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On May 25 2010 02:07 mav451 wrote: Maybe I have a rosy memory, but I don't recall Steam having nearly the same amount of problems we are seeing with BNet2.0. With Steam, that platform was constantly and _quickly_ getting updated. Valve had no problems patching the platform quickly, sometimes even multiple times on the same day to fix problems. Blizzard isn't even close to as responsive as that yet.
Does it worry me? Yes.
This is also true. It's taken Blizzard 4 days now and the game still isn't playable. With Steam the games were always playable, excluding a handful of rare situations where Steam itself went offline, but even when that happened (I can think of 2 times in 6 years) they had it fixed within 24 hours. Steam had a lot of little quirky problems that were on a user-to-user basis, compared to BNet currently which has a massive system-wide array of problems.
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Big difference when something is costing you revenue or not. Steam having problems costs revenue every second. BNet being down during Beta? No revenue loss. Means they can take their time to fix the issues properly, internally test them to make sure they're not breaking anything else, then releasing it, as opposed to opting for bandaid solutions to keep people happy. Steam had ENORMOUS large-scale problems in the early days. People couldn't even login to play HL2 for like the first 8 hours after release and then there were constant overwhelming traffic issues. Definitely rose-coloured glasses, there. Those issues probably cost them a metric fuckton of money from people frustrated they couldn't play the game on release day and returned it.
BNet definitely has the same risk, and Blizzard would be wise to learn from those mistakes. Leave people to get frustrated now, fix it properly while its in Beta and reap the rewards later.
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Some day we will all feel like westwood studio fans. Looking back wondering what went wrong and if there was anything we could have done to stop it
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On May 25 2010 02:05 Spawkuring wrote:Show nested quote +On May 25 2010 01:27 junemermaid wrote: All this rage is expected from people who don't understand what is being done. B.net 2.0 is the new system that Blizzard is using for ALL THEIR GAMES, not just sc2. This is on the level of a Steam client release.
Does anyone remember Steam's release? Buggy friends list, laggy as hell connections, crashes on start up, inability to launch games, chat windows that wouldn't deliver messages, updates that never installed properly, memory leaks, the list goes on and on.
This doesn't get ironed out in the beta phase (steam didn't, so why do we expect this from bnet 2.0?). A lot of steam's functionality wasn't implemented until quite some time later. I expect no more or less from bnet 2.0. When all is said and done, however, I expect b.net 2.0 to live up to all the hype its garnered. This should include all the points being discussed currently (chat rooms, global ladder, tournament systems, clan channels, online replays etc...). To demand it at release or during beta unwarranted; demanding it during launch is a little more reasonable, but understandable if it isn't delivered.
Anyone expecting a smooth and easy ride when buying on day 0 for SC2 is naive. All I need to do is point to Half-Life 2 & CS:S implementation of steam for precedence. The difference between this and Steam is that Steam at the very least had a solid core of features, and most of the problems it had were purely technical. I don't mind the fact that Bnet is laggy right now because it's a beta, and beta is when such issues are ironed out. The main issue people have with Bnet isn't some technical problems, it's the INTENTIONAL, CALCULATED decisions to remove many of the features the community once enjoyed or desired in the name of control. There are no technical limitations with chat channels or cross-region play (even people in Europe say that lag between regions is minimal). Blizzard purposely removed these things and many of them show no signs of coming back. I honestly don't know what custom mapmakers are gonna do now that they have to live with the fact that they can only publish so many maps worth of content, or the fact that they can take everything we make and sell it at any time. It goes far beyond simple lag issues, and that's why we're upset.
Yeah, you do bring up valid points. Then again, we are only seeing what blizzard wants us to see, currently. Yes, they have said that chat channels are not going to be implemented during the launch, but I find it very difficult to see how they can build an online in-game community without some kind of public domain.
The way I see it, Diablo 3 is going to be on bnet 2.0. I think it would be impossible to play that game without some kind of chat / lobby system in place & without substantial updates and interface fixes. Imagine trying to navigate Diablo 3 with that interface. It becomes clear that bnet 2.0 is in it's infancy.
