Activision Blizzard doesn't care about anything other then 'ESPORTS' these days, not caring about story, graphics, sound, or anything else. They just seem to snort cocaine and go on about ESPORTS all day.
When in reality custom content is a core part of Blizzard-RTSes. Here, I think Destiny puts it correctly:
It has been three years any real changes are not coming. They do not have a clue about anything in any element of game-development, and they have demonstrated this admirably.
If anything, AB cares less about esports than most other companies.
For others, once a competition starts about they're game, they go all "WATCH THIS, OMG, ITS AMAZING, ITS SUPER, ITS DFUISDHJIUFHJUIWEHFIUSDHFSHDUIFHUISEHFISDUHF."
Blizzard goes "This event is happening soon, now go watch it cuz we aint talking about it until its over or if its WCS."
And besides, Blizzard has changed UI two times already (You know how big that is for a company to change how almost everything in a game looks... twice?). They've created the Arcade system, featured custom games, and if the only thing keeping most games unnoticed is because of the MOBA fans (MOBA isn't bad, but there are a few idiots out there criticizing anything that isn't one). Ignorant noobs that keep complaining, and how unappealing the "Fun or Not" system is.
And besides, Blizzard has changed UI two times already (You know how big that is for a company to change how almost everything in a game looks... twice?).
I truly hope that never happens. If they try and simplify it I think I'd cry. The data editor is well organized and isn't as hard as people make it sound. It definitely takes getting used to but it's effective and is easy once you get the idea.
I agree with you, in fact Im only saying I wouldn't mind if they did it for those that don't like it. I can adapt (unlike some others) and when Im saying it I am far new to lots of things in the editor, I can't do any advanced stuff. I think with years people become more and more whiny - from campaign story to features to everything!
Activision Blizzard doesn't care about anything other then 'ESPORTS' these days, not caring about story, graphics, sound, or anything else. They just seem to snort cocaine and go on about ESPORTS all day.
They don't care about graphics - What?? Sounds too? - Since whne ppl complain about graphics too? They even further worked on them with HotS. It is exactly such comments that make the whole points lose credibility and look like whining for the sake of whining... Also Reddit is FULL of whiners, I mean they really complain about everything you can possibly complain, bad example.
Well the game is an RTS afterall, it's normal to give more support to eSports, but I do support that they start giving more attention to map making as well.
Regardless of what graphics "improvements" they have made, the fact is that those changes were largely useless. They've been wasted on a game that isn't growing.
StarCraft 2 should have as large or bigger player base at this point as when it was released. Its player base, for the most part, have already been playing some blizzard RTS for at least 3 straight years.
StarCraft 2 was supposed to be a golden age that never happened. They are focusing on E-Sports. Besides South Korea it isn't a safe investment. Furthermore in South Korea the E-Sports scene is a complete prop. The real reason it ever got that big has as much to do with shielding South Korea's youth from North Korean communist propaganda.
The viewer base for the largest tournament was under 150k viewers. Still a good number, but not a growing viewer base.
Regardless of what graphics "improvements" they have made, the fact is that those changes were largely useless. They've been wasted on a game that isn't growing.
StarCraft 2 should have as large or bigger player base at this point as when it was released. Its player base, for the most part, have already been playing some blizzard RTS for at least 3 straight years.
StarCraft 2 was supposed to be a golden age that never happened. They are focusing on E-Sports. Besides South Korea it isn't a safe investment. Furthermore in South Korea the E-Sports scene is a complete prop. The real reason it ever got that big has as much to do with shielding South Korea's youth from North Korean communist propaganda.
The viewer base for the largest tournament was under 150k viewers. Still a good number, but not a growing viewer base.
Do you have anything to back any of this up, or are you just pulling "facts" out of your...?
(...)
First of all, back in WoL Beta the mapping section was more alive than it has been before or since. The smart ones left before StarCraft 2 came out. They saw what the popularity system would do ahead of time. They warned about it. They were ignored. In fact almost everyone was claiming with confidence (myself included) that Blizzard would fix it.
(...)
But if the Galaxy Editor was difficult for the WarCraft 3 people, it was completely alien to the StarCraft 1 mod makers. And since no documentation or tutorials (minus a few, like those made by OneTwoSC. Without him the community may not be alive at all today) were ever made by Blizzard they were left out on a limb. So most of them jumped ship.
(...)
