How come you don't play ladder?

I must say that I am with Ftx on the BO issue. It really doesn't matter that much and there are really very few people that have any BOs / any decent ones. Yes, it's true that if someone played Twin rivers 5 times and watched it on stream he will have a better early game than someone who plays it for the first time. But it's not a BO that loses you the game, it's simply map knowledge and the ability of your opponent to properly scale since he intuitively knows how much mass he will have and scales accordingly.
Also, I disagree with the idea that these "BOs" are super important on 5x5 maps. There you legitimately make couple facs and spam tanks, there is no scaling involved except for maybe grabbing some reclaim. So if you just follow the most standard fac 2 pgen 4 mex 3 pgen fac BO that you should know by now you will maybe be behind 1-2 tanks or w/e. Doesn't matter.
Don't get me wrong, ladder can be stressful and it's hard but honestly, I am a bit fed up with this whole "Can't play ladder because unless I know BO's for all the maps I auto-lose". Like seriously, I sometimes come back after months of not playing and do most random shit, stall mass min 2 or float 300 power and it's still playable. I doubt people on the ladder have such insane BOs that you can't recover with whatever mediocre "BO" you do.
Just for reference when I actually hardcore sandboxed Badlands for a couple of hours and made a BO that cut every possible corner, was nearly perfect, etc. I've got maybe 5 tanks and 1 factory more min 5-6 compared to the most basic walk to hydro, make factories and pgens, spam tanks.

Now back on topic, why I don't play ladder?

• it's hard to find games, duh.
• it's pretty tiring and stressful honestly

I stopped basically playing global games due to too much gap/astro and similar and to long lobby times. 4v4 for me works much faster and is the same fun like playing global, except being limited to 8 players :-/. 1v1 is fine as well, but a completly different story in the experience. 2v2 does not happen for me due to the lack of other players ... sadly.

Can speak for a friend as well: he never played 1v1 because taking care of everything everywhere on the map by himself is just to much for him. So he only plays 2v2 or larger team games.

• BO advantages can be massive and can be caused through BO whoring or just dumb luck (both players improvise BO, but one happens to get a good BO by chance, or happens to win the rock-paper-scissor mechanics BOs can have in 1v1: aggressive vs greed vs passive)

• "Minor" (non-)interactions like a lab finding an engineer VS missing it, a bomber only barely grazing past ur scout's radar range and proceeding to do game-winning damage, an interceptor losing a 1v1 to another interceptor, a transport only barely (not) landing, or a proxy that went unscouted for a little too long, can cause massive impacts on the game. This makes earlygame sometimes come down to pure luck

I enjoy 1v1 once it gets past minute 5-8 with even odds. Sadly this occurs very rarely and it can be seen from the fact that tons of the semi-competent ladder replays are around 15 minutes in duration (and this is ignoring time added by players continuing to play in a lost position)

@mach said in How come you don't play ladder?:

teamgames provide stability for game to get played to its fuller potential unless you are a pro that can do all of this solo while having fun doing it, it kind of seems you need to have "minimum mastery over the game" to be able to enjoy 1v1, and it seems pretty high

i agree with this too. im ~2k in 1v1 and I can only play close to full potential on 10km. Playing 15km or larger makes me feel like I'm doing a terrible job at everything. It also increases the odds of these minor interactions with potentially massive results that i was talking about earlier.
That's just personal preference though, and i do not suggest removing >10km maps from ladder.

My music isn't good enough for ladder.

Lack of 2k+ ladder players, lack of highly intensive macro 20x20 maps and main reason is depression after underperfoming badly, its the endless cycle of motivation to play and unrust to get good again > play only once bad > get depression > never play again so never unrust > back to sentons and other chill games

Because it's scary. In 8vs8, I can at least hide in a corner.

@waffelznoob said in How come you don't play ladder?:
sive vs greed vs passive)

i agree with this too. im ~2k in 1v1 and I can only play close to full potential on 10km. Playing 15km or larger makes me feel like I'm doing a terrible job at everything. It also increases the odds of these minor interactions with potentially massive results that i was talking about earlier.
That's just personal preference though, and i do not suggest removing >10km maps from ladder.

100% agree. I really don't enjoy maps like the ditch or whatever where there's simply way too much stuff to pay proper attention to anything. Even 10x10 maps are really hard to optimize in 1v1. Playing something like ditch, painted desert, etc. (even much less egregious examples) requires a total paradigm shift in playstyle where you ignore any efficiency optimizations and choose dumb strats like spamming t1 bombers in every corner of the map or hiding random proxy bases to tax enemy apm.

I get that some people really like that kind of thing so it may never happen, but I would prefer if maps like that were not included in ladder or tournys and were just reserved for some meme custom games.

Naturally I have very similar, but opposite, opinions about 5x5 maps.

I do play ladder but Ill respond anyways. When you loose in a 1v1 game, you only have yourself to blame. Alternative is to deny that and blame it on stuff like BO's, faction difference, map, etc etc. But in the end you can't fool yourself and get frustrated.

