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4713 Posts
On October 12 2013 01:15 Thieving Magpie wrote:Show nested quote +On October 12 2013 00:56 Grumbels wrote:On October 12 2013 00:40 Thieving Magpie wrote:On October 12 2013 00:13 The_Red_Viper wrote:
btw i didnt use these statictics for any argument cause its pretty hard to do. I did this more or less cause i was curious.
But i think these data shoes that bw was less volatile than sc2, that isnt shocking (harder mechanics) but you can see it in this data (i guess).
I dont think this has anything to do with skill ceiling though, its just way harder to get better in sc2 compared to other progamers, cause there are many things that wont matter that much (as long as you have one strong army you can win, its not important what happened before).
Well i dont know if sc2 can stabalize after the last expension (and no patches!), but its pretty damn hard right now to dominate the korean scene. Sort of. SC2 was a lot more consistent early on when people had Reapers, Ghosts, Amulet, etc... to abuse. As each successive "OP" unit got patched the game became less and less consistent. In the time of 4gate MC was unbeatable, almost literally unbeatable winning almost 90% of his PvP matches. As the 4gate got nerfed and nerfed it got more and more coinflippy until it became just a lazerfest. The MSC has improved the possible openers and unit compositions, but there was a magic when PvP was truly who had the best Stalker micro and nothing else. MC in 2011 lost key series in PvP to HuK, Alicia and HongUn for instance. He really wasn't unbeatable in PvP, it's just that for a while the protoss competition was really bad and he could mop up San, Anypro, Inca and HongUn to pad his winrates. Saying that 4gate was the non-volatile era in PvP is really really questionable/dumb, you always had the option to do defensive vs offensive 4gate and so on. The people who beat him were few and far between, and for the most part he would beat them more often than they'd beat him. Although it wasn't strategically diverse, the top PvP players were very much distinct at that time period as opposed to now. Heck, you wouldn't call iloveoov a scrub just because he didn't compete in the time of the Flash/Jaedong/Bisu era do you? Of course not, oov was the best in his time, boxer in his time, flash in his time. Qualitative measurements are always relative to the time period. MVP kept winning and most of his strats are what eventually got patched out of terran. After a few years of Blizzard literally patching his innovations to the game MVP finally stopped winning against Koreans as dominantly as he did early on in SC2. Its the same with Nestea. He kept winning everything despite Zerg losing a lot of the time. And as the zerg got more and more of its defensive capabilities buffed Nestea's safe play stopped being good enough to differentiate him since all zergs could now easily survive the early game. There's a reason those three players dominated the scene for the first 2 years even just swapping titles back and forth for about 5 or six GSLs in a row. But after enough patches everyone could be as good as them. For example, I believe that Flash has all of MVP's skills and then some, and if Flash had been playing SC2 in 2010/2011 he would dominate the scene in much the same way that MVP dominated the scene. However, after the game got as many patches as it did, Flash is now just a less struggling MVP as his weaker BW mechanics can't be overcome by pure tactics anymore and why innovation, who had better mechanics than flash but less tactical know how, eventually charged forward as the leader of the terran pack. There was a lot of consistency in early SC2, and had the game not been patched as much as it was it would have stabilized on its own. Reapers seemed too strong, so everyone nerfed it. Now that maps are huge and map makers no longer have to match the ladder 2010 reapers would not be a problem anymore. Do you remember the San vs SC match that got Amulet nerfed? SC wasn't even splitting his army just letting them die to 2-3 storms. Do you think that would be a problem now? Hell no. A lot of the old patches fixed solvable problems. A lot of the things they fixed were aspects the game that allowed players to truly differentiate themselves. The more those "OP" aspects got nerfed the less people are able to differentiate themselves.
While I partially agree with part of your conclusion that a lot of the early SC2 patches hit things that could have been fixed on their own, I don't agree with your entire conclusion.
I believe that, ultimately the biggest problem with SC2 is that it is build in such a way that it facilitates very few ways to actually differentiate yourself and excel as far as engagements go. Posturing is what matters 90% of the time and often armies dance around each other seeking the superior position until someone engages and then, after a short fight, it all ends, usually with someone coming out the clear winner and the other guy hopelessly behind.
The armies posturing around each other is boring and anti-climatic and would ultimately have happened regardless of whether or not Blizz patched the game, because at its core that is what SC2 gravitates towards, huge deathball fights that end quickly.
