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I just watched 5 minutes of Soma playing vs Mini at 0.25x speed, in FPVOD. It was pretty intriguing. You miss a lot less of their little moves that way, and can also appreciate the little hesitations. It's the first time I've ever tried that. Also, the Zerg sounds are even creepier that way. Who here has tried that before?
How does this effect my thesis? It was my inspiration.
In chess, you have options for the time control. Time controls referred to as "blitz" and even "bullet", i.e. 3-5 minutes or 1 minute per side per game, are overwhelmingly popular. This is not the main professional time control. Chess of course is a game of thinking, primarily, and thinking is something that isn't always more interesting when done quickly. The faster time controls are more popular anyway among amateurs because games take less long that way, and people have short attention spans, and are more easily excited by things that move quickly. Despite this, amateur players are generally encouraged by teachers to play at least some slow games, and why is that? It's because more time to think during a strategy game gives you more time to appreciate the strategy in the moment. In chess, you learn this way that the game has so much depth that you can think as fast as you want, and play as slow as you want, and still never have room to breathe.
In Star Craft, which is spelled with capital letters because it is a privately owned game invented for profit in modern times (which is good), is different. A real time game, it is even more ideal for the joy and intrigue of speed to take hold. In this game, a fast thinker can see deeper into the game in the same amount of time, and a fast actor gets more turns per second. It is a beautiful thing. However, there are no time controls in StarCraft, it seems. Everyone, professional and amateur, plays the game at the same exact speed, all the time. Except there is an option, which we who have ever played the game are used to ignoring. It's treated just as another part of the game creation UI that we deliberately train our muscle memory to skip past as quickly as possible, so that we can get to playing. It's called Game Speed.
Players in Warcraft II (for those old enough to remember) have regular "debates" about which game speed is the best. They play different versions of GOW, the most popular map, at different speeds. They change the speed based on the kind of tournament they want to have, and who's watching, and latency, just like in chess. In StarCraft, ladder game speed used to be "faster", and even then, everyone was like "Why?" Because Blizzard were old fogies who were disconnected from what kids these days want from a videogame.
Yet another phenomenon which will eventually be seen, by somebody, to have connection to my thesis, which has not been stated, anywhere, is that in StarCraft we have a problem with our userbase: they don't read good New players have a hard time picking up the game because of the steep learning curve. Day[9] has made the point, with which I agree, that if you suck, you can still enjoy the game. Struggling against the UI, afterall, is 50% of the challenge for the professionals as well. In a way, that is the game. However, I have another suggestion: play the game more freakin' slowly.
Having more time to act means the fight against the UI is less arduous, and less unforgiving. Having more time to think means, as with chess, that you can learn while you play, better. It means that you can actually make decisions during the game, when you don't know the sacred professional technique for thinking while you click
It also makes the game easier.
What are the costs and benefits of slowing down the game, in particular for new players, but also others, like the professionals?
When did the faithful StarCraft userbase finally abandon faster?
Why do people really prefer this game speed?
Am I gay?
Please discuss.
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Old starcraft ladder speed was fast not faster, I always remember people playing fastest speed.
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Benefit is it doesnt take an hour to play one game. And you have plenty of time to react in "fastest" game speed. Its all a matter of being accustomed to the game speed, once thats done you play just as good.
Another reason could also be that the slower game speeds than "fastest" have noticeable frame by frame changes, I.E not as fluid motion, which imo is very annoying. I want a smooth experience and "fast" as in ladder games were not.
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20 years ago I played my first game in the fastest setting and have used that ever since.
edit: Yes the unit movement looks most fluent on fastest.
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imagine the power you would have if you could have your opponent play on fastest but you play on slow.
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Northern Ireland26903 Posts
Are you gay? Really only you or possibly your lovers could answer that.
I’m not sure as to your other points, interesting thread though for sure.
It’d be really interesting to see what the pros could do at slower speeds, I think they’ll actually play worse. All that muscle memory for micro is based on the animations of units at fastest so I think they’d botch a lot of it if you slowed the game down.
Not sure if it’s just experience and bias having played basically only at the higher speeds, to me it just feels like the ‘correct’ speed.
