I liked that thread. Unfortunately it reminded me that sc2 was initially built to be an e-spots game instead of just fun game, like games are supposed to be. Come on blizz, be less mechanical and put more heart into what you do.
Even now, I don't feel like b-net is a place where I would hang out or even keep it alt-tabbed while doing other things. Depressing to think, really.
The post is so on point and cuts right to the core. Blizzard is or is going to hurt badly as they're severily damaged many of the things they had going for them ecpecially their reputation. Even from pure business aspects blizzard is failing; as you said sc2 was built to be an e-sports games and yet they are unable to even market it properly. They do not focus on a target market. If they actually decided to go down the e-sports road then the game should be focussed towards the pro level player with a system to make it easily for people to learn to get to that level if they wish. Instead they're half committing to each trying to statisfy the needs of noobs by making units easy in hots with qimmicks like amove in as many units as possible. There's no creativity, no real interest in developing new idea, but rather changing old systems and rely of their past success to follow them into the future without actually living to to what made the successful in the first place. The exec are clueless in looking for a quick money grab by trying to sell as many copies as possible by marketing to noobs instead of realizing where and how the profit care from long term business like the pros scene. And blizzard isn't getting the hint when pros players or map makers are openly, in public, telling them how idiotic they really are. I mean the 2 highly quality map makers that actually work for years to get their melee maps into the league which actually surpassed even blizzards own design have quit because of this bs. And then pros are going out called David Yim an idiot because instead of actually addressing any real issues at their core, he took the skilless way out and just made it easily by dumbing it down. Even talking to the blizzard devs team they are clueless about the company and barely recognize key names even in their own company. Like i've said already, Blizzard has gone so down hill i would pay more to have staff fired than i would for hots.
Well what can you say at this point. Sc2 was so bad when it came out I think its so hard to recover from the mistakes they have made. Maybe f2p would work...
With the open development of Hots you can pretty much see them struggle and ask community for advice, which is not a bad idea, but to me it looks like they have lost their direction...
Yep, I liked the thread too. Its also a bit sad, if you ask me. It reminds me of an article about nokia that I read (being half finnish and long time engineer and fan of nokia):
To sum it up for those not interested in reading: Nokias problems today were founded back in the ninties, when they created a management structure and internal competition, rather then competition with the outside world. Also, the product designers were "engineers" and "function developers", not "experience" developers. A senior manager actually said something like >>touchscreen phones is just a fluke, because they dont have buttons<<
All in all: the problem here is, according to me, that you have a big and clunky business with managerial problems, struggling under its own size and weight. Some commenters in the battle.net forum and on reddit are repeating the mantra that blizzard does not care. I don't think its about that. After all, people there want their salaries and probably want to keep them, especially with the world economy going down the drainer. Not caring and being unable to turn a clunky ship around is two different things.
When it comes to the open developement they are doing with HoTS, I think its really good for the pro players. Optimizing balance is very tricky and can only be done by trial and error. What seems cool from a game development point of view (like my dream of baneling overlords) is more or less a game-breaker in competitive environment. But for people playing the game for its custom content, its boring. The "new" stuff slowly pours out on the internet like digital porridge and reduces the wow factor.
One way do improve the situation is to let each tournament run on its own mod, like custom units and custom stats of the units. This could make the games more interesting to watch. Then the tournaments would get a "theme" of sorts. It would also make the life of the game designers easier. Less angry "op" this and "up" that comments. Then they could just focus on creating content.
Who's going to participate in so many variations of a tournament though? Once you've mastered one tournament's variation of gameplay, there's no way you can be just as competant in the next tournament, which would severely pigeon-hole you as a pro-tourney player.
I'm sure it'd be fun, but also much less competitive and confusing to watch. The only way I can see it working is if the tourney was completely non-competitive like the Red Bull 'Trials of the Xel'naga'.
Latest news about the reddit fuzz: SOTG Blizzard has agreed to talk with a group...
So, does this community have anything to add to this? Could be a great opportunity to call for some changes.
Unfortunately the group is only interested in the competitive Starcraft scene. Even though I know they have good intentions they probably won't even mention the UMS problems let alone push for any changes. I don't think this group will be able to make any worthwhile changes for the "casual gamer" which is needed to keep a strong Starcraft 2 scene.
