|
So some of you might remember my post a little while back about the amount of skill required to play SC vs WoW here. Well, 2 months after that post the games finally happened.
I said reps would be posted so here they are, enjoy:
I'm not amazing at this game by any means, I'm like the low end of D/D- so I hope you're not expecting insane play on my part. I'm the T by the way.
He said he wants a rematch after he gets some more practice. He'll most likely be switching to P for our rematch he said. Take what you will from that. ^_~
   
|
I don't wanna watch it, but I wanna know who won? ^^
Weird that you actually found someone who thinks skill means something on wow. Most of the wow players actually agree that skill is irrelevant to succeed there.
|
I have reached 2000+ in 3 seasons on WoW (have played for 4 years) and I can tell you WoW is catered to kids and moms. Anyone who thinks different is lying to themselves. Starcraft will always require more skill than WoW ever will.
Its a simple fact.
|
HuskyTheHusky, do you still play? Every single one of my gladiator friends, all of them, already quit the game or quit PvP. One of them who is a PvE'er today, now tells me that those guys that we used to mock of how bad they were. Those that we would make gold selling arena points to on S2~S3. Nowadays those same guys are the ones with 2500'ish rating and gladiator tags. lol
|
On June 24 2009 10:34 VIB wrote: HuskyTheHusky, do you still play? Every single one of my gladiator friends, all of them, already quit the game or quit PvP. One of them who is a PvE'er today, now tells me that those guys that we used to mock of how bad they were. Those that we would make gold selling arena points to on S2~S3. Nowadays those same guys are the ones with 2500'ish rating and gladiator tags. lol
I quit last month. I finally realized after 4 years that Blizzard simply does not know the correct way to balance WoW pvp. If you followed the last couple of patches hunters were at the bottom, got buffed and shot to the top, then got nerfed and dropped to the bottom again. It made me realize that WoW 100% revolves around what buffs/nerfs you get and has very little to do with actual skill.
When warriors are good I face roll to 2100 easily, when warriors are bad its almost impossible to hold 1600 (see: WotLK release).
|
On June 24 2009 11:07 HuskyTheHusky wrote:Show nested quote +On June 24 2009 10:34 VIB wrote: HuskyTheHusky, do you still play? Every single one of my gladiator friends, all of them, already quit the game or quit PvP. One of them who is a PvE'er today, now tells me that those guys that we used to mock of how bad they were. Those that we would make gold selling arena points to on S2~S3. Nowadays those same guys are the ones with 2500'ish rating and gladiator tags. lol I quit last month. I finally realized after 4 years that Blizzard simply does not know the correct way to balance WoW pvp. If you followed the last couple of patches hunters were at the bottom, got buffed and shot to the top, then got nerfed and dropped to the bottom again. It made me realize that WoW 100% revolves around what buffs/nerfs you get and has very little to do with actual skill.
they control the 'meta' cycle so that the highest level of play always stays at an entry level
it's more of a money thing, they definitely know what they're doing
|
God warcraft is so easy, I was one of the top PvE hunters on my server for the longest time. You want to know what I did in raids to put out the highest amount of damage per second out of 25-40 people?
This is a secret that can only be accomplished by the most ELITE (note my name) gamers on earth, most of you scrubs should not even be able to look upon this secret
WARNING: MAY BE TOO 1337 FOR YOUR EYES, GET READY
+ Show Spoiler +I spammed a 1 button macro that I created while watching TV
StarCraft is so far ahead of WoW in terms of skill required it isn't even funny.
So many incredibly stupid people play WoW, and since it is so easy, people think they are some amazingly talented gosu or something. Being in the top 5% of WoW players is about as hard as hitting the middle hole in ski ball at chucky cheese (aka put in a bit of practice and don't be completely retarded and you will be able to do it perfectly).
Also, I have found out from experience that if you meet someone in real life that says they are good at starcraft and will destroy you, there is a 99.9% chance they are rocking 20 apm, have never heard of iccup or tl.net, and think the protoss computer is a strong opponent.
