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On January 28 2017 04:48 DeadByDawn wrote:
And so, with all these shining examples of Blizzards ability, we are asking for a ground up rebalance/redesign? I think a lot of people believe that Blizzard are basically doing damage limitation now, on a game that is no longer on their A list. Tweaks is what we will get, tweaks are what we should focus on asking for.
To be fair, major changes—potentially every year after Blillzcon—until the game is in a perfect state is what David Kim himself said was the end goal for Starcraft 2 (see here).
There is a mismatch between intention and execution however. Pretty big one actually.  So, I can see why you think that we might only get tweaks and nothing "game changing".
On January 28 2017 06:26 Spyridon wrote:Show nested quote +On January 28 2017 04:48 DeadByDawn wrote:
Whilst we will never know for surre what happened with the attempt to remove MM, it does seem that the release date was brought forward, so they cut the beta period.
The whole removal of MM was mishandled. Blizzard should have enough people with numerical analysis skills to model the new economy model and see how it affected each of the races differently in the early game, from this they could have made an initial stab at correcting the economy to see how it worked. They didn't, the game was totally unbalanced and they did not see a way to correct the balance in time and so reverted the changes.
And so, with all these shining examples of Blizzards ability, we are asking for a ground up rebalance/redesign? I think a lot of people believe that Blizzard are basically doing damage limitation now, on a game that is no longer on their A list. Tweaks is what we will get, tweaks are what we should focus on asking for. The only problem is, during Blizzcon they stated that in the future they WOULD be looking at the game again , and be willing to do ground up rebalance/design changes. Yet when the time came, it was a half assed balance update, where the majority of changes got dropped anyway.
I think at one point they will come around and either realize that it is impossible to balance the game with MM in place and remove them; or, they will at least balance the game around no MM and then add them just as a tool for players to differentiate themselves.
Probably gonna take a long time though. 
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On January 28 2017 07:55 Turb0Sw4g wrote:Show nested quote +On January 28 2017 04:48 DeadByDawn wrote:
And so, with all these shining examples of Blizzards ability, we are asking for a ground up rebalance/redesign? I think a lot of people believe that Blizzard are basically doing damage limitation now, on a game that is no longer on their A list. Tweaks is what we will get, tweaks are what we should focus on asking for. To be fair, major changes—potentially every year after Blillzcon—until the game is in a perfect state is what David Kim himself said was the end goal for Starcraft 2 ( see here). There is a mismatch between intention and execution however. Pretty big one actually. So, I can see why you think that we might only get tweaks and nothing "game changing". Show nested quote +On January 28 2017 06:26 Spyridon wrote:On January 28 2017 04:48 DeadByDawn wrote:
Whilst we will never know for surre what happened with the attempt to remove MM, it does seem that the release date was brought forward, so they cut the beta period.
The whole removal of MM was mishandled. Blizzard should have enough people with numerical analysis skills to model the new economy model and see how it affected each of the races differently in the early game, from this they could have made an initial stab at correcting the economy to see how it worked. They didn't, the game was totally unbalanced and they did not see a way to correct the balance in time and so reverted the changes.
And so, with all these shining examples of Blizzards ability, we are asking for a ground up rebalance/redesign? I think a lot of people believe that Blizzard are basically doing damage limitation now, on a game that is no longer on their A list. Tweaks is what we will get, tweaks are what we should focus on asking for. The only problem is, during Blizzcon they stated that in the future they WOULD be looking at the game again , and be willing to do ground up rebalance/design changes. Yet when the time came, it was a half assed balance update, where the majority of changes got dropped anyway. I think at one point they will come around and either realize that it is impossible to balance the game with MM in place and remove them; or, they will at least balance the game around no MM and then add them just as a tool for players to differentiate themselves. Probably gonna take a long time though.
Considering the direction of the game since LotV release, it's obvious that competitive SC2 is not a priority anymore.
So many of the pros leaving for BW has not altered their actions one bit.
And where has their development of SC2 went in to? Obviously not the patches, as you can create a list of every change since LotV release and it would be a rather small document.
Rather, development has primarily went in to mission packs & co-op mode.
This, to me, indicates very clearly that they are not banking on competitive SC2 anymore, but still trying to keep interest in other areas of SC2.
The only reason Blizzard does this traditionally, is to prevent competition with their other games, as they do not like to compete with themselves.
So it seems pretty clear that Blizzard is likely working on another RTS to fill that competitive void. My guess? Probably the SC: BW remaster. Blizzard Team 1 has been stated to be working on another project (Team 1 is responsible for their RTS division) - and it's not Heroes of the Storm.
This would explain exactly why they don't mind one bit that pros are going back to BW.
Also would explain why they are keeping competitive SC2 so differentiated, despite such a large % of the community being unsatisfied. It's a dirty marketing trick in the game industry, but pretty common. Keep players on the hook, but unhappy, wishing things were different, upset that noones listening, and then bam - announce the new release. The more unrest they had prior to the announcement, the more hype generated for the new release.
You see Blizzard do it with most of their expansions.
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On January 28 2017 08:26 Spyridon wrote:
So it seems pretty clear that Blizzard is likely working on another RTS to fill that competitive void. My guess? Probably the SC: BW remaster. Blizzard Team 1 has been stated to be working on another project (Team 1 is responsible for their RTS division) - and it's not Heroes of the Storm.
