The only thing that can compare to it in individual skill is Quake (and all its variants), but the top level players don't practice it as intensely as SC:BW players did, so the skill level at the top isn't as unobtainable.
Halo 3 isn't that hard (individually). No matter how good you are you can't kill someone with less than 4 BR shots, and the skill required to 4-shot someone isn't that high. Most of the skill lies in the team work and map control.
I voted other: Quake (Which really should be an option)
I have a feeling this is going to be INCREDIBLY one sided toward brood war (for good reason).
One that I don't think will get too many votes is super smash brothers. But to be honest, SSBM is probably harder than most of the other ones here (specifically the FPS ones). Then again, I'm biased.
I always felt like Quake games are insane. As Najda said you don't have players playing 16 hours a day, but there's so much going on its insane not to mention the stuff they have to keep track of as far as respawns and all that. Certainly different, bw is a given, but quake is right on par imo. Simply because we're talking hardest, quake I feel like some people are only going to be so fast, bw through lots of practice its more so achievable, but again a close call.
On September 10 2010 09:55 Dog22 wrote: I have a feeling this is going to be INCREDIBLY one sided toward brood war (for good reason).
One that I don't think will get too many votes is super smash brothers. But to be honest, SSBM is probably harder than most of the other ones here (specifically the FPS ones). Then again, I'm biased.
On September 10 2010 09:55 Dog22 wrote: I have a feeling this is going to be INCREDIBLY one sided toward brood war (for good reason).
One that I don't think will get too many votes is super smash brothers. But to be honest, SSBM is probably harder than most of the other ones here (specifically the FPS ones). Then again, I'm biased.
I agree. To obtain a high level takes a tremondous amount of time and dedication in SSBM, and since it's less of a 'thinking' game(not saying that it doesn't take thinking, just not as much as bw), and the fact that it has no replays, makes practising it much more physically demanding as sometimes you just gotta sit there and get the handspeed down(pillaring for example).
honestly id say halo 3 is the most difficult on there... simply because my roommate is huge into it so i've tuned into some MLG halo3 events... the teamwork and speed/precision at which the game relies upon is very intense... i think its an underrated esport to us in the RTS community
granted it's a completely different game than the leading broodwar... but i dont think you can necessarily compare the two in one poll... consdiering theres differnet functions and everything involved between the two
On September 10 2010 09:57 Black Gun wrote: really pointless posting such a poll on an involved forum. on a quake board the answer would be quake, on a war3 board the answer would be war3.
but i think the professionalism and the competition in sc:bw are the highest of all esport scenes.
That's not entirely true. A lot of people who play other games respect the difficulty of SC even if they don't play it themselves, simply because it requires such a higher level of skill than most other games. Although that statement probably holds true in forums of games where the skill required to compete at a top level is close enough to dispute it.
Lol of course the top picks would be sc related here but lete tell you tekken is rediculous and much more i tense/frantic than sc. I agree that bw is the hardest but tekken should be above sc2
this poll is obviously going to be biased towards starcraft the forum goers here would like to believe that it is the toughest game to play so they can feel better about themselves the majority of them probably have never played any of the other games at a competitive level so comparisons will be hard
Counterstrike is pretty hard, requires another completely different set of skills, and is totally nerve twitching, I can hardly follow the pro games and the strategy level is pretty complex...
the amount of time/effort/dedication those players have to put in to be the best makes it far beyond anything else, and by far the hardest sport to break into.
SC2 may one day reach those levels, but the fact is its too new at the moment to even be considered as a more difficult esport than BW.
IMO the only relevant factor that influences the difficulty of any sport is the level of the competition. Although different sports have different physical and mental requirements, no sport is inherrently harder than any other sport, because the ease of the sport is determined entirely by who you're competing against. I voted BW because I think it's pretty inarguable that among esports BW is the one with the highest level of competition.
BW, no contest. Put it this way: does any one country have such a stranglehold as Korea does on BW? Nope, it is impossible for a foreigner to succeed in BW with today's level of competition.
Honest Truth all these games have a skill ceiling that's unattainable so noone really is wrong, competitive human nature is what drives players to become better. The fact remains that Koreans took brood war to a whole different level is why we believe it to be "harder".
SC2 isn't even close to the hardest E-Sport and neither was SC1. When people play a videogame 12-14 hours a day, it stops being about talent and starts being about who is willing to give up more of their life to compete. You don't benefit from playing that much on many games (i.e. shooters). I don't really consider that hard, just a big sacrifice.
Real sports have physical limits that make them 'hard' to compete in.
