I am really scared that they won't listen to us, just like activision did not listen to the cod community. We had an awesome Belgium call of duty community, and after the mw games came out it died. I moved to sc1 and I really hope that blizzard will not make the same mistake as activision =(.
Am I the only one having the feeling that good esports games are not produced anymore? They make everything so easy and just dumb. Starcraft 2 was actually my last hope... We really need to convince blizzard!
What about this idea: form a group with people like day9, tasteless and all those people who know what sc2 & battlenet 2 needs to success, and advice blizzard. Visit their headquarters, talk to them, advice, ... Form a group of esports representatives.
On May 23 2010 17:48 lew wrote: I am really scared that they won't listen to us, just like activision did not listen to the cod community. We had an awesome Belgium call of duty community, and after the mw games came out it died. I moved to sc1 and I really hope that blizzard will not make the same mistake as activision =(.
Am I the only one having the feeling that good esports games are not produced anymore? They make everything so easy and just dumb. Starcraft 2 was actually my last hope... We really need to convince blizzard!
What about this idea: form a group with people like day9, tasteless and all those people who know what sc2 & battlenet 2 needs to success, and advice blizzard. Visit their headquarters, talk to them, advice, ... Form a group of esports representatives.
I think they truly honestly do NOT care about the ACTUAL competetive side of this game. They'll try to make it LOOK like they do so as to get more money but i think they just wanna get as many people to buy the game at release as possible and thats about it.
On May 23 2010 17:48 lew wrote: I am really scared that they won't listen to us, just like activision did not listen to the cod community. We had an awesome Belgium call of duty community, and after the mw games came out it died. I moved to sc1 and I really hope that blizzard will not make the same mistake as activision =(.
Am I the only one having the feeling that good esports games are not produced anymore? They make everything so easy and just dumb. Starcraft 2 was actually my last hope... We really need to convince blizzard!
What about this idea: form a group with people like day9, tasteless and all those people who know what sc2 & battlenet 2 needs to success, and advice blizzard. Visit their headquarters, talk to them, advice, ... Form a group of esports representatives.
do you realize that the company is known as activision blizzard (nasdaq: ATVI)
This reminds me of the Fury beta - the game that had a pretty fun beta, but as it continued closer to release, the player base got bored, and tired of being ignored and just didn't buy the game. Months later they release the game for free, and send out teasing/borderline insulting emails to advertise their game until they had to shut down the servers permanently.
Although Blizzard won't have a money issue, I think the player base will drop sharply as release approaches unless they start listening to community suggestions or at least communicating an intent to work on these things.
do you realize that the company is known as activision blizzard (nasdaq: ATVI)
lolol
lol yes
It's so weird: mw2 was the best sold call of duty game but call of duty 2 and mw1 are still more played then mw2. I heard that activision is now SELLING their maps. When I was playing cod 2 we actually got those maps for free, in a patch.
On May 23 2010 11:47 SoMuchBetter wrote: i really think that blizzard is modelling bnet 2.0 based on xbox live. not sure why considering that the original battle.net and its incarnations (sc1, diablo, wc3) are the benchmark for multiplayer servers and lack of chat rooms is because xbox live doesn't have them (which is because you dont play xbox with a keyboard, but whatever)
As FA said earlier, apparently the Project Director of Battle.NET is Greg Canessa who previously worked on xbox live.
This is an official Blizzard video they released in Feb. Seems like he has a major role in the decision making.
I am in awe of Blizzard's business sense. When you look at it from a sales and marketing perspective, Battlenet 2.0 makes perfect sense and it's hard to see how they could do it any better. With these 3 "pillars" they have basically guaranteed that the game will be bought by as many people as possible, get marketed to as many people as possible and make as much money as possible, while their only drawback is offending the community of hardcore gamers, most of whom will buy the game anyway.
"always online" = A neat and elegant DRM implementation which guarantees people will have to buy the game without the bad publicity from draconian software such as SecuROM, which is largely ineffective anyway.
"Achievements" = A proven way to make a game addictive to casual gamers, who otherwise might play a handful of games and then move on to something else. More players = more expansions and DLC sold. It's also an incentive to get people online and therefore buy the game rather than pirating.
"Competitive environment for everyone" = Again, the more casual friendly a game is, the most people are going to keep playing and not get overawed. The ladders and division system may be bad for the people who want to see global rankings, but for most casuals, seeing their name coming up number 5 in their gold league division is going to keep them playing more than seeing the fact that they're ranked 35,873 in the world.
