- Starcraft 2 is dying in the hand of Blizzard.
I am not sure if its only me or Blizzard is doing the exact opposite of what they should be doing: balance the game correctly. Back in Febuary, all the top NA zerg has started winning absurdly against protoss and maintain a good balance 50% w/r with terran. The patch to increase phoenix range via upgrade didnt change the metagame at all (reason will be explain later) and Zerg players still have yet perfected their mechanic.
At this point, we can all agree that Zerg in sc2 is the most rewarding race if you solely focus on improving your mechanic. Creep spreads for map control, inject for macro, without those being executed perfectly, Zerg has already take more than half of the major tournaments wins since the game released. Blizzard continue buffing, changing the numbers without waiting for the skill ceiling to raised. The game is now completely ruined without careful beta testing before the patches installation which basically ruined the sc2 'industry'. After this months, i would love to see a total income of pro players that is sorted by races. I bet there is a huge dip in the Terran side while Protoss and especially Zerg has a huge jump ahead.
Take a look at the NASL final happening in the next few weeks: out of 8 players: 4 are protoss. Take a look at GrandMaster across all severs: there are barely any Terran there anymore. I would not surprised if tomorrow there will be a reddit post on how Blizzard is trying to ruin WoL balance to increase sales of HoTS. They already doing a similar scheme with Diablo 3 the most recent patch: 1.0.3. Since there were a ton of bot as well as hackers, the entire economy of D3 was ruined and now Blizzard is literally robbing gold outa players to make sure that the economy could recover before the next fix. Keep this in mind, all the things in D3 are being converted into Real Money value therefore they are robbing dollars out of players.
And the reason for all these: incompetence balance designers. In D3, the game was not tested anywhere above 1/3 of act1. Bugs, exploits are all over the game. As the game released, there were already 2-3 versions of bot farming software available to download and use on the fly. Dupe items, dupe gold are then slowly discovered. The balance is simply a joke in combination with garbage severs quality. Bnet design is worst than what sc2 had 2 years ago when it came out. No matter what blizzard said, the game was RUSHED and incomplete. Same function is being applied to HoTS, you can already see the arcade 1.5 are just changes for the sake of having one. Balance of HoTS multiplayers is a joke atm (see avilo HOTSContest blog) and its not in the number, its in the design philosophy.
I think HoTS deserved its owned ranting paragraph. The fact that WoL multiplayer is so boring to watch compare to BW is not bc its lack of new interesting units. If you keep track of majority of BW pros comments about sc2, you will hear something along the line of 'hard to come back', 'clash of 2 balls' or simply 'faster'. Sc2 mid game units compositions is too cost effective compare to tier3. Marines has the best DPS in the game, who need BCs? Blink stalkers colossi kill all the thing, why need carriers? Have you ever heard that Zerg macro is simply 1(R^9000)? To create more interesting game play, the death of deathballs is a must and clearly we have seen nothing such in HoTS display so far. Instead of correcting their current mistakes, they proceed to make new things which simply giving them more chances to screw up later. What the fuck?
"SC2 is a game we are forced to play as a starcraft community but is not a game that the community deserved." Change that Blizzard, and while you are at it, change D3 too. May be collecting some money to buy yourself out of Activision could be a good start. - DotA2 scene is young and looking for talents.
Seeing how manner Puppey were to Synderen after Navi lost the final to mTw, i realized something: DotA2 scene is lacked of personality at the moment. Currently the only personalities in the scene could simply be counted by the tip of fingers. If you have been watching EG.Demon stream from months ago, you could already see EG players has already been educated about this and started to change and adapt.
In this industry, winning games doesnt mean that you win. Majority of the money flowing into the scene atm is from sponsorship and all sponsors was looking for is exposure. This means that even if EG doesnt win anything, their team got lead 1-10 before 20 mins to a no name team, as long as they have a large fan base bc of their personalities, they are still fine. Their could be 1 tournament winners in this game, but there could be multiple entertainers in a same industry. If you watch Sing_Sing stream recently, you will notice some random comments such as 'guys, throw the game a bit for fun' which then lead to some sick 50 mins game with multiple breath taking teamfight. Did Sing just lost a game? or he won 2k viewers among all the twitch viewers based? Think about it.