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As someone who is really slow and bad at this game, I would love to try and play against another in a slower speed, just to see what it looks like. I would feel like a god if I could muta micro while microing a defiler for defending my third while sending drones to mine and building overloads on time.
However, these are things that can be done at fastest even with just 150 apm. Unless you have a disability, everyone can learn to get to this level of Starcraft if they put in the time to practice.
The more intriguing part for me is what would pro play look like at slower speeds. I think we all agree that between 0 to 8-9 minutes would look the same, as there is not much extra you could do with your spare time. However, once a game is in the later macro stage, whoa boy, that would be a different story. I can only imagine Jaedong microing 3 separate control groups of Mutas on different parts of the map while simultaneously leap froging lurkers under dark swarm into the enemy’s natural, all while keeping up perfect macro, scourge dropships, and scouting expos. I can equally imagine Protoss and Terran end games would open up with crazy multi task builds that would just not be possible on fastest game speed.
Would be cool if there was a UMS map of Fighting Spirit that was at fastest speed from 0-7, faster from 7-11, fast from 11-20, and finished with normal from 20 on... (these are just random numbers, don’t take that as what it should look like exactly)
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i cant even play the sc2 campaign cause the shittards reduced the speed for that ~~ its to slow for me, im raging inside
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Fastest game speed is the only way to play.
You must be gay.
EDIT : StarCraft was always played at fastest speed, since the beta. The option was just always there for people to learn easier I assume, like you are suggesting, but I don't think this will help, it will only hinder a players progression.
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It would be so hard to micro at lower speed than fastest because of the muscle memory we all have been used to while playing fastest.
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My friend and I played at fast when we practiced zerg and terran. Like a musician learning an instrument, we started out slow and then increased.
Our biggest problem was that the beginning of the game took too long, and it became boring watching workers mine for ages.
It was a good way to practice, since those races mechanics are overwhelming and we actually got to try some strategies instead of just stressing.
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On December 27 2019 15:01 zobz wrote:
[...]
Yet another phenomenon which will eventually be seen, by somebody, to have connection to my thesis, which has not been stated, anywhere, is that in StarCraft we have a problem with our userbase: they don't read good New players have a hard time picking up the game because of the steep learning curve. Day[9] has made the point, with which I agree, that if you suck, you can still enjoy the game. Struggling against the UI, afterall, is 50% of the challenge for the professionals as well. In a way, that is the game. However, I have another suggestion: play the game more freakin' slowly.
Having more time to act means the fight against the UI is less arduous, and less unforgiving. Having more time to think means, as with chess, that you can learn while you play, better. It means that you can actually make decisions during the game, when you don't know the sacred professional technique for thinking while you click
It also makes the game easier.
What are the costs and benefits of slowing down the game, in particular for new players, but also others, like the professionals?
When did the faithful StarCraft userbase finally abandon faster?
Why do people really prefer this game speed?
Am I gay?
Please discuss.
No, you're not an idiot, the game speed was used rather frequently in the original Battle.net ladder as it was the default setting (hello @GGZerG, you're nostalgia tricks you there).
There are multiple reasons why I used it back then as my go-to set-up, some, if not most of them, were probably related to technical restrictions. When you dialed up with a 56k modem you couldn't help but face lag issues. Mind you, emulated lan (LanLatency / LL) only came rather late via launchers like the PenguinPlug-in. Therefore a ton of micro elements wouldn't work online as good as they do now (e.g. muta stacking or elementary marine splits): You could see that if you went through TvZ from the 2003-2005ish era, as you'd spot more lurker heavy openings. A reduced game speed also reduced the anger you had towards lag spikes in crucial moments of the game.
However, that's one of many points. You assume the UI would be easier to handle - I can assure you, that's not the case. In parts that makes it even worse. There were plenty of bugs when giving more commands to units or buildings. Pylons would power up without energy radius, or the more common bug of range units freezing and not doing a thing. Mostly you tried to "correct" walking paths by giving more orders, which were then realized by the engine one step at a time, leading to units still doing the wrong moving patterns. There's no real upside to it.
As was mentioned by other posters: It also meant that an ordinary 10 minute ZvZ would take up to 15 minutes. Since time online was expensive, you'd wanted to get as many games as possible. Or if you were already older and could afford the costs, time is otherwise important as you'd probably needed to study IRL or go to work. Hence, faster is better and also feels more natural after the initial shock of having to handle more.