Perhaps they had a version they were testing out, but then scrapped it (a la Duke Nukem Forever) and started from the ground up. Blizzard has not been very transperant with regards to development cycles for the new bnet. Everyone assumes they've been working on the same infrastructure for 2+ years, when it could just as likely be a build that is just a few months old. This could explain why the interface and implementation looks so clunky right now. I believe they have ideas lined up for bnet within a year, but are strapped for time. They set the release date because they didn't want to delay AGAIN because of bnet (this is all speculation, but it makes sense).
If you're willing to weather out the storm during the initial release, I think it'll eventually come around in the winter / next year. If it doesn't, THEN we have something to worry about. Right now everyone is crying about spilled milk.
Lets be frank: the actual gameplay is phenomenal. People wouldn't be complaining about the bnet outage if the game wasn't fun as hell to play. I think that should give it enough gas to survive until Bnet 2.0 catches up with the actual gameplay.
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I noticed a lot of posts about casual gamers and people who used to play SCBW casually.
I don't want to get in to an argument about what qualifies someone as a casual gamer, however casual gaming is pertinent to this topic because battle.net 2.0 caters to the casuals. I would like to say playing a game casually does not necessarily mean you're a casual gamer. I believe evaluating someone as a casual gamer needs to take in to account the media they use to play the game as well. Owning a gaming pc, for example, wouldn't be something a casual player would invest in.
Back then I saw a casual gamer as someone who had a console (N64, PS1, Sega Saturn) with a few games that they'd play with their neighbors or family. Today, due to technology becoming less expensive and everything connecting to the internet, I would classify a casual gamer as someone who plays Farmville, flash-based profile games, xbox 360, Wii, and WoW.
The new casual gamer likes rewards for their play. It is what keeps them going. It is what makes Farmville, xbox 360, Wii, and WoW so successful.
A lot of casuals play WoW because it caters to this new casual mindset (influenced by the desires of the new generation but I'll get to that). It rewards them for every quest they do; they receive achievements for their accomplishments, and you can customize your character as you see fit. Xbox 360 is the same way because of xbox live. You accomplish achievements and you customize your own profile person and the space they live in with trophies and rewards. On Farmville you get to customize your own farm and show it to the world (facebook). On Wii you make Miis and customize your character.
The new generation of casual gamers are pretentious. They need a system that shows the world what they have done with their time. If I were to take a current casual gaming 13 year old today, and sit him in front of SCBW, I can tell you he'd ask "how do I quit?" while he tries to migrate to a xbox 360 FPS or his farm on facebook.
So aren't I proving battle.net 2.0's purpose? No.
Blizzard designed Starcraft 2 with the devoted fan in mind. They didn't want to deviate from the Starcraft equation and they wanted to make US happy. We are still a viable market because as gaming is evolving so is the general age bracket (i.e. old SC vets still game). Meanwhile the battle.net team is shoveling this shitty ass casual gaming service that is anything but what the devoted fan needs. They are completely missing the boat. You can tell the two teams didn't communicate who the real market is with each other at all. And to conclude my point I'll offer an example:
My father would be considered a casual gamer. Hand him a controller and he'll learn the very, very simple mechanics of a game on his own in a few days. So lets say the new additions to battle.net 2.0 interest him and I sit him down in front of SC2 to play. He'd be fucking clueless. Starcraft 2 will turn away the true casual gamer.
and QFT:
On May 24 2010 09:22 BeMannerDuPenner wrote: evryone that played wc3 half srs or bw expects something from blizzard. and they kick exactly those guys that spend years of their lifes with the games in the nuts. which is plain stupid cause:
-14 year old johnboy will buy the gamem play campaign, play some ffas/ums and be done with the game. - 14 year old johnboy wont decide wheter to buy the game or not on the bnet features - 14 year old johnboy maybe will buy an expansion. maybe not. - 14 year old johnboy might think "oh nice i can has facebook!" but will never really care about stuff like that
no matter how you look at it, making the casuals #1 priority is plain retarded. blizz lost quite some of their good name already with wow. we all hoped this wouldnt affect the nonwow part of blizz. but we now are see whats happening. and we dont like it.
The solution:
What we need is a revision of old battle.net catered to SC2. Old battle.net already contains a lot of the features they stripped from us in battle.net 2.0, but the revisions would be the party system, matchmaking, and a more browsable ladder.
