I wanted to open up a discussion that I feel is important for the Long term legacy of Starcraft;
In the beginning of 2019 it is safe to say that BW is fully alive and well again; With ASL, KSL, Foreign tours such as BSL, Defiler Tours starting up again, Have at you Tours that have been running for over a year. Contents such as Write-ups, the power rank, medry' s 24/7 VOD stream. basically you name it. Yes everything is going rather well right now for good ol bw, but what about its long term future?
EDIT:
The scene restarted back in 2013 (well, there were some online before I believe, but 2013 was thee start imo) and gained prominence over the years as more ex-pros returned so 2014 and 2015 is off the mark.
From 2012, the beginning of the game that must not be named, people went on and on that bw was dead, is was finished, it was over. Surprise to some, the Scene restarted I believe in 2014 or 2015 in Korea with sbenu running tours out of his pocket, the poor fellow went broke pouring all his attention and money into bw tours. The Shield battery project, which unfortunately run out of luck cause of the outbreak of remastered, and the return of many pros and non Koreans to the scene, and the rest is history as we know it.
Few know what happened in the "dark Ages" of bw. The basic point is, apart from there being very few tournaments, in or outside Korea, little content, and such things, there where still people playing the game all over the place. You could still log on like right now and find a game, play. And trust me, for I have been there in that time, that people where playing and playing with passion, just like today. Whatever rank, whatever skill, whatever kind of bw game. Just like in the past.
That' s what the scene is all about if you break it down. Forget streams, forget tournaments, forget content and write-ups, the basic point is people playing the game. But most people who are playing, are people that have always played, people who are over 25 years old. We are seeing this inside Korea and outside Korea. These are the top players that are dominating the scene.
EDIT: What the problem is and what I would like people to discuss in this thread is type of structure there is to support new players, new blood, new generations especially younger players that see the game, and would like to play it on a competitive level. What I mean, is that basically there are no new names out there, either in Korea, or outside, meaning there is no support structure to someone new who has never played who wants to rise and shine, improve and get to the top levels. This is the real challenge I believe, and if a solution is not found, in the long run, BW will die out, simply because there will be no one who will play it anymore...
EDIT:
LMaster and others have made tons of noobie-friendly content, and there is a newbie server.
EDIT: Thank you everybody for your input to the conversation; It would also be interesting if beginners would post their view on the subject and how it feels to start playing Broodwar; Or even if people who have been playing for years would care to "recall" their experience and hardships of getting into the game;
uhhh...I'm seeing new players all the time. Tinkle just qualified for ASL 7, and community events for both Koreans and non-Koreans are springing up all the time.
If your referring to "support structure" as teamhouses or direct involvment by Blizzard, then yes that likely isn't going to happen in the current StarCraft climate. But any player with enough desire could climb and perhaps even make it into the KSL or ASL.
The era of sponsored teams and teamhouses is likely over for good, but StarCraft can & will adapt to that. It always finds a way.
I've met a few younger than 30 players from outside Korea. Many don't stick around because the game is too "old school" and "hard".
Not saying some will keep at it but pebble makes a fair point, which could be applied to any game really. At some point the player base may and could literally die out.
I mean shit. I'm 34. I've been playing off and on since 1998.
It’s a good point. It’s difficult for new players to break through when there aren’t the same structures that used to be in play to develop up and coming talent. Not sure what can be done about it but the scene does need new talent to keep it interesting and relevant.
The scene restarted back in 2013 (well, there were some online before I believe, but 2013 was thee start imo) and gained prominence over the years as more ex-pros returned so 2014 and 2015 is off the mark. Having said that, new blood is and will always been an issue for an old game such as BW. It can't be helped seeing that most players nowadays prefer easier games and unless you find someone who's equally skilled and wants to play, you'll have to potentially grind early on to get your mechanics up.
I think we should just enjoy what we have and try to keep things going. I'm sure once more ex-pros leave for the military, we'll see more amateurs qualify for ASL, and who knows just what we'll see or how the game will move from that point on.
Its fair and square to say that getting new people into this game has been hard for the past decade...
However when I started playing we had tools and community support in the D ranks Teamleague; Honestly I do not think I would have started playing if it had not been for that; For Example the BSL is a great example of what zzzero and others are doing to support the foreign community at a high level, not to mention the entertainment it provides and the motivation for players to ladder, improve and compete. However that regards more high level play. It wasn't born yesterday either, I think remembering it was based around the Polish community which has always had a large player pool, so that was in their favour from the start, and they succeeded in building a community and eventually bringing it out available internationally.
I see invisible barriers that maybe people who have been involved in the community for so long don' t see... One of the things that I hear often as advice to newcomers who come to watch a stream and have played a couple of games is "go to Liquipedia" or "study a pros build and practice it" or "ladder it out" I think its all advice that is given with a good heart but actually terrible. The information available on Liquipedia is overwhelming for the beginner, even the beginners portal. Honestly I got lost in there. Studying a build requires prior knowledge of broodwar that a beginner simply does not have. And laddering is not a friendly place, and not a place where people play in a standard way.
What I think new people need is a place to meet and play against each other. When you play against someone of your same skill then I don' t think newcomers will find it "too hard" , they need to have personal interactions with people who can explain something as simple as how sending your miners to work in the beginning of the game works, which is a complicated process that involves insta-splitting. This comes second nature because we have all done it and seen it a million times, but imagine someone who sees it for the first time.
As I said now its not a problem, but it may be a problem, and a huge one in the future. Its a complicated scenario furthermore, because there are no examples of past e-sports that have been going on for so long and so no one can really know how things will turn out.
You cannot just drink from the well and if it never rains expect it to replenish itself, because it won' t
And it would be a shame because I think something we can all agree on is that most if not all of the people who do things for this community do it out of sheer love for the game, and this is something pretty unique to Starcraft
Broodwars winner stays on culture is also antithetical to growth because anyone picking it up will feel like a “noob” “dumb” want to quit” right away feeling and called “stupid” compared to experienced or longtime players. Not saying this can really be fixed but since battle net is just sort of cold a lot of the new generation might see overwatch fortnight hearthstone and whatever as more appealing where it isn’t quite so easy to just “lose” in 5 minutes.
On January 24 2019 15:53 pebble444 wrote: Its fair and square to say that getting new people into this game has been hard for the past decade...
However when I started playing we had tools and community support in the D ranks Teamleague; Honestly I do not think I would have started playing if it had not been for that; For Example the BSL is a great example of what zzzero and others are doing to support the foreign community at a high level, not to mention the entertainment it provides and the motivation for players to ladder, improve and compete. However that regards more high level play. It wasn't born yesterday either, I think remembering it was based around the Polish community which has always had a large player pool, so that was in their favour from the start, and they succeeded in building a community and eventually bringing it out available internationally.
I see invisible barriers that maybe people who have been involved in the community for so long don' t see... One of the things that I hear often as advice to newcomers who come to watch a stream and have played a couple of games is "go to Liquipedia" or "study a pros build and practice it" or "ladder it out" I think its all advice that is given with a good heart but actually terrible. The information available on Liquipedia is overwhelming for the beginner, even the beginners portal. Honestly I got lost in there. Studying a build requires prior knowledge of broodwar that a beginner simply does not have. And laddering is not a friendly place, and not a place where people play in a standard way.
What I think new people need is a place to meet and play against each other. When you play against someone of your same skill then I don' t think newcomers will find it "too hard" , they need to have personal interactions with people who can explain something as simple as how sending your miners to work in the beginning of the game works, which is a complicated process that involves insta-splitting. This comes second nature because we have all done it and seen it a million times, but imagine someone who sees it for the first time.
As I said now its not a problem, but it may be a problem, and a huge one in the future. Its a complicated scenario furthermore, because there are no examples of past e-sports that have been going on for so long and so no one can really know how things will turn out.
You cannot just drink from the well and if it never rains expect it to replenish itself, because it won' t
And it would be a shame because I think something we can all agree on is that most if not all of the people who do things for this community do it out of sheer love for the game, and this is something pretty unique to Starcraft
Again, the resources available now are better than they have ever been, and yet we all still managed to learn this game and get better and play it for years without them. What's changed?
As for DRTL and the like, as I said, CPL is a thing. FBW Discord has hundreds of people ready to answer questions and for your to practice with. LMaster and others have made tons of noobie-friendly content, and there is a newbie server. What more are you suggesting we as a community do???
I agree, the problem doesn't seem to be viewership or the younger generations of Korea not enjoying watching it or appreciating it as an esport, but as you stated, that there will be fewer "high level" players once all the KeSpa guys retire.
So it isn't purely the numbers of people watching or even playing it in PC bangs etc., but the fact that it is just not favorable for new players to make it their career. In 2019, it would require insane talent, love for the game and practice hours to compete with the FlaShes and Larvas instead of leaning towards a more popular and easy game such as LoL or OW.
As other people have pointed out, the other games available have changed, as well as probably the way younger kids are growing up have changed, for one none of us who are 25 and over ever remotely was using a smartphone, whereas nowadays I see 2 years old watching videos on youtube.... things in the outer world have changed;
I am not targeting you Jealous or anyone or the community, please do not take my words as a request for someone to do something; Rather I am trying to bring awareness to the topic and stimulate a discussion, and yeah, maybe my words are hard to you, I' m not sure why, but I' m trying to expose my point of view strongly I admit;
Yes, the resources today are better than they have ever been, and that I believe is a positive thing for people already involved for years in this community, because you and me would know how to navigate to get that information quickly and how to apply it, wheres to a beginner it might not be the case. More knowledge and information does not necessarily mean a better learning experience.
On January 24 2019 18:12 pebble444 wrote: nowadays I see 2 years old watching videos on youtube.... things in the outer world have changed;
So kids attention span isn't as much as it was 20 years ago.
Every year the average level on bnet increases, whereas the brand new player starts off where everyone else did when they first picked up the game 20+ years ago.So while it's true that people here learnt the game they did it as the game was evolving over the course of many years so they still managed to win games whereas someone starting from scratch now will probably lose 90%+ of their first 50 games, custom or ladder.
And how many would pick up the game in the first place considering they made SC2 free to play and thats a far more active game.Blizz fucked us over there.I was only half joking when i said have more kids and get them to play.
I got into bw in 1999 because of LANs and private bnet servers. In my college a lot of people were playing and learning the game was a fun journey because you did it shoulder to shoulder with your friends. No way in hell i would do that alone even back then, not to say today. So unless there is an ecosystem where groups of people, communities, colleges, camps - whatever, do it together, i don't see any possible growth potential among youngsters
I totally agree with pebble. You have some very good points. For a new player it's so hard to find the correct information. I've started playing again when remastered came out (before that just some casual games with brothers/friends, not on BNET, so I consider(ed) myself a beginner) and when I tried to improve myself it was so damn hard. It took like 10 months till I discovered Foreign Broodwar Discord (I didn't even know what discord was before), and like 8 months that someone mentioned Day 9's "let's learn starcraft" series which was a great help. Also I completely agree that a liquipedia article is too hard to understand for a beginner. I had to "restart" reading an article like 3 times (some time apart) to fully comprehend one (or maybe I still don't understand it fully). Another thing is teamliquid, I don't even know how I got here. I think as a beginner it's too hard to find the "correct" information and sources. And also I agree that the oldtimers most of the time aren't really helpful... This is one thing I think everyone could change and could have a nice effect! If you see someone who is much lower than your skill level, he is a beginner, don't say he is a noob, but try to help him, give him some pointers. It makes a world of difference believe me. The sad thing is that I played SC before so I'm not that really new blood, for an absolutely new blood I have no idea what would make him/her stay here in SC. Maybe in Korea where you have enough players but... I've played with some new players and it made me feel bad/sad how hard it is for them. To tell you the truth other then this "attitude change" I don't really know what to do. (children of old BW players is a nice thing, and maybe one central easy to find "article" on where to start, what is TL, foreign bw discord and LMaster's things you mentioned, everything explained. Strange thing is that many people are talking about CPL it took like a year for me to learn that it exists and what does it mean... I mention these time frames because an absolute newcomer most likely will not stay for that long.) Maybe it's that I'm just a retard and everyone else finds information right away.
Pebble thank you for bringing this up! It is very important! But I don't really know the answer.
Also what could help is Clans "hiring" new blood as well. At least a clan (I've just joined one) is a friendly place, they will help the newcomer. And I see that in the finding clan topic many clans don't look for newcomers, maybe that could change (but maybe there are good reasons why they don't, I don't know, I'm still new and learning).
Sorry for my post not being organized, one last thing I forgot: if somehow many new players could be drawn to SC at the same time it could work because they could play at the same skill level. But this seems almost impossible.
Honestly a lot of the time playing SC is not really fun. It can sometimes be extremle frustating. Maybe the most frustrating game i ever played. And the more I play the more I think I should win.
I´ve been playing now for over 10 years and I cant get past D-level. I still hover around my 100-150 apm which i had 7 years ago. When I start a session i will loose 7 out 10 games. Once every 2 weeks or so there is a win which will keep me going but its sooooo much work.
If the KESPA Era didn´t leave such a mark in me I´m sure I would have moved on a long time ago.
