Chiyosuke Profile Blog Joined May 2010 United States 51 Posts Last Edited: 2013-12-11 22:20:11 #1



I've been playing this game since WoL beta and I have enjoyed every bit of it. This game is very intrinsically rewarding. When you have practiced hard, you can see yourself improving in terms of macro and micro. You can feel yourself improving mouse accuracy, moving the screen around more swiftly, and other things that make this game fun. Extrinsically you can see your rank go up a little bit, or maybe even get promoted! But that's it. Blizzard has attempted implementing an extrinsic reward system with custom decals, custom skins for some units, and animations (which are pretty much only used as a trolling mechanism), but these haven't had any additions or changes in forever. Furthermore, the fact of the matter is not everyone can get their rank to go up, especially with a decreasing player base.



I know that a lot of people have been complaining about Blizzards decaying MMR, but in all honesty it is the amount of players that is the problem. In ANY type of game there is going to be players that are just naturally better than somebody else. Once there are people playing the game, there is going to be 40% bronze, 30% silver, and only a VERY small 3% masters. Those numbers don't and HOPEFULLY won't change either (...change again anyways, everyone went apeshit crazy when they were demoted without notification last time). MMR decay DOES affect the ladder right now, I'm not going completely ignore that fact, but it doesn't affect players who get to play a couple of games a day that much.



So why does the amount of players matter so much? Let's take a look. Now for example let's say that Starcraft II is a new game with a lot of new players who are interested. Those players start to play, get better at the game, and become better at various rates. Now a new batch of players, let's say some of the original group's friends and some random others, buy the game and these new players become better at various rates too. The first group is going to have more experience than the second group and have an advantage. Keep going on with this pattern constantly and you have a good majority of the players who are new to the game at the bottom of the skill ladder, with more experienced players at the top. With newer players constantly being added on, players who have started to become even a TINY bit better have the illusion of becoming much more skilled much quicker (e.g. 5 more iterations of player groups that come into the game and now the first group is now the around top 14% of the game!). Now there are many factors that can affect this like individual player skill, learning speed, amount of playing time and more, but under the assumption that they affect around all of the groups the same; it should ROUGHLY even out (see below for my AMAZING MS paint picture).



http://imgur.com/VNaqMKR



Well what about now? With Starcraft II losing players left and right, let's take another look at what happens. There are no new players to have at the bottom. Players who have played constantly and are still getting better don't have much wiggle room anymore. They stay in their league for a long time and think they aren't improving at all. With the community just telling them that they just need to "just macro better, just practice more" they think they just are terrible at this game and will never get better. Players on the border of each league will now be demoted as well because the percentages for each league stay the same. With the same intrinsic reward system now biting the players in the butt, people start to dislike the game more. They find any reason to blame the game, "MMR decay is stupid," "[insert race here] is so IMBA," "the game is too intimidating," "the meta is too stagnant," and they all eventually lead up to "I'm going to quit until Blizzard fixes it." This leads to a terrible downhill spiral that is coming into effect.



So what needs to be changed from the community? As unfortunate as it is, the main thing is that players just need to realize that not everyone is master's league material. Players need to understand that everyone else who plays this game gets better at it. There are other things that we can do like inviting friends to play the game, play team games, and encourage players to play for FUN instead of getting better and having good "standard" play (*gasp* god forbid we play a game just for the fun of it). The most important thing for you who is reading this is just to keep playing Starcraft.



What can be changed by Blizzard? Let me start off by saying the campaign was fucking amazing and beautifully done. The achievements were rewarding and challenging in every aspect. I would easily pay another $60 for LOTV campaign. But even so, please oh please make match making free to play . Having to pay 60$ for a game that is super hard to get into is ridiculous. With time ticking away and players still getting better, people who get into the game are going to have a HUGE hurdle to climb just to get their foot in the door. I know they made team games free for anyone with a friend who has the game, but even that can't convince a player that they're going to be good at 1v1 or even enjoy it for that matter.



