To get a larger user database they need to use the freemium model
The game can be free for the 3 games a day
10 games a day one time pay 10 $
20 + games a day 25 $
or something like this The database of players will improve and make starcraft 2 the biggest E - Sports in ever
That isn't how its done, no one will pay for that, it sounds nearly like a subscription model which everyone hates with a passion, and it isn't even a choice since you'll just play trough those 3 games instantly and then be forced to pay for more. This would hurt and discourage the hardcore gamers the most, the Koreans who train 40 + games per day will now have to pay a portion of the stream revenue just to play the game, it just won't work, its 100% idiotic.
If you want to make SC2 free to play it needs to be done in the following way. After the first year of release, reduce the cost of the game until it becomes free, have the brainiac statisticians at Blizzard study within what time period they make the maximum profit from sales and keep the game at 60 dollars or euro for that time period only, after that window of time expires, start reducing the price until the game becomes completely free. This should have already happened with WoL and this should be done for both HoTS and LoV.
Secondly, add a experience or point system similar to that of DoTA 2. You gain experience/points by playing games, wins will always grant more then losses. As you level up, you gain access to UI customization options, you can chose to add more terran, or protoss or zerg elements to your UI, as well as have various other ways to customize it yourself, and I'm not talking just about in game UI, I'm talking about the SC2 out of game UI as well.
Now, with the experience and/or points you get from playing games you can also buy skin customizations for your units and structures. These are purely cosmetic, they won't affect the stats of your units at all, and you can even chose to turn them off with an option in graphics.
These skins, you can either pay real money for them, or you buy them with points, and optimally there should be a way to allow custom made skins to be uploaded and sold, Blizzard gets a cut of course, but so does the skin creator.
Lastly, from time to time, as a sort of reward, you randomly get a skin for winning a game, leveling up, getting a promotion, unlocking a particularly hard 1 vs 1 achievement, getting a feat of strength etc.
I said one time pay not a subscription model. Pay 25$ and u can forever
I voted for replay watching with friends. Currently if I want to watch a replay with a friend, and that friend was not in the same game, I have to first send them the file, then coordinate loading up the replay at the same time, and then give tell them what time and place I am looking at everytime I want to talk to them about it. It's a really annoying process, and something that a lot of casual players would benefit from, since everyone likes to be able to go "hey check out this sick replay", and not have to go through the whole e-mail, get the other person to download it and put it in their Documents/User/Starcraft II/.../.../.../.../Finally I reached The Right Replays Folder/, it's simply not practical.
I would add resume from replay (which I believe they said they are adding in HotS, correct?) would be #2, as that would be super, super beneficial both for practicing and for being able to relive glorious moments from famous games.
I don't think in-game spectating of games should be #1 most important thing. When I watch pros play, I like to see their 1st person cam (stream), or I like to be able to sit back and listen to the commentary and have someone else control the screen for me (especially if they're a great observer, like the GSL guy, since they are much better than I am at observing). If you want to watch professional players play, there is an overwhelming amount of content already available to watch, more content than you could possibly watch if you watched 24/7, so I don't in-game spectating should be high on the priority list.
A simplified custom game area would be nice, but I don't think the Arcade is particularly complicated. If anything, the Open Lobbies list should be listed first. I agree that this should be high up on the priorities list.
I'm not sure what to say about F2P multiplayer. Unless they add custom skins or lots of random crap for people to buy in-game, I don't see why Blizzard would ever do this. I've already bought 3 accounts of WoL to have 1 for each race, so I personally don't care at all about making multiplayer F2P.
Really, I think the stuff towards the bottom is way more important than what people are voting for now. I think the top 1 and 3 options should be the bottom 2...
An in-game highly customizeable tournament option. Blizzard can get involved and have monthly sponsored tournaments, viewable through their "new in-game spectator client". Prizes include anything from cool decals and aesthetically modified units (murloc marines, megatron Thors), to potential seeds for future WCS qualifiers or the like.
I would like to see some sort of incentive to play. My friends and I are currently playing League of Legends and Diablo 3. Why? We can progress in those game. League you are constantly earning points and unlocking things. Diablo 3 we're constantly earning experience and getting new items. Starcraft 2? We can play a game, but then what? We get some ladder points? Sorry, but "getting to Master's" isn't good enough when I have not a lot of time to just sit and play.
I don't know what needs to change to help this, but the game being fun isn't quite enough. There are probably some good ideas in this thread, even, I just haven't read through it yet.
Blizzard has a lot of things it could be working on. I understand they are a small team, working long hours, and plenty of overtime. I can only assume their teams are large enough to work on one specific issue at a time. A lot of the voting issues could be wrapped up into a general, B.net 2.0 'Fix 'em Up' category. B.net 2.0 is just a system that feels dead. How to fix that? I'm not entirely sure. The UI has a long way to go, that's for sure.
*Remember the old chat channels? Ok, now look at the new chat channels. How did they change them? You can now fix the chat-window size? And unlock it from the bottom task bar? I remember more specifically when the Arcade patch was released, and people in the Chat Channels just praising Blizzard for bringing chat back. Like seriously? They didn't do anything.Chat was always there....but now people were re-discovering them as if it were like magic. My point is, people are stupid. They don't know what they want, and more specifically, and why they want it. They are given something, hate it, given it again (tweaked slightly if anything) and now its the best damn thing since sliced bread yet its the exact.same.thing.as.before. People are stupid and whiny.
If I had to fix one thing, and fix isn't the right word, I would say fix Blizzard's attitude. They have seemed to lose that special something that made them really connect with the game. I don't know if Activision is to blame, I don't know if it is just the fact that developers and teams come and go. Maybe its the whole "Gaming Philosophy" that could be pointed at. I don't know. I think a lot of people don't know. And the greatest fear is not knowing.
