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//: StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm |OT| Like Riding a Bike

I

Ikuu

Had his dog run over by Blizzard's CEO
I'm not sure if it's because Valve has complete freedom with being a private company, but Blizzard seem afraid of taking risks, Hearthstone and Storm are further examples of playing it safe.

SC2 MP needs to go free, people can go on Twitch see League/Dota with 200k+ and then give it a go, you could even see GO and buy it for $5 this weekend. But with SC2 you need to buy the base game and expansion, and you're just not going to grab people like that.

I don't buy that you can't monetize the game as easily as League/Dota, Valve even has people buying HUDs and Loading Screens, they're selling people stickers in GO.

Valve gives people the tools to grow their tournaments, while Blizzard still has to approve tournaments over $10k (?). Look at Starladder it's went from being CIS focused, to now being a worldwide event, the prize fund has increased from $80k to $180k (sold ~44k tickets).
 
S

SteveWinwood

Member
I think Valve approves all the events still, but it's more of a firing back of emails making sure you're not trying to use it as a tax loophole or doing something insane like offering your sister's virginity as a prize.

But sc2 multiplayer has to be free if they want to compete with the rest of "esports". No other way about it in 2014 (probably like 2012 but hey whos counting, insert post here of me saying this in 2011). Problem is the existing community would be angered, a fun combination of I paid money for this outrage and the money barrier kept the 12 year olds/riff raff out. Blizzard already let that genie out so now they're stuck with it for another 2 years at least.

We can talk about starter packs and campaign upgrades and all sorts of goofy stuff but they're never going to do that. Just keep on marching forward in your 90s ways blizzard.
 
Dice

Dice

Pokémon Parentage Conspiracy Theorist
Do you think Heroes of the Storm is a scout for Blizzard to figure out what they want to do with Starcraft?
 
Acti

Acti

Member
I just wanna say that I fuckin' hate the decision to pay for heroes... That's one of the main reasons why I despise LoL as an esport and a balanced game. long live sc and dota.
 
Z

Zen

Banned
Flash wins on his 7 year anniversary!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXkZeRT2eAs

Aaron said:
What's the fault of balance, and what's the fault of the players? I think everyone can agree blink all-ins are overpowered, though a chunk of that is due to poor map design. In IEM, I watched zergs get slaughtered... but they were throwing away banelings like they were free, and for the most part ignoring higher tiered units. Other races complaining about swarm hosts being OP, and the zergs aren't even using them. Can't go broodlords because terran has so much anti-air? Well stop leaning on mutas as a crutch, and maybe they won't focus on anti-air.
Click to expand...


This touches on an issue with the game that I do not feel is tremendously easy to solve. Just like how WCS Map pool has pigeon holed all other tournaments, the rise of Esports and availability of content has created a severe case of tunnel vision for the player base on how to play the game.

I was getting so sick of standard play that I started looking into alternatives to broaden my strategies. Mech TvP does work, Air Terran versus Protoss does work, mass Raven PF works in every matchup, I have won games by going mass BC Widow mines and using them like a sensor net to prevent feedbacks, while scanning to get kills on the observers.

But no one gives these strategies the time of day because Pros do not play them because Pros are focused on winning, not evolving the meta game. There is this idea that X strat is inherently under powered and should not be used or explored, even though there are GM players that use it. Maybe some strategies will not work at the 99.9% percentile, but most players do not have to worry about that to begin with, god forbid you play to have fun right, or find the styles that suit you.
 
Z

zargle

Member
Zen said:
This touches on an issue with the game that I do not feel is tremendously easy to solve. Just like how WCS Map pool has pigeon holed all other tournaments, the rise of Esports and availability of content has created a server case of tunnel vision for the player base on how to play the game.

I was getting so sick of standard play that I started looking into alternatives to broaden my strategies. Mech TvP does work, Air Terran versus Protoss does work, mass Raven PF works in every matchup, I have won games by going mass BC Widow mines and using them like a sensor net to prevent feedbacks, while scanning to get kills on the observers.

But no one gives these strategies the time of day because Pros do not play them because Pros are focused on winning, not evolving the meta game. There is this idea that X strat is inherently under powered and should not be used or explored, even though there are GM players that use it. Maybe some strategies will not work at the 99.9% percentile, but most players do not have to worry about that to begin with, god forbid you play to have fun right, or find the styles that suit you.
Click to expand...

