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StarCraft is one of a kind, and we’re committed to making sure that those of you who love this universe like we do have a home here for many years to come. With that in mind, we want to let you know about a development change we’re making for StarCraft II as we continue supporting it for the long-term.
As many of you know, Blizzard continues updating its games long after the initial release—some of you will remember that we were actively patching the original StarCraft more than 10 years after it first hit store shelves. This year we celebrated 10 years of StarCraft II with one of our largest-ever patches, with massive updates to the editor, Prestige Talents for Co-op Commanders, and gameplay improvements delivered to players worldwide.
We’re going to continue supporting StarCraft II in the same manner as we have with our previous longstanding games, such as Brood War, focusing primarily on what our core and competitive communities care about most. What this means is that we’re not going to be producing additional for-purchase content, such as Commanders and War Chests, but we will continue doing season rolls and necessary balance fixes moving forward. On that last note, we’re not planning a Q4 balance update given that we did one a few months ago, but as always, we do plan to continue doing them as needed in the future. StarCraft II esports, which is part of the highest echelon of professional competitive gaming, will also continue going strong as it has been through our partners ESL Gaming and GSL.
We know some of our players have been looking forward to some of the things we’re moving away from, but the good news is this change will free us up to think about what’s next, not just with regard to StarCraft II, but for the StarCraft universe as a whole.
StarCraft is core to Blizzard, and we’ve learned that it’s a game that can change the lives of people who devote themselves to it, whether as a player, content creator, streamer, or member of the community (or developer). The outcome of each match is in your hands 100%. To become better, you have to look inward, be honest about any flaws, and dedicate yourself to improving. StarCraft teaches us that that process of improvement can be a reward in itself, and it’s certainly taught us a lot at Blizzard over the years.
You are one of the most passionate, creative, and dedicated communities in all of gaming. We’re eternally grateful for your ongoing support, and we’ll keep you updated on any and all plans we have for future voyages into the Koprulu Sector.
It has been a fun decade of SC2 and its content updates. Sad to see it finally ending, especially with nothing new on the horizon in regards to RTS games.
edit: nothing new in terms of Blizzard RTS games. I think AoE4 will be a big release, and there's a good handful of stuff coming from indie and AA developers.
This just means SC2 can finally enter the glorious post-Blizzard era, so they can stop screwing the meta up and things can actually develop.
I know they're still saying "don't worry we'll do balance patches" but I hope they just stop. We wouldn't have half the story lines we do in BW if they had continued patching based on competitive results.
On October 16 2020 07:59 eviltomahawk wrote: It has been a fun decade of SC2 and its content updates. Sad to see it finally ending, especially with nothing new on the horizon in regards to RTS games.
Wasn't AoE 4 announced?
Considering how Microsoft handled the AoE II remaster and how Blizzard handled WC3 remaster, I am sadly glad that Blizzard has nothing in works(at least publically) and MS has. Alas it will require Win10 which I don't use currently and certainly won't in the near future, so screw me anyway.
I would love some new commanders or fancy updates to the coop though, it's a fun part of the game. Also increasing the tourney budged via warchests seems cool to me, sad they stopped with this.
But hey, there will be other games and they will leave the ladder on, hopefully... (this is the most worrysome thing)
On October 16 2020 08:05 CatheadSC2 wrote: This just means SC2 can finally enter the glorious post-Blizzard era, so they can stop screwing the meta up and things can actually develop.
I know they're still saying "don't worry we'll do balance patches" but I hope they just stop. We wouldn't have half the story lines we do in BW if they had continued patching based on competitive results.
Blizzard has the power over the ladder/matchmaking and the map pool. Just saying that the no touch policy would mean ladder without new maps
On October 16 2020 07:41 Waxangel wrote: Source Post: Blizzard this change will free us up to think about what’s next, not just with regard to StarCraft II, but for the StarCraft universe as a whole.
On October 16 2020 07:41 Waxangel wrote: Source Post: Blizzard this change will free us up to think about what’s next, not just with regard to StarCraft II, but for the StarCraft universe as a whole.
On October 16 2020 07:41 Waxangel wrote: Source Post: Blizzard this change will free us up to think about what’s next, not just with regard to StarCraft II, but for the StarCraft universe as a whole.
Rob Bridenbecker
Starcraft 3?
I hope this means SC3. I worry they will try to use the universe with a new genre or blend genres elimiating the pure rts aspect of it. That being said, Id love for a rts blended with moba. Like co-op commanders fighting each other where one player controls the army and mining while 4 other players control heroes. The heroes can help clear areas for expansions and defend them.
This is sad news. The new co-ops and Warchests were events I looked forward and was happy to support the game, but guess the 10 year patch did add a lot.
My only concern is that part of the Warchest was used to fund the prizepool for events. I know ESL is still running for another two years but with no more income from Warchest or Co-op and the game now free to play, it doesn't make sense for them to keep pumping money into the Esports side right?
I wish I could say I was hopefully for the next stage, but honestly it kinda feels like the waving of a little white flag from what's left of the Blizzard of old. Thanks for everything Blizzard has done.
I'm haven't bought any of the commanders or war chests...but it's still sad to see given what this means for SC2. I'm guessing they intended Blizzcon to provide one last hurrah, but there it is.
Did we just get HotS'd? This basically confirms to me that Blizzard wanted to kill off WCS this year, but ESL stepped in to take care of it. Blizzard really has no idea how to run an esport.
The one thing I worry about is the future of esports.
I was a writer for Heroes of the Storm. Blizzard said in Novemeber at BlizzCon that they would support the scene and were excited about the future of the HGC. On december, a month later, they announced they were done with Heroes Esports and Casters, Pro-gamers, Tech people, production, and writers lost their job overnight.
I think I read GSL has a contract until 2021 (I think), what happens after that? No more GSL?
Blizzard can, and has, killed esports scenes in a blim. Surely community tournaments would follow but...wouldn't be the same.
I worry about that and the ladder map pool, please implement new maps.
On October 16 2020 09:00 [Phantom] wrote: The one thing I worry about is the future of esports.
i think I read GSL has a contract until 2021 (I think), what happens after that? No more GSL?
I was a writer for Heroes of the Storm. Blizzard said on BlizzCon that they would support the scene in November. December 20 they announced they were done with Heroes Esports and Casters, Progamers, Tech people, Writers, etc lost their job overnight.
Blizzard can, and has, killed esports scenes in a blim. Surely community tournaments would follow but...wouldn't be the same.
I worry about that and the ladder map pool, please implement new maps.
Hold on, that's glancing over a HUGE amount of differences. Everyone, and I mean everyone at BlizzCon that year for Heroes knew shit was going down. No one was getting contracts or any details. They kept being told "it's still being planned" or something.
Blizzard made no commitments or had any contracts for anyone past that year, whereas in SC2 that DH contract is good for 2 more years.
On October 16 2020 07:41 Waxangel wrote: Source Post: Blizzard this change will free us up to think about what’s next, not just with regard to StarCraft II, but for the StarCraft universe as a whole.
Rob Bridenbecker
Starcraft 3?
I hope this means SC3. I worry they will try to use the universe with a new genre or blend genres elimiating the pure rts aspect of it. That being said, Id love for a rts blended with moba. Like co-op commanders fighting each other where one player controls the army and mining while 4 other players control heroes. The heroes can help clear areas for expansions and defend them.
Dreamhaven should continue the SC legacy and Blizzard should denounce it since well Blizzard has lost its soul and it should just be renamed Activision.
On October 16 2020 07:41 Waxangel wrote: Rob Bridenbecker
who?
On October 16 2020 09:07 Wintex wrote: I think GSL is dead and that's the hidden information mr Apollo was refraining from sharing when he tweeted this:
good insight.
On October 16 2020 09:14 washikie wrote: This is so sad
seeing as Blizzard is a US company founded by Americans and based upon American principles...
"so bye bye miss american pie... drove my chevy to the levy but the levy was dry...them good ole' boys are drinking whiskey and rye singing this'll be the day that i die..."
Not surprised. Although it kinda sketches to read about Blizzard's record revenue year follow by massive layoffs, office shutdowns, and shelving games. Blizzard is that max-ed out Terran player that no longer needs scvs and can afford to just lay off all their workers in favor of mule spam.
On October 16 2020 07:41 Waxangel wrote: Source Post: Blizzard this change will free us up to think about what’s next, not just with regard to StarCraft II, but for the StarCraft universe as a whole.
Rob Bridenbecker
Starcraft 3?
I hope this means SC3. I worry they will try to use the universe with a new genre or blend genres elimiating the pure rts aspect of it. That being said, Id love for a rts blended with moba. Like co-op commanders fighting each other where one player controls the army and mining while 4 other players control heroes. The heroes can help clear areas for expansions and defend them.
Dreamhaven should continue the SC legacy and Blizzard should denounce it since well Blizzard has lost its soul and it should just be renamed Activision.
Valve should make the next top tier RTS title.
I’m convinced SC2 was only as big as it was because it was a Blizzard game, with all that entails (or entailed depending on how pessimistic one is). Plus you had a generation of RTS veterans looking a new title.
Even if SC3 starts development tomorrow, chances are I’m closer to 40 than 30 when it comes out.
I think RTS’ chance to make a big splash in today’s market depends almost entirely on a huge company with a great track record and community goodwill putting one out, that is PC focused. Which is who these days?
I think AoE4 may well be a great game for example, will it inject new life into the genre? I can see a potentially fantastic game populated by folks who’ve played RTS games historically and want their fix, but will it branch wider?
Excited to see what happens they do a balance patch and you can't make custom lobbies because they broke something, doubt it'll get fixed as "fast" as the last time it happened lmao
"Guys be aware of this fake balance updates, it's just new content for excitement to lure people in the game."
"Guys focus on true balance and self sustainability of the game because soon or later Blizzard will pull the plug and the game will have to grow up and sustain itself"
And here we go... panic will be the main reaction now
This doesn't seem to change much for the core of the SC2 community that only cares about 1vs1 multiplayer. In 10 years, I haven't paid for any DLC content even once, and I still haven't even tried co-op or whatever other features there may be.
And the bit about esports doesn't explicitly confirm, but at least imply that GSL will still be around.
StarCraft II esports, which is part of the highest echelon of professional competitive gaming, will also continue going strong as it has been through our partners ESL Gaming and GSL.
I can only speak for myself, but that's all I really want from this game.
On October 16 2020 09:27 phodacbiet wrote: Not surprised. Although it kinda sketches to read about Blizzard's record revenue year follow by massive layoffs, office shutdowns, and shelving games. Blizzard is that max-ed out Terran player that no longer needs scvs and can afford to just lay off all their workers in favor of mule spam.
Well if this isn't apt comparison. This is scripture right here.
On October 16 2020 09:51 Aesto wrote: This doesn't seem to change much for the core of the SC2 community that only cares about 1vs1 multiplayer. In 10 years, I haven't paid for any DLC content even once, and I still haven't even tried co-op or whatever other features there may be.
And the bit about esports doesn't explicitly confirm, but at least imply that GSL will still be around.
StarCraft II esports, which is part of the highest echelon of professional competitive gaming, will also continue going strong as it has been through our partners ESL Gaming and GSL.
I can only speak for myself, but that's all I really want from this game.
On October 16 2020 07:59 eviltomahawk wrote: It has been a fun decade of SC2 and its content updates. Sad to see it finally ending, especially with nothing new on the horizon in regards to RTS games.
The insane grow of BW in korea feels quite new (or refreshing) to me
On October 16 2020 08:56 Solar424 wrote: Did we just get HotS'd? This basically confirms to me that Blizzard wanted to kill off WCS this year, but ESL stepped in to take care of it. Blizzard really has no idea how to run an esport.
HotS'd? The community didnt support HGC and they decided to shut it down. Just a logical decision
you would think that people who regularly get poo pooed on by other gaming communities as a dead game would be more fair to the HGC to rather than stoop down to the same level.
The HGC had the same amount amount or more viewers than the GSL, WoW esports, and WAY more than the Hearthstone esports, on a regular basis.
LOL would not be surprised if the letter writers name is a pseudonym for the infamous J Allen Brack. It feels like only WoW related games and Overwatch received Blizzard's blessings after his reign of terror began.
If Starcraft Esports ever looks like it's on the ropes completely hopefully Team Liquid and some big sponsors can come together to keep it going. There isn't another game for Starcraft people to switch to. We aren't going anywhere.
On October 16 2020 07:59 eviltomahawk wrote: It has been a fun decade of SC2 and its content updates. Sad to see it finally ending, especially with nothing new on the horizon in regards to RTS games.
Wasn't AoE 4 announced?
Considering how Microsoft handled the AoE II remaster and how Blizzard handled WC3 remaster, I am sadly glad that Blizzard has nothing in works(at least publically) and MS has. Alas it will require Win10 which I don't use currently and certainly won't in the near future, so screw me anyway.
I would love some new commanders or fancy updates to the coop though, it's a fun part of the game. Also increasing the tourney budged via warchests seems cool to me, sad they stopped with this.
But hey, there will be other games and they will leave the ladder on, hopefully... (this is the most worrysome thing)
On October 16 2020 08:05 CatheadSC2 wrote: This just means SC2 can finally enter the glorious post-Blizzard era, so they can stop screwing the meta up and things can actually develop.
I know they're still saying "don't worry we'll do balance patches" but I hope they just stop. We wouldn't have half the story lines we do in BW if they had continued patching based on competitive results.
Blizzard has the power over the ladder/matchmaking and the map pool. Just saying that the no touch policy would mean ladder without new maps
There will be new maps and balance tweaks, but there won't be massive overhauls and unit redesigns like we had in the past.
Blizzard's method for adding new maps to the game has relied on community development for a long time already. The only thing they really do there is simply pick and choose which ones to add in. They can keep doing that.
Heroes of the Storm has been in maintenence mode for a long time and they still get pretty regular hero balances and reworks even if their map pool is still pretty much stuck. SC2 can keep getting new maps, it takes Blizz almost no effort to retune the map pool.
On October 16 2020 07:59 eviltomahawk wrote: It has been a fun decade of SC2 and its content updates. Sad to see it finally ending, especially with nothing new on the horizon in regards to RTS games.
There is Spellforce 3 around, they working on a second expansion and matchmaking atm, not sure when we will get them, it's pretty fun ! and aoe4 as someone said in another comment :D
Activision Blizzards motives have been quite clear in the recent few years, they have been systematically downsizing most of the E sports divisions and tripling down on Overwatch League. The initial backlash with HGC taught them that they shouldn't just suddenly cut all funding to a league, which is probably why they signed a 3 year contract with ESL. However it is obvious that they are intending to cut all spending on SC2, this will likely mean future tournaments will field a smaller prize pool, so that organizations that are having trouble getting sponsors will either have fewer tournaments or simply reduce the number of player spots in their tournaments.
On October 16 2020 10:44 MinixTheNerd wrote: Activision Blizzards motives have been quite clear in the recent few years, they have been systematically downsizing most of the E sports divisions and tripling down on Overwatch League. The initial backlash with HGC taught them that they shouldn't just suddenly cut all funding to a league, which is probably why they signed a 3 year contract with ESL. However it is obvious that they are intending to cut all spending on SC2, this will likely mean future tournaments will field a smaller prize pool, so that organizations that are having trouble getting sponsors will either have fewer tournaments or simply reduce the number of player spots in their tournaments.
Good thing the deal runs till 2023, after that the community will take over. But yes the pro player scene wont be the same
For the non progamers and every average joe like myself, it will be good if blizzard can confirm there will be periodic map rotation.
For the progamer, it is time to think about streaming. I heard (from BW and SC2 content creator video) BW pro have been making more money off streaming and donation rather than competition price pool. So may be we can see serral and maru playing day in day out instead of just in big tournament?
On October 16 2020 10:47 mounteast0 wrote: For the non progamers and every average joe like myself, it will be good if blizzard can confirm there will be periodic map rotation.
For the progamer, it is time to think about streaming. I heard (from BW and SC2 content creator video) BW pro have been making more money off streaming and donation rather than competition price pool. So may be we can see serral and maru playing day in day out instead of just in big tournament?
Or maybe they just won't play anymore becauee they had earn enough, if it happens, it'll be so sad
I'll be completely honest. I dont want a Starcraft 3 if Blizzard is going to be the studio making it.
The current Blizzard is not the Blizzard that created broodwar / WoL, they just are not capable of making a great game. They never listen to the community until its too late, they give us changes nobody asks for and take months to provide any sort of update. I love starcraft but it is better off without Blizzards involvement at this point.
On October 16 2020 10:47 mounteast0 wrote: For the non progamers and every average joe like myself, it will be good if blizzard can confirm there will be periodic map rotation.
For the progamer, it is time to think about streaming. I heard (from BW and SC2 content creator video) BW pro have been making more money off streaming and donation rather than competition price pool. So may be we can see serral and maru playing day in day out instead of just in big tournament?
Or maybe they just won't play anymore becauee they had earn enough, if it happens, it'll be so sad
Thats more likely, really doubt those guys that refuse to play 20k+ tournaments will suddenly stream everyday in 2023 just to get some donations here and there. They now have time to think about a transition, go hard for another 2 years and then go into the next chapter of their lives
On October 16 2020 11:26 RandomPlayer416 wrote: I'll be completely honest. I dont want a Starcraft 3 if Blizzard is going to be the studio making it.
The current Blizzard is not the Blizzard that created broodwar / WoL, they just are not capable of making a great game. They never listen to the community until its too late, they give us changes nobody asks for and take months to provide any sort of update. I love starcraft but it is better off without Blizzards involvement at this point.
I agree, Blizzard has awful business practices, shocking writing quality when it comes to the campaign story; and a conflict of interest between balancing the game vs making it entertaining to watch.
For me personally I will only be invested in sc2 content for as long as my favourite pro-gamers are active, as soon as they retire or move onto other games, then I'm basically out too.
On October 16 2020 07:59 eviltomahawk wrote: It has been a fun decade of SC2 and its content updates. Sad to see it finally ending, especially with nothing new on the horizon in regards to RTS games.
There is Spellforce 3 around, they working on a second expansion and matchmaking atm, not sure when we will get them, it's pretty fun ! and aoe4 as someone said in another comment :D
There is also Total War: Warhammer 2. There is a tournament scene, and those games tend to be amazing to watch. It is a lot more accessible than Starcraft, it also has a pretty large playerbase, and Creative Assembly is flush with cash thanks to the success of Three Kingdoms. All Total War games (but especially Three Kingdoms ofc) are very popular in China, which nowadays seems to be very helpful in getting a competitive multiplayer scene financed. So the game has a lot of potential for a healthy esports scene. The game is really only held back by its terrible ladder, especially the way the lobby works and all the laming strategies that exist in the game. All that doesn't exist in tournaments, so they tend to be great, but without a good ladder, it is hard for new people to get into it, so most just stick to singleplayer. But I feel that for TW: Warhammer 3, Creative Assembly could potentially focus on improving the multiplayer. I sort of doubt it, but it would be amazing.
