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Our main goal for StarCraft 2 is to create the best game of its type that it can ever be
No it is not, if it were you would have tested a lot of stuff the community wanted to try out. You want the game pace to be slower? Then change how the economy works.
You want harass to be less of an issue? Then don't give players flying units which can delete entire mineral lines in a few seconds. (oracles, liberators, warped in adepts, baneling drops t1)
we would really love to encourage you guys to talk about specific changes that are needed rather than talking too much in general
Because you aren't able to come up with specific changes yourself? There were tons and tons of well written articles how to make the game "better" (how to achieve certain goals), cmon...
Very disappointed about some comments in this update, meh
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On October 23 2016 16:04 SetGuitarsToKill wrote:Show nested quote +On October 23 2016 15:51 TedBurtle wrote:
give workers 100k HP, harras is nerfed I mean don't go overboard but nerfing harass is the first step towards making the game better. The second is slowing down the pace of the game.
I agree 100%. Right now ZvT, which was absolutely my favorite match up in Brood War and SC2 up until blord infestor meta when I left, is so unforgiving, so quick, that I just don't enjoy playing Starcraft 2.
Rather than harass giving you small edges over your opponent it decides games. If the opening reaper gets the creep tumor or 1-2 drones the entire rest of the game is in Terrans court and I have to claw back. If the 2-1-1 push is at all successful the game is likely over and we're just playing it out incase T makes a mistake.
Man! What kind of game is that?
I try so hard to love this game but this level of punishment isn't lovable.
However there is a part 2 we're not discussing. When I don't want to play competitive ranked/unranked I play a different game. That's a big problem.
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Harrassment too strong!? When I think of harrassment only terran comes to my mind. For the other races harrassment had to be invented first with invincible nydus, early game overlord drops, adepts, msc + tp back, oracles, load radius of warp prism and whatever else.
Terran harrassment has always been too strong (since 2010) but instead of nerfing it
a) harrassment of other races was tried to be pushed to equal levels, and
b) random buffs to units that should defend harrassments (queen buff, MSC, etc.)
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On October 24 2016 06:05 The_Red_Viper wrote:Show nested quote +Our main goal for StarCraft 2 is to create the best game of its type that it can ever be No it is not, if it were you would have tested a lot of stuff the community wanted to try out. You want the game pace to be slower? Then change how the economy works.
they did everything they could within the budget allotted the game. very few RTS games get as long as a multiplayer beta as LotV had. i'm happy with how they sped up the economy and the pace of the game. i prefer more "fast and fluid" C&C style game play. WIth guys like Tim Morten, Greg Black, and Dustin Browder its no surprise that SC2 eventually took a turn towards the C&C style of RTS. We get lots and lots of testing and tuning that other RTS games can only dream of.
this puppy only sold a million copies at $40 each. we are getting absolutely incredible support considering the revenue BLizzard is getting from the game. Compare it to CoH2 where it was $60 for 2 factions and 1 matchup; they absolutely bled every last nickel they could out of the multiplayer community by charging another $15 for the 3rd faction. CoH2 has sold around 2 million copies.
right beside the quote of DK that you highlighted it mentions that sales are not their #1 priority. Blizzard is investing in the SC IP/franchise in order to keep the brand/franchise strong so that can make an SC game in another genre. Blizzard thinks loooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong term.
we're pretty lucky, as RTS fans, to get this kind of investment into the genre. no other RTS franchise gets it.
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On October 24 2016 08:33 JimmyJRaynor wrote:Show nested quote +On October 24 2016 06:05 The_Red_Viper wrote:Our main goal for StarCraft 2 is to create the best game of its type that it can ever be No it is not, if it were you would have tested a lot of stuff the community wanted to try out. You want the game pace to be slower? Then change how the economy works. they did everything they could within the budget allotted the game. very few RTS games get as long as a multiplayer beta as LotV had. i'm happy with how the sped up the economy and the pace of the game. i prefer more "fast and fluid" C&C style game play. WIth guys like Tim Morten, Greg Black, and Dustin Browder its no surprise that SC2 eventually took a turn towards the C&C style of RTS. this puppy only sold a million copies at $40 each. we are getting absolutely incredible support considering the revenue BLizzard is getting from the game. Compare it to CoH2 where it was $60 for 2 factions and 1 matchup; they absolutely bled every last nickel they could out of the multiplayer community by charging another $15 for the 3rd faction. CoH2 has sold around 2 million copies. right beside the quote of DK that you highlighted it mentions that sales are not their #1 priority. Blizzard is investing in the SC IP/franchise in order to keep the brand/franchise strong so that can make an SC game in another genre. Blizzard thinks loooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong term.
