It's fairly obvious that SC2 arcade would have been better off if the editor allowed simplicity in the Data Editor. Instead, people are scared off by it. I remember WC3 and first encountering the editor. I had no idea what triggers were, but I tweaked the Data Editor and fueled my craze from that.
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Member since 2010. Made the -The Thing- [Revival] game. Nostalgic of the WC3 days.
Problem is getting that crucial early feedback is virtually impossible. Ppl will only join page 1 maps and their bookmarks.
Not true! I go to populated games/chats/groups/clans and invite every motherfocker in the room to a party. Then I explain to them that they have to leave their current game if they want to test my map... 20% of them do.
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Member since 2010. Made the -The Thing- [Revival] game. Nostalgic of the WC3 days.
It's easy to blame failure on the players instead of the map.
I've yet to see a map that deserved to be on page 1, that wasn't already. Including a lot of my own.
Failure = not being popular map?
People used to make maps for fun.
I know popular maps will never go further in complexity, than like "rock paper scissors", but at least in W3 people played more complex maps....
Failure = not being popular map?
People used to make maps for fun.
I know popular maps will never go further in complexity, than like "rock paper scissors", but at least in W3 people played more complex maps....
In this context, I use the term "failure" to mean unpopular.
The thing with WC3 is that maps were indeed more complex, but the time required to learn them was low. Why? Hero maps were all the rage, and there were only 100-150 abilities which were generally just reused with different duration/damage/cooldown/graphics. Still, most players were already familiar with the abilities in wc3 which made learning fast.
Compare this to sc2. People are already familiar with the 50-60 sc2 units. Maps like Desert Strike are insanely popular because the time to learn it is near zero.
A complicated map needs to be easy to learn else it will fail. My point was that many (really, many, pretty much 100% of projects I see on sc2mapster) maps fall into this complexity trap, then blame players for not putting the time in to learning the map.
A bit. It depends on the tutorial itself. If it's a separate game from the actual game, it will not help. Only an interactive or a very brief tutorial will help.
Though I have to point out, that at least in W3 you could name your lobby like: "noobs only" and you had chance to learn the map with same skilled people. Many map is unpopular in SC2 (specially the more complex ones), because people will always loose the first games against pros and that discourage them from learning the map. Or in a coop map they get raged by the pros...
It's true that overcomplexity can scare off people but do you think a tutorial map could cover that?
In my opinion, no. Tutorials just aren't a thing anymore in gaming as a whole.
What is, is gated content. New players are given a very narrow scope in which they can play.
Eg. an fps where you're given the easiest gun to use, against the easiest enemies to kill.
Eg. an rts like sc2. Just think about the sc2 tech tree for a moment. For the first few minutes of the game, your hand is being held without you even realising it. You're given just enough minerals for a worker, and the first unit you are presented with has, basically, just a big "build worker" button. It starts you there, and guides you with near zero scope into your first attacking unit. Only then does it let go of your hand.
Mechanics are introduced one step at a time in modern games. People have come to expect this. Demonstrating one mechanic at a time, and giving a player enough time to learn that mechanic before moving onto the next as part of the game itself is, in my opinion, far superior (and modern) than a tutorial.
Am I the only one around here who simply thinks the issue is that everything has been done already? There's maybe 5 semi-unique maps in the Arcade of which only 3 or 4 are polished and replayable enough to keep people interested. The reason shit was succesful in StarCraft and WarCraft 3 was because literally every map that came out was based around a concept that was then completely new, or was a new (often better) incarnation of a map that had come out slightly earlier.
No. Another reason why StarCraft and WarCraft III maps were better, was because the voice-acting, sound effects and music were amazing. The default StarCraft II sounds are vomit inducing.
That's kind of true, it takes a lot of work to find stuff like sounds, doodads that feel right.
Even though you might be able to have more complex maps with a tutorial, complexity itself is not what you want in a map, you want depth.
It's easy to say that, but it's missing the point. A game, arcade or not, will have some level of complexity.
What we were discussing is how best to explain this complexity to the player. Something that, in my opinion, is a stumbling block for many arcade projects.
What the video is discussing is how best to make use of that complexity. A fine and proper goal, but that complexity still needs to be explained to the player.
Am I the only one around here who simply thinks the issue is that everything has been done already? There's maybe 5 semi-unique maps in the Arcade of which only 3 or 4 are polished and replayable enough to keep people interested. The reason shit was succesful in StarCraft and WarCraft 3 was because literally every map that came out was based around a concept that was then completely new, or was a new (often better) incarnation of a map that had come out slightly earlier.
