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I responded to many of the legitimate criticisms at the bottom of the OP.
On September 13 2012 05:37 FlaShFTW wrote:oh, i reread this and i came across this... Show nested quote +
Hopefully a more stable metagame and more stable list of "best player" should mitigate some of the increased volatility introduced by the addition of more time.
i dont know what this means... its worded weirdly. i dont know if ur saying that bw needs a more stable meta to mitigate, or it already has a stable meta and is mitigating.
Yeah, that was poorly worded. I meant to say that I had increased the time of the data collection for BW from 8 months up to 15 months. That increase in time should increase the volatility and would normally cause normalizing in the data. In turn, I pointed to the more stable meta-game and the more stable list of "best players" in SCBW which should mitigate some of that volatility. Whether or not that is a fair tradeoff is up to you.
On September 13 2012 08:19 Shock710 wrote:+ Show Spoiler +easy game isnt based on winrates....theoretically chess is "solved" by computers into wins or draws. So with its "50%" win rate and tic tac toe also being "50%", does that mean u can put chess and tic tac toe on the same level of easiness...obviously not there are other factors that are included lets say the concept of thinking and predicting moves ahead of time is the subject or "mechanic" while they are essentially the same thing for Chess and TTT chess has more variations and u have a time limit and memory limit of how long u can spend doing this the requirement to think ahead for TTT is lower and much higher in Chess even tho theoretically computers can have every possibility.
The same can be applied to bw mechanics such as macro/rally point in sc2 u want to set rally point and macro? select hotkey of ur all ur production buildings go to point in map and click ur rally is set now u just hit the production unit key a couple of times.
However in bw, its more demanding first remember theres no MBS so u normally have 5-0 or a set of hotkeys devoted to each production building and a screen hotkey such as f2 set over the area of buildings where u cant hotkey(u dont have enough hotkeys) now i want to set a rally point, i must set a screen hotkey for the place i want to rally lets say f3 first part is a bit easy u go to f3 5right click, 6right click,7right click ect thats ur hotkeyed buildings done but the next is a bit trickier u have to go to f2 select a building f3 rally that single building and repeat till all a done, doesnt sound that complicated?
Well u have to do this every time u want to attack,stop attacking, defend, everytime u expand and need to change the rally point, the problem becomes how much time u spend on doing that, sure everyone can do this given enough time but can u do this while applying ur self to the rest of the game. Its more taxing and requires more in the same amount of time as rallying in sc2, there are videos of bw pros doing their rerallying and its amazing u go oooohhh so sexy and smooth, i cant say the same for sc2 rerallys.
This is only one example but also why mutalisk micro is amazing do u really think its just purely the micro that is amazing? well maybe thats because u've spent a bit too much time on sc2. The amazing thing about jaedongs muta micro is he isnt missing a beat with his macro, making buildings, expanding (which are more taxing in apm than in sc2) i'm sure even someone like soO can have the "micro" beauty of jaedong (maybe a bit off) but he would be spending all his time microing the mutalisk and forgetting macro and other such things, which is not what he wants he would rather spend time into macroing which is why his mutalisk micro is not on par with jaedong, which brings me back to the point of Jaedong and his micro when we see him doing that micro we know in the back of our heads wow AND he is keeping up with his macro which is the amazing part. Now in sc2 the concept of that is the same with micro but the OTHER stuff away from the micro requires less hence why the beauty is diminished.
Great post. It highlights the difference between theoretical and reality. Theoretically speaking, Chess should be solvable and thus nobody should get above 50% winrate, the same as Tic-Tac-Toe. However, reality shows something very different. In reality, human beings have a limit on the amount of information they can process within a given timeframe. This limitation of the human brain/body allows certain people to excel at Chess and have vastly superior winrates over other competent players. The skill of the game does indeed show up in winrates.
As I said in one of my responses to criticism, an argument can be made that BW is theoretically harder; however, that argument has no bearing on reality. The reality is that we are limited by human abilities and our human abilities give us just as much ability to excel in SC2 as it did in SCBW. Any lack of need in the mechanics due to "easier macro" or "one control group for everything" has been transferred over to strategy and precise control. And as we see in the data, even if we assume the APM requirements for macro are down, players are putting that extra APM into other things that have an equivalent effect on their ability to win a game.
