EPTPC Gamer Editorial - Page 11
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MiniRoman
Canada3953 Posts
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maybenexttime
Poland5411 Posts
On May 05 2008 02:53 Quesadilla wrote: That was quite possibly the most incompetent article I have ever read. If I was still subscribed to PC Gamer, that would be grounds for cancellation. Those people are supposed to be knowledgeable before they go and taint public with their opinions in an area which they obviously have no skill or experience. 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. Because the game wouldn't progress.  | ||
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Morzas
United States387 Posts
Increasing the speed like that would open up more potential for blitzes (blitzi?), which TECHNICALLY are a type of strategy, but really have no depth - I'm 99% sure you all know what a blitz is since you seem like an intelligent bunch, but I'll just throw it out there for those who might not; "attack suddenly and without warning; "Hitler blitzed Poland" " Basically, by cranking up the speed, the only strategic element it opens up is the potential for rushes (Zergling rush, anyone?). And I mean, come on, if you think that is a deep strategy on any level that you really don't understand strategy games. And bafoon can create a spawning pool and send 10 zerglings in off the bat. Rushing does add depth to StarCraft, and all RTSes. Rushing exists as a way to punish players who get too greedy early game with their early worker production. If rushing weren't possible in StarCraft, then the early game portion would be completely boring and would only consist of pumping out workers. The threat of a rush is what makes the early game exciting. Now, to inexperienced players, rushes seem imbalanced, but they have to realize that rushers are put at a huge disadvantage when they attack early. This is because the rushers have to spend resources that would have been spent on workers on an early attack force. If the defending player counters the rush, the rusher is put at a huge disadvantage. So, while increasing the speed MAY open up an additional type of strategy in that regard, it closes so many others (IE, well thoughtout mid to end-game performance as opposed to rushing in the beginning). Anyone can rush - not everyone can maintain a good mid and end game battle with a strong economy and base defenses, which I think is only really possible with a normal speed setting. It is true that anyone can rush, and it's also true that anyone can scout them out and properly defend against them. For these reasons, on a high level of play, it takes a lot of skill to pull off a successful rush since there are a lot of viable anti-rush countermeasures. | ||
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Unentschieden
Germany1471 Posts
Even though the "absolute" amount of strategy doesn´t change it changes gameplay nontheless since humans can´t simply adjust endlessly - at least the lower level Players will have to make tradeoffs. SC2 will focus on that - no one said this was a bad relationship. Also, at least in top level games Strategy will still decide games. | ||
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yare
507 Posts
So in reality while on the surface it seems the faster a game the lower the strategy, but as we see in argument after argument it is actually the opposite. The faster game speed creates a greater reliance on the underlying strategy a player is using. Now I guess we see the real issue. Every SC gamer here is arguing that strategy is a key element to the game that is not lessened with game speed.. Dan is saying that he needs more decision making time to adapt and implement his strategy. I believe both parties are actually arguing separate points. Strategy vs In game adaptation. Otherwise we have to believe that every time Dan plays he starts with a complete and total lack of knowledge of the game, and then builds his strategy as he goes. | ||
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ktp
United States797 Posts
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naventus
United States1337 Posts
On May 04 2008 22:46 maybenexttime wrote: That's because they're unaware of the fact that their understanding is only superficial - they think they do understand the game and that there's nothing else to explore. People like Dan ponder plenty of absurd questions during a game, they analyze every idea no matter how irrelevant to their current situation it is or how impossible it is to pull off under given circumstances. 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. QFT | ||
Xeofreestyler
Belgium6759 Posts
On May 04 2008 19:50 Unentschieden wrote: 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. What? Why would each person have the same capability of strategical thinking? Its quite normal for most people to not understand strategical elements of the game. It can be taught though. | ||
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jtan
Sweden5891 Posts
I think most people would agree that playing starcraft at 2x speed would suck, you wouldn't have time to make any cool moves and everything would basicly reduce to macroing. Similarly playing on slowest would be boring since you could play the game almost "perfectly", there would be no pro-scene since every game would be almost identical, and luck would be a huge factor. Not to speak of all the time when nothing is happening. So there must be some gamespeed between slowest and 2x that produce the "best possible" speed for dividing skilled players from not so skilled, making it pleasurable to watch, making the average gamelength reasonable, and making the time scale realistic. Now I claim fastest must be pretty close to this optimal speed. If starcraft was played a little slower, there would clearly be other strategies possible. Like harassing with dropships at multiple places at the same time, and perhaps we would see more things like stasising ramps to kill bases or even using nukes; all these things that isn't done normally (not because they aren't cost efficient, they often are!) but because that the time and effort they take to execute is not worth it. Players would probably get more spellcasters since casting more spells would be easier and more efficient, and players would put a lot more time in general towards microing. In my opinion, it's things like these that makes warcraft 3 boring to watch. It's all about these never ending micro duels where the audiance