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Croatia9526 Posts
On December 30 2015 03:11 Simberto wrote:Show nested quote +On December 30 2015 02:08 2Pacalypse- wrote:On December 30 2015 01:26 Simberto wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On December 30 2015 01:01 Scarbo wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On December 29 2015 23:24 Simberto wrote:
A big problem which can also be seen in this thread is the at least partial prevalence of an elitist attitude in the oldschool BW players. If the prevalent reaction to any complaint is some variation of "git gud scrub" or "l2p", a lot of players will simply decide to play another game instead. Which is probably not want you want, because if you want to keep on playing the game, you will need to make it attractive to new players, or you will have to deal with an ever shrinking playerbase, which once it falls under some critical level means you will have problems finding people to play with.
As someone who is not an oldschool BW player, i notice a lot of very archaic mechanics in the game. Now, the people who have played BW for 15+ years are used to them and even justify them as reasonable, as can be seen by Jealous in this thread. I am still not entirely convinced that that is not just some sort of Stockholm syndrome where you dealt with the weird shit for so long that you think it is actually a good idea.
Maybe i am too casual for BW, but then i think most people who haven't played BW for ages are. To me, artificial barriers that stand between what i want units to do and what they actually do are just annoying, not some genius idea to display my leet APM. If i tell my units to go somewhere, i would like them to go there, instead of walking around in circles because they are stupid. Sure, i can combat that by telling them how to go there in exactly the specific way they like, which is way more complicated. To an oldschool BW player this might be mechanical complexity. To someone who is new to the game, it is just annoying archaic bad programming. If i want to build 5 tanks, why do i have to tell each factory to build one one after another?
Maybe i am getting to old, but there are already enough stressful things for me to take care of during the game without it actively trying to misinterpret my orders and making me state them in a very specific way.
A big problem is also that apperently the game simply isn't a lot of fun before you get good at it, which is highly problematic as it makes it unlikely for people like me to actually be interested in getting good at it.
Of course, the simple answer is "Git gud", which makes you happy as you have established that you are now more hardcore than i am. It also means that soon, you will have problems finding new players to play. And a ladder system that requires everyone to crush a buttload of noobs at the start of a season is the last thing you want if you want to ever find new players. There are ladder systems that are a lot better at providing even matchups to everyone.
As much as you might hate it, if you want BW to continue, you need to attract new players. And telling everyone that they are scrubs and they need to be better, then it will be fun, but first they need to lose 100+ games, will make most of them quit and just play something else. Being an elitist gatekeeper only letting in the "worthy" will not benefit you in the long run. I understand where you're coming from but you have to appreciate a few things. First your example of the 5 factories is not a particularly good one. In SC2 you also have to press T (or whatever hotkey you use) 5 times to make 5 tanks. You can indeed select all 5 factories at once, on the other hand they butchered the UI so bad that the information of whether or not your factories are building something is a small white square at the bottom of the screen. You'd expect more from a modern game. The pathfinding is really retarded sometimes, granted. Only change I'd make is when you tell units to go somewhere impossible (blocked by other units, buildings or terrain) they would get as close as possible to the destination and stop, instead of running around like morons. Everything else I think it's fine. The thing you're missing though, in the words of Day9, is that BW is an inefficiency engine, meaning it's trying to fuck you up the entire time, and your job is to not let it. That's part of what makes a good **real time** strategy game. If you make it so everything repetitive is automatic then might as well make it turn based. Why not make it so production buildings have a switch where you can tell it to just build a specific unit continuously? So you don't have to macro anymore. I'm sure a lot of players are bummed that they have to keep making units over and over, this would certainly make them more interested in playing. You could automatize the larva injection in SC2 as well, or the building scarabs in BW. Certainly would help the slower players. The thing is there are already games made for those people, games like Civ 5 or Chess. Some people, like myself, enjoy the mechanical challenge. I've got an above average hand-eye coordination and am naturally attracted to games where this skill can give me an edge. I understand there are lots of people that don't, but that doesn't make me a nostalgic stockholm syndrom blind fanboy. It's just the way it is. Ok, i guess in that case the main problem (for me) is that that concept simply does not appeal to me. I dislike the idea of artificial mechanical barriers, to me the ideal interface is one where i think about what i want to happen, and then it happens, making the whole thing about the quality of the decisions as opposed of my trained capability of not fucking up large amounts of different things at once. I hate being in a situation where i know what the correct response to a given situation is, but i can't make the game do it in time due to interface constraints. This is also the first time if have heard of BW being talked about like that, usually the discussions are about