The Theory of Starcraft 2 TILT. - Page 2

On January 03 2011 19:39 LilClinkin wrote:
I think an easy way to some-what remedy this situation would be for blizz to include a set of achievements which reward you simply for having played the game.

For instance, win or lose, if you play in 1000 ranked matches you unlock something new. Although I think the reward needs to be a bit cooler than a portrait, maybe they could unlock unique unit skins, or maybe even new units to use in the single player campaign or against an AI in a skirmish match.

I would also like to see a huge slew of achievements dedicated to rewarding creative play. There are already a few of them such as 'kill x amount of units with 1 high templar' but they should really extend it to all sorts of units, like 10 kill streak and 20 kill streak rewards for ALL units, and you can unlock something cool like that. This way even if you're in a losing situation, you may feel encouraged for instance to take a dark templar on a ninja raid and try to rack up kills for his kill-streak achievement. They could also include things like 'win a game without building unit x' where x could be something like a marine or a mule or a roach.

On January 03 2011 20:54 chessiecat wrote:
I think that might actually be a very GOOD idea. Keep in mind, implementation is the issue here. Heck, why not just let it be 'If you leave before the game is up, you don't get to keep your achievements?' Straightforward solution to that kind of farming.

On January 03 2011 16:25 chessiecat wrote:
This is something that has interested me for a while now and it has to do with something very specific to Starcraft 2. Even other Blizzard games don't suffer from as much fear and anticipation of the 'next game' as Starcraft 2 is capable of generating. Why is that?

Well, I have a theory or rather, several pieces of information that look very neat together.

Keep in mind while reading this that I don't think the game needs to change. The game is teaching me patience. Huge quantities of patience. Sometimes I fall apart after just a few games and sometimes I can go all night. If you want to know how to avoid Tilt, you have to know why it happens. Being aware of each of these factors can allow you to consciously direct your mind away from certain lines of thought. The other player is not a cheating bastard. The units are not imbalanced.

I will list a few characteristics of other games which are present to help players deal with losing and encourage them to come back into the game.

1.To the victor go the spoils...and a little something for the loser too.

In Diablo 2, Call of Duty (pretty much all of the recent ones), and any one of a list of recent games there is a particular reward simply for playing. Even Team Fortress 2 rewards you for just staying in the game with regular drops so long as you're contributing a kill once in a while.

World of Warcraft is perhaps the apex of this idea. Even into the late game it is very difficult to just 'die completely'. You can't ever lose everything you owned from death and even if you die, you still gain a bit of experience. Starcraft 2 is very 'one or the other'. Death and loss or triumph and supreme domination. You get some points or you lose some but there is no middle ground.

2.Defeat costs nothing.

There is a certain creativity to assembling a functional base and organizing a strategy. If it works, it is the best feeling in the world. If it doesn't, it can feel like an indictment of your creativity and flexibility as a player. The 'replay' function feels like a looming weight hanging over your head, ready to show your every failing.

If you lose in Team Fortress or even World of Warcraft, you can quickly slip back to the situation you were in and try a new tactic. Starcraft doesn't allow you to do this. Every game will be completely different and losing costs you the entire build-up to the situation you were in.

3.Failure is a private thing.

Nobody can see how many times you've had your face ground into the dust at the click of a single button in Diablo 2. Win/Loss records are private in Team Fortress 2. World of Warcraft won't give away how many games you've lost in a row. You can be TERRIBLE and people will still play with you even if you suck miserably.

Starcraft has these right out there in public. Every crushing defeat is there to be mocked by the public at large.

4.God is touchable.

The most heavily kitted out World of Warcraft warrior with the absolute best armor he can possibly have can still be killed by a slightly crap mage of near equal level in the right circumstances. The longest running player of Team Fortress 2 will always die to a bullet in the head from a Sniper rifle or prolonged fire from the other end of the map. In Call of Duty, even the best cannot weather a hail of bullets.