If you are able to keep a rating of 900+ or better on iccup you should be able to win 99% of the games you play against them since the skill level (well not relative to the rest of the community) is actually pretty high at the D level.
|
On June 24 2009 12:08 Elite00fm wrote:+ Show Spoiler +I spammed a 1 button macro that I created while watching TV
Mind sharing with us what the macro contained?
|
i once had a friend that said dota needed more skill than bw. i was like wat, you control one unit compared to an army, how is that harder? then he went to that even d2 needed more skill than sc. at this point i was like -_- and just gave up.
let them think what they want to think XD
|
MrHoon
10183 Posts
On June 24 2009 12:46 gettodaroflchoppa wrote:Mind sharing with us what the macro contained? hes a hunter, so the 1 button should've been the shot rotation almost every raiding hunter has
|
On June 24 2009 12:56 MrHoon wrote:Show nested quote +On June 24 2009 12:46 gettodaroflchoppa wrote:On June 24 2009 12:08 Elite00fm wrote:+ Show Spoiler +I spammed a 1 button macro that I created while watching TV
Mind sharing with us what the macro contained? hes a hunter, so the 1 button should've been the shot rotation almost every raiding hunter has
yeah it was just a shot rotation
|
My WoW playing bro admits SC is too stressful and hard. That's why he doesn't play it.
So sad for me 
I'm soo tempted to link this blog to the WoW forums XD
|
don't bother, WoW isn't even really a game. it's more of a social club.
|
nice, that WoW player is a giant newbie to the world of competitive gaming.
both games require an infinite amount of skill. It's impossible to control 200 supply worth of units in starcraft perfectly, and it's impossible to have .01s reaction times in wow to play perfectly.
If you want an expert on this subject, ask Stork- he plays starcraft and wow at a high level. (no wonder hes been slumping in sc lately)
most A level starcraft players will suck at WoW when they start playing and most 2500+ rated WoW players will suck at starcraft when they start playing, hence this argument over skill will never be ended.
|
SC is only hard because of the speed and the horrible UI, and the resulting mechanical requirements for the players. Most people don't care about that and don't like putting effort into becoming faster at button mashing.
WoW is not a comparison - it's a fun game, not a competitive one. It's never and can't ever be balanced. This being played competitively is just a result of so many players putting so much time into this game, not a result of it being suited well for competitive play.
|
On June 24 2009 14:22 0xDEADBEEF wrote: SC is only hard because of the speed and the horrible UI, and the resulting mechanical requirements for the players. Most people don't care about that and don't like putting effort into becoming faster at button mashing.
WoW is not a comparison - it's a fun game, not a competitive one. It's never and can't ever be balanced. This being played competitively is just a result of so many players putting so much time into this game, not a result of it being suited well for competitive play.
ya im sure all the builds and timings are incredibly easy to figure out and put to good use..i cant believe u just used botton mashing to describe startcraft -_-
|
Valhalla18444 Posts
On June 24 2009 14:19 stroggos wrote: nice, that WoW player is a giant newbie to the world of competitive gaming.
both games require an infinite amount of skill. It's impossible to control 200 supply worth of units in starcraft perfectly, and it's impossible to have .01s reaction times in wow to play perfectly.
If you want an expert on this subject, ask Stork- he plays starcraft and wow at a high level. (no wonder hes been slumping in sc lately)
most A level starcraft players will suck at WoW when they start playing and most 2500+ rated WoW players will suck at starcraft when they start playing, hence this argument over skill will never be ended.
huh? every A level starcraft player would be just fine in world of warcraft what are you talking about
you do realize its harder to reach C on iccup than it is to figure out what spells do what in wow right
|
On June 24 2009 14:19 stroggos wrote: nice, that WoW player is a giant newbie to the world of competitive gaming.
both games require an infinite amount of skill. It's impossible to control 200 supply worth of units in starcraft perfectly, and it's impossible to have .01s reaction times in wow to play perfectly.
