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Is SC2 fun? - Page 3

Blogs > Itsmedudeman
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L3gendary
Profile Joined October 2010
Canada1470 Posts
January 01 2012 07:19 GMT
#41
As someone who started with sc2 (only watched a bit of bw previously) I had a lot of fun learning the mechanics and it was a very challenging and rewarding experience. It stopped being fun when I got to mid/high masters. Then I started getting into bw and its hard for me to go back to sc2, even tho i seem to play it more often lately just because it's so easy to hop into with the addicting "find match" button but it doesn't take long to remind me why I stopped playing so much.

The problem is I play zerg and i feel there is no fun micros to do except in zvz ling/bling battles. Compare that to lurker, darkswarm, and muta micro. Idk maybe I should've chosen terran but I still do enjoy the macro aspect (injects and especially spreading creep).

I honestly think the biggest thing that makes sc2 not fun is not the easier mechanics (although that plays a part too), but rather the lack of interesting units. Hopefully the expansions change that but blizzard seems to be dancing around the issue, for example adding the swarm host instead of the lurker; it wont work the same way at all and will be hard to balance. Seems like they dont want to admit they were wrong so they're adding back bw units with different names but inadvertently gimping them at the same time.
Watching Jaedong play purifies my eyes. -Coach Ju Hoon
mothergoose729
Profile Joined December 2010
United States666 Posts
January 01 2012 07:28 GMT
#42
On December 27 2011 17:43 Selendis wrote:
I cannot empathise with you.

I feel like every other game is a waste of time. I play them, get bored and by the end of it I feel like the game developers stole 3-4 hours of my life that I will never get back. It's unfulfilling and I hate it.

Starcraft is completely different. I may feel tired,or in a bad mood and not want to ladder. But as soon as I get going, it feels like I'm alive again. The thrill of the win is like a sort of bloodlust and I can see the overall strategies and the individual tactical plays stretching before me as the match starts.

The losses sting, but getting revenge is so sweet.

Then there's custom 1v1. Practice matches are like sparring. You know what your opponent is doing and what you will do, your job is to turn your amateurish half learnt moves into a surgically precise dance of destruction.

Or custom games amongst friends to see who's best. You know your friend's mind as well as s/he knows yours. It's a test of your psychological skills as much as it is a game of finesse.

And then when you win, you feel like a champion.

And sometimes, not only do I win, but I get the indescribable feeling. Like I just levelled. My hands are faster, my mind is quicker, I am closer to perfection.


This right here. Describes how I feel perfectly. Great post.
Kipsate
Profile Blog Joined July 2010
Netherlands45349 Posts
January 01 2012 07:45 GMT
#43
To watch?Yeah

to play?

hell no.
WriterXiao8~~
Kiett
Profile Blog Joined March 2011
United States7639 Posts
January 01 2012 07:58 GMT
#44
If you're decent, it's probably fun. If you suck like me, you'll regularly lose 8 games in a row, experience overwhelming ladder rage, chuck your computer out the window, and cry yourself to sleep.

No, it's not fun. T-T
Writer:o
Eben
Profile Blog Joined September 2008
United States769 Posts
January 01 2012 08:05 GMT
#45
I love the sense of competition. But there is something about sc2 that just isn't as fun as BW was.. I can't put my finger on it.
rd
Profile Blog Joined July 2010
United States2586 Posts
Last Edited: 2012-01-01 08:08:33
January 01 2012 08:07 GMT
#46
On December 27 2011 20:22 Itsmedudeman wrote:
Show nested quote +
On December 27 2011 17:53 xmShake wrote:+ Show Spoiler +

SC2 can be very enjoyable at low levels but as a competitive game, it's simply not very fun at all in terms of actually playing it. I'm going to be comparing this extensively to Broodwar, I game I find to be not only incredibly rewarding but fun to play DURING the fact.

SC2 suffers from a couple of major problems: how an average game is decided, the speed of the battles, and the actual units / micro involved in playing the game.

Think about a ladder session of about 10-15 games, how do they usually play out? It goes like this, either the game is decided early, whether it be through cheese, unfortunate build choice or whatever, or the game plays out into a macro game, players get to 2-3 bases, perhaps there's minor harassment, then there's a big battle, and then someone wins. Does anyone see what's wrong here? Early wins are perhaps unavoidable as they were in Broodwar, but to have most games decided around the 12 minute mark from one 15 second battle is setting people up to feel a lot of things, but entertainment isn't one of them. This is probably one of the reason's why people get so upset when they play this game. It is very possible that a person lost because their macro or economy or composition was inferior to the opposing player's. It's equally possible that the battle was lost due to bad micro, positioning, or a number of other factors. However, in both cases, the focal point of the game was the battle which tends to be the culmination of most games. The long term (arguably where most people would derive their fun), is not valued simply because the first engagement is likely to be the last.