The popularity system, and the lack of documentation or ease of use in the editor is what did the initial damage. Whatever fault may be of the community, maker and player alike is irrelevant. No one was going to risk the time it took to make a genuinely new and innovative map because the cost of failure, all that work going down the drain, is was and is so high that almost every single mapper that held on decided the tried and true was a better bet that all their work wouldn't be for nothing.
Again its a flaw in the design of the system that was never fixed. And the responsibility for that rests solely in the hands of Blizzard.
(...)
Applause! I too spent some time criticizing the lack of documentation for the editor, and that was precisely how I felt about the popularity system as well.
I can't find the post where someone mentioned players couldn't progress in StarCraft II melee. Well, I played Wc3 melee and still do at times, mostly team games, and I can tell you how it looks from my perspective.
Just some time ago, I was playing a wc3 game and I chose the Alchemist hero. Even though I lost, it ended up being the best game I had in a while. I kept pawning other players and saving my allies until my resources ran out (I didn't expand XD), excuse me for the immodesty, but I still believe I was the most valuable player in the game, as my allies would have been defeated so early if I hadn't helped them as often as I did — one of them had a ton of gryphons.
That just happens to be one of the things I love about wc3 melee: even if you don't expand and even if you don't train a lot of units, you can definitely make the difference. In this case, I was using an Alchemist and a Tauren Chieftain and my units were only a few headhunters and 1 or 2 tauren. In SC2, if you get rushed too early or your expansion keeps cracking after you made an investment, you spend the entire game crawling.
In close relation, things in SC2 run too fast. You focus a single unit with a bunch of marines and it's dead. Individual units are of no value, which makes it hard for a single unit, on its own, to be of any use. In Wc3, you have time to micro properly and decently. Game speed is one of the things I noticed mostly about StarCraft II. I am convinced StarCraft 1 players notice it too to some extent, because units in BW suffered heavy from collision. In SC2, collision is smooth. As a result, in BW it's harder to use a bunch of marines to smite down a dragoon whilst in SC2 you can get your marines under a colossus and shoot it down before the player has barely had the chance to notice.
Finally, in WC3 you had the occasional ill-disposed guy flaming and moaning, but it ended up being fun. In SC2, the homologues I have met pretend that they're smart and force their broken logic into you, it's annoying. The even matching system also seems like a big lie at times.
(...)
Think about it: back in WarCraft 3, the map editor literally spawned a new generation of games. There were a number of completely new games: Tower Defense was an original concept, DOTA fermented itself and Hero Defenses came into being. And then there were maps like Life of a Peasant, "Escape from X", The Silmarillion, Footman Wars and Cat and Mouse. Life of a Peasant was something not really done before at that time, "Escape from X"-style maps were completely new in their format (they used to only exist in older and arcade style games, like Frog), The Silmarillion was a combination of styles that had only existed strictly seperated before (Total War series and Total Annihilation), Footman Wars had only been done before with way less features in StarCraft and Cat and Mouse was a game that had never existed in a digital form.
(...)
@FockeWulf: Go
(...)
You're missing my point completely when it comes to originality, though. I guess that's partly my fault, because 'originality' is a very subjective word. Let me try and explain what I mean by it. You linked Subsistence. Ask yourself - what is Subsistence? It's a total conversion of the StarCraft 2 engine. Great, so what does it turn StarCraft 2, this great story-driven military-focused RTS game, into? That's right - a story-driven military-focused RTS game. That isn't originality.
And by saying that I mean absolutely no offense to the lads of Blue Isles Studios: the mod is looking splendid. The point is: it's yet another staple RTS. The names and places change but the faces are the same. It doesn't compare to the first Tower Defense or DOTA maps in WarCraft 3. Those maps literally encouraged a COMPLETELY different playstyle. An entirely different way of thinking and handling your units. THAT is what I call originality - SC2 doesn't have it. And shit; even the original DOTA was nothing more than a clever combination of RPG and RTS. DOTA in turn doesn't even get near to games that really defined genres, like Dune 2 or Wolfenstein 3D.
In StarCraft 2, even the slightest hint of that kind of originality is missing. There are only a couple of maps that come close - Mafia can be compared to Cat Mice, and has thus (rightfully so) been played as one of the most popular maps in the game. Aside from that, there's Eiviyn's maps (Catalyst, Battleships and Magicide), which really are just DOTA maps with a very unique twist (ridiculous amounts of balanced hero customization). These maps too, rightfully so, were immensily popular for at least a short time. Everything else in the popularity list is Nexus Wars - and THAT is the kind of map that melee players hop into when they don't feel like laddering for a bit.
