Regardless of the situation, we will still action upon "dead game" comments. As this is a sensitive issue for SC2 fans, please do not come into this thread and talk about SC2 players switching over to BW. This thread is also not about bashing Blizzard, David Kim, or the WCS system.
On October 19 2016 07:14 JimmyJRaynor wrote: no doubt, match fixing issues hastened its demise. however, the entire RTS genre is not aging well. a great many genres do not age well. None of that has to do with Blizzard. Consumer tastes are shifting away from RTS. RTS still has some life in it... but the glory days are over.
This same tired argument again... Disregarding that BW is still doing better than SC2, which shoots down that whole claim/argument that RTS is dead.
The biggest damage to RTS games was done by Blizzard themselves. SC2 suffered because of Blizzards decisions, and on top of that, BW suffered because Blizzard intentionally harmed BW to make way for SC2.
TBH, the damage to RTS, SC2, and BW, was primarily done by Blizzard. They brought the genre to where they are, but their questionable decisions also brought it down. Would BW have ever stopped being #1 RTS if their own developer didnt force it out of the way...?
Some people rightfully enjoy SC2. Other rightfully are upset with what Blizzard has done.
Jin Air is only supported further because the girl whose father is a super rich dude funds them out of intrinsic motivation. Money or viewership don't matter to her.
On October 19 2016 02:33 Bwenjarin Raffrack wrote: "I can't wait until BW finally dies so all of its best players will switch over to SC2!" 5 years later "As this is a sensitive issue for SC2 fans, please do not come into this thread and talk about SC2 players switching over to BW."
What a time to be alive. As a bygone BW diehard, while there may be a little schadenfreude, there's also empathy. I felt devastated in the wake of BW's tribulations, so this must not feel much better. Sorry, SC2 fans. Hold on to what you have and hang in there.
Schadenfreude is the right word. It sure feels better after all the smugness after BW proleague ended.
On October 19 2016 09:13 [N3O]r3d33m3r wrote: Jin Air is only supported further because the girl whose father is a super rich dude funds them out of intrinsic motivation. Money or viewership don't matter to her.
And they've got their players painted on the side of a plane. Would be awkward to leave that there and probably expensive to paint over.
On August 05 2015 17:45 sh1RoKen wrote: No casual players -> no viewers -> no sponsors -> no money -> no tournaments -> no progamers -> no starcraft. More casual players -> more viewers -> more sponsors -> more money -> more tournaments -> more progamers -> more starcraft.
That is the MOBA recipe for being a successful competitive game and they (MOBAs) are beating the shit out of starcraft right now. More and more people can afford living being a MOBA progamer all over the world (not in just one country). And they are developing 10 times faster than starcraft in order to become a worldwide sport.
Meanwhile "thi bast geme evar" or "altimate brein campetition" is dying in convulsions. Top-level starcraft events have less viewers than above average MOBA player's streams with no comments.
And for those who "Will be playing hardcore starcraft no matter what because they are to smart for MOBA". Stop lying to yourself and look at warcraft 3 competitive scene. What? You can't? Why? Because there is no such thing? Well, that is exactly how "hardcore starcraft only for geniuses" will look like in 2 years.
Its too late for that now. But one thing would be that in lower leagues you don't have to do certain stuff (e.g. not training scvs by your own in bronze/silver...) and this ads in higher leagues so the higher you go, the more mechanics you need to have, therefore if you go for being pro, you have to learn it all, but if you are a casual your game can very fast look like a pro-game since a lot of the complicated stuff is automatized. I even did an extended post on that matter once, like explain several different "AI helpers" for each ladder-level until you reach masters and you have to select SCVs almost like in BW to collect minerals.
A way harder, but still doable aproach would be a sort of "SC2 trainer", a vocal trainer that reminds you of some things you should do in order to execute a build correctly and points out some errors after a game. This solution would never be perfect unless Blizz puts some serious effort into some huge cluster-AI but nontheless certain "rules" can be implemented very quickly. This "trainer" would give less and less tips the higher you go up on the ladder, therefore you are all alone from (lets say) diamond on.
However, lets face it: starcraft 2's demise isn't only the complexity (and therefore the frustrating gameplay for casuals) its obviously blizzards (non) doing. There have been hundreds of proposals from day 1 on about some changes and now, after 6 years they finally seem to start working on them. It has taken them OVER ONE YEAR from anouncing different MMR per race to actually implementing it.
I am actually not sad at all, the SC2 scene shrinks again. Why? I have spent years, watching SC2 grow. But these years were so painful: everytime I felt something is wrong with the game, several months later a blizzard anouncement said they will "look into the matter" only to later "let the meta evolve" or patch something completely different. For every patch I got my hopes up and every time I was somewhat disappointed.
Overall SC2 was a huge disaster to me: I waited for it for about 10 years (for the Campaign), but then the story was dull, the characters shallow, and the graphics &game style went from serious and realistic to comic-like. Then there was multiplayer. I gave it a shot and wanted to reach masters with "fair" macro oriented builds, not cheese my way up, only to learn that doing it the "hard" way is also the stupid way. If you see some ppl, no matter the race, going up and staying at high diamond/masters with stupid cheeses and a third of other players apm, the whole league system and therefore the system that should determine your "skill" is wrong. Also the mathematical geniuses at blizzard, that make a MMR system, based on a magic 50% winrate formula, that promotes or demotes you around that number and everytime you bring up balance to the discussion they magically refer to the perfect balance, proven by a statistic: every race has about 50% winrate. OH YOU DON'T SAY? So all this proved is, that their MMR system works, but they also used it to explain the balance, which is kinda... well... genius, right? This also was something discussed since the very beginning, but nontheless so far it didn't get changed. This game has cost me literally thousands of hours of my life (I guess 2000 of playing, analyzing my errors, replays, learning new builds and reading guides from the internet, watching tutorials (thx apollo )and whatnot by watching GSL,PL, WCS...). Let alone the hours of sleep I didn't have because my frustration about some toss hiding some BS somewhere and therefore (even though being a far worse player) winning the game.