@Imperfect1987: Go
I do think they need to focus on pro gamers, thats what brings a game forward...
Also UMS is just a bonus to starcraft 2, their main revenue will always be the original game if they dont fuck it up.
I think people expected too much from SC2. SC1 was revolutionary, for example there was no pro gaming before SC1 in rts games...
Edit:
They will need to make the game f2p or the competition will destroy it.
@Imperfect1987: Go I do think they need to focus on pro gamers, thats what brings a game forward...
Also UMS is just a bonus to starcraft 2, their main revenue will always be the original game if they dont fuck it up.
I think people expected too much from SC2. SC1 was revolutionary, for example there was no pro gaming before SC1 in rts games...
Edit:
They will need to make the game f2p or the competition will destroy it.
I'm not against Blizzard making changes for pro gamers but that is only a small part of the problem. Besides they have been focusing mainly on the pros the past 2 years and it hasn't grown the scene at all. The initial hype has died and a lot of people have moved on. If Blizzard allowed more casual friendly options and a better custom game system we would have a lot more players still playing and a lot more hype for HoTS. Anyways the casual gamers are the driving force of the gaming market in general. Success of a game is not winning the hardcore players it is by winning the casuals. Even games like LoL make most of their profits off of casuals who like to spend a few bucks here and there for vanity skins and such. It's in Blizzard's best interest to focus on the custom games because good custom games and a good system for playing/socializing/finding these great games will not only bring a lot more players but they can potentially make a lot of extra profit from it. A big part of the success for SC:BW and WC3 is the custom games scene. A lot of people just played them for the custom games especially for Dota. Blizzard missed the ball by not making Dota 2 a few years ago when they could have after the huge Dota success in WC3. Now Valve and Riot have the MOBA marketplace monopolized and Blizzard is going for Blizzard All-Stars which seems too little too late to make a big splash. So even though helping the pros is a good thing it's actually a very low priority in the big scheme of things. Also for us here at SC2Mapster will likely get no benefits at all from this group unfortunately.
Edit - I agree that going free to play is a good idea for Blizzard. I think this realize this too but I guess we shall see if they will go this route or not in the future. Perhaps they plan to open up the Custom Games Marketplace before making it free to play or line them up at the same time.
If you had read the post, you'd see that it isn't about the pro-scene but the state of battle.net in general
Quote:
EDIT: Seems as if some people have the wrong idea. This is NOT an exclusive balance meeting. This is because of discontent expressed with Bnet 2.0, as well as crucial changes to the HotS design philosophy. In general, the SC2 community is not angry about balance(save a few whiners), but the actual state of the game, the UI, the features of it, the interactions, the nature, everything surrounding this beautiful game that we all love.
do we actually still have things to whine about in custom map scene?
I think arcade is pretty much fine. With the current community it does not need to be better. If there was lke 10x more players maybe then we would require more gategorizing and clearer sections to find things.
They should just aim to maximize the social experience, which stll is not as good as possible, allthou decent.
It just not a stellar experience we wanted. Iv had fun for 2 years, but now its getting a bit boring and hots practically adds nothing to the multiplayer experience (which is a huge deal)
blizzard dota could change things too I guess. If we would get like 11 million players like LoL has :D
So here is my idea of how to ake the arcade system more interesting: open it up to the web! This is a post on the eu.battle.net forum, but perhaps this is a better place to put it. Nobody reads those threads anyway :)
Introduction
The web is going through a lot of interesting changes right now. Html 5, with its better cross browser support, enables all kinds of cool features. Some custom client based software have already implemented this. My best example is spotify.
Spotify as example
Their first web-integrated solution made it possible to create a link inside the program. This url could be embedded into normal html. When clicked, the user ends up on a spotify.se/com page with a new link. When the user clicks this the Spotify client starts and immediately jumps into playing the song. This functionality has grown. Now you can play songs directly in the browser, and navigate through playlists and such.
The web is social by default.
The web is hacking-friendly (both in the bad way but also in a good way)
The web would call in casual players.
Most people who have experienced watching games
Maps would more easily go viral. You could send a bunch of links to maps to friends over email/facebook.
Outline
The game lobby is available in a blizzard controlled browser environment, such as battle.net.
