EPTSC2's shrinking talent pool: stuchiu on ESPN - Page 4
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Loccstana
United States833 Posts
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MaestroSC
United States2073 Posts
On January 21 2016 08:47 Big J wrote: I don't think that's the problem. I've talked to so many people who all bought the game, who all play some sort of MobA now and it's always the same: The game is too stressful, too hard to learn, too frustrating and doesn't fullfill the expectations of your typical casual player. If you go into a MobA you get what you expect. You kill creeps, you kill heroes, you buy items, you level up and eventually the game concludes. If you go into SC2 you expect big army battles and to run around with units and so on and then you get 4gated 15 times in a row and leave the game forever before you even find out that the reason you don't have units is that you needed to make a special unit that you need to click every 30seconds and the millions of other possibilities to play the game are all noob-traps. IMO SC2 is in a spot where it doesnt appeal to any demigraphic. Its trying so hard to appeal to the casual crowd that it alienates a lot of the super serious competitive crowd. (the people who want BW with new graphics). But at the same time its so noob/casual unfriendly, that it will never really be able to get any serious traction with that crowd. Its facing the same problem WoW has been facing for the last 2 expansions...in their quest to cater to casual gamers, hardcore competitive players are being pushed to other games. If you are splitting between two opposite demographics you end up not appealing to either. I love BW, I enjoyed WoL...but have since hated the design direction of the game, which has only proven to me that the design team isnt going in a direction I can appreciate, or am interested in pursuing. In their quest for "casual players just want big explosions!" they have alienated the people who want the spread out, skirmish based game that BW was. Speeding up the early game didnt make any sense as a design decision...you dont force more action in the early stages of the game by making it go quicker. You slow it down so people will be forced to do something productive in the beginning/will have the time/ability to focus on the map, and focus on getting shit done. And I wont even talk about the unit design/flow of current matches. Everyone is sick of MMM...Terrans have been building nothing but marines since WoL... Never understood how design took them to a place where we have the Terran being the ones that mass their cheapest unit, while Zerg has to tech to their highest level stuff to counter it. But I wont go too far down this rabbit hole, will just finish by saying the design decisions have pushed myself as well as any/all of my friends who played away from the game. BW is still appreciated because you watch and go "OMG HOW DO THEY DO IT?!" whereas SC2 is caught in the middle ground where losing is still easy, but winning doesnt look like anything worth appreciating. | ||
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iamkaokao
108 Posts
This game is much more stressing than other profesional esports .. there is just soo much you have to learn.. and you cant never stop because the meta changes every week.. along with the maps and hopes , none can really keep up with this for a long time.. , thats the only reason i think older players retire.. If they want to make the game even more elitest or selective in the pro lvls.. then they have to raise salarys.. , ex TSM csgo just got a new team , and their salary is 9k month , im not sure how much is sc2.. but they probably make 1k - 2k aprox? , which is ridiculous for the amount of work , csgo players barely even practice.. compared to kespa players ,even the best teams in the world like envy and fnatic basically play yolo style and still success...... the dedication needed to keep up in sc2 is abysmally harder i feel.. you have to practice 3 matchups.. and maps change all the time , and the patches change the game too much all the time . I feel sc2 is just like chess or something.. only a small amount of people , like to struggle.. , lets be honest.. rts will never be casual... therefore it will always be small compared to fps and moba , that even kids can understand , also the fact that blizzard doesnt seem to care at all about sc2.. its by far the least important game for blizzard the only positive thing i can say about blizzard atm.. is that they at least keep patching XD | ||
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looknohands119
United States815 Posts
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Caladan
Germany1238 Posts
 ).It's interesting how the scene changed. For these kinds of articles and posts you'd all be banned in the tl.net 3 years ago. Now it seems a pretty accepted thing to say, that the game and scene is in trouble. That said, the problem is not the scene. The Starcraft scene was and still is one of the most passionate fan bases in any games of all time. And most of all: Considering the (relatively small!) player base, the pro scene is (relatively) still huge! The problem is also not WCS - it is great that there is WCS at all, most games (if you leave out the top 5 games, LoL and Dota 2 are not the average games) don't have that sort of persistant huge company-sponsored tournamens. BW for sure never had such thing. So as the format is always debateable, WCS is still a pro-factor for SC2's activity and attractiveness. So, what remains? The problem is the game itself and nothing less. Imo Blizz had a huge chance with LotV to revitalize the game but unfortunately missed it. And that's how all of my sc2 friends think. In the end, LotV made sc2 an even more progaming/crowd-focused game. But the problem was never progaming, it always was the low active gamer base! So Blizz should have increased accessability and fun, while decreasing the hurdle by making SC2 totally free to play and advertise it as such. Still will always love Starcraft, and as long as there are people playing it, it will never be dead. Looking forward to DreamHack! | ||
