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On March 20 2016 06:14 404AlphaSquad wrote:Show nested quote +On March 20 2016 06:09 FFW_Rude wrote:On March 20 2016 05:48 avilo wrote:On March 19 2016 23:09 JimmyJRaynor wrote:
Morten views balancing multiplayer as an almost impossible task. Contrast that with many of the junior game designers in various forums acting like they can solve everything in 4 sentences. Balancing multi-player is really easy if your development team is willing to make changes to the live game and iterate upon them, regardless of whether they work out on the first go round. We've seen with SC2, blizzard makes very few to no changes, and even says they will make changes and then 100% backtracks and gets scared of putting them into the game and ends up changing nothing. I mean, how can you expect to balance multi-player or keep the game fresh if you take 1-2 months to announce a change, 2-3 months after that announcing that you might put it on a test map, 1-2 months later saying you agree with players feedback, and then 1 month later you decide you're actually going to do none of that because you love bio too much and want to keep the tankivac. Viewership for SC2 was going up near the start of LOTV when people saw there were changes to the game, fun units, new things to play with, the metagame was changing and new. Viewership is tanking to hell right now because the userbase is getting tired of being yanked left and right about changes, and then not getting any patches/changes at all (in terms of balance/gameplay). I mean, come on. There's 0% mech games now at pro level, and they have killed mech on ladder as well which says a lot in itself. Like...you have to almost have purposely tried to have killed strategic diversity in SC2 to make mech worse than it was in HOTS/WOL when for 5 yrs people have been asking and pleading for viable mech play and even offering advice to blizzard to make it viable. Multi-player is not difficult to balance - it's time consuming to balance. And blizzard have a proven track record they won't put in the time to put out patches and see what happens in terms of multi-player balance. They are too set in stone thinking if they change up the game they'll "kill the game" for the top 5 korean players, when in fact they're killing the game by not doing anything at all. I stopped reading at : "Balancing multi-player is really easy". Balancing is really easy though, making good design decisions is hard.
THIS.
They waste too much time for macro mechanic and now the game still in beta.
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On March 20 2016 06:39 y0su wrote:Show nested quote +On March 20 2016 06:28 Spyridon wrote:On March 19 2016 13:36 JimmyJRaynor wrote:
fascinating to see how polarized the mulitplayer community was leading up to the launch of the game about changes to macromechanics and we think our compromised approach was the correct response.
lots of debate about the 12 worker start during beta. not much negative feedback after launch about this.
Really...? Compromised approach was the correct response? Neither side has been happy with the "compromise"! And the last sentence.... I personally think it's the economic growth being out of control rather than the 12 worker start... but for them to actually claim there has not been much negative feedback...? I've seen so many people make that complaint, even if I don't agree with it, I don't know how they can claim there was not much negative feedback... I don't recall much complaining after launch. (there was definitely a lot of complaint during beta, especially camps that wanted to test DH or something)
I don't know, whenever there is a discussion of SC2's problems, 12 worker start is one of the first issues brought up.
Outside of glaring balance issues since release, I would say 12 worker start is probably one of the most debated upon subjects.
Also keep in mind, just because debate stopped on things like 12 worker start, economy, and macro mechanics, it doesn't mean people are happy with the current state of any of those 3 things. Blizzard removed them from the table for possibilities of being changed. You see them brought up occasionally, but why would the majority of feedback focus on it anymore when it's not even an option to see anything related to them changed?
I guarantee if either of those 3 subjects were brought up again, there would be a huge amount of debate. Because as I said, their "compromise" wasn't really satisfactory for anyone. Even back when feedback was being asked for, one of the biggest complaints was the fact that they were attempting half-measures. People didn't want to see half assed compromises like what they gave us, or autocast. Peoples stance was for one direction or the other - dont touch them, or take them out completely. Polls were 81% for full removal. They disregarded that. They did what people were asking not to do. They disregarded that.
That's why people stopped discussing it, or gave up on SC2 completely. Becuase they took the changes off the table.
Blizzard apparently completley misinterpreted this. Maybe that's why they think everones so happy...
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For real, the co-op "scene" seems really strong. I played em quite a bit a while ago, and queue times were very fast, regardless of the difficulty selection. Would be great to see blizz continue to expand on things like that.
I've got a lot of faith in the future of LOTV. Competitive gameplay is a lot of more fun, and they are doing a lot for casual play.
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Also, is there a reason for not making 2v2 tournament ? Or 2v2 GM ?
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For the most part SC2 looks pretty cartoonish due flashy objects and high contrasts. Graphically, SC2 always felt like a game for kids and it was coloured to resemble Fantasy art style more than Sci-Fi.
I wonder if devs can give a shot to develop atmospheric Sci-Fi missions pack with a different approach to visuals. I really would love to see gloomy and grimy graphics representing some tragic events and horror without "walking in the park" sense while somebody tragically dies or planets being annihilated. Please no eye catching colours during important events - it only diminishes the effect, instead add creepy details to supplement the lack of shine. In short, can you creat a "horror" missions pack ?
I think devs nailed it back in 1998 with your space station cinematic:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FoRXLTMv7OE
If only they could translate that atmosphere into the gameplay.
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United Kingdom20337 Posts
Morten : "Co-op More Popular Than PvP in Month One"
Unsurprising. I played 30 games in first 2 weeks then went on to playing once a week. A friend of mine who hasn't really played at all in years logged in to play 100+ co-op missions.. and then didn't play again after the first month because he has all of the heroes that he's interested in at max level with like 30 games done on them.
See how popular it is after 6 years before comparing it directly to MP 
Also, is there a reason for not making 2v2 tournament ? Or 2v2 GM ?