It has to go free to play so that more people will try it and if only 5% of those players stick we can maybe get some new blood in the long run. Otherwise I´m sure it will die out or we still see flash / larva etc. play in their 40s
On January 24 2019 21:35 heynes wrote: Honestly a lot of the time playing SC is not really fun. It can sometimes be extremle frustating. Maybe the most frustrating game i ever played. And the more I play the more I think I should win.
[...]
If the KESPA Era didn´t leave such a mark in me I´m sure I would have moved on a long time ago.
[...]
I think one important point about the new blood discussion would be that you have to focus on keeping those who're motivated already. BW is infamous enough to have new people stumble across it from time to time, someone will always give it a try. I'm not sure if you need KESPA-Era fire, but the game has to make strong enough a mark on you for what it is to keep you going by yourself.
I don't think Fortnite and LoL etc. actually take players away from BW. Who plays RTS these days anyway? Keep in mind that today with that genre you can target maybe 5-10% or something of the whole gaming-community. More people played in in the old days because there was not so much to choose from, not in today's quality.
RTS and BW especially is just not for everyone. When I stumbled across professional BW in 2011-12, all it took was to watch Flash play in OSL and PL to crawl me through the back-then-TL and learn "everything" from the scattered bits and pieces, right when those "dark ages" began. Making the start easier for noobs will only do so and so much because the game itself is just hard as F and you will have to look for the info you personally need yourself, no way around it. Who doesn't catch the fire won't stay.
edit: On reading that someone wrote they didn't find out about useful info-sources for month: Maybe we should all visit the common-channel (dunno the name) on Bnet (i mean: in game) regularly and just post something like "Hey, listen! If you're interested in improving and looking for help, visit teamliquid.net [discord, etc.] and join our community!" (if that's legal)
On January 24 2019 18:44 fLyiNgDroNe wrote: I got into bw in 1999 because of LANs and private bnet servers. In my college a lot of people were playing and learning the game was a fun journey because you did it shoulder to shoulder with your friends. No way in hell i would do that alone even back then, not to say today. So unless there is an ecosystem where groups of people, communities, colleges, camps - whatever, do it together, i don't see any possible growth potential among youngsters
The ecosystem is called teamliquid.net and you're in it right now.
The key to getting younger players playing BW (in the foreign scene) is to get them posting on this website.
If u want to see BW alive again you: 1) need to be a millionere, sponsoring money tournaments for new blood only (in schools mostly i guess, between schools, collegues etc). 2) Perhaps meta changes, "balance" patches, so everyone has a fresh start to crack the new meta.
Of course we don't have any number ones, and even point 2 alone wouldn't be enough to bring a lot of new players.
BW will die out, simply because there will be no one who will play it anymore...
Broodwar is already dead. Its a species with too few breeding partners to continue. We are extinct, because the community is made up primarily of almost religiously fanatical twats who can countenance no meta changes, no balance changes, no maps for newbies, no reforms whatever that could make the game interesting and engageable and learnable for newbs. But wait! Theres dozens and dozens of videos of people instructing newbies how to do a pro build that leads to a 30 minute macro fest! Huh? I mean the fact that anyone thinks a few video guides are going to bring new blood into a game that is fundamentally not enjoyable to play at lower levels, is absurd. All the guides in the world arent going to make the experience fun, and for a new player to come on and play on absurdly large maps like eddy, doing pro builds he cant get his mind around, all the while occasionally running into 1500-2000 mmr players, well, he isnt going to enjoy himself to say the least!
And i can say this from the perspective of someone who actually has a lot of friends who previously played broodwar and tried to make the transition into melee, people too, who are inclined towards rts games. The reality is, if the meta and maps that are common today were common ten years ago, I would never have picked up the game. I suspect a lot of people who have left the community out of boredom [more than the fanatics would like to admit] or even still play like me, would not have either.
On January 24 2019 15:53 pebble444 wrote: Its fair and square to say that getting new people into this game has been hard for the past decade...
However when I started playing we had tools and community support in the D ranks Teamleague; Honestly I do not think I would have started playing if it had not been for that; For Example the BSL is a great example of what zzzero and others are doing to support the foreign community at a high level, not to mention the entertainment it provides and the motivation for players to ladder, improve and compete. However that regards more high level play. It wasn't born yesterday either, I think remembering it was based around the Polish community which has always had a large player pool, so that was in their favour from the start, and they succeeded in building a community and eventually bringing it out available internationally.
I see invisible barriers that maybe people who have been involved in the community for so long don' t see... One of the things that I hear often as advice to newcomers who come to watch a stream and have played a couple of games is "go to Liquipedia" or "study a pros build and practice it" or "ladder it out" I think its all advice that is given with a good heart but actually terrible. The information available on Liquipedia is overwhelming for the beginner, even the beginners portal. Honestly I got lost in there. Studying a build requires prior knowledge of broodwar that a beginner simply does not have. And laddering is not a friendly place, and not a place where people play in a standard way.
What I think new people need is a place to meet and play against each other. When you play against someone of your same skill then I don' t think newcomers will find it "too hard" , they need to have personal interactions with people who can explain something as simple as how sending your miners to work in the beginning of the game works, which is a complicated process that involves insta-splitting. This comes second nature because we have all done it and seen it a million times, but imagine someone who sees it for the first time.
As I said now its not a problem, but it may be a problem, and a huge one in the future. Its a complicated scenario furthermore, because there are no examples of past e-sports that have been going on for so long and so no one can really know how things will turn out.
You cannot just drink from the well and if it never rains expect it to replenish itself, because it won' t
And it would be a shame because I think something we can all agree on is that most if not all of the people who do things for this community do it out of sheer love for the game, and this is something pretty unique to Starcraft
Again, the resources available now are better than they have ever been, and yet we all still managed to learn this game and get better and play it for years without them. What's changed?
What changed? Between when I picked up melee in earnest 13 years ago and now:
-The size of the average map has effectively doubled. I dont mean the literal size of the map for anyone slow, I mean the effective size. Between rush distance being increased and naturals being made smaller and third bases being made more perfunctory and other means to enlarge general distance, we are playing on, essentially, bland, large, safe maps. Circuit breaker is only a few steps removed from BGH in its strategical simplicity. Gone are the days of monty hall or even fucking python. If the map isnt a bland smattering of money thrown every which way, it aint good enough for the community!
-ironically i think the match maker hurt things quite a bit, given it doesnt even work. I played a game with someone who didnt know how lurkers worked the same day I played an s ranked player. This was a couple months ago, maybe they fixed it a bit since then, but I doubt it. Combine that with match makers inability to race pick aaaaand
you have a game where new players play on giant, indistinguishable maps, using builds they cant actually utilize often against players so much better than them the game was pointless. But wait! Theres video guides. ????
As for the Korean scene, you can just look at the ASL qualifiers and see enough amateurs to fill a hole bunch of tournaments. I think even when some of the current top players go to the military, we have enough amateurs + older players to requalify. I mean look at the current ASL, you have Flash, Jaedong, Sea and Shuttle out, and bam we get amateurs and Nada in. I am more than fine by that. Also there is always Rain, who doesn't have to go to the military. BW will always survive in Korea. I mean in 2012, all pros were taken from the game and it still survived. There'll always be people like Sonic or Britney who love BW enough to keep it going. I mean even if everyone who hasn't gone to the military yet would leave today, we'd get an ajeas vs amateurs ASL. And if you'd get something like a Nada vs Nalra finals, it might actually break viewership records. Plus military is only ~18 months now, afaik bisu will come back this year already.
As in the foreign scene? That's a tough one. I don't think it'll ever get back to where it was pre-sc2. And even that would be considered a small niche nowadays. BW never had the cultural impact in the west as it had in korea. I mean when you watch ASL, you see a ton of teenagers in the audience, and the amateurs we have seen also seem quite young. I think there are very few people in the west around that age who follow BW, let alone play it.
On January 25 2019 01:33 Lorch wrote: As for the Korean scene, you can just look at the ASL qualifiers and see enough amateurs to fill a hole bunch of tournaments. I think even when some of the current top players go to the military, we have enough amateurs + older players to requalify. I mean look at the current ASL, you have Flash, Jaedong, Sea and Shuttle out, and bam we get amateurs and Nada in. I am more than fine by that. Also there is always Rain, who doesn't have to go to the military. BW will always survive in Korea. I mean in 2012, all pros were taken from the game and it still survived. There'll always be people like Sonic or Britney who love BW enough to keep it going. I mean even if everyone who hasn't gone to the military yet would leave today, we'd get an ajeas vs amateurs ASL. And if you'd get something like a Nada vs Nalra finals, it might actually break viewership records. Plus military is only ~18 months now, afaik bisu will come back this year already.
As in the foreign scene? That's a tough one. I don't think it'll ever get back to where it was pre-sc2. And even that would be considered a small niche nowadays. BW never had the cultural impact in the west as it had in korea. I mean when you watch ASL, you see a ton of teenagers in the audience, and the amateurs we have seen also seem quite young. I think there are very few people in the west around that age who follow BW, let alone play it.
to add to that point with a personal anecdote, I went to Korea a couple times last year and at some point I had nothing to do waiting for a train for 4hours. So I crossed the street and went to a PC bang.
now I noticed 2 things: first of all there were highschoolers/undergrads playing as I entered. And secondly as I started playing a couple ladder games, a couple young lads came up to me and asked to play. They looked like they were 16. My korean s not good enough (and by that I mean it sucks) to actually talk to them but they were really excited about the game and it sounded like a bunch of their friends were playing too once in a while.
So I think the game is still fairly popular in Korea, and for the western scene the CPL is amazing and I see many relatively new players there, even if sc2 sorta split the scene and a lot of people grew too old to actually play much (happens to a lot of my friends) I m still amazed it doesnt actually take that long to get a match on the ladder, considering the age of the game.
On January 24 2019 18:12 pebble444 wrote: As other people have pointed out, the other games available have changed, as well as probably the way younger kids are growing up have changed, for one none of us who are 25 and over ever remotely was using a smartphone, whereas nowadays I see 2 years old watching videos on youtube.... things in the outer world have changed;
I am not targeting you Jealous or anyone or the community, please do not take my words as a request for someone to do something; Rather I am trying to bring awareness to the topic and stimulate a discussion, and yeah, maybe my words are hard to you, I' m not sure why, but I' m trying to expose my point of view strongly I admit;
Yes, the resources today are better than they have ever been, and that I believe is a positive thing for people already involved for years in this community, because you and me would know how to navigate to get that information quickly and how to apply it, wheres to a beginner it might not be the case. More knowledge and information does not necessarily mean a better learning experience.
I don't feel targeted or attacked, I'm just not understanding what you're trying to say. Sure, things could be better - but things could always be better, no? Aren't things getting better already? If you admit that there are more resources now than there ever was before, again I ask what is it that allowed for people who got into BW 10 years ago that doesn't also apply to people who are getting into BW right now?
Same old problem in korea. Not much new blood, but the old guard "pros" are so much better in offline settings.
However it is #2 viewed esports behind league of legends right now and is constantly in top 10 ranking in PC bang. A lot of people who has always been playing is still playing and there was that 1 high school only tourny while back
Difficulty of game is not an issue. There’s no such thing as an easy game because it should be defined by how much effort it takes to get good at it, and getting good is defined by winning most of your games. There’s no game where the majority of players are pro level because there has to be some winners and some losers.
If anything, BW takes more effort to FEEL good playing it, because all anyone sees are pro replays and they hold themselves to that standard. You watch an OW pro and think “I can conceive myself getting 2 headshots and capping a point” and define your sense of “good at this game” as such, and most likely won’t feel disappointed for very long (since its more easily doable on lesser skilled players). But if you watch a BW pro and think “I can play that fast” and define your sense of “good at this game” as such, you’re going to be extremely disappointed because it’s just hard to do regardless of the skill level of your opponent.
On top of that, outside of Korea there’s no groups of people getting excited about BW, it’s usually just one person revisiting the game or thinking “eh I’ll try it out”. With no social support there’s practically no point, and beginners are not directed to good resources or communities to help them or share their love of the game.
You look at games like Fortnite and they’re like a playground. You can build shit and do random stuff that’s not even related to winning the game; Minecraft was the same way. Younger players like the free form stuff.
TLDR, this is what needs to happen...
1) Hype BGH games. Get fun streamers genuinely excited at 20 carriers on the screen with interceptors buzzing around and 100 hydras being melted by storms and tanks. Maybe doing a featured streamers thing with BGH nr10 maps only.
2) Put links to TeamLiquid, CPL, and FBW Discord on the battle.net launcher.
3) Not likely to happen, but an outreach team that hosts LAN style parties with BW and tons of BGH maps going to random high schools or colleges.
On January 24 2019 18:44 fLyiNgDroNe wrote: In my college a lot of people were playing and learning the game was a fun journey because you did it shoulder to shoulder with your friends.
No way in hell i would do that alone even back then, not to say today.
