EPTWith the advent of Halo: Reach, the series faltered, and with it, it’s power as an esport. What makes a sport successful -- the money to be had, the spectacles of packed arenas, or perhaps the diversity of teams or strategies within the game itself? All are important, but the heartbeat of a sport is its community.
In the case of Halo, we see a steady progression of esport-friendly design: from Halo CE’s ton of low accuracy, high fire rate weapons to Halo 2’s introduction the Battle Rifle, Carbine, and two Sniper rifles. This showcased player skill over player luck. Halo 3 introduced equipment that provided various forms of area control as well as a high power precision weapon called the Spartan Laser. Just a few years ago, Halo was THE Esports scene in the Americas.
While Reach continued the general trend of making the game more Esport focused (Power Weapons like the Spartan Laser or Brute Shot were balanced or remade, more precision weapons were introduced like the DMR, Needle Rifle, Grenade Launcher, Mobility abilities like Sprint and Evade to make map gameplay more dynamic). Why did a game that tried so hard to be an Esport fail?
Reach split the community.
Certain changes divided the community: traditional Halo fans saw things like weapon bloom and armor abilities to be fundamental departures from the core Halo experience, and turned their backs on Reach in favor of Halo 3. Many insisted that Reach was fine as it was. In the end it didn’t really matter who was right, the scene was split, and more organized Esports like SC2 stole the spotlight. This effect has not damaged just halo Halo: CS, Team Fortress, and Quake have all had their pro communities diminished or marginalized because of fans splitting themselves between games.
Starcraft has tried to rend itself apart -- esports scenes will always struggle with this. Like empires, digital games are doomed to fall in time due to changes in tech and consumer taste. Old sports like Baseball are rooted in history and have generations of people wishing to play the same game their fathers (or mothers) played. These titanic games span centuries, defining entire cultures. Because digital games emerged from the private sector, they follow the same fundamental patterns of the economic culture that they were birthed into. This means that popular digital games like Counterstrike and Quake must be released multiple times to keep competitive in an ever growing market. Like the phoenix, successful esports can achieve immortality by perpetually dying and being reborn in sequel games that have been updated to modern standards and tastes. But has Reach proves, this is a double-edged sword.
There was concern in the aftermath of Wings of Liberty’s big reveal in Korea: Multiple Building Selection, Auto Surround, and Unlimited Unit Selection, and fluid pathing AI all lit up TL.net for years. Was SC2 too noob friendly? Did the game look too cartoony? Was there too much randomness in the game? etc.... While many of these topics were laid to rest, this debate showed two forming factions: BW loyalists and WoL loyalists, their dialog burned into our memory by the infamous TL articles “The Elephant in the Room” and “The Rhino In the Room.” Elephant ultimately asserted that SC2 as a scene couldn’t be taken as seriously due to the fundamental design of the game, while Rhino argued that the design of the game makes the competitive scene less stable and we should be ok with that.
This divide only grew deeper and more bitter, reaching its climax when competitive BW was discontinued. Some left, some stayed, but there was really only one winner: The MOBA. With Kespa fighting Blizzard over broadcasting rights, and an increasingly scattered fanbase, Riot’s League of Legends had an easy time staking a dominant claim in Korea.
Why Has League of Legends done so well?
It has a united community. Even if someone thinks Darius is overpowered or Rengar has been overnerfed, they still log on to play the game, and even if there is a decided imbalance in the game with a champion, there are ways of not having to deal with it (via bans) until the issue is fixed. Only when Riot really screws up with broken champions like release Xin or Vlad do you see any fracturing of the bulk of community outcry. However, because Riot is aggressive in their balance and design, and very active with the community, those fractures don’t affect the core of the community for long. If there is an issue with a champion, it will get adjusted within two weeks to two months, or failing that, get completely remade. Blizzard takes three to six months to do balance tweaks. This is HUGE in establishing a sense of united community, because the community has a working dialogue with the people who make their champions. This isn’t some holiday special like the HotS beta either, this dialogue occurs every week, and game balance gets tweaked every month. Riot’s free to play multiplayer platform where skins generate revenue, allowing players to feel special and even proud by investing in the game. It’s free-to-play nature makes it easy to have accounts to play with your low-skill friends AND you can have a third account do secret practicing stuff on the ladder. Finally, in comparison to Dota 2 and Starcraft, League is much easier to get into and stay into because of a low skill floor due to easy to master mechanics. And, on the mechanical and art side, there are many champions to learn and each kit requires you to read situations slightly differently, creating a sense of variety and progression. These all bring and hold the LoL community together.