Blizzard should postpone this "battle.net 2.0/steam" idea until they refine it perfectly. It isn't a bad idea at all, but they have a lot of kinks to still work out. Once they are done they can then implement it to every one of their games and make a lot of money.
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Casual vs Hardcore can be summed up quite simply as does the person treat gaming as a past-time, or do they treat it as a hobby (or even a career)?
Do you
A) Get home from work, load up a game, kill some shit, save the game and log out, go watch the new episode of Lost on TV, go to the garage and do some work on that shelf rack, or
B) Get home from work, load up a game and play the shit out of it until bed time, set your DVR to record Lost to watch when your internet goes out, only taking a break to make dinner or when your boy/girlfriend complains that you haven't taken out the trash/made him a sandwich, yet?
Every single game you listed (Farmville, flash-based profile games, xbox 360, Wii, and WoW) has both casual and hardcore gamers playing them. There's just a much larger population of casual ones, as there are hardcore.
Do you want to learn the game intricately, and become a master of it, or do you just play it to kill time? You can be in the Bronze league and be a hardcore gamer. You can be in the Platinum league and be a casual gamer. What defines them is how much time they spend, and how involved they get into it.
Would it surprise you to know that the vast, vast majority of gamers never complete the single-player campaigns of the games they buy?
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=25818
While this showed up on Gamasutra about 6 months ago, its been well-known in the industry for a long time. Honestly, I believe its only because many video game developers are hardcore gamers themselves is the only reason we still have video games offering more than 3 hours of single-player gameplay.
When publishers start catching on, we'll see Bioshock 7 have like 3 levels and released in 6 months.
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Bnet 2.0 to me reeks of them stripping back as much as possible to get the thing out the door. Their problem is they put time into fluff like achievements and portraits and not enough on other actually useful things.
I think the reason is achievements, portraits, FB friending, et al is a known quantity. It basically affects you and not others. There is little to "go wrong" in the long term. Chat rooms, online replay, clans, etc affect groups of people. I think honestly they're scared of what happens at launch. How many people are going to be on bnet? Will servers be overloaded? Will these other new features become unusable with a mass influx of new players?
What's odd to me is that if they have concerns about all of this sorts of stuff, beta is the time to test them in an environment that is more accepting (relatively) than the live game. But being so close to release, it seems they're just trying to get playing online to be solid, and (hopefully) adding more features over time as thing settle down after launch.
This is why you see FB added instead of other stuff. There's very little risk to adding it. This is also why people who say "this is only beta, wait till launch to see what's in it" are deluding themselves. They are not going to be adding some massive features before launch, for the same reason, "it's beta". Beta implies feature complete. All they are going to do from now until launch is tweak what is already there.
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On May 25 2010 01:48 FrozenArbiter wrote:Show nested quote +On May 25 2010 00:37 rackdude wrote:On May 24 2010 23:52 HalfAmazing wrote: There is no such thing as a casual gamer. He is an excuse to shove shit down your throat. You don't appreciate the taste of shit? MAYBE YOU'RE TOO HARDCORE. MAYBE YOU NEED TO BE MORE CASUAL.
You think a casual gamer doesn't want chat channels, LAN, or any of that good stuff? WHY NOT? YOU THINK "THE CASUAL GAMER" IS SOME KIND OF RETARD? If something matters to you, then you're HARDCORE. If you don't give a shit, you're CASUAL.
"THE CASUAL GAMER" is an invention by Blizzard's marketing department. Some fictionalized ignoramus who loves the buckets and buckets of shit shoveled into his mouth. "OHHH NOM NOM NOM YUM YUM BLIZZARD SHIT IS THE GOOD SHIT." "THE CASUAL GAMER" is some apathetic tool with no discerning appetite who'll eat whatever shit he's offered.
"THE CASUAL GAMER" is easy to cater to, as he has no desires, demands or concerns! If you're only disappointing EVERY. SINGLE. HARDCORE. player in the world, fear not, because "THE CASUAL GAMER" will still buy it!
Blizzard is just using "THE CASUAL GAMER" to deprive you of basic functionality in an effort to achieve greater control over your gaming experience. Because you care, you're HARDCORE and you're just not the target demographic. SORRY. "THE CASUAL GAMER" is a fucking myth.
