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On February 12 2011 19:52 Zionner wrote:Show nested quote +On February 12 2011 19:45 Tedde93 wrote:
Last i checked BW didn't have ladder, so you played customs games, OH wait i just remembered something you can still do that. . . If you wanna practice against a certain race on a certain map play custom games with a friend. . . Right... and if you are a player in the masters league, and all your friends are in the gold league...how in any sense, would playing custom games with them be helpful?
Practice Partner Thread Retail
Ive gotten maybe half my practice partners from that thread, just made a post a few days after retail, and ppl contact me every week about it. The other half i get from striking up a friendly conversation after a good game, asking for a rematch or just asking if he/she wants to do some practice.
btw, how was this any better in BW?
Edit: I'm sure there are PLENTY of master league practice chat channels in game.
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On February 12 2011 19:52 Zionner wrote:Show nested quote +On February 12 2011 19:45 Tedde93 wrote:
Last i checked BW didn't have ladder, so you played customs games, OH wait i just remembered something you can still do that. . . If you wanna practice against a certain race on a certain map play custom games with a friend. . . Right... and if you are a player in the masters league, and all your friends are in the gold league...how in any sense, would playing custom games with them be helpful?
Get practice partners or join a clan, both of which are fairly easy through TL.
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the reason i don't play ladder, cause the map pool kinda sucks, and i dissagree practice partners arnt hard to find, but bad blizzard, 30 map pool would make things interesting
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All of the problems in the OP would not be addressed by changing anything on the ladder.
They would be addressed by fixing the gawd-awful custom game system.
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United States2382 Posts
On February 12 2011 20:05 Nightfall.589 wrote:
All of the problems in the OP would not be addressed by changing anything on the ladder.
They would be addressed by fixing the gawd-awful custom game system.
How so? As the ladder is used for tourney invites and such, you're encouraged to play on it as much as possible, so if you want to be competitive, you have to play the ladder, allot. If you want different maps, well that's just too bad, you need to keep playing to remain competitive in the top200 scene.
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Blizzard ladder is a wonderful system. You will not get anything out of the game if one game you get a bronze who doesn't know how to build probes, and next game against #32 player in your server. That is what happens if you get rid of Blizzard ladder and random matchmaking.
Allowing a second account is a whole another matter, completely unrelated to the ladder
I'm a protoss player, and it seems from the first GSTL that the new, bigger maps heavily favor protoss. If you allow untested maps into the ladder, you might suddenly see game drop heavily into one races favor.
Personally I don't like the idea of choosing maps. I guess that is personal preference.
But my overall point is, Blizzard is not slow, Blizzard is careful. This game is more volatile than you might think. Increasing range of a single unit by +1 might break the whole game. This applies to allowing random maps to the pool.
About the "lack of features", well I doubt that Starcraft 2 development team is that big. I mean, it doesn't really generate any revenue. People pay once and then it's free.
Blizzards approach to games has been proven to be the right one. I trust Blizzard to do the right thing this time too. Give Blizzard some time. Ladder is not hurting Starcraft 2.
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I think that adding custom ladders or something like that so you can play with your buddies and have a long-term ranking against them. That would make the game a whole lot more fun. Also; if Blizzard were to higher some top players to balance the game or give advice on the maps the game would go further.
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It would be nice to see Custom Ladder implemented. Ones only officials can create and use a certain map pool.
The only issue is the maps and I have to agree. Currently the ladder system is fine. Pros meet pros and can practice regularly.
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I think that the largest thing that people are over looking when it comes to the ladder is that blizzard is the company behind balancing not just WoL, but also the future expansions, and I think that it is 100% fair for them to be in charge of what maps are on the ladder. They want to make the changes themselves and see what works and what doesn't for them so they have a better idea of what they need to change regarding the races, expansion units and how they design maps in the future. Once they get Legacy of the Void out and the game is pretty much balanced, then I think that they will start changing the way the ladder works, if not earlier (read HotS). The community needs to be a little more patient with this.
Another thing that I want to note is that I don't like it when people say "we've had the same maps since the start of beta", or the same X since Beta. While that is true, I feel that the beta shouldn't be taken into consideration when talking about the competitive life of the game. I doubt Blizzard knew how competitive people would play in the beta, and I don't think any game in the world has been under as much scrutiny since the beginning as SC2 has. The focus of the beta was to stress test the units and such more than the maps, but even then they still released maps (Incineration Zone in the beta, then Delta and Xel'naga, followed by Jungle Basin and Shakuras) and removed maps that people pretty much refused to play on and/or they felt were imbalanced (Incineration Zone, Desert Oasis and Kulas Ravine).
