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I'm just writing this off because I see a lot of misconceptions, misimplication and misapplication about these terms. Let's first define them:
Luck
Randomness and blindness, things which are outside the control of either player. Necessarily anything outside your knowledge falls outside of your control as well. If you can control it you can know it because you know your own actions. A game with theoretically zero luck is of course chess, but also Tic Tac Toe.
Skill ceiling
The point of a game wherein theoretical perfection of play lies. The skill ceiling of Tic Tac Toe is low because it can be reached by an average player. An average player can play a theoretically perfect game of Tic Tac Toe. The skill ceiling of checkers is higher, but nevertheless computers can now play a theoretically perfect game of checkers. The skill ceiling of chess is even higher, computers cannot yet play a theoretically perfect game of chess. But man and machine is getting closer and closer towards that perfect game to the point of that the majority of high level chess games currently end in a draw.
The soft skill ceiling is another term which is used for the point where improvement, even though theoretically still possible doesn't actually yield any real benefits any more. For instance worker splitting has a low soft skill ceiling. I'm sure you can always perfect your worker split for that extra 0.0001 mineral income, but the practical benefits are so low that silver league players can attain the soft skill ceiling of worker splitting.
Skill floor
A pretty subjective term obviously, but the minimum level of skill required to play a 'decent game'. This example is best illustrated with musical instruments, the skill floor of a violin is quite high, without proper training someone attempting a violin sounds like a cat dying. The piano has a relatively low skill floor, anyone can quickly learn to play a simple tune on the piano. It's not a masterpiece, but it doesn't sound like a cat dying either. StarCraft has a relatively high skill floor for a computer. People like to say that people in bronze absolutely have no clue whatosever how the game is to be played at even a basic level.
Volatility
Often confused for luck, but something entirely different. Something is volatile if results are hard to reproduce. If Hero beats Taeja 3-0 today, but tomorrow loses 0-3, that's an indication of volatility. It stands opposite to consistency. StarCraft and Poker are quite the volatile games compared to say chess. Lingbane vs Lingbane or lingbane vs biomine are extremely volatile engagements. Roach/Hydra vs mech less so.
With that out of the way:
Fallacy 1: Luck and skill are not polar opposites
People often put luck and skill at seemingly other sides of the spectrum, if something has a lot of luck it can't take skill, if something comes down to skill there isn't luck involved. The government likes to class things under 'game of skill' or 'game of chance'. This is hardly true. Luck and skill are completely orthogonal qualities of any game. Consider that Chess is a game of great skill and no luck. Yet Tic Tac Toe is a game of almost no skill and no luck. Poker is a game of both great skill and great luck, and Baraccarat is a game with no skill and pure luck involved.
Removing luck does not necessarily increase skill. The fog of war in StarCraft exists to create skill by means of luck. Consider poker, say we removed all luck from this game. You can see each other's hand, you know what is going to be in the river before the betting even starts, in fact, you can pick your own hand, no luck involved. Is there still any amount of skill left in this variant of poker? No, not really.
Likewise, if both sides could just see what the other side was doing and had full map vision, a lot of the skill of StarCraft would be gone with it. Luck and skill are orthogonal, luck can as easily take from skill as it can add to it.
Fallacy II: High skill ceiling does not lead to lack of volatility
This is a thing people often sprout around, the believe that giving the game as a high a skill ceiling as possible will lead to consistency of play and the so called 'Bonjwa'. There is simply no reason why it should. The Bonjwa arises due to one player being that much better than the other, the only way the skill ceiling would stop the Bonjwa is if the Bonjwa is capped by the soft skill ceiling, as in, he can reach it and has APM to spare while others can reach it without having APM to spare. The soft skill ceiling is a lightyear away even in LoL, let alone BW, WoL or HotS.
As a prime example, consider Blitz Chess, Blits Chess is basically chess played with very demanding time constraints. It is much, much harder than normal chess, the skill ceiling is far higher and it's far harder for human or computer players to approach the soft skill ceiling. Draws are far rarer in Blitz chess. But in the end, the game is also far more volatile and far less reproducible. Tic Tac Toe, a game with a very low skill ceiling is very much unvolatile, almost any game between two even mediocre players will result into a draw. The same consistent result.
