Warcraft III, E-Sports, and the Ugly Side of Complexity
Warcraft III and Starcraft are popular on the competitive gaming scene, the rare combination of popularity and skill-based gaming, blah blah. Apparently, Starcraft fans see it differently. They disregard Warcraft III’s Chinese popularity and point fingers at Korea’s Starcraft fetish. They explain the “disparity” by claiming Starcraft is the ultimate test of athletic ability.
I personally believe that Starcraft requires the most diverse skill set of any competitive game going. But that’s not the reason for Warcraft III’s underachievement. Let’s ignore the matchmaking aspect, where KeSPA can create exciting tournaments on a weekly basis; Warcraft III’s failings are all about accessibility and presentation.
Know how Europeans can’t understand America’s infatuation with the American brand of football? Know how Warcraft III players want to choke Defense of the Ancients players? Warcraft III has the same issue: It’s too complicated for a live audience. Knowledge of the game’s nuances may not be a headache for veterans, but imagine selling “Warcraft: The Sport” to somebody who has never played a real-time strategy game.
“Tuck Rule”? What the hell is the Tuck Rule?
With an exception for spellcasting units (Defilers, Dark Archons), you can watch competitive Starcraft without knowing a single thing about the game. Psionic lightning looks like lightning, Marines look like dudes with guns, Zerglings have claws, and shit blows up. The ebb and flow of combat and map control are all you need to decide who is winning a contest.
Compare that with Warcraft III, a game that relies heavily on role-playing elements (spells, abilities, effects) to distinguish units and heroes. These numbers and gameplay mechanics must be memorized in order to recognize their impact on the playing field. You cannot look at the graphics for spells like Soul Burn, Howl of Terror, and Inner Fire and determine what they do on face value. And good luck explaining why the Human player is about to win the game because he’s been pinned in his base but is about to get his Mountain King to level six.
Consider the hero experience system. Know that the amount of experience granted by a unit corresponds to its “level”, a number typically equal to the unit’s food cost? Know that rule doesn’t apply to Gryphon Riders, Demolishers, Meat Wagons, Frost Wyrms, and Mountain Giants? How about diminishing returns on experience points gained via neutral unit kills? The amount of bonus experience a lone hero gains as the player advances up the tech tree?
Congratulations, you’ve developed a system where the strategy of levelling a hero falls on creeping patterns and complex calculus. It may provide for one hell of a role-playing strategy hybrid, but good luck selling it to the red states.
December 15th, 2009 at 3:43 pm
Also, where’s the community when things like W3Chart fail? It doesn’t seem very active =/
I wish someone picked WC3 and said “Blizzard sucks” and kept the game going themselves, starting by making a mod (that balances things and takes out the random from important aspects of the game like item drops).
That’s what happened with SC anyway, if it wasn’t for KeSPA, SC would be a unbalanced and only played for UMS and BGH.
December 15th, 2009 at 4:01 pm
So where do you see the NFL fitting in to this?
December 15th, 2009 at 4:02 pm
Blech, misread the article. Ignore the above.
December 15th, 2009 at 5:51 pm
I could care less if the game I play is watchable. As long as it’s fun, that’s enough for me.
All this focus on spectators and e-sports will really take its toll on gaming, I fear.
December 15th, 2009 at 6:47 pm
On the contrary, I feel e-sports will renew the gaming scene. Face it: the ones that get publicity are the ones that are the easiest to pick up, the most difficult to master, and it’s stupidly easy to tell when someone’s winning or losing. Take competitive TF2, a relatively “old” game that is still up-and-coming in popularity for competitions. The game is simple for anyone to get (it’s like only $20) and play (CPU-limited only) and has all the elements of a casual shooter. But then disable random crits, damage spread, and put on class limiting and you’ve got one hell of a recipe for a spectator sport.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USs0abj0e3g&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIKFTn4RFVQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVveOcKQ6BQ&feature=related
The first one is before they disabled random crits in competition from years ago, and the last has no sound because Youtube is gay. But really, how is watching those frag videos NOT entertaining?
December 16th, 2009 at 1:31 pm
@grmnasasin0227
For me Painkiller/Q4/Q3 or even D3 are much better.
It looks like Q3 but you can camp a place for minutes (there aren’t items?) so it’s a lot more boring.
December 16th, 2009 at 3:00 pm
The D3 that matters doesn’t have a release date, brah.
Uh, yeah, there’s items in TF2…health and ammo spawns in certain places like every 10 seconds or so if it’s picked up.
Heh…nobody’s doing any camping in 6v6, it’s literally suicide. You’ll get picked by the scouts so fast…look here.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Paqic5sow0
Carnage is one of the best scouts in TF2. That video’s not sped up, that’s how fast scouts actually do shit. So yeah. Camping is simply not an option in competition.
December 16th, 2009 at 4:56 pm
At 3:55 in the 3º link a guy is on the top of a container receiving shoots from everywhere and killing people.
He would’ve lasted 2 seconds in CS/CSS. In the frenetic shooters (Quake/Doom/Painkiller/Ut2k4) no one does something like that. You have to keep cruising at high velocities while collecting items and killing the enemy.
I’ve seen those videos and people just walks (well, sometimes they jump), and when they shoot the need like 2 missiles and one shotgun shot to kill each other. That’s my definition of lame.
There isn’t high-lethality nor precision bunny hopping, so I don’t find those specially interesting to watch.
December 16th, 2009 at 9:12 pm
At 3:55, Dr Justice actually isn’t taking any damage at all…if you’re talking about the part a few seconds later when he was a retard and ate the rocket, that’s also the only thing that hit him. He WAS probably very close to death because even assuming he was buffed when he jumped up, he’d be at about 70 health left (from 175). But that’s the point of these frag videos. They show that even under pressure in a real match, these pros can take hits and still dish it out.
Well, direct rockets in competition only do about 109 damage in competition; the weakest class still has 125 health. A good solly WILL need at least 1 direct rocket to make a kill. And they resort to the shotty when they know their target is lit or they’re out of loaded rockets.
Who’s bunny hopping?
December 17th, 2009 at 1:38 am
Wasn’t there a post on this blog about how much TF2 is worse than the original?
December 17th, 2009 at 1:57 am
Yeah, I remember somebody raising a stink about it. I’ve never played Classic. However, I enjoy the sequel enough to play it competitively over other fps games and it has a better following than Classic ever did.
December 17th, 2009 at 4:43 am
@grmnasasin0227
No one is bunny hoping (which is what makes most of competitive FPS hard). CS/CSS is about instant reflexes, since you can get killed in on shot from the other side of the map. But in TF2, they’re just running, shooting a lot a receiving lots of shots.
December 17th, 2009 at 12:28 pm
In any video of any fps competition I have seen, there is NO bunny hopping. That’s UT shit, pros don’t bother with it. When you jump, your trajectory is MORE predictable than dancing.
Besides the above, another reason nobody bunny hops in TF2 specifically is because if a rocket or pill hits you in the air you lose all control of your direction. At that point the solly or demo has complete control of you because they can gauge your trajectory and at that point you’re fucked.
Also, what are you missing about the AA video? Snipers DO drop people all over the map.
Not really sure what you mean about receiving a lot of shots…I don’t see a single kill in these videos that took less than 4 hits…people really aren’t getting hit as often as you think they are.
December 17th, 2009 at 4:14 pm
“In any video of any fps competition I have seen, there is NO bunny hopping.”
WHAT
Okay.
I’m done here.
December 17th, 2009 at 5:10 pm
Good, get out scrub.
December 17th, 2009 at 5:30 pm
Knock it off.