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United States744 Posts
I have never made a thread before and I still don't really know if I did this correctly, so I apologize in advance. I was recently talking to my friend who is in masters on NA and he said that he will probably quit SC2. I, who was drawn into the game by him, was almost traumatized by the thought that, someone whom i not only admired but had befriended because of what would become my favorite game (SC2), could just lose all interest in a game that he was pretty good at (I know you can hate on NA servers all you want, but that is completely irrelevant). Then I told my other friend (also masters on NA) about this, and he said that he also had lost interest and would probably start playing more Chivalry and BF3. I couldn't believe it. So I began to wonder, what could possibly have caused them to want to just stop playing? What had they come to realize or what had they discovered in other games that I hadn't? I asked them, and I got a combination of answers that sort of go together with what I understand is a pretty general sentiment among other semi-serious SC2 players. First, the metagame is broken. I myself am a pretty low-level player so I don't feel like I should be speaking on that matter, but I do watch a lot of pro streams and I do understand pretty well how things work at the higher level. Second, there is a point where you can just stop having fun with StarCraft. This would be better explained in a pretty accurate blog that I found: http://www.reddit.com/r/starcraft/comments/11m21k/starcraft_2_will_be_dead_before_legacy_of_the/
I understand that this is a pretty old post so if you feel that it is completely wrong, feel free to discuss, but I thought this pretty much summed up my views in a better way than I could express. Also I never played Brood War, so that also makes me not qualified to discuss some of that. But I do feel that he is very correct about one thing: HotS still needs some big changes for it to start giving StarCraft the popularity it had with BW back. In conclusion, I hope we can all discuss our thoughts on how StarCraft could die, any suggestions/opinions on what Blizzard should do, in hopes that this will be the one big thing that Blizzard finally looks at and finally realizes what its primary audience wants and realizes how it can save the game before it completely dies. I really like the game despite its numerous issues. It is undoubtedly the best game I have ever played and has, by either watching or playing, gotten me through many stressful nights of schoolwork. I don't want to see the game die, but the clock is ticking.
TL,DR: -read the link -discuss
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Yeah I feel the same way too (Masters NA), I probably won't be getting HotS .
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I thought the same, but then i started playing on the kr server and things were a lot more fun with their focus on early aggression.
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Wait until the game averages 500 players max in the day on a pirate server, then you can be concerned.
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It's really a sad story because I'm sure Blizzard wants to do the right things but they somehow don't really understand how their community will react to certain new features and what effects the features will have on players, the same happened in WoW. Also they messed up the Battle.Net in SC2 (and Diablo 3 too for that matter) HARD in my opinion, which is not an easy thing to do if you think about how the Battle.net from 15 years ago would have been completely fine for 99% of people.
But all this doomsaying does nothing productive at all and is the worst thing you can do if you like the Starcraft franchise. In case you want to complain about the product do it on the Blizzard forums, I'm sure they are grateful about every kind of feedback and they are for the most part only measuring their own forums I think. If you don't want to write feedback then just don't play SC2 anymore or don't buy HotS until they add the features that you want.
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Sorry but I don't really know what you mean when you say that the "metagame is broken". If you mean balance, then that's not really an issue now since HOTS is going to shake things up completely and will certainly be patched. Otherwise though, I'm not sure how metagame issues would be detracting from your SC2 experience.
Just because a few of your friends got bored of a game it doesn't mean that everyone else is. In fact I've shown a few of my friends who are SC2 casuals (haven't played in months, usually just played campaign/UMS/team games) the new interface and units and they all seemed excited enough to want to try HOTS when it comes out.
You talk about BW and its popularity needing to come back but SC2 esports is more popular outside of Korea than BW ever was. Even if SC2 is only perceived as about half as "good" as BW was then it doesn't mean that it has to die. esports is not a zero-sum industry and if you check twitch.tv you can see a lot of different games still getting decent viewership. The destiny article you linked was extremely sensational and emotional and he drew some wild conclusions that just don't fit in with where our scene actually is. Everyone was expecting for chaos to ensue but as we gear up for HOTS launch in 2013 we still have a ton of great events lined up. I guess you could point at IPL but their issues are probably more related to the gaming journalism industry (IGN) than the actual state of SC2.
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The metagame is broken and the game became just generally boring to play. But we can't really talk about it in the forums here on TL without being told to shut up or that we're balance whining/complaining.
It became painfully clear after a while that there are just too many design issues that Blizzard wouldn't budge on which were causing issues with the game. A few small things here and there are tolerable for a while but weeks turned into months, months turned into years without real change or fixes to design flaws which are just fundamentally bad for an RTS game. I can't speak much on the past 2-3 months of HoTS or WoL as I haven't played seriously since November of last year, but the state of WoL was really not in a good spot when I quit and it made thinking about HoTS and the future of SC2 depressing so I distanced myself. I don't have the energy or willpower to even begin to go into it all here. (sometime in the near future I may be inspired to throw it all into my own blog post but that'll be for another day)
I can say that I definitely agree that it's been quite easy for lots of high masters or semi professional players who played purely as a hobby to move on to other things. Of course contracted players on professional teams will continue playing because it's their job. But the real life of the game in my opinion, where you can truly gauge the heartbeat on a day to day basis is the scene one step below that. The scene where people log on every night not to collect a paycheck, not to fulfill some tournament obligation, not to do something for the community. But to play because the game is fucking amazing. To play because there's a sense of accomplishment, a sense of self improvement, a sense of meaning to investing time into the game. If the people who play for the love of the game stop playing, that's when you really have an issue. Once a game stops rewarding you regarding the amount of time you start dedicating, well the guy who is dedicating that time will begin to ask himself, why? Am I playing for fun or something more? Am I even having fun anymore?
