|
I took a break from playing SC2 and played Counter-Strike: Global Offensive competitively for some time. CS GO is undoubtedly a more popular game. While I was playing it I tried to analyze why it is so. Here are my thoughts on why and how it can be used in LotV to improve its popularity.
1. First thing I learned is that it's NOT the low skill ceiling which makes games popular. Skill ceiling of CS GO is high. (I hear that by now it's a consensus that the low skill ceiling of Heroes of The Storm stops people from playing it). What makes it fun to play CS GO is that you can progress in the game by just playing it and watching others play. In SC2 that is not enough - you have to memorize build orders before the games start to get fun. The build orders are just too complicated even compared to BW. In BW there was just one gas, no orbitals/queens, no addons on barracks, no reactors on factories. In CS GO the nearest analogy is nade throwing. Some smokes/mollys can not be learned just by watching other players do it. But that becomes critical only in the highest ranks, while build orders are critical already in silver.
Therefore, I agree with Blizzard that macro mechanics have to be changed, but not to just "simplify" it. There is nothing wrong with macro being hard, we have the MMR system for that. The goal should be to simplify build orders.
2. Fights in CS GO are very fast, even faster than in SC2. The difference is that there is no multitasking in CS GO, besides an occasional glance at the minimap. While in SC2 you can lose your whole army while macroing in a second. That's a problem which can be fixed by either removing multitasking or slowing down the battles. Removing multitasking is unacceptable - it's one of the things which makes SC so interesting and unique.
Therefore, I think, that fights have to be significantly slowed down compared to HotS. Even if it requires radical changes, such as introducing battle formations. There is so much depth in SC2 micro/army positioning that this change will not make battles boring but even more interesting.
3. CS GO has death match service. Something similar can be done for SC2. Short (1 min) skirmishes against other players. You choose your race, queue up, spawn on a small map with some army (a random choice between few fixed army composition) and fight your opponent to practice/enjoy your micro. It seems that with some thought it could be made playable.
SC has many advantages over CS in other aspects. It would be a huge pity if RTS disappears as an e-sports genre. What do you think?
Edit: added point 3.
|
Bisutopia19033 Posts
CS is a team eSport. Mobas are team eSports. Team games draw bigger crowds then 1v1 games. There is no way to fix this without other game modes becoming more popular. SC2, like SC1, will never die of. Fans of SC2 will remain because they simply enjoy a different type of competitive atmosphere then others.
edit: That being said, sure we can learn from the success of CS:GO and improve the games, but no matter how perfect the game is, it just won't draw the same level of crowd internationally.
|
While I'm not sure I agree with your points, I think it's a great question to ask.
How can we learn from a game like csgo and its success.
I also stopped play sc2 to try my hand at csgo, matches are too long in my opinion for csgo. Now I play heroes lol
|
BisuDagger, maybe you are right, but why can you be so sure? In my experience, sometimes I want to play with other people on a team, sometimes I want to play alone.
|
1001 YEARS KESPAJAIL22271 Posts
SC2 deathmatch isn't a bad idea, to be honest. It could get more casuals playing, which is never a bad thing.
|
On August 24 2015 11:13 lichter wrote: SC2 deathmatch isn't a bad idea, to be honest. It could get more casuals playing, which is never a bad thing.
Here's an idea- improving matchmaking in the UMS system would functionally add that feature and further increase casual play i think
|
wait high skill ceiling ? I thought you just wait somewhere and then pray and spray through a wall. Just kidding of course. But that skill ceiling thing is always silly. You can reach a skill ceiling in single player games, where at some point there is no way to finish the game faster or when you don't get hit the whole playthrough etc.
But as soon as you throw in opposing players, the skill ceiling increases as the opponent gets stronger. And I guess that consensus about Heroes comes from LoL or Dota2 players. Rather common that people live in fear that their beloved game dies to another game. Which so far has not happened.
Also I never studied build orders or anything. I roll a dice for my race and go from there. Brought me to low masters, before my wrist went to hell. So not a bad progress for just playing and watching. And like you said, people in CS:GO also have to check on data outside of the game to progress to the very top. And those tips can also grant advantages on lower level.