Look at all these features that Blizzard promised with B.net 2.0 after release, and now we have to wait for HoTs to get only a small handful of them? Maybe Blizzard is hiding them to really surprise people. I don't know. Hopefully. There are so many simple features that Blizzard just refuses to address, which gives them names such as, "incompetent" or "lazy." Other companies are adapting fast and Blizzard is being left in the dust. Why doesn't Blizzard want to be number one? What is holding them back? Did they just give up? Is Activision really just calling all the shots? Does the new team just not care like the Old Blizzard Entertainment did? I understand that SC2 and D3 are triple A titles and make money, but look at WC2 and BW and even D2. Those games had heart and soul, and were unbalanced as garbage. The graphics were terrible...but the games were great. I know a lot of those feelings are nonsensical nostalgia, or maybe I'm just getting too old. Maybe I'm so spoiled with games now that those little things I can't see in SC2. Its probably a little of both.
I think its a 50/50 blaming process. Blizzard is lazy and refuses to add certain features. Maybe they are waiting for LotV to release a fully operational game. That sounds exactly like something the Activision would tell them to do. Milk it out like so many other repeat titles out there, Halo, COD just to name a few. And its the community to blame for making outlandish claims of balance, and other nonsense suggestions. Blizzard is in a tough spot here. They want to balance a game, but they can't just balance it for Bronze players. That's just down right wrong. But if they just balance it for the top tier...well, that's another mess. I think that Blizzard is trying too hard to make it a pro's game. BW was only picked up by the pro's after it was a huge success with the masses.
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Making SC2 F2P isn't going to fix anything. Making it free isn't going to stop people from leaving the game or losing interest. At first there will be a swell of people, I can give them that, but after a while people are just going to leave regardless. Its a gimmick and isn't going to solve anything except give those people who feel entitled to everything more entitlement. *Not to mention, if you think map hacks are bad now they will absolutely run rampant after the fact.
Adding pay features like skins and mods will only go so far. No one (in their right mind) is going to pay money for simple atheistic features (unless you have daddy's wallet). Now you have to balance prices of these things. Blizzard would be in more hot water if they charged for something that people want free. Now you are paying for skins and bells and whistles that other company's offer free. OR worse yet, if you spend money to mitigate a bad game mechanic, that the designers put there on purpose, then they win; they trolled you into spending cash. I really don't want to get into another rant about just paying once for a 60 dollar game that isn't a subscription service that so many people think it is.
And why are people so fixated at "fixing" Customs? Do they even know what they want? People, the community, makes those games, not Blizzard. If Customs are dying its solely on the player base making the games. The Arcade made finding and publishing Custom games so extremely easy a child could do it. That's great! An easy interface, and there are a TON of Custom games out there. Yet people are saying, "fix them"? Like seriously, what the **** do they want? They don't know. That's the answer.
And look how things are with hackers now. You basically have to call them out on a public forum before Blizzard will react. Not to mention how long it takes to actually remove an account from the game once the hacker is identified. And then you have people calling Blizzard out on their procedures. We know its not that hard to actually catch 3rd party programs running, but Blizzard refuses to either go after, or just plan stop those programs. [Sure, now you have the debate of privacy, but you kids better read up on the ethics (or lack thereof) of private information that the Internet, Google, and the US Government actually collects] They know the hackers will just buy another account. And half of me actually believes that Blizzard is just milking it. No, its more than half, its like 90%, with 10% blue eyes of innocence.
TLDR Here's what I think is really going on: Regardless or balance, regardless of Blizzard activity or lack of it, Sc2 is a HARD GAME. It takes time and practice to be a good player. People don't want to practice, people don't like hard work. They want to title of Master or Diamond without the work of it. Why are Team Games more popular than 1s? Because you can hide behind people's skill, you can always blame someone other than yourself for losing the game. People don't like being told they suck, they don't want to come to the realization that they suck and so they move on to other win-win, easier games. Like it or not, SC2 is top tier for computer game skill and knowledge.
It's a tough choice :< I voted for fix XvX matchup, because TvZ really disgusts me of the game (being playing or watching it), but that's personnal, and I'd also like a LOT a spectator feature like dota 2's, where you can even have player's cursor displayed. All in all I feel blizzard has a lot to learn from DotA like games on a spectator side, and still a lot of work on the game itself.. It's a lot for a little dev team, and I'm sad they don't put more people/effort into the game, because this game could be so awesome...
I would love a name system similar to Steam (your displayed name is totally changeable at any time (can be letters, numbers, whatever)) while your basic steam id is used for friend requests and login (similar to how your battle.net account is used for login and real id friends).
I don't really see why your displayed name or StarCraft 2 name has to be 'sticky' (and cost $$ to change at all...).
I think its a bigger playerbase. If I look at other gaming forums, the SC2 threads are completly dead there and you cannot find other SC2 players. Non of my friends plays SC2 anymore, because ladder is just no fun at all if you don't follow the scene and have the time to watch alot of VODs.
So: F2P SC2 MP (if they don't let you pay for Maps etc)
Why does the LAN option have a little comment from the poll creator? I would vote for just LAN, or "LAN (and I know it's possible, stop bullshitting us)".
On October 24 2012 15:05 jayaiwhy wrote: Spectator client + cute little things like betting feature that gives you points for some cosmetic, etc.
You've made a fantastic idea here!
I'm trying to imagine logging into SC and the next thing I see is several small icons of popular SC pro's using their ingame clients to get some people watching. I click the one showing "NSH_Seal vs Seed" and bet all-in on Seal "cause I feel like he is a hidden talent that hasn't shown his full potential yet", the series goes all the way to game 5, Seal pulls off a close win! and I gain a little chunk of "battle.net chips" that you'll be able buy small rewards with, and be placed on a betting scoreboard were there is prestige in being a good better!
Awesome post Sheth! Really appreciated it! I had to think really really hard but an ingame client to watch would just be too amazing.
A free to play model would be my next vote. Hopefully having SC2's revenue restructured would persuade Activision to give Blizzard a bigger development team.