On October 16 2020 07:59 eviltomahawk wrote: It has been a fun decade of SC2 and its content updates. Sad to see it finally ending, especially with nothing new on the horizon in regards to RTS games.
There is Spellforce 3 around, they working on a second expansion and matchmaking atm, not sure when we will get them, it's pretty fun ! and aoe4 as someone said in another comment :D
There is also Total War: Warhammer 2. There is a tournament scene, and those games tend to be amazing to watch. It is a lot more accessible than Starcraft, it also has a pretty large playerbase, and Creative Assembly is flush with cash thanks to the success of Three Kingdoms. All Total War games (but especially Three Kingdoms ofc) are very popular in China, which nowadays seems to be very helpful in getting a competitive multiplayer scene financed. So the game has a lot of potential for a healthy esports scene. The game is really only held back by its terrible ladder, especially the way the lobby works and all the laming strategies that exist in the game. All that doesn't exist in tournaments, so they tend to be great, but without a good ladder, it is hard for new people to get into it, so most just stick to singleplayer. But I feel that for TW: Warhammer 3, Creative Assembly could potentially focus on improving the multiplayer. I sort of doubt it, but it would be amazing.
Total Warhammer 2 as a competitive game is a joke.
RIP RTS genre. We will never see the like of StarCraft games again. Only boring and slow ass RTS like Total War left. Fuck gaming trend with its endless stream of FPS and BR.
It was a fun ride boys, Starcraft at its worst is 10 times more fun to watch than the other esports. We got funding until 2022 but this probably shows what Blizzard plans for the game after that.
This is the HotS situation all over again. Not the first time Blizzard makes a *viewer friendly content* decision. They just leave the game to survive or die on the mercy of third-party organizers. btw Team LP just confirmed that their contracts with Patience and Hurricane has ended on a peaceful term. Things are moving too fast.
I'm hopeful in a sense because not having balance patches designed around warchest sales could lead to substantially more thoughtful and better balance patches. (The rationale behind the voidray buffs were definitely ... questionable. But hey I got a SICK banner lol). Of course, I'm also worried. If it's going into pure maintenance mode, balance updates might not be very substantial. Time will tell on that front.
In the winter of last year, I was worried the scene was on life support and was dying. Now we still have 2 more years guaranteed from ESL, so that's excellent.
I wonder if there will ever be talks of loosening up the IP restrictions so that independent businesses can more easily utilize Starcraft 2 to create profitable content without the looming threat of legal action. As it is right now I struggle to see how any Esports ventures actually make any money on their own... And I don't think you need to be an expert to see that the extreme looming threat of legal action, and lack of ownership rights more generally discourages a lot of would-be independent content creators from spreading the popularity of the game even further.
I think making Sc2 free to play and adding skins and voice packs and so on was bad from the begining. This was gonna happen sooner or later anyway. To be honest, in the begining they probably saw a steady income from this. But now they probably dont earn anything at all.
They say that they gonna keep promoting the franchise, which they must cuz it has huge value for them. As they can sell it to Microsoft ......
Tbh we got quite far, their management of this game was terrible all around, it killed the BW scene in Korea and gave its infrastructure to LoL as a parting gift. We knew proleague was dead the moment we saw the 2013 winner break up the next morning. They made almost every single bad decision they could for years. Free to play, Warchests and Coop could have made this game into something else if they didn't take 5 years to figure that out.
Well we all knew it was coming, the decline of Blizzard support. I don't even know if this is bad news, no new content to buy isn't that horrible what kind of support has Blizzard given that we will miss?
I guess the true repercussions of this will not be known until Apollo releases the full plan for next year. How GSL will be effected is a big one and much more important to me than co-op commanders and skins.
On October 16 2020 15:42 Shuffleblade wrote: Well we all knew it was coming, the decline of Blizzard support. I don't even know if this is bad news, no new content to buy isn't that horrible what kind of support has Blizzard given that we will miss?
I guess the true repercussions of this will not be known until Apollo releases the full plan for next year. How GSL will be effected is a big one and much more important to me than co-op commanders and skins.
Does ESL have any say in GSL? I thought it was all Afreeca, if ESL had any say in GSL i think we would already have foreigners seeded into RO4.
Open question to everyone. With no more big overhauls or redesigns coming, what do you think of the current state of the game? We're probably now stuck with it forever. Fingers crossed this final design will have a lot of longevity. Are there any previous annual iterations you preferred? Did you prefer a previous of the Raven, Cyclone etc.?
On October 16 2020 14:16 IvorYchef wrote: I think making Sc2 free to play and adding skins and voice packs and so on was bad from the begining. This was gonna happen sooner or later anyway. To be honest, in the begining they probably saw a steady income from this. But now they probably dont earn anything at all.
They say that they gonna keep promoting the franchise, which they must cuz it has huge value for them. As they can sell it to Microsoft ......
I think this is non news
This comment is so out of touch with the modern video game monetization model. Microtransaction sales give companies a reason to keep investing after a product's launch and it boosted the number of players. Microtransactions like skins, announcers, etc give casual players an incentive to keep playing and help keep a game's playerbase healthy. This is bad for Starcraft and certainly not "non news".
On October 16 2020 15:42 Shuffleblade wrote: Well we all knew it was coming, the decline of Blizzard support. I don't even know if this is bad news, no new content to buy isn't that horrible what kind of support has Blizzard given that we will miss?
I guess the true repercussions of this will not be known until Apollo releases the full plan for next year. How GSL will be effected is a big one and much more important to me than co-op commanders and skins.
Does ESL have any say in GSL? I thought it was all Afreeca, if ESL had any say in GSL i think we would already have foreigners seeded into RO4.
What do you mean if they have any say? I do know ESL lays the plans for the global starcraft 2 circuit and the rules for how that competition works. This means ESL also has a plan for how GSL fits into the starcraft 2 professional circuit, if GSL disappears ESL will know.
On October 16 2020 07:59 eviltomahawk wrote: It has been a fun decade of SC2 and its content updates. Sad to see it finally ending, especially with nothing new on the horizon in regards to RTS games.
Wasn't AoE 4 announced?
Considering how Microsoft handled the AoE II remaster and how Blizzard handled WC3 remaster, I am sadly glad that Blizzard has nothing in works(at least publically) and MS has. Alas it will require Win10 which I don't use currently and certainly won't in the near future, so screw me anyway.
I would love some new commanders or fancy updates to the coop though, it's a fun part of the game. Also increasing the tourney budged via warchests seems cool to me, sad they stopped with this.
But hey, there will be other games and they will leave the ladder on, hopefully... (this is the most worrysome thing)
On October 16 2020 08:05 CatheadSC2 wrote: This just means SC2 can finally enter the glorious post-Blizzard era, so they can stop screwing the meta up and things can actually develop.
I know they're still saying "don't worry we'll do balance patches" but I hope they just stop. We wouldn't have half the story lines we do in BW if they had continued patching based on competitive results.
Blizzard has the power over the ladder/matchmaking and the map pool. Just saying that the no touch policy would mean ladder without new maps
There will be new maps and balance tweaks, but there won't be massive overhauls and unit redesigns like we had in the past.
Blizzard's method for adding new maps to the game has relied on community development for a long time already. The only thing they really do there is simply pick and choose which ones to add in. They can keep doing that.
Heroes of the Storm has been in maintenence mode for a long time and they still get pretty regular hero balances and reworks even if their map pool is still pretty much stuck. SC2 can keep getting new maps, it takes Blizz almost no effort to retune the map pool.
Notice what i was reacting too, the person required literal no touch policy from Blizzard.
I doubt this will change much. Number of games played per day is still much higher than it was before free to play and the pro scene will still go on for a couple of years at least. I will still be playing SC2 5 years from now provided there is no better RTS around then, which I doubt.
SC2 has the perfect mix of macro and micro. Age of Empires is a fantastic game but too slow and macro focused. Warcraft III is not even a RTS, it is 95% micro which I find boring.
SC2 is the best game ever made in my opinion. And I haved played computer games since the early 80s.
Well, hope we get AS2L in Korea then, save us Afreeca.
Afreeca and Blizzard signed a multi-year deal for all the blizzard games. Afaik they didn't say how many years, but it's obviously more than one. Likewise, the blizzard-ESL deal is for three years.
So this announcement means nothing for SC2 esports short-term. The question is what happens after the current contracts expire.
On October 16 2020 15:42 Shuffleblade wrote: Well we all knew it was coming, the decline of Blizzard support. I don't even know if this is bad news, no new content to buy isn't that horrible what kind of support has Blizzard given that we will miss?
I guess the true repercussions of this will not be known until Apollo releases the full plan for next year. How GSL will be effected is a big one and much more important to me than co-op commanders and skins.
Does ESL have any say in GSL? I thought it was all Afreeca, if ESL had any say in GSL i think we would already have foreigners seeded into RO4.
What do you mean if they have any say? I do know ESL lays the plans for the global starcraft 2 circuit and the rules for how that competition works. This means ESL also has a plan for how GSL fits into the starcraft 2 professional circuit, if GSL disappears ESL will know.
No, ESL doesn't have any say in the GSL. Afreeca has their own contract with Blizzard and organise their own tournament
(some more coordination between the two organisers would be nice though. Hopefully we get that in 2021)
Ultimately expected that they want to downsize the team they have working on SC2 to the minimum. Main competitions run by ESL/Afreeca aren't gonna suffer much short-term I imagine. But War Chests have funded a lot of cool extra stuff over the years. NationWars, the War Chest team league that everyone loved and everyone involved was hoping to do again (which is now pretty unfeasible), even Shoutcraft Kings back in the day got its funding upped by War Chest sales.
RIP Starcraft as we know it from 2023 onwards. :-/
The game and community will most likely continue to exist well beyond that, but without cash from Blizzard I expect a massive downscaling in the competitive scene which will have riple effects in other facets of Starcraft (e.g. streaming). The community will most likely soften the blow by crowdfunding their own events, but I don't think they will be able to replace Blizzard in this capacity.
It's really shame. Saying that this wouldn't effect "core" players is somewhat of a fallacy. Much of the money earned with skins and such was used to support tournament price money and other community events, like paying casters and general production quality. It's a net loss for all of us, even those who never touched co-op.
On October 16 2020 16:15 Ziggy wrote: i guess this pretty much confirms they don't have sc3 in the works at all then
you say that like it's a bad thing. we don't need more half baked, excruciating designed flawed games. I would be happy if they never make another RTS again. The last decade for Blizzard has been brutal from every end.
On October 16 2020 07:59 eviltomahawk wrote: It has been a fun decade of SC2 and its content updates. Sad to see it finally ending, especially with nothing new on the horizon in regards to RTS games.
edit: nothing new in terms of Blizzard RTS games. I think AoE4 will be a big release, and there's a good handful of stuff coming from indie and AA developers.
Iron Harvest is a pretty great multiplayer RTS but it is flying under the radar big time.
On October 16 2020 07:59 eviltomahawk wrote: It has been a fun decade of SC2 and its content updates. Sad to see it finally ending, especially with nothing new on the horizon in regards to RTS games.
edit: nothing new in terms of Blizzard RTS games. I think AoE4 will be a big release, and there's a good handful of stuff coming from indie and AA developers.
Iron Harvest is a pretty great multiplayer RTS but it is flying under the radar big time.
I play it, its a rip off of Company of heroes 1 and COH1 was a much better game. Units and general game response is just bad.
AoE2 has a strong esports scene and is an amazing RTS. Been playing it since AoE2: DE and its truly a blast. I would never have thought Microsoft could pull something like that off.
Confusing to me really. Propping up an eSports scene in perpetuity is one thing, eventually that’ll end sure.
New skins and content like sound packs especially tied to supporting tournaments isn’t a huge investment to return ratio.
Ok I don’t have the numbers to hand but just instinctually that would seem to be plausible.
Agree with this 100%.
Why would you ever stop making warchests or other low effort content? Or why not at least outsource this to ESL?
Totally, besides given the avg age of sc2 users, the purchase power of sc2 fans must be quite high, and having a couple of artist making concepts and skins once a year for all races shouldn't be that costly.
Confusing to me really. Propping up an eSports scene in perpetuity is one thing, eventually that’ll end sure.
New skins and content like sound packs especially tied to supporting tournaments isn’t a huge investment to return ratio.
Ok I don’t have the numbers to hand but just instinctually that would seem to be plausible.
Agree with this 100%.
Why would you ever stop making warchests or other low effort content? Or why not at least outsource this to ESL?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't even Heroes of the Storm get new skins and stuff now and then?
Would be really interesting to see some numbers here. I'm a bit ashamed to admit I never bought a skin or warchest or coop stuff, because I only play ladder and the skins only get in the way kinda. Maybe SC2 fans have the cash available, but just don't buy in because there is basically no return other than the 25% of warchest that go to tournaments. But I can get way better value if I just paypal 10 bucks to Wardi or sth now and then
Actually I never considered buying stuff IN SC2, so yeah.
What I still hope for is some kind of jurisdiction for "digital sustainability" that prevents "software as a service" from becoming useless once the company shuts down it's servers - forcing companies to at least to release the server software to customers or even the public.
I feel bad for the up and coming pro players who now have to decide between going all in on SC2 for the next 2 years, or switching to a different game.
Big F At least progamers get a two years notice that they should slowly move on to other projects. As a "blizzard style RTS" fan I sure hope Dreamhaven will manage to release something within the next two years. Hopefully with a smart business model *cough* unlike Sc2's *cough* they'll produce a more sustainable RTS game.
On October 16 2020 18:43 algue wrote: Big F At least progamers get a two years notice that they should slowly move on to other projects. As a "blizzard style RTS" fan I sure hope Dreamhaven will manage to release something within the next two years. Hopefully with a smart business model *cough* unlike Sc2's *cough* they'll produce a more sustainable RTS game.
sadly I doubt dreamhaven will build anything other than mobile games
On October 16 2020 18:43 algue wrote: Big F At least progamers get a two years notice that they should slowly move on to other projects. As a "blizzard style RTS" fan I sure hope Dreamhaven will manage to release something within the next two years. Hopefully with a smart business model *cough* unlike Sc2's *cough* they'll produce a more sustainable RTS game.
sadly I doubt dreamhaven will build anything other than mobile games
Any news about Dreamhaven that i'm not aware of? Seemed to me that the push toward mobile games was a nu-ActivisionBlizz decision and that the Blizzard boomers who jumped ship to Dreamhaven were big PC gaming fans.
Confusing to me really. Propping up an eSports scene in perpetuity is one thing, eventually that’ll end sure.
New skins and content like sound packs especially tied to supporting tournaments isn’t a huge investment to return ratio.
Ok I don’t have the numbers to hand but just instinctually that would seem to be plausible.
Agree with this 100%.
Why would you ever stop making warchests or other low effort content? Or why not at least outsource this to ESL?
Totally, besides given the avg age of sc2 users, the purchase power of sc2 fans must be quite high, and having a couple of artist making concepts and skins once a year for all races shouldn't be that costly.
It makes money but maybe not all the money?
Unless they’re pulling basically all their model designers, and I mean literally all of them onto other projects. Maybe new skins will periodically come out just not via the Warchest mechanism? Not sure.
They could still keep some of this going and outsource creation to the community too and merely just give the OK to what goes into the game. Like they currently do with maps anyway.
On October 16 2020 18:43 algue wrote: Big F At least progamers get a two years notice that they should slowly move on to other projects. As a "blizzard style RTS" fan I sure hope Dreamhaven will manage to release something within the next two years. Hopefully with a smart business model *cough* unlike Sc2's *cough* they'll produce a more sustainable RTS game.
sadly I doubt dreamhaven will build anything other than mobile games
Would be interesting to hear your reasoning behind this thought.
Seeing as moonshot seems to be developing something first person action related I doubt its going to be a mobile game.
SC2 has been riddled with bad decision and mismanagement from the get go, the fact that the scene is still as strong as it is today and the game is as good as it is something of a miracle.
On October 16 2020 14:16 IvorYchef wrote: I think making Sc2 free to play and adding skins and voice packs and so on was bad from the begining. This was gonna happen sooner or later anyway. To be honest, in the begining they probably saw a steady income from this. But now they probably dont earn anything at all.
They say that they gonna keep promoting the franchise, which they must cuz it has huge value for them. As they can sell it to Microsoft ......
I think this is non news
This comment is so out of touch with the modern video game monetization model. Microtransaction sales give companies a reason to keep investing after a product's launch and it boosted the number of players. Microtransactions like skins, announcers, etc give casual players an incentive to keep playing and help keep a game's playerbase healthy. This is bad for Starcraft and certainly not "non news".
What I meant is that microtransactions and all that thing didnt work for them obviously. Otherwise they would just continue with it right? They see no income from this or close to zero results from this.
I saw this coming for sure. Thats was what I meant with non news. The player base is not big enough to capitalize on this. The problem with Starcraft and is that its such a "hardcore" game. There must be a million posts on reddit about ladder anxiety.
We love the game and its a struggle to find other games with the same feeling and skill cap. Blizzards strenght have always been the overall feeling of a game.
On October 16 2020 14:16 IvorYchef wrote: I think making Sc2 free to play and adding skins and voice packs and so on was bad from the begining. This was gonna happen sooner or later anyway. To be honest, in the begining they probably saw a steady income from this. But now they probably dont earn anything at all.
They say that they gonna keep promoting the franchise, which they must cuz it has huge value for them. As they can sell it to Microsoft ......
I think this is non news
This comment is so out of touch with the modern video game monetization model. Microtransaction sales give companies a reason to keep investing after a product's launch and it boosted the number of players. Microtransactions like skins, announcers, etc give casual players an incentive to keep playing and help keep a game's playerbase healthy. This is bad for Starcraft and certainly not "non news".
What I meant is that microtransactions and all that thing didnt work for them obviously. Otherwise they would just continue with it right? They see no income from this or close to zero results from this.
I saw this coming for sure. Thats was what I meant with non news. The player base is not big enough to capitalize on this. The problem with Starcraft and is that its such a "hardcore" game. There must be a million posts on reddit about ladder anxiety.
We love the game and its a struggle to find other games with the same feeling and skill cap. Blizzards strenght have always been the overall feeling of a game.