All games should be channeled through blizzard servers.
All maps should still be uploaded to and controlled by blizzard.
On game start, instead of loading a bankfile from the local client, bankfiles would be loaded from an external server. * When game ends, the bankfile would be sent to the external server. In this way, the campaign/ladder data would be synced with the external server, which could do all sorts of transactions/calculations/editing of the profiles.
By launching maps from an external source, and binding them together with a server-side bankfile, blizzard would not be the bottle-neck in the developement of custom games.
By storing bankfiles on a external server, blizzard would not have to care about server storage.
Since games would be "launched" from and "stored" on external servers, the 20 map limit would not matter. You could scale up projects infinitely. Lets say you would like to make a system with 40 planets, that players could visit with their hero. In the current system, this is impossible due to the 20 maps/mods limit. If I as a mapmaker creates another account and start to upload maps there, the bankfiles used in the first profile would not be accessible. This would circumvent this limitation.
Crowdsourcing of the starcraft universe would be possible.
LAN support has been highly sought after. I know its impossible due to piracy and such. But by being able to launch games through your browser, you could create a fake-lan environment. The localhost would manage the game statistics of the players, as well as the lobby management etc. When players wants to launch a game using localhost, some json is spushed to the blizzard server, which then forces the game client to launch a specific game, using the settings that the localhost wanted. When the game ends, the localhost pulls data from the server.
If all games are given an game-id (hex code), then it would be possible to refer to them using urls and such. It would open up interesting statistics possibilities for third parties.
Players would have to set an specific ip adress that should allow the game to force game starts. Perhaps some kind of password or passphrase would be good, to make sure that its really the player that wants to launch the game. You dont want the random angry dude that you pulverized in an earlier game to interfer.
Issues
Well... there are plenty of problems with a solution like this. Overloading the server using botnets might limit the service for everyone. The forced startup of games would be another. I mean, it would be really irritating if someone is hijacking your account while you are in some game. Problems like these are mostly logical/programming problems.
The overall idea is - if you ask me - still pretty solid.
It would require a legal clarification about what a third party is allowed to charge for. Is it allowed to charche for in game buffs? Is it allowed to charge for access to the custom game? What happens if somebody else is using my player account on the third party (playerHandle) so that I cant use it?
Earning money on this
Every player would have to buy the sc2 game to be able to play these custom games. Thus nothing in the core business model changes.
Loosing money on this
Advertisment money would go to the map-makers. As well as cash for ingame content. A line would have to be drawn in terms of how much income these custom games would generate, as well as what kind of content these custom systems should be allowed to cater. Where blizzard would draw the line is up to the lawyers and bussiness modellers. Some cash would leak out for sure. If you ask me, custom map makers have shown that they can put quite a lot of effort into their maps. But they are never rewarded like pro-players are. They just get angry/happy messages when the maps (don't) work. If you want more professional content in the arcade part: money will have to be allowed to flow in the direction of map-makers. Either by scholarships/ingame transactions/donation system or advertisment. I think the last 2 are the most viable options.
Some api functions
I have never developed an api and have only limited knowledge of json and such, but I like hacking google maps and other things. With that said: here are some suggestions
Push function: Launch game for players [p1, p2, p3, p4] on map [m1] with bankfiles [b1, b2, b3, b4]. Returns GameID
Pull function: Get game data for GameID
if game failed to start (a player has not set his profile to force-game-launch mode) then return the thrown error and [gameError] flag.
if the game is still onging and no player has left: return [gameIsOn] flag
if the game is still ongoing but one or more players left: return [b1, b2] where b1 and b2 are the bankfiles which the players had when the game ended for them.
if the game is done and noone is playing anymore: return [gameOver] flag and [b1, b2, b3, b4]
Finally: to not overfill the blizzard servers with crap: auto delete all bankfiles that is generated after 1 hour or so. Taking care of them should be the mapmakers/servers responsibility.
I never understand these threads. I don't know about prize pools, but last I checked StarCraft 2 was on a Dutch version of the American Daily show with two people showing the presentator how much the idea of Barcrafts have been on the rise. Also last I checked Gangnam style was made popular through the StarCraft community and played on the freaking radio daily. Also last I checked Blizzard attempted to have employees contact and co-operate with mappers and pro-gamers alike to improve the balance and interface of the game. Also last I checked Blizzard introduced the arcade as a response to the complaints of mappers with the original system.
