Teamliquid.net is still the home of foreign Brood War elitism. Few discussions on Starcraft 2 go by without someone mentioning that it is inferior in some way to its predecessor or just plain "easy". The problem is that most of these complaints are not based on any coherent logic nor do they even define what an easy game is. What is it to truly be an "easy game"? Using our definition of an easy game, is there a way to calculate how easy a game is and can we apply it to compare Starcraft 2 to the local holy grail: SCBW?
What is an "easy game"?
Tic-Tac-Toe, case closed
Defeating the Misconception "If the game is so easy, then you should be able to win 100% of the time."
The idea that you should win 100% of the time in an easy game may be true when playing versus a computer or a scoring system, but it is the grand misconception of what it means to be an easy game in any competitive game. When two players play against each other in an easy competitive game, something else happens. Let's use tic-tac-toe to illustrate what happens.
In tic-tac-toe, there are an extremely limited number of options on any turn and the depth is limited to eight turns (on the ninth turn, there is no choice). Therefore, any competent tic-tac-toe player can memorize all the positions (or even logically solve the problem on-the-fly) and come up with the optimal solution. When a master tic-tac-toe player with 10 years of dedicated practice plays against a competent tic-tac-toe player with an hour or two of training, the master doesn't achieve a 100% win rate. Barring a really silly mistake, every game should be a draw and the win percentages should converge to 50%.
In an easy game, a player has no ability to distinguish himself from the masses.
Thus, if a 1v1 game was actually easy (and balanced), nobody would hit 100% (or 90%, 80%, etc) win rate. Any competent player would hit 50% win rate against other competent players. Given the notable variance of skill between players with years of practice, we can immediately say that Starcraft 2 is not an "easy game" by our first definition. However, perhaps we have a problem of definitions. What if we switched our definition to be a "trivial game", and made a new distinction for "easy game".
In a easy trivial game, a player has no ability to distinguish himself from the masses.
Starcraft 2 is clearly not a trivial game, but that leaves us still attempting to answer what an easy game is. And to really define an easy game, we will need to start digging into what makes a game trivial, easy, or skillful. We'll need to talk about the skill cap.
The Soft Cap vs the Hard Cap "The skill cap in Starcraft 2 is infinitely high, just watch Automaton 2000."
Watch those videos and tell me that SC2 has a low skill cap. You can't. With the limits on human dexterity, no human being can actually consistently perform the micro tricks that Automaton 2000 does, so it is safe to say that the skill cap in Starcraft 2 is infinitely high. And thus, no matter how we define "easy game" related to the skill cap, Starcraft 2 could not be considered an easy game, right? Not quite.
What we need to understand is that along with the hard skill cap which is virtually infinite in SC2, there is also a "soft" skill cap. To understand what the soft skill cap is, we'll want to talk a little bit about how players get better in any game.
As a player puts more "practice effort" into a game, he will gain "skill" in that game assuming that the practice effort is relevant towards improving. Some practice regimens are better than others and some people will learn faster than others, but all reasonable practice should result in an increasing skill level. However, in all games, practice effort has diminishing returns. For example, let's say that you and your clone both choose to play SC2 with no prior experience. If you played for 100 hours before your clone played his first hour, you'd have a huge advantage. If you played for 200 hours while your clone played for only 100 hours in the same practice environment, you should still have a noticeable advantage, but it wouldn't be quite so large. Finally, if you played 2100 hours versus your clone's 2000 hours, the advantage would be small enough that it might not show up in most games.
Clones?!? So that's how they did it.
The diminishing returns on practice effort creates a parabolic curve of skill gain. In any non-trivial game, the parabolic curve should never completely level off. However, the slope will get very mild past a certain amount of practice and that point is what we'll call the soft skill cap. The soft skill cap is the level at which further practice has very minimal effect.
defining easy, not so easy
As you can see, the soft skill cap is not really an exact point on the chart. It's more of a matter of opinion and that's why I leave a large area on the graph as the potential soft cap spot while also marking where I'd personally put it on the charts. Also, as you might have noticed in that graph, I have vaguely defined an easy game. However, you'll notice that there are no numbers on either axis. I do not define "easy" on absolute terms (I'll leave that exercise up to you), but instead on relative terms. A game's difficulty is determined by the depth of its skill curve relative to its peers.
In an easy game, the skill development curve is shallower than in a more skilled game.
Every game has a different curve and every player will develop in a game on a different curve. Some curves might have bumps in them as a player makes a big realization and some might have drops due to skill atrophy/injury. Also, depending on the way a player practices, he might actually work into the hard cap before completing the soft cap. For example, imagine a bronze level Terran player who has terrible macro, doesn't hotkey, and right-clicks his army rather than attack-move, but he practices Marine Split Challenge for hours a day and can beat extremely high levels like a boss. Will that practice help him in game? Absolutely, but while he may save a few extra marines versus banelings in a few situations (and have faster clicking overall), he still won't be able to get out of bronze. Basic marine splitting might be part of the soft cap, but spending many hours to squeeze out one or two more splits is a hard cap skill. Think of the skill curve the next time someone advises you to work on your macro. It's not that the other skills are a waste, it's simply that in most cases you can make the greatest gains for the effort by working on macro first.
it takes more than marine splits to be like me
So now we've defined the hard cap and the soft cap. And we have a general idea of how to determine if one game is more skilled that than another. Knowing all this, is there a good way to calculate how much depth there is to a game's skill curve?
SCBW vs SC2: Calculating a Game's Skill One of the most obvious ways determine a skill curve is to look at the win percentages of the top players. Can the top players differentiate themselves from the masses? Presumably, the higher a top player's win percentage, the greater the skill curve in the game.
Starcraft 2 For Starcraft 2, I wanted the most recent data possible since the game is constantly evolving and players are getting better and worse (relatively speaking) on a daily basis. I also wanted data that represented the most current metagame at the highest level with few anomalies due to extremely poor opponents. In a perfect world, I would have been able to gather 100s of games for each player from yesterday to make my determination. Unfortunately, I needed something resembling a significant sample size, so I had to choose a time period longer than one day. As it turned out, I chose eight months from 2012-Jan-1 to 2012-Aug-1 from the Korean TLPD database (not nearly as many weak opponents as the international). For the sample of players, I have an average of 123 games. I did my calculations on the top 39 players by ELO simply because 40 is the number of player on one page of the TLPD (also, should include all code S plus the top of A); however, one of the players had only played against other Kespa players (no opponents in the top 40 SC2 ranks), making his dataset completely worthless (you'll see why soon) and was thrown out.
My apologies for taking so long between initial data gathering and finishing this article.
Starcraft: Brood War For SCBW, I wanted a dataset that represented the golden age of SCBW without going too far into the past. Since I took data from the top 39 current ELO players (to match SC2), it would be very poor form to see how they did long ago. However, I didn't want to include the most recent data of hybrid proleague since that data is tainted by a lack of dedicated practice. Therefore, I only included data up to 2012-Apr-8 (last day of previous proleague). Finally, SC2 players play many more games than SCBW players in the same time period on average, so in order to get a reasonable sample size, I had to include a larger amount of time and went with approximately 15 months from 2011-Jan-1 to 2012-Apr-8. Even still, the average game count per player was 72. 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.
tldr: I tried to compare the most current SC2 versus a relatively idealized time of SCBW.
For the chosen datasets, the top two win percentages for players were Flash (75%) and Taeja (69%). However, the top SCBW ELO was Fantasy (65%) and only Flash and Bisu (72%) had a better win% for that time period than Taeja. Also with less games for the SCBW guys (Flash: 111, Bisu: 97, Fantasy: 101) than Taeja (180 games), there is more room for volatility. Overall, I'd have to give the slight advantage to SCBW, but the results of any single player can be an aberration. So what happens when we rely less on a single player's data and we look at a group of top players as a whole?
The top 39 SC2 players by ELO had a record of 2832-1956 (59%). The Top 39 SCBW players by ELO had a record of 1609-1194 (57%)
Advantage SC2.....err wait! The SCBW scene was much more insular. Top players had much less opportunity to play against outsiders and mostly had to play against each other while SC2 players have a few more open tournaments in which to pad their win% against lesser players. What to do about it?
Let's strip out all the data of top 39 players versus each other to see how dominant these guys are. The top 39 SC2 players by ELO had a record of 1693-817 (67%) versus non top 39 players. The top 39 SCBW players by ELO had a record of 783-368 (68%) versus non top 39 players.
Close? Yeah. In fact, I charted it for each individual player in the top 39. Here are their win percentages versus the outsiders.
Naniwa ruining everything at 8-0
You should note how close everything is from bottom to top. The graphs nearly touch at the beginning, middle and right before the end. Ignoring the Naniwa data due to an extremely small sample size, only at the tip top of BW stats does there seem to any real divergence where Bisu (84%) and Fantasy (88%!!!) put up some astounding numbers versus weaker players. Even the mighty Flash (81%) is in the same realm as TaeJa (80%) and Curious (80%) when it comes to defeating the weaker players.
If we limit the data down even further, The top 10 SC2 players by ELO had a record of 736-424 (63%) versus non top 10 players. The top 10 SCBW players by ELO had a record of 421-215 (66%) versus non top 10 players.
Still quite close, but with just a slight advantage to SCBW. So what we've determined is that the top players in both games put up very similar numbers against weaker players except at the very extreme top of BW. However, we can still be tainted by very weak competition. And in either case, it is possible that less than 40 people have hit the soft cap in SC2 thus far so we could be looking at two reasonably difficult soft caps, but due to SC2's young age, still vastly different soft caps.
What about play within the top 39? If the soft cap is sufficiently high or the road to the hard cap is still reasonably steep, shouldn't there be more variety within the top 39 than in a lower soft cap game? If we only take the wins and losses versus other members of the exclusive 39 club and then graphed everyone's win percentage, a greater slope should show that there is more ability for players to separate themselves. Essentially, a greater slope should show that the game requires more skill. Thankfully, I already did the work for you.
