The SC2 Community's Identity Crisis
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bypLy
757 Posts
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Spyridon
United States997 Posts
On February 09 2016 08:59 bypLy wrote: i genuinely would be interessted to see what percentage of TL's visitors fall in either category. my guess is 95% in favour of high quality play with fundamental analysis and maybe 5% for the other side . This is only logical. Why would a casual even follow starcraft at. Starcraft per se is hardcore stuff. Maybe someone can make a poll. Because i dont believe the "casual" side is big at all. This is probably true, but only because the extremely hardcore players are the majority of players that are left playing the game at this point. Hence the major problem. StarCraft 2 is not bringing in any new players, only trying to keep the old players (mostly the hardcore fan base) as long as they can possibly can before they move on. That's why I believe the problem is with SC2's identity more than the community identity. They spend so much time trying to please their hardcore fans since that's the main ones left... But that's not a key to success in game design or game marketing. If they do anything to make competitive multiplayer more casual friendly, hardcore players get pissed and an overly elitist attitude, and they risk losing their hardcore fans. But the more hardcore they make it, the more players they lose who simply don't have the time to practice as much, and it puts the game on life support as your basing your marketing strategy around slowing decline, rather than encouraging growth. Then you end up with a game like LotV - where they removed downtime to try to speed things up (which makes it appeal to casuals) but with an early beta goal of "making the game harder" to please hardcore players, it only ups the barrier of entry. And hardcore players are still not happy, because balance is a higher concern to hardcore and that's screwed with how little time they left in beta to balance, and Blizzard still tries to force hardcore players in to things they don't want like having to play on maps that force you to play a certain way (which means they favor specific races) rather than developing a competitive standard. A game full of half-measures that doesn't really cater to any audience, and is doing nothing but minimizing damage as they slowly decline. A game that tries to force itself to be hard in pre-determined/artificially competitive ways where your fighting the game mecahnics, rather than allowing players to push the skill cap boundary on their own. A well designed game needs to be both welcoming and fun to new players, as well as a deep & engaging with a high skill cap, strong balance, and mechanics that make the balance feel "fair" by communicating a clear understanding to a knowledgeable player of what is going on at all times, rather than being volatile. LotV fails on both fronts. | ||
Naracs_Duc
746 Posts
On February 09 2016 09:26 Spyridon wrote: This is probably true, but only because the extremely hardcore players are the majority of players that are left playing the game at this point. Hence the major problem. StarCraft 2 is not bringing in any new players, only trying to keep the old players (mostly the hardcore fan base) as long as they can possibly can before they move on. That's why I believe the problem is with SC2's identity more than the community identity. They spend so much time trying to please their hardcore fans since that's the main ones left... But that's not a key to success in game design or game marketing. If they do anything to make competitive multiplayer more casual friendly, hardcore players get pissed and an overly elitist attitude, and they risk losing their hardcore fans. But the more hardcore they make it, the more players they lose who simply don't have the time to practice as much, and it puts the game on life support as your basing your marketing strategy around slowing decline, rather than encouraging growth. Then you end up with a game like LotV - where they removed downtime to try to speed things up (which makes it appeal to casuals) but with an early beta goal of "making the game harder" to please hardcore players, it only ups the barrier of entry. And hardcore players are still not happy, because balance is a higher concern to hardcore and that's screwed with how little time they left in beta to balance, and Blizzard still tries to force hardcore players in to things they don't want like having to play on maps that force you to play a certain way (which means they favor specific races) rather than developing a competitive standard. A game full of half-measures that doesn't really cater to any audience, and is doing nothing but minimizing damage as they slowly decline. A game that tries to force itself to be hard in pre-determined/artificially competitive ways where your fighting the game mecahnics, rather than allowing players to push the skill cap boundary on their own. A well designed game needs to be both welcoming and fun to new players, as well as a deep & engaging with a high skill cap, strong balance, and mechanics that make the balance feel "fair" by communicating a clear understanding to a knowledgeable player of what is going on at all times, rather than being volatile. LotV fails on both fronts. To make this easier, think about Fast Food vs Diners vs Fine Dining. Each has its own market. Each market has its own identity, and way to juggle it. But its only when you try to blend those markets that you get something awful. Expensive fast food? Mass produced fine dining? etc... If you want to market something--you have to pick one audience and don't spread your product across markets. | ||
Spyridon
United States997 Posts