Why is there no resume from replays option? Is it because it is certain to come?
I voted custom games because I think that is important for the longevity of Starcraft 2. I remember in the old days that new maps did not have difficulty finding players to join because they would show up at the top for a brief period until you remade the game. You could advertise in the game name what your map was about or why you where making this map for example.
At the very least the default join custom game screen should be a list of what game lobbies are currently open.
*I'd welcome the possibility to spectate ladder games and tournament games. Very often tournaments have so many games, that some won't even be aired, so that would help solving some problems. *Free name change isn't exactly compulsory, but it wouldn't hurt. When no free name change is given, at least some proper clan system should be implemented. *Cross-region play should be definitely available. *The game should be made free to play. Firstly, it would definitely help to grow the casual scene. In addition to that, new blood for the comp. scene. Most of the current top tier players we know, are still from 2 years ago. New names are hard to come by.
*Game design must be reviewed. As of now I feel that most of my ladder games are exactly the same, unless they reach 20-30 mins. A simple push can snowball into becoming unstoppable. They can be stopped, but that depends entirely on a single unit(e.g zerg depends entirely on infestors, late game PvZ mothership). When I play a game of DotA, it doesn't FEEL repetitive. It may look like it, but it doesn't. Sc2 does feel repetitive.
*Interface and the social side of things must be improved. A new player doesn't know what chat channels to join, or even find the "friends" button. Look up Dota2 interface to see greatness.
The problem with the current leader (in-game live spectating) is that it effectively denies streamers of all the viewers they have who don't have the game. It would need to have its own $$-generating system for the players or be linked to twitch, like in T:A.
Cool poll Sheth I would love for more spectating to be available with friends and quickly of Pro players (Grandmaster maybe?). Also to have a awesome Chat Channel system, to be able to talk to fellow players about the game and not feel lost by yourself.
Add some sort of map objectives for example holding area X would give you 10% boost in income. Eventho unit design is bad and game doesn't focus on microing, the biggest problem is that there's nothing happening for the most part of game. Map objectives would force players to move out early and fight for them which would create more active game and make the game funnier to play and watch.
On October 25 2012 07:08 happyness wrote: All I want is a big-ass chat box and clan support similar to what it was in WC3
Funny how a small company called Dynamix can make a game, Tribes 2, and have excellent clan support, while billion dollar blizzard cant. Tribes 2 was a first person shooter game that gave you the ability to change your screen name at any time, and have a customizable clan profile page in the game client itself. Real clan tags were different color text and could only be obtained by invitiation from the clan founder.
The best alternative sc2 clans have is either a website (which can be hard to handle sometimes) and a facebook page. What if you had the ability to make a psudo-website clan profile page in battlenet? It was possible 11 years ago with tribes 2, im sure it's possible now lol
I feel in some ways that Free to play is almost essential to Starcraft's survival as an esport. The ability to attract LoL size numbers to play SC2 would be huge for the community. Or, potentially, a cheaper, less featured version of SC2 that still features full multiplayer in some capacity. The question of monetization is a difficult one though.
On October 25 2012 05:22 WeedRa wrote: for sure i wanna watch pros play! would be so cool and i'm sure ALOT of players would improve fast!
It might be "cool" and I don't think many would be against the idea, but would it really be that relevant? It would only appeal to a very small percentage of those who are already playing 1v1 ladder consistently, which isn't many. Most people would still stick to streams where you can see players play from their first person view.
It just seems like it would take a lot of resources into adding this feature, and it wouldn't benefit the community much at all. Don't you think it would be reasonable to continue watching streams with those players first person view, and then get some other feature which would actually help to grow the online community? I just honestly don't see the large appeal to watching players in game. I imagine all of them would turn it off if they aren't already streaming. Why offer potential opponents the opportunity to watch you play and learn more about your style with no benefit to yourself? Exactly, there isn't one, so they will just turn it off while not streaming.
The one other benefit is if you could watch friends play, but I think that would be even more insignificant. How much time do you really think you would spend watching friends playing? And for that matter, how many other people do you think would regularly take advantage of that type of feature to the point where it would be more valuable than some feature which would keep people logging into the game to (for example) play custom games more often?
reading this thread depresses me because it reminds me how great sc2 could have been if blizzard was actually had competent people working for them. oh well... we can always dream
'A way to spectate games in client and watch pros with others' - this would be so awesome especially if there was a way to search for (live) ladder games by: league, match up, and map. I know this is a long shot but this would make it so much easier to learn new builds or help you out with a certain aspect in your play style.
On October 25 2012 08:45 Liszt wrote: reading this thread depresses me because it reminds me how great sc2 could have been if blizzard was actually had competent people working for them. oh well... we can always dream
This is quite unfair to Blizz developers. They have developed the best RTS there is. Give credit where credit is due.
On October 25 2012 08:45 Liszt wrote: reading this thread depresses me because it reminds me how great sc2 could have been if blizzard was actually had competent people working for them. oh well... we can always dream
This is quite unfair to Blizz developers. They have developed the best RTS there is. Give credit where credit is due.
I don't know about anyone else but i'm sick to death of the Generic colours you get picked to be in 1v1. I would love for them to implement the option to have your colours randomly selected. So you could be pink vs purple for instance! That would be rad!
Interface-wise: better chat/clan features. No one I know who plays Starcraft 2 regularly uses chat options. I guess this is good for team liquid but I miss going onto Channels and being able to chat instantly with a large amount of people.
Gameplay-wise: Please improve the end-game of SC2. It goes without saying that this is currently the worst aspect of the game. Things like colossus wars in pvp, brood-lord infestor, etc are skill-less and boring.
custom games ala warcraft 3. Seriously the biggest disappointment from SC2 imo. Wc3 had amazing games like dota, all kinda of hero defense etc. And part of that could be due to the unit and hero structure of the game, but there's no reason with a better editor and years of development for awesome and exciting maps to be around. Even BW had better custom games =*(, and I think the biggest problem is how the current arcade mode and custom game setup is.
