I'm going to inform you guys of one big point you are missing.
World of Tanks has left a serious impression in my mind. It does not target younger audiences. It requires patience and timing.
And yet last year, Wargaming (the maker) was pretty much able to match the revenue of Blizzard. Now there are a lot of things that were done wrong, especially later.
But one fact must be faced. The older gaming group, although smaller, also has more money to spend. Since World of Tanks averaged 16.00 USD per active player (that is, greater than pay to play rates) in 2012, targeting the older group is certainly a viable option.
Most of what has been coming out of your trap has been nonsense.
As far as Curse goes... Well hang on here this is my main.
I don't think there is anything worth bringing to the table at this point. This discussion has been interesting to say the least. The bottom line is Blizzard has no interest in the arcade. It wasn't in their business plan (if they had one), they did not want it so they are going to focus their efforts elsewhere. That's fine, I was just hoping they would tell me before I bought the game.
Use: Enables the modding of grand strategy games of a caliber like Azeroth Wars. Enables large scale RPGs. Enables so much more
Feature: A working and easy-to-implement naval system
Priority: 1
Use: A simple naval system allows mapmakers to create maps with more strategic depth without much hassle or flawed workarounds with pathing blockers or what not. The Frozen Throne had it and it was considered a clear improvement and a new dimension back then by both Blizzard and the Community, one of its most important features. Bring it back!
Feature: Server side banks
512x512 maps will not be happening. If the path finding engine has trouble with 256x256 maps (as my experiments and solutions has pretty much proven) 512x512 will tax the path finding engine far too much.
What can work is subdividing the build grid. That is 1 square becomes 4. That allows us to make things smaller.
Also an addition to the graphics engine: Terrain texture UV count (that is that console command that allows you to increase terrain texture resolution) that can be changed to by zoom level. This allows a Supreme Commander/War Game effect that is ideal for large scale RTS maps. The basic concept is used all the way to Paradox games. It would also be an ideal supplement to the melee scene as well. It is far quicker to zoom out, move the mouse and zoom back in then it is to click on the minimap and it would help casuals keep up with events. It would be a feature that would also help sell LotV which is going to have an up-hill if only because a 3rd non stand-alone RTS expansion is something that is not going over well.
Let me try to clarify the over-all point I am trying to make:
The problem has 2 major components:
1. The technical and usability issues in the Map Editor and how it interacts with Battle.net. This also includes any plugins (like the art tools). In addition there is the lack of sufficient support on Blizzard's end for new map makers and map projects which can border on a full Half Life 2 conversion.
2. The consumer aspect. All the technical fixes in the world won't make a difference if there are no players. And to do anything effective about this means you have to be able to see it from their perspective. After having worked retail, I have learned that consumers are emotionally driven semi-human creatures who are cruel enough to wave their money in your face and demand the impossible for next to free. Some of them can indeed be human, but I've found that (in Vegas) to be rare.
Almost all of the suggestions in this thread are about component 1 only. None of them will matter unless component 2 is also fixed.
Unfortunately component 2 is the harder issue to fix. As I have been trying to say: StarCraft 2 has been written off and un-installed by a majority of the players who wanted to primarily play the custom mods.
Why do I make a point of saying "un-installed"? This has nothing to do with technical aspects and everything to do with human nature. The StarCraft 2 download borders on 20GB. Installing from a disk - which often involves getting out of a chair to retrieve said disk - isn't much better considering the sheer amount of patches you have to download.
The almost impossible issue to overcome with people who has un-installed is simple human laziness. People would rather play a game they are content with - content doesn't always mean they are having fun - than try out a new game. To install and then try out a game that has already "let them down" a second or third time is almost impossible, especially considering how large of a download StarCraft 2 is.
So Blizzard has been acting like a headless chicken. So what would a competently management company do?
1. Realize that this would probably be their last chance.
2. Realize that the death of the StarCraft 2 arcade also mean sacrificing a key sales edge Blizzard has had over all other RTS games for over a decade. Between the melee and the user made mods, A Blizzard RTS simply got you more for your money than any other game. WarCraft 3 will not be able to maintain the custom mod scene forever.
So lets say that Blizzard does decide to make an attempt to repair the arcade (other than the more likely scenario that this is just a cheap PR move just like the developers suddenly showing up on the custom mod forums - several old hands pointed out that Blizzard has been doing that for years).
What should they do?
Well the one component they have absolutely no power to directly control is the consumer.
However one major factor that actually works in Blizzard's favor is that StarCraft 2 is the most viable RTS released since 2010. Company of Heroes 2 was terrible design and balance and WarGame's developers can't get away from niche "card deck" based RTS games.
So people are indeed still looking for a good RTS. Blizzard has one chance (before Planetary Annihilation can offer a serious challenge) to recover the player base.
By one chance I mean a period of no more than two weeks (maybe as little as 12 hours) to "sell" the Arcade's new features.
