Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Loud Whispers]

...Or go Korean bronze.

Nah, becouse its always bronze when u fail maximum.

KOREAN

[Flying Dice]

You want to know why you got that response?

Spoiler: this is why (click to show/hide)

Starcraft requires quite good reflex if you want to be more than just in bronze league.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH.

Clearly you've never played Starcraft.

Clearly I've never played against gold and silver league players who didn't build anything-not so much as a probe or a drone-for more than a minute into the game. Clearly I've never played against gold and silver league players who don't tech and send small waves of lings or rines at my main every couple minutes until I make them give up by killing two buildings and some SCVs. Clearly I've never played against gold and silver league players who take ten or twenty seconds to react to an attack, and who apparently just issue an attack order and watch the battle. Assumptions are fun, aren't they?

The point being that a moderately talented chimp could get into gold or silver league if it bothered to try.

No, it requires some skill, or you really faced only noobs.
I have seen some wonderful diamond league players. Its glorious to see two great players to battle each other to death. (No im not great, just watched some replays) I always had unluck i couldnt get away from bronze league in solo. Becouse i didnt use hotkeys. You need hotkeys to win.
And yes Starcraft is serious business,  if you say it requires no skill, go into diamond league and be top 10 or win any serious contest or get into top 3 at least.

When did I say it doesn't require skill? My point was that Starcraft doesn't require abnormal levels of skill, any more than any other game with a competitive element. To head off the obvious response (which you have apparently already started into): Yes, top-tier professional/semiprofessional players are very good. That's implied, same as anything else with organizational structure, formal tournaments, etc. But to play SC or SCII at a mid-range level doesn't require remarkable ability or 'reflex', just a bit of concentration.

That last line in particular is rather absurd. Let me give you an analogy:

Person 1: Basketball requires much more skill than other sports!
Person 2: Not really. Most average players aren't really that good, and you don't need a larger degree of talent to be an average basketball player than to be an average player in another sport.
Person 1: Yes they are! Basketball requires super amounts of talent and skill! Have you never watched an NBA or NCAA championship game!? If you say it takes no skill, go get drafted by a top-tier professional team, play through an entire season, and get a championship ring!

I hope I don't need to explain that to you.

[MantisMan]

I've always found that chart to be a bit inaccurate. I read boatmurdered and spent a week reading everything I could on the wiki before starting the game. I honestly have never found DF to be hard, or challenging. There are still plenty of things I do wrong, or screw up (Like trying to have a sane system for equipping my military, or making enough full sets of clothes to keep my fortress clothed), but it's always just been another aspect of the game.

Ah, but did you have to do a week of research to play a game such as, say, a popular AAA First Person Shooter?

Nope, but I did watch a friend play one of those shooters. When I played that game in a sort-of-but-not-really tournament, I did surprisingly not-terrible. The trick was to start spraying before going into the ironsights.

I played against this friend once in a match of Warsow, a really fast fps based on movement. He couldn't keep up with me.

[Jackrabbit]

The fact that you need to do a weeks worth of research to get into it isn't a point in the game's favour by any means anyway.

[jc6036]

The fact that you need to do a weeks worth of research to get into it isn't a point in the game's favour by any means anyway.

I've got to admit, you've got a good point there. I was just trying to validate the learning curve image that was posted >.>

[Criptfeind]

It took me 30 minutes to learn how to build a fort that lasted until I got bored of the game and stopped playing it in large amounts.

I think the learning curve is more along the lines of it's hype getting to the point where people struggle with it because they are suppose to.

[kaijyuu]

Did you learn in 30 minutes with only what came in the basic download, or did you have the wiki handy and/or lazy newb pack?


The learning curve is draconian not because it takes a large amount of time to learn the game, but because learning it requires either outside resources or a ridiculous amount of trial and error. Your average player's first, wiki-less fort is probably going to die to starvation not long after figuring the interface out and digging a tiny hole. I know mine did.


