EPTPC Gamer Editorial - Page 10
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Centric
United States1989 Posts
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GTR
51469 Posts
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Unentschieden
Germany1471 Posts
On May 04 2008 11:47 EchOne wrote: I disagree. I assume you meant strategic difficulty by "actual difficulty in the adaptation". Strategic difficulty does not amount to the commitment to one initial strategy. Strategic difficulty (in adaptation) amounts to the necessity to consider legions of other possible strategies that you did not necessarily begin the battle with. Adaptation is not simply ordering a dragoon to dance against a zealot, but is also analyzing your initial build order, and possible other build orders and even late-game plans, due to discovering that the opponent is zealot heavy. Yes. It´s not about rigid options but the difficulty and variety of choosing the right one - one factor of choosing a option is the ammount of commitment to a previous one. If you want to go for Tanks that is easier when you previously used vultures instead of Marines (upgrades, production...) Strategy in that context is previously predicting that you MIGHT need Tanks and acting accordingly as well as identifieing that you now DO need Tanks and going for them. On May 04 2008 11:47 EchOne wrote: Given that your point is: Strategic depth comes from the difficulty in coming to the correct decision, I will not contend. Agreed with first point. Second point is an opinion. My opinion is that you should play opponents of similar caliber mechanically so that mechanical differences (differences in what you term "brute force") are minimized. A counterexample to make sure you realize that brute force differences are negligible compared to strategic considerations at the top level. Take Bisu v. Jaedong in MSL Group A. Bisu's initial strategy: fast-expand to heavy goons and stormers. This is a mix that will fare well against heavy hydra or mutas. Jaedong's initial strategy: double expand and make many hydras. This will prepare him against harass by sair/dt, which Bisu is known to do. Jaedong discovers that Bisu harasses only with dts, and fends this off while also discovering Bisu's goon heavy army. Seeing no corsairs, he deviates from his initial strategy, using knowledge that mutas absorb more dragoon damage than hydras, and prepares a spire and then mutas. If he had adapted only on the tactical level by, for instance, attempting to snipe stormers, dodge storm, focus fire dragoons, or overmacro Bisu, Jaedong would've failed. Mechanical disparity, if any, will do nothing for him. Jaedong prevailed with mutas and hydras against the goon/stormer attack due to strategic decision making... made very quickly. This decision would not have been an easy one to make, and I'm pretty sure many Zergs would've opted to just continue macroing. You posted a good example how the game SHOULD play. I bolded a part above to point out that I already mentioned the fact that brute-forcing is irrelevant at high level play-but it should be irrelevant even at the lowest "level" of play. Is there any comparable example for even medium players? The problem can´t be that SC Strategy is to hard to understand for most people or is it? How many other options other than going for mutas did Jaedong have to consider? Would more "options" (with different options each offering to Bisu?) make the desicion harder/the game more strategic? I would say yes. | ||
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Yannis
United Kingdom23 Posts
He was not good enough at his job, and wrote about something he had no understanding, pretending he understood it. He sounded like a fool and embarrassed his magazine and himself. He should have never written anything about star craft. Stick to Age of Empires and Hello kitty. | ||
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maybenexttime
Poland5602 Posts
And as for StarCraft strategy being too hard to understand for most people - I'd say no, but neither is Chess. Both games simply take a lot of dedication and in-depth analysis. That's the reason why the lower skilled players only scratch the surface of strategy involved when analyzing their situation in-game. They don't go as deep as timing attacks, economy management, etc., not to mention metagame management on SaviOr's level (back in the days). If you've actually asked that Dan guy what he thinks about in a game on StarCraft (or most other RTS games for that matter), you'd realize he 'analyzes' the game on a very superficial level. But that's not all - he bases his 'analysis' on his own misconceptions and considers plenty of irrational ideas because of that. Sorry for derailing a bit in the last paragraph.  | ||
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Unentschieden
Germany1471 Posts
