[giblaz]

SC2 is a beautiful game, as a spectator sport and as a competitive activity. I've put about thousands of hours into the game, achieving Masters in 1v1 ranked 8x. I've thought long and hard about what Blizzard could have done to make the game more popular from the get go. Some of my thoughts:

1) The multiplayer should have been F2P from the beginning, and the campaign should have been a buyable add-on. Valve was already doing this on top of the in-game paid cosmetics, and Blizzard could have easily copied their business model for SC2. The game was ripe for those kind of additions.

2) The original UI was far too heavily focused on 1v1 ranked. The reason games like SC:BW and WC3 had such long-term and widespread appeal was because of how easy the casual modes (custom games, big team games) were to access.

3) Blizzard, in an attempt to prevent another Kespa power grab situation, created very restrictive rules for non-Blizzard SC2 tournaments that effectively prevented a large number of independent tournaments from being run. This goes in stark contrast to a game like DotA 2 where Valve put little regulation on independent tournaments which allowed the scene to thrive organically.

4) The official tournament system for professional play was terribly implemented from the get-go. Region locking was a very short sighted idea used to give a boost to non-Korean players, but it was wholly irrelevant as Korean players won every tournament anyways and effectively made the early rounds of Blizzard tournaments much more boring and predictable because you would have mediocre foreign players getting smashed by the Korean players. If Blizzard did this again, they should have simply let the "best" players in, regardless of their region. This is why the GSL was always the more exciting tournament - the player base, from top to bottom, was always far more talented than the WCS.

5) Implementing MMR decay was a terrible idea - it caused a huge number of competitive players to abandon the game for games like League of Legends and DotA, where they could take a legitimate break from the game and come back and still face similarly talented players. It was good Blizzard went back on this, but they damaged the game's competitive playerbase with this move.

6) For too long, Blizzard was far too afraid to make sweeping changes to their game in the same vein as DotA or League. As a competitive player, I don't mind this much, but to keep players coming back, doing major game altering updates is a guaranteed way to keep your playerbase coming back. Very recently, i.e. with the most previous expansion (Legacy of the Void), Blizzard has been actually doing some serious and interesting changes to the game that I believe will keep it fresh and fun while the core game stays intact.

Making the game F2P is great news, and certainly the book is not closed on SC2. I hope Blizzard does not give up on the game now that it's F2P and instead focuses on growing the game organically again. SC2 tournaments should have the same hype levels as a major boxing match - everyone who follows esports should at least tangentially be aware of it happening. The game has the potential to be that kind of spectator sport, it's just up to Blizzard to keep working on it at this point and keep player interest up as best they can.

I still play the game, albeit much less than I used to. If the playerbase started growing again, I would be tempted to put more time in again. It's still a great game - it always has been.

[setr]

I'm still of the opinion that the custom games system was a complete mess, primarily in its list

sorting by popularity and version independence meant that games had a positive feedback loop to maintain popularity, and never gain it, and even updates to the game could never reach high enough popularity to overtake the previous version

So you end up with 5 games that were actually popular enough to get a session of randoms going, and it never changes.

They basically took the late-stage bot-filled custom games hosting of wc3, and decided this should be the starting point of sc2's custom game community.

Ended up dropping it after a month; nothing good would ever come out of that environment, and I was never interested in normal sc

[supergeek133]

Do you ever find the multiplayer game inaccessible for anyone below Masters/Diamond tier?

The beauty of League/Overwatch/PUBG/CSGO as an esport is the burden of game knowledge is relatively low comparatively.

RTS are essentially giant paper rock scissors games, but so fast paced it's really hard to get over the initial hump/learning curve, especially with as much micro across multiple groups as SC2 requires to get higher.

I don't know, I've always been able to compete at an average level in most ranked multiplayer games, but it seems with SC/SC2 it's always one end of the spectrum or another.

[SurrealSoul]

Personally I think its extremely accessible, with the right mind-set.

I started sc2 in bronze (the lowest) since it was my first RTS. I was frustrated with all the cheese (all in, early rushes) but after watching replays and learning the tells and standard ways to stop it from happening it felt good. It was great to expect, defend, and win against something that made me so flustered in the past.

Using COD as an example, the progression system over time unlocks new guns, perks, and cosmetics for you. You can blame losses / deaths on "unavailable items" where in starcraft the progression system is purely about your experience and knowledge. After you learn and get better, you get rewarded with public badges.