Flash: The Peer Pulverizer
Here we see a definite trend in favor of SCBW. While the graphs are extremely similar in shape, the bottom is lower and the top is higher for SCBW. The reasonably smooth slope in the middle of both graphs is also greater on the SCBW side. Perhaps this isn't a huge indicator that SCBW has a greater skill curve, but at least it's something to point to.
I tried.
I really did try to find data that would support the SCBW claim of superiority because all the data I've seen up to this point shows SC2 having an extremely similar difficulty level. I really had to massage the data to finally get just little bits and pieces where you could claim SCBW requires more skill, but even those bits could be the result of small/oddball sample sizes. Like, if we redo that last chart for only games within the top 10 players, we get this:
goodbye conclusions
Mitigating Factors Having said all that, there are mitigating factors on both sides.
- The datasets that were chosen were reasonable in my mind, but are still at least questionable. If we calculated out the old ELOs from a pre-sAviOr scandal era and then used that top 39, perhaps we'd get different results. If we did these calculations 6 months ago or 6 months in the future for SC2, perhaps we'd get very different results. Hell, we might get different results pre-Queen buff versus post (our set includes about equal time for both).
- Starcraft 2 is also a new game. Perhaps it takes approximately 3 years of dedicated practice to hit the soft skill cap in SC2, but it takes longer to hit it in SCBW. It'd be very difficult to tell until we hit that point in SC2's lifetime. All we know is that at the very least, the soft cap in SC2 has thus far allowed people to excel in a relatively equivalent way to BW.
- Starcraft 2's metagame is changing multiple times in a year. In BW, there are players who play stylistically, but the basic reasonable options haven't changed in over a year. In SC2, the TvZ metagame has drastically shifted in the last 4 months and players who were destroying TvZ before are struggling now and vice versa. This would tend to force win percentages towards 50% as players switch over from having a winning strategy to a losing one. This is but one of many metagame shifts in the last 8 months which would normalize win rates. It is likely that in a more stable environment, better players would be able to prove themselves by a larger margin.
- If you believe in the superiority of Kespa players, then it goes to reason that their playing SC2 should serve to increase the slope of the curve in the top 39 vs top 39 chart. If you actually believe that the Kespa players at the very top are the combination of hard work and true talent while the SC2 guys were the middling people who couldn't excel in SCBW, then we're in for a treat. Thus far, the "middling talent" of SCBW has been able to differentiate itself in SC2 approximately as much as the "real talent" from SCBW ever did. If the elephant argument is true, then SC2 might actually have a deeper skill curve than SCBW. Wouldn't that be interesting?
- The final mitigating factor I can think of right now is the racial matchups. By their nature, some matchups may be more skillful than others. PvP in SC2 is considered to be a coinflip matchup by many and, if true, would normalize the win rates of all protoss players closer to 50% as it drags down the best protoss players and bumps up the weaker ones. The same was often said of SCBW ZvZ.
Why the Criticism? So why is there so much criticism towards Starcraft 2? Why do we hear all the "easy game" comments? The first reason I don't want to dwell on too much is simple nostalgia and the unwillingness to accept change. Sure, we accept some change if it is part of the system, like a changing map pool, but changing units, the interface, and the physics engine are large changes that aren't part of the standard system. Those changes are quite jarring and scary and rejecting them is a normal human reaction, no matter if the new things are as good or even better than the previous. This is far from a unique trait of the SCBW community and is instead something that entire books could be written about for humans in general. We're already seeing the negative reaction to the changes proposed in HotS and I guarantee that we'll see the same negative reaction as LotV announcements are made. I'm sure the same thing actually happened when Brood War came out too (though the competitive scene wasn't too big at that point), unfortunately all we're left with now is a humorous spoof.
Perhaps one of the key differences between SCBW and SC2 is the way in which a player shows his superiority. A lot of people point to expert muta control as a defining factor in many top notch BW zergs. It is a visually obvious skill when the ball of mutas is staying tight and maximizing it's DPS on a point while minimizing enemy DPS. There are many other difficult micro tricks like this (reaver-shuttle, etc) that are very visually obvious high skill achievements. In SC2, many of the equivalent actions are not so obvious. Using force-fields perfectly to hit the right spots at the right times to get the absolute most out of your energy is an art form as skillful and beautiful as muta-stacking. Yet, the casual observer won't notice that the force-fields should have been one space further back or are overlapping by one space in a few spots. The elite protoss in SC2 will have extra force-fields to spend per the gas investment because they place their fields better, but it's so easy as an observer to overlook it and it's not really something a very knowledgeable caster can dwell on for too long as the action is pretty much guaranteed to get very hot.
two all-important force-fields you won't have later
Another obvious difference is the macro mechanics. In BW, the mechanics are so hard that even at the pro level you will see obvious mistakes. In nearly every pro match I've seen, there have been idle workers for long periods of time... a clear mistake that the best pros make less often. In turn, the best pros tend to have bigger armies than their opponents even at the professional level. You'd almost never see that in SC2. Bigger armies in SC2 pro games pretty much only come from different strategic choices or previous damage dealt. You would have to assume that the difference in macro mechanics should lower the soft cap in SC2 compared to SCBW, but there's a possibility that something else is happening. The extra time given from easier macro in SC2 doesn't have to go to waste.
I believe that in both SC2 and BW, the soft cap is not being hit. Whether the cap is higher or lower doesn't actually matter if no human being can reach the lower of the two. Whatever time is saved by easier macro is instead shoved into other important soft-cap activities. Quickly splitting units that want to clump up takes a ton of skill. Likewise, creating arcs, focus firing, perfect spell casting, and pulling back injured units all come to the forefront. If you can't just out-macro your opponent, you need to be able out strategize your opponent or make some very small subtle moves that have an extreme impact on the game. And the players at the top have been able to consistently use better strategy and make those subtle moves. It's a skill and it has a massive impact on professional win-rates, it just isn't quite as obvious of a skill as others.
I believe that as SC2 gets more and more developed, we'll see even better control in those extremely intense moments right at the beginning of a battle. The people who can really handle those situations will excel and dominate the scene while everyone else will be held back. Meanwhile, the hardcore observers of the game will notice the little subtleties and truly appreciate top notch plays that they could never make while the casual fan or even BW elitist misses the subtleties and thinks the game inferior.
The Conclusion as close to a TLDR as you'll get
Starcraft 2 cannot be called an easy game without also calling Brood War an easy game. The relevant numbers are too similar to be able to make a distinction between the two. Instead, I believe the "easy game" complaints may be based on nostalgia or they may be based on the way in which skill is demonstrated in SC2 versus SCBW.
This article does not claim that either game is superior. Nor does it even claim that the methods that SC2 uses to demonstrate skill are as good as the ones used in BW. It simply states that the methods to excel exist in a relatively equivalent amount between the two games within the limits of the human ability to learn.
So the next time someone calls SC2 an easy game, you can just link them to this blog.
Answering the Criticism
On September 13 2012 05:54 Itsmedudeman wrote: BW pros caught up in 3 months. Do you really believe SC2 players could do the same in BW?
The implication is that BW must be more difficult because SC2 pros could never do the reverse. However, if SC2 pros were able to take their current mechanical skill and be teleported back in time to the early 2000s, yes, I think they could compete within 3 months. Due to the constantly shifting meta-game in SC2, every single non-kespa pro has only had a few months inside the current meta-game... just like Kespa pros. The time they have spent on previous meta-games has become irrelevant because better strategies have been figured out. So the time that someone put into 5-rax reaper (for example): learning how to do it, optimize it, how to counter basic defenses from a strategic and tactical perspective, and learning how to transition out of it is all wasted time. Blizzard patched that one completely out. Other strategies have simply been figured out.
From the beginning of the game until approximately 6 months ago, only the mechanical skills non-kespa pros worked on is relevant. And as everyone is aware, the Kespa pros had plenty of mechanical skill to transfer over. So it's not a shock that some Kespa pros were able to make a smooth transition to a new game. Yet, if we reversed the situation, the non-kespa pros would have to compete against years of legitimate meta-game practice that is still relevant today. The situations are not equal.
BW pros caught up in 3 months. Do you really believe SC2 players could do the same in BW?
This, so much this. There are plenty of other things I could use to argue that BW is a harder game but this is the killing blow right here. Both games have skill ceilings that have not yet been reached but the low skill floor required to be able to play BW and do the same things as in SCII is much higher. You pretty much require 100+ APM to be able to macro and micro simultaneously even a little bit in SCBW; in SCII you can do it with 60 APM.
Your post just shows that among top BW players, the differences between them are statistically the same as the differences between top SCII pros. ELO is an indicator of relative skill among players, and the ELO curve of one game should correlate very closely to the ELO curve of another, becase that is how ELO works
So no one misses it: THE ELO CURVES OF TWO GAMES WILL ALWAYS BE ALMOST THE SAME
Not true. Tic-tac-toe clearly will not have the same ELO curve. I'd also throw in nearly any game with inherent luck, such as Poker, not being the same. Superior players in poker will lose to inferior players far more often than a superior player in SC2 or other skillful games. Hell, I could play heads-up against the best poker player in the world and have a legitimate shot at busting him despite only being a very mildly profitable player. I have no chance against any pro Starcraft player. However, over time and thousands of hands a poker pro will be able to take his slight edge and work it into consistent profits.
Alternatively, the best runners/swimmers in the world win much more consistently than even the best Starcraft players. How often does the 8th best swimmer in the world win a match against the top 7? Essentially never. Now look at Starcraft 2. If a tournament was held between Taeja, Squirtle, HerO, Seed, Curious, Life, Creator, and Marineking, the odds of any one of them winning are reasonably good. The curve in swimming/running would be much steeper than SC2 or BW.
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.
On September 13 2012 05:54 Itsmedudeman wrote: BW pros caught up in 3 months. Do you really believe SC2 players could do the same in BW?
