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On April 04 2014 01:41 -Archangel- wrote:Show nested quote +On April 04 2014 00:51 Xiphias wrote:On April 04 2014 00:10 Capricis wrote:
What's wrong with what we have now? 660 ranked games played the last 7 days, and probably hundreds more unranked that aren't recorded. This is an average of one ranked game played every fifteen minutes. Sure okay, most of these games are played during primetime of about 10:00-19:00 GMT, but anyone who wants to play and is willing to wait for 5m can find games. yes! Without the initial hype we would probably not have this at all. As long as enough people are playing (by enough, I mean so I can find a decent game, even if I have to play vs the same people a lot), I'm happy. Would be nice to see a Korean explosion in the future though  As I said before, initial hype was produced by a high player quality tournament that had a cool video. If someone organizes something similar again, there will be more hype. Sc2 didn't become big by itself. Lots of people put in a lot of time, effort and a lot of money. Starbow will not become big if at least two of those things don't happen. I see so many tournaments for sc2 and most of them have money to pay the contestants. Some of these sponsors should be able to sponsor Starbow as well, especially since Beta Invitational did WELL in viewer numbers, especially for an amateur tournament. There just needs to be people with enough will (and possibly knowhow but that can be substituted with passion to a point) to approach as many different sponsors as possible (these people need to have authority from the devs) and ask them to be a part of this project. Dota didn't become big overnight, and neither did other community projects, but they all had passionate people that didn't say no and pushed on until it all worked out.
I think you make some valid points, but some of the things you say are also a bit naive when it comes to why games get big. I think it's worth addressing that, although bear in mind I won't make any suggestions or statements in general as to what StarBow should/could do in order to become big, whether or not it can even become big in the first place etc. That is not the purpose of my post and I don't know your intentions as a playerbase / the intentions of the devs.
You say SC2 didn't become big by itself. True. In fact, quite the opposite is the case. SC2 was not small, and became big, it was birthed big, grew for a short while, then gradually began to decline for various reasons (which I'll discuss just a tad bit later). So why was it big from the very outset? I can think of at least three reasons.
1. Blizzard's reputation back then was much more pristine, only tarnished perhaps in the eyes of the most hardcore of WoW players (who were feeling that new expansions weren't quite up to par). But for the rest of us, for many RTS fans and most likely Diablo players as well, Blizzard was a company that had made nothing but fantastic games. That is why people had been looking forward to SC2 ever since its announcement way, way back.
2. Demand for RTS. Despite the fact that Brood War and Warcraft 3 were pretty bloody huge as "esports", RTS as a genre has been on the decline for a very long time now when compared with the entirety of the PC gaming market. This has to do with more people getting into gaming, and games becoming more casual in attempts to appeal to a lower and lower common denominator. When SC2 came out, there were lots of people who were just aching to see what this new RTS game would entail, and also people who had never played an RTS before but were captivated by the notion and the hype.
RTS games tend to be a lot more complex than most gamers nowadays tend to bother with, and that's not even counting the notions that competitive player are familiar with, like micro tricks beyond just "select spellcaster; use spell" , good macro, good timing (or indeed the idea of timing in and of itself) etc. Sad as it sounds, that's the reality, most RTS games tend to involve far more decision making than most games (except for other Strategy genres), and to top it all off you have to make them on the fly, in real time. For us who are more old school or at least competitive in nature, that's fine, we can learn build orders and grind out games until we develop good gamesense, but most gamers these days would find it very difficult to know when to do anything, and what to do in a given situation. The reason BW and WC3 lasted for as long as they did as played - not just watched - games has a lot to do with custom maps. You could play with friends, and you could enjoy something that is not only fresh and interesting compared to the base game (or perhaps, more laid-back and casual fun if we're talking about stuff like BGH) but also much more limited in scope.
3. Marketing. Blizzard spent an enormous amount of money and effort hyping SC2 up and keeping it going, most of all targeting the aforementioned demographic, people who had not played BW/WC3 or abandoned them long before, people who weren't super hardcore RTS players. In other words, most of the market. And us, the BW diehards, did most of the pre-beta release work for them, since most of us were extremely hyped for it (I know I was ^^), and through the power of the internet we did a lot (knowingly or not) to promote it. SC2 was a resounding success in terms of sales I'd say, but it's worth noting that most people only bought it for the singleplayer campaign. This has to do with point #2, if you've not guessed. And as we should well know by now, despite this huge initial success and a staggering growth in the "esports" / viewership area, the multiplayer playerbase has been on the decline for most of the game's lifespan. Whether it has to do with people getting bored, perceived balance issues, perceived game design issues or the absolutely garbage custom games system, many people stopped caring.