If it wasn't for me getting into casting back in 2008 and making friends with the [Media] guys, especially Machine, G5 and LzGamer and Future and Xeris when they were in [LighT] and actually learning the damn game and recognizing timings, build orders and making smarter decisions. I probably wouldn't be playing anymore and if I were - definitely not in any type of Ranked melee. I own my current abilities to the patience they showed to me back then as I struggled to improve.
I'm not saying it's impossible to teach newer players as older players because if it's the one thing we've learned is patience in learning the game and that you will lose WAY more than you win until it finally "clicks" on how it all starts coming together. I can't really explain it. One day it just "clicked" and my skilled jumped almost overnight out of Iccup D's into C and lower B eventually back then.
Most newer players do not have that kind of patience to "grind" RTS games anymore because you're looking at 10-20min per game vs many games today that are much more rewarding in that same amount of time.
Well I'm the new blood, started a year ago. The game's hard as fuck especially playing during the week after work. Hard to do even most basic things and concentrate. Still I managed not drop to F rank consistently like I did before.
The community is great. Lots of people help me and answer my stupid questions on discord. Why I picked this game? Coz it's hard AF. That's what stands out of most modern games like Fortnite, Overwatch, SC2, WC3.
You play against yourself all the time. You suffer hard and every victory is the most satisfying this in the world. We might be a minority coz it takes guts to keep playing despite being total shit in the game.
On January 25 2019 05:12 Psyonic_Reaver wrote:Most newer players do not have that kind of patience to "grind" RTS games anymore because you're looking at 10-20min per game vs many games today that are much more rewarding in that same amount of time.
It's not just limited to games. In the US, graduates are quitting jobs after 6 months because they aren't having an impact. It's a problem with the generation as a whole. The idea of putting in constant effort for long term gratification is completely foreign to them. As such, any endeavor has little chance to progress beyond proficiency. I don't know the solution, but it spans far beyond gaming.
What the problem is and what I would like people to discuss in this thread is the lack of a structure to support new players, new blood, new generations especially younger players that see the game, and would like to play it on a competitive level. What I mean, is that basically there are no new names out there, either in Korea, or outside, meaning there is no support structure to someone new who has never played who wants to rise and shine, improve and get to the top levels. This is the real challenge I believe, and if a solution is not found, in the long run, BW will die out, simply because there will be no one who will play it anymore...
I usually don't like long ass post but this one deserved it. The lack of structure you are talking about, I think was way more relevant before than now, let me give you an example, I started in 1999, 56k internet 20h/month, no decent ladder whatsoever, blizzard's ladder was on "fast" mode and totally swarmed with hackers, then in 2001 1.08 came out, great we have replays now, but problem, there was only a couple of them released every once in a while. I remember community jumping on new nada boxer yellow reps like it was gold. And those reps were the only decent "howto" you could find. If you were lucky, you would find other players real life at the nearest internet cafe but that's assuming you were not living in a god damn village and had money for it.
Years later, I think in 2004 wgtour ladder came out, great now that is starting to look like something. You had to find an opponent, create a game manually on their page, play the game, report the game uploading the replay.. Forget about launchers, antihacks or whatever. Keep in mind that already 6 years have passed since I had played my first game, a generation of top players already "retired" at that time and you could already read "bw is dead" blablabla, I mean same old shit.
So now let's skip to 2019, we have 24/7 first person world class players stream, well established websites where community can gather and post threads like you just did, petabytes of data including, vods (with english translation please...), replays, guides, plugins and many more things... Foreign tournament streams almost if not on a weekly basis where everyone is welcome to join. A remastered game with good graphics for sensitive minds, fucking auto match making and finally, 20 years of gameplay knowledge built by thousands of players...
So I really don't get the "lack of structure". What more do you want? Someone knocking at your door saying:
"Hi, I like starcraft, I am about the same level as you, I want to play at the same time as you, I have a clan with players just like you, we speak the same language as you, do you want to be our friends and join us?
pauline: My question to you is that do you want new blood to flow to BW or not? If yes then how should we do it? The things you wrote are not really relevant here. A lot has changed since the 2000s... There weren't so many games around so it is obvious that you were trying harder for the one you chose and seem to like. I could argue about these a lot but I don't think it would be useful somehow... Hence my question in the first line.
Regarding the more useful part of your post: yes there are all these resources but there is something called "searching a needle in a haystack". This may not be the best comparison but it is really hard to find the useful information at first. Ok there are streams, so? A newcomer should watch a guy play high level SC where he can't even follow what he is doing with his eye let alone his mind? It doesn't help. If he asks in the chat and he gets a useful reply then ok, but... I think you are missing the point that a newcomer in 2000 was totally different than today regarding a lot of things. You could say that "we don't want those people, they don't work hard enough, not BW-worthy" (as sponge-worthy in Seinfeld). Well then as many said here the players will die out.
But I agree with that the problem is not the lack of structure, it's more how it is organized. (Altough the main problem is that not many people start playing SC...)
On January 25 2019 07:35 bferi wrote: If yes then how should we do it?
This is what I've been wanting to see answered myself. Pebble and others in this thread and prior ones will say vague things like "we need more structure" but I don't see any feasible solutions presented. I'm sure if there was a really great idea, there would be some people willing to put in the effort, but just bemoaning the current state of affairs without going into detail as to how to fix the situation is pretty pointless IMO.
On January 25 2019 06:59 iFU.pauline wrote: So I really don't get the "lack of structure". What more do you want? Someone knocking at your door saying:
"Hi, I like starcraft, I am about the same level as you, I want to play at the same time as you, I have a clan with players just like you, we speak the same language as you, do you want to be our friends and join us?
When we were young the gaming landscape, community, etc, was all very different. I 100% honestly think this last joke you made should not be a joke. Why wouldn't it be great if it was exactly as you exemplified?
Recently I had a long holiday and decided to try to level up a little. It wasn't going very well but then I got closer to a couple of guys from the community that were very easy going and decided to altruistically help me, and that got me from high D to low B in <3 weeks. I think we should all pitch in with what we can to teach, be inviting, easy going, as much as we can, regardless of whether it was harder for us back then.
On January 25 2019 06:59 iFU.pauline wrote: So I really don't get the "lack of structure". What more do you want? Someone knocking at your door saying:
"Hi, I like starcraft, I am about the same level as you, I want to play at the same time as you, I have a clan with players just like you, we speak the same language as you, do you want to be our friends and join us?
When we were young the gaming landscape, community, etc, was all very different. I 100% honestly think this last joke you made should not be a joke. Why wouldn't it be great if it was exactly as you exemplified?
Recently I had a long holiday and decided to try to level up a little. It wasn't going very well but then I got closer to a couple of guys from the community that were very easy going and decided to altruistically help me, and that got me from high D to low B in <3 weeks. I think we should all pitch in with what we can to teach, be inviting, easy going, as much as we can, regardless of whether it was harder for us back then.
I don't think anyone here is arguing against helping people?
I'll keep this brief, because I've been working on a large article that'll post as a blog in a while.
I've been one of the few people who have ever consistently casted 'bad' games of BW. I've casted 'newbie tourneys' and generally - through attempted humor - tried to show people Starcraft outside of pro and even C+ play.
There are a lot of paradigm shifts that need to happen to make BW a 'large' game. It isn't impossible, but certainly improbable.
My main argumentation for the return of BW to a stable playerbase - several thousand, perhaps around the 10k mark (outside of korea) is that 'kids today' are already subdivided into various groups of gamer that already enjoy the mechanics that BW consists of. People don't balk at terrible UIs or shy away from terrible graphics (although RM cleaned things up). There is a whole 'retro scene' that just can't get enough of the 'old school hard core' as long as it is only pretending to be old. You also have Dark Souls, and a whole bunch of frustrating games that everyone can't seem to fellate enough on reddit.
Dark Souls sort of alleviates the issue with games like BW or Quake: the large amount of hidden skill that can't be taught through playing the game, but must come from outside sources. Quake has strafe jumping and even rocket jumping. BW has build orders and mechanical 'tricks'.
If people don't learn this hidden skill, then they start playing the game in '98 and you get games like the ones I'm casting.
I already wrote an article about this called 'Preventing the Starcraft Dark Age' - right before remastered came out. To jabber on about that topic a bit. And I think, now that Blizzard has come and gone, I'm disappointed (but not surprised in the least) that Blizzard didn't take this time and their endless budget to at least give a fucking link to a Day9 video in the fucking game. (Or a micro tutorial or 2 ... I know, utopian dreams).
I think right now our biggest adversary is Starcraft's legacy. The game is one of the most well know franchises on the planet - including SC2 - and everyone is too fucking scared to play it. Same with Quake. It's reputation is of pure hardcore. You don't play this game to have fun, you play it to get your ass beat for a decade before even having a grasp of just how much you suck. And it attracts only those types of people.
My Don Quixote quest has been largely hidden from the mainstream. I have 2k subs after 10 years. Mostly cuz I'm bad at what I do and I never cared much for self promotion - I also have a series of cult followers that kill random members of my fanbase each time I upload a video. But ... I have always shown that normal human beings also play Starcraft - and that not everyone who picks up the game needs to aspire to be Flash. We play FFAs so all the noobs can gang up on Jealous so he quits the channel again. They get to play the game, see all levels of low level SC (of which there are MANY) and have a good time with real people in a discord voice chat. And when they're done they're around in the channel, to talk about the game (and not cue up instantly for the next one).
Games like Quake were played by thousands on LANs - casually. Brood War was played casually! And we were OKAY WITH BEING BAD!
But now, with ranked matchmaking you are constantly put into competition with people. There is a winner, and a loser, and that's where the relationship ends. We didn't give a shit about ladder. We played some BW in our channels, and then played some UMS and then some FFA, or 3v3 or 2v2. BW was ALL we played, in various forms. And that community feeling is now gone.
"How can I improve." "I want to be C+ by next month!" "I'm grinding ladder."
Where is "I'm having fun."?
Isn't the basis of every sport that kids can play it in the schoolyard? The kid that starts crying on the football pitch because someone didn't give him a pass like De Bruyne - or someone didn't dunk it like LeBron (is that right?)... Nobody thought like that. So why do we have to do the builds like Flash? Let's first try to find people's natural level before they grind themselves into a burnout. Before they eventually realize they're forever stuck on C+ and leave forever.
There is an unhealthy split between casual and competitive, and in BW, casual died. In SC2 casual never existed. We were talking more about Ladder anxiety than about playing the game, because everything was recorded. And when you were burned out on ladder, you took a break.
I've been C- on a good day since 2003. And that is normal. I've been a mid level competitive player in every shooter I've ever touched, never good at BW. And that's a ... Maturity... That has mostly vanished from games today.
If BW is to ever grow again, we need to bring back the noobs. Casually. Let them roam in '98 and slowly bring them in. Will this be possible without Blizzard? Yes. But it will take a long time and a lot of motivated people. If Blizzard decides to grace us with another divine visitation after yet another decade of silence - that and a few thousand bucks, and some expansion on what Remastered is right now (not maintained by a skeleton crew) - a few twitch sponsorships - then things could go very fast indeed.
And because I've never been marketable - I will accept payment to never post a video again.
On January 25 2019 06:59 iFU.pauline wrote: So I really don't get the "lack of structure". What more do you want? Someone knocking at your door saying:
"Hi, I like starcraft, I am about the same level as you, I want to play at the same time as you, I have a clan with players just like you, we speak the same language as you, do you want to be our friends and join us?
When we were young the gaming landscape, community, etc, was all very different. I 100% honestly think this last joke you made should not be a joke. Why wouldn't it be great if it was exactly as you exemplified?
Recently I had a long holiday and decided to try to level up a little. It wasn't going very well but then I got closer to a couple of guys from the community that were very easy going and decided to altruistically help me, and that got me from high D to low B in <3 weeks. I think we should all pitch in with what we can to teach, be inviting, easy going, as much as we can, regardless of whether it was harder for us back then.
I don't think anyone here is arguing against helping people?
What I quoted seemed to be arguing against being as helpful as possible, but whatever, here to help not to argue I was thinking that since the Discord channel is pretty active we could just communicate here somewhere that the Discord channel is a good way of getting questions answered and getting some lightweight mentoring, etc. We're not doing that actively at the moment, right?
On January 25 2019 06:59 iFU.pauline wrote: So I really don't get the "lack of structure". What more do you want? Someone knocking at your door saying:
"Hi, I like starcraft, I am about the same level as you, I want to play at the same time as you, I have a clan with players just like you, we speak the same language as you, do you want to be our friends and join us?
When we were young the gaming landscape, community, etc, was all very different. I 100% honestly think this last joke you made should not be a joke. Why wouldn't it be great if it was exactly as you exemplified?
Recently I had a long holiday and decided to try to level up a little. It wasn't going very well but then I got closer to a couple of guys from the community that were very easy going and decided to altruistically help me, and that got me from high D to low B in <3 weeks. I think we should all pitch in with what we can to teach, be inviting, easy going, as much as we can, regardless of whether it was harder for us back then.
I don't think anyone here is arguing against helping people?
What I quoted seemed to be arguing against being as helpful as possible, but whatever, here to help not to argue I was thinking that since the Discord channel is pretty active we could just communicate here somewhere that the Discord channel is a good way of getting questions answered and getting some lightweight mentoring, etc. We're not doing that actively at the moment, right?
