My view regarding Destiny's latest statements - Page 7

The reason few people argue is because its pointless.

Casual argument is stupid. Anyone that say LoL is only for casuals are ignorant. It has no anticompetitive elements unlike say brawl or ogermagi.
Easy argument is equally stupid. The simpler a game becomes the more nuances there are and the more unforgiving it becomes.

LoL is a lot less about strategy and more about tactics. It has to do with game design. A game will never be "easier" than another if it has equal or more choices than chess.

On February 08 2012 07:59 hodgestar wrote:
I think when the OP says "LoL takes no skill", he doesn't mean that it literally takes NO SKILL. Even walking takes skill. He just means the skill required to play LoL at a competitive level is very low, and with that I agree.

Destiny, will you go further and claim that BW involves very little strategy and intelligence, as it's pretty much considered a "solved" game in some sense, and mechanical skill is a big deal in it, more so than in sc2?

I'm a fairly highly-ranked chess player, and to everything one can do in a game of chess, I can draw a very straightforward sc2 analogy.
Thing is, mechanical skill in sc2 serves a purpose - executing your strategy correctly.
The better mechanical skill one has, the richer his potential strategy landscape becomes.

Destiny seems to have little understanding of the game (oh god, he thinks it's ok to spam Z-D-Z-D-Z-D when he doesn't know whether he should make drones or zerglings) and his mechanics are really not very good. So yes, I agree he can't really be making such claims. It's like a very young child saying mathematics takes no intelligence because it's only about arithmetic, which is very mechanical in nature.

As someone said before, the game is still severely unexplored and we're still figuring out timings and builds, and are not yet at a level of understanding the game to the point of putting more complex/dynamic strategies into use, without ending up just getting killed by some more basic stuff. We're still figuring out how to play against said basic stuff.

However, even right now at the very high level, we can see things like deep strategic positioning/movement, mind games, calculating many variables several steps ahead and forcing advantageous situations, optimally emphasizing on dynamically created opportunities, and so on.
These alone are deeper and more demanding than whatever is required in LoL. Yes, you could draw analogies to LoL, but each one will be a very simplified form of the starcraft version.

You could argue that cheese is currently too strong and allows, sometimes, forcing a "coin flip" rather than playing an actual game of strategy. but watch how players keep exploring and come up with better and better solutions to cheese, resulting in more macro games. Destiny, would you still stand by your claim if no one ever cheesed in sc2?

Also, don't forget all the strategy that's going on outside the game. When going into a match in the GSL for example, you would probably want to "figure out" your opponent, the metagame, the maps etc, and construct strategies based on that.
You can do things like that even during the game, to a certain extent. Imagine a really sick player playing in a BO5 or BO7, playing the first couple of games in a way directly designed to examine and model his opponent's play style, strengths and weaknesses, so he could use this information to make reads and better counter his opponent next rounds. This actually happens a lot in top-level play (hello NesTea).
Again, you could make some analogies to LoL, and again, they'll be very simplified versions of the sc2 counterparts.

It is important to note that people don't have to come up with "their own" strategies, certainly not on-the-fly, in order for them to actually be considered strategies, they just have to manipulate and modify them on the fly.

From Wikipedia:
Strategy, a word of military origin, refers to a plan of action designed to achieve a particular goal.

By that definition, almost everything you do in sc2 is a strategy.
So, Destiny, would you be so kind to share your evidently made-up definition of the word with us?

That's about strategy. I don't know what you mean by intelligence, please clarify.

On February 08 2012 07:59 Praetorial wrote:


I honestly hope this is sarcasm, b/c what you just described takes skill.

On February 08 2012 08:19 Praetorial wrote:

Do note the highlighted bit.

Have you played the game or just theorycrafting?

On February 08 2012 08:31 Enki wrote:


Still, like many people have already pointed out, it takes far less skill to be competitive in SC2 then in Brood War. Too bad SC2 has so many casual players that it will always be drawing in huge amounts of viewers. Whether or not it actually deserves it doesn't matter. Long as tournaments see all that ad revenue generated by these people they won't stop broadcasting it.

