StarCraft II

[Malakili]

APM is totally misleading. If you watch a pro actually play they'll click on the same fucking spot like a billion times to move one group of units (i.e. spam clicks). That's why their APMs are so high.

There is some spam APM, but they play very quickly and it isn't all smoke and mirrors.  Also, in Brood War, that was necessary due to the terrible pathing so you wanted to recalculate the pathing over and over so your units didn't diddle around, it is less useful in SC2 because the units actually path well.

Edit: Also, I think we tend to overstate how difficult APM is.  I have a feeling everyone around here can type well.  I don't know what your words per minute is, but all of us could easily type at well over 100 APM, and likely several times that.  It isn't a matter of pure speed that most of us lack for SC2, it is the muscle memory which makes it as easy as typing.

[Samprimary]

The issue that SCII is facing is that it is experiencing a cycle that loops back on itself:  everyone still even peripherally interested in SCII knows that if they step back into the game, they're stepping into an environment increasingly devoid of people like them and increasingly populated by the nuts who are still there because they play it obsessively and aren't generally stresssssssed out by the high string of mental overhead the game demands.

so people look at that and go ehhhhhhhh nareally interested in that shit thanks and their interest in the game dwindles down well past casual into nonexistent and SCII further becomes a playground of sharks who stressed the casuals away in the first place. It is just dealing with how much of a stressbot 2000 the game's core fundamental gameplay is in general. People would, in massively increasing numbers, play stuff that gives you a fuckin' breather once in a fucking ever, like LoL.

[Malakili]

The issue that SCII is facing is that it is experiencing a cycle that loops back on itself:  everyone still even peripherally interested in SCII knows that if they step back into the game, they're stepping into an environment increasingly devoid of people like them and increasingly populated by the nuts who are still there because they play it obsessively and aren't generally stresssssssed out by the high string of mental overhead the game demands.

so people look at that and go ehhhhhhhh nareally interested in that shit thanks and their interest in the game dwindles down well past casual into nonexistent and SCII further becomes a playground of sharks who stressed the casuals away in the first place. It is just dealing with how much of a stressbot 2000 the game's core fundamental gameplay is in general. People would, in massively increasing numbers, play stuff that gives you a fuckin' breather once in a fucking ever, like LoL.

Yeah, this is true.  There has been a lot of buzz lately in the SC2 community about how to get the "casual" player to care about the game again, because the competitive community is now realizing how much the casual community fuels the success of the spectator side of the game (see: LoL).  One of the real big problems is that SC2 just isn't a casual friendly game at any level.  Even if you are in the bronze league on the ladder, it is already above the level where most people ever care to go.  I would actually go as far as to say that RTS in general isn't casual friendly. 

The way Blizzard has traditionally gotten around this problem is by having really strong custom game communities.  Let's not forget that DOTA is a WC3 mod.  But the reality is the next DOTA is impossible in SC2 because the custom game interface is just terrible.  Even the new "Arcade" which is admittedly a lot better than the original battle.net 2.0 interface, is still pretty bad.  They really need to bring back the ability to create named games and allow people to browse them.  If they want large numbers of casual players to play SC2 it isn't going to be through them playing the official multiplayer mode regardless.

Hell, when someone like me, who loves the game, who has laddered pretty extensively, who doesn't mind the stress too much, STILL doesn't play the game very often simply because I don't have the mental sharpness at the end of a long day, they have a real problem that extends pretty far beyond the problem of "casual" players.  By almost any standard I am not (or at least wasn't?) a casual SC2 player, and even I don't feel particularly compelled to log in lately.

[bhodi]

I quit playing SC2 for all the reasons listed. FTR, I was a fairly good player, I was in high diamond and then low masters once they created it. I wasn't tournament level but I could place in amateur tourneys and I could definitely stomp locals. I quit not long after. I suspect I was roughly at Malakili's level. Here are the reasons as I see them.