OTOH most of the well known commanders are already in the game and there's not much you can do with skins. Maybe they just hit the creativity wall and are backing off. But Katowice/Blizzcon warches sold very well IIRC, so I am shocked they are removing this.
We already knew ActiBlizzard's decisions were questionable; It's fine, community will take over. This is not remotely comparable to HoTS, Sc2's competitive scene has at least 30 other months of guaranteed support.
Sc2 won't die after that, it will downscale. And even if so, people were calling Sc2 a dead game in 2013 already and turns out it this might happen more than 10 years later; not a bad lifespan for the most successful competitive Rts in the history of videogames.
On October 16 2020 16:49 JustPassingBy wrote: RIP Starcraft as we know it from 2023 onwards. :-/
The game and community will most likely continue to exist well beyond that, but without cash from Blizzard I expect a massive downscaling in the competitive scene which will have riple effects in other facets of Starcraft (e.g. streaming). The community will most likely soften the blow by crowdfunding their own events, but I don't think they will be able to replace Blizzard in this capacity.
Meanwhile Afreeca have to pay good money to host a tournament
At some point it feels like a bad news. On the other hand I belive ESL/DH + Afreeca combined can handle pro scene much better in comparison (if they got a good competitive + financial structure). Also, there is a hope for @Dreamhaven guys and even for SC3.
In the end we're on the same boat and some changes had to be done, maybe there is a chance to make it all better? 3 years is esports is a huge period honestly, we got time to figure it out, we got a powerful core community that dedicated many talented people to such big companies esl/dh/shopify/deepmind/redbull/twitch and others directly involved in esports.
SC2 was a catalyst and it was directly responsible for the new era of competitive esports, in 2010-2013 it also allowed twitch to rise to the level it has now.
On October 16 2020 13:51 lechatnoir wrote: The only thing that counts is GSL and the Pro Tour.
In general, absolutely, more specifically, some of the other community tourneys are rather important too. Homestory Cup, this year's King of Battles, NationWars, TSL, etc.
Something CatZ said on his stream last night about the "offseason" between GSL seasons and this DH Summer/Fall/Winter. When there is a dearth of official tournaments, these kind of tournaments have done really well in filling the gap. The worry now is will those dwindle over time, which would be unfortunate. Of course, 2 additional years with ESL means two more years of weekly ESL Open Cups, which is absolutely stellar.
From my perspective, TLO leaving TL to be Shopify's eSports Program Manager means that there are some 3rd parties that are really considering investing time and potentially resources into the scene. What I've enjoyed, especially during the COVID lockdown, is the consistent amount of content to watch. AlphaX has done a great job filling the gap, hopefully they continue to do so. Indy has done a lot as well, Wardi and his tourneys have been great, etc.
CatZ said something else too: "Well yes, if you perceive the scene to be dead, then it is dead. But if you choose to see it as alive and running instead, then that's what it will be." (paraphrasing, not exact)
Blizzard's post doesn't change my interest in the pro scene as long as there is one. There's plenty to be excited about and there's plenty to be hopeful of. As long as the top players continue to give their all, I will support the scene.
On October 16 2020 13:51 lechatnoir wrote: The only thing that counts is GSL and the Pro Tour.
In general, absolutely, more specifically, some of the other community tourneys are rather important too. Homestory Cup, this year's King of Battles, NationWars, TSL, etc.
Something CatZ said on his stream last night about the "offseason" between GSL seasons and this DH Summer/Fall/Winter. When there is a dearth of official tournaments, these kind of tournaments have done really well in filling the gap. The worry now is will those dwindle over time, which would be unfortunate. Of course, 2 additional years with ESL means two more years of weekly ESL Open Cups, which is absolutely stellar.
From my perspective, TLO leaving TL to be Shopify's eSports Program Manager means that there are some 3rd parties that are really considering investing time and potentially resources into the scene. What I've enjoyed, especially during the COVID lockdown, is the consistent amount of content to watch. AlphaX has done a great job filling the gap, hopefully they continue to do so. Indy has done a lot as well, Wardi and his tourneys have been great, etc.
CatZ said something else too: "Well yes, if you perceive the scene to be dead, then it is dead. But if you choose to see it as alive and running instead, then that's what it will be." (paraphrasing, not exact)
Blizzard's post doesn't change my interest in the pro scene as long as there is one. There's plenty to be excited about and there's plenty to be hopeful of. As long as the top players continue to give their all, I will support the scene.
If Blizzard didn’t hold the keys to the kingdom in terms of the actual game UI and servers etc I’d feel 100% confident here.
We’ve got a great dedicated community, companies willing to sponsor SC2 content etc.
I have no worries there whatsoever, but the community currently has no way to replace Blizzard in terms of balance, ladder map pools etc. Unlike what we’ve seen in BW and WC3 in the past.
Depends how this moves on going forwards, and what level of maintainence Blizz commits to.
Six of my friends and I just refunded our Shadowlands Epic Edition preorder and our subscriptions to set a statement against this bullcrap. I hope those Activision product managers die a horrible and slow death of asphyxiation under the piles of money they make from the mobile market.
Yes the as close to perfect solution is we get minimal to no corporate influence from Activision-Blizzard, and the devs still continue to do balance tweaks and bugifxes as needed..
The community can create the content on it's own. TLMC can be used for adding to map pools and with the new 5.0 Editor fingers crossed the Arcade becomes the new home for original content.
The only big loss to me is no more Co-op commanders and no more funding from War Chests. Beyond that, the less influence from Blizzard the better off SC2 is in the long term.
I am not a co-op player so this news does not really bother me. The Warchest - and with it the tournament that were financed with the Warchest - is a disappointment, but I would assume there is some way to come up with the funding for similar events without it. And Blizzard supported StarCraft II for more than 10 years with all kinds of content. That's more than we could have asked for when it was released 10 years ago. The only thing that would be worrying, was, if they actually cut the funding of the eSports-Scene. But even there I am not worried too much, since the contracts with ESL and Afreeca stand and there are at least two more years of fully funded eSports in StarCraft II. And that's all I need right now.
And on the plus side, these were the first comments by Blizzard that suggest that new games in the StarCraft universe are on the horizon? I definitely do not expect a StarCraft III given the state of the RTS genre in recent years (although some publisher seem to be willing to invest into the genre again recently with remakes and remasters being released). Any new game in the StarCraft universe would be awesome though. And if the end of commanders and Warchest means that the eSport-scene will still be there and at the same time they are working on something new, that's a positive thing overall, imo.
... the only thing that worries me is that we don't know what Blizzard is up to these days in general. This news does not change anything about that though. Even without any word - or maybe even more without any word - I would have been worried that they suddenly killed the game because it does not make enough profit for them. So... no change in worries in this regard for me. Blizzard pulling away from the game might actually be even good there, because the scene can stabilize independently of Blizzard.
It's 2020 and I still play Unreal Tournament 99 with my guys. There are CTF international cups in Europe. Every year we have big lan party here in Poland. Epic gave their source code to community and thanks to that we have new patches. 21 years and ppl are still playing. And UT was never as big as sc2.
So i think that as long as people would play, and the player base is legit, there will always be some investors to host a tournament, or lan and shit like that. Pro scene will definitely shrink, but hopefully thanks to passion, wilk never perish.
People here are very confident about the two more years of GSL and ESL. You don't know the contracts. There could be clauses that let blizzard pull out at any time. Hell, I bet there are.
Next year ESL is pretty much happening. Next year GSL? I don't known... And after that? I wouldn't bet on it. It's cool there are contracts, but even that is no guarantee.
Kind of surprised about the loss of Co-op support. I thought that was the biggest active part of the game. It would be fun if they allowed user maps in the future... Always thought it could be cool to have a longer map with 3+ expansions etc.
On October 17 2020 01:59 TanksALot wrote: Kind of surprised about the loss of Co-op support. I thought that was the biggest active part of the game. It would be fun if they allowed user maps in the future... Always thought it could be cool to have a longer map with 3+ expansions etc.
Maybe they're going to work on a new game in the SC universe? Resources might be shifting no way for us to know.
On October 16 2020 07:41 Waxangel wrote: Source Post: Blizzard this change will free us up to think about what’s next, not just with regard to StarCraft II, but for the StarCraft universe as a whole.
On October 17 2020 02:25 Lalo504 wrote: GJ tl you did it. You killed SC2. You banned people which created constructive posts in polite way!!! Even demuslim got flamed here, when he posted about protoss economy. TL cucks, now you will be irrelevant. Now you reap what you have seeded. And you, sc2 community is so DELUSIONAL, you can't talk about balance, or you get shit on. You driven everyone out of the game. FUCK YOU ALL TARDS!!!
On October 17 2020 01:13 hiroshOne wrote: It's 2020 and I still play Unreal Tournament 99 with my guys. There are CTF international cups in Europe. Every year we have big lan party here in Poland. Epic gave their source code to community and thanks to that we have new patches. 21 years and ppl are still playing. And UT was never as big as sc2.
So i think that as long as people would play, and the player base is legit, there will always be some investors to host a tournament, or lan and shit like that. Pro scene will definitely shrink, but hopefully thanks to passion, wilk never perish.
I don't know about that, passion have been driven by developers updates for so long
On October 17 2020 01:38 [Phantom] wrote: People here are very confident about the two more years of GSL and ESL. You don't know the contracts. There could be clauses that let blizzard pull out at any time. Hell, I bet there are.
Next year ESL is pretty much happening. Next year GSL? I don't known... And after that? I wouldn't bet on it. It's cool there are contracts, but even that is no guarantee.
Yes, they might be allowed to pull out. Everyone probably knows that StarCraft is most likely not the most profitable game Activision has released. Everyone knows that there's a risk that Blizzard is going to kill the game at one point. This news here however does not push this any closer. The news is - in the end nothing but a confirmation that the game in terms of additional content outside the professional scene is being cut. And this alone is not a bad thing, considering it might be hinting towards a new StarCraft game. It might not, agreed, but just based on this news there's not much to be worried about.
On October 17 2020 01:13 hiroshOne wrote: It's 2020 and I still play Unreal Tournament 99 with my guys. There are CTF international cups in Europe. Every year we have big lan party here in Poland. Epic gave their source code to community and thanks to that we have new patches. 21 years and ppl are still playing. And UT was never as big as sc2.
So i think that as long as people would play, and the player base is legit, there will always be some investors to host a tournament, or lan and shit like that. Pro scene will definitely shrink, but hopefully thanks to passion, wilk never perish.
I don't know about that, passion have been driven by developers updates for so long
SC2 has an insanely passionate community and SC2 as an eSport has even withing the eSports scene a good reputation. I don't know how long the game could stay alive without Blizzard's funding, but among the less popular eSports titles, StarCraft II would probably be among the ones that could deal with it the best.
On October 17 2020 01:38 [Phantom] wrote: People here are very confident about the two more years of GSL and ESL. You don't know the contracts. There could be clauses that let blizzard pull out at any time. Hell, I bet there are.
Next year ESL is pretty much happening. Next year GSL? I don't known... And after that? I wouldn't bet on it. It's cool there are contracts, but even that is no guarantee.
Yes, they might be allowed to pull out. Everyone probably knows that StarCraft is most likely not the most profitable game Activision has released. Everyone knows that there's a risk that Blizzard is going to kill the game at one point. This news here however does not push this any closer. The news is - in the end nothing but a confirmation that the game in terms of additional content outside the professional scene is being cut. And this alone is not a bad thing, considering it might be hinting towards a new StarCraft game. It might not, agreed, but just based on this news there's not much to be worried about.
On October 17 2020 01:13 hiroshOne wrote: It's 2020 and I still play Unreal Tournament 99 with my guys. There are CTF international cups in Europe. Every year we have big lan party here in Poland. Epic gave their source code to community and thanks to that we have new patches. 21 years and ppl are still playing. And UT was never as big as sc2.
So i think that as long as people would play, and the player base is legit, there will always be some investors to host a tournament, or lan and shit like that. Pro scene will definitely shrink, but hopefully thanks to passion, wilk never perish.
I don't know about that, passion have been driven by developers updates for so long
SC2 has an insanely passionate community and SC2 as an eSport has even withing the eSports scene a good reputation. I don't know how long the game could stay alive without Blizzard's funding, but among the less popular eSports titles, StarCraft II would probably be among the ones that could deal with it the best.
Give the community few days and they'll gonna whine about the meta being stale or something lol
I feel like the whole Blizzard thing is pretty dying since long. They just survive from their past sucess. All their recent projects are just desappointed, they seemed to fire every creators and kept only the marketing team.
SC2 is just a game that is niche compared to moba/FPS, it's logic for guys interested in money only to give up starcraft 2.
I just hope, really really really hope that current ActiBlizz doesn't touch SC IP in any shape or form. One day, in the future, when things may be better I'd die for SC3 or World of StarCraft type of a game but not now, not made by this shitty ActiBlizzard we have atm.
On October 17 2020 01:02 Highways wrote: Co-op is still quite massive. Why did they have to kill that
ROI man. if ATVI has the balls to discontinue Guitar Hero the nanosecond is starts to decline they definitely have the balls to lower support for SC2.
I think the year SC2 came out and the game generated its most revenue it still only represented 2% of ATVI's total revenue. The Starcraft franchise has great brand strength, however, it does not generate much revenue or profit. Fortunately, Bobby Kotick recognizes brand strength and has a keen eye in that area. Thus, ATVI has kept Starcraft alive well beyond its "Best Before" date.
On October 16 2020 13:51 lechatnoir wrote: The only thing that counts is GSL and the Pro Tour.
In general, absolutely, more specifically, some of the other community tourneys are rather important too. Homestory Cup, this year's King of Battles, NationWars, TSL, etc.
Something CatZ said on his stream last night about the "offseason" between GSL seasons and this DH Summer/Fall/Winter. When there is a dearth of official tournaments, these kind of tournaments have done really well in filling the gap. The worry now is will those dwindle over time, which would be unfortunate. Of course, 2 additional years with ESL means two more years of weekly ESL Open Cups, which is absolutely stellar.
From my perspective, TLO leaving TL to be Shopify's eSports Program Manager means that there are some 3rd parties that are really considering investing time and potentially resources into the scene. What I've enjoyed, especially during the COVID lockdown, is the consistent amount of content to watch. AlphaX has done a great job filling the gap, hopefully they continue to do so. Indy has done a lot as well, Wardi and his tourneys have been great, etc.
CatZ said something else too: "Well yes, if you perceive the scene to be dead, then it is dead. But if you choose to see it as alive and running instead, then that's what it will be." (paraphrasing, not exact)
Blizzard's post doesn't change my interest in the pro scene as long as there is one. There's plenty to be excited about and there's plenty to be hopeful of. As long as the top players continue to give their all, I will support the scene.
If Blizzard didn’t hold the keys to the kingdom in terms of the actual game UI and servers etc I’d feel 100% confident here.
We’ve got a great dedicated community, companies willing to sponsor SC2 content etc.
I have no worries there whatsoever, but the community currently has no way to replace Blizzard in terms of balance, ladder map pools etc. Unlike what we’ve seen in BW and WC3 in the past.
Depends how this moves on going forwards, and what level of maintainence Blizz commits to.
Fair point on that, however if Blizzard is truly leaning towards distancing themselves from SC2 then hopefully that means at some point they will part with those "keys to the kingdom." Sell them to another org, ESL or Afreeca maybe, idk. Wishful thinking, sure, but not unfathomable.
Balance, I do worry. If they are going super lax on their maintenance, we may end up with a very stagnant metagame for way longer. If it goes from quarterly updates to twice a year, not the worst. Fewer than that? Does not bode well...
Ladder map pools? Not so much. The TL mapmaking contests have always garnered a lot of attention and creativity. Hell, someone made a GOAT tournament for all of the maps in the ladder pool over the years. That can either ramp up to the point that more maps get submitted, or if it stays stagnant then we can just select additional finalists rather than just a couple, or something along those lines.
Only time will tell of course. For now I'll just enjoy the tournaments we're guaranteed to have
people are dreaming in technicolour if they think ATVI will sell off IP. They will "park" the Starcraft IP and use it a few years later long before they'll ever sell it. How long has Activision parked IP like Pitfall! , Spyro and Guitar Hero?
As long as Kotick runs the show ATVI won't sell the Starcraft IP. Activision is all about leveraging IP.
On October 17 2020 05:10 JimmyJRaynor wrote: people are dreaming in technicolour if they think ATVI will sell off IP. They will "park" the Starcraft IP and use it a few years later long before they'll ever sell it. How long has Activision parked IP like Pitfall! , Spyro and Guitar Hero?
As long as Kotick runs the show ATVI won't sell the Starcraft IP. Activision is all about leveraging IP.
Also why would they sell the Starcraft IP? Did they sell Star Trek to Seth MacFarlane? No! Did it stop him from creating Star Trek named The Orville? Nope! Something about rose and shit
When Make Morhaime announced the new studio a tweet said "they will make a game with three allien races, the Gains, the Proteans and the Xarg". Maybe that will come true after all.
On October 16 2020 13:51 lechatnoir wrote: The only thing that counts is GSL and the Pro Tour.
In general, absolutely, more specifically, some of the other community tourneys are rather important too. Homestory Cup, this year's King of Battles, NationWars, TSL, etc.
Something CatZ said on his stream last night about the "offseason" between GSL seasons and this DH Summer/Fall/Winter. When there is a dearth of official tournaments, these kind of tournaments have done really well in filling the gap. The worry now is will those dwindle over time, which would be unfortunate. Of course, 2 additional years with ESL means two more years of weekly ESL Open Cups, which is absolutely stellar.
From my perspective, TLO leaving TL to be Shopify's eSports Program Manager means that there are some 3rd parties that are really considering investing time and potentially resources into the scene. What I've enjoyed, especially during the COVID lockdown, is the consistent amount of content to watch. AlphaX has done a great job filling the gap, hopefully they continue to do so. Indy has done a lot as well, Wardi and his tourneys have been great, etc.
CatZ said something else too: "Well yes, if you perceive the scene to be dead, then it is dead. But if you choose to see it as alive and running instead, then that's what it will be." (paraphrasing, not exact)
Blizzard's post doesn't change my interest in the pro scene as long as there is one. There's plenty to be excited about and there's plenty to be hopeful of. As long as the top players continue to give their all, I will support the scene.
If Blizzard didn’t hold the keys to the kingdom in terms of the actual game UI and servers etc I’d feel 100% confident here.
We’ve got a great dedicated community, companies willing to sponsor SC2 content etc.
I have no worries there whatsoever, but the community currently has no way to replace Blizzard in terms of balance, ladder map pools etc. Unlike what we’ve seen in BW and WC3 in the past.