What we need to find the answer to is WHY aren´t lower skilled players worriying about timing attacks, economy management etc.? | ||
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maybenexttime
Poland5602 Posts
They think RTS games are some kind of 'RTS IQ test' and that they don't have to actually learn the 'rules' of the game, so they refuse to improve and learn more about the game. | ||
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yare
507 Posts
How long would it take to make a BC in real life? Probably longer than a boeing 747. How long did it take the USA from the time Einstein said nuclear weapon was possible until it was dropped in Japan? Does a RTS need to be this expansive in timeline to be truly Real-Time? Edit: I thought the real-time in RTS was that decisions were impacted by time. In other words "rushed". Perhaps if Dan had his way, this is not the case. Edit 2: This means that the the faster the decision making process is forced, the MORE important underlying strategy becomes. This is due to the fact that thinking time is compacted. Your strategy must be tried, true, adaptable, and effective against your opponent. When you fail to adapt or adapt in appropriately, think Savior, your strategy no longer meets these requirements and you no longer win. So I believe the faster a RTS game goes, the more emphasis strategy has in the game. The tactics/mechanics of the game become more difficult however (see the SC2 thread on x2+ speed thread). Ignorance can be described as not knowing what you don't know. I think this describes Dan's position in this debate. He does not know that his complete lack of knowledge of the evolving strategies in a game negatively impact his strategical play (irregardless of speed), and instead attributes this deficiency on the speed of the game play. This would be like me saying if a game of chess spans a great enough time, I could beat a grand master. Yet I do not now know any strategies for chess outside of how the pieces move. I have knowledge of the fact that I do not know these things. This defends that I am not ignorant in the matter. Dan on the other hand defends his ignorance by saying its a hasty and rude word. It's a word that simplifies this entire paragraph into 3 syllables. I guess I agree that it is hasty, but if you find it rude defend your self with knowledge and understand what you do not know. | ||
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Showtime!
Canada2938 Posts
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teamsolid
Canada3668 Posts
DJPCG wrote: My argument is that the genre is called real-time strategy, not compressed-time strategy. I believe that StarCraft does have great strategic depth, but I think that it is robbed of much of that when you deprive players of the chance to consider it. In an RTS, you do have to make decisions in real-time like you would in the real world, and you get a realistic amount of time to make your decisions. But speeding that up makes it artificial; it ceases to become a representation of a real battlefield and becomes a place where humans are running 45 miles per hour and attacks are coming five or six times per second. Dan, I just wanted to make this clear. Fastest mode is only about 50-60% faster than Normal speed. Now let's imagine a war/battlefield in real life. Hypothetically, if soldiers were to somehow move/fire 50-60% faster on the field (e.g. cyborgs or "crystal meth" troops), would this really decrease the amount of strategy used by the general? If anything, there might be new tactics that rely on surprise that weren't as effective before. DJPCG wrote: When you crank up the speed, you're changing the rules for no reason other than to make things harder to manage and punish players who pause to think (and yes, to make the game more spectator-friendly, though you could accomplish the same thing by speeding up the replays), which is all well and good if you acknowledge that the game is not about strategy but about who can manipulate the system fastest (yes, while executing some level of strategy). This is what I was talking about when I wrote that “strategy goes out the window”—increasing the speed increases the challenge in other areas at the expense of strategy. Personally, I do not think that a competition to see who can blink the least is a contest of strategy. You are correct that mechanics indeed become more difficult as the speed is increased. The "relative" importance of strategy becomes decreased. However, this does not decrease the overall amount of strategy involved in the game. The misconception you hold here is that you believe players are supposed to actively think up new strategies from within the game. It is only the weaker players who have little to no concept of the strategical basics (i.e. counters, timing, metagame, game sense, etc) who are spending time guessing/thinking about strategies