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On September 21 2013 23:44 Holy_AT wrote:
I think it is also time to demystify broodwar.
Broodwar is put on the highest of high pedestal, but does it really deserve to be there ?
Outside of korea, meaning the rest of the world, BW was not *the hit*. Yes there was a sworn in hardcore community and many people played it, it was not that multiplayer hit people believe it to be nowadays.
It rose to *fame* one can say in korea, but also under special circumstances.
Also it is a strategy game and fewer casual players will play it and they will leave if there is nothing for them in the game anymore.
SC 2 had a great start, it was picked up especially by the foreign scene at the beginning while Korea was slow. The game was hyped, many casuals played SCI or broodwar single player and wanted to play this game as well so there was a relative broad basis at the start.
But this basis of people never really got that much bigger after the first few month or the first year in my opinion.
The casuals started to loose interest, now even the amateurs and pro players start to loose interest in the game.
I dont talk for the pro players, but why does the average Joe loose interest ?
Because there is nothing new in the game. No content, no new units or major changes or diversions. There may be changes on how the game is played when new meta games emerges, but the game is stall and thats something the average video gamer dislikes. He wants something new, to try something new, he wants blizzard to provide something new, advertize tournaments and what not.
II do not like LoL that much gameplaywise, but just look at it. New heroes every month, new skinns, games or tournaments beeing advertised on the fucking client. There are news videos and what not on the fucking client.
Riot is working hard even though the game is out to make the people enjoy and pay for it (although its free).
And look at blizzard: They made the game and now their job is done for them. They may do some minor balance patches when their lofty highborn David Kim feels up to it and that's it. Blizzard is like fire and forget, buy and die.
Just like they did with diablo 3. Buy the crap and play it we're not doing anything for you although everyone is upset and hattin. They of course screwd around with the balance a bit and that's it. After month or more then a year ??? they finally included the arena multiplayer pvp stuff they had more or lesson promised from the start and what not.
And I do not understand it. Blizzard is making WoW where they throw in new stuff every month or so to keep players happy. New gear, new bosses and monsters new pets new.. new everything. Well it must not go to that extreme but I think there is always some place in a game for change.
Yes BW deserves to be put on the highest of pedestals. It has nothing to do with popularity, just with game quality. The huge popularity of a game like bw in korea was a singular occurrence due to very special circumstances and will not happen again. The gaming and esports market has changed (or more precisely, there didnt even exist an esports market when sc1 was made) and it will not allow such high quality games to be the most profitable ones anymore. Like with literature, music and everything else that has evolved from a market for a small elite to a full scale mass market, the most popular and profitable goods (in this case games) will be of mediocre quality at best, while top quality products, should they be published, are niche products.
Everybody who has played bw passionately for a cpl of years and then played sc2 or still plays sc2 knows that the depth and quality of bw is simply much bigger. Ask any ex-bw sc2 pro and they will all tell you that bw was the better game. BW was so deep it didnt need new units or balance patches for nearly a decade and still new ways to play were devised. Granted, its not a game to pull huge masses, just like a Goethe novel wont pull as many readers as a Dan Brown one.Sc2 on the other hand wont be able to sustain even a small hardcore community without expansions and updates which obviously still come at a pace too slow to keep the casual players interested. The "new-factor" has worn off and there isnt enough new stuff thrown out at a fast enough pace to keep the casual crowd interested. But on top of that, the game doesnt have enough depth and quality to keep the hardcore community interested. I for one am fairly certain that SC2 would not survive 5 years of no changes, let alone a decade with still new styles of play being invented. So to be blunt, BW isnt put on the highest of pedestals because it retained popularity in korea for so long but because it was a game with depth and quality so far unparalleled in the RTS genre.
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4713 Posts
On September 21 2013 22:08 RaZorwire wrote:
I also have to say that I find it a bit weird that people try to attribute the supposed decline of SC2 to the gameplay itself being flawed. Don't get me wrong, having opinions on and suggestions for the gameplay mechanics is good, but it's not like deathballs and a lack of reaver drops are things that just popped up in the game recently and turned people off from watching. If the game was doing fine the first few years, why would issues with the gameplay mechanics become an issue after such a long time? I mean, what happened? People were enjoying SC2 for two years and then suddenly their reaver drop withdrawal kicked in and made them leave?