If you want an expert on this subject, ask Stork- he plays starcraft and wow at a high level. (no wonder hes been slumping in sc lately)
most A level starcraft players will suck at WoW when they start playing and most 2500+ rated WoW players will suck at starcraft when they start playing, hence this argument over skill will never be ended.
Most A level starcraft players will suck at WoW because they'll realize it's stupid to be "worse" than someone because you don't spend 56459085690 hours farming stupid shit like gold, doing boring ass raids, or farming the pvp system(notice everything is fucking farming). It's almost always gear related, I can easily tell if I'm leagues past someone in skill but he just has a bunch of SSC gear or some shit.
Being good at WoW PVP or PVE is so fucking easy it's not even funny, when my friends and I played we had shitty ass gear and still did good in BG/Arena. Raiding was a waste and I regret it, although there was some cool people I met in the guild.
|
I made this flowchart for wow back in the tbc days.
MOONFARE SPAM
|
United States11390 Posts
On June 24 2009 10:20 VIB wrote: I don't wanna watch it, but I wanna know who won? ^^
He's a 45 apm zerg. (the WoW player)
That pretty much speaks for itself.
|
On June 24 2009 15:14 RoieTRS wrote:I made this flowchart for wow back in the tbc days. MOONFARE SPAM
+ Show Spoiler +
|
On June 24 2009 14:56 FakeSteve[TPR] wrote:Show nested quote +On June 24 2009 14:19 stroggos wrote: nice, that WoW player is a giant newbie to the world of competitive gaming.
both games require an infinite amount of skill. It's impossible to control 200 supply worth of units in starcraft perfectly, and it's impossible to have .01s reaction times in wow to play perfectly.
If you want an expert on this subject, ask Stork- he plays starcraft and wow at a high level. (no wonder hes been slumping in sc lately)
most A level starcraft players will suck at WoW when they start playing and most 2500+ rated WoW players will suck at starcraft when they start playing, hence this argument over skill will never be ended. huh? every A level starcraft player would be just fine in world of warcraft what are you talking about you do realize its harder to reach C on iccup than it is to figure out what spells do what in wow right I've been top 3'ish on my battlegroup during 2 seasons on 2 different classes. I assure you, it's harder to get D+ on ICCup than to figure out wow.
|
On June 24 2009 15:39 VIB wrote:Show nested quote +On June 24 2009 14:56 FakeSteve[TPR] wrote:On June 24 2009 14:19 stroggos wrote: nice, that WoW player is a giant newbie to the world of competitive gaming.
both games require an infinite amount of skill. It's impossible to control 200 supply worth of units in starcraft perfectly, and it's impossible to have .01s reaction times in wow to play perfectly.
If you want an expert on this subject, ask Stork- he plays starcraft and wow at a high level. (no wonder hes been slumping in sc lately)
most A level starcraft players will suck at WoW when they start playing and most 2500+ rated WoW players will suck at starcraft when they start playing, hence this argument over skill will never be ended. huh? every A level starcraft player would be just fine in world of warcraft what are you talking about you do realize its harder to reach C on iccup than it is to figure out what spells do what in wow right I've been top 3'ish on my battlegroup during 2 seasons on 2 different classes. I assure you, it's harder to get D+ on ICCup than to figure out wow.
I second this. Once you get the hang of the spells/combos and get a little experience it's quite easy.
|
51388 Posts
It fucking irks me how Blizzard are trying to get people into the game by doing shit such as reducing mount level requirements/prices etc.
I find it really frustrating how I had to farm gold for like a week just to get my Normal Flying mount training. Now for the same price you can get Epic Flying. FML.
|
lol, when i played wow there was no grinding part to the game for me, apart from 1-70(arena was the only part of the game i played). When i needed money i would sell arena points, it was fun because it was arena and it would make about 1000gold/hour. And the best pvp gear was easily available because i made many arena points myself every week. It was easy for anyone to get the best gear this way which is GOOD, because a game shouldn't be about having the best gear. That's certainly not why i played WoW.
|
Valhalla18444 Posts
On June 24 2009 15:50 GTR wrote: It fucking irks me how Blizzard are trying to get people into the game by doing shit such as reducing mount level requirements/prices etc.