On October 25 2012 08:45 Liszt wrote: reading this thread depresses me because it reminds me how great sc2 could have been if blizzard was actually had competent people working for them. oh well... we can always dream
This is quite unfair to Blizz developers. They have developed the best RTS there is. Give credit where credit is due.
I voted for "Other -- Please write a comment." Here is my comment. My vote is for an interesting combination of:
A way to spectate games in client and watch pros with others. Simplified Custom games area with individually named games. Changing how ladder works and giving you more stats. In game tournament promotion so you can easily see where big tournaments will be.
I think that it could be a really nice feature that would kill several birds with one stone to allow an account to have the ability (maybe purchase?) to create a ladder and/or tournament through the game client.
~ An account that has this ability would be able to add and subtract map, gather statistics, send invitations, remove players, enforce scheduling, make payouts, assign and collect enterence fees, make veto options, show brackets, etc. (I would think the RMAH technology might be leveraged for a bunch of the money related issues.)
~ There would be override controls for scheduling, player slots, tournament or ladder end times, and other things.
~ There would be a way for a ladder season to flow into a tournament, say top 32 of the ladder season make it into the tournament bracket.
~ There would be a way to browse tournament scheduling, browse current tournament games, spectate the games freely, donate to a particular tournament, sign up for a tournament, view tournament stats.
~ For each tournament, there could be an option to run a ladder concurrently with anonymity options for players (like temporary smurf names, match history games not displaying data until after a tourney is over, etc.) in the tournament so the players can practice and so spectators might be able to play alongside the pros on the maps they might be playing for the tournament (and if they are good enough, maybe even against them).
~ Subladders would generally work based off of the primary ladder rating kind of how one ladder rating affects initial placement of other ladder ratings (e.g., 1v1, influencing 2v2), but obviously the number of people joined into that subladder would affect where people ultimately fall and who they might wind up playing against.
~ There should also be a way to leave a tournament or ladder feedback, kind of like in the arcade.
With something like this:
A) Tournaments and eSports in general get's a lot of support. Blizzard can generate revenue either on when an account purchases the ladder/tourney creation rights, or on a percentage of the prize pool (so something like if you want to have a $500 prize pool, you have to pay $5 to Blizzard assuming 1% is a fair number cut, maybe a tiered system...), or a percentage of enterence fees, etc. -- it opens up a lot of options for increased monetization through SC2, which means it's not only a win for eSports, but a win for Blizzard.
B) Map makers have a chance for improved support and recognition, because it would be easy to just create a ladder or tournament with custom maps to draw attention to new stuff. Mappers get more feedback on their maps and can make better strides in improvement of their maps, and thus the map pool and mapping knowledge in general.
C) Players get the chance not only to watch the big tournaments more easily, but spectators might get a chance to play against the pros, and if not, at least against other people watching the same tournament. It's a fun community builder.
D) The main ladder is still the place to go to get your base MMR and does not become obsolete as the primary balancing testbed. (Maybe??)
It may seem like a lot to ask, but in my mind it is one big integrated thing, and again, a solution to many problems at once. I hope others like this idea and help to refine it and vote for it so it will happen.
And Blizzard, if you are looking for more manpower and like this idea and want to get it done, please have Liquid'Sheth PM me with the place to send my resume. Dead serious.
Edit: Fyi, I posted this on B.net forums since I feel very strongly about this idea. If you ever post there, and you have a mind to do so, please post some discussion about this over there. Many thanks.
If your still reading this Sheth, I'd just like to point out that most people voting in this thread are core players. I'm sure you are doing your best to submit valuable feedback, and probably already realize this, but don't forget to ask people who haven't played sc2 since release. The ones who won't play unless all their friends play, who play through the campaign on easy, and who don't go to forums involving the game. Many of your poll features are focused around 1v1, and personally I want weekly online tournaments for portraits or what have you, but I also realize this is just another 1v1 feature adding to your list. Some of my friends have given me surprising reasons for not playing with me, like lack of a 4th race, how they can't meaningfully show their silver rank off to their bronze friends due to the league system, no co op campaign or mission style multiplayer maps, and cheesy team games. By far the number one complaint I get is that wc3 custom maps are easier and more fun, followed by getting dragged into playing wc3 for the evening QQ.
A big problem is that many customs require 1v1 knowledge to play. Units keep the same stats and counters, and there is an unreasonable learning curve for even simple massing games. I totally understand how this feels, because I have NEVER played wc3 multiplayer or campaign. When I think of myself playing wc3 games that rely on unit balance, I don't see myself playing the game at all. I tried to find a simple evolves game in sc2 to play with friends today and gave up after an hour. I know blizzard can't change what maps people make, but an easier to use editor might encourage more people to create maps. As a child I had an easier time using the map editors than I do now as an adult. Maybe a "beginner mode" in the editor would help people who can't script put out some simple games.
So after putting my thoughts down in text, I guess the conclusion is that I want to ask for a beginner mode added to the map editor, for just about anyone to put a simple idea into practice without studying for 2 weeks first.
Better social system in bnet 2.0 so people are logged into the game just to hang out sometimes.. Thats what I am missing a lot. Everyone seems to write about it in other posts. I wonder why people havn't been suggesting it to the poll.
I voted for "SC2 Free to Play Multiplayer" but what I really mean is that I'd like cheaper accounts. I think it's absolutely ridiculous that it costs the same amount as the entire game to get a new log in. My husband and I share a computer and we had to re-buy the game so that I could play on ladder. I got it on sale for $30, but I had to wait for that because I was NOT going to pay $60 for it.