You could argue though that this is the wrong approach. In Sc2 everyone is so focused about learning build orders and macro. I wonder what would happens if everyone in CS would give new players the advice, study how to throw grenades and at what position you need to aim when standing in a certain spot!
As for point 3. Custom games ... but I guess Blizzard really has to implement some sort of 1 button press system so people actually know that Sc2 is more then 1vs1.
|
Skins and probably a shitton of bots fishing for these skins. A raise of 990000 Viewer doesnt come from gameplay
|
The deathmatch thing would be cool. It would be like a Blizz-backed version of the micro challenges.
|
I don't agree with your statement that CSGO is more popular because it's easier to learn by just watching and playing. That's true for CSGO specifically, but both Dota 2 and League (I don't know so much about league) have an enormous knowledge barrier to begin play and get better. There are over 100 heroes in dota; you probably need to learn the major abilities of a good amount of them. There are a ton of items, which you have to learn their names, functions, prices, and other characteristics. Learning a build order at low-level starcraft 2 basically boils down to spending 5 minutes writing it down on a piece of paper and putting it next to your computer as you play, and you refer to it when you ladder until you memorize it (obviously if you want to learn efficiently you should practice on an empty map, but that's not something that most players care to or need to do.) And you don't need to memorize units, either, because the models tend to be very intuitive and you meet half of them in the campaign anyway. But learning the items and heroes in Dota 2 consists of many, many trips to the wiki and a lot more memorization than starcraft. Starcraft is undoubtably easier to start off in than Dota. I actually think Starcraft starts you off quite well--the campaign is a very effective tutorial, and all it would take is maybe just an ingame link from Blizzard to some page of beginner builds for starcraft to lower the initial entry barrier almost entirely. Starcraft's difference from CSGO and Dota and League is much more related to the fact that it's 1v1, it's stressful, difficult, lonely, and incredibly draining and exhausting. But that's not an entry barrier, that's a characteristic of the game that never goes away.
|
I think part of the appeal of CS:GO is the simplicity it is for beginners. CSGO: You have a gun. You shoot people by aiming. Starcraft: I make workers? How many barracks? What units are good? CSGO is much more intuitive than Starcraft, but it's not really something Starcraft can really change on. Blizz has already tried to bridge that gap by encouraging campaign play and Training mode. edit: LoL and Dota aren't exactly intuitive, so I'm not sure if I'm completely right.
|
On August 24 2015 12:31 PinheadXXXXXX wrote: I don't agree with your statement that CSGO is more popular because it's easier to learn by just watching and playing. That's true for CSGO specifically, but both Dota 2 and League (I don't know so much about league) have an enormous knowledge barrier to begin play and get better. There are over 100 heroes in dota; you probably need to learn the major abilities of a good amount of them. There are a ton of items, which you have to learn their names, functions, prices, and other characteristics. Learning a build order at low-level starcraft 2 basically boils down to spending 5 minutes writing it down on a piece of paper and putting it next to your computer as you play, and you refer to it when you ladder until you memorize it (obviously if you want to learn efficiently you should practice on an empty map, but that's not something that most players care to or need to do.) And you don't need to memorize units, either, because the models tend to be very intuitive and you meet half of them in the campaign anyway. But learning the items and heroes in Dota 2 consists of many, many trips to the wiki and a lot more memorization than starcraft. Starcraft is undoubtably easier to start off in than Dota. I actually think Starcraft starts you off quite well--the campaign is a very effective tutorial, and all it would take is maybe just an ingame link from Blizzard to some page of beginner builds for starcraft to lower the initial entry barrier almost entirely. Starcraft's difference from CSGO and Dota and League is much more related to the fact that it's 1v1, it's stressful, difficult, lonely, and incredibly draining and exhausting. But that's not an entry barrier, that's a characteristic of the game that never goes away.
