EPTWe had EG Team House and all the drama to go along with it. I miss those times.
StarCraft II - A Lifecycle - Page 2
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Bleak
Turkey3059 Posts
We had EG Team House and all the drama to go along with it. I miss those times. | ||
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BronzeKnee
United States5217 Posts
Starcraft II started with so much hope. There was a time when Starcraft II was a top esport. But as time wore on, Blizzard seem incapable of managing their game. WOL bounced from countless bunker changes to the 4 Gate to the 1-1-1 to the Soultrain to Broodlord Infestor ect. Blizzard only had band aid solutions to these problems in Heart of the Swarm, like Photon Overcharge. And as a result of these band aids, we got hours long Swarm Host snooze fests. It was a masterclass in how not to design a game, during the very time League was producing articles on how to design games! LOTV fixed some of these issues, but there are still very poor game design mechanics present in the game. And people stopped watching and playing because the game went from promising to boring and frustrating. It was always about the quality of the game. And it started off so promising. But Starcraft was mismanaged by the hubris of Dustin Browder and David Kim, who thought that people would like ladder specific maps like Acid Plant, that players just needed to figure how to deal with all-ins that had perplexed professionals for months. And of course, they thought the technology just wasn't there yet for basic features like ingame chat rooms. Telling the tale of Starcraft II without talking about Blizzard's hubris is telling an incomplete story. | ||
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deacon.frost
Czech Republic12129 Posts
On June 05 2019 22:23 BronzeKnee wrote: Blizzard squandered Starcraft II. Starcraft II started with so much hope. There was a time when Starcraft II was a top esport. But as time wore on, Blizzard seem incapable of managing their game. WOL bounced from countless bunker changes to the 4 Gate to the 1-1-1 to the Soultrain to Broodlord Infestor ect. Blizzard only had band aid solutions to these problems in Heart of the Swarm, like Photon Overcharge. And as a result of these band aids, we got hours long Swarm Host snooze fests. It was a masterclass in how not to design a game, during the very time League was producing articles on how to design games! LOTV fixed some of these issues, but there are still very poor game design mechanics present in the game. And people stopped watching and playing because the game went from promising to boring and frustrating. It was always about the quality of the game. And it started off so promising. But Starcraft was mismanaged by the hubris of Dustin Browder and David Kim, who thought that people would like ladder specific maps like Acid Plant, that players just needed to figure how to deal with all-ins that had perplexed professionals for months. And of course, they thought the technology wasn't there yet for basic features like ingame chat rooms. Telling the tale of Starcraft II without talking about Blizzard's hubris is telling an incomplete story. The biggest player drop was IMO in WoL. I wouldn't blame HotS or LotV that much. Also in our country there's a saying, that you cannot build a good house on a bad bottom. And WoL beta/WoL is the lowest layer who should have been the best for the games which are built on it. (Maybe I did a wrong translation) | ||
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BronzeKnee
United States5217 Posts
HOTS seemed like last big chance to fix the issues and redeem the game, and instead it made the game worse. | ||
Nakajin
Canada8988 Posts
On June 05 2019 22:23 BronzeKnee wrote: Blizzard squandered Starcraft II. Starcraft II started with so much hope. There was a time when Starcraft II was a top esport. But as time wore on, Blizzard seem incapable of managing their game. WOL bounced from countless bunker changes to the 4 Gate to the 1-1-1 to the Soultrain to Broodlord Infestor ect. Blizzard only had band aid solutions to these problems in Heart of the Swarm, like Photon Overcharge. And as a result of these band aids, we got hours long Swarm Host snooze fests. It was a masterclass in how not to design a game, during the very time League was producing articles on how to design games! LOTV fixed some of these issues, but there are still very poor game design mechanics present in the game. And people stopped watching and playing because the game went from promising to boring and frustrating. It was always about the quality of the game. And it started off so promising. But Starcraft was mismanaged by the hubris of Dustin Browder and David Kim, who thought that people would like ladder specific maps like Acid Plant, that players just needed to figure how to deal with all-ins that had perplexed professionals for months. And of course, they thought the technology just wasn't there yet for basic features like ingame chat rooms. Telling the tale of Starcraft II without talking about Blizzard's hubris is telling an incomplete story. I don't think it ever mostly about the quality of the game, people just went to play something else and SC2 didn't have the agressive marketing of CSGO or the free to play and already huge player base of Moba. And as for HOTS problems, well it certainly existed but as a medium player (between gold and diamon) it wasn't really a factor. Hours long game with swarmhost almost never happen to me, and while I sucked against P it certainly wasn't because of the MSC, but mostly cause I couldn't split for shit agaisnt storm and collosus or play with ghost. (It maybe is a more fundamental problem of SC2 but thats another question) Balance problems don't affect most players. Valve STILL don't have a legit match making system, you have to pay external server to play CSGO without half the player hacking or sucking ass and you can't host a lobby on valve server, yet it's doing just fine. Also I'm pretty sure Acid Plant came to the map pool after DK and Browder left the game, but I get your point. | ||