Yes, there's a lack of LAN and some different bugs, but I'm kind of at a point where I'm wondering wtf people want from Blizzard. Criticism is not obliged to come with solutions, but I will ask you for some here: what DO you want from Blizzard? What more can they do that would satisfy you as a community member? I'm actually having a hard time coming up with stuff, keeping the previous paragraph in mind. I'm seriously glad I'm not Blizzard right now; while I agreed with a lot of the criticism uttered during the WarCraft 3 and WoW times, it now seems more to me that the community has turned into a collection of whiny little teenagers rather than people with actual insight into the state of the game and legit criticism.
FYI this isn't actually happening, I talked to someone about it, because I agree, a mapper would have been nice to have. But yeah, this isn't happening, someone made assumptions and blew it out of proportion. Bitter is simply e-mailing the community team some feedback, just like anyone can do through the forums.
Here is a thread thats critical about sc2. If someone is interested.
Reddit thread
I liked that thread. Unfortunately it reminded me that sc2 was initially built to be an e-spots game instead of just fun game, like games are supposed to be. Come on blizz, be less mechanical and put more heart into what you do.
Even now, I don't feel like b-net is a place where I would hang out or even keep it alt-tabbed while doing other things. Depressing to think, really.
The post is so on point and cuts right to the core. Blizzard is or is going to hurt badly as they're severily damaged many of the things they had going for them ecpecially their reputation. Even from pure business aspects blizzard is failing; as you said sc2 was built to be an e-sports games and yet they are unable to even market it properly. They do not focus on a target market. If they actually decided to go down the e-sports road then the game should be focussed towards the pro level player with a system to make it easily for people to learn to get to that level if they wish. Instead they're half committing to each trying to statisfy the needs of noobs by making units easy in hots with qimmicks like amove in as many units as possible. There's no creativity, no real interest in developing new idea, but rather changing old systems and rely of their past success to follow them into the future without actually living to to what made the successful in the first place. The exec are clueless in looking for a quick money grab by trying to sell as many copies as possible by marketing to noobs instead of realizing where and how the profit care from long term business like the pros scene. And blizzard isn't getting the hint when pros players or map makers are openly, in public, telling them how idiotic they really are. I mean the 2 highly quality map makers that actually work for years to get their melee maps into the league which actually surpassed even blizzards own design have quit because of this bs. And then pros are going out called David Yim an idiot because instead of actually addressing any real issues at their core, he took the skilless way out and just made it easily by dumbing it down. Even talking to the blizzard devs team they are clueless about the company and barely recognize key names even in their own company. Like i've said already, Blizzard has gone so down hill i would pay more to have staff fired than i would for hots.
Well what can you say at this point. Sc2 was so bad when it came out I think its so hard to recover from the mistakes they have made. Maybe f2p would work...
With the open development of Hots you can pretty much see them struggle and ask community for advice, which is not a bad idea, but to me it looks like they have lost their direction...
in before hype train...choo.chooo...
Yep, I liked the thread too. Its also a bit sad, if you ask me. It reminds me of an article about nokia that I read (being half finnish and long time engineer and fan of nokia):
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
To sum it up for those not interested in reading: Nokias problems today were founded back in the ninties, when they created a management structure and internal competition, rather then competition with the outside world. Also, the product designers were "engineers" and "function developers", not "experience" developers. A senior manager actually said something like >>touchscreen phones is just a fluke, because they dont have buttons<<
Another interesting read (about Microsoft):
How Microsoft lost its mojo
All in all: the problem here is, according to me, that you have a big and clunky business with managerial problems, struggling under its own size and weight. Some commenters in the battle.net forum and on reddit are repeating the mantra that blizzard does not care. I don't think its about that. After all, people there want their salaries and probably want to keep them, especially with the world economy going down the drainer. Not caring and being unable to turn a clunky ship around is two different things.
Also, I wrote some comments in eu forum:
Thread 1
Thread 2
When it comes to the open developement they are doing with HoTS, I think its really good for the pro players. Optimizing balance is very tricky and can only be done by trial and error. What seems cool from a game development point of view (like my dream of baneling overlords) is more or less a game-breaker in competitive environment. But for people playing the game for its custom content, its boring. The "new" stuff slowly pours out on the internet like digital porridge and reduces the wow factor.