the depth of strategy and so on, with the mechanics basically being something you need to deal with to reach that juicy core of strategy below it, as opposed to the main meat of the game being the mechanics and the struggle with a computer just reacting very weirdly to inputs so you have to learn many very specific things to do at once in an "inefficiency engine" I still think that it is possible to have a game that is based on real time decision making and adapting your strategy to the changing situation without putting artifical APM wasters in the way of it to fuel your "inefficiency engine". To me, a lot of the BW style mechanics are something that is in the way of the fun of the game, which would be thinking about strategies, but apparently to you those (to me) annoying useless interface complexities are what you actually want. You throw the word "artificial" around like there's some other kind of "APM wasters". Everything is artificial; it's a scale that can be balanced based on what kind of a game you want. On one side you have turn-based games, which don't require any mechanical skill and on other side, you have something like Warcraft 2, which have a lot of mechanical demands (and yes, there are still people who play and enjoy Warcraft 2). Saying you prefer one kind of an "APM waster" (larva injection in SC2) over another (telling workers to mine minerals manually in BW) is pretty much meaningless. BW has a good balance between mechanical demands and "wanting things to happen, and then they happen", which millions of people have enjoyed and loved. It's obvious you prefer something that's leaning more towards the turn-based games and with less mechanical demands, but that is highly subjective matter and doesn't answer the question "which way is better?". I guess i might have a slight problem with the mislabelling here, because with such a focus on the mechanics BW according to your explanation BW is (for everyone but a few people at the very top) less of a "strategy" game and more of an "APM game", while most of the discussion is about strategy, and few people talk about the mechanical parts of the game. I still wonder how many people really enjoy the APM part of the game, and how many just see it as something they have to deal with to get to the "strategy" part.
I don't know how you got that out of my post, because I never even mentioned the word "strategy" in my post. I was talking about mechanical demands exclusively. This popular belief that strategy and mechanical demands are in inversely proportional relationship is a fallacy that is easily shown to be false.
Strategy and mechanical demand are not a zero-sum game where you can't have both or indeed, none. Incidentally, turn-based games are a zero-sum game because they're 100% strategy and 0% mechanical demand. But this is rather an exception that proves the rule, rather than the rule itself, because in real-time strategy games you can have a lot of strategy and a lot of mechanical demand at the same time. They're also intertwined in complex ways so it's very naive to be talking about "APM part" and the "strategy" part, like they're completely separate. The notion that if you somehow decreased the mechanical demand of a game will suddenly open vast amount of strategy that you weren't been able to achieve before is ridiculous; and in fact, it's probably the other way around.
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Simberto, it`s not really up to anyone else to help get people through the passage of the gate. The activity can easily speak for itself, especially in the case of a well-explored, well-known game like this.
I believe the word you`re looking for is `anachronistic` or similar.
Have you recently tried to recommend shows, games, or hobbies that you really enjoyed deep down, but you really can`t recommend to everyone? I think that statement/question should stand on its own, even if it really doesn't. You can't exactly pass something (a mechanic, idea, method) off as a charm without being met with questions with the same nature. 'Where is the fun in things?'. 'Why is that a good thing?'.
One of the great things about sc:bw is that you don't have to strain yourself to explain why, and there are many reasons for this. I am no longer passing the game off as an art, and it (and its players) can speak for itself. What people enjoy about this universal game is having grown with it in tow. Whether you were actively part of that experience or not, you know people who have done it and whom have not regretted a moment about it. It goes a bit beyond getting other people to enjoy or experience it the same way.
It was a game people really played back then that people play a lot today; it's as simple as that.
If you dislike stuff that's archaic, redundant and whatnot; or maybe you feel like it loses a a game its potential, i feel like there aren't too many reasons to go the extra mile and say that the entire world works that way. Game difficulty and the learning curve measured in tiny little subtleties that your average joe will rarely notice help the entertainment surrounding it. but that's all it does: help. Most of it is knowing, or, feeling that whatever is happening is cool. At least some of it is when it clicks that there's several millions sitting there and enjoying the same things.
When there's a distant future where there's an even better game, i don't think we'll be playing it. We won't be playing games like we are now, and it's not meant as an insult to those games or their developers, or fanbases. It's just that there's greater and better things out there for you, and you understand that. Gaming is a passion more than it is something that you absolutely need to take seriously.
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@ 2pacalypse
But what would the advice be that you give to beginners? Probably something along the lines of "build pylons, build probes, keep your money low", not "think about your strategy, figure out what your opponent is doing, then think of a good way to exploit it".