lol come on man nobody's gonna buy this... it doesn't cost a lot of money to make some changes to a game that already has its engine and lots of things laid out.. haha..
not to mention the right direction was foreseeable loooooooooooooong time ago
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relative to what other RTS franchises get we're getting amazing support.
you can yap away about how cheap it is. why don't u just make ur own game dawg.
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On October 24 2016 08:43 JimmyJRaynor wrote:
relative to what other RTS franchises get we're getting amazing support.
you can yap away about how cheap it is. why don't u just make ur own game dawg.
I'm making my own game I distribute it for free -_-
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great, i compare real world products and actual support levels. i don't sit back in some idealized dreamworld and criticize Blizzard from fantasy land. it'll be interesting to see how your product and support compares to Blizzard's.
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To create a good SC2 you just gotta do these three steps:
1. Bring everything back to WOL level (actually early HOTS would be working as well I assume).
2. Remove colossi & banelings.
3. Identify and fix what is wrong.
After that bring back units that still should have a place step by step not as key units but as alternatives.
Sure, macroboosters should be revised still and some other things. But that would get the essentials right and eliminate the heavily frustrating elements of the game.
Edit:
Just for the fun of it let me continue this for a bit:
3. ->
Recognize bio is way overpowered and nerf it.
Recognize roaches now are too strong and nerf them (needed to be that strong before to face bio).
...
Nerf immortal as a roach counter and roaches themselves -> mech gets viable/op without a single buff.
etc.
Easy as that. Instead you had to evolve your game around op bio and its counters for half a decade.
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then don't make a stupid suggestion in the first place to compare a one man game to a mega wealthy corporation
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On October 24 2016 08:54 ProMeTheus112 wrote:
then don't make a stupid suggestion in the first place to compare a one man game to a mega wealthy corporation
i'm a consumer. i buy whatever provides me with the most entertainment for the lowest possible price. i make choices between available products. Spenlunky was made by 1 guy.
welcome to the real world free market.
i make a product that competes with products made by teams of guys. i have a couple of colleagues in the same boat. single man operations competing with giant corporations. in the most extreme case...1 friend of mine.. his #1 customer is Paypal and his product competes with SAP Crystal Reports.
for $40, LotV is a great deal and its great that 1 year later the support continues when just about every other developer would've abandoned a $40 game that sold 1 million copies.
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On October 24 2016 08:43 JimmyJRaynor wrote:
relative to what other RTS franchises get we're getting amazing support.
you can yap away about how cheap it is. why don't u just make ur own game dawg.
You say that as if Starcraft has a competitor in the RTS genre.
You say "why don't you make your own game" when we play Icefrogs game with a million others and watch his game he made with 5.5 million others.
This is not a RTS problem. Or a genre problem. Or that people prefer team games.
It's a game problem. SC2 has not been well managed and rather than accept the exodus to new/different games, people come up with a litany of excuses as to why it was not SC2s fault. My personal favorite is blaming it on luck.
The genre is not the reason tournaments have closed down. It isn't the reason professional players are switching to different games. In Wings of Liberty six years ago we were promised things would only get better and things have more or less stayed the same. It is time for the community to unite and hold the game accountable for its flaws so that we can move forward with Blizzard and say that changing the siege tanks attack cooldown by 0.3 seconds will not suddenly reveal the amazing game underneath. The time for drastic improvement was 5 years ago. This was not met. So the best time for drastic improvement is right now.
