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On February 14 2012 07:26 roymarthyup wrote:
i think a incredibly helpful system to implement that might increase user count is to add in a ladder filter by opponents race
this filter will "try" to match everyone based on their race preferences within the first 90 seconds of searching, then after that you are sent into the anything zone
i mean seriously, how bad is it that you would be able to play zerg and thumbs down zerg and random as possible opponents? i mean considering most people playing would be doing the same thing eventually the algorithm would even itself out and ON AVERAGE people would play against the race they want to play against
this way someone could practice mainly ZvT for a week and enjoy only having to learn ZvT and practice really hard on that. possibly trying to get their ZvT to master level then relearn the other ones
i mean eventually even if you spam only ZvT games eventually you get to a point where you will lose to people better than you. So in the end who cares
i think its a great idea
I think this system should be implemented, but not on ladder. Ladder you don't get to pick and choose your matchups, that violates its legitimacy as a competitive system.
There is a model of system that allowed you to practice the matchups you needed to intensely, however. It's in BW. It's called a "working custom game system". You may have heard of it, Blizzard!#@#!@
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The problem is that games today have this concept to them where there is always something visually to "progress" at. Sc2 has this, but it is extremely minimal. They use league icons and achievements, but they dont have something to continuously progress at just for playing the game, whether you win or lose.
Take that, and compare it will other popular games: MMO's, Moba's.
Lets just use WoW as an example (and its another blizzard game). You dont actually have to be any good at the game OR 'improve' at the game in order to 'progress' in it. You can just spend time playing the game and you will eventually get what you want out of it, or at least keep a level of obvious and visually oriented progress. Your character level goes up, and never goes down.
Lets use LoL as a moba example. Again, you dont actually have to be good or improve at the game to keep a constant progression going. All you have to do is keep playing, and you will continuously earn points or credits or whatever that game uses to buy characters or whatever. Your level in that game also goes up, AND NEVER GOES DOWN.
Keep in mind, I am not saying WoW and LoL are doing it wrong or that there is anything bad about the games in general, I am just comparing the models they use to the one Sc2 uses. They are different types of games, I know that, but the reasons I just listed are big factors in ladder activity decreasing.
"Ladder fear" is ridiculous and fake. It isnt actual "fear" of playing or "fear" of losing. It is a subconcious "fear" of NOT progressing. In WoW and LoL, that subconcious "fear" doestn exist because the only way to not progress in those games is to NOT actually play them.
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The UI drives me away from the game. Everytime I log on and play, I feel this sense that i'm disconnect from the rest of the SC2 community. I was Rank 1 diamond for a while and could have easily pushed to masters if I grinded it out, but I had no real insentive to do so. There was no connection to the people I played against in diamond and there wouldn't be a connection to people I played against in Masters. I came to realize that the only time you actually feel somewhat part of the community is in GM, where you play against the same opponent many times, learn their playstyle and are somewhat excited to play and see the changes he/she made in their game. I simply was honest with myself and knew I wasn't going to put in enough hours to get to GM, so I pretty much stopped playing agressively.
As many others have said here, they find more enjoyment playing customs or just doing those 1v1 obs games. I actually run into people that I play against all the time in those games. I feel a sense of community when that happens and that makes it more enjoyable.
Whats really sad is that SC2 is still fun as hell to play. It's amazing that something like a UI can just kill the fun game play of SC2, but it did for me.
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On February 14 2012 07:08 Grohg wrote:Show nested quote +On February 13 2012 23:14 Joseph123 wrote:
1. Perhaps add maps that are worth playing, how am i supposed to ladder a lot when there are 7 maps from which I've banned 3, so I'm playing the same maps over and over again and I don't even like them
Solution: add more maps + more bans.
2. Battle.net is a lonely boring place, all you can do is click find match button and that's all I do. If you want to get involved, you can do that, but that requires a lot of time and effort outside the game to find the people to do so.
Solution: Fix battle.net
3. There are no statistics about your games, just some boring match history that requires so much time to open anyway
Solution: Add more features to 1v1 statistics, I can't think of all of them, but statistics about every maps, every bo, every race, etc.. No, I don't want to use Sc2gears for that.
4. How am i supposed to keep on playing when i get 10 pvp's in a row? I don't care that "this is your luck" or something, I don't have all the time in the world to click the find match button, so if I play 10 games, I want them to be against all races.........................................?
Solution: Fix that.