Need to stop now but I've now been inspired to go into this topic in more detail in a blog post of my own in the not so distant future.
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United States744 Posts
Erik.TheRed: I was simply putting their words together about the metagame being broken. I don't mean to say that it's completely imbalanced, since yes HotS is shaking things up. But it was pretty stagnant in WoL, and I guess I should have added this, but they said that HotS was boring because people didn't really know what they were doing. I understand that now the pros are messing with it and it is starting to get some structure, but any perspective about the metagame is really about how you perceived HotS to be. If you expected HotS to be as drastic as the changes from BW to SC2, then no it isn't that. But if you expected something similar to what it actually is, then the metagame could be viewed as "not stagnant" for the lack of a better term.
I understand that just because a few of my friends stopped playing doesn't mean that everyone else has. I know that HotS has gotten some people more interested in playing, but I really do think that it is somewhat of a discouragement if you feel like they do, that it still lacks a lot of structure and understanding. I'm not trying to say that you are a low leaguer, but since they are masters I feel like they are in a better position to speak about things such as the metagame. Also I don't want to bring up the metagame too much, since it is a very very very minor reason StarCraft could potentially "die" as I have titled the post. But when you experience the frustration they had with WoL in its decline, I can understand the deterrent to play HotS.
I totally understand what you say about eSports rising in popularity and SC2's popularity outside Korea. Yes there are tons of games being streamed on Twitch, and that is great. But SC2 itself I still feel is not really at the popularity level it needs to be to maintain a profitable thing for Blizzard. I understand the article is somewhat outdated and was, I guess, radical, but I am inclined to think somewhat radically about this because you can't do marketing or producing without accounting for all the contingencies. Like any other company, Blizzard I'm sure has thought long and hard about what could happen if they did this or that, and some of their thinking had to involve a change being horribly accepted and a major decline in popularity. And no, I agree, that has not happened yet, and I don't necessarily think that it ever will. This build up for the HotS launch is definitely going to help, but it has to be successful. If you think back to BoxeR's popularity and fanbase, or Flash, or MKP or MC or IdrA or the really popular pros, you name them, that is the kind of popularity HotS needs to get to really bring SC2 back to where it needs to be to actually suggest that it will have longevity, not necessarily as great as BW, but longer than WoL before it became what it did for people like my friends.
Again, I know that 2 people is a very small sample for a very large SC2 community, but I think that it really is on a decline, and this is where I take a definitive stand, if the "competitive" nature of the game, as mentioned in the article, is actually what Blizzard was aiming for. Maybe the "Unranked" feature of the recent patch/HotS is the next step to getting people to play more, just playing to play and not feel the pressure of losing points or ranking. The XP system could also be a good way to bring more interest, as was even addressed in the article, but I think it needs to be more rewarding than portraits and decals right now. But, if Blizzard was not aiming for the competitive nature of ladder rankings and the like, then they completely missed their objective, and if they are trying to make it better in HotS, it definitely needs restructuring because it is still largely like WoL if you don't count adjustments to the UI.
So maybe the conclusion we have come to is that StarCraft will only die if Blizzard does not effectively produce their goals for the game, fails to impress and interest more people in the game with HotS, does not maintain a fanbase for whatever reason, be it an overall decline and therefore a lack of new pros or viewership, and does not, obviously, whatever they do in the future, please the majority of the StarCraft community.
I hope this has cleared up my lack of thoroughness or maybe apparent ignorance in the original post.
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First of all, I don't think you are using the term "metagame" properly at all. I'm not trying to nitpick but it's making your argument confusing for me to understand since metagame literally means "beyond the game", such as a player six pooling his enemy because he knows that his enemy plays extremely greedy in most games. So the "metagame" can never really be broken, it's influence can just be stronger or weaker depending on the circumstances. And obviously games with more random/blind elements (poker) have greater metagame influences. When it comes to SC2 we traditionally found this kind of blind randomness in matchups like pvp where there was a large degree of units countering each other in different tech trees that were not easy to scout before the tech investments were made. I can't really speak for the non-protoss matchups but as a high masters player I really do feel like HOTS will reduce the randomness in the long run because the scouting is better for all races (reaper buff, free hallucinate, ovie speed, oracles, etc). Also there are better defensive options for all races (spore doesn't require evo, faster burrow, nexus cannon, widow mines/free siege) that reduces the chance of a dumb quick ending for a game like someone missing 1 forcefield vs a 2 rax. Sure not everything has been balanced yet but it seems like across the board the changes are a step in the right direction.