No more excuses. No more blame. We need honest and clear feedback from both players and pros, but also and much more importantly, from the people who have left. A professional player is a great asset to discuss high level balance. But a game can't be made from the top down if it's going to have a playerbase outside the top level players. The real feedback needed is from the folks that are never asked - those that moved on.
Accessibility and fun. That's what makes a great competitive game. Not the genre or some petty balance change that only affects the top 5% of players.
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you think only about money, it is your absolute obsession, not mine, which is why I don't mind working on something that I'm not going to sell. I simply don't care about having paypal for a customer or competing with some giant corporation, and I'm not making a game that requires continuous support either.
the point is that this they did everything they could within the budget allotted the game has no meaning. It has nothing to do with budget.
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On October 24 2016 08:33 JimmyJRaynor wrote:Show nested quote +On October 24 2016 06:05 The_Red_Viper wrote:Our main goal for StarCraft 2 is to create the best game of its type that it can ever be No it is not, if it were you would have tested a lot of stuff the community wanted to try out. You want the game pace to be slower? Then change how the economy works. they did everything they could within the budget allotted the game. very few RTS games get as long as a multiplayer beta as LotV had. i'm happy with how they sped up the economy and the pace of the game. i prefer more "fast and fluid" C&C style game play. WIth guys like Tim Morten, Greg Black, and Dustin Browder its no surprise that SC2 eventually took a turn towards the C&C style of RTS. We get lots and lots of testing and tuning that other RTS games can only dream of. this puppy only sold a million copies at $40 each. we are getting absolutely incredible support considering the revenue BLizzard is getting from the game. Compare it to CoH2 where it was $60 for 2 factions and 1 matchup; they absolutely bled every last nickel they could out of the multiplayer community by charging another $15 for the 3rd faction. CoH2 has sold around 2 million copies. right beside the quote of DK that you highlighted it mentions that sales are not their #1 priority. Blizzard is investing in the SC IP/franchise in order to keep the brand/franchise strong so that can make an SC game in another genre. Blizzard thinks loooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong term. we're pretty lucky, as RTS fans, to get this kind of investment into the genre. no other RTS franchise gets it.
I really don't care about this angle at all, you repeat the same stuff all the time and there surely is truth to it.
Still, the comments i quoted are beyond ridiculous. It's not (only) about the support they do, it's about the quality of it.
Sure, we get weekly udates, we get patches, etc. All that stuff is amazing. But the end result is not that good, you can talk about your numbers all you want, at the end of the day i am reading these updates with ideas for the future, with phrases which claim they wanna have the "best sc2 possible" and i ask myself: "what happened in the past few years?"
There was tons of feedback, dozens of well written articles about certain design choices, etc. Now they wanna have "specific feedback" ? Really? It was there all these years for things they apparently have problems with right now, for me this is a joke, a bad one.
But yeah, pls tell me again that it's the only successful rts game in the past x years, pretty irrelevant to the discussion at hand though. The name alone sells the product at this point, it's blizzard and not some no name company. Most people don't even care about multiplayer at all, we do though. We discuss these things.
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usually i rebuttal the angry ranting. and that angry rant qualifies as "repeat the same stuff all the time".
if you bother to read my posts i discuss lots of shortcomings with SC2 and OW. Because i make realistic criticisms a large portion of my criticisms get dealt with. of the last 10 criticisms i've had about OW and SC2 blizzard has dealt with 9 of them.
for example. i don't think Blizzard will ever strip down the SC economy model so that it runs like C&C. So, when i'm tired of the in base economy babysitting of SC i just play C&C. There is no point in me making 100 "complaint posts" demanding a complete overhaul of the SC economy so that it runs like the RA3 economy. i just play RA3.