I am not talking about the people at the top, but about people beginning to play the game. And there is a large hurdle of mechanics you have to step over before thinking about strategy becomes a worthwile investment. Thus, for a beginner, the game is very much only about mechanics, and not really about strategy for a very long while. And even then it will for a very long time only be learning other peoples strategies, not coming up with your own, simply because you still don't understand the mechanics well enough to be able to do that reasonably well.
So BW is at least from my perspective an APM game, until you become very good at the APM part, at which point i have no idea but it appears to have some large part of strategy involved, but also still has APM as a very relevant part of the game.
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On December 30 2015 03:56 Simberto wrote:
@ 2pacalypse
But what would the advice be that you give to beginners? Probably something along the lines of "build pylons, build probes, keep your money low", not "think about your strategy, figure out what your opponent is doing, then think of a good way to exploit it".
I am not talking about the people at the top, but about people beginning to play the game. And there is a large hurdle of mechanics you have to step over before thinking about strategy becomes a worthwile investment. Thus, for a beginner, the game is very much only about mechanics, and not really about strategy for a very long while. And even then it will for a very long time only be learning other peoples strategies, not coming up with your own, simply because you still don't understand the mechanics well enough to be able to do that reasonably well.
So BW is at least from my perspective an APM game, until you become very good at the APM part, at which point i have no idea but it appears to have some large part of strategy involved, but also still has APM as a very relevant part of the game.
Sorry to be obnoxous or to butt in, but i think you're a little stuck on the idea that "it's APM".
The moment you talk or have an internal monologue about that checklist of things you need to do, that is strategy, or a least a form of it. At that point you're not just doing things for the sake of it, like say mashing buttons in a fighting game. You're working out a plan that you know from a larger POV that it'll be good for you. It's a moot point i'm making, and i'm on a tangent already.
Let me tell you, i've gotten cannon rushed back when games were fresh, 16 games in a row by nearly different people every time. That was their strategy to make work. Don't you recall the 'first-love' in playing strategy games? Mechanical skill might be what sets that strat apart, but that doesn't stop people from getting it to work. This is a strategy that starts up before anything your opponent does is even called into question. it doesn't matter what they do, you're building pylons and cannons in their base, rofl.
The advice is have fun, no need to overthink. Noone is going pro here (at least not initially),
and believe me... people who think they are good or have been playing for years and years have lost to worse.
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Croatia9526 Posts
On December 30 2015 03:56 Simberto wrote:
@ 2pacalypse
But what would the advice be that you give to beginners? Probably something along the lines of "build pylons, build probes, keep your money low", not "think about your strategy, figure out what your opponent is doing, then think of a good way to exploit it".
I am not talking about the people at the top, but about people beginning to play the game. And there is a large hurdle of mechanics you have to step over before thinking about strategy becomes a worthwile investment. Thus, for a beginner, the game is very much only about mechanics, and not really about strategy for a very long while. And even then it will for a very long time only be learning other peoples strategies, not coming up with your own, simply because you still don't understand the mechanics well enough to be able to do that reasonably well.
So BW is at least from my perspective an APM game, until you become very good at the APM part, at which point i have no idea but it appears to have some large part of strategy involved, but also still has APM as a very relevant part of the game.
What would I tell someone who's beginning to play the game? The same thing I would tell someone beginning to do anything... practice and as you eloquently put it earlier "git gud". I've spent 6 years training at my local football club and most of that time was spent literally kicking a ball at a wall, perfecting the "APM part" of getting good at kicking the ball. And I did it because I love playing football and while it was a lot of hard work, it was also pretty fun in the end.
However, it's also important to point out that not everyone is playing the game because they want to get good at it either, whether it's football or BW. It's very much possible to play both casually, not caring about all the strategy and intricacies of the game, and have fun (BGH, UMS etc. in BW or kicking the ball around with your mates in the backyard). So this notion that you need to master the "APM part" (whatever the hell that means) of BW to even remotely enjoy it is silly, as it is proven false by countless number of noobs everywhere  .
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On December 30 2015 03:56 Simberto wrote:
@ 2pacalypse
But what would the advice be that you give to beginners? Probably something along the lines of "build pylons, build probes, keep your money low", not "think about your strategy, figure out what your opponent is doing, then think of a good way to exploit it".