during an actual game. Much like Chess (or any popular game, or even on a real battlefield for that matter), the optimal strategies and proper counters in various situations have been analyzed outside the game by the collective minds of millions of much higher skilled players in the past. If you've never played Chess at a competitive level, then indeed you will be trying to guess among thousands of possibilities that your opponent will make. This is inefficient use of time and in a game of both Chess and Speed Chess, the opponent who has a basic grasp of optimal strategies will wipe the floor with you. DJPCG wrote: I like the sports analogy, and referring to StarCraft as an eSport, because it goes to prove my point. StarCraft, played at high speed, is a strategy game in the same way as basketball or boxing are strategic. There's strategy involved, to be certain, but it is not the primary concern. At best, it's equally important to reflexes, because if you don't keep your speed up the entire time you're dead. Like Romantic said, playing at a more manageable speed does not make for a good spectator sport, but spectator sports are not necessarily strategic. And while StarCraft might be more strategic than most other games when played at high speeds, it's still less strategic at high speed than it would be played at normal speed. Since you like the sport analogy, and indeed it is at least somewhat accurate to think of Starcraft as an advanced game of basketball, let me ask you this question then: If the speed of every basketball player was hypothetically reduced to 2/3rd of their original speed, would this really allow for greater strategy in the game? DJPCG wrote: I still absolutely stand by my speed chess analogy, despite the initial criticism of the proportional differences. Strategy is all about thinking about the best response to your enemy's actions, and the reaction you think of first is not always the best you can think of – which is why speed chess is not considered as strategic as regular chess. Some people are better at fast thinking than others, which is great, but are they more strategic? No. If you have more time, more often than not you will think of a better solution to a problem than the first thought you have. Chess is proof of this—take two equally skilled players and give them unequal clock times, and the guy with more time will win more often than not. If, as you guys claim, StarCraft has huge strategic depth, more time to analyze a situation and execute your response can really only improve the level of strategic play in the game. The problem with the "speed chess" analogy has been explained in part above (and by Klogon/EchOne previously). Good chess players are not actively thinking up new strategies within a game. Instead, they memorize and understand optimal strategies to use in various situations outside the game. During the game, a good chess player will mostly be analyzing the board to figure out which strategy he should use in order to adapt to his opponent's strategy. However, due to the complex nature of Chess, the "analysis" of the board is extremely difficult, because you have to map out all possible moves from your opponent about 5-10 steps in advance and plan out your moves accordingly. This is the only situation where active thought processes and critical thinking truly requires a significant amount of "time". No RTS (or even a real life war) will ever achieve this, because information obtained from your opponent is imperfect and very limited. Since you only have a snapshot of what your opponent is doing, you can only react based on this limited piece of information. You will never find a RTS that will be complex enough to require you to predict and plan out hundreds of different VALID moves in advance throughout the game, as it is necessary in a highly structured game of chess where you have full information of the battlefield at all times. DJPCG wrote: Based on that logic, I disagree with the assertion that “good players don't need the additional time.” You guys might make your decisions instantly, but someone else might kick the crap out of you by taking a few seconds to more thoroughly think the scenario through. No, if you gave a good player a few more seconds, he would STILL come out with the most optimal decisions based on his strategical knowledge, scouting and game sense. Only a player with a poor grasp of strategy would require a few more seconds in order to adapt properly to an opponent, because he is unable to draw upon the strategical analysis by experts in the past. DJPCG wrote: You criticize others for not having specific replays to show as examples, but you have nothing to offer to counter the argument because as you yourselves say, no one plays at normal speed on Battle.net. So if no evidence exists, I'm going to go ahead and theorize. Without replays, there is no