5. The division system is completely retarded, there isn't a real way to compare yourself to your opponent and to all the people.... Just no comment, you are top1 master in one division, but in other you're like top25. Seriously? What is the point in that? The whole statistics are meaningless, you don't get any information about your skill improvement.
6. Things that compare you to other players such as apm are completely ruined by absolutely no reason, good job Blizzard -1 thing that can compare you to other people.
I can continue, but there is no point, they have shown no intention in making battle.net a place that you can do anything else other than pressing "Find match" and then using 3rd party programs for statistics. So people like me who wanna play maybe 20 games a day are gonna play a lot less, because there is nothing to keep us continuing to play after a long series of pvp's or just nothing happening, just staying at one place, no way to guess after this 20 games, did I improve or not? Did my MMR jump high or not? Of course I'm not able to understand that, because of bonus pool. Well done.
If you want to veto every map that Protoss typically veto then of course you're going to have more PvPs than other matchups. I fail to see how that isn't expected. They're adding in new maps this coming season that ARE tournament style maps and removing two of the worst as result. They also mentioned that they will be focusing more on these maps in the future. If you want statistics then use sc2gears regardless of whether you want to or not, why does it matter if it's in game or another program. Unless you want the stats to be there just for other people to see how good or bad you are then a small piece of software to give you all the info you could ever want is simple to download and use. Oh by the way, they're also throwing old APM back into the game so people who need to know how fast their fingers can spam buttons can now see that again. As for the social aspect, there are plenty of practice group channels with lots of people in them who are more than willing to play games with you and socialize. Having to make any attempt to do anything for yourself is bad? I wouldn't mind those features all in game but it certainly doesn't make or break it. The game is an RTS not a social media site.
There are enough maps and few enough vetoes that players who have completely different vetoes will still have at least one map available between them, so your vetoes have zero effect on who you end up facing or what matchup.
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There's a great community outside of Battle.net 2.0, but when playing the game you feel too isolated. Nobody wants to just 1v1 ladder for a few hours without talking to anyone.
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Despite it being simplified relative to it's predecessor, this game is still too hard for the average gamer. It's more fun for them to play LoL, WoW (or another MMO) or whatever the cool FPS is atm.
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On February 14 2012 05:59 Noocta wrote:Show nested quote +On February 14 2012 05:55 Sated wrote:A whiny bitch with a loser's attitude will think, "WAHHHH! Too many allins! So fucking lame! This is no fun! I don't want to play anymore! Fuck this stupid shit, I fucking quit!" News just in: People play videogames to have fun! "I want to have fun playing videogames, this isn't fun anymore, so I'm gonna play something else", isn't a whiny attitude, it's an incredibly normal attitude. Some people know they're never going to be pro and simply want to have fun, if they stop finding the game fun then they're gonna stop playing. That's something that didn't appear that much before. Videogame were seen much like something to perform in, not a way to only entertain yourself. Arcade games, first generation PC games, all these games were hard and challenging. The fun was in beating them, not playing them.
I was a big Arcade gamer and I have to say that Arcade games are extremely fun to play. Sure you had to perform due some ridiculous difficulties, but the Arcade games always created a sense of achievement even if you lost. Having scores meant you could challenge yourself and see actual progress game to game. Beating the game was simply the icing on the cake. SC2 on the other hand gives you no real sense of achievement and In fact SC2 gives you a sense of failure more than a sense of progress.
SC2 to me is like gambling. Where the thrill of the game itself can often be great, but ultimately you stop with a sense of losing.
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On February 14 2012 07:37 jliu wrote:
Here's my personal answer
I'm too afraid to botch my high MMR so I only play 2-3 games every other day (max) and only when I've accumulated a large bonus pool. I'm just too nervous about my rank (or becoming one of the players in top8 division with 500 wins) - IMO get an unranked or invisible (rank/mmr/league) matchmaking system .Or have some kind of experience based reward system and not only win-rate based.
Ditto. I always wait for bonus pools to accumulate a bit if I'm feeling nervous about the ladder. The simple reason is that losses don't hit me as hard then since I can recover from them faster by spending the bonus pool.
I agree with the other posters that battle net feels like a lonely place at times. Personally I would like more chat rooms and custom game lobby's for testing new maps and finding people to play against rather than relying on the tl forums or such like. For example, the steam client just shows a list of hosted games of counter strike in the country of your choice, and you can join whatever you want. If this sort of a system were implemented, it would be a lot easier to find people to play with and to play what you wanted. As it stands its quite hard to reliably find people, sure threads in tl run into several pages, but to actually find a decent number of people when actually logged in is hard. Ask anyone who tried to set up an observer group.