So when should this be tried? There are only 2 general dates that can apply. And they are both when school gets out. Christmas or summer are the only 2 potentially successful targets. Everything has to be ready and working (and I mean no major bugs unlike what usually happens with major content patches) by the time the first "lost player" checks out the game.
So what is the over-all goal? Well to make more money of course. But how?
Here is where the target consumer needs to be understood. There are 2 major factors:
1. They are biased against the game.
2. They most likely don't own HotS.
So a map market could be implemented. But player saturation is lacking and will most likely doom it to failure unless enough players have become consistently active to make it profitable. Remember in any F2P game only a small fraction of the players actually spend money so the bigger the player base the more players who will spend money.
The other option is to sell more copies of HotS. However if HotS's current features (campaign and melee) haven't already sold the game then it won't do any better now.
So HotS needs more features. And they need to be cheap to add.
Now in my specific case I have a problem. Of the players who play my maps, only roughly half actually own HotS. However with full spawning there is a possible lure here.
Lets say by some insanely impossible event Blizzard pays any more attention to me than they did back in WoL Beta (when I only made like 3 posts during the entire Beta). I cannot go to the players who play my maps and say "you need to buy HotS to play what was already in the WoL version". That would be the best way to fail terribly.
But I think I could say: "If you have HotS, all of the models get swapped out to accurate World War 2 models made by Blizzard". Now what I have is something that is not forced but very, very much wanted because of increased immersion and therefore improved experience. But they have to buy HotS.
With my map by itself they might be willing to pass on that. But with a bunch of maps with similar situation it is a very potent sales pitch.
But all that costs money right? Well yes, but who are you paying? An experienced professional? Or a college intern willing to work for minimum wage with no benefits?
Because something like a World of WarCraft model port project that is done by college interns isn't nearly as expensive paying for a full industry professional.
And reaching out in the direction of the college students is the right thing to do with the Arcade scene. It takes a college-level Computer Science student to be able to full use the editor and a college-level Computer Graphics student to make a passable model (although lots of free-lancers are available) for StarCraft 2.
So here would be my verdict. Christmas 2013 isn't a realistic target. Extreme polish will be as important as the content itself. So the summer of 2014 is the ideal target for any serious recovery project. It allows time for content to be well-made and polished as well as making sure Battle.net is as polished as it can be. Even if it means stalling LotV's release. It also allows time for "leaks", "anticipation" and "hope" to build.
Get the organization put together end development started now. Help people get teams together and maps made. This should all be possible through the web and Battle.net interface.
But there is one thing I continuously warned about that could shoot all of that in the butt. It played a major role in shooting down all community attempts. Money. Its very hard for a college student to justify spending time on a frustrating map editor to make a map which they have no idea if it will actually "take off" - especially if they have been burned before (which most of the people who know how to really use the editor have by now). Since you are talking a college student or higher, Blizzard will need to pay for their time. Back in 2011 they might have not had to do this but by 2012 the scene was too far gone.
So really what it amounts to is Blizzard doing a massive internship program to develop the content aspect (component 1 from the top) and also a very good public relations campaign (component 2) to slowly make players start looking at StarCraft 2 again.
Will this be done? I highly doubt it. Both components require a huge adjustment in ATVI's business model and it would be a rather bitter pill for some of their management to swallow.
LotV will be 1 of 2 things:
1. Either a last attempt to milk as much money from StarCraft 2 for as little investment as possible (the most likely situation).
2. A real attempt to recover StarCraft 2's arcade scene. This will reduce the over-all profit of StarCraft 2 (something investors won't like) in the short run but would have long-lasting benefits in WarCraft 4/StarCraft 3. If Blizzard fails to recover and maintain the custom mod community in StarCraft 2 then their future RTS sales will suffer and it will be even more expensive to build a new community from scratch.
One last question. What can the arcade do? How can the arcade fit into the long-term plans of ATVI? It isn't a decision Blizzard will ultimately make. Dustin Browder isn't the one who needs to be convinced. Robert Kotick does.
He does seem to have a sore spot (actually all of the large game development/publishing companies seem to). Valve. Specifically Steam. More specifically Steam mods and indie games.
Because one of the major flaws with Steam is that rewards and products are not interconnected with each other. They try, I mean one of the bonuses that came with EU 4 was TF2 hats. And it can make quite a bit of money. But its still not interconnected. Battle.net on the other hand, that can be interconnected.
Try to follow me here. Lets say we have Tofu, SCU, Subsistence and maybe a few other projects that are professional level indie games made on the StarCraft 2 RTS engine. What's wrong with selling content packs that cross over multiple games? That way you get a little bit of everything and everyone's map gets promoted and everyone gets a little bit of the income.
Eimtr your accusations both fall far short of the mark and are meaningless anyways.
So what if they actually improve the editor and fix the remaining issues with battle.net?
Where are the players? And why is Blizzard taking this kind of interest now?
Oh I have my own huge list of things that need to be fixed.
