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On December 20 2014 21:11 Zealously wrote:Show nested quote +On December 20 2014 20:48 Schakal111 wrote:
Sc2 is not fun at all.. Bnet 2.0 you feel lonley, the arcade system ist very static and boring, the games are very stressfull (larva inject, timewarp, creep spread etc), and the defense ist shit(too many damage from units). If your a casual u want to lean back, putting some defense feel save, dont click every seconds on the timewarp button etc., Bw was the better game, skill but more fun too, if you dont like 1v1 you play big game hunters or hunters FFA, very fun games. Hate this new style. It seems a little strange to say that when BW most certainly required more clicks to maintain baseline macro/production. Lets not fool ourselves by claiming BW wasn't stressful.
I agree. It's the nature of the beast for 1v1 games. There are so many high profile games on the market now that are team games, and that require very little mechanical skill to succeed at, or to at least have fun with friends.
I think people may need to come to terms with the fact that SC2 became massively popular because these other massive team franchises hadn't really emerged yet. SC2 made esports known to so many people but as soon as other options presented themselves, everyone was quick to jump ship - hence the bubble pop. I don't think SC2 will ever experience the amount of growth it had in the first couple years again. It's up to Blizzard whether or not SC2 maintains the fan base it has now. Any meaningful growth might be wishful thinking.
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Micro transactions would do very little for SC2. Starcraft 2 is at the bottom of the viewer list and number of players because it isn't accessible. At its core, it is a complex, unforgiving 1v1 game. That isn't appealing to most people. SC2 is more comparable to the fighting game genre. The same types of people play these games. They require hours of *practice* to just be decent. Any type of FPS cannot be compared. Even terrible players will do decent once in a while in an FPS. In SC2 (and fighting games), a player might never win a game. I know when I stated playing, I lost something like 25 in a row (never played an RTS online ever and never played Starcraft at all) before I got my first win.
These games no longer have a large audience, and they are unlikely to ever have one again. There will be some large tournaments that draw crowds and spark people to play ( just like EVO). However, it is unlikely that there would ever be an influx of truly new players. The game is simply too hard and too time consuming. The best it can hope for is a strong, dedicated community much like that seen in the FGC.
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I really liked Destiny's blog. Their are tons of ways that Blizzard could take advantage and make money.
SC2 should also add soundboard like in Age of Empires. We have a mute function. So it's not game breaking. Some you can unlock others you buy. You can have taunts, and it will also make Team games more fun and easier to chat.
Imagine simply typing GLHF makes Kerrigan say it? Or Raynor? And if skins are too much, what about unit hats. Imagine little party hat marines? And have some skins be random drops, that can be auctioned in the Blizzard store, where Blizzard takes a chunk of the profits?
Blizzard has a huge opportunity being the ONLY RTS game. Give incentives for FFA and make Blizzard made Money Maps. With Official Blizzard Lobby, where only Blizzard maps are found.
The Arcade IMHO is just clutter.
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On December 20 2014 21:11 Zealously wrote:Show nested quote +On December 20 2014 20:48 Schakal111 wrote:
Sc2 is not fun at all.. Bnet 2.0 you feel lonley, the arcade system ist very static and boring, the games are very stressfull (larva inject, timewarp, creep spread etc), and the defense ist shit(too many damage from units). If your a casual u want to lean back, putting some defense feel save, dont click every seconds on the timewarp button etc., Bw was the better game, skill but more fun too, if you dont like 1v1 you play big game hunters or hunters FFA, very fun games. Hate this new style. It seems a little strange to say that when BW most certainly required more clicks to maintain baseline macro/production. Lets not fool ourselves by claiming BW wasn't stressful.
Its more fun to play without this mechanics, i want to feel free, dont click every time on the mechanics button like larvra, mule etc.. better use this time for fights.
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On December 21 2014 02:06 Schakal111 wrote:Show nested quote +On December 20 2014 21:11 Zealously wrote:On December 20 2014 20:48 Schakal111 wrote:
Sc2 is not fun at all.. Bnet 2.0 you feel lonley, the arcade system ist very static and boring, the games are very stressfull (larva inject, timewarp, creep spread etc), and the defense ist shit(too many damage from units). If your a casual u want to lean back, putting some defense feel save, dont click every seconds on the timewarp button etc., Bw was the better game, skill but more fun too, if you dont like 1v1 you play big game hunters or hunters FFA, very fun games. Hate this new style. It seems a little strange to say that when BW most certainly required more clicks to maintain baseline macro/production. Lets not fool ourselves by claiming BW wasn't stressful. Its more fun to play without this mechanics, i want to feel free, dont click every time on the mechanics button like larvra, mule etc.. better use this time for fights.
Those mechanics are a lot more generous and easier to do than production cycles were in BW..