And I'm not sure I agree with your sentiments on SC2 not being financially profitable for Blizzard... the tournaments that they host are more like marketing events than independent ventures and honestly they could probably sell plenty of copies on just the single-player alone. I've never heard them say that they require the esports scene around for their business model to work, but rather it's something they never anticipated but want the community to maintain independently.
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Aotearoa39261 Posts
On March 10 2013 16:04 LuckyFool wrote: The metagame is broken and the game became just generally boring to play. But we can't really talk about it in the forums here on TL without being told to shut up or that we're balance whining/complaining. Well we certainly don't want the average user to do this, but I'm sure we'd let you because of your experience in the scene....
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Yup, the term metagame is more about the fashion of the actual state of the game. For Example: Queens got buffed > 4 Queen Openers will be played (safe opening) > terran plays 3 cc opener to counter that (greedy opening) > zerg assumes he plays greedy, does a roach ling push (aggressive opener), basically rock paper scissor. The metagame was never broken, its stagnant (Did you mean that with broken?). HotS will fix that I guess, because you can play alot different kind of builds as each race. I also see the argument that starcraft dies because of 2 friends leaving it as quite biased and not that significant. Starcraft has still plenty of depth, maybe your friends dont see it or are kinda saturated of the game and want to do something else till hots (even day9 is playing simcity, lol).
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One point the post misses that I think is very important: StarCraft II displaced a large number of Brood War fans and replaced them with grassroots fans. Sure, numbers right after launch looked great and everyone was playing the game, but it's quite apparent that Brood War was massive not because of growth, but because of retention.
I anticipate HoTS will bring a similar wave of grassroots followers that will go back to other games (LoL, DoTA, etc.) in less than 18 months.
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There are not many games, which lived for more than 10+ years. Only Counterstrike and Broodwar, right? What other games were there?
Warcraft III (started 2003 or so?), DotA (2005), Quake 3 (2005?). All dead now. Maybe one other?
It's natural, that games lose their attraction over time. Wheat can scream "ESPORTS GROWGROWGROW OMG DO IT - NO HURT ESPORTS" as much as he wants on his shows, but it doesn't change the fact, that a huge portion of gamers move on to other games, given enough time. Now even more than in recent years. Old school gamers value games in a different way than younger people, who grow up in a huge pool of games. Look at how much TL has grown since the SC2 release. I also came here only around the SC2 release, because BW was of no interest to me. I'm still here, others are gone. That's the way it is.
Even the legends of competitive gaming are dead now, so why would anyone think SC2 was immortal?
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This whole discussion Is kinda funny actually.
It Feels like the Starcraft community is a growing child who previously had no concept of that everything one day could end, and now when SC2 HOTs is about to come out and the community has grown a bit older it finally realizes it's own mortality and by this shocking insight is trying to come with terms with it by questioning everything. I swear to god, you could apply a classical development model and all its various acting out stages would correlate perfectly with the responses of this community.
EDIT: I should had seen this before, it's damn obvious now in retrospect.
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On March 10 2013 18:16 Inori wrote: Been playing on and off since very early WoL beta. I swear I see these topics every 2-3 months... It's our destiny...
What does "die" even mean. The "something of the void" will come out, no matter how many fans are left - there will still be enough for it to be viable to produce. Heck, BW with 500 people on private servers does not really constitute as dead either.
Gameplay improvements in HotS aside, even just the technical improvements - like replay restart from any point - can bring a whole new world of having fun with the game. For LotV, they could, for example, finally make something like DotaTV, where you can watch matches directly in the client and listen to casters from there, and follow the games of your favorite progamers live as they play them on the ladder etc. Even such tech improvements can bring a lot of new interest to the game.
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United States744 Posts
On March 10 2013 17:14 Erik.TheRed wrote: First of all, I don't think you are using the term "metagame" properly at all. I'm not trying to nitpick but it's making your argument confusing for me to understand since metagame literally means "beyond the game", such as a player six pooling his enemy because he knows that his enemy plays extremely greedy in most games. So the "metagame" can never really be broken, it's influence can just be stronger or weaker depending on the circumstances. And obviously games with more random/blind elements (poker) have greater metagame influences. When it comes to SC2 we traditionally found this kind of blind randomness in matchups like pvp where there was a large degree of units countering each other in different tech trees that were not easy to scout before the tech investments were made. I can't really speak for the non-protoss matchups but as a high masters player I really do feel like HOTS will reduce the randomness in the long run because the scouting is better for all races (reaper buff, free hallucinate, ovie speed, oracles, etc). Also there are better defensive options for all races (spore doesn't require evo, faster burrow, nexus cannon, widow mines/free siege) that reduces the chance of a dumb quick ending for a game like someone missing 1 forcefield vs a 2 rax. Sure not everything has been balanced yet but it seems like across the board the changes are a step in the right direction.
And I'm not sure I agree with your sentiments on SC2 not being financially profitable for Blizzard... the tournaments that they host are more like marketing events than independent ventures and honestly they could probably sell plenty of copies on just the single-player alone. I've never heard them say that they require the esports scene around for their business model to work, but rather it's something they never anticipated but want the community to maintain independently.
