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Russian Federation4295 Posts
As on Blizzcon it was announced that with patch 2.1 SC2: Starter Edition removes many restrictions like only Terran faction and only featured games at Arcade, and some other moments, that should be listed and compared here.
Lets look at current StarCraft 2: Starter Edition:- It gives access to the first three missions of Wings of Liberty plus either The Evacuation or Smash and Grab (player's choice)
- The first two challenges are available for free: Tactical Command and Covert Ops
- Access to Terrans in Single-Player vs AI and Custom Games in the following maps: Discord IV, High Orbit, The Shattered Temple, Xel'Naga Caverns and the custom map StarJeweled, Left 2 Die and Aiur Chef
- Access to featured games in Arcade
Lets remember what Spawning Feature is. When you invite your SE-friends into your party, they get access to many StarCraft 2 features:- Ranked/unranked 2v2, 3v3, 4v4 games, so no 1v1 ladder
- Entire Arcade with any UMS map
- Still restricted to only Terran faction
- Nothing changed regarding campaign and challenges
What gives patch 2.1 to Starter Edition players?
- Available to play for free as all three races - Terran, Zerg, Protoss
- Custom games as any race and on any map are free
- Any Arcade map is available to play for free
- Still no 1v1 ladder, but Spawning provides 2v2 / 3v3 / 4v4
- Still restricted to first 4 missions from WOL
In result, semi-F2P may solve question regarding LAN. Looks like now you can install StarCraft 2 in many PCs and do a tournament with just Starter Edition. Create custom game, choose your race and fight! There is no 1v1 ladder, but you still can train against AI and your friends. Just have Internet-connection, thats all you need now.
But this also have one bad side - as a SE-player, you can do anything in the Arcade realm. Under "anything" I mean also cheating in custom maps. Of course no one cares about that, because it's just custom game with no ladder or statistics, but it may ruin Arcade because of many SE-players that can do anything for no cost. If their account was banned, they can create a new character with another Starter Edition and do whatever they want again.
Probably thats a reason, why Blizzard keep 1v1 ladder from being free-2-play? Maybe thats a good compromise between F2P and boxed version of the game? What do you think about it?
tl;dr - in Starter Edition
◘ AVAILABLE - Some first missions of WOL campaign and intro trailer from HOTS campaign
◘ AVAILABLE - All 3 races: Terran, Zerg, Protoss and leveling (portraits, decals and skins) with all of them.
◘ AVAILABLE - Ranked & Unranked 2v2, 3v3, 4v4 - when Spawned (in party with player with a full SC2)
◘ AVAILABLE - Arcade (all UMS maps, not only featured) & Customs games (all maps, not only 4 SE-maps)
◘ AVAILABLE - Replays (watching, saving new ones, co-op replay observing)
◘ AVAILABLE - Only reading Chat Channels and observing Groups. You also can connect to player's game, if he is in the created game, by clicking on green button near his nickname in the user-list in chat channel.
◘ AVAILABLE - Very Easy and Easy A.I. You can still play against Medium or harder AIs, when you find predefined custom maps like "CO-OP vs AI Brutal"
◘ AVAILABLE - on the Matchmaking screen you can play Training Stages and Versus A.I.
◘ NOT AVAILABLE - 1v1 Ladder (Ranked / Unranked) and full WOL & HOTS Campaigns
◘ NOT AVAILABLE - Groups & Clans creation. You also can't join to group in SE.
◘ NOT AVAILABLE - Chat Channels usage (you can't write in Chat channels)
◘ NOT AVAILABLE - Official forums posting (You need a SC2-character to post on official forums)
◘ NOT AVAILABLE - Cow-Level Chat (click 10+ times on SC2 logo in the main menu)
Poll: Free Arcade, Customs and Team-ladder - good or bad?Good (499) 86% I don't care (54) 9% Bad (21) 4% Other answer in comment (4) 1% 578 total votes Your vote: Free Arcade, Customs and Team-ladder - good or bad? (Vote): Good
(Vote): Bad
(Vote): I don't care
(Vote): Other answer in comment
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Russian Federation40186 Posts
Let's be fair here guys, there is a very high possibility that SC2 already paid for itself in sales, and with f2p access to not-really-main-parts of the game aka 1v1 ladder and campaign Blizzard probably does not lose anything really important but gets a possibility to get itself a higher user base. So, from money point of view, Blizzard is absolutely fine with what they are doing.
On hax side of things: well, i am not particularly sure how map hax or whatever you mean under cheating can help you in Nexus Wars or whatever.
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It's quite silly that if someone is interested on multiplayer only, he needs to buy the whole game just to be able to play in 1v1 ladder.