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On October 24 2016 09:20 The_Red_Viper wrote:Show nested quote +On October 24 2016 08:33 JimmyJRaynor wrote:On October 24 2016 06:05 The_Red_Viper wrote:Our main goal for StarCraft 2 is to create the best game of its type that it can ever be No it is not, if it were you would have tested a lot of stuff the community wanted to try out. You want the game pace to be slower? Then change how the economy works. they did everything they could within the budget allotted the game. very few RTS games get as long as a multiplayer beta as LotV had. i'm happy with how they sped up the economy and the pace of the game. i prefer more "fast and fluid" C&C style game play. WIth guys like Tim Morten, Greg Black, and Dustin Browder its no surprise that SC2 eventually took a turn towards the C&C style of RTS. We get lots and lots of testing and tuning that other RTS games can only dream of. this puppy only sold a million copies at $40 each. we are getting absolutely incredible support considering the revenue BLizzard is getting from the game. Compare it to CoH2 where it was $60 for 2 factions and 1 matchup; they absolutely bled every last nickel they could out of the multiplayer community by charging another $15 for the 3rd faction. CoH2 has sold around 2 million copies. right beside the quote of DK that you highlighted it mentions that sales are not their #1 priority. Blizzard is investing in the SC IP/franchise in order to keep the brand/franchise strong so that can make an SC game in another genre. Blizzard thinks loooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong term. we're pretty lucky, as RTS fans, to get this kind of investment into the genre. no other RTS franchise gets it. I really don't care about this angle at all, you repeat the same stuff all the time and there surely is truth to it. Still, the comments i quoted are beyond ridiculous. It's not (only) about the support they do, it's about the quality of it. Sure, we get weekly udates, we get patches, etc. All that stuff is amazing. But the end result is not that good, you can talk about your numbers all you want, at the end of the day i am reading these updates with ideas for the future, with phrases which claim they wanna have the "best sc2 possible" and i ask myself: "what happened in the past few years?" There was tons of feedback, dozens of well written articles about certain design choices, etc. Now they wanna have "specific feedback" ? Really? It was there all these years for things they apparently have problems with right now, for me this is a joke, a bad one. But yeah, pls tell me again that it's the only successful rts game in the past x years, pretty irrelevant to the discussion at hand though. The name alone sells the product at this point, it's blizzard and not some no name company. Most people don't even care about multiplayer at all, we do though. We discuss these things.
The tons of feedback that the community generates is a mountain of generalities, flawed ideas, and terrible suggestions. Your "dozens of well written articles" exist only through statistical inevitability due to the shear volume of ideas the community has. If Blizzard's request for "specific feedback" is a joke, your comment is the punchline.
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On October 24 2016 11:26 ZigguratOfUr wrote:Show nested quote +On October 24 2016 09:20 The_Red_Viper wrote:On October 24 2016 08:33 JimmyJRaynor wrote:On October 24 2016 06:05 The_Red_Viper wrote:Our main goal for StarCraft 2 is to create the best game of its type that it can ever be No it is not, if it were you would have tested a lot of stuff the community wanted to try out. You want the game pace to be slower? Then change how the economy works. they did everything they could within the budget allotted the game. very few RTS games get as long as a multiplayer beta as LotV had. i'm happy with how they sped up the economy and the pace of the game. i prefer more "fast and fluid" C&C style game play. WIth guys like Tim Morten, Greg Black, and Dustin Browder its no surprise that SC2 eventually took a turn towards the C&C style of RTS. We get lots and lots of testing and tuning that other RTS games can only dream of. this puppy only sold a million copies at $40 each. we are getting absolutely incredible support considering the revenue BLizzard is getting from the game. Compare it to CoH2 where it was $60 for 2 factions and 1 matchup; they absolutely bled every last nickel they could out of the multiplayer community by charging another $15 for the 3rd faction. CoH2 has sold around 2 million copies. right beside the quote of DK that you highlighted it mentions that sales are not their #1 priority. Blizzard is investing in the SC IP/franchise in order to keep the brand/franchise strong so that can make an SC game in another genre. Blizzard thinks loooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong term. we're pretty lucky, as RTS fans, to get this kind of investment into the genre. no other RTS franchise gets it. I really don't care about this angle at all, you repeat the same stuff all the time and there surely is truth to it. Still, the comments i quoted are beyond ridiculous. It's not (only) about the support they do, it's about the quality of it. Sure, we get weekly udates, we get patches, etc. All that stuff is amazing. But the end result is not that good, you can talk about your numbers all you want, at the end of the day i am reading these updates with ideas for the future, with phrases which claim they wanna have the "best sc2 possible" and i ask myself: "what happened in the past few years?" There was tons of feedback, dozens of well written articles about certain design choices, etc. Now they wanna have "specific feedback" ? Really? It was there all these years for things they apparently have problems with right now, for me this is a joke, a bad one. But yeah, pls tell me again that it's the only successful rts game in the past x years, pretty irrelevant to the discussion at hand though. The name alone sells the product at this point, it's blizzard and not some no name company. Most people don't even care about multiplayer at all, we do though. We discuss these things. The tons of feedback that the community generates is a mountain of generalities, flawed ideas, and terrible suggestions. Your "dozens of well written articles" exist only through statistical inevitability due to the shear volume of ideas the community has. If Blizzard's request for "specific feedback" is a joke, your comment is the punchline.
