Destiny on where he thinks SC2 is heading. - Page 52

On October 18 2012 07:00 DerNebel wrote:
Well, Wings of Liberty did explode the scene, at least in the west.

At least in the west. That sounds a bit hollow doesn't it? The largest Brood War tournaments could fill entire football stadiums, and here we have MLG struggling to make money about the "successor" that was supposed to explode the scene. A ton of A-teamers in BW had their own, dedicated fanclub that turned up live, stress that word, live to cheer for their favorite progamers. If you hung around since the early beta days you may remember the BW coverage always being covered in fangirl screams when huge plays happened. This was the spirit, a football stadium's worth of people watching Brood War live, and at the forefront the most dedicated fans, cheering for their fans with extreme hyperbole. Starcraft 2 does have these things, don't get me wrong here, but the scale is so minute, so tiny that it's simply insignificant.

That Starcraft 2 is less played in PC bangs in Korea than Brood War, that it isn't even in top 10 is way more significant than you might think if you don't know Korean gaming culture. The PC bang, the net café, is very important in Korea, it is the place eSports started. In the wild early years of Brood War, it was people playing in the PC bangs all over the nation that sparked the first tournaments, hosted in PC bangs, that led to the first, terrible, unhealthy gaming houses, which eventually led to the OSLs and the nationwide eSport. I am not sure how many people go play there today, but I would guess that the number is still quite big, and it is in places like these that eSports are born. Not in a lab, concocted with equal parts artificial skill ceiling and spectator appeal, but through people playing a good game and then going on to playing tournaments in it.

RIOT showed us that you can kick your game forward, you can make an eSport out of the really fun game you've made. Everybody has heard of the huge viewerships at League of Legends tournaments, but few remember the baby steps they took when the game was relatively small, like the travesty of the lorebased showmatch, an agony to watch so don't do it. RIOT and Valve have two amazingly fun games, and they both organize amazing tournaments for them, with RIOT taking the reins far more than Valve, but both promoting the game as a really fun game to play and to watch.

Blizzard tried to explicitly make an eSports game. That was a mistake. I am not going to make any concessions here, making Starcraft 2 a "competitive" experience was a mistake. They forgot everything most people really find fun about gaming: community. Community, communication, playing stupid shit with friends, if you want it in english. 1v1, online, versus strangers is just not fun in the long haul for the vast majority of players. LoL kept its players coming back and DOTA has loads of 6+ year veterans plus swathes of new players coming in, while Starcraft 2 is facing lower and lower ladder numbers by the season.

Its just not fun enough, that's my point. Blizzard needs to make the game more fun, they need to be brilliant, to simultaneously cater to the casual and the hardcore. If they keep up the hamfisted approach to game design, map design and balance they have had until now, then I predict a lot of disillusioned posts on the front page about an heir that failed its heritage when the third expansion comes out. And I'm not talking about DOTA2.

On October 18 2012 06:06 Bleak wrote:


Exactly why I stopped playing too. The game is just too stressful, in order to get good you need to practice in a specific way and if you don't have access (or time) for that kind of practice, you get frustrated. It also does not reward the player enough to keep playing. I just switched to Dota 2 and I don't miss SC2 at all. It is much more fun and much less stressful than SC2. The last MLG I watched was the one with JD/Flash etc. and it was also the last tournement I watched. The International 2 though was just super exciting.

On October 17 2012 22:01 Liquid`Nazgul wrote:
Since this is such a long post, it's only normal to disagree with a couple points. Overall I think it is well written and hits on a lot of important points. However, I don't agree with the underlying thought that StarCraft as an esport doesn't have any hope without Blizzard stepping it up. There are more than enough opportunities to grow this thing.

The current prize money level represents that of a very serious sport. We need to be making some strides in better payout structures, and rewarding more spots, but in the grand scheme of things, we are in a decent place. There is enough prize money to keep developing this scene. It's always good to improve payouts, but it's not something that keeps this from being a successful sport.

I also don't agree with the part about casual versus competitive features. If you look at LoL and Dota the casuals aren't necessarily buying more skins than the competitive gamers. Skins itself are not a casual feature, and can be applied successfully in a competitive, as well as a casual game.

Dota uses a top-down approach where they start with competitive play and expect this to trickle down. I think the success of BroodWar in Korea relied on competitive play first, casual play second. There are even the success stories of mods such as Dota1 and Counter-Strike, where accessibility was not the primary concern. The reason these games succeeded is off of competitive play.

Presenting features for casual players in a clear and easy to use manner is very important, however you don't need to go so far as to say your focus needs to be on those. Just take care of casual players properly and find the right balance. In order to be a successful esport, there is no need at all to put casuals first. Asking game developers to put casuals first is a step in the wrong direction, asking them to take care of casuals properly is what we need from them.

It is undeniable that Blizzard has a lot of things they could be doing that would make things better for us. Issues with buying multiple accounts for each server, all the server switching, the poor latencies between the servers, skins, logo integration, name changes. It doesn't matter that I disagree with a couple points Destiny makes, the fact that this post exists is a good thing.

On October 18 2012 06:59 Serpico wrote:

Really amazing support from valve, especially since the game will be f2p. They aren't messing around here.

On October 18 2012 06:40 Areon wrote:
Some amazingly valid and powerful points. A little too ranty at times, but this is something that needs to be read by a lot of people. Don't agree with his QQ about competitive games not being fun; competitive games can be absolutely fun, just depends on the player and the game.

On October 18 2012 07:15 elanobissen wrote:
Just remove collosus, forcefields, infestor, BL, Roaches(buff hydras ffs) and swarmhost, and we are good to go. Might aswell bring back the real firebat while we are at it. That would make for an actually nice game.

On October 18 2012 07:30 Doodsmack wrote:
Reading this thread you would think no one in this community actually likes SC2.

On October 18 2012 07:32 Archerofaiur wrote:


We are all here because we deeply love SC2. Apathy and silence would be the sign of dislike.