EDIT: Now with reply to Destiny's comment on the Reddit post about this blog at the bottom
Hey guys. I don't normally make posts like this, but the topic has been bothering me so here's my take on it.
First of all; chill out. It doesn't matter what anyone on Reddit or Twitter or any other public internet platform says. SC2 isn't going anywhere any time soon. There's lots of reasons why, but they've nearly all been said already and if you haven't believed any of them yet, hearing them from me won't change your mind. In the end you'll just have to trust me and wait for time to prove it.
Obviously all this drama is born from passion for our game, which is great! I'm happy to see so many people being vocal about the issue. There are a few things that worry me though that I hope people consider.
One of the biggest dangers in all of this is that we poison our ability to like Heart of the Swarm no matter how it's released. From the look of Reddit and TL, etc lately it gives me the impression that some people aren't even ready to give the game a chance at this point. If that's true, that's sad.
A lot of pros are very vocal about their dislike of HotS and that's fine. Blizzard should listen to their concerns. The problem is the way that it's being approached. You can be critical without proclaiming the end-times. The majority of the criticism I see right now is "If you don't do X then the game is screwed" instead of "If you do X, it will improve the game by Y". The first method scares away people and makes the community look immature. Everyone learns fairly early on in school as a child that positive criticism is nearly always better than negative criticism. That philosophy only becomes more important in the real world. Blizzard has opened itself up to more community influence than nearly any other developer has before and if you really want to participate in a meaningful way in this relationship you should try to be professional about it and at the very least mature. Doom and gloom on Reddit and Twitter hashtag barrages really don't have any positive effect. In fact they have exactly the opposite. We want to appear concerned and informed, not whiny and entitled.
But Doa, aren't those people making good points and saying things that Blizzard needs to hear?
Of course they are, but it's not about the content of the post or Tweet. It's about how it's presented. Let's take a second and read one of the oldest examples of why this is the case. From "The Fables of Æsop"
The Wind and the Sun were disputing which was the stronger. Suddenly they saw a traveler coming down the road, and the Sun said, "I see a way to decide our dispute. Whichever of us can cause that traveler to take off his cloak shall be regarded as the stronger. You begin."
So the Sun retired behind a cloud, and the Wind began to blow as hard as it could upon the traveler. But the harder he blew the more closely did the traveler wrap his cloak round him, till at last the Wind had to give up in despair.
Then the Sun came out and shone in all his glory upon the traveler, who soon found it too hot to walk with his cloak on.
Obviously this is one of the most overused fables ever, but the point remains relevant. Basically if you want to influence someone then [i[usually[/i] most effective way to do it is with kindness. In the case of SC2 Blizzard already knows the risks they face in their game succeeding or failing. We don't need to convince them to want their own game to succeed. So instead of focusing on worst-case scenarios, why not take time to make detailed, logical, and calm posts about the game. There are definitely some good examples of this out there, but not nearly enough and not as many as there are overly-negative posts. Let's change that.
In the end if we want new people to come into this game as fans then we can't afford to have all this negativity about our scene displayed so prominently on our biggest media outlets. To a certain extent we're our own PR department and it's vitally important that we don't scare away that one fan that might bring in his friends, who bring in their friends, etc or that one fan that ends up being a wealthy individual who decides that they want to invest in esports. Equally important is that one fan who randomly comes to TL or Reddit and simply decides that they like watching Starcraft.
So please, by all means, keep talking about HotS! Keep telling Blizzard what we want, but let's do it in the most effective way and make sure we're not accidentally hurting ourselves more than we're helping.
Destiny replies:
Yes, if we just maintain a positive attitude, we can forget that viewership for SC2 is down 50-60%. We can forget that games that we'd never even heard of before are now 10x larger than what we all thought was the "flagship e-sports" game. If we stop being so darned negative on online forums and just use the channels of communication Blizzard already has open, we can forget that for 3 years we've been without name changes, LAN, or a decent custom game interface.
These are all valid concerns as I did allude to in my blog. Nobody is telling you to forget any problems the game has. I didn't.
Also it's not reasonable that we should expect any single game to be dominant forever. Just because it has the capacity to or has been previously doesn't mean it will continue to be dominant or even deserves to be. Brood War was as popular as it was for so long because it was a great game and nobody could topple it. Not many games or companies really tried as esports wasn't as important to developers back then. Starcraft 2 is my favorite game by far and has obviously succeeded over the last two years in being the "flagship game" that's lead us into a new age of esports. That's great! It's not logical though to think that Starcraft 2 is entitled in any way to keep this title. That's going to be mostly on Blizzard. We can only influence it so much ourselves. If prominent community members and progamers only talk about how bad everything is then it certainly won't be dominant again. That's a sure thing.
Don't worry, bros, our passion will carry all of us into success! In 2 years when Tasteless is casting LoL fulltime, the MLG finals are getting 15k viewers and the foreign scene is dominating the Korean scene because every Korean has switched to LoL, we'll all know that our game is the bestest and we're all positive rainbows unicorns yeah!
Again you use sarcasm to try to prove a point through appealing to raw emotion instead of logic. Humor is another method you like to use. It's entertaining, but also distracting in a serious conversation. You make fun of the passion of the community (or maybe my passion. not sure), but an appeal to pure emotion and passion is more or less what the rhetoric (i.e. the part of what you say that tries to influence someone's opinion) of your posting usually consists of. This last paragraph is a great example of that in fact. You try to scare fans with the supposed loss of Tasteless to LoL. You don't know him personally and don't know what his plans are so why make those predictions other than to stir people up and simply get them to blindly agree with you? Any real esports commentator is going to do multiple games anyway. Sometimes even at the same time, believe it or not. You include yet another "doomsday" scenario at the end as well. This type of thing doesn't help anyone. As passionate or emotional as we might feel about Starcraft 2, this is a time for calm, rational discussion because that's what will work the best. Being negative causes stress, which in turn can impede rational thought. I can't speak for you, but that's not a condition I want to be in when I'm trying to help the game I like. It's counterproductive and that's really the main point of a lot of this blog: helping Starcraft in the most effective way possible while not undermining your own love for the game.
I'll say this again because I feel it's important. I think you make a lot of great points about the game, but the way you make them isn't productive and frankly it's harmful at times. It's your style to be edgy and sarcastic, but you've actually got a lot of influence and you should be careful about how you use it if you really do want the game to do well.
Basically if you want to influence someone then usually most effective way to do it is with kindness. In the case of SC2 Blizzard already knows the risks they face in their game succeeding or failing. We don't need to convince them to want their own game to succeed.
I appreciate the sentiment and where you are going with this, but it seems to me the community is exercising pent-up anger at this point. There are a number of issues that have plagued StarCraft II since release, and all kind tips towards fixing these issues with kindness have been ignored or shelved indefinitely.
The negativity is an economic signal to Blizzard at this point. It is equivalent to: "If you do not fix your game, no one will play it." This marks a substantial hit in sales figures, which might be the only language Blizzard speaks in at the moment.
Being overly positive and nice only makes it easier for people to walk all over you. Sometimes you need to get angry and start yelling to get shit done.
We tried being nice and Blizz has not done anything to help fix obvious issues with their game.
Where is chill? Where is the old school, who know what this website was meant to be? Why are the forums filled with these garbage threads? Starcraft is so much bigger than it ever was, why are we all so unhappy.
I think the big point is that people are adressing blizzard since sc2 beta about issues and nothing has happened yet. I dare you to prove me otherwise.
On October 22 2012 02:06 m3rciless wrote: I just want the pillars to come back.
Where is chill? Where is the old school, who know what this website was meant to be? Why are the forums filled with these garbage threads? Starcraft is so much bigger than it ever was, why are we all so unhappy.
Doa the nice guy . I like your sentiment, but I don't think its necessarily true. Sometimes people and companies do need to hear the harsh truth; sometimes there are elements that really are leading to the downfall of the game. If you "sugarcoat" it in a way, by saying that for example "improving arcade in X way will make the game better" then it doesn't really impart the true weight of the message. Sometimes the truth is hard to hear - and if people truly have come to believe that the arcade and chat channels (etc.) are a major problem that will lead to the downfall of the game, then its kind of important that they have a right to express that sentiment clearly.
I think you're right if you meant that generally people shouldn't be over the top, using pejoratives etc. That doesn't help anyone. But "the wind" in your example does have effects. Remember when Blizzard wanted to force people posting on their forums to use their full names? There was a *massive* backlash, a lot of negative press...and the result was Blizzard changed. Negative and positive statements can both make changes; in both cases its possible to be civil though.
Personally I'm not sure how much of an impact all of this drama and negativity is having. It all seems secondary to how good the game is, and most people forget about balance (mostly) when we're watching a game of Sc 2. I seriously doubt LoL is popular because of how positive/negative the community is, its because the company responds to its customers well (compared to Blizzard forum-wise) and their game is *fun* to play and watch.
To me this drama is a secondary point that's really only in the awareness of those who really care about the game. The majority of people just want a fun game to play, and to know Blizzard is listening to them. But yeah definitely helpful to get people to be nicer, I suppose.
On October 22 2012 01:57 Glurkenspurk wrote: Being overly positive and nice only makes it easier for people to walk all over you. Sometimes you need to get angry and start yelling to get shit done.
We tried being nice and Blizz has not done anything to help fix obvious issues with their game.
This is the angry overentitled style that hes referring to I would imagine. Why not people just stop pretending they have any idea how to develop a game with the complexity and scale of a game like Starcraft? The PROS should have input, yes, but other then that, I doubt any change good or bad has been made just because a random average joe had some sort of input.
On October 22 2012 01:57 Glurkenspurk wrote: Being overly positive and nice only makes it easier for people to walk all over you. Sometimes you need to get angry and start yelling to get shit done.
We tried being nice and Blizz has not done anything to help fix obvious issues with their game.
This is the angry overentitled style that hes referring to I would imagine. Why not people just stop pretending they have any idea how to develop a game with the complexity and scale of a game like Starcraft? The PROS should have input, yes, but other then that, I doubt any change good or bad has been made just because a random average joe had some sort of input.
Blizzard don't have great programmers. It's been true for a LONG time. Takes them forever to implement simple stuff and it always ends up being subpar. (WoW looked kinda crap next to the first Guild Wars, technology wise even though they released roughly in the same period. Starcraft II's technology isn't anything that eclipses CoH's or SupCom2 which is really sad. Diablo 3 is so inefficient it's not even funny.)
It's not because they don't "listen to the community" it's just because they are straight up bad programmers and they're slow as hell to get anything done. Either they don't manage their people well or they have trouble attracting talent but they do a piss poor job of making quality systems. So yeah, HotS will be kind of disappointing feature-wise. What you will get is a balanced game that's pretty fun to play. A single player campaign with a lot of effort and love poured into it. That's what WoL was and same with HotS.
If you want a developer that doesn't write crap code then you have Capcom, Epic, Dice, Konami, Square-Enix,etc.We chose Blizzard to represent e-sports so we're gonna have to live with bad code and lack of features.
(Say what you want about Square-Enix's games but they are still at the bleeding edge of 3d technology. They make some of the best 3d engines out there. If you tried Final-Fantasy XIV on PC you will understand that their programmers are no joke.)
On October 22 2012 02:06 m3rciless wrote: I just want the pillars to come back.
Where is chill? Where is the old school, who know what this website was meant to be? Why are the forums filled with these garbage threads? Starcraft is so much bigger than it ever was, why are we all so unhappy.
because it's boring to watch and repetitive
Yeah but i still want chill to talk about it. I never see chill anymore. I feel like the old strengths of the community are jaded and tired.
Thank you for telling us the obvious, DoA. Unfortunately, this will change absolutely nothing. The number of QQ threads about how Blizzards "doesn't give a fuck" and "SC2 is dead" is growing every day. Shame.
I 100% agree, DoA. It feels like we are hurting ourselves a bit more than helping due to the presentation of our concerns for HotS. It's great that a lot of players are voicing their concerns to ensure that this game can be the best it can, but a lot of the vehemence that surrounds it only makes it harder to understand (are there legitimate concerns, or is this another "Blizz is the devil" thread?) and only ends up causing drama.
While I think the drama won't slow down any time too soon, it does my heart good to see you, Grubby, and Artosis' perspectives on the matter. And thus, I shall take your advice and chill out...
Most people are just too stupid to understand. Reddit is pretty useless site and TL is starting to become less and less constructive. I am all for constructive suggestion thread and people should keep doing it but just don't act like a baby when your ideas are not used. I am also fucking sick of all useless threads.
On October 22 2012 03:43 Wildmoon wrote: Most people are just too stupid to understand. Reddit is pretty useless site and TL is starting to become less and less constructive. I am all for constructive suggestion thread and people should keep doing it but just don't act like a baby when your ideas are not used. I am also fucking sick of all useless threads.
They are not stupid but actually pretty smart of admitting flaws in the game. Didn't want to be blinded by false hope from Blizzard. Its useless to get mad at them because there will be increasingly amount of materials dedicated at pointing out the flaws of the game.
On October 22 2012 03:43 Wildmoon wrote: Most people are just too stupid to understand. Reddit is pretty useless site and TL is starting to become less and less constructive. I am all for constructive suggestion thread and people should keep doing it but just don't act like a baby when your ideas are not used. I am also fucking sick of all useless threads.
They are not stupid but actually pretty smart of admitting flaws in the game. Didn't want to be blinded by false hope from Blizzard. Its useless to get mad at them because there will be increasingly amount of materials dedicated at pointing out the flaws of the game.
Constructive post that point out the flaws of the game and the way to fix it and let people dicussing it is always good but that's not what I called stupid such as noone really think the recent Grubby's thread was stupid. Read my post again.
DoA, thank you for writing that. I can only agree, if people stop whining about balance and emphasize the amount of fun it is to play this game people will come.
On October 22 2012 03:43 Wildmoon wrote: Most people are just too stupid to understand. Reddit is pretty useless site and TL is starting to become less and less constructive. I am all for constructive suggestion thread and people should keep doing it but just don't act like a baby when your ideas are not used. I am also fucking sick of all useless threads.
They are not stupid but actually pretty smart of admitting flaws in the game. Didn't want to be blinded by false hope from Blizzard. Its useless to get mad at them because there will be increasingly amount of materials dedicated at pointing out the flaws of the game.
Constructive post that point out the flaws of the game and the way to fix it and let people dicussing it is always good but that's not what I called stupid such as noone really think the recent Grubby's thread was stupid. Read my post again.
On October 22 2012 03:43 Wildmoon wrote: Most people are just too stupid to understand. Reddit is pretty useless site and TL is starting to become less and less constructive. I am all for constructive suggestion thread and people should keep doing it but just don't act like a baby when your ideas are not used. I am also fucking sick of all useless threads.
