I'm a silver league protoss player. When I heard the GSL was going to be a PvP I was instantly excited because PvP is my worst matchup and I wanted to learn some things.
Like when these players place a gateway... where they place their first pylon... when they drop the robo bay... etc etc... I love watching their builds. When Seed faked out MC in that first game I thought it was amazing. I was so pleased with those finals. I'm a sucker for the underdog and Seed made MC look silly.
Of course, after reading the reaction over on Reddit you'd think Hitler just occupied the Rhineland. There was nothing but distaste from nerds with this weird sense of entitlement.
It makes me wonder if they ever played a macro game... let alone a PvP. As a player I absolutely despise macro games. I like to go all in off two bases, if that fails I'll expand and hope to god they don't counter attack.
Against zerg you pretty much NEED a mothership to win a macro game and you gotta hope for a damn good vortex. And if you hit that vortex you gotta kill kill kill because that army will be up again soon. TvT's are more bearable... in the silver leagues Terran like to mass thors... I guess they're expecting mass void ray... but that one Terran who gets a bunch of Ghosts... all he needs is one good round of EMPs to end you... and then the cloak/snipe of my high templars... so annoying.
I recently watched Liquid vs Prime in the IGN team league. The game was Hero vs Annyang... it went an hour and five minutes... Hero ended up going mass carrier mothership and he mined out like 7 expansions.
For the last 20 minutes it was like "wow, hero's going to lose..." It was so annoying.
From my perspective, surprising your opponent with something he isn't expecting often relies more on luck, but standard macro play focused around a longer game tends to revolve more around skill. The longer the game goes, the better player has more of an advantage, and he has a better chance at outplaying his opponent, so there's less luck involved. Taeja for example plays macro games, and he's insanely good at it whereas someone like MKP tends to cheese a lot and rely on luck to win more of his games than Taeja.
Also the GSL finals were awful IMO. Whoever expanded first lost almost every single game. PvP is really the worst matchup to play/watch
macro games are much more interesting to watch because it shows how the players have prepare the early-mid-late game plan. Multi-prone aggression, storm drops, flanking, how he moves the army to protect the bases that are now spread out, how and when did he get the upgrades, units, expand etc.
It's so much more than just an all-in kill build that either works wonderfully or fail miserably.
not to mention some games are literally mining out the entire map and both players are fighting for just small mineral difference to gain the edge.
Basically the whole luck/skill argument is stupid, I've come to realize over my years of gaming in FPS and RTS that everything is chance, when does your opponent happen to scout, if it's late and your scout is early, well, chance. If he forgets to scout, well, I wouldn't call him unskilled because brain does that shit sometimes. That's just for example.
The appeal of macro games is that they tend to reward the better player more. It stops the game from being a simple Rock/paper/scissors match where Build A beats Build B (11/11 rax vs 3 hatch before pool for example, though definitely not a typical one!) and there wasn't really a chance for either player to play around this and make a comeback. But a macro game (definition, a game that lasts more then 12 minutes) has many decisions worked into it some subtle some a bit bigger and it puts more in control of the individual players.
There's nothing saying you can't learn good PvP from Seed vs MC but from a spectators point of view you won't get something as exciting, generally, from PvP then you do from, say, any of Gumiho's games the night after. Because Gumiho's games were a series of decisions and sick plays rather then someone quickly getting shanked out of the game without really any chance to get anything back.
Managing 5 bases without missing an inject while microing his infestors, his brood lords and running by with lings is much more impressive than some guy doing another cheesy easy to do build hoping for a good coinflip, and lategame has much more variables and possibilites of different situations.
On July 30 2012 02:23 AxUU wrote: Basically the whole luck/skill argument is stupid, I've come to realize over my years of gaming in FPS and RTS that everything is chance, when does your opponent happen to scout, if it's late and your scout is early, well, chance. If he forgets to scout, well, I wouldn't call him unskilled because brain does that shit sometimes. That's just for example.
Or you actually make decisions based on potential timings your opponent can hit. Everything is definitely not chance, precious experience will allow you to make better decisions instead of doing random stuff and hoping for the best.
On July 30 2012 02:06 Mattson wrote: I'm a silver league protoss player. When I heard the GSL was going to be a PvP I was instantly excited because PvP is my worst matchup and I wanted to learn some things.
Like when these players place a gateway... where they place their first pylon... when they drop the robo bay... etc etc... I love watching their builds. When Seed faked out MC in that first game I thought it was amazing. I was so pleased with those finals. I'm a sucker for the underdog and Seed made MC look silly.
Of course, after reading the reaction over on Reddit you'd think Hitler just occupied the Rhineland. There was nothing but distaste from nerds with this weird sense of entitlement.