I agree with this thinking. Especially since the random games at IEM with carriers or an unkindness of ravens were fun to watch.
 
S

SamuraiX-

Member
XsLalqX.jpg



Also, StarDust is officially BoxeR's protege:

Um07aul.png
 
H

HolyCheck

I want a tag give me a tag
Yep :D got my camera and fanct lenses! Gonna take heaps of photos.

Got my HotS box too to try and get it signed!

Incoming "hi holdens mum" sign.
 
H

HolyCheck

I want a tag give me a tag
I went in there 1.5 hours early... then got trapped in there. no one batted an eye lid. Just dudes walking around setting up equipment.

They sell some merch in there too which is cool.

I found an exit and am now sitting outside with a nice coffee while I wait.

I don't understand everyone here. They're all in coats and scarves etc. Tshirt and jeans :(

This is nice weather.


I'm also struggling to find a bar near by :(

I found this sweet one with a massive (thousands aand thousands) vinyl collection... but they apologised as they're not properly open for another hour.
 
U

unknownstranger

Member
Lol Supernova just played one of the most amusing TvT's on ladder. He went double proxy Reaper, and it was mass Reaper vs mass Reaper for like the first 10 minutes of the game before he gave up and started to tech up. He had 6 Barrack's before making a Factory or even an add-on for any of them. Both went bio/tank and he ended up losing by going for a massive doom drop that failed.
 
Z

Zen

Banned
Flash: "The number of fans has increased recently." and "For today's match I practiced 70 games with only 2 losses."

Q: A lot of fans have come to the studio today.

Flash: It really gives huge strength. Since this new SPL, I have found much of the feelings like before. I used to have a happy communication with my fans, but suddenly fans have become fewer, which makes me feel regretful. But recently the number of fans have increased, which gives me huge strength.

Q: I heard that you never lose in TvP during practice.

Flash: This time I practiced for about 70 games, with 2 losses. So I have confidence. My winrate is high so I think I have performed well in today's game. Rain's reaction is outstanding so it was difficult. I dropped in his natural and lost many units but thankfully I have killed lots of workers as well. And then I was gradually gaining advantage.

Q: Last words?

Flash: Lots of fans came today for my 7 anniversary. Thank you everyone. I hope everyone can come to cheer for me in the future. After eating the mountain ginseng, I will certainly cheer up.

qX8zdWN.jpg


Some data on the SC2's recent popularity in Korea.

For some unknown reasons, SC2's popularity in Korea has indeed been good after the new SPL,at least compared to the last SPL during OGN's production, which is strange considering the higher status of OGN. The online game played time ranking on inven shows that SC2 has been around #15 for many months and it was not that high during Wings and not that high before this new SPL as well. But of course shortly after the HOTS release the ranking was higher----I remember that it was around #11, for a few months.

The ranking data since last Oct:

Oct: http://www.inven.co.kr/webzine/news/?news=64666&site=webzine

Nov: http://www.inven.co.kr/webzine/news/?news=65850&site=webzine

Dec: http://www.inven.co.kr/webzine/news/?news=67239&site=webzine

Jan: http://www.inven.co.kr/webzine/news/?news=102771&sclass=26

Feb: http://www.inven.co.kr/webzine/news/?news=103953

March: http://www.inven.co.kr/webzine/news/?news=106259

Also, the new SPL's VOD viewership in Korea is relatively better than before as well. The VOD of some of the best players achieved a viewership of 20k to 40k. And Fantasy vs Roro in Round 2 has a ridiculous viewer number of 159k, which is even higher than most of the LoL VODs on Naver's VOD system.

http://sports.news.naver.com/videoCenter/index.nhn?uCategory=esports&category=starcraft2
 
A

Aaron

Member
I'm happy for Flash winning on his anniversary. It sounds like he's getting his confidence back, which will be good going forward. Though proleague is like bizarre balance where terrans are consistently crushing the protoss. That Keen game from today was madness.
 