Again, there's nothing wrong if you dislike the way SC2 is played, but the game would never have reached the state and size it was at in 2011 if a majority of the community agreed with you. The fact that it's supposed decline didn't start until several years after release suggest the gameplay was never the problem. Also, HotS generally seems better suited for multi-tasking and less focused on death balls than WoL was, so if the game is still in decline (which might not even be true, but if), doesn't that imply that the way the game plays out never was the problem?
And if it really is true (as someone tried to point out last page) that a majority of SC2 players have never played BW, why would the supposed superiority of BW matter? If hardcore BW-fans really are a small part of the community, then SC2 being different than BW wouldn't hurt viewership numbers much.
Actually I have an explanation for this. In the first year to 18 months of SC2, some of the flaws of the game weren't immediately apparent, the game wasn't at all figured out and the level of play was very low. So in this time SC2 experienced a boom because there was so much excitement in discovering new things. Once SC2 settled down and the level of play got sufficiently high we started to see the problems and viewership/interest started to decline.
Well, I'm not saying anything along those lines actually did happen, but it seems to be like a plausible explanation. Design is also the reason why some MUs are more exciting then others. For example TvT and TvZ are my favorite MU's they are more execution based and similar to BW in the sense that your battle micro and army interactions are much, much more dynamic.
I hate the back and forth posturing you see in PvZ, PvZ or TvP, if I wanted to see two adversaries size each other off I'd be watching animal planet, I play and watch SC2 to be engaged, to see who can control his army better, who can multi-task, all the while macroing behind it.
SC2 had that in the very beginning before everyone learned what was the optimal ways to fight, and before we realized that posturing is 90% of the battle, because you can't really micro in a battle due to the sheer speed at which they end.
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there is no problem with SC2.
people expected too much.
it is a base-building resource gathering RTS game.
it is a small niche market which has only gotten smaller over the past decade.
generally speaking, i'm happy with the game and i feel blizzard delivered full value for an RTS title.
Expect SC2 esports to continue on its slow decline.
Expect Blizzard to make another nice pile of profit on Legacy of the Void.
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The MLG that had only local players was incredibly boring to watch...
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4713 Posts
On September 22 2013 00:29 lamprey1 wrote:
there is no problem with SC2.
people expected too much.
it is a base-building resource gathering RTS game.
it is a small niche market which has only gotten smaller over the past decade.
generally speaking, i'm happy with the game and i feel blizzard delivered full value for an RTS title.
No that's not true at all, SC2 is an excellent RTS, no doubt about that, but it is still missing a lot of intricacies of what made BW a great game, and it has some notable design issues, some that had been apparent since the beginning of the game (Larva Inject, Warp Gate), and some that only became more apperant as time went by (lack of proper high ground mechanics, lessened defender's advantage, pathing).
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On September 22 2013 00:21 Destructicon wrote:Show nested quote +On September 21 2013 22:08 RaZorwire wrote:
I also have to say that I find it a bit weird that people try to attribute the supposed decline of SC2 to the gameplay itself being flawed. Don't get me wrong, having opinions on and suggestions for the gameplay mechanics is good, but it's not like deathballs and a lack of reaver drops are things that just popped up in the game recently and turned people off from watching. If the game was doing fine the first few years, why would issues with the gameplay mechanics become an issue after such a long time? I mean, what happened? People were enjoying SC2 for two years and then suddenly their reaver drop withdrawal kicked in and made them leave?
Again, there's nothing wrong if you dislike the way SC2 is played, but the game would never have reached the state and size it was at in 2011 if a majority of the community agreed with you. The fact that it's supposed decline didn't start until several years after release suggest the gameplay was never the problem. Also, HotS generally seems better suited for multi-tasking and less focused on death balls than WoL was, so if the game is still in decline (which might not even be true, but if), doesn't that imply that the way the game plays out never was the problem?
