UC Berkeley Starcraft Class - Page 16

On February 07 2009 01:29 [Noman] wrote:
(Yes, this is my post here and I'm posting here because I found a link to this discussion on sirlin.net. No, I am not sirlin.)

I do think there is some fanboyism in this argument. It is natural since this is a starcraft site, but most people here think they are being objective. This is how I see it :
The biggest argument I've seen here is that taking away APM advantages takes away from the skill of the game. Its true!
You people are acting like he said 'Remove any strategic option from the game that isn't technically simple / requires a high APM in order to achieve'. HE DID NOT SAY THAT.
What he would like, is for operations that can be made easier using a slightly different interface to be made easier.
Unit construction comes to mind : If a terran built 6 barracks and wanted to pump out 6 marines fast (1 from each barracks) he would have to either hotkey 6 different barracks or perform around 13 actions (go to location hotkey + click each barracks with mouse then marine shortcut). In the heat of the battle, especially while microing units that are currently fighting, you need to be good technically. (Feel free to reply with 'If you cant do that then go play simpler games' etc).

Here's an option that blizzard can add in SC2 (Don't know if they did) : Group buildings. If you group a few buildings together (that you obviously built for the same task) to a shared hotkey, it should be possible to select the group, press M (or whatever) six times, and one marine would start being produced from each barracks. Much easier. 7 Actions, but only 2 'sets of same action', instead of 12/13 originally.
Updating the rally point of the 6 barracks (which you'd probably want to change all of them if you change one) will also become a much easier task.

I honestly believe that changes like these do not take any depth away from the game. They just make it easier to do things that are strategically just one action, but translate to much more in the game.
I think that this is the point that Sirlin was steering to as well.

Please try to see what he's really trying to say rather than escaping to "He's an APM hater because he's too sloppy for the game he sucks".

On February 06 2009 14:24 systranerror wrote:
Sirlin made Kongai at kongregate.com, wrote some book about fighting game theory (that he tries to ineffectively apply to other genres of games), and worked on Street Fighter 2 Turbo HD. He wrote that "playing to win" article that is pretty popular. I like his attitude when it comes to fighting games, but he really pisses me off when he talks about Starcraft.

He has created this "theory" of how games should work. He can't find out how to fit Starcraft into his theory, and so rather than modifying his theory to apply to Starcraft he'd rather change Starcraft to fit into his theory. The fact that he actually raised his hand and said "what about yomi... the japanese word for--" and then actually just HAD TO SAY "I wrote a book about it and made a card game based on it" made him look like a sperging nerd who can't be taken very seriously outside of his asperger realm of fighting games/card games based on fighting games.

It's also interesting to note that his card game, Kongai, I heard from an unreliable source (don't care to research this), that the top ranked player in that game just made some formula which he uses completely mathematically and it wins for him almost all the time. The game is basically Sirlin's theory in action, and while it is sort of fun, the fact that it focuses so much on YOMI (gotta roll eyes when I type that) makes it pretty boring. The element of reading your opponent in a good fighting game or in Starcraft is fun because so much other stuff is going on, in Kongai it's pretty much the only thing you can do, and therefore it becomes way overplayed and almost random (i.e. "Ok I think he's going to switch out... but he knows I know that... so I'm not going to do that... but he knows etc. etc.)

hello, can someone please make sure sirlin gets this