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Blizzard ladder is fine. Randomness is what makes it fair and not 1-dimensional.
Multiple accounts would be a horrible idea. Ladder Rankings would be flooded so many smurf accounts and ruin things like being in top 10% or being top 1000 in your server. You'll never be able to determine this (or come close). It would be like taking 2v2 (preset teams)'s rankings seriously--too many teams. The correct solution would be able to use their ladder system for unranked games.
Also, people have been QQing about these same issues for a year now.
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The game JUST came out! Starcraft 1 took a good while before it became the game it is today. Most people probably wouldnt care about the maps if pro's didnt say anything. Community maps dont NEED to be in the ladder yet because they arent extensively tested out yet. We havent been playing the maps for almost a year as there has been maps put in and removed. They cant change the map pool every month because it would be to hectic for tournaments. Tournaments arent event using custom maps fully yet.
-Choosing a map/opponent in ladder would be dumb because that pretty much takes away the entire ladder experience as ladder is supposed to be random. Ladder helps more with tourneys because you dont know every map and opponent your gonna face.
-More accounts would just clog up the ladder divisions with tons of people that didn't play. So yes you will pretty much have to suck it up and get your ass handed to you a bunch of time as your skill just wouldn't be where its supposed to be or join a custom game. Playing against a computer to get down timings is fine if you have to worry about what the opponent is doing.
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Well I never did iCCup but how often do they change the map pool? Every 5~6months? If they do it that often switching to BW for (or partly for) that reason is valid, however if not it's kind of unfair to change game using that reason. Since blizzard is already experiment with new maps. (Maybe they're still the same as beta, could be, but that was BETA not the actual game, I wasn't lucky enough/didn't try enough to get a beta key if they'd changed the map pool after 2months i'd feel WTF why do they change the map pool so damn often, possibly together with a bunch of other people who never had beta. What I mean is there are two parties involved, not just people who play since early beta days.)
Some extra options like "find custom game vs.Y map: A" Would be amazing though to practise specific match ups. However could get you in an endless waiting line if there is no Y that is also looking for a custom game on map: A. (not likely with the player base sc2 has) Would be great non the less, and i'd love to see that implanted. Now i think about it, that would greatly improve the game online experience/quality.
I however think for laddering that random opponent, random map is the only way to go. Else playerX can just play MapA he likes a lot, vs race Y (his best match up) all day and be 'at the top' in no time, without actually being good.
I'm also big in favor of having 1 'off-account' attached to your main account, so you could mess around a bit with other races/lower leagues. I am in favor though, that you could see in a players profile that it is an 'off-account' or 'main-account' together with a link to the players main/off-account profile. To 'avoid' people who go to low lvl leagues to just get easy cheese wins, and then lose on purpose for 50times just to stay in bronze, that's no fun for low level players either.
I feel your friend makes a big mistake comparing all the good things a 12year old game has gotten over it's life spam to a half a year old game.
Edit: typo
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On February 12 2011 19:36 blith wrote:
I just don't see how they are "supporting E-sports"...
Okay a lot of people need to realize something: Blizzard is an entertainment company, NOT an eSports organization. In my opinion, anything they do for eSports is more than they're 'obligated' to, because that's NOT the reason their company exists. We should be grateful that they're listening to the competitive community and attempting to better eSports.
Also, I think we have to wait. I think a lot of these issues will be fixed in the future. Hell, some of it might not even be that far away. The PTR is testing five new maps right now, we could see some of those in the near future. This game is young. Release was July right? That's six months, and we've had progress since then.
Basically, give it some time, and don't feel entitled that because you play SC2, Blizzard is required to listen to your every whim.
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I'd say yes, mainly because how the game is balanced right now. Being inaccessible and frustrating to new players.
Also while i guess most of you are fine playing 1v1's over and over again, but a little variety would'nt hurt. More official game modes with MM and ladders would be oh so cool for casuals. It might get figured out by modders pretty much and many awesome UMS will prosper but i understand matchmaking is impossible without blizzard implementing it for custom games.
Generally Sc2 feels so beta'ish. Anyways fingers crossed for Hots.
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The problem with the ladder will be more pronounced in a few months; GSL maps will likely be more widely established, perhaps some of the ICCup maps will see more use too given they're already in play in the ESL and Blizzard is itself introducing new maps in the PTR that will be yet another different set for people to play. Now you'll have three map pools, of which the one that is most irrelevant for e-sports is the only one you can have automatic matchmaking for.
The best solution is probably to just add all those maps to the ladder map pool and then maybe design a more sophisticated system for which maps you don't want to play on, or do want to play on. An alternative might be to let people create seperate ladders: create an interface a map needs to have to rank players participating in it, and then you can just select several of those maps for a ladder for people to play on that uses the Blizzard matchmaking. If Blizzard is afraid of there being too many ladders, they could limit it to organizations such as GSL, team liquid, ESL.
