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On February 09 2016 03:20 Atrimex wrote:
SC2 has become more track and field. That was forced by hardcore SC2 community since the beginning. People want to watch players like Goody, while the hardcore coummunity hates Goody because his APM is low. Creativity and strategy has lost against training time and reaction abilities. Sure it is nice to see a Rubik's Cube solved in some seconds, but I don't need to watch a tournament with guys solving a Rubik's Cubes even they do some kind of battles.
Goody is actually a perfect example of the issue with the community.
Despite doing well, he was derided for low APM--because the community wanted to feel that the reason they lost is not being fast enough instead of not being smart enough. Patches followed to punish Goody type players more and more as the game became focused on high APM high speed clicks--and no amount of power creep was considered hard enough.
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What are you guys talking about? Goody was never hated or derided. Don't just make up a story to fit your narrative. His games were best known during HotS, with his style being emblematic of the problem with mech. It wasn't smart, it wasn't skillful, boring to watch, boring to play and play against, just simply defending, waiting to mine out the map.
Anyways, despite the poster hiding behind a new name, the following post is so true, but we are all afraid to acknowledge it.
On February 08 2016 02:31 pimp daddy automatic wrote:
I don't see how you can simultaneously claim to be a fan of competitive SC2 and at the same time be in favour of things that compromise the competitive nature of the game like region locking or inviting "funny" "personalities" that have no clue what they're doing over someone who knows the game but doesn't spout as many epic memes for the 12 year olds in chat.
I'm just going to say it: compared to other esports like CS:GO or LoL, SC2 is a joke. Not just smaller, less viewed, a complete joke.
Compare the production and commentary for a big CS:GO tournament to an SC2 one. In CS:GO you have very professional commentators that work well together and can be funny and entertaining while also giving detailed concise descriptions of what's going on, then you go to an analysis desk where they give very in depth analysis that really breaks everything down and lets even a noob understand what's going on.
In SC2 you get Kaelaris stuggling to construct a sentence while Nathanias talks about rip in pepperoni, then you cut to an analysis desk where some epic personality points to a screen and says "I think this part where he attacked and won the game was important, back to you boys lads banter".
I know this sounds like a cruel rant but I really care about SC2, at least I used to. Now all I see in the scene is an old boys club of "personalities" coasting by on name recognition, pretending that the below par foreigners they're casting are great because Koreans weren't allowed in, while spouting cringe worthy """""banter""""" that is mostly just repeating memes like a little kid who just found out about the internet.
Pretty much every big figure in the scene seems to give the impression that broadcasting high level competitive SC2 is at the absolute bottom of their list of priorities and it makes me so mad, because they are shaping the future of the scene, and they're leading it into an early grave.
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we need more freedom in LR's. The fear of the ban hammer restricts fun
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On February 09 2016 03:36 Dangermousecatdog wrote:
What are you guys talking about? Goody was never hated or derided. Don't just make up a story to fit your narrative. His games were best known during HotS, with his style being emblematic of the problem with mech. It wasn't smart, it wasn't skillful, boring to watch, boring to play and play against, just simply defending, waiting to mine out the map.
You contradict yourself. Goody was a casual fan favorite since the beginning.
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On February 09 2016 03:38 Noonius wrote:
we need more freedom in LR's. The fear of the ban hammer restricts fun
rip Ej...
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On February 09 2016 03:53 Atrimex wrote:Show nested quote +On February 09 2016 03:36 Dangermousecatdog wrote:
What are you guys talking about? Goody was never hated or derided. Don't just make up a story to fit your narrative. His games were best known during HotS, with his style being emblematic of the problem with mech. It wasn't smart, it wasn't skillful, boring to watch, boring to play and play against, just simply defending, waiting to mine out the map.
You contradict yourself. Goody was a casual fan favorite since the beginning.
My saying he wasn't hated contradicts him having fans how so? Saying that I have contradicted myself doesn't make it so.
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On February 09 2016 05:01 Dangermousecatdog wrote:Show nested quote +On February 09 2016 03:53 Atrimex wrote:On February 09 2016 03:36 Dangermousecatdog wrote:
What are you guys talking about? Goody was never hated or derided. Don't just make up a story to fit your narrative. His games were best known during HotS, with his style being emblematic of the problem with mech. It wasn't smart, it wasn't skillful, boring to watch, boring to play and play against, just simply defending, waiting to mine out the map.
You contradict yourself. Goody was a casual fan favorite since the beginning. My saying he wasn't hated contradicts him having fans how so? Saying that I have contradicted myself doesn't make it so.
