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He is completely right. The scene and the game is almost neglected by the devs, and they aren't doing the game accessible for the general public, neither balanced. Also SC2 devs ignored the community.
And also pricing is a huge factor there.
CS:GO, with a base price of 10€/$, has gone in very aggressive sales of even an 80% that made the player base really huge. Starcraft 2 started at 40€/$ per expansion (so 120 in total), now it costs the 40$ with both expansions, and they will need to reduce it even more if they want players. That's basic.
They should go very heavy on skins and shit like that (see dota) and cut the price drastically, being aggressive. It's always the same: game is cheap, accessible, people knows the gameplay style a lot, people jumps in. See Heroes of the storm alpha numbers, see Hearthstone.
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On December 16 2014 19:15 phodacbiet wrote:Show nested quote +On December 16 2014 19:04 Grumbels wrote:
In my opinion, skins are a predatory business model and many people that champion it have no actual intention to buy skins, while seeking to profit from those who will.
Can we please keep our old and fair model of: 'buy a game = access a game' ? The thing with skins is that they aren't necessary to buy if you dont want them. Your lings will still be the same whether they look like lings or flying bugs. Since the skins will serve as nothing more than a nice aesthetic look, there's no reason to not have them in the game. Sure itll be weird to look at for the first few games, but people will get used to it. It wouldnt hurt to add it, i mean it's not like sc2 is going to get anymore dead with skins.
The community is very fetishistic about these monetizing schemes. Buying pointless content like skins and voice packs is framed as an altruistic act to support the (giant, faceless, corporate) game developer. In DOTA2 you are peer pressured into buying compendiums to "support the scene" (i.e. advertisement for Valve's tournament and enriching a handful of top players). Many people cheer at such models while happily profiting by being able to play the game for free because most people will make only a few purchases at best. The community cheers at game companies creating new ways to exploit the playerbase. I don't get it to be honest.
None of the problems that SC2 has will be fixed by on-going development. Blizzard just needs to be competent in designing the game.
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On December 16 2014 15:49 purakushi wrote:
It is the gameplay that is SC2's biggest issue. Everything else is just icing.
LotV? Last chance, Blizzard.
And how would they have to change it? Reading your signature it seems like you simply don't like sc2 in general, in that case you should consider moving on to another game, blizzard doesn't have to change it just for you.
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On December 16 2014 15:51 Liquid`Jinro wrote:Show nested quote +On December 16 2014 15:46 Musicus wrote:
Definitely an excellent read, it won't directly affect Blizzard's way of doing things, but it's good to show that we care. Can't remember when the last time was that something got upvoted that high on r/starcraft.
Sadly sc2 came out as a full prized game and people expect (rightfully so) a complete game, with every future content to be free. With LotV being standalone I don't think that will change, since only a free multiplayer would allow microtransactions. But I hope they will at least provide better rewards for playing/laddering even if we won't be able to spend money ingame. I don't really know why they couldn't do something like free multiplayer / pay for campaign. I guess the product is too far along for that, but in theory that sounds good to me.
They could even make the whole game free. I mean, what is 40 euros (price of lotv) compared to ton of skins, etc. sold? F2P with skins/voice packs/etc will earn you more in the end, than paying 40 for the game straight up. Some people pay hundreds of dollars just for the skins in LoL, At least IMO.
It would be a wise move by Blizzard, just like what they did with Heroes.
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On December 16 2014 21:26 Grumbels wrote:Show nested quote +On December 16 2014 19:15 phodacbiet wrote:On December 16 2014 19:04 Grumbels wrote:
In my opinion, skins are a predatory business model and many people that champion it have no actual intention to buy skins, while seeking to profit from those who will.
Can we please keep our old and fair model of: 'buy a game = access a game' ? The thing with skins is that they aren't necessary to buy if you dont want them. Your lings will still be the same whether they look like lings or flying bugs. Since the skins will serve as nothing more than a nice aesthetic look, there's no reason to not have them in the game. Sure itll be weird to look at for the first few games, but people will get used to it. It wouldnt hurt to add it, i mean it's not like sc2 is going to get anymore dead with skins. The community is very fetishistic about these monetizing schemes. Offering pointless content like skins and voice packs is framed as an altruistic act to support the (giant, faceless, corporate) game developer. In DOTA2 you are peer pressured into buying compendiums to "support the scene" (i.e. advertisement for Valve's tournament and enriching a handful of top players). Many people cheer at such models while happily profiting by being able to play the game for free because most people will make only a few purchases at best. The community cheers at game companies creating new ways to exploit the playerbase. I don't get it to be honest. None of the problems that SC2 has will be fixed by on-going development. Blizzard just needs to be competent in designing the game.
People cheers that economic models because they demand less money at the first moment than the classsical model. We have to think in the dynamics of the economy today, as this is a marketing question. Starting for free is a big advantage, and then we move on pricing. How much do you pay for Dota, HS, CS? Very little. 40$ is a lot of money today to pay all at a time. With 40 € I buy basic food (rice, pasta, eggs, milk, vegs) for a month as I'm a poor student. What do my friends play? Dota and Lol, and other F2P or cheap steam stuff.