1. It's difficult and stressful on your body to play a game for 40 minutes with absolutely no slowing down. This makes it not relaxing and you can't play more than two or three games back to back.
2. SC2 requires you to hold a bunch of things in your mind, and check back on them in specific time intervals. This can be difficult because people naturally get tunnel vision when exciting things happen (combat)
3. The game is fairly deep at even modeate level; you need an entire branching decision tree complete with build timings to estimate what the other player is doing (and counter it) from a minimum of scouting info. This requires keeping up to date on the latest builds plus an encyclopedia of 'meta-game' knowledge unless you just like to 4gate all-in every game.
4. The matching system assumes that you are playing at your 'peak' every game, and if you aren't, it feels unfair because you'll just get rolled, which makes you want to play less.

All these things make SC2 essentially an anti-casual game. Frankly, I am likely not going to get heart of the swarm.

APM was never really a consideration for me; I was on the very low end for my skill level at about 90, spiking to 150 or so during exciting moments. Being able to juggle things in 3 different areas of the map is much, MUCH more important.

[Malakili]

I quit playing SC2 for all the reasons listed. FTR, I was a fairly good player, I was in high diamond and then low masters once they created it. I wasn't tournament level but I could place in amateur tourneys and I could definitely stomp locals. I quit not long after. I suspect I was roughly at Malakili's level.

Yeah, this is pretty much exactly my story.  I still play the occasional ladder game, but I've slipped down to mid diamond at this point just due to not playing regularly enough to be any better.  My fundamentals are still solid enough to beat up on people who can't macro right, etc, but I'm woefully out of date on the meta game, and make some stupid errors.

But the reasons you list are basically the long and short of it.  Number 4 is probably the biggest for me personally.  As a result of that, it feels very all or nothing to me, as a game.  Either you devote all your gaming time to it, or you feel compelled to play almost none at all.  Lately it has been almost none at all.

Edited to add:  I do plan on buying HotS though, I think the unranked ladder system might get me playing more.  And if not, well, I'm sure I'll still get my money's worth out of the campaign + whatever limited about of multiplayer I do play.

[Fordel]

I think they actually loosened the matching system relatively recently, working on the idea that you may got stomped really badly once in awhile, but you'll get to stomp someone else once in awhile too. Or Something.

[Malakili]

I think they actually loosened the matching system relatively recently, working on the idea that you may got stomped really badly once in awhile, but you'll get to stomp someone else once in awhile too. Or Something.

Problem is, that only balances out if you play a whole bunch of games in a row.  If I am going to log in and play one game on a given night, the chance that I am either going to get a trivially easy game or nearly impossible game as that one game doesn't exactly give me more incentive to log in.

[Maledict]

Starcraft 2 is without a doubt the most stressful game I've ever played - by a long way. I've been gaming online since the days of Doom and *nothing* has ever come close to the anxiety levels that game gave me in multiplayer. Ended up stopping playing because after a hard day at work the last thing I want to do is be stressing out on a game to that extent.

Never really been sure why SC2 was so stressful - it's fairly unique in that respect.

[Fordel]

Constant demand of your attention. You can get into 'the zone' with a FPS. You get breaks in a DOTA style game.

A SC level RTS, the entire game requires all your attention, then requires even more of it as the game progresses longer and longer.

[Megrim]

I'd almost think that its also a psychological thing - people tend to come in with the perception that they "must try hard every game" from the get go, and not realise that there are different levels of pushing oneself. At first, when coming into the game its perfectly fine to play 'as you are' and just get acclimatised, letting your skill plateau naturally. After that, when cruising at the level one is comfortable at, is the time to start playing to improve. And because for most people, improvement comes over time and exposure, its far better to just play a lot while putting in a little bit more effort, versus playing a few games and trying really hard. i.e. take it easy and go from there.

[Malakili]

Constant demand of your attention. You can get into 'the zone' with a FPS. You get breaks in a DOTA style game.

A SC level RTS, the entire game requires all your attention, then requires even more of it as the game progresses longer and longer.

Not only that, but the longer the game goes, the more your attention is stretched, and the after having played 20 really rock solid minutes, you can lose because your focused slipped for literally 1-2 seconds.  That is one of the things that used to really get me.  One teeny tiny mistake can really undo an entire game worth of good play, or at least good enough play.  It is stressful knowing that one little thing can tank the entire game.  In a shooter, or DOTA or whatever, there is just very rarely THAT MUCH riding on every single moment.  It isn't just about attention and multitasking, but the margin for error.   Sure, top end shooter or DOTA players also have that, because THEN the game starts having that little margin for error, but it exists at pretty much every level in SC2.