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"Is sc2 hurting sc2"?
You need to remember that Sc2 is a competitive game. Ladder means nothing, it's just a tool for light practice and / or casual play.
Tournaments are the REAL sc2.
If the ladder bothers you, then you might want to play customs. Blizzard makes the game. The community makes the maps and the tournaments. That's it.
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On February 13 2011 01:16 raf3776 wrote: The game JUST came out! Starcraft 1 took a good while before it became the game it is today. .
How many times does this need to be posted? Can't we just ban this statement? Firstly it didn't 'just come out' and secondly it should BUILD on what Starcraft did. They are not going from scratch here at all. This stupid fucking comment posted in every thread should be banned, seriously it's stupid.
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Practicing on specific maps and specific match ups is nice, unfortunatley, due to the nature of their ladder they can't really do that because of the league system. You may be 3500 masters on metal v terran but 2500 diamond on LT v zerg or something, and the system wouldn't know how to rank you without an extremely complex algorithm. To get this I feel like you would have to not want specific rankings.
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On February 13 2011 01:18 S.O.L.I.D. wrote:Show nested quote +On February 12 2011 19:36 blith wrote:
I just don't see how they are "supporting E-sports"...
Okay a lot of people need to realize something: Blizzard is an entertainment company, NOT an eSports organization. In my opinion, anything they do for eSports is more than they're 'obligated' to, because that's NOT the reason their company exists. We should be grateful that they're listening to the competitive community and attempting to better eSports.
Maybe it's BLIZZARD who needs to realize this then, and let actual eSports companies control the proscene? Why should we have to suck up to Blizzard because they say something about supporting eSports now and then, wheres their actions to back up these words? I'd prefer they just keep out of it completely. Balance your game, fix Bnet and leave it be. Leave the proscene to be run by others. I think we'd all be much happier if there was already SC2 proleague and MSL2/OSL2 and divisions for SC2 in each major proteam, but it was Blizzard who decided they wanted more of the pie than completely free mass promotion and advertisement. Other companies would kill to have their games played professionally on TV regularly as promotion, yet Blizzard decides that isn't enough for them.
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If you had people able to choose maps and races to play against there would be no games. Terrans/Protoss would only choose maps they are favored on and Zergs would only play cross position meta and shakuras/scrap. It would pretty much mean mirror matches all the time. Pretty terrible Idea imo
also
How many times does this need to be posted? Can't we just ban this statement? Firstly it didn't 'just come out' and secondly it should BUILD on what Starcraft did. They are not going from scratch here at all. This stupid fucking comment posted in every thread should be banned, seriously it's stupid
You clearly did not play SC1 at all in the first 2 years of its exisitance. Or were old enough to realise it. SC1 was barely playable competitively until Brood War and subsequent patches came out (over a year later). Yes I agree they should of built on that system, but clearly they didnt. So getting your panties in a twist over the timeframe to fix all the issues and bashing people who mention the relative short timeframe of SC2's lifespan isnt helping anyone.
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@ OP: Your friend is spot on on all fronts. Ive been saying the exact same thing since the game was released.
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On February 12 2011 19:36 blith wrote: Wow, I agree with so many things in this post.
I mean battle 2.0 seems like more of a downgrade then an upgrade.
no cross realm play, no lan, no clan system, even chat took a while to implement.
Clan war function woulda be great, change of map pool- as u mentioned
I just don't see how they are "supporting E-sports"...
They are supporting Bobby Kotick's wallet. It's kind of a joke that these things aren't implemented yet to be honest. And yes the SC2 ladder demotivates me from playing the game lately. We need better maps first of all.
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On February 13 2011 01:18 S.O.L.I.D. wrote:Show nested quote +On February 12 2011 19:36 blith wrote:
I just don't see how they are "supporting E-sports"...
Okay a lot of people need to realize something: Blizzard is an entertainment company, NOT an eSports organization. In my opinion, anything they do for eSports is more than they're 'obligated' to, because that's NOT the reason their company exists.
I don't have any links to a source, but I'm 100% sure I've heard Blizzard saying they want SC2 to become an e-sport, they even have an e-sport team working...
We should be grateful that they're listening to the competitive community and attempting to better eSports.
Really? REALLY? hahaha hahaha
Blizzard needs SC2 to become an e-sport. To become that SC2 needs to be competitive. The community is their best source to model SC2 as it should be.
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I'm just gonna chime in with the chorus here. The ability to choose different race/map combos, or play against opponents you deem as not at your level, is available via chat channels, clans, and the custom game interface. Sure, it's not optimal, but it's also not really functionality that the bulk of users are clamoring for.