My views are conditioned by the fact I was a child when I entered WC3 and I never played anything for real, on the Internet, besides other RTSes like Age of Empires, Age of Mythology and this or the other RPG (NWN), along with a few console games. As such, my knowledge of different gameplays was relatively limited, which allowed WC3 to introduce me to quite a few. I'll allow myself to believe most of the genres spawned there.
However — and someone spoke about it too —, I believe if there was any sort of «decay» in the userbase itself, it happened long before StarCraft II.
For me, the golden age of WC3 was before WoW came out and the first blowns were dealt to WC3. I remember the RP maps (TheBlackMage remade the map for SC2, but SC2 is just a whole different game, medieval/fantasy theme forever :D), the loooong hours I spent roleplaying with those that were my best WC3 friends of all time, playing "Battle for Middle Earth" (then in its golden days, from v2.5 to v3.1, 2005/6(?), it was never the same again).
Back then, it was possible to have some fun and expect some degree of intelligent input from people, even with more or less swearing, in both games and forums. Right now, what I see are ever more bored and decadent communities: people can only have fun feeding off drama, destroying and striving for power, spamming picture responses, injuring, provoking, trolling, and whatnot — I think the term «trolling» didn't even exist back then. If it did, then I only came to know it muuuch later on.
I still remember their nicknames: Sargent-Moose, Eyrie, Balderon, Sonic-X, chaos11. As soon as WoW hit the shelves, all those people vanished, I never saw many of them again. Most of them told me they had been moved on to WoW or something else, others just disappeared and I never heard of them again. Ah, heck, I know it's obvious I'm being led by nostalgia here, but those are the times I do remember as being WC3 at its best. Followed by that was another period in which people — map makers, roleplayers and whatnot — had good ideas or perfected already existing ones, but things were getting repetitive.
Safe to say I never found anything remotely like it in SC2. What you said about originality is what I have always felt about SC2 exactly. I look at the custom maps list and I'm immediately overwhelmed with nausea, such is the lack of originality and poorness of the execution. Cheap TDs, arena/AoS mixes, slay endless waves of Zerg (the campaign turned the idea cliché even before the map makers exhausted it)... meh.
@Mozared: Go
(...)
Even the most popular SC2 maps aren't that popular. I'm the main developer for SquadTD and our actual community is pathetically small, I've tried to encourage a lot more in-game chat and forum use but it's just not happening as there really aren't that many people playing it. Sure Blizzard could have and should have done a lot of things better (more visibility to custom maps, better arcade system, open-lobbies from the getgo, etc) but there really just aren't that many people interested in playing custom maps that much anymore. And I doubt it's even a creativity issue at this point.
You are the maker of Squadron TD? I've got to admit I hate TDs in general, but I actually played Squadron a few times. It fell into one of those categories I mentioned earlier: idea already executed, but yours was a perfecting of its execution. Implementing some degree of strategy into it, like where to place towers, decide when you're investing on income or towers or units in order to defeat your enemy, made it very interesting and worthy.
I see a lot of people here with a certain reverence for "Nexus Wars". If I'm associating the map and name right, I have to admit I did encounter other better maps. For some reason, the creator of that map decided that it was a nice idea to have Ultralisks with 1k hp and tons of damage and armor increase. Every time I played the game and people went for those, it was a «meh» game, I felt like my time had been wasted. Hopefully he's reverted that.
I'm talking about the original assets you find with the game. The amount of models and icons on wc3 was bigger due to the jungle creeps and the amount of abilities/icons was huge due to heroes. When I first used the SC2 editor it was one of the first things I noticed, it had less then 50% of assets due to his different nature, less RPG more RTS...
God YES! Finally, a twin soul. PurplePoot insisted with me that I was being stupidly persistent about it, but I advertised countless times how the lack of creep models would hurt SC2's diversity and how you could not easily grab a SC2 asset and call it medieval. Glad I'm not the only one who things that is right. =)
Now back to the point of map making,
As for Galaxy, the Data Editor's complexity was intimidating, but that's not what set me off. Guess that's the only thing original I'm adding to this topic (=P): In the nearly 10 years of WC3 now, I've heard all sorts of bickering about the World Editor's bad design, limitations and whatnot. As such, in my head, Blizzard said «so you want a better editor? Here». I dearly hope they don't remove functionalities from it in future RTSes, if they make any.