In Starcraft 2, the odds that Mr.Bronzey Mc-Spacky pants is EVER going to kill Huk or Jinro are approximately zero. It just will not happen. The distance between a player like Idra or Huk and the lowest level Bronze player is so massive that persevering to improve feels like pissing off Niagra Falls. You won't ever 'get lucky' and manage to kill these player.

5.If I'm not winning then I can just go hang with friends! (this section is temporary until chat rooms are implemented)

Starcraft 2 is not a social game right now. It's a game of strict combat. You can't just sit and observe others playing or converse with them in large part.

The Public Test Realms allowed players to interact and to gather up a group of people to just come and enjoy watching another player's game. It was huge fun sitting and casting games while they were going on, describing the tactics and going over each element. You learn a lot from it. It's also very friendly.

This friendly interaction takes the competition down a notch and encourages experimentation and exchange of ideas. It makes players feel less isolated with their failures if they can head into a chatroom and say 'Damn, I screwed up'.

6.Losing requires no loss of pride.

Starcraft 2 requires you to surrender. No other major multi-player game I can think of off the top of my head except perhaps Warcraft 3 requires a surrender button to end the game quickly. You are either killed or you win. Surrender is a very powerful idea. It acknowledges defeat so complete that you don't even want to see the end of the battle.

This surrender is not just the loss of your base but of pride and of the effort you put in. In Starcraft 2 you can continue to play after the point you have been beaten, but the only reason to do so is to make the other player hate you.

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Taken individually none of these things would make a player feel particularly uncomfortable but together they can add up to a sports event level feeling of pressure to perform. There are plenty of threads on how to 'deal' with Tilt but not many on why tilt happens so heavily in SC2. I figured the information might be helpful. None of these things is BAD for the game. This game will teach you not to fear failing. It just takes time. {edit to remove statements about chess}

On January 03 2011 21:16 DennyR wrote:
The great thing about starcraft is... that you are the reason you lost. So you can improve to avoid that stupid losses. Everytime you lose you either made a stupid mistake or the opponent was just plain better than you.
You see how much you improve by just winning to stuff you used to lose to earlier.


Everyone that rages does not understand that part of the game.

Its rather like sports. You train to get better in ladder. You dont rage for shit because you lose a practicegame in soccer. You take it and learn from it.

Take your starcraft into cups and then you are allowed to rage because you lost in the finals to cheese.

On January 03 2011 17:12 alphafuzard wrote:
Mostly agree I suppose, but I'm going to have to disagree on the "God is touchable" point.

Noobs aren't going to be killing the TLO's of Call of Duty. Ever.
And if they did, it would be like a noob killing one zergling, but losing 50 - still not a shot in hell of victory.

Hopefully the social aspect is improved with chat rooms and group replays.

On January 03 2011 22:39 Sm3agol wrote:

Definitely going to disagree here. I've played quite a few games competitively, but never at a high level. And I've definitely killed some "gods" of their sports in various FPS, in competitive and casual settings.

I've killed DaHang twice(in CA, not duel, but still), walter and dtK once apiece in duel, and jones, kgb, Wintergr33n(I think, lol, EG member I thik, been a little while ago) and a bunch of other "pro" ctf players quite often in casual CTF games, and in one competitive game.

In CSS I 1 v 3'ed an ESEA invite group in a casual game, where I had the bomb down and they were trying to defuse. I've also killed single "professional" players in ESEA pugs quite often.

And all these players are of the caliber that if the same level/skill difference we were at was applied to SC2, I would get hardcore raped. In FPS games, a single lucky shot like a flick 1 deag can get you a kill and win you a round vs a professional player. In SC2, making a single lucky play won't win you anything but another 15 seconds of time you would survive.

On January 03 2011 22:44 Snowfield wrote:We tell MMO's and FPS games to go fuck themselves, fucking carebears, play a game that require real skills.

On January 03 2011 22:43 Roggay wrote:


Someone named ActionJesus has something to say about this.

On January 03 2011 23:05 popnyah wrote:


Try playing WoW or Quake Live at the pro level. We'll see how quickly your implication that they don't require "real skill" goes out the window.