That is a big part of what makes 1v1 feel more competitive and stressful than teamgames and it's partly the reason why some people don't play it. Also 1v1 requires more attention and working memory from the player than teamgames.

That said, this thread may accidentally imply to people that ladder is somehow less played. It really isn't. It's actually a quite popular matchmaker and has been that way for years. That said it is true that the 2k+ bracket has all but died out. Prob because there is very few streamers playing or casting high level ladder the past 1 to 2 years or so, which induced a vicious circle of fewer high level players playing > longer que times > even fewer players playing.

I play 1v1 ladder and intentionally keep my rank below 400 to keep it low stress....lol

This thread is terrible and it's actually featured on the news page of the FAF client-- why? It gives the wrong impression that ladder is unpopular, which is totally not true, but some people might just see the title and figure it's not worth queueing since apparently nobody plays it.

This thread is great, it brings different povs on an existing problem, so i'd keep away comments like yours about it being terrible

Perhaps the very wrong target audience, because I do actually play ladder, but I do have a gripe.
It feels like I meet the same four people all the time. Unless someone specifically queues against me, I tend to have four matches versus the same dude in a day.

1v1 are also highly taxing and require a lot more focus and attention span than many other game modes because you are responsible for everything, there's no ally to bail you out if you screw up. Everything is on your shoulders.
Personally I would enjoy seeing more mapgens purely because it can be frustrating to play on a mappool set that my brain just goes "nope" on, but I feel as if the inverse is also true, where mapgen can screw with a persons "how to play game" thought process.

1v1 ladder tends to be more stressful and intense than I'd prefer. Also, I find the gemeral amount of t1 tank-focused gameplay on 1v1 ladder to be far higher than my preference. I would play way more ladder if there was a mapgen-only queue for it.

Btw, I think a lot of the disagreement over the level of importance of BO's might have to do with different people having different definitions of what a BO is. I think some people mean BO in the sense of a very specific build order that is done for several minutes of the game, while some people just mean a relatively specific build order for the first 1-4 minutes, while some others might just mean the general level of familiarity and understanding of a map that a player typically gets after playing it a few times.

Personally, the first time that I play a map that I haven't seen before, I generally perform notably worse on it than the 5th time that I play it, and I'll generally play even better on it by the 10th time, etc. I think that's normal. I think a lot of the people saying BO don't mean precise BO's in the sense that a 2k+ player might mean, but instead just mean that general level of familiarity and understanding of how to play the map and various details regarding its meta and such that normally develops after a few games on it.

@rezy-noob

"It's too stressful for my ego" and "I don't like the concept of a build order" are not real fixable problems

"There aren't any/enough people at my rank level" or "map pool sucks" are fixable problems but they're not going to be fixed by scaring more people away from 1v1 ladder

@zeldafanboy said in How come you don't play ladder?:

This thread is terrible and it's actually featured on the news page of the FAF client-- why? It gives the wrong impression that ladder is unpopular, which is totally not true, but some people might just see the title and figure it's not worth queueing since apparently nobody plays it.

Well, the reason why it was promoted on FAF news is because I asked them to. No bribes or special deals for me - I asked and I got it.

That being said, I wanted to obtain some data from normal average Joe players and veterans, and it is my best odds of reaching both sides.

Furthermore, this not only helps me get valuable data but also helps balance teams, map makers, client developers, and plenty of others to understand some underlying root causes of player diminishment from ranked games.

I am not saying that they are evaporating at a rapid pace, but understanding some problems at a larger scale helps with solving them as well.

@penguin_ said in How come you don't play ladder?:

Btw, I think a lot of the disagreement over the level of importance of BO's might have to do with different people having different definitions of what a BO is. I think some people mean BO in the sense of a very specific build order that is done for several minutes of the game, while some people just mean a relatively specific build order for the first 1-4 minutes, while some others might just mean the general level of familiarity and understanding of a map that a player typically gets after playing it a few times.

There is no confusion. If you think it’s “general familiarity” and then cite mapgen as some solution to this “general familiary bo problem” you are beyond delusional. I said it before in the discord:

If we had some dude go crybaby mode in the training channel about how he NEEDS map gen maps so that his 1st drone rush will be viable against the “bo wins” of hydro rush everyone would clown on him repeatedly. But 2000 rated dudes somehow think they’re above “general familiarity” learning and that their loss due to failing in long term scale is some ethereal “bo loss” that is different from this dude they would have no issue poking fun at.

Map gen solves issues of Tagada-tier BO farming ie what he said with his badlands sandbox. It does not solve realizing what mex/reclaim distribution makes matter and how to not gas your first 5 minutes. Luckily, you don’t see such BO gameplay except in tournaments with a serious prize. Ladder, whether premade or random maps, does not have much of any difference in prep between the two types of maps.

I asked Yudi how far his Ditch BO goes and he doesn’t even go beyond the 3rd factory before just winging it. I’m sure if you asked some of the dudes that complain about BO here they would say Yudi simply beat them due to BO and they would totally stand a chance in some ditch-style map gen, though.

