Top Players VS Game Mechanics & Features

[kyonides]

I know we usually focus on RPG's and variations of it, but let's see how something that happened to an RTS game might also affect RPG's.

Recently, I had a shallow discussion on a discord server on what's happening to an RTS game that doesn't seem to grow. Every so often you find players there talking about quitting, leaving the game for some time or expecting the developers to fix n amounts of features / bugs or else they won't return as full-fledged players. Let's say people have multiple attitudes so it's impossible to make a game that everybody will like. Yet, you go to the store, be it steam or gog, and you read the comments and it's not uncommon to find people complaining about this mechanic, this play mode, etc. (Not to mention some server issues every now and then...)

When you speak to some seasoned player, they always reduce everything to a single point: get good or skill issue.

Games sort of expects you to learn how to play and how to become legendary in that specific game. That sounds normal, right?

Some people only care about the former (like yours truly) because they're casual players for the most part. Yet, some would publish clips to show how lame their defeats or deaths were in that game. Players I'd call game addicts, for a good reason, they play it as if they were small kids eating their favorite candies because they just can't stop playing that. They want to excel in that game and upload videos of how great they've become there, show off their achievements. OK, what player wouldn't?

Thus, getting good shouldn't sound like a bad thing or like people mocking newbies, right?

But what happens when an online game, with some offline modes or features, gets sort of controlled by those guys that claim to be at the top of their rankings? Their domination is so self evident that other players would love to mimic them. So far everything sounds like what happens in every RTS and there should be no surprise at all. Right?

And what happens if I tell you that once you watch them play either live or on youtube?

Well, instead of how to play like a pro, you will soon notice that at least in this specific game they leave out dozens of techs or some other features, they stop building this structure, be it military camps or mines or fisheries and others.

I'm not against specialization. Pick what you like, drop what feels like a burden. So far everything sounds feasible or probably even desirable.

Where I can see a huge problem is the fact that you start reading stuff like "this civilization focuses on building this amount of x building, it doesn't build those others" or "this group creates this military unit but not the other 3 it offers" and even "it picks this amount of technologies / upgrades before ignoring the other tech features for the rest of the game."

OK, in this game you get 21 technologies or upgrades depending on what exactly you pick at that moment. They focus on 3 aspects, actually 4 if you count the warchief or leader and 1 or 2 special units in very specific cases, and they are civilian stuff like health and food or wood production, war stuff like weapon upgrades or feeling safe in your current environment based on a specific condition, and purely economic stuff for making money or reducing your upkeep.

If you pick one tech, the next will cost you more and more and more... You're supposed to increase your tech points generation at some point or let your civilization die trying.

At this point you'd say this is all about picking most of the techs to get the best for your in-game people and go crush the violent wildlife, the mythical critters and of course, your enemies!    

What do you think if at the end of the day being good means that you should forget all about that and pick very few techs in a very specific order?
If you're planning to get to the top and still getting all techs or most of them, you won't make it. Guaranteed. Not even after a year playing that game online. The same will happen if you keep thinking that you can make 3 or 4 types of military units. Nope guys, you won't ever get to top 10 nor top 50 in any mode.

As a side note, I wanna mention that there's also a bothersome mechanic that might not have been inspired by the devs but the seasoned players, be them top players or average ones. It's how to kill certain or all of the neutrals, meaning wildlife or sometimes undead that loves to attack you every now and then. The way they prefer to kill them is to use 2 long ranged units to attack them from one side or the other based on your timing or synching and a normally predictable response from the target's AI. Really you have to spent a couple of minutes doing something as what? stupid? as that to get rid of them without losing your 2 units. What the heck!?

As a side note, I wanna mention that there's also a bothersome mechanic that might not have been inspired by the devs but the seasoned players, be them top players or average ones. It's how to kill certain or all of the neutrals, meaning wildlife or sometimes undead that loves to attack you every now and then. The way they prefer to kill them is to use 2 long ranged units to attack them from one side or the other based on your timing or synching and a normally predictable response from the target's AI. Really you have to spent a couple of minutes doing something as what? stupid? as that to get rid of them without losing your 2 units. What the heck!?

Now what I'm saying here might sound harsh (for casual players) or like c'est la vie (for seasoned multiplayer gamers) and you'd probably be right about it up to some point based on how much you enjoy it or how often you play it. Even so, the point is this: Is that the only way you should play it if you wanna be considered a good or decent player?

So here I've got a couple of questions I want you to answer or discuss here.

• Did the top players hijack the game at this point?
  
• Are they imposing they're own self-written rules on everyone else? (Willingly or unwillingly...)
  
• Is (all of) the players' fault this has become the norm?
  
• Did the game developers make a serious mistake here?
  
• Was it impossible for them to foresee this even after several years of experience spent on developing it?
  
• Or is it a mix of all of the situations I've posted above?
  

There are some other stuff I haven't mentioned so far like tiny changes in certain game modes that makes you think why that very specific thing wasn't mentioned before or has never been updated as of today or Single Player mode & Campaigns having not much in common with Multiplayer mode. Nonetheless, I might leave that out for the time being.
Let's focus on what I've exposed here already.