This, so much this. There are plenty of other things I could use to argue that BW is a harder game but this is the killing blow right here. Both games have skill ceilings that have not yet been reached but the low skill floor required to be able to play BW and do the same things as in SCII is much higher. You pretty much require 100+ APM to be able to macro and micro simultaneously even a little bit in SCBW; in SCII you can do it with 60 APM.
Your post just shows that among top BW players, the differences between them are statistically the same as the differences between top SCII pros. ELO is an indicator of relative skill among players, and the ELO curve of one game should correlate very closely to the ELO curve of another, becase that is how ELO works
So no one misses it: THE ELO CURVES OF TWO GAMES WILL ALWAYS BE ALMOST THE SAME
Their is one flaw in your argument. While BW pro's did catch up in 3 months a lot of the mechanics are transferable to sc2. I mean besides learning some new hotkeys (don't really have to, just change them) all you have to do is learn new strategies. I would not argue that SC2 is easier but the players from Broodwar are just much better.
But that still means that the OP's 'statistics' are irrelevant.
I don't think anyone can deny these points: 1: BW has a higher mechanical skill floor to play at what is considered a basic level. 2: BW has a higher mechanical skill ceiling. 3: Both SCII and SCBW have theoretical skill ceilings for general skill (not just mechanical skill) than what has been reached so far.
The first two points are both theoretical. Even without evidence, I agree with the first. However, I disagree with the second. SC2 is a faster game due to things like the Terrible Terrible Damage philosophy. At a theoretically perfect level, the amount of APM needed to perfectly control an army in SC2 or BW dwarfs the amount of APM needed to macro perfectly in either game. When you hit those theoretical levels, the speed of SC2 likely gives it a higher hard skill cap, but both are nearly infinite.
Point #3 is the most important point. It is the part that gets away from theoretical and back into reality. In both games, not even the soft cap on skills is being reached. If you want to claim that BW has a higher theoretical cap and is therefore "more difficult", you can go right ahead. Unfortunately for you, you're then living in theoretical world, not real world. In the real world, players aren't hitting any caps and their ability to perform relative to their peers remains equal in both games. For all real-world practical applications, SC2 is just as hard as SCBW based on all current evidence.
mechanical skills in BW > SC2
As a general response to many people. Since when does mechanical skill of just a few portions of a game equate to the be-all-end-all of a game? The skill in a game such as SC2 or BW is about much more than just mechanical skill. And from many of the responses I'm seeing, it doesn't appear that people are getting that point. If you only take bits and pieces of a game, you can make an argument in favor of BW, but when you look at the skill of a game as a whole and how it relates to actual statistics, SC2 stacks up quite well to BW.
Meanwhile, the hardcore observers of the game will notice the little subtleties and truly appreciate top notch plays that they could never make while the casual fan or even BW elitist misses the subtleties and thinks the game inferior.
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This article does not claim that either game is superior. Nor does it even claim that the methods that SC2 uses to demonstrate skill are as good as the ones used in BW. It simply states that the methods to excel exist in a relatively equivalent amount between the two games within the limits of the human ability to learn.
I'm going to have to disagree with that. As far as game design and complexity goes, Starcraft 2 has far fewer options in terms of strategy and expression of strategy with higher level mechanics due to the dumbed down engine. It's an opinion that has been stated many times, but I'm more and more inclined to see it as the truth.
1. Equivalent armies - at the highest level macro is not so much a differentiating skill as it is a baseline. Higher level players in BW could differentiate themselves on macro alone. 2. All the requirements of battle such as arcing and splitting that you mention in SC2 are applicable in BW, the only issue is that BW has much MORE options to choose from and mechanical difficulty making the game even more complex and "deep." Take a look at Orb's post about the warhound, it sums this up nicely.
At this time I do think the soft cap for SC2 is being hit in terms of macro. We are never going to see any better macro then we see today - no more refinement. That is disappointing. We will see more refinement of builds.
As for engagements and gameplay, I do think that a lot of interesting compositions that were present in BW are limited by racial designs (you guessed it). This removes a lot of interesting gameplay and also limits map design.
Just because stats claim that both games are the relatively the same, doesnt mean that both must be labelled the same thing.
At least, when I call sc2 an easy game, I do it because... 1) Macroing. Many will attest to this. 1 hotkey for all your barracks, or hatcheries, or warpgates (warpgates dont even use a hotkey lol). In BW, macroing already took up like 100 of your (at least my) apm.
for example, how i macro is... f2, click, (make unit), click, repeat, f3 (my rally point), and then assort them into appropriate hotkeys.
compared to sc2.... 4/w (make unit) while ur still keeping your screen on the battle or w.e. you are doing the entire time.
2) Army. 1 hotkey for the entire army? now i understand that most players probably will split their army into multiple hotkeys (zerg, infestor (1) bling (2) broodlord/corrupter (3)) but its not the same. you cant put 50 lings into one hotkey. you'd have to make like 1-4 hotkeys for lings alone.
and you cant just 1-a click around the map either in bw. it takes time to attack, especially if ur maxed (my small hands )
3) Smartcast. really? take all ur ht/infestor and just blanket easily? yeah noty. bw, each individual unit had to be clicked on. or else ud waste so much energy.
im sure there are some other things that i have, but those are the ones that came to mind immediately.
oh, i reread this and i came across this...
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.
sc2 appears really interesting and difficult to people who have never played BW seriously. For those of use who have the game is easy (at least relative to the skill we are coming from)
Why the Criticism? We're already seeing the negative reaction to the changes proposed in HotS and I guarantee that we'll see the same negative reaction as LotV announcements are made. I'm sure the same thing actually happened when Brood War came out too (though the competitive scene wasn't too big at that point)
Bit of a tangent, but I'm not sure why people frequently compare Starcraft -> BW being similar to Starcraft 2 -> HotS at all. BW came out 30 November 1998 (was slated for october release) when starcraft came out in March 31 1998. That's a hilariously small 8 months for the (major) expansion to come out--there were actually shitty campaign mission things called Insurrection and Retribution in between. Just something random I see all the time that I really don't understand (posts, real talk with artosis when they talked about vanilla sc being unbalanced and bw being balanced, etc). Like nobody considers vanilla starcraft as relevant since BW came out just a short few months afterwards/everyone knew it would have been coming out by say July 1998 (and thought it would be october 1998).
anyways I do appreciate the attempt to quantify the "Easiness" by relation to professional gaming, but unfortunately that analysis is just not really applicable to 98% of the player base.
I mean, you could whip up something like is the piano or violin or guitar "easy" where the skill ceiling is not reached (and the top guitarists/pianists are always able to be quantified as being the best, but amongst themselves they are similar in "skill" and performance) but that doesn't relate how hard it is to play, say, a simple 2 octave scale or an easy song on the piano vs the violin. Which for 98% of newcomers to the instrument is the assessment of how "difficult" the instrument is (piano you can learn that easier, while on a violin people probably would break the strings or make a fucking cat screeching sound).
Piano is insanely difficult (I imagine) but if the requirement is to play a simple tune then it wouldn't be nearly as hard as playing equivalent tune on a violin, in this hypothetical.
Which I firmly believe that anyone who was legitimately high d+ in skill level bw (not rely on proxy 2 gates or 9 pools or something) should and could be at least high diamond sc2, which is supposed to be around the top 5% of the player base. While d+ in bw means nothing.
Thank you OP for attempting to provide some numbers. I agree with your sentiment, and your view.
The difficulty of a game is not a "matter of opinion" - it is a real, measurable quality as long as you define what "difficulty" is in the first place, as the OP has.
The difference between a Brood War player criticising SC2 at every turn for being "easy" and the OP, is that the OP has done some research, put some thought into the argument; and I honestly believe if that stats came back overwhelmingly in BW's favour they would have agreed - but they didn't.
The math may not be perfect, but it is at least some evidence that contradicts the endless mind numbing SC2 bashing that lurks in every corner. Brood War was an incredible game, no-one is arguing otherwise, but that doesn't mean it's ok to diminish the experience of another group of people who play (and love) another game (SC2).
On September 13 2012 05:54 Itsmedudeman wrote: BW pros caught up in 3 months. Do you really believe SC2 players could do the same in BW?
This, so much this. There are plenty of other things I could use to argue that BW is a harder game but this is the killing blow right here. Both games have skill ceilings that have not yet been reached but the low skill floor required to be able to play BW and do the same things as in SCII is much higher. You pretty much require 100+ APM to be able to macro and micro simultaneously even a little bit in SCBW; in SCII you can do it with 60 APM.
Your post just shows that among top BW players, the differences between them are statistically the same as the differences between top SCII pros. ELO is an indicator of relative skill among players, and the ELO curve of one game should correlate very closely to the ELO curve of another, becase that is how ELO works
So no one misses it: THE ELO CURVES OF TWO GAMES WILL ALWAYS BE ALMOST THE SAME
BW pros caught up in 3 months. Do you really believe SC2 players could do the same in BW?
This is just hypothetical heresay, at least the OP tried to provide some knid of analytical evidence. I wouldn't be surprised if SC2 players could go and play well in BW within 3 months, but my opinion doesn't matter. Show me the evidence.
On September 13 2012 05:54 Itsmedudeman wrote: BW pros caught up in 3 months. Do you really believe SC2 players could do the same in BW?
This, so much this. There are plenty of other things I could use to argue that BW is a harder game but this is the killing blow right here. Both games have skill ceilings that have not yet been reached but the low skill floor required to be able to play BW and do the same things as in SCII is much higher. You pretty much require 100+ APM to be able to macro and micro simultaneously even a little bit in SCBW; in SCII you can do it with 60 APM.
Your post just shows that among top BW players, the differences between them are statistically the same as the differences between top SCII pros. ELO is an indicator of relative skill among players, and the ELO curve of one game should correlate very closely to the ELO curve of another, becase that is how ELO works
So no one misses it: THE ELO CURVES OF TWO GAMES WILL ALWAYS BE ALMOST THE SAME
Their is one flaw in your argument. While BW pro's did catch up in 3 months a lot of the mechanics are transferable to sc2. I mean besides learning some new hotkeys (don't really have to, just change them) all you have to do is learn new strategies. I would not argue that SC2 is easier but the players from Broodwar are just much better.