Tbh this is a rather silly poll, you are on a site dedicated to SC:BW and SC2, what do you think the 2 top picks will be? If you tried putting this poll over on Halo forums I'm sure the results would be pretty different.
On September 10 2010 10:14 iEchoic wrote: SC2 isn't even close to the hardest E-Sport and neither was SC1. When people play a videogame 12-14 hours a day, it stops being about talent and starts being about who is willing to give up more of their life. You don't benefit from playing that much on many games (i.e. shooters). I don't really consider that hard, just a big sacrifice.
Seriously? Do you even believe the words that you type?
I think the RTS's have a higher skill ceiling (YOU CAN ALWAYS DO BETTER SOMEHOW), but I think that most people max out at a certain level at FPS's, as its more like IRL sports where you are simply limited by your reaction time at some point, and your knowledge of the game and experience are simply not as helpful. There are always some people who will naturally dominate FPS, whereas some people are naturally horrible. Sounds silly but its true.
-edit-
Im talking about twitch FPS (cs/mw), tf2 actually takes a good bit of teamplay/proactivity/creativity along with the general FPS skillset, but clearly its popularity would never allow it to win a poll like this.
On September 10 2010 10:07 DaCruise wrote: SC2 will soon be the hardest e-sport if not allready.
Why? you may ask. Cause the competition is much, much higher than other games due the vast amount of players.
The micro demands for BW are like exponentially higher though.
Remains to be seen. The APM (micro and macro) demands are.. what your opponent forces them for you to be. BW apm demands were ridiculously low in its early stages of international competitive play.
If things go well, the easier handling of SC2 could allow players to improve the complexity of their micro and macro battles to levels never seen before in any game. Better map pool is a must, though. The current prevalence of 10-minute games off of 1 base looks just silly.
The entire poll is just wrong. It depends on your talents. Some players are extremely good at reaction and have a 3rd sense in shooters so obviously for them bw would be much harder. Some are super hyperactive and love repetition for them quake would be much much harder.
For me its def Quake, hell i cant even play that stuff >20mins without heavy headache. So its obviously much much "harder" for me than BW could ever be.
On September 10 2010 10:14 iEchoic wrote: SC2 isn't even close to the hardest E-Sport and neither was SC1. When people play a videogame 12-14 hours a day, it stops being about talent and starts being about who is willing to give up more of their life to compete. You don't benefit from playing that much on many games (i.e. shooters). I don't really consider that hard, just a big sacrifice.
Real sports have physical limits that make them 'hard' to compete in.
You fail to provide any evidence to suggest that SC1 isnt "even close to the hardest esport", making your post pretty redundant, considering you acknowledge that people have to train on it for 12-14 hours a day to hold a high enough standard of play.
On September 10 2010 10:14 iEchoic wrote: SC2 isn't even close to the hardest E-Sport and neither was SC1. When people play a videogame 12-14 hours a day, it stops being about talent and starts being about who is willing to give up more of their life to compete. You don't benefit from playing that much on many games (i.e. shooters). I don't really consider that hard, just a big sacrifice.
Hahaha what? That's what makes it hard, the fact that it takes so much practice to be good at it. How does talent = hard? Imagine a game completely based on talent; it's the easiest game in the world because the guy with the most "talent" wins every time.
On September 10 2010 09:56 QuothTheRaven wrote: To even suggest that Halo is more difficult than Quake, let alone SCBW, is ridiculous.
Have you seem the MLG streams? They're pretty insane.
you wouldn't say that if you had ever seen a pro quake duel. the nature of thumbsticks on a controller make it impossible to turn past a certain speed. mice are only limited by your handspeed. plus movement in quake is non-trivial, and add on top of that a pretty intricate theory for map control and controlling the item respawn time (and having to time at least 3 items on separate timers mentally, and even more if you want to deny weapons), and quake is infinitely more difficult than any halo game could hope to be.
On September 10 2010 10:14 iEchoic wrote: SC2 isn't even close to the hardest E-Sport and neither was SC1. When people play a videogame 12-14 hours a day, it stops being about talent and starts being about who is willing to give up more of their life to compete. You don't benefit from playing that much on many games (i.e. shooters). I don't really consider that hard, just a big sacrifice.
Real sports have physical limits that make them 'hard' to compete in.
You can still train your physical limits (a 10 minute mile to a 5 minute one) just like training your video game skills.
On September 10 2010 10:14 iEchoic wrote: SC2 isn't even close to the hardest E-Sport and neither was SC1. When people play a videogame 12-14 hours a day, it stops being about talent and starts being about who is willing to give up more of their life to compete. You don't benefit from playing that much on many games (i.e. shooters). I don't really consider that hard, just a big sacrifice.