On February 09 2016 09:53 Naracs_Duc wrote: To make this easier, think about Fast Food vs Diners vs Fine Dining. Each has its own market. Each market has its own identity, and way to juggle it. But its only when you try to blend those markets that you get something awful. Expensive fast food? Mass produced fine dining? etc... If you want to market something--you have to pick one audience and don't spread your product across markets. Problem is, Blizzard has never stuck to one audience. They have always tried to balance casual and hardcore. It could potentially be done (many other genres focus on this as a core aspect of their design, such as fighting games etc, even games like Rocket League with a high skill cap but easy to pick up), as there is a 'semi-hardcore' audience out there, which has typically fell in to Blizzards games audiences. But too many things just don't make sense from the beginning of SC2's development, and those things have never been changed. I completely believe that one of their biggest hurdles is how they are "trying" to make a hard game. A "hard" game has difficult to balance, because it has to feel "Hard, but fair". An example of this is D3's torment mode at launch - its difficult in the way that everything just 1 shots you and you have to kite them off screen to have a chance. But SC2 is a competitive game. Trying to make a competitive game "harder" is a silly venture. Because the difficulty of a competitive game should be determined by the strength of your opponent. You don't HAVE to make the mechanics "hardcore". Making mechanics harder only artificially increases difficulty, but this is the player competing against the game, rather than the player competing against their opponent. That's why typically you see innovation in a games design by making the controls improved. If the player can make their units do what they want easier, they are spending more time competing against the opponent rather than competing against the computer or themselves. Blizzard does a half-measure of this. Units control better than they did in BW, but they put new mechanics in place to try to make it more "difficult". They added a crap load of active abilities in LotV to specifically try to make the game more "difficult". If you are adding mechanics to make it harder after every improvement, it's not really an improvement in the end, and it stands out as "out of place" in the design. It's destined to fail. It halts the innovation of the game, and this is one of the many contributing factors that is causing RTS's as a genre to fall off. They didn't need to give every unit an active ability of some sort to make the game "harder". They simply had to give the player more decisions to make that have COMPETITIVE strategic value. That's where the true difficulty of a game comes in to play, because decisions turn in to mind games, tactics, scouting, and prediction based upon your opponents actions. Metagames aren't as straight forward with more strategic options in play. Too many options were removed at this point, and more than ever it is about mechanics > strategy. How is that supposed to make hardcore or casual players happy? I've said this so many times lately... SC2 needs a vision. It needs to change directions, and move towards a clear vision of what StarCraft wants to be. The closest thing it caters to right now is hardcore players, but it doesn't make them happy, and there needs to be some sort of appeal for new players. Appeal for new players doesn't necessarily mean casual, but it does mean removing hindrances that do not feel natural or like they add much to competitive gameplay. Moba's are the most popular genre these days, and those games are NOT new player friendly. They have a steep learning curve where you must learn dozens/100+ characters, a deep metagame, and a toxic community making you feel like shit every mistake you make. BUT they do not have all the hindrances RTS games have, and the mechanics make sense for what they are. Newer players might not know any of the spell abilities or anything, but have a decent idea of what is going on and/or who is winning. They can have a relative idea of where they failed and where they need to improve without watching replays. If playing a moba game with toxic players trash talking you repeatedly is MORE fun and has less hiderances than learning an RTS game like SC2, there's a problem. Becuase that's not even an ideal situation for moba games, and it's far better than what we have here. | ||
Dangermousecatdog
United Kingdom7084 Posts
On February 09 2016 08:14 Naracs_Duc wrote: I'm going to let you answer your own questions. 1) I never said people thought his playstyle was strategically bad 2) I never said Goody a joke, a jester, a clown to be laughed at. 3) Goody has fans. That is true. A community is made out of different people. Goody's fans essentially treating Goody as a joke? I never said that. You can quote me all you want, but it still remains that what you are qouting does not correlate with what I have written, implied or otherwise. There is simply no contradictory staements. Stop making things up. All this just so you can make up a story of how Goody was derided, to continue whatever agenda you have. | ||
Naracs_Duc
746 Posts
On February 09 2016 20:01 Dangermousecatdog wrote: You can quote me all you want, but it still remains that what you are qouting does not correlate with what I have written, implied or otherwise. There is simply no contradictory staements. Stop making things up. All this just so you can make up a story of how Goody was derided, to continue whatever agenda you have. You honestly believe that your saying that Goody's play being boring, not smart, and not skillful is you suggesting that people liked Goody's play? | ||