Fallacy III: Skill ceiling and skill floor are something totally different
Often when people talk about skill ceiling, what they mean is skill floor. I'm sorry people, but things like automatically sending workers to mine or giving an indication of worker saturation on your townhall does nothing for the skill ceiling of this game. It leaves the skill ceiling alone and lowers the skill floor. Automating something any pro or even decent player can already do has no effect on the skill ceiling of this game whatsoever.
You often see that 'Terran has the highest skill ceiling'. I have no idea how people would know that given that the skill ceiling of all 3 races hasn't even been close to being approached. What people mean is that Terran has the highest 'skill floor'. I can understand that Terran is a bit difficult at gold league and when both T and Z amove into each other T has a tendency to lose the engagement. That all says very little about the pro level where both sides are microing like crazy. My own hunch is that Z has the highest skill ceiling simumtaneously the lowest skill floor. To appraoch the soft skill ceiling of Z basically means spreading creep so tightly that improvement doesn't yield any beefits any more. It is insurmountably difficult to basically never have creep tumours on cooldown longer than a second.
Does this mean that the better player should always pick Zerg? No, that is a fallacy, because again, we aren't even close to that legendary level of play yet. Should the time ever come that Terran players are approaching the soft skill cap and Zerg players aren't yet and the matchup is still balanced, yes, then the better players should switch to Zerg, but that is never ever ever going to happen.
Fallacy IV: High skill ceiling does not lead to better spectatorship
It goes without saying really but many people seem to think it does for some reason. Making a game more adn more difficult and making a game spectator friendly are two entirely different things. Very few people watch Blitz chess because you often can't see or follow what is going on any more. ZvZ arguably has been the matchup with the highest skill ceiling throughout BW, WoL and HotS and is also a clusterfuck of volatility but ultimately very few people like to watch it because it's a clusterfuck of shit going with commentators being unable to explain what is going on because it's such a clusterfuck.
Fallacy V: Lack of volatility does not lead to better spectatorship
In fact, I would say the opposite, can anyone remember 4gate vs 4gate? Can anyone remember the 90% winrates of MC and Inca at that time? There wasn't a lot of volatility or luck involved. You micro your stalkers better, you win. On top of that stalkers being low dps, high hp are exceptionally microable against each other. But ultimately everyone stopped giving a damn because it was the same thing all over.
Ultimately, people like volatility from a spectatorship perspective. CAn we all still remember how ForGG's entire army exploded in medivacs due to his own mines? that is volatility. There is no luck involved, it was his own goddamn fault flying over his own mines when they were targetting Stephano's banes. It's a one in a thousand result but that makes it all the more spectacular, the crowd goes wild over biomine stuff like that because it is so volatile and can swing into every direction. Everyone loved good reaver hits because they are so volatile.
Fallacy VI: Lack of luck does not lead to better spectatorship
Volatility and luck have one thing in common, they imply you can't know the result beforehand which is why we watch sports. Almost no one likes spoilers, we don't want to know what is going to happen before it happens. A little bit of luck in fact doesn't hurt spectatorship. A unit barely surviving because a unit from the lowground missed it is quite exciting for the crowd, even if it was just luck.
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Love this post, +1 and 5/5. Would read again.
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About skill, luck and volatility, I agree almost completely. I would even argue that a certain degree of luck and volatility are necessary for entertainment. People will always find ways to make the odds stack in their favor, and as long as the luck and volatility don't stack things too heavily in one players favor to the extent that it cannot be overcome by superior skill, it makes for far more interesting games.
Fallacy II- I'd just like to say that I personally agree with you and would argue that time and luck are the factors that will result in less volatility. The more time players have to make decisions or execute techniques, the more likely they are to make correct decisions and correctly execute techniques, and the less luck plays into it, the more likely this will work in their favor.
