Re:In defense of hard counters in real time strategy games
by jgon on Tuesday July 27, 2021 @03:59PM
(#27976870)
I think another thing is that MOBA's have downtime. You need to walk to places, you need to back, buy items, etc, etc. It's been a while since I played Starcraft, but my memories of it were basically that if you weren't doing things at literally every moment, you were probably going to get beat. You could try and use better macro, and tactical understanding but you'd eventually run up against someone who was equivalent and had better micro/apm and just lose. Which meant that every match basically felt like a sprint from start to finish, which was exhausting. Eventually it got to a point where it was hard to jump into a match because I just wanted to game and not go all out. I had pre-emptive anxiety/exhaustion about the intensity of a match. A moba can still feed that competitive desire and has moments of intensity, but it feels much more balanced than RTS' ever did to me.
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Re:In defense of hard counters in real time strategy games
by Regic on Tuesday July 27, 2021 @05:29PM
(#27977897)
These were my exact thoughts about CS vs Quake back in the days. Quake had no downtime, all action while CS had time between rounds or just tense moments without anything actually happening. I think this dynamic was an important point behind the success of battle royal games too. An all action game is like an action movie without a moment's pause - it just doesn't work for most people.
Re:In defense of hard counters in real time strategy games
by ajuc on Tuesday July 27, 2021 @04:08PM
(#27976972)
Yup this is more important - in starcraft you will lose a game you almost completely won if you stop context switching for a few minutes.
On the other hand you can abandon starcraft game at any moment with no consequences and it doesn't last for 50 minutes. If you got toxic teammates in DOTA you are pretty much stuck with them for almost an hour.
Re:In defense of hard counters in real time strategy games
by s1artibartfast on Tuesday July 27, 2021 @06:05PM
(#27978262)
I think this also plays into the human reward pathways. More variation in intensity means more spikes of adrenaline and dopamine.