Look back into sc2 scene, Idra was one of the biggest hyped personality when the game came out for his manners. MC and MMA won a ton of fans purely based on their awesome winning ceremonies. Without those, MC will just simply a 4 gates cheeser and MMA will be forever Clide. Trash talking might brought onto yourself hates in DotA but it is the best way to gather people attentions, create tournaments story line and bring more hype toward the fans. "Bye xboct!" we need more of these. - Non-esports game wanabe esports.(aka. i-hate-lol)
Yesterday there were quite an interesting fraction of TotalBiscuit(TB) real talk that i want to mention. He talks about how developers approached him and ask for advice on how to make their games an esports. I love his answer and encourage everyone to check it out here: Link.
For a long time, i have been flagged for calling League of Legend for not being an Esports game. To me, esports has always about the competitive edge of playing a game, not about the fun of it. Why would you play games if they are not fun? one might ask. Well, at first you play it for fun but then, when the fun went away, you stay for the competitive edge. I often like to compare these to chess: who would have fun seeing the same black and white pieces move around 64 squares? Yeah at first you might have fun with most of the thought provoking idea and toy around but once you play enough, know all the basic opening, there is nothing else but the competitive edge. In fact, this theory applied to everything i have ever played: Go, Chess, Xiangqi, dominions, monopolies, soccer, basketball,... the list goes on. Video games is no exception. Lowering the competitive edge of a game is simply making the 'endgame' of the game boring and thats exactly how i view LoL.
By lowering the skill gap, Riot lose majority of the hardcore DotA fan during the HoN vs LoL period and gain a lot of attentions from the casual gamers scene. There are 2 good things about this: raise the value of the community(compare to dota ofc) and expanding their player based. Together with the F2P model, LoL soon becomes the new go to game on the block. They makes ton of money with all the skin and new champions every 2 weeks. Sponsored their own tournaments and attract a ton of attentions from sponsorship in NA and EU, soon later expanded to Korea. Little did they know the game is a ticking bomb, an inflating soap bubble.
What is MOBA? what make it so competitive? LoL throw them all out of the window for their 1 champion per 2 weeks quota. If in DotA, you might see 1 new hero per year, each heroes take months to tweak and test before applied to tournaments play, in LoL balance changes are used to adjust the skin sales of the champions and have a lot of negative impact into the game balance. A lot of fans has recently raised their voice on the repetitive in skill designed for new champions. Nothing news is introduced but a nerfed, modified clone of existing champions. The endgame in LoL is absolutely boring and the metagame is static. Watching LoL tournaments in dreamhack, i have yet since anything new changes inside the meta game since the game released. There is still a same team composition, same laning, same tatic. Yeah they might have some massive number of spectators this year, but what would happen next year when people got tired of watching the same shit over and over?
LoL is an entertaining game, it has some good mechanic that should be looked into as a moba title, but the way Riot running it is simply not suited to be an esports title. The skill ceiling is lowered and lowered as you play more if it has ever existed to begin with. Will it become the new WoW arena or I am just being a complete idiot? we will see.