Fallacy III- I'm very confused on your views on the relationship between 'skill ceiling' and 'skill floor' and their involvement in spectatorship and luck. There is a direct correlation between the skill ceiling and the skill floor(as the title suggests); to raise one lowers the other, no matter how much people like to argue otherwise. Sure, you can have something that is such a small change it hardly affects the game, or a skill which is easy to master and thus it is assumed that everyone past a certain point has mastered it (with worker splits as you pointed out being an example of both), but getting rid of it does still raise the skill floor (players who dont send their workers to mine quickly or who dont know how to worker split are no longer behind players who can do either or both) and lower the skill ceiling (players no longer have to learn how to send their workers to mine quickly nor do they have to learn how to worker split in order to reach the skill cieling). Especially 'small, insignificant' skills I think are a nice way to give players easy accomplishments to achieve when they first pick the game up.
((As an example, my girlfriend who rarely plays sc2 (<50 games total all vs ai) but watches with me, has favorite players and has gone to an MLG was really disappointed when sending your workers to mine was (essentially) removed from the game. It was the first skill she had learned and come close to mastering- and was/is for almost everyone. Even though she knew it was a horribly easy skill everyone was assumed to have down past a certain level, it gave her a sense of accomplishment and something she could point at and say "Hey, look, I've gotten better".))
It also doesn't make any sense to me to say removing skills any pro 'or even decent' player can do doesn't affect the skill ceiling. Lets use making sure there are only 16 workers on minerals in each mineral patch as an example. This is an extremely easy skill in and of itself (both to learn and master), but constantly doing it also takes away from players time and attention during the game when there could be more important things to be spending your time and attention on. As a result of this, it's not uncommon to see pro players have 20+ workers in one mineral line and <16 in another during moments of high intensity. And because of this, a 'more skilled' player (at least at the art of constantly checking and moving workers to optimal areas) can seperate themselves from a 'less skilled' player by using the extra time and attention they gain from being faster to have a slightly stronger economy. Making it take less time and attention allows 'less skilled' players to play more similarly to 'more skilled' players without improving their skillset- i.e. lowering the skill ceiling.
As a final point towards this, you say that when players say Terran has the highest skill cap, they mean Terran has the highest skill floor. I highly disagree. From my experience, when most people say Terran has the highest skill ceiling they mean that if all three races had a player that had hit the theoretical skillcap for their respective race, the Terran player would be the one most likely to win. All races have the same theoretical skill floor of doing nothing except what is automated by the game (i.e. nothing but harvesting minerals and hoping for at best a draw). If by skill floor you mean minimum skills necessary to become a professional player (which is how I read it at least), I think it's a pretty bold claim to say that Terran has the least necessary skills to become a professional player and would like to hear your reasoning (since, as you yourself have pointed out, no proof of this is even possible) and I also think it's pretty out of whack with the general community perception of Terran.
Fallacy IV- I agree that a higher skill ceiling does not necessarily lead to better spectatorship, but I would argue that having an unachievable skill ceiling is a necessary component to gaining and retaining viewers, and that assuming all other factors are the same between two sports having a higher theoretical skill ceiling is better for the longevity of the sport. Even Tic Tac Toe was (at least for me, and probably for others as well) fun until you reached the de facto skillcap.
(edit: also, I just want to clarify that I dont think getting rid of sending your workers to mine at the start of the game / splitting was a significant chance to the game, I was just using it as an example since that's what you specifically pointed out. It did lower the skill ceiling, but not in any significant way.)
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Nice read. We will never find out whether your opinions in the examples ("Zerg highest skill ceiling", etc.) are true. But I think they fill their purpose as explantions.
@Pursuit_
A pretty subjective term obviously, but the minimum level of skill required to play a 'decent game'.
They way he introduces skill floor I don't think we should critizise too much whether the examples he uses match our own views. Obviously you could put the skill floor at a level where one could macro without getting supply blocked if he focuses alone on that, or split marines properly against banelings if he focuses solely on that. Or we could put it at "minimum Progamer level", like you say. Point is, that people really confuse it with skill ceiling very often.