One way do improve the situation is to let each tournament run on its own mod, like custom units and custom stats of the units. This could make the games more interesting to watch. Then the tournaments would get a "theme" of sorts. It would also make the life of the game designers easier. Less angry "op" this and "up" that comments. Then they could just focus on creating content.
Who's going to participate in so many variations of a tournament though? Once you've mastered one tournament's variation of gameplay, there's no way you can be just as competant in the next tournament, which would severely pigeon-hole you as a pro-tourney player.
I'm sure it'd be fun, but also much less competitive and confusing to watch. The only way I can see it working is if the tourney was completely non-competitive like the Red Bull 'Trials of the Xel'naga'.
@Triceron: Go
Yes... you're right :) it was just something that plopped up in my head.
Latest news about the reddit fuzz: SOTG Blizzard has agreed to talk with a group...
So, does this community have anything to add to this? Could be a great opportunity to call for some changes.
Unfortunately the group is only interested in the competitive Starcraft scene. Even though I know they have good intentions they probably won't even mention the UMS problems let alone push for any changes. I don't think this group will be able to make any worthwhile changes for the "casual gamer" which is needed to keep a strong Starcraft 2 scene.
@Imperfect1987: Go I do think they need to focus on pro gamers, thats what brings a game forward...
Also UMS is just a bonus to starcraft 2, their main revenue will always be the original game if they dont fuck it up.
I think people expected too much from SC2. SC1 was revolutionary, for example there was no pro gaming before SC1 in rts games...
Edit:
They will need to make the game f2p or the competition will destroy it.
I'm not against Blizzard making changes for pro gamers but that is only a small part of the problem. Besides they have been focusing mainly on the pros the past 2 years and it hasn't grown the scene at all. The initial hype has died and a lot of people have moved on. If Blizzard allowed more casual friendly options and a better custom game system we would have a lot more players still playing and a lot more hype for HoTS. Anyways the casual gamers are the driving force of the gaming market in general. Success of a game is not winning the hardcore players it is by winning the casuals. Even games like LoL make most of their profits off of casuals who like to spend a few bucks here and there for vanity skins and such. It's in Blizzard's best interest to focus on the custom games because good custom games and a good system for playing/socializing/finding these great games will not only bring a lot more players but they can potentially make a lot of extra profit from it. A big part of the success for SC:BW and WC3 is the custom games scene. A lot of people just played them for the custom games especially for Dota. Blizzard missed the ball by not making Dota 2 a few years ago when they could have after the huge Dota success in WC3. Now Valve and Riot have the MOBA marketplace monopolized and Blizzard is going for Blizzard All-Stars which seems too little too late to make a big splash. So even though helping the pros is a good thing it's actually a very low priority in the big scheme of things. Also for us here at SC2Mapster will likely get no benefits at all from this group unfortunately.
Edit - I agree that going free to play is a good idea for Blizzard. I think this realize this too but I guess we shall see if they will go this route or not in the future. Perhaps they plan to open up the Custom Games Marketplace before making it free to play or line them up at the same time.
@Imperfect1987: Go
If they were smart, they would go Free2play, and give everyone who actually bought the game, Portraits and a free upgrade to Heart of the Swarm.
That would keep everyone happy, yeah blizzard wouldnt get that Initial gain from HoTS, but it would pay off in the end.
The only thing that should be sold though is VANITY stuff...
Extra Portraits( SHould still be unlockable by other means), Decals, Custom In Game Modesl( similar to the CE Thor)
Things like that.
3d Portraits... lol.
DONT SELL MAPS THOUGH!!! DAMMIT
OR just atleast go Free 2 Play to WoW Players. hell i hate those guys too but atleast they ARE players..
If you had read the post, you'd see that it isn't about the pro-scene but the state of battle.net in general
Here's a link to my comment on that thread: http://www.reddit.com/r/starcraft/comments/11pmfu/sotg_blizzard_has_agreed_to_talk_with_a_group_and/c6os8s1?context=3
If you have a reddit account and agree with what I'm saying, upvote it so that it gets seen.