In terms of DotA, no, it most certainly did not become big overnight. In fact, that's the thing that most people overlook when they talk about DotA 2. The original DotA has for the longest time had a huge playerbase between China and Eastern Europe. Quite literally hundreds of thousands, if not millions of players. Why is that exactly? Well, it was a fun custom map that you could play if you owned WarCraft 3, which is already a huge bonus since WarCraft 3 was quite big. Compared to WarCraft 3, it was easier to get into, easier to understand, and more fun to play casually (again, fewer decisions to make and more intuitive decisions overall). On top of that, WarCraft 3 ran well and was extremely easy to *ahem* obtain for free and get going, much like other big games of that age (Counter-Strike, Brood War ). So all DotA 2 really did was make it a standalone game on a new, shiny engine, polish it up a bit for newer potential players and announce it to people who weren't aware of its existence, without fucking with the actual game too much. It certainly also helps that VALVe are a huge name, perhaps more reputable and trust-worthy than Blizzard as of late, and Steam has gotten very big indeed.
Hype can only bring you attention. Attention helps, there is no doubt about that whatsoever. But how you convert attention into a stable playerbase is a different thing entirely. Many of us think the reason SC2 failed to maintain so many of its initial players is because of SC2 as a particular game. Starbow is an attempt to remedy that by making the game more challenging and interesting at the same time. It's a very valiant attempt indeed, but at the end of the day it comes from the perspective of the hardcore, the competitive... the minority, sadly. Again, I have no intention of discussing how well Starbow is doing/can do/will do, or what you should do for X to happen. But it seems to me that what we're experiencing with SC2 and Starbow is not so much a symptom of the games themselves, but of the RTS genre as a whole in relation to the current gaming market, or the unified gaming community if we were to assume such a thing exists.
I think you understand what I'm trying to get at here. It's the market, it's what gaming is, what gaming has become, not so much how good this game or that is. Hell, if you want to look at the broader picture, you can even say it's what entertainment in general has become, between music, film, "reality TV" and even websites and the Internet (look at how popular Reddit and Reddit culture are, etc.)
So, to conclude my rambling I personally don't think it's feasible to push a complex, competitive-oriented game anymore, unless you have a staggering amount of support behind you, both monetary and fan-wise, and even if you do succeed, there's a good likelihood of it petering out fairly fast. But again, I don't intend to make any predictions about Starbow or indeed pretend that that is what you want to have happen. But I felt like, since you've opened this discussion, a bit more perspective was needed. Hopefully you don't feel like reading this was a waste of your time. ^^
I'll just end with saying that I respect Starbow as a project and I hope you are happy with it as well. Whether being happy means simply having a good game to play, or managing to capture a wider audience, I wish you best of luck and best of success, and if there's any more high profile tournaments with Korean pros in them I'll definitely tune in for that. ^^
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@ Bugs
I have informed the great decemberdore about the air pathing and other bugs which has been reported lately.
Pathing is something that is manually added to individual units and we have not added pathing to air units so this sounds a bit weird tbh.
@ Hype
Also, news!
The winners of the ladder cup finals (which is set to April 26th, but will be pushed back some as it collides with Dreamhack) may be featured in Starbow show-matches on BastradeTV. These show-matches will have a small prize-pool and may feature pro-gamers as well.
Top players from the cup events will play in the final event. Remember to sign up here: http://goo.gl/cN8RyZ
This will be the last chance to qualify for the ladder cup final event!
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For me, the hype is still there, I just need more starbow to watch. I wouldn't have continued to play sc2 for years if the esports scene hadn't picked up and grabbed me. Stuff like Day9's daily and random casts from HD and Husky and Psy in the early days kept me hyped. Now I have the casters and player personalities to keep me interested even though I just don't like the game of sc2 that much anymore, I still want to keep track of these personalities.
But I'm not just an RTS gamer, I like lots of games and RTS only grabs me when I get hyped from watching and it makes me want to get better. I imagine more people are like me than hardcore RTS only gamers, and I think we need more fun stuff to follow in the Starbow scene to stay motivated to play. This is why I saw a stream list as such an important aspect to keep the scene growing from the beginning, so people who are interested in watching have an easy way to watch at any time, and the streamers could stay interested if they saw their numbers continuously rising.
We also need more tournaments and community stuff going on. Bringing big names into starbow from sc2 is nice but if they don't stay, the hype is only momentary. We need to boost the players who are more dedicated to starbow into the spotlight and give them a chance to show their personality. No one cares about MC if he's just some protoss in the game, he's interesting because of his personality and history in addition to his in game skill. Remember the hype behind watching FruitDealer make his way through that first GSL? I sure do, but if I had only watched vods and he never gained a face with a personality and commentators to explain and hype, it just wouldn't have been as exciting.