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I only play 1v1 and the campaign, so no. I guess it's natural that there's less people every day, as the game loses popularity just like every videogame does.
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A lot of people buy the game and stop playing shortly, or longer, thereafter for a variety of reasons. This has happened and will continue to happen to every game ever made. Ever. No need to overanalyze.
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There is a few factors I would say. Some people probably found the game grew old and just wasnt for them. It was cool when it was new but that effect wore off and they dont want to play now.
The game can also be mentally stressful and that also might just not be for certain people. There is probably a ton of other factors but those two kind of stand out in my mind at the moment.
I think the ladder system also sucks. There should be no visible ranks that people can compare each other with. Ranking should just be like MMR in which you are matched against people your skill level without knowing their "skill" level. It just leads to a lot of elitism and stupid people that think masters is good when its actually not good at all and pure macro alone can pretty well get you there.
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On February 14 2012 06:52 sc14s wrote:Show nested quote +On February 13 2012 23:08 chestnutcc wrote:
Ladder phobia should be a documented phenomenon. Living it right now TT
PS: Yeah, people who imagine themselves to be the greatest macro players if only they could get past the cheese and all ins irritate the hell out of me. Its ladder phobia disguised as strategic xenophobia. yeah.. no i get tired of getting 1 based all inned and /or getting massive amounts of ZvZ sooo i get tired of doing only those and dont bother laddering? its not that i am the greatest macro player or insert random bullshit that you think as some phobia its called boredom not xenophobia..
Getting tired of it is what I call strategic xenophobia. The reason these strategies don't persist as much the higher up you go is because once you learn to deal with them, you move past the people executing them. Case in point: cheese in the lower leagues, like cannon rushes, proxy gates or six pools in bronze and silver. It seems hopeless to those players, but its simple to defend these (at least with a fighting chance) once you learn the game better. Its the same thing, except these all ins and cheeses take a bit more skill to defend. You can't be a legitimate macro player if you can't defend these strategies.
10 zvzs in a row can be tiring and boring, but does one actually even play 10 games before going enough? The point is avoidance without cause i.e. ladder phobia.
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Its because most people have other stuff to do, and since the ranking system works in a way that playing few games gives little reward, people drop out quickly because the game is hard, and you have trouble keeping up with competition. Nobody likes being demoted and so they rather just quit playing. If you can't play a lot, why play when you will just be losing.
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On February 14 2012 06:56 ceaRshaf wrote:Show nested quote +On February 14 2012 06:52 sc14s wrote:On February 13 2012 23:08 chestnutcc wrote:
Ladder phobia should be a documented phenomenon. Living it right now TT
PS: Yeah, people who imagine themselves to be the greatest macro players if only they could get past the cheese and all ins irritate the hell out of me. Its ladder phobia disguised as strategic xenophobia. yeah.. no i get tired of getting 1 based all inned and /or getting massive amounts of ZvZ sooo i get tired of doing only those and dont bother laddering? its not that i am the greatest macro player or insert random bullshit that you think as some phobia its called boredom not xenophobia.. It's because some people would really like to train or play a certain type of game but it's out of our control and we get frustrated. I have come from work many times eager to play some challenging 1v1s only to get rushed/all inned. And I have no pleasure in holding the rush either. I feel it's a waste of time. I don't blame the players for all inning so much, but the game. I
Agreed, there should be greater freedom to practice what we want more easily. Like a vast public custom games lobby, like Steam or the like.
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On February 14 2012 07:58 ishyishy wrote:
The problem is that games today have this concept to them where there is always something visually to "progress" at. Sc2 has this, but it is extremely minimal. They use league icons and achievements, but they dont have something to continuously progress at just for playing the game, whether you win or lose.
Take that, and compare it will other popular games: MMO's, Moba's.
Lets just use WoW as an example (and its another blizzard game). You dont actually have to be any good at the game OR 'improve' at the game in order to 'progress' in it. You can just spend time playing the game and you will eventually get what you want out of it, or at least keep a level of obvious and visually oriented progress. Your character level goes up, and never goes down.
Lets use LoL as a moba example. Again, you dont actually have to be good or improve at the game to keep a constant progression going. All you have to do is keep playing, and you will continuously earn points or credits or whatever that game uses to buy characters or whatever. Your level in that game also goes up, AND NEVER GOES DOWN.
