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On October 03 2016 01:26 [PkF] Wire wrote:Show nested quote +On October 03 2016 01:13 hjkim1304 wrote:
jesus my man. There is no way to 'save' SC2. This is simply supply and demand at work. You could try pouring millions of dollars into this industry, it's just not going to revive it. If anything, it will only increase the SC2 bubble. The popularity is just not there. This isn't the community's fault, this isn't Kespa's fault, this certainly is not Blizzard's fault. It's just pure fact that people don't like RTS's currently. There is no way to fix that. can't say I disagree. But had some things been done better, maybe we wouldn't be in dire straits like now. Not the most popular, but in OK shape. Right now everything seems to be falling apart.
Things that jump out of the paper as reason for the decline in popularity:
Swarm Host vs mech
Infestor/ broodlord era
No grassroots tournaments (remember the kespa drafts?)
not enough tournaments overall. My memory may be weak but i remember there was a time in early Wings, before the broodlord infestor era that seemed to have a tournament every weekend.
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I've said this before.
It's ACTIVISION-Blizzard. Not just Blizzard.
It's better for them to let the game slowly die and focus their resources on their big cash cows (hearthstone, WoW, OW).
They still pretend to care because they got a reputation to uphold, but it's apparently obvious they don't.
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TRUTH. I'd take a fun but unbalanced game over a balanced but boring game any day.
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On October 03 2016 01:58 hai2u wrote:
TRUTH. I'd take a fun but unbalanced game over a balanced but boring game any day.
Yes. We play games for fun - not 'challenge' nor 'fairness'
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On October 03 2016 01:58 hai2u wrote:
TRUTH. I'd take a fun but unbalanced game over a balanced but boring game any day.
Here is the issue. The game was never meant to be fun. It was made to be an Esports. Unbalance is absolutely not allowed when you create a game and you want to make a sport out of it.
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On October 03 2016 00:32 RoomOfMush wrote:
You generalize quite a bit when you say "TeamLiquid has this or that opinion/viewport/agenda/etc".
There is many different people on TL and many different voices. There are certainly some members to which your description applies, but I dont see myself in your words at all.
TL has one viewpoint.
"The game is fine, stop complaining and pointing out flaws because that's unproductive."
Goodbye account
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On October 03 2016 02:39 Wrath wrote:Show nested quote +On October 03 2016 01:58 hai2u wrote:
TRUTH. I'd take a fun but unbalanced game over a balanced but boring game any day. Here is the issue. The game was never meant to be fun. It was made to be an Esports. Unbalance is absolutely not allowed when you create a game and you want to make a sport out of it.
This is absolutely correct.
On October 03 2016 02:46 PtitDrogo wrote:
I'm triggered
It's funny how pros these days (with only a couple exceptions) have nothing interesting or worthwhile to say about these vital topics. I do miss the days when people like qxc, HuK, even IdrA actually made thoughtful posts to these kinds of discussions instead of just shitposting weak memes or "bait".
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There is just happening what I was expecting years ago. RTS based on intense use of mechanic, punishing for every slight mistake are outdated - look at MOBA's and their huge success.
Why doesn't SC 2 had automated production - why this game came down only to mechanical grind? There were no strategy involved unless u were on the highest tier. Most of your time and energy had to be invested in mechanical intense excercise - and this was not funny, nor pleasant.
But Blizzard was always listening to "old guard" (if one can say that) of RTS enthusiasts - those who were saying that game shouldn't be simplified, that it should be mechanically demanding. Those people had forgotten that for game to be succesfull as an e-sport there must be reasonable pool of spectators - and those spectators are coming from the ranks of players.
If u have game demanding mechanical grind, where slightest mistakes are punished, where come backs are rare you won't get big pool of gamers, and thus you won't get a big pool of spectators.
Take a look at LoL for example - game loathed by SC2 elitists for its "simplicity". As it is this game is mechanically simplier but it is much more strategic - there, instead of mechanical grind, most important aspect of playing is decision making. In SC2 it is exactly opposite. Anyone can see which game is doing better at the moment.
