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DepressedOne
Profile Blog Joined September 2014
United States190 Posts
Last Edited: 2014-09-13 11:18:55
September 13 2014 11:16 GMT
#1
Hello everyone, today I'd like to discuss the concept of the greatest possible StarCraft player. I was thinking about this when I remembered a conversation I had with a person I was playing a series of one versus one games with. He played Zerg and the matchup he most had the difficulty playing was ZvT, which is a common characteristic among Zerg players, even the top progamers with very few being zvt specialists and mostly having higher winrates in ZvP historically. He arrived to the conclusion that the ZvT matchup favored the Terran race citing ZvT trends and players like Flash and Nada who had won numerous games against their zerg rivals Jaedong and Savior, Flash especially who had won three consecutive tournament finals over Jaedong towards the end of their rivalry.

His views of game balance reflected his own matchup weaknesses and sometimes it might be the fact that the matchup is imbalanced. Sometimes you may be better at ZvP and weaker at ZvT or the other way around and that may be the way it is. Really though the ceiling limit in my mind had not been hit, it's always theoretically higher than any human could possibly be, and in my mind while top tier pros like Jaedong, Flash, jangbi, Fantasy, etc. were all high performing players far above their human peers they were nowhere near the top of the skill ceiling. When I thought about the concept of the highest skill ceiling player possible I was thinking about how a computer AI could improve on everything that progamers couldn't do perfectly.

Just imagine the possibilities. For example, the Probe has the ability to outrange an SCV while still being able to take it since its attack has slightly farther range. You do this by clicking away from the scv, use the attack command, and quickly move away. A computer AI could be programmed to do this consistently without fail harassing workers while moving away when it's in danger. On different spawning points you will have mineral patches that yield different mining efficiency rates. Computers can determine which mineral patches should be mined from first to optimize income. I remember a BW AI that had top tier Mutalisk control that could take apart 2 full control groups of marines even when stimmed with medics. The destination from point A to point B would be even more efficient, like when a Zerg opens with 12 Hatch a drone will be sent at the exact time it needs to be sent to make that hatchery. The hypothetical highest skill ceiling player would probably take into account hundreds of trivial factors, if not billions that progamers never thought were important that a normal person would disregard as unimportant yet it all matters. I can't think of any because I'm just a human.

There's a thought I have that trying to comprehend a game of the highest skill play cannot be fully grasped. I'd like to allude this to Carl Sagan and his video about the 4th dimension, something just as foreign as the highest skill ceiling player that is in the video below.
.

In the video he talks about the concept of the 4th dimension. He first sets up the scenario of a 2D world called "Flatland" filled with 2D geometric shapes like a triangle or a square. Once a human from the 3D dimension interacts with them the 2D shapes of Flatland become bewildered not able to see the human, only hearing its voice. The human puts down an apple in their land, yet the only thing they see is the very bottom of it in a 2D shape unaware of where it came from. Much like how foreign and uncomprehensible the third dimension must be to a world in the 2nd dimension, in our three dimensional world we cannot fully comprehend the 4th dimension, but we can conceptualize it.

Just like the highest skill ceiling player, a player that would literally make Jaedong and Flash look like D- scrubs, or even hundreds of times lower, we cannot fully comprehend this player, but we can conceptualize it. While marine medic micro may look overpowered in a high level TvZ game what would a high level game look like between two masterful AI's? Maybe there is a threshold that pro level Zerg against Terran has not been able to cross that the highest skill ceiling player has, something without reach with new ways to micro and new ways to deal with mech, a completely different way of thinking and strategizing that top Zergs like Jaedong and Savior were never close to that hasn't been a part of the current Zerg mentality. No one can solidly say which race has the greatest advantage over another in a particular matchup until they've seen the greatest player possible, the imaginary highest skill ceiling player. I wouldn't say games between BW pro amateurs is a fair projection of what players at the highest ceiling would be like. We can only......conceptualize..

*
Me sad.
pebble444
Profile Blog Joined March 2011
Italy2503 Posts
Last Edited: 2014-09-13 11:54:54
September 13 2014 11:52 GMT
#2
what did i run into...

first of all do you know this: http://www.sscaitournament.com/ ? might be interesting, every year theres a competition where people make Ai's to battle each other.

I think that Ai may outshine a human in the micro or macro aspect, but that is it. The computer cannot ever be a good player of starcraft, because the game itself, is not only based on carrying out orders, but on making decisions, decisions which require the player to be human, that is to be able to interpret a situation, and make a decision, based entirely on the situation. ultimatly creative.

Computers are not capable of subjective decision-making; They can carry out a decision made out by math, but thats their limit. The also lack a fundamental ability, which is Instinct, which plays a very big role not only in Broodwar, but also chess and poker alike. magnus carlsen, currently chess #1 player in the world, said in an interview, even do he can make calculations, knowns strategies, odds and what not, his decisions in the game of what path to take or move to make are most of the time carried out by instinct.

also check out "perfect wraith micro" on youtube

Edit: Maybe if there where some bionic being, say half computer half human (other than Flash), who is capable of computer micro and macro, and human decision making and instinct it could prevail. But then theres still the problem on the 2 parts clashing, which part would prevail in decision making? no i am still convinced a computer will never possibly reach a level of "creative thinking" , which sets us apart into the animal world and not in the computer world
"Awaken my Child, and embrace the Glory that is your Birthright"
Birdie
Profile Blog Joined August 2007
New Zealand4438 Posts
September 14 2014 01:26 GMT
#3
Pebble444, it would definitely be possible to make a computer which is a good player at StarCraft, it's just not easy. The problem space of a StarCraft game is very large, which makes it much more difficult for a computer to make the most ideal choice when presented with the billions of possible actions at each moment in the game.
Red classic | A butterfly dreamed he was Zhuangzi | 4.5k, heading to 5k as support!
DepressedOne
Profile Blog Joined September 2014
United States190 Posts
Last Edited: 2014-09-14 22:31:59
September 14 2014 22:31 GMT
#4
uhm maybe not in the near distant future sort of AI. It doesn't even have to be an AI or human, or anything realistic. Just imaginary. It may or may not be realistically feasible to achieve that high skill level, I'm just wondering what a perfect game of starcraft would look like. Pls. Flash? Uhuhuhuh how about the Jang Bang Bi.
Me sad.
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