The most crucial thing though is the micro management. With build orders you have relative timings, you always put a hydra den at 50% of the lair to be able to upgrade lurkers once the lair is done. With micro, you rely heavily on your gut feeling, which depends on the game speed. You will get the macro right 100% of the time, the micro is totally different and even pros would need to play a ton of games to really adapt. But to what end? Where's the benefit for them?
There are good reasons why the major ladders (WGT, PGT) switched to the set up as soon as they could and gained huge popularity via launchers like PenguinPlug and Chaos.
I can see why you assume more time would lead to a cleaner game, just like a beginner in chess does fewer blunders in a 15/10 than he'd do in a 3/0. Yet, that's apples vs. oranges, as StarCraft is more of a rock-paper-scissors game. You either already have a good idea of what you're doing or you die. If a beginner still thinks cannons in front and rush to carriers off one base is good, speed won't help him. Reading / watching guides and games while constantly reviewing every replay of the own games is crucial - that's where you find parallels to chess. Aspects like micro and memorizing openings can be done easily on special maps already.
So in conclusion I can only tell from own experience over ten years (fast -> fastest -> introduction of LL -> actually having good net and get "real" LL) that it sounds good in retrospective, but starting from a decreased game pace only makes the learning curve steeper.
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i used to think game plays bit better on speeds slower than fastest, but the beginning of the game is a bit slow
maybe there'd be some other parts of the game than the start that could feel a bit slow at times not sure
a lot of players disliked how fast you need to be playing to do well in the game, calling it a clickfest rather than strategy game. And then you can't deny almost nobody can really control everything that's going on in battles or even out of battles on fastest.. so yeah if the game's start was a little bit faster, i think a bit slower speed would be quite good overall. The opposite of sc2^^
so the original ladder imo had it pretty good if it wasn't for bots and hacks, slow early game or lack of map update and general maintenance by blizzard. However I believe quite some players didn't like the slower speed of that ladder?? not sure. What if the game just started with 6 probes..
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1. It's okay to be gay.
2. Comparing starcraft and chess is mental masturbation.
3. For newer players struggling to overcome the UI, a slower speed will likely hamstring their longterm growth. Part of not sucking at starcraft is just getting various timings drilled into your head. Eventually you should instinctively know when your probe is about to finish, when your gates are done with another round of production, etc... You can't drill that into your brain with a lower speed, and a memorized build order will almost always go out of the window at one point or another. Get that stuff in your head and everything else will fall into your place.
4. I think people really overrate hand speed. I've observed plenty of games where people have 300+ apm and stay supply blocked for minutes. Odds are those subtle things you wouldnt have time to do at a faster speed aren't that impactful. Even those boxer-like micro tricks of killing a lurker with one marine are antiquated parts of history.
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Some people here are saying that BW ladder was always played on fastest. That's not true. It was actually fast or faster (don't remember anymore, but I'm 100% sure it wasn't fastest). It was one of the reasons people didn't play official ladder and switched to WGTour.
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On December 29 2019 18:27 Dantak wrote:
Some people here are saying that BW ladder was always played on fastest.
Who?
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People didn't play old ladder because it was slightly slower? Or was it due to the huge hacker issues and lack of support from blizzard? No legit player could top the ladder because the top spots were hackers and win traders.No point.
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On December 31 2019 11:38 Piste wrote:Show nested quote +On December 29 2019 18:27 Dantak wrote:
Some people here are saying that BW ladder was always played on fastest. Who?
Some people
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On December 31 2019 18:38 iPlaY.NettleS wrote:
People didn't play old ladder because it was slightly slower? Or was it due to the huge hacker issues and lack of support from blizzard? No legit player could top the ladder because the top spots were hackers and win traders.No point.
When I first started playing brood war online regularly in 2002 the ladder was completely dead, I played maybe 1 or 2 ladder games, the only map in the small pool that anyone would play was Lost Temple and the game speed was set to faster or maybe even fast without option to speed it up. Also I think it had hackers and winbotters etc. so nobody bothered with it.
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EPT
