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On February 15 2012 00:40 Penecks wrote:+ Show Spoiler +I still play 1v1s, usually everyday, but I can see why people would stop. My two negative points about it, I'm sure they've been touched on:
1) Treadmill feeling - no matter how much you improve you still lose half of your games. This is incredibly unintuitive to players from other games/genres. If I'm masters and my friend is silver, you'd say the skill difference is pretty high there, yet when we play ladder we lose the same amount. If we were Counterstrike players with these same skill levels, for example, and I said our global K/D was the same you wouldn't believe it: the better players have a chance to stand out in those games.
2) Punishing, no real way to re-do a mistake - I feel like this point is at the heart of all "cheese" posts and encompasses even more of the game, which is the fact that a simple mistake that happens in 2 seconds can easily cost you a game that you've been working on building up for some time. A long time ago someone compared their games to a painting, and how their end felt like they were just slopping paint all over it. Let's say I'm playing Call of Duty and a camper kills me from behind a bush. I'm annoyed for a second or two, but then I realize I'm going to respawn in 5 seconds and have another chance to kill him. In SC if I screw up my marine split a bit vs baneling bust (example), I don't get to try that again. I'll probably never see my opponent, hell maybe I won't even play anymore TvZ that day, much less on that same map. There is no revenge factor at all to cover up for frustration.
Well, regarding your second point. Why dont you just ask him if he wants to parctice more and you can play him/her hundreds of times. Part of the fun for many people is refining their play so that they just get a grin on their face every time they see a baneling nest. I think that the main difference between for example COD and SC at a non top level is that the quest is to improve yourself and then always facing new challenges, rather than getting good stats by using your improvement to kill people not as good as yourself.
On the other hand i can understand why many find this unappealing. As mentioned: Games should be about having fun, and people find different kinds of things fun.
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Does not surprise me at all. There was a huge influx of new players when SC2 came out and was all new and shiny. Most of them probably moved on to the next big thing or are planning to do so soon (Dota 2, Diablo 3).
The bigger problem is that the game can't even keep an RTS-junky like me interested. I have played maybe 10 games total in the last seasons, for a few simple reasons.
-Ladder mappool is still largely shit and frustrating to play on
-Battle.net 2.0 is just not fun. I had a hard time meeting new players or getting into a clan, compared to BW/War3. It just feels like a lonely place, where the only thing to do is hit that 'find match' button.
-Ladder and division system is rather meaningless and doesn't inspire me to play much. The only exciting thing about it is promoting to a new layer, but that's about it. It's hard to care whether I am #55 or #1 in a random diamond division, because there are a gazillion of them and it's impossible to really know where you stand. A single world ladder gives you a much better feeling of your standing and every game has a real impact on your standings
-Last but not least, Starcraft 2 simply isn't that well designed. One-base play and gamble builds are incredibly strong and still dominate the ladder. Lack of defender advantage and area control lead to big deathballs in mid/late game and base-races are almost becoming the standard.
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I still actively play SC2, I like the challenge and skill it takes. :-) I can definitely understand the arguments being made here though. What helped keep me active in the game, not just on a play-level, but on a social level was joining a clan (eXe) that has teams for all levels to practice and have fun with.
What I want the most (apart from more GSL maps and HotS) are better features in Battle.net that would make more of my friends interested in keep playing. This would specifically be replay-sharing/watching (this should be a three-click process ingame), things like clan-support, better social features like more and better chat channels ala WC3. Take something from HoN: Let players jump into a game their friend is playing and let them watch from their perspective (as a volunteer option only obviously), I think that would be fun. Much more stats available so we don't need SC2gears: best and worst maps, win-ratios, matchups, stuff like that. Make it hide-able as an option. Hell, Steam integration would be fucking awesome.
Edit: What I would like to add however, is that I don't share the bad ladder experiences people seem to have. I have played from silver to diamond in EU and NA. Very very rarely has there been any form of BM at all. From memory I could probably count them on two hands, and this is from hundreds of games on different skill levels. Ditto on cheese/all-ins. There is the occasional 2-port banshee, proxy gates, 6-8 pools, but these are very rare to meet for me. Most of my games are standard games that reach the mid/lategame. ZvZ has a tendency to often be over at the early game due to how volatile the MU is.
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Im a mid-ish diamond player, but I don't ladder much because of all the stupid all-in and cheese I face constantly on ladder.