Depends how this moves on going forwards, and what level of maintainence Blizz commits to.
Fair point on that, however if Blizzard is truly leaning towards distancing themselves from SC2 then hopefully that means at some point they will part with those "keys to the kingdom." Sell them to another org, ESL or Afreeca maybe, idk. Wishful thinking, sure, but not unfathomable.
Balance, I do worry. If they are going super lax on their maintenance, we may end up with a very stagnant metagame for way longer. If it goes from quarterly updates to twice a year, not the worst. Fewer than that? Does not bode well...
Ladder map pools? Not so much. The TL mapmaking contests have always garnered a lot of attention and creativity. Hell, someone made a GOAT tournament for all of the maps in the ladder pool over the years. That can either ramp up to the point that more maps get submitted, or if it stays stagnant then we can just select additional finalists rather than just a couple, or something along those lines.
Only time will tell of course. For now I'll just enjoy the tournaments we're guaranteed to have
I’m not pessimistic/optimistic, we’ll see.
There are positives and negatives to the current model. What I do like about it is that the game is standardised at least on the ladder. You go on and play the same game as everyone else is playing.
Which tbh I think is good and underrated frequently, as someone who at times has tried to play older games with multiple different servers, different pools etc. Everyone’s in that ecosystem, be it a lowly scrub like me or Maru laddering over in Korea.
There are downsides to that level control, notably customisation and well, everything else if the developer stops paying to maintain it.
Worst case is Blizz stops bothering but doesn’t let someone else do the job. Frankly I’m not sure how likely it is, they’ve hD enough community backlashes lately and unlike others this one doesn’t even really cost them much money to avoid.
Best case I think is some mechanism where users can upload skins and voice packs and proceeds could fund a Warchest successor, and maps could be done via the TL contest, with ESL and GSL having some input too. That really only leaves Blizz having to do occasional balance patches.
To be honest something akin to that setup would have made sense to implement ages ago. Tournament organisers run the tournaments (which we have now), have input on map pools which the community create and shape.
its ok to say ur winding it down. Its ok to say all the core developers left and we dont really have a single idea between us. We as a commumity will support starcraft, now and forever, remember that.
Well there is only one reason for atvi to keep bleeding money into starcraft 2, now they have simpley 0 income and only cost.
The only reason they would keep giving money to tournaments and the scene is if they are planning on making a game were the goodwill will translate into sales. Which means they are working on something new starcraft related (or rts related), its the onlyt explanation. The three years contract feels to me to make clear expectations and also create a very firm deadline for them when they have to realse their new game and earn money on the starcraft community again. With that in mind it makes sense to funnel all developers into the new game and away from warchests and commanders.
On October 17 2020 05:59 I wasbanned fromthis wrote: "I hope this means SC3."
Ego fiddler on the lyre from Letch; Prede.
or it could be warcraft 4 ;p i wouldnt be salty if this came true at all cuz both communities deserve a fucking sequel but as for warcraft story-wise, they are shooting themselves in da foot right now so sc3 would be moar likely tho
On this day i shall leave my home and sell everything that i own and with that money that i get from it i shall buy a ticket to fly to the base of the tallest mountain that the money can take me too. I shall then ascended that mountain to the very very peak and on that peak i shall build a home not out of sand not of stone not of wood but from the very earth that my feet stand on and in the home i shall build a shrine and once that shrine is complete i shall step outside of the home once the sun arises and take the biggest breath that i can possible take and yell at the top of my lungs can support so that the very heavens can hear me say the most sacred words of the Starcraft fandom........ D3ad gaem
even at this point, can't u guys be more open to the community and listen to our voice? Plz, at least make one big patch change per year, it's not hard. please. There are tons of units in the story that haven't used, you can even make a mobile sc2 manager game, let those who watch and love starcraft (but don't have the time or effort to play ladder) to enjoy it.
On October 17 2020 10:15 Carminedust1 wrote: On this day i shall leave my home and sell everything that i own and with that money that i get from it i shall buy a ticket to fly to the base of the tallest mountain that the money can take me too. I shall then ascended that mountain to the very very peak and on that peak i shall build a home not out of sand not of stone not of wood but from the very earth that my feet stand on and in the home i shall build a shrine and once that shrine is complete i shall step outside of the home once the sun arises and take the biggest breath that i can possible take and yell at the top of my lungs can support so that the very heavens can hear me say the most sacred words of the Starcraft fandom........ D3ad gaem
I tried once in minecraft, an enderman teleported and murdered me
this has been long time coming. Years. All the signs have been pointing to it. No one should be surprised. Also, unless there's a colossal shift in Activision's corporate policy, there is not gonna be SC3 in foreseeable future. Yes, I said AV because there's no way Blizzard is gonna be allowed to spend massive amount of money developing a game with very niche target audience without parent company approval.
I played Starcraft when it originally came out, then Broodwar, and then Starcraft 2. So SC has been a part of my life for a very long time. Although I was never into the SC "scene" until SC2 came out in 2010. And while I do follow TL, I exclusively lurk, and have rarely ever posted. Today is kinda important so I thought I would post.
1) The first thing I want to say is that, being mindful of the mod note on the thread, it is important that you let people grief. Some have played SC for a large part of their lives, some only a few years, others have followed the eSports and watched, even as they stopped playing, so we are all invested in this game to varying degrees. I understand that websites like TL promote the game, and don't want to be negative, but in a momentous occasion like this, it is alright to let people grief. Tomorrow will be another day and life will go on. But for now, we should have a right to grief.
Obviously not to insult/flame/etc but we, the fans, should be afforded the opportunity to be sad, to lament. That is, those of us who feel that sentiment and wish to express it.
2) I would like to argue against the notion of some that, as Blizzard will keep the servers, and make balance updates, and since they don't play Coop Commanders, that this doesn't affect them. To be crystal clear: THIS IS A DEATH NOTICE. Nothing more (there is always a possibility the game can be resurrected), nothing less (this is bad news no matter how it is being spun).
It doesn't cost Blizzard much to make an occasional update to the game. The fact that they have decided not to spent even those few pennies (relatively speaking considering the size of the company) means they see little future in the game. There is no revenue stream in the pipeline. This trickles down to tournaments, and so casters and pro-gamers and other content creators are affected. And so it will affect you, the viewer.
So just because you don't play Coop Commanders or participate in War Chests doesn't mean you won't be affected by this announcement.
3) For over 20 years Starcraft has been alive, and in some development form. Whether it be expansions or sequels or ports or remaster or whatever. This announcement puts a nail through all that. So this is a death notice, and for those of us passionate about the game, we should be sad, and lament. Or hold a wake. Or something. It is not business as usual.
4) People keep talking about the community taking over. While that's nice, it won't be as "big". But there's an even larger problem. Unlike Brood War, Blizzard has locked down the IP for Starcraft2 content. I can't see companies investing in the game (tournaments and the like) when they can't control the legal environment and reap the rewards.
And I can't see Blizzard letting go of the IP. They would rather see the scene die than let someone else make it a success. As others have said, sometimes if you're a business and you can't make an IP work, you nevertheless keep it to kill it and stop anyone else making it work.
5) I know this post has been negative. But come on. It was a response to shitty news.
Just off the top of my head, so I will probably miss major moments. Memories of Starcraft (includes BroodWar): - BGH - remember that anyone?? lolz - Lost Temple - how many games have you played on that map? - Dire Straits - no, not the band, although they are awesome too! Esports: - Nestea - creator of the universe .... while Creator - the kid that just couldn't? - MVP - the whale - MVP vs Squirtle - MC - Boss Toss - Parting - Soul Train - Life - He Whose Name Shall Not be Spoken - Soo - eternal bridesmaid - Serral 2018 - invincible - shout out to InControl (I will forever call it the Artosis pylon) and TotalBiscuit, RIP
It's sad to see support get toned down, but I'm not really surprised. Not just because of the large amounts of changes, typically at the head of the operation, that blizzard has gone through. It's probably just not a tenable position to hold at this point (for blizzard), supporting a game/community that isn't really growing. The part that surprised me was that they didn't just pull support for the competitive scene entirely.
4) People keep talking about the community taking over. While that's nice, it won't be as "big". But there's an even larger problem. Unlike Brood War, Blizzard has locked down the IP for Starcraft2 content. I can't see companies investing in the game (tournaments and the like) when they can't control the legal environment and reap the rewards.
And I can't see Blizzard letting go of the IP. They would rather see the scene die than let someone else make it a success. As others have said, sometimes if you're a business and you can't make an IP work, you nevertheless keep it to kill it and stop anyone else making it work.
To be fair, people can make custom maps with balance changes built in, if it gets to that point, and I doubt blizzard would have anything against that becoming the de facto competitive mode in a distant future.
Why is this supposed to mean the game is dead? They stated they will still be doing balance updates, and they never stated that they are stopping support of the competitive scene and the like. They just aren't doing war chests / co-op content.
On October 18 2020 01:09 Russano wrote: Why is this supposed to mean the game is dead? They stated they will still be doing balance updates, and they never stated that they are stopping support of the competitive scene and the like. They just aren't doing war chests / co-op content.
Canceling War chest is a hint. Much money from it went for prize pools of tournaments. So basically canceling them means withdraw from supporting competitive scene. That's for one example. And concidering how maintenance mode ended for Heroes of the Storm, people have concerns about future of sc2.
DreamHaven... everything lies on your shoulders to bring a game as exhilarating as broodwar and sc2. please make it happen, based on this announcement the players including at a pro level will move on to other games and ventures.
On October 16 2020 13:51 lechatnoir wrote: The only thing that counts is GSL and the Pro Tour.
In general, absolutely, more specifically, some of the other community tourneys are rather important too. Homestory Cup, this year's King of Battles, NationWars, TSL, etc.
Something CatZ said on his stream last night about the "offseason" between GSL seasons and this DH Summer/Fall/Winter. When there is a dearth of official tournaments, these kind of tournaments have done really well in filling the gap. The worry now is will those dwindle over time, which would be unfortunate. Of course, 2 additional years with ESL means two more years of weekly ESL Open Cups, which is absolutely stellar.
From my perspective, TLO leaving TL to be Shopify's eSports Program Manager means that there are some 3rd parties that are really considering investing time and potentially resources into the scene. What I've enjoyed, especially during the COVID lockdown, is the consistent amount of content to watch. AlphaX has done a great job filling the gap, hopefully they continue to do so. Indy has done a lot as well, Wardi and his tourneys have been great, etc.
CatZ said something else too: "Well yes, if you perceive the scene to be dead, then it is dead. But if you choose to see it as alive and running instead, then that's what it will be." (paraphrasing, not exact)
Blizzard's post doesn't change my interest in the pro scene as long as there is one. There's plenty to be excited about and there's plenty to be hopeful of. As long as the top players continue to give their all, I will support the scene.
If Blizzard didn’t hold the keys to the kingdom in terms of the actual game UI and servers etc I’d feel 100% confident here.
We’ve got a great dedicated community, companies willing to sponsor SC2 content etc.
I have no worries there whatsoever, but the community currently has no way to replace Blizzard in terms of balance, ladder map pools etc. Unlike what we’ve seen in BW and WC3 in the past.
Depends how this moves on going forwards, and what level of maintainence Blizz commits to.
Fair point on that, however if Blizzard is truly leaning towards distancing themselves from SC2 then hopefully that means at some point they will part with those "keys to the kingdom." Sell them to another org, ESL or Afreeca maybe, idk. Wishful thinking, sure, but not unfathomable.
Balance, I do worry. If they are going super lax on their maintenance, we may end up with a very stagnant metagame for way longer. If it goes from quarterly updates to twice a year, not the worst. Fewer than that? Does not bode well...
Ladder map pools? Not so much. The TL mapmaking contests have always garnered a lot of attention and creativity. Hell, someone made a GOAT tournament for all of the maps in the ladder pool over the years. That can either ramp up to the point that more maps get submitted, or if it stays stagnant then we can just select additional finalists rather than just a couple, or something along those lines.
Only time will tell of course. For now I'll just enjoy the tournaments we're guaranteed to have
I’m not pessimistic/optimistic, we’ll see.
There are positives and negatives to the current model. What I do like about it is that the game is standardised at least on the ladder. You go on and play the same game as everyone else is playing.
Which tbh I think is good and underrated frequently, as someone who at times has tried to play older games with multiple different servers, different pools etc. Everyone’s in that ecosystem, be it a lowly scrub like me or Maru laddering over in Korea.
There are downsides to that level control, notably customisation and well, everything else if the developer stops paying to maintain it.
Worst case is Blizz stops bothering but doesn’t let someone else do the job. Frankly I’m not sure how likely it is, they’ve hD enough community backlashes lately and unlike others this one doesn’t even really cost them much money to avoid.
Best case I think is some mechanism where users can upload skins and voice packs and proceeds could fund a Warchest successor, and maps could be done via the TL contest, with ESL and GSL having some input too. That really only leaves Blizz having to do occasional balance patches.
To be honest something akin to that setup would have made sense to implement ages ago. Tournament organisers run the tournaments (which we have now), have input on map pools which the community create and shape.
Don't think there's a better way to put it than that. Only time will tell, let's just see. Us fans just need to remember that we're a big part of why there's a scene to follow in the first place. If we stick around through this uncertain limbo then damn we'll stick around through just about anything.
On October 16 2020 13:51 lechatnoir wrote: The only thing that counts is GSL and the Pro Tour.
In general, absolutely, more specifically, some of the other community tourneys are rather important too. Homestory Cup, this year's King of Battles, NationWars, TSL, etc.
Something CatZ said on his stream last night about the "offseason" between GSL seasons and this DH Summer/Fall/Winter. When there is a dearth of official tournaments, these kind of tournaments have done really well in filling the gap. The worry now is will those dwindle over time, which would be unfortunate. Of course, 2 additional years with ESL means two more years of weekly ESL Open Cups, which is absolutely stellar.
From my perspective, TLO leaving TL to be Shopify's eSports Program Manager means that there are some 3rd parties that are really considering investing time and potentially resources into the scene. What I've enjoyed, especially during the COVID lockdown, is the consistent amount of content to watch. AlphaX has done a great job filling the gap, hopefully they continue to do so. Indy has done a lot as well, Wardi and his tourneys have been great, etc.
CatZ said something else too: "Well yes, if you perceive the scene to be dead, then it is dead. But if you choose to see it as alive and running instead, then that's what it will be." (paraphrasing, not exact)
Blizzard's post doesn't change my interest in the pro scene as long as there is one. There's plenty to be excited about and there's plenty to be hopeful of. As long as the top players continue to give their all, I will support the scene.
If Blizzard didn’t hold the keys to the kingdom in terms of the actual game UI and servers etc I’d feel 100% confident here.
We’ve got a great dedicated community, companies willing to sponsor SC2 content etc.
I have no worries there whatsoever, but the community currently has no way to replace Blizzard in terms of balance, ladder map pools etc. Unlike what we’ve seen in BW and WC3 in the past.
Depends how this moves on going forwards, and what level of maintainence Blizz commits to.
Fair point on that, however if Blizzard is truly leaning towards distancing themselves from SC2 then hopefully that means at some point they will part with those "keys to the kingdom." Sell them to another org, ESL or Afreeca maybe, idk. Wishful thinking, sure, but not unfathomable.
Balance, I do worry. If they are going super lax on their maintenance, we may end up with a very stagnant metagame for way longer. If it goes from quarterly updates to twice a year, not the worst. Fewer than that? Does not bode well...
Ladder map pools? Not so much. The TL mapmaking contests have always garnered a lot of attention and creativity. Hell, someone made a GOAT tournament for all of the maps in the ladder pool over the years. That can either ramp up to the point that more maps get submitted, or if it stays stagnant then we can just select additional finalists rather than just a couple, or something along those lines.
Only time will tell of course. For now I'll just enjoy the tournaments we're guaranteed to have
I’m not pessimistic/optimistic, we’ll see.
There are positives and negatives to the current model. What I do like about it is that the game is standardised at least on the ladder. You go on and play the same game as everyone else is playing.
Which tbh I think is good and underrated frequently, as someone who at times has tried to play older games with multiple different servers, different pools etc. Everyone’s in that ecosystem, be it a lowly scrub like me or Maru laddering over in Korea.
There are downsides to that level control, notably customisation and well, everything else if the developer stops paying to maintain it.
Worst case is Blizz stops bothering but doesn’t let someone else do the job. Frankly I’m not sure how likely it is, they’ve hD enough community backlashes lately and unlike others this one doesn’t even really cost them much money to avoid.
Best case I think is some mechanism where users can upload skins and voice packs and proceeds could fund a Warchest successor, and maps could be done via the TL contest, with ESL and GSL having some input too. That really only leaves Blizz having to do occasional balance patches.
To be honest something akin to that setup would have made sense to implement ages ago. Tournament organisers run the tournaments (which we have now), have input on map pools which the community create and shape.
Don't think there's a better way to put it than that. Only time will tell, let's just see. Us fans just need to remember that we're a big part of why there's a scene to follow in the first place. If we stick around through this uncertain limbo then damn we'll stick around through just about anything.
Only way this is possible is by having the community donate to tournaments so the pros can have the motivation to play. i.e king of battles. i believe king of battles was funded by the community. but i dont think the community can fund a blizzcon level tournament, but its better then nothing.
On second thought. I can't believe they are going to leave Zerg in the ridiculous state they are at now.
I know they said they will have balance updates "if needed" but that sounds to me like we won't get another balance patch unless something really broken (like 70%) winrate broken. It seems the 65% winrate of Zerg in premier tournaments isn't enough.
I think this will be the final state of the game guys. With the Z>P>T balance state.
On October 16 2020 15:50 col_jung wrote: Open question to everyone. With no more big overhauls or redesigns coming, what do you think of the current state of the game? We're probably now stuck with it forever. Fingers crossed this final design will have a lot of longevity. Are there any previous annual iterations you preferred? Did you prefer a previous of the Raven, Cyclone etc.?
I think the current iteration is the best. However there are some minor gripes/tweaks I would make, especially as a mech player. I wish that Tempests got a more interesting role/buff, instead of having an upgrade that ends up helping Protoss vs Mech more than it does PvZ. Corruptor vomit probably does more damage than it should. Viper Abduct is an archaic ability being used in ways other than its original intended purpose to discourage deathballs, and is not only anti-climactic and lame to watch as a spectator but design wise Abduct is hindering a lot of the progress SC2/LotV has made towards moving it to a "small skirmishes all over the map, more and longer lasting battles" game. Stuff like that.