Most people would probably have no issue admitting they're worse than Yudi, though. I guess the bigger BO loss conundrum is dudes losing to people they think they are better than and there surely cannot be a reason that needs more introspection than simple BO loss. As many people mentioned before, it's a lot easier to blame shit team in teamgames and so you do not see "BO loss gg" in teamgames like you do in ladder, where that excuse is removed and so you are left with pure copium instead. Funny enough, a lot of the higher-rated people here who complain about BOs are also dudes who follow the advice that you shouldn't blame your team for teamgame losses but look at how you could have carried games when you're looking to improve in that environment. But I guess BO stuff is different.

I played a few ladder games many years ago, but competitive RTS just isn't my cup of tea. Too stressful, I can't focus on everything at once and I tend to micro/macro badly. All of these things would be solved with practice but I haven't taken the time to do it yet, so for now I either play against the AI or watch ladder replays, and realise that I don't suck that bad. Not so long ago I saw a 800 guy stalling on mass before he even finished his first mex, started three mexes and a factory at once, and waited like 30 seconds before realising he should send an engie to reclaim the 75+ wrecks by his base, then proceeded to cancel everything but his second factory and stall again.

So yeah, if I'm going to get this kind of opponent I might just give it a try, but chances are I'd become that very guy if I get too anxious. Over a game, yes.

since everyone else is talking about build orders

the problem with build orders is if your build order isn't as good as your opponents, which is different on every specific map (oh you missed 1 reclaim wreck here, you didn't take this path but a longer one, you should have sent transport here earlier, etc etc), you will not be starting on even ground and will be at a disadvantage from beginning and for the rest of the game in a constant uphill battle, and next game you will get a different map with different optimal build order that you will fail in a different way for same result

so you have to get past (master) build orders to even start playing the game itself, which are specific to each map, maybe it is more like "openings" in general rather than build orders that I mean, it is not just about what buildings you build but everything else you do in beginning, such as the path your engies take and what/whether they reclaim in between, which definitely isn't the same on every map

all the "pro" players that are saying otherwise are simply too good to notice what they even do in beginning of the game because it is second nature to them and just seems "normal", meanwhile to those that don't it is like their opponent starts better off than them and they have to play catch up instead of the game, all because they didn't memorize what to do in beginning of this specific map

in mapgen (didn't play yet so idk) it seems this is removed because no one knows where mexes or reclaim will be to have a predefined optimal opening for the specific map (because it never existed before) to gain immediate advantage over someone who doesn't, they both have to figure it out on the fly instead of one of them going "ok I should take this path with this engi, don't forget to send a raid to here, no one expects it, this path with this engi, reclaim these wrecks in between..." while other goes "what even is this map, I better expand here, oh wait there were wrecks in other direction, where did those labs come from?..."

Of course people know the predefined opening for the specific map gen. These are map gen maps. They are not complicated maps with specific reclaim timings anywhere near some premade maps. You can just watch tons of 1800+ or 2000+ map gen games and see people maintain parity in macro because they are aware of the correct moves to macro properly (or too bad to notice the 3000 rated way to macro better). If you can’t keep up in macro you lose the game, that’s what everyone teaches new players and it’s why they first learn how to get to 3 factories without stalling when being trained. If you can’t scale up and keep pace, even 10k mass in selens will kill you. Apply that to map gen and anybody that can’t keep up in macro will lose rating, but it just doesn’t happen.

The BO stuff you're talking about is exactly what is still present in map gen. Pros do things second nature because they have thousands of hours and can just know what a terrain/mex setup will do for the game state. Combine that with knowledge of how games work in low player and high player counts. That means they pick the correct start whether it's all in t1 spam, super early t2 mex, quick drop, quick ACU move, or what. Nobody has 30 15 minute BOs in their brain, they just know the way a map is going to play. Or they know what they need to do a specific play because they’ve done it before on maps whether in term of game state or eco.

The extent of BO that exists in ladder, or frankly just about any teamgame that isn't dual gap or senton (not that these BOs are insanely difficult or essential to know to be relevant even in a 2k+ lobby) is basically that far in term of "set up knowledge." If you account this as BO, then map gen has the equivalent level of BOs. If you don't, then neither map gen nor essentially any ladder game has BOs.

It just comes down to whether you think learning the game's mechanics is just another way of saying BO (where both map types have these BOs, because it's still the same game) or if it doesn't count as BO because it's impulsive moves in the moment (where again, both map styles have it since nobody is tryharding the shit out of ladder). The times where a difference exist is essentially tournaments farming out sandboxed BOs because of a map pool release 2 weeks prior to the event and it having the money to warrant the pain of doing it.

Just ask yourself if anybody is going 1st drone or some other totally worthless opening on map gen. No? That’s already “bo knowledge” and as you get higher in rating, the more false choices you are able to recognize and avoid. I do not define that part of the game as BO.