How to keep new people in Blizzard RTS games? - Page 4
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dUTtrOACh
Canada2339 Posts
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virpi
Germany3598 Posts
On October 24 2020 05:25 deacon.frost wrote: You see, the issue is that you have to overcome the first 40 games where you get very uneven matches. In case of newbies you get rekt horribly for the first 15 games, maybe even more. This isn't exactly funny experience. There are way easier games to get into than this game. Adding mechanics to lower the bottom so people have more enjoyable experience isn't bad. Also, if you want to improve, you will improve. Sure, but that applies at the same time for the other people on the ladder as well. So they're improving like you do... you see where I'm getting at? Doesn't help that lower league players are being shamed based on their league, right? MAYBE, JUST MAYBE, if people in the community wouldn't be such dicks(especially during the earlier stages) we wouldn't have lsot so many players. But hey - you're just a platinum noob, nobody cares about your opinion isn't exactly a great counter-argument. (but the idea was here for the 10214515th time - did you hear about copy & paste from predefined replies?) Edit> Also I strongly believe that many players find enjoyable to fight and play with the army. Not play the game - oh fuck, I'm supply blcoked again. Oh fuck, I was fighting and now I have no dolls to play with. etc. Adding the auto-build function(with the slight delay as was suggested) would give these players more joy from the game than building 4 supply depots at a time because they were hard supply blocked at 44 for the 10419501950196501th time in a row. This game is throwing at players many obstacles, while most players just want to have fun with them units. They don't wanna be bothered with macro, supply blocks or scouting, that's why they fail at it and that's why you can get into masters with anything as long as your macro is on point. Edit 2> another VERY BAD thing about SC2 is the instant end. Hey, you didn't look at the army and i just removed a half of it. Git gut nub and gtfo. Imagine you spent 12 minutes of building the army to lose it in 3 seconds of you not paying attention. That's IMO the worst thing about SC2. Or losing 2 mineral lines while you fight because Blizzard had these great ideas about harassment. (great to watch, stupid to play against) Edit3 > recentlyu I watched some Artosis' BW videos on the youtube. he stayed at 2 bases for so long. At the time of his 3rd(Which was delayed according to the chat) you would be on 4 bases at SC2. Maybe even 5. That's way too many for a casual so they can defend the mineral lines properly. SC2 is a great game to watch and if you have the tenacity, great game to play. But boy, the game has so many frustrating things and it throws them at newbies... Sorry for the late answer, work and stuff. Imho, there's nothing wrong with a hard game. Look at games like chess or go. They're insanely difficult, yet they're still being played by millions of people on all levels. Take chess: You will NOT win a single game against a better opponent. Just like Starcraft. They should not create false comfort by making the game easier. I have to repeat my point: There should have been better in game tutorials. Drills and meaningful practice scenarios. Like how make workers consistently. how to use control groups, how to use camera keys, what scouting is, the list goes on. There are so many concepts the game itself doesn't teach to players. Competitive people will learn them by themselves, but there's a slice of the audience, which actually might enjoy 1v1 if the ramp wasn't as steep. Still, I believe that there's no way around losing players over time. SC2 has been out for over 10 years now. And for a game of its age, it's actually quite healthy. Casual players will ALWAYS move on. They will never play competitive multiplayer, because it stresses them out too much. Different games for different people. Besides, coop actually is a mode for casual fun, which is why it has been so successful. | ||
dUTtrOACh
Canada2339 Posts
EDIT: For some, the fun in the genre is the study and improve aspect, while for others it is the genre's greatest detractor. Should developers be striving to twist the genre into something appealing to people who fundamentally aren't interested in it, or should they just develop another game for people who don't actually like RTS? | ||
WombaT
Northern Ireland20729 Posts