The sooner people acknowledge that, in this regard, BW is clearly the superior game, the better for the future of SC2. Obviously I'm not advocating for the return of BW esque pathing, what I am advocating for is smart design solutions to slow down fights and make them more involving, back and forth, skillful.
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On October 12 2013 01:52 Destructicon wrote:Show nested quote +On October 12 2013 01:15 Thieving Magpie wrote:On October 12 2013 00:56 Grumbels wrote:On October 12 2013 00:40 Thieving Magpie wrote:On October 12 2013 00:13 The_Red_Viper wrote:
btw i didnt use these statictics for any argument cause its pretty hard to do. I did this more or less cause i was curious.
But i think these data shoes that bw was less volatile than sc2, that isnt shocking (harder mechanics) but you can see it in this data (i guess).
I dont think this has anything to do with skill ceiling though, its just way harder to get better in sc2 compared to other progamers, cause there are many things that wont matter that much (as long as you have one strong army you can win, its not important what happened before).
Well i dont know if sc2 can stabalize after the last expension (and no patches!), but its pretty damn hard right now to dominate the korean scene. Sort of. SC2 was a lot more consistent early on when people had Reapers, Ghosts, Amulet, etc... to abuse. As each successive "OP" unit got patched the game became less and less consistent. In the time of 4gate MC was unbeatable, almost literally unbeatable winning almost 90% of his PvP matches. As the 4gate got nerfed and nerfed it got more and more coinflippy until it became just a lazerfest. The MSC has improved the possible openers and unit compositions, but there was a magic when PvP was truly who had the best Stalker micro and nothing else. MC in 2011 lost key series in PvP to HuK, Alicia and HongUn for instance. He really wasn't unbeatable in PvP, it's just that for a while the protoss competition was really bad and he could mop up San, Anypro, Inca and HongUn to pad his winrates. Saying that 4gate was the non-volatile era in PvP is really really questionable/dumb, you always had the option to do defensive vs offensive 4gate and so on. The people who beat him were few and far between, and for the most part he would beat them more often than they'd beat him. Although it wasn't strategically diverse, the top PvP players were very much distinct at that time period as opposed to now. Heck, you wouldn't call iloveoov a scrub just because he didn't compete in the time of the Flash/Jaedong/Bisu era do you? Of course not, oov was the best in his time, boxer in his time, flash in his time. Qualitative measurements are always relative to the time period. MVP kept winning and most of his strats are what eventually got patched out of terran. After a few years of Blizzard literally patching his innovations to the game MVP finally stopped winning against Koreans as dominantly as he did early on in SC2. Its the same with Nestea. He kept winning everything despite Zerg losing a lot of the time. And as the zerg got more and more of its defensive capabilities buffed Nestea's safe play stopped being good enough to differentiate him since all zergs could now easily survive the early game. There's a reason those three players dominated the scene for the first 2 years even just swapping titles back and forth for about 5 or six GSLs in a row. But after enough patches everyone could be as good as them. For example, I believe that Flash has all of MVP's skills and then some, and if Flash had been playing SC2 in 2010/2011 he would dominate the scene in much the same way that MVP dominated the scene. However, after the game got as many patches as it did, Flash is now just a less struggling MVP as his weaker BW mechanics can't be overcome by pure tactics anymore and why innovation, who had better mechanics than flash but less tactical know how, eventually charged forward as the leader of the terran pack. There was a lot of consistency in early SC2, and had the game not been patched as much as it was it would have stabilized on its own. Reapers seemed too strong, so everyone nerfed it. Now that maps are huge and map makers no longer have to match the ladder 2010 reapers would not be a problem anymore. Do you remember the San vs SC match that got Amulet nerfed? SC wasn't even splitting his army just letting them die to 2-3 storms. Do you think that would be a problem now? Hell no. A lot of the old patches fixed solvable problems. A lot of the things they fixed were aspects the game that allowed players to truly differentiate themselves. The more those "OP" aspects got nerfed the less people are able to differentiate themselves. While I partially agree with part of your conclusion that a lot of the early SC2 patches hit things that could have been fixed on their own, I don't agree with your entire conclusion. I believe that, ultimately the biggest problem with SC2 is that it is build in such a way that it facilitates very few ways to actually differentiate yourself and excel as far as engagements go. Posturing is what matters 90% of the time and often armies dance around each other seeking the superior position until someone engages and then, after a short fight, it all ends, usually with someone coming out the clear winner and the other guy hopelessly behind. The armies posturing around each other is boring and anti-climatic and would ultimately have happened regardless of whether or not Blizz patched the game, because at its core that is what SC2 gravitates towards, huge deathball fights that end quickly. The sooner people acknowledge that, in this regard, BW is clearly the superior game, the better for the future of SC2. Obviously I'm not advocating for the return of BW esque pathing, what I am advocating for is smart design solutions to slow down fights and make them more involving, back and forth, skillful.