Ok. I admit that i made a horrible mistake in saying "broken" instead of "stagnant". It is a far better term that has already been mentioned. As for the second part, we have very different views of this whole situation and I don't want to turn this into a drawn-out argument. So there. Also to anyone who may have criticized this: I know my story is biased. I honestly thought I would get more people who understood what I was trying to say. But that's ok. Anyone who feels the desire to start another forum like this one but maybe better, I support you.
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On March 10 2013 15:43 ninazerg wrote: Wait until the game averages 500 players max in the day on a pirate server, then you can be concerned. Fish is pretty active...
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I was a high master/gm terran on EU. I quit in early 2012 due to school, gym, etc. (I had to play a lot of sc2 to stay at the level I was playing at). However, I felt already at that time the game was becoming stagnant. The last entertaining TvZ for me was Blizzard cup finals end of 2011, DRG vs MMA. TvP and TvT and even PvP was fine though.
Although I quit playing, I bought a 1 year pass for the GSL on GOMTV. After the first half of 2012, I just stopped watching. Every zerg match up was boring to watch. So predictable, so little going on. PvZ was a joke as well.
Another problem was of course the maps, but I don't wanna get into that..
So from my personal perspective as a viewer in WoL, from most enjoyable to least, I'd say: TvP (lots of action, so many openings for both races) > TvT (so many strategies, high potential for action) > PvP (OK amount of strategies, micro-intensive, unpredictable) > TvZ (predictable, but different strats available for terran, mech or bio) > ZvP (no action for 10 minutes, predictable, stupid late game) > ZvZ (action and micro-intensive yes, but too much of the same).
That's not to say that I didn't see some amazing games with all the zerg match ups. I definitely did, but for the most part, the level of entertainment did not even compare to 2011.
HotS is going to make SC2 way more interesting though, especially as it gets more balanced
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I started to loose interest in SC2 over the last year or so (some of the balance changes played a big part by making the game more boring to spectate)
I had a lot of hopes for HOTS and, well, i canceled my pre-order. None of the fundamental problems with WOL were touched on like economy scaling, death balls, terrible units like colossus, etc.
It's still a good game don't get me wrong, but it does feel like it will never reach it's potential. It also feels like the community has to fight the developers for their own game...and this is very weird lol. It's not dyeing, it's on life support.
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On March 10 2013 16:04 LuckyFool wrote: The metagame is broken and the game became just generally boring to play. But we can't really talk about it in the forums here on TL without being told to shut up or that we're balance whining/complaining.
It became painfully clear after a while that there are just too many design issues that Blizzard wouldn't budge on which were causing issues with the game. A few small things here and there are tolerable for a while but weeks turned into months, months turned into years without real change or fixes to design flaws which are just fundamentally bad for an RTS game. I can't speak much on the past 2-3 months of HoTS or WoL as I haven't played seriously since November of last year, but the state of WoL was really not in a good spot when I quit and it made thinking about HoTS and the future of SC2 depressing so I distanced myself. I don't have the energy or willpower to even begin to go into it all here. (sometime in the near future I may be inspired to throw it all into my own blog post but that'll be for another day)
I can say that I definitely agree that it's been quite easy for lots of high masters or semi professional players who played purely as a hobby to move on to other things. Of course contracted players on professional teams will continue playing because it's their job. But the real life of the game in my opinion, where you can truly gauge the heartbeat on a day to day basis is the scene one step below that. The scene where people log on every night not to collect a paycheck, not to fulfill some tournament obligation, not to do something for the community. But to play because the game is fucking amazing. To play because there's a sense of accomplishment, a sense of self improvement, a sense of meaning to investing time into the game. If the people who play for the love of the game stop playing, that's when you really have an issue. Once a game stops rewarding you regarding the amount of time you start dedicating, well the guy who is dedicating that time will begin to ask himself, why? Am I playing for fun or something more? Am I even having fun anymore?
Need to stop now but I've now been inspired to go into this topic in more detail in a blog post of my own in the not so distant future. I would be definitely interested in your thoughts on this.
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It's a vicious circle. Topics such as these work actually in a counter-productive manner, seeing that there's plenty of people who eventually stop playing because of the negativity and alike. Myself, the negativity of the community and the elitism based on rank instead of knowledge is pushing me away from the game.
I am someone who is highly competitive, and prior to my internship in China I used to play around 40-50 hours a week to practice. When I returned after 6 months of inactivity, the spark was gone and there were no reasons for me to really re-ignite my passion for this game. I reached a skillcap due to not playing enough because of various reasons. Reasons which some percieve as 'balance whine', so not to be discussed here. For the same reason, I am highly doubting to buy HotS. I play a Zerg and I've not had much fun in the game, so I guess there's no point.
As long as we've got incapable designers roaming around the Blizzard HQ, I will remain damn skeptical.
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Yesterday, I played SC2 WoL for the first time in about two weeks. Before that, and even until now, I just use the client for casting and that's it.
