|
Russian Federation823 Posts
On August 10 2013 22:17 Sejanus wrote: * Results are too unpredictable. Even casters fail to predict correctly so often. Even TL writers fail so often. And they have so much experience. Game is too random. I wouldn't have enough sugar to sugarcoat this elephant in the room even if I wanted to.
* Games are too similar. Too boring. Too unpredictable (Yes it all is possible all at once. Think of a coin toss tournament). In basketball I can watch advantage building up. Every point matters, every cool play matters. I can watch the team building up their advantage and winning eventually. Or I can watch the other team starting catching up, and winning eventually. I see very clearly why winner is winner. What I cannot see in basketball is Lakers leading by 25 pts but then Kobe running into a "nice conclave" of Thunders, losing a ball, Durant throwing a stupid three pointer from his own basket, hitting, and it suddenly counts for 30 pts and Thunder wins by five. It's just stupid when majority of the game doesn't matter at all. If it doesn't matter I do not care to watch it, as simple as that. Can we fast forward to moments that do matter? And the biggest facepalm is when casters say "one mistake can cost a game" as if it's a good thing. One mistake should cost the game only when players are extremely equal, situation is extremely equal, etc. etc., not virtually in every game.
This is just my opinion, it's quite possible fixing all the things I listed won't help the game to become popular because other people may (dis)like different things. But that's why I can't imagine myself getting bored by basketball and stopping watching it for good. Which is already happening with SC2. And I've been watching basketball literally more than 10 times longer than SC2.
Unfortunately, these are the reasons why i don't really enjoy watching important games. The randomness kills any significance of this, as i safely can say that on some other day, Bogus 4 - 0 Maru for example.
|
|
Russian Federation823 Posts
On August 10 2013 23:34 IronyDK wrote:Show nested quote +On August 10 2013 23:29 kusto wrote:
Unfortunately, these are the reasons why i don't really enjoy watching important games. The randomness kills any significance of this, as i safely can say that on some other day, Bogus 4 - 0 Maru for example. So you dont think Maru just figured out how greedily Innovation plays and punished it? Rather that it was luck and a random win caused by the nature of SC2?
Yes, so next time Bogus prepares in such a way that he owns Maru 4 - 0. Completely possible in SC2. For example, this is how all the PvX matchups work in the metagame. They all in until somebody figures them out and then they adjust with another all-in.
|
On August 10 2013 21:04 DarkSpectre wrote: SC2 is dying but at a slow rate. I'm no longer enjoying playing nor watching SC2 games anymore. I'm sure that I'm in the majority.
I've never really enjoyed playing that much, but always had enjoyed watching it. I'd been offracing a lot to try and make the game new and fun again, but I can't play more than a game without getting bored. I watched the Maru 4-0 and his comeback last night, and I could barely stay awake. I find myself more drawn to Dota2 in the last while.
I think the game needs a complete overhaul in order to grow. It's just not that fun, no amount of eSports support will help.
|
|
My idea: run all tournaments at off-peak hours (like when WCS EU is on in NA) and dodge the hell out of LCS/DOTA tournaments to capture the people like me who will "watch" it on their other monitor and only pay attention when the casters start screaming.
edit: Food for thought, maybe having GOM charge $20+++ for VODs of any quality of the premier SC2 tournament (which also happens to be totally impractical to watch live for anyone who has a job or attends school outside of Korea) is not a great strategy for "growth."
|
On August 10 2013 00:21 [F_]aths wrote:Show nested quote +On August 09 2013 23:38 peidongyang wrote:On August 09 2013 23:31 [F_]aths wrote:On August 09 2013 23:23 Esoterikk wrote: It's up to Blizzard to fix the game on a fundamental level, unfortunately Blizzard is the least likely to do anything because sc2 isn't their main source of income. They could "fix" anything. Realtime strategy still is not as attractive as a whole as other genres. One should rather look at the success of SC2: The first global esports RTS. Honestly for most players sc2 isn't an rts game. It only is at the top levels of play. Sc2 is a very mechanical and motor-memory trained game and herein lies the problem. It's not a strategy game for most or a game that attracts a larger audience due to the subtlety in appreciating high level play. There is no "noob" fan base like they had in bw or in Moba games. Lots of players will complain but to make sc2 more popular you need to dumb down the mechanics and up the excitement factors and flashy plays/strategies. If you look at all the memorable matches, they weren't your standard metagame games, they were either flashy, game breaking, or just awesomely cheesy or close. Dumb downed mechanics and flashy plays make the game more boring in my opinion.
LoL and Dota2 disagree.
