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.
I play online multiplayer in sins, I am one of those brutal players who will cut you to pieces if you so decide to face me online. Not that i'm a mean person, I don't mind training new people online at all. I prefer games like chess, where speed has less of an influence on the game, which gives players more time to think. I enjoy playing a person's intellect, not their click speed and keyboard command controls, and click control of their units. I feel from playing both games that sins allows for more psychological warfare, that sins allows for a greater number of choices, and that sins gives players enough time to plan a sort of strategy that I have never before seen in an RTS. An impatient person wouldn't enjoy sins very much. I find this to be a huge advantage to the game, as it gets rid of a lot of idiots. Blizzard develops games that have a "flavor of the month" in every single game, and I find this annoying. A new patch comes out and EVERYTHING is different. Fads have very little meaning to me, and really appeal to a different personality.
I was in the diamond ladder in starcraft 2 beta, I played around 1000 games testing the game out. Starcraft 2 was fun, but it had not staying power for me, since I like to use my mind. It offers fewer choices, fewer tradeoffs. you seem to think that the "flavor of the month" strategy seems to offer a different path to victory. That is not what I am talking about at ALL. You are talking about a literal difference in the way to get from point A(start of game) to point B(victory). I am talking about a fundamental design strategy that is based upon rates of fire over time, allowing for longer tactical battles to occur, while at the same time giving a player time to think about the next move even while the battle is going on. In starcraft you can build a "cookie cutter" attack strategy that will be effective at one thing. In sins you can start in a cookie cutter way, but the game evolves organically in such a way that it is EXTREMELY uncommon to have a game that plays out in a similar fashion to another game. In starcraft battles are over so fast its ridiculous. Most of the time, if you lose one major battle that is it, goodbye team. In sins you can lose a major battle, but do enough damage to the enemy fleet that you actually win via attrition. The TEC are a whole faction that is based upon attrition. Since the pace of the encounter is much slower in sins, you can have more unit abilities and have more player controlled interactions in a fight.
There needs to be more games that favor thought over the "twitch" aspect of gaming, while still allowing for real time game play.
What do you think of Rise of Nations?
Best regards,Steven.
Maybe this was your experience from the Beta, but that is not how it is now. One battle can but will not always decide an winner in SC2 and there are not cookie cutter strategy that will give you a win each time. You will need to adapt often and smartly. But you will need to know the game first. You will need to learn the little nuances and be able to recognize pattern. Sc2 is much more like chess then any other RTS out there and it being so fast only means you need to be even better to be the best.
Hmm honestly I haven't played it much, even though I own it...lol. i got that game a little before I bought sins, and I haven't looked back in wonder. I'm sure it is a great game, as I have heard a great deal of positive feedback. Sins just has a map that is big enough to excite my mind. If I remember correctly it felt similar to age of empires with a tiny pinch of the civilization series.
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