On October 28 2020 03:55 dUTtrOACh wrote: With regards to competitive, economy-based RTS, the hard truth is that it doesn't appeal to everyone as a genre. Not everyone is capable of playing at a high level, and the devotion it takes to reach a high level is akin to work. Therefore, people are confronted with the reality that they will either be terrible, or will have to work at being good (with differing maximum levels from person to person, depending on talent). Unlike some other games people consider to be hardcore, you're not able to just memorize some attack pattern, or some other faulty measure of skill ceiling. RTS games, especially more complicated ones, take a level of devotion and introspection that IMO most people are unwilling to dedicate themselves to. EDIT: For some, the fun in the genre is the study and improve aspect, while for others it is the genre's greatest detractor. Should developers be striving to twist the genre into something appealing to people who fundamentally aren't interested in it, or should they just develop another game for people who don't actually like RTS? I like that about the genre, I just think there is at least some more potential accessibility trade off that could still be made without sacrificing the depth. Especially in a game that’s years old, few of us are particular innovators, most of us are pulled along with the tide of the wider community’s discoveries. Then it’s applying that knowledge to our own games, analysing our own play and where it deviates, and yes the occasional bit of experimentation. So I guess something that streamlines and centralises the kind of information that old hands like ourselves takes for granted and basic builds etc would be fantastic to ease people in, would also be an incentive for community members to contribute to something that’s embedded and whatnot. Ideally in the client, or links that would launch from the client. The community have made great things to help, be it YouTube stuff, the Core and how to do rapid fire properly, build order calculators, arcade maps, forum guides and the likes. It’s quite easy to miss that stuff, for whatever reason. I missed some hotkey stuff because I use my own variant of standard hotkeys instead of trying the Core so I didn’t peruse that thread much, even though I eventually found it to be hotkey discussion gold which is totally my jam. | ||
WombaT
Northern Ireland20729 Posts
On October 27 2020 12:06 Frankenberry wrote: Auto-production or similar isn't a good thing for an RTS. It removes the "real time" aspect of the game and leaves you only with "strategy". No. Just no. I uninstalled SC2 tonight. So I guess I'm one of the people leaving the game. It's not the first time but this time it's probably for good. Came back from a 4 year break to check out the game and I don't think I'll be giving it more chances. A bit about me. I've been playing on and off since WoL beta. Always played Terran. My highest rank was master 1 4 years ago. Can't remember my MMR but I was starting to meet some low GM's here and there. I took a break for 4 years and recently tried it out again. I played around 250 games around 4000 - 4200 MMR on EU. The main problem with Starcraft 2 in my opinion is that the races have way too many options now. There are so many all-ins, so many different forms of cheese and they are too hard to hold. Even if you scout them you will have an up-hill battle ahead of you. Why was it ever necessary to make so many different units viable in so many matchups ? Why is it a good thing that on top of everything else we now have Battlecruiser all ins or Shield Battery + Void Ray or Shield Battery + Immortal / Warp Prism and all the other bullshit. It's hard to scout and you got almost no time to react. To me it seems like Starcraft 2 more than ever before encourages the players to cheese. And I did notice there is a lot more early aggression / cheese / early all-ins now than there were 4 years ago when I played last time. 12 workers means you have less time to scout and adapt. That change from HotS combined with all these options makes the game very unenjoyable. If I get to a macro game the game is still solid. Still enjoyable, even after 10 years but the early game and the idea that every unit had to be viable for as many matchup's as possible has made it very volatile. A lot of my games felt like very "ooooh gotcha" and it wasn't cool. Cheese is just way too hard to hold. Even if you scout it. Don't feel like it's very well designed to be honest. TvP and TvT especially felt extremely random. I was never particularly good, I got to Diamond/facing Masters regularly as Toss in WoL, hated PvZ so much (a trend that continues to this day) and switched to T and was able to keep to roughly the same level pretty quickly. What was nice about that period was I discovered you could literally 1 rax gasless FE in every matchup (which included random, another bane of my P life). Your tech might lag behind some openers, your eco might be behind hardcore greed your opener can’t easily punish, safe against most but hardcore cheddar, but I found you’d transition into the midgame smoothly, where decisions needed made and mechanics counted. Which hey I quite enjoyed, definitely my most fun playing the game anyway. Legacy introduces so many units as you say, on a pool of 2 player maps and thus openers are far, far more technical. But not in a sense of decisions based on information, just in terms of the two blind openers and how they intersect, because the 12 worker starts forces you to make decisions so much faster. I think the units are actually fine, it’s more that you can get all the units and tech so quickly that they all come into play so quickly, and the tech trees are more fleshed out vs Wings/Hots’ first skirmishes. Case in point that you can open battlecruisers and not just die (god I hate that unit) I guess sidestepping talk of core mechanics, there are areas I think you can make things more forgiving without dumbing