No, they DO exist. THEY come from things like C&C and WOW. Why would you BUY those games if you're NOT casual? But seriously, there are casual gamers. Most of them are age 20ish-40 women who do "microgaming". They pay the most for in game content and they constantly flip games for the newest Zombies vs Plants. I thought my mom (yeah, my mom) was odd that she did that, but it's now becoming the norm. And it's a big cash cow. Blizzard is trying to get that demographic because they have the money, but they normally only buy smaller games. So you can see Blizzard's active attempt to get the demographic. http://www.1pstart.com/women-dominate-casual-gaming/ (Read the title) http://www.forbes.com/2008/03/13/casual-gaming-women-tech-personal-cx_bc_0314casual.htmlhttp://news.vgchartz.com/news.php?id=5995http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/17/technology/17drill.htmlhttp://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704882404574463652777885432.html (Activision is mentioned in this one) http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2006/10/7922.arsNow does the marketing make sense? Does the UI make sense? Does the censorship make sense? It just follows this research (and much more). They took the man who implemented casual gaming into Xbox (Xbox arcade) and made him head of Bnet 2.0 There is also a lot of research into achievements and casual gaming. I cannot find it right now because I think it was a few psychology papers from journals, but they are finding this demographic and they are finding they have the money. You know what else you find? They want the "fluff"/achievements. PS. RANDOM CAPS is very annoying at least to me. You MAY want to not use them. It will get your point across better. What kind of retard would you have to be (and I don't mean you btw) to think you are going to get the "soccermom" demographic to play an RTS game because of achievments? I mean, what makes anyone think they are going to go for THIS: Just because the game has achievments? Really? Also, I would have thought this is exactly the demographic that would appreciate chat features, but I guess not. Show nested quote +On May 25 2010 01:41 EliteAzn wrote: remember, there is a huge hardware/software update that is triggering the end of phase 1.
Start making complaint posts after phase 2 begins. I think the majority of complaints comes from things that Blizzard has officially said WONT be in the game by release but will MAYBE be added later.
Just to note, if you read my post carefully you will see that I never admit that what they are doing is smart. In fact, if you read my other posts you will see I think it's stupid. What I'm trying to combat though is the stupid uninformed posts. The posts like "there is no casual gamer!" and talking about how they don't exist is just stupid. It will lead to a pissing match between Bliz and the fans because Bliz will say "yes it does" and we say "no it doesn't".
Instead we should act like informed human beings and say "it does exist, but what's wrong with what's going on?" Jinro, your stance is the same as mine. I don't think SC2 can be their game. However, I was just posting information because it seems like people in this thread (specifically the one I quoted) have been pretty shortsighted about what actually exists. I was just showing what is happening and what Bliz's thought process is. I hope people can make informed arguments know that deal with the marketing data that's out there instead of this "i don't like it. I'm a fan of Bliz, but now I won't buy it" stuff.
Edit: Thinking about your argument more, I don't think it works. I mean, it sounds like a simple idea: would they buy this game? No. Look at this picture. It's not their market.
And that's the problem, it's not their market! They know who they can get easily (us) and they know who they have to bait. So what are they doing? Trying to expand the market. That's just what marketing is made to do. Xbox Arcade was geared towards the same idea: get the casuals from the WII. In fact, now the guy who worked on Xbox Arcade is the one heading Bnet 2.0. Coincidence? (Too bad Xbox Arcade didn't work very well...)
What should be pointed out though is that Xbox Arcade didn't work as planned. In the same way, the microgaming interface being set up to sell minigames and maps is heading in the same direction. Still, they are trying anyways because that "soccermom" demographic is almost half of the paying market!
I really think that the only way to argue against all of these horrific changes would be to show somehow that this market is just clearly unreachable to the point that even gearing anything towards this 1/2 of the gaming market (literally, half of the $$$) is not worth the money. Actually, the best would be to find ways for these two group to get the features in a decent way so they can peacefully coexist.
However, right now Bliz has a coding nightmare.