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On March 10 2013 16:04 LuckyFool wrote: The metagame is broken and the game became just generally boring to play. But we can't really talk about it in the forums here on TL without being told to shut up or that we're balance whining/complaining.
It became painfully clear after a while that there are just too many design issues that Blizzard wouldn't budge on which were causing issues with the game. A few small things here and there are tolerable for a while but weeks turned into months, months turned into years without real change or fixes to design flaws which are just fundamentally bad for an RTS game. I can't speak much on the past 2-3 months of HoTS or WoL as I haven't played seriously since November of last year, but the state of WoL was really not in a good spot when I quit and it made thinking about HoTS and the future of SC2 depressing so I distanced myself. I don't have the energy or willpower to even begin to go into it all here. (sometime in the near future I may be inspired to throw it all into my own blog post but that'll be for another day)
I can say that I definitely agree that it's been quite easy for lots of high masters or semi professional players who played purely as a hobby to move on to other things. Of course contracted players on professional teams will continue playing because it's their job. But the real life of the game in my opinion, where you can truly gauge the heartbeat on a day to day basis is the scene one step below that. The scene where people log on every night not to collect a paycheck, not to fulfill some tournament obligation, not to do something for the community. But to play because the game is fucking amazing. To play because there's a sense of accomplishment, a sense of self improvement, a sense of meaning to investing time into the game. If the people who play for the love of the game stop playing, that's when you really have an issue. Once a game stops rewarding you regarding the amount of time you start dedicating, well the guy who is dedicating that time will begin to ask himself, why? Am I playing for fun or something more? Am I even having fun anymore?
Need to stop now but I've now been inspired to go into this topic in more detail in a blog post of my own in the not so distant future. Just wanted to pop in and say I'm very interested in the blog you mentioned.
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I really hate seeing these. Let's please not go back to the OMGAWD WOL HAS TEH DEATHS posts we saw back with the conspiracy theories and blah. Please. The game is the second most popular E-Sport in the world. It is constantly behind LoL, but that is due to marketing and a large casual crowd that blizzard has only now realized is important. I'm going to clear here when I say that SCII is not dying. If blizz made a couple more ladder parts, between master and grand master maybe your friends wouldn't quit, but SCII, when HotS comes out, is going to be a different game. Blizzard has given us most of what we wanted, and to see people saying they won't even try it out is enormously whiney. I get if someone was ultra-into the scene, spending tons of time on the game and got disillusioned with the game, but to not try out the game that comes out afterward is ridiculous. I remember Luckyfool making a youtube video about SC vanilla before BW and how great of a change it made BW seem, I think we can all expect similar results from HotS from what we have all seen from the beta.
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United States744 Posts
On March 11 2013 01:35 docvoc wrote: I really hate seeing these. Let's please not go back to the OMGAWD WOL HAS TEH DEATHS posts we saw back with the conspiracy theories and blah. Please. The game is the second most popular E-Sport in the world. It is constantly behind LoL, but that is due to marketing and a large casual crowd that blizzard has only now realized is important. I'm going to clear here when I say that SCII is not dying. If blizz made a couple more ladder parts, between master and grand master maybe your friends wouldn't quit, but SCII, when HotS comes out, is going to be a different game. Blizzard has given us most of what we wanted, and to see people saying they won't even try it out is enormously whiney. I get if someone was ultra-into the scene, spending tons of time on the game and got disillusioned with the game, but to not try out the game that comes out afterward is ridiculous. I remember Luckyfool making a youtube video about SC vanilla before BW and how great of a change it made BW seem, I think we can all expect similar results from HotS from what we have all seen from the beta.
Thank you for sharing your opinion, and I'm glad you actually said what you did. I intended this blog really to be a discussion about how StarCraft might die. But might is obviously a word that can go either way. You have taken the opinion that is less frequently expressed in these thread because I opened it up negatively. I do have a negative view, but I largely respect not only your but everyone's opinion in this thread. Anyone else please continue to discuss any or all sides of this argument, as it is interesting to hear specific stories and well thought-out statistically-based positions.
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The best way I can sum this up is a quote from mike morhaime from the ESPN talks I watched recently.
"You know, with Starcraft 2 we set out to make an esport[sic]"
then later on in the interview when talking about how they balance: "Well we look at win percentages for every match up on every map in every league and then decide what needs fixing from there."
Sorry you can't make MLB be "balanced" off wreck/work leagues. There comes a point(as in plat and below) where you say, "Sorry kid, right now you're just not that good and this strategy isn't overpowered, you just don't have the skill or game knowledge to properly handle it yet." As opposed to going "we saw that bronze and silvers are massing void rays only and that is unacceptable so we're completely re-designing the void ray." The fact that multiple units have gone through multiple re-works yet are still this piss poor speaks volumes.
That said, StarCraft 2 does have too many underlying issues as Luckyfool said. It just doesn't work all that well, IMO the units aren't as flexible even with micro.(Things like seeing 8 dragoons take on 14-20 zerglings and coming out on top through dance micro) The accelerated macro mechanics actually take away from the game as well IMO as opposed to adding to it. And also the fact that they intentionally made us have 2 geysers "to up the skill ceiling in base management". Managing an extra geyser doesn't "increase" any skill ceiling, it just creates another hurdle you have to jump through. Think about what that would mean to have to have 3 less workers for every base, on three bases that is an extra 4 units at 2 supply each or 1 extra tier 3 unit, at various points in the game, that can be a game changer.