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On December 20 2014 06:25 [F_]aths wrote:Show nested quote +On December 20 2014 05:47 JimmyJRaynor wrote:On December 20 2014 04:33 Noro wrote:
People are wrong in criticizing Blizzard for not being able to emulate and implement F2P/Microtransaction models. They simply don't want to for SC2. They know those models work because they're using them on games that they see actually having a monetary future. Blizzard can put out as many PR statements they want about how much they care about this game but really its just white noise. Actions speak louder than words, and what they're saying is SC2 is not worth the investment of resources because the market favours more simplistic/funsie games like HotS and Hearth Stone. Those are the games they will focus on now, regardless of their promises to continually "improve" SC2. I don't think Blizzard is misleading us. They are attempting to improve SC2. However, Blizzard is doing so with a team size and budget that is commensurate with their profit expectations for an RTS game. no one is dumping big dollars into a RTS games because there is no one thinks big money can be made as you've noted. there are still low budget/small scale RTS games like Etherium, Grey Goo, and Rise of Nations Extended Edition coming out these days. i think Destiny's suggestions, properly refined by Blizz, would result in a small increase in revenue and a small increase in playing time. Nothing is going to stop the over all trend away from RTS games though. I think that Destiny's analysis is very good. However I doubt that his more specific suggestions would play out well. I think, a casual-friendly but esports-viable RTS as f2p can work. If it is designed from the ground-up that way. SC2 is made like a classical full-price title. In my opinion, SC2 is a bad game to play with your friends who have no (or just bronze-level) SC2 skills. Compare it with Quake: Even if someone wins with 20 frags, casual gamers will every now and then get a lucky shot and finish with lets say 4 frags.
Your quake argument doesn't make sense. Now lets compare FFA starcraft with quake FFA. Even a random low level player who doesn't get attacked can mass up a group of carriers and kill a few players. Also, I don't know how you can get a lucky shot when aim is entirely down to the mechanics of the individual + a bit on the movement of the other player which is also an aspect of SC2.
People overrate how hard SC2 is all the time. Most of my friends quit the game from the poor arcade system. We never got the longevity that brood war provided with its endless source of UMS games which had a proper popularity system.
Also, speaking of quake live for example which doesn't have a great matchmaking system at this point in time. I went to try the game and won about 5 of my first 100 duels. My SC2 win% never went below 40-60% due to matchmaking.
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I read through his blog post and then skimmed through this thread. I mostly agree with Destiny. The ball is in Blizzard's court and we can only really hope that they act accordingly.
I think that one point that Destiny neglected just a bit when discussing ways to make the game more casual friendly is the re-balance of the game and its design.
Starcraft 2's engagements are over quite quickly and certain units can also end games quite quickly as well. On top of that, the macro in Starcraft 2 can get out of hand really quickly if you're not on top of things since resources gather quite quickly. The game itself is OK but it's incredibly fast paced. There are community concerns about the worker change in LOTV which say that things will get even worse if they accelerate the growth of economy even more. It's anti-casual for sure and I think that Blizzard would do well to read that thread carefully.
Slowing down the economy would be a good start. I don't think that the new player should be playing a different game from the professionals though. There are easy ways to make the game easier to manage without actually changing it. Start with a better UI, which shows you your own production tab. That way you have an idea of whether or not you're missing production cycles: it's a visual aid.
Another visual aid would be for supply: green if you're two depot/pylon/OL ahead of your supply at the moment. Orange if you're only one supply unit ahead of your supply, red if you're capped. Give the orange increment a bigger visual punch than the green one. Fundamentally the game remains the same yet these visual aids help the player anyway.
You might even be able to include a "build order" note-pad, an in-game tool that you can use to craft your own build order.
Professionals might turn off such features as it might clutter their workspace however these should really help a newer player or anyone who wants to reduce their in-game workload.
Team games and FFAs should get better maps. Portraits and such should be awarded for maximum rank attained or something, stuff like that. Should be fun.
Destiny is right in posting this and at very least I think that most people should bounce off what he has to say. Above all, Blizzard needs to be less like Blizzard and more like a gaming company which is flexible about the way it supports its game. Blizzard has been very hit and miss to be perfectly frank.
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On December 21 2014 01:30 big_aug wrote:
Micro transactions would do very little for SC2. Starcraft 2 is at the bottom of the viewer list and number of players because it isn't accessible. At its core, it is a complex, unforgiving 1v1 game. That isn't appealing to most people. SC2 is more comparable to the fighting game genre. The same types of people play these games. They require hours of *practice* to just be decent. Any type of FPS cannot be compared. Even terrible players will do decent once in a while in an FPS. In SC2 (and fighting games), a player might never win a game. I know when I stated playing, I lost something like 25 in a row (never played an RTS online ever and never played Starcraft at all) before I got my first win.
