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lestye
United States4163 Posts
On November 28 2016 18:01 Bacillus wrote: I hope not all publishers and developers are drawing this conclusion. I feel there's still a nice market for RTS games, but they really need to do way better job than SC2 has done. I don't think you've been paying attention. They made that conclusions years ago. | ||
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Bacillus
Finland1927 Posts
On November 28 2016 17:41 FireCake wrote: Also, the baneling is a key unit. I think it is the most well designed unit of Starcraft 2. This unit allows you to trade your economy/tech (the unit cost a lot of gas) to defend in an emergency. Which means even if the terran player don't do damage directly by destroying a base, it still do damage because the zerg player has to produce banelings and hurts his economy. (Indirect damage -> communication between players). I think SC2 is exactly missing the interactive dialogue between players ("You took that, so I'll try to take this") in many cases. However, I feel even baneling is pretty dull in some ways, especially in the micromanagement section. If we look at BW M&M interaction against something like lurker, there's a very clear difference. The zerg player makes a lot of tactical decisions on how he plays the lurkers. There's a lot of possibilities in what kind of position you burrow them and how you get them there (simply having them burrowed there, deploying them alongside a ling attack and so on...). Once the terran sees the lurkers, there's a nice set of possibilities of counterplay from falling back, trying to snipe the lurkers, splitting marines to going for a runby and all that. In case of a run-by for example, the zerg player probably gets some free hits but then has to figure out how to handle the run-by, possibly meaning more repositioning with lurkers and more decisions with the marines. It's a very reactive situation for both the players and there are a lot of potential trades happening where both players gain and lose something. Meanwhile with banelings you pretty much have to split back with your marines. It's a very mechanical thing you just need to do as efficiently as you can. Certainly there's some finesse to it, but it's still a pretty straightforward interaction most of the time. Also, in terms of accessibility the marine split is pretty hard. For an experienced player it's routine, but for a new or less active player it's a thing that'll lose you games over and over again. Meanwhile being proficient at it doesn't allow you to do that much cool and creative stuff other than just getting more out of the fight in a predetermined way. I gave up on actively following SC2 somewhere early HotS though, so I'm not sure if there's some game changing in LotV gameplay. Most of the peeks I've taken at recent games seemed to have improved from many previous versions, but the core issues still seemed to be there most of the time. On November 28 2016 18:16 lestye wrote: I don't think you've been paying attention. They made that conclusions years ago. Most did definitely, but I'd like to think somebody at some point is going to give it a try. Especially now that SC2 isn't stealing all the attention. I highly doubt there's going to be any triple A pokes at it anytime soon, but maybe some smaller studio will get adventurous and succeed in a sufficient way. | ||
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BlueStar
Bulgaria1166 Posts
On November 28 2016 03:48 chocomaro wrote: Every month or two there's a balance change. And significant changes are often enough that it puts off people like me who feels like "welp gotta learn a new way to play the game again". I started telling myself a few years back "when the patching is stabilized and not so frequent i'll REALLY get into it". That never stopped, and it's just annoying that they're trying to make every unit in the game used. ^ this | ||
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lestye
United States4163 Posts
The reverse is even worse imo. Having to deal with really bad design that doesn't work itself out, refusing to patch, got us into some terrible times in WoL. | ||
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aQuaSC
717 Posts
On November 28 2016 17:52 Dingodile wrote: This game has to many problems. But outside this game too: 1) very toxic sc2 community 2) twitch numbers. In sc2, you get more viewers when you are talking with the viewers. When Jaedong and Grubby played their original game (BW/WC3), we all noticed that just playing the game gets much more viewers than talking. 3) I already complained in 2011 about "personality-based" interests from the community, they care more about players than the game. One of many proofs is what I mean about 2). I feel like we lost 90% of the community when Stephano and IdrA left the game. Such thing never happened in WC3 and BW days. I agree with all your points, but the most with the third one. Community was far too deeply invested in people that created their "brands" and then left. Not enough community game-related content post-Day9, too much personality based things. Drunk stream anyone? | ||
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KT_Elwood
Germany943 Posts
With Buildorders, the only relevant informations are on the latest patch. And we need people who have ever written a BO guide or made a video, to simply delete Old Content so it does not pop out as top googly search result. I guess this should be a TL top News. Delete old stuff please. | ||
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SpecKROELLchen
Germany151 Posts