Keep in mind, I am not saying WoW and LoL are doing it wrong or that there is anything bad about the games in general, I am just comparing the models they use to the one Sc2 uses. They are different types of games, I know that, but the reasons I just listed are big factors in ladder activity decreasing.
"Ladder fear" is ridiculous and fake. It isnt actual "fear" of playing or "fear" of losing. It is a subconcious "fear" of NOT progressing. In WoW and LoL, that subconcious "fear" doestn exist because the only way to not progress in those games is to NOT actually play them.
Another thing to add to my post:
For whatever reason, people think that they HAVE to play sc2, even though they dont like something about it and they suffer because of it. The people that have this problem know what I am talking about. It is very hard to explain. I have something similar to this issue, but mine is more like 'i am bored of the other games that I've played for 5+ years and I want sc2 to be my next main game because of the image that the pro community gives this game'.
In a way, and yes it is MY fault for thinking this way, the pro communnity is pushing me away from the game. I actually tried to play this game as best as I could, and once upon a time i DID care if I won or lost.
When people like IncontroL says something in most of his many many interviews like 'it is not impossible to be a pro gamer' or 'everyone has the potential to become a pro' I get this feeling that someone like me can accomplish it, when it is just impossible, and that creates a level of depression and disconnect from the game in general.
I dont have 10 hours a day to dedicate to the game, no working person does. I dont have friends that play the game, I dont have contacts within the game to teach me how to play, I dont know any pro gamers that could help me in any way, I dont know anyone that played Sc1 or any other older RTS games on a competitive level. The only things I have are: the game, an internet connection, an MLG stream to watch. What IncontroL should be saying is 'pro gaming is as HARD as ever to get into, especially as the game gets older because there are so many ALREADY PRO players so much ahead of everyone else that starts playing after them', but I understand why he doesnt speak 100% truth in what he says. He is an icon of the community (atm) and everything he says is required to be positive and give as much promotion to the game as possible because he gets paid for it and he needs to sustain his good image in a lot of peoples eyes.
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On February 14 2012 07:02 Zorgaz wrote:Show nested quote +On February 14 2012 06:46 ceaRshaf wrote:On February 14 2012 06:43 elKaDor wrote:
from my 10years of bw playing i know around 8(?) people out of lets say 100 that still plays sc2.
and out of those 8 i think its around 2 or 3 who actually enjoys the game, the other just hang around plays some custom with eachother cuz of old times.
I quit the game 5 months ago, and i played maybe 500 games since release and my perspective is mostly the UI that destroys the game.
In BW i could sit for hours in chatchannels or watch replays with friends, blizzard completely ruined that for SC2, and i know WC3 also had very good UI but didnt really play it so i have no experience of it.
I really hate the gamelobbys in sc2, feels like crap, also i think the game is too hard to read, warpgates/reactors/larvainject makes it to hard to really read the opponent, like (aight i saw 2 stalkers, np) but then he had 6 wg which i didnt see and a hidden pylon) kind of thing.
Nah i didnt enjoy SC2 at all, the reason i played those games was because i really really really wanted to enjoy SC2, but 5 months ago i just gave up on the game, no way i could enjoy it This post speaks so much truth. The thing is Bnet 2.0 is not engaging you at all. You really have to want to play, you are not dragged in at all. That is really bad for the game. I now play only 2v2 with a team friend. I watch a LOT of sc2 though. Just don't play that much cause it's a lot more fun to follow Esports. But this, is sad. Yeah, i have tons of friends who loved WC3 and we played custom games for years. Then SC2 came out and everyone was excited, now I'm the only one who still plays SC2... They prefer WC3 over SC2, which is kinda fail.
Idd, the lonely bnet really sux, the chat channels is a joke that probably took blizzard around 25sec to add, feels like they made the game and then didn't care shit about the UI.
Many of my friends started playing BW again and i was going to do the same but Win 7 didnt let me -_-v
When HotS is out i will just check the streams to see if they changed anything in the menu's otherwise i wont buy the game
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I hit masters couple seasons ago and I got kind of burnt out. My next goal was then masters in korea (yes its much, much harder) but it's so laggy that it wasn't worth the frustration. Oh yeah, and school ;;
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I lost interest mid-way season 5. The game doesn't interest me much anymore and I ahve stopped playing mainly because of 3 things -
1) I loved Terran in BW and the vulture mine+tank mechanic was an incredible amount of fun. I don't like the race's design in SC2 where you spam out a shit ton of broken ass marines and then add whatever you need to keep them alive. Basically, I don't agree with Blizzard's decision to favor bio centric play over factory/starport. To compensate for the marine's strength Blizz has had to nerf everything around it resulting in underwhelming non-bio compositions. I am also at a point where I don't want to switch races. I have put in way too much time with terran, Protoss doesn't appeal much and with zerg all you get is zvz's on the ladder.