MOBOs and FPS games are easy to learn because all you have available are the things in front of you. You have your character/gun and you have the immediate area of the map that you can affect. No amount of clicking will allow you to shoot past the area of your immediate influence because that's just not the way the game works. You can't set up 3 different trajectories for your bullets to land and have your opponent walk into that. The skill in CSGO is hand speed, accuracy, and reflex. The strategy in CSGO is in team dynamics and parsing of responsibility. You don't have to be the only one in charge of all 3 hallways, just one. Could you learn more? Sure, but as a new guy who has never touched a computer before, being told "click on what you want to shoot" is easy as fuck to learn.
The same is true in MOBAs
100+ characters--99 of which you can ignore since learning 1 character does not require you to learn all characters.
In an RTS things change dramatically. Which part of the map are you in charge of? All of it. Which units should you know how to use? All of them. You can't just spam SCVs and hope to do well unless your opponent also only spams SCVs.
You know why most noobs can be killed by someone making stalkers? Because new players in SC2 don't even know how to use buildings correctly let alone use the units correctly.
If we want to emulate those games--step one is make SC2 so easy that anyone who hasn't even used MSWORD can accidentally start getting half the buttons right just by holding the mouse and disconnecting the keyboard.
|
On August 24 2015 11:09 bobusbors wrote: BisuDagger, maybe you are right, but why can you be so sure? In my experience, sometimes I want to play with other people on a team, sometimes I want to play alone. You're on TeamLiquid and played CS 'competitively'. You aren't the average person, the average person wants a very social gaming experience.
|
On August 24 2015 11:57 FeyFey wrote: You can reach a skill ceiling in single player games, where at some point there is no way to finish the game faster or when you don't get hit the whole playthrough etc.
But as soon as you throw in opposing players, the skill ceiling increases as the opponent gets stronger. And I guess that consensus about Heroes comes from LoL or Dota2 players. I've heard it from a Heroes player. Haven't played it myself, so can't comment any further on that. It's certainly possible theoretically for a multiplayer game to have low skill ceiling: tic-tac-toe, for example.
On August 24 2015 11:57 FeyFey wrote: Also I never studied build orders or anything. I roll a dice for my race and go from there. Brought me to low masters, before my wrist went to hell. So not a bad progress for just playing and watching.
That's very good. I also played random but couldn't do it. The absolute majority of my games just were not interesting enough. Either I had a huge disadvantage from the early game and got stomped because of a bad build, or we go to the mid game on even grounds and I stomp my opponent, because my MMR is too low due to games of the first type. I continued to play to high plat, because of the rare even games, but then I tried cs and stopped.
On August 24 2015 11:57 FeyFey wrote: And like you said, people in CS:GO also have to check on data outside of the game to progress to the very top. And those tips can also grant advantages on lower level.
You could argue though that this is the wrong approach. In Sc2 everyone is so focused about learning build orders and macro. I wonder what would happens if everyone in CS would give new players the advice, study how to throw grenades and at what position you need to aim when standing in a certain spot!
You might benefit from tips on the lower levels but you wouldn't need to memorize them. As your aim and sense of the game progresses they become natural to you. With the exception of some nade throws and complicated team plays. The latter is not even an issue in PUGs. As for those nade throws that are not natural, they are not nearly as important as build orders.
|
The difference is also that the results are a lot less binary than in Starcraft. In starcraft you win or lose, sometimes you think you barely lost but there's no real way of measuring how well you did other than losing/winning. Constantly getting destroyed and having no real idea why is a real problem with people trying out the game.
In Counterstrike you at least have your K:D ratio, and new players literally go "oh, well we lost but at least my KD was a lot better than last time" or "hey but at least I got a ton of assists so I was somewhat useful to my team". It's a completely different feeling, and it's hard to emulate in Starcraft.
|
On August 24 2015 12:31 PinheadXXXXXX wrote: I don't agree with your statement that CSGO is more popular because it's easier to learn by just watching and playing. That's true for CSGO specifically, but both Dota 2 and League (I don't know so much about league) have an enormous knowledge barrier to begin play and get better.
