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PC Gamer Editorial - Page 9

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EmeraldSparks
Profile Blog Joined January 2008
United States1451 Posts
Last Edited: 2008-05-04 01:30:04
May 04 2008 01:25 GMT
#161
Adaption is not needed if it´s enough to drown your enemys in Crystal Meth Marines - but maybe I have simply bad(?) luck with my opponents.

You need to find better opponents. If you have been able to defeat anyone, ever, just by drowning them marines, they did something very wrong.

[[EDIT]] If all you do is the same build over and over and don't adapt to what your opponent is doing, you will lose over ninety percent of your games against reasonable opponents, unless it's a stupid cheese build or something.
But why?
Unentschieden
Profile Joined August 2007
Germany1471 Posts
May 04 2008 01:32 GMT
#162
On May 04 2008 09:50 teamsolid wrote:
Show nested quote +
On May 04 2008 09:26 Unentschieden wrote:
On May 04 2008 07:31 teamsolid wrote:
You must be a pretty damn slow thinker if it actually takes you time in game to decide whether to tech to BCs or nukes.

Thats why I used it as BAD example! The issue was that in serious play BOTH options are avoided, and as mentioned BC come up only in deadlocks.

I meant that in general terms for the selection of any strategy. Refer to EchOne's post for more detail.

Selecting the right strategy isn´t a matter of time, I´ll elaborate.


On May 04 2008 09:50 teamsolid wrote:
Show nested quote +
On May 04 2008 09:26 Unentschieden wrote:
On May 04 2008 07:31 teamsolid wrote:
The only situation where active thought processes can truly take a significant amount of time is in a game like Chess, where you have to map out all possible moves from your opponent about 5-10 steps in advance and plan out your moves accordingly. That is the only kind of critical thinking that actually takes "time".

That´s what I was saying. SC lacks such "chess moves" with huge impacts. And thouse that DO (as in the outcome is more complex than: he can counter/ he can´t) are avoided by the players. BC/Nuke is in CONCEPT a desicion of consequence. Disagreeing is one thing, not comprehending because of it another.

Yes, the reason that SC isn't as strategical as Chess is because it's not as complex! It has NOTHING to do with the speed it's played at.

Nothing is the wrong word. SC has many facettes that could be strategic but were patched out/ignored as result of the game speed. Why is no one bothering to manage energy levels on Medics? (blind that Overlord or keep the energy for healing?) Desicions like that ARE NOT WORTH IT FOR THE TIME THEY TAKE UP. By the time you apply that minor strategic desicion you already lost 50 Mins due to lazy peons or whatever.

SC is simply to fast to be complex. Even if it were more complex players wouldn´t/couldn´t bother since they are already busy enough with more basic concerns.


On May 04 2008 09:50 teamsolid wrote:
Show nested quote +
On May 04 2008 09:26 Unentschieden wrote:
On May 04 2008 07:31 teamsolid wrote:
No RTS will ever achieve this (or even in a real life war), 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.


That´s the spice. Lack or imperfect information makes it more than choosing the appropiate counter. A good player should be able to analyze the enemy even without accurate information, based on meta-game (the real world) but also scouting results (or lack thereoff) intutition, game knowledge etc.

That or the game is so complex that even IF you have ALL information it´s still hard to predict your enemys moves (like chess).


You can't possibly plan that far ahead if you can only guess at what your opponent is doing. Either way, you won't be "critically" thinking (i.e. using all your brain power) like you do in Chess. It will still mainly be selecting/adapting your strategy to your opponent using split-second decision making, much like a general on the battlefield.


I never said guessing. Even in Chess you always lack the most important information of them all: what your opponent is planning. Each constellation offers myriads of valid movesand counters to each of them.
The better a strategist you are the less "concrete" information you would need to make the right desicion/predict the enemys moves, and react(adapt) or plan beforehand for "surprises".
Unentschieden
Profile Joined August 2007
Germany1471 Posts
May 04 2008 01:35 GMT
#163
On May 04 2008 10:25 EmeraldSparks wrote:
Show nested quote +
Adaption is not needed if it´s enough to drown your enemys in Crystal Meth Marines - but maybe I have simply bad(?) luck with my opponents.

