On October 29 2015 05:29 Blargh wrote: My biggest concern is actually just that there is not enough strategic depth in the game.
Based on what?
Actually, I agree with Blargh completely. Game is just so much faster, more energetic. All my planning goes into next few seconds, because in those seconds so much happens, that all my plans would be shattered anyway. When I can easily just win based on my opponent reacting one second to late, I´m not even happy with the win. I think that people who play a lot, especially if they are good, will eventually be able to read different situations and base their strategies of off that, but for casual people who can only play a few games a week, it would always be just messy and stressful experience.
On October 29 2015 05:29 Blargh wrote: My biggest concern is actually just that there is not enough strategic depth in the game.
Based on what?
Actually, I agree with Blargh completely. Game is just so much faster, more energetic. All my planning goes into next few seconds, because in those seconds so much happens, that all my plans would be shattered anyway. When I can easily just win based on my opponent reacting one second to late, I´m not even happy with the win. I think that people who play a lot, especially if they are good, will eventually be able to read different situations and base their strategies of off that, but for casual people who can only play a few games a week, it would always be just messy and stressful experience.
But that really isn't that much different from what we had before in HotS or even in WoL. Casual people were losing all the time because of slow reactions and bad scouting/reading of opponent's strategy.
On October 27 2015 16:12 summerloud wrote: put your hope in mods, with no more expansions to look forward to, now is the time to mod the game in the direction the community wants
On October 29 2015 05:29 Blargh wrote: My biggest concern is actually just that there is not enough strategic depth in the game.
Based on what?
Actually, I agree with Blargh completely. Game is just so much faster, more energetic. All my planning goes into next few seconds, because in those seconds so much happens, that all my plans would be shattered anyway. When I can easily just win based on my opponent reacting one second to late, I´m not even happy with the win. I think that people who play a lot, especially if they are good, will eventually be able to read different situations and base their strategies of off that, but for casual people who can only play a few games a week, it would always be just messy and stressful experience.
That was always and will always be the case with starcraft, though. The decision making happens largely in your replay analysis, and in the game you just apply your knowledge and judge based on your experience.
Starcraft was never a game where you could sit back and think "Hmmm, what am I going to do next?". Players that do that are usually very low level and stop doing this once they've gathered more experience. And then it's all natural.
This does not mean it's not a strategic game. In fact it makes it makes good strategies all the more important since the best ones are those who are either so powerful that they don't have to adapt, or so flexible that they're able to adapt to nearly every possible reaction from the opponent.
tough to really balance when no pros are taking it seriously. When the game is fully released, I expect a LOT of patches after the first few months.
it's really too bad they didn't just remove macro mechanics, that's when the beta was at it's best. But I'm looking forward to the 12 worker start and mineral patch changes, I really like what they did there.
On October 29 2015 07:29 emc wrote: tough to really balance when no pros are taking it seriously. When the game is fully released, I expect a LOT of patches after the first few months.
it's really too bad they didn't just remove macro mechanics, that's when the beta was at it's best. But I'm looking forward to the 12 worker start and mineral patch changes, I really like what they did there.
Where are you getting this "no pros are taking it seriously" when literally the only 16 players not playing lotv full time are players at Blizzcon?
All Koreans switched month ago, ugh I wish people would stop saying "when the best switch yada yada".
On October 28 2015 05:10 brickrd wrote: you can't complete the balance of the game without seeing months of pro level play, so they have to release it. complaints that it's premature are just a reflection of this community never ever being satisfied or happy, we're mostly a very negative and vindictive bunch
And that's the reason why we don't get good, varied gameplay. "We need to confirm for 22months straight that Mech TvP isn't viable, before we consider changing it!" 22months later: "We won't change balance now, pros will complain if we do too many balance changes. The game is what it is!"
lol exactly!