What you said was
His games were best known during HotS, with his style being emblematic of the problem with mech. It wasn't smart, it wasn't skillful, boring to watch, boring to play and play against, just simply defending, waiting to mine out the map.
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And...where is the contradiction?
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On February 09 2016 05:59 Dangermousecatdog wrote:
And...where is the contradiction?
You attempted to show that Goody was not derided, using the example that people thought his play style was strategically bad, visually boring, and a shining example of how awful an aspect of terran design was. That makes Goody a joke, a jester, a clown to be laughed at. No offense to him--lots of people mention how much they love goody. But always in a joking way.
However, in WoL, when he was wrecking the German scene, no one ever used him as an example of strong terran play. Because the assumption is that slow hands =/= low skill.
You attempting to point out that Goody has fans while telling us that those fans essentially treated Goody as a joke is you contradicting the message of your statement.
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1) I never said people thought his playstyle was strategically bad. That's you
2) I never said Goody a joke, a jester, a clown to be laughed at. That's you.
3) Goody has fans. That is true. A community is made out of different people. Goody's fans essentially treating Goody as a joke? I never said that. That's you.
So you made up a bunch of stuff up just so you can say I contradicted myself? Not sure what your intention is, but I suggest you stop.
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On February 09 2016 07:34 Dangermousecatdog wrote:
1) I never said people thought his playstyle was strategically bad. That's you
2) I never said Goody a joke, a jester, a clown to be laughed at. That's you.
3) Goody has fans. That is true. A community is made out of different people. Goody's fans essentially treating Goody as a joke? I never said that. That's you.
So you made up a bunch of stuff up just so you can say I contradicted myself? Not sure what your intention is, but I suggest you stop.
I'm going to let you answer your own questions.
1) I never said people thought his playstyle was strategically bad
His games were best known during HotS, with his style being emblematic of the problem with mech. It wasn't smart, it wasn't skillful, boring to watch, boring to play and play against
2) I never said Goody a joke, a jester, a clown to be laughed at.
His games were best known during HotS, with his style being emblematic of the problem with mech. It wasn't smart, it wasn't skillful, boring to watch, boring to play and play against
3) Goody has fans. That is true. A community is made out of different people. Goody's fans essentially treating Goody as a joke? I never said that.
His games were best known during HotS, with his style being emblematic of the problem with mech. It wasn't smart, it wasn't skillful, boring to watch, boring to play and play against
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i genuinely would be interessted to see what percentage of TL's visitors fall in either category. my guess is 95% in favour of high quality play with fundamental analysis and maybe 5% for the other side . This is only logical. Why would a casual even follow starcraft at. Starcraft per se is hardcore stuff. Maybe someone can make a poll. Because i dont believe the "casual" side is big at all.
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On February 09 2016 08:59 bypLy wrote:
i genuinely would be interessted to see what percentage of TL's visitors fall in either category. my guess is 95% in favour of high quality play with fundamental analysis and maybe 5% for the other side . This is only logical. Why would a casual even follow starcraft at. Starcraft per se is hardcore stuff. Maybe someone can make a poll. Because i dont believe the "casual" side is big at all.
This is probably true, but only because the extremely hardcore players are the majority of players that are left playing the game at this point.
Hence the major problem. StarCraft 2 is not bringing in any new players, only trying to keep the old players (mostly the hardcore fan base) as long as they can possibly can before they move on.
That's why I believe the problem is with SC2's identity more than the community identity. They spend so much time trying to please their hardcore fans since that's the main ones left... But that's not a key to success in game design or game marketing.
If they do anything to make competitive multiplayer more casual friendly, hardcore players get pissed and an overly elitist attitude, and they risk losing their hardcore fans. But the more hardcore they make it, the more players they lose who simply don't have the time to practice as much, and it puts the game on life support as your basing your marketing strategy around slowing decline, rather than encouraging growth.
Then you end up with a game like LotV - where they removed downtime to try to speed things up (which makes it appeal to casuals) but with an early beta goal of "making the game harder" to please hardcore players, it only ups the barrier of entry. And hardcore players are still not happy, because balance is a higher concern to hardcore and that's screwed with how little time they left in beta to balance, and Blizzard still tries to force hardcore players in to things they don't want like having to play on maps that force you to play a certain way (which means they favor specific races) rather than developing a competitive standard.
A game full of half-measures that doesn't really cater to any audience, and is doing nothing but minimizing damage as they slowly decline. A game that tries to force itself to be hard in pre-determined/artificially competitive ways where your fighting the game mecahnics, rather than allowing players to push the skill cap boundary on their own.