4/ RIP Quake. I love you
Games ranting
Blogs > NB |
NB
Netherlands12045 Posts
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SnipedSoul
Canada2158 Posts
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polyphonyEX
United States2539 Posts
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empty.bottle
685 Posts
And I'm pretty sure EG is not relevant outside north america. | ||
Itsmedudeman
United States19229 Posts
2. That's the players fault mostly. It's not looking for talent, talent is already there. Next to sc2/sc1 dota has the most talented players of all time. If you don't have 5+ years of dota experience you're gonna be hard pressed to break out into the competitive scene. Seriously, name one "new player" who deserves a mention cause they're all still leagues under na'vi/mtw caliber players. All the top teams just have too many good players, as well as too many free agents floating around. There NEEDS to be more streamers as well. There should always be one well known player streaming around the clock. That just isn't happening. 3. I can agree. It's so boring to watch competitive LoL after a month. It's the same thing but usually with different heroes. Riot is afraid of changing their metagame even the slightest cause it's working all too well right now and it's pretty much the most popular game in the world. | ||
docvoc
United States5491 Posts
1. On SC2, HoTS may end up like that, but lets not get all conspiracy theorist here and say that Blizz is forcing us to buy the expansion by fucking up their game, that would be horrible publicity. Also yes they have done a tweak, but in an interview both David Kim and Dustin Browder stated that Terran vs Zerg winrates aren't as skewed as people think. I agree Blizz should let the players create the meta, but they attempted a tweak and every patch that comes out makes the community moan and bitch, its a little annoying. I get Terran is difficult, but changes come in HoTS also and Blizz is patching in preperation for the upcoming expansion. 2. DotA is very cool, but being BM is not the way to get noticed, SIng_Sing does that style but I wouldn't call him noticed. I'd say they need to create a real catch of personality a cult almost, kind of like what Grubby has right now (I <3 Grubbeh) 3, I like LoL and its definitely an E-sport, the fact is that it is simpler, but its simpler to the point that creative play, mechanics and everthing else shines brighter than gimmicks. You complain that Blizz changes the meta too much, but Riot does not change the meta enough with their characters? Also yes they are implementing new characters, but they all have different kits and most all of them are not re-skins. Sure they may have similar abilities, but how many different ability types can you ask for, I can narrow them down to a couple standard blocks, standard attributes, etc and then you can say that they all derive from the same place. Its not going to pop, its the most popular game in the world for a reason and your statement is completely unfounded IMHO. 4. Yes quake is amazing :D RIP quake . Also RIP CS:1.6 Take my post with a grain of salt, but please if you could see my point of view. | ||
Alur
Denmark3900 Posts
On June 25 2012 15:41 docvoc wrote: I have to say I disagree with a lot of what you say, but hey its your opinion, 1. On SC2, HoTS may end up like that, but lets not get all conspiracy theorist here and say that Blizz is forcing us to buy the expansion by fucking up their game, that would be horrible publicity. Also yes they have done a tweak, but in an interview both David Kim and Dustin Browder stated that Terran vs Zerg winrates aren't as skewed as people think. I agree Blizz should let the players create the meta, but they attempted a tweak and every patch that comes out makes the community moan and bitch, its a little annoying. I get Terran is difficult, but changes come in HoTS also and Blizz is patching in preperation for the upcoming expansion. 2. DotA is very cool, but being BM is not the way to get noticed, SIng_Sing does that style but I wouldn't call him noticed. I'd say they need to create a real catch of personality a cult almost, kind of like what Grubby has right now (I <3 Grubbeh) 3, I like LoL and its definitely an E-sport, the fact is that it is simpler, but its simpler to the point that creative play, mechanics and everthing else shines brighter than gimmickson. You complain that Blizz changes the meta too much, but Riot does not change the meta enough with their characters? Also yes they are implementing new characters, but they all have different kits and most all of them are not re-skins. Sure they may have similar abilities, but how many different ability types can you ask for, I can narrow them down to a couple standard blocks, standard attributes, etc and then you can say that they all derive from the same place. Its not going to pop, its the most popular game in the world for a reason and your statement