I actually agree with you entirely.
In BW, pathing, ai, glitches, UI limitations etc... all provided ways to differentiate people.
In early SC2 this was most apparent through OP/undercosted units/abilities. As each of those units got nerfed and flattened without something to replace it we get less and less people able to differentiate.
Bunker rushes were strong in early SC2, but not strong enough to stop Nestea from winning the 2nd GSL and winning 2 more quickly after that. Had the maps been bigger, had we had depots in the low ground, etc... we wouldn't have needed the non-stop nerfs to the barracks and the bunker.
Voidrays were SERIOUSLY strong, if they survived the early sections of a fight and there were so many tricks people played to maintain Voidray DPS that was exciting. Now they have an anti-armor stim. Genius had made a name for himself with his Voidray play, now voidrays are a joke.
The flatter they make the game the more legitimate the BW loyalists complains become. Heck, do you remember when only about 3-4 Terrans in the world could consistently do the Ghosts transition in TvZ and they hoped to god they opponent didn't just transition to mass lings if they overmade ghosts? That was awesome!
Or do you remember when MVP would mech in all his TvZ games, Nada would go Marine/Tank in all his TvZ games, and Bomber would go pure bio march ala SC in all his TvZ games? And they all produced back and forth games regardless of strategy?
And then Queens and Infestors got buffed and we had the Broodfestor era?
In the early parts of SC2 you could find ways to differentiate yourself. San storms, SC marches, Nestea holds, etc... When you don't have UI limitations you need to have something else differentiate people. Going the WoW route of making all healers the same is stupid.
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On October 12 2013 02:05 Thieving Magpie wrote:
The flatter they make the game the more legitimate the BW loyalists complains become.
The problem is that they HAVE TO flatten the game because the battles are too fast (due to the super high unit/dps concentration and smartcast making mass-chaining of spells far too easy) and powerful stuff is far too easy to use and could make battles too one-sided. Sadly Blizzard doesnt understand this and thinks only in terms of MORE AGGRESSION. Just look at the changes they introduced with/since HotS and you see A LOT of speed increases. That is terrible and makes my allegory with a race car much more easy to understand.
Trained F1 drivers can dive such a race car to its full potential, but if you stick a regular newbie in it the chances of him crashing it are too high because the reactions arent fast enough. BW on the other hand had each player "drive" an oldtimer through a busy city at rush hour and only their knowledge of the city AND their skill at overpowering the cars difficulties let them win. Even a newbie driver can handle an oldtimer without crashing it all the time.
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Russian Federation40190 Posts
The problem is that they HAVE TO flatten the game because the battles are too fast (due to the super high unit/dps concentration and smartcast making mass-chaining of spells far too easy) and powerful stuff is far too easy to use and could make battles too one-sided. Sadly Blizzard doesnt understand this and thinks only in terms of MORE AGGRESSION. Just look at the changes they introduced with/since HotS and you see A LOT of speed increases. That is terrible and makes my allegory with a race car much more easy to understand.
Won't bother to mention the opinion of mine that you seem to ignore the arguments about clumped up deathballs being rather bad outside of ranged vs melee fights (and even then ranged vs melee works with split just fine, if you are Automaton 2000), but it is funny to see a player to defend turtling with deathball and saying that trying to fight it is wrong thing to do. While criticizing deathball!