I won't be purchasing HoTS if it's the same thing. A single player campaign and a half a dozen new units just aren't worth $40 for me, especially when it becomes $80 if both me and my husband want to play. On the other hand, if we were paying $40 for the expansion, and then, say, $10 for another account, I'd reconsider. If we could transfer our WoL accounts over for just the cost of $40 for the expansion, I'd be good. (I still think $40 is a little steep for what we're getting, but I can't expect less from Blizzard.)
I really think that this greedy set-up will hurt the game in the long run. I can't be the only person who doesn't want to spend $140/account.
(I am, of course, assuming Blizzard is going to price HoTS and LotV at $40 each.)
On October 25 2012 08:45 Liszt wrote: reading this thread depresses me because it reminds me how great sc2 could have been if blizzard was actually had competent people working for them. oh well... we can always dream
This is quite unfair to Blizz developers. They have developed the best RTS there is. Give credit where credit is due.
On October 25 2012 08:45 Liszt wrote: reading this thread depresses me because it reminds me how great sc2 could have been if blizzard was actually had competent people working for them. oh well... we can always dream
This is quite unfair to Blizz developers. They have developed the best RTS there is. Give credit where credit is due.
You are so ignorant..
Please, enlighten me then. Explain how Blizzard developers are incompetent. As someone who has watched and played countless hours of SC2 and still enjoys the game, that notion seems absurd.
Its easy to take some of SC2's flaws and blame it on developers. Do you know any SC2 devs? How much of SC2's problems are because of management decisions or time restrictions? Without insider knowledge, I don't see how you can call the developers of the greatest RTS incompetent because it is missing a few nice features. It's still an awesome game
On October 25 2012 11:21 JDub wrote: This is quite unfair to Blizz developers. They have developed the best RTS there is. Give credit where credit is due.
If there was only one bad game in the world, it would be the best game there is, but it wouldn't still make it any good.
My point being the only reason SC2 is as popular right now is lack of good competition in the RTS genre.
I think if SC went completely free to play, it would compete better with LoL. I would release just multiplayer with no name changes, just raw multiplayer, and a paid version that includes unlimited name changes and maybe special looking units (thor from WoL and hydra in HotS)
On October 25 2012 08:45 Liszt wrote: reading this thread depresses me because it reminds me how great sc2 could have been if blizzard was actually had competent people working for them. oh well... we can always dream
This is quite unfair to Blizz developers. They have developed the best RTS there is. Give credit where credit is due.
You are so ignorant..
Please, enlighten me then. Explain how Blizzard developers are incompetent. As someone who has watched and played countless hours of SC2 and still enjoys the game, that notion seems absurd.
Its easy to take some of SC2's flaws and blame it on developers. Do you know any SC2 devs? How much of SC2's problems are because of management decisions or time restrictions? Without insider knowledge, I don't see how you can call the developers of the greatest RTS incompetent because it is missing a few nice features. It's still an awesome game
If SC2 came out in the earlier 00's when the RTS genre was at its peak, noone would play it. As for you watching countless hours of SC2, that is all subjective and mostly irrelevant to the discussion.
The ONLY reason why majority of people play SC2 now is because of the huge amount of money funded into it for "e-sports" (another laughable concept) and the fact that SC2 currently has no competition because the average gamer now plays FPS, RPG and MOBA genres.
On October 25 2012 08:45 Liszt wrote: reading this thread depresses me because it reminds me how great sc2 could have been if blizzard was actually had competent people working for them. oh well... we can always dream
This is quite unfair to Blizz developers. They have developed the best RTS there is. Give credit where credit is due.
You are so ignorant..
Please, enlighten me then. Explain how Blizzard developers are incompetent. As someone who has watched and played countless hours of SC2 and still enjoys the game, that notion seems absurd.
Its easy to take some of SC2's flaws and blame it on developers. Do you know any SC2 devs? How much of SC2's problems are because of management decisions or time restrictions? Without insider knowledge, I don't see how you can call the developers of the greatest RTS incompetent because it is missing a few nice features. It's still an awesome game
If SC2 came out in the earlier 00's when the RTS genre was at its peak, noone would play it. As for you watching countless hours of SC2, that is all subjective and mostly irrelevant to the discussion.
The ONLY reason why majority of people play SC2 now is because of the huge amount of money funded into it for "e-sports" (another laughable concept) and the fact that SC2 currently has no competition because the average gamer now plays FPS, RPG and MOBA genres.
So my subjective opinion that the game is really fun to play and fun to watch is irrelevant, but your subjective opinion that if SC2 came out in the early 00's then no one would play it is relevant? What are you basing that opinion on? I'm not the only one who loves playing and watching SC2.
You can't speak about the motivation for the "majority of people" who play SC2 now. The majority of people I know who play SC2 play the custom games or team games and don't know much about professional SC2 or "e-sports" at all. Does that mean I can apply that over the total "majority of people"? No, I can't speak to the motivations of the majority of the people. Moreover, how is "e-sports" a laughable concept? Go tell that to Day9.
On October 25 2012 15:11 HypertonicHydroponic wrote: Liquid`Sheth, Blizzard, et Al.:
I voted for "Other -- Please write a comment." Here is my comment. My vote is for an interesting combination of:
A way to spectate games in client and watch pros with others. Simplified Custom games area with individually named games. Changing how ladder works and giving you more stats. In game tournament promotion so you can easily see where big tournaments will be.
I think that it could be a really nice feature that would kill several birds with one stone to allow an account to have the ability (maybe purchase?) to create a ladder and/or tournament through the game client.
~ An account that has this ability would be able to add and subtract map, gather statistics, send invitations, remove players, enforce scheduling, make payouts, assign and collect enterence fees, make veto options, show brackets, etc. (I would think the RMAH technology might be leveraged for a bunch of the money related issues.)
~ There would be override controls for scheduling, player slots, tournament or ladder end times, and other things.
~ There would be a way for a ladder season to flow into a tournament, say top 32 of the ladder season make it into the tournament bracket.