jekku
Canada1640 Posts
My only criticism would be that it didn't cover enough. There are so many more layers to this that I would love for this writer (or others) to unpack and look at. Maybe make this a series of articles. Also, no need to be so apologetic. If people actually got angry and offended by this honest and necessary analysis, then our beloved game is REALLY in trouble. | ||
Eighty7Gaming
12 Posts
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Honeybadger
United States821 Posts
My issue with SC2 is that I just don't have the time to follow events and there is NO good system in place for archiving events for people to watch later. That frustrates the hell out of me to the point where I just don't watch SC2 much anymore despite it being quite literally the only online game I enjoy to watch played. If blizzard had a system (or hell even a youtube channel) where all major tournaments were uploaded in straight blocks, they'd get a hell of a lot of revenue out of me alone. Caster wise, I am generally pretty zen with regards to who's casting what, but I hate forced, artificial screaming and "hype" as the internet kids put it these days (so that video was mostly good apart from the screaming and forced "hype"). It makes me want to claw my eyes out with forks. Good casting compliments a game, it doesn't drown the gameplay out. I don't think all games need pure analysis. The problem is that there is no real system in place for players to all rally around. the GSL was a great start, but it mutated into this ungainly monstrosity that ultimately fell apart, the NASL just didn't have the viewership. Blizzard really should step in and put together something to bring the players together more than just once a year at blizzcon, and host VODS of cast games (as much as I love analyzing games myself, I do really enjoy well cast games so much) | ||
Laurens
Belgium4458 Posts
You will always have a small group left that follows it (the hardcore, if you wish), but the casuals will jump ship eventually. For me this happened during the BL/Infestor era, my entire group of friends lost interest and switched to Dota. Dota and LoL both saw a massive rise in players in that period btw, let's blame it all on BL/Infestor Now I'm back briefly for LotV, but I don't see myself getting invested in the pro scene ever again. I'm just fooling around on ladder and earning some achievements until the next good game rolls around (looking at you, fire emblem fates). | ||
FrkFrJss
Canada1205 Posts
On February 10 2016 16:59 Honeybadger wrote: I think casual vs hard core is irrelevant. The problem is that there is no broad access to VODS. Sure, someone's always streaming, but it's rarely ever tournaments, and I don't have time to watch live casts often, and I'm not going to pay twitch sub fee to every single goddamn tournament stream channel (demuslim is the only person who gets my hard earned money because he embodies the attitude I respect most in a pro gamer, alongside QXC and Jinro) My issue with SC2 is that I just don't have the time to follow events and there is NO good system in place for archiving events for people to watch later. That frustrates the hell out of me to the point where I just don't watch SC2 much anymore despite it being quite literally the only online game I enjoy to watch played. If blizzard had a system (or hell even a youtube channel) where all major tournaments were uploaded in straight blocks, they'd get a hell of a lot of revenue out of me alone. Caster wise, I am generally pretty zen with regards to who's casting what, but I hate forced, artificial screaming and "hype" as the internet kids put it these days (so that video was mostly good apart from the screaming and forced "hype"). It makes me want to claw my eyes out with forks. Good casting compliments a game, it doesn't drown the gameplay out. I don't think all games need pure analysis. The problem is that there is no real system in place for players to all rally around. the GSL was a great start, but it mutated into this ungainly monstrosity that ultimately fell apart, the NASL just didn't have the viewership. Blizzard really should step in and put together something to bring the players together more than just once a year at blizzcon, and host VODS of cast games (as much as I love analyzing games myself, I do really enjoy well cast games so much) I'll address the first point of your argument. There seems to be two main parts to your argument 1. Broad access to VODs (preferably high level tournament vods) 2. No system in place for watching VODS I think part of the problem with this argument is that you do not have the time to familiarize yourself with the ways to access vods. Basetradetv always has free vods on their twitch page, and it's only a matter of looking through them to see which tournaments are casted. ESL, Dreamhack, and GSL (at least currently) have free vods on twitch, and those are available relatively quickly after a broadcast. Admittedly, it's harder to track down IEM vods since esltv SC2 is constantly playing reruns. However, for all major tournaments, vods are usually up within a week on their respective Youtube channels. For GSL, it's afreecatv, for Proleague, it's esportstv, for esl, esltv, dreamhacktv, and ogaming. All of these are completely free on youtube, and it's really easy to find these channels. Second You say that there is no system in place for watching archived, but I would say that for the most part, the youtube channels above have all organized their vods (usually into english vods) but also for the english channels into tournaments, like for example IEM Taipei, on the esltv vods, it would be "IEM Taipei" or something like that. It's really not that hard to go to youtube, type in "channel" and then browse