I've been on a rollercoster with this BETA; at first i was super excited about the goals, like changing the eco, making mech viable vs P, no more Colossus as the centre piece, lurker; but as things progressed i was more and more disappointed with the direction. Air units to strong, all about fast units and not enough positional play, not enough big changes to the eco
So i don't know, it's more adventurous then HOTS, but is it enough? I'll wait on buying it like i did with HOTS.
You should watch this game
Maybe it just takes really(REALLY) good players to play LotV. David Kim has said multiplet times that they're still waiting for more SC2 Pros to switch to LotV.
This is actually really bad example of lotv, because a good Protoss player would crush Zerg trying to go swarm hosts and just because it's Life who did it doesn't mean that's how lotv will look like ;;
Watch Solar and TRUE play, that's how Zerg is and will be played.
On October 28 2015 05:10 brickrd wrote: you can't complete the balance of the game without seeing months of pro level play, so they have to release it. complaints that it's premature are just a reflection of this community never ever being satisfied or happy, we're mostly a very negative and vindictive bunch
And that's the reason why we don't get good, varied gameplay. "We need to confirm for 22months straight that Mech TvP isn't viable, before we consider changing it!" 22months later: "We won't change balance now, pros will complain if we do too many balance changes. The game is what it is!"
lol exactly!
I've been on a rollercoster with this BETA; at first i was super excited about the goals, like changing the eco, making mech viable vs P, no more Colossus as the centre piece, lurker; but as things progressed i was more and more disappointed with the direction. Air units to strong, all about fast units and not enough positional play, not enough big changes to the eco
So i don't know, it's more adventurous then HOTS, but is it enough? I'll wait on buying it like i did with HOTS.
Maybe it just takes really(REALLY) good players to play LotV. David Kim has said multiplet times that they're still waiting for more SC2 Pros to switch to LotV.
This is actually really bad example of lotv, because a good Protoss player would crush Zerg trying to go swarm hosts and just because it's Life who did it doesn't mean that's how lotv will look like ;;
Watch Solar and TRUE play, that's how Zerg is and will be played.
You're right, especially about Solar and TRUE. Though I just wanted to point out that there will be players trying out different stuff that could potentially work, whereas right now everyone is playing kind of the same way since there is a "beta meta". So once the majority of HotS players switches over, we will see a lot of different stuff tried out again.
On October 28 2015 05:10 brickrd wrote: you can't complete the balance of the game without seeing months of pro level play, so they have to release it. complaints that it's premature are just a reflection of this community never ever being satisfied or happy, we're mostly a very negative and vindictive bunch
And that's the reason why we don't get good, varied gameplay. "We need to confirm for 22months straight that Mech TvP isn't viable, before we consider changing it!" 22months later: "We won't change balance now, pros will complain if we do too many balance changes. The game is what it is!"
lol exactly!
I've been on a rollercoster with this BETA; at first i was super excited about the goals, like changing the eco, making mech viable vs P, no more Colossus as the centre piece, lurker; but as things progressed i was more and more disappointed with the direction. Air units to strong, all about fast units and not enough positional play, not enough big changes to the eco
So i don't know, it's more adventurous then HOTS, but is it enough? I'll wait on buying it like i did with HOTS.
Maybe it just takes really(REALLY) good players to play LotV. David Kim has said multiplet times that they're still waiting for more SC2 Pros to switch to LotV.
This is actually really bad example of lotv, because a good Protoss player would crush Zerg trying to go swarm hosts and just because it's Life who did it doesn't mean that's how lotv will look like ;;
Watch Solar and TRUE play, that's how Zerg is and will be played.
You're right, especially about Solar and TRUE. Though I just wanted to point out that there will be players trying out different stuff that could potentially work, whereas right now everyone is playing kind of the same way since there is a "beta meta". So once the majority of HotS players switches over, we will see a lot of different stuff tried out again.
Of course they will try out new stuff. Its a "new" game. That always happens. But it wont stay for long. After a short while there will not be any more new stuff. At some point the *perfect* build (or perfect builds) will emerge and everybody will be doing the same stuff over and over. Its how it always goes. It would be nice if it didnt, but to accomplish something like that is really really hard and I dont blame blizzard for not being able to do it.