These games no longer have a large audience, and they are unlikely to ever have one again. There will be some large tournaments that draw crowds and spark people to play ( just like EVO). However, it is unlikely that there would ever be an influx of truly new players. The game is simply too hard and too time consuming. The best it can hope for is a strong, dedicated community much like that seen in the FGC.
Based on what do you feel micro-transactions wouldn't help? Someone made an excellent point earlier:
On December 20 2014 08:43 magicmUnky wrote:
We can't assume SC2 would be viable as a micro transaction game.
Nobody has qualified this statement beyond "sc2 is very dissimilar to other micro-transaction games". I'm sorry but how is CSGO any less dissimilar from dota2 or LoL?
Clearly you feel it wouldn't work, as I feel it could. And that's OK 
The thing about any game across any genre (and why I think eSports is always going to have a limited appeal (not saying it wont continue expanding)) Is that on some level you have to fundamentally understand what you're watching. Personally I think this is easier in a genre like FPS, it has more crowd appeal. You don't really have to play it to understand it. As you say though, this is not the case with SC2.
To appreciate SC2 you have to of played it, or perhaps have your hand held as you watch by someone who has, there's no headshot mechanic going on to make things obvious, it's subtle, very very subtle at times (gas on 11 over 12 for example). So we have a high learning curve game, with less mass market appeal.
From Destinys blog. While the ratio of players-to-viewers is indeed high for Starcraft 2, it is undeniable that the more popular your game is and the more people you have playing it, the greater your viewership will be for your tournaments. This establishes a very important, often-ignored link between the professional and casual gaming scene: more casual gamers means a healthier professional scene.
This for me is at the very core of Destinys blog, the real big point we need to focus on.
One way this will be achieved in LotV is Archon mode, we can bring our friends into SC2, hold their hand and hopefully let them see how cool it is.
However, what's the deal with skins then? Firstly as he says, it's the incentive for casuals (or the hardcore gamer for that matter) To be in Starcraft and laddering. There is currently no reward system in Starcraft to make people keep playing, beyond getting the odd portrait or base icon. There are lots of achievements and rewards to be had from the campaign elements of WoL or HotS, but in multiplayer? Is there really much beyond 1000 matches played as Terran, 500 wins as random?
Now ask yourself why World of Warcraft was a total monster.
- You level up
- You get constant new items, skins
- You're being constantly rewarded for playing
- You can easily interact with your friends, and make new ones
Off the top off my head these sprang to mind, I'm sure there are plenty of other good reasons too. Of course achieving this is all done in a very presentable enjoyable way, but where is all this in Starcraft?
Someone reminded me further up the thread that Destiny himself mentioned that this doesnt have to be a pay-for-skin system. It could be inbuilt as part of the Starcraft experience.
So why pay for skins then? For my mind it's continued development. For bliztard to keep developing the game after LotV, there has to be monetary incentive for them to do so, this shouldn't be the case though! And here is why it should not be the case;
On August 3, 2010, Blizzard announced that StarCraft II sold more than one million units worldwide within one day of its release. After two days, when Blizzard began selling the game as a digital download on its website, approximately 500,000 additional units of the game were sold, bringing the total up to 1.5 million worldwide and making it the fastest-selling strategy game of all time. In its first month on sale, StarCraft II sold a total of three million copies worldwide. As of December 2010, the game has sold nearly 4.5 million units. LINK
Or how in HotS it's;
The game sold approximately 1.1 million copies worldwide in its first two days on sale, and was the top-selling PC game for the first quarter of 2013. LINK
Someone care to do the maths for me, and estimate potential sales and revenue trying to vary in factors like sale prices and collectors edition sales? You'll have to get more accurate and up to date figures first however... TLDR: We've made you stinking rich already blizzard, that's why we shouldnt need micro-transactions. But that level of success wouldn't be the case if you hadn't created such great games as WoL and HotS! Credit where credit is due.
But that's OK. We all want more money don't we. Back to skins.
Why do I personally feel that it's essential for there to be micro-transactions in SC2 in some form?. From this one line by stuchiu in his (or her!) Excellent recent article Battle for the Empty Throne
BW got its last gameplay patch on 4/18/01 on patch 1.08, 2.5 years after launch. After that, it was all up to professional players and mapmakers to create balance, either through innovative strategies or map design.
History.
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BW got its last gameplay patch on 4/18/01 on patch 1.08, 2.5 years after launch. After that, it was all up to professional players and mapmakers to create balance, either through innovative strategies or map design.
Because ladder and tournaments were always organized OUTSIDE of Battle.net !