Regardless of how good of a game Starbow continues to become, it needs some consistent community stuff going on between the updates and play time to really become an esports thing. Maybe you guys could do a weekly dev show to discuss updates, bring on a top ladder player to discuss balance, and take community calls? Something like that would help begin to bridge the game with the community.
Anyway, looking forward to the upcoming tourneys.
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On April 04 2014 02:54 Xiphias wrote:
The winners of the ladder cup finals (which is set to April 26th, but will be pushed back some as it collides with Dreamhack) may be featured in Starbow show-matches on BastradeTV. These show-matches will have a small prize-pool and may feature pro-gamers as well.
How many winners will the starbow cup 1 finals have?
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Starbow stream list could be good if it can be implemented on Starbowmod page. It does not need to be fancy, just have links to active streams from Twitch that are currently streaming Starbow (those all have Starbow in stream name; at least that is how I find them). Implementing such a list to matchmaking program would be even better 
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On April 04 2014 05:31 -Archangel- wrote:Starbow stream list could be good if it can be implemented on Starbowmod page. It does not need to be fancy, just have links to active streams from Twitch that are currently streaming Starbow (those all have Starbow in stream name; at least that is how I find them). Implementing such a list to matchmaking program would be even better
We are working on it.
Also, patching the mod file now with some bug fixes.
Dark Swarm duration should be properly set to 30 sec now and air units should not mess up pathing anymore.
Thanks to Decemberscalm for helping me fix the bugs.
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Damn, I guess we'll just all become crazy marketing experts and save Starbow.
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Insightful post, MasterOfPuppets...I enjoyed reading it.
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Thinking that only BW units would make starbow good was a mistake. You simply cannot expect to take out key mechanics and expect people to be interested in it. Unlimited selection, multibuilding selection, smartcasting, unit pathing (clumping still an issue when a-clicking across map) and even auto mine are all bad mechanics. A fundamental part of sports is limiting the player.
Saying limited selection was a broken mechanic/bad mechanic is like saying that dribbling in basketball or only being able to use ones feet in football is a bad thing. It doesn't matter that everyone is still wearing he appropriate clothing, playing with the same equipment and uniforms, on a field/court. You've taken away a fundamental part of the game that made things interesting. The very flow of the game is now completely off, even if the game(s) last nearly identical amounts of time. Think of kick ball; a very similarly set up as baseball, but it's not regarded as a popular sport in any notable country. A game to play with friends? Sure, but it's not a sport that has thousands of people paying to go see or hundreds of thousands watching on tv.
Starcraft 2 is by no means easy, but it's not good either. To be completely straight forward, Starcraft2 is like playing soccer in the house, where you had to dribble a medicine ball. It wasn't fucking soccer. The main reason people kept playing sc2 was that the meta had not been resolved; which was necessary to openly reveal the glaring flaws with the fundamental mechanics of sc2. Once people consciously or unconsciously realized the games fundamental mechanic were garbage, blizzard refused to even consider (and still has to this day) changing of sc2's core mechanic. In return sc2 was a game where units lacked 90% - 95% of the micro potential that they had previously. A broken economic system, where anything above 3 base was sub-optimal. Mindless macro mechanics and horribly unbalanced uncounterable anti-micro spells to fill the void where good unit control was once needed (at least you can split marines against and banelings... that's fun right?). Starbow only ever gained any popularity because of how sick everyone was of sc2. (wouldn't bash sc2 if it wasn't so ezypz)
Starbow did good by returning many of the old units in sc (I even like that they added some new stuff as well), but it means nothing without the mechanics. Many of the people who opposed starbow having full bw mechanics no longer play. I still play starcraft bw to this day; a game that is nearly 17 years old and many others do as well. Yet, what is it 80% of people on TL don't even play sc2 anymore. Over and over scbw veterans and fans have just been pushed to the back. The hype and excitement surrounding starbow during the first month and a half since it's re-release this past January quite literally proves that what many have said all along is not complete bs. It's not just some blind hatred for blizzard or sc2, there are legitimate reasons why sc2 has fallen off most people's radar (reasons that blizzard has publically stated they will likely do nothing about).