Thats why its so important to see what happens with Blizzard's SC2 Panel. I agree that it is unlikely that it will be just like Brood War where we see different stuff happen without any interference from Blizzard, but realistically they could continue work on the multiplayer with a proper business model.
On October 29 2015 05:29 Blargh wrote: My biggest concern is actually just that there is not enough strategic depth in the game.
Based on what?
Actually, I agree with Blargh completely. Game is just so much faster, more energetic. All my planning goes into next few seconds, because in those seconds so much happens, that all my plans would be shattered anyway. When I can easily just win based on my opponent reacting one second to late, I´m not even happy with the win. I think that people who play a lot, especially if they are good, will eventually be able to read different situations and base their strategies of off that, but for casual people who can only play a few games a week, it would always be just messy and stressful experience.
That was always and will always be the case with starcraft, though. The decision making happens largely in your replay analysis, and in the game you just apply your knowledge and judge based on your experience.
Starcraft was never a game where you could sit back and think "Hmmm, what am I going to do next?". Players that do that are usually very low level and stop doing this once they've gathered more experience. And then it's all natural.
This does not mean it's not a strategic game. In fact it makes it makes good strategies all the more important since the best ones are those who are either so powerful that they don't have to adapt, or so flexible that they're able to adapt to nearly every possible reaction from the opponent.
sorry but thats complete bullshhhhhh. making the game that fast, lotv is, it isnt accessible or fun for beginners or low level players at all. feeling constantly stressed by the mass of tasks makes the unappealing or even unplayable for them. blizzard should have made this game more accessible for beginners but they made more appealing to best of the best. and strategy wise all i see is one harass strat which leads into another harass strat, which may ends the game. its about who can kill more works of his opponent...
as a gold player i enjoyed wol and hots but lotv, holy f, there is nothing i can enjoy. its complete stress, from the first second. i feel like blizzard is telling us causuals, noobs are not welcome. but hey thats ok, i find another game to enjoy.
On October 29 2015 05:29 Blargh wrote: My biggest concern is actually just that there is not enough strategic depth in the game.
Based on what?
Actually, I agree with Blargh completely. Game is just so much faster, more energetic. All my planning goes into next few seconds, because in those seconds so much happens, that all my plans would be shattered anyway. When I can easily just win based on my opponent reacting one second to late, I´m not even happy with the win. I think that people who play a lot, especially if they are good, will eventually be able to read different situations and base their strategies of off that, but for casual people who can only play a few games a week, it would always be just messy and stressful experience.
But that really isn't that much different from what we had before in HotS or even in WoL. Casual people were losing all the time because of slow reactions and bad scouting/reading of opponent's strategy.
Yea but he makes THAT EXACT POINT, that lotv was supposed to make the game less stressful for casuals. The result is that the target has not been reached, casuals will be even more stressed due to higher demand and faster game pace
Its like dk thought "yea lets make it really easy to get into sc2 with automating some tasks" and afterwards he was like "woa, we just broke the game for pros, screw the casuals lets revert changes". Of course the point above was timings and fast decision making being tough for casuals but macro changes belong in the discussion, i feel
On October 29 2015 05:29 Blargh wrote: My biggest concern is actually just that there is not enough strategic depth in the game.
Based on what?
Actually, I agree with Blargh completely. Game is just so much faster, more energetic. All my planning goes into next few seconds, because in those seconds so much happens, that all my plans would be shattered anyway. When I can easily just win based on my opponent reacting one second to late, I´m not even happy with the win. I think that people who play a lot, especially if they are good, will eventually be able to read different situations and base their strategies of off that, but for casual people who can only play a few games a week, it would always be just messy and stressful experience.
That was always and will always be the case with starcraft, though. The decision making happens largely in your replay analysis, and in the game you just apply your knowledge and judge based on your experience.