The Raven is going to be my biggest complaint, since it was my favorite unit and it had great synergy and depth as it was a positional/zoning spellcaster, but Viper Abduct and BC Jump are very problematic as well. Current Raven design is OK, but 1D and contrived and also hinders the design in ways similar to Viper/Abduct.
The old Raven with PDD, HSM, and longer lasting Turret was the best, especially for Mech. But even for standard compositions and standard meta, seeing mass Raven and mass Disables in TvT is kind of lame, it removes a lot of the positional advantage and strong defense needed to push the game towards a "strong defense but small skirmishes all over the map" game like BW. I think the fun of SC2 comes when it feels like both players are constantly trying to put out fires, rather than ending a game in 1 big battle. It is what SC2 has been pushing towards across its 10 years. (Of course, variety is good though.)
Blizzard got this weird aversion to the Raven and felt like Terran should not have a gas sink and that you should only make 1-2 Ravens. What unit is designed to have its effectiveness cap at 1-2? Only Mothership is like that. That is just dumb design. Terran not having a good powerful spellcaster / gas sink also makes the economy game for Terran much less fun. In BW, you can increase your army power by increasing income by spreading out workers across more bases to mine more efficiently per worker. In SC2, saturation works differently, but there is a similar equivalent; the more bases you have the more gas you can mine, and gas is the most powerful resource. Terran not having a powerful gas heavy unit takes that dimension out.
Ok about the Raven itself. Blizzard really overreacted to the old Raven. Yes, it was OP in HotS (TvZ in particular), as a mech player I totally understand that. But there were some good tweaks they could do to it to stop it from scaling so oppressively lategame, without scrapping the whole design. I believe they simply did not think of those tweaks and gave up and redesigned it.
First off, Ravens were not nearly as OP in LotV as they were in HotS, and this is because of the Viper having parabomb (and abduct) both of which were effective vs mass Ravens. Thus, mass Ravens could still be strong, but Zerg had an easy and clear solution to it. You can't just mass Ravens and be invincible like in HotS, as Parabomb is easy and does so much damage and heavily discourages a dense mass of Ravens. Hydras and Corruptors were also buffed, both of which can burn PDD energy quickly (especially Hydras).
What they really needed to tweak, is the fact that PDD can block an unlimited amount of projectiles instantly. This is what allowed Mech players going mass Raven lategame in TvZ to have a flock of 20 Ravens, 20 Vikings, and destroy an infinite number of Corruptors. They do this by throwing down PDD, forcing the Corruptors to move away, and the Terran continues to chase the Corruptors down by leapfrogging PDD until the Corruptors are cornered.
For example, if they added an additional constraint to the PDD: In addition to costing energy, you only have ~3 "charges" per second. Meaning 1 PDD can not shoot down more than 3 projectiles per second. This would make it still effective in early game engagements, like in TvT if you have 1 Raven and 4 Vikings, and throw a PDD down for some positioning and support. But if you wanted to create an invincible position lategame TvZ for your air army, you would need to throw down say 15 PDDs in order to completely block all shots from the Zerg's 45 Corruptor fleet. And all the Zerg would need to do is move outside of its range, and not fight inside the PDD range. If Terran wanted to chase the air army down while being 100% invincible, they can leapfrog PDDs, but since each one only blocks 3 a second, you would quickly burn out on energy. Basically, limiting the PDD to ~3 charges a second allows the opponent to actually still do steady damage to the Terran.
The other thing to address is HSM scaling too hard lategame. Blizzard caused this issue themselves, by making HSM lock on much quicker than in the past. In the past, it was easy to move back and cause it to become a dud. While this may make the old HSM seem weak, using it on key units like Immortals or Colossus would still encourage such units to back off from a fight for 5-10 seconds, or continue fighting but eat the damage. It was an interesting zoning tool. What they did was eventually shorten the lockon time, and it became a very strong AOE nuke for a small cost. In lategame battles where you have many Ravens, you can keep throwing out HSMs to force them to back off or split, and eventually they need to fight and will eat some nukes. They only needed to nerf how hard HSM scaled lategame, by for example heavily reducing its AOE damage and making it more of a single target nuke/zoning tool, similar to what Disable is currently. You could still use it on Sieged Tanks or deployed WPs similar to Disable, but also be able to use it for zoning. Disable is anti-micro and there is not much interesting counterplay to it.
The old turret was really great too because while it had low DPS, it lasted a long time. Blizzard has an obsession with killing workers, and thinks it's like the only form of harassment possible. By making the turret have a very short 10 second duration with high DPS, it's like the Raven became a pseudo Banshee. It's also not interesting to have so many forms of Terran harass center on "the opponent didn't look quick enough so now they lose workers, but if they pull away then no damage is done". We already have the Liberator and even WMs to fulfill that niche of harass. If current iteration of turret must be kept, then at least increase the duration to say 12-15 seconds and nerf the damage slightly. That way, you have more of a decision whether to kill the turret to get back to mining, instead of right now where you almost always just want to wait it out since it is only 10 seconds.
The old turret was able to be used in later game situations such as planting a lot of them at an enemy expansion to slowly kill the base if nothing was done, or fortifying a position on the map (which helps slow the game down!). The new auto turrets can't be used in the same way because the total damage they do across its 10 seconds is much much lower than how much damage the old turret would do across its much longer lifespan. The old turret also combo'd really well with fortifying forward positions with a Mech (or even Bio/Tank/Lib) army. You could use the turrets as walls vs Zealots and such, but it is much harder now as they only last 10 seconds and only last for 1 engagement.
The old Raven gave such great synergy to not just Mech styles but Terran in general. The new Raven is 1 dimensional and contrived, with it being really useful (even oppressive) in TvT, while being OK in TvP (disabling carriers/archons/robo units is useful as a mech player), but being very useless in TvZ other than getting maybe 1-3 for detection and AA missile for Bio (or Libs/BCs for Mech).
If I were to fix the old Raven instead of gutting it, I would do this to summarize: 1) PDD is limited to 2-3 charges per second, instead of being able to use all its shots/energy instantly. 2) HSM AOE damage is reduced heavily, such as to ~10-20 damage. AOE is also reduced. Also, either the lockon time may slowed back down by 1 second to emphasize its role as a zoning tool rather than a reliable nuke. Alternatively, further push the HSM role to be more similar to what Disable is now, by buffing the damage to its primary target, but removing all AOE damage. 3) Auto Turret has the low dps as the original, and lasts ~60 seconds on the map. 4) Another option is to increase Raven supply from 2 to 3 to match the Viper, but I think simply nerfing its abilities would be enough, since again Vipers have parabomb now.
Oh yeah, BC jump is stupid. We need to stop having abilities that reduce the importance of positioning. Defender's advantage is weak enough in SC2. I would suggest giving the energy bar back and having Jump/Yamato both cost energy and have a cooldown. That way, it isn't a braindead unit where you just get a free Yamato and Jump back home every time it's off cooldown. Mass BCs is also toxic lategame when you can just keep jumping all over the map. BC Jump also allows mass BCs, which have always been the strongest endgame comp, to be even stronger. Because now you can just Jump onto Carrier/Tempest and instantly Yamato everything and win... the BC used to be the strongest straight up fighting unit, but its weakness was immobility. Now it can shoot while moving and also teleport anywhere to escape or force engagements...
As for Viper, Abduct needs more meaningful counterplay, or just remove Consume. Abduct being able to pull units instantly is anti-climactic and removes positional depth. Abduct was introduced in HotS at a time when Protoss deathballs were too strong and we needed a way to break deathballs up. We already have that in LotV in the form of you needing to expand and spread out more, and with new units that double up as both "strong defender" and "good harasser" like Liberator, Disruptor, Lurker, etc., which help discourage deathball play even more. Abduct being able to pull Massive Protoss units is especially problematic. What if Abduct could only pull Massive units half the distance, or not at all? Or what if Abduct was some kind of chanelling spell that drags the unit for a couple seconds, rather than an instant pull? It's not right that Abduct lets you punish players for moving out on the map. That's not fun. SC2 has always been trying to encourage armies to poke more often and have engagements be less committal.
On October 16 2020 15:50 col_jung wrote: Open question to everyone. With no more big overhauls or redesigns coming, what do you think of the current state of the game? We're probably now stuck with it forever. Fingers crossed this final design will have a lot of longevity. Are there any previous annual iterations you preferred? Did you prefer a previous of the Raven, Cyclone etc.?
I think the current iteration is the best. However there are some minor gripes/tweaks I would make, especially as a mech player. I wish that Tempests got a more interesting role/buff, instead of having an upgrade that ends up helping Protoss vs Mech more than it does PvZ. Corruptor vomit probably does more damage than it should. Viper Abduct is an archaic ability being used in ways other than its original intended purpose to discourage deathballs, and is not only anti-climactic and lame to watch as a spectator but design wise Abduct is hindering a lot of the progress SC2/LotV has made towards moving it to a "small skirmishes all over the map, more and longer lasting battles" game. Stuff like that.
The Raven is going to be my biggest complaint, with Viper being second I think. Current Raven design is OK, but contrived and also hinders the design in ways similar to Viper/Abduct.
The old Raven with PDD, HSM, and longer lasting Turret was the best, especially for Mech. But even for standard compositions and standard meta, seeing mass Raven and mass Disables in TvT is kind of lame, it removes a lot of the positional advantage and strong defense needed to push the game towards a "strong defense but small skirmishes all over the map" game like BW. I think the fun of SC2 comes when it feels like both players are constantly trying to put out fires, rather than ending a game in 1 big battle. It is what SC2 has been pushing towards across its 10 years. (Of course, variety is good though.)
Blizzard got this weird aversion to the Raven and felt like Terran should not have a gas sink and that you should only make 1-2 Ravens. What unit is designed to have its effectiveness cap at 1-2? Only Mothership is like that. That is just dumb design. Terran not having a good powerful spellcaster / gas sink also makes the economy game for Terran much less fun. In BW, you can increase your army power by increasing income by spreading out workers across more bases to mine more efficiently per worker. In SC2, saturation works differently, but there is a similar equivalent; the more bases you have the more gas you can mine, and gas is the most powerful resource. Terran not having a powerful gas heavy unit takes the fun out of things a bit.
Ok about the Raven itself. Blizzard really overreacted to the old Raven. Yes, it was OP (TvZ in particular), as a mech player I totally understand that. But there were some good tweaks they could do to it to stop it from scaling so oppressively lategame, without scrapping the whole design. I believe they simply did not think of those tweaks and gave up and redesigned it.
First off, Ravens were not nearly as OP in LotV as they were in HotS, and this is because of the Viper having parabomb (and abduct) both of which were effective vs mass Ravens. Thus, mass Ravens could still be strong, but Zerg had an easy and clear solution to it. You can't just mass Ravens and be invincible like in HotS, as Parabomb is easy and does so much damage and heavily discourages a dense mass of Ravens.
What they really needed to tweak, is the fact that PDD can block an unlimited amount of projectiles instantly. This is what allowed Mech players going mass Raven lategame in TvZ to have a flock of 20 Ravens, 20 Vikings, and destroy an infinite number of Corruptors. They do this by throwing down PDD, forcing the Corruptors to move away, and the Terran continues to chase the Corruptors down by leapfrogging PDD until the Corruptors are cornered.
For example, if they added an additional constraint to the PDD: In addition to costing energy, you only have ~3 "charges" per second. Meaning 1 PDD can not shoot down more than 3 projectiles per second. This would make it still effective in early game engagements, like in TvT if you have 1 Raven and 4 Vikings, and throw a PDD down for some positioning and support. But if you wanted to create an invincible position lategame TvZ for your air army, you would need to throw down say 15 PDDs in order to completely block all shots from the Zerg's 45 Corruptor fleet. And all the Zerg would need to do is move outside of its range, and not fight inside the PDD range. If Terran wanted to chase the air army down, they can leapfrog PDDs, but since each one only blocks 3 a second, you would quickly burn out on energy.
The other thing to address is HSM scaling too hard lategame. Blizzard caused this issue themselves, by making HSM lock on much quicker than in the past. In the past, it was easy to move back and cause it to become a dud. While this may make the old HSM seem weak, using it on key units like Immortals or Colossus would still encourage such units to back off from a fight for 5-10 seconds, or continue fighting but eat the damage. It was an interesting zoning tool. What they did was eventually shorten the lockon time, and it became a very strong AOE nuke for a small cost. In lategame battles where you have many Ravens, you can keep throwing out HSMs to force them to back off or split, and eventually they need to fight and will eat some nukes. They only needed to nerf how hard HSM scaled lategame, by for example heavily reducing its AOE damage and making it more of a single target nuke/zoning tool, similar to what Disable is currently. You could still use it on Sieged Tanks or deployed WPs similar to Disable, but also be able to use it for zoning. Disable is anti-micro and there is not much interesting counterplay to it.
The old turret was really great too because while it had low DPS, it lasted a long time. Blizzard has an obsession with killing workers, and thinks it's like the only form of harassment possible. By making the turret have a very short 10 second duration with high DPS, it's like the Raven became a pseudo Banshee. It's also not interesting to have so many forms of Terran harass center on "the opponent didn't look quick enough so now they lose workers, but if they pull away then no damage is done". We already have the Liberator and even WMs to fulfill that niche of harass. If current iteration of turret must be kept, then at least increase the duration to say 12-15 seconds and nerf the damage slightly. That way, you have more of a decision whether to kill the turret to get back to mining, instead of right now where you almost always just want to wait it out since it is only 10 seconds.
The old turret was able to be used in later game situations such as planting a lot of them at an enemy expansion to slowly kill the base if nothing was done, or fortifying a position on the map (which helps slow the game down!). The new auto turrets can't be used in the same way because the total damage they do across its 10 seconds is much much lower than how much damage the old turret would do across its much longer lifespan. The old turret also combo'd really well with fortifying forward positions with a Mech (or even Bio/Tank/Lib) army. You could use the turrets as walls vs Zealots and such, but it is much harder now as they only last 10 seconds and only last for 1 engagement.
The old Raven gave such great synergy to not just Mech styles but Terran in general. The new Raven is 1 dimensional and contrived, with it being really useful (even oppressive) in TvT, while being OK in TvP (disabling carriers/archons/robo units is useful as a mech player), but being very useless in TvZ other than getting maybe 1-3 for detection and AA missile for Bio (or Libs/BCs for Mech).
If I were to fix the old Raven instead of gutting it, I would do this to summarize: 1) PDD is limited to 2-3 charges per second, instead of being able to use all its shots/energy instantly. 2) HSM AOE damage is reduced heavily, such as to ~10-20 damage. AOE is also reduced. Also, either the lockon time may slowed back down by 1 second to emphasize its role as a zoning tool rather than a reliable nuke. Alternatively, further push the HSM role to be more similar to what Disable is now, by buffing the damage to its primary target, but removing all AOE damage. 3) Auto Turret has the low dps as the original, and lasts ~60 seconds on the map. 4) Another option is to increase Raven supply from 2 to 3 to match the Viper, but I think simply nerfing its abilities would be enough, since again Vipers have parabomb now.
Oh yeah, BC jump is stupid. We need to stop having abilities that reduce the importance of positioning. Defender's advantage is weak enough in SC2. I would suggest giving the energy bar back and having Jump/Yamato both cost energy and have a cooldown. That way, it isn't a braindead unit where you just get a free Yamato and Jump back home every time it's off cooldown. Mass BCs is also toxic lategame when you can just keep jumping all over the map. BC Jump also allows mass BCs, which have always been the strongest endgame comp, to be even stronger. Because now you can just Jump onto Carrier/Tempest and instantly Yamato everything and win...
As for Viper, Abduct needs more meaningful counterplay, or just remove Consume. Abduct being able to pull units instantly is anti-climactic and removes positional depth. Abduct was introduced in HotS at a time when Protoss deathballs were too strong and we needed a way to break deathballs up. We already have that in LotV in the form of you needing to expand and spread out more, and with new units that double up as both "strong defender" and "good harasser" like Liberator, Disruptor, Lurker, etc., which help discourage deathball play even more. Abduct being able to pull Massive Protoss units is especially problematic. What if Abduct could only pull Massive units half the distance, or not at all? Or what if Abduct was some kind of chanelling spell that drags the unit for a couple seconds, rather than an instant pull? It's not right that Abduct lets you punish players for moving out on the map. That's not fun. SC2 has always been trying to encourage armies to poke more often and have engagements be less committal.
Plenty I agree with there (and disagree with) but specifically with your point on 1-2 ravens not scaling being bad design.
I mean that’s how most spellcasters should work. A smattering used well augments stock fighting forces, too many and your standing force is weaker comparatively.
A little seasoning that enhances a well-balanced dish if you will. You shouldn’t be dining on a giant plate of seasoning.
Some of the absolute worst matchup metas have all coincided with massable casters, most notably Infestors and Raven.
Protoss while still not 100% to my taste are a much better race for being less reliant on forcefields/Zergs having anti-forcefield measures.
On October 18 2020 04:24 [Phantom] wrote: On second thought. I can't believe they are going to leave Zerg in the ridiculous state they are at now.
I know they said they will have balance updates "if needed" but that sounds to me like we won't get another balance patch unless something really broken (like 70%) winrate broken. It seems the 65% winrate of Zerg in premier tournaments isn't enough.
I think this will be the final state of the game guys. With the Z>P>T balance state.
This post would have been accurate 2 weeks ago, but there have been some absolutely wild power shifts in the meta recently.
On October 18 2020 04:24 [Phantom] wrote: On second thought. I can't believe they are going to leave Zerg in the ridiculous state they are at now.
I know they said they will have balance updates "if needed" but that sounds to me like we won't get another balance patch unless something really broken (like 70%) winrate broken. It seems the 65% winrate of Zerg in premier tournaments isn't enough.
I think this will be the final state of the game guys. With the Z>P>T balance state.
I wouldn't say ZvT is Zerg favoured at all right now. Nice balance whine attempt though.
I guess I get not wanting to spend development costs on new content, but it does seem a little bit rough to cut the community out of supporting the scene via warchests.
On October 17 2020 03:15 whiterabbit wrote: I just hope, really really really hope that current ActiBlizz doesn't touch SC IP in any shape or form. One day, in the future, when things may be better I'd die for SC3 or World of StarCraft type of a game but not now, not made by this shitty ActiBlizzard we have atm.
Oh my god, if this were done some company is getting a LOT of my money. Haha. Dream Haven pls
On October 18 2020 04:24 [Phantom] wrote: On second thought. I can't believe they are going to leave Zerg in the ridiculous state they are at now.