"Connecting the Blizzard community" = They can advertise to you through WoW, Starcraft, Facebook, Your Email... by requiring email addresses they have set up a platform whereby they can advertise their products via email to anyone who has purchased the game, and should you choose to use their facebook integration can potentially market to 100s of people on your friends list as well. Whatever kickbacks facebook has given them is just the icing on the cake.
On May 23 2010 18:08 IKenshinI wrote: This reminds me of the Fury beta - the game that had a pretty fun beta, but as it continued closer to release, the player base got bored, and tired of being ignored and just didn't buy the game. Months later they release the game for free, and send out teasing/borderline insulting emails to advertise their game until they had to shut down the servers permanently.
Although Blizzard won't have a money issue, I think the player base will drop sharply as release approaches unless they start listening to community suggestions or at least communicating an intent to work on these things.
listening to the community does not equal letting the community design the game for them. and even then, most of the balance changes have reflected clear consensus in the community about what aspects of the game are and aren't fun, so it seems like blizzard's main problem is actually that it's impossible to please everyone.
Great posts by OP and FA I was getting too emotionally worked up going from thread to thread ranting about my dislikes of battle.net to the point where my thoughts were unorganized and completely incoherent (and rarely pertaining to the primary topic of discussion)
And I'm far too lazy to actually make an articulated, comprehensive yet concise post of my own
I'm glad there are other people that can persuasively convey their(our, the community's) opinions to hopefully convince the developers to finally make changes and take action.
On May 23 2010 17:32 Wolfpox wrote: Is there clan support? No.
Are there chat rooms? No.
Is there any logical reason to assume that they've shown everything they will end up doing in the final product even though they've said that they'll take down the Beta and bring it back later on with more features? Not at all.
They have said, publically that they WILL NOT HAVE THESE FEATURES IN THE GAME FOR RELEASE.
At least take the time to read stuff like this before you get your hopes up.
I am in awe of Blizzard's business sense. When you look at it from a sales and marketing perspective, Battlenet 2.0 makes perfect sense and it's hard to see how they could do it any better. With these 3 "pillars" they have basically guaranteed that the game will be bought by as many people as possible, get marketed to as many people as possible and make as much money as possible, while their only drawback is offending the community of hardcore gamers, most of whom will buy the game anyway.
"always online" = A neat and elegant DRM implementation which guarantees people will have to buy the game without the bad publicity from draconian software such as SecuROM, which is largely ineffective anyway.
"Achievements" = A proven way to make a game addictive to casual gamers, who otherwise might play a handful of games and then move on to something else. More players = more expansions and DLC sold. It's also an incentive to get people online and therefore buy the game rather than pirating.
"Competitive environment for everyone" = Again, the more casual friendly a game is, the most people are going to keep playing and not get overawed. The ladders and division system may be bad for the people who want to see global rankings, but for most casuals, seeing their name coming up number 5 in their gold league division is going to keep them playing more than seeing the fact that they're ranked 35,873 in the world.
"Connecting the Blizzard community" = They can advertise to you through WoW, Starcraft, Facebook, Your Email... by requiring email addresses they have set up a platform whereby they can advertise their products via email to anyone who has purchased the game, and should you choose to use their facebook integration can potentially market to 100s of people on your friends list as well. Whatever kickbacks facebook has given them is just the icing on the cake.
Your post scares me because it is entirely plausible. Sigh. Why cater to the people who will buy the game regardless of how shitty you make it, as long as you can rope people who have never played an RTS into it giving money you wouldn't have gotten before.
I keep wanting to believe that bnet 2.0 is just following Steam's footsteps. I remember when Steam first came out and I was horrified by it. I usually just launched counter-strike or half-life or whatever from my start menu no problem without any of this integrated nonsense. It was incredibly terrible at first and the friends list didn't work for a long, long time.
Over the ages, it got better and better. By better, I mean less of a nuisance. I could play offline and wasn't hassled. I like software that doesn't try to actively annoy me as hard as possible by forcing me to its whim. It seems like bnet 2.0 is following this latter trend.
I realize that Steam has to account for many different games and bnet 2.0 only has to cater to Blizzard games. I realize that it will help integrate future blizzard games, but honestly, I can't see bnet 2.0 being used for anything other than SC2's 3 sub games, DIII and WoW. Seems like a bold move.
