Garak73 said:
Everyone says that Starcraft I is easy, I couldn't beat it without cheats and I since I didn't care to cheat, I just shelved it.
That's Starcraft 1. I agree that it was quite a bit more difficult than most people made it out to be. Most of the people I met who complained about the campaign being too easy were already competent in multiplayer or micro-wizards.
I love the strategy genre, and I had my ass sorely kicked in SC1.
Starcraft 2's Easy Mode, however, stacks the deck so heavily in favor of the player that anyone who is complaining about losing there lacks the will to improve. I'm sorry, but in order for a game to have gameplay, it must present some sort of conflict that the player tries to overcome through some application of skill (barring games of chance, but there are people who even have those figured out).
Then again, you claim that accessibility isn't even a factor in the next quote.
It doesn't matter if it's easy for you, it doesn't matter if how easy it is for anyone because the issue here is that Blizzard has now decided that they can dictate how you play in single player mode. I think that's going too far, you don't?
There are two issues at stake here...
1) Blizzard dictating how you must play Single Player (there are logic/rules in a game?)
2) Blizzard discouraging users from hacking the game because they must.
1) Yes, they have the right to dictate how you should play the game. The very definition of gameplay implies that some sort of rules/logic exists. You define what logic you want to compete on, and then you play. By eliminating those rules, you are invalidating the point of the gameplay.
For players who just want to experience the story: there's Easy Mode for that!
If you want to play a variant game, you have access to a plethora of user-created maps online, or could create one yourself. Hell, they gave you access to modding the game via the map editor, but that still wasn't good enough? Wasn't that the point of hacking Single Player to begin with?
2) Blizzard cannot be partial to players about these sorts of mods/hacks because they (Blizzard), in legalese, established that there should be ABSOLUTELY ZERO gameplay alterations to the core game code by the end-user.
If they fail to enforce that, it will only mean trouble for them if they do have to drop the legal hammer somewhere down the line (due to the establishment of a Double Standard, which would contradict the terms they established in the contract/EULA).
And yes, that EULA is enforceable by law.
So, for one thing, they have legal obligations to meet and enforce.
The next part is the new Blizzard Policy (which is a set of guidelines that are relatively independent of the law).
I think Blizzard changed their policy after putting up with player-created bullshit in Diablo 2 for years. Lets look at Maphack, for example.
Maphack was a relatively harmless utility that enabled a player to skip most of the game content entirely by eliminating the random map element. One could argue that this practice, by itself, is harmless, and they would be correct.
However, it was the exploits that were inspired or even outright based on Maphack's network code exploits that lead to all sorts of problems from undermining the item-economy to eliminating the point of playing the game itself. (I had prepared a list of events that can be attributed directly to the hacker-mod community in D2, but for the sake of brevity I omitted it.)
Finally, and most importantly, it's their game. They set the rules in their game. They own the code.
This is how it has always been, no matter what sentiment we may have for the past.
You don't have to like it, but that's that how it is.
As long as Blizzard does not put any unconscionable terms in the EULA (and it doesn't violate the law), they can do as they see fit with their software.
I personally find it regrettable that we have passed the age where users were allowed (or outright encouraged) to mod their game without reprisal.
But because people abused their privileges in the past, we have to put up with these new restrictions. It isn't unethical, nor unreasonable, to expect Blizzard to enforce this decision. They don't want to encourage hackers, and they don't want other users to encourage hackers by using their hacks.