I know they said they will have balance updates "if needed" but that sounds to me like we won't get another balance patch unless something really broken (like 70%) winrate broken. It seems the 65% winrate of Zerg in premier tournaments isn't enough.
I think this will be the final state of the game guys. With the Z>P>T balance state.
I wouldn't say ZvT is Zerg favoured at all right now. Nice balance whine attempt though.
Sorry I was actually going to say Z>P>T>Z which I think its what we have been seeing the past 2 years. Maybe T=Z recently. Which I believe most people here can agree with?
In any case I don't think the game is balanced enough for long term. It's relatively balanced right now, but the game has much more complex unit interactions than BW and it's much more fast paced so I don't think we are at a point where we can leave the game without patches for long, and I doubt Blizzard will continue to patch things (even though they say they might).
On October 17 2020 15:46 Whois wrote: I played Starcraft when it originally came out, then Broodwar, and then Starcraft 2. So SC has been a part of my life for a very long time. Although I was never into the SC "scene" until SC2 came out in 2010. And while I do follow TL, I exclusively lurk, and have rarely ever posted. Today is kinda important so I thought I would post.
1) The first thing I want to say is that, being mindful of the mod note on the thread, it is important that you let people grief. Some have played SC for a large part of their lives, some only a few years, others have followed the eSports and watched, even as they stopped playing, so we are all invested in this game to varying degrees. I understand that websites like TL promote the game, and don't want to be negative, but in a momentous occasion like this, it is alright to let people grief. Tomorrow will be another day and life will go on. But for now, we should have a right to grief.
Obviously not to insult/flame/etc but we, the fans, should be afforded the opportunity to be sad, to lament. That is, those of us who feel that sentiment and wish to express it.
2) I would like to argue against the notion of some that, as Blizzard will keep the servers, and make balance updates, and since they don't play Coop Commanders, that this doesn't affect them. To be crystal clear: THIS IS A DEATH NOTICE. Nothing more (there is always a possibility the game can be resurrected), nothing less (this is bad news no matter how it is being spun).
It doesn't cost Blizzard much to make an occasional update to the game. The fact that they have decided not to spent even those few pennies (relatively speaking considering the size of the company) means they see little future in the game. There is no revenue stream in the pipeline. This trickles down to tournaments, and so casters and pro-gamers and other content creators are affected. And so it will affect you, the viewer.
So just because you don't play Coop Commanders or participate in War Chests doesn't mean you won't be affected by this announcement.
3) For over 20 years Starcraft has been alive, and in some development form. Whether it be expansions or sequels or ports or remaster or whatever. This announcement puts a nail through all that. So this is a death notice, and for those of us passionate about the game, we should be sad, and lament. Or hold a wake. Or something. It is not business as usual.
4) People keep talking about the community taking over. While that's nice, it won't be as "big". But there's an even larger problem. Unlike Brood War, Blizzard has locked down the IP for Starcraft2 content. I can't see companies investing in the game (tournaments and the like) when they can't control the legal environment and reap the rewards.
And I can't see Blizzard letting go of the IP. They would rather see the scene die than let someone else make it a success. As others have said, sometimes if you're a business and you can't make an IP work, you nevertheless keep it to kill it and stop anyone else making it work.
5) I know this post has been negative. But come on. It was a response to shitty news.
Just off the top of my head, so I will probably miss major moments. Memories of Starcraft (includes BroodWar): - BGH - remember that anyone?? lolz - Lost Temple - how many games have you played on that map? - Dire Straits - no, not the band, although they are awesome too! Esports: - Nestea - creator of the universe .... while Creator - the kid that just couldn't? - MVP - the whale - MVP vs Squirtle - MC - Boss Toss - Parting - Soul Train - Life - He Whose Name Shall Not be Spoken - Soo - eternal bridesmaid - Serral 2018 - invincible - shout out to InControl (I will forever call it the Artosis pylon) and TotalBiscuit, RIP
Really good post. Couldn't have said it better myself.
This should not be a surprise to anyone. If you look at the amount of SC2 viewers on Twitch, it's like next to nothing compared to all the other games. We've become a small, niche, community and it most definitely shows on the balance sheet. Remember when LR threads would go over 100 pages? Now we're lucky to break 10.
Also let's not forget any time Pokimane or T1 Tyler streams for example, it's more than what Wardi gets. Heck even Fl0m gets more when he streams himself playing CS for fun.
On October 18 2020 04:24 [Phantom] wrote: On second thought. I can't believe they are going to leave Zerg in the ridiculous state they are at now.
I know they said they will have balance updates "if needed" but that sounds to me like we won't get another balance patch unless something really broken (like 70%) winrate broken. It seems the 65% winrate of Zerg in premier tournaments isn't enough.
I think this will be the final state of the game guys. With the Z>P>T balance state.
I wouldn't say ZvT is Zerg favoured at all right now. Nice balance whine attempt though.
Sorry I was actually going to say Z>P>T>Z which I think its what we have been seeing the past 2 years. Maybe T=Z recently. Which I believe most people here can agree with?
In any case I don't think the game is balanced enough for long term. It's relatively balanced right now, but the game has much more complex unit interactions than BW and it's much more fast paced so I don't think we are at a point where we can leave the game without patches for long, and I doubt Blizzard will continue to patch things (even though they say they might).
Has any diverse race game with 3+ races ever been well balanced at anything but the very top level of play? I don't think so. Hell, Chess isn't even perfectly balanced. I don't need an absolutely 100% fair fight to enjoy the game. If I'm using the toughest race in the game and facing someone who is my equal and playing the easiest race then i will probably lose. meh. i view it as part of the game and part of playing a diverse race RTS. Its like being angry about the wind in a baseball game.
I'm a better Zerg player than I am Terran player despite playing T a lot more. T is more fun. So I play T and have a worse rank. whatever man. If I have a lot of fun... i win even when i lose the game.
I also dabble in competitive EA NHL '94 hockey and Super Tecmo Bowl. Neither of those games is perfectly balanced and their respective competitive communities have been having a blast with those games for decades.
I'd say SC2 is more balanced than NHL '94 and Super Tecmo Bowl. Relatively speaking, Blizzard has done a phenomenal job balancing their RTS games.
On October 17 2020 15:46 Whois wrote: I played Starcraft when it originally came out, then Broodwar, and then Starcraft 2. So SC has been a part of my life for a very long time. Although I was never into the SC "scene" until SC2 came out in 2010. And while I do follow TL, I exclusively lurk, and have rarely ever posted. Today is kinda important so I thought I would post.
1) The first thing I want to say is that, being mindful of the mod note on the thread, it is important that you let people grief. Some have played SC for a large part of their lives, some only a few years, others have followed the eSports and watched, even as they stopped playing, so we are all invested in this game to varying degrees. I understand that websites like TL promote the game, and don't want to be negative, but in a momentous occasion like this, it is alright to let people grief. Tomorrow will be another day and life will go on. But for now, we should have a right to grief.
Obviously not to insult/flame/etc but we, the fans, should be afforded the opportunity to be sad, to lament. That is, those of us who feel that sentiment and wish to express it.
2) I would like to argue against the notion of some that, as Blizzard will keep the servers, and make balance updates, and since they don't play Coop Commanders, that this doesn't affect them. To be crystal clear: THIS IS A DEATH NOTICE. Nothing more (there is always a possibility the game can be resurrected), nothing less (this is bad news no matter how it is being spun).
It doesn't cost Blizzard much to make an occasional update to the game. The fact that they have decided not to spent even those few pennies (relatively speaking considering the size of the company) means they see little future in the game. There is no revenue stream in the pipeline. This trickles down to tournaments, and so casters and pro-gamers and other content creators are affected. And so it will affect you, the viewer.
So just because you don't play Coop Commanders or participate in War Chests doesn't mean you won't be affected by this announcement.
3) For over 20 years Starcraft has been alive, and in some development form. Whether it be expansions or sequels or ports or remaster or whatever. This announcement puts a nail through all that. So this is a death notice, and for those of us passionate about the game, we should be sad, and lament. Or hold a wake. Or something. It is not business as usual.
4) People keep talking about the community taking over. While that's nice, it won't be as "big". But there's an even larger problem. Unlike Brood War, Blizzard has locked down the IP for Starcraft2 content. I can't see companies investing in the game (tournaments and the like) when they can't control the legal environment and reap the rewards.
And I can't see Blizzard letting go of the IP. They would rather see the scene die than let someone else make it a success. As others have said, sometimes if you're a business and you can't make an IP work, you nevertheless keep it to kill it and stop anyone else making it work.
5) I know this post has been negative. But come on. It was a response to shitty news.
Just off the top of my head, so I will probably miss major moments. Memories of Starcraft (includes BroodWar): - BGH - remember that anyone?? lolz - Lost Temple - how many games have you played on that map? - Dire Straits - no, not the band, although they are awesome too! Esports: - Nestea - creator of the universe .... while Creator - the kid that just couldn't? - MVP - the whale - MVP vs Squirtle - MC - Boss Toss - Parting - Soul Train - Life - He Whose Name Shall Not be Spoken - Soo - eternal bridesmaid - Serral 2018 - invincible - shout out to InControl (I will forever call it the Artosis pylon) and TotalBiscuit, RIP
"And I can't see Blizzard letting go of the IP. They would rather see the scene die than let someone else make it a success. As others have said, sometimes if you're a business and you can't make an IP work, you nevertheless keep it to kill it and stop anyone else making it work." ----- Yeah... Really sad but probably true.
-IPLTAC3 when Taeja reverse-all-killed MVP once, and then almost did it a second time. I was at the event. It was spectacular. Everyone was really into it. The line to get Nestea's autograph during intermission was so long eventually he was like, "Alright enough" and he just sat back down. -GomTV and GomPlayer. Staying up super late to watch the games so I could use the build orders myself. -That frenetic rush of finally breaking into Gold for the first time after a game on Desert Oasis. Every league promotion felt like a dream come true. -Watching the Koreans dominate, and rooting for my favorite players. -Korean interviews, where every post-game interview was essentially the same and everyone kept saying, "I hope to make exciting games for my fans". I loved that. -The Fist of Neeb -Beating Terran players who were actually better than I was by getting a few carriers and researching graviton catapult. -All the nights I stayed up late to watch GSL live. Laughing and enjoying the Tastosis banter. Hearing Tasteless say "We love you" at the end of the night. -Discovering Twitch and learning some of the dos and don'ts of engaging with the community. -Hosting my own tournaments. Becoming a sort of recognizable name.
___
I generally believe that the best things in life - the most sophisticated, and containing the most depth - are not things that everyone can easily grasp or even access. I believe life is filled with these kinds of gems, and the paradox is that these things, while they may be the most worthwhile to invest in personally - for those who are privileged to be able to comprehend them - can't ever be the most profitable thing to invest in monetarily because of their innate complexity.
For example, if I wanted to turn the greatest profit on my investment, and I had to choose between two instagram channels - a philosophy instagram and a model with an advanced bosom, I would need to choose the model. I would definitely end up richer for catering to the most basic instincts of viewers, and dumbing down the product I offer... but the world ends up poorer for not seeing investment in the complex subject.
Given this fact, I lament daily that many people see riches as the primary barometer of what makes something or someone worthwhile. But... Well, basic nature always wins out eventually. It's a truly grand challenge to create and maintain things that most people aren't interested in. It's costly. And the fact that So many community tournaments have been created despite what is essentially a guarantee (legally) that anything too profitable can actually just be taken at any moment by Activision-Blizzard speaks to the truth that Starcraft is one of those incredible gems.
I really think that the people who are interested in this game are some of the smartest, most talented, interesting people on the planet Earth. The Starcraft fans I've met in real life have always impressed me - often times before I had any idea they were Starcraft fans. Some of the shrewder ones went on to do great things - perhaps knowing that this would all come to a head eventually.
I can feel this beautiful old vessel starting to take on some water. I really, truly, sincerely hope that Activision-Blizzard will allow our ship to make port so that it can be refurbished and kept alive by motivations beyond good will.
Does seem a lot like SC2 is getting the HotS treatment. A lot of SC2's pro scene was being artificially propped up by Blizzard's funding when Mike Morhaime was around because it was his passion project. Now that he's gone, it's been all cost-cutting measures from Blizzard. It's hard to say what SC2's professional scene will be like once the GSL and ESL contracts are up.
Although, I don't think Blizzard has ever run a successful E-sport venture themselves. Brood War was a happy accident that happened organically in South Korea that couldn't be replicated anywhere else. Also, Blizzard had little to do in actual organizing of it. StarCraft 2 was successful for the first couple of years and that begin to dip in 2012 when the rising MOBA genre began to eat into its viewer base. WoW arenas never caught on, neither did competitive dungeons. HotS was entirely artificial from start to finish and was a loss leader. Overwatch League was the biggest mainstream success Blizzard ever achieved, and I watch it, but it's an example of how not to make an E-sport league. And it may not be around in a year or two with its dwindling viewership problems.
StarCraft 2, in my opinion, lasted as long as it did almost entirely due to the beneficence of Mike Morhaime.
Honestly these announcements do not change much of my attitude towards the playing and watching the game, which is pretty much: "Make the most of it while you can".
But if I would be a young, non-established player and have real passion for this game and the skill and am thinking about, whether I want to make a career off of this game.... Tough decision
I think many of the established players should have significant savings, so they could change career plans if they want. But for casters, etc. I don't think this applies. Of course you can always make some extra money with streaming. But I wonder at which point some casters I love will seriously consider quitting, because they don't want to build their career on such unstable ground.
I wish Activision Blizzard would take more responsibility here. I mean, they know what kind of reaction this post would cause. Instead of playing with open cards and presenting a plan for the next years, they leave a lot of room for speculation. Even if they entirely quit sponsoring this game, I would rather have them say that right away with a date, so the involved people can plan ahead.
On October 17 2020 15:46 Whois wrote: I played Starcraft when it originally came out, then Broodwar, and then Starcraft 2. So SC has been a part of my life for a very long time. Although I was never into the SC "scene" until SC2 came out in 2010. And while I do follow TL, I exclusively lurk, and have rarely ever posted. Today is kinda important so I thought I would post.
1) The first thing I want to say is that, being mindful of the mod note on the thread, it is important that you let people grief. Some have played SC for a large part of their lives, some only a few years, others have followed the eSports and watched, even as they stopped playing, so we are all invested in this game to varying degrees. I understand that websites like TL promote the game, and don't want to be negative, but in a momentous occasion like this, it is alright to let people grief. Tomorrow will be another day and life will go on. But for now, we should have a right to grief.
Obviously not to insult/flame/etc but we, the fans, should be afforded the opportunity to be sad, to lament. That is, those of us who feel that sentiment and wish to express it.
2) I would like to argue against the notion of some that, as Blizzard will keep the servers, and make balance updates, and since they don't play Coop Commanders, that this doesn't affect them. To be crystal clear: THIS IS A DEATH NOTICE. Nothing more (there is always a possibility the game can be resurrected), nothing less (this is bad news no matter how it is being spun).
It doesn't cost Blizzard much to make an occasional update to the game. The fact that they have decided not to spent even those few pennies (relatively speaking considering the size of the company) means they see little future in the game. There is no revenue stream in the pipeline. This trickles down to tournaments, and so casters and pro-gamers and other content creators are affected. And so it will affect you, the viewer.
So just because you don't play Coop Commanders or participate in War Chests doesn't mean you won't be affected by this announcement.
3) For over 20 years Starcraft has been alive, and in some development form. Whether it be expansions or sequels or ports or remaster or whatever. This announcement puts a nail through all that. So this is a death notice, and for those of us passionate about the game, we should be sad, and lament. Or hold a wake. Or something. It is not business as usual.
4) People keep talking about the community taking over. While that's nice, it won't be as "big". But there's an even larger problem. Unlike Brood War, Blizzard has locked down the IP for Starcraft2 content. I can't see companies investing in the game (tournaments and the like) when they can't control the legal environment and reap the rewards.
And I can't see Blizzard letting go of the IP. They would rather see the scene die than let someone else make it a success. As others have said, sometimes if you're a business and you can't make an IP work, you nevertheless keep it to kill it and stop anyone else making it work.
5) I know this post has been negative. But come on. It was a response to shitty news.
Just off the top of my head, so I will probably miss major moments. Memories of Starcraft (includes BroodWar): - BGH - remember that anyone?? lolz - Lost Temple - how many games have you played on that map? - Dire Straits - no, not the band, although they are awesome too! Esports: - Nestea - creator of the universe .... while Creator - the kid that just couldn't? - MVP - the whale - MVP vs Squirtle - MC - Boss Toss - Parting - Soul Train - Life - He Whose Name Shall Not be Spoken - Soo - eternal bridesmaid - Serral 2018 - invincible - shout out to InControl (I will forever call it the Artosis pylon) and TotalBiscuit, RIP
"And I can't see Blizzard letting go of the IP. They would rather see the scene die than let someone else make it a success. As others have said, sometimes if you're a business and you can't make an IP work, you nevertheless keep it to kill it and stop anyone else making it work." ----- Yeah... Really sad but probably true.
-IPLTAC3 when Taeja reverse-all-killed MVP once, and then almost did it a second time. I was at the event. It was spectacular. Everyone was really into it. The line to get Nestea's autograph during intermission was so long eventually he was like, "Alright enough" and he just sat back down. -GomTV and GomPlayer. Staying up super late to watch the games so I could use the build orders myself. -That frenetic rush of finally breaking into Gold for the first time after a game on Desert Oasis. Every league promotion felt like a dream come true. -Watching the Koreans dominate, and rooting for my favorite players. -Korean interviews, where every post-game interview was essentially the same and everyone kept saying, "I hope to make exciting games for my fans". I loved that. -The Fist of Neeb -Beating Terran players who were actually better than I was by getting a few carriers and researching graviton catapult. -All the nights I stayed up late to watch GSL live. Laughing and enjoying the Tastosis banter. Hearing Tasteless say "We love you" at the end of the night. -Discovering Twitch and learning some of the dos and don'ts of engaging with the community. -Hosting my own tournaments. Becoming a sort of recognizable name.
___
I generally believe that the best things in life - the most sophisticated, and containing the most depth - are not things that everyone can easily grasp or even access. I believe life is filled with these kinds of gems, and the paradox is that these things, while they may be the most worthwhile to invest in personally - for those who are privileged to be able to comprehend them - can't ever be the most profitable thing to invest in monetarily because of their innate complexity.
For example, if I wanted to turn the greatest profit on my investment, and I had to choose between two instagram channels - a philosophy instagram and a model with an advanced bosom, I would need to choose the model. I would definitely end up richer for catering to the most basic instincts of viewers, and dumbing down the product I offer... but the world ends up poorer for not seeing investment in the complex subject.