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Morbidius
Brazil3449 Posts
On June 05 2019 22:23 BronzeKnee wrote: Blizzard squandered Starcraft II. Starcraft II started with so much hope. There was a time when Starcraft II was a top esport. But as time wore on, Blizzard seem incapable of managing their game. WOL bounced from countless bunker changes to the 4 Gate to the 1-1-1 to the Soultrain to Broodlord Infestor ect. Blizzard only had band aid solutions to these problems in Heart of the Swarm, like Photon Overcharge. And as a result of these band aids, we got hours long Swarm Host snooze fests. It was a masterclass in how not to design a game, during the very time League was producing articles on how to design games! LOTV fixed some of these issues, but there are still very poor game design mechanics present in the game. And people stopped watching and playing because the game went from promising to boring and frustrating. It was always about the quality of the game. And it started off so promising. But Starcraft was mismanaged by the hubris of Dustin Browder and David Kim, who thought that people would like ladder specific maps like Acid Plant, that players just needed to figure how to deal with all-ins that had perplexed professionals for months. And of course, they thought the technology just wasn't there yet for basic features like ingame chat rooms. Telling the tale of Starcraft II without talking about Blizzard's hubris is telling an incomplete story. I cannot agree more, i think most of the good design SC2 has comes from the exceptional race design in the original. Their new units proved to be a mess time and again, the maps were horrible, the balance was an atrocity. Instead of designing Heart of the Swarm as a real expansion and adress problems with the game they used it as a paid patch to fix Broodlord/Infestor. Only after releasing legacy of the void, with the glorious tankivacs and adepts, the clowns had to admit that what they were seeing was the final product, and that it was a mess. By then it was a niche esport and kespa had one foot at the door. On June 05 2019 23:08 Nakajin wrote: Also I'm pretty sure Acid Plant came to the map pool after DK and Browder left the game, but I get your point. I think he might be refering to Slag Pits, its kinda similar to Acid Plant(only in a cosmetic way) | ||
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BronzeKnee
United States5217 Posts
On June 05 2019 23:08 Nakajin wrote: Balance problems don't affect most players. I think a lot people confuse balance and game design. A game can be balanced without being well designed. However, a well designed game is relatively balanced. That being said, people see balance and assume good game design. Bad game design is power without gameplay (Photon Overcharge), lack of counterplay ect... A game can have those elements and still be balanced. So it really isn't about balance. Yes, the MSC solved some certain balance problems Protoss was having in the early game, but it did that through gameplay that utterly lacked skill and was bad design. As a Protoss player I was frustrated that all my hard work in WOL in learning to hold different timings via scouting, positioning and micro was rendered useless by simply clicking a button and pressing on a Pylon in the HOTS beta. I felt skill being drained out the game, even if the MSC happened to improve balance at times. That was frustrating, and by that time WOL had been boring to watch. That was the last time I played SC2 ladder seriously. There is a direct correlation between the quality of the game and the exodus of players. As players figured out how to abuse Infestors and other stuff that the other side had no counterplay against, the game became boring, predictable, and frustrating to play and watch. Even if it remained relatively balanced. And Blizzard was helpless in fixing it. | ||
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Morbidius
Brazil3449 Posts
On June 05 2019 23:48 BronzeKnee wrote: Yes, I meant Slag Pits. If Browder&friends watched a couple of Brood War professional games and had some vague notion about balance they would never put in things like that in the map pool. And they believed these kind of maps were ''Beginner Friendly.'' I'm sure people playing their first ladder game just loved having 6 lings in their mineral line before the game even begins. Very welcoming. Then the guy went on to create another failure for Blizzard: Heroes of the Storm. In a way i'm glad that game failed because it highlights how imcompetent the original SC2 devs were. | ||
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Ben...