Dice

Dice

Pokémon Parentage Conspiracy Theorist
Well after nearly a month... I think I have literally tried changing absolutely everything that is possible to change in and out of game, and it is still crashing. As are Diablo 3 and Hearthstone. Such strange crashes, fucking up several programs and leaving others fine until I reboot. Showing no signs of hardware stress or spikes in monitor logs, but just happening for no reason seemingly. So I submitted a ticket and hopefully they will be able to fix it, because I did not pay $120 for this. That is worth 12 games these days, if not 20. No other games out of 500+ on my PC crash for me, only these, and yet these are the only ones I want to play. So much anger I am trying to keep controlled...

Maybe I will be able to play with you guys soon. Until then I will keep watching proleague and dreaming of actually being able to play this game I paid for without it crashing 4 times in one mission.
 
W

Woorloog

Banned
D3 and HS too but not other games? Hmm, to me that sounds like an issue with Battle.net or something, perhaps your firewall/anti-virus is somehow incompatible with Blizzard's games?
Frankly, i don't believe my own suggestion but if you've tried everything... you sure you tried everything?
 
Dice

Dice

Pokémon Parentage Conspiracy Theorist
Woorloog said:
D3 and HS too but not other games? Hmm, to me that sounds like an issue with Battle.net or something, perhaps your firewall/anti-virus is somehow incompatible with Blizzard's games?
Frankly, i don't believe my own suggestion but if you've tried everything... you sure you tried everything?
Click to expand...
That would make sense... except I have whitelisted all directories related to anything Blizzard in MSE, and tried playing with it and even windows firewall off, leaving myself completely vulnerable just to see if that was it.

The only things I haven't tried is installing them to a different hard drive, since I'm pretty sure I would have to redownload them to do that, or uninstalling and reinstalling windows altogether, since that is complete overkill. I have updated, uninstalled, reinstalled every driver. I have changed every single in-game setting. I have tried using my motherboard audio (since the sound glitches and cuts out when it crashes) instead of my sound card. I have tried playing with every other program and as many background processes as possible closed. I have probably rebooted my computer more in the last 3 weeks than in the last 5 years.

I agree about the battle.net suspicions since it is all three games.
 
W

Woorloog

Banned
Dice said:
Win 7 64bit Professional.
Click to expand...

Hmm-mmm. If you had Win 8, i would have suggested it and SC2/Battle.net might have some odd issue but that obviously ain't the case.

Perhaps Blizzard's support can help you, i have no more ideas. Practical ones, that is. You could always use a hammer to smash your computer. Or just your HDD.

(And this kind of issues is why usually prefer sticking to console gaming. Someday i'm going to be the one with unique, unsolvable issue..., i highly doubt this kind of issues exist on retail console games. And did i just curse my future? Anyway, Blizzard, give me SC2 Kinect, that looked fun. The only fun Kinect thing ever, even if it were faked.)
 
Dice

Dice

Pokémon Parentage Conspiracy Theorist
The thought literally went through my head to use some tax refund money to buy a laptop just to play these.

I think that shows how much I enjoy them, even aside from the insane amount of crashes I have dealt with scientifically approaching the problem to eliminate as many possible causes as I could. Most games I would just give up on forever if they gave me this much shit. I've dropped many just for mildly annoying game mechanics.

That love for them makes the problem all the more sad.
 
W

Woorloog

Banned
Just to make sure, you have re-installed the game themselves, clean installs? And what about the repair tool that comes with the game, used it?
(Seriously, troubleshooting is such a bore, checklist after checklist... EDIT and internet troubleshooting is more so, because someone else asks you the same questions you ask yourself. On the other hand, sometimes one overlooks something relatively obvious but people in internet do not.)

Oh and is this one of those cases where you google this, you only find your own questions about the issues?
 
S

SamuraiX-

Member
ml4Jb7W.png


Dustin March Madness: $10,000 Team Showmatch

Acer said:
Team Acer is proud to be participating in a special StarCraft II team event: Dustin March Madness powered by Intel!

Team Acer will compete against Team Liquid in a team showmatch, as StarCraft II returns to the Ericsson Globe in Stockholm. The two teams will be fighting for their share of a $10,000 prize pool: the largest ever for a team showmatch[1].

It'll be a best of seven all-kill format, with an ace player for each side. Both Acer and Team Liquid will send 3 of their best players to fight for their teams. Before the fight gets underway, all six players will warm up in a Free For All game. The lineup for both sides will be announced soon.