down a game at all. Indeed you can actually make it both harder and more forgiving by say, making 3 and 4 player maps more playable in your new hypothetical RTS. Personal taste, I can stomach losing to a cheese, if it’s obviously scoutable and I’m being greedy, if my response is bad etc. It gets very frustrating when scout timing with probe well it looks like every other build, and by the time I have a next obvious scouting opportunity (say with an adept or forward stalker) it’s almost too late to react in time even if I do get the information I’m looking. Then I look at a match history and all my opponent does is do the same dumb blind cheese every game :p It seems to me that Legacy is a bit of a toxic soup of factors in terms of frustrations in this regard. Just how the eco accelerates tech but shortens scouting windows and almost every map is 2 players so your opponent can always take that gamble. | ||
dUTtrOACh
Canada2339 Posts
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WombaT
Northern Ireland20729 Posts
On October 28 2020 06:21 dUTtrOACh wrote: The custom game / arcade system and the F2P nature of the core, multiplayer game (F2P perhaps implemented with poor timing or lack of advertising) and the coop system are already so much... so much more than other games in the genre. If being basically the best isn't enough, then maybe there is a more brutal reality at play that can't be addressed. We’re 10 years in, we didn’t always have these things and for me anyway SC2 was a huge step down from WC3 at launch for social features and the likes. By most reasonable metrics SC2 was a gigantic success, one ‘Frost Giant untitled RTS’ could learn from, both the successes and areas of improvement. | ||
dUTtrOACh
Canada2339 Posts
EDIT: If adding a casual ladder, with adjusted mechanics can keep people playing and interested in Starcraft 2 or even BW, along with retaining the game that people who like the game actually enjoy playing, I don't see a problem with that. Blizzard said nothing recently about not delivering any free content. Blizzard's launcher thing is also a hinderance to welcoming people in. People use Steam or Epic games store when looking for something to play for free. The stubbornness of licensing SC2, BW, WC, etc for sale on the platforms people actually use is frankly delusional, from an advertising standpoint. | ||
AirbladeOrange
United States2566 Posts
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nojok
France15837 Posts
RTS are very beginner friendly but the long road between casual gameplay and competitive gaming is now rather empty while you could meet a lot of people at your level as you progressed this road before. | ||
Harris1st
Germany6136 Posts
On October 28 2020 01:15 dUTtrOACh wrote: The idea that the game should artificially force interaction somehow is something I find odd. The two players playing the game are in charge of when they interact. If they aren't interacting enough, it's because they lack the mechanical prowess to interact. Also, the sooner you start interacting, the sooner a lead can be established and exacerbated. Also, the opinion of someone with 20 minutes of game time is literally irrelevant to the discussion of long-term commitment. EDIT: What I mean is you could give them any economy-based RTS, and it would have a slower build-up than SC2. Their opinion would be the same, because econ-RTS is clearly not for them. EDIT: Direct interaction is also an odd concept to attempt to produce in an econ-RTS. You are by the game's very nature interacting indirectly. You have two players who are playing God, controlling minions who do their bidding. If you cut out the middle-man, there is no game. There is no RTS. Strategists don't fight one another directly. They sacrifice the lives of subordinates to achieve objectives. Well, the topic of this thread is "how to keep new people .... " Interaction is one answer. For example, if playing a BR game, if you don't interact with anyone for the first 5-10 mins (cause map too big or whatever) and gear up and suddenly you get a sneaky headshot from somewhere, chances are it was not a good experience for you. Another example would be Moba, where you interact with someone in your lane for small leads and you are on high alert, thrill of the hunt, chances are it was good experience. This is what players, specially younger, want. My point beeing, the next big thing in RTS can be econ driven, but econ has to be the outcome of interaction. Like gold mines you fight over from the get go or something. Way more in the direction that WC3 goes than Starcraft. Now, in Starcraft you can influence the eco of your enemy pretty early, but IMO in bad ways. Like an unseen mine drop can end the game. Not fun, not a good experience I also think it is way more likely that Blizz works on WC4 than SC3 | ||
triforks
United States370 Posts
Other thought is reduced army sizes. I think a lot of players lose efficiency the longer the game goes on which can feel frustrating. What if you only had to control 50/50 units instead of 200/200 in late game? Maybe a team format with multiple players controlling a small army each would be cool. (Not Archon mode/shared control though). | ||
BisuDagger
Bisutopia19033 Posts