~ There would be a way to browse tournament scheduling, browse current tournament games, spectate the games freely, donate to a particular tournament, sign up for a tournament, view tournament stats.
~ For each tournament, there could be an option to run a ladder concurrently with anonymity options for players (like temporary smurf names, match history games not displaying data until after a tourney is over, etc.) in the tournament so the players can practice and so spectators might be able to play alongside the pros on the maps they might be playing for the tournament (and if they are good enough, maybe even against them).
~ Subladders would generally work based off of the primary ladder rating kind of how one ladder rating affects initial placement of other ladder ratings (e.g., 1v1, influencing 2v2), but obviously the number of people joined into that subladder would affect where people ultimately fall and who they might wind up playing against.
~ There should also be a way to leave a tournament or ladder feedback, kind of like in the arcade.
With something like this:
A) Tournaments and eSports in general get's a lot of support. Blizzard can generate revenue either on when an account purchases the ladder/tourney creation rights, or on a percentage of the prize pool (so something like if you want to have a $500 prize pool, you have to pay $5 to Blizzard assuming 1% is a fair number cut, maybe a tiered system...), or a percentage of enterence fees, etc. -- it opens up a lot of options for increased monetization through SC2, which means it's not only a win for eSports, but a win for Blizzard.
B) Map makers have a chance for improved support and recognition, because it would be easy to just create a ladder or tournament with custom maps to draw attention to new stuff. Mappers get more feedback on their maps and can make better strides in improvement of their maps, and thus the map pool and mapping knowledge in general.
C) Players get the chance not only to watch the big tournaments more easily, but spectators might get a chance to play against the pros, and if not, at least against other people watching the same tournament. It's a fun community builder.
D) The main ladder is still the place to go to get your base MMR and does not become obsolete as the primary balancing testbed. (Maybe??)
It may seem like a lot to ask, but in my mind it is one big integrated thing, and again, a solution to many problems at once. I hope others like this idea and help to refine it and vote for it so it will happen.
And Blizzard, if you are looking for more manpower and like this idea and want to get it done, please have Liquid'Sheth PM me with the place to send my resume. Dead serious.
Edit: Fyi, I posted this on B.net forums since I feel very strongly about this idea. If you ever post there, and you have a mind to do so, please post some discussion about this over there. Many thanks.
I added the following to my post on Battle.net, but I wanted to add it here too in case anyone is reading to page 22/23 for good "other" ideas in this poll to vote for (please go bump the B.net post if you like the idea!) -->
EDIT: It should not have to be said, but I will for absolute clarity sake, that this idea is in no way only supposed to apply to 1v1 melee, but also for team melee, and custom UMS games. Just think how great it would be for all of the Squadron Tower Defense, Nexus Wars, Desert Strike, Hero Attack, etc. players to have a real ladder and tournament system to help see if your game could take off as an eSport...
The thing I would like to see is for a built in Battle.net tournament creator so that I could play competitive games, like laddering, but in a different format. I haven't seen this sort of thing discussed, and there may be a reason for that (I may be missing something big). I envision instead of selecting a quick match, I could select a tournament and give me some options for tournaments in my MMR range that I could sign up for. It would be a larger commit to time than quick matches as you would have to be around to play the matches and there would have to be a system to prevent people for ditching mid tournament (some sort of time penalty if you ditch on a tournament before you could enter another).
If proper clans were added, this could also be expanded to a team tournament, which I think would be a blast. The clan would have some sort of group MMR and different clan head-to-head formats could be selected for the tournament. This could be simplified to just clan head-to-head matches which I think would be super fun to play. Spectating your buddies games during the matches and then anaylzing replays together after a match to discuss strategies and jumping into the next game with a new plan. I think that would be a blast with friends.
Very very hard... But out of most: Redisign infestor. Add LAN. Change maps!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! MUSPELHEIM FTW!!!!!!!!!!!DAYBREAK AND ANTIGA FTL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Wouldn't in client spectating reduce the amount of ad revenue earned by streamers, or tournament streams that run ads to pay for a portion of their costs?
I'm personally only interested in in-game clan and tournament support, and don't personally understand most of why these issues are so hot. But I'm glad that people are concerned enough to speak up.
OK I get that LOL has the option to watch pro's in game or whatever and that's cool and all. We have this site called team liquid where we can find all the streams you could ever want so to me changing to allow people to watch in game should be toward the bottom of the priority list...
I've been playing this badass custom called The Star Strikers. Half the time I can only find games in channel "Strikers" if at all. I've been playing this game for a couple months here and there and it has become apparent to me the custom game system is still messed up where it still heavily favors 10-20 different "top of the list games". Well anyways if you like skill based team games where reaction time and team strategy are crucial try TSS.!!!
Edit: Here is my comment on what I think could help improve sc2 a LOT.
this isnt for me personally but more a suggestion to make the game better for casual players,
I want sc2 to become a HUGE esport, where the players can live of salaries without being IMMVP or Stephano.
I think the casual aspect of sc2 needs to be taken care of, for the hardcore players ( such as myself) the game is fine but in order to attract more players perhaps sc2 needs some kind of casual ladder system, both teamwise and individualwise where some mechanics are automized, for example larvae inject or worker production and perhaps implement fun units people can gain through achievement or simply skins to the already existing units.
When I talk to my casual friends about what they think of sc2 they pretty much all say the same thing; They enjoy watching it, but think the mechanics are too hard to learn, the game itself is too hard for them and they prefer playing with friends rather than sit and practice alone. So instead they choose to play mobas where they not only have fun with friends but also get rewards for their fun such as achievements and coins/experience to spend on skins hats and whatnot.
I think its very important to separate casuals from hardcore players since personally I'd hate it if marines all of a sudden looked like clowns or there was this new "fat-pile-of-poo-on-a-bike" for zergs that is bad but people fuck around with it in ladder games. but my friends and a lot of casual players with them would love it.
