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On November 29 2016 11:28 Korakys wrote:
I stopped playing 1v1 a long time ago (2011) because it was frustratingly difficult to make your units do what you wanted them to do. The future of RTS is low APM games.
Anything than that, i cant express enought hate already... games likes Quakeworld, Quake 3 Arena, Painkiller were great fast paced games... why is everything need to be slow ?
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On November 29 2016 15:59 alexanderzero wrote:
I will never forgive a single person that raised a stink about "dead game" bullshit at any point during this game's history. A LOT of people have skipped this game because they were given the impression that nobody plays it and that the online lobbies would be deserted. I have seen it first hand.
While dead game threads surely are not helpful they are in no way the reason for SC2 decline and cannot be blamed.
They are more an equivalent or synonym for people who believe their actual reasons and arguments are neither being heared nor ever will be addressed.
You mix up cause and effect here.
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Nice video. An idle thought - does a game like SC2 need to be significantly more dynamic to be a successful esport?
Balance in LoL and DOTA 2 seems to be a somewhat dynamic thing - the games are always changing, powerful strats are found and then nerfed.
Given the complexity of interactions in all 3 games, I suspect (but I don't know) that powerful strategies will always be found, however careful the designers and whatever the designer's intent.
Firecake makes an interesting point: powerful strategies are exciting the first time they're seen. Viewers want to witness creativity, and they respect when a player innovates. They get boring when they stick around as the number 1 thing. Dynamic balance, if done correctly, means that players can keep coming up with innovative strategies.
Starcraft 2's thing, to some extent, was to avoid regular rule changes - I get the impression that this was partly looking at how successful Brood War was with no balance patches whatsoever. I wonder if this is no longer a winning strategy today.
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Poland3756 Posts
From my POV the fact that SC2 will not live up to SC:BW legend was more or less clear by the end of WoL
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The game plays on the bleeding edge of human reaction. A simple mistake can cause you the game due to stupid amounts of damage. I've been masters many times, and the game feels too punishing on little mistakes. Even at the highest level of play, at the highest reaction rate and mechanical skill, I see top pros making a game-ending mistake all time.
I was watching Innovation stream a week ago(?), who is ranked 1 on Korean ladder, and was amazed at his mechanical skill. He plays vs. Z, builds up a little marine mine comp to harass,etc but takes a look away for a millisecond and his main force dies to a zerg/bane. He quits the game. It ended less than 8 min. A simple game-ending mistake should be not be allowed to happen, and it happens consistently at top level.
This is also the reason why you never see a consistent top winner, or a consistent pool of top 10, top 5 players. Take note of the top 5 now it will most certainly change in the near future. TY, currently second best, so far has failed twice in the qualifiers to IEM. Patience who just won Homestory, beating Zest, Stats, TY, has failed twice to qualify as well, losing to Jjakji. A korean filled qualifier has always been like throwing darts, there's upsets all over. Top 5 players should not lose to code B players.
How is it in 2016 season 1 SSL and GSL, the top 10 players are completely different form each other? And in season 2 the top five of both tournaments are different.
In other 1v1 games do we see as much randomness at top level of play? In WC3, there is a consistent top. In Melee, the top 5 is set in stone. I assume it's as well for SC1 (I don't follow SC). In tennis, there is a consistent top 5. Same goes for chess. Because of this inconsistency with SC2, it's hard to root for a certain player, as their reign on top is short lived.
Yes mistakes will happen with a game that has an immeasurable skill ceiling like SC2. You can argue that a top player making a mistake balances out because the opposing top player also makes mistakes, and you can argue that the Korean talent pool was(is) so stacked and deep so that's why so many upsets happen and it's so hard to predict. But I believe that theoretically if there is a game that eliminated all factors of luck, at the highest level of competition there would be filtering out of extraordinary players who should always make less mistakes than other, and hence the top talent pool should not deviate too much.
But since the game plays on the bleeding edge of human reaction, where the game can be decided by looking away for a millisecond, or by one big fight that happens and ends all too quickly, it's frustrating.
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On November 29 2016 17:11 lpunatic wrote:
Starcraft 2's thing, to some extent, was to avoid regular rule changes - I get the impression that this was partly looking at how successful Brood War was with no balance patches whatsoever. I wonder if this is no longer a winning strategy today.
Maps do much of the "fine tuning" of racial balance in Brood War.