is supposed to go "awwwwwwww" for every unit a player loses. In a faster paced game it's more about the big picture, about who can keep up their economy and still have time to macro decently. Many awesome things that are possible in starcraft would not really be viable at lower speeds. Imagine this: A bunch of lurkers and lings advancing on your m&m army. Your senses tells you the lurkers will unborrow and advance soon, so you look at the lurkers without macroing for a second. As the lurkers unburrow you quickly stim, spread your marines to a nice angle, focuses 2 lurks, scans, and beautifully kills the zerg army with minor losses. It feels good, the audiance loves it, and it looks realistic and intense like in a proper war. Play the same scenario on a slow speed setting, that wouldn't only be boring to watch, it wouldn't even happen. As the zergs see marines getting a nice spread he can just backoff and save most of his army, or reburrow really fast and aim every single spine to kill marines so that you end up about equal in losses. Looks shitty, feels shitty, and is unrealistic. And there's so many scenarios like that, where you have to make a good and quick decision to win (just like in a real war). Like when you are zerg and your opponent catches you off gard with a fast dropship to lift his troups to your main. Your main will be gone in like 30 sec if you don't do something etc. So all I want to say is that fastest is an awesome speed for players and audiance in starcraft. Changing it just a little in one direction or the other probably would have made a very similar game anyway. But I bet that creating a game like Dan wants it would create something very miserable. So we should probably just be happy that Dan isn't a blizzard developer but rather a stupid editor at a pc magazine. | ||
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Integra
Sweden5626 Posts
He must be one of those 1% of the people that cannot play and think at the same time. He wants to everyone to play on normal or slow? I don't get it. Is he just bitching at the Starcraft community because he sucks? | ||
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ImgGartok
United States216 Posts
It's like someone complaining that top end Smash Brothers games have items turned off or CS 1.6 pro matches don't begin with 16000 funds on round 1. If you can't strategy while playing then SC just isn't the type of game for you, don't ruin it for other players who have a minimal ability to multitask. | ||
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Integra
Sweden5626 Posts
On May 05 2008 09:59 Oc wrote: The problem with the article is that he basically admits most people (including the top tier players) want faster game speed, then criticizes both the players and developers for playing at higher speeds. It's like someone complaining that top end Smash Brothers games have items turned off or CS 1.6 pro matches don't begin with 16000 funds on round 1. If you can't strategy while playing then SC just isn't the type of game for you, don't ruin it for other players who have a minimal ability to multitask. I know the problem with the article already: That the majority of the starcraft players sees no problem with the speed and the fact that his reasoning is idiotic. I just don't see any point in it all. Probably no else does either by the look of earlier posts. It feels like he just typed up a 5 minute rant and wanted to see exactly how many people he could piss off in the Starcraft community. | ||
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Mercer
United States18 Posts
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jtan
Sweden5891 Posts
So he basicly says that not only do we all play at the wrong speed, it would also be a better game and we would enjoy it more if it was played it his way. An ultimate asshole-statement in other words  | ||
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Integra
Sweden5626 Posts
On May 05 2008 10:16 jtan wrote: His point is that the game would reward "thinking" players more if it was played slower. So he basicly says that not only do we all play at the wrong speed, it would also be a better game and we would enjoy it more if it was played it his way. An ultimate asshole-statement in other words Now i get it. So he wants SC2 to turn into a TBS game. (Turned-Based Strategy). I think he doesn't understand the difference between RTS and TBS games. | ||
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G5
United States2863 Posts
On May 02 2008 10:20 Xeofreestyler wrote: So some rts newb reviewer doesnt like sc's pace what else is new true but if it is ridiculously fast I agree with him then. we shall see when sc2 comes out TT | ||
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Newbistic
China2912 Posts
The author of that article is someone who can never, ever understand the concept of playing to win. To even suggest playing at a slower speed makes it any more "strategic" is to completely misinterpret what strategy actually means. He has constructed a very fixed, narrow idea of strategy, a glass prison, from which his mind can never break free of. What he sees as "strategy" is a leisurely game where both players take time out to "think" about how to react. But if you think about it, this is precisely a permanent loser's perspective of Starcraft: "If I had more time, if I could just take time out to think about how to react." But this never works. More time for you means more time for the enemy- you may have more time to "react" to how your enemy would have attacked if he or she was playing on a faster setting, but it will still fail you because now your enemy is able to do whatever he or she was doing, except even faster and more efficiently at this slower setting, and you are stuck asking again for an even SLOWER setting. What the author of that article REALLY wants is an impossibility- a game where the reactive, slow, "see what happens first" player could have decent chance at winning. In reality, all GOOD Starcraft players (and players of any game, really) are both proactive AND reactive- we make our own decisions and try to preemptively strike while at the same time fending off the enemy's attack. The preemptive attacker has an edge because he or she could determine the game flow and try to throw the other person's game sense totally off balance. So in conclusion... Please go fuck yourself, or better yet, kill yourself. Had you been born 6,000 years ago, your family would have fed you to the wolves because you are just such a fucking loser. Worse yet, you tried to explain off your dicklessness by blaming hundreds of thousands of other gamers for how they like to play. Multiplayer gaming is fun for most Starcraft players because it is exhilerating to win- you know that in your heart, secretly, too. Please, no more excuses. If you lose, play harder, think faster. | ||
