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Never heard a pro saying : DK listen to me, i suggest some things and he does it...
On the other side, the community, specially NA scene ruins the game :
For TvZ : used to be a fun war bio vs LBM (best MU acording to all).
But :
"We want macro changes"
"we don't like mutas, we want a hard counter"
"We wants mech"
Now they keep spamming : nerf ultras, while it's the direct result of larva nerf and having a mutas hard counter.
And we're going to have turtle mech back thx to Avilo & fan...
Feel like DK does efforts to listen "community" (casual players with bias and poor understanding of the game) and it's what is wrong
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Bisutopia19231 Posts
How unhappy are you guys with the current state of the game? Disregard what anger you have about the past. The only thing left is what you do about the game right now. SC2 isn't going anywhere, you just may get to a point where you have to contribute more then a view to keep the scene going.
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When you have a race that can produce its basic units anywhere on the map, but still need it to have shooting supplies, you know you failed as a game designer.
The huge majority of changes made to the game since WOL have been terrible. More gimmicks, more binary units and less counterplay options.
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So the downfall of sc2 in Korea is because Blizzard listened to pro players... fantastic.
I'm 100% sure I could dig out a shit ton of post from 2 years ago that are saying exactly the opposite. What makes your analysis better?
(Side note : I like the game and have fun playing it every day, shoot me!)
EDIT : Oh and maybe you missed it, but there have been plenty of extremely fun pro games lately, last ones just a few hours ago...
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On October 03 2016 04:26 LSN wrote: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. Show nested quote +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.
Will you believe me if I tell you David kim and the entire Sc2 design team didn't listen to pro until 2016 ? (and even then it was just a little bit)
Therefore the pros were physicly unable to destroy sc2 design ?
You seem really convinced of that fact, ence your entire post, but it's just not the case.
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Before we enter an infinite loop that ends with a lock to this thread can we get an actual Korean opinion on the matter?
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100% disagree with the premise of your thread entirely.
Because your thread is actually under the assumption that there were ever patch changes made to the game in a consistent and iterative manner.
But they were never done like that.
In fact, it's quite the opposite of exactly what your thread premise is. Blizzard almost never listened to the community on anything, especially when it came to gameplay. Or when they did it was with a delay of 1+ yr each time which was not helpful.
Remember TL discussions of DH10 and DH9 economy models? These were never tested on a live game. Blizzard claimed to only test them internally.
Remember all the discussions of high ground advantage? Never implemented, or considered publicly.
Remember mech not being viable ever since the siege tank nerf and the past 4+ yrs of people like myself and others basically handing blizzard the blueprints on how to make mech viable without being OP? They still refuse to listen that mech has no anti-air unit EVEN TO THIS DAY on the test mod there still is no factory anti-air option to promote factory based play.
Remember the 1+ yr it took for blizzard to acknowledge that infestors+broodlords was ridiculously OP and ruining the game to the point we had ZvZ games that devolved into both players doing this exact strategy and the entire pro scene had almost become entirely ZvZ at one point? It was blizzard's ego and the fact they weren't listening that led to this taking so long to fix.
Remember almost 1 yr later the same exact thing happened with swarmhosts and blizzard still refused to do anything and listen to the community or tweak anything at all. Both of these situations arose because blizzard had the terrible habit of believing if a match-ups winrate was 50/50 between two races then the game was perfectly balanced despite the gameplay being utterly terrible.
Remember mass adepts in LOTV? OH WAIT. This is still currently in the game even since after the beta, and the entire last 9 months this still is ruining the game and blizzard refuses to listen to the community about it and take any aggressive stance on making changes to it. All because they still faultily believe that if winrates are fine it's ok for Protosses to make 99% adepts in their games.
Your thread premise does not match up to the reality that Blizzard never listened to the community, and blizzard has been incompetent as hell and slow as fuck to ever respond to any of the design or balance concerns of this game.
Problematic champions/heroes in HOTS, LoL, and DotA are addressed quite quickly before they destroy the balance ecosystem of those games. Just a day or two ago Zarya was hotfixed in Heroes of the Storm because she was way overperforming.
