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coming from a casual competitive smash bros background myself, I have to agree with all 4 of those points.
it was so frustrating not having friends who played smash bros, and there not being a good solid way to practice online.
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I agree with most of your points, except the usage of the term "democratize". SCII is inherently competitive in nature, and much more players of SCII follow the competitive scene as well as attempt to play competitively, opposed to super smash bros where competitive players are a minority. Hence both Blizzard and Nintendo are still catering to the majority at the expense of the minority (SCII's system generates ladder fear for some low level players just as super smash bros' system generates unreliable practice for high level players), which is very democratic.
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"Democratizing" is not the right word. You are possibly looking for the word "socializing" (made available to everyone who, by buying the game, inherently invested in it) and even that would be a stretch. A video game is not a system of economics or government.
To the general idea that the ladder gives people more opportunity to practice and improve, I would agree somewhat. Blizzard has made every attempt they could think of to dissuade such improvement, though. When they removed the displayed win ratios for 98% of players, Blizzard said that low level wins and losses mean basically nothing. So, then, what is there left to compare? Points are a measurement of activity, not skill. By only worker rushing I had more points than anyone in my bronze division. Does that make me better than them? Not really.
Instead of guiding players to improve, they are steered toward achievements or ladder points. These are rewards for playing a lot of games, not necessarily playing them well. By boiling down the competition to just a single division of your league with points as the only metric, they have obfuscated any true measure of skill, any way to measure improvement. It is instead a system designed to keep people interested until the next expansion pack comes out, not necessarily to enhance the quality of that play.
Coupled with the matchmaking system which only pits you against players of close skill, improvement is not encouraged, even if it is possible. So, while the ladder does give one the opportunity to improve, it is in no way emphasized by the game itself. Most of that comes from out of the game, the ladder is just the tool we use to get games. I wouldn't give blizzard too much credit for it.
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lol Gheed and ur silly worker rushing blogs. (I love those btw)
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I sense some jealousy in your post
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Canada73 Posts
I agree that democratize perhaps is not the best word. The matchmaking system for SC2 does give more people the power to improve, so in that loose kind of sense I meant democratize i suppose. Maybe just saying 'evens the playing field' or 'reduces geographical bias/luck of what games your friends play' or something like that.
Gheed there are many examples of Blizzard encouraging you to climb the ladder. For example splitting up players into small divisions so you can try to bust in the the top 8 and get a shiny gold star on your league badge. Using the most obnoxious strategy at low levels to climb the ladder and claiming the system is flawed doesn't really mean anything. I think you're giving too much weight to an anomaly rather than a rule. For me, I always look at the league of each player after the game and think about raising my MMR and so on. To continue a comparison with smash brothers (and most fighting games) you can beat relatively unskilled players very easily with one or two moves (Meta Knight's neutral B for example is hard to deal with for beginners) but you won't be able to get it done against a competent player...
Also I'm aware that a few people have gotten really high on the ladder worker rushing or 6 pooling, but i would argue these are short term results.
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EPT
