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Alright so I started this blog so I could update daily about various things on my mind that are SC2 related. I will make fairly uninformed and general statements, perhaps someone will enjoy them hehe
For the first entry I want to talk about how matchmaking 'democratizes' SC2. I will compare it with the first game I got into competitively (my first love ololol): Super Smash Bros. Brawl. Nintendo is a company that has never acknowledged the competitive community of its Smash Bros. series. These are the repercussions of this fact:
1. The game is balanced for casual players.
2. The game is never patched.
3. Nintendo doesn't support any Smash Bros. tournaments.
4. Nintendo's matchmaking system doesn't allow for reliable practice.
The negative repercussions of these are pretty self explanatory. Number 4 however is especially damning since tournaments are played on LAN latency and Nintendo's online has a significant amount of unavoidable lag. This means that practicing revolves around who your friends are or which good players you can find nearby. One of the top players in North America, Ally, happens to have a brother who is also extremely high level at Brawl. Go figures!
Anyways I love StarCraft 2's matchmaking system. I can find an opponent at my skill level after a 20-30 second queue. Even ICCUP's channel type system of creating games and waiting for people felt like it took longer in my experience. Allowing anyone to find games whenever they want allows anyone to improve and thus democratizes the game.
Edit: I want to make a blog post about something good about SC2 or that I find interesting for daily for (at least) the next 100 days. 1/100!
 
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United States205 Posts
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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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