Because of having played RP maps, "Battle for Middle Earth" and "Azeroth Wars Strategy/Legacy Reborn", my primary concern was always the limitation on map size and ground textures. I just found it plain stupid how games as old as AoE 1 allow you to use all textures in the game and Blizzard is still stuck with forcing this limitation. Then, like I said, I spent a lot of time warning as to how the lack of diversified models and documentation for the Editor would be a turndown for SC2. With the broken promise of multiplayer campaigns, the popularity system, the not-so-fun melee games, the poor maps and the overall state of things, I just didn't even try to do anything with the Editor. I admit I didn't even buy HotS.
Also, I like this thread, it's good to see a lot of people give smart input into a topic instead of spamming it or posting picture responses (until now...).
For me, the golden age of WC3 was before WoW came out and the first blowns were dealt to WC3. I remember the RP maps (TheBlackMage remade the map for SC2, but SC2 is just a whole different game, medieval/fantasy theme forever :D), the loooong hours I spent roleplaying with those that were my best WC3 friends of all time, playing "Battle for Middle Earth" (then in its golden days, from v2.5 to v3.1, 2005/6(?), it was never the same again).
Back then, it was possible to have some fun and expect some degree of intelligent input from people, even with more or less swearing, in both games and forums. Right now, what I see are ever more bored and decadent communities: people can only have fun feeding off drama, destroying and striving for power, spamming picture responses, injuring, provoking, trolling, and whatnot — I think the term «trolling» didn't even exist back then. If it did, then I only came to know it muuuch later on.
I still remember their nicknames: Sargent-Moose, Eyrie, Balderon, Sonic-X, chaos11. As soon as WoW hit the shelves, all those people vanished, I never saw many of them again. Most of them told me they had been moved on to WoW or something else, others just disappeared and I never heard of them again. Ah, heck, I know it's obvious I'm being led by nostalgia here, but those are the times I do remember as being WC3 at its best. Followed by that was another period in which people — map makers, roleplayers and whatnot — had good ideas or perfected already existing ones, but things were getting repetitive.
Safe to say I never found anything remotely like it in SC2. What you said about originality is what I have always felt about SC2 exactly. I look at the custom maps list and I'm immediately overwhelmed with nausea, such is the lack of originality and poorness of the execution. Cheap TDs, arena/AoS mixes, slay endless waves of Zerg (the campaign turned the idea cliché even before the map makers exhausted it)... meh.
However — and someone spoke about it too —, I believe if there was any sort of «decay» in the userbase itself, it happened long before StarCraft II.
Oh yes, definitely. I should probably clarify that. I don't think the lack of originality is at all a SC2-specific problem. It just shows more in SC2 because it is one of the few large games around with such an easily accessible potential for modding/editing. The lack of originality is an issue that is platform-wide, and not limited to one game. I can take one look in my current games folder right now and lead back 90% of the stuff in there to an older game. I'll show you what I mean:
Anno 2070. Easy, that's an RTS-styled Sim. It's a modern day Simcity.
Assassin's Creed 3. Oh look, a Third Person Shooter with Stealth elements - hello Tomb Raider! Nice disguise, but I've seen you.
League of Legends. A DOTA clone, which in itself is a combination of RPG and RTS; let's say Dune meets Dungeons & Dragons.
Orcs Must Die! 2 - an RTS style game with a third person camera: basically Dune, or Savage if you want to take it a little bit closer to our current time.
Portal 2: Oh look, a puzzle game - a follow-up on one of the THOUSANDS of these that were released between 1980 and 1995. Main difference between those games and this one: the position of the camera.
And the list goes on and on and on. Gaming as a whole has become larger and more mainstream while nearly all the possibilities for PC gaming have been exploited. This, sadly, is what causes this feeling of detachment for me. It's not that I don't enjoy modern games, it's just that they're all repetitions of stuff that I've seen before. All of the games I just named are great games and I've loved playing all of them (and I still love doing so), but it's only barely enough to keep me playing. The wow-factor is gone. And that isn't anybody's fault, it's just... the limitations of the personal computer. You can only play so much games of Chess before the game loses some of its attraction.