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On May 24 2010 23:21 Crabman123 wrote:Show nested quote +On May 24 2010 23:13 clickrush wrote:On May 24 2010 22:52 infinity2k9 wrote: I don't understand the constant use of the term casuals here. What i'd consider casual gamers aren't the kind of people who would even buy Starcraft 2 in the first place. Even the average BW/WC3 player would like the features we all want. I'am sorry to say it that way, but you have no idea what your talking about. blizzard and carnessa know what games have become today. games are not anymore restricted to a bunch of computer nerds like we where 12 years ago. since a few years there was a huge evolution in the gameindustry. games like WoW, farmville and Wii have changed the shape of the gaming world. Also before that there was and is warcraft3 which has/had so many "casual" gamers in it. look at the huge variety of custom content. there are rpgs towerdefenses etc. so many different styles and games.but battle.net2 and starcraft2 do not exceptionaly focus on the new "casual" consumer. they just realize that their products will have much, much more success if they get those people into their game and their community. blizzard did, and does alot for the hardcore gamers. they listen to the hardcore community the most if you think about it. but they also know what the casual players want. they learned it from WoW and carnessa learned it from his experience with xbox life. so in one hand, blizzard does get feedback from the hardcore and professional players to improve the game, and in the other hand they try to create an environment where casual players are motivated to be part of! Starcraft also had a huge variation of styles and games. I mean HUGE. I can't count the number of unique UMS games I have played. So if I understand correctly from the rest of your post, then you say its okay if they slash basic features so the casual gamers won't have to deal with them. Which I don't understand why the use of basic features would stop any 'casual' user from not enjoying the game.
no I tryed to say that its ok that blizzard implements all these environment things for the casual players. the basic bnet features of BW and WC3 must also be implemented. but they are not as important as the gameplay features. and blizzard listens heavily to the hardcore players to improve the gamplay of sc2.
If you are really honest, then this (gameplay) is what counts the most for hc/pro players and their fans. while the whole bnet2 features are gimmicks and extras that make things easyer/more appealing. and if they fail to implement bnet features that are wanted by hc/pro players, then these players will organise ladders, tournaments etc themselves like they allways did.
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On May 25 2010 01:35 Bibdy wrote: Things can be fixed just as quickly as they're broken. Have any of you ever worked in software?
Sorry, but it sounds like you haven't. . Not to be mean, but that is a really naive statement. All CS labs I've ever done goes like this:
Program it in 8 hours. Great! Debug for 4 hours. OMG. Debug the next morning for 6 hours. 20 tabs open for each separate class. Debug for 10 more hours. Made some progress. Found one spelling error. Debug for 10 mores the next day. Realized someone else working on the project was a dumbass. Debug another hour. Now I have almost something. But it's inefficient. Change code in one area for relative efficiency. What? My partner implemented insertion sort? Change that to quicksort or heap sort. Crap, now I just ruined something. Debug it for 3 hours. Ok, now there's something that runs in most cases. However, there is this one case where it doesn't. Either stop right now and take the A- or work on it for 5 more hours to get the full credit.
Programming = 4/5 debugging. Especially as projects get larger.
There is a reason that these problems show up and take awhile to fix.
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On May 25 2010 03:04 rackdude wrote:Show nested quote +On May 25 2010 01:35 Bibdy wrote: Things can be fixed just as quickly as they're broken. Have any of you ever worked in software? Sorry, but it sounds like you haven't. . Not to be mean, but that is a really naive statement. All CS labs I've ever done goes like this: Program it in 8 hours. Great! Debug for 4 hours. OMG. Debug the next morning for 6 hours. 20 tabs open for each separate class. Debug for 10 more hours. Made some progress. Found one spelling error. Debug for 10 mores the next day. Realized someone else working on the project was a dumbass. Debug another hour. Now I have almost something. But it's inefficient. Change code in one area for relative efficiency. What? My partner implemented insertion sort? Change that to quicksort or heap sort. Crap, now I just ruined something. Debug it for 3 hours. Ok, now there's something that runs in most cases. However, there is this one case where it doesn't. Either stop right now and take the A- or work on it for 5 more hours to get the full credit. Programming = 4/5 debugging. Especially as projects get larger. There is a reason that these problems show up and take awhile to fix.
What I meant was the solution to the problem is usually a quick change or a minor tweak. It just takes time to read, absorb the code and find the source of the problem.