They are not stupid but actually pretty smart of admitting flaws in the game. Didn't want to be blinded by false hope from Blizzard. Its useless to get mad at them because there will be increasingly amount of materials dedicated at pointing out the flaws of the game.
Constructive post that point out the flaws of the game and the way to fix it and let people dicussing it is always good but that's not what I called stupid such as noone really think the recent Grubby's thread was stupid. Read my post again.
Who is acting like a baby in the first place LOL
Yeah no one, everyone is weighing on the flaws of the game. Again, its common sense that some ideas might be used, no need to state the obvious.
If Dustin Browder's feelings get hurt from reading TL and that's why he won't listen to community feedback, then he should quit his job.
This whole thing about community feedback and 'telling Blizzard our feelings' thing is so ridiculous, as if Blizzard can't just read the TL forums on their own.
On October 22 2012 03:13 Denzil wrote: Shame most of the posters in thIs thread have already missed your point DoA
Thanks for trying though
Same impression here. If people are struggling to understand the general notion of this thread, what chances are that fable analogy has been properly understood. none.
I agree with 2 posts here. First, DoA's, very good points although it's kind of ridiculous to have to remind people the most natural and obvious truths. Second, the post saying Blizzard is very slow to implement most basic stuff. even when aware of the issue. I'm not even entirely sure it's programmer's fault. Maybe it's that their designs are really hard to change and not general enough. Feels like they have to give priority to the really, really REALLY most urgent tasks. Let's face the truth blizz is too big, and by having such anti-agile environment, their product updates, and especially design changes, are a huge pain.
If DB and the Blizz game developers have any sense, they'll stay away from TL and Reddit. The recent spate of QQ threads on Blizzard and SC2 is like visiting a festering sewage dump. This place is suddenly full of screaming keyboard experts.
Stay the fuck away, Blizzard. For your own good.
The same goes for design feedback from most pros. Any feedback from pros should be from those of high quality and/or able to be objective about their race and the game. This means listening but not necessarily heeding feedback from pros like Grubby, Whitera, Stephano, QXC, Thorzain, Nony etc or from the top tier Koreans like Nestea, MC, MVP, DRG etc. Input from Artosis, Day9, Apollo may also be useful. I hope they ignore design feedback from mediocre nonentities like Catz and Destiny.
Nice post, by the way, DOA. Constructive criticism is better but, unfortunately, it's rare and gets drowned out in the noise.
Well said. And thank goodness you said it. When I see people raging about how they won't even buy HotS because it "looks like shit" and "Blizzard fucked it up hard," it really bugs me. Starcraft is a great game, why would you not give it a chance?
On October 22 2012 01:57 Glurkenspurk wrote: Being overly positive and nice only makes it easier for people to walk all over you. Sometimes you need to get angry and start yelling to get shit done.
We tried being nice and Blizz has not done anything to help fix obvious issues with their game.
This is the angry overentitled style that hes referring to I would imagine. Why not people just stop pretending they have any idea how to develop a game with the complexity and scale of a game like Starcraft? The PROS should have input, yes, but other then that, I doubt any change good or bad has been made just because a random average joe had some sort of input.
Then did you read pros opinions on HOTS ?
What did they say again ?
Pros say the game is bad. But my point (which you clearly missed) was that I gurantee professional players have better insight then the average player, even if they are in masters.
On October 22 2012 02:06 m3rciless wrote: I just want the pillars to come back.
Where is chill? Where is the old school, who know what this website was meant to be? Why are the forums filled with these garbage threads? Starcraft is so much bigger than it ever was, why are we all so unhappy.
because it's boring to watch and repetitive
Yeah but i still want chill to talk about it. I never see chill anymore. I feel like the old strengths of the community are jaded and tired.
I think a lot of them feel that way because of the kind of boredom/repetitiveness that sc2 can take on at times and stuff :/ it's also for a variety of reasons of course: the sheer volume of flooding posts, the lack of interest in a game that just can't seem to bring the excitement that BW did and still does bring, etc.
On October 22 2012 01:57 Glurkenspurk wrote: Being overly positive and nice only makes it easier for people to walk all over you. Sometimes you need to get angry and start yelling to get shit done.
We tried being nice and Blizz has not done anything to help fix obvious issues with their game.
This is the angry overentitled style that hes referring to I would imagine. Why not people just stop pretending they have any idea how to develop a game with the complexity and scale of a game like Starcraft? The PROS should have input, yes, but other then that, I doubt any change good or bad has been made just because a random average joe had some sort of input.
I think the multi-billion video game giant that is Activision Blizzard can afford to reinvest a little time and effort into their game. We the community tried being nice since beta and a beta is designed to solve a lot of issues. Given that fact a beta cannot find all the issues and they need to be looked at case by case basis. The fact that being nice has not been effective at all is the main reason people are upset. People just do not want Heart of the Swarm to end up like Wings of Liberty did upon release. To this day the game is still plagued with issues from release and dare do I say Battle.net!
Blizzard has some big shoes to fill come Heart of the Swarm because Brood War set the bar pretty high. Heart of the Swarm I believe will make or break competitive SC2. Lastly not everyone pretends they know how to develop a game but they are the end user of the game which gives them an informed opinion. I myself think very poorly of blizzards newest generations of games such as D3 and SC2: WOL. Regardless I will find myself spending the 50-60$ USD on another half ass game designed to take my money due to the branding.
WOAH WHAT? I think I just read an opinion that said that Jessica over-reacted and did something stupid. Now its time to overreact, say she is killing e-Sports, call a bunch of sponsors on all the eSF teams, request all korean teams to dissolve and not be happy until it happens, that and post all over random fan clubs. I'm being facetious, but that is what I feel like happens when drama like this occurs in sc2.
On October 22 2012 01:57 Glurkenspurk wrote: Being overly positive and nice only makes it easier for people to walk all over you. Sometimes you need to get angry and start yelling to get shit done.
We tried being nice and Blizz has not done anything to help fix obvious issues with their game.
This is the angry overentitled style that hes referring to I would imagine. Why not people just stop pretending they have any idea how to develop a game with the complexity and scale of a game like Starcraft? The PROS should have input, yes, but other then that, I doubt any change good or bad has been made just because a random average joe had some sort of input.
Then did you read pros opinions on HOTS ?
What did they say again ?
Pros say the game is bad. But my point (which you clearly missed) was that I gurantee professional players have better insight then the average player, even if they are in masters.
Given that pro's may have different opinions of the game at a competitive level does not mean their opinions are more valuable. The casual scene is what fuels the competitive scene and in turn their opinions are just as valuable.
thanks for the post Doa, we have to agree the internet has to calm down a bit and stop this whining BS.
it doesnt look like theyre gonna release HOTS tomorrow , i think it will be a fairly long (if not a really long) period of beta before it launches , they cant fuck with tournaments , organizations and prize money depending on his game.
theyre listening to the community like never before!! give them the time , the mechrauder Warhound was removed , the Oracle its being told to be reworked , let them focus , one thing at a time , I for one actually LOVE that theyre taking his time and adressing issues one by one and they start from the most obvious ones , the lesser ones will come one at a time.
On October 22 2012 01:57 Glurkenspurk wrote: Being overly positive and nice only makes it easier for people to walk all over you. Sometimes you need to get angry and start yelling to get shit done.
We tried being nice and Blizz has not done anything to help fix obvious issues with their game.
This is the angry overentitled style that hes referring to I would imagine. Why not people just stop pretending they have any idea how to develop a game with the complexity and scale of a game like Starcraft? The PROS should have input, yes, but other then that, I doubt any change good or bad has been made just because a random average joe had some sort of input.
Your point is all well and good when it comes to balance, but any bronze player can see that Battle.net 2.0 is lacking basic interface features that are only now being added in with HotS. And lack of LAN is still hurting tournaments all over the world.
On October 22 2012 04:29 Grumbels wrote: If Dustin Browder's feelings get hurt from reading TL and that's why he won't listen to community feedback, then he should quit his job.
This whole thing about community feedback and 'telling Blizzard our feelings' thing is so ridiculous, as if Blizzard can't just read the TL forums on their own.
And you just assume he doesn't read this forum because his feelings get hurt?
DoA, you hit it right on the nose. If we aren't careful as a community, we will poison ourselves with all of this negativity. This Stacraft community we've builot over the last 10+ years is incredible and capable of amazing things. It needs to start acting like it again.
This is really insightful on a deep level not only about StarCraft but how to approach problems in general, great post DoA. I hope some can take it to heart, this isn't about "being nice to Blizzard" as much as it is simply having the right perspective in being the catalyst for change. I stayed on TL over other websites for years because it was the only place that had an atmosphere that revolved around how much they loved what they did, as opposed to simply hating everything else and I hope we can keep that positive attitude going into the future.
I can't be the only one who did a double take and read it as "dota says". Also, totally agree, its not that we shouldn't discuss flaws, but we can't as a community drown in negativity. That will kill SC2, more than anything else.
ITs great to see how many people care about starcraft 2. Ppl are so eager and passionate to see a better game, they might get caught up in angry rants or discussions. But perhaps that is also what is nessecary to wake blizzard up (if they werent already). The downside of all this negativity around HoTs is that it kills the hype. Some part of the community is almost dreading HoTs instead of welcoming it...There is no sense of occaision (`like when sc2 first came out, I remember being glued to Day9's stream waiting for the beta to be released at midnight etc.) The upside is, well that we can all be surprised when HoTs comes out. What if blizz actually delivers a game that is still balanced, has a better UI, and includes some of the things the community has wanted for almost 2 yrs now (stats, unranked ladder games etc.) What if things arent exaclt ylike the past? Perhaps blizz needs HoTs and the Void expansion to improve the game as much as BW did for Sc1. I for one, am willing to give them a chance to redeem themselves.
On October 22 2012 02:06 m3rciless wrote: I just want the pillars to come back.
Where is chill? Where is the old school, who know what this website was meant to be? Why are the forums filled with these garbage threads? Starcraft is so much bigger than it ever was, why are we all so unhappy.
because it's boring to watch and repetitive
Oh sorry, are you talking about basically every sport ever?
edit: to clarify, what I meant to imply is that there's only really so much variance that can occur in a game.
Hey DoA, I agree wholeheartedly with you, and heyoka also makes the important clarification that "not flamming" isn't the same as giving blizzard a free ride.
I think it's good to have a healthy debate over things we're passionate about, and we as a community have been abundantly frank with Blizzard that something needs to change. I worry that because of how fucking great the state of the game was for about a year we feel entitled to miss out on the roughness that comes with transition. SC2 has been a great game for a long time, and THE Esports posterchild for a long time. I think the community is suffering a little bit of only-child syndrome now having to share some of the spotlight with LoL, Dota 2, etc. That fear coupled with what has been a rough few weeks for SC2/Hots is I think where a lot of this frustration is coming from.
I've been feeling down the past few weeks myself with respect to SC2. This post really helped me get my mind in a better place! Keep up the positivity, DoA. You and Grubby are great positive voices in the scene.
Great post Doa! This is exactly how I've felt about all this. The community reaction to the recent drama has been disappointing, at least the manner in which it's reacted. Hopefully people come to think more like this and we'll all be better for it. :D
On October 22 2012 09:33 EngrishTeacher wrote: Some good points but with the current state and the way HoTS is being patched it's difficult to get my hopes up.
Especially for Terran, with the siege tank untouched with everything but bio largely unplayable.
Blizz has said numerous times that they're patching the HotS units first, then WoL units.
Yes. There are alot of people who just dont know how to properly voice criticism. There are some people that are easily susceptible to negativity. There are people who just like to complain but dislike to use their brain (rhyme!)
All of those should really try to understand what doa says here. We dont need this negative shit to overrun the forums. It stunts growth. Gets us nowhere. Helps noone.
But there ARE ALSO people who know that as far as some topics are concerned, different, more aggressive approaches ARE needed. Lan support, Ability to change names, shared replay support - to name a few. There is no point in being nice about something that blizzard has ignored for such a long time.
Good points. I didn't realise all the negativity that was coming from the community (including myself) in the hope of helping the game was actually hurting it. The game is still great, I just want it to improve in the long run rather then become easier and more noob friendly.
I think blizzard employees have, after so many terrible posts on their forums, grown to be extract concepts and points from poorly thought out and/or aggressively toned posts.
The things I see people being most "passionate" about are things they were being passionate about when Wings of Liberty was in beta. There are some critical things Sc2 has been missing since day 1. Blizzard hasn't listened and people are getting mad. I think there's going to be a period of anger in the community before people finally give up on their hopes. This isn't like Sc1 where someone like R1CH can just create a fix for us so Blizzard doesn't have to. There's stuff the game needs, and has needed, and will continue to need badly.
On October 22 2012 10:46 Sinensis wrote: The things I see people being most "passionate" about are things they were being passionate about when Wings of Liberty was in beta. There are some critical things Sc2 has been missing since day 1. Blizzard hasn't listened and people are getting mad. I think there's going to be a period of anger in the community before people finally give up on their hopes. This isn't like Sc1 where someone like R1CH can just create a fix for us so Blizzard doesn't have to. There's stuff the game needs, and has needed, and will continue to need badly.
I don't really feel that's the point of this thread. It's only normal to get frustrated at times, but lashing out emotionally is probably the worst way to try and change the thing that's bothering you. "You made a decent game but if you change this I think it could be even better!" is probably more likely to get a point across than "If you don't change this your shitty game will die horribly"
On October 22 2012 10:46 Sinensis wrote: The things I see people being most "passionate" about are things they were being passionate about when Wings of Liberty was in beta. There are some critical things Sc2 has been missing since day 1. Blizzard hasn't listened and people are getting mad. I think there's going to be a period of anger in the community before people finally give up on their hopes. This isn't like Sc1 where someone like R1CH can just create a fix for us so Blizzard doesn't have to. There's stuff the game needs, and has needed, and will continue to need badly.
I don't really feel that's the point of this thread. It's only normal to get frustrated at times, but lashing out emotionally is probably the worst way to try and change the thing that's bothering you. "You made a decent game but if you change this I think it could be even better!" is probably more likely to get a point across than "If you don't change this your shitty game will die horribly"
"You made a decent game but if you change this I think it could be even better!"
That was in 2009, when Blizzard was just trying out the new platform. Now it's 2012 and
"If you don't change this your shitty game will die horribly"
I'm going to just keep playing the game I love, watching the players I love to watch. Whatever comes of it, I'm certain others love the game more than I do and Ill always have someone to play with.
On October 22 2012 01:57 Glurkenspurk wrote: Being overly positive and nice only makes it easier for people to walk all over you. Sometimes you need to get angry and start yelling to get shit done.
We tried being nice and Blizz has not done anything to help fix obvious issues with their game.