With Bnet 2.0 Blizzard is in charge of matchmaking, ranks and maps, and with that overall balance. With WCS being the biggest Tournament, they also set the rules for the general approach to maps.
We want it that way, we want an "authority" in ladder maps, and patching. Someone to blame, someone truly no biased.
We cant have anyone going into the editor and make Maps and Mods to his liking.
We want easy, fast matchmaking, not talk to poeple or clicking in browsers.
Blizzard was willing to fullfill this role to take the Burden of Balance.
I thought WoL felt so much more alive as a game than HotS. There were changes and reverse on changes every few weeks, the map rotation was faster, back in the day without a unified mappool you got diffrent games on the same patch, now it's all freaking overgrowth, MGR, KSJS all the time everywhere.
Also the diffrent maps caused the need of teams. Today you click 1v1-play on ladder, even as a pro. You get a decent opponent. Okay sometimes you need that too, but you can play online.
Back then you could not rely on that, you got to have someone decent who might play THAT MAPS with you, wich you are going to face in a tournament.
The impact of maps can be seen at ProLeague!
The unifiedmappool is the downfall for GSTL !
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On December 20 2014 08:43 magicmUnky wrote:This blog hits the nail on the head but reading this commentary you'd think that the SC2 posters here would rather the game just died? These sentiments are echoed quite a bit throughout the thread: Nobody has qualified this statement beyond "sc2 is very dissimilar to other micro-transaction games". I'm sorry but how is CSGO any less dissimilar from dota2 or LoL? People seem to bash microtransactions without realising that those pay-systems are currently keeping a huge number of relatively unpopular games floating (look on steam for free games and bask in the glory of a thousand bizarre titles). FYI, D3 auction house was axed because it incentivised botting and compromised the game in a very significant manner. It would be foolish to extend that idea onto any conceivable implementation of micro-transactions on SC2.
No one here wants SC2 dead, I don't think you are reading everyone's reply very carefully.
Many of us agree with Destiny about the problem, but don't necessarily agree with his solution.
We aren't bashing micro transactions, and of course they work for a lot of other games, but you are only assuming it would work for SC2. For one thing, those games don't have the budget and manpower like Blizzard. Games with such a large budget/manpower needs to have a higher cost. Games with such a high cost feel rather greedy with a micro transaction model attached on.
If I pay $60 for a game, I want all features included. It would feel like Blizzard is nickel and diming us. The only way to make SC2 micro transaction work is to make it free or really cheap. Will Blizzard make a profit on SC2 if it was free but relied on micro transactions? How many skins will they have to sell to eventually make a profit? How many of their players would be converted into purchasing a skin or voicepack? How many skins would have to be developed?
Sure a game like Candy Crush can thrive off micro transactions. By my guess, it probably only cost developers $50k to make that game (keep in mind its just a clone of bejewelled). A game with low overhead can adopt the free to play model.
A game like SC2 might not turn a profit with a free to play model. We don't know, and you don't know either.
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On December 20 2014 12:53 Areaz wrote:Show nested quote +On December 20 2014 08:13 [F_]aths wrote:
If we think about payment in general. You have to consider different laws in different countries. You have to implement a system accepting a range of currencies. You have to implement actual age control. All things you do must be triple-checked and tested because you are handeling with real money now.
Remember how complicated the D3 auctionhouse was? It was cut later anyway, because it was not wanted from core D3 playerbase. Thats where you are wrong. They implemented D3 auction house perfectly. It was easy to use and the microtransactions on items was possible across all the major regions i believe. Do you honestly think that blizzard wouldnt be able to do this when pretty much every other game does this? I mean seriously now. Not only that they have it in heroes of the storm dude.
Heroes of the Storm is a different genre, micro (or not-so-micro) transactions are already established via other games.
SC2 is designed as a game where you have a set of content. Because of the balance, it is not as easy to introduce new units outside of expansion, while it is easier to introduce new units (heroes) into a moba.
SC2 would be left with cosmetic stuff to purchase. But the game is not tailored for that.
The D3 AH sold items found by players. Blizzard did not create content to sell. For SC2, they would have to create content, which costs money and time if it has to uphold a level of quality one expects from Blizzard.
On December 20 2014 20:07 TerransHill wrote:
But well Blizzard is a huge company and they have alot of experts so I cant imagine that they havent been considering something like that already. They don't want to. They're going to release LotV for 40 bucks, make some money out of it and leave it be.
Guess we have to face the truth: Blizzard has abandoned Starcraft and similar games and put more effort into their new, simpler games which are free to play from the start like Hearthstone, Heroes of the Storm and this new Battle Arena game.
If they had "abandoned" Starcraft, why would they develop an expansion with a full-blown campaign, polish it to be on par with the existing campaign? Why would they bother to change some fundamental variables of the game?