They might have added a whole bunch of changes in Patch 13, which broke the stability of BNet and I find it hard to believe this is going to last until launch. The fact that it was so stable before, and now its a complete disaster just screams that the problem(s) will be easy to find.
In all likelihood, it'll get fixed in Patch 14, released Thursday/Friday this week (they usually release updates on Thursday or Friday each week) and then everyone will completely forget any of this ever happened.
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On May 25 2010 01:25 EliteAzn wrote: Please hold off the complaining until the game comes out.
For the billionth time by the billionth person THIS IS BETA
Except, as far as we know, the beta we are playing (for as much that is possible with patch13) is close to what the final product will look like. Think about that next time you yell "omfg its beta, they still have 2 whole months to fix something they've been working on for over 2 years!"
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On May 25 2010 03:09 Bibdy wrote:Show nested quote +On May 25 2010 03:04 rackdude wrote:On May 25 2010 01:35 Bibdy wrote: Things can be fixed just as quickly as they're broken. Have any of you ever worked in software? Sorry, but it sounds like you haven't. . Not to be mean, but that is a really naive statement. All CS labs I've ever done goes like this: Program it in 8 hours. Great! Debug for 4 hours. OMG. Debug the next morning for 6 hours. 20 tabs open for each separate class. Debug for 10 more hours. Made some progress. Found one spelling error. Debug for 10 mores the next day. Realized someone else working on the project was a dumbass. Debug another hour. Now I have almost something. But it's inefficient. Change code in one area for relative efficiency. What? My partner implemented insertion sort? Change that to quicksort or heap sort. Crap, now I just ruined something. Debug it for 3 hours. Ok, now there's something that runs in most cases. However, there is this one case where it doesn't. Either stop right now and take the A- or work on it for 5 more hours to get the full credit. Programming = 4/5 debugging. Especially as projects get larger. There is a reason that these problems show up and take awhile to fix. What I meant was the solution to the problem is usually a quick change or a minor tweak. It just takes time to read, absorb the code and find the source of the problem. They might have added a whole bunch of changes in Patch 13, which broke the stability of BNet and I find it hard to believe this is going to last until launch. The fact that it was so stable before, and now its a complete disaster just screams that the problem(s) will be easy to find. In all likelihood, it'll get fixed in Patch 14, released Thursday/Friday this week (they usually release updates on Thursday or Friday each week) and then everyone will completely forget any of this ever happened.
I really think that what happened is that they wanted to test the new networking (UDP) before the "break" on May 31st. They threw it out there to get as many error messages as they can. They probably have that break set up to be the major fix time. I think there will be one patch that will fix the "common" problem but you will have many cases (many cpus, many network cards, etc) that will still have problems. These won't get fixed until after the break. They timed this to look for those special cases and make those changes over the break. So, sadly, I think Bnet 2.0 will be pretty bad until it comes back post-May 31.
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On May 25 2010 03:13 Karok wrote:Show nested quote +On May 25 2010 01:25 EliteAzn wrote: Please hold off the complaining until the game comes out.
For the billionth time by the billionth person THIS IS BETA Except, as far as we know, the beta we are playing (for as much that is possible with patch13) is close to what the final product will look like. Think about that next time you yell "omfg its beta, they still have 2 whole months to fix something they've been working on for over 2 years!"
I still think the best argument against the "THIS IS BETA" remark is...
We are on a forum to talk about SC2. You cannot just talk about balance all day (that's complaining anyways). The strategy goes in the strategy section. So what is being talked about here? Yeah, you're browsing the area of the forum that you are saying you don't want to read about. Interesting...
