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Morten : "Co-op More Popular Than PvP in Month One"
Hour Long Morten Interview.
https://simplecast.com/s/25c20529
Morten is Lead Producer. Sigaty is the boss.
SC2 in 2016 is treated as "software as a service". Lots more content and releases. Nova Covert Ops over the course of the year. All about Nova.
Morten joined Blizzard in 2014. Worked for Sony, EA, Activision, Victory Games. Worked for Activision in '94.
AAA teams sizes have grown a lot since 1999 when MOrten had his own company. 20 or 30 people could make
a AAA game and now it requires 100, 200 or more.
The SC2 community was asking Blizzard for micro-content unlike the C&C community
Morten arrived when LotV was part way through production. Team was still sharing a lot of engineering with Heroes and my first job was to carve out our own dedicated engineering team. So SC2 has its own Art, Design and now engineering separate from HotS.
Set priorities for new features for LotV and schedule things after LotV release. Gearing the team to micro-content rather than the giant big box release.
Morten has 2016 mapped out. We are talking about 2017 but a lot of those plans depend on feedback this year from players.
NOVA Covert Ops
personal, gritty perspective rather than a giant conflict. bring things back more to an SC1 level of conflict.
traditional RTS campaign content. stealth missions. introduce new gameplay mechanics and new technologies for Nova. SC:Ghost is not related to Nova:CovertOps due
to timeline differences.
Co-Op
in the first month Co-op was more popular than PvP. players want more open-ended content giving Co-op long term play value. We plan on fulfilling that request.
LotV Team Bigger in 2016
we've gone up in headcount after the game shipped due to creating just as much content over the course of the year as if we were making a big box game.
Multiplayer, Co-Op and Campaign audiences are mutually exclusive to a great extent. Morten is curious to see how much of the campaign audience returns when Nova releases. We think of these 3 audiences separately.
March - Nova Release ; April new Co-op Stuff ; May, June - PvP ladder revamp.
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.
Ladder Revamp
players don't have a sense of their progress. provide more segmentation for each league. Provide exposure to the numerical value of your PvP ranking. Players take a long time to actually improve their numerical value. THe term MMR was never used. A separate match-making ranking PER RACE is on the way.
Western players and Korean players often provide different feedback on PvP balance.
How Do You Keep Multiplayer Fresh?
David and the multiplayer team are open to introducing new units but there are a bunch of conditions attached to doing so.
Skins and VoicePacks later in the year. Memory limits make it tough to add new skins and must change the engine to accmodate this.
Archon Mode is a great way to train for multiplayer. Possibility of griefing made them decide not to have the system match you up with a player you do not know.
Starter Edition name will probably change later in the year.
Will SC2 Go F2P? giant meandering ramble which i can summarize in 1 word. No.
Raynor and Kerrigan are not main characters in the Nova Story.
1st year of LotV esports. Matches have been really great. TL.Net gets a mention for finding your way in the confusing SC2 esports landscape. Super excited to see where the esports scene goes from here.
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United States252 Posts
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This is good and uplifting news. Looking forward to seeing starcraft grow and be great. eSports is life!
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On March 19 2016 13:47 LastManProductions wrote:
Thanks for the write up!
Morten reveals a lot of cool info, therefore, if u guys end up making a better version of this thing feel free to close this thread 
thanks to Tim Morten for doing this interview.
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Fiddler's Green42661 Posts
I'm not surprised. Co-op is basically extra campaign missions and most SC2 players bought the game for the single-player.
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Pls no new units. 90% of the units added in HotS and LotV have been terrible.
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On March 19 2016 14:15 Charoisaur wrote:
Pls no new units. 90% of the units added in HotS and LotV have been terrible.
Hots maybe, but I think the new units + new economy in lotv made the game fresh and much more interesting. Ive been watching GSL now and it looks better than it has ever been imo.
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David and the multiplayer team are open to introducing new units but there are a bunch of conditions attached to doing so
Yes plz,delete Swarm host, cyclone.... if they continue underuse.
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On March 19 2016 14:15 Charoisaur wrote:
Pls no new units. 90% of the units added in HotS and LotV have been terrible.
Not for Zerg, they've been awesome .
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This interview is pretty awesome, I'm glad to see that the SC2 team is GROWING and they're commited to SC2 as a service.
I think a ton of people are confusing Ghost and the new Nova missions. I believe the ENTRIETY of Ghost is actually out in Novel form, so I don't think this idea of them forcing the Ghost storyline into the new missions is fair.