EDIT: Its almost like a 400 meter track star begins running the 800 meter and is also really really good.
SC2 is a hard enough game to turn away casuals for not being that much fun at lower levels where not performing certain monotonous tasks will lead to your defeat. In addition, certain design choices alluded to in this excellent article mean that there is not much fun to be had in experimenting with unusual unit compositions nor is there much fun in actual using a large portion of the units in WoL. So not much there for noobs to work with.
SC2 is an easy enough game that we have reached the "soft cap" of macro, which is extremely disappointing in my view, it takes away from player identity in that no one player can now really be known for "insane macro" because everyone's macro is at the same level, relatively. Furthermore the lack of variety in viable competitive unit compositions (again due to design decisions) means that the meta-game is likely to evolve extremely slowly, which will undoubtedly have an adverse effect on player numbers and spectator numbers.
TL;DR: SC2 isn't easy enough for newbs and isn't hard enough for pros;
On September 13 2012 05:54 Itsmedudeman wrote: BW pros caught up in 3 months. Do you really believe SC2 players could do the same in BW?
This, so much this. There are plenty of other things I could use to argue that BW is a harder game but this is the killing blow right here. Both games have skill ceilings that have not yet been reached but the low skill floor required to be able to play BW and do the same things as in SCII is much higher. You pretty much require 100+ APM to be able to macro and micro simultaneously even a little bit in SCBW; in SCII you can do it with 60 APM.
Your post just shows that among top BW players, the differences between them are statistically the same as the differences between top SCII pros. ELO is an indicator of relative skill among players, and the ELO curve of one game should correlate very closely to the ELO curve of another, becase that is how ELO works
So no one misses it: THE ELO CURVES OF TWO GAMES WILL ALWAYS BE ALMOST THE SAME
Their is one flaw in your argument. While BW pro's did catch up in 3 months a lot of the mechanics are transferable to sc2. I mean besides learning some new hotkeys (don't really have to, just change them) all you have to do is learn new strategies. I would not argue that SC2 is easier but the players from Broodwar are just much better.
But that still means that the OP's 'statistics' are irrelevant.
I don't think anyone can deny these points: 1: BW has a higher mechanical skill floor to play at what is considered a basic level. 2: BW has a higher mechanical skill ceiling. 3: Both SCII and SCBW have theoretical skill ceilings for general skill (not just mechanical skill) than what has been reached so far.
But the OP is claiming that because the win percentages for SCII and SCBW are very similiar, the games have similiar difficulty. This is blatantly wrong; the curves he is using SHOULD be very similiar, due to the nature of the curves. Most likely, the top 39 players of chess would also have similiar win percentages, or indeed any game you care to choose.
On September 13 2012 06:26 DRTnOOber wrote: It's turned into a religion/no religion argument!
Thank you OP for attempting to provide some numbers. I agree with your sentiment, and your view.
The difficulty of a game is not a "matter of opinion" - it is a real, measurable quality as long as you define what "difficulty" is in the first place, as the OP has.
The difference between a Brood War player criticising SC2 at every turn for being "easy" and the OP, is that the OP has done some research, put some thought into the argument; and I honestly believe if that stats came back overwhelmingly in BW's favour they would have agreed - but they didn't.
The math may not be perfect, but it is at least some evidence that contradicts the endless mind numbing SC2 bashing that lurks in every corner. Brood War was an incredible game, no-one is arguing otherwise, but that doesn't mean it's ok to diminish the experience of another group of people who play (and love) another game (SC2).
5/5 for the post.
Thou there's the proof that you can't rate games at all.
When you switch back to BW from SC2, you ending up sucking dick because of how easy the controls were in the sequel.
Also:
Using force-fields perfectly to hit the right spots at the right times to get the absolute most out of your energy is an art form as skillful and beautiful as muta-stacking.
Just one of the reasons why I can't take this blog seriously.
The difference between a Brood War player criticising SC2 at every turn for being "easy" and the OP, is that the OP has done some research, put some thought into the argument; and I honestly believe if that stats came back overwhelmingly in BW's favour they would have agreed - but they didn't.
Except people rarely listen to BW player's critiques on SC2 and instead uses umbrella statements like "elitists" to throw off the arguments as just pure nostalgia for an age long gone or anger that a game is more popular than the predecessor, when in reality, people have repeated the same shit over and over again and no one bothers to get it.
On September 13 2012 05:54 Itsmedudeman wrote: BW pros caught up in 3 months. Do you really believe SC2 players could do the same in BW?
This, so much this. There are plenty of other things I could use to argue that BW is a harder game but this is the killing blow right here. Both games have skill ceilings that have not yet been reached but the low skill floor required to be able to play BW and do the same things as in SCII is much higher. You pretty much require 100+ APM to be able to macro and micro simultaneously even a little bit in SCBW; in SCII you can do it with 60 APM.
Your post just shows that among top BW players, the differences between them are statistically the same as the differences between top SCII pros. ELO is an indicator of relative skill among players, and the ELO curve of one game should correlate very closely to the ELO curve of another, becase that is how ELO works
So no one misses it: THE ELO CURVES OF TWO GAMES WILL ALWAYS BE ALMOST THE SAME
Their is one flaw in your argument. While BW pro's did catch up in 3 months a lot of the mechanics are transferable to sc2. I mean besides learning some new hotkeys (don't really have to, just change them) all you have to do is learn new strategies. I would not argue that SC2 is easier but the players from Broodwar are just much better.
But that still means that the OP's 'statistics' are irrelevant.
I don't think anyone can deny these points: 1: BW has a higher mechanical skill floor to play at what is considered a basic level. 2: BW has a higher mechanical skill ceiling. 3: Both SCII and SCBW have theoretical skill ceilings for general skill (not just mechanical skill) than what has been reached so far.
But the OP is claiming that because the win percentages for SCII and SCBW are very similiar, the games have similiar difficulty. This is blatantly wrong; the curves he is using SHOULD be very similiar, due to the nature of the curves. Most likely, the top 39 players of chess would also have similiar win percentages, or indeed any game you care to choose.
This post basically. The statistics are pretty brutally misleading, and the arguments that he throws out are pretty generic and kind of show how little he actually knows about BW, and thus can't make any reasonable comparison between the two games. Make no mistake, I can't either to any masterful degree, but that's not really the point here.
BW pros caught up in 3 months. Do you really believe SC2 players could do the same in BW?
This is just hypothetical heresay, at least the OP tried to provide some knid of analytical evidence. I wouldn't be surprised if SC2 players could go and play well in BW within 3 months, but my opinion doesn't matter. Show me the evidence.
Given that most top SC2 players were BW players beforehand, that couldn't compete with top BW players, I'd say the evidence for that already exists.
On September 13 2012 05:54 Itsmedudeman wrote: BW pros caught up in 3 months. Do you really believe SC2 players could do the same in BW?
This, so much this. There are plenty of other things I could use to argue that BW is a harder game but this is the killing blow right here. Both games have skill ceilings that have not yet been reached but the low skill floor required to be able to play BW and do the same things as in SCII is much higher. You pretty much require 100+ APM to be able to macro and micro simultaneously even a little bit in SCBW; in SCII you can do it with 60 APM.
Your post just shows that among top BW players, the differences between them are statistically the same as the differences between top SCII pros. ELO is an indicator of relative skill among players, and the ELO curve of one game should correlate very closely to the ELO curve of another, becase that is how ELO works
So no one misses it: THE ELO CURVES OF TWO GAMES WILL ALWAYS BE ALMOST THE SAME
Their is one flaw in your argument. While BW pro's did catch up in 3 months a lot of the mechanics are transferable to sc2. I mean besides learning some new hotkeys (don't really have to, just change them) all you have to do is learn new strategies. I would not argue that SC2 is easier but the players from Broodwar are just much better.
EDIT: Its almost like a 400 meter track star begins running the 800 meter and is also really really good.
On September 13 2012 05:54 Itsmedudeman wrote: BW pros caught up in 3 months. Do you really believe SC2 players could do the same in BW?
This, so much this. There are plenty of other things I could use to argue that BW is a harder game but this is the killing blow right here. Both games have skill ceilings that have not yet been reached but the low skill floor required to be able to play BW and do the same things as in SCII is much higher. You pretty much require 100+ APM to be able to macro and micro simultaneously even a little bit in SCBW; in SCII you can do it with 60 APM.
Your post just shows that among top BW players, the differences between them are statistically the same as the differences between top SCII pros. ELO is an indicator of relative skill among players, and the ELO curve of one game should correlate very closely to the ELO curve of another, becase that is how ELO works
So no one misses it: THE ELO CURVES OF TWO GAMES WILL ALWAYS BE ALMOST THE SAME
Their is one flaw in your argument. While BW pro's did catch up in 3 months a lot of the mechanics are transferable to sc2. I mean besides learning some new hotkeys (don't really have to, just change them) all you have to do is learn new strategies. I would not argue that SC2 is easier but the players from Broodwar are just much better.
EDIT: Its almost like a 400 meter track star begins running the 800 meter and is also really really good.
basically you agree with the elephant theory so?
ive been playing bw customs since i was like 6. I believe in flash the father
SC2 is an easier game than BW because it is. Writing a long ass misled essay to defend your game isn't going to change that fact. The same arguments have also been (laughably) used to validate that LoL and dota are similar in difficulty. It's pretty fuckin' embarassing. Just accept it and move on.
SC2 is an easier game than BW. Brood War's APM requirement alone made the game a steep learning curve. I always wanted to stab myself for picking Terran as my first race instead of Protoss. Terran was so APM intensive...
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.
Lots of disagreement but no decent explanations. Let's say BW is a "harder" game - why? Be specific. I am an avid SC2 fan, but I would tend to agree BW was a "harder" game if someone gave a reasoned explanation which isn't an emotional defence of BW (which ends up being an emotional attack at SC2).
