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Lately I've been thinking what keeps so many casuals that actually take the time to try and learn the game to then eventually leave.
The few cases I know(I don't know personally that many SC2 players), they mostly played a bit the game for a month or 2 and then they simply left.
Mostly they complain that the game is all about cheese, and that got me thinking, why do they do think that. It then came to me that people tend to remember their bad experiences a lot better than their good ones.
And so I started thinking which kind of bad experiences are toxic to players. I had a talk with a friend with which I played wc3 for a few years about it (he never played SC2 just watched for the first year and then stopped watching), and he told me that one of the worst things about the game is that there are so many builds that just work a lot and shouldn't then.
He reminded me of the policy blizzard had back then (in wc3) Blizzard nerfed in many different ways almost all kinds of very early cheese, for those that remember, militias stopped being able to be called from any town hall that wasn't the starter, towers got heavily nerfed(good bye canon rush, they made it towers could be easily killed with workers while being built btw, genius solution imo), early summons from heroes started giving more xp so they couldn't be abused many kinds of early creep farming was touched too, that's just to give a few.
Then I thought a little bit more what are the problems of this kinds of builds and then it came to me. This is exactly like in a fighting game getting hit once and dying inside the juggle, or in wow arenas to getting feared/stunned and dying before u get out of it.
The problem with all this is very simple, not only the starter effect is very easy to execute it has the advantage/problem of likely being the killing blow. In starcraft with had the first 2 years being riddled with 2 rax scv pull all ins, 4 gates/ baneling busts, all of this suffer of this juggle effect, they all share the same characteristics, very easy to pull off with the best reward possible, the win, on top of that they have one thing in common after set in motion their usually unstoppable, u either have the defense ready before it starts or ur dead after the banelings start wrecking your wall the game is pretty much over (It's the same with 4 gate and bunker rush etc...).
Now Here's my question to the community.
Is this good for this game in terms of spectators?
Do u feel that it was a good game to watch when this kinds of things happen?
Thx for reading and please don't flame (too much  ).
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In my opinion, professional player should be able to deal with the variety of cheeses out there in the metagame. But for a casual player like me, that aspect of the game certainly sucks. Though in every matchup there certainly is one build that is safe vs all types of cheese, I think.
The bigger problem I have is with the unforgiving nature of the game. Didn't notice the oracle (or hellbat) in your mineral line for a few seconds? Your mineral line is gone! Didn't look at your marines for a couple of seconds? Well, the banelings ate them all. :D ... ... D:
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The premise is absolutely right. People remember bad experiences much more. However, there is no solution. Most people are very anxious about losing. Even if it's a fair 50%. In games like Dota you can blame the other team members and feel good about yourself.
In 1v1 there is just no way around it. I think it would be good to drive those people to many player games where responsibility is diffused. Also it would be advantageous to have some intermediate winning experience during the game. Not just the final win.
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On November 11 2013 22:12 Gere wrote:
The premise is absolutely right. People remember bad experiences much more. However, there is no solution. Most people are very anxious about losing. Even if it's a fair 50%. In games like Dota you can blame the other team members and feel good about yourself.
In 1v1 there is just no way around it. I think it would be good to drive those people to many player games where responsibility is diffused. Also it would be advantageous to have some intermediate winning experience during the game. Not just the final win.
There already is something like that. The game keeps track on certain values during the game, which are presented at the end of the game. And should you do better than your average, you'll be reminded of it (even though it's just a small small tiny reminder).
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Cheese can become legendary for spectators (MVP's 11/11 vs squirtle basically being the prime example of this) for all sorts of reasons. If cheese doesn't become used in more then 2-4% of games then that's an ok ratio.
I think what makes cheese really frustrating to lose to is because the mental process that you go through is basically "Oh what the fuck he did that? But that's so stupid, I can easily counter it by doing XYZ, I only don't do XYZ because clearly anyone of any skill knows it's so simple to do XYZ and that would leave them dead in the water, FUCK THIS GAAAAAAAAAAMEEE!!!!!!!!!!!". It's a problem with the hidden information, randomness factor.
Unfortunately, randomness is an important value in game design since if a game plays out the same way too many times then it becomes routine and then boring. You don't want your game to ever feel like it's completely solved because then people won't play it anymore unless you've invented Chess or something.