I'll be honest as I can here. I never played BW on the ICCUP server until maybe a few months ago. Despite the technological challenge, I liked it a lot more. The original SC battle net was the most horrendous online service I've used. I can't remember how it compared at the time, but it definitely showed its age in the competitive times of BW. I never really used chat channels as a way to build a community, but I would always home-base it with friends there. I even met new friends in channels that had acronyms from my university. I could never do that with bnet 2.0. I'm in favor of chat channels now.
As far as finding games goes, I'm absolutely disgusted with how hosting games is done now. If I want to make a map, I should be able to select it from my computer's hard drive and tell my friends where to find it. I realize that the idea is if I'm on a friends computer, I can log in on my name and host a game that I've published. In an age of thumb drives that can hold a million starcraft 2 maps on them, this problem is immediately negated by tweens with half a brain that would think ahead of time to go through such a procedure. Limiting people to a draconian-like control freak system that is bnet 2.0 is extremely worrisome and doesn't feel like the Blizzard or original battle net we once knew.
The party system, from what I can tell from live streams and my own experience using it, seems to be trying to siphon off the xbox live mania with party systems that the ungodly beast Halo 2 popularized. It worked for xbox, not here. 4 player maximum parties, combined with the lackadaisical chat format with too-small chat windows is a literal nightmare.
As the game stands right now, I'd still buy it. I'd buy it to play with my friends, experience lame server downtime with them and have a fun time with them in general. I'd like to play it at LANs, too. I understood that bnet 2.0 needed a measure of dealing with software pirates and with such a big release there's bound to be a lot of them with their eyes set on SC2. However, by putting all your chips into a system that, with more and more patches, seems to be failing harder and harder does not, to me, seem like the correct approach.
I'm not a software engineer, I'm a physicist. I've written pretty intense C code for my research and I can also understand how frustrating the whole process can be, but ideally, you want a system that optimizes functionality with simplicity and speed. Bnet 2.0 doesn't seem to be heading in this direction, but quite the opposite.
The community has definitely raised hell over LAN, chat channels and so on, but I think Blizzard is too heavily invested in bnet 2.0. Delaying an incredible tour de force that SC2 is for this whole project means they are very serious about it. The thing is, though, they're only serious about how they want to implement it and not how the community wants it to be implemented. If they did, there'd be LAN and that would end half the problems right then and there.
To me, it stinks of what I call the Activision Curse. When Modern Warfare 2 was coming out, you couldn't convince me otherwise that the game was going to be complete ass. Then the draconian-like control freak that was IWnet came into the picture. Much like bnet 2.0, it really limited options and made the whole pc gaming experience for MW2 a travesty at best. It insulted their customer base. The reviews speak for themselves. I don't know how much control over IWnet and the pocketbook rape of DLC that was MW2, that Activison personally had, but Blizzards current mentality and way of going about these things looks so similar, that I have to have my doubts swing back and forth once a week, it seems.
The pay-to-play is the scariest angle I've seen. Yes, yes, we all know it's not going to be really a pay-to-play system that people fear it might have been, but really an option for less well-off countries to have a shot at SC2. I think that's admirable and I support it, but the Activision Curse would wind up having that feature implemented into SC2 somewhere down the line. I'm convinced that the 'constant connection' is a means to warrant something. I don't know what, but I feel something bad coming. Activision bad.
With the whole fiasco of Activision and IW with so many staff being fired from IW as a result, I almost feel like Blizzard made a pact with Satan. I really don't know how much of the problems associated with what people thought was the top-of-the-line gaming company like Blizzard are associated with Activision's reach into places where it shouldn't belong, or if Blizzard are really, truly losing their minds.
I want to look back on these days, a decade from now and think how silly I was. I don't want SC2 to be a failure. I don't want Activision to turn SC2 into a business with $15 downloadable content that should have been packaged with the game originally (fear of paying for chat channels, etc). Maybe I want too much, but I think my...our demands are reasonable enough.
Really, Blizzard has to make a choice. It can stick with bnet 2.0, that's fine. They have to decide to make long-term changes. SC2, as everyone knows, will be very imperfect at the WoL launch. Even after the Void it will still need further balancing. SC2 is a long term project and isn't going to be a pearl out of the box, but rather, a mountain of diamond after many years of slow, meticulous geological pressure.