I really doubt there is a "competitive RTS void". Everyone just plays ow/lol/dota/cs. That's why i reeeeally doubt there will be a new blizzard rts relatively soon (or ever). As Chris Sigaty stated in a recent interview with Rotti, blizzard DO want to do WC4 (for instance) but they have no ideas for what's their RTS gonna look like, he basically said: "guys you are welcome to share your ideas cause we are kinda lost". And it understandable to say the least. Modern (competetive) gaming tolerates no gameplay which involves heavy mechanics. So if there will be a new rts it will be a completely different beast.
On the other hand. What do we have in our RTS niche? BW and... that's it. Sure thing, BW is a masterpiece, but lets acknowledge its success is purely luck-based. Its concept is soooo fragile and controversial. I doubt BW original developers even understand what makes their game so awesome. If they could they would gladly reproduce it. But they tried and failed. We can't neglect the korean factor as well, because w/o korean scene it could happen we wouldn't even remember BW.
So, my point is. There is no such thing as rts, or lets say, a solid concept of its gameplay. We have 1 super successful game (mainly because of timing/luck/korea/w.e.), 1 game, that struggles really hard to repeat the success of its predecessor, and TONs of god forgotten titles modern people havent even heared about (including AoE, C&C etc), which are all in all not bad games at all, but mostly single player based made by 90s standards. I mean, what kind of new competetive RTS do you expect out of this? While blizzard themselves state their complete lack of understanding of what to do. What more should i say when DK states something like "we don't care about the sales we just want to make the hardest game ever"? They abandoned all hope.
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[/QUOTE]
So it seems pretty clear that Blizzard is likely working on another RTS to fill that competitive void. My guess? Probably the SC: BW remaster. Blizzard Team 1 has been stated to be working on another project (Team 1 is responsible for their RTS division) - and it's not Heroes of the Storm.
[/QUOTE]
Yea agreed, I feel this is the direction they will go with.
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On January 30 2017 21:41 insitelol wrote:Show nested quote +On January 28 2017 08:26 Spyridon wrote:
So it seems pretty clear that Blizzard is likely working on another RTS to fill that competitive void. My guess? Probably the SC: BW remaster. Blizzard Team 1 has been stated to be working on another project (Team 1 is responsible for their RTS division) - and it's not Heroes of the Storm.
I really doubt there is a "competitive RTS void". Everyone just plays ow/lol/dota/cs. That's why i reeeeally doubt there will be a new blizzard rts relatively soon (or ever). As Chris Sigaty stated in a recent interview with Rotti, blizzard DO want to do WC4 (for instance) but they have no ideas for what's their RTS gonna look like, he basically said: "guys you are welcome to share your ideas cause we are kinda lost". And it understandable to say the least. Modern (competetive) gaming tolerates no gameplay which involves heavy mechanics. So if there will be a new rts it will be a completely different beast. On the other hand. What do we have in our RTS niche? BW and... that's it. Sure thing, BW is a masterpiece, but lets acknowledge its success is purely luck-based. Its concept is soooo fragile and controversial. I doubt BW original developers even understand what makes their game so awesome. If they could they would gladly reproduce it. But they tried and failed. We can't neglect the korean factor as well, because w/o korean scene it could happen we wouldn't even remember BW. So, my point is. There is no such thing as rts, or lets say, a solid concept of its gameplay. We have 1 super successful game (mainly because of timing/luck/korea/w.e.), 1 game, that struggles really hard to repeat the success of its predecessor, and TONs of god forgotten titles modern people havent even heared about (including AoE, C&C etc), which are all in all not bad games at all, but mostly single player based made by 90s standards. I mean, what kind of new competetive RTS do you expect out of this? While blizzard themselves state their complete lack of understanding of what to do. What more should i say when DK states something like "we don't care about the sales we just want to make the hardest game ever"? They abandoned all hope.
WC was far less mechanic heavy than SC anyway, so the first paragraph isn't really an issue.
Second paragraph... that's exactly why I believe it's going to be BW remaster that they are banking on.
I mean think about it, SC is known for its competitive scene. It may be suffering, but the scene still exists, it's still a very popular eSport. But they are supporting it very minimally at this point. Less than in years. And they are still investing in the mission packs/coop of SC2. They are selectively slacking on competitive SC2.
That is not a coincidence.
And they abandoned all hope? I don't believe that. They have never truly went to drastic measures. Blizzard does not give up on any games they create until they are profitable. They have digged themselves out of horrible situations before - just look at D3 in recent years. They have shown that, if necessary, they will change lead designers and do a complete revamp of the game. But again, they have chosen not to do this. What reason would they decide to let it be, and only work on mission packs/coop? Only reason they would accept declining popularity is to prevent competition.
Regarding Blizzard saying they don't know what to do? You have to draw the line between honest development, and PR. The only reason to leave development up to the community is PR. There's many very talented designers at Blizzard. They are selectively choosing not to put them on SC2. They are assigning them elsewhere.
Also, don't forget the other fact I mentioned - Blizzard has mentioned Team 1 is working on another game. Team 1 is the team that traditionally always worked on RTS series. After Heroes came out, team 1 was moved to Heroes. Team 1 was now moved elsewhere. This has to be something at least somewhat aligned to RTS gaming.
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