I find it really frustrating how I had to farm gold for like a week just to get my Normal Flying mount training. Now for the same price you can get Epic Flying. FML.
thats a dumb thing to be mad about
'how dare people have it easier than i had it to get a flying mount in a video game'
|
On June 24 2009 16:33 stroggos wrote: lol, when i played wow there was no grinding part to the game for me, apart from 1-70(arena was the only part of the game i played). When i needed money i would sell arena points, it was fun because it was arena and it would make about 1000gold/hour. And the best pvp gear was easily available because i made many arena points myself every week. It was easy for anyone to get the best gear this way which is GOOD, because a game shouldn't be about having the best gear. That's certainly not why i played WoW. Let me guess, you didn't play a rogue or a paly I had to hear my rogue partner whining about the exact opposite of what you're saying (needing to farm PvE gear for arena) every freaking match during a whole season lol As a priest/druid myself I could do fine with my arena gear, but my warrior friend was pissed how unlucky he was that the mats for his StormHerald would never drop. And my lock friend would always whine how it was so much harder to beat pve rogues than pvp rogues.
So.. you shouldn't be so confident saying that gear is irrelevant. Some people definetly disagree Well maybe it got better now. I hear they're making resilience reduce all damage and all. Just like people have been telling them to for over 1 year lol But I don't play anymore I don't know how stuff are doing now. I just hear from my friends that skill is more irrelevant than ever. The people we used to sell arena points to, are now the gladiators lol
|
I played a druid and a warrior(lololololss), and ya skill has become pretty irrelevant in arena. I'm not sure if it was because people burnt out, but the more i practiced for the game, the lower the rating i acquired. Very strange. I mean on our bg a clicker made it to the top rank, and he had mediocre gear, but there were tens of thousands of people better than them and they could only get a decent rating. Gold wasn't even an issue though, a lot of point sellers actually spent their spare gold on ridiculous stuff.
|
On June 24 2009 16:35 FakeSteve[TPR] wrote:Show nested quote +On June 24 2009 15:50 GTR wrote: It fucking irks me how Blizzard are trying to get people into the game by doing shit such as reducing mount level requirements/prices etc.
I find it really frustrating how I had to farm gold for like a week just to get my Normal Flying mount training. Now for the same price you can get Epic Flying. FML. thats a dumb thing to be mad about 'how dare people have it easier than i had it to get a flying mount in a video game'
Uh... no... its not. There is absolutely nothing to work towards in that game anymore.
Arenas are a cake walk to all the highest ratings. PVE is a joke, gimicky and boring. Leveling up takes like 2 days.
Essentially they've dumbed down wow so much that its boring for anyone who likes any sort of challenge.
As others have said, its more of a social event at this point. Everyone I know who likes challenging/competitive games has quit wow by now (around 8 people), everyone who i know who likes just hanging out and socializing still plays (around 5-6)
I wish warcraft-realms would update their activity numbers though so I can see just how much wow has dropped
|
Valhalla18444 Posts
it's stupid to bitch if you already have those things and someone else is getting it easier six months down the line why do you care whether other people work for it
dont pretend you wouldn't have preferred it to be that way when you got your mount come on
|
Snet
United States3573 Posts
Lol what kinda stupid shit is this, settling a WoW vs SC debate by playing a 1v1 on sc? Obviously SC takes more skill. WoW doesn't take skill to play, or have a character with good gear - that only takes time. However, if you are skilled at your class the difference is very obvious.
|
Heh, people who think they are good at games and shit, just because they are high rated in WoW, need to go die. WoW's gonna "die out" fairly soon, so Blizzard's working on a new MMO, and it is going to be fucking amazing, because they are going to use all the experience they have from WoW. Or is this too much to hope for? :x
|
On June 24 2009 14:42 FyRe_DragOn wrote:Show nested quote +On June 24 2009 14:22 0xDEADBEEF wrote: SC is only hard because of the speed and the horrible UI, and the resulting mechanical requirements for the players. Most people don't care about that and don't like putting effort into becoming faster at button mashing.