If you did want to remove cheese in RTS style games and make it purely about tactical movement and overall strategy then the best way to do it is to make scouting extremely cheap and strong, and do what Company of Heroes did which is slap a turret at the entrance to each base so you have to get a good amount into the game before you can start attacking the base. But we'll never see that in Starcraft 2 since the ability to cheese is part of the game and some people actually find a way to enjoy doing it all the time, the pricks.
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The premise that a significant portion of the gamer population could be interested in the 1v1 multiplayer mode of an RTS in the first place is just flawed.
A minority played BW and WC3 for 1v1. Most casual gamers have never played a game where they have to control more than 1 hero unit, or where they have to screen jump between different locations on a map to tend to different scenarios.
By definition a person who ventures to play 1v1 RTS is no longer a casual. They're hardcore for even trying.
So my opinion on this: The success of an RTS game does not depend on the 1v1 multiplayer balance. But rather the easier game modes that surround it and that will occasionally feed new players into 1v1. What's the difference between BW, WC3 and SC2? The former two games had a casual scene familiarizing people with the esport and feeding some new blood into the 1v1 scene. SC2 lacks such a scene, and thus lacks self sustainability and regrowth potential.
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^ Lalush above is right.
Another point is easier games like team games, mmos or even that new blizz card game are easier but also easier to distribute blame. Half blame, half pain.
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I think Blizzard tried to circumvent the problem with something—rocks. Lol. Remember the novice versions of those ladder maps?
The problem was that Blizzard named it a "Practice mode" and you had to go through 50 of these games, and also the game speed was set to fast. All factors that gave the feature a "please skip me" impression.
I think that such cheese can be prevented with stuff like No Rush maps for lower leagues or something. Doesn't have to involve rocks, just use force fields like what Blizzard did for the challenge modes in WoL or something. It's boring, but at least macro can be executed and it won't affect high level play.
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I hate Buildorder wins, this happens to much in Mirrors. You scouted perfectly that he is going to cheese or all-in you and however you will lose to 95% because your buildorder begun wrong.
Another thing is I just hate the structure in the first 10min in all matchup, especially in ZvP is so much luck involved.
edit: Diversity in early game should be small and from midgame into the late(-game) bigger. sc2 is exactly the opposite.
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The juggle effect is when scrub Terrans who qq'd through WoL's entirety, got the ridiculous Widow Mine and are now running amok in HoTS ladder with their delusions of grandeur and dreams of being "pro" just because they stimmed some marines. People will then quickly realize that they're all gutter and Blizzard will respond with a heavy nerf hammer over the next couple of patches.
We will then have yet another thread saying "Where have all the Terrans gone?".
Then after much tears, LoTV will be released with Terran getting Stim for free (or some shit like that) and the cycle continues.
That is chasing people from the game and causing the juggle effect.
User was temp banned for this post.
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On November 11 2013 23:25 NarAliya wrote:
The juggle effect is when scrub Terrans who qq'd through WoL's entirety, got the ridiculous Widow Mine and are now running amok in HoTS ladder with their delusions of grandeur and dreams of being "pro" just because they stimmed some marines. People will then quickly realize that they're all gutter and Blizzard will respond with a heavy nerf hammer over the next couple of patches.
We will then have yet another thread saying "Where have all the Terrans gone?".
Then after much tears, LoTV will be released with Terran getting Stim for free (or some shit like that) and the cycle continues.
That is chasing people from the game and causing the juggle effect.
Someone just got 2 rax'ed 10 times in a row in ladder?
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All gaming communities are incredibly toxic when it comes to competition. It doesn't really matter what you do. If you win there is a high chance of someone lashing out. I find it funny. Other people do not.
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Probably had his whole muta flock ended by a few mines.
Poor bastard.
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At low level of play, cheese is very effective, because most of the players are completely clueless while "cheesers" execute a strategy that has been proved to work. I don't think this is wrong, your opponents were smarter than you because they learnt a strategy while you didn't. You shouldn't expect to win if you don't even put enough effort to learn a simple build.
At higher level of play, people know how to counter cheese, therefore pulling them off requires a lot of skill (although a bit different than the one you need in the lategame, depending on the kind of build), so there shouldn't be any complaint about that in this case either.