I am not talking about the random guy posting his "solution to the problems". I am talking about stuff which was discussed over the years, where the problems of sc2 lie, how to fix them. I am talking about articles written about micro, economy, pathing, defenders advantage, pacing of the game, etc.
A lot of great feedback, a lot of specific feedback. Blizzard always more or less ignored it, chose to use a different solution to a problem. Now we have stuff like photon overcharge in the game. One of the worst game mechanics in sc2 ever.
Ask people here on TL, hardcore sc2 fans what they think about matchup quality comparisons hots -> lotv. Most people will probably say that the matchups got worse to spectate and worse to play as well.
Are my comments overly negative? Maybe. But i simply get angry when i have to read the statements i quoted in my first post in this thread, it IS simply absurd.
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On October 24 2016 12:05 The_Red_Viper wrote:Show nested quote +On October 24 2016 11:26 ZigguratOfUr wrote:On October 24 2016 09:20 The_Red_Viper wrote:On October 24 2016 08:33 JimmyJRaynor wrote:On October 24 2016 06:05 The_Red_Viper wrote:Our main goal for StarCraft 2 is to create the best game of its type that it can ever be No it is not, if it were you would have tested a lot of stuff the community wanted to try out. You want the game pace to be slower? Then change how the economy works. they did everything they could within the budget allotted the game. very few RTS games get as long as a multiplayer beta as LotV had. i'm happy with how they sped up the economy and the pace of the game. i prefer more "fast and fluid" C&C style game play. WIth guys like Tim Morten, Greg Black, and Dustin Browder its no surprise that SC2 eventually took a turn towards the C&C style of RTS. We get lots and lots of testing and tuning that other RTS games can only dream of. this puppy only sold a million copies at $40 each. we are getting absolutely incredible support considering the revenue BLizzard is getting from the game. Compare it to CoH2 where it was $60 for 2 factions and 1 matchup; they absolutely bled every last nickel they could out of the multiplayer community by charging another $15 for the 3rd faction. CoH2 has sold around 2 million copies. right beside the quote of DK that you highlighted it mentions that sales are not their #1 priority. Blizzard is investing in the SC IP/franchise in order to keep the brand/franchise strong so that can make an SC game in another genre. Blizzard thinks loooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong term. we're pretty lucky, as RTS fans, to get this kind of investment into the genre. no other RTS franchise gets it. I really don't care about this angle at all, you repeat the same stuff all the time and there surely is truth to it. Still, the comments i quoted are beyond ridiculous. It's not (only) about the support they do, it's about the quality of it. Sure, we get weekly udates, we get patches, etc. All that stuff is amazing. But the end result is not that good, you can talk about your numbers all you want, at the end of the day i am reading these updates with ideas for the future, with phrases which claim they wanna have the "best sc2 possible" and i ask myself: "what happened in the past few years?" There was tons of feedback, dozens of well written articles about certain design choices, etc. Now they wanna have "specific feedback" ? Really? It was there all these years for things they apparently have problems with right now, for me this is a joke, a bad one. But yeah, pls tell me again that it's the only successful rts game in the past x years, pretty irrelevant to the discussion at hand though. The name alone sells the product at this point, it's blizzard and not some no name company. Most people don't even care about multiplayer at all, we do though. We discuss these things. The tons of feedback that the community generates is a mountain of generalities, flawed ideas, and terrible suggestions. Your "dozens of well written articles" exist only through statistical inevitability due to the shear volume of ideas the community has. If Blizzard's request for "specific feedback" is a joke, your comment is the punchline. I am not talking about the random guy posting his "solution to the problems". I am talking about stuff which was discussed over the years, where the problems of sc2 lie, how to fix them. I am talking about articles written about micro, economy, pathing, defenders advantage, pacing of the game, etc. A lot of great feedback, a lot of specific feedback. Blizzard always more or less ignored it, chose to use a different solution to a problem. Now we have stuff like photon overcharge in the game. One of the worst game mechanics in sc2 ever. Ask people here on TL, hardcore sc2 fans what they think about matchup quality comparisons hots -> lotv. Most people will probably say that the matchups got worse to spectate and worse to play as well. Are my comments overly negative? Maybe. But i simply get angry when it read the statements i quoted in my first post in this thread, it IS simply absurd.