WoW is not a comparison - it's a fun game, not a competitive one. It's never and can't ever be balanced. This being played competitively is just a result of so many players putting so much time into this game, not a result of it being suited well for competitive play. ya im sure all the builds and timings are incredibly easy to figure out and put to good use..i cant believe u just used botton mashing to describe startcraft -_-
Yeah, it's hard to digest, but in the end it's completely true. I've only slowly realized this during my last years of playing the game. It took me a long time to realize this. I was blinded by how apparently "awesome" the Korean pros are, blinded by the hype, thinking that this is the ultimate e-sport game. Like many here do.
What do players of all skill levels consider to be "skill" in SC? Not just winning. That would be too easy, lol. No, it's winning by playing straight up. What does "straight up" mean? Using a standard build order and winning by outmacroing your opponent. What does "outmacroing" mean? Being better at multitasking. Which is closely related to being faster.
Playing non-standard, cheesy or "all-in" is considered newbie style in non-pro circles, and in pro circles it's considered a viable surprise strategy which can and should be used from time to time so that you're "not completely predictable". Still... skill is not defined by it. Is YellOw better than Bisu because his last game was a surprising win through some rather cheesy non-standard strategy? Hell no, of course he isn't. Because would he play straight up, Bisu would stomp him into the ground so hard it's not even funny. Yellow winning this game was Bisu's fault instead of Yellow's skill. Yellow's skill in this game was not even relevant. We all know he's much worse than Bisu (I'll add: because his multitasking/macro is much worse).
A good (and maybe the only) way for a much worse player to win is trying to surprise the better player by using all-in/non-standard/cheese etc... this is commonly accepted. If you rephrase it without changing the meaning, it means that being better means winning by playing standard.
You should start to realize what SC skill is mainly based on, right? The remaining aspects of Skill(TM) which you use to defend SC ("BUT IT'S NOT JUST BUTTON MASHING, IT'S ALSO TIMING AND MICRO YOU NOOB!"), are present in other RTSes as well, which probably put an even greater emphasis on them. In SC, most of your actions are about macro. Macro is ~80% of SC skill, and having better macro means having better multitasking/being faster. It's incredibly simple in theory, and people like that about it. In practice, because good players are so fast you need to spend a lot of time becoming fast as well, only then can you start winning from time to time (not counting cheese - everyone cheeses and wins from time to time against a much better player. The much better player in this case often yells "play straight-up you noob! you know you have no chance straight-up!" -- also showing what SC players count as the real skill. Playing to win is not considered skillful in SC; playing basic and having the better multitasking/speed is). So as a result, SC is incredibly competitive of course, no one denies that, but the "nature" of this competitiveness is mainly based on more or less uninteresting things (speed/multitasking). The ingredients which make up the thing called "SC skill" are mostly bad.
If SC had a decent UI and people wouldn't need 300 APM to play it *decently* (not even good), competition would be just as fierce, only with fewer APM needed (I can already hear some shouting "OH NOEZ LESS SKILL REQUIRED" - which would prove my point). It would be like most other RTS (let's just say WC3 because most other RTS have severe weaknesses in other areas). But instead, SC players like that SC is so "hardcore" that you need so many APM to play it, like that normal players play unbelievably crappy because the gameplay is way too fast for them. And then pretend that SC skill is all about the things which other RTSes offer as well, most notably micro and timing. Like SC required "more skill" in that area, although it doesn't (in fact WC3 is probably much more micro-skill-intensive because much more emphasis/APM/time is put on microing).