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On December 21 2014 08:10 Jett.Jack.Alvir wrote:
Sure a game like Candy Crush can thrive off micro transactions. By my guess, it probably only cost developers $50k to make that game (keep in mind its just a clone of bejewelled). A game with low overhead can adopt the free to play model.
A game like SC2 might not turn a profit with a free to play model. We don't know, and you don't know either.
Which was a clone of something else, which was a clone of something else, all the way back to the DOS game Shariki I believe. Not really relevant to the discussion but reading that started some reading of my own and I thought I'd share.
While I'm here, I'll give you my version of "would micro-payments work in SC2".
Short version: Yes. But you have to do it right. And if you're going to do it right you probably need a lot of time and money.
Long version: Turns out smacking buttons for rewards is a thing humans like. If, at some point, you carefully substitute "smack the button" for "pay a buck" you might create a cash cow. You can see this just by looking at video gaming in the past few years, there is no genre which it has been applied to where it hasn't worked. FPSs, RTTs (or MOBAs if you prefer) MMORPGs, space simulations, a hundred thousand different varieties of puzzle game and on and on. It really doesn't matter what activity humans are engaged in, if they get to hit the buttons, pay the bucks and take home a tin cup then they'll do it. This is such a clear state of affairs that at this point I think the onus is on those who think micro transactions wouldn't work to explain what magical property SC2 has that exempt it from this clear rule.
So in principle the micro transaction model (or whatever you want to call it) will clearly work but, just as clearly, how you implement it is incredibly important. What forms do these rewards take? Which ones are accessible through play only and which have to be paid for and which are accessible through either route? What do these things cost in time or money for the player? When do they see the reward appear if they are playing for it? Where is the shop where they pay for rewards? etc. etc.
In my view it would be incredibly easy to kill SC2 stone dead with the wrong implementation of micro transactions. All the player base has to do is get a wiff of "pay to win" or see things as over priced or see that too much is accessible to payers which wasn't accessible to players or any one of a number of other possible mistakes and the audience would be hurt. In general, if the implementation appears exploitative then it will be counter productive. (As a side note that's a good argument for SC2 being different from other games, not because of the game, but because the audience. An audience who feel they have already invested so much in the game -be it the dollars or just a decade of loyalty and love- that they shouldn't have to pay extra for cool things and so would be more likely to cry exploitation.)
Now look at the client. Given that we know that it could work, but we also know that doing it wrong would be counter-productive the very last thing you want to do is to try and spray micro transactions all over a 5 year old client which was made with zero thought to model you're now trying to impose on it. Ultimately you're probably talking about a bigger project than LotV as it now stands. You need to take the whole thing down and start again, you need to redevelop it with a shop in mind from the ground up. You need to place whatever it is you are selling (be it sound packs or unit skins or whatever) central to the play experience from the moment a player logs on, which means at the very least new tutorials and ideally adjustments to the single player campaigns and challenge modes. You need to develop a good amount of content that's given out just for playing. You need to develop a good amount of content that's available exclusively to your current audience so you don't alienate them. And on, and on. And once you've done this it better f**cking not crash or break or be exploitable before you roll it out for millions of people to play with.
Destiny is right -micro tranactions could work- he just doesn't discuss how they would work and agregiously underestimates what it would take to make them work. This thread would be a lot more interesting if it moved from if to how.
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Hi.
Very interesting OP from Destiny. I deeply respect his argument, but I have nevertheless to disagree with one of its key points. Frankly I am quite surprised that nobody brought that up.
So to sum it up, the first part of Destiny's argument boiled down to the following:
(1) SCII needs a bigger player base to sustain an healthy professional scene
therefore
(2)The game has to become more "casual friendly", ie reward more casual play.
I think this logic is flawed.
It would be right if (1) was: SCII need to be as popular as the biggest game franchises, like LOL for instance, to sustain an healthy professional scene.
But it's simply not true. Take chess as an example. For 99% of people, chess is just too abstrat, complicated, slow, hard (...): theyn will play 0 to 10 games in their life, and quit it forever. That indeed explain why chess is widely less popular that soccer or poker. But does it arm the longevity of the game, or the existence of a strong competitive scene? Of course not. Because the other 1% (the number is obviously made up, not important to my point) of people will really get into the game, and thus invest time and money in it. Chess does not need to be played by a large chunk of the audience, it just has to manage to reproduce throughout time its "hardcore" player base.
Maybe here is the problem with SCII.
SC fans are far too much focused on the numbers of the biggest "casual friendly" franchises. Maybe we abandon far too quickly our legendary "broodwar elitism".
I will point out what is for me the biggest elephant in the room: the major flaw of SCII is its unability too retain a large chunk of a (relatively) small market: hardcore gamers.