It makes me wonder if they ever played a macro game... let alone a PvP. As a player I absolutely despise macro games. I like to go all in off two bases, if that fails I'll expand and hope to god they don't counter attack.
Against zerg you pretty much NEED a mothership to win a macro game and you gotta hope for a damn good vortex. And if you hit that vortex you gotta kill kill kill because that army will be up again soon. TvT's are more bearable... in the silver leagues Terran like to mass thors... I guess they're expecting mass void ray... but that one Terran who gets a bunch of Ghosts... all he needs is one good round of EMPs to end you... and then the cloak/snipe of my high templars... so annoying.
I recently watched Liquid vs Prime in the IGN team league. The game was Hero vs Annyang... it went an hour and five minutes... Hero ended up going mass carrier mothership and he mined out like 7 expansions.
For the last 20 minutes it was like "wow, hero's going to lose..." It was so annoying.
What is the appeal of macro games?
By analogy, you are describing the opening moves and beginning of the midgame of a chess game. Anyone who likes chess would find these things quite interesting, but not as interesting as a particularly devious move later in the game, or a very surprising sequence whose outcome is far removed from expectation.
So, the appeal of a macro game is the potential for unusual things to happen. However most people don't appreciate the details, as they should. So good for you. =)
And a million devious unexpected things can happen in the first 5 minutes of a starcraft game, but the herds of "macro game" sheep have no concept and therefore no awareness of it.
There's a thread that gets linked often when this viewpoint comes up, I'll try to find it. It's about how a "real" macro game is when both players fight fucking hard from the opening stages and anyone could die at any time. But through their determination and guile, they find themselves locked in an epic struggle that culminates with repeated and concurrent large scale engagements. Finally the scale tips and one players emerges bloody and victorious. That is a macro game, and qq about short games is complete bullshit. ^^
The appeal is playing a solid overpowering style that has no weaknesses and doesn't rely upon your opponent making a mistake.
In short it's the appeal of playing optimally. Of course calculated risks are a really important part of competitive gaming too, but it is necessary to have a backbone of solid play you can fall back on.
On July 30 2012 04:02 Kashll wrote: The appeal is playing a solid overpowering style that has no weaknesses and doesn't rely upon your opponent making a mistake.
In short it's the appeal of playing optimally. Of course calculated risks are a really important part of competitive gaming too, but it is necessary to have a backbone of solid play you can fall back on.
There is no such thing as a style that has no weaknesses, or you have a fucking boring game.
The appeal of macro games is that it can go back and forth and remain tense for a long time.
All-in at its best: Super tense, is he going to hold? Eyes glued until the end, then GG. All-in at its worst: He attacks, he steamrolls or gets steamrolled, GG.
Macro at its best: 5+ base vs. 5+ base, huge army confrontations, rarely used units (Battlecruisers, Motherships, Carriers, Thors, Ravens, etc.), multi-prong harass, back and forth action, multiple battles since the armies get replenished really fast, maybe some insane base race action. Macro at its worst: Boring for 20 minutes, one battle, GG.
A good macro game has the potential to be 1000x more interesting than any all-in. Not all macro games are interesting.
Personally, I think the ideal Bo7 series would contain 2-3 all-ins (1-2 from each player, and the all-ins should be Pimpest Play material, think of Boxer's Reaper Hellion Medivac), 2-3 decent macro games, and game 7 should be an epic ultra lategame macro game that's remembered forever.
On July 30 2012 02:23 AxUU wrote: Basically the whole luck/skill argument is stupid, I've come to realize over my years of gaming in FPS and RTS that everything is chance, when does your opponent happen to scout, if it's late and your scout is early, well, chance. If he forgets to scout, well, I wouldn't call him unskilled because brain does that shit sometimes. That's just for example.
There's always chances, the point is that the longer the game is, the more "chances" there are. The worse player should make more mistakes on average, so instead of the better player making 1 unlucky mistake and having that end the game, both players make mistakes, but the better player makes fewer mistakes and thus wins in the end.
I think most people will agree they want a good mix and they want many different styles to be viable in every matchup. SC2 has a severe lack of good back and forth 'macro' games, so it makes them more exciting. Well, to be honest, it has a severe lack of good back and forth early game tactics as well. SC2 is dominated by midgame timings and quick dirty all-ins. People have the mind set "I wanna kill him right at this moment" whenever that moment may be, rather than 'I want to get a little advantage and then play out the game to let it grow safely.' Most people have the mentality that a macro game is more likely to support the latter philosophy, and that the game needs to evolve more to support it as a legitimate playstyle.
EPT
