|
Not to rant but I still find it funny that Blizzard thought that chat channels were not required for the release of this game. How does communication happen on SC2? You know the person from elsewhere. You met the person in a game. You see a stream or are in a stream channel with the other person. It's not like you can actively communicate with other TLers on SC2. I need to go on IRC or Vent to find people. I'm sure most people don't do this, and most people who don't know about a lot of the SC2 sites out there don't do it either.
When people feel lonely or unfulfilled they are less likely to participate in something for a lengthy period, though I think with your other points if you had a more 'fun' and 'teamwork is great' functionality in the game (like COD) you would see less long-term retention. Players will just get used to the same old same old and only the hardcore gamers will remain, but the retention of players will be lower than that of SC2 or WOW because the constant release of new versions, or new games for that matter.
EDIT: Less wall-of-text...
|
That's a funny thing about the matchmaking system. I guess I should expect the 50% win-loss ratio but it's such a foreign idea to expect to lose HALF of my games no matter how good I get that I've had trouble with the idea.
|
These are all interesting points. I don't think they are unique to RTS though, I think they are merely correspondent to a dying breed of games. I remember feeling intense anxiety and stress after I saw the words, "You have left the protection of the town guards" when I played UO, because I knew there were reds out there waiting to kill my noob ass and pick my corpse clean, when everything I owned took me hours of skinning cows to get... lol.
Games just don't punish people like they used to. Starcraft, as an RTS, is more punishing than it needs to be due to lack of real interaction and lack of any functional features which would make the game more interesting, such as an observing system for high level games. Most games though have the potential for this, they just choose the WoW route because that's what hooks casuals into paying for longer amounts of time. As a user mentioned, EVE online retains this feature even though the game itself is absolutely no fun at all.
I wish the discussion would focus more on preventing tilt, I feel like I read a breakdown on why Starcraft is awesome but I still feel like I don't fully understand the concept of tilt. When did I go from freaking out over being alone in UO to being comfortable and calm in escaping my hunters? When did I master my fear of loss? How did I do it? I still struggle with these things in Starcraft, I'll play custom games against tough opponents all day but I know if I ladder a few times I'll get burned out and want to quit even if I win. I wish I knew how to stop that from happening.
|
There are a thousand and one threads on preventing tilt. If you don't know why tilt happens, you can't prevent it and none of those threads that I've seen have gone over the reasons that tilt happens so badly in SC2.
Keep in mind, the satisfaction on the flip side is equal. When you win, you are a giant penis howitzer that fires lightning. You are Jesus riding a grizzly bear. You are Muhamed Ali punching a tank to death.
|
I disagree with the fact that a really bad player can't take at least one match from a pro or really good player.
There are ways to win one match (6-9 pool vs 15 hatch in zvz for example). That's why tournaments have bo3 and above.
Also you should not be rewarded for just playing (although the bonus pool does this), it's about constant improving. I'm not a fan of the new era hand holding going on in gaming atm.
|
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.
--------------------------------------
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}
I don't think these are really the issues. BW was much better at bringing players back for more, yet the gameplay is the same. Other RTS's don't necessarily have this issue either, and they have most (if not all) of the same features.
|
Read the post again. I didn't list any of those things as 'issues'. This post wasn't to complain about the game. It was written to give people the reasons behind 'tilt'.
|
On January 04 2011 02:45 chessiecat wrote:
Read the post again. I didn't list any of those things as 'issues'. This post wasn't to complain about the game. It was written to give people the reasons behind 'tilt'.
Last I checked, "issue" and "problem that makes the game worse" aren't necessarily the same word/phrase.
|
your "God is Untouchable" point is way more valid in SC:BW than in StarCraft 2. In StarCraft 2 bad players can beat good player a hell of a lot easier than in BroodWar.
Also from reading your post i assume you were not a BroodWar player?
|
On January 03 2011 19:45 ShadowDrgn wrote:Show nested quote +On January 03 2011 17:16 huameng wrote:
In tournament chess, no one actually gets checkmated. People resign just like in Starcraft. I think every point you listed works against chess as well, yet I don't really know any tilt monkeys in chess. I think the difference is that Chess is a game of perfect information with no sudden surprises, and it's those surprises that trigger tilt. Unless you're really bad at Chess, you're never going to go from thinking you're going to win to being checkmated instantly. In Starcraft, you can go from playing a seemingly perfect game to dead from DTs in a second. In poker, you can get the money in good and lose to a 1 in 990 runner-runner.
eh, in chess the same thing can happen.