This is the angry overentitled style that hes referring to I would imagine. Why not people just stop pretending they have any idea how to develop a game with the complexity and scale of a game like Starcraft? The PROS should have input, yes, but other then that, I doubt any change good or bad has been made just because a random average joe had some sort of input.
Question marks are floating around my head right now.
There's a difference between developing a game to make it "complex" and making it just fun to start with. >.>
On October 22 2012 08:11 heyoka wrote: This is really insightful on a deep level not only about StarCraft but how to approach problems in general, great post DoA. I hope some can take it to heart, this isn't about "being nice to Blizzard" as much as it is simply having the right perspective in being the catalyst for change. I stayed on TL over other websites for years because it was the only place that had an atmosphere that revolved around how much they loved what they did, as opposed to simply hating everything else and I hope we can keep that positive attitude going into the future.
It really makes a difference.
This is really well said, as is DoA's original post. Playing Starcraft 2 is fun, and a lot of what's been happening lately has not been and for no reason. People love the game, even if it's frustrating sometimes or even if people disagree with some of the decisions made by its designers. DoA also makes the excellent point that Blizzard has been open, to an unprecedented level, during the development of HOTS, and is really doing what they can do try and make it an excellent release.
All these people who are chanting "SC2 is a dead game", in support of LoL have yet to play the game out. By that I mean they have yet to experience the game, grind it out (like how you would play a MMO). They've only reached a certain league, and has already deemed the game unworthy of further time investment. Their approach is time = reward and after 2-3 seasons of promotion-less grinds of just 5-10 games a week, they lose faith. I am not saying that everyone should be hardcore to truly appreciate the game for what its worth, but I have been one of those people that gave up on playing SC2 (remember big difference between playing and watching) because I was stuck in Platinum for around 5 seasons. My point is, DoA is right; we should approach the HOTS with a positive attitude. Afterall HotS is only in its beta phase, nothing is permanent and all we have to do is wait and see if blizzard takes up the voice of the community.
i agree with this wholeheartedly. the groundwork for SC2 is laid - this is the gaming engine we've got and the balance we started out with is where we have to go from. if that sounds like a doomed adventure to you then it sounds like you just don't like SC2, period, and maybe you should stop following it (and stop making posts about it - who do you think you're earning points from?)
i mean put it this way - balance was shitty in WoL beta, right? it got changed a couple dozen times until we got the release build, which still had severe imbalances but no one could possibly argue it wasn't at least an improvement. i'm not even going to go through all the balance tweaks and metagame shifts that have happened since release. you could write a massive essay on that. it should be obvious to everyone that every development, whether due to a balance tweak or players adapting, occurred because the game was being played. that's all that matters. not living up to the BW reputation. not having your cynicism proved right. the point is that people play the game, have fun doing so, and for e-sports that it be fun to watch and competitively (if not perfectly) balanced. if you're going to try to tell everyone that WoL is not noticeably more of all of these things since release, and especially since the launch of beta, then i dunno why you haven't bailed on SC2 already.
so, if no one plays HotS, if no one switches over to it, if pros go on record saying 'this sucks' and get a bunch of self-appointed internet warriors to repeat that everywhere, then yeah, the balance is gonna suck, no one will find a use for the units, blizzard won't be able to find ways to change them. basically what this mentality says to blizzard is 'make a new game for us' and that's not gonna happen. this is SC2. if people keep playing it, blizzard will keep patching it, and it will keep getting better. if it's doomed to fail in the end because it's a fundamentally flawed game or whatever, there's absolutely nothing you can do about it. i don't think that's the case but if it's true then enjoy it while it lasts.
i mean blizzard has just shown it's willing to pull stuff the community says sucks like the warhound and entomb, it drastically changed the mcore, and people in those threads were all about the "faith in blizzard restored!", but nothing changed. blizzard is doing exactly what they've been doing since the day WoL beta launched: they're paying attention to their game.
EDIT: in case i didn't make my point very well, what i'm saying is that IF the game is precariously close to failing, then there's nothing you can do about it, not that you shouldn't point out imbalances.
I understand the point DoA is trying to make, but people who are commenting does not i think,
"I can only agree, if people stop whinig about balance and emphasize the amount of fun it is to play this game people will come"
.
Now why should we promote a game as fun, if there are major issues with the game, what people need to understand is that DoA is saying that we should criticise the game if there are flaws, but in a more muture and friendly way. However, i do not agree.
Sure if you are friendly and cuddly when criticising someone, the person getting the criticism will be more happy to embrace it and learn from it. But here we are not talking about a child, team-mate or friend, we are talking about a huge company who is trying to take a skill-based RTS game and turn into a casual any1-can-do it game so that they can sell more copies and earn more money, since even then youngest kids and the most braindead teenagers should ofcourse want to buy it if they can win a game or two.
Also, it has time and time again been proven that harsh methods have a way higher success rate than nice methods, take pet-training for example. You can take a mouse and teach it in X days to run through a maze if you give it cheese at the end (or whenever it makes a correct turn), but you can also teach it 8 times faster to run the maze if you give it an electrical shock whenever it takes a wrong turn. Ofcourse these methods have huge moral issues since you would be harming another living being.
These methods can also be applied when it comes to criticism, telling someone that they did something wrong and that if they do it again they will be punished will be 8 times more effective than pointing out when he does something right. But once again, moral issues since you would probably be scaring / hurting the persons feelings.
However, blizzard is not a person, it is a company that makes a profit out of doing stuff right, and lose profit from making stuff wrong. If we say "Hey guys, Z is wrong... if blizzard doesnt change it then i will probably not buy the game because of X." then that is alot better than saying "Hey guys, Y is very good and i will buy this game for sure."
You are not doing the SC2 community, the tournaments or the teams any favors by being soft and cuddly with blizzard. The only ones who will be making a profit from a flaved game that alot of people bought... is blizzard.
Next time anyone of you go out on a rant about how mean people are to blizzard and that they are scaring away players... perhaps its for the best, since blizzard might learn that they did something wrong and hopefully fix it so people can actually buy the game when its good.
not really, that's like management skills 101, you don't go around threatening your employees with punitive retribution all the time, you will not get results that way, you'll just have a bunch of people who are too worried about losing their paycheck to take any initiative or do anything without being told first. so basically a stupid scared useless work force. not that the analogy holds up in this situation anyway.
On October 22 2012 01:44 DoA wrote: The first method...makes the community look immature.
I really like this post, and I think the above message cannot be stressed enough. An immature fan base gives the impression of a young fan base. Young fans are great too, but advertisers want older demographics with disposable income, and advertising money is the lifeblood of any major sport.
On October 22 2012 12:56 Doc Daneeka wrote: not really, that's like management skills 101, you don't go around threatening your employees with punitive retribution all the time, you will not get results that way, you'll just have a bunch of people who are too worried about losing their paycheck to take any initiative or do anything without being told first. so basically a stupid scared useless work force. not that the analogy holds up in this situation anyway.
Once agian, blizzard is not a person, its a company. If they get enough criticism they have people who be going "Hey guys, the community really doesnt like this, we need to find a way to fix it.. some guys suggested this, perhaps we should look into that." , or well.. thats what any good company would do, i dont know how blizzard deal with their issues.
But if their management threatens their development teams by any means if they get negative feedback from the community, then there are alot bigger issues than hots balance.
What im trying to point out is that we should be telling blizzard what is wrong so they can change it. Ofcourse we shouldnt go spam reddit or twitter with "Omg hots so fucking bad dont buy that shit game", we should get that message across in other words... how about "I probably wont buy HotS because it feels like SC2 is too easy on micro, a protoss pretty much only have to buy some fighter units and rely on forcefields without even moving their other units during fights... so boring"
anyho, if anything i hope that blizzard listens to this guy My take: "#SaveHOTS", he makes alot of valid points.
I think it's unfortunate, but it has always been the case that the community throwing a fit and 'mindlessly' and 'negatively' complaining about Blizzard is the best way to get results.
I think it's always fun to imagine that Dustin Browser, David Kim or any other designer in the SC2 team reads the TL/reddit/Blizzard forums and goes "Oh noez that was a meany! I'll ignore his input!".
Even if Blizzard is having an employee searching through forums and gathering feedback for a higher up designer, do you really believe on the designer's desk there will be document saying: "You should do X, or I will not buy your game." "You should do X, I really love the game!" and not just a document saying: "X - how often was it mentioned: a lot"
On October 22 2012 13:46 Grumbels wrote: I think it's unfortunate, but it has always been the case that the community throwing a fit and 'mindlessly' and 'negatively' complaining about Blizzard is the best way to get results.
Unfortunately I have to agree.
More than becoming a big developer Blizzard in recent years (something imo that clearly could be seen with D3 development) has had the attitude "you will play the game like we tell you to and you will enjoy it beacuse we tell you to".
I'm not saying that they should do changes on the fly based on forum trends. But in both SC2 and D3, whether you call it vocal minority or majority, the community have screamed for features and pointed at other developers features/success (Riot games support of LoL and Dota2 UI to name a few) and hardly any reaction from Blizzard.
Not until their playerbase is getting smaller they show any reaction to "constructive" criticism.
Unfortunately, in terms of Blizzard, screaming and being vocal seems the only way to go so although Doa brings good points I like the community being vocal and dramatic.
The problem with all this negativity is not how it affects what Blizzard thinks. The problem is that it spreads to other players. The only thing that might come as a result is less people playing.
I just think the whole reaction to HOTS from the pro-community is amusing. Pro's often harp on the community for stirring up e-sports drama, but to be frank professional gamers are pretty emo and and have a ridiculous sense of self-entitlement for guys that make a living playing videogames.
It's nice to read a post basically reminding everyone to chill the fuck out.
Finally someone speaking out what i had only been thinking these last few weeks. If you really want this game to stay fun and gro bigger, der right ways are enjoying it as much as you can and voicing your concerns is a constructive way. I have been working together with blizzard folks on game balance for wow back when i was a player, and they always took in a lot of criticism and tried to improve on it. I think you should give them the chance, after all these are the same people that keep makeing the best computer games ever.
Nice post, but I'm not so sure I'm into the fable.
I'm not surprised that the Sun initiated the challenge. I mean, unless the Wind generated a gale force wind in a nanosecond capable of stripping the cloak from the traveler, of course he is going to grip tighter to his cloak when the wind starts blowing. After that the Wind has kinda run out of abilities. The Sun hand has a much easier time to simply turn the heat up a little since the traveler I'm assuming has a long way to walk so unless it was exceptionally cold (although the facts are unclear on this) he is probably going to take the cloak off anyway.
If I was the Wind I would appeal for a rematch. Maybe get Water and/or Earth to mediate the challenge in case Sun tries to pull something unfair again.
I'm thankful that at least a few people are starting to realize that the septic tank we've been drowning ourselves in for the past few weeks is ultimately starting to be more hurtful than whatever "shittiness" is coming out of the Beta - I think at this point in the original WoL beta you still had abominations like 1-supply roaches and unstoppable warpgate rushes, no?
But that's going down the wrong path. It has really surprised me as of late how many people who are on this site because they presumably love Starcraft have been incredibly eager to join the shitstorming and bandwagon on all these "SC2 is dying" or "SC2 is in serious trouble" threads that have been springing up like stubborn weeds. Even in the threads that are trying to be positive, the doomsayers are rushing in to tell everyone who's trying to be positive why they're so wrong and why Blizzard hates all of us personally while Dustin Browder bathes in $100 bills made from WoW profits and plots on how to ruin the game. If one doesn't like watching SC2 or has grown bored or wishes to watch a MOBA, then no one's stopping you (and ideally shouldn't be judging you), but I don't understand why then these people float around on these forums and seem to only make posts bemoaning the awful state of whatever.
I sometimes wonder if we've set ourselves up for an episode like this one because of the very visible and yet-unhealed rift between the Brood War fans and the SC2 fans. Even before this, there's always been a somewhat snarky undercurrent on the site since the release of SC2, but it's grown exceptionally bad in the past month or so. I agree with DoA's title; if we keep on flinging shit at each other, what the hell are passers-by going to think when they see a bunch of people screaming at each other while covered in (figurative) filth? That's the worst poison of all, and it's one only we can inflict on ourselves.
On October 22 2012 08:38 MCDayC wrote: I can't be the only one who did a double take and read it as "dota says". Also, totally agree, its not that we shouldn't discuss flaws, but we can't as a community drown in negativity. That will kill SC2, more than anything else.
Yeah I think this is very true. No just try to be less negative about your critics cause their is no need, you can say exactly the same thing but in a constructive manner. I think this should be considered a challenge cause it is a lot harder to write a positive constructive post compared to a flaming one.
Then some people say that "People need to get hard, this is the internet". Well what I think might happen when you get 1000.000 negative posts saying hundreds of different things in often conflicting subjects in a very angry way is that you go "Fuck it, to read this gives me nothing". It is like we become an entity of negative random shit. You cannot look at your post alone, it is one out of many.
Personally I like the idea for blizzard to reach out to a few persons in the community and give some sort of temporary employment/"idea boot camp" and let them represent the scene. People like, Grubby, MrBitter, Violet, Thorzain or Tyler. This I think is the best option, these people know SC2/RTS way above the average players and can give constructive feedback to Blizzard. As much as I would like the community to change I am not so sure it will happen.
Finally a controversial thing to say. The community should sometimes try to be a little more thankful towards blizzard, everything on the website and in this community is a consequence of their work. It does not feel like this community reflects on this very often.
People do need to chill a bit, the expansions will keep the playerbase big enough to maintain its current level at the minimum. In the end SC2s place in esports will be decided by the final expansion, because thats the game we will have for the longest time, in the same way brood war defined SC1. As long as thats done right, SC2 could easily last as long as 1, as long as blizzard doesnt go full EA (BF4 beta announced already? Really?) and try and release SC3 the year after LotV is finished.
Very good post! All the negative talk lately is a sure way to needlessly hurt SC2. Sure, address problems and concerns, try to get them fixed - but not with the negativity and sensationalism some recent posts had.
Blizzard itself may not be on the community's "side", but the game designers SURELY have a passion for creating great games, or else they would never be where they are today. They are our most important allies in creating a game we enjoy and they can be proud of.
Anger, while potent against apathy or disdain, is damaging when used against allies. We want Blizzards programmers to feel appreciated and we need to show them that we appreciate their effort. With this being done, we can present our criticisms as a process of working together towards a more beautiful game.
Finally, if Blizzard didn't care about the work they created, they wouldn't take to $%^&*ing long to put things out!
[Off Topic] this is the same anger that is destroying our national politics, a desire to blame and deride instead of finding points of commonality and discussion. I hope Jon Stewart and Colbert hold a Rally to Restore Sanity in SC2 :D![/Off Topic]
I find myself in semi-agreement with DoA, but I disagree on some points.