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Iodem
United States1173 Posts
On January 21 2016 08:49 Loccstana wrote: The only solution is for blizzard to increase the GSL prizepool to 10 millions dollars Huge prize pools didn't work for Valve/Nexon with DotA 2 in Korea, why should it work with SC2? | ||
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Djzapz
Canada10681 Posts
On January 21 2016 09:09 looknohands119 wrote: I'm typically a BIG supporter of TL's written content but here I can taste the bitterness in my mouth. Its not the standard of logical thought you guys usually hold yourselves to, stuchiu... I'm disappointed in you. Are you under the impression that people who give information should only report on positive things? | ||
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alexanderzero
United States659 Posts
On January 21 2016 08:47 Big J wrote: I don't think that's the problem. I've talked to so many people who all bought the game, who all play some sort of MobA now and it's always the same: The game is too stressful, too hard to learn, too frustrating and doesn't fullfill the expectations of your typical casual player. If you go into a MobA you get what you expect. You kill creeps, you kill heroes, you buy items, you level up and eventually the game concludes. If you go into SC2 you expect big army battles and to run around with units and so on and then you get 4gated 15 times in a row and leave the game forever before you even find out that the reason you don't have units is that you needed to make a special unit that you need to click every 30seconds and the millions of other possibilities to play the game are all noob-traps. Isn't that just more of a reason to make it free? The people we need to tap into are the ones who can enjoy RTS but don't know it yet, and don't want to spend $40 just to try it out. Not to mention with the average person hating on RTS, these people would be discouraged further. If it was free they might just try it anyways. | ||
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GizmoPT
Portugal3040 Posts
i mean the article got some truth to it.. but sc2 stuff is so depressing and that just drives people out. | ||
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Big J
Austria16289 Posts
On January 21 2016 09:46 alexanderzero wrote: Isn't that just more of a reason to make it free? The people we need to tap into are the ones who can enjoy RTS but don't know it yet, and don't want to spend $40 just to try it out. Not to mention with the average person hating on RTS, these people would be discouraged further. If it was free they might just try it anyways. Well, I'm not going to make blizzard's business decisions. It's still a product meant to make money for the cooperation behind it and if their market research comes to the decision that $40 is the right price I'm not gonna question them, they surely have much more expertice than I do. And you can't make it free right now since that would be a punch in the face of everybody who just bought the game. Also you don't just get players because the game is free if they don't know that they like RTS yet. You still gotta draw them in somehow and with how good players right now are it's probably insanely difficult to catch up just to a very basic level. | ||
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BronzeKnee
United States5219 Posts
On January 21 2016 07:07 FuzzyJAM wrote: But SC2 has been "dying" since release. Of course, the boy who cried wolf did eventually meet a wolf. What? Were you around when the game was released? The hype was unreal, but justified. The game was great. The tournaments were awesome. I used to wake up quite early to catch the GSL. I used to buy tickets to the GSL! Me Mr. Cheapskate buying passes to tournaments because they were so much fun to watch. I used to ladder regularly too. I used to attend and play in local lans. But then people discovered the Infestor, discovered Vortex, basically discovered the late game and how to get their safely and the game went to crap. The late game units were poorly balanced and designed. For instances Brood Lords were too strong, Ultralisks too weak and both were boring. And Blizzard showed a completely inability to make reasonable balance and game design changes to fix that. Then HOTS came out, and Blizzard did the Warhound. They had no idea what they were doing, and still don't. And here we are today. SC2 needs a new designed team. Rather it needed one since 2011. It might be too late. So many other games simply don't have the design problems that SC2 has that make SC2 really frustrating to play. But it didn't used to be like this. It used to be easier to play. And I think the vast majority of people who played WOL would agree, and say that WOL was easier to play than LOTV today. Ironic that the game used to be easier play when Blizzard has been trying to make it easier to play. New design team please. | ||
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Ja.Y.