"A higher APM requirement" is not an explanation. I could equally say SC2 is a faster game, so mechanically it's harder to micro-manage battles, you have less time to respond when you scout an attack, etc.
Things that make BW hard:
- Older UI without massive control groups, less shortcut keys. - Less automated activity; worker rallying at mineral clusters, autorepair, etc. - Less "one trick pony" units, so unit choice is trickier.
Things that make SC2 hard:
- Faster pace of game means you have to be quicker at micro-management.
Even from writing that it does look like BW is a "harder" game, mostly because of the older interface which doesn't automate/streamline the playing experience like SC2 does. Would like to see my lists expanded.
BW has a higher skill-floor than SC2 that one must reach in order to be anywhere near competitive. That's why people consider it a harder game. It doesn't matter where the skill ceiling lies; so long as it lies outside of human reach, talking about a skill ceiling in order to evaluate a game's difficulty is nigh-on pointless imho: nobody can play a perfect game of SC2, and nobody can play a perfect game of BW.
On September 13 2012 08:19 DRTnOOber wrote: Lots of disagreement but no decent explanations. Let's say BW is a "harder" game - why? Be specific. I am an avid SC2 fan, but I would tend to agree BW was a "harder" game if someone gave a reasoned explanation which isn't an emotional defence of BW (which ends up being an emotional attack at SC2).
"A higher APM requirement" is not an explanation. I could equally say SC2 is a faster game, so mechanically it's harder to micro-manage battles, you have less time to respond when you scout an attack, etc.
Things that make BW hard:
- Older UI without massive control groups, less shortcut keys. - Less automated activity; worker rallying at mineral clusters, autorepair, etc. - Less "one trick pony" units, so unit choice is trickier.
Things that make SC2 hard:
- Faster pace of game means you have to be quicker at micro-management.
Even from writing that it does look like BW is a "harder" game, mostly because of the older interface which doesn't automate/streamline the playing experience like SC2 does. Would like to see my lists expanded.
Brood War requires more APM to micro so therefore SC2 requires faster micro?
Please tell me how this logic works. APM by definition is a measure of speed. How can a game that takes less APM need faster micro?
On September 13 2012 08:19 DRTnOOber wrote: Lots of disagreement but no decent explanations. Let's say BW is a "harder" game - why? Be specific. I am an avid SC2 fan, but I would tend to agree BW was a "harder" game if someone gave a reasoned explanation which isn't an emotional defence of BW (which ends up being an emotional attack at SC2).
"A higher APM requirement" is not an explanation. I could equally say SC2 is a faster game, so mechanically it's harder to micro-manage battles, you have less time to respond when you scout an attack, etc.
Things that make BW hard:
- Older UI without massive control groups, less shortcut keys. - Less automated activity; worker rallying at mineral clusters, autorepair, etc. - Less "one trick pony" units, so unit choice is trickier.
Things that make SC2 hard:
- Faster pace of game means you have to be quicker at micro-management.
Even from writing that it does look like BW is a "harder" game, mostly because of the older interface which doesn't automate/streamline the playing experience like SC2 does. Would like to see my lists expanded.
With the above items listed, it renders BW's barrier of entry that much thicker than StarTwo.
Speaking of the unit design alone, Brood War allows the pilots to utilize them in definitively more potent than than the sequel. In StarCraft 2's bland unit's capability make each of them performing dull tasks that the players can manage to catch up with the pros at astounding rate.
Not to mention the BO's volatility in the 'successor'. With the addition of Mules, CB, and Injects, this practically turned the scouting to be less effective. In Brood War, the emphasis on scouting because seeing is believing. So the opponents either are forced to continue with the original algorithm or abandon the strategy which would waste time so every tiny little actions in the game matters to the overall outcome.
On September 13 2012 04:53 RenSC2 wrote:Perhaps one of the key differences between SCBW and SC2 is the way in which a player shows his superiority. A lot of people point to expert muta control as a defining factor in many top notch BW zergs. It is a visually obvious skill when the ball of mutas is staying tight and maximizing it's DPS on a point while minimizing enemy DPS. There are many other difficult micro tricks like this (reaver-shuttle, etc) that are very visually obvious high skill achievements. In SC2, many of the equivalent actions are not so obvious. Using force-fields perfectly to hit the right spots at the right times to get the absolute most out of your energy is an art form as skillful and beautiful as muta-stacking. Yet, the casual observer won't notice that the force-fields should have been one space further back or are overlapping by one space in a few spots. The elite protoss in SC2 will have extra force-fields to spend per the gas investment because they place their fields better, but it's so easy as an observer to overlook it and it's not really something a very knowledgeable caster can dwell on for too long as the action is pretty much guaranteed to get very hot.
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.
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.
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.
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"?
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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...
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.
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 has a touch of "teenage pregnancy rates drop to 0% after age of 19" to it. You see what you want to see, grant you a lot of "us" do that, too, but doesn't make your "science" correct in any way. If you do statistics, always ask yourself "what am I meassuring here?", not "what do I want to show and how could I possibly make it look good?".
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.
I think it's a pretty bad point. If you talk about the koreans pro-gamers, fact is that the good ranked ones switched last, and they are actually doing quite fine.
If you talk about foreigners, the fact is that most of the good players don't come from bw but rather from WC3. Use their bw rank to see their skill is pretty irrelevant... Fact is former foreign bw pro perform (relatively) badly in sc2, but I'm not sure if that's a sign that bw is harder or just that "foreigner in bw sucked".
OP, have you played BW on iccup at the D+/C- level or watch BW on a regular basis? (regular enough to familiarise yourself with the different builds and unit compositions)
I agree with most, if not almost all of your points OP. You made them very logically, and very clearly.
Here is my small argument as to why BW > SC2 in terms of difficulty.
I would like to define both games as having two different skill sets. One being a Mechanical Skill set, the other being general Skill (tactics, strategy, etc).
I assert that BW is a more mechanically demanding game. I think this can be widely agreed upon. This is due, in part, to the game engine and unit pathing. With BW you have to constantly fight the game, and the game itself doesn't give you the same tools (no auto cast, auto mine, auto split now, unit control groups, etc). The hotkey and lack of customization also makes it physically more demanding.
In fact, there is no argument that can be made that would go in favor of a tie, or that sc2 is the mechanically harder game. you can say apm is mechanics, and both require top micro abilities, but what I am referring to is the general level of mechanical ability you would need to play within the top 50% of players at any given time in either games history.
Since BW is mechanically harder, I would also assert that both games require basically the same level of general skill, because strategy and tactics are universal concepts inside of an RTS game.
I believe that the reason why BW is a harder game, and takes a higher amount of skill to play, is due to the fact that learning the game of BW, and becoming good at it is harder then in SC2.
Mechanical play is a harder skill to raise then that of general skill level, because it comes from muscle memory and repetitious play, and not from mental cunning and insight. The effect of having mechanical ability over another player is also mitigated in SC2, meaning that it is not as valuable of a skill when compared to BW.
Now I know this is about overall level of skill, but more then half of the game in BW, and what separates players at each level of the game is mechanics for BW.
I'll take a different direction. If we take 2 people, of identical skill levels, with identical ability, and had them both practice a game, starting from the bottom and working their way up, etc, the player playing SC2 will reach the top of the skill rung before the player playing BW. This is due to the fact that the game of mechanics, one which takes much more time and physical training, is of a greater concern in BW. Therefore, The reason why you see the same stats between those at the top levels is because the difference in mechanical ability at the top is mitigated by the differences of general skill.
Example. July is considered a great mechanical player, but looses to flash, who is considered somewhat average. This is the same in sc2.
After so many games, both players will place similarly given enough time in both games.
I played BW a little bit back in the day, then switched over to sc2. I got to GM once about a year ago in sc2. It took me 1 year to go from copper to top 200 in the NA. I have since switched over to BW, and with some considerable effort, I still lack the mechanical ability currently to play at my previous level in SC2.
My point being, while both games have the same general soft cap, and can be seen as being just as equally as difficult. But in the lower portions of the game, it takes a person longer, and a considerable deal more effort, to get equally as good at BW, when compared to sc2, due to the mechanical difference in both games.
I think most people think of the difficulty of a game being how long it takes you to become competent and competitive at it. Most of your numbers don't really have anything to do with this.
The KeSPA pros will show you exactly how hard SC2 can be when they bring to the scene the kind of skill that comes with dedicated and serious practice.
I think a lot of people will say platinum and diamond league are not very impressive. Masters and Grand Masters is like the minimum you need to be considered competent. It wasn't really that way in BW, was it? Just getting to B was the childish fantasy of many a player, required dedication and devotion to the game that was beyond the discipline most people had. So many hours have to be poured in just to get to that. And that isn't even close to a good Korean amateur. The same goes with C rank back in the day. It was pretty impressive, in meant you were competent and had learned the game and played for a long time.
The question is not 'could you go back to 2000 and compete?' The question is of the games in their current state. Will SC2 ever get the chance to grow complex enough, or will the clock keep being reset by the expansions until the graphics are 10 years old and Blizzard releases SC3 2 years after the last expansion? Let's not resort to pitiful arguements of what SC2 could be, because that is riddled with difficult to support assumptions, complications in data (like SC2 inheriting BW tactics and players) and inanities. If you are going to ask the question what is the harder game, you have to deal with the data that is here.
mostly a good OP. there are minor tidbits I disagree with, but it's mostly good. However, it doesn't change the fact that I _feel_ differently. When I play brood war, a game I have played for 12 years, clocking tens of hours of actual game time, I never feel like I play even remotely close to perfect. When I play sc2, a game where I have played something like 150 hours and where I am mid-high master league, I sometimes have games where I feel like I was "pretty close" (mechanically).
Obviously some of this is related to how the games have slightly different skill sets. and me knowing bw better, I can much easier identify my flaws. But there's just no doubt that, barring theoretical micro challenges where infinity apm would be highly useful in either game, bw is a much more mechanically demanding game. That is, if you are 10% weaker than me mechanically in bw, you're going to lose. Almost every game. those 10% will have a much lower impact in sc2. Essentially, bw requires you to be at a higher level before your mechanical mistakes stop being glaringly obvious. This is related to how macro is more important than micro, and how in bw, the macro is more demanding than the macro from sc2.