And if it really is true (as someone tried to point out last page) that a majority of SC2 players have never played BW, why would the supposed superiority of BW matter? If hardcore BW-fans really are a small part of the community, then SC2 being different than BW wouldn't hurt viewership numbers much. Actually I have an explanation for this. In the first year to 18 months of SC2, some of the flaws of the game weren't immediately apparent, the game wasn't at all figured out and the level of play was very low. So in this time SC2 experienced a boom because there was so much excitement in discovering new things. Once SC2 settled down and the level of play got sufficiently high we started to see the problems and viewership/interest started to decline. Well, I'm not saying anything along those lines actually did happen, but it seems to be like a plausible explanation. Design is also the reason why some MUs are more exciting then others. For example TvT and TvZ are my favorite MU's they are more execution based and similar to BW in the sense that your battle micro and army interactions are much, much more dynamic. I hate the back and forth posturing you see in PvZ, PvZ or TvP, if I wanted to see two adversaries size each other off I'd be watching animal planet, I play and watch SC2 to be engaged, to see who can control his army better, who can multi-task, all the while macroing behind it. SC2 had that in the very beginning before everyone learned what was the optimal ways to fight, and before we realized that posturing is 90% of the battle, because you can't really micro in a battle due to the sheer speed at which they end.
According to google trends (the interest in) Starcraft 2 has very steadily declined since November 2010.
Nothing you say about gameplay inherent reasons can be found in that data. The decline looks as natural as any decline of any impact introduced statistical process will ever look, it hasn't accelerated at a certain point "because people figured out it was flawed".
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On September 22 2013 00:32 Destructicon wrote:Show nested quote +On September 22 2013 00:29 lamprey1 wrote:
there is no problem with SC2.
people expected too much.
it is a base-building resource gathering RTS game.
it is a small niche market which has only gotten smaller over the past decade.
generally speaking, i'm happy with the game and i feel blizzard delivered full value for an RTS title. No that's not true at all, SC2 is an excellent RTS, no doubt about that, but it is still missing a lot of intricacies of what made BW a great game, and it has some notable design issues, some that had been apparent since the beginning of the game (Larva Inject, Warp Gate), and some that only became more apperant as time went by (lack of proper high ground mechanics, lessened defender's advantage, pathing).
I watched Browder directly address the high ground advantage and defender's advantage.
They've made their design decisions. None of these design decisions will convince girls who play Animal Crossing and Grandma's who go on Pogo to play the game.
It captured the largest piece of the strategy gaming market possible. Now its waning.
If you are not happy with these mechanics then pull an Ice Frog and make your own game. Blizzard provided you with the tools.
If u r not happy with this .. use the MOD kit that comes to CoH2 or Rome2 or the new C&C. Oh Wait, none of those games even has a map maker. 
I was happy with WC3 even though DOTA exceeded it in popularity.
Blizzard did its job.
On September 22 2013 00:21 Destructicon wrote:Show nested quote +On September 21 2013 22:08 RaZorwire wrote:
I also have to say that I find it a bit weird that people try to attribute the supposed decline of SC2 to the gameplay itself being flawed. Don't get me wrong, having opinions on and suggestions for the gameplay mechanics is good, but it's not like deathballs and a lack of reaver drops are things that just popped up in the game recently and turned people off from watching. If the game was doing fine the first few years, why would issues with the gameplay mechanics become an issue after such a long time? I mean, what happened? People were enjoying SC2 for two years and then suddenly their reaver drop withdrawal kicked in and made them leave?
Again, there's nothing wrong if you dislike the way SC2 is played, but the game would never have reached the state and size it was at in 2011 if a majority of the community agreed with you. The fact that it's supposed decline didn't start until several years after release suggest the gameplay was never the problem. Also, HotS generally seems better suited for multi-tasking and less focused on death balls than WoL was, so if the game is still in decline (which might not even be true, but if), doesn't that imply that the way the game plays out never was the problem?