On October 28 2020 23:14 triforks wrote: I always thought that 1v1 was a bad format for the majority of players. Lack of social interaction and I think ladder anxiety is worse when you are playing solo. Other thought is reduced army sizes. I think a lot of players lose efficiency the longer the game goes on which can feel frustrating. What if you only had to control 50/50 units instead of 200/200 in late game? Maybe a team format with multiple players controlling a small army each would be cool. (Not Archon mode/shared control though). I think late game can be tough if you have trouble maintaining vision on the map. My greatest weakness is not spreading out vision in time to detect army movements that would backstab me. I would like a new take on map vision, where by default you are granted 30-50% of the map by the way of vision stations, so fog of war is primarily a defensive mechanism. You can take over your opponents vision stations by taking expansions near them. Obviously in this case someone could rush to build a CC/Nexus/Hat at one of the expansion locations, but that's just the tip of the iceberg where it could create diverse strategies. | ||
dUTtrOACh
Canada2339 Posts
On October 28 2020 18:05 Harris1st wrote: Well, the topic of this thread is "how to keep new people .... " Interaction is one answer. For example, if playing a BR game, if you don't interact with anyone for the first 5-10 mins (cause map too big or whatever) and gear up and suddenly you get a sneaky headshot from somewhere, chances are it was not a good experience for you. Another example would be Moba, where you interact with someone in your lane for small leads and you are on high alert, thrill of the hunt, chances are it was good experience. This is what players, specially younger, want. My point beeing, the next big thing in RTS can be econ driven, but econ has to be the outcome of interaction. Like gold mines you fight over from the get go or something. Way more in the direction that WC3 goes than Starcraft. Now, in Starcraft you can influence the eco of your enemy pretty early, but IMO in bad ways. Like an unseen mine drop can end the game. Not fun, not a good experience I also think it is way more likely that Blizz works on WC4 than SC3 Yea, but from the standpoint of a new player playing a MOBA, they can be in centre lane against someone simply better than them, with a favourable hero pick (an imbalanced encounter in two ways). They will get rekt and probably rage. Same thing in a BR... If this new player doesn't actually know how to play a shooter (not just playing a differently skinned game they are familiar with) along with not knowing where or how to loot, they are far more likely to get rekt and probably rage. I don't understand your point on interaction, because in SC2 you can interact as soon as both players' first scouting or proxying workers are able to intercept one another mid-map or arive at the opponent's base. A MOBA game's laning is a simplification of this idea, where you have no choice but to continuously engage your "opponent(s)" in the lane, or face the economic consequences of letting them "free-farm". In attempting to prevent the free-farm of your opponent, you run the risk of potentially exacerbating your deficit by dying and feeding them. In a lot of ways, this is similar to SC2, except you can maybe sub out with another hero or request reinforcements. It still comes down to skill and familiarity, only in a lower stakes environment. In SC2 1v1, you don't spend any time dead, you don't have friends to bail you out when you're worse than your opponent, and you're entirely responsible for any failures that result in defeat. IMO, SC2 (any RTS really) has zero downtime as long as you're in game, and it has more meaningful interaction than most other non-RTS games, with the exception of perhaps shooters and fighting games, where interactions and victory conditions can be met more quickly. EDIT: I'd also like to point out that Blizzard had the idea of putting bases closer together, so that players are more actively fighting, etc. That was in early WoL, where we can probably agree that the game was in a worse state than once maps were made bigger. Players want more time between interactions, more distance between starting positions, and more interesting and varied maps to encourage creative army movement. Thinking that more interaction (meaning more stressed multitasking) is what new players would want when they're trying to learn how to just grow and live is bizarre. Most people's complaints about SC2 are the quick resolution of combat encounters and the fast economic buildup compared to BW and early SC2, which are maybe beneficial to esports, in terms of time-management and action, but are crushing to lower skill players. EDIT: I'm not against new players having more options (in terms of game modes, casual ladder, etc), but I am against the dumbing down of RTS to suit the generational trend of people being too soft to face their own inadequacy. There is practically nothing more intimate in video-gaming, than RTS. | ||
WombaT
Northern Ireland20729 Posts