(...) I don't think the lack of originality is at all a SC2-specific problem. It just shows more in SC2 because it is one of the few large games around with such an easily accessible potential for modding/editing. The lack of originality is an issue that is platform-wide, and not limited to one game. (...)
I reckon that on another level: I doubt any game had such a wide plethora of diversified models as Warcraft III.
I agree with your opinion, there's certainly a lot less room for innovation.
I reckon that on another level: I doubt any game had such a wide plethora of diversified models as Warcraft III.
I agree with your opinion, there's certainly a lot less room for innovation.
Thanks for your earlier comments even though you don't like TDs and that's okay :) Yes, we really didn't do an unique idea in itself, mostly just worked on refining it. Technically, it's not really that impressive and I'll be the first to admit it. It was originally created very early on back when documentation was poor and there wasn't a lot to go on and has since just recieved band-aids and coat of paints here and there, but the time requirement to redo a lot of it is just too much at this point. Most of the creativity comes from adding new builders and balancing quite a complex (and ever increasing) dynamic while having enough sense to vet ourselves and go "does this really add anything fun and is it intuitive?".
As for models, this is absolutely true that it's a factor; although a very very small factor. Even if we had the library that WC3 had, it wouldn't make that much of a difference but the cost for Blizzard would be astronomical since it's really time intensive.. Often I take a look at models/icons and go from there in terms of lore and what can be fitted to the theme of a unit or ability. We've already exhausted most of the available models (and some custom models from here) and while we can dick around with TextureSelectById to extend that a bit, it makes it very difficult to create a cohesive feeling to a map. I was working on an Enfo's Team-Survival esque map and had imported an assload of WoW models (which patch 1.3(?) or something broke and I lost motivation) because I really wasn't happy with the available content.
@Wc3SRui: Go
@Mozared: Go
Many WC3 games were from sc1, and even in the editor u seem many remnants of sc1 campaign editor. The advancement of the editor allowed the advancement of game concepts and creation of more advance games that were not possible before. but sc1 was the first to do battle for middle earth games and DOTA(AEON). SC1 built a wonderful improvement platform for WC3. WC3 had an 8 year head start on SC2 and blizzard didn't improve the editor significantly like they did from sc1 to wc3 so the original well is pretty well tapped out for this generation of editors. Including Tower D, which is very very overdone.
@Mozared: Go
I agree with you completely, but there another factor to consider, that players r brain dead kids trying to put the circle block in the square hole. Many of the games on BNET are too complex for 20-40% of gamers it seems and many non-mainstream simple games are riddled with confused/frustrated players. I see many games that companies are making are too easy. no designer 15 years ago would put quest path and arrows leading exactly to the completion of the quest, like fable and assassins creed and many games, including RTS on hard (easy is pretty difficult). A couple months ago i completed the campaign on brutal, wasn't terribly hard (except maybe last level) and normal is a joke. There are many players that If a player cant win a game he/she doesn't like it.
As for the sc2 arcade, it has gain momentum but is not were it should be, the issue i would stab at is quality control. Many games r broken or just not fun and Fun or Not only works on open games so games not open never get fun or not-ed.
@Deadzergling: Go
That would destroy the fun of expressing opinions.
Edit: When will we get a flame subforum? For people with over 100 post, otherwise it would be hidden, that way no new comers would see this.
Blizzard is listening, and they don't care. They just care about 'lol ESPORTS'
You behave like a child.
Whats so bad about esports? :\
Activision Blizzard doesn't care about anything other then 'ESPORTS' these days, not caring about story, graphics, sound, or anything else. They just seem to snort cocaine and go on about ESPORTS all day.
When in reality custom content is a core part of Blizzard-RTSes. Here, I think Destiny puts it correctly:
http://www.reddit.com/r/starcraft/comments/11m21k/starcraft_2_will_be_dead_before_legacy_of_the/
It has been three years
any real changes are not coming. They do not have a clue about anything in any element of game-development, and they have demonstrated this admirably.@FenixKissKerrigan: Go
If anything, AB cares less about esports than most other companies.
For others, once a competition starts about they're game, they go all "WATCH THIS, OMG, ITS AMAZING, ITS SUPER, ITS DFUISDHJIUFHJUIWEHFIUSDHFSHDUIFHUISEHFISDUHF."