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On October 12 2013 03:39 Rabiator wrote:Show nested quote +On October 12 2013 02:05 Thieving Magpie wrote:
The flatter they make the game the more legitimate the BW loyalists complains become. The problem is that they HAVE TO flatten the game because the battles are too fast (due to the super high unit/dps concentration and smartcast making mass-chaining of spells far too easy) and powerful stuff is far too easy to use and could make battles too one-sided. Sadly Blizzard doesnt understand this and thinks only in terms of MORE AGGRESSION. Just look at the changes they introduced with/since HotS and you see A LOT of speed increases. That is terrible and makes my allegory with a race car much more easy to understand. Trained F1 drivers can dive such a race car to its full potential, but if you stick a regular newbie in it the chances of him crashing it are too high because the reactions arent fast enough. BW on the other hand had each player "drive" an oldtimer through a busy city at rush hour and only their knowledge of the city AND their skill at overpowering the cars difficulties let them win. Even a newbie driver can handle an oldtimer without crashing it all the time.
They don't *have* to make it flatter, but they do have to include abusable aspects. BW had its UI, SC2 had units, but it doesn't actually matter what that *thing* that people abuse to make a gap between talented and try hards. So long as it exists in some form.
SC2 has a HUGE skill gap. There's a reason Koreans own the game. As much as they owned BW? No, but I know for a fact that QXC won't make it through Code A while I have utmost faith that Pigbaby could get to the final 4 of an MLG. (If MLG did SC2 again)
Should it be ridiculously strong defenses ala C&C
Ridiculously nerfed damage output ala Warcraft 3
Maybe it should be turn based like a hex game?
The point is that top players are the top because they can abuse *something* better than people who are not good at the game. The more you strip away that abusable aspect of the game the worse the game becomes.
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On October 12 2013 03:50 lolfail9001 wrote:Show nested quote +
The problem is that they HAVE TO flatten the game because the battles are too fast (due to the super high unit/dps concentration and smartcast making mass-chaining of spells far too easy) and powerful stuff is far too easy to use and could make battles too one-sided. Sadly Blizzard doesnt understand this and thinks only in terms of MORE AGGRESSION. Just look at the changes they introduced with/since HotS and you see A LOT of speed increases. That is terrible and makes my allegory with a race car much more easy to understand.
Won't bother to mention the opinion of mine that you seem to ignore the arguments about clumped up deathballs being rather bad outside of ranged vs melee fights (and even then ranged vs melee works with split just fine, if you are Automaton 2000), but it is funny to see a player to defend turtling with deathball and saying that trying to fight it is wrong thing to do. While criticizing deathball!
Speed isn't everything though, I think it's a good example by Rabiator(e:sorry for misspelling at first!). Racing through a city with a regular car is more interesting (though illegal) than doing so with a formula one car, because the latter is too fast and uncontrollable. In the end you'd have to remove obstacles and simplify the course in order to avoid a situation where you'll always crash your car. (Which of course is why formula one circuits are very simple. ) Why a city would consent to doing this to enable your racing games is another question of course, let's just attribute it to a yugioh-like world where everyone has a singular obsession with one specific thing, in this case car races. 
It's similar to Starcraft 2: the units are so fast and deal potentially so much damage and the economy snowballs so quickly that you need to put effort into constraining all these things. Every dynamic in the game becomes fragile and requires some concessions in order to balance it. In the end it's not a surprise that all maps have to be the same and that units have to be patched for being broken constantly. Although the latter might be Blizzard incompetence, I can never tell.
On October 12 2013 03:53 Thieving Magpie wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On October 12 2013 03:39 Rabiator wrote:Show nested quote +On October 12 2013 02:05 Thieving Magpie wrote:
The flatter they make the game the more legitimate the BW loyalists complains become. The problem is that they HAVE TO flatten the game because the battles are too fast (due to the super high unit/dps concentration and smartcast making mass-chaining of spells far too easy) and powerful stuff is far too easy to use and could make battles too one-sided. Sadly Blizzard doesnt understand this and thinks only in terms of MORE AGGRESSION. Just look at the changes they introduced with/since HotS and you see A LOT of speed increases. That is terrible and makes my allegory with a race car much more easy to understand. Trained F1 drivers can dive such a race car to its full potential, but if you stick a regular newbie in it the chances of him crashing it are too high because the reactions arent fast enough. BW on the other hand had each player "drive" an oldtimer through a busy city at rush hour and only their knowledge of the city AND their skill at overpowering the cars difficulties let them win. Even a newbie driver can handle an oldtimer without crashing it all the time. They don't *have* to make it flatter, but they do have to include abusable aspects. BW had its UI, SC2 had units, but it doesn't actually matter what that *thing* that people abuse to make a gap between talented and try hards. So long as it exists in some form. SC2 has a HUGE skill gap. There's a reason Koreans own the game. As much as they owned BW? No, but I know for a fact that QXC won't make it through Code A while I have utmost faith that Pigbaby could get to the final 4 of an MLG. (If MLG did SC2 again) Should it be ridiculously strong defenses ala C&C Ridiculously nerfed damage output ala Warcraft 3 Maybe it should be turn based like a hex game? The point is that top players are the top because they can abuse *something* better than people who are not good at the game. The more you strip away that abusable aspect of the game the worse the game becomes.