Also you can't "set out" to make an esport, it just has to happen like it did with BW. A lot of factors helped bring brood war to where it was, from the PC Bangs and High Speed Internet to the economic/social issues at the time. Poorer people looking for a way to relax without wasting a fuck ton of money. I remember watching a documentary from 2001? or so about Slayers_99 the player who won a Kings tournament from Norway. They did interviews with people and they pretty much said they go to PC Bangs because for like 2 bucks an hour you can play any game they had and also use the internet. Hell they even had "couples" rooms where couples could get seats right next to each other and play games together.
All of these things combined means that while Starcraft is a decent/good game(7/8 final score after all patches and overhauls IMO) it still wasn't any where near Starcraft Brood War(10 final score after all patches and overhauls IMO). And I say that as someone who once he got his Starcraft 2 Beta key never looked back at playing Brood War until recently, when I just finally realized why Starcraft is leaving such a bad taste in my mouth.
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On March 10 2013 18:32 Kuni wrote: There are not many games, which lived for more than 10+ years. Only Counterstrike and Broodwar, right? What other games were there?
Warcraft III (started 2003 or so?), DotA (2005), Quake 3 (2005?). All dead now. Maybe one other? DotA appears to be thriving, in no small part because Valve had the sense to make an HD version with enhanced features instead of a gimmicky 'sequel'.
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On March 10 2013 17:43 Plexa wrote:Show nested quote +On March 10 2013 16:04 LuckyFool wrote: The metagame is broken and the game became just generally boring to play. But we can't really talk about it in the forums here on TL without being told to shut up or that we're balance whining/complaining. Well we certainly don't want the average user to do this, but I'm sure we'd let you because of your experience in the scene....
Don't open the floodgates Plexa.
On March 11 2013 02:13 FromShouri wrote: The best way I can sum this up is a quote from mike morhaime from the ESPN talks I watched recently.
"You know, with Starcraft 2 we set out to make an esport[sic]"
then later on in the interview when talking about how they balance: "Well we look at win percentages for every match up on every map in every league and then decide what needs fixing from there."
Sorry you can't make MLB be "balanced" off wreck/work leagues. There comes a point(as in plat and below) where you say, "Sorry kid, right now you're just not that good and this strategy isn't overpowered, you just don't have the skill or game knowledge to properly handle it yet." As opposed to going "we saw that bronze and silvers are massing void rays only and that is unacceptable so we're completely re-designing the void ray." The fact that multiple units have gone through multiple re-works yet are still this piss poor speaks volumes.
That said, StarCraft 2 does have too many underlying issues as Luckyfool said. It just doesn't work all that well, IMO the units aren't as flexible even with micro.(Things like seeing 8 dragoons take on 14-20 zerglings and coming out on top through dance micro) The accelerated macro mechanics actually take away from the game as well IMO as opposed to adding to it. And also the fact that they intentionally made us have 2 geysers "to up the skill ceiling in base management". Managing an extra geyser doesn't "increase" any skill ceiling, it just creates another hurdle you have to jump through. Think about what that would mean to have to have 3 less workers for every base, on three bases that is an extra 4 units at 2 supply each or 1 extra tier 3 unit, at various points in the game, that can be a game changer.
Also you can't "set out" to make an esport, it just has to happen like it did with BW. A lot of factors helped bring brood war to where it was, from the PC Bangs and High Speed Internet to the economic/social issues at the time. Poorer people looking for a way to relax without wasting a fuck ton of money. I remember watching a documentary from 2001? or so about Slayers_99 the player who won a Kings tournament from Norway. They did interviews with people and they pretty much said they go to PC Bangs because for like 2 bucks an hour you can play any game they had and also use the internet. Hell they even had "couples" rooms where couples could get seats right next to each other and play games together.
All of these things combined means that while Starcraft is a decent/good game(7/8 final score after all patches and overhauls IMO) it still wasn't any where near Starcraft Brood War(10 final score after all patches and overhauls IMO). And I say that as someone who once he got his Starcraft 2 Beta key never looked back at playing Brood War until recently, when I just finally realized why Starcraft is leaving such a bad taste in my mouth.
I watched Rob do that panel too and I'd say Mike isn't really the best public speaker. There have been several conversations/interviews with Blizzard where they mark out how they go about balancing the game. That was meant to be one example but I do agree with your sentiment.
For the guys who like to keep pointing out that SC2 is larger on the global scale. That comes with time. Let's say you switch the two titles. You would be able to say the exact same thing lol. Last but not least, I'm going to repeat myself by saying Brood War isn't dead; SC2 isn't dead. You can talk about the decline all you want. Please do call it that but both games are in no shape or form dying.