If the StarCraft 2 development team were more careful with their design choices and not included mechanics that could ruin the map balance paradigm (re: Force Fields, Warpgates, Protoss Balance, Static Defense balance, Economic System, etc) then StarCraft 2 could have shared similar success to Brood War.
Unfortunately in StarCraft 2, maps are not the hugely impacting medium of balance Blizzard can go to, but more of a minor one.
Blizzard kind of went off and did their own thing haphazardly, choosing to ignore the lessons learned from the very robust and revolutionary Korean StarCraft eSports scene that existed for 10 years before the release of StarCraft 2.
StarCraft 2 is a good game, but it could have been a much better game than it was, but many mistakes were made along the way.
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Poland3756 Posts
On November 29 2016 19:56 NickHotS wrote:Show nested quote +On November 29 2016 17:11 lpunatic wrote:
Starcraft 2's thing, to some extent, was to avoid regular rule changes - I get the impression that this was partly looking at how successful Brood War was with no balance patches whatsoever. I wonder if this is no longer a winning strategy today. Maps do much of the "fine tuning" of racial balance in Brood War. If the StarCraft 2 development team were more careful with their design choices and not included mechanics that could ruin the map balance paradigm (re: Force Fields, Warpgates, Protoss Balance, Static Defense balance, Economic System, etc) then StarCraft 2 could have shared similar success to Brood War. Unfortunately in StarCraft 2, maps are not the hugely impacting medium of balance Blizzard can go to, but more of a minor one. Blizzard kind of went off and did their own thing haphazardly, choosing to ignore the lessons learned from the very robust and revolutionary Korean StarCraft eSports scene that existed for 10 years before the release of StarCraft 2. StarCraft 2 is a good game, but it could have been a much better game than it was, but many mistakes were made along the way.
I think the important factor is speed - SC2 is a lot faster then BW by design and as a result you have very little to no time to salvage any blunder. Meanwhile in brood war if you screwed up but reacted quickly you weren't dead immediately.
That's actually punishing point of any issue. The game is faster so any factor affecting game will hit the game a lot quicker and as a result is a lot more punishing than it would be in BW.
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For me and some friends the game is too fast and stressfull.. i think sc/bw was a little bit slower.
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On November 29 2016 19:09 BakedButters wrote:
The game plays on the bleeding edge of human reaction. A simple mistake can cause you the game due to stupid amounts of damage. I've been masters many times, and the game feels too punishing on little mistakes. Even at the highest level of play, at the highest reaction rate and mechanical skill, I see top pros making a game-ending mistake all time.
As a side note, most satisfying games have established a good balance between mistakes and awesome plays. Early GSL seasons were exciting partly because players like Fruit Dealer and MKP seemed to find ways to defy the very rules of the game.
Obviously it's hard to maintain the constant feel of novelty and exploration as the game gets more figured out, but it still feels like in SC2 the better player usually just makes less mistakes and plays more efficient. Actual star player highlight moments are pretty rare.
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If the speed of the game is one of the significant issues, why everyone was absolutely against the idea of lowering the game speed? They wanted to do it for lower leagues, seems silly and to be honest it would be weird if they implemented it with current matchmaking (maybe they would make some hard division between lower and higher leagues), but it could work out somehow - of course for those that play the game hardcore it sounds ludicrous and feels like neverending bullet-time scene from the Matrix, but I haven't seen an opinion from a player that plays casually for fun
I think it would be interesting to know how many people play the single player on a speed setting lower than faster.
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On November 29 2016 21:00 aQuaSC wrote:
If the speed of the game is one of the significant issues, why everyone was absolutely against the idea of lowering the game speed? They wanted to do it for lower leagues, seems silly, but it could work out - of course for those that play the game hardcore it sounds ludicrous and feels like neverending bullet-time scene from the Matrix, but I haven't seen an opinion from a player that plays casually for fun
I don't think the overall speed is too fast. However, the damage numbers are out of this world, the splash damage massive and so on.
Playing at different game speeds on different skill levels seems to create an awful gap.
In most RTS games terrible players are allowed to play terrible games and the game itself kind of speeds up and intensifies as the player skill increases. Meanwhile in SC2 they tried to give everybody the tools to do terrible terrible damage right away. The outcome is that anyone can do insane damage with a lucky attack, but only extremely skilled players can consistently keep the received damage at manageable level.