I'm pretty sure it was down to the fact that you can pump out a fully functioning, well-terrained (as much as the engine would allow) and mechanically interesting wc3 map in literally a few hours. Wc3 maps were pumped out with such volume and frequency that it was inevitable that a sizable chunk of maps were fun.
This totally is not the case with sc2. In the time it takes to produce a single, good-quality sc2 hero unit, you could have produced a single, good-quality wc3 map.
I totally disagree about everything being "done already" too. Sc2 is a difficult platform to innovate on in comparison to wc3 purely due to the time-investment required to get a new concept functional. However, I also feel that unit spawn maps are a "genre" that absolutely has not fulfilled it's potential. Nearly every top map is a unit spawn map (including SquadTD here too, because I think it's more about making a proper unit spawn formation than a tower defence).
What if the lack of flexible assets is the problem? Think about it. How often was the Villager used in comparison to Colonists? Can anyone give me ONE SC2 map about the game of life? LoaP or Simple Life or Fantasy Life?
WC3 just needed one model, the Villager, and it spawned plenty of maps of a whole different genre.
And where are the custom models? It also drove people to make maps. I know it did for me.
Combine that with the fact that the Editor can get a bit daunting, and you have an editor not worth anything to you.
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Member since 2010. Made the -The Thing- [Revival] game. Nostalgic of the WC3 days.
Ok for those of you blaming the community (player base) for the problems we are having you are completely unreal at this point.
Even you have ever taken even basic economics you will have heard of this idea of "utility". Its qualitative rather than quantitative value.
And what are the customers after? The utility value of the game. Did they get it? Not all of them.
Really it still comes down to Blizzard. It has to be remembered that although there would have been a slump once the complexity of the editor and the realities of the player base slipped in, it wouldn't have caused nearly the same crash we have now if it weren't for Blizzard's disinterest. If you are going to be allocating blame, its the blue.
As to whether its really recovering? That also comes down to Blizzard. They have made some improvements. The data editor today wouldn't have exacted nearly the same English from me that the data editor of 3 years ago did. Granted some of the biggest additions were barely useful or even useless, and on top of it they still entirely miss the point about who they should have designed the data editor for (namely, no one currently looking at this thread).
Here is the kicker. Melee mapping has received a lot of attention. I don't recall anything previous but its a good bet that few mappers have received more official attention then that IronManSC guy. Is he only using 2% of the entire editor? Sure. Is really a "custom mapper?" No not really. Is he promoting the E-Sports scene? Yes.
You could almost call these market experiments. I mean Diablo 3. An attempt to further milk the player base. StarCraft 2 E-Sports. Another attempt to further milk the player base. Will Titan have a real money market? I think its a better than 50/50 chance.
However the catch about monetizing E-Sports is that, on average, the viewer is going to be someone who owns and actively plays the game.
The last WCS I watched, back in March or April I believe, the only add I saw was in Korean with English subtitles. They couldn't get a company in the Western Hemisphere to fill that add slot. Now either their sales staff is being lazy (possible) or companies have realized that StarCraft 2 is a write-off E-Sports wise. I mean the Razor commercials I used to see 2 years ago were not there. There were none of the nerd companies like Intel, Nvidia, AMD or other ones that tailor to the audience. And there is certainly not the major mile stone, advertising products like Old Spice, Axe and Pepsi that indicates serious competition for those time slots.
Blizzard failed to understand that anything that keeps players playing StarCraft 2 also keeps players watching their E-Sports. The custom mods we make fall into that category. Players who need a break or cannot succeed at a sufficient level in melee can take a break and still play the game, although kind of not. League of Legends, anyone can be reasonably good at that. MOBA is merely a cross between a real time strategy and a first person shooter. It has elements of both mixed in. And most certainly there is less to keep track of than with a real time strategy. MOBA also brought in a lot of players, mostly from the first person shooter genre that normally wouldn't touch over-head cameras with a 90-foot pole.
WarCraft 3 and StarCraft 1 had a very broad appeal because of the vast content. We keep hearing people bitch about players leaving because they want novelty. Well what do they think the arcade provides? No two maps are exactly the same. They may be mostly the same, but there may be a variation that fits someone's niche. If Blizzard wants their E-Sports scene to grow and actually be successful they need to keep players active and playing StarCraft 2.
They are making no move to do this. Because they still seem to fail to realize (judged by what they have done to date about the situation, namely next to nothing) the above bold line is the crux of the matter I don't think the arcade is reviving. I am seeing increased activity. It isn't enough to be called solid. It could drop at any time. Like it has always done in the last 2 years (see my last post).
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Its also perfect example for the shity playerbase:D
It's fairly obvious that SC2 arcade would have been better off if the editor allowed simplicity in the Data Editor. Instead, people are scared off by it. I remember WC3 and first encountering the editor. I had no idea what triggers were, but I tweaked the Data Editor and fueled my craze from that.