And if it really is true (as someone tried to point out last page) that a majority of SC2 players have never played BW, why would the supposed superiority of BW matter? If hardcore BW-fans really are a small part of the community, then SC2 being different than BW wouldn't hurt viewership numbers much. Actually I have an explanation for this. In the first year to 18 months of SC2, some of the flaws of the game weren't immediately apparent, the game wasn't at all figured out and the level of play was very low. So in this time SC2 experienced a boom because there was so much excitement in discovering new things. Once SC2 settled down and the level of play got sufficiently high we started to see the problems and viewership/interest started to decline.
there are many reasons.. your explanation is a small contributor to this effect...
i have a simpler, more primal explanation that every employee of EA and Activision knows about.
it was the excitement of cool new graphics.
the excitement of cool new graphics have been powering the industry since its birth. this factor is part of SC2 as well.
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Good read. My thoughts related to the stuff you talked about. First off the personality thing is really true not just for SC but for sports too. Remember Terrel Owens in the nfl? I hate the cowboys, but I would watch them to see his crazy entertaining things he does during the game. I grew bored of watching WCS tournaments simply because the production isn't that great (Riot kills it with LoL, and TI3 omg!), the players I like to see aren't in them because it is becoming all korean and well lets face it that is boring because korean's are just killers. As far battle.net interface or w/e. yeah it is horrible. In WC 3 chat and clan's were awesome we had rivalries with other clans. I remember in WC 3 I was an officer for a clan called EZW aka Easy win. Our clan was a spilt off from TNRA "The new rebel alliance" so anytime we faced TNRA in 1v1,2v2,3v3,4v4 if you wore those tags you knew you had to play your best to beat them. IN SC 2 I don't have that feeling and it is boring. As far as getting casuals to play, well SC 2 isn't that fun when you get better. I would say for myself when I hit diamond it was now work. I don't see blizzard making changes to the game until LOTV. But I hope WCS gets better....because I can't watch koreans vs koreans vs koreans all day because I don't care. I could watch HuK, Puck, Demuslim, Select play though because they are well local players I care about.
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There's nothing wrong with the game, it's not for everyone and people who don't like it can play something else (plenty out there).
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no recent RTS comes close to the hours I played SC2.
I could get my GF to play DOTA , I will never get her into SC2 ever.
I tried , SC2 is fucking hard for ppl who are not into hardcore RTS or PC gaming in general, theres nothing wrong about it , only hardcore gamers will like it DOTA on the other hand....
Im not complaining SC2 is like the best RTS in the market and I can always find a decent crowd of ppl around my lvl (gold) so... I will play from time to time.
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wow Xeris.. Amazing post dude 
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To me, the answer is in this question: If SC2 was NOT released as a successor to BW and had a completely different name, would it be as popular as it is now? I don't really think so.
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4713 Posts
On September 22 2013 00:36 lamprey1 wrote:Show nested quote +On September 22 2013 00:32 Destructicon wrote:On September 22 2013 00:29 lamprey1 wrote:
there is no problem with SC2.
people expected too much.
it is a base-building resource gathering RTS game.
it is a small niche market which has only gotten smaller over the past decade.
generally speaking, i'm happy with the game and i feel blizzard delivered full value for an RTS title. No that's not true at all, SC2 is an excellent RTS, no doubt about that, but it is still missing a lot of intricacies of what made BW a great game, and it has some notable design issues, some that had been apparent since the beginning of the game (Larva Inject, Warp Gate), and some that only became more apperant as time went by (lack of proper high ground mechanics, lessened defender's advantage, pathing). I watched Browder directly address the high ground advantage and defender's advantage. They've made their design decisions. None of these design decisions will convince girls who play Animal Crossing and Grandma's who go on Pogo to play the game. It captured the largest piece of the strategy gaming market possible. Now its waning. If you are not happy with these mechanics then pull an Ice Frog and make your own game. Blizzard provided you with the tools. If u r not happy with this .. use the MOD kit that comes to CoH2 or Rome2 or the new C&C. Oh Wait, none of those games even has a map maker. I was happy with WC3 even though DOTA exceeded it in popularity. Blizzard did its job. Show nested quote +On September 22 2013 00:21 Destructicon wrote:On September 21 2013 22:08 RaZorwire wrote:
I also have to say that I find it a bit weird that people try to attribute the supposed decline of SC2 to the gameplay itself being flawed. Don't get me wrong, having opinions on and suggestions for the gameplay mechanics is good, but it's not like deathballs and a lack of reaver drops are things that just popped up in the game recently and turned people off from watching. If the game was doing fine the first few years, why would issues with the gameplay mechanics become an issue after such a long time? I mean, what happened? People were enjoying SC2 for two years and then suddenly their reaver drop withdrawal kicked in and made them leave?
