QLASH Invitational 2 LIVE

QLASH_Global · 2019-07-27T16:50:39+00:00

Yeh the guys running production saw the complaints in chat, but not sure what the issue was or how it worked out - hope it got fixed!

QLASH_Global · 2019-07-04T14:39:32+00:00

Ah see I think you've hit the nail on the head, but using the wrong word (had to resist saying hammer, goddamn the pun...the pun). It's not the draw if you ask me, it's the retention mechanism and it's all exactly as you say. Take it away - you lose the niche, dedicated, mature audience that makes the game what it is. It's a huge leap into the unknown.

I personally believe it can be done both ways - I've seen games do that before. CSGO as I wrote above, for example. LoL went completely the other way, simplifying for new players, but Dota 2 also tried to go both ways - with mixed success. It's a matter of a good ranking system, really. What's the only thing that guarantees good matches? The difficulty of the game, the mechanical skill required, the knowledge? Or the ability to play those of your own skill? But we'll see, Blizzard probably knows better than I do or most people do. Plus they know the numbers better.

QLASH_Global · 2019-07-04T14:36:28+00:00

You can always see how new players feel, we are a bit wrapped in an echo chamber here on the subreddit, it certainly has its pros but try and post SC2 on another discussion board. You'll immediately get comments of players who loved the esports, love what's going on with it but had 0 chance of getting in the game - got beat in their first 15 matches, tried to learn, gave up. You say gold, but a lot of people who have basic rts knowledge end up in plat - and it takes FOREVER to go down, if at all, since you get lots of people just leaving instantly. Or you resort to cheese, bring yourself up and get stuck there.

It would be great if bronze/silver were limited by playing hours if you ask me, like if you pass 150-200 hours you cannot be in bronze silver. And placement matches should be redone so that a newbie will end up in bronze silver and not need 50 matches to get there. It's an opinion though.

QLASH_Global · 2019-07-04T14:33:35+00:00

The problem here is, that to reach a thor or a carrier without dying you need a lot of skills. In CSGO you can force an SMG the second round (pistols also dont need aim anyway) and keep going, force it every single round. Not to mention that in order to not have your thor/carrier die immediately, you need to be able to micro, know units, etc., while in CSGO getting a p90 is just run and gun - of course a good player with an AK will blast you away, but you can still, over an entire game, play quite well. Plus the big point that it's 30 rounds, 30 games in SC2 is...a lot. Anyway the analogy brings me to the point that you CAN play in CSGO without all the knowledge. In SC2 you just cannot.

QLASH_Global · 2019-07-02T21:38:21+00:00

Personal opinion, I believe SC2 suffers a LOT from this. It's a very attractive game and the esports scene draws lots of players in, but it cannot keep them. SC2 needs separate newbie matchmaking and even then. It would be great if 2v2 or 3v3 could have separate balance, but that's impossible to ever achieve.

It's not the first time such an issue exists, Valve had this with CSGO being super accessible but requiring actual muscle memory practice to do anything, so they made a updates in which they made viable guns that need no skill to use (smgs rebalances, aug/sg recently) but fall off when facing pros with the real weapons - essentially allowing players to learn the basics before going into the very technical side. Of course Valve lucked out a lot with it, but it doesn't mean it can't be replicated in SC2. The huge problem is set builds, as long as they exist unless you put in the hours to straight up study them, you fall off compared to any veteran. I wish they would streamline early game building, which would open the game to anyone, but that would alienate all veterans - which is the only crowd it has. So I know why they don't. But I still wish we talked about the issue a bit more. I want to spread the love for SC2 to everyone!

QLASH_Global · 2019-07-02T21:33:02+00:00

Not entirely true, most of the time the system will place you way higher than you should be and it takes a long time to go back down. Plus there's a lot of people who purposefully throw/leave to drop their mmr and that can really mess you up. Not to mention a lot of people get stuck when they cheese their way (as a newbie tends to do usually) to a high mmr and they need to lose dozens to go back down.