I usually just play customs, and not because of fear, but I get to play people I normally would not to... A lot of master league guys play customs.. Id say 1/3rd of my 1v1 random customs are vs masters... maybe half diamond and a very small portion plat and below... So I get to play vs better players.. and I can pick map.... yeaaaaaa kk thx
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On February 15 2012 00:51 Snotling wrote:Show nested quote +On February 15 2012 00:25 Fusa wrote:On February 14 2012 23:51 Snotling wrote:
because its not that fun. its not a game on interesting tactics and battles. its a game of doing the same thing over and over and over without making any mistakes. if you make a mistake, your dead.
this is probably why you lose a lot, if you consider doing the same thing over and over again as (scouting) then I would agree with you. If you blindly make stuf over and over you will not enjoy this game and it isn't for you Well, actually im at 56% wr atm. Some times i even scout :-) but that doesnt change very much: banelings? more tanks, banshees? Bulid a turret. Some all-in? Build a bunker. but thats 10% of what im doing, most of the time, i have a plan and follow it. And most of the time i just build scvs and supply depots^^. I play for about a week, then i get bored, and a few months later i play another week. I didnt want to offend anybody, but thats the reason why most gamers stop to play sc2 after a while. I have litteraly a dozend real life friends who dont play sc2 because of it. I have a demanding job, i do a demanding sport, I have a demanding gf. I dont need a demanding, stressfull game. i rather play some rpg for an hour or watch some stream or tournament If you want that. and if you have a lot of fun with starcraft im happy for you :D
LOL.
A dozen of your real life friends stopping because they feel they are doing the same thing over and over? Come on... really? I call BS. Someone that actually like the game and dislike sticking to a single plan and improve it, would just change is plan constantly, to have fun.
If you don't have fun by neither sticking to a plan and improving or just playing for fun and changing your plan constantly... then you just don't enjoy the game, and that's why you are not playing more than that. And, if you enjoy changing your plan constantly but lose more, therefore you are sticking to the same thing but dislike it... then what you enjoy is not the game, but the fact of actually winning. If it's the case, just quit SC2, it's not for you.
You are choosing to do the same strats again and again... it's your own fault.
In the end, I would say that the main reason why there was a big drop is because of the timing. For a casual gamer, SC2 is getting old... and for hardcore SC2 lover, there was less tournaments and less events last two months... it was a December/January season after all. Season 6 should do better on this side.
And SC2Ranks is not that accurate... I can't even find myself on it and I play a lot.
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On February 15 2012 01:03 Lann555 wrote:
-Last but not least, Starcraft 2 simply isn't that well designed. One-base play and gamble builds are incredibly strong and still dominate the ladder. Lack of defender advantage and area control lead to big deathballs in mid/late game and base-races are almost becoming the standard.
May i ask you were you are getting that information from? If its experience then id say you are just unlucky. Or am i just lucky? For my experience is the complete opposite.
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I quit at the start of season 2 because 75% of my games were pvp. I hate pvp with a passion. Sc2 just wasn’t really fun anymore. So I moved on. Not because it was too hard or I was scared of losing, it was just boring as shit. After seeing what they are adding in HoTS I doubt that I will ever come back... 
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The reason bw battle net lasted for 10+ years is because of the UMS game system. You can join new games and expect it to fill up quickly. If you are bored with that, you can play a random zero clutter or fastest map possible. In sc2, you can only play the "most popular" games and those take ages to fill up if they arent the top 3. It was a good idea in the design to make the custom game system like this, but it was a terrible followup and no attempts of a fix was made by blizzard whatsoever. Also, why no clan support?
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2 Weeks ago I lost 6 pvps in a row. Vowed to stop ladder there and then.
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On February 15 2012 01:21 phodacbiet wrote:
The reason bw battle net lasted for 10+ years is because of the UMS game system. You can join new games and expect it to fill up quickly. If you are bored with that, you can play a random zero clutter or fastest map possible. In sc2, you can only play the "most popular" games and those take ages to fill up if they arent the top 3. It was a good idea in the design to make the custom game system like this, but it was a terrible followup and no attempts of a fix was made by blizzard whatsoever. Also, why no clan support?
Isnt that just because few people play them? Or am i tripping here?
If you make a game you would still need people to fill them, and if the top 10 games cant do that, how will some random other game do it?
Although i do understand that if you had a system that put newly created games first it would be easier.
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Why my friends and I stopped playing :
1) my friends almost never played 1v1 because it's too stressful (no automatic search for non ladder games)
2) the game became boring for us, strategies are often the same
3) the game can be really frustrating : losing to a stupid single mistake (bad or good FF mainly), game is not really intuitive and it makes self learning a bit hard, all the more when opponents use the last BO from pros. It needs a lots of time and practice to really appreciate SC2.
4) Seasons ARE WAY TOO SHORT ! it's really a pain when you don't have a lots of time to play, which is the case for a lots of people, and it's not motivating at all to involve yourself in something when it's reseted so fast.
5)Being a diamond protoss player, i feel the balance of the game at my level is quite weird, it looks more like paper rock scissors than a truly thought and balanced game, and it became frustrating too.
6) bnet sucks, chat system sucks, we were all very disappointed by this, and the lack of social interactions within the game cleary doesn't help to keep players online.
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It's really hard to be social; I was in a shitty clan in SC1 that made the game fun.