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On October 03 2016 03:00 207aicila wrote:Show nested quote +On October 03 2016 02:39 Wrath wrote:On October 03 2016 01:58 hai2u wrote:
TRUTH. I'd take a fun but unbalanced game over a balanced but boring game any day. Here is the issue. The game was never meant to be fun. It was made to be an Esports. Unbalance is absolutely not allowed when you create a game and you want to make a sport out of it. This is absolutely correct. It's funny how pros these days (with only a couple exceptions) have nothing interesting or worthwhile to say about these vital topics. I do miss the days when people like qxc, HuK, even IdrA actually made thoughtful posts to these kinds of discussions instead of just shitposting weak memes or "bait".
Your only contribution in this thread is writing "you are correct" and you're shitting and me, nice bait.
This thread is just as smart as the guy that did a video on reddit Blaming Destiny's Reddit post for the downfall of Starcraft 2.
Funny thing is that Historically David didn't fucking listen to pros, that's how we ended up with Broodlord/Infestors for so long remember ?
Many many people were posting about "Doing a massive redesign of everything to fix the game" over the years, but I've never seen someone directly targeting the pros like that. (plz keep the bullying to David kim ).
But you know, ignoring all the anecdotal "evidence" of this thread that you use to make your point, I actually agree with you, sc2 could be a lot better designed. Sure ! But this ? :
"Create solid foundations:
That cannot be e.g. that Zerg is only the defensive race with mostly melee units while terran being the offensive race with ranged units and I wont go in detail here why that is. You didn't fix that by giving the ravager to zerg but made it worse.
That cannot be to give the most offensive race the best defensive macro mechanic which is mules that allow attacks only to do limited damage. This is clearly a mechanic that must belong to a defensive race to make up for their counterparts aggressive potential."
2010 wants its balance whine back.
P.S: I'm just a biased pro gamers that wants an unfair advantage even if it means destroying the game so feel free to ignore my post
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Katowice25012 Posts
While I agree there may be a bit of truth here, I think your premise is overall faulty. I'm not sure why you are uniquely qualified to notice all pros talk only about balance in a biased way, as if that's not something other parties, notably SC2 designers themselves, notice. For example, I have in the past criticized Blizzard for not hiring ex-professionals the way some other studios do (Riot and Wizards of the Coast) to lead their balance teams, as in-house feedback from people who have shown they understand the games on a competitive level to help discuss those issues. The response I got (in personal face to face conversations with them) is that they don't because they feel both that these people can't provide useful feedback on the game as a whole on the level they need, in addition to not having the correct "design" skills they would want in that role. Both things you accuse them of doing.
My general feeling, as someone who has frequent meetings with Blizzard on the professional level (and has in the past and is currently negotiating contracts of tournament structure such as WCS, plus providing feedback), and as someone who consistently has sit down one on one casual discussions with the Morhaimes and development leads of SC2 and other games*, is that designers don't take this feedback very seriously. I don't think any of them have the time to read TL, these are guys that have 6 hours a meetings a day and need to actually do work on top of that I'm not sure where they would get the time to read TL, Battlenet forums, and reddit. This feedback comes to them in the form of wrap-ups that the community team scours the internet for, and then delivers in summary packages, which they then balance with internal opinions and personal perspective. My guess is this is the norm in the industry, I don't know for sure, but it seems to me they judge a lot of these opinions with a weight that is appropriate to their overall business though there are a lot of decisions I don't personally agree with. TL and reddit are more noise than substance so to infer that these heavily changed their core philosophy seems far fetched.
I also don't know why you personally talk down to everyone else talking as "wannabie pros" when you haven't done anything to differentiate yourself from that category, aren't you "just another" novice designer? Why should we believe this instance that tells us what is fun more than the others?
*I'm saying this mostly to brag, but also to give weight to my opinion as a likely possibility
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Canada8989 Posts
Oh look another "sc2 is shit, it has always beem shit and you should be ashame to love it" thread.
Seriously half the time going to TL just make me sad/angry.
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On October 03 2016 01:54 halomonian wrote:Show nested quote +On October 03 2016 01:26 [PkF] Wire wrote:On October 03 2016 01:13 hjkim1304 wrote:
jesus my man. There is no way to 'save' SC2. This is simply supply and demand at work. You could try pouring millions of dollars into this industry, it's just not going to revive it. If anything, it will only increase the SC2 bubble. The popularity is just not there. This isn't the community's fault, this isn't Kespa's fault, this certainly is not Blizzard's fault. It's just pure fact that people don't like RTS's currently. There is no way to fix that. can't say I disagree. But had some things been done better, maybe we wouldn't be in dire straits like now. Not the most popular, but in OK shape. Right now everything seems to be falling apart. Things that jump out of the paper as reason for the decline in popularity: Swarm Host vs mech -snip-.