Polite, upbeat correspondence with a developer works if the developer is listening and communicating and the relationship with the community is in good shape. If it isn't, getting in a tizz is actually the only leverage that community has.
One guy going on a rant doesn't count. That happens all the time; it's like background radiation. What developers do care about, what they watch for and what we should watch for, is when fission starts to cascade and a rant gathers significant momentum. That's a red flag that they, the developers, are neglecting something or doing something really unpopular or communicating what they're doing badly.
What happened immediately after #saveHotS? Like, in the time it would take someone to put together a nicely-formatted BNET press release? An update about the BNET feature set for HotS, and some motion towards getting pro feedback injected more directly into the development process. The former was clearly already in the pipeline, just poorly communicated. The latter may or may not have been on Blizzard's radar - regardless, we are now in a better and more informed position as a result of that groundswell of discontent being given a voice, and there are threads full of 'my faith is restored' posts.
What I'm trying to say is that ranting is not bad for esports in general or SC2 in particular. When there's nothing actually worth getting worked up about, it's just a reassuring background noise that lets you know people are out there caring. When it goes critical (I loves me them puns) like #saveHotS did, it exposes and helps to close gaps in communication or expectation or understanding. Whilst we might as individuals prefer to express our feelings more politely or positively, or even disagree with the importance others attach to features or problems, I don't think we should be trying to shut each other up with accusations that anyone is 'hurting the community'.
i think the #1 factor in SC2's future success is the employees working at Blizzard making the game.
this negativity and rage by hard core game video game players is nothing new. as a group they spend too much time indoors smashing away at their keyboards and are chronically depressed.
Also, this whirlwind of positive and negative commentary about an evolving game ( WoL evolving into HotS ) is all part of the "Chaos" or "Blizzard" software development cycle. Hence, the name of the company.
Let the angry, depressed ragers ... "ramble on" ... they are irrelevant and powerless.
less whine more play . if you dont play dont even talk . if you are a pro go suggest stuff cuz u know stuff better then most of guys that post on bnet forums .ppl should stop looking always back in time for awnsers . seriously every1 that is looking @ sc:bw or sc:wol for awnsers have a deficit of creativity .
I still feel that the anger towards Blizzard is justified. Sure we should take a chill pill but they gotta step their game up and let us know that they're doing, properly.
On October 22 2012 01:57 Glurkenspurk wrote: Being overly positive and nice only makes it easier for people to walk all over you. Sometimes you need to get angry and start yelling to get shit done.
We tried being nice and Blizz has not done anything to help fix obvious issues with their game.
This! We are all nice and polite and tell Blizzard what we want, while Blizzards takes our money and gives a fuck. Well Blizzard died for me with release of D3. I mean Jay Wilson is in position to tell me (Who bought their Game) whats fun and what isn´t.
So in my oppinion SC2 is a step back compared to BW and I just can´t understand why ( Except the money for sure, which is quite a good reason don´t you think?)
this negativity and rage by hard core game video game players is nothing new. as a group they spend too much time indoors smashing away at their keyboards and are chronically depressed.
Maybe I think SC2 is a boring game because... it's boring to me? I'm a "hard core" gamer, but I don't have a negative attitude towards all games. Only games I don't like, such as SC2.
One thing that is silly, however, is people who play SC2 and still whine about how bad it is (which it is). If you chose to be a professional SC2 player, deal with it bro. That is the job you chose. If you don't like it, go to school and then get another job.
The same thing goes for the players. If you think SC2 is a shitty ass game (like I do) just quit and play another RTS.
On October 22 2012 14:50 Zocat wrote: I think it's always fun to imagine that Dustin Browser, David Kim or any other designer in the SC2 team reads the TL/reddit/Blizzard forums and goes "Oh noez that was a meany! I'll ignore his input!".
Even if Blizzard is having an employee searching through forums and gathering feedback for a higher up designer, do you really believe on the designer's desk there will be document saying: "You should do X, or I will not buy your game." "You should do X, I really love the game!" and not just a document saying: "X - how often was it mentioned: a lot"
And then they'll add in more rocks anyways hahaha
Seriously, I was about to write something like this. In the end it'll all just end up as "data" from the community that's collected in bullet points.
And nice guy would more probably buy their game even if it sucks just to "support esports"
Whatever... The game is not as fun to play as BW and no where near as fun to watch as BW. If the game stays around or not is not even the concern, the issue is that the game has low entertainment value.
Edit: look how Valve treats the DOTA community... that's a company that cares about it's customers and the quality of their product... I say this not because I think DOTA is a great game but because Valve is a great company, think if they owned SC2?
Thing is, Blizzard isn't a weary traveler walking down the road. Blizzard is more like a military tank division that time and again has presented as an unwavering, unfeeling entity that generally doesn't give a shit about anything besides money. Can't really blame the community for feeling passionate about this and frustratingly unheard; Blizz should really make more attempts to show how they are openly responding to the community and reading shit people say, which they have been getting better at recently.
I agreed with everything you say... until they release Diablo3. I am not cool with releasing half finished game anymore. Anyway, I will try to keep your word in mind.
it's frustrating for the players when there are so many ideas out there on what things could be improved from progamers, casters and the community and Blizzard doesn't really acknowledge anything. there are plenty of great suggestions out there on how to improve game play, from basic things like 'PvZ late game is boring and ends up with the same unit comp every time', to in depth analysis and 'research' like Liquid`Tyler's discussion on Carrier Micro and Day9's dialogue about Widow Mines being IMBA.
It would be nice if blizzard hired a couple new PR/Game Developers to basically be a bridge between the community and blizzard dev's and be overall more transparent about game changes. They could easily see what topics are trending in terms of wanting/needing fixes and it could be an outlet to give people answers, because at the end of the day if they can talk about the ideas behind the decision making then it gives everyone an opportunity for more constructive criticism. But when you're confronted with a closed door you can only peacefully ask the person on the other side to open it before you start screaming and becoming negative.
Hi DoA, just wanted to say your post is a great initiative for the SC2 community to think a little bit more carefully how things should be said. Being a SC2 fan myself I am also aware of the "threat" from LoL but it is indeed destructive to hear so much complaints about the game.
I think Blizzard is in a situation where they've gotten a lot of feedbacks from the community, but don't really know which one is the best to follow w.r.t. making the game entertaining and fun to play for a long time. I'm sure they are also aware of LoL's growing popularity but don't really know how to respond to this.
One nice think about LoL is that you can easily jump into other people's matches and follow the games. That might be something Blizzard should look into.
Whoever wrote Blizzard has bad programmers above should document his/hers statement. :-P
I've never had the feeling that Blizzard doesn't listen to the SC2 community. Au contraire, I think them taking out warhounds was a panic reaction to the overzealous mob screaming "IMBA!!!!!".
Blizzard should just let the game balance itself. It worked for broodwar.
On October 23 2012 04:16 mathemagician1986 wrote: I've never had the feeling that Blizzard doesn't listen to the SC2 community. Au contraire, I think them taking out warhounds was a panic reaction to the overzealous mob screaming "IMBA!!!!!".
Blizzard should just let the game balance itself. It worked for broodwar.
The warhound was a terrible terrible unit. How does something that mobile make for interesting game play? Just the very idea around it was insane. It seems like the recent defense of it is more of an instinctual response to defend SCII than a thoughout response.
WoL is a mediocre successor with serious problems. Everyone has bleated on and on about how the expansions were going to fix xyz and that hasn't happened. Now every one of these threads defending bliz sound like a kid yelling SHHH to hide a secret from the teacher.
On October 23 2012 04:16 mathemagician1986 wrote: I've never had the feeling that Blizzard doesn't listen to the SC2 community. Au contraire, I think them taking out warhounds was a panic reaction to the overzealous mob screaming "IMBA!!!!!".
Blizzard should just let the game balance itself. It worked for broodwar.
The warhound was a terrible terrible unit. How does something that mobile make for interesting game play? Just the very idea around it was insane. It seems like the recent defense of it is more of an instinctual response to defend SCII than a thoughout response.
WoL is a mediocre successor with serious problems. Everyone has bleated on and on about how the expansions were going to fix xyz and that hasn't happened. Now every one of these threads defending bliz sound like a kid yelling SHHH to hide a secret from the teacher.
What are the "serious problems" that WoL has in your opinion?
On October 23 2012 04:16 mathemagician1986 wrote: I've never had the feeling that Blizzard doesn't listen to the SC2 community. Au contraire, I think them taking out warhounds was a panic reaction to the overzealous mob screaming "IMBA!!!!!".
Blizzard should just let the game balance itself. It worked for broodwar.
The warhound was a terrible terrible unit. How does something that mobile make for interesting game play? Just the very idea around it was insane. It seems like the recent defense of it is more of an instinctual response to defend SCII than a thoughout response.
WoL is a mediocre successor with serious problems. Everyone has bleated on and on about how the expansions were going to fix xyz and that hasn't happened. Now every one of these threads defending bliz sound like a kid yelling SHHH to hide a secret from the teacher.
In BW basically every unit was imba. It's sort of a choice in how you design a game: do you tame everything down to boring level (i.e. SC2) or do you keep crazy shit in there and see how pros manage anyway(i.e. BW)?
I remember reading a really good post about how you can counter OPness with similarly imba units, I wish I could find it.
I'm not defending Blizzard at all, I'm criticizing them for having no backbone and carving in the moment the mob roars.
Presenting your thoughts calmly and not like a dick, on the internet? impossible. In all seriousness, I completely agree with every point and sincerely hope people will take this into consideration(pros, community, casters, everyone). Get your point across, but don't be a self-entitled douchebag about it.
Great points DoA, thank you so much for taking the time to write this, there's not much for me to comment about, everything that's been bothering me regarding the recent threads is taken care of in your post!
On October 22 2012 13:46 Grumbels wrote: I think it's unfortunate, but it has always been the case that the community throwing a fit and 'mindlessly' and 'negatively' complaining about Blizzard is the best way to get results.
Unfortunately I have to agree.
More than becoming a big developer Blizzard in recent years (something imo that clearly could be seen with D3 development) has had the attitude "you will play the game like we tell you to and you will enjoy it beacuse we tell you to".
I'm not saying that they should do changes on the fly based on forum trends. But in both SC2 and D3, whether you call it vocal minority or majority, the community have screamed for features and pointed at other developers features/success (Riot games support of LoL and Dota2 UI to name a few) and hardly any reaction from Blizzard.
Not until their playerbase is getting smaller they show any reaction to "constructive" criticism.
Unfortunately, in terms of Blizzard, screaming and being vocal seems the only way to go so although Doa brings good points I like the community being vocal and dramatic.
But can you support that claim by showing that they've never taken initiative to improve something without the community screaming at them? I don't think you'll be able to, but if i'm wrong then please go ahead.
Also, just because they don't show "any reaction" to an issue, it doesn't mean they haven't already looked at it internally. You don't have to tell the community every single thing you're working on. Why do you think people like interviews? So you can get answers out of people that they may otherwise have had no incentive to give out.
Its approaching 2 years and Blizzard still hasn't fixed any of the problems existing since day 1. Why should we give Blizzard our money for a $60 expansion when we have no evidence it will fix any of the many problems people have brought up over and over again. They've turned the most successful esports franchise in history into a sham that can't even compete with a WC3 mod.
People have been "calmly" talking about SC2's issues for years. Blizzard hasn't done jack shit. You really think they care about SC fans' constructive criticism?
In the end if we want new people to come into this game as fans then we can't afford to have all this negativity about our scene displayed so prominently on our biggest media outlets. To a certain extent we're our own PR department and it's vitally important that we don't scare away that one fan that might bring in his friends, who bring in their friends, etc or that one fan that ends up being a wealthy individual who decides that they want to invest in esports. Equally important is that one fan who randomly comes to TL or Reddit and simply decides that they like watching Starcraft.
If we want new people to come into this game, the game has to be better. Simple as that. LoL has one of the worst communities of any game but is thrashing SC2 in the esports scene.
I would think that DoA's advice would be good for the internet in general. Consider the following:
I probably should respect your right to have an opinion. I probably should respect your right to express your opinion however you want.
But this does not mean that I am in any way obligated to respect your opinion.
Contrary to popular belief, the value of your opinion does not 'speak for itself.' Rather, you speak. And you deliver to your audience reasons why your opinion is important and should be heeded, respected or considered in any serious degree.
Simply because you speak does not mean that anyone is obligated to listen.
***
For some peculiar reason, when you're attempting to actually engage in productive, constructive discussions about topics, having incoherent rage, incoherent walls of text or overly liberal use of capital letters or expletives is counter-productive.
It's almost as if coming across as a ranting, raving person tossing out extreme opinions unsubstantiatable by evidence nor showing the willingness to explore and deeply understand the multiplex complexity of matters will flag you and your opinion as being of little value.
Anger and discontent as sentiments, while somewhat informative to the other side, are not particularly insightful. The kind of constructive feedback one would need to move towards a solution involves being able to articulate both the reasons for and the balm to these feelings
I'm uncertain whether this is true or not in the internet world, but in the world of real-person interactions, there's this thing called decorum and rhetorical tone that act as the vehicles for your opinions. I'm uncertain just how common civil conversation is on this internet thing, but in non-virtual space, conversations are something other than a collection of empassioned opinion spouting.
When engaging in actual, productive conversation, one of the most important things is to be able to accurately state what the position is of the other side. If you cannot do this, you might come across as being embroiled in a battle with strawmen, or worse, with nonsense.
Could Blizzard be more upfront and transparent with the rationale behind the decisions they make? Probably. Can posters be a little more considerate about their mode of presentation? I sure hope so.
***
Did anyone watch the recent State of the Game?
I opine that when they were talking about the lack of Bnet UI updates, QXC made this amazingly insightful comment about how maybe the coding of Bnet is incredibly idiosyncratic, and it is not actually a simple matter to institute large-scale changes. Or, the Wings of Liberty programming team might be really small at the moment.
It's not good argumentative or rhetorical practice to simply presume or take for granted things such as 'Blizzard is an enormous company with infinite resources' or 'changing code is so easy.' To then proceed to deride or rage at Blizzard for being unable to perform the 'simple solution' for a situation that simply isn't real would come across as rather poor.
Does anyone know for sure whether QXC is correct? No, and that's beside the point. The mere fact that we do not know does not entail that we can conclude that QXC was incorrect. At best, all we know is that we don't have sufficient evidence to decide one way or the other beyond mere conjecture.
You would come across as being rather immature if you leapt to wild conclusions based on such poor evidence.
The more powerful your claim, the more powerful your evidence must be. As you approach certainty in the claim you advance, you had best be sure that your evidence supports it really well and that it also refutes alternate explanations as well.