It happens daily if not hourly. Check the various strategy channels. Also happens in LMaster's Discord. And obviously the CPL Discord. There are many, many places where people can go and ask questions about the game, live, like a customer service chat room for a major company.
On January 25 2019 06:59 iFU.pauline wrote: So I really don't get the "lack of structure". What more do you want? Someone knocking at your door saying:
"Hi, I like starcraft, I am about the same level as you, I want to play at the same time as you, I have a clan with players just like you, we speak the same language as you, do you want to be our friends and join us?
When we were young the gaming landscape, community, etc, was all very different. I 100% honestly think this last joke you made should not be a joke. Why wouldn't it be great if it was exactly as you exemplified?
Recently I had a long holiday and decided to try to level up a little. It wasn't going very well but then I got closer to a couple of guys from the community that were very easy going and decided to altruistically help me, and that got me from high D to low B in <3 weeks. I think we should all pitch in with what we can to teach, be inviting, easy going, as much as we can, regardless of whether it was harder for us back then.
I don't think anyone here is arguing against helping people?
What I quoted seemed to be arguing against being as helpful as possible, but whatever, here to help not to argue I was thinking that since the Discord channel is pretty active we could just communicate here somewhere that the Discord channel is a good way of getting questions answered and getting some lightweight mentoring, etc. We're not doing that actively at the moment, right?
It happens daily if not hourly. Check the various strategy channels. Also happens in LMaster's Discord. And obviously the CPL Discord. There are many, many places where people can go and ask questions about the game, live, like a customer service chat room for a major company.
I mean if we actively communicate here on TL about the availability for questions and mentoring on Discord. I only discovered the Discord space 2 months ago.
On January 25 2019 07:55 Greth wrote: I'll keep this brief, because I've been working on a large article that'll post as a blog in a while.
I've been one of the few people who have ever consistently casted 'bad' games of BW. I've casted 'newbie tourneys' and generally - through attempted humor - tried to show people Starcraft outside of pro and even C+ play.
There are a lot of paradigm shifts that need to happen to make BW a 'large' game. It isn't impossible, but certainly improbable.
My main argumentation for the return of BW to a stable playerbase - several thousand, perhaps around the 10k mark (outside of korea) is that 'kids today' are already subdivided into various groups of gamer that already enjoy the mechanics that BW consists of. People don't balk at terrible UIs or shy away from terrible graphics (although RM cleaned things up). There is a whole 'retro scene' that just can't get enough of the 'old school hard core' as long as it is only pretending to be old. You also have Dark Souls, and a whole bunch of frustrating games that everyone can't seem to fellate enough on reddit.
Dark Souls sort of alleviates the issue with games like BW or Quake: the large amount of hidden skill that can't be taught through playing the game, but must come from outside sources. Quake has strafe jumping and even rocket jumping. BW has build orders and mechanical 'tricks'.
If people don't learn this hidden skill, then they start playing the game in '98 and you get games like the ones I'm casting.
I already wrote an article about this called 'Preventing the Starcraft Dark Age' - right before remastered came out. To jabber on about that topic a bit. And I think, now that Blizzard has come and gone, I'm disappointed (but not surprised in the least) that Blizzard didn't take this time and their endless budget to at least give a fucking link to a Day9 video in the fucking game. (Or a micro tutorial or 2 ... I know, utopian dreams).
I think right now our biggest adversary is Starcraft's legacy. The game is one of the most well know franchises on the planet - including SC2 - and everyone is too fucking scared to play it. Same with Quake. It's reputation is of pure hardcore. You don't play this game to have fun, you play it to get your ass beat for a decade before even having a grasp of just how much you suck. And it attracts only those types of people.
My Don Quixote quest has been largely hidden from the mainstream. I have 2k subs after 10 years. Mostly cuz I'm bad at what I do and I never cared much for self promotion - I also have a series of cult followers that kill random members of my fanbase each time I upload a video. But ... I have always shown that normal human beings also play Starcraft - and that not everyone who picks up the game needs to aspire to be Flash. We play FFAs so all the noobs can gang up on Jealous so he quits the channel again. They get to play the game, see all levels of low level SC (of which there are MANY) and have a good time with real people in a discord voice chat. And when they're done they're around in the channel, to talk about the game (and not cue up instantly for the next one).
Games like Quake were played by thousands on LANs - casually. Brood War was played casually! And we were OKAY WITH BEING BAD!
But now, with ranked matchmaking you are constantly put into competition with people. There is a winner, and a loser, and that's where the relationship ends. We didn't give a shit about ladder. We played some BW in our channels, and then played some UMS and then some FFA, or 3v3 or 2v2. BW was ALL we played, in various forms. And that community feeling is now gone.
"How can I improve." "I want to be C+ by next month!" "I'm grinding ladder."
Where is "I'm having fun."?
Isn't the basis of every sport that kids can play it in the schoolyard? The kid that starts crying on the football pitch because someone didn't give him a pass like De Bruyne - or someone didn't dunk it like LeBron (is that right?)... Nobody thought like that. So why do we have to do the builds like Flash? Let's first try to find people's natural level before they grind themselves into a burnout. Before they eventually realize they're forever stuck on C+ and leave forever.
There is an unhealthy split between casual and competitive, and in BW, casual died. In SC2 casual never existed. We were talking more about Ladder anxiety than about playing the game, because everything was recorded. And when you were burned out on ladder, you took a break.
I've been C- on a good day since 2003. And that is normal. I've been a mid level competitive player in every shooter I've ever touched, never good at BW. And that's a ... Maturity... That has mostly vanished from games today.
If BW is to ever grow again, we need to bring back the noobs. Casually. Let them roam in '98 and slowly bring them in. Will this be possible without Blizzard? Yes. But it will take a long time and a lot of motivated people. If Blizzard decides to grace us with another divine visitation after yet another decade of silence - that and a few thousand bucks, and some expansion on what Remastered is right now (not maintained by a skeleton crew) - a few twitch sponsorships - then things could go very fast indeed.
And because I've never been marketable - I will accept payment to never post a video again.
This is how.
The only other things to add is potentially have the lowest 2 leagues in ladder essentially be some sort of safe spaces, where better ranked players can't get into and won't play those players in ranked play. Potentially smaller, simmpler maps for those 2 leagues as well. I have an idea how to probably make both of those things work. We just might need some more newbs arounds first so theres's enough similarly skilled players around for them to play. If Blizzard merges the servers and gets lag-free games between regions common-place, and if the Afreeca streamers and Korean pros eventually move to twitch, that will advertise the game to so many more people, new players will be coming to BW, at least that's the next possible big wave.
On January 25 2019 07:55 Greth wrote: I'll keep this brief, because I've been working on a large article that'll post as a blog in a while.
I've been one of the few people who have ever consistently casted 'bad' games of BW. I've casted 'newbie tourneys' and generally - through attempted humor - tried to show people Starcraft outside of pro and even C+ play.
There are a lot of paradigm shifts that need to happen to make BW a 'large' game. It isn't impossible, but certainly improbable.
My main argumentation for the return of BW to a stable playerbase - several thousand, perhaps around the 10k mark (outside of korea) is that 'kids today' are already subdivided into various groups of gamer that already enjoy the mechanics that BW consists of. People don't balk at terrible UIs or shy away from terrible graphics (although RM cleaned things up). There is a whole 'retro scene' that just can't get enough of the 'old school hard core' as long as it is only pretending to be old. You also have Dark Souls, and a whole bunch of frustrating games that everyone can't seem to fellate enough on reddit.
Dark Souls sort of alleviates the issue with games like BW or Quake: the large amount of hidden skill that can't be taught through playing the game, but must come from outside sources. Quake has strafe jumping and even rocket jumping. BW has build orders and mechanical 'tricks'.
If people don't learn this hidden skill, then they start playing the game in '98 and you get games like the ones I'm casting.
I already wrote an article about this called 'Preventing the Starcraft Dark Age' - right before remastered came out. To jabber on about that topic a bit. And I think, now that Blizzard has come and gone, I'm disappointed (but not surprised in the least) that Blizzard didn't take this time and their endless budget to at least give a fucking link to a Day9 video in the fucking game. (Or a micro tutorial or 2 ... I know, utopian dreams).
I think right now our biggest adversary is Starcraft's legacy. The game is one of the most well know franchises on the planet - including SC2 - and everyone is too fucking scared to play it. Same with Quake. It's reputation is of pure hardcore. You don't play this game to have fun, you play it to get your ass beat for a decade before even having a grasp of just how much you suck. And it attracts only those types of people.
My Don Quixote quest has been largely hidden from the mainstream. I have 2k subs after 10 years. Mostly cuz I'm bad at what I do and I never cared much for self promotion - I also have a series of cult followers that kill random members of my fanbase each time I upload a video. But ... I have always shown that normal human beings also play Starcraft - and that not everyone who picks up the game needs to aspire to be Flash. We play FFAs so all the noobs can gang up on Jealous so he quits the channel again. They get to play the game, see all levels of low level SC (of which there are MANY) and have a good time with real people in a discord voice chat. And when they're done they're around in the channel, to talk about the game (and not cue up instantly for the next one).
Games like Quake were played by thousands on LANs - casually. Brood War was played casually! And we were OKAY WITH BEING BAD!
But now, with ranked matchmaking you are constantly put into competition with people. There is a winner, and a loser, and that's where the relationship ends. We didn't give a shit about ladder. We played some BW in our channels, and then played some UMS and then some FFA, or 3v3 or 2v2. BW was ALL we played, in various forms. And that community feeling is now gone.
"How can I improve." "I want to be C+ by next month!" "I'm grinding ladder."
Where is "I'm having fun."?
Isn't the basis of every sport that kids can play it in the schoolyard? The kid that starts crying on the football pitch because someone didn't give him a pass like De Bruyne - or someone didn't dunk it like LeBron (is that right?)... Nobody thought like that. So why do we have to do the builds like Flash? Let's first try to find people's natural level before they grind themselves into a burnout. Before they eventually realize they're forever stuck on C+ and leave forever.
There is an unhealthy split between casual and competitive, and in BW, casual died. In SC2 casual never existed. We were talking more about Ladder anxiety than about playing the game, because everything was recorded. And when you were burned out on ladder, you took a break.
I've been C- on a good day since 2003. And that is normal. I've been a mid level competitive player in every shooter I've ever touched, never good at BW. And that's a ... Maturity... That has mostly vanished from games today.
If BW is to ever grow again, we need to bring back the noobs. Casually. Let them roam in '98 and slowly bring them in. Will this be possible without Blizzard? Yes. But it will take a long time and a lot of motivated people. If Blizzard decides to grace us with another divine visitation after yet another decade of silence - that and a few thousand bucks, and some expansion on what Remastered is right now (not maintained by a skeleton crew) - a few twitch sponsorships - then things could go very fast indeed.
And because I've never been marketable - I will accept payment to never post a video again.
This is a great reflection on not just bw but life as a whole. Subscribed.
On January 25 2019 07:55 Greth wrote: But now, with ranked matchmaking you are constantly put into competition with people. There is a winner, and a loser, and that's where the relationship ends. We didn't give a shit about ladder. We played some BW in our channels, and then played some UMS and then some FFA, or 3v3 or 2v2. BW was ALL we played, in various forms. And that community feeling is now gone.
"How can I improve." "I want to be C+ by next month!" "I'm grinding ladder."
Where is "I'm having fun."?
This is an excellent point. Unranked matchmaking would possibly help. The current player pool is too low already though. I at least try to adopt a different mindset for ladder, and just use matchmaking to simply find games for fun.
On January 25 2019 07:55 Greth wrote: I'll keep this brief, because I've been working on a large article that'll post as a blog in a while.
I've been one of the few people who have ever consistently casted 'bad' games of BW. I've casted 'newbie tourneys' and generally - through attempted humor - tried to show people Starcraft outside of pro and even C+ play.
There are a lot of paradigm shifts that need to happen to make BW a 'large' game. It isn't impossible, but certainly improbable.
My main argumentation for the return of BW to a stable playerbase - several thousand, perhaps around the 10k mark (outside of korea) is that 'kids today' are already subdivided into various groups of gamer that already enjoy the mechanics that BW consists of. People don't balk at terrible UIs or shy away from terrible graphics (although RM cleaned things up). There is a whole 'retro scene' that just can't get enough of the 'old school hard core' as long as it is only pretending to be old. You also have Dark Souls, and a whole bunch of frustrating games that everyone can't seem to fellate enough on reddit.
Dark Souls sort of alleviates the issue with games like BW or Quake: the large amount of hidden skill that can't be taught through playing the game, but must come from outside sources. Quake has strafe jumping and even rocket jumping. BW has build orders and mechanical 'tricks'.
If people don't learn this hidden skill, then they start playing the game in '98 and you get games like the ones I'm casting.
I already wrote an article about this called 'Preventing the Starcraft Dark Age' - right before remastered came out. To jabber on about that topic a bit. And I think, now that Blizzard has come and gone, I'm disappointed (but not surprised in the least) that Blizzard didn't take this time and their endless budget to at least give a fucking link to a Day9 video in the fucking game. (Or a micro tutorial or 2 ... I know, utopian dreams).