Again, there's nothing wrong if you dislike the way SC2 is played, but the game would never have reached the state and size it was at in 2011 if a majority of the community agreed with you. The fact that it's supposed decline didn't start until several years after release suggest the gameplay was never the problem. Also, HotS generally seems better suited for multi-tasking and less focused on death balls than WoL was, so if the game is still in decline (which might not even be true, but if), doesn't that imply that the way the game plays out never was the problem?
And if it really is true (as someone tried to point out last page) that a majority of SC2 players have never played BW, why would the supposed superiority of BW matter? If hardcore BW-fans really are a small part of the community, then SC2 being different than BW wouldn't hurt viewership numbers much. Actually I have an explanation for this. In the first year to 18 months of SC2, some of the flaws of the game weren't immediately apparent, the game wasn't at all figured out and the level of play was very low. So in this time SC2 experienced a boom because there was so much excitement in discovering new things. Once SC2 settled down and the level of play got sufficiently high we started to see the problems and viewership/interest started to decline. there are many reasons.. your explanation is a small contributor to this effect... i have a simpler, more primal explanation that every employee of EA and Activision knows about. it was the excitement of cool new graphics. the excitement of cool new graphics have been powering the industry since its birth. this factor is part of SC2 as well.
Its for the very reason that I love the SC franchise that I continue to post about its shortcomings and why I believe some design decisions are flawed. I love the game but that doesn't mean I can't post and talk about things that I feel are clearly shortcomings, and there are plenty of other people that seem to agree with me.
You also have no idea what you are talking about when you said pull an Icefrog and make your own game. It took Icefrog years just to refine DoTA to the level it currently is, even a team of people working on a game mod in any engine would have their work cut out for a good 3-4 years.
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On September 22 2013 00:32 Destructicon wrote:Show nested quote +On September 22 2013 00:29 lamprey1 wrote:
there is no problem with SC2.
people expected too much.
it is a base-building resource gathering RTS game.
it is a small niche market which has only gotten smaller over the past decade.
generally speaking, i'm happy with the game and i feel blizzard delivered full value for an RTS title. No that's not true at all, SC2 is an excellent RTS, no doubt about that, but it is still missing a lot of intricacies of what made BW a great game, and it has some notable design issues, some that had been apparent since the beginning of the game (Larva Inject, Warp Gate), and some that only became more apperant as time went by (lack of proper high ground mechanics, lessened defender's advantage, pathing).
I don't quite agree with you.
SC2 is a pretty bad game but what made it so good was the community around. We have GSL, MLG, so many tournaments to watch, laddering was a breeze since you could find games so quickly and so fast.
The game itself is pretty stale, at least in my opinion, compared to other RTS. There's little room for strategy, there's one go-to mid game composition and there are a variety of openings that counter each other in a coin-flippy sort of way which really just doesn't make the game fun
also being able to lose the game to less than 10 units (banshee, DT, banelings, hellions, cheese and so on) really makes the game even more tedious to play. there's so much shit you can die to without playing an actual fun game.
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About the boringness of games :
Wasn't this to be expected from any heavyly mediatized game ?
As soon as a powerfull strategy emerges it is countered in the following weeks, build orders are upgraded and everything goes back to the same strats, would that be SC2 or BW.
It's a poor motivation as a player : should I spend time working on a strategy for months that is going to be destroyed anyway ?
The fact that the same units can be the answer to everything is crippling the game.
We are stuck in a strong, unbreakable environment that regulates itself from any deviation and formats players to an unique, all around style
It's here for so long and in the same form that we boringly accept this state of things. Picture yourself explaining to a noob that his mass thor strat isn't working ? "MMM is what you should do all the time, it's better than everything else... that's how it is ! " Shouldn't he learn what counters what instead ?
