So a recent thread showed us some stats that revealed a stark contrast between Brutal and Brutal+ games played which, if I’m honest, annoyed me a bit as don’t like feeling like I’m in a “minority” player group.
If I remember right there was only 10 or 20k B+ games compared to 200k+ Brutal games.
However, some things occurred to me:
- do weekly mutations count as Brutal games (as they are queued at Brutal difficulty).
- do the stats date back to before B+ was introduced.
- do custom mutation games count as Brutal games (as the difficulty is set to Brutal).
All of these questions probably can’t be answered or might not changed the conclusion all that much (that many more Brutal games are played than Brutal+).
An argument could similarly be made that SC2 Coop is Favoured by casual gamers who just want to play a game that they can win easily and aren’t interested in being challenged or made to feel uncomfortable. Again, this is subjective.
The reason I made this thread is, however, for another reason. Today on Reddit there is a poll checking the prestige completion rate of respondents and only 1/8th of respondents have finished prestiging all commanders and I realised that even as a Brutal++ player (as in, I play Brutal+ or greater, not saying anything about if I play it well!) I’ve recently played some vast amount of Brutal games (and even a few hard and 1 casual) just to finish prestiges which would heavily influence even my stats let alone what it must do for anyone else who doesn’t play B+ as enthusiastically as I do.
So for the 7/8th of Sc2 coop players (Or greater considering reddit readers are probably keener gamers than than average) is it more likely that they’ll play Brutal to level their commander and if they had finished prestiging would they be more likely to play B+?
Another subjective point is that while leveling I was always amazed that I seemed to be usually matched with someone a similar level as I.
So team, what do we think, is there anyway to figure out this answer? Can any game by a sub level 15 commander be removed from the stats? Or mutations and custom mutations games (if they are included)? Would it matter?