The launching of SCII was a huge succes, and 6 millions copies saled by the end of 2012. So let's do the math: if 10% of the buyers had became hardcore fans of the game, it translates to 600k active players at this time. If those fans were willing to pay 10$ per year to watch pro players or streamers, it would amount to 6 millions $ inject yearly into the scene, ie six times the yearly total prize pool of WCS main events.
It's a perfectly fine amount to sustain a very healthy pro scene, and a strong basis for a strategy based on a slow, organic grow, of the community.
But I fear that it's not such great news. Because it would mean that the problem roots itself in the core of the game, not cosmetic issues. That doesn't lead necessarly to something of "gg no re" situation, but it means that Blizzard needs to focus on the "depth of gameplay", and itsmost hardcore aspects.
Let's make sure that the casual gamer has absolutely 0 chance to beat any half-decent player (like chess), that every newcomer feels right from the beginning overwhelmed by the strategic complexity of the game (like chess) and that a whole life time would nearly not be enough to master it (...)!
It's called a niche market, and some of thoses markets are among the most profitable and stable in the entire economy.
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On December 17 2014 04:49 Destiny wrote:Show nested quote +On December 17 2014 04:46 The_Red_Viper wrote:On December 17 2014 04:31 Destiny wrote:On December 17 2014 04:05 Hider wrote:
Destiny's theory is that Blizzard should adopt a business model based on microtransactions -> this gives Blizzard a financial incentive to continue developing the game. I'm not sure if this makes sense, because for Blizzard to change business models they require financial incentive to begin with. I'm assuming that Blizzard's management is aware of the success of MOBAs & CS:GO (Heroes of the Storm takes many lessons from those games), and the reason that SC2 doesn't use a F2P model is because it's not a good fit / the game is too old.
This is what has driven me crazy about Destiny. He is somewhat smart person, but when he gets on to one thought, he is just absolutely convinced he is right, and never assesses his own position by attempting to evaluate its assumption or do more research on the subject. This kind of thinking that "RTS is a special butterfly" needs to absolutely die ASAP. BW was hugely successful. WC3 was hugely successful. A year ago people said "FPS just isn't what it used to be back in the Quake and 1.6 days, we just have to accept that MOBAs are where it's at now" and boom, look at CS:GO now. Please stop with this "RTS is such a special, unique type of gameplay that could never be mainstream again!" You ignore decades of history with such an absolutely ignorant statement by being so incredibly short-sighted. But it kinda is. I think we all can agree that reaching for the masses practically means "make it as easy as possible to enjoy". Do you think sc2 fits there? What exactly can blizzard do about the gameplay to attract the average joe? Skins and voice packs might be interesting to think about as soon as we have a large enough playerbase to keep them playing, but there is no way these additions would help getting people to play the game in the first place (at least not longterm DUE to the gameplay) Some people say the arcade and therefore custom games are the easy solution here, but i srsly doubt that as well. Sure, years and years ago some mini games might have been a strong reason to keep playing that rts game (BW, Wc3), but would that be the same today? We have easy access to a lot of different games (via steam for example), would custom games really be enough for people to care about sc2? I think the archon mode was included for lotv exactly cause of this "problem", but will it be enough? TBF blizzard announced another game mode, but i think we don't have any real informations about that yet What about making it so that from bronze to gold, your main building automatically produces workers until you're at 16 on each base? Maybe you can set up a file before-hand to automatically create gasses at x number of workers? Then new players can simply focus on making units and attacking? Maybe up until silver league you can right click on a unit in a building and the building will automatically produce that unit, assuming you have the resources/supply to do so? Maybe in bronze/silver/gold leagues there are rocks outside of your natural expansion every game that have to be brought down to prevent people from early rushing you? Maybe through platinum league EVERY CC/hatchery/nexus has some sort of built-in defense system that lasts until 8 minutes have passed? There are ways to make the game more "casual friendly" at lower levels while still keeping the higher levels in tact.
That would add complexity, the player would not only have to learn the game, he would also have to learn a different rule set for each league.
Since you are matched with your MMR, not league, you can get an opponent from another league, which would perceived as unfair by the player from the higher league.