Canada3485 Posts
On June 05 2019 23:02 BronzeKnee wrote: Yeah, it seemed like early 2013 to mid-2014 is where a lot more people started leaving (myself included in later 2014). It was a combination of things like DOTA 2 and League of Legends getting much more popular with it becoming clear that not only did Blizzard did not fix the big issues in SC2 with HoTS, but they actually ended up adding more problems, that it really started to do a number on the game's popularity. It took them a very long time to deal with the issue of swarmhosts when it was clear at the time that not only were they balanced poorly, but just from a design perspective they were a horrible concept. They sucked all the fun out of the game and were very powerful when abused. Even the casters seemed to dread games with them after a while. Every other PvZ was starting to turn into a 30-45 minute death animation for protoss unless they managed to catch the swarmhost player off guard or kill them with an all-in. When the strongest strategy is building a massive amount of static defence, parking all your units between it all, and starving your opponent out for an hour, you know something is drastically wrong, but they ignored it for months, and viewership suffered as a result. Same with all the mass raven stuff going on back then. Yes, Blizzard's inability to handle the problems created by boring playstyles that limited counterplay options in WOL was the beginning of the end. That is when people started to leave. HOTS seemed like last big chance to fix the issues and redeem the game, and instead it made the game worse. edit: Like every unit they added in HoTS was horrible at first. The initial hellbat was so badly balanced that they had to rush a patch out for it since the drops would just literally kill any protoss and zerg that didn't specifically prepare for it. I already mentioned swarmhosts. Proxy oracle was obscenely powerful against terran since it could 2-shot marines and SCVs. Widow mines were permanently cloaked so if protoss didn't rush detection for the drops they'd end up either dead or irrecoverably behind. The mothership core was not that bad balance-wise but it was clearly a bandaid fix for how badly broken protoss was in the early game. They made so many bad design decisions with that expansion. I remembered resenting it a lot when it came out. It didn't make the game feel more fun. It made most games at first feel like a coinflip. | ||
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deacon.frost
Czech Republic12129 Posts
On June 05 2019 23:02 BronzeKnee wrote: Yes, Blizzard's inability to handle the problems created by boring playstyles that limited counterplay options in WOL was the beginning of the end. That is when people started to leave. HOTS seemed like last big chance to fix the issues and redeem the game, and instead it made the game worse. Nop, the biggest issue was 1) Bad maps 2) Big design issues(as I played in Beta and was watching beta tournaments I rather not mention them as the biggest may be from beta  )3) Game designed for competetive nerds, not for casuals And I believe #3 was the biggest issue 3.1) No unranked! 3.2) The w/r ratio with your position, league and the graph was on the main page of 1v1 which turned off many people by ladder anxiety(my WR is bad, I can see how bad I am ... or my WR is good, I cannot hit the play button because it will get worse) You were not able to find anyone to help you as for the custom games there's no match making and there were no functions which would overcome this(chat channels, room names). Nowadays we have the Discord, back then even the outside chat was an issue. - edit> back then IRC was a nerd tool either IMO  3.3) No social tools. Yes, you can add friends, but you were not able to see the replay with them(e.g.), you were not able to chat with all of them - 1 chat per friend(annoying). No teams(guilds), this is a huge part of a game, even 1v1, where you can have team leagues. No tournament support(IN A 1V1 COMPETETIVE GAME) 3.4) No tutorial. This was best described with the picture of newbie playing with marines and a "pro" killing this guy with a tank Many new players didn't get into the game, the game is fast and unforgiving. The learning games were on maps which were NOT on the ladder(rocks denying rushes, while many had air close distance.... seriously?) and on the normal speed(no muscle memory training etc.), HotS came with some Tutorials, not best, but at least something.I can go on and on and on, but I believe this was a huge downset for many people. The strong focus on 1v1 and competetivness and ignoring almost everything else. On bad maps. On June 06 2019 00:21 Ben... wrote: Yeah, it seemed like early 2013 to mid-2014 is where a lot more people started leaving (myself included in later 2014). It was a combination of things like DOTA 2 and League of Legends getting much more popular with it becoming clear that not only did Blizzard did not fix the big issues in SC2 with HoTS, but they actually ended up adding more problems, that it really started to do a number on the game's popularity. It took them a very long time to deal with the issue of swarmhosts when it was clear at the time that not only were they balanced poorly, but just from a design perspective they were a horrible concept. They sucked all the fun out of the game and were very powerful when abused. Even the casters seemed to dread games with them after a while. Every other PvZ was starting to turn into a 30-45 minute death animation for protoss unless they managed to catch the swarmhost player off guard or kill them with an all-in. When the strongest strategy is building a massive amount of static defence, parking all your units between it all, and starving your opponent out for an hour, you know something is drastically wrong, but they ignored it for months, and viewership suffered as a result. Actually wasn't, they already had to update the searching algorithm of MM before to widen its range. It was the last straw, but people were leaving before too. In the end, the game was one of the best selling games of that era, we had ton of players at the start. | ||