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On May 25 2010 02:34 Niteo wrote:I noticed a lot of posts about casual gamers and people who used to play SCBW casually. I don't want to get in to an argument about what qualifies someone as a casual gamer, however casual gaming is pertinent to this topic because battle.net 2.0 caters to the casuals. I would like to say playing a game casually does not necessarily mean you're a casual gamer. I believe evaluating someone as a casual gamer needs to take in to account the media they use to play the game as well. Owning a gaming pc, for example, wouldn't be something a casual player would invest in. Back then I saw a casual gamer as someone who had a console (N64, PS1, Sega Saturn) with a few games that they'd play with their neighbors or family. Today, due to technology becoming less expensive and everything connecting to the internet, I would classify a casual gamer as someone who plays Farmville, flash-based profile games, xbox 360, Wii, and WoW. The new casual gamer likes rewards for their play. It is what keeps them going. It is what makes Farmville, xbox 360, Wii, and WoW so successful. A lot of casuals play WoW because it caters to this new casual mindset (influenced by the desires of the new generation but I'll get to that). It rewards them for every quest they do; they receive achievements for their accomplishments, and you can customize your character as you see fit. Xbox 360 is the same way because of xbox live. You accomplish achievements and you customize your own profile person and the space they live in with trophies and rewards. On Farmville you get to customize your own farm and show it to the world (facebook). On Wii you make Miis and customize your character. The new generation of casual gamers are pretentious. They need a system that shows the world what they have done with their time. If I were to take a current casual gaming 13 year old today, and sit him in front of SCBW, I can tell you he'd ask "how do I quit?" while he tries to migrate to a xbox 360 FPS or his farm on facebook. So aren't I proving battle.net 2.0's purpose? No. Blizzard designed Starcraft 2 with the devoted fan in mind. They didn't want to deviate from the Starcraft equation and they wanted to make US happy. We are still a viable market because as gaming is evolving so is the general age bracket (i.e. old SC vets still game). Meanwhile the battle.net team is shoveling this shitty ass casual gaming service that is anything but what the devoted fan needs. They are completely missing the boat. You can tell the two teams didn't communicate who the real market is with each other at all. And to conclude my point I'll offer an example: My father would be considered a casual gamer. Hand him a controller and he'll learn the very, very simple mechanics of a game on his own in a few days. So lets say the new additions to battle.net 2.0 interest him and I sit him down in front of SC2 to play. He'd be fucking clueless. Starcraft 2 will turn away the true casual gamer. and QFT: Show nested quote +On May 24 2010 09:22 BeMannerDuPenner wrote: evryone that played wc3 half srs or bw expects something from blizzard. and they kick exactly those guys that spend years of their lifes with the games in the nuts. which is plain stupid cause:
-14 year old johnboy will buy the gamem play campaign, play some ffas/ums and be done with the game. - 14 year old johnboy wont decide wheter to buy the game or not on the bnet features - 14 year old johnboy maybe will buy an expansion. maybe not. - 14 year old johnboy might think "oh nice i can has facebook!" but will never really care about stuff like that
no matter how you look at it, making the casuals #1 priority is plain retarded. blizz lost quite some of their good name already with wow. we all hoped this wouldnt affect the nonwow part of blizz. but we now are see whats happening. and we dont like it. The solution: What we need is a revision of old battle.net catered to SC2. Old battle.net already contains a lot of the features they stripped from us in battle.net 2.0, but the revisions would be the party system, matchmaking, and a more browsable ladder. Blizzard should postpone this "battle.net 2.0/steam" idea until they refine it perfectly. It isn't a bad idea at all, but they have a lot of kinks to still work out. Once they are done they can then implement it to every one of their games and make a lot of money. Here's the thing, before the release of WoW, MMOGs were pretty much the most hardcore of the hardcore genres of games out there. You'd think there was no way a soccer mom would ever pick up a MMOG like this and actually enjoy it, but somehow Blizzard managed this feat. I'm thinking Blizzard is "trying" to do the same with Battle.net 2.0 but so far I just don't see it really working, because the game SC2 itself doesn't seem casual friendly at all.
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RTS's are very competitive by their very nature, obviously, but being able to mess around with your friends against the AI, or even other people is what is fun about playing RTS games casually. Being able to reach those friends quickly and easily is what will bring the casual market to the RTS genre.
Hence, being able to see and chat to your friends playing WoW, Diablo 3 or Starcraft 2 all from one system and having Facebook integration. It all makes sense when you understand the reason for it.
They aren't just throwing this stuff in for no reason. They're trying to get casual gamers interested in the RTS genre with these so-called 'ground-breaking' universal communication systems. Get casuals buying the game and your game's profit suddenly sky-rockets.