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The question "Is SC2 an easy Game?" totally depends on your definition of easy.
Everyone answering this question based on their own definition, and on top of that thinks that their answer is the only correct one... so it's pretty pointless.
Even an explaination of easy like "An easy game is one that massive amounts of people can pick up and play at a decent level." doesn't help. Now its the same problem over again. What is a "massive amount" and a "decent level"?
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If top players can separate themselves from the pack and dominate, clearly the game is hard enough.
Starcraft II is not an easy game by any means. People have been practicing 10-12 hours a day everyday for over 2 years and still have not perfected even macro. Whether Brood War was harder or not has no impact on if Starcraft II is a legitimate competitive activity.
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On September 13 2012 09:41 Flip9 wrote:
The question "Is SC2 an easy Game?" totally depends on your definition of easy.
Everyone answering this question based on their own definition, and on top of that thinks that their answer is the only correct one... so it's pretty pointless.
Even an explaination of easy like "An easy game is one that massive amounts of people can pick up and play at a decent level." doesn't help. Now its the same problem over again. What is a "massive amount" and a "decent level"?
You got it twisted, the question is not whether or not the game is easy or not. The question is inquiring about its relative difficulty to BW. And a lot of users have posted their own answer to that question with supported arguments.
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That was one hell of a cool read.
Compared to all other games out there, SC2 is not an easy game.
Compared to BW, it's a little bit easier.
But that's not really saying anything new. I like what everyone's been saying so far.
Also, that atheism vs. God particle picture made me laugh/ facepalm so hard lol.
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Can't argue with those stats, i actually thought about these very things quite a lot and i really expected bw to have a noticable even if not big advantage. Thanks for doing this!
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I don't see the relevance of the stats you presented. Win rates don't only depend on the player but also who they are playing against. For example I played CoD4 competitively and it was always dominated by a few top teams (Pandemic and EG won everything in NA) but I wouldn't argue that CoD4 is harder than sc2 or bw. But if you used the stats in the same way you did you'd conclude it was much harder.
If you actually think sc2 has a similar skill curve to bw you haven't played bw.
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United States10191 Posts
On September 13 2012 09:45 MattBarry wrote:
If top players can separate themselves from the pack and dominate, clearly the game is hard enough.
Starcraft II is not an easy game by any means. People have been practicing 10-12 hours a day everyday for over 2 years and still have not perfected even macro. Whether Brood War was harder or not has no impact on if Starcraft II is a legitimate competitive activity.
we're not saying that sc2 is an easy game, though it kinda is.
we are saying that its nowhere near as challenging as bw.
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On September 13 2012 11:39 FlaShFTW wrote:Show nested quote +On September 13 2012 09:45 MattBarry wrote:
If top players can separate themselves from the pack and dominate, clearly the game is hard enough.
Starcraft II is not an easy game by any means. People have been practicing 10-12 hours a day everyday for over 2 years and still have not perfected even macro. Whether Brood War was harder or not has no impact on if Starcraft II is a legitimate competitive activity. we're not saying that sc2 is an easy game, though it kinda is. we are saying that its nowhere near as challenging as bw.
BW is easy compared to Dune II 
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Yes, the difference between this OP and countless others is evidence and logical deduction. Thank you for restoring my faith in humanity.
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If you can accept that tic-tac-toe, poker, and
running/swimming will not have the same ELO curve
as SC2 or SCBW, then you should be able to
understand that games will have different ELO
curves and your basic argument is flawed. I would
welcome anyone who would like to repeat this data collection for something like Chess or Running to
show how different the curves are.
Tic-tac-toe, poker, and running and so on don't have ELO ratings because they wouldn't fit the game. Games like chess, StarCraft BW and II, LoL, DotA, and so on CAN have an ELO curve because there is a measurable skill level, and it is possible to use mathematics to pinpoint the skill level of a player in relation to other players. Chess should have the same ELO curve or similiar, assuming I understand both chess and rating systems correctly. Fighting games would probably be the kind of game to have the most similiar result due to the kind of game it is. I unfortunately don't have time at the moment to go through enough data to make such a curve, but I'm quite confident that the correlation of the two curves bears no relation to the difficulty of each game.