I'd almost think that its also a psychological thing - people tend to come in with the perception that they "must try hard every game" from the get go, and not realise that there are different levels of pushing oneself. At first, when coming into the game its perfectly fine to play 'as you are' and just get acclimatised, letting your skill plateau naturally. After that, when cruising at the level one is comfortable at, is the time to start playing to improve. And because for most people, improvement comes over time and exposure, its far better to just play a lot while putting in a little bit more effort, versus playing a few games and trying really hard. i.e. take it easy and go from there.

Well, sorta.  After you reach a certain level that kind of casual play doesn't work. Even at my current (in my opinion shitty mid-diamond) level, if I don't bring my very best "try hard" game, I'm fucked.  There is no other way to play.

SC2 also demands a certain kind of devotion.  I mean the basics are TOTALLY opaque.  There is no way to know how to play SC2.   If you have never played mutliplayer, just finished the campaign and dive in to bronze league, you will lose EVERY GAME badly while you are still trying to figure out what they hell is going on.  You really have to put in time outside playing the actual game to learn how to play SC2.

[Megrim]

Yea but that's what I'm saying - it shouldn't be an issue because one would be playing with other people who are at that level as well, not just skill-wise but also mentally. Now, if the pool is so shallow that there are exceedingly less and less lower-level players (like if you went into CS 1.6 right now), so a newcomer or regular player just trying to cruise at 50/50 in Silver can't find games and has to play Diamond/Masters players, then you have a problem.

[Samwise]

SC2 also demands a certain kind of devotion.  I mean the basics are TOTALLY opaque.  There is no way to know how to play SC2.   If you have never played mutliplayer, just finished the campaign and dive in to bronze league, you will lose EVERY GAME badly while you are still trying to figure out what they hell is going on.  You really have to put in time outside playing the actual game to learn how to play SC2.

I still haven't played SC2 -- is this more true of SC2 than it was of SC1?  And if so, does it have anything to do with different details in the rules/balance between the campaign and multiplayer, or is it that the core mechanics are more complex?

[Malakili]

SC2 also demands a certain kind of devotion.  I mean the basics are TOTALLY opaque.  There is no way to know how to play SC2.   If you have never played mutliplayer, just finished the campaign and dive in to bronze league, you will lose EVERY GAME badly while you are still trying to figure out what they hell is going on.  You really have to put in time outside playing the actual game to learn how to play SC2.

I still haven't played SC2 -- is this more true of SC2 than it was of SC1?  And if so, does it have anything to do with different details in the rules/balance between the campaign and multiplayer, or is it that the core mechanics are more complex?

SC2 is a bit easier than SC1 actually, but I would've said the same thing about SC1 also.  I'm talking about - specifically - the base multiplayer mode though.  Not inifinite maps, not no-rush 20 minute arrangements, etc. But I'm just talking about simple stuff like answering these sorts of questions "How many workers should I build?" "When should I build my buildings?" How many should I build?  I was teaching a friend to play SC2 just a little on the free trial version, and he played the first couple single player missions (which are in the free version) and then we fired up a multiplayer game (co-op vs. bots).   It really put into perspective how much I take for granted now.  It wasn't intuitive at all for him to, for example, build more than one barracks, or continue to build workers throughout the game, or expand to a new base before his first base ran out of minerals, etc.  All of that (really incredibly basic) stuff requires more knowledge than you might think.

To answer the second part, there is a bigger gulf between the rule sets in SC2 single and multiplayer than there was in SC1 though. SC2 has many more mission-specific mechanics in single player, and also quite a few units available which are not available in mutliplayer.

[Kitsune]

See, this's why I prefer turn-based.  Even in the middle of a giant clusterfuck you have time to sit back and survey the map, make sure you aren't overlooking anything.  Way less brain-hurty that way.