I think right now our biggest adversary is Starcraft's legacy. The game is one of the most well know franchises on the planet - including SC2 - and everyone is too fucking scared to play it. Same with Quake. It's reputation is of pure hardcore. You don't play this game to have fun, you play it to get your ass beat for a decade before even having a grasp of just how much you suck. And it attracts only those types of people.
My Don Quixote quest has been largely hidden from the mainstream. I have 2k subs after 10 years. Mostly cuz I'm bad at what I do and I never cared much for self promotion - I also have a series of cult followers that kill random members of my fanbase each time I upload a video. But ... I have always shown that normal human beings also play Starcraft - and that not everyone who picks up the game needs to aspire to be Flash. We play FFAs so all the noobs can gang up on Jealous so he quits the channel again. They get to play the game, see all levels of low level SC (of which there are MANY) and have a good time with real people in a discord voice chat. And when they're done they're around in the channel, to talk about the game (and not cue up instantly for the next one).
Games like Quake were played by thousands on LANs - casually. Brood War was played casually! And we were OKAY WITH BEING BAD!
But now, with ranked matchmaking you are constantly put into competition with people. There is a winner, and a loser, and that's where the relationship ends. We didn't give a shit about ladder. We played some BW in our channels, and then played some UMS and then some FFA, or 3v3 or 2v2. BW was ALL we played, in various forms. And that community feeling is now gone.
"How can I improve." "I want to be C+ by next month!" "I'm grinding ladder."
Where is "I'm having fun."?
Isn't the basis of every sport that kids can play it in the schoolyard? The kid that starts crying on the football pitch because someone didn't give him a pass like De Bruyne - or someone didn't dunk it like LeBron (is that right?)... Nobody thought like that. So why do we have to do the builds like Flash? Let's first try to find people's natural level before they grind themselves into a burnout. Before they eventually realize they're forever stuck on C+ and leave forever.
There is an unhealthy split between casual and competitive, and in BW, casual died. In SC2 casual never existed. We were talking more about Ladder anxiety than about playing the game, because everything was recorded. And when you were burned out on ladder, you took a break.
I've been C- on a good day since 2003. And that is normal. I've been a mid level competitive player in every shooter I've ever touched, never good at BW. And that's a ... Maturity... That has mostly vanished from games today.
If BW is to ever grow again, we need to bring back the noobs. Casually. Let them roam in '98 and slowly bring them in. Will this be possible without Blizzard? Yes. But it will take a long time and a lot of motivated people. If Blizzard decides to grace us with another divine visitation after yet another decade of silence - that and a few thousand bucks, and some expansion on what Remastered is right now (not maintained by a skeleton crew) - a few twitch sponsorships - then things could go very fast indeed.
And because I've never been marketable - I will accept payment to never post a video again.
Good points. I sorta forgot how stressful ranked play is for most people. It works great for me because I can generally get put into a match within 90 seconds against someone that is 3/4 times pretty close to my skill level. And that's great for me because I don't care about my rank and I just want to play some good games and be able to not play on FS every match lol. But yeah blizzard really pushed ranked ladder matches back when SC2 came out and it really putoff huge chunks of casual players (although it seems that they've turned that around a bit with all of the co-op stuff in the last couple years?).
That's the hardest part about trying to get modern gamers into SC: they almost all have a mindset that they need to be very good at the game to have fun with it.
On January 25 2019 06:59 iFU.pauline wrote: So I really don't get the "lack of structure". What more do you want? Someone knocking at your door saying:
"Hi, I like starcraft, I am about the same level as you, I want to play at the same time as you, I have a clan with players just like you, we speak the same language as you, do you want to be our friends and join us?
When we were young the gaming landscape, community, etc, was all very different. I 100% honestly think this last joke you made should not be a joke. Why wouldn't it be great if it was exactly as you exemplified?
Recently I had a long holiday and decided to try to level up a little. It wasn't going very well but then I got closer to a couple of guys from the community that were very easy going and decided to altruistically help me, and that got me from high D to low B in <3 weeks. I think we should all pitch in with what we can to teach, be inviting, easy going, as much as we can, regardless of whether it was harder for us back then.
I don't think anyone here is arguing against helping people?
What I quoted seemed to be arguing against being as helpful as possible, but whatever, here to help not to argue I was thinking that since the Discord channel is pretty active we could just communicate here somewhere that the Discord channel is a good way of getting questions answered and getting some lightweight mentoring, etc. We're not doing that actively at the moment, right?
It happens daily if not hourly. Check the various strategy channels. Also happens in LMaster's Discord. And obviously the CPL Discord. There are many, many places where people can go and ask questions about the game, live, like a customer service chat room for a major company.
I mean if we actively communicate here on TL about the availability for questions and mentoring on Discord. I only discovered the Discord space 2 months ago.
I think there's too much survivorship bias when it comes time to analyze what does or does not work as an effective tool for new players. Some thrive in the atmosphere that Brood War has had in the years prior and other's don't.
Seems like everytime this post comes up it seems to shift into generational rants about how entitled players are these days. It's pretty awkward being at least somewhat older and having to read these entirely dismissive rants in response to concerns about the new player experience. I don't even understand where it comes from, most of the dudes in the CPL are late 20s/30s.
On January 25 2019 15:27 kaboombaby wrote: I think there's too much survivorship bias when it comes time to analyze what does or does not work as an effective tool for new players. Some thrive in the atmosphere that Brood War has had in the years prior and other's don't.
Seems like everytime this post comes up it seems to shift into generational rants about how entitled players are these days. It's pretty awkward being at least somewhat older and having to read these entirely dismissive rants in response to concerns about the new player experience. I don't even understand where it comes from, most of the dudes in the CPL are late 20s/30s.
Can you suggest some concrete solutions for what you think we should be doing for new players and to attract new players?
I think a Team ladder is really needed. Probably even 3on3 or 4on4. 1on1 duels isn't something casual players are interested in today. And it's many casual players you need, to find the odd guy who likes stick around and get good.
Look at Quake Champions. Yes, it's not a massive success but it has revived the hardcore franchise a bit even with strafe jumping etc. being mostly intact. Yes, it has those wonky heroes as a draw - complete with daily quests and in-game currency, but those are irrelevant for the most part anyway.
The thing is: there's actually a somewhat healthy casual playerbase that play TDM and Instagib (the money map version of Quake if you like to call it that). None of those players would even think about touching the 1on1 duel ranked ladder.
Another example: Rocket League. Granted it is designed as a team game in the first place, but the low rank casual 1on1 ladder is a very special place. It's a massive playersbase, so you'll find some games anyway but it's really awkward with janky games and skill levels all over the place - just like SC low rank casual games would look like. Most flock to 2on2 and 3on3.
I think back in the day you had UMS maps for those players in StarCraft. Of course those are still there, but today's players also want easy matchmaking. I think team matchmaking would help a lot! Of course it will also lead to frustration if you're a veteran that's getting matched with a casual team mate. It's a necessary evil though.
On January 25 2019 07:35 bferi wrote: There weren't so many games around so it is obvious that you were trying harder for the one you chose and seem to like. I could argue about these a lot but I don't think it would be useful somehow... Hence my question in the first line.
This had nothing to do with game count, btw you are talking about a period where you had the greatest hit in online gaming, bw, diablo, warcraft, wow, quake 3, cs and all derived mods, if you were looking for a reason to stop bw, trust me, they were tons of them.
On January 25 2019 07:35 bferi wrote: Regarding the more useful part of your post: yes there are all these resources but there is something called "searching a needle in a haystack". This may not be the best comparison but it is really hard to find the useful information at first.
Hard to find useful information? Are you serious? Right now anyone can click on liquipedia and find hundred of pages of well written guides with all possible build orders you could imagine and progamers vod to back them up.
On January 25 2019 07:35 bferi wrote: Ok there are streams, so? A newcomer should watch a guy play high level SC where he can't even follow what he is doing with his eye let alone his mind? It doesn't help. If he asks in the chat and he gets a useful reply then ok, but...
It doesn't help, WHAT? first person view has been the dream for a decade, in case you didn't notice, foreign level drastically improved when replays came out and even more with afreeca, If you think that this type of material doesn't help a newbie, then what would? A noname loser on a chat that will just tell you the exact damn thing you can find anywhere else?
On January 25 2019 07:35 bferi wrote: I think you are missing the point that a newcomer in 2000 was totally different than today regarding a lot of things. You could say that "we don't want those people, they don't work hard enough, not BW-worthy" (as sponge-worthy in Seinfeld). Well then as many said here the players will die out.
No, I don't think at all I am missing the point, you are talking about having more social interactions which is perfectly understandable. I will give you an other example that is again my own experience. I didn't spend 20 years non stop playing bw, I stopped end of 2005 and came back in 2009. Probably the worst part you could miss when it comes to gameplay and community. Before we were mostly scattered by countries and now it looks like everything became fully international. Players I knew? All gone. So I start grinding iccup with my low C- terran, then I start to get bored, I need a clan with people to interact with. So I look for a russian team, I like russian team they looked pretty durable in the past with good spirit. I find one that is about my level, I start doing clan war and socialize with other players and that is how it goes...
Being part of a community is about being proactive, this is not a generation thing. Everything is already here at the disposal of people who are willing to do something. You sound a bit hopeless frankly. Ultimately bw will die, yes, eventually we will all die too.
pauline: I think we shouldn't compare the number of games back in 2000 and today... It is obvious how many more "possibilities" there are today. And yes it has a great effect on what we are talking about.
I've already written about why it is hard to find information on the first page, I'm not going to repeat myself, only that part maybe I'm too dumb that's why I didn't find useful information at the beginning.
Streams: You just totally ignored what I said, but okay, I don't have enough energy to go into a pointless debate.
This is my last post regarding the debate with you because I think there is no point to continue. No hard feelings, glhf.
On January 25 2019 19:14 bferi wrote: pauline: I think we shouldn't compare the number of games back in 2000 and today... It is obvious how many more "possibilities" there are today. And yes it has a great effect on what we are talking about.
I've already written about why it is hard to find information on the first page, I'm not going to repeat myself, only that part maybe I'm too dumb that's why I didn't find useful information at the beginning.
Streams: You just totally ignored what I said, but okay, I don't have enough energy to go into a pointless debate.
This is my last post regarding the debate with you because I think there is no point to continue. No hard feelings, glhf.
I know what you said about streams and this is utter crap, which i did not discuss. indeed I am nostalgic but I also live in my time, there is no way I would like to go back in 2005 compare to what we have now. I am not the one who post thread like this and I make no judgement on new comers which you implied in your previous post. I don't consider myself as some kind of elite, I know by experience that I read tens of threads like this over 2 decades, which provided nothing useful aside of throwing negative vibes. Starcraft thrived over the years because of people being proactive, it never needed some kind of "social plans" to attract new players as if this was some kind of business company. If that ever worked out anyway...
I started playing SCBW in 2004 at the age of 32. I was a teacher and got interested in what the students are doing in computer classroom. The game was very popular in this school, it was difficult to find unoccupied computer during lesson breaks (and there was often a queue at the classroom door). I was able to observe the casual gaming sustainability - younger students had a chance to learn the game and beat and/or befriend those from higher school year. They were enjoying it regardless of the level of play. There was a common practice of playing 4vs4 Hunters (not BGH), arranging the team of better and worse players altogether so to make whole game balanced. We knew nothing about professionals. This is a first remark I want to make: casual gaming can keep the game alive, alone.
Then came 2011 and some of these people went to the other game. And stayed. They knew "it is still in progress", "there will be parts 2 and 3". They knew that RTS is fun and decided to devote their time to the hot title in the genre. This is my remark number two: new things are attractive. We are lost on this position unless we find a way to introduce new elements to the game. And since we are rather to sacrifice our dead bodies than to change anything in the game balance, I don't see a real solution to that.
I however did something else. Although I was, I am and I will always be a noob, I also am a teacher who discovered SCBW educational value (for those interested it involves reasoning with imperfect information and real-time decisionmaking, those two things being rather absent in school programmes). So I developed a school programme for teaching Starcraft and held it from 2012 to 2017 in secondary school. I had like 10-15 hours to teach absolute basics to the 14 year olds. You cannot imagine that. You have never seen "5CC before anything" build, one base maxing on 11 workers, or "Overlord rush" They had fun. Girls had fun as well, had to mention that. Some of these kids kept playing after the classes were finished. This is my remark number three, and most important one: any game is fun at school, and you can teach it. And this is a form of game promotion as well. Even if we all know Starcraft has ridiculously steep learning curve. For educational purposes it is better to keep it secret.
For a "healthy" game, the player base should have a pyramid structure with a broad "casual" bottom and constantly decreasing number of higher skilled players. In SCBW (or any "matured" game) the structure resembles rather a whirlgig toy. Imagine climbing the surface of pyramid as opposed to climbing the whirlgig. If anyone is to do that climbing, we should either assist on the most difficult FIRST part of the climb or attract enough casual players to eliminate the overhanging part.