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Nakajin
Canada8988 Posts
On June 05 2019 23:59 Morbidius wrote: If Browder&friends watched a couple of Brood War professional games and had some vague notion about balance they would never put in things like that in the map pool. And they believed these kind of maps were ''Beginner Friendly.'' I'm sure people playing their first ladder game just loved having 6 lings in their mineral line before the game even begins. Very welcoming. Then the guy went on to create another failure for Blizzard: Heroes of the Storm. In a way i'm glad that game failed because it highlights how imcompetent the original SC2 devs were. Ah ya that make more sense Slag Pits was shit, actually as much as I think we are overly harsh with SC2 "design" problem, maps were generally legit awefull, it did get better once they started letting community map maker do it. And yes the lack of tutorial in SC2 was/is a problem, the campain gameplay is great, much better then SCBW in my opinion, but it's not a good introduction for the 1v1 as it's more focus on making a fun and diverse experience than to recreate the multiplayer experience in a campain. And the actual tutorial are just awefull messes. Playing against AI is the best tutorial really, but it's not clear that you should do it before getting into multiplayer. With that said most RTS have no or very little tutorial for multiplayer. | ||
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Ben...
Canada3485 Posts
On June 06 2019 00:27 deacon.frost wrote:Actually wasn't, they already had to update the searching algorithm of MM before to widen its range. It was the last straw, but people were leaving before too. In the end, the game was one of the best selling games of that era, we had ton of players at the start. Oh yeah, I'm sure a lot of people left during the end era of WoL where it was infestor/broodlord in like half of all games. I was more referring to those of us who had stuck through the end of WoL hoping that the HoTS expansion would fix the issues with the game. Once we saw the issues were definitely not going to be fixed, we also started to leave. | ||
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romson87
Poland487 Posts
On June 04 2019 20:38 Mizenhauer wrote: They wanted StarCraft II to be something it wasn’t. They needed it be something it wasn’t because of something inside of themselves. I had a good laugh. SC2 Korean pro scene may be on its last legs but the player base seems to be larger than the last few years, so the game probably won't die anytime soon. | ||
Excalibur_Z
United States12235 Posts
On June 05 2019 22:44 deacon.frost wrote: The biggest player drop was IMO in WoL. I wouldn't blame HotS or LotV that much. Also in our country there's a saying, that you cannot build a good house on a bad bottom. And WoL beta/WoL is the lowest layer who should have been the best for the games which are built on it. (Maybe I did a wrong translation) We would say "a good house can't stand on a poor foundation" but it's a valid point. I remember the first reveal of SC2 where they highlighted a lot of the Big Dramatic Changes. Stuff you wouldn't expect, like Zealot Charge, Immortals with the original Hardened Shields, cliff-jumping Reapers, the Phase (Warp) Prism with its power field deployment, the Warp-in mechanic, Blink Stalkers, Nydus Worms, the cliff-walking Colossus with their beam weaponry, Banelings, the Overloading Phoenixes, Warp (Void) Rays with the increased beam damage over time, and of course the Mothership (I had forgotten about the Time Bomb haha). You could tell from the beginning that this was a game about Counters of Counters that have Counters which are Countered by Counters and These Counters Counter the Counters of the Countering Counters, while at the same time it was clearly built around defying expectations. Remember the concept of the Soul Hunter, that increased in strength with each organic unit killed? Dustin Browder made a post about their design tenets once: We have a few rules for our units: 1) A unit should have a cool personality. A unit must be something that is fun to play with. 2) A unit should have their own very unique role on the battlefield. 