No offense to those games (their just as difficult to master due to the team dynamic) but just because LoL and Dota are less mechanically limiting has not stopped their expansion.
Being harder to click is translating to less viewership.
|
On August 10 2013 23:34 IronyDK wrote:Show nested quote +On August 10 2013 23:29 kusto wrote:
Unfortunately, these are the reasons why i don't really enjoy watching important games. The randomness kills any significance of this, as i safely can say that on some other day, Bogus 4 - 0 Maru for example. So you dont think Maru just figured out how greedily Innovation plays and punished it? Rather that it was luck and a random win caused by the nature of SC2?
You still fail to get it. The reason behind Maru winning is not important for this purpose. Whatever, lets say Maru figured Innovation. I believe that was the case, by the way. It doesn't change a damn thing: the outcome of SC2 is too unpredictable. Maru owning Innovation wasn't an isolated case, and epic story of underdog winning. It was a regular coin toss result in SC2 world. I don't care much why the outcomes are so unpredictable, being it due to "figuring", or "random nature of SC2", or low skill ceiling, or bazillion other reasons or combination thereof.
Yes, so next time Bogus prepares in such a way that he owns Maru 4 - 0. Completely possible in SC2.
Exactly!
It may be fun to watch games like that once in a while, when they are exceptions. But it gets pretty boring pretty fast when every match becomes a rock/paper/scissors or a coin toss or how casters call it "mind games" *yawwn*
Dumb downed mechanics and flashy plays make the game more boring in my opinion.
SC 2 mechanics are not very complicated, mostly. Let's not pretend there's much complexity in injecting larvas. It's very hard to do right, but it's not complicated and it's not interesting to watch. It's a gimmicky mechanic and must go, in my opinion. Some others are better, but still SC2 doesn't have incredibly complex mechanics so there's not much dumbing down to do. What's important is making them interesting to play and to watch, not to dumb down or up.
|
|
On August 10 2013 23:34 IronyDK wrote:Show nested quote +On August 10 2013 23:29 kusto wrote:
Unfortunately, these are the reasons why i don't really enjoy watching important games. The randomness kills any significance of this, as i safely can say that on some other day, Bogus 4 - 0 Maru for example. So you dont think Maru just figured out how greedily Innovation plays and punished it? Rather that it was luck and a random win caused by the nature of SC2?
That was figured out a long, long time ago lmao.
|
not a thread for bashing the game on empty arguements.
Nobody's bashing a game, you are fighting against windmills, imaginary opponents.
I am posting because I feel like it. If you can't understand what I am saying and why, the best course of action for you is to ignore me then. I enjoy talking to other people and I especially enjoy finding out it's not only me who dislikes the things I listed.
I dont see how its not an epic story of the underdog winning.
Fine, fine, go and enjoy the game then, good for you. We are talking what we don't like, if you do like the same things, it's very cool. People are different. Just that you do understand that your attempts to convince us we must like the same things you do are kinda pointless?
|
Blizzard should make the balance and unit design more open source. I'm honestly bored with the lack of creativity from their part.
I feel like they didn't grasp what made BW so awesome, and i fear the game really won't change even after the final expansion.
I hope they reserved all the crazy shit and upgrades for the last but I highly doubt about it.
They already screw the game with some of the existing units in my opinion.
Warp gate was a mistake for protoss, protoss has never been about mobility but about muscle. (Collossus and voidrays don't add much relevant things to the game play) Swarm hosts, broodlord, roach and (what they did to the) hydra does not fit the zerg concept, and are very annoying to play with and against. Hellions and mines are a sad way to avoid including the vulture into the game, Thor and marauder are boring units in my opinion, they are waaayyy too straight forward.
As long as they try to conserve those bad ideas, I don't expect much from this game. They introduced a lot of boring, and unidirectional units that won't produce interesting gameplay or strategies.
What is the concept behind the creation of the roach, the corruptor, the marauder, the voidray, the thor,... beside having A-move units that counters specific armor type ?
They even had the idea to add the warhound into that list :O There probably won't be a great enthousiasm around a not-great game.
If Blizzard was more humble and listened more to the constructive criticism right from the start we wouldn't be here, it's not too late, but Blizz will have to really surprise me in order to correct the shot.
|
Not sure about the growth, but imo something could be done to make SC2 more fun game. Imo, changing the standard bases from 8patches/2gas into something like 5-6 patches/1 rich gas would make the game more fun to watch, but obviously it would require pretty drastic balance changes in order to be successful.
In my eyes, the biggest flaw of SC2 was summed by Apollo in today's cast: (after Grubby took the 4th base) 'He doesn't need to mine from those minerals until the main is depleted anyway.'