TL;DR my suggestion is a casual ladder for the casual players with ingame cosmetic changes and/or the way red bull xelnaga maps worked.
Either this or make some serious changes to custom games to make them more popular like the way wc3:FT custom games were, but I dont think that'll increase the playerbase and definitely not the amount of viewers.
Wouldn't in client spectating reduce the amount of ad revenue earned by streamers, or tournament streams that run ads to pay for a portion of their costs?
I'm personally only interested in in-game clan and tournament support, and don't personally understand most of why these issues are so hot. But I'm glad that people are concerned enough to speak up.
Maybe? But, on the other hand, I don't see why there couldn't be a simple addition of having tournament controls that allowed for some sort of ticket or subscription payment system for viewing the tournament itself, and maybe being able to extend that to the players if they wish. For that matter I don't see why that couldn't be worked in for just following the pro's themselves (or anyone really). Advertisement controls might be a little more tricky, at least from a business model point of view, as in the why/how would they support it, but I think still doable. Stream companies might not like it, but I think there is still a lot of casual viewership out there that doesn't own the game.
I think it's a great consideration though to factor into the ultimate solution for this, so thanks for bringing it up. I don't see that it should be a deal breaker though.
I want blizzard to release SC:BW with better graphics. so basically I want them to: - remove all the newbfriendly stuff - bring back the amazing units from BW - get rid of the weird AI, i.e. get rid of the fucking useless deathball crap. and so on
no wonder SC2 is dying before the addon is even released. sorry to be so negative, but me and my team have no motivation whatsoever to play anymore.
Wouldn't in client spectating reduce the amount of ad revenue earned by streamers, or tournament streams that run ads to pay for a portion of their costs?
I'm personally only interested in in-game clan and tournament support, and don't personally understand most of why these issues are so hot. But I'm glad that people are concerned enough to speak up.
Maybe? But, on the other hand, I don't see why there couldn't be a simple addition of having tournament controls that allowed for some sort of ticket or subscription payment system for viewing the tournament itself, and maybe being able to extend that to the players if they wish. For that matter I don't see why that couldn't be worked in for just following the pro's themselves (or anyone really). Advertisement controls might be a little more tricky, at least from a business model point of view, as in the why/how would they support it, but I think still doable. Stream companies might not like it, but I think there is still a lot of casual viewership out there that doesn't own the game.
I think it's a great consideration though to factor into the ultimate solution for this, so thanks for bringing it up. I don't see that it should be a deal breaker though.
or do what Heroes of Newerth does; simply open a twitch stream inside the game when u want to watch ingame-crap. that way the streamers still get the ad-income.
On October 26 2012 02:23 HypertonicHydroponic wrote:
On October 26 2012 01:57 Noobity wrote: Question,
Wouldn't in client spectating reduce the amount of ad revenue earned by streamers, or tournament streams that run ads to pay for a portion of their costs?
I'm personally only interested in in-game clan and tournament support, and don't personally understand most of why these issues are so hot. But I'm glad that people are concerned enough to speak up.
Maybe? But, on the other hand, I don't see why there couldn't be a simple addition of having tournament controls that allowed for some sort of ticket or subscription payment system for viewing the tournament itself, and maybe being able to extend that to the players if they wish. For that matter I don't see why that couldn't be worked in for just following the pro's themselves (or anyone really). Advertisement controls might be a little more tricky, at least from a business model point of view, as in the why/how would they support it, but I think still doable. Stream companies might not like it, but I think there is still a lot of casual viewership out there that doesn't own the game.
I think it's a great consideration though to factor into the ultimate solution for this, so thanks for bringing it up. I don't see that it should be a deal breaker though.
or do what Heroes of Newerth does; simply open a twitch stream inside the game when u want to watch ingame-crap. that way the streamers still get the ad-income.
Well, maybe that's the form it takes, but the option that takes away is watching games that aren't streamed. It doesn't really change the "what we (I) want Blizzard to do" it just changes "how it might be accomplished".
I chose LAN, but I don't know whether or not it will be a step to solve what I really want. I think I want ladders to be able to be built upon maps or mods. Imagine if you could take sc2promod and attach a ladder onto it. And then sc2OurModIsBetter comes along and a ladder is attached. Popular mod ladders would gain a following, the "market" would decide and tournaments could start being based around mods. We'd get the gameplay "we" want, such as the micro recommendations from the likes of Lalush, Nony, Failing, etc.
I want more interesting gameplay to watch. I don't care as much in terms of "growing SC2 as an esport", but I want to get excited again about watching a JaeDong v. Stork type match. I don't watch much SC2 anymore, although I'm optimistic that the gameplay can get better by the LotV expansion, or within a couple years after that.
What I would like to see is a change in the team multiplayer matchup. Atm, 3v3 and 4v4 are just silly. Monobattles are the main way people seem to enjoy big team battles.
IMO: in these game modes, the income and supply cap are too high. 3v3 and 4v4 are just really poor game modes. When I think of a team strategy game, I think of dota/league/hon not starcraft and a lot of people enjoy playing with friends.
basically, I'd like to see big team battles like 3v3 and 4v4 slowed down somehow so that they aren't the cheese mosh pit that they are today.
Unranked ladder, multiplayer replay watching, clan system, spectate MLG ipl etc from the client (you're in the game, just like CS). Also the game is pretty boring at the moment and I realised that you can play other games casually and still be very good.
as an admin of tournaments and someone who likes to cast with people on occasion, the game really needs a way to watch replays with other people
basically it would be like creating a lobby for a custom game, but instead of a map, it would be for a particular replay. then inivte the players you want to obs and go.