I should note that I play both games and find BW more difficult to play. This doesn't make it an inherently "better" game, as that is somewhat subjective, but it definitely is harder to play. Note: this doesn't mean that the skill ceiling is higher on either game; but for a person who is new to RTS, when he sits down and plays one or the other game, he will almost certainly find SCII to be easier to play than SCBW.
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Quick poll on opinions here, since the BW fans have come out en masse. This is something I've always been curious about, but never really felt threadworthy.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but even the best BW players had room for improvement in many areas due to the sheer difficulty of the game, something which does not exist in SC2 at the variety BW has.
So is BW better because there is more variety of what to focus on at the limits of human capability? As in, you have more "wiggle room" to do stuff at the highest level, unlike SC2, where at the highest level there isn't much you can do better.
Or is BW better because at the limits of human capability you do better stuff, i.e. reaver micro, muta micro and such.
Note that I am acting under the (accurate) assumption that the skill ceilings in both games are the same: the limits of human capability to play the game.
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United States10191 Posts
On September 13 2012 11:44 DRTnOOber wrote:Show nested quote +On September 13 2012 11:39 FlaShFTW wrote:On September 13 2012 09:45 MattBarry wrote:
If top players can separate themselves from the pack and dominate, clearly the game is hard enough.
Starcraft II is not an easy game by any means. People have been practicing 10-12 hours a day everyday for over 2 years and still have not perfected even macro. Whether Brood War was harder or not has no impact on if Starcraft II is a legitimate competitive activity. we're not saying that sc2 is an easy game, though it kinda is. we are saying that its nowhere near as challenging as bw. BW is easy compared to Dune II
well ive never actually played dune ii so ill take your word for it.
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On September 13 2012 12:34 AnachronisticAnarchy wrote:
Quick poll on opinions here, since the BW fans have come out en masse. This is something I've always been curious about, but never really felt threadworthy.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but even the best BW players had room for improvement in many areas due to the sheer difficulty of the game, something which does not exist in SC2 at the variety BW has.
So is BW better because there is more variety of what to focus on at the limits of human capability? As in, you have more "wiggle room" to do stuff at the highest level, unlike SC2, where at the highest level there isn't much you can do better.
Or is BW better because at the limits of human capability you do better stuff, i.e. reaver micro, muta micro and such.
Note that I am acting under the (accurate) assumption that the skill ceilings in both games are the same: the limits of human capability to play the game.
I would say both there seems to be more variety at high levels of play, the metagame shifts constantly, even without balance patches, and the variation makes it more exciting. Only a few games I've watched in SCII made me as excited as how a lot of SCBW games make me feel. But also just seeing the extraordinary things these players can do with micro, and the way one misclick during micro can end the game right there makes it very tense to watch and to play. It's not that SCII doesn't have those moments, it's that SCBW has more of them, I guess. I like SCII, don't get me wrong, but SCBW, for me personally, is far more exciting to play and watch.
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On September 13 2012 12:37 FlaShFTW wrote:Show nested quote +On September 13 2012 11:44 DRTnOOber wrote:On September 13 2012 11:39 FlaShFTW wrote:On September 13 2012 09:45 MattBarry wrote:
If top players can separate themselves from the pack and dominate, clearly the game is hard enough.
Starcraft II is not an easy game by any means. People have been practicing 10-12 hours a day everyday for over 2 years and still have not perfected even macro. Whether Brood War was harder or not has no impact on if Starcraft II is a legitimate competitive activity. we're not saying that sc2 is an easy game, though it kinda is. we are saying that its nowhere near as challenging as bw. BW is easy compared to Dune II well ive never actually played dune ii so ill take your word for it.
Dune II was the rts ever. There was 1 unit select and the AI was retarded.
