I finally threw in the towel on Starcraft this week. As a single player game, it’s amazing. Game of the year as far as I’m concerned. It’s multiplayer design is phenomenal as well. It’s the single best game purchase I made in 2010.
And yet, playing online, against humans, has demonstrated why I just cannot stand multiplayer games in general. At various times during the beta I was ranked between "bronze” and “diamond” leagues. In my experience, the difference between silver and gold is pretty small in terms of player quality. Above that, you are starting to deal with a much higher quality of player.
The problem is, at silver and gold levels of Starcraft, the players you’re up against are overwhelmingly “all in” starting strategists. That is, they expect to win or lose the game in the first 5 minutes, which, to me, as a father of 3 nearing 40 years of age, is an anathema. I want to play the damn game.
The key to Starcraft is “scouting”. You scout to try to figure out what strategy they’re going to employ. This works in theory -- if you’re willing to devote inordinate amounts of time to the meta game that is Starcraft multiplayer. The meta game consists of scouting YouTube and various other sites to see what the latest fad opening cheese tactic is.
Playing against Zerg? Check to see if they’re doing a Baneling rush. Mutablob? Or are they going to do the extra roach cheese rush? Or something entirely different.
Playing against Protos? Photon canon rush? remote base? Probe hiding in your base?
Playing against Terran? Mass marine + peon rush? Mass Reapers? Rush for cloaked banshees? Or any of the myriad of other all-in strategies.
Scout. Scout. Scout. That’s the alleged answer but it misses the point. If you want to play the game, counter or no counter you still lose. If you fail to counter, game is over in 5 minutes. If you successfully counter, they quit and game is over in 5 minutes.
I don’t even know what Blizzard could do about this because we are playing two different games. I am playing a game of Starcraft, they are playing the Meta game of Battle.net rankings.
I get more pissed off when I counter all-in strategy than when I fail because I don’t even get the satisfaction of taking the fight back to them. They quit immediately when their all-in attempt has failed and move on to the next game.
But that frustration is rivaled by the feeling that if I don’t want to be victim to the latest all-in strategy I have to keep up with it. The extra Roach trick, for instance, is really hard to spot from “scouting” and very hard to counter (and if you’re wrong about which strategy they’re going to employ – something the “scout” people ignore, you end up crippling yourself).
Probably the only realistic thing that Blizzard could do is have those at Bronze, Silver and Gold Leagues have a somewhat randomize set of start-up conditions so that players can’t literally play out a recipe strategy they read on the net. But I don’t see that happening.
I love Starcraft. I love it so much that I get frustrated that I can’t just get to play the actual game. I’ll have to stick with LAN parties for now I guess.
It's the game's problem.
However for me SC2 was a disappoinment for the game itself, expecially the half backed, plain and uninspired single player.
They could do a separate ladder for people that play for fun where your rank was kept hidden from you.
That way it could still match you up with equally skilled players, whilst having no incentive for the 'Ranking-up-chumps'.
But yes in general playing with friends/friendly comunities is the way to go, as it really is hard to work around the chump factor without limiting the game. This is why i was against Elementals multiplayer trying to be competitive based, it just cant be done, multiplayer is always best with friends for any game that takes over 5 minutes to play.
I can really relate to alot of people here.
Generally, I am really really competitive when it comes to games, I am for the win, and I really enjoy being like that. Trying different strategies and ideas and see how they would work out and (hopefully) reap my rewards .
However like some of you said, its annoying when you have to use the newest method of winning or you are not going to. In my opinion thats not strategy....Hence why havent picked SC2 yet...I enjoy the competition, but there is no fun. Whats the point if the match would end before its begun?
My best multi player time has been with Empire Earth 2. I guess its because there are branching ways you can start and a lot of factors to consider not just the units you are going to build. Eg the research you going to do, what civilization you are, your main power, do you play defensive or not. Matches with one friend tend to be from 20minutes to 2/5 hours..which is really refreshing..sometimes its quick 20 min game (if the situation calls for it) but we can have an enjoyable night playing one match.I have played a lot of this game and its really weird how its not that popular...but hey we are all unique in our own ways hehe.
By playing Elemental, my first TBS game, I am starting to actually enjoy planing my expansion and not just clicking non stop Enter. Its really refreshing hehe. Maybe people who tend to like TBS games are the more relaxed crowd, or maybe I am just talking rubbish hehe
I hate multiplayer games, I hate other people in general.
I will probably get a lot of hate for this (as usual) but, play Dawn of War 2, it's an innovative and IMO much better multiplayer strategy game than Starcraft. (terrible single player though) It's criminal it doesn't have a larger player base.
Always action in the first 30 seconds of any game, very strategic despite lack of traditional base building. Most of the leaderboard/ranking complaints in this thread aren't an issue in DOW2. My only hate is it uses GFWL while also requiring steam installed.
(can't wait for that sirlin designed fighting game to come out. SSF2T HDREMIX was awesome.)
This was true of the original StarCraft as well. So, I turned to offline, making maps, modding ... but there was no way around the pig stupid AI. Even so it was a lot better than playing online.