A well designed game needs to be both welcoming and fun to new players, as well as a deep & engaging with a high skill cap, strong balance, and mechanics that make the balance feel "fair" by communicating a clear understanding to a knowledgeable player of what is going on at all times, rather than being volatile. LotV fails on both fronts.
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On February 09 2016 09:26 Spyridon wrote:Show nested quote +On February 09 2016 08:59 bypLy wrote:
i genuinely would be interessted to see what percentage of TL's visitors fall in either category. my guess is 95% in favour of high quality play with fundamental analysis and maybe 5% for the other side . This is only logical. Why would a casual even follow starcraft at. Starcraft per se is hardcore stuff. Maybe someone can make a poll. Because i dont believe the "casual" side is big at all. This is probably true, but only because the extremely hardcore players are the majority of players that are left playing the game at this point. Hence the major problem. StarCraft 2 is not bringing in any new players, only trying to keep the old players (mostly the hardcore fan base) as long as they can possibly can before they move on. That's why I believe the problem is with SC2's identity more than the community identity. They spend so much time trying to please their hardcore fans since that's the main ones left... But that's not a key to success in game design or game marketing. If they do anything to make competitive multiplayer more casual friendly, hardcore players get pissed and an overly elitist attitude, and they risk losing their hardcore fans. But the more hardcore they make it, the more players they lose who simply don't have the time to practice as much, and it puts the game on life support as your basing your marketing strategy around slowing decline, rather than encouraging growth. Then you end up with a game like LotV - where they removed downtime to try to speed things up (which makes it appeal to casuals) but with an early beta goal of "making the game harder" to please hardcore players, it only ups the barrier of entry. And hardcore players are still not happy, because balance is a higher concern to hardcore and that's screwed with how little time they left in beta to balance, and Blizzard still tries to force hardcore players in to things they don't want like having to play on maps that force you to play a certain way (which means they favor specific races) rather than developing a competitive standard. A game full of half-measures that doesn't really cater to any audience, and is doing nothing but minimizing damage as they slowly decline. A game that tries to force itself to be hard in pre-determined/artificially competitive ways where your fighting the game mecahnics, rather than allowing players to push the skill cap boundary on their own. A well designed game needs to be both welcoming and fun to new players, as well as a deep & engaging with a high skill cap, strong balance, and mechanics that make the balance feel "fair" by communicating a clear understanding to a knowledgeable player of what is going on at all times, rather than being volatile. LotV fails on both fronts.
To make this easier, think about Fast Food vs Diners vs Fine Dining.
Each has its own market. Each market has its own identity, and way to juggle it. But its only when you try to blend those markets that you get something awful.
Expensive fast food?
Mass produced fine dining?
etc...
If you want to market something--you have to pick one audience and don't spread your product across markets.
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On February 09 2016 09:53 Naracs_Duc wrote:Show nested quote +On February 09 2016 09:26 Spyridon wrote:On February 09 2016 08:59 bypLy wrote:
i genuinely would be interessted to see what percentage of TL's visitors fall in either category. my guess is 95% in favour of high quality play with fundamental analysis and maybe 5% for the other side . This is only logical. Why would a casual even follow starcraft at. Starcraft per se is hardcore stuff. Maybe someone can make a poll. Because i dont believe the "casual" side is big at all. This is probably true, but only because the extremely hardcore players are the majority of players that are left playing the game at this point. Hence the major problem. StarCraft 2 is not bringing in any new players, only trying to keep the old players (mostly the hardcore fan base) as long as they can possibly can before they move on. That's why I believe the problem is with SC2's identity more than the community identity. They spend so much time trying to please their hardcore fans since that's the main ones left... But that's not a key to success in game design or game marketing. If they do anything to make competitive multiplayer more casual friendly, hardcore players get pissed and an overly elitist attitude, and they risk losing their hardcore fans. But the more hardcore they make it, the more players they lose who simply don't have the time to practice as much, and it puts the game on life support as your basing your marketing strategy around slowing decline, rather than encouraging growth. Then you end up with a game like LotV - where they removed downtime to try to speed things up (which makes it appeal to casuals) but with an early beta goal of "making the game harder" to please hardcore players, it only ups the barrier of entry. And hardcore players are still not happy, because balance is a higher concern to hardcore and that's screwed with how little time they left in beta to balance, and Blizzard still tries to force hardcore players in to things they don't want like having to play on maps that force you to play a certain way (which means they favor specific races) rather than developing a competitive standard. A game full of half-measures that doesn't really cater to any audience, and is doing nothing but minimizing damage as they slowly decline. A game that tries to force itself to be hard in pre-determined/artificially competitive ways where your fighting the game mecahnics, rather than allowing players to push the skill cap boundary on their own. A well designed game needs to be both welcoming and fun to new players, as well as a deep & engaging with a high skill cap, strong balance, and mechanics that make the balance feel "fair" by communicating a clear understanding to a knowledgeable player of what is going on at all times, rather than being volatile. LotV fails on both fronts. To make this easier, think about Fast Food vs Diners vs Fine Dining. Each has its own market. Each market has its own identity, and way to juggle it. But its only when you try to blend those markets that you get something awful. Expensive fast food? Mass produced fine dining? etc... If you want to market something--you have to pick one audience and don't spread your product across markets.