vods there. If you're feeling ultra lazy, then let me show you this thread: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/sc2-tournaments/119948-small-sc2-vod-thread. It's not completely up to date for 2016, but the pages are on there that specify which matchup in which round on like page 48 for like the GSL. Furthermore, if you wanted to watch archived vods (at least the ones that weren't taken down), it has the near complete listing for 2014/2015 vods. Perhaps it is that you are just not up to date with searching vods, but your profile indicates that you were a user since 2010, so you likely had to find vods then as well, so it seems odd that you would have missed this. It just seems that there are vods in fairly accessible locations that take a minimal amount of effort to find. Admittedly, all the youtube channels and the team liquid page are not blizzard sponsored, and they are not all in one place, but your complaint that "My issue with SC2 is that I just don't have the time to follow events and there is NO good system in place for archiving events for people to watch later" sounds a lot more like an excuse when there's a resource within your grasp that has almost ALL the premier tournament vods (some are unaccessible or lost). And does it really take that much time to google "iem youtube," then click "ESL" for youtube, go to "playlists," then scroll down to the SC2 events? I am sorry if I sound and come across as condescending and/or rude, but it also frustrates me quite a bit when people say that there's no easy way to find vods when there is clearly an easy way to find vods, and they have not taken that effort to find them. TL;DR: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/sc2-tournaments/119948-small-sc2-vod-thread That thread is a system. | ||
Honeybadger
United States821 Posts
On February 10 2016 17:47 FrkFrJss wrote: I'll address the first point of your argument. There seems to be two main parts to your argument 1. Broad access to VODs (preferably high level tournament vods) 2. No system in place for watching VODS Shortened your post to avoid wall of text. That's excellent info that I'll absolutely be taking advantage of and I greatly appreciate you taking the time to put it there for me. That said, you did kind of prove my point, that vods require combing through five or more different resources, which is something a lot of fans just got tired of doing. If blizzard stepped in and consolidated the professional tournament videos in some way, a lot of people would likely come back to SC2. I'm gonna go look for some tournament vids at the sites you listed. thanks! | ||
Naracs_Duc
746 Posts
On February 11 2016 04:26 Honeybadger wrote: Shortened your post to avoid wall of text. That's excellent info that I'll absolutely be taking advantage of and I greatly appreciate you taking the time to put it there for me. That said, you did kind of prove my point, that vods require combing through five or more different resources, which is something a lot of fans just got tired of doing. If blizzard stepped in and consolidated the professional tournament videos in some way, a lot of people would likely come back to SC2. I'm gonna go look for some tournament vids at the sites you listed. thanks! A Blizz sponsored Top 5 games of the week three based on viewership and two based on personal taste of the team in charge of the weekly list would be amazing. | ||
FrkFrJss
Canada1205 Posts
On February 11 2016 04:36 Naracs_Duc wrote: A Blizz sponsored Top 5 games of the week three based on viewership and two based on personal taste of the team in charge of the weekly list would be amazing. That would actually be really awesome, especially since it would demonstrate more blizzard interest in the esports scene (aside from balancing). Also, honeybadger, I'm really glad that you could take advantage of the vods, but the link to the teamliquid page is a consolidated resource that doesn't require combing through five different sources. | ||
Naracs_Duc
746 Posts
On February 11 2016 07:48 FrkFrJss wrote: That would actually be really awesome, especially since it would demonstrate more blizzard interest in the esports scene (aside from balancing). Also, honeybadger, I'm really glad that you could take advantage of the vods, but the link to the teamliquid page is a consolidated resource that doesn't require combing through five different sources. You guys remember battle reports? I LOVED battle reports. Now they can just VOD it! If they spent some energy showing us good games of their new units, pushing through Bnet, even put some vod watching achievements, they would make this so much more exciting | ||
ZerglingSoup
United States346 Posts
Fast forward a number of years. Now I watch Starcraft with my wife and appreciate that, years later, Tasteless and Artosis are still there, casting in a way that entertains me, but makes it accessible to help my wife become a fan of good Starcraft. Neither of us enjoy watching sloppy foreigners play. We mostly stick to Korean games, and have appreciated that more of them are around to play against each other in Korea nowdays, however unfair it is to them. We should try and bridge these two sides, offer feedback, then get back to enjoying the game for what it is. Balance is largely up to the players to get better at their races and overcome adversity. | ||
Chant1
37 Posts
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populis
Brazil88 Posts
For the sake of this argument, consider the extreme forms of these two categories mutually exclusive Stopped reading there. | ||
Olli
Austria24413 Posts
Congratulations on your ignorance. | ||
Thieving Magpie
United States6752 Posts
TLDR Can you use less words please? | ||
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