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Warning for everyone in this thread: I WILL moderate your posts very harshly from now on if you can't have a civil discussion. |
I just actually sent a message to someone regarding this very thing.
As someone who manages many people, I see a lot of parallels between Blizzard and bad managers. Bad managers never listen to anyone under them and do whatever they want. And if those managers are heavily disconnected from what actually is going on, then many issues arise. They do this because listening to people under them, in their view, endangers their position as the boss.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Sure, some people will try and take advantage of it and think they can talk you into things because you've listened to their ideas in the past, but you just gently remind them who is the boss. And the solution to that problem is certainly not to listen to people in general.
Listening to people empowers you as a manager and strengthens the team.
I actually get the feeling that if you suggest a really good idea to Blizzard, that they go out of their way not to implement it, and try to find some other solution.
Case and point: I suggested removing the ability to warp in on ramps to fix the 4 gate in PvP. Even with a FF on the bottom of the ramp, if a player had pylons near the ramp they could warp in over that FF and get vision of the high ground, allowing them to warp in more units.
http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/2416114960
Nearly six months after I pushed and pushed that suggestion, Blizzard finally implemented it. But Blizzard decided to delay Warp Gate tech first, instead of doing the things that actually fixed the 4 gate when I had suggested the ramp fix, and their "fixes" caused so many problems for Protoss. Alone the ramp fix did not solve the 4 gate, but it was a piece of the puzzle and by the end of WOL the 4 gate was a non-issue. I watched every PvP for the Korean qualifiers for TSL4, and not a single 4 gate succeeded.
But then we still got Photon Overcharge.
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As for point 21 about active abilities and how Blizzard thinks it cool that phoenix can harass a mineral line by lifting up workers. Instead of additional units with active abilities there should be units with passive abilities that are triggered by the opponent like enrage (damage increase) or increased health regeneration while attacked. The Immortal shield is the only passive ability that comes to mind. It's an overlooked fix to encourage micro, positioning and counter play instead of the "click to die micro abilities" like fungal growth.
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As much as I agree,
SC3 will probably be the revolution of SC2.
LOTV will be much improved but it will probably fall short.
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I like the comparisons to real sports, aka soccer/football. Football WORKS. People enjoy playing it and watching it. Fact. Yet there are a lot of aspects that are frustrating in theory, such as the arbitrary time add at the end of the game. There are a million things wrong with SC2, but very few of them are preventing it from being an amazing game. There are so many points to consider that SOMEONE must be right, but who that is exactly is very difficult to determine.. GL devs
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Oh... Can somebody type / link me a TL;DR? I will read the whole thing soon™ but right now my body is not ready.
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man these points resonate with what have been boiling up in my mind for past few weeks since LoTV announcement.
Thank you for the article Dwf
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On April 23 2015 07:03 BronzeKnee wrote:
As someone who manages many people, I see a lot of parallels between Blizzard and bad managers. Bad managers never listen to anyone under them and do whatever they want. And if those managers are heavily disconnected from what actually is going on, then many issues arise. They do this because listening to people under them, in their view, endangers their position as the boss.
Bad managers also think their ideas are the best ideas. Is it possible that Blizzard's design team is, you know, listening to the ideas of their own employees first? I'm not sure where this analogy is going, since I don't believe anyone whinging on this thread works for blizzard.
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The premise of op's article is that StarCraft 2 was and is being designed as an esport.
Compare the millions of sold SC2 copies with the SC2 esports scene.
Then you can see that this premise doesn't hold true.
Starcraft as an esport is sort of a side project of Blizzard.
The main project is to sell millions of copies of the game.
If the side project 'esport' doesn't work out, yet they still sell millions of copies, no Blizzard executive will be too pissed about it.
That's why every design desicion has to be "casual first".
Then worry about the esports aspect later.
If you piss off a handful of esports enthusiasts in the process, so be it.
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On April 28 2015 05:52 Ero-Sennin wrote:
As much as I agree,
SC3 will probably be the revolution of SC2.
LOTV will be much improved but it will probably fall short.
If LOTV falls short, many people won't buy lotv or sc3. Blizzard has to prove itself again after their last batch of releases. They're not golden anymore.