2) I dont like the terrible terrible damage and heavy counters system. It pigeon holes people into a bunch of set play-styles. Coupled with the macro mechanics, it also makes all-ins/rush tactics really strong in SC2. Its not fun when you have to put in a ridiculous amount of games just to have some measure of consistency in stopping all-ins. Even at the pro level it boggles me that with the amount practise pros put in they still have a difficult time stopping 111, gateways all-ins, roach/ling all-ins even when they see it coming. The game is too volatile and I don't gain anything in terms of satisfaction when winning or losing against rush/cheese. It comes down to some little thing where I overwhlem my opponent or he overwhelms me.
3) Battle.net 2.0 has very weak supoprt for socializing. I don't understand how Blizzard dropped the ball on this when it is very obvious to the gaming industry how important of a factor this is in games today.
Edit: I don't have problems with challenging games but I should have fun doing it. I have a demanding job and just don't have the time to get good at the game. I got to mid-diamond with toss before the master's league was introduced and got to high diamond with Terran when I switched to it. Seems good enough for me.
Having said that if they fix some of these things in HOTS I can see myself playing the game again.
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My little story as to how I lost interest and am joining the people that admit "I just don't care enough to put the work in anymore."
Played T since Beta, ranked into Silver and quickly promoted up to plat. I was loving it. Then Christmas Eve of '10 my roommate accidentally set the house on fire and I lived in a hotel for 3 months after. When I came back, I couldn't compete with others at my skill level and I got demoted to Gold. I started a new job and bounced between Gold/Plat until I had finally widdled down my last thing keeping me from diamond: TvZ. I got some practice partners, but I just couldn't get over this hurdle. TvT and TvP were very solid MU's for me at the time I was mixing up thor rush and MMMGV in TvP. Then thors got nerfed to have energy and HT's were feedbacking me to death. NP I thought, I'll just play standard all the time (as I probably should). Then EMP got nerfed and suddenly I was losing 80% of my TvP's. During this time I finally got over my struggles in TvZ to a degree by utilizing drop play better and being less afraid to take some risks. At this point I was roughly 50% TvT, 50% TvZ, and 20% TvP.
I started working on alternate ways to deal with TvP and then they started making new seasons every other month. This caused my IRL buddies who played 1's to stop playing because they were all so worried about their damn ranking and demotions that they wouldn't play the game hardly at all. It quickly became a matter of "I'll play one game to get my diamond badge back and then not touch 1's until next season." They became so disconnected by this change that they wouldn't even play 1's with me just to practice.
Now I get on bnet and it's a lonely place unless my very casual buddies (Silverish league) want to play 2's. They never want to practice 1v1 because I'll just crush them and they've experienced it enough I guess.
I still don't know how to deal with TvP and frankly I just don't care anymore. Every time I get over a hurdle blizzard throws a new one in my way. Infestor buffs are what caused the TvZ issue to begin with if I remember right. I feel like all of the fun has been sucked out of SC2 through a vaccuum. Every time I learn something it gets changed. I used to play a lot of Capcom Vs. SNK 2 back in the day and the one thing that made the game's inbalances tolerable was that once I learned how to deal with them, I had that knowledge forever. No patch was coming to fix Roll Cancels or A-Groove Bison at the arcade and once I learned how to deal with it, even if unfavorably, that knowledge wasn't being yanked from me as I moved onto the next flaw I wanted to fix in my gameplay.
The final nail in the coffin for my interest was this long break that the procircuits I follow took (MLG, GSL). Now that GSL is going and MLG is on the horizon, I find I need to force myself to get back in the loops which is why I was browsing TL today.
I'm not defending myself or anything like that. I could have worked a lot harder and I could have put more pressure on my friends to keep up with the game and spar more often. I know this game is patched semi-regularly and balance changes happen for a reason. If I want to keep my skill level up in all matchups and advance through the ladder I have to adapt to the changes. The one thing I will defend is people's arguments that Bnet 2.0 is lackluster. All it offers is a minimalist ladder system that serves its main purpose well of finding you equally skilled opponents, and that's it. So much more could be however, and that's the real shame in it.
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EPT