is completely unfounded IMHO. 4. Yes quake is amazing :D RIP quake . Also RIP CS:1.6 Take my post with a grain of salt, but please if you could see my point of view. I used to be on the fence about sing, but I think calling his "style" bm is not fair. The guy is politically incorrect or juvenile - true, but even when he's saying classic sing stuff, most times it almost has an endearing feel to it. It's also worth mentioning, that sing is an advocate of not flaming your team regardless of their performance, as well as recognizing the skill of your opponents. And those two are definitely some of the most commom character flaws in dota-like games. In your defense calling him bm is somewhat understandable, considering his personality, in which case I might just be arguing semantics. None the less, his behavior is not the only reason he's getting noticed.. | ||
Kenpachi
United States9908 Posts
On June 25 2012 14:47 Itsmedudeman wrote: 1. SC2 is just underwhelming. It has the greatest personalities in all of esports yet fails to capitalize on it. I don't really know why, but I agree the biggest thing I notice is the pace of the mid game fights. They're just too quick and are basically a michael bay film. The early game micro wars are much more fun to watch because they're slower and you can notice all the small things. Get to the mid game and a move your units too early, too late, in a bad area and that's all that matters. Initiation vs. battle. You decide. that makes me wonder what if the units were all weaker in a way.. what results would that produce and is there data to prove why it would or would not work? | ||
NB
Netherlands12045 Posts
On June 25 2012 16:39 Kenpachi wrote: that makes me wonder what if the units were all weaker in a way.. what results would that produce and is there data to prove why it would or would not work? Good question. If the units are nerfed in their cost efficiency, especially mid game units in the current state of meta game (infestor, colossi, medivac), it will simply push the end game solutions to the next units tier: tier 3. This means that in order to get a certain dominance on the battle field, you need to have a constant production of tier3 units on the way. If tier 3 cost is also alot, this will result a thirst for econ power early to mid game which lead to a more expansive turtle play than aggressive, area denial like what we are currently seeing. Mid game attacks will have a different goal than what they own right now, it will be more econ harassment heavy rather than army harassment in order to end game. In away, you can see a lot of what i have been describing are similar to the mordern BW game play: reaver are used to kill workers and secure space to expand, same to vulture and spidermines as well as muta. Massing these units however, wont win you the game. If you overmade it and your enemy defend successfully while getting to tier 3 (arbiter, storm, darkswarm, emp) or even tier 2.5 (tank, DT, lurkers)... you are screwed. The main problem right now is something tier 2.5 like a colossus function way better than tier3 carriers, MMM is wayyyyyy better than getting tier 2 tanks banshee not even counting raven BC's, 10 mins max on roaches works way better than hydra/ultra tech. This force people to stay on the minimum econ that they need to constantly produce the cost efficient unit tier instead of teching to the lastest tier and result in multiple 2-3 bases all in while BW is half/half map. The speed of maxing out army in sc2 is WAY faster than BW simply bc the unit tier is lower therefore the army cost way less in terms of both production time and resources cost. | ||
Spicy_Curry
United States10573 Posts
I personally stopped watching starcraft because it is the same shit everytime. There aren't any exciting strategies anymore since blizzard kills it before people find answers to beat it. Now im forced to watching the odd sc2 finals match and cry whenever I see a 2 base build. I think the DH finals were like 3 different 2 base all-ins. +1 to colossus being strong/boring/simple instead of strong/interesting/assclenchinglyhard I think the Dota 2 scene is still young. People who are diehard Dota 1 fans havent switched yet and there are no established personalities because streaming is more popular than it was then. I think the scene will be fine as long as the games are new and exciting. In LoL's defense. The people who play that game at the competitive level are absolutely terrible. That may be a reason why games are so boring, because they cant capitalize on small nuances in the game. That might also be because there aren't any small nuances in the game. The accepted competitive belief was that people would watch other people do something that they would never be able to achieve. Where the difference between the highest rated players and the professionals are massive. However, League has shown that people are interested in watching people who are a few tiers ahead instead of a few hundred. Im pretty decent at dota but compared to God or LoH I am absolutely garbage tier. But in LoL it isnt like that. What I see them do, I can do. Its just a matter of time. | ||