Compare this to Broodwar. The average game time was around 15 minutes, but I would argue that the variety of games were much greater (not the 12 minutes --> battle --> did I win? thing that tends to occur in sc2), and a late game scenario was much more likely due to some of the features in broodwar that don't exist in sc2. This results in a specific point of time in a game becoming less important, and players becoming more focused on the late game, in case a mid game battle is not game deciding (often the case). This is because Broodwar had a variety of strong defensive options for all races and because battles results were often not as dramatically one sided, allowing a player to come back even if they "lost" and engagement.

Consider the defensive options for each race in broodwar: Terran has access to seige tanks and spider marines, Zerg can use dark swarm and replenish their units quickly, and Protoss has psi storms, reavers, cannons, and smart building placement. The result of these options is that a battle needs to be decisive in order for it to be game deciding, otherwise, the most one can do with leftover units is force another battle, or do economic damage, considering most players had another force of units by the time a battle was done in broodwar, sufficient enough to defend the next attack. SC2 has an absence of these options in most matchups due to the general weakness of static defense and the design of the units. A Terran player MAY be able to repel opposing forces with seige tanks, bunkers, and planetary fortresses, but Zerg or Protoss player would be hard pressed to repel anything but light harass with static defense. To defend anything but the lightest attack, an equally sized army is needed. The result of this is simple: when someone wins the battle, they win the game because the loser of the battle can not hope to defend against a stronger army when an army equal in strength is required barring drastic human error. This explains the tendency of sc2 games to be focused at one point.

The reason why a game centered around such a thing would be unlikely to be enjoyed is due to the speed of the battles, and the micro involved in these battles, which are not fun for the player.

SC2 battles tend to be quick, lasting 30 seconds at the longest if you don't count staring at each other with seige tanks in tvt. Broodwar micro battles can span minutes depending on the matchup. The difference in length of battles allow skilled players in micro to differentiate themselves better from weaker micro players, and generally tend to be the funnest of the game anyway (do you like sitting down and making units better, or watching them kill stuff?).

The next part of this is that in my opinion, micro tends to be dull and insufficiently difficult enough for people to become known for their micro ability. Let me analyze typical micro interactions in the matchups.

TvZ: Boils down to spreading your marines and running away from banes while tanks shoot at them. EMP and snipe occurs in later game battles. Hellions and Banshees light harassment. On the zerg side, setting up for a surround, laying down fungals and move commanding banelings. General mutalisk harassment.

These things are incredibly boring and simple to pull off, and there's generally little variety in how these are performed, and some of them are REQUIRED by the player. Marine splitting for example: there's no thought involved, you split your marines or you lose horribly to banelings and/or fungal, a spell which negates your ability to micro at all. EMP units, point and click, autocast and especially cloak makes this trivial to perform, again no brainer, you do it or likely lose. Banshee harass is very shallow in this matchup, either stuff is there to hit your banshees or they're not. Hellion harass is the only fun thing to perform since you can do some cool stuff with juking zerglings, and how much damage they can do. On the zerg side its simply tragic, you don't actually micro at all during battles besides fungaling and then pulling your infestors back if you have them. Mutalisk "harass" boils down to targeting a turret/building and then running away when marines come because your mutalisks will all get mauled. You can do some cute stuff like picking off reinforcing units and stray tanks, but this a rare oppurtunity.

Meanwhile, in broodwar: seige/unseige + tanks and split marines vs swarm + plague + burrow/unburrow lurkers, mutalisks which can kill armies in the most skilled hands, and epic surrounds. This matchup produces some of the most dynamic and entertaining to watch and perform micro of any and in my opinion what all matchups should strive to be designed to reach in terms unit to unit and player to unit interaction.

In PvZ: gateway composition + sentries + colossus vs roaches and friends (more roaches). Besides forcefields and roach micro, is anything actually interesting going on here? colossus sentry make for incredibly uninteresting micro, and the only comment you're ever going to hear in this matchup is "NICE FORCEFIELDS!" or "THE ZERG SIMPLY HAS TOO MUCH".

Broodwar: non-autocast storm that takes skill and does actual damage, sair and reaver play vs river dance hydralisks, mutas sniping templars, scourge / split muta vs sair, and other things. Another incredible matchup where each unit works in harmony with each other to create interesting dynamics where best micro can determine the outcome of unit interactions like sair vs scourge muta or templar gateway vs hydras and stuff.

TvP: MMM kiting and vikings... shooting. Ghosts predict a forcast of emp. Protoss... more colossus and sentry, only now we use templar sometimes too. Like TvZ, this army interactions tend to be game deciding and boil down to emp + positioning or lol colossus.