Given this fact, I lament daily that many people see riches as the primary barometer of what makes something or someone worthwhile. But... Well, basic nature always wins out eventually. It's a truly grand challenge to create and maintain things that most people aren't interested in. It's costly. And the fact that So many community tournaments have been created despite what is essentially a guarantee (legally) that anything too profitable can actually just be taken at any moment by Activision-Blizzard speaks to the truth that Starcraft is one of those incredible gems.
I really think that the people who are interested in this game are some of the smartest, most talented, interesting people on the planet Earth. The Starcraft fans I've met in real life have always impressed me - often times before I had any idea they were Starcraft fans. Some of the shrewder ones went on to do great things - perhaps knowing that this would all come to a head eventually.
I can feel this beautiful old vessel starting to take on some water. I really, truly, sincerely hope that Activision-Blizzard will allow our ship to make port so that it can be refurbished and kept alive by motivations beyond good will.
Here here.
Did Starcraft make actually quite a lot of money? Yes. Did it make all the money others did? Well no.
But if you’re both a creator and a member of the wider community, 10 years of great moments, events and developing the game. Meeting new and interesting people.
Were Mike Morhaime etc so into Starcraft because it made so much money, or that they’d developed a product that inspired such community and a level of unanticipated mastery of the actual game that they could appreciate?
Seeing all the strategies and crazy micro tricks of the pros must be pretty satisfying, giving them a base set of tools and seeing them work magic with them.
It’s a bad state of affair for us community members the direction Blizz is taking lately, but we should also spare a thought for the many creatives who want to work on projects that inspire this kind of devotion too.
If Activision and Blizzard were being intelligent, they would provide more tools in the editor so people could make their own Commanders, skins ect... and run contests and then put the winning content into the game.
There is people in the community who would do this for free.
I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect RTS to be a big esport nowadays. Consumer tastes are changing and one company despite all the resources it has can’t force the market to change.
Look at the way FPS esports has shifted away from fast paced arena shooters like Quake towards team death match games like CSGO. And arena shooters like Doom and Quake were the grand father of all esports and PC gaming in general, that stuff used to be massive back in the 90s in terms of media coverage and being on ESPN. Even COD which is one of the biggest franchises in the world and had a big head start with esports in MLG never recovered its popularity.
I don’t think this has much to do with how blizzard promoted the game. Few companies in the world have even tried to support a single esport for a decade, especially when you aren’t pulling in the numbers.
On October 18 2020 21:19 Caihead wrote: I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect RTS to be a big esport nowadays. Consumer tastes are changing and one company despite all the resources it has can’t force the market to change.
Look at the way FPS esports has shifted away from fast paced arena shooters like Quake towards team death match games like CSGO. And arena shooters like Doom and Quake were the grand father of all esports and PC gaming in general, that stuff used to be massive back in the 90s in terms of media coverage and being on ESPN. Even COD which is one of the biggest franchises in the world and had a big head start with esports in MLG never recovered its popularity.
I don’t think this has much to do with how blizzard promoted the game. Few companies in the world have even tried to support a single esport for a decade, especially when you aren’t pulling in the numbers.
I’m not sure I entirely agree. Consumers can only play what the market produces, or what they know exists. Or want to play what their friends are playing.
There’s a lot of factors. Cross-platform development in the FPS sphere really kicked arena shooters to the curb as well, you really can’t play those hyper fast games with lots of advanced movement and verticality well with a controller.
You have the problem of genre veterans too and this can only be mitigated by a big player pool in any new title. Even a merely decent long-time Quake player, or SC player playing a new RTS will just utterly crush players trying to learn.
SC2 when compared to the RTS market both then and now was still pretty gigantic. Partly by virtue of being well-made, partly by being well, a Blizzard game with all that entails.
I’m unsure how to flip overall consumer trends, but a big dev really pushing a well-made arena shooter or RTS I think you can still capture enough of the market to have a really viable competitive game.
You only really need one standout title to cover a genre. More is desirable of course but especially with something that is more niche in current trends.
I reckon if say, the next Valve game was in either of the two aforementioned genres and were of high quality that’d be enough to punch through.
I really don't see how everyone can be making straight claims that SC is over as if war chests and co-op commanders were things that were keeping SC2 on the radar of everyone.
It's niche, and even if it isn't getting single player updates, that doesn't mean the franchise is dead, nor does it mean that SC2 itself isn't going to continue to be played. There are many many older games that stick around for years after active development.
I don't think we need to resort to thinking that the franchise is on some sort of death march. It's been pretty consistently niche for a while now.
RTS is the Tennis of esports, and SC:BW and SC2 are the clay and grass courts of Tennis. It's fine.
Is it sad there will be less development on SC2? yeah of course. But we don't know where else the franchise is headed, and I'll enjoy it because I like the universe. I still hope some next great RTS comes out though. I'd like that. And if it comes from Morhaime's new crew and not Blizzard that's ok with me as well.
Indeed not unexpected, but still gets the feelings
I quite dislike that they make it sound like it was great so far: "This year we celebrated 10 years of StarCraft II with one of our largest-ever patches, with massive updates to the editor, Prestige Talents for Co-op Commanders, and gameplay improvements delivered to players worldwide."... The three points from the updates are -Editor updates that were asked for years -Talent tree that literally takes 2h for an intern to program (and is very common in other games, including their own Diablo 3) -Balance update they anyway do regularly and also don't require much dev.
For the warchests, I bough a couple for the sake of supporting, but the content were quite ridiculous as well.
I'm anyway now fuelled by Mike Moraime's and co. new projects. In the meanwhile, I'll keep getting wreck on SC2 ladder :D
On October 19 2020 00:45 ZeromuS wrote: I really don't see how everyone can be making straight claims that SC is over as if war chests and co-op commanders were things that were keeping SC2 on the radar of everyone.
It's niche, and even if it isn't getting single player updates, that doesn't mean the franchise is dead, nor does it mean that SC2 itself isn't going to continue to be played. There are many many older games that stick around for years after active development.
I don't think we need to resort to thinking that the franchise is on some sort of death march. It's been pretty consistently niche for a while now.
RTS is the Tennis of esports, and SC:BW and SC2 are the clay and grass courts of Tennis. It's fine.
Is it sad there will be less development on SC2? yeah of course. But we don't know where else the franchise is headed, and I'll enjoy it because I like the universe. I still hope some next great RTS comes out though. I'd like that. And if it comes from Morhaime's new crew and not Blizzard that's ok with me as well.
It may be niche to us, but we're still the minority. Plenty of people play SC2 entirely for the co-op and custom games, and couldn't care less about 1v1 competitive.
On October 19 2020 00:45 ZeromuS wrote: I really don't see how everyone can be making straight claims that SC is over as if war chests and co-op commanders were things that were keeping SC2 on the radar of everyone.
It's niche, and even if it isn't getting single player updates, that doesn't mean the franchise is dead, nor does it mean that SC2 itself isn't going to continue to be played. There are many many older games that stick around for years after active development.
I don't think we need to resort to thinking that the franchise is on some sort of death march. It's been pretty consistently niche for a while now.
RTS is the Tennis of esports, and SC:BW and SC2 are the clay and grass courts of Tennis. It's fine.
Is it sad there will be less development on SC2? yeah of course. But we don't know where else the franchise is headed, and I'll enjoy it because I like the universe. I still hope some next great RTS comes out though. I'd like that. And if it comes from Morhaime's new crew and not Blizzard that's ok with me as well.
On October 16 2020 07:41 Waxangel wrote: Source Post: Blizzard this change will free us up to think about what’s next, not just with regard to StarCraft II, but for the StarCraft universe as a whole.
Rob Bridenbecker
Starcraft 3?
Unlikely for a lot of reasons...at least for a while.
1st off, ActiBlizzard is really, really into micro transactions, thet's their bread and butter so it's going to take loot box regulation to collapse that model before we see a return to traditional games and their DLC/Expansion profit models.
2nd, RTS, unfortunately is a niche genre that's basically 3/4 dead. For faster paced RTS which includes base building, you've sc2...that's it. AoE is slow paced. Total War series has no resource management, then you get into turn-based, etc. So it's unlikely, unless rts makes a comeback that we'll get a SC3.
3rd, I suspect ActiBlizz wants to bring StarCraft into a business model which supports heavier monetization while reaching to a larger audience. It wouldn't shock me in the slightest if ActiBlizzard was considering a MMOFPS StarCraft game given the massive generational leap in GPUs and even with things like UE4's Chaos Physics (fully destructible objects such as buildings).
In essence, I think it's more likely we'll see something similar to what happened with WarCraft; a move away from RTS into a new genre. I just hope it's not World of Starcraft crap, MMOFPS would be a much more solid choice for the sci-fi setting of StarCraft than a MMORPG.
On October 16 2020 07:41 Waxangel wrote: Source Post: Blizzard this change will free us up to think about what’s next, not just with regard to StarCraft II, but for the StarCraft universe as a whole.
Rob Bridenbecker
Starcraft 3?
Unlikely for a lot of reasons...at least for a while.
1st off, ActiBlizzard is really, really into micro transactions, thet's their bread and butter so it's going to take loot box regulation to collapse that model before we see a return to traditional games and their DLC/Expansion profit models.
2nd, RTS, unfortunately is a niche genre that's basically 3/4 dead. For faster paced RTS which includes base building, you've sc2...that's it. AoE is slow paced. Total War series has no resource management, then you get into turn-based, etc. So it's unlikely, unless rts makes a comeback that we'll get a SC3.
3rd, I suspect ActiBlizz wants to bring StarCraft into a business model which supports heavier monetization while reaching to a larger audience. It wouldn't shock me in the slightest if ActiBlizzard was considering a MMOFPS StarCraft game given the massive generational leap in GPUs and even with things like UE4's Chaos Physics (fully destructible objects such as buildings).
In essence, I think it's more likely we'll see something similar to what happened with WarCraft; a move away from RTS into a new genre. I just hope it's not World of Starcraft crap, MMOFPS would be a much more solid choice for the sci-fi setting of StarCraft than a MMORPG.
Wasn't there a report that they were making an Sc2 fps but cancelled it cause it would compete with overwatch?
For what is worth I think sc3 is more probable than Warcraft 4. Wow is doing ok and they are continuing the story. Wc4 would need to either be a remake of an older game (hmmm) or be way in the future/alternate universe.
Though I agree a game in the style of sc ghost or a co-op inspired game might be the future of sc.
Thinking about SC future last few days and... I am really curious what they gonna do with it. Would be unreal to me if they don't use SC IP anymore, they must have some solid plans or even something in works already for it but I'd guess not SC3 (and I hope current ActiBlizz will never try and ruin SC3). But it feels we wont get any news about it for couple of years tho.
I have been reading some posts on other forums about how they want to learn about other games and feel like the game is now shutting down rapidly, thus making them lose interest.. if you really like this game wouldnt this be the time to actually put more into it so you can enjoy it more for longer? Do people nowadays really need constant cosmetic content updates just so they get that "NEW!!!" feeling everytime they log in?
To me not a lot has changed. Sure I wont buy a new warchest and I wont be playing a new coop commander like last year but I like playing the game starcraft generally not just the new and shiny stuff about it. I actually like it more when the meta is a bit more stable and not thrown around by crazy balance patches like i.e in League of Legends. Its just absolutely insane to try to keep up with that game, its almost like a full time job to learn everything that they changed just in the past year. SC2 is a very matured game and I think we will have a lot more years of exciting pro matches to watch.
Anyways, heres to the future years we will have this game, even if ESL drops it after 2022, I will still follow it and who knows maybe we will get 3rd chapter somewhere along the road!
I think the RTS genre is becoming more and more a niche because no big studio is putting serious effort in trying to renew the genre (just like SC2 or W3 did in their time). There a is serious lack of imagination (or motivation) from game designers in this area.
After all, it's always fun to see big army fighting, and I'm pretty sure tons of people enjoy that. My son loves playing Totally Accurate Battle Simulator (I know it's not an RTS), but SC2 UI is just too complexe to begin with .
A new RTS should have a more progressive learning curve where ultra casual player would not have to create control group, micro anything, etc. And only when you reach a higher league, you start to micro because it gives you better army control. It does not have to be a different game, it could be implemented at the level of the UI.
I know some people are against that, because they think that people won't learn the "true" game. But casuals don't care about being grand master, micro, etc. they just want to have fun.
A new RTS should have a more progressive learning curve where ultra casual player would not have to create control group, micro anything, etc. And only when you reach a higher league, you start to micro because it gives you better army control. It does not have to be a different game, it could be implemented at the level of the UI.
I agree, I thinkm it is the biggest question when making an RTS, how to inroduce the game not too slowly to experienced players but also not too fast for novices. You need a slow learning curve with a lot of different modes to learn the game.
However one thing I disagree with, ultra casual players in starcraft 2 never "had" to create control groups or micro anything. When I played starcraft 1 I basically didn't create control groups or micro. You can totally play like that in starcraft 2. Especially the first two campaigns are so easy there is basically no must, you can mostly ignore macro and focus on micro instead too if you want. Thats tthe beauty of a game like starcraft 2,you can play however you wanta and just have fun.
Lets be realistic. RTS as a genre is seeing less and less spotlight because many younger players/kids these days prefer to play easier games like League. Dont misunderstand me, I love league, been playing it for about 7 years. But there is also no denying how easy it is compared to an RTS game. Why would kids play a significantly more difficult game that is not that famous, as opposed to a far easier game that is seriously popular?
On October 19 2020 18:01 5ecured wrote: Lets be realistic. RTS as a genre is seeing less and less spotlight because many younger players/kids these days prefer to play easier games like League. Dont misunderstand me, I love league, been playing it for about 7 years. But there is also no denying how easy it is compared to an RTS game. Why would kids play a significantly more difficult game that is not that famous, as opposed to a far easier game that is seriously popular?
AoE II HD, AOE:DE and AOE II:DE sold over 5 m copies. Total war is selling quite well too. IIRC They are billions is a quite succesful RTS either
RTS is nowhere near the dead end like may are suggesting. People are buying and playing RTS games. So can everybody starts to name what all of you have the issue with? That nobody is playing these games on a bigger scale competetively? (at least compared to SC2)
RTS as a genre is alive. Unless you start naming the problem by its real name, you are fixing something that doesn't need a fix.
On October 18 2020 09:13 whiterabbit wrote: Didn't notice anyone posting KR/CN reactions to news. What are their pros, casters, SC personalities saying bout all of this?
The Koreans doesn't really follow sc2 and sc2 news, I mean the last time I checked AfreecaTV it had zero Sc2 viewers
On October 19 2020 18:01 5ecured wrote: Lets be realistic. RTS as a genre is seeing less and less spotlight because many younger players/kids these days prefer to play easier games like League. Dont misunderstand me, I love league, been playing it for about 7 years. But there is also no denying how easy it is compared to an RTS game. Why would kids play a significantly more difficult game that is not that famous, as opposed to a far easier game that is seriously popular?
But will esport be driven by kids and weebs for ever? I don't believe so, the adults will enter the esport audience and drive it like they drive irl sport
Does it mean all the stuff quickly gonna be free ? Even the old war chests, or special portraits unavailable since a while ?? If they re not free, at least buyable, it would be great. I could give all my moneys for "Snake Marine"
I am gonna keep on playing till the day my hands fall off. This game has done so many good and amazing things and it does not matter if blizzard is backing the game up or not. The SC2 community is incredibly strong and there will always be people to enjoy starcraft with.
I am a very competitive person and of course i am not super happy about those changes, because it makes stuff more difficult money wise. We need to support our professional players to keep sc2 esports alive! But i am super relaxed, that we will be able to fund our own tournaments etc. if necessary.
I will keep on playing and i bet a lot of other people will do the same. Nothing is stopping me to finally crack 5,4k MMR lol
Love you all guys, the community is a gift! Never take it for granted!
To be honest, Blizzard deserves all that comes their way. Years after years matchmaking of team games is still broken, full team vs random team is just not fair. So all that remains is an enjoyable game for 1vs1 guys.
On October 20 2020 06:46 SC-Shield wrote: To be honest, Blizzard deserves all that comes their way. Years after years matchmaking of team games is still broken, full team vs random team is just not fair. So all that remains is an enjoyable game for 1vs1 guys.
Arranged team versus random is fair as long both teams have a similar MMR.
I wonder why this decision came about now. If the in-game population statistics are accurate SC2 has as many players as it did 4-5 years ago. It's hard for me to imagine that coop isn't profitable for them given how many people buy the p2p commanders.
Hoping that the community just stays strong and doesn't let this news affect their love for the game. Starcraft as a franchise is still doing quite well. Brood War is still hugely popular and Blizzard is still going to do balance changes which lets face it, matters a hell of a lot more then nonsense like skins and war chests and whatever the hell else casual crap Blizzard thinks that they players want.
Not saying I don't think some of the skins aren't really cool, they definitely are, but as long as their are talented map makers that have a passion for the game and the community, we already know we are taken care of on that regard, this seasons map pool is absolutely freaking amazing and makes previous popular maps just look plain vanilla.
Balance isn't even in that bad of a spot, we haven't had any glaring unwinnable. "Brood Lord/Festor" era for any race for awhile now, it's pretty hard to deny that Protoss was, is and probably forever will be the weakest race at the top, and honestly that's okay, there is always one race at the bottom.
Terrans dominated the bonjwa scene for BW, but historically speaking, Terran actually performed only in the + regarding winrates vs. Zerg on Python, and Protoss was actually quite strong vs Terran on all maps but were imbalanced vs. Terran on Python.
I just hope the community keeps doing it's thing, the current tournaments are producing outstanding quality games.
On October 20 2020 06:46 SC-Shield wrote: To be honest, Blizzard deserves all that comes their way. Years after years matchmaking of team games is still broken, full team vs random team is just not fair. So all that remains is an enjoyable game for 1vs1 guys.
Arranged team versus random is fair as long both teams have a similar MMR.
MMR isn't everything in the teamgames.
On October 20 2020 13:43 jpg06051992 wrote: Hoping that the community just stays strong and doesn't let this news affect their love for the game. Starcraft as a franchise is still doing quite well. Brood War is still hugely popular and Blizzard is still going to do balance changes which lets face it, matters a hell of a lot more then nonsense like skins and war chests and whatever the hell else casual crap Blizzard thinks that they players want.
Not saying I don't think some of the skins aren't really cool, they definitely are, but as long as their are talented map makers that have a passion for the game and the community, we already know we are taken care of on that regard, this seasons map pool is absolutely freaking amazing and makes previous popular maps just look plain vanilla.