Lol is not the best exemple of this, but how much do you need to pay in LoL to have lots of content? with 25$ and hitting level 30 you can get a lot of the champs, which are usually enought to have fun for loooots of time.
Micropayments are interesting solutions, and they can be fair, because you can pay whatever you want. If I were in Blizz, I would unify MP with a base pricing (Cheap) in LotV, and sell campaigns as extra content with campaign skins. So we could have something 20€ base game, 10 per campaign (givving you access to lots of skins). What's more, selling skins (that are already in the game) and promoting Custom creations like Dota2 does would be a nice way to motivate interest for it.
For getting public, friend referals and a sysstem to get content discouts as you get friends in the game.
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It is a shame that valve is not making any RTS.
Dota 2 has patches very often, some of them to improve the performance.
I have not seen any patch in sc2 that improves the fps of the game.
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On December 16 2014 21:49 xuanzue wrote:
It is a shame that valve is not making any RTS.
Dota 2 has patches very often, some of them to improve the performance.
I have not seen any patch in sc2 that improves the fps of the game.
Because Valve devs said they have no idea how to make rts game.. regardless to fact that their servers rts games like AoE2HD sucks ass :D...
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On December 16 2014 21:49 xuanzue wrote:
It is a shame that valve is not making any RTS.
Dota 2 has patches very often, some of them to improve the performance.
I have not seen any patch in sc2 that improves the fps of the game.
If they wanted to do it, they would have involved personally in the remakes of Rise of Nations and Age of Mythologies. Specially the last one has an interesting proximity to Starcraft because it is race-based, with each of the 4 races being clearly different.
Both were fun RTS games in their time.
I think that the servers they were using for RTS titles are from Microsoft Games, because they own the rights of the games. So shame on them.
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On December 16 2014 16:17 pmp10 wrote:
It's the same point about making SC2 multiplayer F2P with micro-transactions.
Blizzard could do that but why would they bother?
SC2 is a old game by now.
Any effort spent on it would make much more money when applied to heartstone or heroes.
There simply is no financial rationale to attempting a SC2 revival.
Because it is not as if every penny earned with Sc2 means a penny earned less with Hearthstone or Heroes.
Sc2 sits in a different genre and I don't think it is comparable.
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Depends on what level of success you are talking about. It's not just specifically about SC2. RTS as whole is a dying genre. No matter how good the gameplay is, it will never be as successful as more accessible games like FPS and MOBA. That's just nature of the genre. People who point at specific gameplay issue entirely miss the point. It's no coincidence that SC2 is the sole RTS that is active enough to have relevant competitive scene.
From business perspective, Blizzard has absolutely no reason to keep making RTS games. The genre is one of the least profitable you could think of. Don't get me wrong,SC2 sold extremely well for an RTS game but it's still nothing compared to what Blizz got from WoW and D3 or even what they are getting from HS.
I love StarCraft and I enjoy niche community we have for the niche genre like this. I have my opinions about lots of things that should be improved in SC2 but make no mistake, it's not to make the game super popular like WoW or HS but it's for my enjoyment of the game.
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On December 16 2014 22:08 Wildmoon wrote:
Depends on what level of success you are talking about. It's not just specifically about SC2. RTS as whole is a dying genre. No matter how good the gameplay is, it will never be as successful as more accessible games like FPS and MOBA. That's just nature of the genre. People who point at specific gameplay issue entirely miss the point.
Genres are pure trending. Give out something fun and accessible and no matter what type of game it is, it'll have some success. The trending train will dictate a lot, but fun and pricing are the final decisive points. Some things have to go upstream, like salmons, but they should be more realistic.
WoW, beign as old as it is, is very active, and MMOs aren't completely in the current trending train. Why? Because it was a huge success by its days and now is an active "classic".
Card games weren't very fashionable but they existed, and Hearthstone has hit very hard.
CS:GO is indeed almost an upgrade/remake of an old and simple multiplayer shooter, and is growing like crazy, while the "big shooters" like CoD or BF are declining.
However, it is true that "Classic" Macro RTS are something with more refined public because they are demanding and complex games. But I don't think that this is the point of it. It's only a part of the question. Don't forget that "MOBAs" are indeed pretty much Hero-based RTS, with simplified economic models (5-way linear) and farming, too. And they also demand a big game knowledge.
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On December 16 2014 22:08 Wildmoon wrote:
Depends on what level of success you are talking about. It's not just specifically about SC2. RTS as whole is a dying genre. No matter how good the gameplay is, it will never be as successful as more accessible games like FPS and MOBA. That's just nature of the genre. People who point at specific gameplay issue entirely miss the point.