It's a bit like boxing match where both the boxers have horseshoes in their gloves. Unless both contestants are super good, the guy who swings and hits first usually wins. It's damn hard to have a satisfying slugfest like that too when the first good hit ends the fight.
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On November 29 2016 21:13 Bacillus wrote:Show nested quote +On November 29 2016 21:00 aQuaSC wrote:
If the speed of the game is one of the significant issues, why everyone was absolutely against the idea of lowering the game speed? They wanted to do it for lower leagues, seems silly, but it could work out - of course for those that play the game hardcore it sounds ludicrous and feels like neverending bullet-time scene from the Matrix, but I haven't seen an opinion from a player that plays casually for fun I don't think the overall speed is too fast. However, the damage numbers are out of this world, the splash damage massive and so on. Playing at different game speeds on different skill levels seems to create an awful gap. In most RTS games terrible players are allowed to play terrible games and the game itself kind of speeds up and intensifies as the player skill increases. Meanwhile in SC2 they tried to give everybody the tools to do terrible terrible damage right away. The outcome is that anyone can do insane damage with a lucky attack, but only extremely skilled players can consistently keep the received damage at manageable level. It's a bit like boxing match where both the boxers have horseshoes in their gloves. Unless both contestants are super good, the guy who swings and hits first usually wins. It's damn hard to have a satisfying slugfest like that too when the first good hit ends the fight.
I agree. If they lowered the dps all across the board kinda like they did with Cyclone lock-on, I'd be fine with it.
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I believe sc2 has been the best game in the last decade. The problem is 98% of 'gamers' are noobs who can't implement a unique strategy to save their lives. E-sports are supposed to be the ultimate measure of skill and whits between players. Starcraft is a good game, it just doesn't fit the modern requirements of a flashy 'always fun' spectator game that every player can get into. 
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On November 29 2016 21:20 MrSunny wrote:I believe sc2 has been the best game in the last decade. The problem is 98% of 'gamers' are noobs who can't implement a unique strategy to save their lives. E-sports are supposed to be the ultimate measure of skill and whits between players. Starcraft is a good game, it just doesn't fit the modern requirements of a flashy 'always fun' spectator game that every player can get into.
Thing is that competitive games in 2010 became 'cool' and easily marketable, and being marketable forces making the games social easy to get into to maximize your playerbase, and SC2 of course falls short in this regard. The biggest, most significant reasons the game is not as popular anymore is the fact that the officialy supported mode is 1v1 and that many team-based alternatives popped up.
Does anyone know how Quake was like over the years with Counterstrike as it's competition? There seems to be a simple pattern there.
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On November 29 2016 21:18 aQuaSC wrote:Show nested quote +On November 29 2016 21:13 Bacillus wrote:On November 29 2016 21:00 aQuaSC wrote:
If the speed of the game is one of the significant issues, why everyone was absolutely against the idea of lowering the game speed? They wanted to do it for lower leagues, seems silly, but it could work out - of course for those that play the game hardcore it sounds ludicrous and feels like neverending bullet-time scene from the Matrix, but I haven't seen an opinion from a player that plays casually for fun I don't think the overall speed is too fast. However, the damage numbers are out of this world, the splash damage massive and so on. Playing at different game speeds on different skill levels seems to create an awful gap. In most RTS games terrible players are allowed to play terrible games and the game itself kind of speeds up and intensifies as the player skill increases. Meanwhile in SC2 they tried to give everybody the tools to do terrible terrible damage right away. The outcome is that anyone can do insane damage with a lucky attack, but only extremely skilled players can consistently keep the received damage at manageable level. It's a bit like boxing match where both the boxers have horseshoes in their gloves. Unless both contestants are super good, the guy who swings and hits first usually wins. It's damn hard to have a satisfying slugfest like that too when the first good hit ends the fight. I agree. If they lowered the dps all across the board kinda like they did with Cyclone lock-on, I'd be fine with it.
I think part of the issue is the way units reflect their BW counterparts. For example the marine dps in BW is already very formiddable, but then you add the practically instant animations for turning and firing, combine it with extremely easy stimpacking and wrap it all up with the way units pack up in SC2 and you've got a ball of volatility at your hands.
On one hand the firepower is absolutely insane and on the other hand any kind of splash damage evaporates the whole group. It makes very little sense that despite all the differences, the health and damage values and res and supply costs are pretty much copied over from BW. Even the stim is pretty similar.