Add more ways that the community would WANT to help support their game. We can always help individual teams out by buying items from their sponsors, watching streams with ads /etc, but we can only buy the game/some Starcraft apparel (which is very limited too) to help support Blizzard directly.



Personally I think they should convert the current experience players earn through match making into a type of in-game currency that we can use in an in-game store. The store could have various animations, decals, skins, announcers, and whatever else they could think of to get people to buy. People could buy the in-game currency or just work for it by grinding thousands of ladder games. I know how many players have stated their dislike of skins and whatnot, so please add a disable button as well. "Hey wait a minute Chiyosuke, you're just copying DotA and LoL!" Yes I am. I'm not trying to say anything different or hide it. It works as a business and it has been proven to do well.



Add more ways for people to be social in game. Players love to talk about their game. The clan calendar that they plan to add in 2.1 is nice, but not something that a clan wouldn't have already in a very basic set of forums or website. Give players in game streaming. Let player's friends join in their ladder match and see how well they play or bug them. Give clans a leveling system and make clan tournaments with prizes like decals or skins. Give clans a reason to exist and have interaction with people.



Add a reason to come back. Right now there is absolutely no reason to come back day after day to play. I have had ladder anxiety before and there was not a single reason for me to even try to get over it except intrinsic reward (and the extra experience for the first game). Maybe give players who play the most per season a chance to win a couple of tickets to a SCII event. Or a few clan tournaments every day that players can participate in to win some clan experience / clan decals. Maybe a couple of objectives a day like "Kill 5 banelings with only marines" or "Block your enemy in their main base using a forcefield" for in game currency. Something similar. Anything.



I love this game so much, all I want is for it to succeed and do well. Please just keep on loving and plying this game.



I made a previous blog post that was downrated to the ground before because of "attacking" Starcraft and some ideas presented, but the point that I made of the player base falling drastically was pretty accurate (albeit it didn't even take 1 year when I thought it would take 2). The ideas in the post weren't the best either, but I just wanted to come up with ANY ideas that would be more appealing to a larger crowd. I suggest reading that too :D lol shameless self-promotion/"I TOLD YOU SO" lololol