One of the big problems I am seeing with all of these replies is that nearly all of them are technical. We can already do things that WarCraft 3 never could. And some of the mappers have produced a genuinely superior product from anything in WarCraft 3. And who is playing it? In WarCraft 3 you could host a semi popular tower defense and have it fill and start in 10 seconds or less.
Bottom line: Almost none of these suggestions are going to improve the situation by themselves. Mechanics are one thing. Having people to play the maps is another. And as I had said people have written off the game. And instead of accusing me of starting another "SC2 is dying drama" why don't you instead wake up and realize that it is a problem that needs to be solved if StarCraft 2 is going to recover.
Hiring someone from the community is probably not the best idea from the technical results it will produce (although I question whether anyone in Blizzard can do a better job) but the impression it will leave on the average customer will be very valuable. Any recovery is going to depend as much on public relations as it will on technical aspects.
Lets assume that Blizzard is given another chance by the players. Great.
So lets say the arcade is in the condition its in now and they all flock back to try it out.
What will happen? Oh wait we saw this before after the 1.5 patch came out. 90% of the players don't go for the open lobbies list but instead look at the featured list. And when they get bored of that they well... leave. It was that CaveOfWonders guy that I think accurately stated how the current UI layout actually works in practice. If a bunch of players flocked back right now the recovery would most likely not last. Too many of the maps, or variants of, are still there from the days of WoL Beta. Heck many of the most popular maps are not using HotS assets even now?
Blizzard is lacking in organization and direction. To make matters worse they are being secretive when they need to be the opposite. Is there going to be a public backlash if they start actually interacting with their customers? Oh yes. The "negativity" was the direct result of their willful decisions and they will be wading through a shitstorm.
Well its either they bite the bullet or they are going to have serious sales issues in the future. Taking a look at what is happening it looks like Vivendi is going to be selling off its majority share of Activision Blizzard, meaning figures like Robert Kotick gain almost total control. And there is a lawsuit with Vivendi trying to do one last milk of Activision Blizzard before they sell the stocks and another stock holder not liking the fact.
And then there is the ATVI Q2 report showing a drop of some 400 million in revenue since the same time last year. So they may very well be trying to finally monetize the arcade. I actually support this provided it is implemented correctly. However I don't think they are really capable of doing that. What do I base this on? Exclusively on their track record over the last 3 years.
Do they have a plan to implement this? Do they have a plan to recover the arcade? This whole thread might mean they have finally run out of ideas (and considering how stupid most of those ideas were, thank god).
So lets say they formulate a plan. Will it work? Does any part of the plan even remotely correspond to reality? Do they have a track recording of formulating good "plans" in any aspect of the arcade to date?
There's a lot more to this and going out and accusing me of a "SC2 is dying drama" only shows your ignorance of what is going on.
Even if they make all of these listed changes it will not be enough at this point.
The fact remains that in the customer's minds StarCraft 2 was a huge disappointment The game has been uninstalled and they have moved on. They are no longer checking back. Even Blizzard's emails (when they bother to send them out on time or at all) promoting events and features are no longer being opened.
Blizzard's PR also needs to be revamped and new rules of who can overrule who written. Like that "Cloaken" feller. He may be the top dog in the PR department but he essentially censored one of Blizzard's own developers twice. That's a no-no regardless of whatever "chain of command" exists in Blizzard. If someone with the "developer" tag decides its worth having a discussion in a thread the community management needs to be strictly hands off. He inflicted a lot of PR damage on his own company by those moves.
Then there is this gig about Blizzard strictly favoring a very few mappers. Now I don't have a problem with the few who are getting the blue posts. Most of them are very skilled mappers. And nor do I expect to ever get a blue post myself. But there are almost a dozen mappers per page who are also having issues who have been given the cold shoulder. This has got to stop. It alienates many mappers. Hell it played no small part in my own alienation. Being ignored when I was having issues that I could not solve (in fact no one could solve) was bad enough. Learning that Blizzard was giving attention to a select few mappers when I and others were being hung out to dry was a very sobering experience. And then there was Blizzard deciding the art tools were to be a sales pitch for HotS. They have still not been released. And I'm convinced they never will. They were fully ready by a year after WoL was released and instead they decided to hold them back. Really, really stupid on their part.
Ok I need to stop writing this out. Reminding myself of how I set up to fail (my fault for being stupid enough to believe them, their fault for not keeping a promise) is going to make my language a little bit harsher.
Out of the nearly 5 million copies of WoL sold we are down to less than 75k watching ESports. No big deal except Blizzard exclusively focused on ESports while the arcade tanked.
The point I'm making is that it was a really stupid management decision that is not bringing in enough income to justify the effort. Saying ESports is doing "fine" when Blizzard expected it to pull in a significant amount of income (if you take into account fees for hosting tournaments and the fact that they created their own tournament league when no one else is going that route speaks pretty clearly that they expected to be able to make additional income off StarCraft 2's ESports scene.