maybe blizzard just knows better than the community?
everyone here seems to think that only he knows how to make the game good and if blizzard doesn't design the game exactly to their appeal they're incompetent.
Yes, things like micro, economy, pathing, defenders advantage, pacing of the game, etc. has been heavily discussed over the years but everyone has a different opinion on it. there's no way to make everyone happy so blizzard just does what THEY think is the best way to do and I trust experienced game designers more than random TL guys.
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On October 24 2016 12:05 The_Red_Viper wrote:Show nested quote +On October 24 2016 11:26 ZigguratOfUr wrote:On October 24 2016 09:20 The_Red_Viper wrote:On October 24 2016 08:33 JimmyJRaynor wrote:On October 24 2016 06:05 The_Red_Viper wrote:Our main goal for StarCraft 2 is to create the best game of its type that it can ever be No it is not, if it were you would have tested a lot of stuff the community wanted to try out. You want the game pace to be slower? Then change how the economy works. they did everything they could within the budget allotted the game. very few RTS games get as long as a multiplayer beta as LotV had. i'm happy with how they sped up the economy and the pace of the game. i prefer more "fast and fluid" C&C style game play. WIth guys like Tim Morten, Greg Black, and Dustin Browder its no surprise that SC2 eventually took a turn towards the C&C style of RTS. We get lots and lots of testing and tuning that other RTS games can only dream of. this puppy only sold a million copies at $40 each. we are getting absolutely incredible support considering the revenue BLizzard is getting from the game. Compare it to CoH2 where it was $60 for 2 factions and 1 matchup; they absolutely bled every last nickel they could out of the multiplayer community by charging another $15 for the 3rd faction. CoH2 has sold around 2 million copies. right beside the quote of DK that you highlighted it mentions that sales are not their #1 priority. Blizzard is investing in the SC IP/franchise in order to keep the brand/franchise strong so that can make an SC game in another genre. Blizzard thinks loooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong term. we're pretty lucky, as RTS fans, to get this kind of investment into the genre. no other RTS franchise gets it. I really don't care about this angle at all, you repeat the same stuff all the time and there surely is truth to it. Still, the comments i quoted are beyond ridiculous. It's not (only) about the support they do, it's about the quality of it. Sure, we get weekly udates, we get patches, etc. All that stuff is amazing. But the end result is not that good, you can talk about your numbers all you want, at the end of the day i am reading these updates with ideas for the future, with phrases which claim they wanna have the "best sc2 possible" and i ask myself: "what happened in the past few years?" There was tons of feedback, dozens of well written articles about certain design choices, etc. Now they wanna have "specific feedback" ? Really? It was there all these years for things they apparently have problems with right now, for me this is a joke, a bad one. But yeah, pls tell me again that it's the only successful rts game in the past x years, pretty irrelevant to the discussion at hand though. The name alone sells the product at this point, it's blizzard and not some no name company. Most people don't even care about multiplayer at all, we do though. We discuss these things. The tons of feedback that the community generates is a mountain of generalities, flawed ideas, and terrible suggestions. Your "dozens of well written articles" exist only through statistical inevitability due to the shear volume of ideas the community has. If Blizzard's request for "specific feedback" is a joke, your comment is the punchline. I am not talking about the random guy posting his "solution to the problems". I am talking about stuff which was discussed over the years, where the problems of sc2 lie, how to fix them. I am talking about articles written about micro, economy, pathing, defenders advantage, pacing of the game, etc. A lot of great feedback, a lot of specific feedback. Blizzard always more or less ignored it, chose to use a different solution to a problem. Now we have stuff like photon overcharge in the game. One of the worst game mechanics in sc2 ever. Ask people here on TL, hardcore sc2 fans what they think about matchup quality comparisons hots -> lotv. Most people will probably say that the matchups got worse to spectate and worse to play as well. Are my comments overly negative? Maybe. But i simply get angry when it read the statements i quoted in my first post in this thread, it IS simply absurd.