I'm happy you're not in charge of patching. The game is better off without amulet, 5rax reapers and the old snipe.
And why is Magnus Carlsen the best player in chess? I don't think he abuses anything, unless you want to redefine abuse as 'use', he simply has slightly better game sense than his competitors.
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On October 12 2013 03:53 Thieving Magpie wrote:Show nested quote +On October 12 2013 03:39 Rabiator wrote:On October 12 2013 02:05 Thieving Magpie wrote:
The flatter they make the game the more legitimate the BW loyalists complains become. The problem is that they HAVE TO flatten the game because the battles are too fast (due to the super high unit/dps concentration and smartcast making mass-chaining of spells far too easy) and powerful stuff is far too easy to use and could make battles too one-sided. Sadly Blizzard doesnt understand this and thinks only in terms of MORE AGGRESSION. Just look at the changes they introduced with/since HotS and you see A LOT of speed increases. That is terrible and makes my allegory with a race car much more easy to understand. Trained F1 drivers can dive such a race car to its full potential, but if you stick a regular newbie in it the chances of him crashing it are too high because the reactions arent fast enough. BW on the other hand had each player "drive" an oldtimer through a busy city at rush hour and only their knowledge of the city AND their skill at overpowering the cars difficulties let them win. Even a newbie driver can handle an oldtimer without crashing it all the time. They don't *have* to make it flatter, but they do have to include abusable aspects. BW had its UI, SC2 had units, but it doesn't actually matter what that *thing* that people abuse to make a gap between talented and try hards. So long as it exists in some form. SC2 has a HUGE skill gap. There's a reason Koreans own the game. As much as they owned BW? No, but I know for a fact that QXC won't make it through Code A while I have utmost faith that Pigbaby could get to the final 4 of an MLG. (If MLG did SC2 again) Should it be ridiculously strong defenses ala C&C Ridiculously nerfed damage output ala Warcraft 3 Maybe it should be turn based like a hex game? The point is that top players are the top because they can abuse *something* better than people who are not good at the game. The more you strip away that abusable aspect of the game the worse the game becomes.
Plus, Sc2 is a never ending laddering session. It's supposed to be like this. That's what people love about Sc2.
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On October 12 2013 01:43 Thieving Magpie wrote:Show nested quote +On October 12 2013 01:22 Hydro033 wrote:
My blunt opinion is that foreigners aren't winning anymore. This is hurting global exposure a lot, especially since the decline/retirement of Stephano. Even the retirement of IdrA, whose personality was enough to carry hype. I really think that since Koreans started popping up at events everywhere around the globe and taking foreign victories that foreigners started caring less. Starcraft 2 is not interesting when a single nation dominates everything. People root for the home team. Plain and simple. But this goes against the low skill ceiling argument as well as suggests that BW was a failure for only thriving in one country.
It doesnt -_-. In BW, foreigners cant even win against B and C teamers. In SC2 foreigners can beat B-teamers and now Scarlett and Naniwa can beat the current top koreans (top 4 of gsl). Back in BW they cant even qualify to compete with them even though all OSL/MSL were open.
Secondly 'thriving' is relative. The thriving in one nation had more revenues to pay salaries, studios (they call it stadiums in korea) MBCgame than current SC2 worldwide revenue combined even with blizzards cash injection. Even Ogn was mostly powered by BW broadcasts.
SC2 is basically powered by Blizzards cash. The amount of sponsorship, event tickets etc pales in comparison. Most Esports team in korea was powered by BW alone with a smattering of other games as complement. SC2 esports teams tend to be powered by other esports as main focus and blizzards money. So yeah BW thrived in 'one country' but it thrived better than tennis/badminton ever did. Worldwide SC2 isnt even thriving better than lol/dota much less tennis/traditional sports.