On March 19 2016 14:15 Charoisaur wrote:
Pls no new units. 90% of the units added in HotS and LotV have been terrible.
I think thats the idea. There were a lot of units that didn't work out, and maybe they won't work out down the road. Instead of a 2000 mentality of like "There's NO way they're not going to add units unless they can charge us for an expansion". They're basicaly commiting to taking out, replacing, adding units if the game needs it. I think that's a great place to stand.
Maybe a year from now they come to the conclusion the swarm host and the lurker can't really co-exist so they'll give us something new we can actually use. I think that's an awesome posistion, but maybe we'll have to fight with them because the new unit they suggest is ridiculous. ( I always find it silly how most of the units they promised at the HOTS/LOTV reveal did NOT make it into the game)
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Took me half the article to realise PvP didn't stand for protoss vs protoss.
anyway nice article. Cool to see they still have a big team on sc2.
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On March 19 2016 14:15 Charoisaur wrote:
Pls no new units. 90% of the units added in HotS and LotV have been terrible.
I think he mean they will delete retarded units and add new unit to replace its place
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Listening to it at the moment, but already I need to say:
If it is true that they were surprised that coop was/is very popular, then I think there marketing research is really failing somewhere. They made two SC2 games before, each selling millions of copies, while the PvP mode was one of the least played amongst the current competitive games. Very clearly players do not enjoy the SC2 competitive side, but grab every opportunity to play some highlevel RTS content. Such as campaign or coop.
Edit: Though Morten clarifies anyways they see different sorts of players. Dunno why he said they were surprised then...
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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.
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"lots of debate about the 12 worker start during beta. not much negative feedback after launch about this."
translation: 14 players left laddering on a good day, and all of them just love our design decisions.
Despite what he says, I'd be very surprised, if the majority of co-op players had no interest in pvp. They just don't want this pvp. And the guy just confirmed that they are the bigger demographic.
"Western players and Korean players often provide different feedback on PvP balance."
What a lucky coincidence then, that we have meaningful statistics and Blizzard certainly has even better ones. Listening to the community when it comes to game design might be worthwhile, but balancing must be done scientifically not by vox populi.
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Co-op is great but I wish they would speed up the rate of release on new missions.
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On March 20 2016 00:11 iamho wrote:
Co-op is great but I wish they would speed up the rate of release on new missions.
I think creating an editor package that allows you to create a co-op mission map would be the easiest solution here. Mapmakers would love it, players would get tons of content and all blizzard would have to do is playtest a few maps every month and then change the mappool for coop accordingly.
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On March 20 2016 00:02 Aiobhill wrote:
Despite what he says, I'd be very surprised, if the majority of co-op players had no interest in pvp. They just don't want this pvp. And the guy just confirmed that they are the bigger demographic.
there is an entire (2+ player) vs. (multiple AIs) thing going on throughout the RTS genre and those people don't want to go anywhere near PvP. its existed in several Blizzard RTS games and in several RTS games not made by Blizzard. All with the same characteristic of no interest in PvP. Co-op serves that market and I don't think the guy is bullshitting.
from the RTS games i've played it exists in CoH, Brood War, RA3, Kane's Wrath, and SC2.
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On March 19 2016 14:25 phodacbiet wrote:Show nested quote +On March 19 2016 14:15 Charoisaur wrote:
Pls no new units. 90% of the units added in HotS and LotV have been terrible. Hots maybe, but I think the new units + new economy in lotv made the game fresh and much more interesting. Ive been watching GSL now and it looks better than it has ever been imo.
Really not a fan of adding new units. New maps should be more than enough to keep the multiplayer fresh if the game is done well -and LotV is generally working quite alright.
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On March 20 2016 00:11 iamho wrote:
Co-op is great but I wish they would speed up the rate of release on new missions.
Yeah, it's going to be FOUR months in between missions, and it probably sucks if its only 1 new mission. Hopefully they'll put more resources into it if its so popular. But there also hasnt been any new ladder maps so I don't they're playing favorites :-P
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I read all of that before figuring out that PvP wasnt protoss vs protoss
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On March 20 2016 04:15 lestye wrote:Show nested quote +On March 20 2016 00:11 iamho wrote:
Co-op is great but I wish they would speed up the rate of release on new missions. Yeah, it's going to be FOUR months in between missions, and it probably sucks if its only 1 new mission. Hopefully they'll put more resources into it if its so popular. But there also hasnt been any new ladder maps so I don't they're playing favorites :-P
It is mission packs, so probably 6-7?