3) A unit should be fun for the enemy to try to deal with. Generally this means good strengths and interesting weaknesses. They did dial back some of this stuff during the beta, but foundationally the vision was already cemented. This was how the team was directing the course of development for years behind the scenes. This is a classic Command and Conquer design philosophy (which certainly we can't fault him for this, that's his background) but it's contrary to what we see in Brood War. I'm sure a major critique in Brood War, just at a cursory level, is that Reavers and Tanks are too similar: they do the same thing, long range area damage. Hydras, Dragoons, and Marines have no discernible differences, they're just ranged attackers. Zealots and Zerglings essentially serve the same role. Battlecruisers and Carriers are basically the same, large capital ships. Wraiths, Scouts, and Mutas, all similar air raiding units. Certainly there is so much overlap that there exists a lot of opportunity for diversification. Obviously I believe this misses the bigger picture: even if Zealots and Zerglings have the same movement and attack mechanics, controlling Zealots and Zerglings still feels very different. As a designer, that feeling of unique racial immersion must be inherent to the command experience, it doesn't have to be forced via being broken down to a per-unit level. The live operations phase was another area of difficulty for the game. The beta helped iron out a lot of unit roles and gave Blizzard some great context behind how top-level players utilize all these units in a variety of situations and matches. When the game had its 1.0 launch, Blizzard was criticized for their swift corrective balance actions, and they were often accused of swinging the pendulum too far in the other direction. Discussion forums were constantly blowing up about this: this race is too strong, that race is too weak; this unit is too good, that unit is useless; this pro player vouches for the inferiority of X, that pro player is downplaying how strong Y is... the signal-to-noise ratio was incredibly poor and it was impossible to glean relevant, actionable information. Yet, despite Blizzard's outward "wait and see" mantra, we did tend to see rather frequent sudden changes. Even today, 9 years after the launch of SC2, players are finding new engine quirks to exploit in Brood War and increase the level of mechanical mastery necessary to compete at the top level. SC2 was simply a more technologically refined game, so perhaps the team knew this and decided to react more quickly to things that they predicted couldn't be countered by exploits in their new game's engine. SC2 was also designed to have a broad casual appeal, and the team was on record saying they would patch engine-related issues when they affected the performance of units because they didn't want exploits to be a mechanical and knowledge barrier for players to optimally play the game. I believe the HotS squad had to really scrape the bottom of the barrel when it came to new units and abilities. It showed in the extremely rapid and tumultuous iteration process, and eventually it showed in the games. I think things got streamlined a lot more in LotV though, they learned from a lot of their earlier mistakes and the game is in a good place competitively (and casually, for that matter). | ||
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deacon.frost
Czech Republic12129 Posts
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fishjie
United States1519 Posts
On June 04 2019 20:38 Mizenhauer wrote: I can’t blame people who aggressively claimed StarCraft II was doing fine, or that it was flourishing. But I do feel like they were hiding the truth from themselves. They wanted StarCraft II to be something it wasn’t. They needed it be something it wasn’t because of something inside of themselves. Some even went so far as to ostracized and vilify those who denied the claims of StarCraft II’s well being. everyone on tl who pointed out game was daed kept getting banned cause the mods didn't like the truth shrug. everyone else moved on. thus the daed game posts decreased, not because it wasn't true, but because everyone who could point out obvious got banned or left | ||
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GreasedUpDeafGuy
United States398 Posts
On June 06 2019 05:58 fishjie wrote: everyone on tl who pointed out game was daed kept getting banned cause the mods didn't like the truth shrug. everyone else moved on. thus the daed game posts decreased, not because it wasn't true, but because everyone who could point out obvious got banned or left I was one of those people. Facts aren't welcome around here very often | ||
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-NegativeZero-
United States2141 Posts
the fuck is even the point of this article On June 06 2019 05:58 fishjie wrote: everyone on tl who pointed out game was daed kept getting banned cause the mods didn't like the truth shrug. everyone else moved on. thus the daed game posts decreased, not because it wasn't true, but because everyone who could point out obvious got banned or left or maybe the longtime sc2 fans are simply content with the fact that their favorite game isn't as popular as it used to be, and don't feel the need to keep getting insecure about their esports dick size every couple days anymore | ||
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Xain0n
Italy3963 Posts
On June 06 2019 07:03 GreasedUpDeafGuy wrote: I was one of those people. Facts aren't welcome around here very often The game was so dead back then it's still alive after many years. Which facts? | ||
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Solar424
United States4001 Posts
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