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What determines who wins in SC2 is who can spend their money better than their opponent. Of course, being in the position where you have a superior army is a major part of strategy games; but in SC2, the best way to have a superior army is to number-crunch your minerals/gas more efficiently than your opponent.
You can cite me instances of pro players who do some crazy micro or strategy and it's really cool and all that jazz, that's not the point. Pro players have such a good grasp of min/maxing their resources that the only way to win in a top game is to use your units more efficiently.
Getting out-macroed is the single most prevalent reason for losing in SC2 for the non-pros. But why is this the case?
Well, first off; there are mechanics in this game that punishes you for not keeping up with the tedium of training your units, workers, supply, or whatever. I fail to see any positive gameplay that is added by forcing players to keep making supply depots. Is it a mineral sink? Do people think that you can harass supply (in before "overlord harass", what about depots?") Is it just scenery? I don't get it. And if it does bring positive gameplay, wouldn't making individual supply buildings more valuable be even better for the game? What about supply depots that cost 175 but give 20 supply? Wouldn't those be worthy of harassing and wouldn't those add another factor for strategies to come into play? Supply is just another way to punish those who are not as efficient at the many tediums of SC2.
Of course, one other way this game is focused on min/maxing resources is how much income you can get from bases and how extraordinarily easy it is to expand. Zerg get inject larva to mass produce drones, Protoss get chrono boost for probes and Terran get MULES. Workers are mass produced and there is no downside to making them at any point in the game. Since both players have such large incomes, it becomes more and more tedious to spend all that income. If you don't, the other person will and you will have a weaker army, and it's not like you can beat a big army with a small one. It's not like you can rush, the maps have such a distance and are intentionally designed to have a narrow choke that is usually always blocked off that the only way a rush can work is if you do a "timing" push, which basically needs to be number crunched and experimented with to see if you have a critical mass to bust through the defense position. The point is that you can't avoid the money game.
I can recall a few losses where my opponent legitimately out-played me, but every other loss was basically the opponent spending his money more efficiently then me. If my opponent can get 10 stalkers in the field when I can only get 6, who is going to win in the long run?
To any newbies out there, I guarantee that you will be 500x better at this game if you practiced spending your money, not getting supply blocked, and number crunching certain strategies and how much money you need at what times. SC2 is not a strategy game, it is number crunching simulator to see who can make the most out of their virtual numbers.
The key to victory in SC2 is to spend your money better than your opponent.
The fun of a strategy game is to decide what units you are going to make and how you are going to use them, not how much money units you can make in a certain timeframe.
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Katowice25012 Posts
That's the beauty of an RTS game. You need to be nimble with your fingers to accomplish things, it's a perfect combination of chess and piano. If that bugs you, why not just play a turn based game and have that issue solved?
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Lalalaland34499 Posts
So basically...macro is important?
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The enjoyment and actual skill of the game comes from outsmarting your opponents, not outmassing them.
Why do you think they have weight divisions in combat sports?
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Katowice25012 Posts
Okay. So play a turn based game? This is a very solvable problem I am not sure what your issue is.
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Go ahead and stifle conversation;
Both by moving my thread to a containment board and not actually discussing the point.
Oh, and giving me non-answers.
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Macro is important, but starcraft is a lot more than just spending your money and not getting supply blocked.
Sure maybe pure macro and not caring about your units or strategy can go long ways if you are in a low division, but you need to have a plan and be able to execute it and adapt if you are going to get better.
I'd say the key to victory in SC2 is to be able to execute your strategy, adapt and use tactics while not slipping in macro.
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On May 06 2013 09:45 pornguy wrote:
You can cite me instances of pro players who do some crazy micro or strategy and it's really cool and all that jazz, that's not the point. Pro players have such a good grasp of min/maxing their resources that the only way to win in a top game is to use your units more efficiently.
Getting out-macroed is the single most prevalent reason for losing in SC2 for the non-pros. But why is this the case?
The key to victory in SC2 is to spend your money better than your opponent.
The fun of a strategy game is to decide what units you are going to make and how you are going to use them, not how much money units you can make in a certain timeframe.
While I agree with a lot of what you're saying, I don't see it as a flaw in the same way you seem to. Macro will win games at lower levels, but I don't think a mechanical skill-based game should be judged by what low-level players have to do to succeed. A macro-oriented RTS still has plenty of room for strategy, and some of those strategies are based on greed for the sake of macro.
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Sure maybe pure macro and not caring about your units or strategy can go long ways if you are in a low division
Pure macro will work until you are in the 90th percentile of players.
Do a personal experiment: Save every replay and analyze the game you lost. Did your opponent outmass you?
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Lalalaland34499 Posts
I'm having difficulty understanding your post.
I can recall a few losses where my opponent legitimately out-played me, but every other loss was basically the opponent spending his money more efficiently then me. If my opponent can get 10 stalkers in the field when I can only get 6, who is going to win in the long run?
If your opponent can get 10 stalkers when you can only get 6, causing him to win the game, it sounds to me like he outplayed you.
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Lalalaland34499 Posts
On May 06 2013 09:58 pornguy wrote:Show nested quote +Sure maybe pure macro and not caring about your units or strategy can go long ways if you are in a low division Pure macro will work until you are in the 90th percentile of players.
Not purely. Kwark, for instance, has one of the lowest APM's out there but he still did extremely well (I think he broke A- on iCCup once?) due to his strategic choices and thinking. Admittedly, SCBW rather than SC2, but still relevant.
