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I've been struggling with this question for some time. What is video game skill?
There are many video games out there, and all of them of varying complexity. In all those games, you have top players, you have good players and you have countless noobs. It's easy to argue that "X game takes less skill to play than Y game" but how do you explain that there is still skill stratification?
I remember when WC3 came out there was a lot of hate for it from the SC community. Blizzard made it clear that they wanted to make micro accessible, and the main focus of the game. They did exactly that which led to criticism aimed at WC3 for lacking multitasking and macro. But the game still took skill. The difference between somebody like Moon and a random low ranked Azeroth player was huge. Also, the game wasn't exactly dominated by former SC players, which is what you would predict if it was just easy-mode SC. Just about every good WC3 player was a former SC player, but better SC players did not translate to better WC3 players by a longshot.
Then in the WC3 community itself, DotA was viewed as something for the dumb masses. A game that threw away all the micro needed to play WC3 and condensed it to just managing 1 hero. On it's face, the argument that DotA takes less skill seems rock solid. But somehow, DotA still took skill. You couldn't just be good at WC3 and then say "oh, well I'm just going to drop down to DotA and dominate". The top DotA players were not WC3 pros. Many were good, I don't think any were exceptional at WC3. Somehow, what was skill for WC3 did not directly translate to what is skill for DotA.
This is just one story of progressive "simplification". From SC, where micro, macro and multitasking were all important, to WC3 where it was mostly micro, to DotA where it was just microing one hero. Despite all the apparent simplification, the differences between the best and the average are there. Why?
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My interpretation is this:
The best SC:BW players would do relatively well in DotA, given a month of practice time, but the best DotA players, with the same conditions, wouldn't be anywhere near the best SC:BW players.
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On January 15 2011 14:41 Coagulation wrote:
apples and oranges
Well, maybe the DotA part is a bit of an orange to your apple. But you can tell a story of apparent simplification in many ways. You can do SC->SC2, Dawn of War->DoW II. Or you can do Homeworld->Homeworld 2, Counter Stike->CS:Source, Quake3->Quake4, AoE2->AoE3. These are only the obvious direct descendant cases. There are also many chains of simplification you can make in the same genre for similar-looking games. The point is that everyone says how the future games take less and less skill to play, but you see all these new games get top players, too. These top players manage to beat other top players and consistently win. These top players are also often not the top players from the game that supposedly took more skill.
How does this happen?
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Isnt the best Hon clan a bunch of sc1 players? I belive testie is in it and he claimed that HoN/Dota was not nearly as hard as sc1
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HoN/Dota/LoL don't really require as much skill imo but they do require knowledge and understanding. You really have to think about your team make-up/lane combos/ganking strategies/what items to get in relation to your farm etc... If you have two teams with equal knowledge of the game then it ends up being a close match . And yeah SC uses more multitasking than WC3 but then you could argue WC3 requires perhaps more precision and fine mouse movements in order to micro better.
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Dota is irrelevant because it's not a 1 on 1 match. Team games are completely different.
I do think the progression from Starcraft to Warcraft III is much easier than the reverse, and that the progression to Dota 1v1 matches would be extremely easy for any decent player of either.
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No, it's not necessarily the best team. But they're a top team, for sure. I only knew that Testie played SC, nothing about the others. In any case, he wasn't so scary in DotA. Which is really what I'm trying to understand. Where is the skill in games? You'd think if DotA was so easy, he would have been out there steamrolling all top DotA teams given how good he was at SC. But that did not happen. So is there some other reason for it, or is there more to skill than meets the eye?
The best SC:BW players would do relatively well in DotA, given a month of practice time, but the best DotA players, with the same conditions, wouldn't be anywhere near the best SC:BW players.
Well how could you measure this? I can believe that there are a lot more bad DotA players than there are bad SC players, so you can certainly improve more with respect to the average player. But does a SC player get closer to matching the skills of a pro DotA player than a DotA player gets to matching the skills of a pro, non-Korean SC player?
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On January 15 2011 15:12 meaculpa wrote: No, it's not necessarily the best team. But they're a top team, for sure. I only knew that Testie played SC, nothing about the others. In any case, he wasn't so scary in DotA. Which is really what I'm trying to understand. Where is the skill in games? You'd think if DotA was so easy, he would have been out there steamrolling all top DotA teams given how good he was at SC. But that did not happen. So is there some other reason for it, or is there more to skill than meets the eye? Show nested quote +The best SC:BW players would do relatively well in DotA, given a month of practice time, but the best DotA players, with the same conditions, wouldn't be anywhere near the best SC:BW players. Well how could you measure this? I can believe that there are a lot more bad DotA players than there are bad SC players, so you can certainly improve more with respect to the average player. But does a SC player get closer to matching the skills of a pro DotA player than a DotA player gets to matching the skills of a pro, non-Korean SC player?