On October 29 2020 00:36 dUTtrOACh wrote: Yea, but from the standpoint of a new player playing a MOBA, they can be in centre lane against someone simply better than them, with a favourable hero pick (an imbalanced encounter in two ways). They will get rekt and probably rage. Same thing in a BR... If this new player doesn't actually know how to play a shooter (not just playing a differently skinned game they are familiar with) along with not knowing where or how to loot, they are far more likely to get rekt and probably rage. I don't understand your point on interaction, because in SC2 you can interact as soon as both players' first scouting or proxying workers are able to intercept one another mid-map or arive at the opponent's base. A MOBA game's laning is a simplification of this idea, where you have no choice but to continuously engage your "opponent(s)" in the lane, or face the economic consequences of letting them "free-farm". In attempting to prevent the free-farm of your opponent, you run the risk of potentially exacerbating your deficit by dying and feeding them. In a lot of ways, this is similar to SC2, except you can maybe sub out with another hero or request reinforcements. It still comes down to skill and familiarity, only in a lower stakes environment. In SC2 1v1, you don't spend any time dead, you don't have friends to bail you out when you're worse than your opponent, and you're entirely responsible for any failures that result in defeat. IMO, SC2 (any RTS really) has zero downtime as long as you're in game, and it has more meaningful interaction than most other non-RTS games, with the exception of perhaps shooters and fighting games, where interactions and victory conditions can be met more quickly. EDIT: I'd also like to point out that Blizzard had the idea of putting bases closer together, so that players are more actively fighting, etc. That was in early WoL, where we can probably agree that the game was in a worse state than once maps were made bigger. Players want more time between interactions, more distance between starting positions, and more interesting and varied maps to encourage creative army movement. Thinking that more interaction (meaning more stressed multitasking) is what new players would want when they're trying to learn how to just grow and live is bizarre. Most people's complaints about SC2 are the quick resolution of combat encounters and the fast economic buildup compared to BW and early SC2, which are maybe beneficial to esports, in terms of time-management and action, but are crushing to lower skill players. EDIT: I'm not against new players having more options (in terms of game modes, casual ladder, etc), but I am against the dumbing down of RTS to suit the generational trend of people being too soft to face their own inadequacy. There is practically nothing more intimate in video-gaming, than RTS. Yeah this is a pretty well-articulated post. I've sadly had to become semi-proficient in Fortnite for the benefit of playing with kiddo, in a sense macroing up is a little analogous to the looting and resource-gathering phase of that particular game. You are interacting with the game and opponents improving your future chances, making decisions on routing and what gear to keep/drop. Then your game can end with your first actual engagement with an opponent. Which in terms of ebb and flow isn't actually a million miles away from playing SC sometimes. Strangely I found Fortnite, a super casual game incredibly frustrating initially, because it's difficult to actually grind out improvements given the rather haphazard nature of Battle Royale games. Takes a while to know your way around, what the weapons do etc because if you're playing the BR mode your encounters are pretty sparse. Long-winded way of saying different strokes for different folks I suppose. I could happily grind out a SC build order in a custom game, or jump in and grind out arena deathmatch games all day (and get destroyed). I think SC2's pacing is a little sup-optimal, but RTS downtime isn't really downtime, it is/should 100% be the period you're planning and strategically crafting a longer term response to the game state, while building the infrastructure to execute that plan, and gathering further information if you can. If hypothetical RTS game x had non-stop engagements, it doesn't really allow a huge amount of breathing room to do much in the way of strategic planning or even a lower level series of tactical decisions. | ||
NinjaNight
428 Posts
On October 27 2020 21:08 Dangermousecatdog wrote: That's not true. Guides that focus completly on macro completely bypass the need to think about strategy, by giving the guide follower the strategy to follow, so they don't need to think about strategy at all. You can get to masters by following the same strategy over and over, and the tactics and the BO to go with it, likewise you can get to masters, by doing the complete opposite of these macro focused "guides". Or by being a well rounded player, having fun trying lots of different things. That's how most people get to masters. Most people who follow these guides which brainlessly produce mass marines or whatever stop well before masters. On my way up to grandmaster I constantly found and realized that it's mostly just mechanical skill holding me back and that the strategy side of things is quite straightforward | ||
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