ENT Gaming

Does anyone still play this game?

I'm interested to know since I used to be able to play this game non-stop without getting bored, as it was challenging, entertaining, and rewarding at the same time. So does anyone still play this game as their primary game anymore or do you just play once in a while or have you stopped completely? Also why?

?
yes

I still play, its fun.

How many games per week, and for how long have you played that much?

Yeah I still play ID as my primary game. I think I play about 30 ID games a week if I'm not playing much, and maybe 70 games in a week if I'm playing a lot.

Now that IRL is getting busier and I've just started playing borderlands 2, I'm taking a bit of a break, and FMH is co-chiefing. I'm seriously thinking about quitting the elo farm life and becoming a casual inhouse player and transferring to completely dead like all my oldie brethrens not because of IRL things, but because of my dislike of the new updates. I have all the trust in FMH running clan BTI and keeping the inhouse count up since he is a very active player.

-Burn

As the game changes people will naturally leave, it's an old game and that's just the way of the internet.

Island Defense is still one of the most entertaining maps I've ever played, whether it is 4.x.x or 309d. It's just that pub games are terrible at the moment.

I'll still play inhouses, I still have the most fun playing inhouses. Hit me up when you guys play on skype/steam (PM me if you want this). Also, I won't play for elo on 4.x.x until we get better rules for balance, like making default mode to be -br, not -brfroff.

-Burn

I still play, but I also have an extremely busy life. I work year round and go to school full time, which is a bummer because I can never make IH in the middle of a saturday, but usually still find a couple days a week to play. 5-10 games a week is the norm, if I have time 30 games a week is probably not out of the question.

There's still quite a bit of activity in ID during US prime times, and you can usually be in a game with only 5-10 minutes of wait if you're pub queing for a solid 4-6 hours. Later at night (after midnight PST basically) games are pretty hard to come by, and I've seen empty lobbies at this time for 3-5 hours.

I would agree with Burn that pub games are pretty terrible at the moment. The matches are extremely polarized; the games either end with the Titan stomping or the Builders stomping, which in turn decreases the level of fun for pubs, which results in less pubs. It also doesn't help that all the good players dodge good titans, resulting in a higher amount of good titan v. terrible lobby games, as well as stacking lobbies and trashing pub titans. Although this has been a phenomena in ID for years (from what I've been told), with a decreased playerbase it becomes a more significant impact on the community when all the good players are consistently playing against the crippling pub player pool. Most likely, though, the game is just losing players because it's getting old, but there are certainly plenty of us that enjoy playing (especially at a high level when people are playing well, ID is almost unmatched in fun when the game is close).

ShadowZz wrote:As the game changes people will naturally leave, it's an old game and that's just the way of the internet.

thats like shooting someone in the head and saying its only natural to die someday

No it's not, it's really not lol...... It's a custom game that is over 8 years old on a game that is over 12 years old. The fact that it still exists at all is a miracle that we seem to forget quite often. Considering how many popular Wc3 custom games have died out which were more popular than ID back in the day (Vamp Zero for example) it's really not surprising that the quality of games and the amount of players will slowly decrease. It's a shitty truth but it's a truth none the less.

I play it time to time but busy playing WoW atm, its hard to get that R1 Keepo. I feel theres nothing to do in ID anymore for me, i got burned out as you say.

I agree with shadowzz 100%, it really is amazing that we still have island defense around and fairly well, many other players in the wc3 community don't get to play their favorite customs anymore.

wastedlandering wrote:The matches are extremely polarized; the games either end with the Titan stomping or the Builders stomping, which in turn decreases the level of fun for pubs, which results in less pubs.

Agreed, I've been saying this for a long time too.

wastedlandering wrote: It also doesn't help that all the good players dodge good titans, resulting in a higher amount of good titan v. terrible lobby games, as well as stacking lobbies and trashing pub titans. Although this has been a phenomena in ID for years (from what I've been told),

dodging is new with 4.0.0 but stacking is old yeah. I'd say people dodge because they have no way of dealing with the titan as a builder no matter how much they tryhard since the skill ceiling is so low.

ShadowZz wrote:No it's not, it's really not lol...... It's a custom game that is over 8 years old on a game that is over 12 years old. The fact that it still exists at all is a miracle that we seem to forget quite often. Considering how many popular Wc3 custom games have died out which were more popular than ID back in the day (Vamp Zero for example) it's really not surprising that the quality of games and the amount of players will slowly decrease. It's a shitty truth but it's a truth none the less.

welp, at least 5 of my DotA 2 friends would have continued playing Island Defense if the version would've kept being enjoyable for them. So I'd say Guntrolls analogy is pretty accurate. Sure, it's cool to still have ID left, but that is because it is such an unique and enjoyable game, but I really do think it is sad that it doesn't live up to it's true potential that ID is capable of having.

lordmillt wrote:I feel theres nothing to do in ID anymore for me, i got burned out as you say.

This is exactly me, I feel so limited in Island Defense with the skill cap/ceiling being so low. It limits all the possible strategies into a few, what was once a game of infinite possibilities is now far more restricted.