Kerm
France467 Posts
and btw, Clide never won GSL, nor any major tournament ... | ||
bgx
Poland6595 Posts
The tell sign was them hyping their own Dota product out of nowhere, it was a time when everyone started to point flaws of SC2 and blizzard is like "no worries" look at this! We are making our own dota. | ||
Paljas
Germany6926 Posts
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Praetorial
United States4241 Posts
You're an idiot; it has a proscene as large or larger than SC2, a superior ranking system, and many many more regular players. | ||
NB
Netherlands12045 Posts
On June 25 2012 19:29 Praetorial wrote: 'Will it become the next WoW arena, or am I an idiot?" You're an idiot; it has a proscene as large or larger than SC2, a superior ranking system, and many many more regular players. how would any of those matter if the game itself just sucks? That was the main reason why WoW arena died didnt it? For a quick comparison, look into CoD scene right now compare to the rest of the FPS scene. They have a proscene, they have a ranking system, they have many many more regular players. The only thing they lack is some quality so that people can actually compete. After expansions and expansions the game is still maintain one of the top selling games in the industry and all it gets is shit. Sure some games could be a huge bombshell but they will slowly decay if the 'endgame' mechanic isnt done properly. I talked about this into very details in my OP and if you have anything to disagree with, may be you should try to read the reason first instead of reading the last line of the paragraph? At least if you were trying to argue, try to attack on what points i mentioned that are wrong? The quality of your post is simply proving of you being an ignorance idiot more than anything/anyone else. | ||
Kipsate
Netherlands45349 Posts
Non-esports game wanabe esports.(aka. i-hate-lol) Yesterday there were quite an interesting fraction of TotalBiscuit(TB) real talk that i want to mention. He talks about how developers approached him and ask for advice on how to make their games an esports. I love his answer and encourage everyone to check it out here: Link. For a long time, i have been flagged for calling League of Legend for not being an Esports game. To me, esports has always about the competitive edge of playing a game, not about the fun of it. Why would you play games if they are not fun? one might ask. Well, at first you play it for fun but then, when the fun went away, you stay for the competitive edge. I often like to compare these to chess: who would have fun seeing the same black and white pieces move around 64 squares? Yeah at first you might have fun with most of the thought provoking idea and toy around but once you play enough, know all the basic opening, there is nothing else but the competitive edge. In fact, this theory applied to everything i have ever played: Go, Chess, Xiangqi, dominions, monopolies, soccer, basketball,... the list goes on. Video games is no exception. Lowering the competitive edge of a game is simply making the 'endgame' of the game boring and thats exactly how i view LoL. By lowering the skill gap, Riot lose majority of the hardcore DotA fan during the HoN vs LoL period and gain a lot of attentions from the casual gamers scene. There are 2 good things about this: raise the value of the community(compare to dota ofc) and expanding their player based. Together with the F2P model, LoL soon becomes the new go to game on the block. They makes ton of money with all the skin and new champions every 2 weeks. Sponsored their own tournaments and attract a ton of attentions from sponsorship in NA and EU, soon later expanded to Korea. Little did they know the game is a ticking bomb, an inflating soap bubble. What is MOBA? what make it so competitive? LoL throw them all out of the window for their 1 champion per 2 weeks quota. If in DotA, you might see 1 new hero per year, each heroes take months to tweak and test before applied to tournaments play, in LoL balance changes are used to adjust the skin sales of the champions and have a lot of negative impact into the game balance. A lot of fans has recently raised their voice on the repetitive in skill designed for new champions. Nothing news is introduced but a nerfed, modified clone of existing champions. The endgame in LoL is absolutely boring and the metagame is static. Watching LoL tournaments in dreamhack, i have yet since anything new changes inside the meta game since the game released. There is still a same team composition, same laning, same tatic. Yeah they might have some massive number of spectators this year, but what would happen next year when people got tired of watching the same shit over and over? LoL is an