...Or hide the facts. Separate the man from the boys, for boys good. Pretend Flash never existed. Make skill-based versions of Liquipedia. Let them play against similar skill. Do the "noob only" tourneys. Make new campaign resembling 20 years of metagame shift. And most importantly, never insist they HAVE TO be better. They only have to have fun.
On the side note: Greth I won't give you a dime, because I want you to keep making your videos forever.
On January 25 2019 06:59 iFU.pauline wrote: ... What more do you want? Someone knocking at your door saying:
"Hi, I like starcraft, I am about the same level as you, I want to play at the same time as you, I have a clan with players just like you, we speak the same language as you, do you want to be our friends and join us?
I also play zerg and I wouldn't mind if you knocked on my door. Do you happen to have a photo?
So I have modified the thread because now I understand better that instead of "lack of structure" its more what kind of structure; That being said I realise from reading through the whole thread and what people have posted is that I don' t know myself what a newcomer really needs to pick up brooder and play it... only my ideas, Greth made a really interesting point do about making it fun as opposing to improving at all costs.
Jealous I have already answered your question, and I think other people have indirectly answered it better than me - of course these are all opinions and you are entitled to yours too, I am sorry for not considering what you and L_master are doing for newcomers, I believe that to be an excellent thing and understand the effort, patience and time you both put into to it for no personal gain. That being said I suggest you change your attitude in this thread. Nobody here has or is trying to find a quick fix, this is not the kind of thing for that, but rather people are exposing their ideas, their personal experiences and discussing the topic, so if you have something to contribute on that side, otherwise I think you have made your point...
Also I am interesting in reading threads like this that have popped up in the past, can anyone Kindly provide a link if they know?
I guess I will share my experience as well; Around 2008 and 2009 I was playing some bw vs computer just for fun, really to run away from problems with my girlfriend. Then I found some commentated vods on youtube and started to follow the pro-league and first person streams... still I did not play online vs other players or make an account on TL, which I found but was more rather like a lurker. In 2011 I started to play online some ladder games vs other players and got discouraged, and left. A couple of months after I Found the DRTL and posted hoping some team would pick me up so I could start playing again, with maybe some new people that had my skill set, which would have been close to 0 at that point. I didn't really care, but what was important was to find people who where at that level, who struggled with the same issues I had in game, I mean I could not even beat the computer most of the times.... So eventually no one in the DRTL picked me up as it was packed with newcomers at that time, so I pm' d the organiser and they where very kind and put me into a team last minute. We started to have a lot of fun and where talking to each other daily, organising practice times, reviewing replays, joking and all sorts of good stuff. Without that time I do not think I would have developed the confidence to play online by my own in the coming years, as here in my country BW was never that popular, WOW was pretty big or FIFA, FPS, that kind of thing. A couple of friends would play Starcraft together but after I started playing online I was able to beat them 1vs2 regularly, and I was D+ on ladder. I had an inspiration from that teamleauge, because I always did a lot of sports, especially tennis, and would play competetevly 1vs1, so I started the DRIT, which was the same for the same skill level, and that was a lot of fun too and got me into organising tournaments, which is something I have done. The culmination of that was for me the Italian Esports Open event where I manage to be an admin for the tournament. It was hard, because on one side it felt like a dream come true, but on the other the organization was phenomenal, but most of the staff was Italian and did not play or understand bw that much. Even the mapool which I suggested to change and they did 2 weeks prior to the event. Something that anyone from here would have suggested. I got to meet FBH in person, and Draco, who by the way was always trying to get the players together and play. I remember this moment after the first day was over, where he got everyone together and all the pros where watching FBH ladder or playing against each other or watching some vods, everyone was having a good time. Also KogeT who I believed was co-casting on day2 with Sayle. But another thing made me sad: there where 200 seats and at any given time 40 or so where occupied. Also the Italian stream was always around 100 viewers. This made me wonder beyond the fact as I said that bw was never popular in Italy, that no new people where coming in and interested in BW.
For me personally, the amount of information available was what let me know that there was a competitive scene, but I did not understand any of it. Only when I was in the team and we played vs each other, I started to manage to follow a build order, understand concepts such as harassing, main yarding, timings, valued upgrades. And it was fun because everytime I played with my clan or in the league, it was 40-60 win rates, in between, so it was challenging. It not challenging when I played against an opponent that was much better or much worse than me. only depressing and it felt like a waste of time, winning or loosing.
Isn't the basis of every sport that kids can play it in the schoolyard? The kid that starts crying on the football pitch because someone didn't give him a pass like De Bruyne - or someone didn't dunk it like LeBron (is that right?)... Nobody thought like that. So why do we have to do the builds like Flash? Let's first try to find people's natural level before they grind themselves into a burnout. Before they eventually realize they're forever stuck on C+ and leave forever.
There is an unhealthy split between casual and competitive, and in BW, casual died. In SC2 casual never existed. We were talking more about Ladder anxiety than about playing the game, because everything was recorded. And when you were burned out on ladder, you took a break.
I've been C- on a good day since 2003. And that is normal. I've been a mid level competitive player in every shooter I've ever touched, never good at BW. And that's a ... Maturity... That has mostly vanished from games today.
I made a post about this in page 2 I think, but I agree with you. The ladder as is is a bad tool for bringing in new players, the maps are designed for and predicated around a play level that I dont think is capable for new players to attain. I dont think eddy and heartbreak ridge are exactly what you would call conducive to new players development, especially when you tandemize that with the huge swings from the match maker. In terms of completely casual, non ladder play, virtually everyone will only player hunters or bgh. I've tried hosting blizzard maps or other maps for years for ffa or 3v3 or whatever. Its rare to get anyone.
So short of changing the maps in ladder to be more newb friendly-- as ive suggested before, different maps for E or F ranks-- I dont see what can be done to encourage a more friendly casual atmosphere.
On January 26 2019 01:09 pebble444 wrote: For me personally, the amount of information available was what let me know that there was a competitive scene, but I did not understand any of it. Only when I was in the team and we played vs each other, I started to manage to follow a build order, understand concepts such as harassing, main yarding, timings, valued upgrades. And it was fun because everytime I played with my clan or in the league, it was 40-60 win rates, in between, so it was challenging. It not challenging when I played against an opponent that was much better or much worse than me. only depressing and it felt like a waste of time, winning or loosing.
THIS! This is how I finally started getting better at BW myself was consistent, dedicated practice partners that were around my skill level so that we easily traded wins and would review games on how you/he/she won/lost. This is what I feel we need again and CPL does a great job at it but I feel every time I attempt to help out new players - they get too frustrated and leave because they won't try and make friends, like a real attempt at making friends. They keep too competitive a mind set sometimes. I dunno. It's a fine line.
Someone above said that there needs to be team games like 2v2 for match making and I absolutely agree. Even unranked matchmaking might be a good idea for 1v1 and 2v2. Unfortunately with how things are turning over at Blizzard. I'm not optimistic on the possible outcome for that.
Also, people still play 1v1's via UMS as well - I can find games pretty easily if I make an game with obs slots open for other people to watch as well. Lots of people want to learn and they'll message me after for advice. So I'll start trying to point those people towards the CPL or LMaster's new player discord.
Yeah when I got into competitive BW back in 2008 there's no way I would have stuck to it if it weren't for my buddy at the time also getting into it and we were about the same skill level and mostly just played vs each other for a couple weeks until we felt confident enough to venture onto the ladder.
On January 25 2019 15:30 Jealous wrote: Can you suggest some concrete solutions for what you think we should be doing for new players and to attract new players?
Brood War's storied history and Blizzard brand power attract the new players, so I would think that what you need to do is retain them and keep them engaged.
Personally I think CPL preseason 3 was one of the most welcoming environments I've seen for postremaster starcraft, and it's awesome the role that you've had in fostering it. What I would suggest would be an attempt to prolong/recreate the period where the players are undivided and open to any kind of lateral practice. There's a natural cycle of activity/inactivity but CPL itself as a community in the actual season/postseason can be very closed off and inaccessible to people just wanting to show up and hop in/engage themselves. It just looks like a dead league from the outside when half the teams are using private discords and the other half are using hidden channels.
Now whether takes the form of an active environment like Lmaster's discord or a slightly more structured practice league that runs some sort of mini practice cycles for active participants (rather than quarterly+) is up for grabs but I don't think the very generously offered "teaching discord"s in the past have been grabby enough. Maybe a minicpl that runs more like a casual fun little pick up league informally would be a cute little practice. Team captains pick from people that show up that night, you practice for a little or maybe an evening and then play a match. Couple of nights total, week/two week/or monthly cycles. Camaraderie but without the long lockouts?
Unfortunately this really isn't my game to teach. With a very passive Blizzard presence this game kind of rests on the efforts of what those that can come up with.
To add on to the idea of concrete suggestions, I think a lot of Brood War practices have been very poorly structured in the past. I've watched what I would consider a reasonable amount of team practices for CPL and attended a few sporadic events, a very common theme was 10 people (multiple coaches) spectating a single match with a twitch stream
This is pretty ridiculous to consider. Dividing seasoned players/coaches/noobs to spectate and play multiple games by matchup would be much more effective and have less time wasted on irrelevant matchup spectating. I'm trying to imagine an entire tennis team sitting there watching one pair practice at a time, but that's more or less how BW practices tend to go.
On January 25 2019 23:42 pebble444 wrote: So I have modified the thread because now I understand better that instead of "lack of structure" its more what kind of structure; That being said I realise from reading through the whole thread and what people have posted is that I don' t know myself what a newcomer really needs to pick up brooder and play it... only my ideas, Greth made a really interesting point do about making it fun as opposing to improving at all costs.
Jealous I have already answered your question, and I think other people have indirectly answered it better than me - of course these are all opinions and you are entitled to yours too, I am sorry for not considering what you and L_master are doing for newcomers, I believe that to be an excellent thing and understand the effort, patience and time you both put into to it for no personal gain. That being said I suggest you change your attitude in this thread. Nobody here has or is trying to find a quick fix, this is not the kind of thing for that, but rather people are exposing their ideas, their personal experiences and discussing the topic, so if you have something to contribute on that side, otherwise I think you have made your point...
Also I am interesting in reading threads like this that have popped up in the past, can anyone Kindly provide a link if they know?
I'm still not understanding what more needs to be done to welcome newcomers that isn't being done right now, that's the only reason I can think of that you might have a problem with my "attitude." Meanwhile, people are responding to pauline's perfectly reasonable and logical assertion that one has to be proactive in order to improve in anything in this world with dismissive ambiguities.
And you're wrong. I'M trying to find immediate solutions. We were all newcomers to this scene at one point - some much more recently than others. Why is it so hard for them to pinpoint what they would have liked to have when they entered the scene? Why do we keep using nebulous terms like "structure" when so many extant Discords, threads, sites, etc. already fit into what a "structure" is? It's as if you want your lawn to be as "good" as your neighbors, but when I say "your lawn already has no weeds" you say "no not that kind of good," and if I say "your lawn is already very green," and you say "no not that kind of good," over and over, perhaps you will understand why it is frustrating to try to diagnose what you mean by "good" and what you're actually looking for and what your vision is of how it can be achieved. kaboombaby gave a great example of the kind of discourse I find to be much more productive when trying to assess the shortcomings of the current scene's appeal to new players.
This thread is pretty long and discusses the issues at length:
On January 25 2019 15:30 Jealous wrote: Can you suggest some concrete solutions for what you think we should be doing for new players and to attract new players?
Brood War's storied history and Blizzard brand power attract the new players, so I would think that what you need to do is retain them and keep them engaged.
Personally I think CPL preseason 3 was one of the most welcoming environments I've seen for postremaster starcraft, and it's awesome the role that you've had in fostering it. What I would suggest would be an attempt to prolong/recreate the period where the players are undivided and open to any kind of lateral practice. There's a natural cycle of activity/inactivity but CPL itself as a community in the actual season/postseason can be very closed off and inaccessible to people just wanting to show up and hop in/engage themselves. It just looks like a dead league from the outside when half the teams are using private discords and the other half are using hidden channels.
Now whether takes the form of an active environment like Lmaster's discord or a slightly more structured practice league that runs some sort of mini practice cycles for active participants (rather than quarterly+) is up for grabs but I don't think the very generously offered "teaching discord"s in the past have been grabby enough. Maybe a minicpl that runs more like a casual fun little pick up league informally would be a cute little practice. Team captains pick from people that show up that night, you practice for a little or maybe an evening and then play a match. Couple of nights total, week/two week/or monthly cycles. Camaraderie but without the long lockouts?
Unfortunately this really isn't my game to teach. With a very passive Blizzard presence this game kind of rests on the efforts of what those that can come up with.
On January 26 2019 02:25 kaboombaby wrote: To add on to the idea of concrete suggestions, I think a lot of Brood War practices have been very poorly structured in the past. I've watched what I would consider a reasonable amount of team practices for CPL and attended a few sporadic events, a very common theme was 10 people (multiple coaches) spectating a single match with a twitch stream
This is pretty ridiculous to consider. Dividing seasoned players/coaches/noobs to spectate and play multiple games by matchup would be much more effective and have less time wasted on irrelevant matchup spectating. I'm trying to imagine an entire tennis team sitting there watching one pair practice at a time, but that's more or less how BW practices tend to go.