Funny enough, those games always garnered the most viewers.
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I have to agree with the OP.
Blizzard is making the game faster, more unforgiving, and is bandaid fixing any problem in the name of balance. They're not noticing that the game isn't particularly fun to play.
I do wish they would make macro harder, and not micro. When micro is soul crushingly hard, you lose just due to one misclick or similar.
If macro was hard, you'd lose because you weren't as good as your opponent.
On October 03 2016 03:39 Nakajin wrote:
Oh look another "sc2 is shit, it has always beem shit and you should be ashame to love it" thread.
Seriously half the time going to TL just make me sad/angry.
You didn't even read the thread
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On October 03 2016 00:40 ionONE wrote:Show nested quote +For TL community it was always more important to argue about racial balance in detail rather than helping to improve the basics of the game which make it enjoyable.
Honestly over the past 6 years i saw so many quality design discussions on this forum. (Lalush, Hider, Starbow guys and other) These guys challenged my own viewpoints countless times.
And Blizzard listened. You can they took a few things from Starbow in legacy of the void.
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The two biggest mistakes regarding SC2 in Korea were:
- not having any recent Korean BW pros involved in the initial development of SC2, DKim doesn't count as BW was very different in 2001.
- not coming to an agreement with Kespa immediately. OGN was going to have an SC2 league in 2010 but the Kespa/Blizz dispute canceled it.
They've done a lot to try to make up for those mistakes but a huge part of a game's success, especially in trend-oriented Korea, is momentum, and Blizzard killed what little they had.
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However, I disagree with the popular perception that Blizzard has been making a lot of mistakes recently or that they've been killing their game. I actually think that 2013-present Blizzard has extended the lifespan of a game that didn't seem destined for a long one in the first place.
-WCS stopped the oversaturation of tournaments, improved the EU ladder. WCS NA was probably a mistake as the NA scene wasn't strong enough to improve from the Koreans invading, but WCS EU was brilliant.
-Balance decisions have been controversial, but nothing as bad as BL/Infestor has come up, and most things have been patched without waiting a year or more. WoL was also not that well balanced (except for a short time in early 2012) and was frequently deathball vs deathball.
-The Korean scene finally got a BW-like structure with proleague and 2 major individual leagues, even if it was too late to save the scene.
-Blizzcons have been fantastic.
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Flash retiring a couple of months right after the lotv release was really into something.
Anyways, my opinion is that SC2 and particularly lotv(wol was the bestbtw) failed because the design is much more micro oriented than macro. And when you make the game a lot faster -with lotv, it becomes a torture to play at some point, at least for the more casual players. i agree with a poster above that said Sc2 should be more about macro.
Oh and the switch should have been faster. The last couple of osl's were pointless in my opinion. The community + the pros were split in half and sc2 lost a lot of momentum.
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On October 03 2016 03:50 jalstar wrote:
The two biggest mistakes regarding SC2 in Korea were:
- not having any recent Korean BW pros involved in the initial development of SC2, DKim doesn't count as BW was very different in 2001.
- not coming to an agreement with Kespa immediately. OGN was going to have an SC2 league in 2010 but the Kespa/Blizz dispute canceled it.
They've done a lot to try to make up for those mistakes but a huge part of a game's success, especially in trend-oriented Korea, is momentum, and Blizzard killed what little they had.
This I do agree with. They had all the initial hype going for them, but they ended up failing to transition the Korean scene to SC2 as a whole which ended up having the fans refusing to transition also because they kept comparing SC2 to BW (which is very hard to do since SC2 was an all in fest in the beginning as well as unbalanced while BW was very refined at this point as well as having many star players with huge fan base). And when they missed that boat of initial hype, and fans divided, League hit Korea and everyone went to MOBA. This downfall was long overdue. It was kept going because of Blizzard and select few in the community that have been so passionate about this game. The scene won't die. We will still have pro players. But the scene will keep downsizing. Proleague will most likely disappear, and a lot of Korean SC2 teams will be disbanded. This is sad but I can't see this going any other way. Free market at work.
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Well no need to feel personally attacked @drogo. No need to attack me as well, I am not a balance whiner. Prolly you are just afraid that I could be right in what I say.