With SC 2 I could see the same old thing coming. So, gave it a pass, going to be an instant replay of earlier experience. And these days if I am going to hack, there are a lot better things to hack than StarCraft!
I am thinking the maybe one of the reasons I never really felt that winning was the end game to all games is when i first started playing games, there were no saves. Occasionally there were these long ass codes you could use to start at a certain point, but to finish a game was an all day affair, and as children, we usually weren't allowed to spend that much time on a game. It was still a hell of a lot of fun though, especially at the arcades. It's not that I don't appreciate saves or the ability to finish a game, it's just the process is a blast for me with a good game, win or lose.
I'll have to call you on DoW2, but not quite for the reasons you'd think. I personally love DoW2, and the expansion, though I'll disagree in saying SP is terribad. I personally think it was very interesting (out of all the DoW titles, only the 1st one and the DoW2's had good campaigns).
In terms of GFWL, then try Retribution when it comes out. Retribution won't have GFWL, and will entirely use Steamworks (forgive me if I sound like I'm advocating Steam over Impulse; I simply love Impulse and rather lament that DoW2 is unable to use the fine services of Stardock).
That is why PBEM is good, it is easier to find people that are fun to play with the scedules of the players matter less, as long as they have play time.
People that want a short game would not be good for me to play with, as I and the opposite an sometimes intentionally draw games out.
You are exagerrating. I don't know of any game where cheese tactics have unequivocally reduced it to "shit". Any game with a half decent development team will root out and fix any imbalances that truly pose a threat to the well-being of the game. The cheese tactics that you are talking about are just...regular tactics. It is true that games played between less-skilled players will tend to end fairly early due to cheese but that is simply due to a lack of skill. At higher levels of play cheese diminishes in frequency and simply becomes another opening with its own risk/reward ratio.
I guess you don't play many non-Blizzard RTS' then, as I came name a half-dozen that were basically ruined due to poor balance warping ranked play. Not all developers have the time or funding to balance the game, and others that do don't consult the experts of the community for ideas and try to balance it themselves...usually breaking several things in the process of fixing one. I also don't know what your definition of cheese is, but MY definition of cheese is 'anything that is effective and easy do to, yet extremely difficult for the other player to counter'. When mindless spamming of one or two units wins you 66% of your matches, there is a problem with the game that does not lie with skill levels. Can cheese be beaten? Sure. Is it worth beating when you encounter it game after game? Not really IMO.
I tend to be with Lord Xia these days. Many balance issues could be resolved if people simply stopped abusing them, but they don't. They just want their win. Hell, there are people willing to pull their plug to win in games with poor drop detection. And they can have them, as I'll be playing only with people I know.
SC2 was specifically designed for quick resolution gameplay. I was following the game design from very early on and they specifically said they want to design a game where "a pro could win in 5 minutes over an unexperienced player". I is not a specific quote, but that was the sense of it and I remember thinking that I am not going to play multi on this game since I have no time and inclination for meta-game.
The 5-minutes effect is reached by balancing attack to be more powerful than defense, ergo you can actually win a rush without having to have a real advantage. Well, it is an RTT - Real Time Tactics - but no RTS, as there is no time and place for "strategy".
I guess people who complain about SC2 on this level are more of strategy players, while people who like it are more tactically inclined and they actually hate strategy games. Remember: strategy is about long-term planning, not single engagement. You cannot have a strategy when two guys duel with six-shooters at high noon, and that is what SC2 is actually about: players are cowboys, units are bullets, they fly fast and injure hard.
There is no place for development as it does not matter in the ranking system.
That's actually only half-true. You need to have a long term plan for your game when you go into a match, if you're playing seriously. There is no "guaranteed win" strategy in SC2. If you want to try cheese, you have to have a plan for what to do if it fails - the very definition of strategy. There is plenty of room for micromanagement (tactics), but if your early pressure fails to win a game outright (which is usually what happens at the top of the ladder), all the tactics aren't going to save you if your opponent trumps your economy and floods you with units, no matter how good your micro is. Starcraft 2 is both a tactical and a strategy game, you need both to win. New players should actually be encouraged to focus on the strategy, as it tends to be more important than micro in most respects. If you expand properly, you can afford more units faster and easier and it doesn't matter if your opponent has better micro if he has no economy to match your unit count. This is a strategic decision, not a tactical one. Unfortunately, most new players focus far too much on tactics (especially because they can watch all the "pro" games with the players doing very micro-heavy moves) and neglect just having a plan for the game. Or they'll go read a strategy ("Here's how to have cloaked banshees at 6 minutes") and sure they'll win some games, but as soon as they face an opponent who knows how to deal with it, they're lost because they have no idea what to do after that.
Starcraft 2 RTS needs rushes to keep the players entertained in the first 9 minutes. This isn't DOW40k or Company of Heroes where resource acquisition coupled with base building is handled in a very different manner.
All in strategies? Blizzard already patched in some nerfs and buffs to help address these issues. Moving barracks after supply depot and reaper nitros requiring the factory changed the early game. There are more serious problems that need revision like boring Zerg vs Zerg matchups, no fun.