So I’ve been kinda hyping up this miracle system that I came up with over the past few months over the past few pages, and I do think that it is much more tailored to the community at large, has potential for ergonomic growth, and is superior from the administrative and time-intensity perspectives. However, as I already said, all decisions have pros and cons. So, I will try to assess those after I present the full league outline. Without further ado:
1. No more teams. Instead of teams of players and their respective coaches, the entire CPL community (preferably connected through Discord, using the CN/I channel) will be one giant pool of players who can participate in the league. Instead of dedicated coaches, there will be a pool of coaches.
2. No more line-ups; one match-up per week, sign-ups for people wishing to practice that match-up. Each week we will have one match-up to play – PvZ, ZvT, PvT, Mirror1, PvZ, ZvT, PvT, Mirror2, so on and so forth. Players who wish to practice that match-up for that week will sign up, just for that week. Coaches who wish to coach that match-up for that week will sign up, just for that week.
3. Less skill discrepancy. When signing up to play a match-up, you and another player can be paired based on skill. If C level Protoss1, D level Protoss2, C level Zerg1, and D level Zerg2 sign up, then the administrators can just pair the C level players and the D level players if they wish.
4. Weekly rotation in practice partners. As there will be no distinct teams, players can play with and practice with whomever they want, but more importantly they will have the rest of the sign-ups available for that week. What this means in the example above is, P1 is facing Z1, P2 is facing Z2, and P1 and Z2 can be dedicated practice partners while P2 and Z1 are the same. Zerg Coach and Protoss Coach will be responsible only for coaching their race’s respective players but are of course encouraged to help anyone and everyone.
5. Seasons, matches, and the league in general are far more flexible. There can be no need for seasons at all. In my proposed pattern of MUs (PvZ, ZvT, PvT, PvP, PvZ, ZvT, PvT, TvT, PvZ, ZvT, PvT, ZvZ) there can be either 1 season (all 12 weeks), 3 seasons (first set of 4 or 3 MUs with the mirror being included or excluded), or 0 seasons (if there is no desire for any capstone). Matches can be Bo1 or Bo3 or Bo5 depending on how many people want to participate, for how many games they want to participate, etc. because of player autonomy. Map pool can also be very flexible and less administrator-dependent. The Coaches can participate in a showmatch of that match-up every week as well, just as a comparison for the players to see, and for extra hype/fun for the coaches.
6. Rankings and statistics are now purely individual. No one is limited or bolstered artificially by their teams. The statistics I would compile are Protoss, Zerg, and Terran winrates; MU-specific winrates; individual player winrates; coach winrates (the winrates of the players they back).
**Pros***
1. No teams means a bigger pool of players and resources to draw from on a more consistent basis – one player’s or coach’s absence will not affect the rest of the unit. This also means this league has a lot of ergonomic growth potential, in anticipation of SC:R hypetrain scrubs. 2. No line-ups means less organizational hassle, and no requirement of filling x slots per week. Sign-ups can be handled through various online services quite easily. This also means that players can be matched based on skill, again catering to both existing players and SC:R newcomers. 3. Weekly sign-ups means less commitment issues for players and coaches alike, something that greatly hampered many aspects of CPL for some players/teams/coaches. 4. One match-up per week means a much more focused practice and coaching atmosphere for that week, allowing for bursts of progress in targeted areas for players who need it most by coaches who feel most confident in that match-up. This extends to broadcasters as well; if my broadcasts have shown anything, is that there are many experienced players who are willing to cast low level matches as long as you reach out and coordinate with them. This means that we can have specialists come on for a specific match-up and give much more detailed advice than I could every week as a weak former C+ mostly-Protoss player. 5. Weekly rotation in practice partners and matches means people will get to play structured matches with a broad diversity of opponents, with the same targeted environment described in #4. 6. League flexibility benefits players because it makes it a much more interactive “do what you want” format, meaning you can decide which maps, how many games, etc. you play with your opponent. 7. Rankings and statistics will highlight players more naturally than they did in the teamleague, and will do so for coaches as well. This opens the doors for more frequent and more accurate “All-Star” type events, which can be held monthly, by-season, etc.
**Cons***
1. No teams means very little team unity and cohesion. I respect that some teams have grown quite close throughout CPL and this format would serve to hamper that from happening in the future. The caveat is that I don’t think many teams benefited from the team-based format nearly as much as Drag n’ Herb did, and thus may not be universally seen as a desired element. 2. Less commitment could deter some people who are “in it for the long haul” type people. If people can come and go as they please, that means that there may be inconsistency in work ethic and the availability of people who you could otherwise guilt into “doing their part.” 3. Rotating line-ups would mean that there will be at least one week every two weeks when a player of a certain main race can’t play. I don’t think this is a major issue, but it’s worth noting. 4. Greater flexibility in league format means less uniformity in results, and potentially requires more adaptation from the administrative team. However, I would hope that there would be more than two people running this, and with some people (coaches? Broadcasters?) willing to help out on the more minor things like Liquipedia and cast announcement posts. 5. Less definitive “end” and “beginning” to the league, potentially giving less of a “building to something greater than this” feeling. Goes along with #2. 6. Probably some other shit I’m missing.
Here’s a brief summary of the new format the way I explained it to L_Master via Discord, in case it makes more sense for people as a whole unit of text:
Each week we have one match-up to play. Each week we ask for sign-ups: who wants to play? So no having to fill a certain amount of slots for anyone, purely voluntary. And every week we will have sign-ups for coaches. "Who is free to coach this week?" Assign dedicated practice partners if possible: P1 practice partner with Z2, P2 practice partner with Z1. This way, no person ever has to sign up for more than a 1 week commitment. People can play a whole Bo3 or Bo5 series without it negatively affecting casting time duration, if casts are even desired. People get to practice with an opponent of similar skill level and be coached by a higher level player. Scores will be kept based on 3 distributions Protoss, Zerg, Terran scores. Coach individual scores (whose pupils do well). Individual scores for players. Allstars like event every so often. So one week, you could have like 5 protoss want to play 6 zergs and that's fine; one player can play twice, or one Zerg can play one coach, whatever. And other weeks you could have just 1 Terran and 1 Zerg, and that's fine too, no hassles. Never go more than 1 week without an opportunity to play for any race. That would make organization a lot easier too, and more of a community unit vibe instead of a team vibe; people using CN/I as a learning and growing channel instead of just organizational for reaching out to others. That would also pool coaching resources, so everyone can have the opportunity to have Dragon as a coach, or whoever is free that week for coaching. This is based on the things I learned this season.
Just to further clarify: It would work something like this: Sign-up as a Terran player wanting to play vs. Protoss by 8/12. Specific player match-ups announced 8/13. Game gets played before 8/20 whenever both players agree upon. Coach is assigned or chosen and coaches until then, and must also have signed up before 8/12.
As you can see in the poll on the thread, there was actually a lot of interest for this "new" system proposal, but the new leadership of CPL opted to go for a more conservative format (more similar to season 1) which by no means is a bad choice or bad system IMO. All I'm saying is that ideas of this nature have been floating around for years. You don't have to be a skilled player to follow the above steps, so I guess my question is why doesn't someone who is currently in CPL run something like this one the side? At least now we have a concrete suggestion that we can pool our efforts into.
EDIT: Also, when I was assistant coach in CPL, we were doing stuff like having 1 coach obsing 1 player, coach 2 obsing player 2, each coaching the other on voice chat. Stuff like that is a more efficient use of resources and is completely viable and I'm surprised if more people aren't doing that.
That’s a really good post jealous; let’s agree to disagree then, especially since we know each other since a long time; maybe me opening this thread was overkill, but discussing things is always good imo; keep finding solutions, I absolutely agree with that, peace
On January 26 2019 08:05 pebble444 wrote: That’s a really good post jealous; let’s agree to disagree then, especially since we know each other since a long time; maybe me opening this thread was overkill, but discussing things is always good imo; keep finding solutions, I absolutely agree with that, peace
I'm not even sure we disagree because I still don't understand what your position/suggestions are. I don't think this is a bad thread and I do think that discussions are valuable and can produce potentially beneficial outcomes, but that is impossible when we are only talking about nebulous terms and not with specifics (again, as what kaboombaby said). If anything, I would like to hear MORE about what people think is holding noobs back from joining the scene and getting good, but only as long as we are discussing concrete issues and solutions.
From my understanding, it seems like accessibility is the biggest issue that Pebble was pointing out. This was also mentioned by another new member who stated that it took him a lot of time to find the information that is freely available, aka things like discord channels, LP etc... One other thing is perception and it's something that Greth heavily touched on. BW is a rough game, but the game is extremely fun at all levels and that's something that we should focus on first and foremost instead of the "learn BO and copy x from y fpv stream and make sure to do z" etc... I was personally never a fan of all these practice this build 50x vs AI etc... A game is meant to be fun, not work unless the individual enjoys this kind of stuff then by all means, go for it!
On January 26 2019 09:27 BigFan wrote: From my understanding, it seems like accessibility is the biggest issue that Pebble was pointing out. This was also mentioned by another new member who stated that it took him a lot of time to find the information that is freely available, aka things like discord channels, LP etc... One other thing is perception and it's something that Greth heavily touched on. BW is a rough game, but the game is extremely fun at all levels and that's something that we should focus on first and foremost instead of the "learn BO and copy x from y fpv stream and make sure to do z" etc... I was personally never a fan of all these practice this build 50x vs AI etc... A game is meant to be fun, not work unless the individual enjoys this kind of stuff then by all means, go for it!
I think that all of the people that just want to play for fun... just play for fun. The issue is that the game is not that fun if you're getting shat on every game. This prompts people to ask "How do I get better?" and that is where practicing BOs, watching rep/VOD, finding resources, joining teams/clans comes in. I don't view the two populations as entirely separate, the "I want to get better" crowd often comes from the "I just wanna try this game out and play for fun" crowd. I don't think many people come into BW and immediately think to themselves "I want to get good at this game."
If accessibility is the issue, then I will reiterate my point and question from before:
1. Accessibility is better than it ever was before, and the lack of accessibility in the past didn't stop us from improving/getting involved.
2. What can we do to make the freely available and enormous library of information even more accessible?
From my perspective the community is doing enough but it is being hindered by blizzard and the limited resources they gave to the project.At the same time making many useful 3rd party tools obsolete like bwchart ,BW AI project and making custom mods impossible.
The most popular multi games now are team based.LOL, fortnite, dota 2, whatever else (I dont follow it much).So team matchmaking would be good.The most important thing however is improved AI & AI bots built into the game at differing skill levels.Blizzard needed to hire or allow to work remotely and send code the great community modders and programmers who made the addons for 1.16.1.It’s been a shame how blizzard have handled the remaster.
Problem with new blood is that young dudes dont even know that bw even exists. There is ppl saying "game is too hard" and "too old" but if there is no way to find about bw then the prior argument is non sensical (is that word?) Because they cant judge too old or too hard without even playing it.
12, 13, 14, 15 and 16 year olds might be interested in playing bw, specially outside of korea, because the skillcap needed to be a good player in non korean standards is not that high. (C-B level imo is pretty decent and can be archived in no more than 1 year of playing if you dedicate enough and know where to start. High B-A-S is about refinement and should take longer- or even shorter if you learn fast and play a lot- but that is a diffferent topic)
The main problem with getting young ppl into bw is not the game, that is fun by itself, bw could stand alone among most played games today in terms of fun. The main problem is expousure (is that a word?) Getting people to know that BW exists and that is fun. We as a community shoumd stop the stupid gospel of "OMFG BW SO HARD" and get going the gospel of "OMG BW SO FUN".
(I had some time so I think ended up with some drafting for my upcoming rant/article if you don't mind).
We can't forget that BW used to be a platform rather than a singular game. And I'm not only talking about Battle.net, which was one of the key factors in all of Blizzard's games lasting much longer than any other. Indeed, battle.net introduced a lot of people to chat culture, as IRC was unknown to 'kids those days'.
Starcraft birthed many styles of play, and through UMS it created the tower defence genre, and arguably the embryonic form of DOTA.
For a lot of us there was also no transition between Diablo, Warcraft and Starcraft. We walked from one game to the other, keeping our community intact between them.
Throughout all of this, 1v1 BW has always been the elite 'proper' version of the game. We knew this, and I always shied away from it as a player. I (and this might come to a shock) started as a 7v1 compstomp player, and then graduated to 4v4 Fastest (none of that new wave zero clutter, proper 'my base is minerals' Fastest). Around 2003 I dared stick my head into 2v2 LT and got my face beat in so hard I was shitting teeth for a fortnight (a harmless word in those days).
We understood and revered proper Starcraft. But it was always a fraction of the playerbase even then. I was also an avid UMS player because it was 'safer' than being confronted by the harsh reality of base management and expansions.
Most casuals that stuck their toes into the primordial ooze of competitive Starcraft got stuck in 8 player Hunters games. Having less than 20k minerals per patch was, for many, already hardcore enough. You weren't really having fun until you had 200 supply of carriers.