Blizzard goes "This event is happening soon, now go watch it cuz we aint talking about it until its over or if its WCS."
And besides, Blizzard has changed UI two times already (You know how big that is for a company to change how almost everything in a game looks... twice?). They've created the Arcade system, featured custom games, and if the only thing keeping most games unnoticed is because of the MOBA fans (MOBA isn't bad, but there are a few idiots out there criticizing anything that isn't one). Ignorant noobs that keep complaining, and how unappealing the "Fun or Not" system is.
Note: Please add the suffix "OP" to your name.
Didn't I suggest that? D:
'UI'
@FenixKissKerrigan: Go
You're arguing the fact that AB cares for nothing BUT esports, and the UI is NOT esports.
For a company of around 5,000 people, changing the Battle.net UI is not a big deal at all. The UI is a small problem compared to other matters.
My only argument was that AB cares little about eSports compared to others. The rest is the other's problem.
(5 Post argument, that's a shortest argument forum record right?)
I agree with you, in fact Im only saying I wouldn't mind if they did it for those that don't like it. I can adapt (unlike some others) and when Im saying it I am far new to lots of things in the editor, I can't do any advanced stuff. I think with years people become more and more whiny - from campaign story to features to everything!
They don't care about graphics - What?? Sounds too? - Since whne ppl complain about graphics too? They even further worked on them with HotS. It is exactly such comments that make the whole points lose credibility and look like whining for the sake of whining... Also Reddit is FULL of whiners, I mean they really complain about everything you can possibly complain, bad example.
Well the game is an RTS afterall, it's normal to give more support to eSports, but I do support that they start giving more attention to map making as well.
@Eimtr: Go
Regardless of what graphics "improvements" they have made, the fact is that those changes were largely useless. They've been wasted on a game that isn't growing.
StarCraft 2 should have as large or bigger player base at this point as when it was released. Its player base, for the most part, have already been playing some blizzard RTS for at least 3 straight years.
StarCraft 2 was supposed to be a golden age that never happened. They are focusing on E-Sports. Besides South Korea it isn't a safe investment. Furthermore in South Korea the E-Sports scene is a complete prop. The real reason it ever got that big has as much to do with shielding South Korea's youth from North Korean communist propaganda.
The viewer base for the largest tournament was under 150k viewers. Still a good number, but not a growing viewer base.
Do you have anything to back any of this up, or are you just pulling "facts" out of your...?
Do you have facts? People just defend this game for the fact it has a Blizzard logo.
So I spent a few hours reading this thread after waking from a year sleep *.* xD
Applause! I too spent some time criticizing the lack of documentation for the editor, and that was precisely how I felt about the popularity system as well.
I can't find the post where someone mentioned players couldn't progress in StarCraft II melee. Well, I played Wc3 melee and still do at times, mostly team games, and I can tell you how it looks from my perspective.
Just some time ago, I was playing a wc3 game and I chose the Alchemist hero. Even though I lost, it ended up being the best game I had in a while. I kept pawning other players and saving my allies until my resources ran out (I didn't expand XD), excuse me for the immodesty, but I still believe I was the most valuable player in the game, as my allies would have been defeated so early if I hadn't helped them as often as I did — one of them had a ton of gryphons.
That just happens to be one of the things I love about wc3 melee: even if you don't expand and even if you don't train a lot of units, you can definitely make the difference. In this case, I was using an Alchemist and a Tauren Chieftain and my units were only a few headhunters and 1 or 2 tauren. In SC2, if you get rushed too early or your expansion keeps cracking after you made an investment, you spend the entire game crawling.
In close relation, things in SC2 run too fast. You focus a single unit with a bunch of marines and it's dead. Individual units are of no value, which makes it hard for a single unit, on its own, to be of any use. In Wc3, you have time to micro properly and decently. Game speed is one of the things I noticed mostly about StarCraft II. I am convinced StarCraft 1 players notice it too to some extent, because units in BW suffered heavy from collision. In SC2, collision is smooth. As a result, in BW it's harder to use a bunch of marines to smite down a dragoon whilst in SC2 you can get your marines under a colossus and shoot it down before the player has barely had the chance to notice.
Finally, in WC3 you had the occasional ill-disposed guy flaming and moaning, but it ended up being fun. In SC2, the homologues I have met pretend that they're smart and force their broken logic into you, it's annoying. The even matching system also seems like a big lie at times.