It's hard for me to get my friends into it.
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On February 15 2012 01:10 Xalorian wrote:Show nested quote +On February 15 2012 00:51 Snotling wrote:On February 15 2012 00:25 Fusa wrote:On February 14 2012 23:51 Snotling wrote:
because its not that fun. its not a game on interesting tactics and battles. its a game of doing the same thing over and over and over without making any mistakes. if you make a mistake, your dead.
this is probably why you lose a lot, if you consider doing the same thing over and over again as (scouting) then I would agree with you. If you blindly make stuf over and over you will not enjoy this game and it isn't for you Well, actually im at 56% wr atm. Some times i even scout :-) but that doesnt change very much: banelings? more tanks, banshees? Bulid a turret. Some all-in? Build a bunker. but thats 10% of what im doing, most of the time, i have a plan and follow it. And most of the time i just build scvs and supply depots^^. I play for about a week, then i get bored, and a few months later i play another week. I didnt want to offend anybody, but thats the reason why most gamers stop to play sc2 after a while. I have litteraly a dozend real life friends who dont play sc2 because of it. I have a demanding job, i do a demanding sport, I have a demanding gf. I dont need a demanding, stressfull game. i rather play some rpg for an hour or watch some stream or tournament If you want that. and if you have a lot of fun with starcraft im happy for you :D LOL. A dozen of your real life friends stopping because they feel they are doing the same thing over and over? Come on... really? I call BS. Someone that actually like the game and dislike sticking to a single plan and improve it, would just change is plan constantly, to have fun. If you don't have fun by neither sticking to a plan and improving or just playing for fun and changing your plan constantly... then you just don't enjoy the game, and that's why you are not playing more than that. And, if you enjoy changing your plan constantly but lose more, therefore you are sticking to the same thing but dislike it... then what you enjoy is not the game, but the fact of actually winning. If it's the case, just quit SC2, it's not for you. You are choosing to do the same strats again and again... it's your own fault. In the end, I would say that the main reason why there was a big drop is because of the timing. For a casual gamer, SC2 is getting old... and for hardcore SC2 lover, there was less tournaments and less events last two months... it was a December/January season after all. Season 6 should do better on this side. And SC2Ranks is not that accurate... I can't even find myself on it and I play a lot.
Its not the strat you do over and over, but the strats just dont differ that much. you make a lot of workers and supplybuildings^^
And i quit sc2 (1v1 ladder anyway) because its not for me (and many others) thats kinda the point of this thread^^
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Yeah so I was absolutely crazy about sc2 when the beta came out... I played every day all day long in 1v1 ladder in season one... I watched like every replay after I played and was addicted to husky youtube vids and livestream from TL... but now I just have zero motivation because after season 1 I stopped playing and made a bad decision to try LoL. LoL for me was a break from the craze of 1v1 ladder in season 1 and beta, and after 4 extra season of me not playing 1v1 ladder all I can say is that I just dont think I have the time or motivation to do what I did in season 1 again especially when I factor in school and grades. Maybe if I find motivation again, I am certain I can creep up into top masters or possibly grandmasters... since most of my former 1v1 practice partners have achieved rank 1 masters / top 10 masters
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United States324 Posts
Bnet 2.0 is terrible yes, but the matchmaking is acutally pretty great. I've been laddering way more, recently. Maybe it's because the drop in players, but even in diamond league the majority of my games are enjoyable. I also find working out in between games pretty much nullifes any ladder anxiety I might develop (and herbal treatment ^^), and motivates me for the next game.
Then again, I play for fun. I think occasional cheese is fun and a great way to make an otherwise boring game (aww man, 3rd PvP in a row!?) fun/exciting/interesting. And going further, my goal isn't to improve as a player, but to enjoy the experience (not that they are exclusive).
I think a lot of the people who look at SC2 as something more than a game to be enjoyed will continue to stop playing (I would include a lot of "pros" in this as well). Very simply, why do something that isn't fun for you?
I'm curious to see what the community is distilled to by the time legacy of the void comes out.
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After I read the second solution I stopped taking you seriously.Hiding rank and giving points to purchase items?!Are you mad?This is retarded.
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On February 13 2012 23:14 IOvEggY wrote:Show nested quote +On February 13 2012 23:10 mrafaeldie12 wrote:
I guess it is because the lack of community the game has. im guessing team liquid is not a community.
above was the most stupid comment I have ever seen.. obviously he meant the actual games' ingame-community.. like.. battle.net, which is completely useless. Worst "net" ever... depressing as hell!
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Just to add my (very narrow) perspective, I have had no problem getting games in the bronze league within 1 minute at odd hours.
So while there may indeed be less players, I can't really see it.
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well blizzard needs to retain their casual gamers, and the rank hiding would be optional. i myself am diamond and enjoy laddering
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I actually love ladering. If I don't like a game, I don't play it.
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EPT