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On November 11 2013 23:30 TheDwf wrote:Show nested quote +On November 11 2013 23:25 NarAliya wrote:
The juggle effect is when scrub Terrans who qq'd through WoL's entirety, got the ridiculous Widow Mine and are now running amok in HoTS ladder with their delusions of grandeur and dreams of being "pro" just because they stimmed some marines. People will then quickly realize that they're all gutter and Blizzard will respond with a heavy nerf hammer over the next couple of patches.
We will then have yet another thread saying "Where have all the Terrans gone?".
Then after much tears, LoTV will be released with Terran getting Stim for free (or some shit like that) and the cycle continues.
That is chasing people from the game and causing the juggle effect. Someone just got 2 rax'ed 10 times in a row in ladder?
Someone playing Terran thinking that he's actually good at the game?
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I used to think same as your friend in my first bronze days, but lately I figured that cheese isn't actually what I thought:
1. It teaches you to scout. Yes, do or die is a hard way to learn, but if you can overcome the initial frustration, hell... you will learn. And learning the importance of scouting that early is crucial to be a good player, because after the "cheese window" there are tons of timmings and shenanigans that will crush you if unscouted.
2. It test your mindset and your mechanics. In my first days playing, I was really pissed when someone cheesed me. I insulted, screamed, and even punch my desk sometimes. But after a while, I figured that I was the problem, not cheese. First, because I gave too much shit for every game. So, if I lost to cheese, it was like a stab in my back, an insult to my ego. Bullshit. Losing is normal and you will lose a thousand times, get over it or stop playing.
And second, it taught me to learn from each loss, instead of just complaining. Focusing on what I did wrong, instead of how easy was to your opponent to kill me. Finding the way. Hell, learning to defend to void rays with just queens and spores seemed impossible to me, but it helped me a lot.
3. Granted, cheese it's really easy to execute (or that's what it seems, there are huge differences of execution according to your skill), and yes, it has a great chance to kill you if unscouted. But if you did scout or start having suspects and counter it, you will have a significative (sometimes massive) advantage. A failed bunker rush can let the terran in a very bad position. Don't even mention a failed 2-port banshee, or a 2 gate, etc. There is a huge risk involved in cheese, you have to do enough damage, or you will be far behind. (the exception of the rule is some extreme cheese like pylon blocking the ramp, which to me is not fun and that's why it has been nerfed).
4. And finally, it adds spice to the game. Defending and doing cheese is really fun to me, because you feel yourself in the edge of danger. Just imagine a ling / bane all in vs another ling / bane all in. One mistake and it's over, so you have to micro your ass out. And watching the professional doing it and defending against it (like JD defended the other day against a cannon rush) it's really fun to watch.
So, as a tl;dr: to me cheese is a great thing, it teaches you to scout, forms your mindset, and adds emotion to the game.
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At higher level of play, people know how to counter cheese, therefore to be able to pull them off you still need to be good, (although in a different way than in a macro game), so there shouldn't be any complaint about that.
Hmmm, sort of?
A pro will cheese stronger then an amateur can but if an amateur does the correct things or just scouts properly then an amateur can beat a pro who is cheesing him, who he might not be able to beat otherwise.
A lot of the time in high level games people cheese for a few reasons. 1) they know their opponent has a hole in his play that a cheese can destroy easily (see, MKP and his constant desire to low ground CC first) 2) because they think they have no chance to beat their opponent otherwise, 3) unpredictability. If you cheese sometimes then people will never play comfortable against you and probably won't play as greedily.
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People who complain about this are the same people who used to ask for 20 minutes no rush back in BW. They somehow have the idea that the way the game "should" work is both players sitting back playing sim city and building their army of choice with no interference for a while, before meeting for some bigass fight when they're both ready. Its a toxic mindset that, if catered to, would destroy starcraft as an e-sport and even as a competitive game.
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The thing is that SC2 is very fast. Battles can end in a second, etc. Also the units do so much damage so quickly. Compare SC2 to a (probably too) slow RTS like Age of Empires 2. You really couldn't lose the game in one second or one battle. The game speed was slower, DPS was lower, the maps were gigantic, and you had powerful defensive shooting buildings. There was a strong defenders advantage, but the maps forced you to reall spread out. Thus "raiding" isolated resource collection sites was the main focus in the early game -- not outright kills.
