LotV 3.10.0 Patch Notes - Page 6

On January 27 2017 22:30 JimmyJRaynor wrote:
this TB announcer pack makes for a fascinating litmus test. If another announcer pack with an SC2 personality is never done and Blizzard never adds other languages to TB's pack then it was probably a financial failure. OTOH, if we get 10 new announcer packs for all the top personalities including Blizzard paying for them to say their lines in other languages we'll know TB's announcer pack was a financial windfall.



Blizzard uses the initial base price of the boxed game to deter hacking. the hackers must buy the game again. they do the same thing with Overwatch. OW is boxed game with microtransactions. So is SC2. I'm happy with both games and i like Blizzard's approach to pricing and how they use price to deter hacking.


12 yo boys get their giant army fighting fix playing Mobile Strike and Clash of Clans on their Smartphones. Those games are not as hackable as RTS games. Name 1 financially viable F2P RTS game. I've already highlighted why the entire genre is doomed to a slow decline into oblivion due to market forces and consumer taste changes far beyond Blizzard's control.

Of course, we could also claim Blizzard sucks balls because the 3/4 overhead perspective racing game genre died because ROck'n'Roll Racing killed it off. And, monthly subsciption MMO's are dying off... WoW destroyed it. Tellin' ya man... Blizzard just sucks.


let's get really historical then for a greater perspective. Atari 2600 Pacman sold for $220 USD when you factor inflation. Space Invaders $240 and Asteroids $195. Every Mattel Intellivision game was $120.

if u love SC2 and have very little cash you do not have to spend much to enjoy the fundamental experience. if you love SC2 and have money to burn you can spend it in all kinds of ways and have all kinds of different fun with the game. Basically, this is a "pay whatever you can afford" model with the minimum box price to prevent hackers from easily rejoining.

On January 28 2017 01:42 opisska wrote:
I am really not sure why Creager decided to "agree with me" and then go in a completely different direction, even summoning the wrath of TB himself.

I insist that my original complaint is well founded. I have paid 150 euro for a game, which I quite often can't play, because Blizzard forces me to download shit I do not care about as you can't play online without patching and there is no LAN alternative. This is in my opinion inexcusable and if the customer protection standards in Europe weren't absurdly skewed in the case of software (that is, if the same standards applied to software than they apply to loads of other products) they could even be investigated by some customer protection agencies for this - selling me something and then preventing me from using it.

Yes, I am glad that Blizzard is supporting the game, in the form of bug fixes, gameplay/balance changes and e-sports support, but being glad doesn't bind me to being subservient. They are still a for-profit company, so I see their actions as primarily motivated by their gains and I am not happy that they have decided to reach said gains using my resources - in this case, my bandwidth. I am not saying they should stop producing patches, but they should invest into conservation of the bandwidth, because the data volumes are silly. At least there needs to be the possibility to opt out of anything that is not essential for ladder and have that downloaded only on demand.

But Creager's idea that paying for cosmetics in a game that costed money to buy is somehow essentially wrong, is exactly as absurd as the post I was replying to and Creager was "agreeing with me" - it's just based on Creager being used to getting shit for free. As long as Blizzard keeps the things that I have paid for available for me, why should I take issues with them offering other things for money? That is fucking insane!

On January 27 2017 22:30 JimmyJRaynor wrote:



Blizzard uses the initial base price of the boxed game to deter hacking. the hackers must buy the game again. they do the same thing with Overwatch. OW is boxed game with microtransactions. So is SC2. I'm happy with both games and i like Blizzard's approach to pricing and how they use price to deter hacking.

On January 27 2017 22:30 JimmyJRaynor wrote:

12 yo boys get their giant army fighting fix playing Mobile Strike and Clash of Clans on their Smartphones. Those games are not as hackable as RTS games. Name 1 financially viable F2P RTS game. I've already highlighted why the entire genre is doomed to a slow decline into oblivion due to market forces and consumer taste changes far beyond Blizzard's control.

Of course, we could also claim Blizzard sucks balls because the 3/4 overhead perspective racing game genre died because ROck'n'Roll Racing killed it off. And, monthly subsciption MMO's are dying off... WoW destroyed it. Tellin' ya man... Blizzard just sucks.

On January 29 2017 06:00 xongnox wrote:

Well they would have to first effectively and frequently ban hackers to make this strategy works. I will not make publicity for suck maphackers, but well-know maphackers stayed in GM for consecutive months, even toping it. I think particularly of on dude being a well-know mapahcker for years in the 2v2 scene, then taking 1st GM spot.

In fact the small top ladder EU 2v2 scene got killed multiple times by a few maphackings teams (maphack in teamplay is auto-win if you are semi-decent). They played for months. For the most part they were never banned. Everyone reported them, it was public knowledge.

So while it's a nice theory in paper, i think in practice they don't even give a fuck, and do nearly nothing to combat it.


-Well i heard of a lot of cheating issues in Clash of Clans ^^
-I read your theory about the genre declining, and while i knowledge there are fashions and technical evolutions, i'm not convicted at all concerning RTS. Doom is 25 yo and people still play FPS. From Clash of Clans to MOBA a lot of rts-like (degraded RTS imo) games are popular, and they are technically way easier than an RTS like SC2. You can do them all in a SC2 editor...
-lots of 12yo boys play available free games for them, either on smartphone or on the old father's/brother laptop. Times have changed concerning pricing, we are not with the SNES and 90s PC anymore where only privileged children got a lots of games, and the potential public is way way wider.
-I'm not whining for me (still prefer pack-pricing than pay-to-win bullshit for sure, etc. ) but i think SC2 could do way greater with a economic model change now (let's get realistic, 90% of the sales are done, at least ). Making only the ladder F2P and everything else priced (campaigns, co-op, skins, etc, etc ) for free players could be a very good way to make money and brings in more players.
-Not the place to discuss it here but there are better and more effective way to combat cheating.

On January 29 2017 08:47 JimmyJRaynor wrote:
name 1 financially viable F2P RTS. its easy to sit around and fire potshots. its another thing to create a workable revenue model.

On January 29 2017 11:33 xongnox wrote:

Well without changing model, being realistic, given the very few amount of new players, they already sold 95+% of total probable copies.
So from this perspective they have nearly nothing to loose and everything to win. Each Hearstone's new thing is probably more important for blizzard income than the future of SC2 sales with actual model. The F2P Hearstone, witch makes fucktons more of money than SC2, btw.

SC2 is the sole modern esport RTS for years now ( there is not another viable pay-the-box RTS neither, so we can not directly compare to anything )
But we can name a lot a viable F2P esport games. Even MOBAs are kinda a sub-rts genre. And F2P works in MOBA. (for some major titles, at least )

The only potentially intelligent reason to not make SC2 ladder f2p *now* is not actual money, but the fear of creating a precedent (then everyone will think next blizzard RTS game will be f2p from beginning )