"CPM (Cost Per Thousand). This term actually comes from TV and print, so it could better be termed "number of eyeballs divided by 2" or number of views. Typically it's a price per banner ad plus a guaranteed number of views. A website that charges $15,000 per banner and guarantees 600,000 impressions has a CPM of $25 ($15,000 divided by 600).
These days CPM has fallen dramatically to the $1 range or below for non-targeted static ads on social media websites, although rich or dynamic media ads command a much higher CPM, as do static banners on highly targeted sites."
Now if we take the previously stated Hulu add rate then we come up with:
30 * (75,000/100) = $2250 per add showing.
Is this enough? There are roughly 2 adds per game (shown between games).
If there are 100 games then the net revenue from 1 day tournament is: $225,000. If you add in the costs it takes to host a tournament then this is not nearly enough.
Its really going to depend on what the CPM really goes for. Hulu rates certainly won't cut it.
1. Hire DrSuperGood/Evil and or OneTwoSC to oversee the scene. Or one of the guys who made a 3rd party editor.
Blizzard's own people have proven that they have absolutely no idea what they are doing. Simply giving feedback hasn't been and isn't going to do jack squat.
There is this extremely underused tab call the "data navigator" that is underused for the simply reason that it is useless. Yet even though I first tried to talk the developer in question out of it, then threw a fuss, the result was the same. I don't know how much time was wasted on that when so many other things easier to implement would have been more useful.
No the solution is to put the scene under the overall control of the community. Give David Kim or someone else the entire melee scene (including ESports) and let one of the community's own oversee the development of the arcade and put Dustin Browder on top of both aspects. Giving them equal status as equal departments will go a long ways to improving the situation.
A good share of this issue was both the result of certain personalities as well as the organization itself. The Battle.net team is responsible for too much and the 1-size-fits-all approach backfires in almost every case regardless. Have the individual game development teams be responsible for designing and implementing the front-end of battle.net for their respective games and have the battle.net restricted to improving the back-end and occasional assistance to the game development teams.
Over half of all the issues in StarCraft 2 are caused by Battle.net and that seems to be largely outside the StarCraft 2's development team's control. At least let me actually be responsible for screwing it up if nothing else.
And this is the nth request for feedback now and almost none of it has been implemented? I mean sure there is a percentage based armor system but no one is going to use it since its backwards from the WarCraft 3 system.
Most of what I am offering is reference, know-how and trading work.
I'm current helping a major way with one project, Diplomacy of War 2 (Check out the structures I taught the guy how to make in the map "DOW 2"). He's made some awesome Zerg hybrid structures.
I don't know how this started about how StarCraft 2's graphical effects were ruined by the entire game being child-proofed.
As for E-Sports... Well it's got the community's faith shaken and it will be seen by the business world as a warning. It may never materialize. But the seed of doubt has set in on a large amount of people who used to be confident that all was well (that is to say, diminished zealousness in brain-washed fan boys).
What we seem to agree upon now is that Blizzard has and is suffering from serious mismanagement.
One thing I've learned over time is that the blame doesn't stop with Dustin Browder.
Although he controls the StarCraft 2 team. He has no control over the Battle.net team. I think its fair to say that over - over - half of the failures with the whole StarCraft 2 experience were caused by the Battle.net team and not by Dustin Browder.
The design concept for the arcade seems not to have come with the StarCraft 2 team. Did it come from the Battle.net team?
Personally after the bull shit I've gone through in the belief Blizzard will get better (that is, my fault for being an idiot thinking that things would get better, Blizzard for... Well any map maker that has tried to push a map up that damned popularity list has a long list on this aspect) I'm more inclined to believe an article complete with sources than an Activision-Blizzard employee working for a company that has lied to its customers more than a few times that I've seen myself.
But if the article is accurate (and unless someone can provide sufficient counter evidence it likely is) then the implications are clear. Battle.net 2.0, in its current form (I also know its been in the works before the merger. Now much I don't know) seems to closely correlate to Activision's business model.
In short: Blizzard is becoming nothing more than a development studio for Activision.
Now as far as I can glean from reading around it seems like MLG just dropped SC2 from one of their tournament cicuits not the whole thing. Still what MLG is saying is that they no longer find StarCraft 2 profitable enough to keep them in every event.
Is this the end of StarCraft 2? Not by a long shot. But the current slope of the hill is negative and it's sure got a few of the MVP's worried.
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I'm going to inform you guys of one big point you are missing.
World of Tanks has left a serious impression in my mind. It does not target younger audiences. It requires patience and timing.
And yet last year, Wargaming (the maker) was pretty much able to match the revenue of Blizzard. Now there are a lot of things that were done wrong, especially later.
But one fact must be faced. The older gaming group, although smaller, also has more money to spend. Since World of Tanks averaged 16.00 USD per active player (that is, greater than pay to play rates) in 2012, targeting the older group is certainly a viable option.
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@Eimtr: Go
Most of what has been coming out of your trap has been nonsense.