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Personally I prefer to lose to cheese* instead of in a macro game. Why? Because when losing vs a cheese I generally screwed up something clearly, and next time I do know how to react to it and don't lose anymore. The first time I encounter a cheese I often enough lose. The second time however I generally do easily defeat it.
* Excluded cheese/all-in that I feel like I can do so little about. For example blink all-ins are that problem for me. Even scouted they are incredibly strong, and on enough maps scouting it is pretty much impossible. Not complaining here about balance, just my personal situation against it.
Anyway if something like an NR20 would make casuals happy, why doesn't Blizzard simply introduce it? Shouldn't be that hard tbh. For example in AOE3 it was introduced to make casuals enjoy the game more. Sure it was horribly imbalanced and generally a lagfest, but people liked it, so why not?
Of course it takes some work, but I don't think it would be that much of a problem.
What in general is the issue is that an RTS like SC2 just means no matter how well you play, you will lose 50% of your games. In a moba it is already better, sure you will still lose 50% of your games, but you can feel good about having killed a bunch of enemy heros. No one feels really good about killing a few ultras in SC2 and then being killed by the others.
In a game like BF4 it goes even further. At the 'negative' side we have being killed. At the 'positive' side you kill others. This won't be 50/50 like in SC2, however there are alot more stuff on the positive side, also for those who aren't great players. You got assists, assists counting as kill, spots, objectives you took, friendlies you revived, you got revived so that kill didn't really count, medpacks, resupplies, vehicle damage, repair etc.
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Maybe many casual lower league players love rushing and by forcing macro games you're killing the fun of game for them?
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On November 11 2013 23:33 KingAlphard wrote:
At low level of play, cheese is very effective, because most of the players are completely clueless while "cheesers" execute a strategy that has been proved to work. I don't think this is wrong, your opponents were smarter than you because they learnt a strategy while you didn't. You shouldn't expect to win if you don't even put enough effort to learn a simple build.
At higher level of play, people know how to counter cheese, therefore pulling them off requires a lot of skill (although a bit different than the one you need in the lategame, depending on the kind of build), so there shouldn't be any complaint about that in this case either.
This. Just this.
Holding off cheese teaches you that to win, you don't need the opponent to play the way you want him to, you win with precise scouting, good star sense, sheer mechanics, and knowing when a decision is good but one second later it is not.
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On November 11 2013 23:54 Salient wrote:
The thing is that SC2 is very fast. Battles can end in a second, etc. Also the units do so much damage so quickly. Compare SC2 to a (probably too) slow RTS like Age of Empires 2. You really couldn't lose the game in one second or one battle. The game speed was slower, DPS was lower, the maps were gigantic, and you had powerful defensive shooting buildings. There was a strong defenders advantage, but the maps forced you to reall spread out. Thus "raiding" isolated resource collection sites was the main focus in the early game -- not outright kills.
The majority of players I invited to play found this to be the main problem, instead of cheese. The game is just too fast for them, specially when playing against a zerg. Also, as you said, game is set to be a battleground when low-hp units do huge damage, so it's not like in WC3 that you can nerf cheese and have a slow paced game.
It is sad, I would like my friends who play Dota and LoL to play with me. But as LaLuSh said, 1v1 is not aimed for casual gamers or for those who seek instant gratification (like you feel when you play a FPS, grab a gun and start killing people).
The learning curve is really tough at the beginning.
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On November 11 2013 23:25 NarAliya wrote:
The juggle effect is when scrub Terrans who qq'd through WoL's entirety, got the ridiculous Widow Mine and are now running amok in HoTS ladder with their delusions of grandeur and dreams of being "pro" just because they stimmed some marines. People will then quickly realize that they're all gutter and Blizzard will respond with a heavy nerf hammer over the next couple of patches.
We will then have yet another thread saying "Where have all the Terrans gone?".
Then after much tears, LoTV will be released with Terran getting Stim for free (or some shit like that) and the cycle continues.
That is chasing people from the game and causing the juggle effect.
This post is like living proof for the thread lol
I like cheese in pro games, it's exciting, provided is relatively rare.