If Blizzard doesn't choose to focus on the long-term aspect of the game and instead focuses on the short-term profiteering that MW2 was subject to and still is, then SC2 will be marked as a failure. It will be a good game. It will be a best seller, but it won't live up to its big BW brother. They're tough shoes to fill, but if they don't even attempt and charge you to see them put the shoes on, then the game has failed. Blizzard has failed and another of one of the most anticipated games of all time will fall to the axe that is the new world of corporate videogaming.
I am in awe of Blizzard's business sense. When you look at it from a sales and marketing perspective, Battlenet 2.0 makes perfect sense and it's hard to see how they could do it any better. With these 3 "pillars" they have basically guaranteed that the game will be bought by as many people as possible, get marketed to as many people as possible and make as much money as possible, while their only drawback is offending the community of hardcore gamers, most of whom will buy the game anyway.
"always online" = A neat and elegant DRM implementation which guarantees people will have to buy the game without the bad publicity from draconian software such as SecuROM, which is largely ineffective anyway.
"Achievements" = A proven way to make a game addictive to casual gamers, who otherwise might play a handful of games and then move on to something else. More players = more expansions and DLC sold. It's also an incentive to get people online and therefore buy the game rather than pirating.
"Competitive environment for everyone" = Again, the more casual friendly a game is, the most people are going to keep playing and not get overawed. The ladders and division system may be bad for the people who want to see global rankings, but for most casuals, seeing their name coming up number 5 in their gold league division is going to keep them playing more than seeing the fact that they're ranked 35,873 in the world.
"Connecting the Blizzard community" = They can advertise to you through WoW, Starcraft, Facebook, Your Email... by requiring email addresses they have set up a platform whereby they can advertise their products via email to anyone who has purchased the game, and should you choose to use their facebook integration can potentially market to 100s of people on your friends list as well. Whatever kickbacks facebook has given them is just the icing on the cake.
Your post scares me because it is entirely plausible. Sigh. Why cater to the people who will buy the game regardless of how shitty you make it, as long as you can rope people who have never played an RTS into it giving money you wouldn't have gotten before.
Not exactly my point, I probably should have mentioned that the game itself will be great, I mean it already is great, they know how much they can push it, they know that the game has to be good or they really will lose the hardcore fanbase, but they also know they have a bit more leeway with battle.net, that's why they have the best game developers in the world working on the actual game, and an XBox live guy and no doubt a marketing team working on battle.net.
They're smart and they know what people will put up with. It's like selling that horse on WoW, they know their limit, and that's why they'll never charge for gear that has a tangible effect in game, only stuff that looks cool.
Fuck when i read FrozenArbiter's post i had to rage punch my cat in the fucking face. Soooo heartbreaking for us fans, because you just now they can do better.
I've had my fair share of rants in various threads about this. Since it's released in summer i'm not sure how much i will play anyway. Maybe i give it some rest and join in later on.
I am in awe of Blizzard's business sense. When you look at it from a sales and marketing perspective, Battlenet 2.0 makes perfect sense and it's hard to see how they could do it any better. With these 3 "pillars" they have basically guaranteed that the game will be bought by as many people as possible, get marketed to as many people as possible and make as much money as possible, while their only drawback is offending the community of hardcore gamers, most of whom will buy the game anyway.
"always online" = A neat and elegant DRM implementation which guarantees people will have to buy the game without the bad publicity from draconian software such as SecuROM, which is largely ineffective anyway.
"Achievements" = A proven way to make a game addictive to casual gamers, who otherwise might play a handful of games and then move on to something else. More players = more expansions and DLC sold. It's also an incentive to get people online and therefore buy the game rather than pirating.
"Competitive environment for everyone" = Again, the more casual friendly a game is, the most people are going to keep playing and not get overawed. The ladders and division system may be bad for the people who want to see global rankings, but for most casuals, seeing their name coming up number 5 in their gold league division is going to keep them playing more than seeing the fact that they're ranked 35,873 in the world.
"Connecting the Blizzard community" = They can advertise to you through WoW, Starcraft, Facebook, Your Email... by requiring email addresses they have set up a platform whereby they can advertise their products via email to anyone who has purchased the game, and should you choose to use their facebook integration can potentially market to 100s of people on your friends list as well. Whatever kickbacks facebook has given them is just the icing on the cake.