I am not talking about the people at the top, but about people beginning to play the game. And there is a large hurdle of mechanics you have to step over before thinking about strategy becomes a worthwile investment. Thus, for a beginner, the game is very much only about mechanics, and not really about strategy for a very long while. And even then it will for a very long time only be learning other peoples strategies, not coming up with your own, simply because you still don't understand the mechanics well enough to be able to do that reasonably well.
So BW is at least from my perspective an APM game, until you become very good at the APM part, at which point i have no idea but it appears to have some large part of strategy involved, but also still has APM as a very relevant part of the game.
Actually you should first think what youre doing before trying to get faster. The apm will rise naturally when you know what youre doing. There are plenty of high apm low level players that can be beat with one hand and third of their apm since they lack the strategical thinking.
To a complete beginner the first things to do is figure out what each building and unit does and how to use them (what point of the game and vs what units). Then its mostly just learning from your own mistakes and naturally trying to reach the limits of your hand speed. It's easy to get the wrong idea how to approach the game if you start by downloading bwchart and see high apm fpvods
Edit: and you really need to have patience and good nerves with this game. It is the hardest game I ever played, yet the most revarding. No one should expect a win during their first 50 games or so.
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I'd say the best way to get into BW is not to start playing it alone. Get some friends that are around the same level, read some strategies and try them out on each other, mass games, make LANs, tournaments between yourselves. In my opinion the fun lies within the competition
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Japan11286 Posts
On December 30 2015 03:56 Simberto wrote:
@ 2pacalypse
But what would the advice be that you give to beginners? Probably something along the lines of "build pylons, build probes, keep your money low", not "think about your strategy, figure out what your opponent is doing, then think of a good way to exploit it".
I am not talking about the people at the top, but about people beginning to play the game. And there is a large hurdle of mechanics you have to step over before thinking about strategy becomes a worthwile investment. Thus, for a beginner, the game is very much only about mechanics, and not really about strategy for a very long while. And even then it will for a very long time only be learning other peoples strategies, not coming up with your own, simply because you still don't understand the mechanics well enough to be able to do that reasonably well.
So BW is at least from my perspective an APM game, until you become very good at the APM part, at which point i have no idea but it appears to have some large part of strategy involved, but also still has APM as a very relevant part of the game.
It's hard to execute something if you don't have solid enough fundamentals, that's why beginners are told to do the basic stuff. It's one thing to debate strategy in a forum or with friends but when you're playing the game, it's a whole different story. It's like in sports; in basketball at least, you aren't taught the stuff like pick and rolls, dribble hand-offs, weak-side help defense etc off the bat because even if you know it, you still need to know how to dribble, shoot jumpers, go around or drop from screens to actually apply them. Furthermore, don't confuse stuff like telling workers to mine, making units and basic unit micro to stuff like army positioning. The latter goes hand on hand with strategy while the former is basic management.
Is it an APM game? Absolutely not. You will routinely see people who have ~100 to ~150 apm do really well. Below that you have guys constantly thinking about their next move. For any real-time game (MOBA, FPS, RTS, hell, even (MMO)RPGs), that would spell doom to you.
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Because it's a chore to play.
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- Naturally competitive people, patient people who have the means and will to practice and enjoy the learning process, love BW.
- The other majority, or "casuals", do not like BW, for the opposite of the reasons listed above. In our age of instant gratification, can you really put the blame on anyone?
Conclusion I came to after reading through a good portion of the thread.
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On December 30 2015 12:31 c3rberUs wrote:
Is it an APM game? Absolutely not. You will routinely see people who have ~100 to ~150 apm do really well. Below that you have guys constantly thinking about their next move. For any real-time game (MOBA, FPS, RTS, hell, even (MMO)RPGs), that would spell doom to you.
i just want to point out that any 'real-time game'--rts, like you say--includes starcraft.
i'm not quite sure what you mean.
constantly thinking about the next move spells doom?
and so all those genre of real-time games are examples of apm games?
just trying to make the same correlation as you are right now.
or do you mean the inverse, except for your very first statement.
here's how i make the distinction. if from an intermediate level of play your mechanics start to set you incredibly apart from more methodical players, there is now a clear distinction of skill that stems from practicing controls and execution. it matters, but isn't so important that you're using imbalanced interactions like different heroes, champs, or game pieces because there's a definite possibility of you overcoming the odds through mechanics alone.
say you are using the same pieces on a board game like chess, there are still chances to distinguish yourself through your hand-movements (although grasping hard here) if playing a game mode that utilizes that, like say speed-chess. i'm not even shitting you, there's even a niche 'sport' called chess-boxing where they alternate between rounds of timed chess and physical contact through actual boxing.
still, the chances for you to make a different through that difference in mechanical skill is small when we're takling about most games that are designed to be a board-game at heart.
i don't think the discussion is important, but i don't think a moba is mechanically challenging; i don't think an fps is challenging in the same way either, but i have been playing games my entire life.
there is that distinction. games play using a similar control setup and you need only fine-tune them to meet your needs. the only muscle memory you need to train to get to an intermediate level is going through the motions of playing an entire game through. tiny little mistakes cost you, but so does poor game-theory or decision-making depending on the type of game in question.