It's a bit sad that even if starbow does implament and perfect bw mechanics it will probably still die out soley due to it being a mod, lack of advertisement, and eventually tournament support. I do not predict this mod having any chance without full bw core mechanics. With that said I don't see sc2 being around a year after LotV as blizzard will likely drop the ball even harder than they did in HOTS. Starbow at the moment is literally the scene of sc2 for me and many people I know who are dedicated starcraft fans. Consider the fact that I only browse the starbow thread looking at the recent patches waiting to see if it's become a good enough reason to reinstall old WoL copy.
TL;DR: Implament bw mechanics, as sc2 mechanics are fundamentally inferior. Most people who oppose[d] this action do not play starbow anymore nor sc2. The starcraft community was the BW community and most if not all progressed into the sc2 community at some point only too leave. Starbow could potentially come out of it's current slump by appealing to the bw community; as a game that is similar to bw. Containing old strategies and new, skillful micro and all the intesity that bw had.
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RIP Starbow. Was fun while it lasted. Thanks guys!
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On April 04 2014 12:46 Koxxypoxxy wrote:
TL;DR: Implament bw mechanics, as sc2 mechanics are fundamentally inferior. Most people who oppose[d] this action do not play starbow anymore nor sc2. The starcraft community was the BW community and most if not all progressed into the sc2 community at some point only too leave. Starbow could potentially come out of it's current slump by appealing to the bw community; as a game that is similar to bw. Containing old strategies and new, skillful micro and all the intesity that bw had.
Oh my, that's great. I guess I'll leave it up to to several years of mechanics building in order to fully enjoy a great game with all its heart and soul. I'll practice finger stretches to make sure all my macro scales will be on point. I'll even remove even more keys from my keyboard so I won't accidentally hit them. I'll even make sure I'll play on 1a2a3a practice map for a couple hours a day to ensure I can confirm my mouse accuracy and match with keyboard accuarcy. I'll be sure to get frustrated that I'm not 10 years younger with 0.00025 second reflexes, but only blame that I could beat these bad players if only I had a hyperbolic time chamber or Sands of Time. I'm sure I'll have great fun that way. Cause back in my day, we used to be only able to select 12 units at a time.
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On April 04 2014 13:02 Season wrote:
RIP Starbow. Was fun while it lasted. Thanks guys!
Don't RIP yet lol.
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About ladder activity.
It went down for a while, but now it seems to stabilize at 20-30 people online at most times and also seems to be going up a tad lately as well. Slow and steady :D
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On April 04 2014 12:46 Koxxypoxxy wrote:
Thinking that only BW units would make starbow good was a mistake. You simply cannot expect to take out key mechanics and expect people to be interested in it. Unlimited selection, multibuilding selection, smartcasting, unit pathing (clumping still an issue when a-clicking across map) and even auto mine are all bad mechanics. A fundamental part of sports is limiting the player.
Saying limited selection was a broken mechanic/bad mechanic is like saying that dribbling in basketball or only being able to use ones feet in football is a bad thing. It doesn't matter that everyone is still wearing he appropriate clothing, playing with the same equipment and uniforms, on a field/court. You've taken away a fundamental part of the game that made things interesting. The very flow of the game is now completely off, even if the game(s) last nearly identical amounts of time. Think of kick ball; a very similarly set up as baseball, but it's not regarded as a popular sport in any notable country. A game to play with friends? Sure, but it's not a sport that has thousands of people paying to go see or hundreds of thousands watching on tv.
Starcraft 2 is by no means easy, but it's not good either. To be completely straight forward, Starcraft2 is like playing soccer in the house, where you had to dribble a medicine ball. It wasn't fucking soccer. The main reason people kept playing sc2 was that the meta had not been resolved; which was necessary to openly reveal the glaring flaws with the fundamental mechanics of sc2. Once people consciously or unconsciously realized the games fundamental mechanic were garbage, blizzard refused to even consider (and still has to this day) changing of sc2's core mechanic. In return sc2 was a game where units lacked 90% - 95% of the micro potential that they had previously. A broken economic system, where anything above 3 base was sub-optimal. Mindless macro mechanics and horribly unbalanced uncounterable anti-micro spells to fill the void where good unit control was once needed (at least you can split marines against and banelings... that's fun right?). Starbow only ever gained any popularity because of how sick everyone was of sc2. (wouldn't bash sc2 if it wasn't so ezypz)
Starbow did good by returning many of the old units in sc (I even like that they added some new stuff as well), but it means nothing without the mechanics. Many of the people who opposed starbow having full bw mechanics no longer play. I still play starcraft bw to this day; a game that is nearly 17 years old and many others do as well. Yet, what is it 80% of people on TL don't even play sc2 anymore. Over and over scbw veterans and fans have just been pushed to the back. The hype and excitement surrounding starbow during the first month and a half since it's re-release this past January quite literally proves that what many have said all along is not complete bs. It's not just some blind hatred for blizzard or sc2, there are legitimate reasons why sc2 has fallen off most people's radar (reasons that blizzard has publically stated they will likely do nothing about).