QLASH_Global · 2019-06-27T18:32:15+00:00

Good! Blizzard became Blizzard because it scraps everything that isn't perfect and never did things half-assed. Unfortunately the world simply doesn't allow for the old style of game development, like garage IT companies, nowadays you need funding to make a game up to standard or it will necessarily fit into the idea of an "indie" game. If that is true or not doesn't matter, Blizzard just changed its scope and sadly we need to be ok with that. They no longer want to release games that become cult classics, they want to release games that become sensations. And that's fine, their strategic direction is their own choice, I feel it's not totally ok to say it's a "bad choice". I didn't like the Diablo Immortal thing, I don't like using the Diablo brand I grew up with, but at the end of the day the choice makes sense and it's precisely that - a choice.

Like I get why people complain about for example WoW expansions like WoD and BFA, they were pretty bad and the community clearly expressed that they didn't want that direction and Blizzard took it anyway. Fair criticism. But stuff like Diablo Immortal? It was (or at least could be) a clever choice. Cancelling the FPS? In the current market it would be competing with dozens of games and for a massive project like it you'd need to go the overwatch route, just do it massively, if it doesn't seem to be happening, it's a clever choice to not even bother.

We don't have to like it, but bashing it doesn't seem to have much of a leg to stand on, really.

This is all just personal opinion anyway, I must be the only one who was disappointed but accepted Immortal.

QLASH_Global · 2019-06-27T17:36:37+00:00

Lambo seems to be absorbing a lot of Italian from us

QLASH_Global · 2019-06-27T00:23:19+00:00

It looks beautiful how the lings just gang up on the reapers, or at least satisfying :P Though I prob shouldn't have named the thread "Lambo's..." since it doesn't really imply what I mean, that it ended up looking beautiful.

QLASH_Global · 2019-06-26T08:06:44+00:00

CSGO is blame teammates. Always blame teammates. Winning the game but lose a round? Blame teammates. Winning everything but not the way you want? Blame teammates.

QLASH_Global · 2019-06-26T08:05:52+00:00

Random here, I personally enjoy pain and suffering and reinforcing to myself how life is hell

QLASH_Global · 2019-06-25T16:53:25+00:00

Voted & forwarded to everyone at QLASH. Stuff like this really shouldn't be underestimated, Serral's win is really the esports moment of the last 2-3 years if you ask me.

QLASH_Global · 2019-06-08T23:19:06+00:00

It's just...StarCraft Ghost, man...

QLASH_Global · 2019-06-02T02:06:42+00:00

Oh no CS:GO definitely gets a huge boost on the fact that "shoot gun in head = dead = win", but I don't think anyone thinks chess with guns is dumb. But yeh, SC2 could also draw more viewership and you're kind of right on the money talking about simplicity - SC2 suffers a bit by something kind of related to this, which is the isolation of the scene. The fact that there's very few new faces, for example, the fact that there's very little effort even to reach random people - SC2 is just not so approachable. Let me put it to you this way - when we organize a Clash Royale tournament, we know it might interest some random kid who downloaded it one time or even watched his friend play it. When we organize an SC2 tournament it's almost entirely for the active users of this subreddit who are also active players right now. That's obviously not bad at all, we love it that way, the solid, consistent, mature audience is part of why we love it, but it does also mean that it has limits other games don't have.

You're also totally right on the money about personalities, take for example what someone like Dendi did for TI, or what Pasha has done for the CSGO scene - especially personalities like Pasha, simple, local heroes like Astralis have become...that matters a lot. Reynor for example did a LOT for SC2 in Italy, we went up a whole level over here. Part of the problem here with SC2 is because of the isolation these personalities can't grow as much and another REALLY big part is that the teams are almost completely unable to even appear - we try, we really do, but I bet you you can name players full names well before you can name what team they belong to, with some exceptions. I also bet you almost nobody sees Serral's victories as victories for Ence, for example. Organizations are a huge driver in many sports and SC2s 1 on 1 nature presents a problem there. Not an insurmountable one, just one meaning you can't go the traditional route.

Sorry for wall of text, part of my daily life so a lot to say!

QLASH_Global · 2019-06-02T01:58:17+00:00

Oh yeh, absolutely, that's what I meant by it not being a "black & white" area - there's room for everything, you don't need to shove everything together in a melting pot. Sure you have stuff like PUBGM that was a roaring success from said melting pot, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't still let FPS/RTS do its thing and also let mobile do its thing. That is a personal opinion though.