Now, 6 months (ish) since release, Blizzard is late on the ladder reset (I believe it was supposed to be with patch 1.2), which will probably come out after they have gotten some new maps like the ones on the PTR ready to replace things like steppes and such. In saying that, Blizzard said that they want to change most of he maps every season (which should run 3-4 months).
I'm not saying that I disagree with you necessarily, people need to remember that they are supporting E-sports and they do want ladder to be an important part of everyone's gaming experience. Both pro and under, and I have no doubt that given some more time, it will. The game is not going to die because Blizzard isn't using GOM's maps (which were made for the GSL and high level play as opposed to ladder play, which is for everyone).
When it comes to match picking on the ladder, that could cause problems unless they overhaul the design of the ladder completely. I could be amazing at TvT for example and terrible at other match ups, and filter it so I get more TvTs than other match ups, and on maps that I like/better at, and then have a 70% win rate when I should only have about a 55% one. Ladder is about variety and less about specific practice. Practice partners are the opposite and are less about variety and more about specific practice.
BNet 2.0 is still young. I believe that it was one of the main reasons why the beta for the game was pushed back (talk was that it was supposed to be December to January, but I could be wrong). It will be improved more and more when the expansions and major patches are released. Blizzard won't charge for maps and that. It's not their style. They might charge for things like Blizzard DotA, but that's different than ladder maps.
TL:DR (I hate these but whatever.) The game is young, we have a ladder reset coming with new maps and there will me more new maps/resets more regularly in the future. The maps will get better. Blizzard cares about the map pool and has removed maps that are imbalanced (I.Zone, Desert oasis, Kulas) and added new maps (I.Zone, Xel'naga, Delta, Basin, Shakuras). Match/map picking on ladder will lead to problems unless they change the ladder completely.
Overall, we need to be patient with this a lot more. Blizzard has a lot of time to remedy any mistakes, and they will. The game is less than 6 moths old (retail, don't count beta) and will get better.
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I don't think you can critiscise until you know EVERYTHING that needs to be done on Blizzards end to input all the thing he is saying is wrong with it, and on you're end all you need to do is be nice to some randy on ladder that is the race you want to practice against and ask them for some matches.
I don't even like the GSTL maps and I hope they don't get put in because I'm fine playing the maps atm and I'm fine watching them be played in tourny's.
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United States2382 Posts
On February 12 2011 20:10 Greentellon wrote:
Blizzard ladder is a wonderful system. You will not get anything out of the game if one game you get a bronze who doesn't know how to build probes, and next game against #32 player in your server. That is what happens if you get rid of Blizzard ladder and random matchmaking.
No it isn't? Did you ever play on iCCup? You start at D rank, work your way up playing D/D+ player, gaining points until you get promoted to D+ then could start playing C- player, and kept working. You never had D players playing A/A+ players. Just because you don't have the random matchmaking doesn't mean you have no structure within a ladder. And I'm not saying random Matchmaking needs to go away, you could just choose to use the random system if you didn't care, and it'd be the same as it is now.
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gotta love the people that always return to one game. They ignore any flaws of their favorite game, but a little flaw in the game they are currently testing out and they are like: "everything is going to end !"
have alot experience there. And if they get into a new game the old game is just so old and bad and everything is evil there. Listening to them is just so much fun.
Anyway the ladder isn't hurting sc2. Since bnet2 just sucked in its first version it seemed they completly remade it from the scratch while WoL was at 90% done. If they would wait until bnet 2 is completly ready we would have the sc2 beta next year. and diablo 3 would also need to be delayed because selling 2 masterpieces at the same time is a bad thing.
So as it goes for me i prefer an unfinished menu and enjoy the game. And more people would rant at blizzard if they would use their custom games for a ladder were you have to search your opponents yourself. (and those would post in at blizzard and not at tl  )
PS: compared to other games sc2 has a really little amount of returners (those that return to their former game) but this is mostly because the hype is still there a little so i think not everything they did is wrong .
PPS: people love to pay money for special services, thats why f2p mmpogs are so much more money then p2p xD, so its the fault of this people that you will have to pay for everything. Add a unit to sc2 that costs 10 dollars to have it in multiplayer you will see alot of people with this unit (even the people that would flame about it would have it hehe)
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On February 12 2011 20:09 Arisen wrote:Show nested quote +On February 12 2011 20:05 Nightfall.589 wrote:
All of the problems in the OP would not be addressed by changing anything on the ladder.
They would be addressed by fixing the gawd-awful custom game system.
How so? As the ladder is used for tourney invites and such, you're encouraged to play on it as much as possible, so if you want to be competitive, you have to play the ladder, allot. If you want different maps, well that's just too bad, you need to keep playing to remain competitive in the top200 scene.
If you want to practice your TvP on Metalopolis, you'd be able to do so fairly easily if they just kept the WC3/BW custom games system.