Problem is, Blizzard has never stuck to one audience. They have always tried to balance casual and hardcore. It could potentially be done (many other genres focus on this as a core aspect of their design, such as fighting games etc, even games like Rocket League with a high skill cap but easy to pick up), as there is a 'semi-hardcore' audience out there, which has typically fell in to Blizzards games audiences. But too many things just don't make sense from the beginning of SC2's development, and those things have never been changed.
I completely believe that one of their biggest hurdles is how they are "trying" to make a hard game. A "hard" game has difficult to balance, because it has to feel "Hard, but fair". An example of this is D3's torment mode at launch - its difficult in the way that everything just 1 shots you and you have to kite them off screen to have a chance.
But SC2 is a competitive game. Trying to make a competitive game "harder" is a silly venture. Because the difficulty of a competitive game should be determined by the strength of your opponent. You don't HAVE to make the mechanics "hardcore". Making mechanics harder only artificially increases difficulty, but this is the player competing against the game, rather than the player competing against their opponent.
That's why typically you see innovation in a games design by making the controls improved. If the player can make their units do what they want easier, they are spending more time competing against the opponent rather than competing against the computer or themselves.
Blizzard does a half-measure of this. Units control better than they did in BW, but they put new mechanics in place to try to make it more "difficult". They added a crap load of active abilities in LotV to specifically try to make the game more "difficult". If you are adding mechanics to make it harder after every improvement, it's not really an improvement in the end, and it stands out as "out of place" in the design. It's destined to fail. It halts the innovation of the game, and this is one of the many contributing factors that is causing RTS's as a genre to fall off.
They didn't need to give every unit an active ability of some sort to make the game "harder". They simply had to give the player more decisions to make that have COMPETITIVE strategic value. That's where the true difficulty of a game comes in to play, because decisions turn in to mind games, tactics, scouting, and prediction based upon your opponents actions. Metagames aren't as straight forward with more strategic options in play.
Too many options were removed at this point, and more than ever it is about mechanics > strategy. How is that supposed to make hardcore or casual players happy?
I've said this so many times lately... SC2 needs a vision. It needs to change directions, and move towards a clear vision of what StarCraft wants to be. The closest thing it caters to right now is hardcore players, but it doesn't make them happy, and there needs to be some sort of appeal for new players.
Appeal for new players doesn't necessarily mean casual, but it does mean removing hindrances that do not feel natural or like they add much to competitive gameplay. Moba's are the most popular genre these days, and those games are NOT new player friendly. They have a steep learning curve where you must learn dozens/100+ characters, a deep metagame, and a toxic community making you feel like shit every mistake you make. BUT they do not have all the hindrances RTS games have, and the mechanics make sense for what they are. Newer players might not know any of the spell abilities or anything, but have a decent idea of what is going on and/or who is winning. They can have a relative idea of where they failed and where they need to improve without watching replays.
If playing a moba game with toxic players trash talking you repeatedly is MORE fun and has less hiderances than learning an RTS game like SC2, there's a problem. Becuase that's not even an ideal situation for moba games, and it's far better than what we have here.
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On February 09 2016 08:14 Naracs_Duc wrote:Show nested quote +On February 09 2016 07:34 Dangermousecatdog wrote:
1) I never said people thought his playstyle was strategically bad. That's you
2) I never said Goody a joke, a jester, a clown to be laughed at. That's you.
3) Goody has fans. That is true. A community is made out of different people. Goody's fans essentially treating Goody as a joke? I never said that. That's you.