Member since 2010. Made the -The Thing- [Revival] game. Nostalgic of the WC3 days.
It's easy to blame failure on the players instead of the map.
I've yet to see a map that deserved to be on page 1, that wasn't already. Including a lot of my own.
Most "high quality" maps have extremely dumb mechanics or overcomplexity that just make them a chore to play.
@Eiviyn: Go
Problem is getting that crucial early feedback is virtually impossible. Ppl will only join page 1 maps and their bookmarks.
Not true! I go to populated games/chats/groups/clans and invite every motherfocker in the room to a party. Then I explain to them that they have to leave their current game if they want to test my map... 20% of them do.
Member since 2010. Made the -The Thing- [Revival] game. Nostalgic of the WC3 days.
Failure = not being popular map?
People used to make maps for fun.
I know popular maps will never go further in complexity, than like "rock paper scissors", but at least in W3 people played more complex maps....
As I know Dia blo was never on page 1.
I have to agree with that.
In this context, I use the term "failure" to mean unpopular.
The thing with WC3 is that maps were indeed more complex, but the time required to learn them was low. Why? Hero maps were all the rage, and there were only 100-150 abilities which were generally just reused with different duration/damage/cooldown/graphics. Still, most players were already familiar with the abilities in wc3 which made learning fast.
Compare this to sc2. People are already familiar with the 50-60 sc2 units. Maps like Desert Strike are insanely popular because the time to learn it is near zero.
A complicated map needs to be easy to learn else it will fail. My point was that many (really, many, pretty much 100% of projects I see on sc2mapster) maps fall into this complexity trap, then blame players for not putting the time in to learning the map.
@Eiviyn: Go
This. Approachability is the ONLY determining factor.
@Trieva: Go
A bit. It depends on the tutorial itself. If it's a separate game from the actual game, it will not help. Only an interactive or a very brief tutorial will help.
Member since 2010. Made the -The Thing- [Revival] game. Nostalgic of the WC3 days.
@Eiviyn: Go Yeah you are right.
Though I have to point out, that at least in W3 you could name your lobby like: "noobs only" and you had chance to learn the map with same skilled people. Many map is unpopular in SC2 (specially the more complex ones), because people will always loose the first games against pros and that discourage them from learning the map. Or in a coop map they get raged by the pros...
In my opinion, no. Tutorials just aren't a thing anymore in gaming as a whole.
What is, is gated content. New players are given a very narrow scope in which they can play.
Eg. an fps where you're given the easiest gun to use, against the easiest enemies to kill.
Eg. an rts like sc2. Just think about the sc2 tech tree for a moment. For the first few minutes of the game, your hand is being held without you even realising it. You're given just enough minerals for a worker, and the first unit you are presented with has, basically, just a big "build worker" button. It starts you there, and guides you with near zero scope into your first attacking unit. Only then does it let go of your hand.
Mechanics are introduced one step at a time in modern games. People have come to expect this. Demonstrating one mechanic at a time, and giving a player enough time to learn that mechanic before moving onto the next as part of the game itself is, in my opinion, far superior (and modern) than a tutorial.
Am I the only one around here who simply thinks the issue is that everything has been done already? There's maybe 5 semi-unique maps in the Arcade of which only 3 or 4 are polished and replayable enough to keep people interested. The reason shit was succesful in StarCraft and WarCraft 3 was because literally every map that came out was based around a concept that was then completely new, or was a new (often better) incarnation of a map that had come out slightly earlier.
@Mozared: Go
Lol no, silly overlord.
Member since 2010. Made the -The Thing- [Revival] game. Nostalgic of the WC3 days.
That's kind of true, it takes a lot of work to find stuff like sounds, doodads that feel right.
@Trieva: Go
@Eiviyn: Go
Even though you might be able to have more complex maps with a tutorial, complexity itself is not what you want in a map, you want depth.
@SheogorathSC: Go Interesting. I'm trying to imagine where my projects stand on that depth/complexity rate.
It's easy to say that, but it's missing the point. A game, arcade or not, will have some level of complexity.
What we were discussing is how best to explain this complexity to the player. Something that, in my opinion, is a stumbling block for many arcade projects.
What the video is discussing is how best to make use of that complexity. A fine and proper goal, but that complexity still needs to be explained to the player.
I'm pretty sure it was down to the fact that you can pump out a fully functioning, well-terrained (as much as the engine would allow) and mechanically interesting wc3 map in literally a few hours. Wc3 maps were pumped out with such volume and frequency that it was inevitable that a sizable chunk of maps were fun.