This is part of what it means to engage in good argumentative practices and means that you're doing more than 'just stating your opinion.'
***
For another example, take Liquid'Nony's post on the carrier. To use DoA's words, Tyler took the "time to make detailed, logical, and calm posts about the game." He was articulate, informative and demonstrative. In a manner of speaking, he literally 'came to terms' with the problems of the SC2 carrier, insofar as he actually was able to put the problems into terms. And the response that it got was, relatively speaking, really good on a number of important measures.
Since the beginning of SC2, people have sort of intimated that the SC2 carrier sucks compared to the BW carrier and some vague hand-gesturing towards 'no micro' was brandished about. There were even lots of threads and players about the carrier. And there was a fairly general consensus about how the carrier was, to use MC's words, "trash."
Despite the seemingly-obvious shortcomings of the carrier, the carrier's flaws did not 'speak for themselves.' The discontent of players about the carrier also did not 'speak for itself.'
When someone actually speaks about it in a way that people will listen to it the odds of other people actually listening go up dramatically. And if you also happen to have a constructive solution, that might be heard as well and might even accomplish something.
Then again, maybe I just don't get this whole internet-social media thing. Maybe somehow reasoned and cordial discussion has been supplanted in efficacy by large populist movements.
***
tl;dr: If there's something important being said, the odds of it being expressable in short, snappy statements is extremely low.
On October 23 2012 10:19 iamho wrote: Its approaching 2 years and Blizzard still hasn't fixed any of the problems existing since day 1. Why should we give Blizzard our money for a $60 expansion when we have no evidence it will fix any of the many problems people have brought up over and over again. They've turned the most successful esports franchise in history into a sham that can't even compete with a WC3 mod.
People have been "calmly" talking about SC2's issues for years. Blizzard hasn't done jack shit. You really think they care about SC fans' constructive criticism?
In the end if we want new people to come into this game as fans then we can't afford to have all this negativity about our scene displayed so prominently on our biggest media outlets. To a certain extent we're our own PR department and it's vitally important that we don't scare away that one fan that might bring in his friends, who bring in their friends, etc or that one fan that ends up being a wealthy individual who decides that they want to invest in esports. Equally important is that one fan who randomly comes to TL or Reddit and simply decides that they like watching Starcraft.
If we want new people to come into this game, the game has to be better. Simple as that. LoL has one of the worst communities of any game but is thrashing SC2 in the esports scene.
It's not a $60 expansion... they have been fixing things, just very slowly.
They have been responding, they do not stick to their pride, they have opened discussions for HotS units, they give situation reports, they are transparent with what they are thinking, they've made the game a lot more balanced than when it was released.
The kinds of claims you make shows that you're not even paying enough attention to have an accurate view of what's going on, or you're simply hating, or being overly exaggerative in rage (which is not very helpful).
Also I think it is very arguable that LoL is not a good game. I'm not going to bash on it, and my language may be harsh, but my view on the game is literally this: shit. It's terrible.
There are other factors that contribute to why LoL is "bigger" in "esports". Amount of players. PR. Watching tournies in the game client. More advertising. Etc. etc.
LoL attracts a huge audience, especially since it's a free game and has cartoony looks so many young kids will play it.
Basically if you want to influence someone then usually most effective way to do it is with kindness. In the case of SC2 Blizzard already knows the risks they face in their game succeeding or failing. We don't need to convince them to want their own game to succeed.
I appreciate the sentiment and where you are going with this, but it seems to me the community is exercising pent-up anger at this point. There are a number of issues that have plagued StarCraft II since release, and all kind tips towards fixing these issues with kindness have been ignored or shelved indefinitely.
The negativity is an economic signal to Blizzard at this point. It is equivalent to: "If you do not fix your game, no one will play it." This marks a substantial hit in sales figures, which might be the only language Blizzard speaks in at the moment.
This isn't really true thouhg since half of the people who bought SC2 NEVER played the multiplayer game, and alot of the remaining customers might only have tried it a few times so the concerns that are voiced are problems that over half the customers for sc2 don't give a shit about since they are ALL multiplayer things, noone is going around complaining for them to make the singleplayer better.
Thanks DoA, a calm and positive attitude is always welcomed. And to spend the time to write such is a great sign of your love and commitment to Starcraft.
However, I am very afraid to say that I feel there was a very long time of positive feedback and criticism of the game. Especially for the first 2 years of the game I feel WoL was very much loved and requests for augmentations in design and UI features were most commonly posted in a positive way. The current events are the release of pent up frustration of not feeling heard.
It is a difficult situation. I am not saying that what people have done thus far is mature or even warranted. Yet, at the same time, I can't tell you how many of my own posts on B.net or Reddit on positive requests for inquiry and hopefully change in the game have been thrown to the bottom of the internet pile unheard. This past SaveHots movement, while negative, is the first real time that I feel any significant notice has been made to such requests.
Thus, I ultimately believe your post to be somewhat misled and disconnected. What I heard was a call for everyone to play nice such that if new people look at SC they won't be discouraged to investigate. This does not resolve the main dilemma. The main dilemma is not that SC is going to die, there are too many people, like yourself and myself, that love this game far too much for it ever to leave our hearts. As such, no matter the scale SC will always have a home. The main dilemma is that people are frustrated and unhappy with the path SC2 has taken and where it is headed in both its game design and UI features. I don't believe calling for people to play nice again will solve such an issue as this strategy has failed in the past. However, if you were to amend or refocus your statement to call for people to become more aware of such positive posts and you yourself offer other positive and creative ways to bring more publicity to such "detailed, logical, and calm posts" then I would be elated to agree and support you.
On October 23 2012 10:19 iamho wrote: Its approaching 2 years and Blizzard still hasn't fixed any of the problems existing since day 1. Why should we give Blizzard our money for a $60 expansion when we have no evidence it will fix any of the many problems people have brought up over and over again. They've turned the most successful esports franchise in history into a sham that can't even compete with a WC3 mod.
People have been "calmly" talking about SC2's issues for years. Blizzard hasn't done jack shit. You really think they care about SC fans' constructive criticism?
In the end if we want new people to come into this game as fans then we can't afford to have all this negativity about our scene displayed so prominently on our biggest media outlets. To a certain extent we're our own PR department and it's vitally important that we don't scare away that one fan that might bring in his friends, who bring in their friends, etc or that one fan that ends up being a wealthy individual who decides that they want to invest in esports. Equally important is that one fan who randomly comes to TL or Reddit and simply decides that they like watching Starcraft.
If we want new people to come into this game, the game has to be better. Simple as that. LoL has one of the worst communities of any game but is thrashing SC2 in the esports scene.
It's not a $60 expansion... they have been fixing things, just very slowly.
They have been responding, they do not stick to their pride, they have opened discussions for HotS units, they give situation reports, they are transparent with what they are thinking, they've made the game a lot more balanced than when it was released.
The kinds of claims you make shows that you're not even paying enough attention to have an accurate view of what's going on, or you're simply hating, or being overly exaggerative in rage (which is not very helpful).
Also I think it is very arguable that LoL is not a good game. I'm not going to bash on it, and my language may be harsh, but my view on the game is literally this: shit. It's terrible.
There are other factors that contribute to why LoL is "bigger" in "esports". Amount of players. PR. Watching tournies in the game client. More advertising. Etc. etc.
LoL attracts a huge audience, especially since it's a free game and has cartoony looks so many young kids will play it.
I think those comments count as bashing. Maybe the cartoony graphics attract some kids, but the game is also attracting a lot of ex-starcraft pros. Are they so clueless they're just playing a shit game? Or perhaps there is something to it?
Also for the millionth time you couldn't watch tournies in the game client. They were advertised there, but you had to follow the link to watch them.
Thanks for the story Doa, but you left out the best part. The traveler removed his cloak to reveal that he had two massive weapons and began hunting down all the sc2 naysayers.
On October 23 2012 10:19 iamho wrote: Its approaching 2 years and Blizzard still hasn't fixed any of the problems existing since day 1. Why should we give Blizzard our money for a $60 expansion when we have no evidence it will fix any of the many problems people have brought up over and over again. They've turned the most successful esports franchise in history into a sham that can't even compete with a WC3 mod.
People have been "calmly" talking about SC2's issues for years. Blizzard hasn't done jack shit. You really think they care about SC fans' constructive criticism?
In the end if we want new people to come into this game as fans then we can't afford to have all this negativity about our scene displayed so prominently on our biggest media outlets. To a certain extent we're our own PR department and it's vitally important that we don't scare away that one fan that might bring in his friends, who bring in their friends, etc or that one fan that ends up being a wealthy individual who decides that they want to invest in esports. Equally important is that one fan who randomly comes to TL or Reddit and simply decides that they like watching Starcraft.
If we want new people to come into this game, the game has to be better. Simple as that. LoL has one of the worst communities of any game but is thrashing SC2 in the esports scene.
This is what angers me. Why do people like you, keep parroting the "$60 expansion" when there hasn't been a Blizzard expansion pack in history, that was ever $60 - or ever more than $40?
How much was Warcraft 2: Beyond the Dark Portal?
How much was Starcraft: Brood War?
How much was Warcraft 3: The Frozen Throne?
How much was each and every World of Warcraft expansion(The Burning Crusade, Wrath of the Lich King, Cataclysm, Mists of Pandaria)?
Show me which of the above expansion packs, at any time, ever cost $60. Great job gathering those numbers! Now show me which of those games were RTS titles.
Done?
OK. Show me your impeccable sources that state in bold letters, that Starcraft 2: Heart of the Swarm will cost $60, when every single Blizzard RTS in the history of forever, never has.
With all due respect, does DoA really think that a thread can change the course of the community? Its like trying to get rid of racism 100%. It will always exist regardless.
We have a community here and most of the time these SC2 celebrities get offended pretty easily.. You see all their fans praising them and all on their streams but there is just this one person who calls out and tries to offend the person and guess who gets the spotlight? Yup its that guy, don't worry about all the fans who just give you good work, the guy who just crap the person crap deserves more spotlight than their fans.
I'd say, you'd best accept the situation of the dramas at hand. So what if theres drama, you can choose to ignore it or put more spotlight on it, its how the organic growth. One person trying to change the communities thinking, now thats arrogant.
Telling to stop caring about it will just never work. I doubt anyone here has that power to change the community that drastically.
You troll one crap to a famous person on twitter and out of all the "Good luck", "I'm a fan" tweets that person just really cares about that "you suck" tweet. Hence I don't bother giving encouragement to any players no more because they only want to reply to discouragement tweets.
Very good post! About the only post worth reading for a while now, it seems. While I love SC2, the whiny community has really been a turn off as of lately.
Listen, I hate to burst any bubbles here, but people need to accept one simple fact: Blizzard isn't going to fix the problems. They aren't the Blizzard everyone knew and loved for years. Across their entire platform of games the quality has fallen off a cliff, and they aren't remotely receptive to input from their fans and customers. You only have to look at the legions of disillusioned WoW players and the colossal cluster%$# that was Diablo 3 to know just how much things have changed. Honestly the initial success of SC2 itself is more a product of how vibrant and passionate this community is rather than any exceptional work on Blizzard's part. But all that is irrelevant other than to say that, if people want to resolve these issues, they need to find a way to do it themselves. Blizzard is not going to suddenly become who we want them to be and start being super-responsive to our wants and desires. It just isn't going to happen. They are now a fading giant riding on the prestige of their name, and even that is starting to fade.
TL;DR, find creative solutions within the community to the problems, because otherwise we're all going to end up disappointed.
On October 23 2012 17:47 JPSke wrote: Listen, I hate to burst any bubbles here, but people need to accept one simple fact: Blizzard isn't going to fix the problems. They aren't the Blizzard everyone knew and loved for years. Across their entire platform of games the quality has fallen off a cliff, and they aren't remotely receptive to input from their fans and customers. You only have to look at the legions of disillusioned WoW players and the colossal cluster%$# that was Diablo 3 to know just how much things have changed. Honestly the initial success of SC2 itself is more a product of how vibrant and passionate this community is rather than any exceptional work on Blizzard's part. But all that is irrelevant other than to say that, if people want to resolve these issues, they need to find a way to do it themselves. Blizzard is not going to suddenly become who we want them to be and start being super-responsive to our wants and desires. It just isn't going to happen. They are now a fading giant riding on the prestige of their name, and even that is starting to fade.
TL;DR, find creative solutions within the community to the problems, because otherwise we're all going to end up disappointed.
Sorry but this is bullshit. Blizzard may be absurdly slow to act these days, and without their magic of old, but they are still dedicated to supporting their games. You use Diablo 3 as an example of them ignoring fan input? It's the exact opposite, have you seen how much they have changed since release? How many fan suggestions they have ended up implementing into the game?
Or look at what we have coming in HotS. There was a big uproar about no resume from replays, and not long after we get confirmation that HotS will have resume from replays. Not only that but clan support, unranked matchmaking, more stats, all things we have been requesting. What's more, they aren't just holding all that back for HotS in a move to get more sales as some have cynically suggested, all of that will be implemented into WoL free of charge. Then there was the big Arcade update, a long requested improvement to the custom game system, too little too late for sure but they did it and they didn't have to.
They have definitely heard the feedback and are taking it into account, how well they will do yet remains to be seen but you can't say they aren't listening or that they don't care.
On October 23 2012 17:55 lolboi222 wrote: You cant seriously consider game with broodlords and infestor to be an esports?
I never had fun playing sc2, I never will have fun playing sc2! I am a lover of eSports and sc2 is not eSports! That's why I am here on these forums, telling you this!
Sc2 is a deeper game than almost anything you can imagine, an entire industry is built around it. You come in and dismiss all of that with a 1-liner balance whine? Fuck off.
I'll say this again because I feel it's important. I think you make a lot of great points about the game, but the way you make them isn't productive and frankly it's harmful at times. It's your style to be edgy and sarcastic, but you've actually got a lot of influence and you should be careful about how you use it if you really do want the game to do well.
I don't want to sound like a prick, but I must be blunt. Maybe the community is often more interested in Destiny's sarcastic but straight to the point way of putting things because we've been hearing platitudes about being calm and positive from high placed people within the scene for a long time now, and nothing has changed.
On October 23 2012 17:47 JPSke wrote: Listen, I hate to burst any bubbles here, but people need to accept one simple fact: Blizzard isn't going to fix the problems. They aren't the Blizzard everyone knew and loved for years. Across their entire platform of games the quality has fallen off a cliff, and they aren't remotely receptive to input from their fans and customers. You only have to look at the legions of disillusioned WoW players and the colossal cluster%$# that was Diablo 3 to know just how much things have changed. Honestly the initial success of SC2 itself is more a product of how vibrant and passionate this community is rather than any exceptional work on Blizzard's part. But all that is irrelevant other than to say that, if people want to resolve these issues, they need to find a way to do it themselves. Blizzard is not going to suddenly become who we want them to be and start being super-responsive to our wants and desires. It just isn't going to happen. They are now a fading giant riding on the prestige of their name, and even that is starting to fade.