wc3 was also balanced around 1v1 but luckily 2v2 turned out to be fun and "balanced" too. In sc1 there was 3v3 BGH which we played as kids and it was fun as hell. there were even leagues for that with. Dont get me wrong, i love 1v1, master each season, but some more teamplay would have helped keeping players at the game. They somehow tried with archon mode but it failed horribly because it is boring as hell for the macro played. Archon mode could work, if balanced separately or something like this. | ||
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aQuaSC
717 Posts
On November 28 2016 19:40 KT_Elwood wrote: What Firecake is right about: The Useless information on "old Patch" Guides and BOs. With Buildorders, the only relevant informations are on the latest patch. And we need people who have ever written a BO guide or made a video, to simply delete Old Content so it does not pop out as top googly search result. I guess this should be a TL top News. Delete old stuff please. Thing also is that some people with good intentions (ones that community needs) are willing to invest the time for making a 40-minute video guide or 10+ pages write-up about something that's going to be soon obsolete anyway. Too big length and unnecessarily deep writing is enough to drive some people away from a piece, remember the TL ultimate PvT guide or something? I think it was WoL related, so many resources put into a thing that was going to last a month or so. EDIT: excuse me, it was a PvZ guide, found it: http://www.teamliquid.net/staff/monk/PvZ_guide/pvz_theguide.pdf 100 pages! Who read all of that? It's good for practice as a writer, but doesn't work for a player that wants to know more unless SC2 is the only thing he does in life | ||
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nojok
France15845 Posts
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Taf the Ghost
United States11751 Posts
So much of the analysis of SC2 really needs to keep this in mind, as the entire ecosystem of gaming changed less than a year after launch. But that doesn't absolve Blizzard of their two fairly catastrophic mistakes: Battlenet 2.0 and the SC2 Economy. Bnet 2.0 has been rehashed for 6 years, so that isn't new but it crippled the social-interaction reach of SC2, but I really think it was the design aspects of the Economy within the game that was so punishing. During the LOTV beta, when they were testing the modified economy, the RedBull Battlegrounds happened. And that tournament was amazing. Terrible balance, it should be noted, but that Archon Mode tournament was a joy to watch. Games weren't actually decided in the first 30 seconds, like 80% of all professional matches. We got a glimpse of what SC2 could be, and I really miss that we didn't get that opportunity. The world, however, will keep moving on. We may get another RTS in the future, but the model will be different. The rise of SC:BW happened with most people played with their friends locally, rather than nameless handles internationally. That matters quite a bit for people to keep playing. It also matters that something like 75% of people that buy Hats/Skins/Cosmetics actually gift them to other people, which is where the social aspect of F2P games is centered around. | ||
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Argonauta
Spain4937 Posts
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aQuaSC
717 Posts
On November 28 2016 20:12 Argonauta wrote: Why there is way more people comentating this than any SC2 tournament or interview? I was pulled into it because the title annoyed me with the "dead game" meme flavor, then it was changed | ||
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Shana
Indonesia1814 Posts
The reason why BW and WC3 so popular even to the casual players is because playing UMS on those game is easy and fun. Just ask most of the BW/WC3 players what were their fondest memory of playing BW/WC3 and I'll guarantee most will say playing UMS with friends, on LAN if they have rl game buddies. Neither exists on SC2. | ||
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aQuaSC
717 Posts
On November 28 2016 20:19 Shana wrote: Trying to play sc2 UMS sucks. That's the biggest reason why SC2 is "dead". You may argue about game design and so on but the vast majority doesn't even play ladder, most only buy to play SP. It's not popular enough to the masses. The reason why BW and WC3 so popular even to the casual players is because playing UMS on those game is easy and fun. Just ask most of the BW/WC3 players what were their fondest memory of playing BW/WC3 and I'll guarantee most will say playing UMS with friends, on LAN if they have rl game buddies. Neither exists on SC2. I think many issues with the arcade come from the fact that there is not much quality content in it, due to how much effort it takes to do something of quality in the editor. There are tons of cringy stuff. BW and WC3 map editors were about putting blocks mostly, compared to the editor we got with SC2. It's sometimes funny to me how people state that the competitive side of the game is that much dependent on the other side of the game that has literally nothing to do with it. I was never able to connect ums players to pro scene followers in terms of gameplay, I think they were being drawn there plainly because of the show that was put and that trend shows today with SC2. Many interesting players and recently Korean tournaments liked by people are gone, and with them gone there is loss in game's popularity. I wonder if similar situation could happen to other games if half of their top competitive scene just left. | ||
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KrOmander
United Kingdom78 Posts