I am very glad that this is now closer to being over. I lost and regained my passion several time, but with the SC2 scene shrinking around me, it feels like there is less I would miss if I stop playing now.
After collecting some data, I even thought about giving a my PhD a shot, which should have been around player behavior/game styles in SC2 considering the countries the player come from. While that sounds weird, its actually kinda funny: when you ask your opponent ingame "where are you from, mate`?" at the beginning, you can easily tell the upcoming tactics by the answer. I did this in over 2000 games and wrote down some statistics, and the results are fun, they even save you the time of scouting ^^.
On October 19 2016 02:33 Bwenjarin Raffrack wrote: "I can't wait until BW finally dies so all of its best players will switch over to SC2!" 5 years later "As this is a sensitive issue for SC2 fans, please do not come into this thread and talk about SC2 players switching over to BW."
What a time to be alive. As a bygone BW diehard, while there may be a little schadenfreude, there's also empathy. I felt devastated in the wake of BW's tribulations, so this must not feel much better. Sorry, SC2 fans. Hold on to what you have and hang in there.
Schadenfreude is the right word. It sure feels better after all the smugness after BW proleague ended.
You're just trying to justify being a dick to be honest. Never is it appropriate to treat a community like this; it wasn't cool back when it happend to BW, it isn't cool now.
On October 19 2016 07:14 JimmyJRaynor wrote: no doubt, match fixing issues hastened its demise. however, the entire RTS genre is not aging well. a great many genres do not age well. None of that has to do with Blizzard. Consumer tastes are shifting away from RTS. RTS still has some life in it... but the glory days are over.
This same tired argument again... Disregarding that BW is still doing better than SC2, which shoots down that whole claim/argument that RTS is dead.
The fact that BW is doing better than SC2 doesn't mean a whole lot though.
The point about RTS in general being less popular in Korea compared to other games is completely valid. As people have pointed out countless times, Korea cares more about Overwatch and League than anything else.
On October 19 2016 07:14 JimmyJRaynor wrote: no doubt, match fixing issues hastened its demise. however, the entire RTS genre is not aging well. a great many genres do not age well. None of that has to do with Blizzard. Consumer tastes are shifting away from RTS. RTS still has some life in it... but the glory days are over.
This same tired argument again... Disregarding that BW is still doing better than SC2, which shoots down that whole claim/argument that RTS is dead.
The biggest damage to RTS games was done by Blizzard themselves. SC2 suffered because of Blizzards decisions, and on top of that, BW suffered because Blizzard intentionally harmed BW to make way for SC2.
TBH, the damage to RTS, SC2, and BW, was primarily done by Blizzard. They brought the genre to where they are, but their questionable decisions also brought it down. Would BW have ever stopped being #1 RTS if their own developer didnt force it out of the way...?
Some people rightfully enjoy SC2. Other rightfully are upset with what Blizzard has done.
To be fair, he has a point: (complex) RTS games aren't "in" anymore, since everything that is cool nowadays has to be simple. Every modern FPS is simpler then the ones 10 or even years ago (check out "if quake was done today" or "if doom was done today"). In order to track attention, games have to be simpler. There will always be hardcore gamers that love games like BW/SC2, ARMA and others, but the mass market plays COD, LOL, GTA, BF...
On October 18 2016 16:04 Heartland wrote: the sheer nihilistic glee of some people at the death of our hobby is so sad. You always wanted this to happen to prove your own ressentiment-fueled fantasies real.
Some of us lost the same hobby, to play and/or watch SC2, just a few years earlier. And at least some of us, we had our denial, our anger; our bargaining, our depression. At least some of us didn't go quietly, we had ideas, proposals, criticism. Hindsight is always 20/20, but the moment the ladder and later the viewer numbers from LotV were out, somebody at Blizzard should have noticed something went terribly wrong. But nobody did, or at least nobody relevant enough to shift course.
For a mass market and even for a much smaller RTS 'mass' market, LotV is a terrible game to play and a - at best - questionable game to watch. The closest parallel in gaming was the MMO Wildstar, some vocal hardcores on the forums and likely within Blizzard as well got what they wanted and the rest of the audience reacts with disgust, bewilderment or simply desinterest. A decade later I still remember some great WC3 games, I remember great SC2 games and absolutely glorious HotS games as recently as spring 2016, so it's not me beeing old and jaded. Despite watching it in the beginning, I can't recall a single LotV game. All I remember is way too many Liberators.
I feel no glee whatsoever, but looking back at the decisions of the design team in the last few years, they had this coming and it is well deserved.
I always wanted, really wanted, a Warcraft IV. I guess somehow I still do, but certainly not from the people who designed SC2.
This truly is the end of an era. I grew up watching starleague...Remember many nights staying up until the AM hours to watch matches. Its sad to see it go.
On October 19 2016 09:28 -Kyo- wrote: blizzard announces their own league branching wcs system foreign player participation new korean teams new rosters that will surprise
blizzcon announcement and more u r welcome
Some variant on this would actually not surprise me. Here's hoping!
EPT
)and whatnot by watching GSL,PL, WCS...).