Well actually he probably meant all in strategies not meaning the terrans in this sense.
I find it easy to kill any terran, also scouting and keeping protoss at bay preventing them to acquire new resources if you want to win at all times, but actually hard to go against zerg, they just spamn and spam units and i am overwhelmed till i get my first colossi out to keep them at bay.
I've never cared for rankings and the meta gaming they bring. They hurt Sins MP too. Winning becomes more important than enjoying the game. But you can't really blame the players. Who would want a bad record?
I hope Devs of online strategy games would make MP without rankings. Other possibility is to make rankings optional, or play separate tournaments that put players on a ladder.
Yes, this would be great if this happened. Maybe Elemental could go without rankings? Or only have rankings if all the players in a game wanted them?
At least allow fully-featured co-op against the AI without rankings.
Best regards,Steven.
Blizzard is fail @ match making. They have failed since WarCraftII. They fail in WoW. My guess is the MatchMakingBot is an unmarried retired accountant from a large company like Enron that still feels since the CEO went to church he couldn't have done anything wrong. "Hmm let's see we have beginner1, beginner2, & beginner3, heavens to betsey it's getting late how about match with KoreanGenius, PKUFaceOFF, and SkankyPajama2. Yeah, that's lovely."
If you have to give them the benefit of the doubt, you might say, "Yes. Matching a person that's played twice against someone with 3,455,389 matches under their belt is a very quick game and it gives the new player insight on how to beat the pants of someone else in under 3min. Thank you for not killing me sooner Blizzard you awesome guy you."
In WorldofWarCraft you can enter in to open map battles with characters that will 1-shot you over and over and over and over and 'just lovely', thank you Ms. Blizzard.
Actually, the matchmaking in SC2 is very, very good. First it will place you with people right around your point level. As you keep winning, it gives you tougher and tougher opponents. If you lose, it gives you a bit easier ones.
Like I said earlier, winning and enjoying the game should come hand-in-hand IF you have a well designed game. A player shouldn't be able to distinguish between 'playing to win' and 'enjoying the game'. Winning is the anchor which defines how the game is played, balanced, and enjoyed. If winning is not the end goal it adversely affects both the game designer and the player. Game developers cannot balance and make their game enjoyable because there is no clearly defined goal - each player may have their own way of 'having fun'. For the player, winning serves as the benchmark for how well they play the game. Without ladders, rankings, win/loss ratios or other skill measing metrics the player has no way of knowing whether they have improved or not. And this I would argue is the source of fun for ANY game.
That's why developers should not cater towards gamers who want to "enjoy the game" at the expense of winning. There's simply to much ground to cover due to differing tastes. The enjoyment gained from winning however is universal and is the only way of making a game enjoyable to every gamer.
I would have to disagree with you. From my experience playing WoW, Warcraft 3 and Starcraft 2 the matchmaking algorithm is very good. If you look at the math behind it (it was explained on the WoW website at one point) it shows exactly how the system matches you with other players. Your post feels like a huge rant and a personal unwillingness to understand how the games actually work.
Well I disagree. Rolling over a significantly less skilled player is not fun. But losing a long even match can be a lot of fun. And if we take the wins/losses ratio from Sins for example, it's not necessarily a measure of skill at all.
And if no record was kept, there would be little reason to smurf and stack the teams.
But I'd still say make it optional for those who absolutely must show off or shame themselves trying.
Actually no. The problem with SC2 and the greatness of tetris lies within the fact that you still can win the game of tetris even when you are close to the top. A few good shapes, a very good descisions and you still can get down to the bottom. While in Starcraft the winner of a match is dertimend often very, very early with very few chances to get back into the game. Imagine tetris would be over if you get 5 Shapes in a row, either ending with a win for you or a lose. Whould tetris still be fun?
Having a games outcome be determined on very few desicions makes a simple game, which can be considered as poor game design for a strategie game. (You may disagree if you like a more casual approach to gaming). Such a game will lack depth. Don´t get me wrong, a game does not need to be complicated to have depth take chess for example: A simple game, but the endless possiblies of the players decisions give the game depth. Now imagine chess would be game full of fool's mate and scholar's mate with a good chance of winning the game with them, and even worse, make you lose the game within the next 50 moves inevitable if they fail.
It is a game's problem, it is not a player problem.
This is also mostly false. There are cases where a winner is determined early - but then the game also ends early. There are not many cases where a winner is determined early, but the game drags on. Most often if it seems that way, it's a situation where one player gradually eeks out ahead through repeated engagements. But in that case, each engagement is a chance for the other player to get back into the game, providing more than "very few" chances.
Starcraft 2 games do not drag on. If they end early, they end early. If they end late, it's because of hard-fought battles all around, and not because one player won 20 minutes ago but has to spend all this time mopping up and the loser has no chance.
There are of course exceptions, like those Terrans who'll lift all their buildings when losing and spread them around the corners of the map, or a Protoss who'll spam Pylons all over the map out of spite, but these are the exceptions, not the rule.
Alot of thought went into this Starcraft stuff. I wish someone could spend that much effort into fixing Elemental war of crashes.
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