SC2SEA.com - Starcraft 2 SEA eSports Community Site

Rant
 

"The gameplay in SC2 is boring and repetitive, it's just the same thing over and over again"


The guy with the sunglasses is how I imagine people that complain about this...


This is a phrase I've heard quite a bit recently. You know, the truth of the matter is, everyone sucks at SC2 and barely grasps how the game works. For the last 2 years everyone has described concepts in the game using relationships and examples from Broodwar or occassionally Warcraft 3. But this isn't fitting as it's a completely different beast to those games! It has such intensely powerful macro mechanics and abilities to attack suddenly with hyper-mobile units, warpins and creep-spread that we see some of the most dynamic and back-and forth games ever. But then again I was never any good at wc3 or bw so I won't talk about them too much.

Let's just talk about this idea of "the gameplay is boring and repetitive". Because it is complete bullshit.

GSL Finals

Last week I watched the GSL finals live! Life played the most unique and amazing, control and multi-tasking focused play I have ever seen. He fought in 3 places at once at multiple times constantly striking MVP's mech from behind whilst fungalling and throwing infested-terrans from the front to slow it's advance.He fought against blue flame helions with zerglings and queens only, he used mutalisk harass to great effect at a time when "terrans just know how to shut that down".



Anyone who thinks they've ever seen play like that before is so full of their own shit they have it pouring out of their mouth and down their shirt-front.



Maybe the perception comes from foreign tournaments with few Koreans? Also the livestreams of our favourite foreign progamers being too repetitive? Meh I dunno.

Essentially what we have in the foreign scene is a whole lot of low-tier and mid-tier progamers doing the same builds very regularly. Basically we all like to stick to this defensive let's sit on our arse concept of the game and just try and win with defensive macro play because we don't understand timings enough to properly react in-game. Instead we just learn how to perform macro mechanics properly and how to micro some basic, pre-set and mastered aggressive timings.



This does lead to a bit more stagnant play then you might see in Korea where the game is set up to have better support for players and so you have these guys living in a house playing all day and generally being better at attacking/adjusting in-game. Nonetheless the best players (Stephano, Nerchio, Grubby maybe? Can't think of who else) constantly adjust the way they play whether with prepared builds or reactions ingame and you see in their results the effects of doing this.

Kespa players

You also have this other group of guys that not only live in a house playing all day, but they make sure they play like 12 or more hours a day, and have coaches and other people helping them improve their play. These guys are called Kespa players. From what I hear their lifestyle kind-of sucks balls, but their support system kicks ass. I can only imagine the game will be adjusting more and more and changing faster than ever in 6 months to a years time with Kespa on the scene (Imagining it was still WoL).

What are we talking about again?

Ok so, people still suck, they have a long way to go... the foreign scene needs to just grow in general so the players are generally better... Kespa competition will raise the bar exponentially to the point where the game becomes better and better to watch. This is a positive end to the story...


OH WAIT. There's a fuckn expansion comin out.


Ok so I forgot to mention there are some problems with WoL!

Namely:

*Infestors are too general a unit,

• they are the ultimate unit for harassment (burrow-move, infested terrans + fungal),
• They are the ultimate unit for front-on battles (fungal + infested terrans)
• They counter air and ground
• If they catch capital ships or main units out of position they can win the game with a few quick spells (neural)

Terran units have a ridiculously high skill-ceiling. This isn't a problem in-of-itself, it's the fact that these units suck balls if you aren't 3/4 of the way up this skill ceiling or more, and so playing terran is just HARDER than the other races. Also their macro is probably the most time-consuming and difficult.

Protoss have trouble scouting early especially vs Zerg.

These are the 3 main issues at the moment, I'm sure there's more but really, it's not my aim to identify each and every "issue" with the game. Even some of these above are arguably not that bad for the top-level gameplay.

Back on track...

So anyway my point is the game is ******* GOOD AND FUN TO WATCH AND TL AND REDDIT ARE THE WORST WEBSITES IN THE WORLD RIGHT NOW!

Haha had to let that out. Ok, calm now.

My point is why are people bitching right before an expansion comes out that's gunna fix many of these issues. And why are people claiming shit that just isn't true "the gameplay is stagnant blah blah blah!"

Either you don't understand the difference in builds/timings etc to see what's going on, the casters are too crap to point it out (or make the game entertaining because they don't know whats going on... only a bad thing if they are bad at play-by-play). Or maybe you're watching a boring foreign player like Idra/Destiny that does the same thing over and over and wonders why he loses? This isn't fuckin Tetris, you have to react to your opponent not just play "better" than them. You'll notice the players that do the same shit over and over tend to get their face ripped off whenever they go up against a smart opponent who ALWAYS uses different builds EVERY single game: STARTALECurious - Boss zerg.

It's gunna get even better...so why are people crying?

Anyway all in all the game is good, it's getting a little stale simply because there aren't as many units as a well-rounded RTS should probably have... oh wait that's about to get fixed in HoTs! Haha so I just want to say the game will get better and better and anyone that listens to the crying mid-level NA pros better watch some more GSL and get their stories straight.

Note I agree Blizzard can do things better, I rage about it sometimes. I get annoyed that the game isn't as user-friendly as it could be. But FML the fact is everyone's been spoiled with great interfaces and easy shit to make experiences better, of course we won't enjoy sc2 customs as much as Broodwar customs when we were kids. We went and grew up. Also we bitched about this 2 years ago when the game came out, realised that bitching achieved nothing and then stopped. So why bitch right before an expansion comes out that might actually fix these things?

Destiny and ROOt brewing up the QQstorm...

Oh god who knows maybe the shitstorm Root and Destiny brewed up might actually pressure blizzard to changing one or two things? Who knows maybe it'll have a positive result. Personally I just hate that it's validated the 1000 trolls and idiots that "don't play the game" and have "lost their passion because of activision" and yet for some reason spend ALL their free time posting negative shit on one of my favourite websites: TL.

I'm really happy these attitudes haven't spread to sc2sea and this is something of a haven for me at the moment. I really with TL would pick up a lot more moderators and mass warning/ban all the morons that derails threads over with their vaguely related complaints about everything. Especially how this shitstorm has somehow made the fact that everyone sucks at the game "blizzards fault" and not their own.

We're all shit, let's hold hands and rub shit on each other...

You're all shit at this game. I'm shit at this game. Let's all be shit together and sit in our shitness and accept it. If we want to bitch let's bitch, but not about gameplay being "boring" or "always the same" or "if you get behind there's no way to come back". These are all the most trash and stupid attitudes ever.

Today I 7 pooled a Korean GM Protoss. I killed just 2 probes initially and didn't even get past his wallin. I still won the game in the mid-game. Tell me that isn't "coming back from being behind"

Rant over! Btw anyone who wants to see pics from Korea including GSL finals go like my facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?s...7020162&type=3

Dat Promotion