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Katowice25012 Posts
What conversation? Your complaint is that StarCraft isn't a game where you purely outsmart your opponents, because it has an additional requirement (macro). I am saying that those aspects of it are by design, it's not meant to be a game that is purely about thinking and if it was it wouldn't be in the Real Time Strategy genre, a sub-genre of strategy game that adds components on top of the strategy parts of an army style game. You're saying it's a problem that macro exists, when in reality that's by design.
Also I didn't move this, you can thank a moderator for that.
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On May 06 2013 09:58 Firebolt145 wrote:I'm having difficulty understanding your post. Show nested quote +I can recall a few losses where my opponent legitimately out-played me, but every other loss was basically the opponent spending his money more efficiently then me. If my opponent can get 10 stalkers in the field when I can only get 6, who is going to win in the long run? If your opponent can get 10 stalkers when you can only get 6, causing him to win the game, it sounds to me like he outplayed you.
You missed the point entirely.
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Lalalaland34499 Posts
On May 06 2013 10:01 pornguy wrote:Show nested quote +On May 06 2013 09:58 Firebolt145 wrote:I'm having difficulty understanding your post. I can recall a few losses where my opponent legitimately out-played me, but every other loss was basically the opponent spending his money more efficiently then me. If my opponent can get 10 stalkers in the field when I can only get 6, who is going to win in the long run? If your opponent can get 10 stalkers when you can only get 6, causing him to win the game, it sounds to me like he outplayed you. You missed the point entirely.
Then please enlighten me. Is it that you consider 'macro' to be a completely different and unnecessary/not-fun aspect of the game?
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On May 06 2013 09:58 pornguy wrote:Show nested quote +Sure maybe pure macro and not caring about your units or strategy can go long ways if you are in a low division Pure macro will work until you are in the 90th percentile of players. Do a personal experiment: Save every replay and analyze the game you lost. Did your opponent outmass you?
Think about how many sports there are IRL where people with more athletic talent get a massive advantage.
And as far as the personal experiment, most of my games are lost due to cheese or poor army composition.
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On May 06 2013 10:02 Firebolt145 wrote:Show nested quote +On May 06 2013 10:01 pornguy wrote:On May 06 2013 09:58 Firebolt145 wrote:I'm having difficulty understanding your post. I can recall a few losses where my opponent legitimately out-played me, but every other loss was basically the opponent spending his money more efficiently then me. If my opponent can get 10 stalkers in the field when I can only get 6, who is going to win in the long run? If your opponent can get 10 stalkers when you can only get 6, causing him to win the game, it sounds to me like he outplayed you. You missed the point entirely. Then please enlighten me.
The point is that by sheer resource min/maxing, one person can have a substantial lead over another without even interacting with that person. This "macro gap" can become extremely wide and requires considerable study and practice merely to become proficient at the many tediums that SC2 requires you to master to play this game properly.
You are asking me to retype my OP.
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On May 06 2013 10:03 pornguy wrote:Show nested quote +On May 06 2013 10:02 Firebolt145 wrote:On May 06 2013 10:01 pornguy wrote:On May 06 2013 09:58 Firebolt145 wrote:I'm having difficulty understanding your post. I can recall a few losses where my opponent legitimately out-played me, but every other loss was basically the opponent spending his money more efficiently then me. If my opponent can get 10 stalkers in the field when I can only get 6, who is going to win in the long run? If your opponent can get 10 stalkers when you can only get 6, causing him to win the game, it sounds to me like he outplayed you. You missed the point entirely. Then please enlighten me. The point is that by sheer resource min/maxing, one person can have a substantial lead over another without even interacting with that person. This "macro gap" can become extremely wide and requires considerable study and practice merely to become proficient at the many tediums that SC2 requires you to master to play this game properly.
And those people will rightfully rise up the rankings until they face other players who they can't beat with just sheer macro, at which time, they will have to involve strategy. How is this a problem?
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Katowice25012 Posts
You need to elaborate before you can be condescending to other people, dude. There are tons of games that are purely about strategy, you could play chess or Axis and Allies or Civilization or XCom if you want that experience. The reason StarCraft is awesome is because while it has some elements of those games, it adds in a time component that varies gameplay by allowing for styles that are based purely on mechanics. You get guys who are really fast but not very smart (by.hero, Luxury) who can win games on brute force alone or dudes who are smart but not very fast (Boxer) who can out-smart people with unusual tactics.
If that's not for you, there is no problem with that, there are tons of games that cater to a different taste. But to say it's a flaw in StarCraft makes no sense, because you want it to be something else.
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On May 06 2013 10:03 LoveBuzz wrote:
Think about how many sports there are IRL where people with more athletic talent get a massive advantage.
There is a difference.
One is a video game and the other one is a sport. RTS's are about strategy, sports are specifically about atheletic ability. Making sure you build your depots is not really a strategic option.
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Lalalaland34499 Posts
On May 06 2013 10:06 pornguy wrote:Show nested quote +On May 06 2013 10:03 LoveBuzz wrote:
Think about how many sports there are IRL where people with more athletic talent get a massive advantage.
There is a difference. One is a video game and the other one is a sport. RTS's are about strategy, sports are specifically about atheletic ability. Making sure you build your depots is not really a strategic option.
I consider having good mechanics as essential to Starcraft, and it is one of the things that makes Starcraft such a great game, the fact that you need a good mix of strategy AND mechanics to succeed. If you want to just focus on strategy and forgo mechanics, there are other games like Dawn of War/etc that can appease you.
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EPT