SC skill is pretty much equivalent with (E)APM. If someone with 80 APM wins against a 300 APM guy he can't be generally better, right? Not even if he plays smarter with better micro and timing, right? He was just lucky, or the other guy had a bad day or let him win, right? You even see it in this thread - one guy saying that a 45 APM Z must be totally noob. Now I know that he indeed IS totally noob in SC - but that's exactly the problem. Being good should be independent of APM. You should be able to be good by either playing really fast (the only option in SC1), OR be good by having better micro or timing meaning you could win in the early game already where you don't even NEED high APM! But the latter thing is almost universally frowned upon in the SC community. It's considered all-in, non-standard, or cheese. It's not considered to be the real game. It means that there's no way in hell that having low APM and winning means that you're skilled. You're only skilled if you have high APM and win later on in the game. And what's worse is that almsot all competitive maps being played generally force you to play the long macro way, the maps make other things less efficient. So you pretty much have no other option - either you play standard, or you play a bad strategy and try to win by surprise. There is no other way, no middle ground. The one, good way to play is clearly defined, and going along that way means you need high APM for a strong MACRO.
Most of the SC2 discussion is about SC1 players wanting to preserve the old and bad UI, just because they fear that their skill (= button mashing speed) will become worthless and that they have to invest more into thoroughly refined micro, timing and build orders instead of playing basic and winning by simply pumping more shit faster than their opponent.
Well, you'll probably realize this at some point. Enjoy SC until then. It's far from being a bad game after all, but I hate people who act as if every single thing about it is godlike and mustn't ever be changed. That's delaying progress so much.
What we need for the future is a much better balance between macro and micro (potentially even more focus on micro because that's the most interesting aspect anyway), and a comfortable interface with a lot more customization options. The interface needs to adapt to the player, not the other way round (but SC players view this as being part of the skill required, and therefore as a gerat thing to have, of course...)
Anyway. Hope my post was at least somewhat coherent. I don't put much effort into this (despite the looks of it) and so it's not very well structured or explained at times. In fact it's quite random. :D
|
Please don't post over a thousand unstructured words if you'd like to be in any way persuasive or informative. Any work is more powerful, and thus more likely to achieve a purpose, if it is well organized.
Please also try to justify assertions when you make them, instead of making more, similar assertions and then discussing their hypothetical consequences. People who disagree with those assertions are not going to sway at all unless you provide some reasoning behind them. Without reasoning to discuss, there is no way meaningful debate will occur.
|
yup, being good at starcraft is 90% mechanics, but strategy still exists, weather it be mind games or special timing build orders. 10% of starcraft is a huge amount of it as well. And star craft is the most strategically demanding rts game out there, its just that the mechanic skill has built up over the years and is also very very demanding.
Besides that, i think Yellow totally outplayed Bisu last game, skillwise. There were so many things Bisu easily could have done to not lose that game. He lost though because Yellow practiced that build against Protoss more than bisu practiced against 2 hatch slow drop.
Im all for a new better UI, mbs and all that jazz in sc2, as long as the skill curve is steady.
|
On June 24 2009 23:25 EchOne wrote: Please don't post over a thousand unstructured words if you'd like to be in any way persuasive or informative. Any work is more powerful, and thus more likely to achieve a purpose, if it is well organized.
Please also try to justify assertions when you make them, instead of making more, similar assertions and then discussing their hypothetical consequences. People who disagree with those assertions are not going to sway at all unless you provide some reasoning behind them. Without reasoning to discuss, there is no way meaningful debate will occur.
Well I don't really care about creating good debate, proving my point or anything. It's just an opinion, a rant, a comment on the general situation, and it includes quite a bit of subjectivity. I wasn't trying to prove something (honestly, (e)sports and theory never goes well together anyway), but explain my viewpoint instead. If someone reads through it, cool. If someone agrees with it, even better. But if not, it's no biggie...
|
Oh, one more thing about WoW... I doubt it's such a skillless game. There's a lot to take care of, a lot of abilities to use, a lot of things to consider. Plus it's relatively fast action.
Furthermore, consider the time these players spend on that game... they probably play like 24/7, and no one else is that good, so that should mean something... right?