1) The campaign having a cheesey vibe compared to the more edgy Sc1&BW campaigns. WoL was also the only actual good campaign imo. 2) UMS never seemed like a fun place to be for too long. I would rather load up other RTS games between 2010-2012 like BW, Wc3 or even Red Alert 3 to play the custom maps in those games over Sc2's arcade. 3) "Terrible terrible damage" just isn't fun for ladder players and I dare say even high level players most of the time. 4) A little bit more minor, but I have to say the design of Protoss. A real fun killing race that has been to play against over the years, and I do not mean that as a balance complaint point of view, but simply enjoyment factor whilst laddering. 5) The nail in the coffin: LotV. "Make it faster" they said. How about making the game better? Because of "boring early game" everyone wants to be thrusted straight into the mid game was declared the reason why Sc2 wasn't leading the way. Let's forget that the first few minutes of LoL solo que matches hardly anything happens, and that game is doing quite well. | ||
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DanteStyle55
14 Posts
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Clonester
Germany2808 Posts
For me the Addons are the killers. Every Addon lead to a decline of the game in interested people. And when everyone called LOTV the best iteration of SC 2, I wonder why Pros like Heromarine say they dislike LOTV and rather played HOTS and even mor WOL. The first nail for me is that WOL had only a Terran Campaign. In RTS you learn the basics of the game by playing an amazing campaign, Warcraft III had this, SC had this. In WOL you only learned terran (and that was a terran way out of proportion to the multiplayer terran) and a little bit of protoss. Same for HOTS with Zerg and LotV with Protoss. You singleplayer experience was either not there or you could not transfer it to the multiplayer part. Then the new need of forcing new units into the game with every addon turned into a fuckfest. Oracle, Tempest, SH and Widow Mine have been bad designed units in HotS, that tuned up the worker harrasment heavily or forced up frustraiting to play against playstyles. Take Ling-Bane-Muta against MMM(M), the most played style and still one of the best to play. It is not frustrating for both sides, as both sides have almost equal conditions, they can harass with runbys/drops, their main fights are mechanical demanding for both sides, they can defend runbys/drops thanks to fast lings or fast stimmed bio without having larger forces in their bases, if they react quick enough. The style is constant action over a time without feeling frustraiting, because you see where you do mistakes (not splitting, not target firing banes) and you see where you done good. Then look at SH plays or Tempest plays or a proxy Oracle, a Widowmine drop. Playing against the first 2 means you play against a wall out of your range that chips away parts of your base/army every so slightly every few secs and playing against the last to means that you get terrible terrible damage in the early game you cant comeback from a single unit that went into your mineral line early. This did not became better, Adept, Liberator and Lurker are terrible frustrating to play against once again, Adepts killing your workers in the dozens and you can only see how your marauders do no damage (while your marines get shred), same goes for the Zerg. Liberator force your to either play boring as stale positions in the lategame where you have to chip away small bits with the viper, while terran just replaces these bits and fuck your mining in a frustrating way. Especially when the maps have not been used to it and you couldnt place your spore or even your queens had hard times to reach em. And Lurkers are just again another wall you run into and see your stuff poop. For me the games became worse with each now addon, not better. The need of Blizzard to force 2 new units each into game turned the game into a much more complicated, much more volatile, much harder to balance state, where more and more frustrating playstyles have been introduced. This put down the interest in SC II with each addon release, not increased it. Then Arcade: Has been a total mess long time. In Wc3, the Arcade was a major point to even get into the game (once a time after release) and it was beatiful and deverse. From the TDs to the Dotas over real RPGs and to total crazy stuff like hardly working FPS. You name it, you played it. Yeah, it is harder to find a map in WC3 Arcade, as you either had to be lucky to find them open hosted or you had to download them at hiveworkshop, but once you hosted it, people joined and you played and it almost spread itself. The editor was on the one hand beautiful easy to use and on the other hand so powerfull that you could do almost anything there (which then started to be harder then just changing and creating units). The SC II editor never got to this point, mapmakers go way more frustrated using it then using it in WC3. And the Arcade mode itself was a mess, because only popular games got a high rank during that times and not often played games never found anyone to play with. You still can name your lobbies, which is a still a shame. You also cant controll when your lobby starts in arcade, it starts right after the last dude joined. Not to talk about all the downthings of Bnet 2.0 at the beginning. Another big issue was the trend to give your players something to play for in multiplayer games. Lol, Dota, CS:GO, all these games give their players something after a win (or even a loss) and they see some progression/reward after games they play. CS:GO was almost a dead/failed game till valve found out, that