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Japan11286 Posts
I didn't word it right it seems. It's like when you're doing a BO you're not familiar with, you keep thinking about the next step in the BO. The tiny delays accumulate into precious seconds then BAM you're behind. In DotA from my experience, it's like doing a spell combo a second too late -usually results to getting owned.
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On December 30 2015 13:29 nanaoei wrote:
i don't think the discussion is important, but i don't think a moba is mechanically challenging; i don't think an fps is challenging in the same way either, but i have been playing games my entire life.
Its true that its not challenging but its probably more challenging than you might think. Try going on DOTA, for example and hit a creep score of 70 every game. Doing something so easy is not as simple as it might seem. I do, however attest to the fact games like LoL and DOTA are faa~aar below BW when it comes to strategic depth and mechanical needs.
Also weighing in on the "APM" vs "Strategy" debate, this is the same bullshit SC2 people tried to shove down our throats when the game was first hitting the market claiming having everything easier mechanically meant more forgiving games (more people at higher level and therefore a more vibrant pro scene) and your mind was free to strategize. Turns out that was a load of shit and this argument STILL somehow pops up.
You want real-time strategy games in a nutshell? Here. Notice the name's composition. "Real-time" meaning it takes place in real-time units or seconds. This is more akin to speed chess than regular chess (mobas/slower games). Making more correct/better decisions which result in more correct/better things happening (quantity) per unit of time all over the map are what win a real-time strategy game. It does not matter what pace. If those 3 variables are very high %s, you are going to be one of the top players of the world. BW is just one that requires a lot of mechanical prowess to actually manage everything. Even doing something like following a build order tightly takes a lot of practice.
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Are we still on apm/strategy or talking about the merits of different games/genres? How is any of that relevant to the discussion at hand?
I guess my response was buried, but really you guys are over analyzing everything and going off on tangents. It always boils down to the difficult and steep learning curve of BW, where "normal" people, who are in the vast majority, derive none or very little pleasure from playing such a difficult and old game. BW could have more strategic depth by a factor of 100, and people still wouldn't play due to the absurd initial investment in time and practice.
For something to be truly popular, it has to be accessible, easy to learn, and hard to master. BW is moderately accessible (pay for b.net or mess around with other servers, which requires some tinkering), hard to learn AND master. So naturally people aren't going to suddenly set aside hours everyday and grind out build orders vs. AI. That's 95% of the discussion, I'll repeat again the fact that it DOESN'T MATTER how good or bad BW actually is, if it's neither easy to pick up nor accessible, it will receive little to no exposure from the public, and newcomers will be put off by the game no matter how much you attempt to convince them otherwise.
Dota is a lesser version of soccer, and SC2 is akin to gymnastics. Someone prove me wrong in that there's actually much more to the discussion or how it would be relevant to what OP was asking.
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On December 31 2015 00:42 EngrishTeacher wrote:
Are we still on apm/strategy or talking about the merits of different games/genres? How is any of that relevant to the discussion at hand?
I guess my response was buried, but really you guys are over analyzing everything and going off on tangents. It always boils down to the difficult and steep learning curve of BW, where "normal" people, who are in the vast majority, derive none or very little pleasure from playing such a difficult and old game. BW could have more strategic depth by a factor of 100, and people still wouldn't play due to the absurd initial investment in time and practice.
For something to be truly popular, it has to be accessible, easy to learn, and hard to master. BW is moderately accessible (pay for b.net or mess around with other servers, which requires some tinkering), hard to learn AND master. So naturally people aren't going to suddenly set aside hours everyday and grind out build orders vs. AI. That's 95% of the discussion, I'll repeat again the fact that it DOESN'T MATTER how good or bad BW actually is, if it's neither easy to pick up nor accessible, it will receive little to no exposure from the public, and newcomers will be put off by the game no matter how much you attempt to convince them otherwise.