My views are conditioned by the fact I was a child when I entered WC3 and I never played anything for real, on the Internet, besides other RTSes like Age of Empires, Age of Mythology and this or the other RPG (NWN), along with a few console games. As such, my knowledge of different gameplays was relatively limited, which allowed WC3 to introduce me to quite a few. I'll allow myself to believe most of the genres spawned there.
However — and someone spoke about it too —, I believe if there was any sort of «decay» in the userbase itself, it happened long before StarCraft II.
For me, the golden age of WC3 was before WoW came out and the first blowns were dealt to WC3. I remember the RP maps (TheBlackMage remade the map for SC2, but SC2 is just a whole different game, medieval/fantasy theme forever :D), the loooong hours I spent roleplaying with those that were my best WC3 friends of all time, playing "Battle for Middle Earth" (then in its golden days, from v2.5 to v3.1, 2005/6(?), it was never the same again).
Back then, it was possible to have some fun and expect some degree of intelligent input from people, even with more or less swearing, in both games and forums. Right now, what I see are ever more bored and decadent communities: people can only have fun feeding off drama, destroying and striving for power, spamming picture responses, injuring, provoking, trolling, and whatnot — I think the term «trolling» didn't even exist back then. If it did, then I only came to know it muuuch later on.
I still remember their nicknames: Sargent-Moose, Eyrie, Balderon, Sonic-X, chaos11. As soon as WoW hit the shelves, all those people vanished, I never saw many of them again. Most of them told me they had been moved on to WoW or something else, others just disappeared and I never heard of them again. Ah, heck, I know it's obvious I'm being led by nostalgia here, but those are the times I do remember as being WC3 at its best. Followed by that was another period in which people — map makers, roleplayers and whatnot — had good ideas or perfected already existing ones, but things were getting repetitive.
Safe to say I never found anything remotely like it in SC2. What you said about originality is what I have always felt about SC2 exactly. I look at the custom maps list and I'm immediately overwhelmed with nausea, such is the lack of originality and poorness of the execution. Cheap TDs, arena/AoS mixes, slay endless waves of Zerg (the campaign turned the idea cliché even before the map makers exhausted it)... meh.
You are the maker of Squadron TD? I've got to admit I hate TDs in general, but I actually played Squadron a few times. It fell into one of those categories I mentioned earlier: idea already executed, but yours was a perfecting of its execution. Implementing some degree of strategy into it, like where to place towers, decide when you're investing on income or towers or units in order to defeat your enemy, made it very interesting and worthy.
I see a lot of people here with a certain reverence for "Nexus Wars". If I'm associating the map and name right, I have to admit I did encounter other better maps. For some reason, the creator of that map decided that it was a nice idea to have Ultralisks with 1k hp and tons of damage and armor increase. Every time I played the game and people went for those, it was a «meh» game, I felt like my time had been wasted. Hopefully he's reverted that.
God YES! Finally, a twin soul. PurplePoot insisted with me that I was being stupidly persistent about it, but I advertised countless times how the lack of creep models would hurt SC2's diversity and how you could not easily grab a SC2 asset and call it medieval. Glad I'm not the only one who things that is right. =)
Now back to the point of map making,
As for Galaxy, the Data Editor's complexity was intimidating, but that's not what set me off. Guess that's the only thing original I'm adding to this topic (=P): In the nearly 10 years of WC3 now, I've heard all sorts of bickering about the World Editor's bad design, limitations and whatnot. As such, in my head, Blizzard said «so you want a better editor? Here». I dearly hope they don't remove functionalities from it in future RTSes, if they make any.
Because of having played RP maps, "Battle for Middle Earth" and "Azeroth Wars Strategy/Legacy Reborn", my primary concern was always the limitation on map size and ground textures. I just found it plain stupid how games as old as AoE 1 allow you to use all textures in the game and Blizzard is still stuck with forcing this limitation. Then, like I said, I spent a lot of time warning as to how the lack of diversified models and documentation for the Editor would be a turndown for SC2. With the broken promise of multiplayer campaigns, the popularity system, the not-so-fun melee games, the poor maps and the overall state of things, I just didn't even try to do anything with the Editor. I admit I didn't even buy HotS.
Also, I like this thread, it's good to see a lot of people give smart input into a topic instead of spamming it or posting picture responses (until now...).