The multiple accounts concept is one that I think more people care about, but you mention and then totally ignore smurfing, which I think is Blizzard's main fear with this. Sure, there's something to be gained from playing against people below your normal level, but again that's something you can accomplish through custom games. If you can't find any platinum players who want to be walked all over by someone in high masters, I don't think Blizz should be building in functionality to let you beat up on newbs without them having a chance to say no. I think there is potentially a case for a limited (I've thought maybe 1 per race) number of accounts (or even just separate ladder rankings) per key as a way to allow people to off-race without leading to excessive smurfing.
Generally, I think all the posts like this are coming from people who are very serious about the game and they tend not to consider that Blizzard is trying to balance the competing interests of many different user groups here. Sure, they want to make the best game possible for serious professional level players, but not at the expense of making the multiplayer experience awful for lower level players with an excess of smurfing (see PA comic below). Similarly, the new custom game interface isn't really optimal for serious players trying to grind out practice games, but if WC3 is any indication there's a whole community of people whose entire SC2 multiplayer experience will be a few practice league games and a billion custom games, and this new system might be just right for them.
As to the maps, I suspect (well, really just hope) they'll be releasing more in time, and will start including fan favorite custom maps and GSL/other third party maps. It's also possible that as time goes by and the percentage of players who are playing competitively goes up, Blizzard's priorities will change and we'll start to see them focus more on designing just for top-tier players, but I think they're still trying to attract new players at this phase of the game's lifecycle, rather than worrying about keeping old ones.
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So now 7 months after release people complain once again about features or lack of features that we knew about before the game was even release yet they still bought it. The ladder in SC1/BW was also completely terrible compared to what we have now, and smurfing? All that did was make the WC3 ladder worse, you never knew who you would get matched up against, and it was common for people to just constantly play 50-100 games and then start a new account. Plenty of pros have already switched races with nothing but a small and non-permanent drop in rating, if that is too painful for you, then spend the $60 for a new account. It is so childish how some of you guys deride Blizzard for actually wanted to make money. Maybe you should take a look around, how many game companies actually still make a esports quality game? It's almost always yearly releases of horseshit, if Blizzard cannot make money with this model, then it is bad for all of us. Unless you don't care about new releases, and in that case, why aren't you still playing BW?
How long must this go on until people either stop playing or stop complaining?
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The current ladder system is far from the best; I agree. But at the same time, I think the matchmaking system is a much bigger blessing than a lot of people realize.
When I go back and play BW, one of the worst things about it is trying to find a suitable game on b.net (none of my friends play anymore, and I can't really play on Iccup since I have a mac). With SC2 it is just SO easy to jump on and find a game in seconds, which I love.
Ideally, it would be awesome to have a mix of BW ladder and SC2 ladder. Able to set up games with any maps and play against whoever you want, but also be able to use a matchmaking system. I'm sure there are plenty of problems with that system (i.e. map pool of custom games vs map pool of matchmaking games), but I still think they could find a nice middle ground between that and the current system.
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I played BW and watched alot of pro matches just like I do for SC2 now and I must say that I like SC2 alot mroe then BW
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On February 13 2011 01:18 S.O.L.I.D. wrote:Show nested quote +On February 12 2011 19:36 blith wrote:
I just don't see how they are "supporting E-sports"...
Okay a lot of people need to realize something: Blizzard is an entertainment company, NOT an eSports organization. In my opinion, anything they do for eSports is more than they're 'obligated' to, because that's NOT the reason their company exists. We should be grateful that they're listening to the competitive community and attempting to better eSports. Also, I think we have to wait. I think a lot of these issues will be fixed in the future. Hell, some of it might not even be that far away. The PTR is testing five new maps right now, we could see some of those in the near future. This game is young. Release was July right? That's six months, and we've had progress since then. Basically, give it some time, and don't feel entitled that because you play SC2, Blizzard is required to listen to your every whim. It always makes me happy to see that there are still sane people left in the world.
Also, all you iCCup people did this to yourselves-- Blizzard doesn't want to lose control over SC2 the way this did over BW. That's life.
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Basically comes down to this, Activi$ion doesn't give a crap about the more serious gaming community, all they want is money. Guess what, that's just how big companies work, they need to make a profit. Now you wonder: "well isn't activi$ion afraid they'll push it too far and alienate their customers?" No, one single incident last year proves that the majority of the gaming community is a complete and utter joke. They released some dumb pet with wings on WoW FOR 25 DOLLARS, HELLO!!!! and literally hundreds of thousands of people bought it within an hour. They made MILLIONS within a couple of hours. Really, if everyone's this stupid you deserve to have your wallet sucked dry. People who can see through this ridiculous marketing strategy are in a very minor minority and they'll still make millions from all the other idiots buying, I dunno, a female marine for 200 bucks (a month). It doesn't matter what you do, you lose because idiots with their parents cash to burn are in the majority.
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