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On April 28 2015 19:21 mikedebo wrote:
I'm not sure where this analogy is going, since I don't believe anyone whinging on this thread works for blizzard.
I didn't clearly define the analogy because it was assumed, but what I was saying was that Blizzard not listening to the community is the same as a manager not listening to his employees. There is no good reason for not listening in either case, and generally pride is problem.
It isn't like (all) the community ideas are terrible, the fact they are often implemented months later just makes Blizzard look terrible.
Perhaps the more obvious analogy is a company not listening to their customers since that is exactly what is happening here. Most businesses bend over backwards to deliver exactly the product the customer wants.
I don't know why Blizzard is trying to force their product on us.
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very agreeable, as of right now I'm unsure if I'll buy LotV or not for the same reasons.
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On April 28 2015 22:33 HewTheTitan wrote:Show nested quote +On April 28 2015 05:52 Ero-Sennin wrote:
As much as I agree,
SC3 will probably be the revolution of SC2.
LOTV will be much improved but it will probably fall short. If LOTV falls short, many people won't buy lotv or sc3. Blizzard has to prove itself again after their last batch of releases. They're not golden anymore.
I don't know, do you think they won't buy it because it's Blizzard? I still think they would, but maybe I'm wrong.
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On April 28 2015 22:35 BronzeKnee wrote:
Perhaps the more obvious analogy is a company not listening to their customers since that is exactly what is happening here. Most businesses bend over backwards to deliver exactly the product the customer wants.
I don't know why Blizzard is trying to force their product on us.
Believe me, Blizzard is listening to their customers.
Except that you, the op, the TL community or the esports scene are not their main customers.
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On April 29 2015 09:10 helpman169 wrote:Show nested quote +On April 28 2015 22:35 BronzeKnee wrote:
Perhaps the more obvious analogy is a company not listening to their customers since that is exactly what is happening here. Most businesses bend over backwards to deliver exactly the product the customer wants.
I don't know why Blizzard is trying to force their product on us. Believe me, Blizzard is listening to their customers. Except that you, the op, the TL community or the esports scene are not their main customers.
So who are those ominous customers you are speaking of? And what channels of communication do they use that so massively influence what blizzard does, but goes completely under the radar of everyone here.
Where have those demands been placed that you say blizzard is listening to and by whom if not by the active community?
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On April 28 2015 22:35 BronzeKnee wrote:
It isn't like (all) the community ideas are terrible, the fact they are often implemented months later just makes Blizzard look terrible.
Perhaps the more obvious analogy is a company not listening to their customers since that is exactly what is happening here. Most businesses bend over backwards to deliver exactly the product the customer wants.
I don't know why Blizzard is trying to force their product on us.
Because we are far from a unified voice.
We recently had the Terran LotV unit contest where the winner, the most popular idea in this community, is getting panned by other parts of this community as a really bad idea. Yet, we selected it by popular vote. Should Blizzard automatically implement the walking forcefield?
How many people want to get rid of smart casting? A small portion of our community. How many think smart casting is a good idea? A small portion of our community. How many people don't know what smart casting is? A large portion.
We can do that for almost every topic and get approximately the same answers. And then even when there is relative agreement, it doesn't mean that we're right for creating an interesting game. A large portion of this community for a long time has been pushing for faster and faster game mechanics... more active abilities, more things to do to really challenge the players because SC2 is an "easy game". Now we get this article and suddenly a whole lot of people are swaying the other way... that there are too many abilities and too much to do and that strategy is being killed by that compression of time.
There are plenty of other examples. When Barrin came up with FRB, it was very popular with pretty much anyone that read the proposal. Would it have been better than the normal game if it had been implemented by Blizzard? Maybe. However, the results from tournaments and show matches seemed inconclusive.
Now we've got the TL strategy article on double harvesting. It's wildly popular and I'd love to see Blizzard give it a try, but does it actually create better games on average? I have no idea. I do know that the twelve worker start has removed almost all of the uninteresting downtime at the beginning of the game... and yet it's getting criticized heavily by the community that mostly hasn't even tried it yet.