So why the fuck is this not done to blatantly game breaking mechanics like invincible nydus worm (still in the game)? Why are there no hotfixes to massing pure adepts (still in the game)? Why are there no hotfixes to parasitic bomb (still in the game)? 8 armor ultras? Still in the game. Mass ravagers? Yep stil in the game.
What about the queen range buff that was just put in the game which was unnecessary and to be blatantly honest has ruined the game just as badly as the previous queen range buff that occurred over 2 yrs ago?
Mech viability? It's taken 4+ yrs for blizzard to acknowledge the siege tank sucks.
Do you see my point? Your thread original post is claiming the downfall of SC2 is somehow everyone here on teamliquid's fault or the SC2 reddit or the battle.net forums, etc. How is that possible when blizzard has consistently shown they refuse to embrace the iterative design process they talk about, and they almost never patch SC2?
You're living in a dreamworld where this game is patched bi-weekly - 1 month like other successful games, and then assuming that SC2 is in the current state it's in. I can assure you, if that were the case, SC2 would be alive and thriving way more than it is now.
Currently, blizzard is still on the "hey we'll patch every year" schedule of "iterative" changes, and then when any of those changes are bad they are left in the game for the next 1+ yr.
Those are just my thoughts, and i'm sure a lot of people will analyze the situation objectively. If myself or someone wanted to we can go back through every patch for SC2 that has been released and you'll be presented quite a terrible picture of an "iterative process."
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On October 03 2016 04:37 BisuDagger wrote:
How unhappy are you guys with the current state of the game? Disregard what anger you have about the past. The only thing left is what you do about the game right now. SC2 isn't going anywhere, you just may get to a point where you have to contribute more then a view to keep the scene going.
I think it's terrible
But there isn't a better game either, so whatcha gunna do.
There aren't a lot of fun interactions in the game. What's the ZvP meta? Chase adepts around your bases, losing workers because they *cannot* defend without drone losses while the protoss techs up and expands freely.
ZvZ? 3 hatch ling bane. Oh boy.
ZvT? Try not to die until ultras.
Dumb meta is dumb
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@Drogo
Well their system relies on pro feedback from korea and on feedback from TL which to a certain degree is being dominated by pro feedback as well, as if a pro says anything here not only few people just blindly follow and support that.
So they certainly work with that feedback but create their own conclusion and assumptions based on that which you don't consider "listen" to pro feedback.
My criticism is mainly addressing blizzard. Their current system of feedback and the use of that feedback obviously hasn't brought the wanted results. Their goal must have been failed.
But I criticize pros as well as those being generally listened the most at but by default (as explained) are not or only limitedly capable of thinking outside the box when giving suggestions. This results in mainly meaningless little changes as pros usually don't demand to make the game good for everyone but close their little balance gap that they are currently focused on. This kind of feedback, no matter if being followed 1:1 or not is not of any value to make SC2 a better game.
In general I aim towards an increase in quality of feedback that blizzard receives from its sources and I advertise for putting less weight on the word and thinking patterns of progamers in order to make the game great again but to search and follow new and different approaches of desgingn the game.
@Avilo, sorry but wrong
It doesn't matter if they listen to pro feedback or not 1:1. What matters is if this feedback has yet brought up the deceisive breakthrough and victory or not and if it is capable of doing so at all.
1. Korean pro feedback is oftenly biased as blizzard stated themselves.
2. Foreigner feedback as far as it can be followed openly here on TL hasn't as well. I have read most of the things in the past years and those were mainly about small, smaller and the smallest changes to fix the tiny little balance gaps that appear mainly at certain level and upwards.
That kind of feedback altogether (the whole approach) is utterly useless to turn the game for the better. I haven't seen a single pro to discuss SC2 from a different angle of view than balance, which can be the first step to thinking outside the box. And it is not their job so I don't blame them. I blame blizzard to still ask their opinion on issues that can't be provided with solutions that have their origin in the thinking patterns of pros by default or not to ask the right questions at all.