On February 08 2012 02:35 Destiny wrote:
I'm only publically humiliating myself to the vocal minorities that only see 1 game, their legendary Starcraft 2, as the only competitive game in the world. I still think I could defend the statement that LoL (or any MOBA, honestly, especially DotA 2) requires more "skill" in terms of strategy/intelligence, BY FAR, than Starcraft 2.

On February 08 2012 07:59 hodgestar wrote:
I think when the OP says "LoL takes no skill", he doesn't mean that it literally takes NO SKILL. Even walking takes skill. He just means the skill required to play LoL at a competitive level is very low, and with that I agree.

Destiny, will you go further and claim that BW involves very little strategy and intelligence, as it's pretty much considered a "solved" game in some sense, and mechanical skill is a big deal in it, more so than in sc2?

I'm a fairly highly-ranked chess player, and to everything one can do in a game of chess, I can draw a very straightforward sc2 analogy.
Thing is, mechanical skill in sc2 serves a purpose - executing your strategy correctly.
The better mechanical skill one has, the richer his potential strategy landscape becomes.

Destiny seems to have little understanding of the game (oh god, he thinks it's ok to spam Z-D-Z-D-Z-D when he doesn't know whether he should make drones or zerglings) and his mechanics are really not very good. So yes, I agree he can't really be making such claims. It's like a very young child saying mathematics takes no intelligence because it's only about arithmetic, which is very mechanical in nature.

As someone said before, the game is still severely unexplored and we're still figuring out timings and builds, and are not yet at a level of understanding the game to the point of putting more complex/dynamic strategies into use, without ending up just getting killed by some more basic stuff. We're still figuring out how to play against said basic stuff.

However, even right now at the very high level, we can see things like deep strategic positioning/movement, mind games, calculating many variables several steps ahead and forcing advantageous situations, optimally emphasizing on dynamically created opportunities, and so on.
These alone are deeper and more demanding than whatever is required in LoL. Yes, you could draw analogies to LoL, but each one will be a very simplified form of the starcraft version.

You could argue that cheese is currently too strong and allows, sometimes, forcing a "coin flip" rather than playing an actual game of strategy. but watch how players keep exploring and come up with better and better solutions to cheese, resulting in more macro games. Destiny, would you still stand by your claim if no one ever cheesed in sc2?

Also, don't forget all the strategy that's going on outside the game. When going into a match in the GSL for example, you would probably want to "figure out" your opponent, the metagame, the maps etc, and construct strategies based on that.
You can do things like that even during the game, to a certain extent. Imagine a really sick player playing in a BO5 or BO7, playing the first couple of games in a way directly designed to examine and model his opponent's play style, strengths and weaknesses, so he could use this information to make reads and better counter his opponent next rounds. This actually happens a lot in top-level play (hello NesTea).
Again, you could make some analogies to LoL, and again, they'll be very simplified versions of the sc2 counterparts.

It is important to note that people don't have to come up with "their own" strategies, certainly not on-the-fly, in order for them to actually be considered strategies, they just have to manipulate and modify them on the fly.

From Wikipedia:
Strategy, a word of military origin, refers to a plan of action designed to achieve a particular goal.

By that definition, almost everything you do in sc2 is a strategy.
So, Destiny, would you be so kind to share your evidently made-up definition of the word with us?

That's about strategy. I don't know what you mean by intelligence, please clarify.

On February 08 2012 01:20 sermokala wrote:
this is a halrious thread. Destiny makes a valid point and instead of refuting it people go into a massive hissy about hows hes lost his passion and lost touch with his viewers even when you can get a dozen pros to back up his statements.

nice first post though.

On February 08 2012 04:18 Xenocide_Knight wrote:

I'm going to save this quote forever, to show all these new sc2 members of the forums, how we BW players and they are not so different. How does it feel having your game threatened by what you deem an inferior game? Count your blessings, at least your competitor isn't mocking your game by solely riding off of its success and cannibalizing your current infrastructure.

Maybe you should go talk to Idra about his opinions on sc2?