Thinking of it now, the marine may even have been the first unit put into the game and served as a starting guideline for the rest of the unit design.
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On November 29 2016 16:18 FireCake wrote:
I think it is good to acknowledge the mistakes of the situation to have a britghter future for us and the next generations :
This is what I mention in the end of my video, in my opinion e-sport in sc2 is over (unless a gigantic WCS announcement), if you want a future for Starcraft 2 the scene has to changed somehow.
For the next generations I am thinking about the new progamers, the new teams, the new games. I think they should watch what happenned on previous "e-sport" games to takes the good decisions for their future
Agreed. I'm baffled by those who don't want the game to grow. Keep the conversation going!
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On November 29 2016 16:29 LSN wrote:Show nested quote +On November 29 2016 15:59 alexanderzero wrote:
I will never forgive a single person that raised a stink about "dead game" bullshit at any point during this game's history. A LOT of people have skipped this game because they were given the impression that nobody plays it and that the online lobbies would be deserted. I have seen it first hand.
While dead game threads surely are not helpful they are in no way the reason for SC2 decline and cannot be blamed. They are more an equivalent or synonym for people who believe their actual reasons and arguments are neither being heared nor ever will be addressed. You mix up cause and effect here.
The dead game meme definitely created a feedback loop. People say SC2 is dead -> other people pick that up and actually mean it because they didn't check -> more peple say SC2 is dead -> more people think SC2 is actually dead.
Just go on /r/starcraft and search for threads "Is StarCraft really dead??", now that is just the number of people that bothered to ask. There are probably many more that simply thought "People say SC2 is dead, not gonna bother checking it out".
The dead game meme, like many other things, had an impact on how people perceive StarCraft nowadays. I mean even StarCraft players are turned off by that meme.
On November 29 2016 16:28 PharaphobiaSC wrote:Show nested quote +On November 29 2016 11:28 Korakys wrote:
I stopped playing 1v1 a long time ago (2011) because it was frustratingly difficult to make your units do what you wanted them to do. The future of RTS is low APM games. Anything than that, i cant express enought hate already... games likes Quakeworld, Quake 3 Arena, Painkiller were great fast paced games... why is everything need to be slow ?
Not sure what you're talking about. "Everything need to be slow", 99% of the modern games are incredibly fast-paced and slow-paced games are dying out.
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On November 29 2016 22:45 KeksX wrote:Show nested quote +On November 29 2016 16:29 LSN wrote:On November 29 2016 15:59 alexanderzero wrote:
I will never forgive a single person that raised a stink about "dead game" bullshit at any point during this game's history. A LOT of people have skipped this game because they were given the impression that nobody plays it and that the online lobbies would be deserted. I have seen it first hand.
While dead game threads surely are not helpful they are in no way the reason for SC2 decline and cannot be blamed. They are more an equivalent or synonym for people who believe their actual reasons and arguments are neither being heared nor ever will be addressed. You mix up cause and effect here. The dead game meme definitely created a feedback loop. People say SC2 is dead -> other people pick that up and actually mean it because they didn't check -> more peple say SC2 is dead -> more people think SC2 is actually dead. Just go on /r/starcraft and search for threads "Is StarCraft really dead??", now that is just the number of people that bothered to ask. There are probably many more that simply thought "People say SC2 is dead, not gonna bother checking it out". The dead game meme, like many other things, had an impact on how people perceive StarCraft nowadays. I mean even StarCraft players are turned off by that meme. Show nested quote +On November 29 2016 16:28 PharaphobiaSC wrote:On November 29 2016 11:28 Korakys wrote:
I stopped playing 1v1 a long time ago (2011) because it was frustratingly difficult to make your units do what you wanted them to do. The future of RTS is low APM games. Anything than that, i cant express enought hate already... games likes Quakeworld, Quake 3 Arena, Painkiller were great fast paced games... why is everything need to be slow ? Not sure what you're talking about. "Everything need to be slow", 99% of the modern games are incredibly fast-paced and slow-paced games are dying out.
Literally KeksX for president for this "feedback loop" post!
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I like one thing which Firecake addresses. Viewership for the game is directly related to the amount of actual players.
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On November 29 2016 23:27 Incognoto wrote:
I like one thing which Firecake addresses. Viewership for the game is directly related to the amount of actual players.
but as overwatch proves, there are other factors.
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EPT