Ah well, maybe BW isnt THE esport phenomenon but rather it is Korea that is THE esport phenomenon coz lol seems to be approaching BW.
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Russian Federation40190 Posts
Speed isn't everything though, I think it's a good example by Radiator. Racing through a city with a regular car is more interesting (though illegal) than doing so with a formula one car, because the latter is too fast and uncontrollable. In the end you'd have to remove obstacles and simplify the course in order to avoid a situation where you'll always crash your car. (Which of course is why formula one circuits are very simple. ) Why a city would consent to doing this to enable your racing games is another question of course, let's just attribute it to a yugioh-like world where everyone has a singular obsession with one specific thing, in this case car races.
Speed is not everything, true that. Speed, however is one of the best kinds of buffs, as it rewards control without making unit outright more powerful.
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I haven't read all 75 pages of this thread, but what I've seen is mostly rehashed old arguments, dumb metaphors, dotaclone comparisons, and slaughtered strawmen.
I think we've all discovered what StarCraft 2's problems are by now. If you want something done, then you'll have to talk to Blizzard, or get more progamers to talk to Blizzard.
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On October 12 2013 05:07 PineapplePizza wrote:
I haven't read all 75 pages of this thread, but what I've seen is mostly rehashed old arguments, dumb metaphors, dotaclone comparisons, and slaughtered strawmen.
I think we've all discovered what StarCraft 2's problems are by now. If you want something done, then you'll have to talk to Blizzard, or get more progamers to talk to Blizzard.
Thx for sharing your wisdom.
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I can't help but feel that it's a fundamental problem with the game, with nothing to do with personalities, tournament formats, etc. My reason for thinking why it's so is that even brand new streamers for hearthstone are getting more views than actual SC2 pros. Throughout the day, hearthstone is also getting more views on twitch although SC2 was designed from ground up as an e-sport.
Why would you blame the non f2p model when SC2 can't even retain players who have already bought the game?
Why would you blame tournament formats when the game itself can't even attract more players to watch on twitch stream than hearthstone?
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On October 12 2013 21:54 Luppy1 wrote:
I can't help but feel that it's a fundamental problem with the game, with nothing to do with personalities, tournament formats, etc. My reason for thinking why it's so is that even brand new streamers for hearthstone are getting more views than actual SC2 pros. Throughout the day, hearthstone is also getting more views on twitch although SC2 was designed from ground up as an e-sport.
Why would you blame the non f2p model when SC2 can't even retain players who have already bought the game?
Why would you blame tournament formats when the game itself can't even attract more players to watch on twitch stream than hearthstone?
ughhh very well said. Esp the part about retaining players who have already bought the game. RTS is truly a dying genre. Mainstream > niche > dying. Sad but perhaps inevitable.
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If you want to send a strong message to Blizzard. You'd have more people retiring and possibly coming back for LotV. Actions always speak louder than words and Luppy1 made one of the best posts I've seen and that's one of the only reasons I'm coming back to post in this dreadful thread because he gets it other than the personality quip because there is a little evidence against it, but it doesn't skew the figures dramatically. You guys have to understand that this community will not get much bigger for the game. We live in a very streamlined (no pun intended) industry. At the end of the day we can bitch and moan about the formats all we want, the game design, the price points, etc. At the end of the day you have no control over it and if all you want is more viewers. Goes back to what I just said, the numbers aren't going to dramatically increase. There's already enough turmoil over in Korea. I don't think they want anymore, lol.
On October 12 2013 22:19 Kheve wrote:Show nested quote +On October 12 2013 21:54 Luppy1 wrote:
I can't help but feel that it's a fundamental problem with the game, with nothing to do with personalities, tournament formats, etc. My reason for thinking why it's so is that even brand new streamers for hearthstone are getting more views than actual SC2 pros. Throughout the day, hearthstone is also getting more views on twitch although SC2 was designed from ground up as an e-sport.
Why would you blame the non f2p model when SC2 can't even retain players who have already bought the game?
Why would you blame tournament formats when the game itself can't even attract more players to watch on twitch stream than hearthstone? ughhh very well said. Esp the part about retaining players who have already bought the game. RTS is truly a dying genre. Mainstream > niche > dying. Sad but perhaps inevitable.
Let me get one thing straight: RTS was never a dying genre. It was always a small piece of the pie in the bigger picture.