As for cheese in "casual"games, i think there are multiple angles to this. For one thing a lot of people are not "switched on" in the early game...it's like a tacit agreement that there will be no fighting in the early game, and when someone breaks that "agrement" it's on with the insults and balance whining, like the poster i quoted lol The guy that used to worker rush proved this quite well.
Another angle to this is that SC2 is very unforgiving a lot of the time. Oracles, baneling, firebat drops, Immortals (if you play mech) can make you loose the game for just one or two seconds of not paying attention. So is it the speed of the game that is too fast or the very hard counter system that is in place, or something else, fuck knows...
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I don't think this is really characteristic for SC2.
You have that problem in every game that does not include a massive "defenders advantage" in early game. It's like that in most big RTS games:
tower rushes - AoE, Starcraft, Warcraft
proxy production - AoE, Starcraft, Warcraft, CnC
using starting money only on units and no macro/tech - six pool, every CnC ever made
etc. etc. etc.
But even if we look beyond RTS games, there are immidiatly some rush strategies in any other game that invovles how different players have to distribute their of attention/resources and some just put everything into offense early. From just plainly ganking/overrunning spread out opponents as a team in a shooter or MoBA to spike-builds in Guild/Clan Wars of MMORPGs.
All of that stuff is quite easy to learn but requires exact planning and good gameknowledge to learn to defend it.
That being said, yes, Strategy games like Starcraft suffer probably inherently more from it, since there are very few mechansism you can fall back on. Like in a shooter you lose a map, which isn't tragic, or in a Moba the opponent gets a tiny bit stronger because they got a kill, but they still can't immidiatly push into your base and do massively more damage.
I guess there is a lack of good early game mechanics that have a good balance between allowing aggression, but not outright ending the game in RTS games. Base towers, easier scouting early on (or no need for it, by revealing enemy stuff), positional advantages for the defender, etc.
But then again, it has to be balanced very well so that interactive play is still possible/required/promoted, which I guess is the crux with the whole thing and why most developers skip that kind of stuff.
In SC2 you can find such stuff in the likes of salvageable bunkers (nerfed because "free", "reactionary" bunkers promoted early massing of such defenses), the Mothership Core (tinkered around a ton until blizzard thought they got it's powerlevel right... and many players would say that it denies aggressive play way too much), the creep/crawler mechanisms (one of the huge reasons for BL/Infestor and swarm host turtling, since you get a semimobile army of basedefenses, which promotes turtling since it doesn't cost supply).
Basically all such stuff (queens, tanks...) has been tinkered around with at some point, because blizzard felt it was too strong at denying attacks, or didn't do it's job sufficiently and the race had too much trouble with cheeses.
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Ya'll just gave me an idea for a custom game...
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On November 11 2013 23:25 TheManInBlack wrote:
The juggle effect is when scrub Terrans who qq'd through WoL's entirety, got the ridiculous Widow Mine and are now running amok in HoTS ladder with their delusions of grandeur and dreams of being "pro" just because they stimmed some marines. People will then quickly realize that they're all gutter and Blizzard will respond with a heavy nerf hammer over the next couple of patches.
We will then have yet another thread saying "Where have all the Terrans gone?".
Then after much tears, LoTV will be released with Terran getting Stim for free (or some shit like that) and the cycle continues.
That is chasing people from the game and causing the juggle effect.
User was temp banned for this post.
LOL
Sorry but I called it (see the Designated Balance thread for context).
If I'm infringing on any rules then honestly I apologize. I don't want to be warned or banned again, I just thought that this was funny. I know the post I quoted is pretty much troll bait but it happened just as I said it would. I want to know if this really is a cycle and is causing a huge downturn in spectator ship and casuals/new players playing the game.
What are your thoughts?
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Imagine you are a new player and don't have much experience yet, now imaginw an oracle flies in and destroys your 9 mining workers. This would feel pretty hopeless for every new player.
Even BW doesn't equivalate when it comes to killing yout opponent so fast. I mean yes a myriad of proxies + some specific cheeses, but that usually involves some ctrl not flying a unit over the mineral and calling gg, but more importantly SC2 doesn't have tbe equivalent of hunters to ease new players in.
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EPT