^^pulimuli, no one cares, no reason to start something.
|
To all stated in the OP is why I LOVE War3 and Star2. Its basically a game BUILT for competition and there's nothing that gives bad players an easier run. Either you fight and practice to get better, or you simply accept that this is not a game for you.
|
On January 04 2011 03:08 LittLeD wrote:
To all stated in the OP is why I LOVE War3 and Star2. Its basically a game BUILT for competition and there's nothing that gives bad players an easier run. Either you fight and practice to get better, or you simply accept that this is not a game for you.
I totally agree.
|
On January 04 2011 02:54 Pulimuli wrote:
your "God is Untouchable" point is way more valid in SC:BW than in StarCraft 2. In StarCraft 2 bad players can beat good player a hell of a lot easier than in BroodWar.
Also from reading your post i assume you were not a BroodWar player?
And that falls solidly on how poorly built the game's UI was, which is not a positive, imo. It gave the game a false learning curve, where just getting used to what the game UI made you do was half the battle. It worked out in the end because the rest of the game was so solid, but it's not exactly a good model on how to create a successful e-sports game. If SC2 had half the horrible UI failures that BW had, noone would be playing it now.
|
On January 04 2011 02:27 chessiecat wrote:
Keep in mind, the satisfaction on the flip side is equal. When you win, you are a giant penis howitzer that fires lightning. You are Jesus riding a grizzly bear. You are Muhamed Ali punching a tank to death.
This is exactly right. I mean, I am all of those things.
No, actually I'm not, but the point about the satisfaction on the flip side being equal is absolutely key. I play SC2 and sometimes I go on a losing streak and get bummed out, but I improve my game and savor my wins that much more. And they're MY wins, not at all applicable to luck. There are no games I've lost where I've looked at the replays and there was absolutely nothing I could have done better. Every loss is mine, and every win is mine.
|
Personally, I think a large part of SC2s problem regarding the appeal of competitive matches is the sheer opacity of the system rather than the "nastiness" or otherwise of it.
What puts me off laddering, or at least makes the whole experience a lot less pleasent than it could be, is the void in which it's performed. Unless a player's somehow managed to attach genuine significance to league points, the chances are the only punishments or rewards available for wins and losses are the wins and losses themselves. There's simply no obvious significance to any one game, or evenings worth of games.
To compare and contrast a little...
In EVE (played it for the first 9 months), if I took my battleship loaded with my "best" kit into 0.0 space and dove into a fight, I knew damn well I had chance of binning a lot of time and efforts worth of kit if it went tits up, but I also knew I had a chance of inflicting the same thing on the opposition. The consequences were obvious and immediate, and downright adrenaline-pumping. The amount "on the line" compared to an SC2 ladder match was massive, but it was worth doing because the rewards for victory (or merely avoiding defeat) were just so much fun, and so immediate. Had the result of a three hour running battle around some system or other been the words "You won, that is all", I'd have uninstalled it after the first week.
In iRacing*, the consequences were also very prominently shown. Without going into details, there were essentially four stats that moved about per race, with these stats being visible to one and all. At the end of a race, you knew** precisely who you beat, who beat you, how the ranked relative to you both before and after the race, how safe they usually are, how experienced they were, etc. In short, you could go out there and come 10th in a 14 car field and, thanks to being able to see the stats, work out that you had, in fact, beaten everyone ranked below you plus one driver ranked above you - surface result... you sucked... actual result... you put in a better performance than expected, "gratz". Personally, I think Blizzard could learn so, so much from the iRacing system as the firm statistical context it placed around the competition gave genuine meaning to results and performance - it made everything matter, gave positives in the face of ostensibly negative outcomes, and gave obvious, clear, and unambiguous targets*** to aim for.
I suppose, to sum it all up, what I feel SC2 lacks is, oddly, any real sense of competition. It's all just a big, anonymous void, in which it's impossible to measure yourself even against friends by any measure other than "he usually beats me" or vice versa.
* A very hardcore motor racing sim (not game, not in a million years), entirely online, entirely against human opponents, and where beating the best of the best was as likely as it is in SC2 (in fact, probably even less so).
** Past tense, sadly. Just don't have the time for it any more. Brilliant system though. Brilliant.
*** Which SC2 simply doesn't do. "I'm going to get to Platinum" is, as a target, about as meaningful as stating "I'm going to go to Washington" without actually knowing which Washington you're supposed to get to or, for that matter, where on the planet you're currently situated.
|
I really don't get this. Is this basically a long winded way of saying, "I hate losing, so I wish there was some artificial way or device or system that was in place so that my ego didn't feel so battered"?