This is so true, and it's scary. Blizzard attracted Activision to them, and I think Blizzard allready was heading this way without much of Activisions help. It's what happens when power and sales get too your head, you lose your way of being a company making good games. I think most people on TL.net realize how sales does not equal being a good game. Take Supreme Commander 1, TLO loved it, I loved it and it was a great game despise having a tiny playerbase. And guess what, it was made for hardcore gamers. A little better marketing and all the great stuff blizzard does to hype their product would make that game a big title.
The question is, what can we do? I love playing starcraft, but seeing how they spit in their loyal playerbase just makes me want to drop sc2 and find something else,, something what? Is there even something else?
Dno what you're all up to rly, but here's my opinion:
Get channels remove facebook feature
All the other stuff with leagues is just an implemented ICCup for example, so why r ppl rly whining about it? like everyone is playing such leagues in sc1, and here Blizzard r comin hosting it themself in a useful way to get the best experience of gaming, and gosh you rly have to whine about it?
The real problem is that they've just "overmade" 2.0, they're trying to make it have a cool look but it's just getting too complicated
That's the killer really. No matter how much we piss and moan about the lack of features, Blizzard know this is the big RTS title everyone has been waiting for so there's pretty much zero chance that we won't buy it. And that's us as the supposedly 'hardcore' community who will be most negatively affected by all the Bnet changes...I can hear them cackling already...
Yep, Blizzard is running a RTS monopoly and they know it. They know theres nothing else that even competes with them right now so if we all want to play RTS games still, we are stuck with SC2..
I personally, am looking into playing FPS competitively now. RTS are dead as soon as bw/war3 finally die out, and frankly I think they will in afew years not because they are a bad game, just because they are so old/metagame is so overrun. I really doubt we will spend another 5 years on BW finding new builds/etc, its pretty much to its limits right now with Flash/Jaedong/Bisu's builds. I really doubt anyone is going to suddenly make Scouts a common strat, and etc.
And for the guy who said Esports games are never made anymore; while I do agree its not common, theres some good ones out there.. Halo Reach is looking REALLY good, taking the best of all the old halos and combining with some really neat stuff.. the whole CS Pro mod is also getting better and better each time they release new patches. I think its just the RTS community thats dead unfortunately.
The question is, what can we do? I love playing starcraft, but seeing how they spit in their loyal playerbase just makes me want to drop sc2 and find something else,, something what? Is there even something else?
What can we do?
- Don't give them your facebook password, I mean I wouldn't give my FB pass to any 3rd party app, program or game anyway I think most people should adopt this philosophy because you don't know who you're giving your details to or what they're going to post on your feed. Show them that this facebook thing isn't going to help them and that it's a waste of time. If no one uses this feature they're not going to bother working on it.
- If they're going to keep forcing you to give your email out to everyone who wants to add you as a friend on bnet, then sign up with a dummy email address that you never check. They're soon going to realise that if they want to be able to inform you about their latest product via email then they're going to have to tighten up with regards to privacy in order to get a real email address from you that you might actually check.
- Enjoy the game, it's still going to be great even without the old bnet features, the ladder will still work better than it does in 99% of games released. Eventually private leagues like the ICCUP will come out for pro and hardcore players, and most of those will probably end up there.
Does anyone feel like all this is happening because they hired the Xbox Live guy?
- No chat channels (console games dont need chat channels) - No universal ladder (console games are for casuals, they just want to feel good) - No command line prompts (console games uses buttons from the controller)
On May 23 2010 19:24 Zed.iii wrote: Dno what you're all up to rly, but here's my opinion:
Get channels remove facebook feature
All the other stuff with leagues is just an implemented ICCup for example, so why r ppl rly whining about it? like everyone is playing such leagues in sc1, and here Blizzard r comin hosting it themself in a useful way to get the best experience of gaming, and gosh you rly have to whine about it?
The real problem is that they've just "overmade" 2.0, they're trying to make it have a cool look but it's just getting too complicated
The leagues are nothing like ICCUP.
On ICCUP, everyone starts at D. On ICCUP, there is ONE ranking - if you are D+ you are ranked #13509340950460958709, but that's fine.
In SC2, if you are Bronze, you are ranked #5 in bronze division #159405 ... I mean Bronze Division Delta-Tango-Foxtrot.
Here's the SC2 ladder rankings: Oh wait... there isn't one, because blizzard won't let you view anyones rankings except your own. The community has had to create their OWN rankings, thanks to Gibybo over at www.starcraftrankings.com