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On December 21 2014 03:39 KingDime wrote:Show nested quote +On December 20 2014 06:25 [F_]aths wrote:On December 20 2014 05:47 JimmyJRaynor wrote:On December 20 2014 04:33 Noro wrote:
People are wrong in criticizing Blizzard for not being able to emulate and implement F2P/Microtransaction models. They simply don't want to for SC2. They know those models work because they're using them on games that they see actually having a monetary future. Blizzard can put out as many PR statements they want about how much they care about this game but really its just white noise. Actions speak louder than words, and what they're saying is SC2 is not worth the investment of resources because the market favours more simplistic/funsie games like HotS and Hearth Stone. Those are the games they will focus on now, regardless of their promises to continually "improve" SC2. I don't think Blizzard is misleading us. They are attempting to improve SC2. However, Blizzard is doing so with a team size and budget that is commensurate with their profit expectations for an RTS game. no one is dumping big dollars into a RTS games because there is no one thinks big money can be made as you've noted. there are still low budget/small scale RTS games like Etherium, Grey Goo, and Rise of Nations Extended Edition coming out these days. i think Destiny's suggestions, properly refined by Blizz, would result in a small increase in revenue and a small increase in playing time. Nothing is going to stop the over all trend away from RTS games though. I think that Destiny's analysis is very good. However I doubt that his more specific suggestions would play out well. I think, a casual-friendly but esports-viable RTS as f2p can work. If it is designed from the ground-up that way. SC2 is made like a classical full-price title. In my opinion, SC2 is a bad game to play with your friends who have no (or just bronze-level) SC2 skills. Compare it with Quake: Even if someone wins with 20 frags, casual gamers will every now and then get a lucky shot and finish with lets say 4 frags. Your quake argument doesn't make sense. Now lets compare FFA starcraft with quake FFA. Even a random low level player who doesn't get attacked can mass up a group of carriers and kill a few players. Also, I don't know how you can get a lucky shot when aim is entirely down to the mechanics of the individual + a bit on the movement of the other player which is also an aspect of SC2. People overrate how hard SC2 is all the time. Most of my friends quit the game from the poor arcade system. We never got the longevity that brood war provided with its endless source of UMS games which had a proper popularity system. Also, speaking of quake live for example which doesn't have a great matchmaking system at this point in time. I went to try the game and won about 5 of my first 100 duels. My SC2 win% never went below 40-60% due to matchmaking. My Quake example was a different one. It is not about to login and play versus random guys.
It is about to pick a game you can play with/versus some of your friends. Even someone who did not play Quake for a long time can get some frags. In Quake, the action begins instantly, eventually you will have some frags on your scoreboard.
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This is what you get if you search for "play starcraft 2":
Millions of players have experienced the intense strategic combat of StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty and now, it has never been easier to join the action. Take command, and lead your forces into battle against rival Terran factions, deadly Zerg hives and mysterious Protoss tribes. Simply click below to begin downloading and then follow the on-screen instructions to play.
Play the first five missions of the epic single-player campaign, wage unrelenting war on your friends in pulse-pounding multiplayer battles, and try the free StarCraft II Arcade. Get in the fight!
In comparison this is the message for League of Legends:
What is League of Legends?
League of Legends is a fast-paced, competitive online game that blends the speed and intensity of an RTS with RPG elements. Two teams of powerful champions, each with a unique design and playstyle, battle head-to-head across multiple battlefields and game modes. With an ever-expanding roster of champions, frequent updates and a thriving tournament scene, League of Legends offers endless replayability for players of every skill level.
Note that for League there is the use of video game jargon and a direct mention of the game's competitive aspects (gameplay, tournament scene), which I would never expect Blizzard to do. I don't know if this is significant, but I thought it was interesting. SC2 is supposed to be this hardcore competitive game, but Blizzard itself shies away from those descriptions, focusing more on the arcade and the single-player, while League is this supposedly casual game that nevertheless promotes its competitive scene a lot.
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It's nothing personal on Blizz's part, just business. It's a simple matter of risk vs reward and ROI. While I don't know the inner workings of Blizz at this point but I'd be willing to wager the majority of their workers are currently assigned to their other games that they think have a higher reward and lower risk that SC2. WoW probably has most of their workers since it's still quite the cash cow for them. I'd assume Hearthstone comes next with HotS following up. Overwatch probably takes priority over SC2 as well. D3 and SC2 are probably about the same since so far they haven't found a real practical way to monetize either of those games(though D3 had console releases for some quick cash and an expansion).
Essentially monetization is the problem with with SC2 and D3. D3 had the money AH but that was removed (for the better I might add). Aside from the SC2 expansions and maybe tournament licenses and possibly some ad revenue (I'm not sure if they get a cut of the ad money from tournaments as well) there doesn't seem to be that great of a revenue stream coming from SC2. Compare this with their other games (Wow has subscription and micro transactions, HS has micro transactions, HotS will have micro transactions, too early to tell anything for Overwatch but I'd assume it would be the same). With these games Blizzard knows people will engage in micro transactions since they're a core part of those games. People will buy booster packs in HS and speaking from personal experience people will always be transferring servers, faction changing, and re-customizing in WoW and people buying skins in HotS is also a fairly certain thing. Because of this Blizzard is comfortable with devoting coders/artists to creating content for these games since they have past evidence that the reward is most likely going to be worth it. Which leads us to SC2.