a large number of ranks (from which you can downrank!!!!) and cosmetic items dropped at the end of the game help the players to motivate. Look where the game is now since the intervention of skins and ranks? Yes RTS have never been the pinnicle of esport (outside of korea, where blizzards failure is even bigger) but this heavy decline shouldnt be there, if Blizzard would be able to read out the trends of the industry and patch them in like Valve did with CS:GO. So you sit there, girnd your gears in the multiplayer and get nothing but MMR points (you couldnt know about some time ago). It is equally frustrating to grind your gears in CS:GO, it can even be more frustrating, when you once again play with a full stack of foreign language speakers and retards againt a hacker (and hackers are much more frequently as they have ever been in SC II there... and now Hackers are close to be gone in SC II) but at least you gained something for it. You saw your rank in one of 18 skill ranks and gained some cent wise skins (or if you are lucky, some $ skins). In SC II you are left with a victory/defeat screen and the option to play it another game. Yes, I know that Blizzard braught alot people wanted to the game, like better ranks with Master 1-3 and so on, with micro transactions, soon with WCS Battlechests financing WCS like Valve finances his tournaments with stickers/compendiums. BUT IT IS TOO LATE. The trend for these thing started in 2012-2013, now we get major things in 2016, centuries in computer ages later. WCS Battlechests, something like CS:GO Operations, just come out in 2017, a time where it is over. Yes, The game is not dead. Alot of people have fun playing coop, playing some ladder games here and there, playing the campaign once in a while or play some arcade maps. But in the esport branche of SC II, something this website majorly covers, And the esport is dying off in so rapid fashin, that it is frustrating. It is not dead yet, but with the lose of practically all professional korean teams, with the loss of last (and only) teamleague for these teams, with the loss of more and more western tournaments (MLG, RB, HSC gone, less and less DH couvering SC II, WCS leagues gones, WCS championchips are only old tournaments we had long time like IEM Katowice changed to WCS brand), with the loss of regional tournaments like EPS, we are in a rapid decline in every region, on every scale. Yes, there are personans and sponsors who still go for SC II, because they have PASSION and love the game, but its an economical situation, where money making gets harder and harder each day or is even impossible. And only from passion a scene cannot live, it will not die aslong there is passion, but it will be in a sad position. Not only compared to major esport titles, but also compared to its former self. Me for myself, I switched back to Warcraft III as my major Esport title. With the end of ProLeague, the possible end of SSL and the less and less tournaments in the west (11 WCS circuit events are a joke the once we had over 20-25 premiere and major tournaments in a year) gave me time and WC III is gets injected with live again. Yes, it is also mostly passion driven, yes, it is once again frustrating to deal with Blizzard, but it is like BW: It is the game we always loved more then SC II and only switched over because it was new and big, not because it was better. Now BW and WC III have their 2nd phase of prosperation, they are still smaller then SC II, but they are the games we played, when we were children, the games we waked up early or stayed up late even our parents forbid it. Now these games are back on bigger scales back and the replacement is going down. | ||
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KrOmander
United Kingdom78 Posts
On November 28 2016 20:43 DanteStyle55 wrote: if only everyone realized what a masterpiece broodwar was and played that. someone fund 1m$ tourneys in broodwar pls T_T I wouldn't want to play BW anymore, and when someone who grew up around RTS games in the 90's is saying that, then I think getting the kids into it is going to be super tricky. Simply dated from a technical point of view and in this day and age I would prefer a smoother expeirence for a multiplayer game, but I do hope for an RTS game that has as big an impact in the future. I just think the Sc2 scene should chill. Seriously doubt things are going to improve from here on, but the game has had a decent following over the years (although not as big as it could have been) and I personally have a lot of good memories of Sc2. Sure lots of other people have also. Doesn't need to be be one of the biggest games out there, and for those looking for a return of 2011 levels of popularity, I feel those guys are setting themselves up for a fall. | ||
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Sadiv
11 Posts
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ZenithM
France15952 Posts
On November 28 2016 20:43 DanteStyle55 wrote: if only everyone realized what a masterpiece broodwar was and played that. someone fund 1m$ tourneys in broodwar pls T_T The problem is that Broodwar, as beautiful a game as it is, is way too hard and clunky to get into right now. Whenever I felt like playing BW again, after 2 years of playing SC2, the only thing I could think about was "no hotkey remapping?". And I don't consider myself a "casual". I'm not even talking about the gameplay itself, just basic UI QoL. Like come on, a video game nowadays needs those basic features to garner a wide audience. I don't see BW getting that back, at least in the West. Now, where is that BW HD at, Blizzard? | ||
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