In turn, this gives the illusion that differences between players is much smaller in sc2 than in bw, because it's harder to tell them apart. And personally, it gives me the impression that I could compete with top sc2 players, if I dedicated myself to it for 6 months. Whereas in bw, I considered it completely impossible for myself to attain a level to defeat flash.
I think the whole mechanical thing is a bit misguided in terms of how "easy" a game is.
BW is mechanically harder than SC2 in the same way that running is mechanically harder than riding a bicycle. They both use the same leg strength and are essentially the same goal in competition (get from point A to point B in the fastest time), but in cycling the bike does some of the work for you, leaving you to turn the pedals, switch gears as needed, and turn the handlebar in the direction you want to go.
That being said, cycling and running are both equally hard. Usain Bolt, given 3-6 months of practice, would probably be a good cyclist due to good leg strength from running, and better than the average cyclist, but nowhere near the best. Conversely Lance Armstrong would probably be a fast runner for the same reasons, but he too would be bad at track events when running alongside the likes of Bolt.
Running would seem harder because you have to put in more effort to run the same amount of time. A 10 km run is harder than a 10 km bike ride. But cycling events are longer for this reason. The triathlon usually has the cycling part anywhere from 3 to 10 times as long as the running part (olympic is 4.3). But to get as good at cycling is still just as hard as getting good at running.
On September 18 2012 00:48 Liquid`Drone wrote: I'm sorry but that analogy makes no sense at all.
How so? I find it fitting. The bicycle in this case would be things ranging from automine to multiple building selection.
I think I agree with drone here, learning to ride a bike is actually pretty hard compare to running. Anyone could just start running but you have to take some time to learn to ride a bike first. Maybe its more like BW = Running and SC2 = Tricycle.
On September 17 2012 23:43 Liquid`Drone wrote: mostly a good OP. there are minor tidbits I disagree with, but it's mostly good. However, it doesn't change the fact that I _feel_ differently. When I play brood war, a game I have played for 12 years, clocking tens of hours of actual game time, I never feel like I play even remotely close to perfect. When I play sc2, a game where I have played something like 150 hours and where I am mid-high master league, I sometimes have games where I feel like I was "pretty close" (mechanically).
Obviously some of this is related to how the games have slightly different skill sets. and me knowing bw better, I can much easier identify my flaws. But there's just no doubt that, barring theoretical micro challenges where infinity apm would be highly useful in either game, bw is a much more mechanically demanding game. That is, if you are 10% weaker than me mechanically in bw, you're going to lose. Almost every game. those 10% will have a much lower impact in sc2. Essentially, bw requires you to be at a higher level before your mechanical mistakes stop being glaringly obvious. This is related to how macro is more important than micro, and how in bw, the macro is more demanding than the macro from sc2.
In turn, this gives the illusion that differences between players is much smaller in sc2 than in bw, because it's harder to tell them apart. And personally, it gives me the impression that I could compete with top sc2 players, if I dedicated myself to it for 6 months. Whereas in bw, I considered it completely impossible for myself to attain a level to defeat flash.
Except he doesn't say anything like that. All he does is to pull random ELO rankings and compares a few lines to another. He doesn't get that he compares apples and oranges (which is almost every time the case for SCII <-> BW comparisons). He also does a few lines that show that this blog (or his "statistics") are "constructed" (knowingly or not) to make his case, rather than to test a theory. It was definitely not worth reading this blog. I see how BW "elitists" are repelled and how SCII people think that proofs "their" point, when in truth only badly done statistics and flawed comparisons are presented. Topics like these should immediately closed, all they do is to split the readers and inforce all the bs hatred.
I liked your reply Chef because it is logical and straightforward, but it gives me a few different places to respond where I think the disagreement is.
On September 14 2012 23:37 Chef wrote: I think most people think of the difficulty of a game being how long it takes you to become competent and competitive at it. Most of your numbers don't really have anything to do with this.
Yes, this would be a different, but very reasonable, definition for how easy a game is. The problem is, how do you define competent and competitive? Is having the mechanics to do what you want to do the defining feature of being competent and competitive? If so, Chess must be one of the easiest games in the world. Yet, few would agree with that assessment. I think a lot of the replies have a huge BW bias in how they define competent and competitive. And that bias centers completely around the mechanical difficulty. Yet, if you remove the words "Starcraft" from a game, they're able to get away from their bias and accept a game like Chess as difficult for reasons other than mechanics.
So defining competent and competitive is not a straightforward endeavor. If you define competitive from the very top (#1 player), then the stats I show do just that. In SCBW, players outside the top 39 (but still good) can only beat Fantasy 12% or Flash 19% of the time. In SC2, players outside the top 39 (but still good) can only beat Taeja or Curious 20% of the time. Do my stats then appear as a legitimate measure of competitiveness? Or is competitiveness only something to be measured at a much lower level?
On September 14 2012 23:37 Chef wrote: The KeSPA pros will show you exactly how hard SC2 can be when they bring to the scene the kind of skill that comes with dedicated and serious practice.
On a bit of a tangent here, I think the practice regimen of the ESF houses is highly underrated. If the guys at EG actually practice 8+ hours a day (as they repeatedly claim), then I'd have to imagine the ESF guys are putting in a lot more. Most of them (including coaches) came from the Kespa system in the first place. I don't think they suddenly forgot how to practice. Perhaps they're only putting in 10 hours a day instead of the customary 12 or more?
On September 14 2012 23:37 Chef wrote: I think a lot of people will say platinum and diamond league are not very impressive. Masters and Grand Masters is like the minimum you need to be considered competent. It wasn't really that way in BW, was it? Just getting to B was the childish fantasy of many a player, required dedication and devotion to the game that was beyond the discipline most people had. So many hours have to be poured in just to get to that. And that isn't even close to a good Korean amateur. The same goes with C rank back in the day. It was pretty impressive, in meant you were competent and had learned the game and played for a long time.
The difference is that more than 99% of all players already dropped out of SCBW. I played SC right when it came out. My 2-gate zealot A-move rush (not even proxied) could beat everyone I knew except for one person and he was in the top 25 of the Blizzard Ladder when it actually meant something (before everyone learned how to abuse it). I believe he actually invented building a second hatchery in-base (he'd then turn that into a massive ling rush... it got him into the top 25), and no, I'm not shitting you. Sadly I don't remember his name anymore.
The player base back then was a joke. A whole lot of people had to learn a ton or fall out. Most fell out over the years. Only the most dedicated people are left remaining and that's what you see when you play ICCUP and similar player-made servers. If 99% of the least dedicated players dropped out of SC2 (basically everyone not currently in masters), even getting to silver would suddenly be a big accomplishment. It's another unfair comparison that is frequently made. For someone new to come into that environment, getting to Gold would seem like a childish fantasy. Fortunately, the SC2 player base is still large enough that we won't see that moment for quite some time, especially with two expansions coming out.
On September 14 2012 23:37 Chef wrote: The question is not 'could you go back to 2000 and compete?' The question is of the games in their current state. Will SC2 ever get the chance to grow complex enough, or will the clock keep being reset by the expansions until the graphics are 10 years old and Blizzard releases SC3 2 years after the last expansion? Let's not resort to pitiful arguements of what SC2 could be, because that is riddled with difficult to support assumptions, complications in data (like SC2 inheriting BW tactics and players) and inanities. If you are going to ask the question what is the harder game, you have to deal with the data that is here.
Yeah, it's difficult to presume exactly what will happen in 10 years. Perhaps SC2 gets figured out and everyone approaches 50% win rate. Perhaps the Kespa pros come in and with their harder training regimen, they run into the soft cap and nobody can really excel. Perhaps Blizzard changes the game every 2-3 years with expansions (and minor balance changes in-between) until SC3 comes out, and we never really learn how high the skill cap in SC2 is.
We do have to work in the here and now. Luckily, I already did that in the OP. In the here and now, when we measure difficulty from the very top, the games do show similar results of difficulty.
The people making presumptions about difficulty, without looking at the facts, are the people who look at the "easier" mechanics of SC2 compared to BW and assume that the game is easier because of it. Yet, the actual numbers, here and now, don't line up with those assumptions.
Not convinced by the methodology at all. Especially given the lack of truly STABLE players at the top. All the SC2 big names have been rising and falling into oblivion within months.
So, maybe someday.
Either way you can't calculate difficulty with win rates and such quantitative data. You can maybe use it to make suggestions but you're not getting answers, and to pretend that you are is unscientific.
Well researched and well written, I enjoyed it. Both games are clearly hard and require great skill to play at a high level; they are just difficult for different reasons. That you might prefer the way in which one game is difficult to the other, or that it is more obvious to you why one game is harder than the other, does not mean, thereby, that the one which you prefer is in fact harder or more skill-based. 5/5
BW pros caught up in 3 months. Do you really believe SC2 players could do the same in BW?
This is just hypothetical heresay, at least the OP tried to provide some knid of analytical evidence. I wouldn't be surprised if SC2 players could go and play well in BW within 3 months, but my opinion doesn't matter. Show me the evidence.
No they fucking couldn't. You do realize that the vast majority of those players were either on a bw pro team or trying to make it to the pros.
there are a lot of barriers to entry just like making it in the gsl, i.e. code b, code a and code s whereas bw has courage for earning a pro gamer license or you need to get a handout from one of the few pro gamer licenses the KeSPA team has.
A lot of those statistics are irrevelant and a big lol at the Golden Age of BW.
Sorry you guys can try to rationalize it all you want, but the critics (i.e. the Koreans who actually played both are already on the fence as to where they stand when it comes to both games).
You will keep getting the politically correct answers to sell SC2, which is fine.
Not to say the game isn't hard because it is but comparing the two games when everything from the game design to flow is different is apples to oranges.