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When Starcraft dies I'll still be hosting LANs in my basement with a derelict Battle.net server if anyone wants to come over post-SC-apocalypse. I'll even hop on the treadmill to power it all if someone else wants to play. For this reason alone, Starcraft will never ever die. I will be there giving it CPR and keeping blood pumping manually until I die. So fuck you downers. Starcraft for life.
Seriously though, I honestly feel like re-linking Destiny's infamous "SC2 is dying" thread a few months after the fact is hardly any more useful than the post was in the first place. The discussion hasn't gone anywhere since then, and isn't going anywhere now. If you're so damn worried about Starcraft dying you could try to avoid getting on your soapbox and telling people to repent before the metagame rapture happens, and instead tell people how great the game really is in spite of its many faults, try to be a positive influence perhaps, or just share the game with a few friends who haven't ever played it maybe?
Every little nitpick and gripe that people bring up about why SC2 is dying is ultimately a perfect example of the 2/10 knees too pointy, would not bang attitude. Ya, SC2's metagame can be kind of tiring to deal with at times, but 9/10 games I don't feel that way. 9/10 games I watch or play I am having a blast enjoying my favorite game of all time. If you are about to propose to your girlfriend of 2 years because you've finally realized that she is way out of your league, treats you wonderfully, loves you dearly, is hot as hell, and you can't live without her, but then you notice that she has a weird birth mark on her neck. Wait, she also likes that one TERRIBLE movie that you hate beyond anything else, and she is right handed but likes to eat with her fork in her left hand for some convoluted and silly reason, and she likes to sing in the shower and she's a horrible singer are you going to dump her by the way side? NO. Because in spite of her weirdness, faults, and quirks she is still way better for you than any other girl out there. That girl's name is Starcraft. And she is a nice lady. DotA and LoL are pretty good looking too, and maybe if Starcraft dies you can find some comfort in them, but no one will ever complete you like Starcraft will.
Also, Starcraft is a game that is still changing and growing and becoming better and better, whereas a girl would start to get old, flabby, and wrinkled, Starcraft is getting sexier and sexier and has a team of dozens of dedicated people working all the time to make it the best game ever, for us. Plus she has an open relationship with hundreds of thousands of other awesome people (men AND women, HOT) that make up this community.
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I also think SC2 is dying, as it deserves. I used to be a Master zerg (BEFORE the queen range buffs and infestor metagame) and quit simply because I got bored. It's just a poorly designed game with a lot of factors that not only make it a bad esport but also NOT fun. Colossi are not a fun unit. There is nothing enjoyable about using them. They're just ridiculously effective at what they do. And the counter to them is not fun either. It's just massing long range air units that are completely useless after killing the colossi. It is not fun to dump 40% of your army resources into units that have only one use and then literally just sit around in the sky as paperweights waiting to get shot down.
This problem occurs a LOT in SC2, where you have hard counters where one unit is basically completely useless versus another. And because macro is so automated and because there is this hard counter system, you basically just smash armies against each other, suicide the remains, and then tech switch instantly to a different army comp then do it all over again. It lacks nuance. It lacks finesse. It is an ugly brute of a game, not at all like Broodwar.
Blizzard made a huge mistake destroying the Broodwar scene and making this atrocity of a game.
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On March 10 2013 16:04 LuckyFool wrote: The metagame is broken and the game became just generally boring to play. But we can't really talk about it in the forums here on TL without being told to shut up or that we're balance whining/complaining.
It became painfully clear after a while that there are just too many design issues that Blizzard wouldn't budge on which were causing issues with the game. A few small things here and there are tolerable for a while but weeks turned into months, months turned into years without real change or fixes to design flaws which are just fundamentally bad for an RTS game. I can't speak much on the past 2-3 months of HoTS or WoL as I haven't played seriously since November of last year, but the state of WoL was really not in a good spot when I quit and it made thinking about HoTS and the future of SC2 depressing so I distanced myself. I don't have the energy or willpower to even begin to go into it all here. (sometime in the near future I may be inspired to throw it all into my own blog post but that'll be for another day)
I can say that I definitely agree that it's been quite easy for lots of high masters or semi professional players who played purely as a hobby to move on to other things. Of course contracted players on professional teams will continue playing because it's their job. But the real life of the game in my opinion, where you can truly gauge the heartbeat on a day to day basis is the scene one step below that. The scene where people log on every night not to collect a paycheck, not to fulfill some tournament obligation, not to do something for the community. But to play because the game is fucking amazing. To play because there's a sense of accomplishment, a sense of self improvement, a sense of meaning to investing time into the game. If the people who play for the love of the game stop playing, that's when you really have an issue. Once a game stops rewarding you regarding the amount of time you start dedicating, well the guy who is dedicating that time will begin to ask himself, why? Am I playing for fun or something more? Am I even having fun anymore?
Need to stop now but I've now been inspired to go into this topic in more detail in a blog post of my own in the not so distant future.
They don't let people post balance whine/this game sux shit anymore because it's annoying. People are tired of hearing about it, especially when it's some random "low master" player who is mad because of "patchzergs". I mean, sheesh, no one is holding a gun to their head and forcing them to watch/play SC2. I think you might have some valuable insight into the game to make a difference. Most people, when talking about the game, make terrible, terrible suggestions like "Air units should be able to burrow", "We need to give Terran an arbiter", etc, or just bitch about how bad the game is.