Real sports have physical limits that make them 'hard' to compete in.
You fail to provide any evidence to suggest that SC1 isnt "even close to the hardest esport", making your post pretty redundant, considering you acknowledge that people have to train on it for 12-14 hours a day to hold a high enough standard of play.
You can't provide 'evidence' that something is harder than something else, it's entirely a matter of opinion. I just don't consider what this game takes to be 'hard', just a lot of sacrifice. CoD, for instance, is about teamwork and strategy, and requires less mechanical skill (because everyone dies nearly instantly). I think that is what makes a game hard. Developing teamwork and strategy is very hard. In a game so much about mechanics like SC, the amount of time you put in is paramount - and that's not hard to do.
I'm not saying the game sucks or it's not fun, just that I don't think it's the ideal candidate for an e-sport.
On September 10 2010 10:17 jdwashere wrote: Psychically: BW Mentally: SC2
This is subject to change.
Agree
I also like how some ppl say BW is harder to play than SC2 as a good thing like if the ability to click 10 rax manualy faster than your oponent is a great skill to have.
Starcraft: Brood War yes, I think it's because it's just one of the oldest games that's been around, I think it's the hardest to compete at the top level.
I think when you're talking about the 'hardest' e-sport, the only intelligent metric is a game's skill ceiling. Otherwise, you're trying to figure out how to compare too many radically different aspects. I think that's also what makes Brood War so exemplary, it having spawned an incredibly competitive pro scene that's still very dynamic more than 10 years after the original game was released. I'd vote for Brood War being the hardest, but I'll be the first to admit that I'm biased. My take on some of the others:
Starcraft 2: Simply too early to get an accurate measure. It's reasonable to conclude that it's not as 'hard' at a basic level as BW is, simply because of the interface/hotkey changes, but to take the argument any further than that I think is jumping the gun.
Warcraft III: Gets a lot of shit on this site due to the (mostly good-natured) rivalry over which is the 'best' Blizzard RTS. Does seem to have a lower skill cap than BW though, due to lower army cap, easier macro mechanics, lack of map changes, and incentive through upkeep mechanic to keep armies small. WC3 is definitely a more micro-oriented game than BW, though, so it could be argued that the skill-set is simply different.
Halo 3: I don't care how good your teamwork is, the nature of the Xbox controller means you're always going to be more limited in potential skill than an equivalent CS team. Plus Halo 3 is bad.
WoW Arena: Also an e-sport that gets a lot of shit from SC players, somewhat undeservedly. The constant patches/gear changes/class changes make it radically different from most esports events, but the amount of skill involved is considerable, regardless. Similar to Halo 3, the mechanics of the game tend to cap certain skill areas, specifically the global cooldown.
Fighting Games: Not my area of expertise or even knowledge, I'm not even qualified to make generalized judgements.
Counter-Strike: Lots of skill in terms of twitch aiming and teamwork, very difficult to compare to the RTS skillset. I do see more depth of strategy and skill potential in an RTS-type game, though. The things that were good in CS 5 years ago are still good; the same can't really be said for BW.
Quake: One of, if not the fastest FPS game, requires a lot of concentration to keep track of spawn times, positioning, and the sort of twitch reaction that's required at a high level. The competitive scene tends to revolve around duel rather than teamplay like CS, so hard to compare the two.
Team Fortress: I don't know of anything that would suggest that TF(2) is harder than CS or Quake.
On September 10 2010 10:17 jdwashere wrote: Psychically: BW Mentally: SC2
This is subject to change.
Agree
I also like how some ppl say BW is harder to play than SC2 as a good thing like if the ability to click 10 rax manualy faster than your oponent is a great skill to have.
I like how some ppl say SC2 is harder to play than BW as a true thing like BW doesn't hasn't developed to a stage mentally that far exceeds anything in SC2 at the moment and treat BW as if it's just about who can click faster.
By the way, posting stupid, uninformed comments is also a great skill to have. And so is misquoting memes.
Brood War is the hardest to play in my opinion, but a lot of it comes from having a very clunky and finicky interface, and a plethora of bugs. This stuff we've all come to love as SC players, but it certainly does make the game harder, far harder than any other on the list purely because that all the others have a rather intuitive play system, I've played all of the games there and got relatively good at each. Far from pro level, but decent enough to understand which one is the hardest to pick up and play from not knowing anything.
On September 10 2010 10:17 jdwashere wrote: Psychically: BW Mentally: SC2
This is subject to change.