Dota is a lesser version of soccer, and SC2 is akin to gymnastics. Someone prove me wrong in that there's actually much more to the discussion or how it would be relevant to what OP was asking.
pay for bnet since when? Why are people even involving themselves in this argument when they do not have even have a clue about the game. jesus..
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On December 31 2015 00:52 SolaR- wrote:Show nested quote +On December 31 2015 00:42 EngrishTeacher wrote:
Are we still on apm/strategy or talking about the merits of different games/genres? How is any of that relevant to the discussion at hand?
I guess my response was buried, but really you guys are over analyzing everything and going off on tangents. It always boils down to the difficult and steep learning curve of BW, where "normal" people, who are in the vast majority, derive none or very little pleasure from playing such a difficult and old game. BW could have more strategic depth by a factor of 100, and people still wouldn't play due to the absurd initial investment in time and practice.
For something to be truly popular, it has to be accessible, easy to learn, and hard to master. BW is moderately accessible (pay for b.net or mess around with other servers, which requires some tinkering), hard to learn AND master. So naturally people aren't going to suddenly set aside hours everyday and grind out build orders vs. AI. That's 95% of the discussion, I'll repeat again the fact that it DOESN'T MATTER how good or bad BW actually is, if it's neither easy to pick up nor accessible, it will receive little to no exposure from the public, and newcomers will be put off by the game no matter how much you attempt to convince them otherwise.
Dota is a lesser version of soccer, and SC2 is akin to gymnastics. Someone prove me wrong in that there's actually much more to the discussion or how it would be relevant to what OP was asking. pay for bnet since when? Why are people even involving themselves in this argument when they do not have even have a clue about the game. jesus..
I'm sure he means you pay for the valid CD key to be allowed to log into bnet. Third party servers don't always require valid CD key (I'm genuinely not sure how they would check).
Moderately accessible is an overstatement though. None of the stuff about 'how hard BW is' really matters, even to so called casuals. They just need other casuals to play with, and boom it's a pretty fun game. It's all the tinkering necessary to get it running even with a legitimate copy, that is basically the only problem. There's no necessity at all to learn build orders or practice against the AI. You just need to get appropriately matched to players of similar strength. The update / remake will eventually happen and make that possible, and you'll probably see a moderate resurgence of interest in BW.
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On December 31 2015 00:52 SolaR- wrote:Show nested quote +On December 31 2015 00:42 EngrishTeacher wrote:
Are we still on apm/strategy or talking about the merits of different games/genres? How is any of that relevant to the discussion at hand?
I guess my response was buried, but really you guys are over analyzing everything and going off on tangents. It always boils down to the difficult and steep learning curve of BW, where "normal" people, who are in the vast majority, derive none or very little pleasure from playing such a difficult and old game. BW could have more strategic depth by a factor of 100, and people still wouldn't play due to the absurd initial investment in time and practice.
For something to be truly popular, it has to be accessible, easy to learn, and hard to master. BW is moderately accessible (pay for b.net or mess around with other servers, which requires some tinkering), hard to learn AND master. So naturally people aren't going to suddenly set aside hours everyday and grind out build orders vs. AI. That's 95% of the discussion, I'll repeat again the fact that it DOESN'T MATTER how good or bad BW actually is, if it's neither easy to pick up nor accessible, it will receive little to no exposure from the public, and newcomers will be put off by the game no matter how much you attempt to convince them otherwise.
Dota is a lesser version of soccer, and SC2 is akin to gymnastics. Someone prove me wrong in that there's actually much more to the discussion or how it would be relevant to what OP was asking. pay for bnet since when? Why are people even involving themselves in this argument when they do not have even have a clue about the game. jesus..
BW elitism is probably a pretty big factor too. It's a pretty powerful and blinding feeling/attitude that wards off casuals faster than bear mace.
FYI, I've been with BW since I was 13 or so, so over 10 years of experience with it. I was there for all its UMS and fastest maps glory, watched pro games religiously and later on peaked at C+/C on iccup with toss. Also, yes, you still pay for access to bnet for BW, since... release.
What a shit post on your part, throwing such a specific and wrongly interpreted strawman at me, ignoring all my other points, so typical when one becomes defensive due to the presentation of an unpleasant truth. I don't blame you though, like I said, BW elitism is very good at clouding one's judgment and making one defensive, so thank you for proving my point.
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On December 31 2015 01:17 Chef wrote:Show nested quote +On December 31 2015 00:52 SolaR- wrote:On December 31 2015 00:42 EngrishTeacher wrote:
Are we still on apm/strategy or talking about the merits of different games/genres? How is any of that relevant to the discussion at hand?