That doesn't mean it's fit for competitive play though! It's not fit at all for that, because it's completely imbalanced. Too many races, classes and abilities. And too many patches with balance changes which change everything all the time. It's just that its popularity is leveraging it into that role. A million flies can't be wrong - eat shit! ... something along those lines.
|
On June 24 2009 14:19 stroggos wrote: nice, that WoW player is a giant newbie to the world of competitive gaming.
both games require an infinite amount of skill. It's impossible to control 200 supply worth of units in starcraft perfectly, and it's impossible to have .01s reaction times in wow to play perfectly.
No, this is wrong. Playing a perfect game of wow is very possible, playing a perfect game of starcraft is impossible. Wow has a skill roof, sc does not.
|
On June 25 2009 01:26 Epicfailguy wrote: Playing a perfect game of wow is very possible, playing a perfect game of starcraft is impossible. Wow has a skill roof, sc does not.
I think we have reached that already, too. Not the real absolute limit, but still a limit where no one can really set himself further apart from the others. The fact that there hasn't been a new bonjwa since 2007 is an indicator for that. Before that, we always had one player who was significantly better than the rest for a significant amount of time. One player who showed everyone else that he's one level above all others, and in doing so that there even *exists* at least one higher level. Now, everyone's basically extremely good and who wins is not a matter of who's really better but rather who is the most up to form on this very day, and who has the most luck. Bonjwa? Level above all others? Not really. I think one can safely assume that the skill limit might have been reached already (besides, humans can't realistically become faster than ~500 APM and play like that all the time...) and several players at once are scratching at the skill roof. I stand corrected when a new bonjwa arises. Which probably won't (can't!) happen.
|
0xDEADBEEF, you do not understand professional StarCraft my friend. While it is SEVERELY mechanical oriented, it seems to me that you are missing the best part.
And Starcraft professionals actually DO everything they can to win, they DO play to win and not to entertain or anything else. There is a little concept known as meta-game, it's basically the reason why the most common choice of playstyle is a fast relatively expansion in most match-ups, and it's usually the absolute best choice they can make to maximize chances of winning.
The strategy in StarCraft is a multitude of subtle nuances, and realistically only understandable by good players, while everyone can grasp the concepts of expansion, macro and basic timing, you have to be really good to get the real, full deal.
|
I believe you are confused by the many players up until the C+ ranks on Iccup who try to play standard and focus on build orderds, mechanics and mindless repetition. Yes, real self-induced strategy is elusive in many of these players' gameplays, and so is their understanding of it. Out of them, those who are fastest and have better large army control usually win.
They often loose to cheese and get annoyed about it, but a B level player can swarm the yellow/red ranks even without his superior mechanics.
|
Did he know he can quit before he gets eliminated?
|
Yeah, nuances... such things exist in any game. And the knowledge about them plus the ability/skill to take care of such nuances and use it to improve your game is present in all progamers currently. Even lower level players know many, but usually fail to execute tasks which would (ab)use them due to not being mechanically strong enough. When all your APM goes into the required constant macroing, how do you even want to do something else? Either you DO something else and neglect your macro, resulting in you getting rolled over very soon, or you don't do it, resulting in you playing macro-centric but without doing some of the nifty things progamers do. You can't do both if you're too slow...
Pretty much every S class progamer currently understands the game, timings and builds well enough. There are small differences in gameplay or preference but those differences are so tiny that it's usually not worth discussing them. They aren't necessarily indicative of a better or worse understanding of the game. For example Jaedong seems to prefer and excel at micro since his strong ZvZ performances suggest that, but his macro is still a straight 10. Bisu seems to prefer and excel at multitasking (drop/harass, macro + attack at the same time) in PvZ, but Zerg can't really do all that stuff in that matchup anyway so it's kind of stupid to say "omg Bisu so great multitask" when Z can't show off similar things because Z drops occur rarely and are costly (whereas P drops are very very common) and Z doesn't have corsairs constantly scouting and attacking overlords in addition to his main army. Well, things like that... They all play well enough, the winner seems to be just the one with the strongest nerves, the best daily form, the most luck and the least mistakes made. It's not really about playing better anymore. When it's JD vs. Bisu, for example, there is no "better". It's all about being able to endure the pressure, not give in, and not make a game-deciding mistake due to a slip of attention or similar stupid things. Either player has an equal chance to win in each game. They both know the matchup inside-out, and have incredible mechanics/multitasking.