Starcraft was never a game where you could sit back and think "Hmmm, what am I going to do next?". Players that do that are usually very low level and stop doing this once they've gathered more experience. And then it's all natural.
This does not mean it's not a strategic game. In fact it makes it makes good strategies all the more important since the best ones are those who are either so powerful that they don't have to adapt, or so flexible that they're able to adapt to nearly every possible reaction from the opponent.
sorry but thats complete bullshhhhhh. making the game that fast, lotv is, it isnt accessible or fun for beginners or low level players at all. feeling constantly stressed by the mass of tasks makes the unappealing or even unplayable for them. blizzard should have made this game more accessible for beginners but they made more appealing to best of the best. and strategy wise all i see is one harass strat which leads into another harass strat, which may ends the game. its about who can kill more works of his opponent...
as a gold player i enjoyed wol and hots but lotv, holy f, there is nothing i can enjoy. its complete stress, from the first second. i feel like blizzard is telling us causuals, noobs are not welcome. but hey thats ok, i find another game to enjoy.
The fact that the game is too fast for your liking does not change the fact that this was always the case, even in HotS and WoL. The main difference between the previous two expansions is the fact that there are many safe build orders whereas LotV does not have those yet. Technically LotV is not much faster since yeah, aggression happens a lot earlier, but so does defense.
I'm curious, have you ever played any other competetive game out there? As far as I'm concerned, a round of DotA2 can be equally stressing if not more stressing than a round of SC2.
The harass point is something I read repeatedly from lower level players (not meant as a diss, just an observation) so there seems to be a lot of truth in there. Though personally I think builds that are safer vs harassment were always an unequal problem in SC2 and is nothing exclusive to LotV.
On October 29 2015 05:29 Blargh wrote: My biggest concern is actually just that there is not enough strategic depth in the game.
Based on what?
Actually, I agree with Blargh completely. Game is just so much faster, more energetic. All my planning goes into next few seconds, because in those seconds so much happens, that all my plans would be shattered anyway. When I can easily just win based on my opponent reacting one second to late, I´m not even happy with the win. I think that people who play a lot, especially if they are good, will eventually be able to read different situations and base their strategies of off that, but for casual people who can only play a few games a week, it would always be just messy and stressful experience.
But that really isn't that much different from what we had before in HotS or even in WoL. Casual people were losing all the time because of slow reactions and bad scouting/reading of opponent's strategy.
But my problem isn´t the losing, it´s the winning, I don´t enjoy winning at all. When getting used to HotS, I didn´t have this problem at all tbh. I mean, it has really became just way to fast paced, to active, to exciting maybe, for me.
But not in BW, KeksX. You said "Starcraft", like Dustin Browder used to do talking about SC2 I believe. It is not a common point between the two games, so you can't call that characteristic of it "Starcraft". Starcraft is a strategy game and you don't just do decision making in replay analysis no no no. That is because of the volatility of SC2 indeed like it has been pointed out. Can't plan a lot of things, mostly you have to go for harrass aggression and defense, reactively, because you can't rely what you have will endure but you can rely harassing will create opportunities for terrible terrible damage. I would dare say, in a way essentially SC2 is pretty random haha (more so with LotV it seems... I don't remember that WoL was this messy with fast AoE everywhere all the time... lol)
On October 29 2015 05:29 Blargh wrote: My biggest concern is actually just that there is not enough strategic depth in the game.
Based on what?
Actually, I agree with Blargh completely. Game is just so much faster, more energetic. All my planning goes into next few seconds, because in those seconds so much happens, that all my plans would be shattered anyway. When I can easily just win based on my opponent reacting one second to late, I´m not even happy with the win. I think that people who play a lot, especially if they are good, will eventually be able to read different situations and base their strategies of off that, but for casual people who can only play a few games a week, it would always be just messy and stressful experience.
That was always and will always be the case with starcraft, though. The decision making happens largely in your replay analysis, and in the game you just apply your knowledge and judge based on your experience.