As far as Curse goes... Well hang on here this is my main.
I don't think there is anything worth bringing to the table at this point. This discussion has been interesting to say the least. The bottom line is Blizzard has no interest in the arcade. It wasn't in their business plan (if they had one), they did not want it so they are going to focus their efforts elsewhere. That's fine, I was just hoping they would tell me before I bought the game.
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512x512 maps will not be happening. If the path finding engine has trouble with 256x256 maps (as my experiments and solutions has pretty much proven) 512x512 will tax the path finding engine far too much.
What can work is subdividing the build grid. That is 1 square becomes 4. That allows us to make things smaller.
Also an addition to the graphics engine: Terrain texture UV count (that is that console command that allows you to increase terrain texture resolution) that can be changed to by zoom level. This allows a Supreme Commander/War Game effect that is ideal for large scale RTS maps. The basic concept is used all the way to Paradox games. It would also be an ideal supplement to the melee scene as well. It is far quicker to zoom out, move the mouse and zoom back in then it is to click on the minimap and it would help casuals keep up with events. It would be a feature that would also help sell LotV which is going to have an up-hill if only because a 3rd non stand-alone RTS expansion is something that is not going over well.
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Let me try to clarify the over-all point I am trying to make:
The problem has 2 major components:
1. The technical and usability issues in the Map Editor and how it interacts with Battle.net. This also includes any plugins (like the art tools). In addition there is the lack of sufficient support on Blizzard's end for new map makers and map projects which can border on a full Half Life 2 conversion.
2. The consumer aspect. All the technical fixes in the world won't make a difference if there are no players. And to do anything effective about this means you have to be able to see it from their perspective. After having worked retail, I have learned that consumers are emotionally driven semi-human creatures who are cruel enough to wave their money in your face and demand the impossible for next to free. Some of them can indeed be human, but I've found that (in Vegas) to be rare.
Almost all of the suggestions in this thread are about component 1 only. None of them will matter unless component 2 is also fixed.
Unfortunately component 2 is the harder issue to fix. As I have been trying to say: StarCraft 2 has been written off and un-installed by a majority of the players who wanted to primarily play the custom mods.
Why do I make a point of saying "un-installed"? This has nothing to do with technical aspects and everything to do with human nature. The StarCraft 2 download borders on 20GB. Installing from a disk - which often involves getting out of a chair to retrieve said disk - isn't much better considering the sheer amount of patches you have to download.
The almost impossible issue to overcome with people who has un-installed is simple human laziness. People would rather play a game they are content with - content doesn't always mean they are having fun - than try out a new game. To install and then try out a game that has already "let them down" a second or third time is almost impossible, especially considering how large of a download StarCraft 2 is.
So Blizzard has been acting like a headless chicken. So what would a competently management company do?
1. Realize that this would probably be their last chance.
2. Realize that the death of the StarCraft 2 arcade also mean sacrificing a key sales edge Blizzard has had over all other RTS games for over a decade. Between the melee and the user made mods, A Blizzard RTS simply got you more for your money than any other game. WarCraft 3 will not be able to maintain the custom mod scene forever.
So lets say that Blizzard does decide to make an attempt to repair the arcade (other than the more likely scenario that this is just a cheap PR move just like the developers suddenly showing up on the custom mod forums - several old hands pointed out that Blizzard has been doing that for years).
What should they do?
Well the one component they have absolutely no power to directly control is the consumer.
However one major factor that actually works in Blizzard's favor is that StarCraft 2 is the most viable RTS released since 2010. Company of Heroes 2 was terrible design and balance and WarGame's developers can't get away from niche "card deck" based RTS games.
So people are indeed still looking for a good RTS. Blizzard has one chance (before Planetary Annihilation can offer a serious challenge) to recover the player base.
By one chance I mean a period of no more than two weeks (maybe as little as 12 hours) to "sell" the Arcade's new features.
So when should this be tried? There are only 2 general dates that can apply. And they are both when school gets out. Christmas or summer are the only 2 potentially successful targets. Everything has to be ready and working (and I mean no major bugs unlike what usually happens with major content patches) by the time the first "lost player" checks out the game.
So what is the over-all goal? Well to make more money of course. But how?
Here is where the target consumer needs to be understood. There are 2 major factors:
1. They are biased against the game.
2. They most likely don't own HotS.
So a map market could be implemented. But player saturation is lacking and will most likely doom it to failure unless enough players have become consistently active to make it profitable. Remember in any F2P game only a small fraction of the players actually spend money so the bigger the player base the more players who will spend money.
The other option is to sell more copies of HotS. However if HotS's current features (campaign and melee) haven't already sold the game then it won't do any better now.
So HotS needs more features. And they need to be cheap to add.
Now in my specific case I have a problem. Of the players who play my maps, only roughly half actually own HotS. However with full spawning there is a possible lure here.