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On March 20 2016 05:07 MyrionSC wrote:Show nested quote +On March 20 2016 04:15 lestye wrote:On March 20 2016 00:11 iamho wrote:
Co-op is great but I wish they would speed up the rate of release on new missions. Yeah, it's going to be FOUR months in between missions, and it probably sucks if its only 1 new mission. Hopefully they'll put more resources into it if its so popular. But there also hasnt been any new ladder maps so I don't they're playing favorites :-P It is mission packs, so probably 6-7?
I was referring to Co-Op.
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On March 20 2016 05:02 oGoZenob wrote:
I read all of that before figuring out that PvP wasnt protoss vs protoss
Real talk: so did I.
I wouldn't mind them at least trying to update/improve SC2 as much as they can do, and updating the PvP system, and everything's a good way to begin doing it.
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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.
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Is playing with friends more popular than alone? Tonight at 10.
The failed arcade system and ZERO attention to 2v2 (and up) throughout SC2s life are IMO the biggest areas where blizzard has completely missed the mark.
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On March 20 2016 05:54 y0su wrote:
Is playing with friends more popular than alone? Tonight at 10.
The failed arcade system and ZERO attention to 2v2 (and up) throughout SC2s life are IMO the biggest areas where blizzard has completely missed the mark.
I don't know what I wanna see 2v2 become. It'd be interesting if that was balanced separately from 1v1s.
Probably a load of time would be spent on it though, but they do have a larger team now.
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On March 20 2016 05:48 avilo wrote:Show nested quote +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".
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On March 20 2016 06:09 FFW_Rude wrote:Show nested quote +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.
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Glad to hear they will elaborate the coop. I hope they include a mode where you can play on 3 or 4 person teams for my LANs.
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4 months between missions, at 60 minutes per mission including replays and achievements is... 3 hours of gameplay added over the next year.
Wait, wut
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TBF, everything is more popular then PvP.
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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...
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6 lines in and I thought it was jimmyjraynor who wrote this, and I looked up to check and was right. Suprised he didn't write about how he thinks XYZ actiblizzard person is a genius and the RTS genre is dead.
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On March 20 2016 06:28 Spyridon wrote:Show nested quote +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)
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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.
Balancing CAN be easy. Balancing 3 asymmetrical races with varying units and playstyles having viablity, impact, in early-mid-late game, across a variety of maps with differentiating features while having the game stay fun and strategically interesting, is incredibly hard.
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Awesome news, really excited, PLEASE let there be an Abathur voice pack, I'm sure alot of players of all races would love to have it because face it, Abathur is awesome.
I think instead of being open to new units, every 12 months on the dot there should be a balance test map that tests more radical changes (within reason obviously) to units that don't see much use and trying to make sure that all units end up as at least semi viable, this will contribute dividends to the games longevity.
One more thing I desperately wish was on the table, is for Blizzard to borderline surrender their map making entirely and foster the growth of the community maps like times 10 because yea, we all know that community maps >>>>>>> Blizzard maps. We've gotten the best maps we've ever had almost exclusively from the community and not Blizzard. Not saying Blizzard has never cranked out a good map, but our guys on the non company end have that real passion that makes sexy maps that stand the test of times.
Would anyone really complained if they did added some of the more balanced old school maps in? I wouldn't, Overgrowth was awesome, even if it was small.
Other then that, awesome news, especially for ladder revamps, tournaments are awesome and was totally a step in the right direction, the leagues seem distributed nicely.
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Are people really surprised that coop is more popular than pvp? Pvpers are louder but coop and solo players are the majority. Always been, always will be. Way too often, I get a feeling of a huge disconnect between the community and the developers. This is just them sugarcoating that fact by making it appear they were surprised too.
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On March 20 2016 07:19 andrewlt wrote:
Are people really surprised that coop is more popular than pvp? Pvpers are louder but coop and solo players are the majority. Always been, always will be. Way too often, I get a feeling of a huge disconnect between the community and the developers. This is just them sugarcoating that fact by making it appear they were surprised too.
I think its more like people are surprised of how long co-op has been more popular than co-op. The fact that more people came back to the game for Kerax, than the launch of LOTV, is awesome news.
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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 Kingdom20308 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 Kingdom20308 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