However, as you said, it wouldn't be a wise choice to let free accounts play in 1v1 ladder with maphack usage so common.
I guess the best thing would be finally fixing the maphack problem, but if they didn't so far there's no reason to expect they will in the close future.
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This is unquestionably good.
I'm quite sure that Blizzard would love to make the Multiplayer of the game free as well, if they only could find a way to monetize that. There's simply no way in hell to compete with popular F2P multiplayer games if you are a traditional (yet still popular) multiplayer game, and Blizzard knows it. But they can't just flip the switch and make Ladder F2P without having an infrastructure in place that allows monetisation and continuous addition of new (mostly non-free, non-balance interfering) content.
Here's to hoping they'll do that for LotV.
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I wonder if you have access now to HotS units with this change or just WoL units, it could be a problem if players are only allowed to play WoL.
I also feel this was an excellent decision, because this avoid the hackers to flood the 1v1 ladder yet it will allow players to actually play the game without being restricted to Terran or only two arcade games, besides more players will be able to play my maps! so i'm all for it :3
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Russian Federation4295 Posts
I wonder if you have access now to HotS units with this change or just WoL units, it could be a problem if players are only allowed to play WoL.
If you have all Terran units from HOTS also right now, it means it will be same for Zerg/Protoss, maybe
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On November 10 2013 20:53 Existor wrote:
In result, semi-F2P may solve question regarding LAN. Looks like now you can install StarCraft 2 in many PCs and do a tournament with just Starter Edition. Create custom game, choose your race and fight! There is no 1v1 ladder, but you still can train against AI and your friends. Just have Internet-connection, thats all you need now.
I don't think you understad what the question regarding LAN is...
edit: but the change is definitely good. For casual players it's probably as close as you can get to F2P multiplayer without compromising the ladder (from 1vs1 up to 4vs4).
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I fear for the modest and polite chatting going on in most games... Occasional BM is okay, but with f2p trolls and assholes soon joining in on team games I don't feel this is going to a very pleasant thing to play anymore. Gotta resume my 1v1 career, then.
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On November 10 2013 21:32 Creager wrote:
I fear for the modest and polite chatting going on in most games... Occasional BM is okay, but with f2p trolls and assholes soon joining in on team games I don't feel this is going to a very pleasant thing to play anymore. Gotta resume my 1v1 career, then.
They only have access to teamgames over the spawning functionality.
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Dakota_Fanning
Hungary2335 Posts
I accidentally clicked on a wrong answer. Any way to re-vote or change vote?
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just make it f2p multiplayer already .. with 1v1 ladder so ppl know what this game is all about
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Its a really great thing and something I recommended that Blizard should do almost a year ago. The next step IMO is to develop an easymode F2P 1on1/team arcade game to easen the transition from F2P to purchasing and playing the full game. The important thing here is to make this experience similar to a normal Sc2 game but with a higher focus on social aspect + less stressful playing experience.
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Russian Federation4295 Posts
On November 10 2013 21:51 xsnac wrote:
just make it f2p multiplayer already .. with 1v1 ladder so ppl know what this game is all about
But you can already for free play 1v1 in customs and in arcade
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I felt like the HotS campaign wasn't really worth that much money by itself. It was quite short and easy, just a rush through mostly similar maps. And most people don't really care about 1vs1.
I think what will be nice about this is that people will be forced not to use the ladder so much though, this will likely promote clans or groups or channels or whatever.
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Sweden33719 Posts
So, as soon as there's a decent way to make a non-blizzard ladder/match making system for SC2, we might see the Chinese sc2 scene take off ~_~
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Arcade section for free is pretty epic. But hope they really don't try to go closer to f2p. Such a balance act there that could destroy the game within days. Just because LoL did it and Dota2 brings in money in a different way, doesn't erase the 30k other free 2 pay failures that ended in pay 2 win.
And well Blizzard has no experience when it comes to f2p, so I like that they try it out in other games and not risk Sc2.
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For sure I think this is a good step for sc2 to take. Friends can now go to a internet cafe and just start a tournament. Hopefully this will improve the korean scene.
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I think it's a cool idea. I totally agree with all races being available, my friends always wanted to play but they lost interest because they didnt like Terran..
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I don't think they're adding anything many people care about to the game.
It's not going to make a difference no matter how you look at it.
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I like it. Will make converting buddies into SC2 a hell of a lot easier since we can actually play together and be casuals.
Let's be realistic, if they LOVE SC2 and wanna play it more competitively, they would go and shell out the money for the game. (I'm in Canada so maybe the gaming culture's different in other places)
This gives the game (what I consider) a pretty sweet trial edition where you get the entire game besides 1v1 so newcomers know what they're getting when (or if) they cash in.
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EPT![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/3sBL4lA.png)