One thing I don't see anyone paying attention to (other than to complain about it) is the overall quality of the 1v1 ladder map pool. It's not just that some of the maps aren't very good--it's that they never change. When everyone gets three vetoes blizzard can afford to be a bit more adventurous. Why not hold a community mapmaking contest every season and put the top three vote-getters in the pool? Both the contest and the increased variety might renew casual interest in 1v1. Also I can't see how this would be much work on their part. One can only play so many games on ohana, daybreak, and cloud kingdom.
i think if they have unranked games they could add in super casual friendly mode with things like not just showing the worker count but allowing players to put it onto autobuild, having more minerals and gas on each harvest to speed things up, warnings before supply blocks, more starting workers
i have at least two friends that could play the game in that mode but are forever bronze in the real game, but they can have fun with easy mode and it wouldnt hurt anyone
I've always only watched esports. Could care less about casual features. I wish they'd take the mappool + balance more serious or do an overhaul. Atm TvT is really the only matchup I consider really good.
On October 26 2012 02:35 sCuMBaG wrote: I want blizzard to release SC:BW with better graphics. so basically I want them to: - remove all the newbfriendly stuff - bring back the amazing units from BW - get rid of the weird AI, i.e. get rid of the fucking useless deathball crap. and so on
no wonder SC2 is dying before the addon is even released. sorry to be so negative, but me and my team have no motivation whatsoever to play anymore.
The 2 current winners, in-game stream/game view and simplified custom game menu are both so good. I went for the in-game stream/game view. Would be really awesome if that part was free to watch too, just DL the client and obs games.
Other: Either the ability to create more then one account per game or the possibility to have different MMRs per race on one account. In WC3 I liked to be able to play all the races with different accounts and to fool around and stuff, which definitely kept my interest in playing high over a long time. Nowadays I haven't played SC2 for 2-3 months, because I'm kinda bored, but I'd probably play more, if I could play a different race without having to lose the next 20 games and later on winning the next 20 against easy opponents, if I switch back.
On October 27 2012 01:37 Barrin wrote: I didnt see fewer resources per base / high ground mechanic / etc so i just went with "Simplified Custom games area with individually named games" which is a close second.
I was expecting more map mechanics in hots, and blizzard bring collpasable rocks :s
Here are a few alternatives to make more interesting the maps IMO, the maps currently only offer xel'naga towers and infamous rocks.
Bridges: those could be neutral structures allowing be destroyed or be repaired throughout the game. With this idea the islands maps could have interesting mechanics. Yeah, you can call it rocks -1
Chrono Rift fields. would be an area with the spell of Jim Raynor (the pyramid) Anything trapped inside of the area will suffer penalties to its movement speed and attack speed. To remove this rift-zone I propose to destroy an obelisk, or control two Xel'Naga towers. Near of the pyramid. This can be ethereal rocks.
Platforms (levers) are areas large enough to contain a base that can change the ground level. Two alternatives, the platform can raise the ground level to make easy its defense, and the platform can lower the level, to make easy the siege. Platforms could also move horizontally, to isolate the area or approaching the "continental area". No rocks analogy this time
Please note that all those mechanics are triggered by the players, and no by one auto-script, like was the rising lava working.
Please add automated tournaments to the list. It would add a different aspect to the game instead of endless hours of laddering. Also it would be great to have tournaments in the custom games section where i suppose the dedicated players in nexus wars or what ever could get a big reward for playing custom games, now known as the arcade.
i would really like it if terran would stop requiring twice as much micro (and skill, really) as the other races in leagues lower than GM. I understand the game needs to be balanced for the pro scene, but im not even playing anymore just because its so damn frustrating. also, being able to watch replays with people would be nice, i think there was some talk about that feature a while ago but i guess it never went through
I want something that increase playing. Although F2P is a great way give everyone a chance to play my concern is that SC2 currently doesn't do enough to keep people playing. I think there are a lot of things in the pole that would improve that: A way to spectate games in client and watch pros with others. Simplified Custom games area with individually named games. Allowing you to watch replays with friends. Allowing Global play and trying to fix the latency issue that is around. Other -- Please write a comment. (Community interface: clan support, in game tournament/boX setup etc).
I personally think that the biggest of those is what made BW great for a lot of people: Better custom game / Arcade options.
On October 27 2012 02:33 archonOOid wrote: Please add automated tournaments to the list. It would add a different aspect to the game instead of endless hours of laddering. Also it would be great to have tournaments in the custom games section where i suppose the dedicated players in nexus wars or what ever could get a big reward for playing custom games, now known as the arcade.
I already voted for in game viewership, but if I could take that back and vote for client hosted tournaments I would. I would LOVE to have that, especially with clan support incoming.
While a lot of things would be a nice bonus there is no change I really want or that would make the game experience that much better for me. I have tons of fun how it is and the UI and other things around the game that don't affect gameplay aren't really interesting for me. I don't like HotS yet (I played the beta) but WoL is close to perfect for me.
Edit: But bnet tournaments as in wc3 would be the best!
I would like for the company to sell me a full game from the beginning instead of holding back features for upcoming releases, in order to get $140. Everything from the social side, UMS side, non-ladder side, game search feature, map creating features, a full campaign, well thought out game design, ect should be included from the start. They released shit and tricked us once, then they did the same thing with D3. Activision is just trying to make a buck off what Blizzard did in the past. I really don't want anything from this company anymore. If you buy HOTS, and aren't a pro gamer, you're feeding the degradation of video games. Every type of game nowadays seems to make a very successful game, then produce followup games based off that one's name, but aren't even close to the caliber of the previous game.
This game reworked with FTP and micro transactions would actually make them more money. This game actually done right would have made them more money based off word of mouth and reviews.
I also find the pro scene kind of boring at the moment, but I really don't attribute that being 100% Acti Blizz's fault, except maybe the PvZ and how the end game works out, that is their fault. I really just think players aren't really developed fully enough to make games consistently entertaining like in Broodward because the players knew what they could get away with at any time. But with the release of an expansion every couple-few years it will always reset this clock on the pro player's skill levels. So, now you will get 6+ years of mediocre SC2, except sometimes where the metagame happens meets up or two good players skill levels and play styles match up.
EPT
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