Starcraft was never a game where you could sit back and think "Hmmm, what am I going to do next?". Players that do that are usually very low level and stop doing this once they've gathered more experience. And then it's all natural.
This does not mean it's not a strategic game. In fact it makes it makes good strategies all the more important since the best ones are those who are either so powerful that they don't have to adapt, or so flexible that they're able to adapt to nearly every possible reaction from the opponent.
sorry but thats complete bullshhhhhh. making the game that fast, lotv is, it isnt accessible or fun for beginners or low level players at all. feeling constantly stressed by the mass of tasks makes the unappealing or even unplayable for them. blizzard should have made this game more accessible for beginners but they made more appealing to best of the best. and strategy wise all i see is one harass strat which leads into another harass strat, which may ends the game. its about who can kill more works of his opponent...
as a gold player i enjoyed wol and hots but lotv, holy f, there is nothing i can enjoy. its complete stress, from the first second. i feel like blizzard is telling us causuals, noobs are not welcome. but hey thats ok, i find another game to enjoy.
I wanted to reply to KeksX, but your reply was pretty much what I would have written anyway and even my feelings and skill level seem to be the same. In LotV, no matter if I win or lose, I´m just glad it´s over. Actually, I mind losing much less than in HotS, but that may not even be a good thing.
On October 29 2015 05:29 Blargh wrote: My biggest concern is actually just that there is not enough strategic depth in the game.
Based on what?
Actually, I agree with Blargh completely. Game is just so much faster, more energetic. All my planning goes into next few seconds, because in those seconds so much happens, that all my plans would be shattered anyway. When I can easily just win based on my opponent reacting one second to late, I´m not even happy with the win. I think that people who play a lot, especially if they are good, will eventually be able to read different situations and base their strategies of off that, but for casual people who can only play a few games a week, it would always be just messy and stressful experience.
But that really isn't that much different from what we had before in HotS or even in WoL. Casual people were losing all the time because of slow reactions and bad scouting/reading of opponent's strategy.
Yea but he makes THAT EXACT POINT, that lotv was supposed to make the game less stressful for casuals. The result is that the target has not been reached, casuals will be even more stressed due to higher demand and faster game pace
Its like dk thought "yea lets make it really easy to get into sc2 with automating some tasks" and afterwards he was like "woa, we just broke the game for pros, screw the casuals lets revert changes". Of course the point above was timings and fast decision making being tough for casuals but macro changes belong in the discussion, i feel
Yes, when I found about MM changes, I got back into beta big time, when they reverted back, I was just so disappointed, I hoped they would keep on that road. I mean, inject is better, at least I can play Zerg now, but the game itself just isn´t fun, just stress .
On October 29 2015 22:34 ProMeTheus112 wrote: But not in BW, KeksX. You said "Starcraft", like Dustin Browder used to do talking about SC2 I believe. It is not a common point between the two games, so you can't call that characteristic of it "Starcraft". Starcraft is a strategy game and you don't just do decision making in replay analysis no no no. That is because of the volatility of SC2 indeed like it has been pointed out. Can't plan a lot of things, mostly you have to go for harrass aggression and defense, reactively, because you can't rely what you have will endure but you can rely harassing will create opportunities for terrible terrible damage. I would dare say, in a way essentially SC2 is pretty random haha (more so with LotV it seems... I don't remember that WoL was this messy with fast AoE everywhere all the time... lol)
It's the lack of positional advantage you are talking about. I don't agree that's related to speed of the game or harass. You can easily have strong defensive tools that allow you to hold a position cost efficiently while having fast-moving harass units at the same time.
On October 29 2015 05:29 Blargh wrote: My biggest concern is actually just that there is not enough strategic depth in the game.
Based on what?