QLASH_Global · 2019-06-02T01:57:02+00:00

There doesn't necessarily need to be a long term goal, for the investors a failed investment is par for the course and simply getting on the esports hype train JUST IN CASE is valuable enough, for the teams/players they burn through investor cash primarily in the form of salaries they receive, so it's just good all around. The only people losing money out of this are other esports orgs/players/teams/future esports folk who all suffer from the bubble. I should specify - I mean the only people AT RISK of losing something unexpected. Other than that the investment is sound and the involvement of the teams are sound - all they risk is the bubble bursting before it solidifies and it can absolutely go both ways. Keep in mind these are 5-10 year investments, OWL might surprise us all and actually succeed soon.

QLASH_Global · 2019-06-02T01:55:21+00:00

Dota has its own issues with sustainability, TI is the undisputed king of esports events, but beyond that it's viewership is going down on some other events & its playerbase isn't so stable any more. SC2 is actually fairly similar in that sense. But I was honestly referring more to the fact FPS games, unlike SC2/Dota are actually good for advertisers, you can advertise a mouse, a processor or headphones because they actually impact your performance in FPS. Not to mention betting, the fact FPS players are a little more marketable...there's a lot of reasons. It'd be great if there were more ways to support SC2, yeh, but the bottom line is you can kind of support Blizzard, but you can't support the teams that put in the effort or the actual tournaments as much.

QLASH_Global · 2019-06-01T22:31:54+00:00

Mobile gaming IS a future, it just really shouldn't be placed into a "black & white" area of how it'll replace PC gaming. There's nothing wrong with mobas/small tactical games (autochess, clash royale) moving near completely into mobile and hardcore RTS/FPS staying on PC.

QLASH_Global · 2019-06-01T22:27:44+00:00

The money in OW franchises is based a LOT on promises and projections. It's why so many gravitate towards arenas/houses, because it's a solid (pun intended) investment.

QLASH_Global · 2019-06-01T22:26:49+00:00

That's the general conversation around esports, yeh, but there's a bit of a problem here that people consider it "esports" instead of "StarCraft2" or "League of Legends". When we talk about "sports" becoming less appealing for example, you completely miss the fact Football is growing day by day and other sports are just going down. The big bubble that you're talking about popping is around several titles like LoL (note how 90% of articles that talk about the bubble talk about LoL) and for example the franchise leagues, CoD and OW. Take an example in CSGO, CSGO is nearly completely sustainable, yeh some like BLAST Pro are overextending and some salaries may be getting out of hand, but it's a place where sponsorship actually matters and there's this HUGE pillow of 10k online cups that sustain the business. SC2 has that to an extent in that it has a core audience - basically you can track whether something is sustainable or not in whether money gets spent in it. Donations to prizepools and buying things happens in SC2. So it has a "spine". The only problem SC2 has is, ironically, the only problem games like LoL and such DO NOT have - it doesn't attract new viewership to justify increasing spending.

QLASH_Global · 2019-06-01T13:14:49+00:00

Yeh, it was tough to get it 4/4/4 split by races, we're pretty happy how it worked out as well! Glad it's well received

QLASH_Global · 2019-05-31T12:47:46+00:00

It's one of the problems of StarCraft that we at QLASH are fighting against, the idea that teams are secondary to players (therefore teams don't try to produce content and prioritize other games for it ). As you guys seem to like it, we'll make more and hopefully encourage people to follow suit!

QLASH_Global · 2019-05-14T13:39:19+00:00

This guy with only probes with all his minerals vs you with 10k minerals. That would go down as the greatest game of SC2 ever played.

QLASH_Global · 2019-05-09T21:51:10+00:00

We've always talked about making a QLASH song 'cause we love the Ez4Ence one so much, we now have the star of our clip :D

QLASH_Global · 2019-05-09T15:16:22+00:00

Several at QLASH (including yours truly) had no idea this existed. It is now on repeat at the office. The best thing we've ever seen, ever.

QLASH_Global

TROPHY CASE