Some ideas for creating a revenue stream have been floated around including micro transactions for arcade maps and skins. The arcade maps idea was scrapped because I think it would be unlikely that people would be willing to shell out $60 for a game then more to be able to play maps and would drive people away. Another would be charging for new units but that's silly for obvious reasons. So that leaves skins. The only past data that they have on whether or not people would buy skins is HotS collectors edition. We don't have the numbers for how many collectors editions were bought but since no new skins were really developed aside from the ones from the ladder rewards it might not have met expectations and thus was not an idea that was continued. But that wasn't the only reason, there were most likely many so lets look at some problems SC2 currently has.
The biggest one is that SC2 (relative to other micro transaction games) has a small player base. Meaning that there aren't that many people to sell the skins to. Second Blizzard has very little information on past skin purchasing. Now of course anytime you add micro transaction to a game it is a risk, but if you put the two aforementioned things together it's a bigger risk than what you would have in a purely micro transaction based game.
Now while they don't directly relate to SC2 there are other outside problems as well. Blizzard already has other successful micro transaction game with plenty of data on past purchasing habits of their users. In addition to this (this is more an assumption on my part) it does not appear that Blizzard is hiring new coders/artists to make skins. This means that in order to create skins for SC2 they would have to pull people off of their more successful games in order to have them work on SC2, and that poses another risk as well as opportunity costs. So from these assumptions (all of these assumptions I've made are derived from the SC2 numbers posted in Destiny's blog) I deduce that at the present time given the uncertainty of the success of SC2 skin cells they don't think there would be enough of a reward to take the risk and pull coders/artists off their other projects and assign them to SC2.
With the upcoming (well sort of, next year anyways) release of LotV it can be assumed that some old players and maybe some new players (it is standalone after all) will come in to check out what changed and if they think it's worth playing again. If the numbers improve (and with it comes the risk to reward ratio) and retention looks good then I would be surprised to not see Blizzard pull a few people over and have them make a few skins to test the waters. Or alternatively if they ever hire new coders/artists they could assign them to SC2 to do this first, and if it doesn't work out they'll move them to other games.
I think I've summed up the current situation pretty well from a business perspective but again a lot of this is assumptions so take it with a grain of salt.
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One factor that people are forgetting is that custom maps (or UMS) in SC1 were much more diverse and played more often, giving everyone something else to enjoy and be good at that wasn't the official game mode. It could be a unique melee map like BGH, Zero clutter, Fastest money, or micro maps; or UMS like V-Tec paintball, micro maps, snipers, evolves, art of defense, period based maps (Civilization, WW2:DIE, Rise/Fall of Rome, Republique 1800), and god knows how many other categories of UMS maps there were that were played. How fucking awesome would it have been if Blizzard had made a 10-player Hunters style map for racewars and FFA's?
Streaming has also lessened the amount of games people play because before, casual players would still be playing something (above game "modes") or hanging around in bnet channels chatting and running clans, while now we watch the pros play and offer armchair strategical advice in the twitch chat.
The social experience is also missing even with the implementation of chat channels. I'm forced to find clans using the internet while before I could hop into Clan Recruitment and within 5-10 minutes be in a tryout game or already tagged up.
I guess there were a lot more ways to play and experience the game because of the way the game and battle.net 1.0 were designed. Some people will tell me that blizzard is coming up with innovative new game modes like Archon mode, but this mode was shipped with SC1 (Team Melee or w/e it was called) or was developed later as the Micro/Macro UMS map.
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him if i see the communtiy of this games i realy go to sc2 is realy no point to go in a teamgame base game becouse of massiv flaming kids. Cs, call of duty, lol, Dota 2 all have the same flamer community. Many people look this games becouse is easyer to play and lrean in way faster time. The future of esports is sad then the COMPANYS want make money and nothing other. The game with most viewers will be number 1 and this have nothing to do with skill of the player or the game.
Its the same with chess and football how many people look chess and how many look football?
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On December 22 2014 03:23 craz3d wrote:
The social experience is also missing even with the implementation of chat channels. I'm forced to find clans using the internet while before I could hop into Clan Recruitment and within 5-10 minutes be in a tryout game or already tagged up.
Have to agree. There's not much too like about the whole UI! Seems very dull and unimaginative. Rarely updated.
The chat / channels thing seems to be a constant grip since roughly 800BC. There's opensource, stable software out there which would solve these problems, would be a monumental (I assume!) Task to shoehorn something like qwebirc onto starcraft. How cool would it be though to have IRC features available for starcrafts chat channels.
I'd would love to of been a fly on the wall at bliztards HQ when the UI features were decided upon.
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EPT
