EPTThe Worst Thing about Starcraft 2: Heart of The Swarm Beta
I was at work, working as hard as I could to not work, finding every excuse to do something that wasn't actual work, in this case I pulled my phone out of my pocket. I had a plethora of distractions literally at my fingertips. I chose G-mail. I could only see one e-mail in my inbox. It was from Blizzard. It was my HotS invite. How did I not see this sooner? I could have played last night before I went to bed? I could have called in sick and been playing right now.. come to think of it I'm not feeling too good. I spent a good 10 minutes working my brain for ideas on how to get out of work. Whatever, it can wait, I need my paycheck.
*eons and eons later*
After dealing with some minor installation issues, because I was too lazy to delete the 1.5 Beta before installing HotS. I was finally online, only I had to think of a new name. So exciting. This is quite a big ordeal for me, but I couldn't let it impede my objective. I went with the first random quirky thing I could think of. Which was the ?dinosaur? idol of all the Rugrats. So my beta name is Reptar.
I toyed with the idea of custom games versus AI to sharpen my skills and learn the nuances of the new units but I couldnt deny myself the joy of human prey. But I am happy to see a check box which allows me to indicate if I want to play for precious ladder points or not. Great, I lost, but no big deal it was fun and I made a Mothership Core damnit, and that is something that I had never done before this. This Mothership core was the one that moved super slow, so one iteration back. Either way.. I was ready for the big time. Beta Ladder here I come.
This is where I'd like to actually get to the point of making this post, at least start to, this will likely become more of a rant than a specific point... As you'll know you're default entered into general chat.
I don't turn this off, because I enjoy trolling the general chat and just generally being a troll. I always like to do a warm up game, it can be like the unranked game I mentioned earlier, or a game vs AI, or a team game. Beta doesn't offer team ladder, but it's very easy to find people in general chat looking for 2v2's. This in itself is fine. And obviously I enjoy playing 2v2's also. But this sorta irks me a little bit when that's all you're doing in the beta. And trust me when I play these 2v2's, I get cannon rushed or 10 pooled by the people inviting me. Which is totally fine in itself, but this is just sort of some color for my real gripe.
I really don't care what strategy you play. I was joking the other day that "I wish more people would cheese, so I could get my wins faster, it's soooo annoying to have tech all the way to broodlords just to kill someone". Cheese me away. Or play a macro game, or make nothing but the new units. Its your game and your time too.
But really that's my point to this entire blog is play the damn game. The developers didn't give you beta to play team games the entire time, that's why it's not an option for ladder. They gave it to you to test the units and balance multiplayer at least somewhat before release. They did not give you the game so you can sit in general chat and complain about where you were placed, or what you were beat by, unless you're complaining about widowmine then keep on complaining.
I think people spend more time talking about how they don't feel like playing 1v1, or they think 1v1 is bs, they got placed in the wrong league, or how the ladder isn't fair or who knows what they're saying, I'm busy playing.
So far I have done a really bad point of making my actual point. So let me broaden it.
Why do you care about your ladder ranking? We all know that up until recently your place in your division didn't mean anything. And we all know that the ladder is relative to who is 'active', if everyone in GM just stopped playing, those spots would be filled in, and that doesn't mean those next 200 people are any better than they were, it just means that they are better than everyone else on the ladder, but it says nothing to your actual skill unless you know the skill of the people next to you in line.
So beta ladder should mean even less right? Apparently not.
I think it comes down to why you play this game. But I feel like there are a ton of people who really cannot make up their mind. I totally understand the game can be frustrating to lose, but 1-3 games every 2-3 days, you're really not going to improve when other people are playing more than that. If the entire population is slowly getting better, then you have to get better faster to actually rank up. But people don't think this way. Imagine playing yourself from 2 years ago. Or even 1 year ago, hell even 2-3 months ago would be a huge difference imo.
Why do you play starcraft? If it's to dominate nerd faces then why don't you practice as if that's the reason? Really dedicate yourself to scouting your base, scouting their base, denying cheese/allins while gaining a lead for the next stage of the game.
Ladder is hands down the best way to do general practice if you're not already high master or GM. There are so many basic macro mistakes and decision making blunders that should be 2nd nature before you start grinding into one build order over and over. If you think you are better than probes and pylons, let me tell you that I suck, and that has been at the top of my list since the first time I heard day 9 say it, and it still is. I still get supply blocked sometimes, and I definitely forget to make probes during attacks even before 10 minutes sometimes, it's just bad.
Ok, how about the other option, you want to just play have fun and bs with your friends. Great, that's spectacular, now why are you bitching and moaning about ladder anxiety and how all you do is get cheesed on ladder when you could be playing with your friends?
+ Show Spoiler +
There are more options, like people who want to make other people rage/bm, well those people obviously have no issues playing, and they are doing a great service to the meta-game, which is to keep everyone honest with their builds.
There are the people who act like their play-style is naturally superior, and the thought of a more aggressive play-style should be demonized and called names such as "cheese" and "all-in". You know what I say.. I say you are a macro cheeser, and that you were "all-in" to your economy. Why you no have units mister? The point of the game is to kill people, it is not to save the most money, that my friend is the game of life, and one that you're also probably losing.
There are the cheesers themselves, I don't think these guys have an issue laddering, and they are also keeping everyone's builds honest.
There are the people who act like their play-style is naturally superior, and the thought of a more aggressive play-style should be demonized and called names such as "cheese" and "all-in". You know what I say.. I say you are a macro cheeser, and that you were "all-in" to your economy. Why you no have units mister? The point of the game is to kill people, it is not to save the most money, that my friend is the game of life, and one that you're also probably losing.
There are the cheesers themselves, I don't think these guys have an issue laddering, and they are also keeping everyone's builds honest.
The biggest problem I have with the beta is that people still refuse to ladder. I personally think the ladder is extremely inaccurate mainly because most people don't play more than 10 games. I am pretty sure the moving average MMR is more than 10 games. I think many people play a couple ladder games per session when they play.
Starcraft is a game of many many different pieces that must fit all together very nicely to come away afterwards and say "there wasn't much to change about that". Most of the time you can find many many things you could have done better, and also equally important, things you could have done differently.
It's really not fair to expect yourself to have consistent improvement or even consistent results when you only put in a couple of hours throughout the week. It's very different than a FPS game where once your muscle memory is there, and you learn the maps, you can keep that level of skill up very easily with very few games "like riding a bike". There is of course an extremely high skill cap with FPS, but I would argue that it's quite a bit easier to maintain that FPS skill than it is RTS skill.
If you've only once (a few days ago) decided you're getting the robo before adding 2 gates, then how do you expect yourself to do it naturally every time? I've been going ffe vs zerg for like 6 months and I still don't get my cybercore down at a good time except like 1/3 games. And I bet I play more than most people who read this.
People are so caught up on winning or losing, or playing the game how they want or think it should be played. What you'll soon learn in life and in Starcraft is that there are always winners and losers. And when there are other humans involved, you don't exactly get to play your way, certainly not all the time. Starcraft by nature is a game of reaction. Without reaction there is no strategy. So basically less QQ and more GG. It's better for your health. Blizzard is forcing you to have 50% wins and 50% losses anyways, so you might as well try to win, which means scouting for cheese, and then reacting. If you're so concerned about playing a certain way then just play your way.. until the enemy kills you at which point you should gg and leave the game because you got to do what you wanted to do.
Perhaps that's the heart of the issue, is that people want to have it their way and will whine if it's not their way. I think that a lot of this comes from many people within the community being rather immature, no offense is intended because I was extremely immature during the ages of 12-Current age. Perhaps a better word is spoiled, but I'll stick with immature.
I was going somewhere with this, but yeah. Even in HotS people have ladder anxiety. I just don't get it and it bothers me. I see these people in GM who played like 2 games and then stop. I'm sure they're all bragging about getting to GM, but they refused to play because their MMR might go down, get over yourself, if your MMR goes down overtime that's because you're not that good or it's because you aren't actually getting better like the rest of the population.
As more and more waves of people get into the beta and play the placements +1-2 games, it will be even more flooded with people who actually haven't played enough games to get a remotely accurate ladder ranking. I really just wish the ladder removed you from your league if you don't play a certain quota of games, like an average of 5 per week say...? How can you consider yourself in a league if you don't actually participate? If this were tennis or golf, and you played the season opener and then sat out the rest of the season, well you wouldn't really get recognized for your "diamond league placement for the 2012 Season 1" or whatever it is.
This has become just a rant about people in general. But really this is my biggest complaint about the beta. Coincidentally it's my biggest complaint about WoL too :-)
+ Show Spoiler +
So this is my first real attempt at a blog, I'd appreciate any and all criticism and flames. I need to know which writing styles are good and which are just bad, as I do jump around quite a bit.
I also need to know if no one agrees with anything I'm saying or not, cause that'd just be nice to know. If you feel like you know what the point of all this is then also let me know that, cause I'm trying to figure that out currently.
I will probably come edit this soon to try to make my points more clear and concise, might leave it how it is and call it a piece of art, any perceived imperfection is merely your imperfect mind perceiving it as such. We shall see.
Disclaimer: I started this with a fire inside me, got less passionate, then got really tired...
I also need to know if no one agrees with anything I'm saying or not, cause that'd just be nice to know. If you feel like you know what the point of all this is then also let me know that, cause I'm trying to figure that out currently.
I will probably come edit this soon to try to make my points more clear and concise, might leave it how it is and call it a piece of art, any perceived imperfection is merely your imperfect mind perceiving it as such. We shall see.
Disclaimer: I started this with a fire inside me, got less passionate, then got really tired...