So I'm going to rant a bit here. I've tried a blog post like this before, and it was pretty unsuccessful. Hopefully this time will be different.I've been playing this game since WoL beta and I have enjoyed every bit of it. This game is veryrewarding. When you have practiced hard, you can see yourself improving in terms of macro and micro. You can feel yourself improving mouse accuracy, moving the screen around more swiftly, and other things that make this game fun. Extrinsically you can see your rank go up a little bit, or maybe even get promoted! But that's it. Blizzard has attempted implementing an extrinsic reward system with custom decals, custom skins for some units, and animations (which are pretty much only used as a trolling mechanism), but these haven't had any additions or changes in forever. Furthermore, the fact of the matter is not everyone can get their rank to go up,I know that a lot of people have been complaining about Blizzards decaying MMR, but in all honesty it is the amount of players that is the problem. In ANY type of game there is going to be players that are just naturally better than somebody else. Once there are people playing the game, there is going to be 40% bronze, 30% silver, and only a VERY small 3% masters. Those numbers don't and HOPEFULLY won't change either (...change again anyways, everyone went apeshit crazy when they were demoted without notification last time). MMR decay DOES affect the ladder right now, I'm not going completely ignore that fact, but it doesn't affect players who get to play a couple of games a day that much.So why does the amount of players matter so much? Let's take a look. Now for example let's say that Starcraft II is a new game with a lot of new players who are interested. Those players start to play, get better at the game, and become better at various rates. Now a new batch of players, let's say some of the original group's friends and some random others, buy the game and these new players become better at various rates too. The first group is going to have more experience than the second group and have an advantage. Keep going on with this pattern constantly and you have a good majority of the players who are new to the game at the bottom of the skill ladder, with more experienced players at the top. With newer players constantly being added on, players who have started to become even a TINY bit better have the illusion of becoming much more skilled much quicker (e.g. 5 more iterations of player groups that come into the game and now the first group is now the around top 14% of the game!). Now there are many factors that can affect this like individual player skill, learning speed, amount of playing time and more, but under the assumption that they affect around all of the groups the same; it should ROUGHLY even out (see below for my AMAZING MS paint picture).Well what about now? With Starcraft II losing players left and right, let's take another look at what happens. There are no new players to have at the bottom. Players who have played constantly and are still getting better don't have much wiggle room anymore. They stay in their league for a long time and think they aren't improving at all. With the community just telling them that they just need to "just macro better, just practice more" they think they just are terrible at this game and will never get better. Players on the border of each league will now be demoted as well because the percentages for each league stay the same. With the same intrinsic reward system now biting the players in the butt, people start to dislike the game more. They find any reason to blame the game, "MMR decay is stupid," "[insert race here] is so IMBA," "the game is too intimidating," "the meta is too stagnant," and they all eventually lead up to "I'm going to quit until Blizzard fixes it." This leads to a terrible downhill spiral that is coming into effect.So what needs to be changed from the community? As unfortunate as it is, the main thing is that players just need to realize that not everyone is master's league material. Players need to understand that everyone else who plays this game gets better at it. There are other things that we can do like inviting friends to play the game, play team games, and encourage players to play for FUN instead of getting better and having good "standard" play (*gasp* god forbid we play a game just for the fun of it).What can be changed by Blizzard? Let me start off by saying the campaign was fucking amazing and beautifully done. The achievements were rewarding and challenging in every aspect. I would easily pay another $60 for LOTV campaign. But even so, please oh please. Having to pay 60$ for a game that is super hard to get into is ridiculous. With time ticking away and players still getting better, people who get into the game are going to have a HUGE hurdle to climb just to get their foot in the door. I know they made team games free for anyone with a friend who has the game, but even that can't convince a player that they're going to be good at 1v1 or even enjoy it for that matter.We can always help individual teams out by buying items from their sponsors, watching streams with ads /etc, but we can only buy the game/some Starcraft apparel (which is very limited too) to help support Blizzard directly.Personally I think they should convert the current experience players earn through match making into a type of in-game currency that we can use in an in-game store. The store could have various animations, decals, skins, announcers, and whatever else they could think of to get people to buy. People could buy the in-game currency or just work for it by grinding thousands of ladder games. I know how many players have stated their dislike of skins and whatnot, so please add a disable button as well. "Hey wait a minute Chiyosuke, you're just copying DotA and LoL!" Yes I am. I'm not trying to say anything different or hide it. It works as a business and it has been proven to do well.Players love to talk about their game. The clan calendar that they plan to add in 2.1 is nice, but not something that a clan wouldn't have already in a very basic set of forums or website. Give players in game streaming. Let player's friends join in their ladder match and see how well they play or bug them. Give clans a leveling system and make clan tournaments with prizes like decals or skins. Give clans a reason to exist and have interaction with people.Right now there is absolutely no reason to come back day after day to play. I have had ladder anxiety before and there was not a single reason for me to even try to get over it except intrinsic reward (and the extra experience for the first game). Maybe give players who play the most per season a chance to win a couple of tickets to a SCII event. Or a few clan tournaments every day that players can participate in to win some clan experience / clan decals. Maybe a couple of objectives a day like "Kill 5 banelings with only marines" or "Block your enemy in their main base using a forcefield" for in game currency. Something similar. Anything.I love this game so much, all I want is for it to succeed and do well. Please just keep on loving and plying this game.I made a previous blog post that was downrated to the ground before because of "attacking" Starcraft and some ideas presented, but the point that I made of the player base falling drastically was pretty accurate (albeit it didn't even take 1 year when I thought it would take 2). The ideas in the post weren't the best either, but I just wanted to come up with ANY ideas that would be more appealing to a larger crowd. I suggest reading that too :D lol shameless self-promotion/"I TOLD YOU SO" lololol