So if you can tell Blizzard exactly what portion of the community to listen to and what portion to ignore, then go right ahead. But for every time they take their time on a "good idea" or don't implement it at all, be glad that they didn't implement tens or hundreds of terrible community ideas. Because if you keep your eyes and ears open with a critical mind, you'll realize that the vast majority of the community ideas when related to actual game play are bad.
Sometimes I think a whole lot of people in this thread and others think that "Blizzard ideas = Bad, community ideas = Good" no matter what their actual merits are.
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On April 29 2015 08:13 Ero-Sennin wrote:Show nested quote +On April 28 2015 22:33 HewTheTitan wrote:On April 28 2015 05:52 Ero-Sennin wrote:
As much as I agree,
SC3 will probably be the revolution of SC2.
LOTV will be much improved but it will probably fall short. If LOTV falls short, many people won't buy lotv or sc3. Blizzard has to prove itself again after their last batch of releases. They're not golden anymore. I don't know, do you think they won't buy it because it's Blizzard? I still think they would, but maybe I'm wrong.
Speaking for myself, I'll buy it still because whatever bad things we might have to say about Blizzard or whatever frustrations I might have with the game, nobody except Blizzard is making a decent quality micro-oriented RTS.
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On April 29 2015 11:36 RenSC2 wrote:Show nested quote +On April 28 2015 22:35 BronzeKnee wrote:
It isn't like (all) the community ideas are terrible, the fact they are often implemented months later just makes Blizzard look terrible.
Perhaps the more obvious analogy is a company not listening to their customers since that is exactly what is happening here. Most businesses bend over backwards to deliver exactly the product the customer wants.
I don't know why Blizzard is trying to force their product on us. Because we are far from a unified voice. We recently had the Terran LotV unit contest where the winner, the most popular idea in this community, is getting panned by other parts of this community as a really bad idea. Yet, we selected it by popular vote. Should Blizzard automatically implement the walking forcefield? How many people want to get rid of smart casting? A small portion of our community. How many think smart casting is a good idea? A small portion of our community. How many people don't know what smart casting is? A large portion. We can do that for almost every topic and get approximately the same answers. And then even when there is relative agreement, it doesn't mean that we're right for creating an interesting game. A large portion of this community for a long time has been pushing for faster and faster game mechanics... more active abilities, more things to do to really challenge the players because SC2 is an "easy game". Now we get this article and suddenly a whole lot of people are swaying the other way... that there are too many abilities and too much to do and that strategy is being killed by that compression of time. There are plenty of other examples. When Barrin came up with FRB, it was very popular with pretty much anyone that read the proposal. Would it have been better than the normal game if it had been implemented by Blizzard? Maybe. However, the results from tournaments and show matches seemed inconclusive. Now we've got the TL strategy article on double harvesting. It's wildly popular and I'd love to see Blizzard give it a try, but does it actually create better games on average? I have no idea. I do know that the twelve worker start has removed almost all of the uninteresting downtime at the beginning of the game... and yet it's getting criticized heavily by the community that mostly hasn't even tried it yet. So if you can tell Blizzard exactly what portion of the community to listen to and what portion to ignore, then go right ahead. But for every time they take their time on a "good idea" or don't implement it at all, be glad that they didn't implement tens or hundreds of terrible community ideas. Because if you keep your eyes and ears open with a critical mind, you'll realize that the vast majority of the community ideas when related to actual game play are bad. Sometimes I think a whole lot of people in this thread and others think that "Blizzard ideas = Bad, community ideas = Good" no matter what their actual merits are.
I think the problem stems from blizzard making hard to understand decisions, to put it nicely. It has little to do with them not listening or listening to the wrong people. It's their very own ideas that bug me the most.
They are inconsitent with what they are saying:
"we are bot going to put 2more units in every expansion", "lurkers didnt make it in because of overlap". A few years down the road we have 4-5 new units per race, amonst them the lurker...
Or "we want mover-shooters". Proceed to add an activated ability on every unit in the game.
"Game should be easy to learn, hard to master" - create an economy that kills you in 5mins when you havent mastered some key aspects of the game.
It's like all of their original intentions were good, but they got lost down the road of trying to compete with Mobas.