(And I am not saying if this isn't done SC2 will die or anything, because it won't. Just saying that SC2 probably could be a little bit better.)
|
bumping this thread back up yo!
|
The answer to growing StarCraft depends on where you want to grow it. People playing? People watching? Number of tournaments? A specific scene? Amount of money? Just 'growing StarCraft' is a vague and massive goal to aim for.
To grow StarCraft player base, you would need to frankly refocus the game elsewhere--1v1 RTS is an extremely small niche and SC2 has pretty exceptional size in that regard. Bigger FFAs/team games are the best way to go, but would likely require a much larger map size than anything currently available to pull off well--even at 256x256 maps are just too small to fit a good 8 player FFA or 2v2v2v2 or what have you. People have a lot more fun in these environments, hence why BGH was so popular back in the day. Customs of course offer lots of value too, but if you're talking purely StarCraft you really want people to grasp the core of what the game is and have fun with it.
To grow viewership? Part of that would be shifting the game specifically to avoid stagnance, doing production better, and seeing where viewer counts are lacking. Without sufficient information we do not know what the raw numbers mean--is it time zones? Is it the right players being there? Is it the lack of NA players meaning fewer NA viewers giving a damn? We can presume, but without information it is hard to tell what needs to be fixed. The one universal thing is of course to advertise and spread better. I don't see ads for big WCS events when I play other Blizzard games. I have no idea when most stuff is going on unless I peruse TL. New eyeballs may not be interested, but the more who know this thing exists, the more have that chance at least.
How to grow the amount of money in the scene? A good start would be to stop bleeding so much of it. I would question just how much money has gone to travel across StarCraft 2 as a whole--I can only imagine the numbers. That's all money that's going right out of the scene. We also have yet to properly explore any payment plans beyond the most basic and/or stupid. Heck for all we know a kickstarter or something of the like could land us a tournament on par with TI3--nobody knows because nobody's tried it. A PPV event could even work if done correctly for all we know. There's just so much stuff and so little people trying anything.
I could go on and on with this stuff, but honestly my voice doesn't mean that much at the end of the day. *shrug*
|
1. bigger maps for big tournaments and Pro league
2. rebalance the entire game? meaning make useless units in Protoss and TErran useful again.
3. WCS? I did not like the idea from the start. I liked MLG with SC2.
4. More prize money for bigger tournaments
5. Make 2v2 matchups worth while again. maybe 3v3?
|
On August 09 2013 23:23 Esoterikk wrote: It's up to Blizzard to fix the game on a fundamental level, unfortunately Blizzard is the least likely to do anything because sc2 isn't their main source of income. not as eloquent as needed but basically this. if sc2 was a better game i'd be all up in that shiz. I'm itching for RTS but I can't really fool myself into playing SC2 just because it's 'starcraft' and the only real competitive option.
|
You could add a watch porno app to battle.net. Might improve popularity!
|
ITT: People further the conspiracy that koreans are taking our money, and strategically putting themselves in foreign events to keep the money rolling to them.
edit: Here is an idea. If you don't want Koreans to win so much, why not train as hard as them and beat them? Its a known fact that Koreans train much harder and for longer periods of time then foreigners.
|
On August 11 2013 03:22 crms wrote:Show nested quote +On August 09 2013 23:23 Esoterikk wrote: It's up to Blizzard to fix the game on a fundamental level, unfortunately Blizzard is the least likely to do anything because sc2 isn't their main source of income. not as eloquent as needed but basically this. if sc2 was a better game i'd be all up in that shiz. I'm itching for RTS but I can't really fool myself into playing SC2 just because it's 'starcraft' and the only real competitive option.
Yup, but income or not I don't think they really see it as something they care about. I highly doubt Valve or Riot went into their games thinking "this won't be big so lets half ass it!" No they found ways to monetize and grow and cultivate and put new, interesting features and content into their games. They spent time, money, and brain-power making it that much better, and with quality will come people willing to pay (...if money is all your after). Blizzard doesn't/hasn't done that at all. They have done nothing but prove 1 of 2 things; they don't care or they're having some serious time/managerial issues within the company and its development process. I'm going to vote a nice mix of both considering the amount we've seen from Blizzard in the content department over 3 years. Compare that to what Valve has done with DOTA2 in about 2 years.
At the very least you think Blizzard (which I think is just too much of a stubborn,old kook type of company, the kind that is just too big and too arrogant to get anything done) would see these good ideas and take note, attempt implementations of their own. But they don't, they hide in their offices, do a horrific job of communicating, and apparently get nothing done.
|
|
|
|