Why did Blizzard fail (so far) with Bnet 2.0?

[Skyze]

A) Not trying to be harsh here, but if your not going to put in an equal amount of time how can you expect to be the best of the best as someone who is grinding away endlessly? This almost reminds me of just about how any MMO is Time=Reward. I see this the same thing here. I'm not going to go into SC2 expecting to play 10 hours a week and be considered one of the top players on the west coast of the US; that's almost silly.

B) A pyramid style Division set up is something I've thought about but never quite bothered to work out the details. Much agreed there.

C) Facebook adding wont be mandatory at launch. I don't see that being a valid complaint for launch Bnet2.0

RTS games, esp like SC and War3, are NOT time=reward games. Couldnt' be further from the truth, of course time is helpful but RTS games are based on "skill", rather than time=reward.. so even if I practiced 100 hours a week and Flash/Jaedong played 1 game a week, I doubt I would ever be able to beat him in a BO5, solely based on his talent. Hell, the thing thats great about SC is that you can actually improve A LOT by not even playing the game; sometimes what I do for my "practice sessions" is sit down with a piece of paper and write out checklists of things that should be processing in my mind, and just drill them so much that I pay more attention to my common mistakes in my games, stuff like that which you can do outside of SC which will significantly improve your gameplay, therefor while mass gaming will help you build your "muscle memory" for those types of things, it takes increased mental stimulation and being aware of all these things to make a better player, and if a copper/silver player who doesnt know about these things and cant figure them out on his own, even if he plays 200 hours a week he wont improve at the rate a Diamond player can in a short period of time by knowing how to fix his game. in WOW, even the most mindless creeping and killing enemies gives you XP, theres no thought into that, therefor time really does equal reward.. but theres also no way to speed that up, if you can understand it..

Like I said before, when i last played seriously on this beta ladder, I reached 1900 in Platinum under 75 games, where the #2 in ladder was 1400 with 150+ games. If you go like 70-20, you can be at the same point total as someone who is 200-150, if we calculate each game to be on average ~10 minutes, thats 15 hours vs 59 hours.. See what im getting at? Even if people play way more than me, I can still get up there quite quickly, ~80 games a week is enough to climb at a steady pace, sure I might not ever catch a player like Idra who plays ~500+ games a week, but I can still be in the upper portion of the ladder which is all I am hoping to achieve in this game since I dont have massive amounts of time.

Granted, I have 10 years of RTS competitive gaming in my system already, I've learned all the mechanics and shit that takes time to be good, so for me when I started playing SC2, even tho I joined beta a month late, I almost instantly shot up to the top of the ladders solely based on RTS instincts alone. I feel confident that I can maintain a high diamond level on the US server when retail comes out, despite a lowered amount of playing time. Sure, I'd fail horribly if I tried gaming in Craftcups and vs Europeans, but anyone with RTS smarts, decent micro/macro and in-depth knowledge of proper build orders could do fine on the US server.

[Dragoonx]

RTS games, esp like SC and War3, are NOT time=reward games. Like I said before, when i last played seriously on this beta ladder, I reached 1900 in Platinum under 75 games, where the #2 in ladder was 1400 with 150+ games. If you go like 70-20, you can be at the same point total as someone who is 200-150, if we calculate each game to be on average ~10 minutes, thats 15 hours vs 59 hours.. See what im getting at? Even if people play way more than me, I can still get up there quite quickly, ~80 games a week is enough to climb at a steady pace, sure I might not ever catch a player like Idra who plays ~500+ games a week, but I can still be in the upper portion of the ladder which is all I am hoping to achieve in this game since I dont have massive amounts of time.

Granted, I have 10 years of RTS competitive gaming in my system already, I've learned all the mechanics and shit that takes time to be good, so for me when I started playing SC2, even tho I joined beta a month late, I almost instantly shot up to the top of the ladders solely based on RTS instincts alone. I feel confident that I can maintain a high diamond level on the US server when retail comes out, despite a lowered amount of playing time. Sure, I'd fail horribly if I tried gaming in Craftcups and vs Europeans, but anyone with RTS smarts, decent micro/macro and in-depth knowledge of proper build orders could do fine on the US server.

...and thus I point you to Triceron's post;

You're playing against a drop in the bucket. There are too many divisions because the number of accounts is high, while active, skilled participants are low. If someone got the beta to see what Terrans played like for 3 games and never play again, they will still take up a slot on the ladder. This creates a buffer where the bottom of the ladder is filled with 1-off accounts, while active players get pushed to the top. Most people who are in the beta just want to see the game, play their favourite race and see what's new. You're not being pit against someone who is in it to go #1.