Regarding your earlier statement, it almost appears to me as if you don't play video games at all. Sc2 is not easy, whether BW was really that much more demanding mechanically adds nothing to spectator value, or competitive viability.
The fact is, people train 12 hours a day and still basically suck. I agree these statistics don't prove both games are equally difficult, but it proves both games are difficult enough to be legitimately competitive.
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On September 13 2012 12:34 AnachronisticAnarchy wrote:
Quick poll on opinions here, since the BW fans have come out en masse. This is something I've always been curious about, but never really felt threadworthy.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but even the best BW players had room for improvement in many areas due to the sheer difficulty of the game, something which does not exist in SC2 at the variety BW has.
So is BW better because there is more variety of what to focus on at the limits of human capability? As in, you have more "wiggle room" to do stuff at the highest level, unlike SC2, where at the highest level there isn't much you can do better.
Or is BW better because at the limits of human capability you do better stuff, i.e. reaver micro, muta micro and such.
Note that I am acting under the (accurate) assumption that the skill ceilings in both games are the same: the limits of human capability to play the game.
I think BW is better is because the gameplay is better. Nothing to do with the skill ceiling. If you, like the OP, derive more excitement from watching non-overlapping force fields than good muta/reaver/shuttle micro, then be my guest.
Regardless of your opinion, this blog is really silly. That BW is a harder game than SC2 should be obvious to anyone who has tried playing both games. Not to mention that the statistics offered by the OP are worthless because the player base is different in both games. If you like SC2 then just go play SC2 instead of making pathetic condescending posts trying to prove that BW sucks.
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On September 13 2012 11:39 FlaShFTW wrote:Show nested quote +On September 13 2012 09:45 MattBarry wrote:
If top players can separate themselves from the pack and dominate, clearly the game is hard enough.
Starcraft II is not an easy game by any means. People have been practicing 10-12 hours a day everyday for over 2 years and still have not perfected even macro. Whether Brood War was harder or not has no impact on if Starcraft II is a legitimate competitive activity. we're not saying that sc2 is an easy game, though it kinda is. we are saying that its nowhere near as challenging as bw.
Who we? I noticed you are single person; unless you are some kind of representative of BW fans or you can read in their minds I guess you can speak only for yourself - there were a lot of BW fans diminishing SC2, saying it is an easy, noob game.
And if we speak about lower challenge level of SC2, tell that to people who practices this game many hours a day. If SC2 wouldn't be challenging i guess it would be really stupid thing to do.
Think.
This is multiplayer game - in game like this the other players are part of game challenging nature. For example - try to defend early aggresion all the while correctly microing and macroing. The part of the challenge is made by opponents, and this makes this game a real challenge - as original poster showed.
P.S. Oh and by the way, I'm not saying that you are blinded elitist fanboi of a dying, outdated game that no one plays anymore, though you kinda are. (see what i did there).
P.S.2 If this game is easy, where is your GSL title?
User was temp banned for this post.
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I have to agree with the op sc2 is a really DIFFFICULT GAME to play . Couldn't even play it longer than two games longer after experiencing it's wonderful depth and difficulty. Back to broodwar I guess...
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On September 13 2012 11:39 FlaShFTW wrote:Show nested quote +On September 13 2012 09:45 MattBarry wrote:
If top players can separate themselves from the pack and dominate, clearly the game is hard enough.
Starcraft II is not an easy game by any means. People have been practicing 10-12 hours a day everyday for over 2 years and still have not perfected even macro. Whether Brood War was harder or not has no impact on if Starcraft II is a legitimate competitive activity. we're not saying that sc2 is an easy game, though it kinda is. we are saying that its nowhere near as challenging as bw.
We're not saying you are stupid, though you kinda are.
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On September 13 2012 09:16 FullNatural wrote:
An easy game is one that massive amounts of people can pick up and play at a decent level. This would be SC2. This is is how video games are made these days. The easier it is the more people will purchase it and play = more money. Actually this is how movies and just about everything else is made these days. Rule #1 appeal to the masses.
Another reason SC2 is easy. The majority of SC2 players with high ranks have terrible BW ranks.
This
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EPT