What Blizzard can do.
Here’s a controversial statement of the article: Dustin Browder is a pretty damn good designer. His focus in SC2 was to make the races more distinct while focusing on player experience in the game itself. Just look at the language he uses in interviews going way way back, he always comes to the question “how does this make the player feel?” We have creep speed bonus, add on swaps, and pylon power mechanics because of those efforts. Things that enhance the feel of each race. And while many things can be improved in those fields, those ideas (and many many others) are spot on.
The big issue is Starcraft 2 hasn’t supported the community BETWEEN games, due to the lack of a level-up mechanic, statistic support, Clans etc. After the community called out and pillars of the community gnashed their teeth, Blizzard decided that something like meta-progression is important, and implemented the EXP system alongside previous plans like clan support, better statistics, and worldwide play. The issue isn’t that Blizzard doesn’t listen, because they do, and they are pretty damn tenacious about fixing perceived problems with their game. The issue is that they are too slow and cautious with their improvements. I can respect that they don’t wish to upset the tourney scene, people’s livelihoods are on the line. But the fact of the matter is when there are issues with their game, and it takes a long time to fix or improve it, it makes the gameplay and community feel stagnant and neglected.
Therefore, Blizzard needs to show its commitment to improving the game (and openness to change fundamental aspects in design) in a way that protects the professional scene. I.E. They should have an integrated Public Test Realm.
Make it a Feature!
Starcraft 2’s Test Realm didn’t work because it was detached from their main client, and frankly, you could be laddering instead. Making them a special map is an improvement, but it lacks the sense of united purpose that a Test Realm does. What if, along side the various playlists, you had a PTR matchmaking system that changed every two weeks, and had achievements and portraits to earn all within the client. This way, Blizzard could gather data on a variety of maps as well as enabling the community to play a more active role in the development process.
This slows down and weeds out harmful changes, but depends on a consistent player base to test it (which has been the problem traditionally). Finally, for us neophiles in the community, it means there is always new (potential) content to test out every two weeks.
What the Community can do.
First, we need to show consistent interest in exploring changes to unit and race design. We need to show Blizzard we want to see changes discussed and tested, not just during one of the two remaining betas, but week after week, and seeing the results of our efforts foster a better Starcraft. This means, making custom maps and testing things out and sending that data to blizzard, saying “hey, we think this will make for an even better Starcraft experience, you should try this out!” Blizzard has looked at things as fundamental as unit pathing, they can sure as heck test out tier 1.5 hydras, or a difference in Warp Gate implementation.
Second, we must learn from the past, not implement it. Brood War was fantastic; it was a big part of my adolescence, and it showed us that Esports could dominate a CULTURE. It holds a place in history and rightly so, many, many good things came from BW: design, readability, gameplay. The question is, why imitate Brood War when we can do better? If the fanbase can collaborate with Blizzard, Starcraft 2 could easily meet, or even surpass Brood War in design and gameplay. To do so, we need to be open to each other, respectful, organized, and most importantly, we must set aside our sacred cows, our assumptions that Brood War was some unreachable miracle of design our comfort with WoL’s second fiddle in the Esports scene. No, we must push every day to make this game better as a community, with common understandings of what makes good design, what can be good design, and what is to be avoided.
What we have been doing
I have been working with different people in the community to build a custom map to test out significant changes to the game state in an attempt to better express the different identities of each race. (See my articles.) The early game dynamics have been reworked to allow a stronger protoss early game and where Zerg can be more aggressive. Terran have a much more supply efficient mech army and a stronger tier three. OneVoice is an attempt to test out ideas from the community and relay the data we collect to blizzard to aid them in their decisions. I have setup a gmail account so that you folks, my fellow starcrafters, can submit ideas (and explain why you think they would be a good idea for Starcraft.) The mod will be up and live on arcade very soon, and everyone is welcome to give their 2 cents! Look forward to playing with you soon!
Just submit your suggestions to onevoicemod@gmail.com
http://i.imgur.com/Bv8Ez.png
Some ground rules:
1. Be polite to us, the community, and Blizzard, we are all in this together!
2. No Classic units. (Spin offs, and re imaginings are fine and dandy, Blizzard will not remake classic units verbatim this time around.)
3. Focus on racial theme and fun gameplay (for both players)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/bGvms.png)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/gvA2S.jpg)
.