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On April 29 2015 12:04 Big J wrote:Show nested quote +On April 29 2015 11:36 RenSC2 wrote:On April 28 2015 22:35 BronzeKnee wrote:
It isn't like (all) the community ideas are terrible, the fact they are often implemented months later just makes Blizzard look terrible.
Perhaps the more obvious analogy is a company not listening to their customers since that is exactly what is happening here. Most businesses bend over backwards to deliver exactly the product the customer wants.
I don't know why Blizzard is trying to force their product on us. Because we are far from a unified voice. We recently had the Terran LotV unit contest where the winner, the most popular idea in this community, is getting panned by other parts of this community as a really bad idea. Yet, we selected it by popular vote. Should Blizzard automatically implement the walking forcefield? How many people want to get rid of smart casting? A small portion of our community. How many think smart casting is a good idea? A small portion of our community. How many people don't know what smart casting is? A large portion. We can do that for almost every topic and get approximately the same answers. And then even when there is relative agreement, it doesn't mean that we're right for creating an interesting game. A large portion of this community for a long time has been pushing for faster and faster game mechanics... more active abilities, more things to do to really challenge the players because SC2 is an "easy game". Now we get this article and suddenly a whole lot of people are swaying the other way... that there are too many abilities and too much to do and that strategy is being killed by that compression of time. There are plenty of other examples. When Barrin came up with FRB, it was very popular with pretty much anyone that read the proposal. Would it have been better than the normal game if it had been implemented by Blizzard? Maybe. However, the results from tournaments and show matches seemed inconclusive. Now we've got the TL strategy article on double harvesting. It's wildly popular and I'd love to see Blizzard give it a try, but does it actually create better games on average? I have no idea. I do know that the twelve worker start has removed almost all of the uninteresting downtime at the beginning of the game... and yet it's getting criticized heavily by the community that mostly hasn't even tried it yet. So if you can tell Blizzard exactly what portion of the community to listen to and what portion to ignore, then go right ahead. But for every time they take their time on a "good idea" or don't implement it at all, be glad that they didn't implement tens or hundreds of terrible community ideas. Because if you keep your eyes and ears open with a critical mind, you'll realize that the vast majority of the community ideas when related to actual game play are bad. Sometimes I think a whole lot of people in this thread and others think that "Blizzard ideas = Bad, community ideas = Good" no matter what their actual merits are. I think the problem stems from blizzard making hard to understand decisions, to put it nicely. It has little to do with them not listening or listening to the wrong people. It's their very own ideas that bug me the most. They are inconsitent with what they are saying: "we are bot going to put 2more units in every expansion", "lurkers didnt make it in because of overlap". A few years down the road we have 4-5 new units per race, amonst them the lurker... Or "we want mover-shooters". Proceed to add an activated ability on every unit in the game. "Game should be easy to learn, hard to master" - create an economy that kills you in 5mins when you havent mastered some key aspects of the game. It's like all of their original intentions were good, but they got lost down the road of trying to compete with Mobas.
I agree with you. Blizzard has been inconsistent and I do think it has hurt the product. However, this is a tangentially related topic to what I responded to. People say that Blizzard doesn't listen, and my response is, "Who are they supposed to listen to?"
Now, if we go back to your post, I think if you look at what has lead Blizzard to that inconsistency, you'll actually find that they listen to the customer too much. They don't have strong leadership with a solid vision for the future of the game. Instead, they flail around trying to please everyone. They didn't want lurkers due to some overlap (mostly with the now changed swarmhost), the community wanted it anyways, so we have lurkers. The community for a long time has been asking for more interesting units which used to mean more active abilities, so Blizzard added an active ability to damn near everything. The community has been demanding more multitasking, more spread out armies, and more bases, so Blizzard changed the economy to force more bases, more spread out armies, and more multitasking at the cost of "easy to learn". Now that we got what we (most of the community) asked for, we actually want to go back closer to what we had.
As I said, I agree with you on your post. But it's the reasoning of why we get here that has been proposed in this thread that I disagree with. It's not that Blizzard isn't listening. The problem is that they don't have a strong vision for the future of the game and to make up for it, they're listening too much.
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EPT