I legitimately stopped trying to play 1v1 for weeks because I would lose to scouting probes. And I still harbour an intense hatred for Protoss to this very day.
And so, us 'Starcrafters' would sing the praises of 1v1 as the Ultimate Sport, to glorify the Zergling rush and laugh at anyone who made a ghost.
The casuals bled away - ironically to types of games based on the derivatives of core Starcraft and Warcraft. Indeed, our audience is currently playing LoL and DotA. A boiled down micro battle that threw away the terrors of macro.
What remained was that true core of Starcraft players, the elite that dared venture into the realms of competitive play. And also that mouldy growth of FFA players that we nurtured back at the mausoleums of SC2GG. The forgotten culture of NoHunters and Battlereports.com (of which I was never anything more than a sycophant).
This is when that legacy of Starcraft became all that remained. And it no longer became a game you could play without going hardcore 'tryhard'. Once SC2 was released, it was that core that set the tone. Matchmaking had many options, but competition and progression of all kinds was put at the forefront. Everyone grinds on the ladder and if you're playing 'unranked' or simple UMS you were mostly wasting time - you have to get to Masters or everyone laughs at you. 'Platstrats' indeed.
So, what's the point of all this? It's either a sad truth or something to build on. The 'platform' that BW was needs to be revived. And I feel we need to trick the potential playerbase into reforming it.
I'm not opposed to the travesty of rebranding NHFFAs to Starcraft: Battle Royale. Create a whole set of 4v4 based BW and revive fastest, Hunters and 'proper' 4v4 as different stages of play. To accept them instead of shunning them.
It is from that expanded pool of players that aren't actually playing 'the game' that you eventually distil the cunning and the brave that filter through the proper game.
Does one have to go through those to get interested in the 'real brood war'. No, of course not. We have a functional inflow of people, and they filter through discord as is discussed here, and another filtration of that seeps through to the actual coaching community as a whole. But there is a lot of loss along the way as there is no safety-net. There is no 'default' to fall back on, no present casual community to buffer those that shy away or burn out.
Fastest and Hunters games were my fallback when I was healing from the reaming I got in 'proper Starcraft'. And right now, to the outside world and the collective consciousness of gaming 'Proper Starcraft' is all that remains. Fastest and compstomps, even hunters, is hardly even accepted as being part of the game.
My whole concept of NHFFA is outdated, as we parody a culture that no longer exists. I am become Ozymandias.
So, what if we rebrand all those facets. All those lesser forms, and market them as the return to Starcraft. Starcraft 'for the people'. Call it Casual Starcraft. Call it what you will. Get a sponsorship with Fisher Price or Duplo and tape off every pointy corner.
But one thing we all need to do is to stop announcing things and branding them as revivals. It is still here, it is already here, we are doing this now. No expectation, no 'we need people'. Hi, we're Starcraft and we have never stopped. And we stop waiting for Blizzard. We stop waiting for eSport money to fuck us in the ass when the whole organisation of it collapses the moment there is a downtick in viewership. Fuck that.
We make Remastered the new game it is to all these people that are older than BW. What you haven't heard of this new game? It's a mechanical skill based RTS. We don't need to hark back to the olden days. We have to stop referring to the history of BW. We have to go out and find ways to sell this game in ways Blizzard never did. What they should have done - Instead of putting a Kerrigan skin on fucking Windowmaker.
It was lauded and retweeted by Carmac himself because it was so unheard of. People sucking, not knowing how to play this giant of the gaming world, this hardcore elite superhuman gladiatorial masterpiece. How dare they! ... But ... It was fine? Everyone had ... Fun... Sure, the movement that we worked on for 2 years in the AFPS community - to rally behind QL and Reflex was severely shat upon by the horror that is QC. I won't digress, but it literally killed all hope in under a month. It was quite impressive.
So why can't we make this 'Soft' Starcraft happen? Remastered is not QC. It is not great, but ... We can work with it somewhat. And perhaps we can construct something that deserves a second glance from our obsidian deity.
Also, when SC2 was announced, everyone - including the smouldering casual underbelly of BW was laserfocused on making sure Blizzard didn't fuck up on the competitive angle. Indeed, some of our harping meant that it established the BW community as grizzled old men that threw shit at everything that was new - but we knew we were right. Further scaring away any 'damned kids' that would dare step on our lawn to play BW. To great dismay of those few of us that - in explaining the difference between the two games - got invariably thrown in with the zealots. And I was once one of the first optimists! With that laserfocus, nobody looked at making the game actually playable outside of competition. Indeed, Blizzard designed the game to be softer for the general public, eroding away that which made BW what it was. Ironically, with simpler concepts and hard counter units, combined with the QoL changes, I believe the game turned out to be much less forgiving and frustrating. The micro that saved so many noobs in the past was missing, so you macro and smash armies together in lower play. Hardly compelling. This is why I stopped casting SC2 vidreps, as newbie play was boring as all hell. It was always the same. A single attack and someone dies. GG. BW newbie games are amazing to watch, as there are so many factors that lead to failure. Anyway.
So, let's trick everyone into believing BW is a new game from an indie publisher and you can play it all the ways you like. Let them learn the game like I did, in stages. And if they don't like Fastest, or hunters (or maybe a map to replace hunters) then we can move them up and down to where they find comfort. And those we snag for good, we can introduce to the 'real game' - and perhaps the other way around too, but I doubt that will be as successful. Stepping down is always harder. It took me a decade to accept the reality of my limits.
None of this is easy. But there is a critical mass to strive for. Twitch will be very important in this, more than anything. Acting 'normal' around BW will be important.
There is a wishlist here, for IF Blizzard decides to pull RM out of the graveyard shift. And that would not only variable team based unranked ladders (cuz who gives a shit about SR in 4v4) - FFA (and yes, dare dream for NHFFA matching) and most importantly - Fastest and hunters style specific - though I shudder at the thought.
Community efforts would need to be visible in the games - the discords perhaps soft integrated. Newbie events alongside ASL. And no constant corporate interest shackling any official endorsement.
This is my dream. Let us reach even a fraction and I will be elated.
That was a long, long post Greth...but to be honest I agree with alot of it. From any source I see, anyone that is curious about starcraft 1 is greeted with a bunch of competetive shit, and while true, the cries of "play alot of games, expect to lose often, and grind those builds and macro"
That appeals to a small segment of people that really like working on hard things and don't mind losing, such as myself. It's a massive turn off for most. So they stay away. Now, BW 1:1 played properly is a beautiful thing, and it's why 99% of us are here posting on TL. TL needs to remain the hub for that, but if it had some more content in some manner emphasizing that games can and should be played for fun that wouldn't be bad.
The bigger question though is, where is this audience from BW coming, and how does one change an entire communities way of thinking. Even if many people won't play 1:1, I think almost all of them will dabble, and appreciate top level starcraft. That means more people watching streams, a more active TL/Reddit/etc., and a more active BNET. However, the welcoming side of BW that people need to see is not "play 1:1 and grind that skill up boyo", it needs to be "damn these progamers are fucking awesome, look at these ballers play; but also "hey you're new, here is a bunch of other new people to play with in this relaxed team games and UMS games".
What I don't have is how we get from where we are now at point A -> over to this point B that would be the new "feel" people get when they hear about, or read about, BW.
I'm going to essentially crosspost but I had another idea/recollection that reminds me of something we could ask for from Blizzard, at least:
Back on ICCup we had sGs., a noobie clan where people could join and then instead of checking their friends list with /f l, they could check their clan list with /c l and see what other people around their MMR were one to ask for games. If Blizzard offered more support for clans, this would help a clan like sGs become prominent again (afaik it was one of the largest clans ever on ICCup) so that people who are confirmed low tier players could contact one another easily. When you launch BW it could put you in "op sGs" instead of general. When you do /c m you could ask any player who is on for practice matches. That could definitely ease the pain for players who just joined BW multiplayer and might not know of TL/Liquipedia/Discord channels and find a niche in which they fit, simply by playing other people with "sGs" in their name and becoming friends with them and being invited into the clan.
On January 24 2019 15:53 pebble444 wrote: Its fair and square to say that getting new people into this game has been hard for the past decade...
However when I started playing we had tools and community support in the D ranks Teamleague; Honestly I do not think I would have started playing if it had not been for that; For Example the BSL is a great example of what zzzero and others are doing to support the foreign community at a high level, not to mention the entertainment it provides and the motivation for players to ladder, improve and compete. However that regards more high level play. It wasn't born yesterday either, I think remembering it was based around the Polish community which has always had a large player pool, so that was in their favour from the start, and they succeeded in building a community and eventually bringing it out available internationally.
I see invisible barriers that maybe people who have been involved in the community for so long don' t see... One of the things that I hear often as advice to newcomers who come to watch a stream and have played a couple of games is "go to Liquipedia" or "study a pros build and practice it" or "ladder it out" I think its all advice that is given with a good heart but actually terrible. The information available on Liquipedia is overwhelming for the beginner, even the beginners portal. Honestly I got lost in there. Studying a build requires prior knowledge of broodwar that a beginner simply does not have. And laddering is not a friendly place, and not a place where people play in a standard way.
What I think new people need is a place to meet and play against each other. When you play against someone of your same skill then I don' t think newcomers will find it "too hard" , they need to have personal interactions with people who can explain something as simple as how sending your miners to work in the beginning of the game works, which is a complicated process that involves insta-splitting. This comes second nature because we have all done it and seen it a million times, but imagine someone who sees it for the first time.
As I said now its not a problem, but it may be a problem, and a huge one in the future. Its a complicated scenario furthermore, because there are no examples of past e-sports that have been going on for so long and so no one can really know how things will turn out.
You cannot just drink from the well and if it never rains expect it to replenish itself, because it won' t
And it would be a shame because I think something we can all agree on is that most if not all of the people who do things for this community do it out of sheer love for the game, and this is something pretty unique to Starcraft
Again, the resources available now are better than they have ever been, and yet we all still managed to learn this game and get better and play it for years without them. What's changed?
As for DRTL and the like, as I said, CPL is a thing. FBW Discord has hundreds of people ready to answer questions and for your to practice with. LMaster and others have made tons of noobie-friendly content, and there is a newbie server. What more are you suggesting we as a community do???
For someone who stumbles upon TL or liquipedia, these discord servers are relatively hidden. It could be possible to advertise it in a static page, on tl or liquipedia. For example I had no idea what FBW Discord was until you mentioned it in a random forum post i happened to read.
On January 24 2019 15:53 pebble444 wrote: Its fair and square to say that getting new people into this game has been hard for the past decade...
However when I started playing we had tools and community support in the D ranks Teamleague; Honestly I do not think I would have started playing if it had not been for that; For Example the BSL is a great example of what zzzero and others are doing to support the foreign community at a high level, not to mention the entertainment it provides and the motivation for players to ladder, improve and compete. However that regards more high level play. It wasn't born yesterday either, I think remembering it was based around the Polish community which has always had a large player pool, so that was in their favour from the start, and they succeeded in building a community and eventually bringing it out available internationally.
I see invisible barriers that maybe people who have been involved in the community for so long don' t see... One of the things that I hear often as advice to newcomers who come to watch a stream and have played a couple of games is "go to Liquipedia" or "study a pros build and practice it" or "ladder it out" I think its all advice that is given with a good heart but actually terrible. The information available on Liquipedia is overwhelming for the beginner, even the beginners portal. Honestly I got lost in there. Studying a build requires prior knowledge of broodwar that a beginner simply does not have. And laddering is not a friendly place, and not a place where people play in a standard way.
What I think new people need is a place to meet and play against each other. When you play against someone of your same skill then I don' t think newcomers will find it "too hard" , they need to have personal interactions with people who can explain something as simple as how sending your miners to work in the beginning of the game works, which is a complicated process that involves insta-splitting. This comes second nature because we have all done it and seen it a million times, but imagine someone who sees it for the first time.
As I said now its not a problem, but it may be a problem, and a huge one in the future. Its a complicated scenario furthermore, because there are no examples of past e-sports that have been going on for so long and so no one can really know how things will turn out.
You cannot just drink from the well and if it never rains expect it to replenish itself, because it won' t
And it would be a shame because I think something we can all agree on is that most if not all of the people who do things for this community do it out of sheer love for the game, and this is something pretty unique to Starcraft
Again, the resources available now are better than they have ever been, and yet we all still managed to learn this game and get better and play it for years without them. What's changed?
As for DRTL and the like, as I said, CPL is a thing. FBW Discord has hundreds of people ready to answer questions and for your to practice with. LMaster and others have made tons of noobie-friendly content, and there is a newbie server. What more are you suggesting we as a community do???
For someone who stumbles upon TL or liquipedia, these discord servers are relatively hidden. It could be possible to advertise it in a static page, on tl or liquipedia. For example I had no idea what FBW Discord was until you mentioned it in a random forum post i happened to read.
I guess that's up to TL, then. Not much we can do about it as regular people who don't run TL or those Discords. I know for example that these Discords can be found on r/starcraft and r/broodwar sidebars.