entertaining game, it has some good mechanic that should be looked into as a moba title, but the way Riot running it is simply not suited to be an esports title. The skill ceiling is lowered and lowered as you play more if it has ever existed to begin with. Will it become the new WoW arena or I am just being a complete idiot? we will see. LoL is an E-sport because people watch it, whether something is an esport is not for you to judge but for the audience, and the audience finds it an esport because they watch it. Yes you are correct (in my own biased opinion) that LoL is more casual then Dota, however there is nothing wrong with this, it will make LoL(and thus Esport) more mainstream. The hardcore will move to Dota if they want to(as is happening right now already) and both games can co-exist. Moreover Riot takes activly part in promoting esports, they send their own crew to help(Dreamhack had help from Riot guys), they listen to the community(something Blizzard can take note of). Even if the skill is lowered, it is not for you to judge whether it is an Esport, it is once again for the audience, and evident by the numbers which LoL puts out(this is complemented by great marketing from Riot as an Esport) then I don't see what is wrong with it at all, if you don't like it don't watch it, you can watch Dota. And atleast in Korea it is not a ticking timebomb, there are sponsors for LoL and it is already a greater esport in Korea then SC2 is(surpassing BW even if I am not mistaken). Riot does a fine job in promoting Esports and each company who wants to promote its esport should take note of how they do it(Valve takes great notes btw). Yes LoL does have its flaws(every game does) but it is for all intends and purposes an E-sport. | ||
HeeroFX
United States2704 Posts
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Praetorial
United States4241 Posts
On June 25 2012 20:58 NB wrote: how would any of those matter if the game itself just sucks? That was the main reason why WoW arena died didnt it? For a quick comparison, look into CoD scene right now compare to the rest of the FPS scene. They have a proscene, they have a ranking system, they have many many more regular players. The only thing they lack is some quality so that people can actually compete. After expansions and expansions the game is still maintain one of the top selling games in the industry and all it gets is shit. Sure some games could be a huge bombshell but they will slowly decay if the 'endgame' mechanic isnt done properly. I talked about this into very details in my OP and if you have anything to disagree with, may be you should try to read the reason first instead of reading the last line of the paragraph? At least if you were trying to argue, try to attack on what points i mentioned that are wrong? The quality of your post is simply proving of you being an ignorance idiot more than anything/anyone else. LoL does not suck. It's an intuitive, enjoyable, regularly balanced game, that adds new content that does not give advantages to players. What is MOBA? what make it so competitive? LoL throw them all out of the window for their 1 champion per 2 weeks quota What. Nothing news is introduced but a nerfed, modified clone of existing champions. The endgame in LoL is absolutely boring and the metagame is static False. Watch MLG Little did they know the game is a ticking bomb, an inflating soap bubble. Hasn't exploded, isn't showing any signs of exploding | ||
Spicy_Curry
United States10573 Posts
On June 25 2012 22:08 Praetorial wrote: LoL does not suck. It's an intuitive, enjoyable, regularly balanced game, that adds new content that does not give advantages to players. I have nothing against LoL, but saying that having access to new heroes is not an inherent advantage is a bunch of bullshit. Advantage: A condition or circumstance that puts one in a favorable or superior position. Hypothetically speaking, lets say Riot releases a hero that dominates lane and snowballs out of control. (new assassin hero dyrus) How is something like that not an advantage. There is also the fact that if I pick up league of legends right now, I cant compete with people who have already been playing until I grind out RP to get my runes and skill bonuses. Damnit Trollbaited :/ | ||
FlaShFTW
United States9977 Posts
Champion comes out. Either: A) OP champion. Patched a couple times in the next weeks after the first week of non-stop action. Or they don't patch and leave champion at OP state. B) No one likes this champion. Champion is never played again (Sejuani) I'd like it if Riot wouldn't have this "1 champ per 2 week" bull. It's stupid. It's dumb. That's like churning out a new unit for SC every month or something. I'd like it to be 1 per month AT LEAST, if not 1 per 6 months which is what I would like. Give newer players the chance to learn all the other champions before releasing the other ones. | ||
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