In all seriousness though, good post - I came here expecting something about how "harder interface in BW is just artificial difficulty", but was pleasantly surprised.
However, if SC2 pros were able to take their current mechanical skill and be teleported back in time to the early 2000s, yes, I think they could compete within 3 months
Early 2000s!? It'd take more like 3 days considering that most korean SC2 pros are from BW. Any decent amateur player by today's (or 2009's) standards would crush the top pro players from the early 2000's.
I suspect that the kind of comparison you want is: if the current pro scene had the strategical knowledge of the early 2000s but retained their current mechanics, then SC2 pros with their mechanics but no knowledge of strategy would be able to catch up in 3 months. Which I'd probably disagree with if we could somehow disregard the philosophical incoherence of such an scenario (e.g. if many of the mechanical subtleties that are now known couldn't arise without the associated strategic understanding first developing).
And god I'm so sick of people on both sides giving the impression that the harder interface is the only thing making BW harder. For me it's more that there's just many more situations in BW where the player has "the power to make a difference". To take an innocous early game situation - if I scout a 13cc as zerg, then with good micro my scouting drone can really give the terran a headache. You have to be really fast and accurate with the mouse to do moving shot with drones (spam move+left click on the SCV, right click it only when you're in range, move click away instantly). In the corresponding SC2 situation the other guy just right clicks my drone with another scv and I can't do shit. I might elaborate with a whole blog on this soon.
If you don't think it's an easy game, then why do you feel the need to defend it? Let those ignorant fools keep thinking what they think and let yourself feel superior to them....
It's a ridiculous debate; bw elitists will be elitists and sc2 elitists will be sc2 elitists. Just call them different and head our separate ways? yes? Close this thread.
I feel bad for you. I'm not insulting you, I actually feel bad for you. You worked hard on something, you put lot thought into it, but because of your myopic focus you wasted hours working on something that is clearly wrong to someone who actually takes the time to carefully read it. Of course, most people won't. SC2 fans will see a block a text, a couple of images, a few well-formatted sentences and let your post confirm their bias.
Here's where you make your crucial mistake. And I quote: "One of the most obvious ways determine a skill curve is to look at the win percentages of the top players. Can the top players differentiate themselves from the masses? Presumably, the higher a top player's win percentage, the greater the skill curve in the game."
This is, of course, very wrong. It's wrong for many reasons. I tend to think you realized what a gigantic mistake the colored portion of the quote was. That's why you prefaced it with a presumably. Sadly, you decided to back up that weak premise with statistics, observations, and thousand of words. Considering your choice of words, I doubt I have to even attack your hypothesis myself. You can. And frankly, you should. Your post had some interesting points, quite a bit of solid research, and was presented well. Don't be too proud to admit your mistakes. However, in case you won't, here's a thought experiment for everyone reading.
Imagine there are two games, A and B. A is a perfect game, as defined by the author. B is easy game, as defined by the author. In game A, all serious players play a 12 hours a day according to a rigid schedule. As you would expect, all the players get better. They all reach a high skill level, and the players are pretty even. A few players are more talented, or manage to sneak in an hour or two more a day, and win more often than everyone else. In game B, many play about 4 hours, some other play 8, and a very few play 12. As you would expect, the few hard workers would beat the others regularly, even though it's an easy game.
But that's not the only example. The fact is, the win percentage of top players against 'less skilled' or 'equally skilled' players does not show hard the game is unless the game is trivial. Players of one game might be more or less talented. They might practice more or less. Players in one game might have hugely superior environments to their competition, while in the other game everyone is on an equal playing field. Unless the soft cap can't be moved, those, and many other things, could explain the variations in win rate.
To conclude: 1) Your post was (SERIOUSLY) good, except for the flaw which invalidated everything and 2) I have no comment on whether BW or SC2 is harder.
I would like to make a point against the 'a D+ BW player is high-diamond in SC2' argument: only average to above average players even knew about iCCup, it wasn't something Blizzard advertised on the game so there's automatically a large amount of players not on iCCup. We can also assume that most iCCup players are above-average on B.net.
iCCup took a small amount of the best battle.net players and threw them into the large D- to A+ ranking system. From there minor differences in skill and strategy created the divisions.
In Starcraft 2 there is no seperate ladder system, a much larger player pool, and less ladder divisions (7 compared to iCCup's 13). All of the above-average players are shoved into just two leagues, Masters and Diamond.
I bet if we took just the Diamond, Masters and GM players and threw them into their own ladder system we would see the ladder divisions being filled. My point is if we took that D+ BW player and put him into his own ladder system along with the rest of Diamond, Masters and GM he would be silver or lower, which is equivelant to iCCup's D+.
On September 18 2012 14:39 -_- wrote: I feel bad for you. I'm not insulting you, I actually feel bad for you. You worked hard on something, you put lot thought into it, but because of your myopic focus you wasted hours working on something that is clearly wrong to someone who actually takes the time to carefully read it. Of course, most people won't. SC2 fans will see a block a text, a couple of images, a few well-formatted sentences and let your post confirm their bias.
Here's where you make your crucial mistake. And I quote: "One of the most obvious ways determine a skill curve is to look at the win percentages of the top players. Can the top players differentiate themselves from the masses? Presumably, the higher a top player's win percentage, the greater the skill curve in the game."
This is, of course, very wrong. It's wrong for many reasons. I tend to think you realized what a gigantic mistake the colored portion of the quote was. That's why you prefaced it with a presumably. Sadly, you decided to back up that weak premise with statistics, observations, and thousand of words. Considering your choice of words, I doubt I have to even attack your hypothesis myself. You can. And frankly, you should. Your post had some interesting points, quite a bit of solid research, and was presented well. Don't be too proud to admit your mistakes. However, in case you won't, here's a thought experiment for everyone reading.
Imagine there are two games, A and B. A is a perfect game, as defined by the author. B is easy game, as defined by the author. In game A, all serious players play a 12 hours a day according to a rigid schedule. As you would expect, all the players get better. They all reach a high skill level, and the players are pretty even. A few players are more talented, or manage to sneak in an hour or two more a day, and win more often than everyone else. In game B, many play about 4 hours, some other play 8, and a very few play 12. As you would expect, the few hard workers would beat the others regularly, even though it's an easy game.
But that's not the only example. The fact is, the win percentage of top players against 'less skilled' or 'equally skilled' players does not show hard the game is unless the game is trivial. Players of one game might be more or less talented. They might practice more or less. Players in one game might have hugely superior environments to their competition, while in the other game everyone is on an equal playing field. Unless the soft cap can't be moved, those, and many other things, could explain the variations in win rate.
To conclude: 1) Your post was (SERIOUSLY) good, except for the flaw which invalidated everything and 2) I have no comment on whether BW or SC2 is harder.
Actually, you've made a good point. The whole OP relies on a very important presumption, and it's one that L3gendary brought out with his CoD4 example too. You can get the same separation of win rates in an easy game if there are too many unequal practice regimens. Perhaps none of the top 39 players (or only a small group of them) really push their human limits in practice. Perhaps the practice environment is insufficient... there are plenty of NA pros that complain about the lack of difficulty on the NA ladder.
Those are legitimate concerns that could affect the results. However, considering the team-house environment in Korea and the full-time practice regimens that ESF pros are on, those problems likely don't exist in the SC2 pro scene. The very top of the Korean SC2 scene almost assuredly pushes close to the human limits. The addition of the Kespa pros will further ensure that the limits are being pushed.
As I've mentioned multiple times, there is a possibility that the Kespa pros will hit the soft cap after a year or two while the ESF pros couldn't. I would put that in the doubtful category, but it is a possibility. In any article like this, there are assumptions that have to be made and the assumption that the very top of ESF pros are putting in massive amounts of effort is one of those assumptions. It's one of the reasons why I didn't just end with top 39 vs others. I compared the top 39 vs each other because I wanted to see if at the very tip top, where $100,000s are on the line, if the players could still separate themselves.
For the time being, they can do it just as much as the Kespa pros did towards the end of SCBW. With that said, the purpose of this blog was to both arm SC2 fans with information to defend their game against an ongoing stream of insults, and hopefully show the BW fans on TL that SC2 is a game worthy of respect, even if they don't particularly enjoy it. Sadly, the second part has mostly not happened.
On September 18 2012 14:39 -_- wrote: I feel bad for you. I'm not insulting you, I actually feel bad for you. You worked hard on something, you put lot thought into it, but because of your myopic focus you wasted hours working on something that is clearly wrong to someone who actually takes the time to carefully read it. Of course, most people won't. SC2 fans will see a block a text, a couple of images, a few well-formatted sentences and let your post confirm their bias.
Here's where you make your crucial mistake. And I quote: "One of the most obvious ways determine a skill curve is to look at the win percentages of the top players. Can the top players differentiate themselves from the masses? Presumably, the higher a top player's win percentage, the greater the skill curve in the game."
This is, of course, very wrong. It's wrong for many reasons. I tend to think you realized what a gigantic mistake the colored portion of the quote was. That's why you prefaced it with a presumably. Sadly, you decided to back up that weak premise with statistics, observations, and thousand of words. Considering your choice of words, I doubt I have to even attack your hypothesis myself. You can. And frankly, you should. Your post had some interesting points, quite a bit of solid research, and was presented well. Don't be too proud to admit your mistakes. However, in case you won't, here's a thought experiment for everyone reading.
Imagine there are two games, A and B. A is a perfect game, as defined by the author. B is easy game, as defined by the author. In game A, all serious players play a 12 hours a day according to a rigid schedule. As you would expect, all the players get better. They all reach a high skill level, and the players are pretty even. A few players are more talented, or manage to sneak in an hour or two more a day, and win more often than everyone else. In game B, many play about 4 hours, some other play 8, and a very few play 12. As you would expect, the few hard workers would beat the others regularly, even though it's an easy game.
