For tl;dr terms, some people like to associate higher skill as being better than having lower skill. However, when it comes to games, people can enjoy high or low skills, the functional concern is the relative reward for the relative skill. How well does a game encourage its players to excel?
Part of the issue for HoTS over the years is that it hasnât had the desired levels of reward-to-skill. Some of that is seen in the team xp/share, or getting dragged down my the lowest skill player â or the reverse in demanding to carry â the quality of concern isnât specifically the skill, or specifically the reward, but the interaction between the two.
One of the hardest things for a game is to lower the reward yield a player receives. IF there is a disproportion between reward and skill, lowering the reward is seen as a bad thing even if it brings it overall into a better yield for the expected level of âskillâ for a game. So if the reward is already at a certain value, it can feel better to âraiseâ the skill needed to earn that reward instead.
(though for players that donât rise to the gap chance, itâll still feel like a loss of reward to them)
Per example, but as an aside, I do follow some events for speedgaming; when I spectate something, I like to watch things that I donât want to put the time into developing myself. Super Metroid is a strong speed running game and a solid number of categories played have a good balance between skill needed per reward received such that its appealing to play, and appealing to watch. However, some categories allow tricks that make âbeating the gameâ easier, and faster, but itâs too ârewardingâ per the skill to use that itâs not as enjoyable to watch. Similarly, there are lots of tricks that are very difficult to use, but they donât save enough time to be worth learning to do them, so they lack rewards to incentive players to learn them outside of a showcase demo.
So on two different spectrums (spectator and player) there can be imbalances between skill and reward for that skill.
A good chunk of HoTS game had a bad design dip that overly rewarded the wrong things. While adjusting some of those things has made things âhealthierâ for the game, many players see a diminished reward and not a ratio-to-reward relation.
While it could feel better to have a higher skill gap, the concern is that the reward relative to that skill gap needs to be better. Some heroes are ârewardedâ for mindlessly spamming abilities and people only âsucceedâ because they can try that many more times compared to other picks.
As such, some people only ever learn to use abilities because theyâre up, not because itâs the right time to use them. Resource management is a key element for trying to offset mindless rotations, and unfortunately, enough heroes have gone without sufficient consequences for their skill spam that it then makes other heroes look bad by comparison.
Zarya isnât really a âhardâ or âskilledâ hero, but she has clear lines on when sheâs rewarded. She could use her abilities at any given time, but if its not at the right time, she wonât soak damage, build energy, and generate the numbers she needs to contribute. In that regards, she has a good indicator for application of effort and the indicators for rewarding that. Players that donât learn the âskillâ to use opportunities well end up energy starved and become dead weight.
Part of the issue of say, Genji, is that while some call it hard to succeed with him, heâs really not a hard hero to use: he gets rewarded for chain-spamming his combo and just getting back out. As such, enough players get enough a ârewardâ to mindlessly go in, use everything & run, that it drags the performance of the hero down. The relative power of his kit is not design well-enough to incentivise the right kind of reward for the skill needed to earn it.
As a consequence, he oscillates between âtoo goodâ (invalidating other heroes) or âtoo badâ and becomes a direct liability.
So in that way, some of the âloweringâ of the skillgap had hurt some of the design elements and end up rewarding the wrong stuff, and it teaches bad habits to players rather than incentivise better play.
The âgapâ can be reduced, but the challenge, skill to meet the challenge, and reward, should carry the right kind of balance. Thatâs part of why aram brawls can seem that much more appealing than say QM, the relative skill demand and reward for that demand have a better balance than other rewards.
Given the movie reveal for announcing hots (with characters just duking things out 1v1 all over) had the game released with aram/brawl instead of QM, it would have matched the visual expectation from that video better than the objective-driven gameplay. Thatâs part of why some players just âbrawlâ it out in mid: itâs what they wanted to do in the first place cuz thatâs how they saw the game.