First step for smoothing out the learning curve to "reasonable" would be an interface overhaul, imo. Who knows when/if that will happen.

[Criptfeind]

I did not even know there was a wiki or newb packs.

[Knight of Fools]

Same here, except it was more by choice. I blundered through a few games until I started getting the hang of it. I only consulted the Wiki once I knew what questions I wanted answered. It makes it more fun in my opinion.

[Jackrabbit]

I do wanna point out that I like the game, and it's a good one. It's just that, this joke that it's so hard to get and you have to be like a hacker straight out of the Matrix to get it is a joke that's been going on so long that people who are new to the game think that it's serious.

[kaijyuu]

If you didn't like the game, why bother pointing out flaws with it? That's a disclaimer you shouldn't have to write.


I find it hard to believe anyone would have trouble learning the game due to horror stories they heard beforehand. Precognitions can have an effect on some things like enjoyability, but not difficulty. DF isn't hard to learn because you expected it to be hard to learn.


Here's some points I doubt anyone will disagree on:

- The interface sucks. Toady himself has said it could be pretty vastly improved. Some parts of it work okay, but Therapist exists for a very good reason.
- Necessities to keep a fort alive and sane are not immediately apparent to a new player. Nothing in-game tells you you need to make food or clothes until your dwarves are starving or going wacko, respectively. Traps and/or military are needed to ward off goblins, but nothing tells you that until they show up and slaughter you.
- Even if you believe the above necessities are "obvious," achieving them is definitely not. The farming section on the wiki is huge for a good reason.


As such, I think we can agree DF has a "high learning curve." And of course, the above problems can potentially be fixed. Hell, just fixing one (the interface) would go a long way toward fixing the other two (giving player necessary information).

[justinlee999]

You, sir, OP, are an elitist bastard.

[Leafsnail]

Those necessities are mentioned on the ? page though.

[Criptfeind]

- The interface sucks. Toady himself has said it could be pretty vastly improved. Some parts of it work okay, but Therapist exists for a very good reason.
- Necessities to keep a fort alive and sane are not immediately apparent to a new player. Nothing in-game tells you you need to make food or clothes until your dwarves are starving or going wacko, respectively. Traps and/or military are needed to ward off goblins, but nothing tells you that until they show up and slaughter you.
- Even if you believe the above necessities are "obvious," achieving them is definitely not. The farming section on the wiki is huge for a good reason.

Although true that the interface could be better I have little issue with it in fort mode. Or at least I did. A lot of the new stuff is huh worthy.

The second point I fully disagree with. You need only three things to keep a fort alive. A farm. A brewery. And a ditch to keep gobos out. And even the ditch you don't need for a while. To start a farm that will keep you in enough food for a medium amount of dwarves is like nine button presses total. Then you are set for in game YEARS. Farming is not hard. From what you can see in the menu it is not hard at all to guess how to make them. And no. Being told you need to make things to eat and drink when you can see your guys eating and drinking and taking up supplies is not a large leap in logic for anyone. Also clothing is not needed.

It tells you how to build a farm every step of the way and once you got that set up you have everything you need to keep your dwarfs alive for years to figure out the rest of the game.

I find it hard to believe anyone would have trouble learning the game due to horror stories they heard beforehand. Precognitions can have an effect on some things like enjoyability, but not difficulty. DF isn't hard to learn because you expected it to be hard to learn.

Why? I mean. It's hard for me to argue what other people may think. But let me try:

"Oh look. It is done genning. Yeah. Start now. Oh shit. Look at dat graphic. lolll what am I doing? How to mine? Well everyone said it was so hard I better go and spend weeks researching it bai."

The large amount of misinformation surrounding the game acts as a excuse to not even try which then goes on to create more misinformation.

[MantisMan]

The large amount of misinformation surrounding the game acts as a excuse to not even try which then goes on to create more misinformation.

QFT. The question, then, is what we can do about it.