P.S. — I apologize for the long post. =P
Oh yes, definitely. I should probably clarify that. I don't think the lack of originality is at all a SC2-specific problem. It just shows more in SC2 because it is one of the few large games around with such an easily accessible potential for modding/editing. The lack of originality is an issue that is platform-wide, and not limited to one game. I can take one look in my current games folder right now and lead back 90% of the stuff in there to an older game. I'll show you what I mean:
Anno 2070. Easy, that's an RTS-styled Sim. It's a modern day Simcity.
Assassin's Creed 3. Oh look, a Third Person Shooter with Stealth elements - hello Tomb Raider! Nice disguise, but I've seen you.
League of Legends. A DOTA clone, which in itself is a combination of RPG and RTS; let's say Dune meets Dungeons & Dragons.
Orcs Must Die! 2 - an RTS style game with a third person camera: basically Dune, or Savage if you want to take it a little bit closer to our current time.
Portal 2: Oh look, a puzzle game - a follow-up on one of the THOUSANDS of these that were released between 1980 and 1995. Main difference between those games and this one: the position of the camera.
And the list goes on and on and on. Gaming as a whole has become larger and more mainstream while nearly all the possibilities for PC gaming have been exploited. This, sadly, is what causes this feeling of detachment for me. It's not that I don't enjoy modern games, it's just that they're all repetitions of stuff that I've seen before. All of the games I just named are great games and I've loved playing all of them (and I still love doing so), but it's only barely enough to keep me playing. The wow-factor is gone. And that isn't anybody's fault, it's just... the limitations of the personal computer. You can only play so much games of Chess before the game loses some of its attraction.
I reckon that on another level: I doubt any game had such a wide plethora of diversified models as Warcraft III.
I agree with your opinion, there's certainly a lot less room for innovation.
Thanks for your earlier comments even though you don't like TDs and that's okay :) Yes, we really didn't do an unique idea in itself, mostly just worked on refining it. Technically, it's not really that impressive and I'll be the first to admit it. It was originally created very early on back when documentation was poor and there wasn't a lot to go on and has since just recieved band-aids and coat of paints here and there, but the time requirement to redo a lot of it is just too much at this point. Most of the creativity comes from adding new builders and balancing quite a complex (and ever increasing) dynamic while having enough sense to vet ourselves and go "does this really add anything fun and is it intuitive?".
As for models, this is absolutely true that it's a factor; although a very very small factor. Even if we had the library that WC3 had, it wouldn't make that much of a difference but the cost for Blizzard would be astronomical since it's really time intensive.. Often I take a look at models/icons and go from there in terms of lore and what can be fitted to the theme of a unit or ability. We've already exhausted most of the available models (and some custom models from here) and while we can dick around with TextureSelectById to extend that a bit, it makes it very difficult to create a cohesive feeling to a map. I was working on an Enfo's Team-Survival esque map and had imported an assload of WoW models (which patch 1.3(?) or something broke and I lost motivation) because I really wasn't happy with the available content.
@Wc3SRui: Go @Mozared: Go Many WC3 games were from sc1, and even in the editor u seem many remnants of sc1 campaign editor. The advancement of the editor allowed the advancement of game concepts and creation of more advance games that were not possible before. but sc1 was the first to do battle for middle earth games and DOTA(AEON). SC1 built a wonderful improvement platform for WC3. WC3 had an 8 year head start on SC2 and blizzard didn't improve the editor significantly like they did from sc1 to wc3 so the original well is pretty well tapped out for this generation of editors. Including Tower D, which is very very overdone.
@Mozared: Go I agree with you completely, but there another factor to consider, that players r brain dead kids trying to put the circle block in the square hole. Many of the games on BNET are too complex for 20-40% of gamers it seems and many non-mainstream simple games are riddled with confused/frustrated players. I see many games that companies are making are too easy. no designer 15 years ago would put quest path and arrows leading exactly to the completion of the quest, like fable and assassins creed and many games, including RTS on hard (easy is pretty difficult). A couple months ago i completed the campaign on brutal, wasn't terribly hard (except maybe last level) and normal is a joke. There are many players that If a player cant win a game he/she doesn't like it.
As for the sc2 arcade, it has gain momentum but is not were it should be, the issue i would stab at is quality control. Many games r broken or just not fun and Fun or Not only works on open games so games not open never get fun or not-ed.