You need to understand it certainly, in the same way you need to understand the rules of Football to really enjoy watching a game. but I haven't played SC or SC2 in years and I still enjoy watching the streams, in the same way that I've never played a real game of hockey but still like watching the NHL.
Well, Brood Wars had a huge esports following too. It still does have a niche following.
SC is such a perfect game for esports but it's probably just too complex for many people. You really have to understand the nuance of the game for it to be enjoyable to watch. But if you do, it's dramatic.
Agreed. Starcraft in particular is fun to watch because you can see some longer term strategies at work.
Compare to CSGO or COD. I have no idea what's going on, only that one side has better mechanics than the other. I know these games have strategies / formations as well. But they're a lot less apparent to me, and engagements are so quick I can't grok what's happening.
SC2 has one huge advantage over MOBAs I've seen - it's interesting to watch when you don't play it. I've played original sc campaign for a few weeks when it was published, then had no contact with the game for several years, recently I've discovered sc2 tourneys streamed by ZeddSC (great Polish sc2 commentator) - I was hooked immediately, despite knowing next to nothing about the game, meta, players etc. It's just fun to see players microing 100+ units at the same time.
I've tried to watch lol and dota2 tourneys, but it's soo boring. I don't know what any of the skills does, nobody is explaining them, everybody assume I must play the game to watch this, I don't even know who's wining except if the frag difference is big.
Even CS streams are better than MOBAs.
I sincerly hope sc2 wil have some revival, it's great game, I started to play multiplayer because of watching it. The design decisions that people cry over - I don't think they matter that much for average Joe, games in silver or gold league aren't decided by balance.
I find Starcraft2 fun to watch but it's not like I hang out on twitch to watch each day. Usually if a tourney lines up with a weekend where I can stay up until 3am is where I indulge :)
Dwindling twitch numbers doesn't always mean a game isn't fun to watch.
I watch Starcraft games in my liesure time after work.
I used to play it often. But I find I can get as much enjoyment watching pros, who completely dominates the game, play against each other.
The difference is watching doesn't involved the mental effort that playing does. After 8hrs of design/programming, the last thing I want to do is think more.
I imagine the required effort is the same for grabbing a beer and watching football on TV vs going outside and playing it.
My cousins like to play and watch League, but I never did. That said, we did an impromptu road trip to LA awhile back to watch some professional games live. As someone who never played and only watched a handful of games, it was really a ton of fun and not that difficult to follow. Though they're far from perfect, the announcers do a pretty good job of explaining the action. From a layperson point of view, I really only needed to know whatever the super attacks were for the characters and could figure that out pretty quickly with the help of the announcers.
Really, I think what helps League over StarCraft is that it's pretty clear who's winning and who's losing since there's a relatively easy to follow flow across the map. When one team loses their towers, which are clearly denoted, they're probably behind. Further, gold and experience also give a pretty good indication of who's winning and losing. With StarCraft, which I've also never played, but have watched a handful of games, I find it difficult to follow on a macro scale. Certainly, it's easy to see when one battle is won or lost, but then suddenly one player will concede and I'm left wondering why. I think that rapid nature of forfeiting and loss of the game hurts its spectator appeal.
The problem with games like League & DotA is they're nearly impossible to understand what's going on as a spectator unless you already play the games. They're a victim of their own complexity - over 100 characters each with a minimum of 4 unique abilities. It makes major fights practically impossible to follow as a person who doesn't play the game.
SC2, on the other hand, is much easier to grok as a spectator. It's 1v1, so you know each army is controlled by 1 player, and the capabilities of the units are far more obvious as well, since a lot of them are based on pre-existing science fiction concepts.
League & Dota get far more viewers because the games are far more popular, however, as a spectator sport, they fall short because of their complexity.
In StarCraft the reverse it true. There are many who get information outside the game by watching, but don't actually play that much (1v1 in particular). Just by playing it puts you in a high percentile of SC2 players (that used to play or only play co-op and other forms).
I watch hearthstone streams and tournaments pretty frequently, and I used to watch a lot of starcraft. It was 80% so I can watch people that are better than me at the game and pick up strategies, and like 20% entertainment.
You clearly have not played Starcraft 2 or (Battlefield: Bad Company 2).
SC2 is such a finely tuned piece of gaming, I spend 30 minutes a day just watching replays at http://youtube.com/hdstarcraft. It beats watching most TV series. It's so good, I bought the game just to support Blizzard, even though I mostly just watch others play.
Yeah I stopped playing during HotS despite being very passionate about the game because it just became so boring to watch at the highest levels which broke my heart. But I recently picked it up again and just finished watching the WCS finals this past weekend. I think SC2 is the best it has ever been in terms of gameplay for both players and spectators. Most of the matches I watched over the last few weeks have had intense, back-and-forth games that really showed off the multitasking these pros can exhibit. I didn't see very many games which were decided by a mid-game deathball fight which has been fantastic to watch. This is how it should have been all along. I highly recommend that anyone who put it down some time ago check it out again, I think you'll be pleasantly surprised!
I watch both too and I disagree. After a while I have to stop watching SC1 games, I can continue watching SC2 for much much longer. SC1 just gets way too boring. It really is like watching chess, slow and methodical (assuming the perfect control only the top players can achieve in this game, I could not stand watching any less skilled players, other than with SC2). I appreciate the much faster games in SC2. I think SC2 game play is more significantly more varied too.
A lot of people would rather watch experts play a sport than play it themselves. I have met quite a few people that sort of gave up on being good at Starcraft 2 and instead watch the experts play it.
Watching experts execute highly trained strategic and tactical skills in real time is fun for a lot of people.
> SC2, on the other hand, is much easier to grok as a spectator. It's 1v1, so you know each army is controlled by 1 player, and the capabilities of the units are far more obvious as well, since a lot of them are based on pre-existing science fiction concepts.
The problem is that SC2 had very long periods of unwatchable metas. Twelve months of pro games consisting of two players building deathballs, having one battle (Where someone gets caught out of position, and loses their entire army in 5 seconds,) and the game ending was awful, as a spectator sport. (That was any Heart of the Swarm match involving Zerg in a nutshell.)
I was like watching a chess game, that, at turn 15, if one side didn't have a clear advantage, getting decided by a coin flip. This may be fun from a player's perspective, but is awful as a spectator sport.
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