I'm not nearly as convinced as you that all that was written in these articles about economy, pathing, and pacing are relevant and helpful in practice, but let's assume. Let's assume that all this feedback given to Blizzard was written by well-meaning, thoughtful, intelligent people who considered the problems in depth and have a deep understanding of game design. Let's assume moreover that Blizzard's balance team has read and considered all this feedback, and that it hasn't either been lost in the inchoate masses of poor advice, or simply not passed on by community managers. If Blizzard followed that advice it still wouldn't make for a good game.
The proverb that "Too many captains will sink the ship" applies here. All the feedback given by the community doesn't result in a holistic game if you will. The solutions provided by one person clash with that of another. LaLush's ideas about what Starcraft's economic model should be to prevent stalemates aren't entirely compatible with what Zeromus suggested LotV's economic model should be, or Uvantak's ideas about worker pairing. Those ideas are probably reconcilable, but someone with the skill and understanding to reconcile them would no doubt have their own different ideas on what the game should be.
Certainly there is much room to be critical of Blizzard's decisions, but always following community advice (even good community advice) does not result in a good game. The community does much better as a barometer for problems than a compass for solving them.
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On October 24 2016 12:05 The_Red_Viper wrote:Show nested quote +On October 24 2016 11:26 ZigguratOfUr wrote:On October 24 2016 09:20 The_Red_Viper wrote:On October 24 2016 08:33 JimmyJRaynor wrote:On October 24 2016 06:05 The_Red_Viper wrote:Our main goal for StarCraft 2 is to create the best game of its type that it can ever be No it is not, if it were you would have tested a lot of stuff the community wanted to try out. You want the game pace to be slower? Then change how the economy works. they did everything they could within the budget allotted the game. very few RTS games get as long as a multiplayer beta as LotV had. i'm happy with how they sped up the economy and the pace of the game. i prefer more "fast and fluid" C&C style game play. WIth guys like Tim Morten, Greg Black, and Dustin Browder its no surprise that SC2 eventually took a turn towards the C&C style of RTS. We get lots and lots of testing and tuning that other RTS games can only dream of. this puppy only sold a million copies at $40 each. we are getting absolutely incredible support considering the revenue BLizzard is getting from the game. Compare it to CoH2 where it was $60 for 2 factions and 1 matchup; they absolutely bled every last nickel they could out of the multiplayer community by charging another $15 for the 3rd faction. CoH2 has sold around 2 million copies. right beside the quote of DK that you highlighted it mentions that sales are not their #1 priority. Blizzard is investing in the SC IP/franchise in order to keep the brand/franchise strong so that can make an SC game in another genre. Blizzard thinks loooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong term. we're pretty lucky, as RTS fans, to get this kind of investment into the genre. no other RTS franchise gets it. I really don't care about this angle at all, you repeat the same stuff all the time and there surely is truth to it. Still, the comments i quoted are beyond ridiculous. It's not (only) about the support they do, it's about the quality of it. Sure, we get weekly udates, we get patches, etc. All that stuff is amazing. But the end result is not that good, you can talk about your numbers all you want, at the end of the day i am reading these updates with ideas for the future, with phrases which claim they wanna have the "best sc2 possible" and i ask myself: "what happened in the past few years?" There was tons of feedback, dozens of well written articles about certain design choices, etc. Now they wanna have "specific feedback" ? Really? It was there all these years for things they apparently have problems with right now, for me this is a joke, a bad one. But yeah, pls tell me again that it's the only successful rts game in the past x years, pretty irrelevant to the discussion at hand though. The name alone sells the product at this point, it's blizzard and not some no name company. Most people don't even care about multiplayer at all, we do though. We discuss these things. The tons of feedback that the community generates is a mountain