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On May 25 2010 03:21 teamsolid wrote: I'm thinking Blizzard is "trying" to do the same with Battle.net 2.0 but so far I just don't see it really working, because the game SC2 itself doesn't seem casual friendly at all.
That's not true.
I have tons of friends in copper league during the beta that absolutely love the game and totally suck at it. They play like a couple games a week and talk about it probably twice as much.
Heck even SC BW was casual friendly. I played that game since release and totally sucked at it until I found these forums/iccup a couple years ago. My bnet account from a year ago is like 25-175
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On May 25 2010 01:36 PokePill wrote:Show nested quote +On May 25 2010 01:32 irishash wrote:On May 25 2010 01:30 Renaissance wrote:On May 25 2010 01:25 EliteAzn wrote: Please hold off the complaining until the game comes out.
For the billionth time by the billionth person THIS IS BETA This post would be acceptable if the release date wasn't TWO MONTHS AWAY. um think about it. it took overnight for blizzard to patch some huge changes to zerg, and you think two months isn't enough time to make some other major changes if they want? How about some real perspective? They've been working on this game since mid 2003. Why would they be able to do something in 2 months that they couldn't do properly in 7 years?
lmao that is THE perspective. obviously you can't change something for the better if you don't know it's bad in the first place. why do you think they have a beta? purely for bug testing?
you act like blizzard knows EVERY SINGLE WAY a player could use a certain spell or feature in the game. what might be balanced now could be totally imbalanced a year from now due to a player finding a new way of using something. take mutas for example, compare brattsunami era muta use to julyzerg era muta use. it changed the game completely.
look how much brood war changed from release to v.1.15 or whatever version it went up to. and SC2 is still beta. if you don't "complain" now, then you have no right to complain after release (assuming you were in the beta) its like voting, you can't really complain about who got voted in if you didn't vote yourself.
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On May 25 2010 03:21 teamsolid wrote: Here's the thing, before the release of WoW, MMOGs were pretty much the most hardcore of the hardcore genres of games out there. You'd think there was no way a soccer mom would ever pick up a MMOG like this and actually enjoy it, but somehow Blizzard managed this feat. I'm thinking Blizzard is "trying" to do the same with Battle.net 2.0 but so far I just don't see it really working, because the game SC2 itself doesn't seem casual friendly at all.
Exactly. You can tell SC2 as a product and battle.net 2.0 as a service are targeting two completely different markets.
And it is going to fail for SC2.
Any ideas on how to get the message out? We have 3 different topics on TL expressing everyone's distaste for the direction of battle.net 2.0. Two topics discussing battle.net 2.0 in general (with FrozenArbiter's professional insight), and one topic discussing how it will harm custom content (with IskatuMesk's custom content experience). If we were to combine all these topics and try to reach out to the general public then maybe we can get Blizzard to open their eyes.
Where do we go to? The battle.net forums have completely evolved from a decade ago; fanboyism runs rampant there and very few old fans still post there anymore. They'll basically eat up whatever shit blizzard cranks out.
There is that rock and battle.net 2.0 comparison picture that we could try to digg up. Does blizzard pay attention to twitter or facebook? We could try to get a change battle.net 2.0 group up. Any good ideas?
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On May 23 2010 05:45 FrozenArbiter wrote: Cross server playability There is none. There won't be any for release. They don't even have latency as an excuse anymore - I played on US today without battleping, after the TCP to UDP switch, and it's completely smooth. No lag, next to no latency differences from playing on EU.
The latency argument is worthless anyway, since what are you supposed to do if you travel to another country? For example, this year, 10/12 months I am in the US, and the other two I'm in Europe. I am on a US server, but if latency was an issue, wouldn't it be better for me to select EU servers while traveling? If this were the case, it's a disservice to the customer to lock them in to their initial region's servers. I also have played the beta on US servers while in the EU, and the latency is fine.
Also, with this wonderful Facebook integration, I have RL friends, that will assumedly be showing up in Bnet as a Facebook friend also, registered on the EU Bnet servers that I won't be able to play with. Great.
At this point I'd even be happy with a web 2.0 micropayment to be able to log in to different regional servers. It's better than not playing on these other servers at all (or being forced to buy another copy of the game, which I know a lot of people will resort to).
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