SC2 needs other kind of feedback, feedback that is not mainly focused on balance details and motivated by rage about balance but feedback that respects e.g. the fun and frustration levels of unit interactions, and many other things of importance such as the fundamental analysis about the role and effect of mules, offensive vs. defensive metagames and which fits best for which race (put whatever you feel is important there, I put what I consider important from the view of someone that mainly has played zerg in SC2). What I describe is a shift in values away from "balance the game on the highest level of play and it will be good for everyone" cause it has failed drastically, even for the players that play there. As pro feedback obviously and even according to this discussion is not capable to deliver that, we need other sources of influence to determinate the future progression of SC2 multiplayer and potentially bring the deceisive steps.
What has made SC2 what it is now is the broad assumption of only the highest level of play(ers) should be allowed to speak and being deceicive and the meta of discussions mainly circle around those few things that are brought up in this environment. It is what I call arrogance and decadence probably comparable with the late roman.
Believe it or not. I think you guys truly don't know what I am talking of. ^_^
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It's the maps, dammit, not the units.
There's your base, your driveway, and the street outside, then the middle...
That the topographical designs of maps determine gamestyle so directly isn't fun.
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On October 03 2016 05:58 WeddingEpisode wrote:
It's the maps, dammit, not the units.
There's your base, your driveway, and the street outside, then the middle...
That the topographical designs of maps cater so directly in size and shape to gameplay isn't fun.
Yeah that's true the map design is a huge factor for balance. If a race play a tournament, and all the maps unfavor you : your race looks underpowered, and you get buff, but if the maps then become better, so you become overpowered...
But not the first time it was mentionned, pro give some feedbacks : "give us balanced map before engaging patch on the game".
But it was ignored.
DK is pretty lazy with maps, there is no real deep reflexion and it's just : "yeah it looks cool so we release it" even if they're usually bugged...
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Everything I've been arguing for years.
Blizzard needs a skilled person to lead the direction of the game. That is all there is too it. David Kim is clearly not that person.
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On October 03 2016 06:43 BronzeKnee wrote:
Everything I've been arguing for years.
Blizzard needs a skilled person to lead the direction of the game. That is all there is too it. David Kim is clearly not that person.
Yeah, what does "skilled" mean to you precisely, because just throwing around that "DK is not skilled enough" is a very old and outdated statement.
DK is highly skilled at making in-depth analysis based on precise data and numbers, that's how he kept the job for so long.
What other skill would you suggest, other than the ability to analyze and interpret lots of data, trying to identify imbalance in numbers and compensate it? How do you define a 100% capable lead designer, since you're so sure that DK lacks the necessary qualities?
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SC2 never failed through balance but through design. Therefore SC2 needs now game design with clear visions and goals to achieve that make natural sense (as the two examples above of solid foundations).
I agree with your main point here, but i pushed for that in a lot of threads, it's not gonna happen.
The current sc2 is what will stay, either you can find a way to have fun with it (i did i guess) or just try to find another game.
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SC/RTS in Korea never really made that much cash for Blizzard. The genre has not had the companies attention since the day WoW was released. I'm kinda surprised its lasted this long with Diablo and WoW making far more and now with Overwatch and Hearthstone kicking ass it puts SC2/RTS even lower on the totem pole.
I think Blizzard is putting SC2 into maintenance mode after BlizzCon 2016.
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Finally someone who gets it. Its not about balance. Even with perfect balance in terms of win rates you still lose 50 percent of time to annoying shit. It's about design. The fundamental error that blizzard makes is that they believe complex abilities/mechanics/fundamentals lead to a more strategic/fun/nuanced game. This is not true! If you look at all successful games (from Chess, soccer, Overwatch, Lol, WC3 even BW), its always simple fundamental things given a large enough space to play out lead to a complex, strategic, and most of all playable game. Further not of these games where original designed for a pro base. By designing SC2 for a pro-base Blizzard has actively destroyed their pro-scene. Simply because the influx of new pros doesn't equal the number retiring. Without noobs learning and supporting the game, the game can't last.