I guess my response was buried, but really you guys are over analyzing everything and going off on tangents. It always boils down to the difficult and steep learning curve of BW, where "normal" people, who are in the vast majority, derive none or very little pleasure from playing such a difficult and old game. BW could have more strategic depth by a factor of 100, and people still wouldn't play due to the absurd initial investment in time and practice.
For something to be truly popular, it has to be accessible, easy to learn, and hard to master. BW is moderately accessible (pay for b.net or mess around with other servers, which requires some tinkering), hard to learn AND master. So naturally people aren't going to suddenly set aside hours everyday and grind out build orders vs. AI. That's 95% of the discussion, I'll repeat again the fact that it DOESN'T MATTER how good or bad BW actually is, if it's neither easy to pick up nor accessible, it will receive little to no exposure from the public, and newcomers will be put off by the game no matter how much you attempt to convince them otherwise.
Dota is a lesser version of soccer, and SC2 is akin to gymnastics. Someone prove me wrong in that there's actually much more to the discussion or how it would be relevant to what OP was asking. pay for bnet since when? Why are people even involving themselves in this argument when they do not have even have a clue about the game. jesus.. I'm sure he means you pay for the valid CD key to be allowed to log into bnet. Third party servers don't always require valid CD key (I'm genuinely not sure how they would check). Moderately accessible is an overstatement though. None of the stuff about 'how hard BW is' really matters, even to so called casuals. They just need other casuals to play with, and boom it's a pretty fun game. It's all the tinkering necessary to get it running even with a legitimate copy, that is basically the only problem. There's no necessity at all to learn build orders or practice against the AI. You just need to get appropriately matched to players of similar strength. The update / remake will eventually happen and make that possible, and you'll probably see a moderate resurgence of interest in BW.
Good point, accessibility even precedes how easy/hard it is to get into something. However, I'd argue that to a good portion of PC gamers, BW is not as inaccessible as you think. A legit copy will often run with no problems even on 64 bit windows 7/8, although many experience the color glitch in menus which isn't game breaking anyway. Furthermore, the computer literacy required to set up Fish/Iccup does prevent quite a few people from playing, but in the end is undeniably quite basic. These people who can't or won't even spend a few minutes googling a guide probably wouldn't stick around with the game for long anyway.
More significantly, it's the outdated graphics and mechanics that are probably more off putting. Combine this factor with the overwhelming praise and elitism that inevitably comes with the existing fans of the game, all of this probably fosters an intimidating and disappointing environment for newcomers.
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On December 30 2015 01:26 Simberto wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On December 30 2015 01:01 Scarbo wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On December 29 2015 23:24 Simberto wrote:
A big problem which can also be seen in this thread is the at least partial prevalence of an elitist attitude in the oldschool BW players. If the prevalent reaction to any complaint is some variation of "git gud scrub" or "l2p", a lot of players will simply decide to play another game instead. Which is probably not want you want, because if you want to keep on playing the game, you will need to make it attractive to new players, or you will have to deal with an ever shrinking playerbase, which once it falls under some critical level means you will have problems finding people to play with.
As someone who is not an oldschool BW player, i notice a lot of very archaic mechanics in the game. Now, the people who have played BW for 15+ years are used to them and even justify them as reasonable, as can be seen by Jealous in this thread. I am still not entirely convinced that that is not just some sort of Stockholm syndrome where you dealt with the weird shit for so long that you think it is actually a good idea.
Maybe i am too casual for BW, but then i think most people who haven't played BW for ages are. To me, artificial barriers that stand between what i want units to do and what they actually do are just annoying, not some genius idea to display my leet APM. If i tell my units to go somewhere, i would like them to go there, instead of walking around in circles because they are stupid. Sure, i can combat that by telling them how to go there in exactly the specific way they like, which is way more complicated. To an oldschool BW player this might be mechanical complexity. To someone who is new to the game, it is just annoying archaic bad programming. If i want to build 5 tanks, why do i have to tell each factory to build one one after another?
Maybe i am getting to old, but there are already enough stressful things for me to take care of during the game without it actively trying to misinterpret my orders and making me state them in a very specific way.
A big problem is also that apperently the game simply isn't a lot of fun before you get good at it, which is highly problematic as it makes it unlikely for people like me to actually be interested in getting good at it.
Of course, the simple answer is "Git gud", which makes you happy as you have established that you are now more hardcore than i am. It also means that soon, you will have problems finding new players to play. And a ladder system that requires everyone to crush a buttload of noobs at the start of a season is the last thing you want if you want to ever find new players. There are ladder systems that are a lot better at providing even matchups to everyone.