This totally is not the case with sc2. In the time it takes to produce a single, good-quality sc2 hero unit, you could have produced a single, good-quality wc3 map.
I totally disagree about everything being "done already" too. Sc2 is a difficult platform to innovate on in comparison to wc3 purely due to the time-investment required to get a new concept functional. However, I also feel that unit spawn maps are a "genre" that absolutely has not fulfilled it's potential. Nearly every top map is a unit spawn map (including SquadTD here too, because I think it's more about making a proper unit spawn formation than a tower defence).
I don't think the Arcade's lack of a large player base is due to the lack of mappers (due to the data editor being too complex).
I dislike using the Arcade but not because of the lack of maps. There are still plenty of playable maps that I haven't tried.
And I seriously doubt the reason many players stopped using the Arcade is because they ran out of maps to try out.
Or does anyone see a problem with that logic?
What if the lack of flexible assets is the problem? Think about it. How often was the Villager used in comparison to Colonists? Can anyone give me ONE SC2 map about the game of life? LoaP or Simple Life or Fantasy Life?
WC3 just needed one model, the Villager, and it spawned plenty of maps of a whole different genre.
And where are the custom models? It also drove people to make maps. I know it did for me.
Combine that with the fact that the Editor can get a bit daunting, and you have an editor not worth anything to you.
Member since 2010. Made the -The Thing- [Revival] game. Nostalgic of the WC3 days.
Ok for those of you blaming the community (player base) for the problems we are having you are completely unreal at this point.
Even you have ever taken even basic economics you will have heard of this idea of "utility". Its qualitative rather than quantitative value.
And what are the customers after? The utility value of the game. Did they get it? Not all of them.
Really it still comes down to Blizzard. It has to be remembered that although there would have been a slump once the complexity of the editor and the realities of the player base slipped in, it wouldn't have caused nearly the same crash we have now if it weren't for Blizzard's disinterest. If you are going to be allocating blame, its the blue.
As to whether its really recovering? That also comes down to Blizzard. They have made some improvements. The data editor today wouldn't have exacted nearly the same English from me that the data editor of 3 years ago did. Granted some of the biggest additions were barely useful or even useless, and on top of it they still entirely miss the point about who they should have designed the data editor for (namely, no one currently looking at this thread).
Here is the kicker. Melee mapping has received a lot of attention. I don't recall anything previous but its a good bet that few mappers have received more official attention then that IronManSC guy. Is he only using 2% of the entire editor? Sure. Is really a "custom mapper?" No not really. Is he promoting the E-Sports scene? Yes.
You could almost call these market experiments. I mean Diablo 3. An attempt to further milk the player base. StarCraft 2 E-Sports. Another attempt to further milk the player base. Will Titan have a real money market? I think its a better than 50/50 chance.
However the catch about monetizing E-Sports is that, on average, the viewer is going to be someone who owns and actively plays the game.
The last WCS I watched, back in March or April I believe, the only add I saw was in Korean with English subtitles. They couldn't get a company in the Western Hemisphere to fill that add slot. Now either their sales staff is being lazy (possible) or companies have realized that StarCraft 2 is a write-off E-Sports wise. I mean the Razor commercials I used to see 2 years ago were not there. There were none of the nerd companies like Intel, Nvidia, AMD or other ones that tailor to the audience. And there is certainly not the major mile stone, advertising products like Old Spice, Axe and Pepsi that indicates serious competition for those time slots.
Blizzard failed to understand that anything that keeps players playing StarCraft 2 also keeps players watching their E-Sports. The custom mods we make fall into that category. Players who need a break or cannot succeed at a sufficient level in melee can take a break and still play the game, although kind of not. League of Legends, anyone can be reasonably good at that. MOBA is merely a cross between a real time strategy and a first person shooter. It has elements of both mixed in. And most certainly there is less to keep track of than with a real time strategy. MOBA also brought in a lot of players, mostly from the first person shooter genre that normally wouldn't touch over-head cameras with a 90-foot pole.
WarCraft 3 and StarCraft 1 had a very broad appeal because of the vast content. We keep hearing people bitch about players leaving because they want novelty. Well what do they think the arcade provides? No two maps are exactly the same. They may be mostly the same, but there may be a variation that fits someone's niche. If Blizzard wants their E-Sports scene to grow and actually be successful they need to keep players active and playing StarCraft 2.
They are making no move to do this. Because they still seem to fail to realize (judged by what they have done to date about the situation, namely next to nothing) the above bold line is the crux of the matter I don't think the arcade is reviving. I am seeing increased activity. It isn't enough to be called solid. It could drop at any time. Like it has always done in the last 2 years (see my last post).