I haven't played either DoTA or League so can't comment, but before posting I had asked my friend who played DoTA. He told me more or less what Thieving Magpie said. You don't need to know 100 characters or items to play the game and have fun.
|
On August 24 2015 12:31 PinheadXXXXXX wrote: Starcraft's difference from CSGO and Dota and League is much more related to the fact that it's 1v1, it's stressful, difficult, lonely, and incredibly draining and exhausting. But that's not an entry barrier, that's a characteristic of the game that never goes away. I also thought like that before playing CS GO. 5v5 is a double edged sword. Your teammates can blame you for the loss. I found CS GO to be almost (if not exactly) as draining and exhausting. Just my experience.
|
On August 24 2015 13:35 Abradix1 wrote: The difference is also that the results are a lot less binary than in Starcraft. In starcraft you win or lose, sometimes you think you barely lost but there's no real way of measuring how well you did other than losing/winning. Constantly getting destroyed and having no real idea why is a real problem with people trying out the game.
True. "Constantly getting destroyed and having no real idea why" has a lot to do with build orders, hence my post.
On August 24 2015 13:35 Abradix1 wrote: In Counterstrike you at least have your K:D ratio, and new players literally go "oh, well we lost but at least my KD was a lot better than last time" or "hey but at least I got a ton of assists so I was somewhat useful to my team". It's a completely different feeling, and it's hard to emulate in Starcraft.
Also very true. You win some rounds even if you lose the match. This alleviates some saltiness, but in my experience I can still get almost as salty as playing SC2. I concluded, it's not the main reason.
|
On August 24 2015 13:43 bobusbors wrote:Show nested quote +On August 24 2015 12:31 PinheadXXXXXX wrote: I don't agree with your statement that CSGO is more popular because it's easier to learn by just watching and playing. That's true for CSGO specifically, but both Dota 2 and League (I don't know so much about league) have an enormous knowledge barrier to begin play and get better. I haven't played either DoTA or League so can't comment, but before posting I had asked my friend who played DoTA. He told me more or less what Thieving Magpie said. You don't need to know 100 characters or items to play the game and have fun. You don't need to know builds or need to know all the starcraft units to have fun, but that's what we're talking about here.
On August 24 2015 13:48 bobusbors wrote:Show nested quote +On August 24 2015 12:31 PinheadXXXXXX wrote: Starcraft's difference from CSGO and Dota and League is much more related to the fact that it's 1v1, it's stressful, difficult, lonely, and incredibly draining and exhausting. But that's not an entry barrier, that's a characteristic of the game that never goes away. I also thought like that before playing CS GO. 5v5 is a double edged sword. Your teammates can blame you for the loss. I found CS GO to be almost (if not exactly) as draining and exhausting. Just my experience. CSGO is draining, but I have played a decent about of CSGO (almost 500 hours) and never do I have the experience that I can get in starcraft where I have to be mentally engaged from minute 1 and I play intensely nonstop throughout the entire game and when I finish, my hands are shaking and I'm sweating. CSGO is stressful on a round by round basis, you always have to be on your toes and can't ever stop being alert, but then you die and you can observe. There are some long games of starcraft that I play where I can not relax, I can not let up, I cannot slow down for 30 minutes, and literally the entire time I must stay alert and fast and when I finish I feel like I'm dead. CSGO and Dota have exhausting games too but they aren't exhausting in such an intense way. I've never finished a game of Dota or CSGO so mentally exhausted that I must sit back and can't do anything for at least 5 minutes.
|
On August 24 2015 10:41 BisuDagger wrote: Team games draw bigger crowds then 1v1 games.
I don't understand why you think this is true... SC2 regularly drew the biggest crowds during it's heyday. And DOTA, LOL and CS were around, they just weren't as good of a game.
So what happened?
Well, DOTA is pretty much the same game it was before, isn't it? So is LOL, so is CS. They have evolved slowly over time, built new features on a solid foundation. They are better games now.
But SC2 changed differently...the SC2 team made huge changes that radically changed how the game was played... and not for the better.
And so here we are.
|
|
|
|