And yes, a B level player might win vs. lower ranks without superior mechanics. But that's the only exception - because bottom rank SC is total crap not just in regards to mechanics but also to general understanding of BOs and timing. A higher ranked player however does not have that weakness (at least he knows the most important basics). A top ranked player without mechanics will not win vs. a slightly lower one (not bottom rank). Meaning that strong mechanics are required for being skilled, and thus a huge, no, the MAJOR part of how skilled you are. Which was pretty much my point. Without mechanics, you'll never reach the top ranks (although you are able to at least ascend from the bottom rank, I'll admit that. Especially when using Protoss, heh).
Oh, and B rank is still pretty pathetic skill-wise, in the grand scheme of things. Notable skill only starts at the very top foreign level, but even they are severely lacking in late game performance (macro (at that stage mostly about keeping min count below 1k, which takes a huge amount of APM (a shame)), large army control which also takes much more APM than it should... all the heavy multitasking stuff). Only progamers manage to do that decently, yet even they make mistakes constantly. Just less dramatic ones. And their reaction when a drop comes in (even in lategame) is impressive, while top foreigners suck hard at that - but it's no wonder why, there's way too much going on. Insufficient multitasking resulting in extreme losses. And even progamers suck at coordinating large groups of lings in late game - bad flanks, many lings still standing behind, huge amounts of lings dying because retreating them all is too slow, etc... but that's perfectly understandable, since the horrible UI doesn't allow you to do this well, no matter your name or rank.
The. game. is. too. hard. And that's NOT a good thing when the game is your enemy too, not just your opponent. It just makes everyone play much worse than he could, and often results in some rather stupid lategame mistakes where it was clear that the player was too overwhelmed by what's all going on (you know, those "noooo how could he let that happen" or "he should have done X right now! Why didn't he!" situations... which can of course be game-deciding).
But enough of these discussions now. Waste of time.
|
On June 25 2009 00:45 0xDEADBEEF wrote: Oh, one more thing about WoW... I doubt it's such a skillless game. There's a lot to take care of, a lot of abilities to use, a lot of things to consider. Plus it's relatively fast action. As many others here posted, many of us have been in the top of the ladder in wow. We do have a clue of how to get there. And I assure. Most classes/match-ups don't need more than knowing how to press 4 buttons in the right order. With a 1.5sec time span between each button. And as you can easy find around. Some get to the very top of the ladder with even less than that. Just google/youtube things like "wow arena clicker backpedal" things like that. And you will find not only one, but hundreds and hundreds of videos of very top top players first person view. Who play clicking each button instead of using hotkeys. Who have brainfarts and stop thinking/acting for whole seconds when surprised (called "backpedal" because they press "back" when thinking what to do)
That would be very similar to clicking instead of using hotkeys in starcraft. It delays you that much. Could you get D+ clicking in starcraft? Well, some people get top ratings being that bad at wow.
90% of the strategy in a wow arena means. Knowing who to attack first, and who to cast CC spells on. You to lock on that target, till it's dead. That's it. That's the plan, period. And the means to achieve that, is like I said before. Knowing how to press 4 buttons in the right order with a 1.5sec time span between them. The other 10% of the matchups are those you need to coordinate target swaps on ventrilo.
|
After that post, I realize that do not respect your opinion on the matter enough to bother to ever respond. I'm sorry if I'm offensive, but you seem to be at very best a player of average BW skill, you are wrong and tend to contradict yourself, and honestly, now I'm absolutely positive you have no idea what you're saying.
|
|
@minus_human: Amusing.
@VIB: Yeah, maybe. I don't know about WoW, just wanted to throw in some things one should consider, but it may very well be that it's competitive play is indeed as bad as you describe it.
|
|
|
|