[Job601]

The ironic thing is that Starcraft fans have nobody to blame but themselves for the decline of their game.  All through development, anytime the devs suggested anything that would make the game easier to learn or easier to play, there was constant whining about pandering to casuals and lowering the skill-cap.  Blizzard for some reason decided listening to their fans was the right move.  Clearly, the skillcap being too low was not something anybody had to worry about with Starcraft 2.

[Malakili]

The ironic thing is that Starcraft fans have nobody to blame but themselves for the decline of their game.  All through development, anytime the devs suggested anything that would make the game easier to learn or easier to play, there was constant whining about pandering to casuals and lowering the skill-cap.  Blizzard for some reason decided listening to their fans was the right move.  Clearly, the skillcap being too low was not something anybody had to worry about with Starcraft 2.

The thing is, Brood War was ultra popular and it was harder.  I don't know that pure difficulty is to be blamed per se.  The problem is that battle.net 2.0 is shit.  No sense of community to keep you around, no custom games to get into or people to meet through them.  Pretty much the only thing Battle.net 2.0 is set up to facilitate is solo grinding the ladder.  They lost sight of why people kept playing their old RTS games for a decade at a time, and it wasn't the base game.  I mean sure, competitive Brood War was an impportant part of the brood war scene, but it was the custom games that kept people coming back.

[Fordel]

I'm not sure BW actually was THAT popular anymore. Like, everyone and their dog had played the SC campaign, but how much of that BW online multi was just Korea madness?

[Malakili]

I'm not sure BW actually was THAT popular anymore. Like, everyone and their dog had played the SC campaign, but how much of that BW online multi was just Korea madness?

I don't know what the numbers look like, but SC2 isn't doing particularly well in Korea either.  SC definitely did benefit from circumstance, being the game of choice when PC Bangs caught on in Korea shot the popularity through the roof.  Nowadays, LoL is the main game in those things.

[slog]

What drives me crazy is Zerg Queen injects.  Adds nothing to the game beyond being a completely non-fun APM sink.  Perfect example of an SC2 game mechanic that drives away casuals.

[Malakili]

What drives me crazy is Zerg Queen injects.  Adds nothing to the game beyond being a completely non-fun APM sink.  Perfect example of an SC2 game mechanic that drives away casuals.

I wish they had come up with a zerg macro mechanic which was more similar to terran/protoss.  Not that I want all races to play the same, but the main issue it that Inject can't be made up for the way chronoboost/mules can.  As long as you don't get to full energy on a nexus or orbital command you can use it all up without having lost anything (besides a timing maybe, but that is advanced enough a concept that your average player doesn't care anyway).  With zerg, every second you aren't injecting, you don't ever get to make up for it.  You can add on additional hatcheries, which is recommended for new zerg players so they get the additional larvae automatically.

But the problem goes even deeper than just the APM needed to inject and the multitasking ability to remember to inject, it goes to the question about how new players are even supposed to know how important these things are to begin with.  You can't really overstate just how important keeping up with larvae is, but I don't think there this is ever taught to players explicitly.  A new player would probably just get rolled over by not having enough units and never understand why.

[Samprimary]

I think starcraft II would do well with an alternate game mode that is kind of like Myth. Point buy your archers and dwarves and shit to create a good functional army, then be a battle commander for an engagement which resembles the buildup and crush where one army tops the other and finalizes the outcome of the game thus far.

[Fordel]

You could make Larvae Inject an auto-cast thing, but at like, half the speed. So say your supposed to inject every 30 seconds (made up number), a queen will Auto-inject into the nearest hatch every 60 seconds.


Of course, everything below top level play would be ruined by Zergs ruling the world with their unmatched unit production 

[Malakili]

You could make Larvae Inject an auto-cast thing, but at like, half the speed. So say your supposed to inject every 30 seconds (made up number), a queen will Auto-inject into the nearest hatch every 60 seconds.


Of course, everything below top level play would be ruined by Zergs ruling the world with their unmatched unit production 

You give newbies too much credit - there is no way the newest players would spend all their money, even with infinite larva.

[Fordel]

Well that's why it's so powerful. Us noobs have a really hard time keeping up with constant production. So instead of constantly re-building during a big fight, we focus on the fight itself then panic after its done "OH GOD I HAVE NO UNITS" and try to pump out as many soldiers as we can out of whatever production is available.