If you wanted to play new maps, you'd be able to do so as well.
Many tournaments do not invite based off ladder rankings - and if serious play shifted from ladder to custom games, even fewer of them would.
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United States2382 Posts
On February 12 2011 20:18 minimat wrote:
I don't think you can critiscise until you know EVERYTHING that needs to be done on Blizzards end to input all the thing he is saying is wrong with it, and on you're end all you need to do is be nice to some randy on ladder that is the race you want to practice against and ask them for some matches.
I don't even like the GSTL maps and I hope they don't get put in because I'm fine playing the maps atm and I'm fine watching them be played in tourny's.
That's obtuse. Is it OK to say "Well, as an Egyptian citizen, I don't like all the stuff our leader does because he's looking out for western interests, not ours, but I don't know all the stuff that the government has to do, so I guess I just need to accept it."
No. Obviously it's weird to be connecting world politics to sc2, but the same concept applies, accept it because they work really hard, or you don't understand what they have to deal with. "Apathy is the glove into which evil slips it's hand" is an old saying that encapsulates this well, if you're not questioning things, you've doomed yourself to complacency.
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improvements to matchmaking, ladder, clan system, cross-realm play... if blizz put all these things in the game right away, what would they have expansions for? It's simple as that, many people fail to realize that. Just look at wow and it's expansions, and the improvements in every one.
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On February 12 2011 19:53 Phanekim wrote:
ladder system is something i Actually like with New bnet. my issues are with Game design. :-/.
Well, the auto matchmaking is great but the ladder design itself is poor for all of the reasons outlined in the OP. I feel like if Blizzard wants to run the ladder system then they should at least commit to it fully and do it right. They should redesign the ladder system to make practice more feasible (like thumbing up maps) and get an official team together to create new maps and rotate them into the ladder. And don't be afraid to take community maps into the pool if they're good.
It makes sense from a business perspective. Starcraft is the type of game you'll play for ten years, and sales will continue as new people will wonder what all the fuss is about. Hell, if Starcraft 2 becomes successful as an esport it will be like a giant continuing advertisement for the game. New people will come across tournaments like the TSL 3 or something and enjoy it so much that they'll just have to buy the game to check it out. So it makes sense for Blizzard to do everything in their power to provide a great practice environment and ensure that competitive players want to keep playing. But if you let the ladder stagnate (and do not allow the community to create their own ladder) people will eventually abandon the game. I doubt this game would ever completely die, even if we're playing on Steppes for the next ten years, but its popularity will certainly be massively diminished.
Given that there are two more expansions coming out, I hope Blizzard will realise this gives them a perfect opportunity for a redesign of the ladder system. They see how popular the game is becoming just from esports. Perhaps they didn't fully realise this when creating Wings of Liberty, but after watching GSL I'm sure they see the full potential of the Starcraft franchise now. They just have recognise how to tap into it by fostering a good competitive environment.
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Your friend seems to be affected by some unfounded elitism. Practice partners, specific maps and overall custom games are an integral part of the training process for any pro, better yet for anyone pursuing an improvement. You can't have them served on a silver platter.
Ladder system is fine as it is, the only major flaw is the bonus pool. The longer it runs the more it separates the actual value (MMR) from point ranking.
But then again, who cares about ladder ranking, it's what you do in the tourneys that matters.
I agree maps are old but they are stable to some extent.
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Bnet is an awesome casual tool, put when it comes to competitive play it really sucks.
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United States2382 Posts
On February 12 2011 20:28 Nightfall.589 wrote:Show nested quote +On February 12 2011 20:09 Arisen wrote:On February 12 2011 20:05 Nightfall.589 wrote:
All of the problems in the OP would not be addressed by changing anything on the ladder.
They would be addressed by fixing the gawd-awful custom game system.
How so? As the ladder is used for tourney invites and such, you're encouraged to play on it as much as possible, so if you want to be competitive, you have to play the ladder, allot. If you want different maps, well that's just too bad, you need to keep playing to remain competitive in the top200 scene. If you want to practice your TvP on Metalopolis, you'd be able to do so fairly easily if they just kept the WC3/BW custom games system. If you wanted to play new maps, you'd be able to do so as well. Many tournaments do not invite based off ladder rankings - and if serious play shifted from ladder to custom games, even fewer of them would.
Blizzcon, one of the biggest tournaments (money-wise) outside of korea bases invites solely off ladder, and if players want a shot at blizzcon (and possibly future blizzard sponsored events) they need to be constantly on that ladder.
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On February 12 2011 20:32 debasers wrote:
Bnet is an awesome casual tool, put when it comes to competitive play it really sucks.
The ladder doesn't need to be competitive. There are tournaments for that.
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