Balance isn't even in that bad of a spot, we haven't had any glaring unwinnable. "Brood Lord/Festor" era for any race for awhile now, it's pretty hard to deny that Protoss was, is and probably forever will be the weakest race at the top, and honestly that's okay, there is always one race at the bottom.
Terrans dominated the bonjwa scene for BW, but historically speaking, Terran actually performed only in the + regarding winrates vs. Zerg on Python, and Protoss was actually quite strong vs Terran on all maps but were imbalanced vs. Terran on Python.
I just hope the community keeps doing it's thing, the current tournaments are producing outstanding quality games.
Why is Protoss the weakest? This should be interesting
On October 20 2020 06:46 SC-Shield wrote: To be honest, Blizzard deserves all that comes their way. Years after years matchmaking of team games is still broken, full team vs random team is just not fair. So all that remains is an enjoyable game for 1vs1 guys.
My guess is that arragend teams have slightly lower MMR than random teams so it is about equal. Haven't played random teams in ages so really not sure but I think they said something like this back in the day
On October 20 2020 00:30 Haku wrote: I am gonna keep on playing till the day my hands fall off. This game has done so many good and amazing things and it does not matter if blizzard is backing the game up or not. The SC2 community is incredibly strong and there will always be people to enjoy starcraft with.
I am a very competitive person and of course i am not super happy about those changes, because it makes stuff more difficult money wise. We need to support our professional players to keep sc2 esports alive! But i am super relaxed, that we will be able to fund our own tournaments etc. if necessary.
I will keep on playing and i bet a lot of other people will do the same. Nothing is stopping me to finally crack 5,4k MMR lol
Love you all guys, the community is a gift! Never take it for granted!
This. This is the kind of positivity I've been looking for in this thread. Plenty of others like it have sprung up but this one just hit exactly where we need it to.
You're so right, this is the perfect place for competitive people. I got into this game thanks to my older brother, who peaked at diamond league before he sorta lost the time to commit to it. Now I've gotten to diamond, and what's he tell me?
"Dude nice, maybe you can finally break through into Masters like I never could."
That feeling resonates through this news, and it's great to see it resonate with other people. It's stuff like this that will keep the community going strong :D
3 years of minor updates and tweaks are coming to Starcraft2
We are about to witness some of the best starcraft 2 we have ever seen in 2022, and even if 2023 is the end , it will be worth it.
Pros can now poor hours into practice without fear of becoming something to Byun, who is still amazingly good, but we all know his art of reapers , that no one could come close to, was forever balanced patched in exchange for his victory road run.
Imagine hitting that stride without that fear, imagine being able to practice knowing that confidence.
I am just so happy to know starcraft 2 tournament contracts will remain intact, and I if we are lucky activision won't try to double dip when this game becomes the front page of Esports once again.
On October 19 2020 18:01 5ecured wrote: Lets be realistic. RTS as a genre is seeing less and less spotlight because many younger players/kids these days prefer to play easier games like League. Dont misunderstand me, I love league, been playing it for about 7 years. But there is also no denying how easy it is compared to an RTS game. Why would kids play a significantly more difficult game that is not that famous, as opposed to a far easier game that is seriously popular?
I want to take issue with this attitude. Not too long ago, computer games used to be something for the nerdiest kids only. I would be hard-pressed to find more than a dozen people at my high school who knew what StarCraft was in 2001, and they were all my friends. Now, virtually every high schooler and their mom knows what fortnite is. You have soccer moms who never played games growing up playing Minecraft with their kids because that's all they want to do.
PC games have become the default form of entertainment for the younger generation because they have adapted to meet the demands of a wider audience. They are basically replacing television as another form of slightly more interactive, but still mindless, entertainment.
Entertainment and hobbies are two completely different market sectors that video games exist in. The hobbyist sector still represents the same small nerdy group that it always has. Hobbyists want games that challenge them and make them try over and over again until they finally improve. The entertainment crowd just wants to get rewards for clicking buttons.
There are still as many kids looking for challenging video games as there ever has been. But companies that create video games have learned how to make much more money by creating for the entertainment sector. Even hobbyists will still buy entertainment games, because we still need a break from our hobbies once in a while and just want some mindless entertainment.
The issue, of course, is that now that game companies have learned how to effectively design games for the entertainment sector, there is no reason to design for the hobbyists. A well-designed, well balanced and artfully written RTS is much more difficult to build than a MOBA or FPS arena game, and it appeals to a much smaller market. Given the costs of building physics engines and graphics layers from scratch, the cost of making a modern AAA title is just not feasible for the hobbyist market.
I am convinced RTS builders who set expectations of competing in the entertainment business are destined to fail. You could get a lot of kids to play StarCraft 3 for sure. But there won't be nearly as many of them as there will be playing yet another game where you click on the bad guy and get loot. New RTS projects need to be scaled to the market potential of their audience, the hobbyist sector, and not be operating under some illusion that they are going to get the kind of numbers that entertainment sector games get.
On October 20 2020 06:46 SC-Shield wrote: To be honest, Blizzard deserves all that comes their way. Years after years matchmaking of team games is still broken, full team vs random team is just not fair. So all that remains is an enjoyable game for 1vs1 guys.
Arranged team versus random is fair as long both teams have a similar MMR.
On October 20 2020 13:43 jpg06051992 wrote: Hoping that the community just stays strong and doesn't let this news affect their love for the game. Starcraft as a franchise is still doing quite well. Brood War is still hugely popular and Blizzard is still going to do balance changes which lets face it, matters a hell of a lot more then nonsense like skins and war chests and whatever the hell else casual crap Blizzard thinks that they players want.
Not saying I don't think some of the skins aren't really cool, they definitely are, but as long as their are talented map makers that have a passion for the game and the community, we already know we are taken care of on that regard, this seasons map pool is absolutely freaking amazing and makes previous popular maps just look plain vanilla.
Balance isn't even in that bad of a spot, we haven't had any glaring unwinnable. "Brood Lord/Festor" era for any race for awhile now, it's pretty hard to deny that Protoss was, is and probably forever will be the weakest race at the top, and honestly that's okay, there is always one race at the bottom.
Terrans dominated the bonjwa scene for BW, but historically speaking, Terran actually performed only in the + regarding winrates vs. Zerg on Python, and Protoss was actually quite strong vs Terran on all maps but were imbalanced vs. Terran on Python.
I just hope the community keeps doing it's thing, the current tournaments are producing outstanding quality games.
Why is Protoss the weakest? This should be interesting
Pretty sure Protoss has had the weakest representation on both ladder and at the tip top level of play, there has been far more Zerg and Terran champions then Protoss champions.
On October 20 2020 06:46 SC-Shield wrote: To be honest, Blizzard deserves all that comes their way. Years after years matchmaking of team games is still broken, full team vs random team is just not fair. So all that remains is an enjoyable game for 1vs1 guys.
Arranged team versus random is fair as long both teams have a similar MMR.
On October 20 2020 13:43 jpg06051992 wrote: Hoping that the community just stays strong and doesn't let this news affect their love for the game. Starcraft as a franchise is still doing quite well. Brood War is still hugely popular and Blizzard is still going to do balance changes which lets face it, matters a hell of a lot more then nonsense like skins and war chests and whatever the hell else casual crap Blizzard thinks that they players want.
Not saying I don't think some of the skins aren't really cool, they definitely are, but as long as their are talented map makers that have a passion for the game and the community, we already know we are taken care of on that regard, this seasons map pool is absolutely freaking amazing and makes previous popular maps just look plain vanilla.
Balance isn't even in that bad of a spot, we haven't had any glaring unwinnable. "Brood Lord/Festor" era for any race for awhile now, it's pretty hard to deny that Protoss was, is and probably forever will be the weakest race at the top, and honestly that's okay, there is always one race at the bottom.
Terrans dominated the bonjwa scene for BW, but historically speaking, Terran actually performed only in the + regarding winrates vs. Zerg on Python, and Protoss was actually quite strong vs Terran on all maps but were imbalanced vs. Terran on Python.
I just hope the community keeps doing it's thing, the current tournaments are producing outstanding quality games.
Why is Protoss the weakest? This should be interesting
Pretty sure Protoss has had the weakest representation on both ladder and at the tip top level of play, there has been far more Zerg and Terran champions then Protoss champions.
You might have fallen for some type of perception bias. Statistics does not confirm that claim when it comes to the ladder. Especially on the grand master level, protoss accounts make up around 40%. https://www.rankedftw.com/stats/races/1v1/#v=2&r=0&l=4
And from al the AfreecaTV organised premier tournaments, only 6 out of 23 played in LotV had finals without a protoss competitor. Global StarCraft II League
On October 17 2020 15:14 Noonius wrote: this has been long time coming. Years. All the signs have been pointing to it. No one should be surprised. Also, unless there's a colossal shift in Activision's corporate policy, there is not gonna be SC3 in foreseeable future. Yes, I said AV because there's no way Blizzard is gonna be allowed to spend massive amount of money developing a game with very niche target audience without parent company approval.
in a world without gold we might have been heroes :[
Everything is going has expected. Perfect prédiction. Good bye Blizzard, good bye TL, may be some of you will understand one day that closing/laughing on every thread who was trying to change the game, was non productive. And there it is. Was a pleasur ++
On October 20 2020 06:46 SC-Shield wrote: To be honest, Blizzard deserves all that comes their way. Years after years matchmaking of team games is still broken, full team vs random team is just not fair. So all that remains is an enjoyable game for 1vs1 guys.
Arranged team versus random is fair as long both teams have a similar MMR.
On October 20 2020 13:43 jpg06051992 wrote: Hoping that the community just stays strong and doesn't let this news affect their love for the game. Starcraft as a franchise is still doing quite well. Brood War is still hugely popular and Blizzard is still going to do balance changes which lets face it, matters a hell of a lot more then nonsense like skins and war chests and whatever the hell else casual crap Blizzard thinks that they players want.
Not saying I don't think some of the skins aren't really cool, they definitely are, but as long as their are talented map makers that have a passion for the game and the community, we already know we are taken care of on that regard, this seasons map pool is absolutely freaking amazing and makes previous popular maps just look plain vanilla.
Balance isn't even in that bad of a spot, we haven't had any glaring unwinnable. "Brood Lord/Festor" era for any race for awhile now, it's pretty hard to deny that Protoss was, is and probably forever will be the weakest race at the top, and honestly that's okay, there is always one race at the bottom.
Terrans dominated the bonjwa scene for BW, but historically speaking, Terran actually performed only in the + regarding winrates vs. Zerg on Python, and Protoss was actually quite strong vs Terran on all maps but were imbalanced vs. Terran on Python.
I just hope the community keeps doing it's thing, the current tournaments are producing outstanding quality games.
Why is Protoss the weakest? This should be interesting
Pretty sure Protoss has had the weakest representation on both ladder and at the tip top level of play, there has been far more Zerg and Terran champions then Protoss champions.
You might have fallen for some type of perception bias. Statistics does not confirm that claim when it comes to the ladder. Especially on the grand master level, protoss accounts make up around 40%. https://www.rankedftw.com/stats/races/1v1/#v=2&r=0&l=4
And from al the AfreecaTV organised premier tournaments, only 6 out of 23 played in LotV had finals without a protoss competitor. Global StarCraft II League
I think protoss is doing ok overall.
Apologies, I was mistaken, thanks for posting that info
On October 25 2020 23:43 OG-Anoss wrote: Everything is going has expected. Perfect prédiction. Good bye Blizzard, good bye TL, may be some of you will understand one day that closing/laughing on every thread who was trying to change the game, was non productive. And there it is. Was a pleasur ++
Calm down mate, sc2 is far from dead. But it looks like you just ant to prove your point which is ironic as you are on a throwaway acount
Coop is pretty much the only game mode i enjoy playing anymore. Was really hoping for one more blizzcon content patch- new commander and/or map. Now all i can hope for is that they at least decide to fix the bugs their last/final patch created. might be too much to ask for tho -.-
On October 26 2020 07:04 MinesMakeWidows wrote: Just wondering if TL sponsored events such as the TSL or the TL map contest are going to continue??
Honestly the esport side of starcraft isn't what worries me the most. Starcraft will always be competitive even if there's literally 0 money in it. Lots of people just enjoy laddering and climbing ranks. You'll always find people who want to play in weekly cups even if there $0 prize money. What worries me the most is that the community, the people who still care and aren't in it for the money, have absolutely 0 control over the ladder experience. Starcraft 2 has been out for 10 years and there is still no realistic way to make a popular melee map if that map isn't on the Ladder. Blizzard never really cared much about the map pool for some reasons but now it's going to be even worse and we may end up forced to play on the same 7 maps forever. This is pretty much a fast track to the game's demise (and it always has been imo). Even the most hardcore fans won't enjoy playing the game on the same maps for very long.
On October 26 2020 07:04 MinesMakeWidows wrote: Just wondering if TL sponsored events such as the TSL or the TL map contest are going to continue??
Honestly the esport side of starcraft isn't what worries me the most. Starcraft will always be competitive even if there's literally 0 money in it. Lots of people just enjoy laddering and climbing ranks. You'll always find people who want to play in weekly cups even if there $0 prize money. What worries me the most is that the community, the people who still care and aren't in it for the money, have absolutely 0 control over the ladder experience. Starcraft 2 has been out for 10 years and there is still no realistic way to make a popular melee map if that map isn't on the Ladder. Blizzard never really cared much about the map pool for some reasons but now it's going to be even worse and we may end up forced to play on the same 7 maps forever. This is pretty much a fast track to the game's demise (and it always has been imo). Even the most hardcore fans won't enjoy playing the game on the same maps for very long.
Python and Fighting Spirit would like to have a word with you
On a more serious note, I'd gladly contribute 5 or 10 dollars to make say, a public funded map making contest
On October 26 2020 07:04 MinesMakeWidows wrote: Just wondering if TL sponsored events such as the TSL or the TL map contest are going to continue??
Honestly the esport side of starcraft isn't what worries me the most. Starcraft will always be competitive even if there's literally 0 money in it. Lots of people just enjoy laddering and climbing ranks. You'll always find people who want to play in weekly cups even if there $0 prize money. What worries me the most is that the community, the people who still care and aren't in it for the money, have absolutely 0 control over the ladder experience. Starcraft 2 has been out for 10 years and there is still no realistic way to make a popular melee map if that map isn't on the Ladder. Blizzard never really cared much about the map pool for some reasons but now it's going to be even worse and we may end up forced to play on the same 7 maps forever. This is pretty much a fast track to the game's demise (and it always has been imo). Even the most hardcore fans won't enjoy playing the game on the same maps for very long.
Python and Fighting Spirit would like to have a word with you
On a more serious note, I'd gladly contribute 5 or 10 dollars to make say, a public funded map making contest
You still have to pay for a license for a tournament over 9999 USD, don't ya? So it isn't as happy and dandy as it sounds.
On October 26 2020 07:04 MinesMakeWidows wrote: Just wondering if TL sponsored events such as the TSL or the TL map contest are going to continue??
Honestly the esport side of starcraft isn't what worries me the most. Starcraft will always be competitive even if there's literally 0 money in it. Lots of people just enjoy laddering and climbing ranks. You'll always find people who want to play in weekly cups even if there $0 prize money. What worries me the most is that the community, the people who still care and aren't in it for the money, have absolutely 0 control over the ladder experience. Starcraft 2 has been out for 10 years and there is still no realistic way to make a popular melee map if that map isn't on the Ladder. Blizzard never really cared much about the map pool for some reasons but now it's going to be even worse and we may end up forced to play on the same 7 maps forever. This is pretty much a fast track to the game's demise (and it always has been imo). Even the most hardcore fans won't enjoy playing the game on the same maps for very long.
Python and Fighting Spirit would like to have a word with you
On a more serious note, I'd gladly contribute 5 or 10 dollars to make say, a public funded map making contest
You still have to pay for a license for a tournament over 9999 USD, don't ya? So it isn't as happy and dandy as it sounds.
It costs 10 grand to make a publicly funded contest for a video game?
On October 26 2020 07:04 MinesMakeWidows wrote: Just wondering if TL sponsored events such as the TSL or the TL map contest are going to continue??
Honestly the esport side of starcraft isn't what worries me the most. Starcraft will always be competitive even if there's literally 0 money in it. Lots of people just enjoy laddering and climbing ranks. You'll always find people who want to play in weekly cups even if there $0 prize money. What worries me the most is that the community, the people who still care and aren't in it for the money, have absolutely 0 control over the ladder experience. Starcraft 2 has been out for 10 years and there is still no realistic way to make a popular melee map if that map isn't on the Ladder. Blizzard never really cared much about the map pool for some reasons but now it's going to be even worse and we may end up forced to play on the same 7 maps forever. This is pretty much a fast track to the game's demise (and it always has been imo). Even the most hardcore fans won't enjoy playing the game on the same maps for very long.
Python and Fighting Spirit would like to have a word with you
On a more serious note, I'd gladly contribute 5 or 10 dollars to make say, a public funded map making contest
You still have to pay for a license for a tournament over 9999 USD, don't ya? So it isn't as happy and dandy as it sounds.
It costs 10 grand to make a publicly funded contest for a video game?
Nah, but if you wanna do a tournament with a prize pool with 10k or more, you have to buy a license(I don't know the cost of the license, but from the talks around it I would guess it's not exactly cheap). I trust in this community that we would be able to create such tournament once in a while.
On October 26 2020 07:04 MinesMakeWidows wrote: Just wondering if TL sponsored events such as the TSL or the TL map contest are going to continue??
Honestly the esport side of starcraft isn't what worries me the most. Starcraft will always be competitive even if there's literally 0 money in it. Lots of people just enjoy laddering and climbing ranks. You'll always find people who want to play in weekly cups even if there $0 prize money. What worries me the most is that the community, the people who still care and aren't in it for the money, have absolutely 0 control over the ladder experience. Starcraft 2 has been out for 10 years and there is still no realistic way to make a popular melee map if that map isn't on the Ladder. Blizzard never really cared much about the map pool for some reasons but now it's going to be even worse and we may end up forced to play on the same 7 maps forever. This is pretty much a fast track to the game's demise (and it always has been imo). Even the most hardcore fans won't enjoy playing the game on the same maps for very long.
Python and Fighting Spirit would like to have a word with you
On a more serious note, I'd gladly contribute 5 or 10 dollars to make say, a public funded map making contest
You still have to pay for a license for a tournament over 9999 USD, don't ya? So it isn't as happy and dandy as it sounds.
EPT
Something about rose and shit 
Global StarCraft II League