2v2 is not great atm; the map pool is still basically HOTS. Balance is bad. Archon tournaments are fair game
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On March 20 2016 06:14 404AlphaSquad wrote:Show nested quote +On March 20 2016 06:09 FFW_Rude wrote:On March 20 2016 05:48 avilo wrote:On March 19 2016 23:09 JimmyJRaynor wrote:
Morten views balancing multiplayer as an almost impossible task. Contrast that with many of the junior game designers in various forums acting like they can solve everything in 4 sentences. Balancing multi-player is really easy if your development team is willing to make changes to the live game and iterate upon them, regardless of whether they work out on the first go round. We've seen with SC2, blizzard makes very few to no changes, and even says they will make changes and then 100% backtracks and gets scared of putting them into the game and ends up changing nothing. I mean, how can you expect to balance multi-player or keep the game fresh if you take 1-2 months to announce a change, 2-3 months after that announcing that you might put it on a test map, 1-2 months later saying you agree with players feedback, and then 1 month later you decide you're actually going to do none of that because you love bio too much and want to keep the tankivac. Viewership for SC2 was going up near the start of LOTV when people saw there were changes to the game, fun units, new things to play with, the metagame was changing and new. Viewership is tanking to hell right now because the userbase is getting tired of being yanked left and right about changes, and then not getting any patches/changes at all (in terms of balance/gameplay). I mean, come on. There's 0% mech games now at pro level, and they have killed mech on ladder as well which says a lot in itself. Like...you have to almost have purposely tried to have killed strategic diversity in SC2 to make mech worse than it was in HOTS/WOL when for 5 yrs people have been asking and pleading for viable mech play and even offering advice to blizzard to make it viable. Multi-player is not difficult to balance - it's time consuming to balance. And blizzard have a proven track record they won't put in the time to put out patches and see what happens in terms of multi-player balance. They are too set in stone thinking if they change up the game they'll "kill the game" for the top 5 korean players, when in fact they're killing the game by not doing anything at all. I stopped reading at : "Balancing multi-player is really easy". Balancing is really easy though, making good design decisions is hard.
No it's not. Give me another RTS that is really really balanced.
Perfect balance is impossible. There's too much factors. And if you tell me BW is balanced i'lll say yes sure. Perfect balance ? hell no. If you take map factor, just tell me BW is balanced TvZ on Reverse temple or Longinus.
It's possible to have balance sure. But there is really a lot of factors. I don't know any RTS that's balanced (maybe total annihilation ? But races are quite similar to some extent and maps linears)
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First of all, it's obvious that there's some PR bullshit sprinkled in with legitimate information. Activision Blizzard is a public company unlike Valve, and they are beholden to their shareholders. This means that they cannot be as honest as private companies like Valve because being too honest and providing too much information can be detrimental to stock prices.
That said, I think it is very good that Blizzard is starting to realize that the casual playerbase dwarfs the competitive/professional player base. The biggest hurdle holding back Starcraft 2 since 2010 was Blizzard's stubbornness towards the casual/competitive divided. They incorrectly assumed that they could devote most of their attention to the competitive side of SC2 and throw casual players under the bus.This fatal error is the main reason why the top two RTS games today are LoL and DotA respectively.
What I don't like, though, is that they seem to think that there is no overlap or there shouldn't be any overlap between the casual and competitive player bases. This is not because casual vs. competitive is binary, but because the ladder is so frustrating to play that almost everyone who isn't a hardcore gamer stopped playing it. I am hoping that they will try to bridge the gap between casual and competitive because they're actually not binary; competitiveness is on a spectrum. Some people are more casual are about video games, others are more competitive, but to simply pigeonhole each player as casual or competitive with no overlap is a big mistake.
I would love to play in a multiplayer ladder similar to C&C: Generals: Zero Hour or even C&C 3 (where Dustin Browder came from). I like 2v2 but I don't like playing team games vs. AI players.
Zero Hour had three main factions with three subfactions each, for a total of 12 playable factions:
1. USA
2. USA Airforce General
3. USA Laser General
4. USA Superweapons
5. China
6. China Infantry General
7. China Tank General
8. China Nuclear General
9. GLA
10. GLA Stealth General
11. GLA Toxin General
12. GLA Demolitions General
Kane's Wrath had the following:
1. GDI
2. Steel Talons
3. ZOCOM
4. Nod
5. Black Hand
6. Marked of Kane
7. Scrin
8. Reaper-17
9. Traveler-59
If Starcraft 2 had them in multiplayer, we could expand the factions thus:
1. Terran
2. Jim Raynor
3. Rory Swann
4. Zerg
5. Sarah Kerrigan
6. Zagara
7. Protoss
8. Artanis
9. Vorazun
10. Karax
Now, I know some of you will say, "That's impossible to balance," to which I counter, "Most players don't care." In fact, a lot of players will play underpowered factions for bragging rights. Competitive players will play the strongest factions. Most other competitive games (fighting games, MOBAs, even other RTS games) have tier lists which change when a new strategy is developed that pulls someone down from tier 1 and elevates someone else to that level, or when a new patch is released, or both.
The fact that the game is unbalanced actually gives many players an excuse to keep playing instead of giving up. "Dalek didn't really beat me, he was playing the OP Rory Swann while I was playing the UP Donny Vermillion. My paparazzi deal too little damage; he just a-moved his marines onto them! Then he aimed his big fucking laser onto my news room! That's bullshit. I'm going to queue again and hope I don't run into another Swann player."
We have a long road ahead of us towards rebuilding the SC2 community. Let's hope Blizzard makes the right decisions.
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United Kingdom20337 Posts
This fatal error is the main reason why the top two RTS games today are LoL and DotA respectively.
MOBA is pretty much a whole other genre. Even blizzard doesn't call heroes of the storm an RTS
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EPT