Dota is a hard game to determine skill by due too it being a team game. It is also very chaotic with many varibles affecting a battle. Dota is not a good game for this kind of discussion -.-
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As for DotA, I think skill lies in knowing extremely subtle things about the game. ks^int's KuroKy is a good example of just how much you can pull off
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Does skill even really depend on the game? It seems that no matter what game, so long as the developers try to balance it somehow, you end up skill in the game. The simpler some of the major things become, the more important the subtle things become. So it seems, anyway.
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I used to play a lot of wc3 way back when. During the 1.16 patch, I made it up to 16th place on the useast solo ladder. Now that's not really saying anything, but when I switched to SCBW afterward, I was just a random D+ scrub for months and months. Only ever made it to low C ranking on ICCUP, even when I was playing a lot.
And then in SC2 beta I found myself at the top of a diamond division again.
The games aren't really comparable. SCBW is just plain harder. ICCUP especially was crazy competitive.
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On January 15 2011 15:36 Haemonculus wrote:
I used to play a lot of wc3 way back when. During the 1.16 patch, I made it up to 16th place on the useast solo ladder. Now that's not really saying anything, but when I switched to SCBW afterward, I was just a random D+ scrub for months and months. Only ever made it to low C ranking on ICCUP, even when I was playing a lot.
And then in SC2 beta I found myself at the top of a diamond division again.
The games aren't really comparable. SCBW is just plain harder. ICCUP especially was crazy competitive.
I can agree with that. But was SC harder because SC was just a harder game, or was it harder because ICCUP consisted of the most dedicated SC players who had much more time to practice than you did?
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Skill is 9 parts out of 10 practise.
Someone skilled in parallel bars can't just drop into a single bar competition and expect to start dominating..
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On January 15 2011 16:00 meaculpa wrote:Show nested quote +On January 15 2011 15:36 Haemonculus wrote:
I used to play a lot of wc3 way back when. During the 1.16 patch, I made it up to 16th place on the useast solo ladder. Now that's not really saying anything, but when I switched to SCBW afterward, I was just a random D+ scrub for months and months. Only ever made it to low C ranking on ICCUP, even when I was playing a lot.
And then in SC2 beta I found myself at the top of a diamond division again.
The games aren't really comparable. SCBW is just plain harder. ICCUP especially was crazy competitive. I can agree with that. But was SC harder because SC was just a harder game, or was it harder because ICCUP consisted of the most dedicated SC players who had much more time to practice than you did?
SC is harder because the game is much more punishing on mistakes than other games, and, due to its macro nature, there are a lot more chances to make mistakes..
I think the skill of a game is in how many choices need to be made, how many variables there are. In a game like DotA you control just one unit. In WC3 you control many. In SC you control many plus you are managing an economy.
Obviously natural talent comes into it, such as being able to make decisions quickly, and having fine motor skills (fast fingers). With experience these fast decisions become correct decisions. 100 correct decisions in a row will definitely win you a game of starcraft, even if you are playing Boxer.
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On January 15 2011 16:34 ThunderGod wrote:
Skill is 9 parts out of 10 practise.
Someone skilled in parallel bars can't just drop into a single bar competition and expect to start dominating..
I think this is true. The games focus on different aspects. BW Players practice micro/macro/strats etc. all equally. They're not going to switch games and be more dominant at one of those aspects than players who only practice that the entire time.
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The reasons all sports have great stratification is that there are many many many variables that go into a game. Think of them as stats on an rpg character. To be good at macro in starcraft you need a mouse movement score of 100, a hotkey score of 250, an awareness score of 130, precise clicking, time management, a clear head under pressure, necessary production numbers and the foresight to add/remove them, etc. You can say 'he has good macro' but two identical results don't always come from two identical skillsets.
We expect a starcraft -> warcraft 3 player to be good because he already has a lot of high numbers in common rts stats but he still has a lot to learn because every good game has its own new stats that it doesn't share with any other. As an example, try to think of a game you could play that would help prepare you for tetris. Some things help but really the only way to gain that particular box stacking skill is to actually play tetris.
war3, dota, and starcraft are each like this in their own way. No starcraft player has ever considered item management to be a necessary skill the same way a dota player doesn't care about gold taxes based on upkeep. Each player simply has their skill set and the stratification comes as a result of how they interact with the game and with each other.
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EPT