When the zerg noob does this, he'll still have like 50 Larvae ready and just swarm over the 12 marines the other dude was able to train up in that time. 

[Samwise]

You could make Larvae Inject an auto-cast thing, but at like, half the speed. So say your supposed to inject every 30 seconds (made up number), a queen will Auto-inject into the nearest hatch every 60 seconds.

See, this is probably an indicator that I'm just too old or not the target audience for RTSes, but my general thinking is that if it can be automated by a drinky bird, the game should just do it for you and free your attention up for making more interesting decisions.

If the optimum strategy during a certain phase of the game is to tell my queen to spit a larva every thirty seconds, then the queen should have a command where it will spit a larva every thirty seconds until I tell it to stop.  I mean, you don't have to micro your workers to harvest each individual armload of minerals, right?  You just tell them to start harvesting and they do it until they run out of stuff to harvest.

Although I'd then go a step further and say that if everyone who knows how to play the game uses the queen to produce extra larvae, just remove that ability from the queen and make it so that amount of larvae are produced automatically.

[Megrim]

Eh, there were plenty of people who during the design stages, pointed out that the additional "macro mechanics" were shallow and added nothing to the game. No-one listened to them, why I don't know.

[Malakili]

You could make Larvae Inject an auto-cast thing, but at like, half the speed. So say your supposed to inject every 30 seconds (made up number), a queen will Auto-inject into the nearest hatch every 60 seconds.

See, this is probably an indicator that I'm just too old or not the target audience for RTSes, but my general thinking is that if it can be automated by a drinky bird, the game should just do it for you and free your attention up for making more interesting decisions.

SC2 has automated quite a few things - workers ARE a lot smarter when it comes to mining efficiently, to use your example.  In Brood War you DID have to send every single worker to mine (although once they are mining they continue to mine), in SC2 you can rally point directly to a mineral patch.  You could only select one building at at time, which meant it took loads more APM to macro properly.  Units now are much smarter when they target enemies (so all your 10 siege tanks won't shoot the first zergling which comes into range, they will spread their damage around a bit more intelligently).  There is "Smart casting" which makes micro managing caster units much easier.  

Somewhat ironically better pathing and smarter AI has been one of the major issues with those "more interesting decisions" though.  Because units are generally smarter and don't get stuck on each other (which is hard to argue is a bad thing), it actually makes the tactical choices in the game significantly more shalllow.  For example, in Brood War you really wanted to spread units out, attack on multiple fronts, have long front lines to spread your units out, and control as much of the map as possible in order to give yourself the most room to operate.  In SC2 map control is still important, and but we have seen the rise of this "deathball" style gameplay in which players are sometimes punished for making tactical decisions to split their forces too much because the good AI means that bigger armies are pretty much always beating smaller armies.
This isn't true 100% of the time, but it has been an issue which has arisen even at the pro level, and about which there continues to be debate.

Lastly - at some point I think it is fine to have plain old difficult to execute stuff in a game.  Multitasking is the name of the game in an RTS, and remembering to do lots of stuff, and actually being able to do it all, is a big part of the genre.  It isn't grand strategy/turn based strategy, where you can sip your tea for 30 minutes before deciding to attack.  Not that turn based strategy is bad - I like that genre too - it is just that automating too much starts making the game another genre entirely.  

But I certainly understand where you are coming from, and I think it stems from the word "Strategy" in the title of the genre.  I have a friend who loves the idea of RTS, but when we play SC2 he would get very frustrated that his ideas never worked out - in a large part due to the fact that he didn't understand how to play the game very well.  But playing the game actually matters - it isn't just a thought experiment - you need to be able to actually execute.  It is the difference between knowing it is time for a hit-and-run and actually putting the ball in play when it is pitched to you.


_____

All of that being said, the larva inject mechanic is the worst of the bunch.  With Orbital command energy you have to decide between Mules and Scans, with Chronoboost you have to decide between which buildings to chronoboost, in larva inject you just sort of have to do it every time it is available except in really really specific early game situations where a transfuse or creep tumor are a better choice.  But in practice, the majority of the time you just build more queens so you can do everything - thus removing the choice aspect.