Actually, I agree with Blargh completely. Game is just so much faster, more energetic. All my planning goes into next few seconds, because in those seconds so much happens, that all my plans would be shattered anyway. When I can easily just win based on my opponent reacting one second to late, I´m not even happy with the win. I think that people who play a lot, especially if they are good, will eventually be able to read different situations and base their strategies of off that, but for casual people who can only play a few games a week, it would always be just messy and stressful experience.
That was always and will always be the case with starcraft, though. The decision making happens largely in your replay analysis, and in the game you just apply your knowledge and judge based on your experience.
Starcraft was never a game where you could sit back and think "Hmmm, what am I going to do next?". Players that do that are usually very low level and stop doing this once they've gathered more experience. And then it's all natural.
This does not mean it's not a strategic game. In fact it makes it makes good strategies all the more important since the best ones are those who are either so powerful that they don't have to adapt, or so flexible that they're able to adapt to nearly every possible reaction from the opponent.
sorry but thats complete bullshhhhhh. making the game that fast, lotv is, it isnt accessible or fun for beginners or low level players at all. feeling constantly stressed by the mass of tasks makes the unappealing or even unplayable for them. blizzard should have made this game more accessible for beginners but they made more appealing to best of the best. and strategy wise all i see is one harass strat which leads into another harass strat, which may ends the game. its about who can kill more works of his opponent...
as a gold player i enjoyed wol and hots but lotv, holy f, there is nothing i can enjoy. its complete stress, from the first second. i feel like blizzard is telling us causuals, noobs are not welcome. but hey thats ok, i find another game to enjoy.
The fact that the game is too fast for your liking does not change the fact that this was always the case, even in HotS and WoL. The main difference between the previous two expansions is the fact that there are many safe build orders whereas LotV does not have those yet. Technically LotV is not much faster since yeah, aggression happens a lot earlier, but so does defense.
I'm curious, have you ever played any other competetive game out there? As far as I'm concerned, a round of DotA2 can be equally stressing if not more stressing than a round of SC2.
The harass point is something I read repeatedly from lower level players (not meant as a diss, just an observation) so there seems to be a lot of truth in there. Though personally I think builds that are safer vs harassment were always an unequal problem in SC2 and is nothing exclusive to LotV.
As for me, I played WoW arenas on, I´d say high level. I´ve never been to tournaments, but we´ve made top10 on Arena Tournament multiple times with 2v2 and 3v3, then we switched to LoL, it was time when a lot of top guys were WoW PvP guys unhappy with Cata and saw LoL overtaking. We were participating in some European league and stayed in top 20 for some time, but since our friends who switched as well were doing much better and actually made it to the big stage, I guess it was just not enoug, being only "allright" so we fell apart, since then, I´ve gone into full casual mode and switched to SC since I had no team and LoL with random ppl was very frustrating. I can actually be very calm in HotS and carry out my little silly strategies, I wasn´t able to do that in LotV, I may even be playing better in LotV, but I just don´t enjoy playing in the first place. For me, it is just a game, a way to relax, I don´t want to be trying hard, I just want to have a good time.
On October 29 2015 22:34 ProMeTheus112 wrote: But not in BW, KeksX. [snip to make post smaller]
I'd argue you do more decision making in replay analysis than in the real game. Decision making is a calculation of risk vs reward, "what has the highest chance of a positive outcome for me?" etc. All those things take time and knowledge(in the sense that you need to know what your opponent is doing), both if which are either not there(time is money in SC2) or uncomplete(scouting does not always give you 100% info).
So you have to rely on your experience from past games which you only get by analysing (your own) replays.
Remember that decision making is not only "well I get a roach warren and then build roach in response to his mech". It can be as small as reading your opponent's current plan by seeing 3 marines in front of his natural and counting the number of drones you can make before building units. You don't analyse stuff like the thoroughly in a game, you do it beforehand so your reaction/response happens immediately in a future game.
And the more analysis you do, the more experience you get, the more comfortable you feel playing. All of these things make the game less stressing, so naturally a "new game" is just all the more stressing especially if it feels more fast-paced at the same time.