Here's another comment: http://www.reddit.com/r/starcraft/comments/11pmfu/sotg_blizzard_has_agreed_to_talk_with_a_group_and/c6os9w6?context=3
do we actually still have things to whine about in custom map scene?
I think arcade is pretty much fine. With the current community it does not need to be better. If there was lke 10x more players maybe then we would require more gategorizing and clearer sections to find things.
They should just aim to maximize the social experience, which stll is not as good as possible, allthou decent.
It just not a stellar experience we wanted. Iv had fun for 2 years, but now its getting a bit boring and hots practically adds nothing to the multiplayer experience (which is a huge deal)
blizzard dota could change things too I guess. If we would get like 11 million players like LoL has :D
So here is my idea of how to ake the arcade system more interesting: open it up to the web! This is a post on the eu.battle.net forum, but perhaps this is a better place to put it. Nobody reads those threads anyway :)
Introduction
The web is going through a lot of interesting changes right now. Html 5, with its better cross browser support, enables all kinds of cool features. Some custom client based software have already implemented this. My best example is spotify.
Spotify as example
Their first web-integrated solution made it possible to create a link inside the program. This url could be embedded into normal html. When clicked, the user ends up on a spotify.se/com page with a new link. When the user clicks this the Spotify client starts and immediately jumps into playing the song. This functionality has grown. Now you can play songs directly in the browser, and navigate through playlists and such.
The web is social by default.
Outline
Issues
Well... there are plenty of problems with a solution like this. Overloading the server using botnets might limit the service for everyone. The forced startup of games would be another. I mean, it would be really irritating if someone is hijacking your account while you are in some game. Problems like these are mostly logical/programming problems.
The overall idea is - if you ask me - still pretty solid.
It would require a legal clarification about what a third party is allowed to charge for. Is it allowed to charche for in game buffs? Is it allowed to charge for access to the custom game? What happens if somebody else is using my player account on the third party (playerHandle) so that I cant use it?
Earning money on this
Every player would have to buy the sc2 game to be able to play these custom games. Thus nothing in the core business model changes.
Loosing money on this
Advertisment money would go to the map-makers. As well as cash for ingame content. A line would have to be drawn in terms of how much income these custom games would generate, as well as what kind of content these custom systems should be allowed to cater. Where blizzard would draw the line is up to the lawyers and bussiness modellers. Some cash would leak out for sure. If you ask me, custom map makers have shown that they can put quite a lot of effort into their maps. But they are never rewarded like pro-players are. They just get angry/happy messages when the maps (don't) work. If you want more professional content in the arcade part: money will have to be allowed to flow in the direction of map-makers. Either by scholarships/ingame transactions/donation system or advertisment. I think the last 2 are the most viable options.
Some api functions
I have never developed an api and have only limited knowledge of json and such, but I like hacking google maps and other things. With that said: here are some suggestions
I'm curious about any possible updates with the group sending complaints to Blizzard. Has anything been done yet?
@Monkalizer: Go SC2 isnt a flash game buddy.... not even Steam streams games for free......
I never understand these threads. I don't know about prize pools, but last I checked StarCraft 2 was on a Dutch version of the American Daily show with two people showing the presentator how much the idea of Barcrafts have been on the rise. Also last I checked Gangnam style was made popular through the StarCraft community and played on the freaking radio daily. Also last I checked Blizzard attempted to have employees contact and co-operate with mappers and pro-gamers alike to improve the balance and interface of the game. Also last I checked Blizzard introduced the arcade as a response to the complaints of mappers with the original system.
Yes, there's a lack of LAN and some different bugs, but I'm kind of at a point where I'm wondering wtf people want from Blizzard. Criticism is not obliged to come with solutions, but I will ask you for some here: what DO you want from Blizzard? What more can they do that would satisfy you as a community member? I'm actually having a hard time coming up with stuff, keeping the previous paragraph in mind. I'm seriously glad I'm not Blizzard right now; while I agreed with a lot of the criticism uttered during the WarCraft 3 and WoW times, it now seems more to me that the community has turned into a collection of whiny little teenagers rather than people with actual insight into the state of the game and legit criticism.
@Imperfect1987: Go
Nothing happened. Quote from the mod forums: