EPTToday I played a few team games with some friends, and I experienced a roller coaster of emotions due to all the memories that popped into my mind.
When I think about my past, I barely feel nostalgia about any real life event or situation. Many people of my age wish they could back to middle school or high school, but I don't feel anything like that. Being a pretty introvert guy, I never formed strong relationship with people which I can now say that I really miss. I found life in middle/high school to be quite dull, and although I got along well with my peers, those relationships never evolved during the years. These days, I often feel sorry about the way I chose to live my life. I only cared about playing videogames, and as a result, I didn't notice the people around me and get the chance to develop relationships. On the other hand, if I didn't play videogames so much, I have no idea what kind of a person I would be now, so I can't honestly say that I fully regret my decisions.
Anyway, let's talk about the game, more specifically.
Why did I quit sc2? There were two main reasons, and both are ever more valid today, which is why I don't simply start playing again. One is that I decided that I wanted to focus more on my real life over videogames, as I'm growing older and need to take some responsibilities. Sadly, Sc2 is not a game you can truly enjoy unless you put your heart into it and practice everyday. I felt, and still feel like, I wouldn't be able to do that anymore. Queueing up a ladder game, being faced against the same people all over again, and losing because you haven't kept up with the practice is something which I found too frustrating.
The second is one which I'm a bit ashamed of - I couldn't stand how the game was dying at such a fast rate. Does that qualify me as someone who just follows trends and only plays the mainstream games? I honestly don't feel like it. It simply made me way too sad to see my favourite game ending up like that. I had a lot of people around me with a more positive attitude who just acted like it wasn't happening, or avoided the subject at all cost. But simply hitting the ladder and seeing that I was constantly facing the same players, many of which I didn't like playing against, grew my unrest.
Convinced by some of my friends who were playing the game at the time, in August 2015 I started playing dota. The switch was quite gradual, as I was playing enough games to mantain my GM status until the Lotv update in November 2015. I've never been really good with adapting to big changes (HotS was traumatic as well), so that's when I finally stopped playing regularly.
Right now I'm close to 3k hours on Dota, an 'impressive' amount. Even so, the Dota 2 experience has never been comparable to sc2 for me. First off, I didn't get the chance to make new friends with dota. That's my fault as well, but I never got used to the 'format' of 5 player teams, which will inevitably fall apart as people take breaks from the game, etc.. On sc2, you could simply join a team or 'clan' and find some practice partners to play with. You only needed 2 people to play an 1vs1 game one against each other or to team up in 2v2s, while on Dota you need 5 people to play a serious game.
But in truth, that's only a minor problem. The crucial issue is that I don't find the game to be nearly as fun. I remember when the classic 'ded gaem' tread on reddit or TL popped up, many people would bring up the fact that the game was dying simple because 'it isn't fun to play'. That really triggered me as I couldn't think of a more exciting game than sc2. So why isn't Dota (and I guess the other mobas as well) fun? The pace is extremely slow, so you're not doing anything (not counting farming and moving around the map) 80% of the time. Games last 40 minutes on average, but in the end you don't really feel satisfied as in fact, not much has happened. For comparison, for the first year or so I was playing sc2, I would play only a couple of games a day (for a total of about 30 minutes), put all my effort into it, and the amount of emotion and stress (the positive kind) made it enough for that day. Ladder anxiety wasn't all that bad in the end - I would play very few games, which hindered my mechanics improvement, but each of them was special. To this day, I still remember some of them. Nothing like that happened with dota. Actually, I've never even watched a stream because I find the games even more needlessly long and boring when I'm not playing. It was the exact opposite with sc2.
It is true that it comes down to preference, but having played both games more than most people, I believe that my opinion has at least some degree of unbiasedness and knowledgeability. As far as I'm concerned, I've come to the conclusion that the main reason why Sc2's player base never grew, and instead decreased dramatically over time, is the economical one - the game has always been way too expensive to cater for the mass of casual players.
In conclusion, I must say that nothing satisfied me as much as when I pulled off a perfect army engagement with multiple right calls in a fraction of a second, or when I kept my cool for a long, multitask-intensive macrogame and defied all my opponent's attacks successfully, or when I decided to go for an all in rather than expanding and hit the perfect timing when my opponent was being too greedy, or when I sneaked a cheese all in and caught my opponent completely unprepared. The effort I put into a game of sc2 wasn't limited to the decision I had to take and the buttons I had to press, but it was also an emotional effort. I really wanted to improve and losing or winning a single game often meant the world to me.
Recalling these moments today, make me remember how important it is in life to have something you really care about, and an objective to strive for with all your might. I don't think I will start playing sc2 again, but I hope I can build my future so that I can keep experiencing this kind of emotions.