evidence to suggest that his theory is true either. A theory by itself is worthless without empirical evidence. As mentioned before, it is only at a very low skill level where both players have very poor mechanics and strategical understanding, that this situation is even possible. At this low level, it is possible for one player to defeat another by luck, or simply by massively outproducing the other. Perhaps, the player "B" who wins at normal speed is just extremely slow mechanically and slowing down the speed to Normal gives him a massive boost in his production capabilities and micromanagement. Meanwhile, it's possible that player "A" simply gains less from the lower speed for whatever reason, such as unfamiliarity with the speed. Either way, there is no evidence to suggest that the slower speed in fact allowed player "B" to outstrategize his opponent. DJPCG wrote: Anyway, if you guys feel that only people who spend thousands of hours playing StarCraft has any right to comment on it, and that no one is allowed to have any kind of dissenting opinion, you're welcome to feel that way. But don't expect me to not discuss it as someone who has played a wide variety of games. Dan, I wish you wouldn't give so much credit or attention to the trolls. Please don't lump everyone into one group just because of a few bad apples, who were banned from TL as well. Furthermore, no one has any problem with you stating your opinion. However, the reason why many are offended is because you also made conclusions in your article (e.g. "What's worse, though, is that when you're playing at that rate, you can go ahead and toss strategy out the window along with the realism.") based on your (uninformed) opinion (no offense) about StarCraft, when most people expect a game journalist to fully understand what they're writing about. Furthermore, your logic appears to makes sense at the surface (which is why there are people agreeing with you), but the truth is that it is incorrect on many levels. This becomes obvious to anyone who has more thorough understanding of the game in question. There are also several factual inaccuracies in the article itself. (e.g. you implied that Fastest speed in Starcraft is 2-3 times faster than Normal, when in fact it's only about 50-60%). Also, the default speed for play on Battle.net as defined by Blizzard when it was first introduced in 1997 was actually "Fast", not "Normal". It was then further increased to "Fastest" speed in 1999 by the Battle.net community. However, this change was not induced by the progamers (as you imply in the article). In fact, it was the community as a whole that changed the standard game speed. Casual players have always been a distinct community from the pros, as their maps of choice are often BGH, Fast $$ or UMS maps. However, it was in fact these low-leveled players who first moved to "Fastest" speed (and not the Pros), because they felt it would make for a more exciting pace. It was much more controversial when the competitive scene switched soon after as well. Also, just so you know, most StarCraft fans such as myself have also played a wide variety of games. In fact, there are very few games I truly dislike. 99% of people at TL.net are not "pro-gamers" who spend their life training SC (this happens only in Korea). They are simply StarCraft fans who prefer watching and/or playing one game over several others. | ||
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Wonders
Australia753 Posts
On May 04 2008 22:23 Unentschieden wrote: I´m not shure what you are saying there maybenexttime - you essentially agreed with me. I especially pointed out that SC Strategy is easy to understand. In both chess and SC it is very easy to understand your current situation - the art is to find and apply the right response. What we need to find the answer to is WHY aren´t lower skilled players worriying about timing attacks, economy management etc.? Why aren't low skilled chess players worrying about tactical possibilities opened up to your opponent when you put a piece out of position to take a pawn, or about what happens when black gets a passed pawn on the queenside in the Yugoslav attack (I made these up, chess experts please correct me). Like starcraft, the dynamics of the game change drastically depending on your level of understanding of the game; at very low levels it's a race to see who comes out on top in a cascade of captures, at low levels it's usually about who makes the first tactical error, and who knows what kind of arcane knowledge they'd have up at the super-grandmaster level. Whatever it is, it's pretty certain that the average chess player wouldn't be taking such things into consideration when making a move; they'd just be worried about how many times it is defended and how many times it is attacked (say). | ||
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Showtime!