of generalities, flawed ideas, and terrible suggestions. Your "dozens of well written articles" exist only through statistical inevitability due to the shear volume of ideas the community has. If Blizzard's request for "specific feedback" is a joke, your comment is the punchline. I am not talking about the random guy posting his "solution to the problems". I am talking about stuff which was discussed over the years, where the problems of sc2 lie, how to fix them. I am talking about articles written about micro, economy, pathing, defenders advantage, pacing of the game, etc. A lot of great feedback, a lot of specific feedback. Blizzard always more or less ignored it, chose to use a different solution to a problem. Now we have stuff like photon overcharge in the game. One of the worst game mechanics in sc2 ever. Ask people here on TL, hardcore sc2 fans what they think about matchup quality comparisons hots -> lotv. Most people will probably say that the matchups got worse to spectate and worse to play as well. Are my comments overly negative? Maybe. But i simply get angry when i have to read the statements i quoted in my first post in this thread, it IS simply absurd.
Overall SC2 went downhill from WOL at each and every turn.
Somewhere around late 2011 i think, before the BLestor era, the game was so much fun to play. TvZ was lings bane mutas vs marine tanks, with a heavy focus on macro while agressive play was still allowed. TvT wasn't about doom droping or rushing tankivacs on that imba spot, it was about upgrades, positionning, and map control. And TvP was also pretty cool, with heavy marauder bioballs against stalker colossi, where you were allowed to drop as terran without dying to pylons and where protoss didn't have to fear that a single widow mine shot would kill his entire mineral line or templars group.
Then it went to shit. First, the abusive strats were never fixed and became common meta. BLfestor where terran had to litterally stay splitted all game long, while the game could end on a single fungal. Chargelot/archon bullshit builds where protoss Amoved his whole army, while terran had to kite and micro like the keyboard was on fire. ZvZ at ironsquid where we could literally see armies of broodlings and infested terran clash for dozens of minutes.
When HOTS came out, the hellbat screwed so many tournaments because it didn't get patched right away. Then blink allins with 13 vision MSC made the game horrible to play against protoss. Then, the SH killed mech play and made PvZ horrible to watch. Then, when it was finally nerfed into something completely useless, cancer mecha were the aim of terran was to never ever attack came up. Oh and need i mention that during this whole time, protoss was virtually immune to any kind of early game agression with 5 min 13 range PFs?
Every single unit that was added to this game, except for the hellbat, the lurker and arguably adepts and roaches, is terrible in design and frustrating to play against. Oracles, MSC, widow mine, SH, liberator, cyclones, tempest, disruptors are ALL units that have been terrible to this game.
And yeah, there's been a LOT of constructive feedback from the community at each and every turn, and not only whiny BS "waah waah colossi are too strong my army melts because i have 40 marines and 2 vikings".
But there's a point where a game designer has to make choice and bring good things to the game with concepts that are HEALTHY for the game.
For instance : most of the community agreed in HOTS that gateway needed a versatile fighter. When the adept as a unit was introduced, most people were pleased. The adept was supposed to be a frontliner that would help protoss deal with agression, secure bases, and eventually even make photon overcharge obsolete (because it'd help in defensive skirmishes).
What is the adept in the end? A core fighter, sure. A good defensive unit? Nope, not at all. The best harass unit in the game? Yup, exactly.
That's the problem right there. The adept could have been an interesting unit without an ability, with an attack animation that allowed micro, that had the tendency to stack and therefore would encourage protosses to split against AoE while using adepts. But no, it had to be the best harass unit in the game, for no reason whatsoever.
A game developper shouldn't rely on its community to voice the obviousness of what's wrong with the game. The dev team should have a vision for the game, with units that have clear role and that should be tweaked agressively if they are obviously being bad for the game.
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