As much as you might hate it, if you want BW to continue, you need to attract new players. And telling everyone that they are scrubs and they need to be better, then it will be fun, but first they need to lose 100+ games, will make most of them quit and just play something else. Being an elitist gatekeeper only letting in the "worthy" will not benefit you in the long run. I understand where you're coming from but you have to appreciate a few things. First your example of the 5 factories is not a particularly good one. In SC2 you also have to press T (or whatever hotkey you use) 5 times to make 5 tanks. You can indeed select all 5 factories at once, on the other hand they butchered the UI so bad that the information of whether or not your factories are building something is a small white square at the bottom of the screen. You'd expect more from a modern game. The pathfinding is really retarded sometimes, granted. Only change I'd make is when you tell units to go somewhere impossible (blocked by other units, buildings or terrain) they would get as close as possible to the destination and stop, instead of running around like morons. Everything else I think it's fine. The thing you're missing though, in the words of Day9, is that BW is an inefficiency engine, meaning it's trying to fuck you up the entire time, and your job is to not let it. That's part of what makes a good **real time** strategy game. If you make it so everything repetitive is automatic then might as well make it turn based. Why not make it so production buildings have a switch where you can tell it to just build a specific unit continuously? So you don't have to macro anymore. I'm sure a lot of players are bummed that they have to keep making units over and over, this would certainly make them more interested in playing. You could automatize the larva injection in SC2 as well, or the building scarabs in BW. Certainly would help the slower players. The thing is there are already games made for those people, games like Civ 5 or Chess. Some people, like myself, enjoy the mechanical challenge. I've got an above average hand-eye coordination and am naturally attracted to games where this skill can give me an edge. I understand there are lots of people that don't, but that doesn't make me a nostalgic stockholm syndrom blind fanboy. It's just the way it is. Ok, i guess in that case the main problem (for me) is that that concept simply does not appeal to me. I dislike the idea of artificial mechanical barriers, to me the ideal interface is one where i think about what i want to happen, and then it happens, making the whole thing about the quality of the decisions as opposed of my trained capability of not fucking up large amounts of different things at once. I hate being in a situation where i know what the correct response to a given situation is, but i can't make the game do it in time due to interface constraints. This is also the first time if have heard of BW being talked about like that, usually the discussions are about the depth of strategy and so on, with the mechanics basically being something you need to deal with to reach that juicy core of strategy below it, as opposed to the main meat of the game being the mechanics and the struggle with a computer just reacting very weirdly to inputs so you have to learn many very specific things to do at once in an "inefficiency engine" I still think that it is possible to have a game that is based on real time decision making and adapting your strategy to the changing situation without putting artifical APM wasters in the way of it to fuel your "inefficiency engine". To me, a lot of the BW style mechanics are something that is in the way of the fun of the game, which would be thinking about strategies, but apparently to you those (to me) annoying useless interface complexities are what you actually want.
How can people still not understand what BW players like about high apm requirements?
APM is a resource that has to be spent wisely, just like you have to spend your minerals and gas wisely.
If you have enough APM to do everything you want to, then there's no choice, thus there is less tactical and strategic depth.
It's been said for years. It is said in every thread of this nature.
For something to be truly popular, it has to be accessible, easy to learn, and hard to master
The first two are correct. The last one is not. World Of WarCraft and The Sims are not hard to master. They were very popular.
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On December 31 2015 02:15 vOdToasT wrote:Show nested quote +
For something to be truly popular, it has to be accessible, easy to learn, and hard to master
The first two are correct. The last one is not. World Of WarCraft and The Sims are not hard to master. They were very popular.
There have been many The Sims games, so I'm not even going to a talk about it since it's series of games. For WoW, it definitely was "hard" to master in the sense that there was a very strong incentive to keep playing to improve yourself in the game. Sure it was mindless grinding, but it was very hard to acquire the best gear, to be the best of the mundane. Even the insanely addictive RPG leveling mechanic eventually wears one out.
I was also unclear with what I meant by truly popular, I should have definitely included the staying power of something in its definition. My point is the 2 outlier examples you provided aren't even really outliers since they still follow the general rule of accessible/easy to learn/hard to master. Apply the rule to pretty much everything else, and you'll find almost perfect correlation. Be it popular sports such as soccer or classical music, you name it and the rule fits well. The hard to master part is necessary to keep participants involved in the long-term, or they will inevitably move onto other things.
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