But that's not the only example. The fact is, the win percentage of top players against 'less skilled' or 'equally skilled' players does not show hard the game is unless the game is trivial. Players of one game might be more or less talented. They might practice more or less. Players in one game might have hugely superior environments to their competition, while in the other game everyone is on an equal playing field. Unless the soft cap can't be moved, those, and many other things, could explain the variations in win rate.
To conclude: 1) Your post was (SERIOUSLY) good, except for the flaw which invalidated everything and 2) I have no comment on whether BW or SC2 is harder.
Actually, you've made a good point. The whole OP relies on a very important presumption, and it's one that L3gendary brought out with his CoD4 example too. You can get the same separation of win rates in an easy game if there are too many unequal practice regimens. Perhaps none of the top 39 players (or only a small group of them) really push their human limits in practice. Perhaps the practice environment is insufficient... there are plenty of NA pros that complain about the lack of difficulty on the NA ladder.
Those are legitimate concerns that could affect the results. However, considering the team-house environment in Korea and the full-time practice regimens that ESF pros are on, those problems likely don't exist in the SC2 pro scene. The very top of the Korean SC2 scene almost assuredly pushes close to the human limits. The addition of the Kespa pros will further ensure that the limits are being pushed.
As I've mentioned multiple times, there is a possibility that the Kespa pros will hit the soft cap after a year or two while the ESF pros couldn't. I would put that in the doubtful category, but it is a possibility. In any article like this, there are assumptions that have to be made and the assumption that the very top of ESF pros are putting in massive amounts of effort is one of those assumptions. It's one of the reasons why I didn't just end with top 39 vs others. I compared the top 39 vs each other because I wanted to see if at the very tip top, where $100,000s are on the line, if the players could still separate themselves.
For the time being, they can do it just as much as the Kespa pros did towards the end of SCBW. With that said, the purpose of this blog was to both arm SC2 fans with information to defend their game against an ongoing stream of insults, and hopefully show the BW fans on TL that SC2 is a game worthy of respect, even if they don't particularly enjoy it. Sadly, the second part has mostly not happened.
You're still missing the point. Correlation of ELO curves does NOT mean games are equally easy. If it does, prove how it does. As you are the one making the claim that it does, the onus is on you to prove how two ELO curves from the top pros of a particular game have anything at all to do with the difficulty of the game.
On September 18 2012 14:39 -_- wrote: I feel bad for you. I'm not insulting you, I actually feel bad for you. You worked hard on something, you put lot thought into it, but because of your myopic focus you wasted hours working on something that is clearly wrong to someone who actually takes the time to carefully read it. Of course, most people won't. SC2 fans will see a block a text, a couple of images, a few well-formatted sentences and let your post confirm their bias.
Here's where you make your crucial mistake. And I quote: "One of the most obvious ways determine a skill curve is to look at the win percentages of the top players. Can the top players differentiate themselves from the masses? Presumably, the higher a top player's win percentage, the greater the skill curve in the game."
This is, of course, very wrong. It's wrong for many reasons. I tend to think you realized what a gigantic mistake the colored portion of the quote was. That's why you prefaced it with a presumably. Sadly, you decided to back up that weak premise with statistics, observations, and thousand of words. Considering your choice of words, I doubt I have to even attack your hypothesis myself. You can. And frankly, you should. Your post had some interesting points, quite a bit of solid research, and was presented well. Don't be too proud to admit your mistakes. However, in case you won't, here's a thought experiment for everyone reading.
Imagine there are two games, A and B. A is a perfect game, as defined by the author. B is easy game, as defined by the author. In game A, all serious players play a 12 hours a day according to a rigid schedule. As you would expect, all the players get better. They all reach a high skill level, and the players are pretty even. A few players are more talented, or manage to sneak in an hour or two more a day, and win more often than everyone else. In game B, many play about 4 hours, some other play 8, and a very few play 12. As you would expect, the few hard workers would beat the others regularly, even though it's an easy game.
But that's not the only example. The fact is, the win percentage of top players against 'less skilled' or 'equally skilled' players does not show hard the game is unless the game is trivial. Players of one game might be more or less talented. They might practice more or less. Players in one game might have hugely superior environments to their competition, while in the other game everyone is on an equal playing field. Unless the soft cap can't be moved, those, and many other things, could explain the variations in win rate.
To conclude: 1) Your post was (SERIOUSLY) good, except for the flaw which invalidated everything and 2) I have no comment on whether BW or SC2 is harder.
Actually, you've made a good point. The whole OP relies on a very important presumption, and it's one that L3gendary brought out with his CoD4 example too. You can get the same separation of win rates in an easy game if there are too many unequal practice regimens. Perhaps none of the top 39 players (or only a small group of them) really push their human limits in practice. Perhaps the practice environment is insufficient... there are plenty of NA pros that complain about the lack of difficulty on the NA ladder.
Those are legitimate concerns that could affect the results. However, considering the team-house environment in Korea and the full-time practice regimens that ESF pros are on, those problems likely don't exist in the SC2 pro scene. The very top of the Korean SC2 scene almost assuredly pushes close to the human limits. The addition of the Kespa pros will further ensure that the limits are being pushed.
As I've mentioned multiple times, there is a possibility that the Kespa pros will hit the soft cap after a year or two while the ESF pros couldn't. I would put that in the doubtful category, but it is a possibility. In any article like this, there are assumptions that have to be made and the assumption that the very top of ESF pros are putting in massive amounts of effort is one of those assumptions. It's one of the reasons why I didn't just end with top 39 vs others. I compared the top 39 vs each other because I wanted to see if at the very tip top, where $100,000s are on the line, if the players could still separate themselves.
For the time being, they can do it just as much as the Kespa pros did towards the end of SCBW. With that said, the purpose of this blog was to both arm SC2 fans with information to defend their game against an ongoing stream of insults, and hopefully show the BW fans on TL that SC2 is a game worthy of respect, even if they don't particularly enjoy it. Sadly, the second part has mostly not happened.
1) Every ESF player who has experienced both KESPA and ESF house says KESPA players practiced much harder. For example, Idra has said it in essentially those words. So, I don't think it's fair to say at "the very top of the Korean SC2 scene almost assuredly pushes close to the human limits."
2) I feel like you're saying that practice regime is the one caveat you have to make. There are so many other reasons why win rates could be similar! For example, what if one player has high win rate in a perfect game because he practices harder, while in an easy game one player has a high win rate because he has a support staff that researches the strategies of his opponents and he has build order advantages in his games!
On September 18 2012 14:52 Limelights wrote: I would like to make a point against the 'a D+ BW player is high-diamond in SC2' argument: only average to above average players even knew about iCCup, it wasn't something Blizzard advertised on the game so there's automatically a large amount of players not on iCCup. We can also assume that most iCCup players are above-average on B.net.
iCCup took a small amount of the best battle.net players and threw them into the large D- to A+ ranking system. From there minor differences in skill and strategy created the divisions.
In Starcraft 2 there is no seperate ladder system, a much larger player pool, and less ladder divisions (7 compared to iCCup's 13). All of the above-average players are shoved into just two leagues, Masters and Diamond.
I bet if we took just the Diamond, Masters and GM players and threw them into their own ladder system we would see the ladder divisions being filled. My point is if we took that D+ BW player and put him into his own ladder system along with the rest of Diamond, Masters and GM he would be silver or lower, which is equivelant to iCCup's D+.
Actually, compared to all the players that play starcraft BW, ICCUP has the lowest skill level of all the servers. When we lump all the players from Fish, Brain, West and ICCUP together, someone that is D+ on ICCUP would probably be the lowest group of players, or Broze in Sc2 terms. Somone that is B- on ICCUP (very good already), is probably slightly above average if they go on a server like Fish.
Yes, this would be a different, but very reasonable, definition for how easy a game is. The problem is, how do you define competent and competitive? Is having the mechanics to do what you want to do the defining feature of being competent and competitive? If so, Chess must be one of the easiest games in the world. Yet, few would agree with that assessment. I think a lot of the replies have a huge BW bias in how they define competent and competitive. And that bias centers completely around the mechanical difficulty. Yet, if you remove the words "Starcraft" from a game, they're able to get away from their bias and accept a game like Chess as difficult for reasons other than mechanics.
I don't think it's hard to define. I don't think you need to bring in mechanics or the particular functions of each game you talk about either. It is simply the amount of time it takes to compete at either the top amateur level (and from there, the professional level). How long does it take to master Go? How long does it take to master Chess? How long does it take to master BW? How long does it take to master SC2? Where master means you are able to compete with the best and you display a strong understanding of the game (which is defined by how much you know vs how much the best know). If it takes 10,000 repetitions to master an activity, can we not say that if it takes someone 100 repetitions to gain equal mastery in the activity that it is not easier than the one where 100 repetitions is insufficient? Of course my definitions necessarily means that an activity could become more and more difficult as time progresses, as the game grows deeper and the players skills increase. I'm okay with that.
Forgive me for not responding to the rest of your retorts, but I find a drawn argument like this tedius, so I just replied to the one that interests me most and I think is the lynchpin of the argument anyway.
BW pros caught up in 3 months. Do you really believe SC2 players could do the same in BW?
This is just hypothetical heresay, at least the OP tried to provide some knid of analytical evidence. I wouldn't be surprised if SC2 players could go and play well in BW within 3 months, but my opinion doesn't matter. Show me the evidence.
Hmmmm... Evidence?.. MC was called "Flounder", "Suicide Toss" (i assure you he likely won't be proud of either of them) back in Brood War. And he had spent many years training as an amateur. After that, and more years of training in a pro-house, he never got anywhere (look up his BW record). And he where is he in SC2 now?. 3 months? None of your current SC2 pros will be fit to just sit on the bench after 3 months.
I pretty much quit following TL Starcraft after the last Proleague Grand Finals, after all this time these Starcrap II people still havn't managed to at least accept that their game require less skill? I ll agree with Sawamura, Starcraft 2 is a very difficult game to play. No wonder every single one of my friends quit (both playing n watching).
From where i'm looking, the OP's data and the conclusion he drew from it are completely irrelevant.
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