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Morzas
United States387 Posts
Yes, I can, and yes, I was. While I'm not even close to a pro, or even semi-pro, I have played quite a bit, and I've been playing since the beginning. Playing a game for a long time does not mean anything. In most competitive games, there are multiple levels of play. Most people don't rise above the most basic ones, these are the people that you see playing public Fastest Map Ever and BGH games on battle.net, or the guys that never get above the lowest ranks on a ladder. There's nothing wrong with this, but you have to realize that playing a game for a long time means NOTHING unless you've been playing at a competitive level for the majority of that time. And like I've said many times, I do not believe that the first reaction that players have is necessarily the best one they can think of if they spend a moment to think it through, or pay closer attention to the situation without having to worry quite as much about falling behind elsewhere. If the first reaction were always the best, why would anyone ever set the chess clock to more than five minutes per player? Because in a Real-Time Strategy game (keyword real-time), you're not supposed to have all the time in the world to devise an awesome plan. You're supposed to improvise based on your previous experiences. That's what makes the game fun. If you want to play a game where you get all the time in the world to plot out an awesome scheme, don't play RTS. | ||
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Morzas
United States387 Posts
EDIT: Scratch that, looks like THE ENTIRE FORUM got deleted. | ||
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Kwidowmaker
Canada978 Posts
Saying fastest is the best speed to be played at seems a bit arbitrary to me, if a faster speed were available, how would that do in terms of popularity? Faster was skipped, so it seems to me that had a faster game speed been available, we'd all be playing fastester (it's a working title). I'm really no expert, but I think if we were playing fastester gameplay would be more micro based rather than macro based. I base this on the fact that less time means that late game mechanics, specifically in macro, become much more difficult. The fine mechanics of micro would also be more difficult, but I think that given the general focus on micro in early Starcraft, this would be improved and players would be able to play at this level. For the next bit, I am going to assume that the mechanics to macro increase faster than the mechanics to micro as speed increases because macro requires many things to be happening at once, whereas micro is generally focussed on one area. So, with that assumption, I will say that the macro revolution would have happened much later, because for the hymen of macro to be broken (just had to get that word in there), a higher mechanical skill would have been required than on fastest. That of course assumes that mechanical skill generally increases over time, which is evident in the rising level of play from the start of professional Starcraft until now. The delay of the macro revolution could mean that we would be behind where we were now, and this year could be seeing savior rise to dominance for the first time (completely ignoring how complex the path to his rise - or any other event for that matter - that was only to demonstrate the delay). Had faster been the fastest speed available, the opposite may have happened, and the macro revolution and modern Starcraft may have come earlier. This is of course, very simplified, but I think the reasoning is sound; lower mechanical requirements from the slower speed would mean that the mechanical ability now could have been obtained possibly years ago. Both of these do not consider the strategical development, but I think that that would keep pace no matter what. Flash did learn the game in 3 years if I recall correctly, so I think that the strategy used today could have developed in 8~ years (faster) or 12~ years (fastester). Those numbers are completely arbitrary, and again are to demonstrate the difference of time. Possibly if the game had been played on faster, we could be seeing the gameplay that will come up in a couple of years on fastest. The point of all of this is to prepare for the question, would the game be worse off not on fastest? Is this really the optimal speed that we are defending so fiercely - yet restrained for the most part - on the PCG forums? Would Starcraft be Starcraft if it were played on fastester or faster? Also, what would happen if we were to change the gamespeed now to fastester? It may stop all these boring (in my opinion, although some are quite good, many are boring) macro games, and encourage more drop play, more harassment and more early game micro. On the flip side, what would happen if we were to play on faster? Using the same reasoning as before, there would be more macro games now, but much better mechanics. It would also be more forgiving and allow for near perfect play to be shown more often (and hell, maybe even some actually perfect play). Fastest is the middle ground between these two, but it's only there because of chance I believe. Fastester would be the middle ground between the unforgiving fastestest and the mechanically perfect fastest. Faster would also be the middle ground between the similarly unforgiving fastest and the mechanically perfect fast. So, I'm going to conclude this with a few questions that I'd like anyone who took the time to read that - thank you very much if you did, I suspect it was quite incoherent and rambling - to answer. First, like I asked earlier, how much different would the game be if it were to be played of faster or fastester? Much trickier, would the game suffer or benefit from the different speed? Also, if now the speed were to be changed from fastest to faster or fastester, how would the game change, and similarly, would Starcraft suffer or benefit from this? Thank you for suffering through that; I didn't edit -edit- So it appears jtan made a similar post before mine. God damned ninja. | ||
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