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On October 12 2013 21:54 Luppy1 wrote:
I can't help but feel that it's a fundamental problem with the game, with nothing to do with personalities, tournament formats, etc. My reason for thinking why it's so is that even brand new streamers for hearthstone are getting more views than actual SC2 pros. Throughout the day, hearthstone is also getting more views on twitch although SC2 was designed from ground up as an e-sport.
Why would you blame the non f2p model when SC2 can't even retain players who have already bought the game?
Why would you blame tournament formats when the game itself can't even attract more players to watch on twitch stream than hearthstone?
Data is instantly contradictory. I looked at Twitch right now. HotS: 7253 viewers. Hearthstone: 6971 viewers.
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On October 12 2013 22:35 coverpunch wrote:Show nested quote +On October 12 2013 21:54 Luppy1 wrote:
I can't help but feel that it's a fundamental problem with the game, with nothing to do with personalities, tournament formats, etc. My reason for thinking why it's so is that even brand new streamers for hearthstone are getting more views than actual SC2 pros. Throughout the day, hearthstone is also getting more views on twitch although SC2 was designed from ground up as an e-sport.
Why would you blame the non f2p model when SC2 can't even retain players who have already bought the game?
Why would you blame tournament formats when the game itself can't even attract more players to watch on twitch stream than hearthstone? Data is instantly contradictory. I looked at Twitch right now. HotS: 7253 viewers. Hearthstone: 6971 viewers.
The no. of viewers do fluctuate throughout the day. But, my main point still stands.
So, you feel that it's all good now that SC2, a game created as an e-sport, has only 300+ more viewers than hearthstone at this present moment.
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On October 12 2013 04:18 lolfail9001 wrote:Show nested quote +
Speed isn't everything though, I think it's a good example by Radiator. Racing through a city with a regular car is more interesting (though illegal) than doing so with a formula one car, because the latter is too fast and uncontrollable. In the end you'd have to remove obstacles and simplify the course in order to avoid a situation where you'll always crash your car. (Which of course is why formula one circuits are very simple. ) Why a city would consent to doing this to enable your racing games is another question of course, let's just attribute it to a yugioh-like world where everyone has a singular obsession with one specific thing, in this case car races.
Speed is not everything, true that. Speed, however is one of the best kinds of buffs, as it rewards control without making unit outright more powerful.
Speed isnt a good buff! There was a TV ad some decades back (either tyres or cars) which had the slogan "power is NOTHING without control" ... and more speed loses that control element, because BOTH PLAYERS need to be able to control their destiny and not just the attacker.
With the "unit density design" of SC2 you CANT make units more powerful because they would become far too powerful in such an automatically maxed unit density system. With BW you only achieved maximized density through a lot of micro and that made it far easier to add power to the units, because they were only LOCALLY overpowered and didnt kill off the whole enemy army with one easy "less than five seconds maneuver" as it would be possible in SC2.
Another allegory I have given for the games is that SC2 is a gunfight on an open plain with no way to defend against shots other than a) moving very fast OR b) ineptitude of your opponent. BW however is a swordfight WITH a shield (defenders advantage) and you can force him to try and get past that shield.
Thus SC2 has a lack of playstyles IMO because it only focuses on adding benefits for attackers ... which ultimately ends with a coinflip game where the guy who pulls his revolver first (and hits) will win. No skill of overcoming defenses is needed for many of the games and it is only the size of the maps which masks this a bit. Just think about Steppes of War and the other tiny garbage which Blizzard cooked up for us because they are too stupid to think about consequences of going full offensive design.
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On October 12 2013 22:38 Luppy1 wrote:Show nested quote +On October 12 2013 22:35 coverpunch wrote:On October 12 2013 21:54 Luppy1 wrote:
I can't help but feel that it's a fundamental problem with the game, with nothing to do with personalities, tournament formats, etc. My reason for thinking why it's so is that even brand new streamers for hearthstone are getting more views than actual SC2 pros. Throughout the day, hearthstone is also getting more views on twitch although SC2 was designed from ground up as an e-sport.
Why would you blame the non f2p model when SC2 can't even retain players who have already bought the game?
Why would you blame tournament formats when the game itself can't even attract more players to watch on twitch stream than hearthstone? Data is instantly contradictory. I looked at Twitch right now. HotS: 7253 viewers. Hearthstone: 6971 viewers. The no. of viewers do fluctuate throughout the day. But, my main point still stands. So, you feel that it's all good now that SC2, a game created as an e-sport, has only 300+ more viewers than hearthstone at this present moment.