Lets say by some insanely impossible event Blizzard pays any more attention to me than they did back in WoL Beta (when I only made like 3 posts during the entire Beta). I cannot go to the players who play my maps and say "you need to buy HotS to play what was already in the WoL version". That would be the best way to fail terribly.
But I think I could say: "If you have HotS, all of the models get swapped out to accurate World War 2 models made by Blizzard". Now what I have is something that is not forced but very, very much wanted because of increased immersion and therefore improved experience. But they have to buy HotS.
With my map by itself they might be willing to pass on that. But with a bunch of maps with similar situation it is a very potent sales pitch.
But all that costs money right? Well yes, but who are you paying? An experienced professional? Or a college intern willing to work for minimum wage with no benefits?
Because something like a World of WarCraft model port project that is done by college interns isn't nearly as expensive paying for a full industry professional.
And reaching out in the direction of the college students is the right thing to do with the Arcade scene. It takes a college-level Computer Science student to be able to full use the editor and a college-level Computer Graphics student to make a passable model (although lots of free-lancers are available) for StarCraft 2.
So here would be my verdict. Christmas 2013 isn't a realistic target. Extreme polish will be as important as the content itself. So the summer of 2014 is the ideal target for any serious recovery project. It allows time for content to be well-made and polished as well as making sure Battle.net is as polished as it can be. Even if it means stalling LotV's release. It also allows time for "leaks", "anticipation" and "hope" to build.
Get the organization put together end development started now. Help people get teams together and maps made. This should all be possible through the web and Battle.net interface.
But there is one thing I continuously warned about that could shoot all of that in the butt. It played a major role in shooting down all community attempts. Money. Its very hard for a college student to justify spending time on a frustrating map editor to make a map which they have no idea if it will actually "take off" - especially if they have been burned before (which most of the people who know how to really use the editor have by now). Since you are talking a college student or higher, Blizzard will need to pay for their time. Back in 2011 they might have not had to do this but by 2012 the scene was too far gone.
So really what it amounts to is Blizzard doing a massive internship program to develop the content aspect (component 1 from the top) and also a very good public relations campaign (component 2) to slowly make players start looking at StarCraft 2 again.
Will this be done? I highly doubt it. Both components require a huge adjustment in ATVI's business model and it would be a rather bitter pill for some of their management to swallow.
LotV will be 1 of 2 things:
1. Either a last attempt to milk as much money from StarCraft 2 for as little investment as possible (the most likely situation). 2. A real attempt to recover StarCraft 2's arcade scene. This will reduce the over-all profit of StarCraft 2 (something investors won't like) in the short run but would have long-lasting benefits in WarCraft 4/StarCraft 3. If Blizzard fails to recover and maintain the custom mod community in StarCraft 2 then their future RTS sales will suffer and it will be even more expensive to build a new community from scratch.
One last question. What can the arcade do? How can the arcade fit into the long-term plans of ATVI? It isn't a decision Blizzard will ultimately make. Dustin Browder isn't the one who needs to be convinced. Robert Kotick does.
He does seem to have a sore spot (actually all of the large game development/publishing companies seem to). Valve. Specifically Steam. More specifically Steam mods and indie games.
Because one of the major flaws with Steam is that rewards and products are not interconnected with each other. They try, I mean one of the bonuses that came with EU 4 was TF2 hats. And it can make quite a bit of money. But its still not interconnected. Battle.net on the other hand, that can be interconnected.
Try to follow me here. Lets say we have Tofu, SCU, Subsistence and maybe a few other projects that are professional level indie games made on the StarCraft 2 RTS engine. What's wrong with selling content packs that cross over multiple games? That way you get a little bit of everything and everyone's map gets promoted and everyone gets a little bit of the income.
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Re-implement full spawning and don't take it away. It was doing more to revive the scene than almost anything else.
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@Eimtr: Go
Eimtr your accusations both fall far short of the mark and are meaningless anyways.
So what if they actually improve the editor and fix the remaining issues with battle.net?
Where are the players? And why is Blizzard taking this kind of interest now?
Oh I have my own huge list of things that need to be fixed.
One of the big problems I am seeing with all of these replies is that nearly all of them are technical. We can already do things that WarCraft 3 never could. And some of the mappers have produced a genuinely superior product from anything in WarCraft 3. And who is playing it? In WarCraft 3 you could host a semi popular tower defense and have it fill and start in 10 seconds or less.
Bottom line: Almost none of these suggestions are going to improve the situation by themselves. Mechanics are one thing. Having people to play the maps is another. And as I had said people have written off the game. And instead of accusing me of starting another "SC2 is dying drama" why don't you instead wake up and realize that it is a problem that needs to be solved if StarCraft 2 is going to recover.
Hiring someone from the community is probably not the best idea from the technical results it will produce (although I question whether anyone in Blizzard can do a better job) but the impression it will leave on the average customer will be very valuable. Any recovery is going to depend as much on public relations as it will on technical aspects.
Lets assume that Blizzard is given another chance by the players. Great.
So lets say the arcade is in the condition its in now and they all flock back to try it out.