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Well there's a time and a place to bitch about things. You can't bitch about everything constantly. People like avilo aren't taken seriously because they bitch about everything from the sun rising in the east to lag while playing broodwar in LAN mode. While he does have good points sometimes there is a time and a place to express opinion and a time and a place to hold back.
I feel selective bitching at times is quite necessary and far more effective. It's all about picking and choosing your battles.
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United States10328 Posts
On March 10 2013 18:32 Kuni wrote: There are not many games, which lived for more than 10+ years. Only Counterstrike and Broodwar, right? What other games were there?
Warcraft III (started 2003 or so?), DotA (2005), Quake 3 (2005?). All dead now. Maybe one other?
I think Age of Empires II still has an active ladder; and though it's not a computer game, Super Smash Bros. Melee still has lots of tourneys.
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even after playing sc2 and league of legends for a while, i still find myself coming back to broodwar
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On March 11 2013 02:43 Severedevil wrote:Show nested quote +On March 10 2013 18:32 Kuni wrote: There are not many games, which lived for more than 10+ years. Only Counterstrike and Broodwar, right? What other games were there?
Warcraft III (started 2003 or so?), DotA (2005), Quake 3 (2005?). All dead now. Maybe one other? DotA appears to be thriving, in no small part because Valve had the sense to make an HD version with enhanced features instead of a gimmicky 'sequel'.
That's true. I guess the argument, that DotA2 is still DotA and not another game is valid. I'm sure it will reach the 10 years easily. It's one of the best online games that have ever been made, and it was only a custom map :-)
On March 11 2013 09:30 ]343[ wrote:Show nested quote +On March 10 2013 18:32 Kuni wrote: There are not many games, which lived for more than 10+ years. Only Counterstrike and Broodwar, right? What other games were there?
Warcraft III (started 2003 or so?), DotA (2005), Quake 3 (2005?). All dead now. Maybe one other? I think Age of Empires II still has an active ladder; and though it's not a computer game, Super Smash Bros. Melee still has lots of tourneys.
That's cool. Apparently the first Super Smash Bros. Melee tournament was hosted in 2003 and this year's EVO will have one due to a charity vote for the last game of the event. Age of Empires 2 came out 1999 I believe, so that's quite a success, if lots of people are still playing the game today. Just read, that the developers have stopped investing time and efforts in the game at the beginning of the year. But that doesn't mean people will stop playing it. 13 years for a computer game is pretty respectable.
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Quoting an article from Destiny in Starcraft is like quoting Georges W. Bush in political science ...
I wished I would take the time to explain why things change slowly in a big company like Blizzard but I have no time to waste. The game isn't perfect but it doesn't have to be for me to enjoy it, I just have to enjoy the storylines.
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On March 11 2013 08:51 LuckyFool wrote: Well there's a time and a place to bitch about things. You can't bitch about everything constantly. People like avilo aren't taken seriously because they bitch about everything from the sun rising in the east to lag while playing broodwar in LAN mode. While he does have good points sometimes there is a time and a place to express opinion and a time and a place to hold back.
I feel selective bitching at times is quite necessary and far more effective. It's all about picking and choosing your battles. This definitely concerns me a lot whenever I embark on writing a review for a game.
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On March 11 2013 19:02 Kuni wrote:Show nested quote +On March 11 2013 02:43 Severedevil wrote:On March 10 2013 18:32 Kuni wrote: There are not many games, which lived for more than 10+ years. Only Counterstrike and Broodwar, right? What other games were there?
Warcraft III (started 2003 or so?), DotA (2005), Quake 3 (2005?). All dead now. Maybe one other? DotA appears to be thriving, in no small part because Valve had the sense to make an HD version with enhanced features instead of a gimmicky 'sequel'. That's true. I guess the argument, that DotA2 is still DotA and not another game is valid. I'm sure it will reach the 10 years easily. It's one of the best online games that have ever been made, and it was only a custom map :-) Show nested quote +On March 11 2013 09:30 ]343[ wrote:On March 10 2013 18:32 Kuni wrote: There are not many games, which lived for more than 10+ years. Only Counterstrike and Broodwar, right? What other games were there?
Warcraft III (started 2003 or so?), DotA (2005), Quake 3 (2005?). All dead now. Maybe one other? I think Age of Empires II still has an active ladder; and though it's not a computer game, Super Smash Bros. Melee still has lots of tourneys. That's cool. Apparently the first Super Smash Bros. Melee tournament was hosted in 2003 and this year's EVO will have one due to a charity vote for the last game of the event. Age of Empires 2 came out 1999 I believe, so that's quite a success, if lots of people are still playing the game today. Just read, that the developers have stopped investing time and efforts in the game at the beginning of the year. But that doesn't mean people will stop playing it. 13 years for a computer game is pretty respectable. Age of Empires 2 is also getting the HD update treatment, slated to come out this April on Steam. I'm thinking of pre-ordering.
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