Canada2938 Posts
Just another thing for them to think about anyway but gj. | ||
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wswordsmen
United States987 Posts
On May 04 2008 23:30 Wonders wrote: Why aren't low skilled chess players worrying about tactical possibilities opened up to your opponent when you put a piece out of position to take a pawn, or about what happens when black gets a passed pawn on the queenside in the Yugoslav attack (I made these up, chess experts please correct me). Like starcraft, the dynamics of the game change drastically depending on your level of understanding of the game; at very low levels it's a race to see who comes out on top in a cascade of captures, at low levels it's usually about who makes the first tactical error, and who knows what kind of arcane knowledge they'd have up at the super-grandmaster level. Whatever it is, it's pretty certain that the average chess player wouldn't be taking such things into consideration when making a move; they'd just be worried about how many times it is defended and how many times it is attacked (say). This might be a nit-pick that doesn't matter, because you are right about your level changing the dynamics, but low level chess players do care about that stuff (the enemy threating pawns and passed pawns). What they don't care about is sacrificing material to gain position, or when to bring more pieces to attack or defend. | ||
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maybenexttime
Poland5602 Posts
On May 04 2008 23:38 wswordsmen wrote: This might be a nit-pick that doesn't matter, because you are right about your level changing the dynamics, but low level chess players do care about that stuff (the enemy threating pawns and passed pawns). What they don't care about is sacrificing material to gain position, or when to bring more pieces to attack or defend. He just meant that there are plenty of metagame ingredients that you become aware of as you progress in skill level. | ||
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Unentschieden
Germany1471 Posts
On May 04 2008 23:30 Wonders wrote: Why aren't low skilled chess players worrying about tactical possibilities opened up to your opponent when you put a piece out of position to take a pawn, or about what happens when black gets a passed pawn on the queenside in the Yugoslav attack (I made these up, chess experts please correct me). Like starcraft, the dynamics of the game change drastically depending on your level of understanding of the game; at very low levels it's a race to see who comes out on top in a cascade of captures, at low levels it's usually about who makes the first tactical error, and who knows what kind of arcane knowledge they'd have up at the super-grandmaster level. Whatever it is, it's pretty certain that the average chess player wouldn't be taking such things into consideration when making a move; they'd just be worried about how many times it is defended and how many times it is attacked (say). Speaking from personal experience: In chess new players ARE worried about tactical possibilities. One of the very first things a new chessplayer learns (after the rules and standart openings) is that you won´t win by a war of atrution (in this case, removing more/better pieces than the enemy). Of course it is important to keep your pieces - Id put that equall to a working economy in SC. But improving that kind of "basic" play will make you selfdestruct in Chess (In SC it works to "steamroll" your enemy) as "loosing pieces" is the no.1 tool to get the enemy into a formation you want him to. The thing is that Chess highly supports more elaborate setups over "piece by piece" play by making you loose even IF you always "trade beneficial" (like pawn for knight etc...) or at least even. Imagine that in SC, if you would loose the match even though you beat your enemy at every skirmish up until the last one since he baited you into a position that you couldn´t win in. It is NOT like that in lower level play. The dynamics do change, and what SC2 SHOULD to is to make the "switch" from brute-forcing to paying attention as easy, rewarding and intuitive as possible. What is the point if only 1% of the whole community play the game "properly"? | ||
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maybenexttime
Poland5602 Posts
As for new chess player being worried about tactical possibilities - that's because they deem chess as something more than just another form of pasttime, contrary to most casual RTS players. | ||
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SayaSP
Laos5494 Posts
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BlackStar
Netherlands3029 Posts
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Quesadilla
United States1814 Posts
If I allowed that guy to pause as many times as he wanted, on normal speed, he would never have a chance at winning. Ever. | ||
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teamsolid
Canada3668 Posts
On May 05 2008 00:23 Unentschieden wrote: What is the point if only 1% of the whole community play the game "properly"? You know, there's a lot of Koreans playing Starcraft. Did you pull that number out of your ass? There are all kinds of different levels of skill. I'm sure most players out there at least have some semblance of strategy, BO's and counters, unlike this Dan character. A lot of people don't have great enough mechanics to execute everything they want to. Also, there is nothing wrong with a player who is not playing the game properly. They are casual gamers and as long as they are matched with another of equal skill, they will still have fun. Casual chess players aren't playing the game "properly" either, but you don't see anyone complaining that Chess is "too hard" so its strategy should be toned down. | ||
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