This has been my experience in all of the past Starcraft versions. Stress -> Analysis / Experience -> Comfort.
I acknowledge that LotV brought in some plays that are more stressing, but given time these will either be figured out(giving knowledge/experience and thus ocmfort) or Blizzard might patch them out if the majority of players has a problem with this. Hider already made a valid point about this: positional play. The Lurker for example gave me ( as a zerg user ) the option to be much more safe in certain scenarios while I can focus on other things.
On October 29 2015 05:29 Blargh wrote: My biggest concern is actually just that there is not enough strategic depth in the game.
Based on what?
Actually, I agree with Blargh completely. Game is just so much faster, more energetic. All my planning goes into next few seconds, because in those seconds so much happens, that all my plans would be shattered anyway. When I can easily just win based on my opponent reacting one second to late, I´m not even happy with the win. I think that people who play a lot, especially if they are good, will eventually be able to read different situations and base their strategies of off that, but for casual people who can only play a few games a week, it would always be just messy and stressful experience.
That was always and will always be the case with starcraft, though. The decision making happens largely in your replay analysis, and in the game you just apply your knowledge and judge based on your experience.
Starcraft was never a game where you could sit back and think "Hmmm, what am I going to do next?". Players that do that are usually very low level and stop doing this once they've gathered more experience. And then it's all natural.
This does not mean it's not a strategic game. In fact it makes it makes good strategies all the more important since the best ones are those who are either so powerful that they don't have to adapt, or so flexible that they're able to adapt to nearly every possible reaction from the opponent.
sorry but thats complete bullshhhhhh. making the game that fast, lotv is, it isnt accessible or fun for beginners or low level players at all. feeling constantly stressed by the mass of tasks makes the unappealing or even unplayable for them. blizzard should have made this game more accessible for beginners but they made more appealing to best of the best. and strategy wise all i see is one harass strat which leads into another harass strat, which may ends the game. its about who can kill more works of his opponent...
as a gold player i enjoyed wol and hots but lotv, holy f, there is nothing i can enjoy. its complete stress, from the first second. i feel like blizzard is telling us causuals, noobs are not welcome. but hey thats ok, i find another game to enjoy.
The fact that the game is too fast for your liking does not change the fact that this was always the case, even in HotS and WoL. The main difference between the previous two expansions is the fact that there are many safe build orders whereas LotV does not have those yet. Technically LotV is not much faster since yeah, aggression happens a lot earlier, but so does defense.
I'm curious, have you ever played any other competetive game out there? As far as I'm concerned, a round of DotA2 can be equally stressing if not more stressing than a round of SC2.
The harass point is something I read repeatedly from lower level players (not meant as a diss, just an observation) so there seems to be a lot of truth in there. Though personally I think builds that are safer vs harassment were always an unequal problem in SC2 and is nothing exclusive to LotV.
As for me, I played WoW arenas on, I´d say high level. I´ve never been to tournaments, but we´ve made top10 on Arena [snip to make post smaller].
Well you might not be calling it "tryhard" and yourself a "casual"... But you have to pick up ideas for those strategies you executed in HotS from somewhere, right? There are a ton of resources for HotS strategies and if you wanted to execute a build order for your own comfort, you could look it up and get 100s of them. So while you don't do the work yourself, you still get to reap the benefits of others' work.
This will be the same once LotV is figured out more. People will put out guides, tutorials, build orders and all that so that you can consume it and apply to your play. Even just watching player streams where you saw something and said to yourself "I'm gonna try that myself!" are greatly improving your play.
And with that type of stuff, you're not considered a casual anymore. Even the fact that you're posting on TL potentially shows you're not one. "Real Casuals" barely do any of this, fire up the game and struggle to build a Spawning Pool in time. "Real casuals"(sorry, I hate that term too but I can't think of a better one) were already frustrated with WoL being too fast...
If anything, all this shows is that the game might be too hard/fast/stressing/messy for anyone, not just casuals. But that is something I cannot possibly answer.
EPT
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