What will happen? Oh wait we saw this before after the 1.5 patch came out. 90% of the players don't go for the open lobbies list but instead look at the featured list. And when they get bored of that they well... leave. It was that CaveOfWonders guy that I think accurately stated how the current UI layout actually works in practice. If a bunch of players flocked back right now the recovery would most likely not last. Too many of the maps, or variants of, are still there from the days of WoL Beta. Heck many of the most popular maps are not using HotS assets even now?
Blizzard is lacking in organization and direction. To make matters worse they are being secretive when they need to be the opposite. Is there going to be a public backlash if they start actually interacting with their customers? Oh yes. The "negativity" was the direct result of their willful decisions and they will be wading through a shitstorm.
Well its either they bite the bullet or they are going to have serious sales issues in the future. Taking a look at what is happening it looks like Vivendi is going to be selling off its majority share of Activision Blizzard, meaning figures like Robert Kotick gain almost total control. And there is a lawsuit with Vivendi trying to do one last milk of Activision Blizzard before they sell the stocks and another stock holder not liking the fact.
And then there is the ATVI Q2 report showing a drop of some 400 million in revenue since the same time last year. So they may very well be trying to finally monetize the arcade. I actually support this provided it is implemented correctly. However I don't think they are really capable of doing that. What do I base this on? Exclusively on their track record over the last 3 years.
Do they have a plan to implement this? Do they have a plan to recover the arcade? This whole thread might mean they have finally run out of ideas (and considering how stupid most of those ideas were, thank god).
So lets say they formulate a plan. Will it work? Does any part of the plan even remotely correspond to reality? Do they have a track recording of formulating good "plans" in any aspect of the arcade to date?
There's a lot more to this and going out and accusing me of a "SC2 is dying drama" only shows your ignorance of what is going on.
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Even if they make all of these listed changes it will not be enough at this point.
The fact remains that in the customer's minds StarCraft 2 was a huge disappointment The game has been uninstalled and they have moved on. They are no longer checking back. Even Blizzard's emails (when they bother to send them out on time or at all) promoting events and features are no longer being opened.
Blizzard's PR also needs to be revamped and new rules of who can overrule who written. Like that "Cloaken" feller. He may be the top dog in the PR department but he essentially censored one of Blizzard's own developers twice. That's a no-no regardless of whatever "chain of command" exists in Blizzard. If someone with the "developer" tag decides its worth having a discussion in a thread the community management needs to be strictly hands off. He inflicted a lot of PR damage on his own company by those moves.
Then there is this gig about Blizzard strictly favoring a very few mappers. Now I don't have a problem with the few who are getting the blue posts. Most of them are very skilled mappers. And nor do I expect to ever get a blue post myself. But there are almost a dozen mappers per page who are also having issues who have been given the cold shoulder. This has got to stop. It alienates many mappers. Hell it played no small part in my own alienation. Being ignored when I was having issues that I could not solve (in fact no one could solve) was bad enough. Learning that Blizzard was giving attention to a select few mappers when I and others were being hung out to dry was a very sobering experience. And then there was Blizzard deciding the art tools were to be a sales pitch for HotS. They have still not been released. And I'm convinced they never will. They were fully ready by a year after WoL was released and instead they decided to hold them back. Really, really stupid on their part.
Ok I need to stop writing this out. Reminding myself of how I set up to fail (my fault for being stupid enough to believe them, their fault for not keeping a promise) is going to make my language a little bit harsher.
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@Eimtr: Go
Out of the nearly 5 million copies of WoL sold we are down to less than 75k watching ESports. No big deal except Blizzard exclusively focused on ESports while the arcade tanked.
The point I'm making is that it was a really stupid management decision that is not bringing in enough income to justify the effort. Saying ESports is doing "fine" when Blizzard expected it to pull in a significant amount of income (if you take into account fees for hosting tournaments and the fact that they created their own tournament league when no one else is going that route speaks pretty clearly that they expected to be able to make additional income off StarCraft 2's ESports scene.
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http://fuzic.nl/events/338-wcs-am-finals-day-2-premier-season-2-2013/
is the one I watched and I didn't watch the last round.
So those adds are not breaking 75k (to be safe). What is that worth?
I just did some looking in the mechanics of it:
Hulu's adds in this list seem to be the closest match to the type of add, with rates for the add based on CPM.
http://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/Editorial/Featured-Articles/Back-to-Basics-Advertising-Rates-and-Metrics-65329.aspx
http://digiday.com/publishers/what-online-ads-really-cost/
"CPM (Cost Per Thousand). This term actually comes from TV and print, so it could better be termed "number of eyeballs divided by 2" or number of views. Typically it's a price per banner ad plus a guaranteed number of views. A website that charges $15,000 per banner and guarantees 600,000 impressions has a CPM of $25 ($15,000 divided by 600).