[Fordel]

SC was never REALLY about the S in RTS. Being able to execute a terrible plan is far far superior to having a really good one but not being able to carry it out.



It's why shit like 4 gates or 2rax pressure become so popular.

[Malakili]

SC was never REALLY about the S in RTS. Being able to execute a terrible plan is far far superior to having a really good one but not being able to carry it out.



It's why shit like 4 gates or 2rax pressure become so popular.

I think it is actually due to a mistake about the word "strategy."  Strategy doesn't exist in a vacuum.  It has to exist in a context, and most people who complain about SC2 not rewarding strategy are actually just applying strategy to some other context and being upset that it isn't working in SC2.

[Fordel]

I have no idea what you mean there.

[Kail]

I think it is actually due to a mistake about the word "strategy."  Strategy doesn't exist in a vacuum.  It has to exist in a context, and most people who complain about SC2 not rewarding strategy are actually just applying strategy to some other context and being upset that it isn't working in SC2.

I think this is more due to the "strategy" used in SC2 (or most RTS to some degree) being completely different from "strategy" as it's used outside the game, in real life.  Talk to a non-gamer about military strategy, and they won't start talking about how many miners you need or how many marines you can produce in a minute.  There's definitely a way to win at SC2, but it's mostly not the Hannibal-esque vision of a general sitting around a map with a bunch of pins in it wondering how he can flank the enemy or whatever.  It's mostly about getting more soldiers than the other guy, and that's mostly about the game's economy mechanics, which don't mesh with reality very much.

[Malakili]

I think it is actually due to a mistake about the word "strategy."  Strategy doesn't exist in a vacuum.  It has to exist in a context, and most people who complain about SC2 not rewarding strategy are actually just applying strategy to some other context and being upset that it isn't working in SC2.

I think this is more due to the "strategy" used in SC2 (or most RTS to some degree) being completely different from "strategy" as it's used outside the game, in real life.  Talk to a non-gamer about military strategy, and they won't start talking about how many miners you need or how many marines you can produce in a minute.  There's definitely a way to win at SC2, but it's mostly not the Hannibal-esque vision of a general sitting around a map with a bunch of pins in it wondering how he can flank the enemy or whatever.  It's mostly about getting more soldiers than the other guy, and that's mostly about the game's economy mechanics, which don't mesh with reality very much.

Well that is my entire point.  But for whatever reason people don't assume they should be Hannibal when they are playing tic-tac-toe, or baseball, or football, or even Chess.  People intuitively understand that strategy in those games is bound by their particular set of rules,  but make the pieces look like army men and suddenly people get upset when their supposedly brilliant strategy doesn't work.

[RT81]

I think it is actually due to a mistake about the word "strategy."  Strategy doesn't exist in a vacuum.  It has to exist in a context, and most people who complain about SC2 not rewarding strategy are actually just applying strategy to some other context and being upset that it isn't working in SC2.

I think this is more due to the "strategy" used in SC2 (or most RTS to some degree) being completely different from "strategy" as it's used outside the game, in real life.  Talk to a non-gamer about military strategy, and they won't start talking about how many miners you need or how many marines you can produce in a minute.  There's definitely a way to win at SC2, but it's mostly not the Hannibal-esque vision of a general sitting around a map with a bunch of pins in it wondering how he can flank the enemy or whatever.  It's mostly about getting more soldiers than the other guy, and that's mostly about the game's economy mechanics, which don't mesh with reality very much.

When I first became interested in "strategy" games after getting a decent PC of my own back in the day, the first game I tried was SC. I became frustrated very quickly with it. Then I discovered war games along the lines of Combat Mission and Panzer General and realized this is what I had really wanted to play to get my "strategy" fix. Although those games are really more at the tactical and operational level, respectively, they were more of what I had in mind.

SC and the RTS genre are their own thing. They're tactical, pseudo-strategic resource management games with a twitch skill element. They're meant to be played at a metagame level.

[Lantyssa]

It's not strategy if what limits you are reflexes.