"Being bad" in starcraft just means your inexperienced. Since being bad normally results in loses, it feels inaccessible. If I lost my first 10 matches in any game and didn't have a fun time I normally wouldn't continue. But if you have the drive to improve yourself you can find losses are the most information rich resources

[gpm]

I found SC2 multiplayer far more accessible than League/Dota multiplayer, simply because there are less rules (units with unique abilities) you need to learn, and no team mates to yell at you.

Like any game with proper matchmaking, you win ~50% of your games unless you are so good there don't exist better opponents (or I suppose so bad there don't exist worse opponents, but the bottom 0.1% is at a lot more similar of a skill level than the top 0.1%). I never reached diamond league but had tons of fun. Then my wrists started complaining and I had to stop :(.

[notl4wy3r]

> Do you ever find the multiplayer game inaccessible for anyone below Masters/Diamond tier?

Three quarters of players are below masters/diamond, so presumably it's reasonably accessible even below those tiers.

> I've always been able to compete at an average level in most ranked multiplayer games, but it seems with SC/SC2 it's always one end of the spectrum or another.

What do you mean by this? No matter how good you are, unless you're the very best, you're going to get to the point where you win about half your games in SC2, as with any other 1v1 zero-sum match-made game.

[vkou]

> Three quarters of players are below masters/diamond, so presumably it's reasonably accessible even below those tiers.

Yes, but how engaged are they with the game?

I had a lot of RTS experience, so when SC2 launched, I placed Diamond/Master pretty quickly. I enjoyed it for about a thousand matches.

It's unclear how enjoyable people placing in Bronze and Silver found it. One friend of mine did grind out ~2000 games, and eventually made it from Bronze into Platinum, but I don't know anyone else who started in the lower brackets, and stuck with the game like he did.

[giblaz]

I had many friends who grinded from Bronze/Silver/Gold up to higher ranks playing thousands of hours. Frankly though, I think these players would've been better served with more fun casual time killing modes, but like I stated in my original post, the game was not released with this emphasised in the beginning.

[SandwichTeeth]

I started in bronze, managed to grind all the way up to diamond with all 3 races. I enjoyed it because I also followed the esport scene around it. Honestly, it was the esport scene that drew me in initially back in 2011ish. It was fun to watch pro games, become inspired to play better, and then immediately jump on the ladder and try out new things I've learned. I took a big break partway through HotS due to the very stale metagame that made it boring to play and watch, but I recently picked it up again and managed to get diamond again with all 3 races. I think it's in the best shape it has ever been.

[cjbprime]

I've gone Bronze to Diamond recently with no prior RTS. Probably wouldn't have got there without watching lots of GSL/WCS/Proleague/Lowko/PiG videos, but needing to be engaged in learning like that is true of anything difficult.

[giblaz]

I think the multiplayer is plenty accessible to players below Masters level. The matchmaking in SC2 was always more fair than the team based matchmaking games because 1v1 ELO systems are legitimately fair systems, compared to team ELO games where there's a lot more variance in skill.

>The beauty of League/Overwatch/PUBG/CSGO as an esport is the burden of game knowledge is relatively low comparatively.

This statement rings false for me - Overwatch and League (and DotA) are practically impossible for a novice or inexperienced player to follow because the number of unique characters and abilities is overwhelming. Contrast that with CS:GO or PUBG which is much more simple gunplay anyone can understand. In the middle of these extremes is Starcraft 2 where most of the in-game units are based off pre-existing sci-fi lore, and thus the function of the units is far more obvious to a novice spectator.

>RTS are essentially giant paper rock scissors games, but so fast paced it's really hard to get over the initial hump/learning curve, especially with as much micro across multiple groups as SC2 requires to get higher.

That's quite an oversimplification of the strategy required in Starcraft:Brood War or SC2. I'm sure other RTS are like this, but the ability to scout in those games creates a skillful back and forth with how a players build their tech/base/army and evolve their strategy throughout the match.

[cjbprime]

I found it accessible -- have gone from Bronze (no prior RTS) to Diamond in the last three years.

At the start MMR wasn't shown and that made it much harder, you had no idea when you were near promotion. Visible MMR was the biggest barrier IMO.

[joejev]

> For too long, Blizzard was far too afraid to make sweeping changes to their game in the same vein as DotA or League.

Why are big changes a good thing? As someone who started playing brood war since the remastered release, I really like that the game is the same as it ever was. Leave tweaks to the community through map making. People come up with all kinds of fun ways to change up the game like reverse ramp mains or that weird assimilator/neutral egg setup on gold rush.

When I was still playing SC2 I appreciated how well thought out the changes were, for example when they increased the range of queens. That had such a huge affect on the game but it all came from such a small change.