No, but I think there are too many simplistic views. Such as jumping to the conclusion that I somehow think SC2 is fine just because I contradicted the only fact that supported your argument with actual data.
StarCraft 2 has a problem. It is growing far more slowly than it needs to be to become mainstream. Other games seem to be growing more quickly and it might be alarming that Blizzard's next game in beta is drawing similar interest to StarCraft among stream viewers. I actually think blaming the F2P model and tournaments is rubbish. But I thought last year that believing StarCraft was on its way to ESPN and CBS (i.e. mainstream TV in the US) was rubbish too.
Even though I think the arguments are poor, it is indicative that Blizzard and the WCS system has alienated many fans. If I were a manager at Blizzard, I would probably recommend staying the course because gaming communities are notoriously conservative about change (and nerds on the internet are notoriously conservative about changing their minds). The biggest PR problem is that WCS in 2012 involved closed regional tournaments and then a global finals while the WCS in 2013 involved open tournaments with season finals culminating in a global finals, and fans seem very slow to realize or accept that change.
The F2P model is whining IMO but I think it also picks at old scabs about Blizzard's blatantly greedy business model with StarCraft 2, using two full-priced expansions that require the others to play. You can't buy HotS unless you also buy WoL and you won't be able to play LotV unless you also bought HotS and WoL. Then you have Battle.net 2.0, which I don't want to get into an argument about, but suffice it to say people are upset and never seemed to really get over it.
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Russian Federation40190 Posts
On October 12 2013 22:41 Rabiator wrote:Show nested quote +On October 12 2013 04:18 lolfail9001 wrote:
Speed isn't everything though, I think it's a good example by Radiator. Racing through a city with a regular car is more interesting (though illegal) than doing so with a formula one car, because the latter is too fast and uncontrollable. In the end you'd have to remove obstacles and simplify the course in order to avoid a situation where you'll always crash your car. (Which of course is why formula one circuits are very simple. ) Why a city would consent to doing this to enable your racing games is another question of course, let's just attribute it to a yugioh-like world where everyone has a singular obsession with one specific thing, in this case car races.
Speed is not everything, true that. Speed, however is one of the best kinds of buffs, as it rewards control without making unit outright more powerful. Speed isnt a good buff! There was a TV ad some decades back (either tyres or cars) which had the slogan "power is NOTHING without control" ... and more speed loses that control element, because BOTH PLAYERS need to be able to control their destiny and not just the attacker. With the "unit density design" of SC2 you CANT make units more powerful because they would become far too powerful in such an automatically maxed unit density system. With BW you only achieved maximized density through a lot of micro and that made it far easier to add power to the units, because they were only LOCALLY overpowered and didnt kill off the whole enemy army with one easy "less than five seconds maneuver" as it would be possible in SC2. Another allegory I have given for the games is that SC2 is a gunfight on an open plain with no way to defend against shots other than a) moving very fast OR b) ineptitude of your opponent. BW however is a swordfight WITH a shield (defenders advantage) and you can force him to try and get past that shield. Thus SC2 has a lack of playstyles IMO because it only focuses on adding benefits for attackers ... which ultimately ends with a coinflip game where the guy who pulls his revolver first (and hits) will win. No skill of overcoming defenses is needed for many of the games and it is only the size of the maps which masks this a bit. Just think about Steppes of War and the other tiny garbage which Blizzard cooked up for us because they are too stupid to think about consequences of going full offensive design.
Yeah right, hence i have seen at least 3 lost games because of player pulling revolver first.
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Perhaps, I can give an analogy. This was said by Sean Plott, before he was famous, before everyone knew who day9 was. I asked him about what would happen if an SC2 came out and about other current RTS's, like why wasn't he as interested in them (I loved playing Age of Empires 2 and he didn't). He said Starcraft was like chess, you can't just make Chess 2. It's hard to create a game that is as complicated and deep as chess, just as it is to do with an RTS (make a game that is complex, challenging, and fun to watch/play). There is a reason South Korea didn't pay Age of Empire 2 competitively and chose BW (which he then proceeded to explain). Just my 2 cents; I don't know how to fix the problem, but I think acknowledging it is a good first step.
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