TL;DR, find creative solutions within the community to the problems, because otherwise we're all going to end up disappointed.
Pretty much the truth. I thought the few resource bases was a step in the right direction but that sadly died off.
Completely agree, I can't see how anyone could argue that "#SaveHOTS" doesn't imply that the game is going to fail. And even if the intention is right, in any kind of literature people will always draw themselves towards the most dramatic aspect of it, and with posts like these the most dramatic aspect is that everyone thinks Heart of the Swarm, a huge expansion for a huge PC game by one of if not the most reputable gaming companies, is going to be a failure. I assume this is also why people found Destiny's post interesting, apart from the heavy rhetoric used and Destiny's name particularly on reddit; the masses will always prefer a dramatic post like his over a level-headed one, regardless of what the content is.
Honestly, I think the biggest problem here is that Destiny is setting a bad example, because in being popular/e-famous for various reasons people are inclined to side with him and give him attention and representation within the SC2 scene. It gives us a bad rap and makes it harder for people/sponsors/anyone who values maturity to take us seriously. I do realise that much of this is the reason why Destiny got popular in the first place, with his excessive and vulgar humour, but that to me is not an excuse for continuing to act this way when you're in the limelight. Put it this way, if Destiny were employed by a regular employer to be a spokesperson for just about any company in the world while maintaining his current attitude and persona, he would not last. So for the SC2 community to accept, and even embrace this kind of behaviour in public (though admittedly not entirely, his use of racial slurs has been called to question even by fans), it ostracises our community from the real world. In order for esports to continue to blossom and appeal to more people, my opinion is that we need to show that we are as respectful, mature and intelligent a community as any other within the real world.
Now is the time where you SC2 people can start to see the writing on the wall for your favorite game. Maybe now you can understand why people who were super passionate about SCBW felt so sad when SC2 and all the corporate interest/money came along and killed our game.
I don't see the need for hyperbole. Blizzard is a modern company and as such they will try to pay attention to the wants of their audience - which is not equivalent to team liquid, mind you. And their lead developers and coders would not be in the place they are if they didn't have at least some skill in developing a successful product. Starcraft 2 is a pretty good game after all, with a really fun campaign, okay multiplayer and even battle.net is a good product not counting the lack of features. Which will be fixed in the expansion.
Things can still go wrong: - understaffed departments due to business decisions - an inability to add more functionality easily due to bad design, which can happen for a lot of seemingly benign reasons - bad game design, but good game design is really difficult, so it can be forgiven - cowardice in addressing core game issues due to not wanting to alienate the current audience/not wanting to take risks - wrong people in the design team, because of business decisions.
etc. etc. there are so many things that go wrong and could lead to Blizzard not providing us with the best possible experience. For what it's worth, I think the main issue is that Blizzard counted on being able to continue past practices and be rewarded with success, so they didn't see the need to take risks, do something innovative. And they might have too many managers etc. that spend too much time worrying about all the different types of audiences they could alienate and as a result the product becomes middle of the roadish.
Destiny's a clown, he posts controversial responses to get attention for his stream. You're only doing him a favor by responding to his comments in the OP. TL posters need to grow thicker skin against trolling I think.
I am a great fan of SC from the very beginning and as years passed (I'm not really young now), SC has become the only game I kept playing. I told this just to make you understand how disappointed I am with the state of the game in general and why I am going to use pretty harsh words on Blizzard.
I absolutely don't agree with the original poster and I'm quite happy that Destiny raised some points and heated things up with it. If Blizzard had ever cared about making SC2 to be such an awesome game as Brood War was, they should have listened to what the community said from the very begginning.
Destiny has done the right job scaring Blizzard, because the truth is that with the huge succes of their games Blizzard has become lazy as fuck. Adding some features to the game now that should and could have been included right from the start is just ridiculous and pathetic. Blizzard's only luck is that they don't have any real competition in the field of RTS games, and if a company has no competition, it will become lazy. They think that we, fans of the RTS genre have to make do with what we get, even if it's only the second best because we don't have any choice.
And they are right. At least FOR NOW. Because as soon as an other big game company realizes that there is a gap in the market of RTS's, they will suffer. A little competition would really do wonders, because Blizzard would actually have to care about making the best RTS game possible, and not just a sort of OK game.
There are to big issues with the game. The first one can be described as BATTLENET 2.0., which is a complete and utter failure from the very beginning, I don't want to go into details, a lot of people have summed this up well. What's really mindblowing to me is that they needn't have invented any unique and new stuff as they already had the right receipt that was Battlenet 1.0 that WC3 had. I can't imagine that those people in charge at Blizzard didn't realize what a HUGE STEPBACK Battlenet 2.0 was.
The second is BAD GAME DESIGN. Because you can balance a game more or less perfectly (although Blizzard has managed to screw up a lot of things at balancing too), but balancing won't solve the flaws in game design. This is also not anything new, a lot of threads covered this topic too. What I'd like to add that it's really surprising that Blizzard still fails to understand this as it is obvious from how they suffer to do something reasonable about the failure that is HOTS at the moment. The game would need a complete rework (removing/changing boring a-move units, game defining spells that totally deny microing, from the viewers side adress problems such as stupid ZvP metagame and boring matches as big comebacks rarely ever happen), and with HOTS coming this should be the right moment to do it, but the sad thing is that it's just doesn't seem to happen.
Unless Blizzard understands all these things and start to listen to the community, I don't see a bright future for SC2, so there is really nothing to be optimistic about.
I hope everyone still remember how blizzard gave us shit we were asking for for years within a week of this shit happening. we scares them and being nice about it didn't do shit. scaring the investors and their pocketbooks is the easiest way to make the company get their ass in gear. I wish blizzard was the type of company that would change based on niceness but so far they only respond to bitching and fear. This whole thing is a reality check and I hope it ends positively.
I find that believing that a dev would make a great game if they "just listened to the community" comes with a certain amount of arrogance. It implies that the game makers should mostly just be mouthpieces to the fans if they want to succeed, and it's the same situation TV shows face with fans and their fan fiction. Certainly fan opinion can be useful, and as the OP says, those that give constructive, and more importantly reasoned opinions, can be heard and considered, but in the end it's not our job to create the game, and game design is never as easy as one thinks. The thing is, there are many fans, and there are many fan opinions, and half the time they contradict each other, and when Blizzard makes a decision one way or the other the fan segment that didn't get what they wanted is outraged. Warhounds? Fans complained vehemently that they sucked. Blizzard takes them out? Other fans vehemently complain that they were needed and now Terran sucks. There's very little for which a fan base is ever unified or has a clear idea, and as the idiom goes (since we're bringing out the fables and whatnot), "too many cooks spoil the broth."
Also, there's also the usual online disinhibition effect that makes the internet and forums into pretty ugly places to be, where everyone's opinion swings far in one direction or the other and no one has trouble typing out every nasty thing that comes to their head because no one's going to reach out through the screen to slap them in the face. I'd never want to be a community manager.
The gameplay factor - I came, I played, I got bored.
Blizzard set out to sell their games to everyone. How do you make a game that suits everyone? You can't, simply. People like differently. So they came up with their solution. Cram in as many "cool" spells and abilitys in sc2 as possible. And it worked, everyone went omg this game is the dopest thing ever untill after 6 months you'd bored and you felt nothing for their "cool" mechanics anymore. And this was the first problem.
The second problem was somewhere along the game design phase it was decided that no two units in this new starcraft should do the same thing. It will be much more epic if every single unit feels unique. Remember back, if I got a penny every time someone said in an interview they wanted to make every unit feel unique I could have made my own game.
The problem with making every unit unique is you can no longer just have two basic fighting units, The basic differences (Attack, range, life, speed, mobillity etc) wasn't enough. Now every unit needs a different attack and a spell or three or it wasn't hipp enough to be in the new flagship game. This required alot of spells. I believe primary reasoning for this whole idea was they had already thought of a ton of spells and badly wanted them implanted in their game but it's off the point.
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Every unit needs spells. As they went on implementing spells it shortly became extremely forced. They didn't implement spells because they thought it would make the game greater. They implemented spells because they had to according to the game design. And they needed to implement a lot of spells because god forbid two units would do even remotely the same thing. They wanted three balanced races and every race should be able to do the same thing but go about it in extremely different ways. All this leads up to how they forced spells upon the game itself that contributed to why the game could never reach it's potential as the follow up to broodwar. Because at the design level they had put themselves against the wall with 'spells for every unit' and crippled themselves with 'no spells can be simmilar'. They were forced to implement bad spells to get enough spells which resulted in suboptimal gameplay. (some of the abilliys have been removed but their presences at the design level made the game what it is today)
The observer factor - why doesn't the lesser player loose.
What made the korean bw scene so amazing to watch for me was how hardcore it was. The pros prepared endlessly for their strategys, training their builds and executing them flawlessly. I knew that when I watched two pros go up against each other I knew they were giving it everything they had. Most importantly I knew when I turned of the stream the better player had prevailed. There wasn't a doubt in my mind that the victor had deserved his win even if I was a hardcore fanboy of the loser. There wasn't room for doubt.
Turning my eyes at sc2. The first year was the worst I'd ever seen. People were cheesing left and right. All-in builds and timing pushes were dominating regular up play. It was just to hard to be strong all around, or rather not playing "standard" was just disturbingly strong. I had my heroes though, the elite people I saw had strong macro and micro but upsets were daily and it killed me to see them get smashed by lesser skilled players timing pushes and shenanigans. Now I'm not saying the game is still at that level, There are sc2 playes who smash anyone lesser skilled but it's not come as far as you've been deluded into thinking it has because there are still fundamental flaws in the game design that makes it easier for the lesser player to win. And this, more then anything else is what killed the viewers. Because it's not fun to speculate on a match up when the smallest mistake can be a small mistake... or lead to the destruction of half your army due to poorly designed mechanics.
I feel the problem is opposite of what DoA wrote - we've been too polite so Blizzard Sc2 division didn't care to take us seriously, 3 years and pent-up anger is beyond the point of holding, combined with dropping numbers, finally told Sc2 division the problems are real. Blizzard still on the slow track, and I won't mention the actual gameplay but on the user front UI (that numerous people already pointed out and repeated). They are too fixed in trying to cash up an improved UI for HotS ("buy HotS, we promise you get a better UI!!!") When it comes to 3d engine, supcom has it better and it's an older engine by several years (faster and do more).
I agree on only one point, and that we can only say so much before Blizzard has it in their own hands. Believe it or not...its ALL up to them. Sc2 is THEIR sport. We are the viewers. If we have to coddle the game and present problems in the happiest light possible, than we are kidding ourselves for it to ever be legitimate. People are angry because the game basically is not designed well, and its coming out in the development of the expansion everyone thought would "fix it" more than ever. I am pretty sure blizzard can figure out what is legitimate criticism from ranting and whining on their own. They can invest in making the game into an "esport" and take the lead in the industry as before, or they can continue on their current path, and it is entirely up to them. The only thing this negative attitude is hurting is leagues trying to grow and people trying to stream, not the GAME. And it sucks, but again, the companies should make that clear to Blizzard, not whine about the fans. They should figure out a way to get people to watch or fail. I don't think people acting fake and cheerful will make Esports go mainstream, that is a pretty naive viewpoint.
On October 22 2012 01:57 Glurkenspurk wrote: Being overly positive and nice only makes it easier for people to walk all over you. Sometimes you need to get angry and start yelling to get shit done.
We tried being nice and Blizz has not done anything to help fix obvious issues with their game.
This is the angry overentitled style that hes referring to I would imagine. Why not people just stop pretending they have any idea how to develop a game with the complexity and scale of a game like Starcraft? The PROS should have input, yes, but other then that, I doubt any change good or bad has been made just because a random average joe had some sort of input.
Stop putting game developers on a pedestal, as somebody who has played hundreds of video games I know what features make for good gameplay and a fun to play game that I enjoy, and what features are meaningless fluff or don't work at all.
(A) We aren't talking only about game balance in complaints but overall game design. (battle.net, arcade, etc.)
(B) Pros input only takes priority for things like balance, and even then lots of pros are retarded and don't have the proper reasoning to stand back and look at the game as a whole to fix a problem. Just because someone isn't a pro doesn't mean they don't have the proper perspective to recognize problems and come up with solutions. If only pros can design games, then why are we play starcraft? a game not made by pros.
(C) Overly entitled? Is it overly entitled to ask for a better game or else we won't buy the next expansion? That's called consumerism. You demand a good product or else you don't buy it.
Again, stop putting game developers on a pedestal. Blizzard is not some indie company with 20 game developers working their hearts and souls to ash to put out a good game based on polite feedback. They are a large corporation trying to maximize profits from the game by weighing the time to money benefit of working on certain features. If people don't put their wallets where their mouth is they will never give you what you want or they will take 5 years to do it.
Everybody wants you to be right and Destiny to be wrong, but the issue is that hard facts, empirical evidence supports what he is saying and absolutely blows what you are saying away. He has numbers on his side, you just have "faith" on your side.
Viewership is down across the board and has dived by roughly 50% in the span of just a year. That is a outright crisis in every imaginable way
This is not about Destiny or whether you like him or not, i personally do not like him, but at least here he is finally in the right. He is the only person who is "e-famous" enough in SC2 community who actually has the grapefruits to say what needs to be said, the game is in free fall and who knows where it will be in year.
The so called respected personalities of SC2 all have too much of a stake in their jobs with keeping sponsors happy to really tell you the truth, whether it be Apollo, iNcontrol, Day9, Artosis or whoever else you look up to while you trash Destiny.
All of those guys might have to find a new job soon unless either SC2 picks up or they switch to LoL. You can bet your ass that behind closed doors and in privacy they are saying 95% of the same things Destiny is, while in public portraying this super positive, everything-is-fine goody too shoes attitude.
Day9 used to get 20-25k viewers, now he gets around 8k, there are people who goof around on Twitch and play WoW Arena who get as many viewers as he does, TSL3 did 60-70k, TSL4 barely did half those numbers, Destiny himself used to do 3-4k viewers now he hovers around 1,5-2k. Take any sample and the trend is right there. We arent talking some personal experience "my 2 friends used to watch, now they dont, SC2 is dead lolz" we actually have the numbers to back it up.
And no i am not some LoL or DOTA fanatic, do not give a **** about either game and the entire genre, i have no desire to watch either nor play any of them.
Well done DOA, I agree that community needs avoid turning the venom on itself. Although here are valid complains about Bnet and HotS, the world is not ending. SC2 was not going to be on top forever, there are to many other games trying for the top spot. Competition is good and will only drive Blizzard to do better. But doing better takes time. There is no awesome button Blizzard has been holding back, which they can now press.