So you made up a bunch of stuff up just so you can say I contradicted myself? Not sure what your intention is, but I suggest you stop. I'm going to let you answer your own questions. 1) I never said people thought his playstyle was strategically bad Show nested quote +His games were best known during HotS, with his style being emblematic of the problem with mech. It wasn't smart, it wasn't skillful, boring to watch, boring to play and play against
2) I never said Goody a joke, a jester, a clown to be laughed at. Show nested quote +His games were best known during HotS, with his style being emblematic of the problem with mech. It wasn't smart, it wasn't skillful, boring to watch, boring to play and play against 3) Goody has fans. That is true. A community is made out of different people. Goody's fans essentially treating Goody as a joke? I never said that. Show nested quote +His games were best known during HotS, with his style being emblematic of the problem with mech. It wasn't smart, it wasn't skillful, boring to watch, boring to play and play against
You can quote me all you want, but it still remains that what you are qouting does not correlate with what I have written, implied or otherwise. There is simply no contradictory staements. Stop making things up. All this just so you can make up a story of how Goody was derided, to continue whatever agenda you have.
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On February 09 2016 20:01 Dangermousecatdog wrote:Show nested quote +On February 09 2016 08:14 Naracs_Duc wrote:On February 09 2016 07:34 Dangermousecatdog wrote:
1) I never said people thought his playstyle was strategically bad. That's you
2) I never said Goody a joke, a jester, a clown to be laughed at. That's you.
3) Goody has fans. That is true. A community is made out of different people. Goody's fans essentially treating Goody as a joke? I never said that. That's you.
So you made up a bunch of stuff up just so you can say I contradicted myself? Not sure what your intention is, but I suggest you stop. I'm going to let you answer your own questions. 1) I never said people thought his playstyle was strategically bad His games were best known during HotS, with his style being emblematic of the problem with mech. It wasn't smart, it wasn't skillful, boring to watch, boring to play and play against
2) I never said Goody a joke, a jester, a clown to be laughed at. His games were best known during HotS, with his style being emblematic of the problem with mech. It wasn't smart, it wasn't skillful, boring to watch, boring to play and play against 3) Goody has fans. That is true. A community is made out of different people. Goody's fans essentially treating Goody as a joke? I never said that. His games were best known during HotS, with his style being emblematic of the problem with mech. It wasn't smart, it wasn't skillful, boring to watch, boring to play and play against You can quote me all you want, but it still remains that what you are qouting does not correlate with what I have written, implied or otherwise. There is simply no contradictory staements. Stop making things up. All this just so you can make up a story of how Goody was derided, to continue whatever agenda you have.
You honestly believe that your saying that Goody's play being boring, not smart, and not skillful is you suggesting that people liked Goody's play?
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Excellent article and analysis (and I was skeptical when I first saw it). Pretty solid information regarding the current state of our beloved game.
My only criticism would be that it didn't cover enough. There are so many more layers to this that I would love for this writer (or others) to unpack and look at. Maybe make this a series of articles.
Also, no need to be so apologetic. If people actually got angry and offended by this honest and necessary analysis, then our beloved game is REALLY in trouble.
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Tvz hots was my favorite mu pure mechanics. Scrappy tvp games with lots of trading is my favorite lots of mechanical finesse. Imo.
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I think casual vs hard core is irrelevant. The problem is that there is no broad access to VODS. Sure, someone's always streaming, but it's rarely ever tournaments, and I don't have time to watch live casts often, and I'm not going to pay twitch sub fee to every single goddamn tournament stream channel (demuslim is the only person who gets my hard earned money because he embodies the attitude I respect most in a pro gamer, alongside QXC and Jinro)
My issue with SC2 is that I just don't have the time to follow events and there is NO good system in place for archiving events for people to watch later. That frustrates the hell out of me to the point where I just don't watch SC2 much anymore despite it being quite literally the only online game I enjoy to watch played. If blizzard had a system (or hell even a youtube channel) where all major tournaments were uploaded in straight blocks, they'd get a hell of a lot of revenue out of me alone.
Caster wise, I am generally pretty zen with regards to who's casting what, but I hate forced, artificial screaming and "hype" as the internet kids put it these days (so that video was mostly good apart from the screaming and forced "hype"). It makes me want to claw my eyes out with forks. Good casting compliments a game, it doesn't drown the gameplay out. I don't think all games need pure analysis.
The problem is that there is no real system in place for players to all rally around. the GSL was a great start, but it mutated into this ungainly monstrosity that ultimately fell apart, the NASL just didn't have the viewership. Blizzard really should step in and put together something to bring the players together more than just once a year at blizzcon, and host VODS of cast games (as much as I love analyzing games myself, I do really enjoy well cast games so much)
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EPT