Agree
I also like how some ppl say BW is harder to play than SC2 as a good thing like if the ability to click 10 rax manualy faster than your oponent is a great skill to have.
It is. Sorry, in gaming, that's one of integral part of determining skill. Do people honestly think some serious theoretical equations are going through a good player's mind when he's playing SC2? At the top level, most of the actions are based purely off of instincts.
I'd say BW is more physically demanding than quake as far as APM goes, but quake (mainly quake1 and then quake3) takes a certain type of skill that is harder to come by than BW. There are less great quake players than there are great BW players, because not everyone can really strafe jump so smoothly around maps, let alone doing it while maintaining great aim.
Quake1 is probably the most skillful computer game around at top level play, but the argument could also be made for BW, they are both extremely awesome in different ways so it's hard to truly compare them against each other.
SSBM and some fighting games have a legitimate reason to be on that poll, a lot of those other games are pretty much jokes compared to bw and quake though.
To people that are voting I would just like to clarify a misconception; hard is very subjective.
There are people with gifted hand dexterity (aka skill) and there are people with gifted intellect (aka strategy).
How "hard" this game is, is HUGELY dependent on the person.
Someone with great intellect , for example "Stephen Hawking"(Lets just assume he is intellectually gifted, this is an example, whether or not this is true is irrelevant to my point) may not have succeeded if he had devoted himself to table tennis. Someone with great skill, for example "Michael Jordan" may not have succeeded had he devoted himself to Counter Strike.
I know everyone will jump on me and flame OMG MAN SC1 IS THE HARDEST AND BEST GAME EVA !!!
I am just spitting the logical truth. You can hold your own opinions if you wish to ignorant.
and to be on topic; based on the choices given, I would definitely agree starcraft broodwar is the most difficult to master. Simply because it is a game based soley on your own ability where as almost every other game(on that list) endorses teamwork.
On September 10 2010 10:14 iEchoic wrote: SC2 isn't even close to the hardest E-Sport and neither was SC1. When people play a videogame 12-14 hours a day, it stops being about talent and starts being about who is willing to give up more of their life to compete. You don't benefit from playing that much on many games (i.e. shooters). I don't really consider that hard, just a big sacrifice.
Real sports have physical limits that make them 'hard' to compete in.
You fail to provide any evidence to suggest that SC1 isnt "even close to the hardest esport", making your post pretty redundant, considering you acknowledge that people have to train on it for 12-14 hours a day to hold a high enough standard of play.
You can't provide 'evidence' that something is harder than something else, it's entirely a matter of opinion. I just don't consider what this game takes to be 'hard', just a lot of sacrifice. CoD, for instance, is about teamwork and strategy, and requires less mechanical skill (because everyone dies nearly instantly). I think that is what makes a game hard. Developing teamwork and strategy is very hard. In a game so much about mechanics like SC, the amount of time you put in is paramount - and that's not hard to do.
I'm not saying the game sucks or it's not fun, just that I don't think it's the ideal candidate for an e-sport.
The thing is that many will argue that the strategic aspect of Starcraft is not lessened compared to a game like CoD--and that the mechanical demand is strictly in addition to the difficulty of developing solid strategy.
On September 10 2010 10:14 iEchoic wrote: SC2 isn't even close to the hardest E-Sport and neither was SC1. When people play a videogame 12-14 hours a day, it stops being about talent and starts being about who is willing to give up more of their life to compete. You don't benefit from playing that much on many games (i.e. shooters). I don't really consider that hard, just a big sacrifice.
Real sports have physical limits that make them 'hard' to compete in.
So you don't think that it is in fact TALENT that separates players when all the players are practicing as much as physically possible (i.e. only breaking to eat and sleep)? Any extra minutes of practice on top of the 14 hours already used would surely have such diminishing returns that the biggest factor dividing the top from the top of the top would be some kind of innate game sense or talent. Your argument is backwards.
When people practice very little, an increase in practice time from 1 to 2 hours a day is a monumental 100% increase in time spent playing the game, meaning that any natural talent would probably be eclipsed by practice time.
On September 10 2010 10:17 jdwashere wrote: Psychically: BW Mentally: SC2
This is subject to change.
Agree
I also like how some ppl say BW is harder to play than SC2 as a good thing like if the ability to click 10 rax manualy faster than your oponent is a great skill to have.
It is. Sorry, in gaming, that's one of integral part of determining skill. Do people honestly think some serious theoretical equations are going through a good player's mind when he's playing SC2? At the top level, most of the actions are based purely off of instincts.