No matter how good the gameplay is? So, in essence, no matter how fun a game will be, nobody will ever play it? That does not really make sense to me. I think there are just not that many top tier RTS games out there. I agree that the RTS scene is going through a rough time, but the only problem I see is that no company dares to do something about it just because MOBA is more popular atm.
RTS has not found its place within the current free-to-play casual market yet. A lot of the accessibility has got to do with price, the amount of friends you can get with you to explore, learn and have fun, etc. With that I think it's the involuntary task of the only semi-popular RTS around to find a way to survive and prosper. After that, I surely see RTS growing again.
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On December 16 2014 22:19 JCoto wrote:Show nested quote +On December 16 2014 22:08 Wildmoon wrote:
Depends on what level of success you are talking about. It's not just specifically about SC2. RTS as whole is a dying genre. No matter how good the gameplay is, it will never be as successful as more accessible games like FPS and MOBA. That's just nature of the genre. People who point at specific gameplay issue entirely miss the point. Genres are pure trending. Give out something fun and accessible and no matter what type of game it is, it'll have some success. The trending train will dictate a lot, but fun is the final decisive point. WoW, beign as old as it is, is very active, and MMOs aren't completely in the current trending train. Card games weren't very fashionable but they existed, and Hearthstone has hit very hard. However, it is true that "Classic" Macro RTS are something with more refined public because they are demanding games. But I don't think that this is the point of it. It's only a part of the question. Don't forget that "MOBAs" are indeed pretty much Hero-based RTS, with simplified economic models (5-way linear) and farming, too.
When I talk about RTS, I mean traditional RTS. If in order to make StarCraft popular, you have to get rid of fundamental aspects of the game then hell no. Moba got rid of all aspects of RTS that are supposed to be "hard and boring" by some people standard.
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They should just take the Hearthstone/Heroes of the Storm model of daily quests (daily missions to make it more SC-y) that reward money (credits/minerals/whatever). Credits can be put toward new skins, graphics, overlays, sounds, everything. Blizzard can keep releasing new ones over time like in Heroes. Skins in Heroes are like $9.99 yet people still buy them. Add in "master" type skins like in Heroes, with prerequisites like earn the 500 1v1 win achievement with that race, then give you the option to purchase a more unique skin, etc.
I really enjoy playing SC2 but I was surprised at how "addicting" and easier it was to play a few games of HS/Heroes every day to finish the daily. Keep credit income pretty low; add in some credits per win/loss (40 per win, 10 per loss) like in the other games so people don't feel like they're always wasting their time with losses. Add in some skins or whatever that can only be bought with money if you want.
Some dailies could be simple like... build 40 zealots (mirroring play 20 2 mana or less cards in HS). Or win 2 games with terran. Win 3 team games. Win 7 games in any mode. Use your imagination. Tons of possibilities out there.
The model really works IMO in both games. It seems like a no brainer to add it in to SC2...
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On December 16 2014 22:20 Anacreor wrote:Show nested quote +On December 16 2014 22:08 Wildmoon wrote:
Depends on what level of success you are talking about. It's not just specifically about SC2. RTS as whole is a dying genre. No matter how good the gameplay is, it will never be as successful as more accessible games like FPS and MOBA. That's just nature of the genre. People who point at specific gameplay issue entirely miss the point. No matter how good the gameplay is? So, in essence, no matter how fun a game will be, nobody will ever play it? That does not really make sense to me. I think there are just not that many top tier RTS games out there. I agree that the RTS scene is going through a rough time, but the only problem I see is that no company dares to do something about it just because MOBA is more popular atm. RTS has not found its place within the current free-to-play casual market yet. A lot of the accessibility has got to do with price, the amount of friends you can get with you to explore, learn and have fun, etc. With that I think it's the involuntary task of the only semi-popular RTS around to find a way to survive and prosper. After that, I surely see RTS growing again.
It may become popular again but not in the form of traditional RTS we know and love for sure. If RTS is going to survive this, it needs to adapt itself to not be fundamentally demanding as it is now. Are you ok with that? Also, a game can be really fun when you can actually play it at decent level but it won't be popular because of its inaccessible nature.
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Price has to be lowered, anyways. At half the price, 4 times the sales.
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SC2 gets really good viewer ratio considering its amount of playerbase. This means that the game can be really fun when you look really high level play but why bother if you can't dream of playing even close to that level?
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Destiny forgot that adding skins for SC2 units is not as easy. These skins would influence FPS of players. Sure you could make skins that would not, but you need a way to test it for weaker computers.
So it takes time and effort to make a skin, you cannot just mass produce it like in CS:GO. Letting community do some will present same problems.
For voice packs, I don't see a reason why not.
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On December 17 2014 00:16 -Archangel- wrote:
Destiny forgot that adding skins for SC2 units is not as easy. These skins would influence FPS of players. Sure you could make skins that would not, but you need a way to test it for weaker computers.
So it takes time and effort to make a skin, you cannot just mass produce it like in CS:GO. Letting community do some will present same problems.
For voice packs, I don't see a reason why not.
We are talking a 4 year old game :/
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EPT
