Nobody Plays 1v1 Ladder Anymore? - Page 81

On April 19 2012 06:38 ishyishy wrote:
There is no point in playing 1v1 if you dont enjoy it, and a lot of people dont enjoy it. Most of the time, it is the nature of this game that is the reason.

- no player interaction: obvious right? It's 1v1. Ok, but that doesnt make this reason invalid; it isnt entertaining playing this game by yourself, and thats what 1v1 is.

- clans/community: this is one of the worst communities ive ever seen in any game that I've played over the last 10 years. I tried to join these 'clans', but all of them were full of silly kids that just joke around in their chat channel or on skype the whole time and dont actually play. And there are the ones that have lower league players that refuse to play me because "i am in diamond or masters and they would have no chance at winning" ok so apparently, even when it isnt on ladder, all people care about is winning. Shitty.

- On the surface, no sentimental value: Games like any mmorpg have a sort of automatic progessive nature to them; the more you play, the more you gain from it. To a lot of people, myself included, this game provides me with nothing of value to progress with. If I get 3 or 4 new peices of gear in WoW, my character IS going to be better overall in what ever I am doing in the game. Getting 100 ladder points doesnt do anything for me at all; I can still make mistakes, and I can still lose to things that I havent lost to in the past, and i can lose those points, whereas with an mmo I never actually lose the things I gain; I am not guaranteed to progress with anything when I play. Now I am not that big of an idiot to not understand that this is an RTS and they arent like mmorpg's, but again that does not invalidate this reason why people do not like playing this game.

- Some people just get bored easily: Again, this goes along with the sentimental value aspect of other games that this game doesnt share. Again, in games like WoW, I can keep playing and there is always something to gain that I can 'itemize' (like gear for example, or levels, or XP that cant go down, etc). In this game, I can gain a higher rank and a new shiney little icon, but the very next day I can lose it. Have you ever reached a new height, then dropped down below where you were the previous day, and then said to yourself "god damnit now I have to win X amount of games to get back to where I was" ? This creates bordem. Games like (i hate to say it) LoL are like WoW in that there is always something to gain from playing, and nothing to lose. I can play, and no matter how many times I lose, I will always GAIN points I can use to buy another character. In Sc2, I cant buy anything with my rank points, and I can lose rank points. This drives people away, believe it or not.

Some, if not all, of these things are probably not the games' fault. This isnt a bad game, I am not saying that at all. It's just a game that not everyone can get into because of it's nature.

I half agree. First, I think seeing your gameplay progress is *far* more satisfying than XP/item grinding. However, its much harder to do the former, and the latter is just a matter of investing more time.

That said, I really do wish there were more badges/icons/whatever that you could get from playing ladder. Sure its just bragging rights, but it makes a difference. People will play harder when they think they can get that gold star from top 8, for example.

I also wish those reqards were much more visible. Why not create the functionality to show off that stuff in the loading screen?

On April 19 2012 04:19 Enzymatic wrote:
Mid-Masters Protoss player here (well not anymore, but I sit at top 25 masters when I'm playing a lot). I used to ladder a lot but I have gotten to the point over the last few months where I only play my placement game and maybe a ladder game or two every week or so.

Reasons I've stopped playing:

- PvP (And mirror match-ups in general) - (literally makes me want to punch a hole in the wall when I see a toss opponent on the loading screen).. PvP has turned into rock-paper-scissors. It actually wasn't bad when it was a 4-gate fest and 1-base Collosus wars... At least that came down to skill/micro. Now its just "Oh you went robo? I auto-win with Phoenix opener"... "Oh you went Stargate? Auto-lose to 4-gate"... "Oh you went DT? Auto-lose to Robo opener"... "Oh you went Blink Observer? Auto-lose to Blink without robo"... "Oh you went 3-gate Blink? Auto-lose to DT"... And on and on.

- Annoying/frustrating element of ladder. - Lets face it... Cheese runs rampant on ladder anything short of an upper GM level of play. There are always kids out there desperate to cheese for a promote. As someone mentioned earlier in the thread.. Once false-read, missed scout, and you can easily lose to a cheese build and its game over. When this happens it typically leaves one with a really sour taste in their mouth and frustrated. I personally get too annoyed when I ladder and lose to something dumb, and it really discouraged me from laddering. When playing a video game.. Nobody really wants to be left annoyed/pissed off after they're done playing.

- Hitting Skill Ceiling for how much time I have to play - Making the leap from lower to mid masters to upper masters is a massive skill incline.. One of which I just didn't have the time to put into the game in order to make due to classes, work, gf, etc. Once I hit that point where I knew I couldn't reach any higher (I knew I wouldn't get high masters).. I gave it up for the most part.. There was no reason to keep playing to try and improve when the people I am playing against in top 8 have 8 more hours per day put into laddering/playing.

That about sums it up for me.

On April 19 2012 06:58 ishyishy wrote:


I never really understood why those kinds of "rewards" that dont really actually do anything (achievements and the like) are saught after. I like getting rewards that I can actually use, and sc2 has none of that.

Also, when I get a full new set of gear in WoW, my gameplay DOES progress, a great deal in fact, which is the point in getting the gear int he first place. Can I kill that boss or kill that other player when I have severely outdated gear? No. So I then have motivation to get new gear to defeat that player and/or boss. Yes it is an endless grind, but thats what an mmo is: an rpg that doesnt end, and when you dont enjoy it anymore you can always just quit or...make another character/class that you havent played before lol.

On April 19 2012 07:33 Squalish wrote:
Long time top 10+ masters player here. quit last fall. I quit because the interface sucked in several ways, which was bad enough itself, but it also caused many friends to quit, which was a bigger factor. Staying on battle net was straight boring. Competing against euro/kr players while trying to hit gm was annoying. Team games aren't nearly as fun as they were in bw. Original battle.net kept me coming back and highly interested. Not buying hots until blizz gives more than the tip of the iceberg as far as capabilities for sc2 go.
On a side note, with the amount of ladder players drastically dropping every season, ladder competition level is probably going down, not up.

On April 19 2012 03:12 Gtoad wrote:
Answer is pretty obvious imo. Casuals are starting to leave and play the "new hot" games, and only those who actually enjoy Starcraft and rts in general still play and ladder competitively.

On April 19 2012 07:33 Smackzilla wrote:


Depends on the person, I guess. Some people like trophies and medals and those don't "do" anything.

As for gear in wow, your character becomes more powerful, but how YOU play changes very little. If you're still bad, you're still pretty likely to wipe your raid. If you're bad at arena, better gear still isn't going to get you gladiator. And frankly, levels being equal, its pretty easy to kill a geared out PVE'er even in blues.

I really do admit there's a difference, and I swear I'm not trying to bash WOW. MMOs provide a feeling of progression that's very safe and easy to experience. SC2 basically has leagues, division rank, and ladder points and that's it. SC2 can definitely do more in the area of "carrots" to get people to ladder. Its not a silver bullet, though, and there's a few other things I think blizz can do to encourage ladder participation and a strong community.

On April 19 2012 07:46 sorrowptoss wrote:
"still play the game"+"ladder is too stressful". But I overcome the stress by 2-3 games. Speaking of community, TL is probably the cure to that!