What you're talking about is lack of skill-testing competition, yet your only experience is in a beta test that involves casual players who don't care about ranking up since their accounts are temporary and trivial.

It's not going to be the same once the game goes live and there are thousands upon thousands of players, hundreds upon hundreds who know how to play competently. Give people real accounts with real incentives to play, and you will have your challenge in front of you.

Also, what if Blizzard surprises us by having a web based strict ladder pulling information from Bnet? I can't imagine that being too hard to implement down the line.

[Maul]

Why do you think mass media hasn't even reviewed SC2 yet but everyone else is? That's because it's not finished/released yet. It hasn't failed because it hasn't even been released. We've all had a taste of it and an idea of what to expect, but until you can purchase a released copy of the game you can't judge if something has failed or not.

[Skyze]

...and thus I point you to Triceron's post;



Also, what if Blizzard surprises us by having a web based strict ladder pulling information from Bnet? I can't imagine that being too hard to implement down the line.

It wont happen or it would of happened already, this is going on month 4 or 5 of beta? In Warcraft 3, it was out the very first beta patch (a website ladder).. So that is a pretty good indication that they dont plan on making one. Besides, its counter-active to their moto of "we want EVERYONE to be #1! Yay!".. reminds me of like crappy 5 year old sports leagues where "no one is a loser".. what a crock of shit.

Triceron's post may be somewhat true, but it still doesnt solve the main issue.. DIVISIONS.. Sure, you get lots of fodder at the bottom, but thats how ladders work, If there are so many 2-0 people at the bottom of the ladder, it will only take you 5 or 6 games to pass them anyways.. I cant understand why he thinks that is a logical explanation of not implementing a real ladder.. Face it, without a real ladder, this ladder is a failure, and we'll soon have someone like ICCUP coming to the rescue for players who want actual competition..

And trust me; we dont want assholes like ICCUP running the only competitive ladder like the monopoly they have on BW for the past 3 years; where their mods can ban whole city's IPs when they just feel like it (and all the other corrupt shit the ICCUP mods do).. It hurts the integrity of the game, where at least if Blizzard had their shit together to run a good ladder for once, it will be unbiased and fair.

[Skyze]

It just pisses me off, how the Warcraft 3 ladder was like.. PERFECT in almost every sense of the word in terms of Gaming ladders... The only issues were minute ones such as updating the maps and deleting hackers (which led to the ladders end, because blizzard stopped doing those two things, otherwise it would still be here today).. Everything else was so good and fluid, why cant they just take the exact WC3 ladder, and put it in SC2.. Then this would easily be the best game released possibly ever on the PC.. But no, they want to intergrate facebook (a trend that will be dead in 2 years anyways) and have all this bullshit that is so trend-based, that BNet 2 will be completely outdated before the 2nd expansion is out, and they will have to integrate all the new "social media networks" into the game then.. Imagine if they made WoW require Myspace accounts back in 2003?? Wonder how that would work now, where myspace is nothing more than music profiles/13 year old girls sexting eachother.. Thats how facebook will be in 2-3 years, so this whole thing is a waste of effort.. Cant believe they delayed the actual game of SC2 another year because of this.

[Dragoonx]

@Skyze

Never knew the dirt behind ICCUP. I fairly enjoyed watching their streams at Justin.tv but that is a shocker. Interesting fact.

As for the Facebook thing... While I don't feel its all that detrimental to the game as a whole, it seems awkward to have it built-in when I get the feeling all this social networking bull is just a passing trend. I'm awaiting the day Facebook does turn into the now current Myspace haha. Throw Twitter in there too.

[Drakkart]

such polls tell me one thing.
i was right claiming to know people will buy it anyways because it has the better grfx, no matter how bad product itself is.
but hey go ahead, you buy it, i pirate it, because this is what they forced me to do, for i will not support a company that spits on its customers.
well maybe they really show some changes in the second phase of the beta then i shall reconsider but right now the whole thing is a punch into SCfans belly.

[Pandonetho]

i was right claiming to know people will buy it anyways because it has the better grfx, no matter how bad product itself is.

And you know the game is bad already right? What, did you steal a time machine and go to the future to play it?

but hey go ahead, you buy it, i pirate it, because this is what they forced me to do, for i will not support a company that spits on its customers.

Cut the crap. You're justifying your own acts of piracy by saying Blizzard forced you to do it? What BS is that?

[Dragoonx]

And you know the game is bad already right? What, did you steal a time machine and go to the future to play it?



Cut the crap. You're justifying your own acts of piracy by saying Blizzard forced you to do it? What BS is that?

Entitlement syndrome BS. Lol.

[TheEconomist]

He's upset that a few features aren't in Battle.net so he doesn't use Battle.net at all ... for all eternity?