EPThttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxx55e1ZQCY
For those needing a refresher (or a summary), Day[9] talks about a hypothetical game being designed where points are scored by hitting posts with a thing – a frisbee or baseball. (In fact, he's basically talking about some super-complicated team golf-type game.) Day[9] suggests that he finds Brood War units more "frisbee-like" because there end up being more options to accomplish a goal which he says leads to having more options for goals.
I keep wondering if he got that backwards.
If you can throw a frisbee, you can put slice on it with barely any effort. Most of us probably threw the thing with a curve before we managed to straighten it out, and re-learning that with control isn't that big a problem. Distance, trick throws – at least a decent handful of them – are fairly easy to pick up.
Throwing a consistent curveball with a baseball, on the other hand, is a bit of a pain. Now let's consider what else you can do with a frisbee other than throw it a bunch of different ways.
Considering...
Considering...
...well, you try playing a game of baseball with a frisbee, and tell me how it goes. Sure, when it comes to throwing, a frisbee presents more options. If you tried to play ultimate with a baseball, it would be stupid. But when it comes to integrating one of the things into a game with more complicated goals – our projectile is now a "unit" – the baseball wins. Why? Well, there are really two reasons.
The first is simplicity. The design of the baseball demands almost no concessions when we do whatever we're doing with it. It's round, and that's about it. Round things work well for a variety of purposes due to the laws of physics. It's compatible with a ton of purposes.
The second is difficulty. Day[9] talked about the "physicality" of objects, but when it comes down to it the raw ability to "do more" with a frisbee doesn't produce the same difference in skill level as does the necessity to "do more" with a baseball in order to succeed. I can produce a pretty good imitation of almost anything any "pro" can do with a frisbee; but I throw curveballs by accident even when I'm trying, and attempting to throw a knuckleball is pretty much a joke.
So what does this really have to do with Starcraft? One more detour – I'm getting there.
It never hurts when talking about strategy games to talk about chess. Sure, it's overdone and borders on the facileness of political arguments that can't avoid Hitler, but for good reason: it's got all the basics and it's ancient.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/HJSms.gif)
You know, this thing.
The difficulty, beauty, and mastery of chess lies in using simple pieces to do very hard things. Beyond a handful of special moves, "spells" in RTS parlance – the en passant capture, castling, pawn's first move, and the eighth rank upgrade – and one piece with an "ability" – the knight's jump – each piece is absolutely limited to one possible type of movement. (Except the queen, and that forces her to be treated very carefully.)
To try to make a "Neo Chess" with a wider variety of pieces and properties would run a huge peril of damaging the simple genius of the game. To take an absurd example, we could add a piece ability "can put opposing king in check" – jump to wherever on the board that would be necessary to do it. But it radically simplifies a basic task of the game, which would quite arguably weaken game play.
I call this the principle of limitation: the greatest skill difference becomes apparent when operating on things which can't do it all. The queen cannot win the game by herself except at the lowest levels of play. I can drop a ball in a hole as well as anybody else, but make me do it with a golf club and I'll be honest I've never golfed in my life.
So I've rambled on at length about how Day[9] actually got his analogy backwards, but that's really nit-picking. After all, I would tend to agree with his general conclusion that SC2 doesn't present the same kind of difficulty in many places as Brood War did and may have a lower relative skill ceiling.
But I really think he got the analogy backwards because of why I think SC2 has looked "simpler" even beyond the streamlining of the controls. Here's an example of what I'm talking about: the example I've chosen – there are others – is the Terran add-on mechanics in the two games.
As conceived, the add-on is a brilliant "limitation" on production combining all the traditional features of the tech tree with the feel of the race overall. But consider how the mechanics play out in the two games.
In Brood War, each building with an add-on – Command Center, Barracks, Factory, Starport, Science Facility – has its own unique add-on with its own properties, choices, and limitations. (The CC and Science Facility have two possibilities each, no less.) While it doesn't come across as at all odd, this design is limitation. Any new tech choice – shop for mines vs. vultures now, say – forces a new choice.
In contrast, Starcraft II brings us (mostly) interchangeable addons (although the limitation-and-choice model does prevail with the Command Center). The result is, of course, more "options" at any given point in the game – granted you may briefly give up the ability to make tanks (say) in order to pump banshees, but there is not the limitation choice "cloak+extra time till the next wraith or wraith now" but rather the choice of possibilities "banshee or tank". (Though obviously it would be possible to postpone a tech lab until you got the starport up, but why?)
To go back to the Day[9] analogy, Starcraft II has upped the number of possible throws, but it does feel like there's been a degrading much of the potential skill differential. Consider the relative difficulty of executing a 2 port wraith build vs 2 port banshee (is that actually a thing? I'm assuming it is, but I really only watch MLG and if it's not then insert >>standard banshee harass-based build<<). If nothing else the simple time difference of building a new add-on vs having an add-on already makes the SC2 build easier (to say nothing of the relative damage). Obviously the add-on differences aren't the sum of the difference – MBS, auto-mine, and other things (it seems like early game Terran is either more defensible or techs faster (even without the add-on change) or both in Starcraft II) contribute to the relative degree of difficulty.
It's not necessarily the case that this is actually a problem with Starcraft II so much as just one more element of strategy to be incorporated into our understand as the game progresses – possibility choices rather than tech choices, not really different from do-I-build-tanks-or-vultures. There certainly seems to be enough depth to the game that, if balance properly, it will survive the additions and find all the micro potential that will eventually make this point look kind of silly. I mean, if you want to depress yourself, go watch Boxer win games with like ten units total and realize that was revolutionary because he was effective with those dropships. (Alternatively you can find it amazing how far our understanding of "the RTS scenario" has progressed since then.)
...However, I'm going to say that and then immediately say that I actually think it is a problem at least in the short run. I mean, if I didn't think it was a problem, why would I write this? While I used the example of the add-ons, there are plenty of other examples of the differences – I'm thinking mostly in the spells-and-abilities category – that I may go into if attention warrants.
EDIT: tl;dr: I disagree with application of Day[9]'s analogy (frisbee vs baseball) even though I generally agree with his point (ability to show more skill > less ability to show skill). Most of the rest of the blog is me rambling about how I think it actually applies - I'll edit it up for clarity when I'm not at work.