The $10,000 prize pool will be divided into $500 for the FFA winner, $3000 for the losing team and $6500 for the winning team. With such a large purse at stake, no punches will be pulled by either side.

Acer, Intel and Razer are sponsoring the match, while Dreamhack are providing event coverage. Dustin March Madness will mark the debut of Dreamhack TV’s new studios, and should provide an experience beyond the normal high standards you’ve come to expect. Two leading casters, four cameras and a whole production crew will be taking part.

Dustin March Madness will take place on March 29th from 1pm CET, so be sure to watch the stream provided by Dreamhack TV. You can also visit Dustin Expo at the Ericsson Globe in Stockholm to witness the action yourself for free!
Click to expand...

Siiick!

Hyped for this.

Hoping for MMA, INno and Nerchio (Acer) along with TaeJa, Bunny and MaNa/TLO/Snute (Team Liquid). :)

I imagine they'll just save money and make it MMA, Nerchio and Bly along with Bunny, TLO and Snute since all of those six players will be in Europe anyway in that preceding week with WCS EU Premier Ro16 happening.
 
H

Hazaro

relies on auto-aim
Link to Flash VODs? 68-2 is why he is a god
HolyCheck said:
cross posting from the proleague thread

also.. PHOTOS. just a few, illl upload the rest of my korea trip when i return to aus, but i thought you guys might like to see some.
Click to expand...
Neato
Zen said:
Sonic (CEO of Sinbal Farm and Orginizer of SSL9) collapsed, rushed to hospital due to "resorting to taking medicine to get past the last week of SSL9"
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/brood-war/446488-sonic-collapsed-rushed-to-hospital

Semi aside, has SSL9 been any good? Show we start linking and watching the BW matches? I think it would give us some perspective since most of us talk about BW through rose tinted glasses anyway.
Click to expand...
Yes
Hazaro said:
Here's a Bisu vs Hero (PvZ) Finals set from this week with both Korean and English casting! I suggest watching game 1 of the Finals as that is what PvZ should look like. KR // ENG
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/brood-war/402419-small-vod-thread-20?page=21#420

And here is some mutha fuckin BW TvT from this week (Sea vs Hiya Finals)
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/bw-tournaments/446263-gcs4-final
Click to expand...
I watched the first PvZ set which was incredibly refreshing and good.
TL rating seems to say the TvT was good also.
 
S

SamuraiX-

Member
Aaron said:
Wasn't sure if it was 16 or 8. Those weekends tend to be a blur for me.
Click to expand...

Speaking of which, you ready for PvPvPvPvPvPvPvPvPvPvP in the quarters of Code S tonight? :p

Hoping Rain makes it. He's been doing much better in GSL. Three straight appearances in the Top 8! :D
 
A

Aaron

Member
I wonder if sOs will be in shape, or even give a shit about GSL with 100k in his pocket. It'll be funny though if he faces HerO again, and just hits him with those scummy tactics again.
 
Dice

Dice

Pokémon Parentage Conspiracy Theorist
I am possibly relieved yet (again) very annoyed with ATI software.

It turns out that check for updates was lying to me, saying my drivers were up to date. They were in fact a year old. So instead of using the fail update check I downloaded the newest drivers manually and played 4 missions in SC2 without a crash.

Now, Diablo 3 has gone 10hrs without a crash before, so crashes seem random and I can't be fully sure so soon, but... yeah...
 
W

Woorloog

Banned
Manual downloads all the way.
When i bought this laptop and tried to use the driver software's auto-update, it didn't work because the pre-installed drivers were so old they didn't even support this laptop's GPU... Have used manual updating ever since. And for most other things too, have too many issues with auto updating systems.
Glad your problem got solved. At least hopefully it got solved.
 
A

Aaron

Member
So I'm watching Free 2 Play, the Dota 2 docu, and one of the players says that ten years ago competitive gaming wasn't even a thing, and right after he says it they show a bank of people at an IEM event playing games, and right there is Khaldor. Can't see what he's playing, but I don't remember him ever mentioning Dota 2. Just struck me as odd. They really avoid mentioning Starcraft or LoL.
 
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