It's a bit sad that even if starbow does implament and perfect bw mechanics it will probably still die out soley due to it being a mod, lack of advertisement, and eventually tournament support. I do not predict this mod having any chance without full bw core mechanics. With that said I don't see sc2 being around a year after LotV as blizzard will likely drop the ball even harder than they did in HOTS. Starbow at the moment is literally the scene of sc2 for me and many people I know who are dedicated starcraft fans. Consider the fact that I only browse the starbow thread looking at the recent patches waiting to see if it's become a good enough reason to reinstall old WoL copy.
TL;DR: Implament bw mechanics, as sc2 mechanics are fundamentally inferior. Most people who oppose[d] this action do not play starbow anymore nor sc2. The starcraft community was the BW community and most if not all progressed into the sc2 community at some point only too leave. Starbow could potentially come out of it's current slump by appealing to the bw community; as a game that is similar to bw. Containing old strategies and new, skillful micro and all the intesity that bw had.
And the only reason why SC2 is/was popular is because of the success of its predecessor BW.
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In my opinion the majority of people are approaching how to grow starbow in completely the wrong way. No esport ever has succeeded in making a successful game by growing it from the top down. In fact all the games that set out to try and be an esport that way fail miserably.
We don't need to convince the progamers to switch over and even if you try they won't. There is no infrastructure at all to convince anyone to do such a thing. Hosting some invite tournaments with cash prizes won't change that at all. All you will do is make them play the game once, and then leave as soon as the tournament is over because there is nothing else.
Starbow needs to cater to the average gamer, like any successful game. Get all the scrubs like myself playing. Ease of access and easy tools to learn the game are a MUST. In many games the tool to learn the game is the single player portion, but it could also be tutorials vs the ai to play out scenarios that you would encounter in a real game of starbow.
Start building your house bottom up and it won't come tumbling down on you (or atleast minimize the risk of it )
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On April 04 2014 19:13 nkr wrote:In my opinion the majority of people are approaching how to grow starbow in completely the wrong way. No esport ever has succeeded in making a successful game by growing it from the top down. In fact all the games that set out to try and be an esport that way fail miserably. We don't need to convince the progamers to switch over and even if you try they won't. There is no infrastructure at all to convince anyone to do such a thing. Hosting some invite tournaments with cash prizes won't change that at all. All you will do is make them play the game once, and then leave as soon as the tournament is over because there is nothing else. Starbow needs to cater to the average gamer, like any successful game. Get all the scrubs like myself playing. Ease of access and easy tools to learn the game are a MUST. In many games the tool to learn the game is the single player portion, but it could also be tutorials vs the ai to play out scenarios that you would encounter in a real game of starbow. Start building your house bottom up and it won't come tumbling down on you (or atleast minimize the risk of it )
It depends if the ultimate goal of Starbow is to become esport or even replace Sc2.
What you say about growing esport does make sense, nobody can expect sc2 progamers to switch to starbow. But I am not sure anyone really expected it. But having them play it in their "free" time and/or on stream would be a cool first step.
And yes, they will leave but "average gamer" will be left with a feeling "wow this is a cool game" when they see good plagues, scourge/muta micro, lurker micro, reaver micro or tank/mine vs toss. But they will also come back next time there is a tournament for them to play.
OK. Let talk about this average gamer. Who is that? Answer to this question also gives us info about the target group of players for Starbow. Is that the disgruntled BW player that never switched to Sc2? Is that the BW player that played Sc2 but went back to BW? Is that the BW player that played Sc2 but stopped playing both? Is is the Sc2 player that didn't like Sc2 from the start but played it because it was only RTS game of note? Is it the SC2 player that is angry with current state of the game? Is it the Sc2 player that prefers Arcade games anyways?
Is it someone completely new? Dota player? LoL player? Diablo player? FPS players? Console players?
I don't know what this average gamer is, and as result I don't know what and if Starbow can offer them that Sc2 already does not. Once you can answer these question, then you can cater to them.
These successful games have money, lots of effort and time spent in making and promoting them. SB has Xiphias as only face of SB that is putting effort into promoting it and he now says he does not have time to do it or do more. These successful games also knew their target group and catered directly to those.
Maybe SB should move the other way, toward making SB more simple version of SC2 and not more complex if they want to make esport out of it (it didn't hinder LoL), as in get lots of players and sponsors.
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EPT