'The ability to click 10 rax faster than your opponent'. Yea and if you want to say that then its safe to say that every video game ever made is 'just clicking buttons'. Well guess what it is, but if you click those buttons faster, and in a better combination than someone else, thats skill. You can say the same thing for any sport. Hockey is 'just' shooting a puck in a net, soccer is 'just' the same thing but with a bigger net and a ball, Tennis is 'just' two people shooting a ball back and forth with rackets. You can say it about it anything, the actions of most competitive sports in and of themselves are simple actions, but the speed, timing, accuracy, and order that the professional do those actions in is what determines skill. So in a video game where the keyboard is the primary input device how fast you push buttons is very important.
I am positive anyone that didn't list Brood War has not played it. Anyone who has played it and hasn't listed it is one of those people who just watch SC2 HD/Husky youtube videos in the entirety of their spare time and think both game's are easy because it looks easy.
Oh look the MLG players are all taking it incredibly seriously and calling out where players are, "L2, L2 1 shot!" Amazing intense team work and skill!
If I had to pick the perfect e-sport, it would probably be either a tactical team-based shooter with a low mechanics ceiling like SOCOM II or an incredibly complex RTS like AoEII. The simplicity of starcraft elevates the importance of mechanics to the foreground. Some people like that, but I don't think it makes for a good e-sport as mechanics is mostly muscle memory that anyone can do with practice.
People like to bash on games that are mechanically easy, but the interesting thing is being mechanically easy actually makes them more strategical. Once mechanics are mostly out of the picture, people have to exploit strategical options for a win instead of exploiting mechanical superiority.
Think of it like chess - the importance of mechanical skill plays 0 part in chess skill (i.e. how fast you move the pieces). If chess suddenly became played in real-time, it wouldn't be dominated by great thinkers, it would be dominated by 15-23 year old kids who practice placing pieces as fast as they can all day.
On September 10 2010 10:42 iEchoic wrote: Think of it like chess - the importance of mechanical skill plays 0 part in chess skill (i.e. how fast you move the pieces). If chess suddenly became played in real-time, it wouldn't be dominated by great thinkers, it would be dominated by 15-23 year old kids who practice placing pieces as fast as they can all day.
And you don't believe that at the top levels the kids who place pieces fast wouldn't *also* be great thinkers?
There are levels at which mechanical superiority is the relevant factor in winning games--but at the highest levels, where mechanical gains see diminishing returns, where we see players like Flash and Jaedong, and where the term "e-sport" is most relevant, I don't see it being an exceedingly relevant factor, even in Starcraft.
On September 10 2010 10:42 PokePill wrote: I am positive anyone that didn't list Brood War has not played it. Anyone who has played it and hasn't listed it is one of those people who just watch SC2 HD/Husky youtube videos in the entirety of their spare time and think both game's are easy because it looks easy.
Oh look the MLG players are all taking it incredibly seriously and calling out where players are, "L2, L2 1 shot!" Amazing intense team work and skill!
Thats a really arrogant view man. Quake CS and even SSBM are pretty hard games. i would put it close to BW.
On September 10 2010 10:42 iEchoic wrote: Think of it like chess - the importance of mechanical skill plays 0 part in chess skill (i.e. how fast you move the pieces). If chess suddenly became played in real-time, it wouldn't be dominated by great thinkers, it would be dominated by 15-23 year old kids who practice placing pieces as fast as they can all day.
And you don't believe that at the top levels the kids who place pieces fast wouldn't *also* be great thinkers?
If they were great thinkers, why wouldn't they dominate the game prior to the change?
On September 10 2010 10:42 PokePill wrote: I am positive anyone that didn't list Brood War has not played it. Anyone who has played it and hasn't listed it is one of those people who just watch SC2 HD/Husky youtube videos in the entirety of their spare time and think both game's are easy because it looks easy.
Oh look the MLG players are all taking it incredibly seriously and calling out where players are, "L2, L2 1 shot!" Amazing intense team work and skill!
Thats a really arrogant view man. Quake CS and even SSBM are pretty hard games. i would put it close to BW.
Given that since the end of 2v2 in Korea (a long time ago) BW, and now SC2 has been purely about 1v1 brackets its really not a fair comparison of an RTS 1v1 vs (lets take CS as example) RTS 6v6 - there is a the team element and that is completely different kind of skill than what is in BW. So essentially both could be on par in terms of difficulty, but they are very different games, a good CS player, Quake player (FPS in general) would never be a good (read: pro) RTS player, and same for RTS players playing FPS.
EPT
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