Please correct me if I'm wrong. If I'm not, then it just sounds like you need to work on your mentality regarding competition, because that's how competition works, and SC is an ultra-competitive game.
|
IMO these things are precisely one of the triumphs behind the SC2 competition system, that it makes even bronze seem real, it brings a sense of real competition to every gaming level, thus while sucking at the game, you can still enjoy the "rush" of competing. This is very different from other RTS and competitive games, in which you get punished real hard for sucking, and there's almost no way to feel rewards until you are in a mid-high competition level. SC2 rewards you for progress and does so through a tangible and visible method.
For me, this means that while it's very dissapointing to lose, the rewards for winning and, particularly, for improving and progressing through leagues are much more potent than the punishment for sucking at the game.
|
On January 04 2011 04:01 Kimaker wrote:
I really don't get this. Is this basically a long winded way of saying, "I hate losing, so I wish there was some artificial way or device or system that was in place so that my ego didn't feel so battered"?
Please correct me if I'm wrong. If I'm not, then it just sounds like you need to work on your mentality regarding competition, because that's how competition works, and SC is an ultra-competitive game.
Did you happen to glaze over the part where OP explained: Keep in mind while reading this that I don't think the game needs to change
Or the several other posts where the OP explains that the purpose isn't to complain about StarCraft, but to explain the sources of tilt so players can better deal with it.
Anyway. I pretty much agree with all of this. I experience much more anxiety before a game of starcraft than I did/do experience before rounds of CS/CoD. I think another contributing factor is the structure of an RTS game compared to FPS games. Cause and effect are very closely tied (or appear to be) in FPS games. You die because you were slower on the draw or didn't check a corner or approached poorly etc. Your failure 3 minutes ago rarely comes back to bite you. (There are always exceptions, such as Quake-style FPSes).
In contrast many losses in RTS games seem very much rooted in the past which contributes to a sense of helplessness.
|
2. Ever played HoN? its the same. You start from scrap every game, and there is only loose or win.
4. Ofcourse you can always lucky shot some one in CoD, but killing an enemy pro gamer once doesnt win you the game. You need to kill a whole team to win 1 round. A team consist out of 5 players. The chances you lucky shot a pro are like 1%. You also have to win 21 rounds out of 40. Gl winning :')
my idea is: you just dont know enough about others games on a competitive level like you do about starcraft. all games with a competitive scene around it have many differences in skill level.
|
On January 03 2011 19:16 wherebugsgo wrote:
Hahaha I can sense some weak RTS souls in this thread.
What's the proposed solution? Anything introduced to the game to change it is...not a very appealing idea.
I think it's just an attitude problem. People tilt in all games. You could, for example, repeatedly lose a duel to the same guy in WoW, or never be able to complete a certain raid encounter. In WoW you change this by playing more and getting more, better equipment. You might change your spec.
In SC2 you do this by watching replays and playing more. It's the same general idea, and playing more in both games leads to improvement. It's bad attitude that leads to constant losses.
I did play MMOs (Lineage2) a huge amount of time and never had such feelings sc2 laddering managed to inflict on me. Only incident that could come close was party vs party against the only other top clan on server when wins or defeats were topics of discussions for weeks. Movies recorded, players spectating. Failure was definitely not a private thing. However, being a team game, you could never take the full responsibility for a loss on yourself.
In starcraft its you. Playing more wont grant you better chances, there's no such backup as better equip. You start with 6 harvesters and a main, he starts with 6 and a main. What happens next is just a result of your actions alone. Comparable to FPS maybe but as opposed to shooters, your whole thought process is under scrutiny after a loss. Feeling absolutely powerless in face of your opponent. That's what i think leads to TILT
i've only experienced it once when i, as terran, decided to steer away from mm, cloak banshee, defensive play, into reading my opponents actions, trying to react, understand the metagame. Needless to say i got into a huge loose streak eventually getting paired with bronze. Nothing seemed to work and i was seriously doubting not just my RTS skills but my decision making and intelligence (which never happened in any competitive game i've played). Got out of it and even though im still gold, same as i was when i did the switch, i just feel 10 times more confident and losses dont affect me at all.
So yeah, TILT is just your psyche flipping out. And starcraft 2 seems to put it to the test more than any other games.
|
|
|
|
|
|
EPT