Broodwar: This matchup was another work of art. Mines + seige mode make for an EXTREMELY map control based matchup, while the interaction between vulture + tank + vessel vs zealot dragoon templar arbiter made for incredible battles. The mines kept away the zealots and dragoons, but they could be used against the terran army by a protoss with good zealot micro or dropships, the emp vs stasis / storm tension, and the siege tank mechanic where they can't shoot what gets close to them being utilized fully by protosses with smart shuttle usage. And Reaver drops, which the potential to kill 20+scvs in a blink of the eye. Another dynamic and interesting matchup.

The key about the broodwar matchups is that the units not only interact well with each other that allows for dynamic gameplay, but also allow the player to interact with their units in such a fashion that there is an unattainable skill ceiling for controlling them. This allows players to become well known for their micro or a certain piece of their micro, which creates excitement because you wanna see how a matchup between a person known for his micro plays out vs a macro player or a well known micro player vs another well known micro player. Who doesn't get excited when they think about boxer's dropship micro or nada controlling some vultures, or july with 9 mutas? Then think about SC2, which has been out for a reasonable amount of time. You don't really get people well known for their micro, only for their game style or creative play (practically the only thing to differenciate players by in sc2). You can bring up someone like marineking but he was only well known for splits because he was one of the first to do it well and often. Pretty much any masters level terran can put up a good marine splitting show for you nowadays. I can't think of another single person known for their micro in particular, only creative play or known for building a type of unit.

I could continue to ramble on about other aspects as to why sc2 is not fun but seeing as micro is probably the biggest aspect of sc2 I find wrong with it, I'll summarize my thoughts. The micro is shallow and uninteresting. The battles are short, and there is rarely a way for you to differentiate yourself through micro. Why play a play game where you make units for 10 minutes so that you can engage in a boring battle for 20 seconds and then greet the score screen? I know I only do it because I feel some commitment towards my CSL team and enjoy playing with my friends, but in really I'd rather be playing broodwar if it was still alive in NA or some KOF13.

For reference im a random player at the top of masters, I play all the matchups and I know pretty much all of them are boring besides tvt (The only sucessful matchup) when it makes it to midgame.

I think this is close to how I feel. It's not necessarily that SC2 is too easy or anything, but that I just don't have fun going through the mechanics of SC2. Macroing feels pretty empty, and the big engagements are just well... feel very empty and unsatisfying at times. Even though SC2 is very much about that big battle, outside of the very frantic 2 seconds when the engagement begins there's not much to do that'll help a lot after the initial spellcasting/splitting as engagements end much too quickly. There's definitely moments in battles where it's still going on and I'm thinking "ok well, there's nothing I can do with my army at this point" and you've either lost or won the battle decided upon by that initial 2 seconds. I think the best way to put it is that it's more of an "engagement" rather than a "fight".

Also, it's not that I don't enjoy competitive aspects. Every game has competitive aspects to it and winning is definitely enjoyable and I'd certainly want to avoid losing as much as I can. However, I'm saying that SC2 (for me) is more like 95% about winning, and 5% about actually enjoying the game for what it is. There just isn't any motivation for me to continue wanting to get better at something that isn't fun to begin with. Why not put my time and effort into being better at something else more conventional if that's the case?


If you're chilling at your base maxing out then attacking, macro'ing seems pretty empty and big fights look pointless. I don't know your skill level, but multi-tasking really opens up the possibilities. You suddenly find yourself with way more split second decisions to make. If you can't spare the APM to constantly multi-drop then obviously it comes off as daunting, but it's trying to pull it off and actually tasking your mental capacity that makes it fun.
OmniEulogy
Profile Blog Joined July 2010
Canada6592 Posts
January 01 2012 08:22 GMT
#47
I try to manage my team the best I can and get greater enjoyment from watching them win their games than playing myself. That being said I find the game incredibly fun to play as well but yeah I believe the fact that I carried with me the idea that if I ever lose it's something I did wrong and not because my opponent is playing (x) race from when I was taught how to play broodwar has really helped me on this point.
LiquidDota Staff
IMoperator
Profile Joined October 2011
4476 Posts
January 01 2012 09:53 GMT
#48
The only fun I had with the game was improving and ranking up. I went from bronze in season 2 to masters this season because I had the drive to get better. But once you get to masters and it takes almost as long to get to GM as it is to get from bronze to masters, it really starts sucking the fun out of it. Every time I play it seems like a chore now. Instead of playing and having fun doing weird unit combinations and stuff, you try to grind out builds and figure out timings. I think that starcraft is fun for a while, but you can get burnt out way faster than with other games.
S2Lunar
Profile Joined June 2011
1051 Posts
January 01 2012 11:14 GMT
#49
I find the game very fun still, i still play a ton and watch a ton daily, and i've been playing since launch where i was bronze, now i'm high masters.

SC2 is a very rewarding game, certain losses hit me hard but I keep grinding out games to improve, learn new builds and refine the execution of my current builds. I love to improve and play better and better opponents.

Team games are fun and relaxing for me too.
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