![]() ![]() As I’ve said, SC2 is a competitive game and the people who stick around are all mainly competitive players. Having a ranked mode is still important, of course. How can this be addressed? I think it’s quite simple: de-emphasize ranks and leagues. How can we get new players if the presentation of multiplayer is already as intimidating as it is? What SC2 needs is new blood, new players who want to try the game out and see what the fuss is all about. Despite remaining as the most popular RTS game on the market, its current population dwarfs in comparison to what it was a year or two after release. It’s no secret that SC2 is on the decline. This ends up having a larger effect on the perception of SC2 being too competitive and ultimately leads to ladder anxiety and subsequently scares another potential player away from the game. Focusing the multiplayer solely on Ranked places an unnecessary expectation on the player to do well, contributing to the feelings of stress in an already stressful game. While great for its target audience, I think that this focus on competitive multiplayer leads to a few problems particularly in drawing in casual or non-competitive multiplayer crowd. The name Unranked itself seems like the mode is only secondary to Ranked, making you feel like you should be playing Ranked. Even the quick match option, Unranked mode mirrors this. Ranked mode is the default multiplayer mode. When you go into the matchmaking menu, you’re immediately greeted with your league badge and your rank. SC2 multiplayer revolves solely around ranks and leagues. Perhaps as a product of this focus, the entire multiplayer experience has been focused on competition as well. Whether or not they succeeded (I personally think that they did), there’s no denying that SC2 is focused on competition. Blizzard saw the eSports community grow with Brood War and decided that its sequel, SC2 must be a competitive game worthy of following in Brood War’s footsteps. I believe that while SC2 in itself is a stressful game, the presentation of the multiplayer aspect of the game has a far greater effect on ladder anxiety than we care to admit.įrom the very beginning, SC2 is designed to be a competitive multiplayer game. People who have no desire to improve and increase their ranks are scared off and they don’t even know why. What ever it is that triggers ladder anxiety, it’s one of the main things that drive people away from SC2. SC2 is a 1v1 game (for the most part) and having no team mates to take the blame for losses means that every loss is on the player. Some believe that it’s the ladder itself. ![]() The body responds to a stressful situation by avoiding it in the future and if it’s stressing out when playing a match of SC2, then it makes sense that the body subconsciously avoid it. ![]() It’s the epitome of a hard game, with one mistake often being your last. How does it happen? How can you enjoy playing a multiplayer game yet at the same time be scared to death to play it? Some argue that it’s the body’s reaction to stress and I guess it makes sense. In fact, the term is no longer limited to SC2 and can be seen used in any online multiplayer game with ladder. A quick search of reddit, Team Liquid, and the official forums paints the picture. Sounds silly doesn’t it? Honestly, it is but that doesn’t remove the fact that it’s real. In a nutshell, people with ladder anxiety are scared to play. For those who don’t know, ladder anxiety is basically the fear or anxiety in playing a quick match, despite wholeheartedly wanting to play. Statistically speaking, obviously.I’m going to break the mold a little here and talk about something completely unrelated to tactics. It should be normal if 43% player base -> 43% S rank, but if 43% player base protoss -> only 40% S rank protosses, then it's only clear that it's harder to get S rank as protoss. The least percentage of people playing protoss become S rank. Keep in mind we are speaking about the top 1% here so just having a bigger player base of protoss users doesnt make a big factor here its remarkable that of those 1% there is an abundance of protoss players 2% doesn't seem that significant of an amount in any case so the results are in line with what you would expect. Well if 42-43% of the whole ladder is playing P then P is actually underrepresented at the top rank. It gives you what it is S rank race distribution in S. And besides you can judge the S rank statistics by itself dont need to include the rest of the ladder perse ![]()
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