It’s still early, but I’m still liking Heart of the Swarm after the Honeymoon period of its release. Why is this?
Two things: Unranked Ladder and Cross Server Play.
Blizzard is doing ladder all wrong in Starcraft 2. Ladder is only something a minority of gamers wish to do. Ever since online multiplayer of Warcraft 2, people play the game just to play the game. There is no E-Peen desire for most people. “If you play X number of games, it shows your statistics of how many times you did X, Y, Z and where you rank on the world stage of…” Screw that. I just want to play something after dinner.
Blizzard still isn’t allowing what I want. It is the manner of totally resetting your character. I don’t want to play in Master’s League where all the players think the game is a superbowl. It’s not fun to me. If you’re a casual gamer and are good at the game, you get penalized. You keep getting stuck with the hardcore nerds.
You know what I wish? I wish there was complete and absolute ‘random play’. It would stick me against literally ANYONE. It could be a Bronze player or some famous pro player. You never know what you’d get. Games become spontaneous and more interesting because of that. (And don’t say ‘Custom Games’. With all the rewards and BS for ladder games, no one plays custom games. The same exact problem occurred with WoW as PvP plummeted when Battlegrounds appeared with rewards. Why do PvP when you can spend your time being the hamster for battleground awards? I despise the portraits, decals, and all this other crap that is making people focus more on the hamster wheel than on just playing the game.)
I hate that Blizzard is forcing you lose 50% of the games and win 50% of the games. That might be fine for ladder, but that is not how RTS multiplayer communities work. It is also why Starcraft 2 has no multiplayer community except for the hardlycores and those who watch Korean kids play.
The problem is similar to one in WoW. In WoW, you used to have communities grow organically before Dungeon Finder. In RTS games, communities also formed organically. If someone was much better than someone else, there were handicaps put in place in the game. “But what if someone wanted to compete?” They would use a ladder like Case’s Ladder. Case’s Ladder was around forever.
The reason why Starcraft 2 feels lifeless is not because of Bnet 2.0 but because of Blizzard pushing everyone into the ladder (unranked or ranked). I do not like feeling like a cog in your system, Blizzard!
The ‘official ladder’ is as destructive to Starcraft 2 as the ‘official auction-house’ was to Diablo 3. Game developers should stay out of player organizations and trading as that is not their field. They should stick with the actual game.
Games require the human element in order to be interesting. Blizzard is removing the human element by machine-making (Blizzard interprets this to be making more ‘accessible’) player run elements of the games such as the auction house, group finding, or ladder.
One possible solution would be allowing player run ladders. Then everyone would focus on those and let the ‘official ladder’ go to hell as it ought to go.
I prefer the solution of being able to reset your account or make more like in Warcraft 3 or the original Starcraft. It’s just a stupid game. Why is Blizzard so anal about this? Being unable to do this makes me feel I am in some digital police state where every game I play, everything I do, is recorded forever. I don’t need this shit if I just want to play something fun after dinner.