Also, people need to see the decline in numbers as a sign that there is to many SC2 shows and events out there. Day9 was pulling 25K viewers when he was the only man doing what he is doing. But 8k viewers is still a huge number which outpaces most cable networks nightly:
So Day9 is still more watched most cable networks. There is value is SC2 and people need to market it. This is the crunch time for the community. We are no longer in the period of endless growth that propelled forward for 2 years. There are other games out there fighting for viewers. Leaders of the community need to put a more push a more positive outlook and encourage better discourse, rather than let venom rule every thread.
On October 24 2012 01:30 Tyree wrote: This is not about Destiny or whether you like him or not, i personally do not like him, but at least here he is finally in the right. He is the only person who is "e-famous" enough in SC2 community who actually has the grapefruits to say what needs to be said, the game is in free fall and who knows where it will be in year.
The so called respected personalities of SC2 all have too much of a stake in their jobs with keeping sponsors happy to really tell you the truth, whether it be Apollo, iNcontrol, Day9, Artosis or whoever else you look up to while you trash Destiny.
All of those guys might have to find a new job soon unless either SC2 picks up or they switch to LoL. You can bet your ass that behind closed doors and in privacy they are saying 95% of the same things Destiny is, while in public portraying this super positive, everything-is-fine goody too shoes attitude.
This is my thoughts as well. As long as playing/doing anything related to the game at hand is the main source of income, no way are they going to say negative stuff about it openly. They may behind the door, but never publicly. I think this is one of the prime proof of that. http://soundcloud.com/jcmoods/inc1 + Show Spoiler +
Idra: It's sc2, you get better when you don't practice. incontrol: get those comments out now Greg, we can get those out of the way. Idra: yea...I'll be good. incontrol: .....it's just that when it's just us friends and you say something that if ever were leaked out, you would have to back peddle a little bit Idra: uhuh....fucking terrible game....I've talked to FakeSteve about it and he said he hasn't talked to a single top player who doesn't secretly hate the game
So Day9 is still more watched most cable networks.
rofl what?
If you take any cable network and look at the nightly viewership for a single show, it topped out at around 2-5 thousand nightly for their most popular shows. Day9 pulls in about 8-9K per daily every night. This is why people who don't play games care about Esports, because their numbers are compelling and the demographic is one that normally does not watch ads.
The easiest way would be if someone would nuke the LoL-Developer Headquarters. Its so sad that such a terrible game has 35 Mio. Players. Thats like these 120 "The Sims" Expansions that add like 4 new furniture items for 20$.
The biggest problem is: SC2 is hard and 98% of people are way too bad to play hard games. SC2 is no fun if you are a terrible gamer - so they play LoL and have fun with it because its so easy even if you are completly retarded.
I mean I think I see where DoA is coming from, he´s afraid. Hell I´d be fucking afraid if I was a professional sc2 commentator or progamer... you are always at the merci of Blizzard and the fate of the game in general and you better have a very good backup plan. But you cant exspect the same loyalty and support for this game from people who are not involved into sc2 professionally. Most players just want to be entertained and if Blizz fails to deliver, there is no point in trying to push for the success of a shitty game.
I think Blizzard RTS games are still the goldstandard when it comes to gameplay and balancing. Yes sure the balance of sc2 isnt perfect and I think one problem that makes the game very frustrating to play is that different races and game mechanics reward skill very differently depending on the level of play. However if we´re honest balancing is still very good - I dont think there are many other games that are real competitors in that regard - besides other Blizz games.
So why are so many people leaving? I feel like one out of many reasons, maybe not the main reason but still, is their mafia style marketing tactics. I cant speak so much for Broodwar, but alot of sc2 players and followers, atleast those who are active in the esports department of sc2, came from another Blizz RTS. The problem is the reason why they came. Normally if you produce a new product and want to sell it, it must be good enough for the consumer to believe that its better than the old one, so he or she needs to replace it. However I think with sc2 that wasnt the case. A community is what keeps a game alive, a multiplayer game is nothing without its community and blizz knows that. Also in esports the communities are based around tournaments and livestream-coverage etc... and regarding those events Blizzard has its fingers in every pie. I mean look at sc2, blizz kinda runs GSL together with gom.tv, they are partners with MLG and nearly every other league that matters. What they did to wc3 was they just shut off life-support and let the communities die to achieve a community transfer from wc3 to sc2. I remember how ESL.tv (ESL is kinda the most important league for the german scene) suddenly decided to replace wc3 by sc2 and even though the protest of the community was overwhelming (atleast in the beginning) they repeated like a broken record the following mantra: "blablabla the community is tired of wc3, they want a new game, which would be sc2 then". Most of the third party companies wich make content for entertainment purposes based on Blizz games are part of the Blizzard marketing machine (which isnt very surprising because at the end of the day Blizz has total control over them due to legal matters like copyrights etc, if Blizz doesnt approve what they´re doing, theyre done) and to my mind you must be quite naive to not see this. However making your customers switch by ruining the old product is not a very good long term strategy. It maybe works once - but if you fail to satisfy them repeatedly youre going to lose them at some point.
Ofcourse I know that what I wrote doesnt apply on anyone who s played BW or WC3 and that there are alot of people who switched and genuinly fell in love with sc2 - of course I dont want to take anything away from them!
Blizzard is a company that we give our money to. So many people in this community act like they did us a favor for making SC2. This community does so much of their job for them already. They have more ideas and feedback then they could ever hope to pay some one for and they get it for free, granted they are not all good ideas but there are plenty of great ones too. The community also makes maps and holds contest with outsider money. Everything from game play to Bnet seems as if it was made in a rush without much thought for longevity. Bnet 2.0 was a step backwards from Bnet 1.0 made more than 10 years earlier. Even if Blizzard doesn't have an exact lead over battle net they certainly have oversight.
Why not cross realm play? Because people buy a second copy of this game to play on another server, boosting sales.
I am sorry this is so negative but SC/BW was a great part of my childhood and it's clear in my eyes that Blizzard has very little intentions of every putting the effort forth to make this game live up to it's predecessor.
Yay a post that bottles the 'it's not a real opinion if you use colourful language' mantra that's made this place such a chore and why the most middle of the road boring commentators and community figures do so well. It's like you condensed the reason why I find you, Wolf, Khaldor, Jorosar, MrBitter and all the ones who aspire to be just like you so detestable, into one incredible post! Stay gold pony boy!
If you take any cable network and look at the nightly viewership for a single show, it topped out at around 2-5 thousand nightly for their most popular shows. Day9 pulls in about 8-9K per daily every night. This is why people who don't play games care about Esports, because their numbers are compelling and the demographic is one that normally does not watch ads.
No. you clearly did not understand the chart and you are incredibly naive to believe a TV show even the most random TV show would get <80,000 viewers. That chart is by the thousand..so its like 1.9-4 million a night...not 4000 lol.
How could you possibly believe that Day9 is more watched than a primetime news show???
I could not help but to read the blog in Doa's voice. 6 out of 5 stars!
Some responses in this blog only strengthens Doa's points. SC2 is an extremely well-made game. It could be better still, but we should not act as if doom is imminent. We should support the game and voice real criticism instead trying to appeal to emotion.
Some minor points which could be improved to make SC2 a better game is not the end of the world.
edit: So sad that some try to undermine Doa's credibility because he works as an SC2 caster. He as an SC2 caster has much more insight that we normal TL users. We should focus on his argument instead of attacking him ad hominem.
If you take any cable network and look at the nightly viewership for a single show, it topped out at around 2-5 thousand nightly for their most popular shows. Day9 pulls in about 8-9K per daily every night. This is why people who don't play games care about Esports, because their numbers are compelling and the demographic is one that normally does not watch ads.
No. you clearly did not understand the chart and you are incredibly naive to believe a TV show even the most random TV show would get <80,000 viewers. That chart is by the thousand..so its like 1.9-4 million a night...not 4000 lol.
How could you possibly believe that Day9 is more watched than a primetime news show???
No, I just looked at the graphs quickly and did not notice the scale. I feel a bit stilly now. I did notice the shows the specific shows they were referencing at all. I blame the fact that I was at work and had been reading pleadings for 5 hours straight. Had I looked at it longer, I would have noticed the scale of the graphs. Sadly, that did not happen.
It's hard to stay excited for a game that is both fundamentally and in execution suboptimal to when Blizzard rules with an iron hand and doesn't seem to give a fuck about the community and shows no plans or voices and desire to change any of these three thing.
Okey actually untrue. The community wanted a better interface, chats and clansupport that wasn't worse then what they did ten-fifteen years ago. They said it wasn't ready but promised to get that working in six months. Two years ago. They might as well be flipping the community the finger. What are their plans now? Chat support for hots, we can pray that will include clan support but realistically they will probably withhold that for LoV. Blackmailing.
On October 24 2012 06:14 risk.nuke wrote: It's hard to stay excited for a game that is both fundamentally and in execution suboptimal to when Blizzard rules with an iron hand and doesn't seem to give a fuck about the community and shows no plans or voices and desire to change any of these three thing.
Okey actually untrue. The community wanted a better interface, chats and clansupport that wasn't worse then what they did ten-fifteen years ago. They said it wasn't ready but promised to get that working in six months. Two years ago. They might as well be flipping the community the finger. What are their plans now? Chat support for hots, we can pray that will include clan support but realistically they will probably withhold that for LoV. Blackmailing.
Can you back up any of those claims? When did they say they were work on clan support in 6 months? They have said they are adding in clan support for HotS along with other features. Have you been following they responses on the B.net forums? That they tested out the adjusted movment and found that it didn't do anything about the clumping issue? Or are you just here to complain and make claims that are only half true.
On October 24 2012 06:14 risk.nuke wrote: It's hard to stay excited for a game that is both fundamentally and in execution suboptimal to when Blizzard rules with an iron hand and doesn't seem to give a fuck about the community and shows no plans or voices and desire to change any of these three thing.
Okey actually untrue. The community wanted a better interface, chats and clansupport that wasn't worse then what they did ten-fifteen years ago. They said it wasn't ready but promised to get that working in six months. Two years ago. They might as well be flipping the community the finger. What are their plans now? Chat support for hots, we can pray that will include clan support but realistically they will probably withhold that for LoV. Blackmailing.
Can you back up any of those claims? When did they say they were work on clan support in 6 months? They have said they are adding in clan support for HotS along with other features. Have you been following they responses on the B.net forums? That they tested out the adjusted movment and found that it didn't do anything about the clumping issue? Or are you just here to complain and make claims that are only half true.
It's from a video interview from two years ago. If I dedicated a couple of hours to tracking it down I could likely find it if it's still up somewhere but I don't care enough to do that. Believe me or don't believe me, it's your choice. I remember it well because I had plenty of great times with wc3 clans and I remember being excited for promised clan support.
And look what happened. It got pushed back and now we might need to pay money for it. Wouldn't surprise me the least if Blizzard decided to only implement it for the expansions.
As for the other claim. It is based on my opinion that WoL was fundamentally flawed. And if you agree with that then yes I can back up exacly why they are doing it again in HoTS and will probably do it for LotV aswell. We have ofcourse no idea what is going on behind the curtains for the end product but an educated guess is they won't turn around but follow how they did WoL and HoTS.
I don't wish sc2 to die but the truth is sc2 as it's currently looking won't last ten years as a great E-sports game. It's already had it's glorydays. It will get a boost when HotS is released and then another activity jump for LoV. After that it will decline and be a shadow after 2-3 years.
Sc2's only hope of lasting would be a complete or major revamp. Blizzard isn't likely to do that so the hope lies in the community's hands. But there is another problem, the community isn't and won't be motivated do attempt such a thing until Blizzard stops being an all controlling jerk (which they will remain until LotV stops earning them money). And then it will likely be to late.
I am sick of all the threads about all the drama around SC 2 and how it is dying. At the end of the day SC 2 is a video game. We play for fun, we watch it for fun. Sure the pros play for money, but if they didn't enjoy playing it they wouldn't do it. IF SC 2 is dying then why are we not seeing a mass exodus of pros leaving SC 2. Why do we not see incontrol, idra, machine, Demuslim, and Puma playing LoL?
On October 24 2012 06:14 risk.nuke wrote: It's hard to stay excited for a game that is both fundamentally and in execution suboptimal to when Blizzard rules with an iron hand and doesn't seem to give a fuck about the community and shows no plans or voices and desire to change any of these three thing.
Okey actually untrue. The community wanted a better interface, chats and clansupport that wasn't worse then what they did ten-fifteen years ago. They said it wasn't ready but promised to get that working in six months. Two years ago. They might as well be flipping the community the finger. What are their plans now? Chat support for hots, we can pray that will include clan support but realistically they will probably withhold that for LoV. Blackmailing.
Can you back up any of those claims? When did they say they were work on clan support in 6 months? They have said they are adding in clan support for HotS along with other features. Have you been following they responses on the B.net forums? That they tested out the adjusted movment and found that it didn't do anything about the clumping issue? Or are you just here to complain and make claims that are only half true.
Modified movement was a silly idea that illustrated how the community will jump at solutions to perceived problems. The actual problem with the engine is different, more along the lines of units being too slippery and movement being too smooth, not to mention unit and interface design. There are quite a number of differences compared to Brood War and modified movement tried to fix all of it with one simple change, which made for a cool youtube video, but was never demonstrated to work for the real game. Nevertheless, Blizzard could have done something about the pathfinding and they didn't need a community video to set them on this path to begin with.
You see the same thing with Nony's carrier video. With a bit of knowledge about Brood War (which is accessible to them as surely they are in contact with progamers) they could have easily been aware of any issues with the carrier. The fact they removed the carrier without experimenting with changes like this is really quite incompetent. Blizzard actually admitted that after watching Nony's video they had maybe thought about implementing something along those lines, but it would have to be in the future, which to me is just silly. It wouldn't take that long to change and test, the only real concern would have been balance. It makes me think they're either understaffed and don't have time for more experimental changes (the multiplayer team consisted of three people, as far as I heard...) or perhaps changes to increase a unit's micro potential don't fit Blizzard's design philosophy, as the mechanics of it would be too tricky and casual unfriendly in many cases - even if the same thing was fine in Brood War.