These days CPM has fallen dramatically to the $1 range or below for non-targeted static ads on social media websites, although rich or dynamic media ads command a much higher CPM, as do static banners on highly targeted sites."
Now if we take the previously stated Hulu add rate then we come up with:
30 * (75,000/100) = $2250 per add showing.
Is this enough? There are roughly 2 adds per game (shown between games).
If there are 100 games then the net revenue from 1 day tournament is: $225,000. If you add in the costs it takes to host a tournament then this is not nearly enough.
Its really going to depend on what the CPM really goes for. Hulu rates certainly won't cut it.
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1. Hire DrSuperGood/Evil and or OneTwoSC to oversee the scene. Or one of the guys who made a 3rd party editor.
Blizzard's own people have proven that they have absolutely no idea what they are doing. Simply giving feedback hasn't been and isn't going to do jack squat.
There is this extremely underused tab call the "data navigator" that is underused for the simply reason that it is useless. Yet even though I first tried to talk the developer in question out of it, then threw a fuss, the result was the same. I don't know how much time was wasted on that when so many other things easier to implement would have been more useful.
No the solution is to put the scene under the overall control of the community. Give David Kim or someone else the entire melee scene (including ESports) and let one of the community's own oversee the development of the arcade and put Dustin Browder on top of both aspects. Giving them equal status as equal departments will go a long ways to improving the situation.
A good share of this issue was both the result of certain personalities as well as the organization itself. The Battle.net team is responsible for too much and the 1-size-fits-all approach backfires in almost every case regardless. Have the individual game development teams be responsible for designing and implementing the front-end of battle.net for their respective games and have the battle.net restricted to improving the back-end and occasional assistance to the game development teams.
Over half of all the issues in StarCraft 2 are caused by Battle.net and that seems to be largely outside the StarCraft 2's development team's control. At least let me actually be responsible for screwing it up if nothing else.
And this is the nth request for feedback now and almost none of it has been implemented? I mean sure there is a percentage based armor system but no one is going to use it since its backwards from the WarCraft 3 system.
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It would be nice if Blizzard would tell us how they define mech. So far they've failed to do that.
It won't matter. Since Blizzard hasn't seem to care about the whole MLG thing I think they are showing their arrogant side again.
I only saw 40k and change viewers for on the last day of the WCS. That's a very poor number. And once again no adds made in the North American Region.
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Ya its pretty much what I've been helping the others with.
There are still a good amount of people who know more about the editor than I do left in the community but its not nearly as many as there used to be.
What I do is show via streams/teamviewer/Skype etc
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I might be willing to help.
I've got some experience with maps like this: http://www.sc2mapster.com/forums/player-zone/map-feedback/54441-preview-prototype-squad-units/
Most of what I am offering is reference, know-how and trading work.
I'm current helping a major way with one project, Diplomacy of War 2 (Check out the structures I taught the guy how to make in the map "DOW 2"). He's made some awesome Zerg hybrid structures.
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@Eimtr: Go
I don't know how this started about how StarCraft 2's graphical effects were ruined by the entire game being child-proofed.
As for E-Sports... Well it's got the community's faith shaken and it will be seen by the business world as a warning. It may never materialize. But the seed of doubt has set in on a large amount of people who used to be confident that all was well (that is to say, diminished zealousness in brain-washed fan boys).
What we seem to agree upon now is that Blizzard has and is suffering from serious mismanagement.
One thing I've learned over time is that the blame doesn't stop with Dustin Browder.
Although he controls the StarCraft 2 team. He has no control over the Battle.net team. I think its fair to say that over - over - half of the failures with the whole StarCraft 2 experience were caused by the Battle.net team and not by Dustin Browder.
The design concept for the arcade seems not to have come with the StarCraft 2 team. Did it come from the Battle.net team?
Its important to remember the biggest source of information we have. I've had a few Blizzard developers deny it and more than a few can boys go so far as to defend the man: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=128252
Personally after the bull shit I've gone through in the belief Blizzard will get better (that is, my fault for being an idiot thinking that things would get better, Blizzard for... Well any map maker that has tried to push a map up that damned popularity list has a long list on this aspect) I'm more inclined to believe an article complete with sources than an Activision-Blizzard employee working for a company that has lied to its customers more than a few times that I've seen myself.
But if the article is accurate (and unless someone can provide sufficient counter evidence it likely is) then the implications are clear. Battle.net 2.0, in its current form (I also know its been in the works before the merger. Now much I don't know) seems to closely correlate to Activision's business model.
In short: Blizzard is becoming nothing more than a development studio for Activision.
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You miss me?
Anyways on that little topic about StarCraft 2 Esports doing just fine?
This just in: http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/9628392767
Now as far as I can glean from reading around it seems like MLG just dropped SC2 from one of their tournament cicuits not the whole thing. Still what MLG is saying is that they no longer find StarCraft 2 profitable enough to keep them in every event.
Is this the end of StarCraft 2? Not by a long shot. But the current slope of the hill is negative and it's sure got a few of the MVP's worried.