Redesign the game for noobs/fun. However open up maps or push lots of the active abilities to later tier units, and you will get the kind of infinite variation needed to make this comparable to say chess. Simple mechanics + Complexity development through-out the game as players expand/move. Not complex mechanics+ frantic, jagged, volatile, development with abrupt endings
Also forget LoL type active abilities and battles. That game is completely different. Not every SC unit has to be a special sunflower.
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SC2 has not been declining because of game design choices like widow mines of MSC. These are utterly trivial in the grand scheme of thing for the vast majority of the playerbase.
The real reason is that high skill-based (as opposed to luck) 1v1 games can't be popular anymore. Playing these kind of games is too stressful and losing is too painful for the ego. Feeling like you lost because you got outplayed is not fun. The genius of Hearthstone is that there's pretty much no way to tell the difference between getting outplayed and getting unlucky.
You might be thinking "why has BW been popular, then"? Well, that was then and this is now. For whatever reason (I'm guessing technical), team multiplayer games or something like Hearthstone didn't exist back then, at least not with a large player base.
SC2 was very popular in its first couple years because 1) it's a Blizzard game, and that gives it lots of momentum and 2) it was right at the cusp of these other multiplayer genres making it big. Had SC2 come out in 2013, it wouldn't have had such a steep decline because it wouldn't be that popular in the first place.
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On October 03 2016 11:47 AndAgain wrote:
SC2 has not been declining because of game design choices like widow mines of MSC. These are utterly trivial in the grand scheme of thing for the vast majority of the playerbase.
The real reason is that high skill-based (as opposed to luck) 1v1 games can't be popular anymore. Playing these kind of games is too stressful and losing is too painful for the ego. Feeling like you lost because you got outplayed is not fun. The genius of Hearthstone is that there's pretty much no way to tell the difference between getting outplayed and getting unlucky.
You might be thinking "why has BW been popular, then"? Well, that was then and this is now. For whatever reason (I'm guessing technical), team multiplayer games or something like Hearthstone didn't exist back then, at least not with a large player base.
SC2 was very popular in its first couple years because 1) it's a Blizzard game, and that gives it lots of momentum and 2) it was right at the cusp of these other multiplayer genres making it big. Had SC2 come out in 2013, it wouldn't have had such a steep decline because it wouldn't be that popular in the first place.
SC2 ignored lots of BW principles which alienated BW Korean fans.
That was a big mistake on Blizzard's part.
BW was popular because of UMS games, not because of its 1 vs 1 scene.
Only after a year or two, people started exploring its 1 vs 1 aspect.
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On October 03 2016 11:52 RealityIsKing wrote:Show nested quote +On October 03 2016 11:47 AndAgain wrote:
SC2 has not been declining because of game design choices like widow mines of MSC. These are utterly trivial in the grand scheme of thing for the vast majority of the playerbase.
The real reason is that high skill-based (as opposed to luck) 1v1 games can't be popular anymore. Playing these kind of games is too stressful and losing is too painful for the ego. Feeling like you lost because you got outplayed is not fun. The genius of Hearthstone is that there's pretty much no way to tell the difference between getting outplayed and getting unlucky.
You might be thinking "why has BW been popular, then"? Well, that was then and this is now. For whatever reason (I'm guessing technical), team multiplayer games or something like Hearthstone didn't exist back then, at least not with a large player base.
SC2 was very popular in its first couple years because 1) it's a Blizzard game, and that gives it lots of momentum and 2) it was right at the cusp of these other multiplayer genres making it big. Had SC2 come out in 2013, it wouldn't have had such a steep decline because it wouldn't be that popular in the first place. SC2 ignored lots of BW principles which alienated BW Korean fans. That was a big mistake on Blizzard's part. BW was popular because of UMS games, not because of its 1 vs 1 scene. Only after a year or two, people started exploring its 1 vs 1 aspect.
Keep in mind that a huge reason for why BW has been popular in Korea is that, in the early 2000s, it came pre-installed on almost all computers. That's another reason why saying that SC2 should've been more like BW is not a good argument.
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EPT