Anyone suggesting we should warm Blizzard to change their mind has not been following events since the release of WoL. Disappointments have been widespread with regards to features, units and balance from the start. TO THIS DAY some of these issues still haven't been addressed. Blizzard was fine with us giving them money for their product but didn't want to hear from the community on ANYTHING. It was top-down management and it's crashing and burning. People have invested their entire lives in BW and SC2. Training all day since school years. How are they rewarded? Not with a grand ol' tourney but by the introduction of the biggest joke in history - The Warhound. BW had momentum and SC2 had potential but Blizzard dropped the ball. I've been playing LoL for a week and I'm trying to figure out ways to give them money because their game is MILES AHEAD of SC2. To this day I've only played 4v4s and custom games in SC2 because I knew what BW was and how far they strayed with SC2. Haven't had the interest either way to learn about the game, play the game or follow the pro-scene. I've been watching the Korean scene because they have inherent enthusiasm that transcends bad games.
Perhaps the problem can be traced back to SPLITTING THE GAME IN 3 FROM THE START! Adding units throughout and mucking around with balance - what were you thinking would happen to the pro-scene? Players need to hone their skill but when you reset the board every 2 months and hard-reset the game every 3 years - HOW IS A VIEWER SUPPOSED TO FOLLOW? Abilities, damage, range, speed - nothing is sacred and can be changed by any whim from the programmers. They say they've been working on this game since 2004 / 5 - How is it that they still can't balance the multiplayer? Seriously - WTF Blizzard? You've had 8 years to test this out. Once you had a good thing you we're supposed to stop. BW didn't change. Lurkers under dark swarm we're broken but you found your way around it. Not patched it to infinity and back. And how did the OSL end? With a Protoss on top!! Over Terran and Zerg. The race that was considered inferior - in the right hands - became triumphant. An equal credit to map-makers, programmers and progamers.
Where does that leave us with HotS? What is going to happen with LotV? TL has already begun covering Dota2 which indicates that they know what's going on. LoL / Dota2 is a worthy successor. LoL is so much more fun to play than grinding 1v1s on ladder or watching MLG tournaments. I'm gonna miss following the progamers - foreign and korean. Unless they scrap LotV and focus on a FUN MULTIPLAYER, I don't see a future for the game. And no amount of sugar coating will change the fact that they are incompetent.
On October 24 2012 08:34 HeeroFX wrote: I am sick of all the threads about all the drama around SC 2 and how it is dying. At the end of the day SC 2 is a video game. We play for fun, we watch it for fun. Sure the pros play for money, but if they didn't enjoy playing it they wouldn't do it. IF SC 2 is dying then why are we not seeing a mass exodus of pros leaving SC 2. Why do we not see incontrol, idra, machine, Demuslim, and Puma playing LoL?
Gotta realize that when pros play sc2, they play sc2 for multiple reasons that probably are overwhelming that "viewership" that destiny gladly points out, here are some of them:
Skill - Pro players like Idra, Incontrol, Machine, Demuslim probably do NOT have the skill to play LoL... (yes I said skill, LoL is a baby to hardcore game skillwise depending on who you play with/against) - Idra was the top THE TOP foreign player of scbw now obviously he isn't for sc2, each game has a set of skills to master, thus LoL and Sc2 and ScBw are different from each other. Players dont have skills to play games they have skills to play specific games or genres or if they do practice and try hard then yes they can be at the top level of "LoL" -> where everyone watches their stream (maybe balancing would fix this but I doubt it)
Genres - Pro players of sc2, probably love macro/micro over control of 1 hero. In Mobas or ARTS there is a set of heros withs their spells, ultimates, item build which incredibly do have a huge learning curve not to the extent of sc2 but a huge learning curve... pro players probably dont want to learn a knew stuff.
PS: Think about players, I'm good I get money doing this, its a hobby yatatata, why would i switch to LoL... BUT LOOK AT THE SLayers team, teammates moving into LoL, yes its true. Players do switch games based on viewership (
Think about gamers retiring, once a player has his/hers spotlight then loses or goes into a big slump. we always see them not trying anymore... huk idra slumping they are. The major casters, probably make more then the average pro player.
TLDR: Pro players dont want to change, or dont give a fuck. they play cause they are good and look at the slayers disbanded members they switched to LoL
On October 22 2012 02:45 Fyodor wrote: Blizzard don't have great programmers. It's been true for a LONG time. Takes them forever to implement simple stuff and it always ends up being subpar. (WoW looked kinda crap next to the first Guild Wars, technology wise even though they released roughly in the same period. Starcraft II's technology isn't anything that eclipses CoH's or SupCom2 which is really sad. Diablo 3 is so inefficient it's not even funny.)
You're right, it's a big unwieldy company.
Big unwieldy companies often are rotten on the inside. (speaking from personal exp.)
DOA has many good points in there. The truth is its a matter of focus. look at chess. I compare sc2 to chess a hell of a lot. No body questions chess as a game anymore . You could always add more squares or some new pieces, but chess is chess. Everyone accepts it for what it is. Back off fools, and lets see what blizzard offers the world with hots on release.
Also, I understand the uncomfortable situation SC2 lovers are in at the moment. Blizzard is experimenting with HOTS and splitting up the players. We have no firm ground to stand on right now. Therefore I understand the frustration that comes with being in limbo and can understand people like destiny(even though I could probably never be friends with him, I still respect him as a human with obvious weaknesses).
No, the disappointing thing is the people in the community with the most to loose if sc2 flops should be the ones on the front lines fighting for a better game. They if anyone have the power to change things. But instead of standing up to blizzard and demand a better product they beg of the community to accept a bad product.
It is depressing seeing how many people think that rational, logical, unbiased, critical thinking is just 'being nice' and that screaming and shouting and hurling abuse is the real way to get things done.
Unbiased critical thinking is a skill, one that happens to be useful for playing starcraft, I guarantee it is a skill that successful professional players have.
Also I would highly recomend looking up Aesops fables.
Here are some conclusions from them:
Be wary of advice prompted by selfishness
The loudest quarrels are often the most petty
Actions speak louder than words
Those who cry the loudest are not always the ones who are hurt the most
familiarity breeds contempt
I could go on.
The community is basically a PR machine for Starcraft, although it all comes from wanting hots to be the best it can be, parts of it currently seem to have launched a negative add campaign which will serve little other than to allienate existing and future fans and sponsors.
If you play strarcraft what is more useful, hurl abuse at your opponent and at blizzard to change things so you have an easier time. Or do you work out the reasons for why things went badly and ways to improve them? Hots is currently in beta, that is the process by which it is worked on untill it gets to a stage where everyone is happy and it is ready for release. I can not remember half of the changes since wol beta, and am still watching/playing today
Here are a few more sayings:
Whoever is dissatisfied in one place will seldom be happy in another
By asking for too much, we may lose the little that we once had
I enjoy playing and watching starcraft, if it becomes no longer enjoyable I will simply stop. These forums at their best can be a place for a constructive sharing of ideas in a common interest. If it turns into angry posts of everying is terrible we want more/better now now now then I may stop useing them. It hurts everyone involved.
On October 24 2012 04:15 Fandango wrote: Yay a post that bottles the 'it's not a real opinion if you use colourful language' mantra
Yeah he didn't actually say that at all. In fact, he freely admits some of the negative postings make valid points. You might want to read the blog again if you are going to comment on it.
Great post DoA. It's refreshing to hear well thought out, valid points that aren't filled with personal digs and sarcasm that just distract from the overall message and make all the work you put into making yourself sound intelligent wasted. I respect that.
May this game not be a casualty to the vitriol of Internet fans (and those that love to hate the game). Diablo 3 paid the price to poor design. Other game studio releases have bombed. We've got a chance here to resist the urge of full criticism until its perfect. If some strange things make it through the beta, continued discussion of what needs changing and why will help. Don't make new customers go aghast at reading how C sucks, games broken, B sucks more, don't even try in XvY. Choose caution and the middle path. Starcraft 2 isn't what it was day 1, day 60 of the beta or day 1 day 60 of game release. Grow it together.
gj doa, say it like it is. If only people could see it this way, then we could actually see some improvement in the number of players...all this negativity in the forums and community definitely makes it look like sc is losing popularity...I honestly think it's overrated. Sc can only dominate for so long, but that doesn't mean it's lost its edge!
All of these "calm down" posts lately keep focusing on the competitive aspect of SC2 and how that's still doing quite fine and whatever. It is, but that's not the biggest concern, and it's why just about everyone who's important in the "scene" is overlooking/dismissing Destiny's thoughts outright. The casual fan base that was a huge part of BW because of the custom maps and chat interface for social interaction largely feels left out in SC2. Even this new leveling thing coming out with the next HotS beta patch is still focused on ladder/competitive play.
There's still very little incentive for custom map makers to make new and exciting games for people to play, mostly because of how limited the Arcade makes everything. It's in this way that SC2 is getting dominated by other games recently, and losing it's casual fan base, which is what keeps games alive and thriving for so long.
I would also like to point out that one of the reasons BW was on top for so long is because it had no real competitors going on at the same time. This is very much not the case for SC2.
On October 22 2012 01:57 Glurkenspurk wrote: Being overly positive and nice only makes it easier for people to walk all over you. Sometimes you need to get angry and start yelling to get shit done.
We tried being nice and Blizz has not done anything to help fix obvious issues with their game.
This is the angry overentitled style that hes referring to I would imagine. Why not people just stop pretending they have any idea how to develop a game with the complexity and scale of a game like Starcraft? The PROS should have input, yes, but other then that, I doubt any change good or bad has been made just because a random average joe had some sort of input.
So you're saying a multi-billion dollar company can't develop a game that has simple features the community wants?
I haven't played a single game of SC2 in over a month. I haven't watched a tournament or stream in longer than that. I have a close friend who quit the game too, both of us were masters with random. Neither of us are buying the expansion, and we LOVED starcraft. We waited outside GameStop at midnight to buy it on release day. We used to play on a daily basis and watch tons of tournaments. We just realized that it isn't that fun of a game. This is just anecdotal evidence of course, take it as you will.
SC2 is making progress. Why is it so hard for people to try to look at the glass half full. Every single month SC2 has new and exciting posts about how once again the final nail in the coffin is in. People who have moved on to enjoy other games seem like they also need to trash the game they left in order to get some kind of justification for playing other games.
Clearly if you play another game besides SC2 its because SC2 is must have failed right? If its not first its last. If that is the kind of mentality people have towards it, then be all means involve yourself in another competitive community. I suspect those same people will be hopping on a new game in a year or two when the next hype machine game comes out.
Drown blizzard in as constructive of criticism as possible. Stop searching for the apocalypse.
On October 27 2012 22:22 Torpedo.Vegas wrote: SC2 is making progress. Why is it so hard for people to try to look at the glass half full. Every single month SC2 has new and exciting posts about how once again the final nail in the coffin is in. People who have moved on to enjoy other games seem like they also need to trash the game they left in order to get some kind of justification for playing other games.
Clearly if you play another game besides SC2 its because SC2 is must have failed right? If its not first its last. If that is the kind of mentality people have towards it, then be all means involve yourself in another competitive community. I suspect those same people will be hopping on a new game in a year or two when the next hype machine game comes out.
Drown blizzard in as constructive of criticism as possible. Stop searching for the apocalypse.
For some it's FIRST OR BUST. Try to be happy with what you have and just seek to improve upon what you have. Envy and jealousy only lead to destruction.
This is a great post, one of the best on TL, or the internet in fact about esports/sc2 in general, and life in general.
Not a fan of DoA in general and I dont like his castings that much, but still a great post, keep up the good work man. I wish more ppl read it and really understands the meaning of the post instead of just go ballistic and start QQ
I stopped playing/watching SC2 a few months back, largely with the aim of giving DotA2 a try (being a huge DotA fan). I don't think I'll come back to be honest ... My decision has very little to do with balance or gameplay. There were one or two things that bothered me, but I was diamond on EU - what do I know?
The absolutely main reason I would rather play DotA2 is that it is 100% geared towards the competitive scence. I don't think I even need to flesh out what I'm talking about here. Anyone who has played both games knows what I'm talking about.
Everything from the pricing structure to tournament viewing is just so much better ... Bear in mind this is a game that uses Steam ... Ya, I didn't think that would be possible either.
If Blizzard's team aren't seriously worried SC2 is not going to be the game it could of been.
I agree with the point you make. It's definitely not doomsday. As far as I've seen it, the "negative" attitude people are your regular attention seekers.
Well, negativity leads to nothing. I have written Blizzard in tickets and in forums that they need to make HotS more noob/casual/beginner player friendly. If more casual/non-professionals play SC2, there will be more viewers for competitive SC2 - not focus so much on answering to the concerns of pro players. If they continue on this road focusing 99,99% of their resources just on balance - HotS might still be competitive and watched by many its not going to fail, but its going to be less noob-friendly.
You can criticize, you can be doom-and-gloomy if you feel that is the truth. Personally I don't think SC2 is going anywhere for a very long time, but there are things that needs to be looked at for HotS/PotV to be better games and one of the main concerns is casual players and integrating them into SC2.
Its not about positive versus negative criticizm, its about true versus false criticizm.
BTW, you and Moletrap did a great job casting OSL finals! I really miss you two back in Code A, I barely watch any Code A anymore since you and Moletrap left...
I agree, positive criticism with solid suggestions on how to improve something will always get better results. However, it's much easier to just say "hurrr X is bad" rather than to actually come up with some creative solutions on how to resolve a problem.
I think the most shocking thing about this post was learning that Destiny is still relevant. The guy is nothing more than a gimmick yet still apparently has a large fan base?
Doa is right, why do we need to listen to Destiny a League of Legends player with no real accomplishments in SC2? Does he have a crystal ball to tell the future or payed a some kind of voodoo shaman to tell him whats going to happen in 2 o 3 years? Cmmon get serious here, SC2 wont die cause somebody in their basement says so, we must take the positve and bury all the negative. This applies to everything in life, like for example when your trying to start a new business there will be tons of people who will come to you and say: "Dont do it, its a bad idea, your going to lose your money, youll never suceed, not enough market", etc. but in the end they are just jealous and dont want to watch you grow. Blizzard is a huge company and Im sure they wont let this game die. They do listen to us. So I say F them and lets enjoy the glory of the upcoming GSL - Proleague - MLG - DreamHack and WCS matches. Long live StarCraft!
destiny just loves coming in and immaturely ruining anything he can get his hands on. so obnoxious. Thank you, doa, for saying something different than the countless posts we've seen recently that agree (more or less) with destiny's attitude.
SC2 feels like driving in a car really fast and getting bypassed by another one that drives faster: you feel like driving backwards XD.
So if SC2 (to some extend every Blizzard game lately) is not improving fast enough or is not the "best" or most played game out there we all feel like beeing on a sinking ship.
to change that, I guess I am with Doa here, we have to be more construktive. On the other hand there needs to be someone that makes the outcry.- I really think Destiny caused more good with his outbreak than bad.
Children don't listen to logic and whatever else anyone wants to believe, the anonymity of the internet removes 30 years of intellectual maturity from its posters.
Never expect to "convince" anyone of anything because they are only looking for an argument.