United States253 Posts
And, ESPN has slowly been creeping into the e-sports market. My wish is that ESPN had been more supportive a few years earlier so that SC2 could have gotten more coverage before LoL became what it is now and GO took off to what it is now. But, the state of SC2 is a depressing and interesting one and the next year will tell how much longer SC in general will actually survive. We don't need a savior, we just need multiple consistent, invested sponsors who are willing to take the risks in old and new players and let them play their passion without any worries. | ||
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Draconicfire
Canada2562 Posts
Regardless cool to see it on ESPN. | ||
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MaestroSC
United States2073 Posts
On January 21 2016 10:04 BronzeKnee wrote: What? Were you around when the game was released? The hype was unreal, but justified. The game was great. The tournaments were awesome. I used to wake up quite early to catch the GSL. I used to buy tickets to the GSL! Me Mr. Cheapskate buying passes to tournaments because they were so much fun to watch. I used to ladder regularly too. I used to attend and play in local lans. But then people discovered the Infestor, discovered Vortex, basically discovered the late game and how to get their safely and the game went to crap. The late game units were poorly balanced and designed. For instances Brood Lords were too strong, Ultralisks too weak and both were boring. And Blizzard showed a completely inability to make reasonable balance and game design changes to fix that. Then HOTS came out, and Blizzard did the Warhound. They had no idea what they were doing, and still don't. And here we are today. SC2 needs a new designed team. Rather it needed one since 2011. It might be too late. So many other games simply don't have the design problems that SC2 has that make SC2 really frustrating to play. But it didn't used to be like this. It used to be easier to play. And I think the vast majority of people who played WOL would agree, and say that WOL was easier to play than LOTV today. Ironic that the game used to be easier play when Blizzard has been trying to make it easier to play. New design team please. This... one thing noone is addressing...but Blizzard essentially released almost the same exact game 3 times in a row... and were sitting in HQ like "hm i wonder why HotS and LotV didnt completely revitalize the scene?" Maybe because HotS and LotV were nothing but campaign expansions, that you tried to market as new games. The core aspects/flow of multiplayer hasnt really changed much at all. You cant pretend LotV is a new game, when its nothing more than an expansion pack with a new campaign and maybe 1-2 new units per race? Like it seemed like Blizzard was looking to rework the multiplayer, and ultimately come up with a new design/direction for the game when they announced "More workers for bigger explosions even sooner!" but then that was where the innovation stopped. There is little to no difference in multiplayer from LotV to WoL... so idk how you expect to revitalize the scene/game with nothing but the next part of the campaign (which for the other WC and SC games... came with the original fucking game). IDK I wish they would have taken more risks and tackled the real issues with LotV and looked to address the serious flaws that have been hurting the game and lead to its decline. LotV is nothing but a paintjob on a beater of a car.. "oh its shiny and new ill come check it out!" until you take it for a spin and,"i remember why i got rid of this car" | ||
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StarStruck
25339 Posts
On January 21 2016 06:12 Lunareste wrote: Proud of stuchiu for the recognition, but damn if this isn't a bleak outlook as a first article for ESPN. It's the truth though. Several of these guys are making more on freeca and it's just more appealing. On January 21 2016 10:15 Ja.Y. wrote: I remember reading this article through the ESPN app but didn't realize it was written by stuchiu! :o congrats! And, ESPN has slowly been creeping into the e-sports market. My wish is that ESPN had been more supportive a few years earlier so that SC2 could have gotten more coverage before LoL became what it is now and GO took off to what it is now. But, the state of SC2 is a depressing and interesting one and the next year will tell how much longer SC in general will actually survive. We don't need a savior, we just need multiple consistent, invested sponsors who are willing to take the risks in old and new players and let them play their passion without any worries. That's not happening; the train left the station a long time ago. Time to focus on new releases and learn from the experience. | ||
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20-Minute-Jackal
United States336 Posts
WCS is more like a band aid for the scene, Blizzard fronts the money for tournament prize winnings, and when Koreans lose access to the foreign tournaments, they're actually retiring when they should, instead of artificially being propped up by Blizzard, who have been propping up professional SC2 since 2012. The real problem why the scene is shrinking, is because of a lack of sponsorships. There's not enough outside interest in SC2 to provide the sponsorships to support 8 professional teams in Korea anymore. From a pure business standpoint, why bother? SC2 gets less than stellar views on Twitch, usually coming in around 15th place in popularity. Why should businesses sink money for ad space in SC2? If you're gonna advertise in an e-sport, there's four plainly better options that routinely get far higher views (LoL, Dota 2, CS:GO and Hearthstone). Without sponsorships, we can't have professional teams, without professional teams, we can't have professional players who can stay professional by being salaried. SC2 feels like a house of cards being held together by the artificial economy Blizzard has set up by fronting all of the prize money. That is not the sign of a healthy sport. I feel that if Proleague dies, that's it, pro SC2 in Korea is finished, as for the foreign scene, I don't know how that will survive without Blizzard's charity tournaments desperately trying to keep a ded gaem relevant. | ||
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MaCRo.gg
Korea (South)860 Posts
On January 21 2016 06:43 Circumstance wrote: Not making a comment on the subject, because there will be plenty of threads about completely unrelated subjects to argue about that. What I will say is that Stuchiu is easily the most appropriate person to put up the first SC2 article on ESPN, and Slasher was smart to push this through. Congrats big win for TL and Stuchiu. Hope to see them even get on TV regularly. | ||
BisuDagger
Bisutopia19307 Posts
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ErectedZenith
325 Posts
On January 21 2016 11:25 BisuDagger wrote: I have too many mixed feeling about the article itself, so the positive here is congrats to Stuchiu for the article! TL SC2 staff though, what are we doing to keep articles like this on SC2 instead of letting ESPN snipe our writers. Where is our counter opinion piece on the WCS system and where does the SC2 staff stand on this situation? I really hope our SC2 staff releases something that either has the staff come out with one united argument or have two well written opposing arguments. Unless TL admins starts paying people to write for them, ESPN will snipe TL writers. | ||
munch
Mute City2363 Posts
On January 21 2016 11:39 ErectedZenith wrote: Unless TL admins starts paying people to write for them, ESPN will snipe TL writers. You do realise that writing isn't necessarily exclusive either way? stu has already written articles for several other sites | ||
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