Though you may be right that some people really want to say that "Terran has the highest skill ceiling", many others just want to paraphrase "playing Terran at my level is harder".
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Ah, my bad, I'm not really sure how I missed his definition of skill floor when I read the others. It's actually not a bad way to look at it, but I feel like setting it at a 'decent game' is way too high. And even so my points still stand. Just because it's a skill everyone is assumed to have mastered doesn't mean it isn't a skill that contributes to the outcome of the game and takes time and attention away from the players and therefor lowers the skill ceiling. Imagine Dota2 without last hits because it's an assumed skill that in order to play a decent game of Dota2 you need to be able to get last hits.
Also, I've never seen anybody use the term "skill ceiling" to indicate that Terran is harder to play in diamond league. Most people seem to say what they mean, i.e. "Terran requires the most skill to break into masters". Maybe I just don't forum lurk enough?
I do see people use the term skill ceiling to mean theoretically better though. As I said in my previous post, most people who say "Terran has the highest skill ceiling" mean "If all three races had a player who had reached the skill ceiling, the Terran player would be the most likely to win / best". This doesn't mean that they think Terran has the most/hardest skills to master, which is what the term 'skill ceiling' implies.
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On September 02 2013 03:22 Pursuit_ wrote:
Ah, my bad, I'm not really sure how I missed his definition of skill floor when I read the others. It's actually not a bad way to look at it, but I feel like setting it at a 'decent game' is way too high. And even so my points still stand. Just because it's a skill everyone is assumed to have mastered doesn't mean it isn't a skill that contributes to the outcome of the game and takes time and attention away from the players and therefor lowers the skill ceiling. Imagine Dota2 without last hits because it's an assumed skill that in order to play a decent game of Dota2 you need to be able to get last hits.
Also, I've never seen anybody use the term "skill ceiling" to indicate that Terran is harder to play in diamond league. Most people seem to say what they mean, i.e. "Terran requires the most skill to break into masters". Maybe I just don't forum lurk enough?
I do see people use the term skill ceiling to mean theoretically better though. As I said in my previous post, most people who say "Terran has the highest skill ceiling" mean "If all three races had a player who had reached the skill ceiling, the Terran player would be the most likely to win / best". This doesn't mean that they think Terran has the most/hardest skills to master, which is what the term 'skill ceiling' implies.
That's not what Skill Ceiling is. What you described would be what the - however determined- best race is:
If 3 people who have reached the skill ceiling with their respective race play, the "best" race wins.
Not the one with the highest skill ceiling: That just means who of those three players is better.
Just my thoughts~
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There can be luck in chess. Whoever is white wins more often, yes? Also, players can do different openings where the accidentally counter one another without realizing it.
Let's not forget that one player could sleep better before the big match due to luck(loud noises, insomnia due to genetics or other factors, etc).
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United States4883 Posts
In the end, I think that a good RTS game is going to have a low, attainable skill floor and an immeasurably high skill ceiling with as many steps in between as possible to continue to make the game rewarding and challenging. The purpose of luck and volatility is to make the game interesting and exciting, but overall the game must be stable and playable without having to rely on either luck or volatility. In the end, if we have a stable game with wide ranges of skill, it's a good game. And as of right now, SC2 is almost there.
Some sidenotes: Overall I agree with the OP with most points, though some of them might be a little extraneous. I play violin and piano so I resent the piano comment a little bit hahaha (guitar would be a better example in my opinion), but it's all good.
Also, as far as formatting goes, if you're going to title it "Fallacy #1:....", you should state an actual fallacy after it and THEN prove it wrong in the text. It's a little misleading to discredit it before even stating what it is. Also, you have "1." as the first point and then roman numerals afterwards lol.
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Volatility is probably what makes Brood War fun to watch at all. Not volatility like 'you make a mistake you can't come back,' but volatility like 'a mis-click can result in a significant shift in the game' or 'well placed storms vs units that aren't effectively counter-microed can completely turn a game around.'
It's volatility that as far as game design is concerned, is supposed make comebacks possible so that a person who gets behind early in the game still sees a point in continuing to play.
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EPT