What could Blizzard do ?
Blizzard is playing a double, opposite role in this.
First, they created this environment and obviously want to keep its stability. We saw them nerf many times units that are the core of powerfull strats.
Second, they are aware of this stale situation and they try to shake the state of things without destroying the environment : buff to undersued units, map changes and last but not least, new expansion units.
Many hoped for a way better game, but in the end the boringness came back.
To adress the boringness problem, Blizzard would need to change gameplay mechanics to break the environment and find a new stability. However since they created this environment I can't picture them destroying it and doing another.
Wasn't the original design idea for sc2 was a "unit X counters Y which counters Z which counters X" ?
That could actually be a viable design that would break the current environment, if applied seriously.
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4713 Posts
On September 22 2013 01:23 renkin wrote:
About the boringness of games :
Wasn't this to be expected from any heavyly mediatized game ?
As soon as a powerfull strategy emerges it is countered in the following weeks, build orders are upgraded and everything goes back to the same strats, would that be SC2 or BW.
It's a poor motivation as a player : should I spend time working on a strategy for months that is going to be destroyed anyway ?
The fact that the same units can be the answer to everything is crippling the game.
We are stuck in a strong, unbreakable environment that regulates itself from any deviation and formats players to an unique, all around style
It's here for so long and in the same form that we boringly accept this state of things. Picture yourself explaining to a noob that his mass thor strat isn't working ? "MMM is what you should do all the time, it's better than everything else... that's how it is ! " Shouldn't he learn what counters what instead ?
What could Blizzard do ?
Blizzard is playing a double, opposite role in this.
First, they created this environment and obviously want to keep its stability. We saw them nerf many times units that are the core of powerfull strats.
Second, they are aware of this stale situation and they try to shake the state of things without destroying the environment : buff to undersued units, map changes and last but not least, new expansion units.
Many hoped for a way better game, but in the end the boringness came back.
To adress the boringness problem, Blizzard would need to change gameplay mechanics to break the environment and find a new stability. However since they created this environment I can't picture them destroying it and doing another.
Wasn't the original design idea for sc2 was a "unit X counters Y which counters Z which counters X" ?
That could actually be a viable design that would break the current environment, if applied seriously.
You are right in that there is staleness in the game at some points, but that doesn't stem at all from the counters, its just from the way the engine and pathing and fighting works.
For reference I'd read http://www.teamliquid.net/blogs/viewblog.php?topic_id=429573
But in short, the problem is that a lot of the fights is mostly posturing and searching for a favorable position, once that is achieved and a fight starts, there is very little micro that can occur, because the fights are so fast and everything dies so easily.
Now if the fights could be slowed down and if more interactivity existed withing fights, being able to bait units and kill them off, back and forth action in fights, focus fire, repositioning and re posturing within fights, all designed to maximize damage, then the game would be way more exciting because, even if someone could say, player A could create the theoretical perfect composition to kill player B's composition, if player B just has better battle micro overall and can still win, then that adds a ton more excitement. You now have the fun of watching someone reach his perfect composition but now you have to see if he also has the skill to control it.
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On September 22 2013 01:12 ander wrote:
To me, the answer is in this question: If SC2 was NOT released as a successor to BW and had a completely different name, would it be as popular as it is now? I don't really think so.
Obviously not, but what that accomplish? Ask better question :p
We can divulge about human psyche, and how i prefer something over something, but after examination i find it's only the difference of name.
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Good read, but all of this has been said before. Many times. The problems are well known but Blizzard doesn't step in and take care of their baby. Lose/lose for everyone in the scene.
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On September 22 2013 01:15 Destructicon wrote:
You also have no idea what you are talking about when you said pull an Icefrog and make your own game. It took Icefrog years just to refine DoTA to the level it currently is, even a team of people working on a game mod in any engine would have their work cut out for a good 3-4 years.
He never said it was going to be easy. Making games is hard. Making games that work as an esport is harder.
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EPT