Blizzards strategy is to receive feedback from TL and korean pros. Blizzard expressed themselves that feedback of korean pro gamers oftenly is as different as the races they play. These statements and that they do not follow many suggestion as you here state yourself support that it is not that valuable for them in alot of situations.
I don't blame pros at all but they are obviously not the right people to ask everything all the time. Following the reasons of logical thinking one who tries to be best in a certain system and setup cannot at the same time have doubts about this very system which however was needed to acquire the necessary tools to improve the system fundamentally. You simply cannot afford that as a pro as it would decrease your focus on winning the game and then decrease your results. You guys have to fully accept the system to become the best at it at it in the first place, this is a necessary requirement in thinking patterns as you will understand.
You guys are not to be blamed but have to accept that reality. I don't want to judge about individuals but put general conclusions. There surely are individuals who have doubts and certainly these are not helpful for their performance or even cause those many quits and switches to other games.
The ones who can afford doubts are the ones who are not affected by a doubtful way of thinking as their performance doesn't matter.
Compare that with a soccer club: You got players (progamers), coaches, presidents, medicals, etc. You don't have the players decide about acquisitions of the club even tho probably every single one of them surely believes to know best. You don't have the president decide about medical treatments of injured players. Compare it with the balance of powers in executive, legislative and judiciary. That works pretty well in reality and noone would ever try and doubt that system of different strengthes and weaknesses to reach the best results.
Just in SC2 that is different. And it is a clear sign of arrogance that runs like a red thread through the whole scene of SC2 towards:
a) lower level players.
b) players of other games.
It has something of late roman decedence that pro-players are to be expected and probably many believe themselves that they are the only people to ask when it comes to improving that game.
The result of this policy throughout the past years can be seen and is the biggest imaginable debacle with disbandoning teams in korea just 3/4 year after the release of LOTV, which should turn everything to the good.
It is important to note that blizzard relies on and works with that system. No matter how many individual suggestions they have been following in the past this system of mainly relying on pro feedback and working with that should be changed to create different results.
Concerning the bias thing: I mainly directed that towards korea according to the information blizzard itself has released.
Concerning TL: Many people can voice their opinion here and do so, maybe too many. It is more an issue of discussions always going all the way down to the smallest common denominator, which wasn't helpful at all for SC2 as SC2 required larger changes which should not be subject to make everyone happy at once. Yes, they are now coming after all. Lets hope they don't mess it up.
On October 03 2016 03:37 Heyoka wrote:
This feedback comes to them in the form of wrap-ups that the community team scours the internet for, and then delivers in summary packages, which they then balance with internal opinions and personal perspective.
Sure thing. Now one source of failure could be which opinions are being transported to them and which are being emphasized. Anyway I doubt that they would put up a PR and feedback thing like that on TL and then give a shit about it. That simply makes no sense. I am pretty sure they read and evaluate pretty carefully what is brought up here at TL direct or indirect. The reason for that is simple: If Blizzard knew themselves what to do they would not need that kind of system to begin with. Putting it up is a clear sign of them being a bit helpless in how to proceed with SC2 development to say the least and an ask for help.
Also your argument about time doesn't make sense to me. They got a department that solely is responsible to develop the balance and multiplayer experience of SC2. I don't think these guys are burdened with daily 6 hour meetings which deny them to do their actual job especially due to the fact that it is not that much to read. Probably half a day or less is enough to read everything of importance that is being brought up at TL within one week.
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On October 03 2016 03:55 lastride wrote:
Flash retiring a couple of months right after the lotv release was really into something.
Anyways, my opinion is that SC2 and particularly lotv(wol was the bestbtw) failed because the design is much more micro oriented than macro. And when you make the game a lot faster -with lotv, it becomes a torture to play at some point, at least for the more casual players. i agree with a poster above that said Sc2 should be more about macro.
Oh and the switch should have been faster. The last couple of osl's were pointless in my opinion. The community + the pros were split in half and sc2 lost a lot of momentum.
Huh, I kinda agree with this also. I personally think they should've gotten rid of spell-oriented unit designs as well as unlimited unit selection. Make macro little bit more difficult. I don't mean it in terms of queen injecting etc. but make the game so that the games don't end with 1 oracle, couple of widow mine hits, or have someone win a game with one engagement that ends in 5 seconds and afterwards press F2+A to win.
If we had maybe only 24 or 36 unit selection, I think it could've helped alleviate this issue...
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EPT