You need to find better opponents. If you have been able to defeat anyone, ever, just by drowning them marines, they did something very wrong.

[[EDIT]] If all you do is the same build over and over and don't adapt to what your opponent is doing, you will lose over ninety percent of your games against reasonable opponents, unless it's a stupid cheese build or something.


Youd be frightened what a couple of keyboard macros and Excel can accomplish. I never pretended to win every match or even most of them - simply winning ANY match by "brute forching" is already to much imho.
EmeraldSparks
Profile Blog Joined January 2008
United States1451 Posts
May 04 2008 01:52 GMT
#164
Youd be frightened what a couple of keyboard macros and Excel can accomplish. I never pretended to win every match or even most of them - simply winning ANY match by "brute forching" is already to much imho.

Look, if SlayerS_BoxeR manages to SCV rush a player with 10 APM, the player with 10 APM is going to lose. I still don't see how this means that Starcraft is somehow devoid of strategy.
But why?
Highways
Profile Joined July 2005
Australia6103 Posts
Last Edited: 2008-05-04 01:55:17
May 04 2008 01:54 GMT
#165
Dan just replied



I seem to have missed the party, but I just spent a bunch of time typing this up, so what the hell:

First of all, yes, the column was absolutely written to promote discussion – otherwise what's the point? Writing things that everyone will agree with all of the time would be pretty useless, wouldn't it? It's nice to have your views validated, but it's much more interesting to have them challenged.

Second, I don't think any of you should take offense at the title, Speed Freaks. Article headlines are designed to be catchy and make you want to read on, and are not necessarily meant literally. And c'mon, it is kinda catchy. As I made sure to mention in the column, I absolutely do respect the skills of professional players. (Nowhere did I claim I could have beaten a pro player on normal speeds.)

On the topic of respect, calling someone ignorant or lacking insight because they don't agree with you isn't a very effective way of going about convincing them they're wrong. It's a very effective way of making yourself seem like a bit of a dick (not all of you are doing this, of course. You know who you are). Shocking as it may be, not everyone believes that StarCraft is the end-all-be-all of RTS games, even though I think the vast majority of us can agree that it's a great game. I referred to the email I posted as “hate mail” because a) I enjoy a little hyperbole now and then, and b) the writer made a point of calling me ignorant instead of using more polite language.

I'd also like to point out that nowhere did I criticize the design of StarCraft, StarCraft II, or Blizzard themselves, and I certainly never said the game wasn't (or didn't deserve to be) astronomically popular. Many times in my column I have held up StarCraft's design as an amazing example of balance and asymmetry that should be followed more often. What I criticized was people who change the design by upping the speed from what has been designated by the designers as “normal” - and let's go ahead and dispense the with the idea that “most people” play the game on fast or faster speeds, because if that were the case there's absolutely no reason they would continue to call it “normal.” It's the people that play competitively that crank up the speed, and they are the tiny minority of the people who buy and play the game. So let's not get any crazy ideas that most people play that way. By definition, if you increase the speed you're playing the game abnormally.

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. 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.

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.

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.

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. 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.

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.
#1 Terran hater
teamsolid
Profile Joined October 2007
Canada3668 Posts
Last Edited: 2008-05-04 02:18:57
May 04 2008 02:13 GMT
#166
I just repasted all of our "good" arguments into one massive post. I hope Dan reads it.

Okay guys, please NO more flaming on that thread. I don't care if one of them pisses you off due to their ignorance, just flame him here instead if you need to let out some steam. Don't do it on their boards, it just makes us look bad.

Dan seems to have the same opinion as "You" and I'm sure several others on their boards. Let's see how this goes.
EchOne
Profile Blog Joined January 2008
United States2906 Posts
May 04 2008 02:47 GMT
#167
I think here we are splitting hairs again on the word "strategy". Well I use it like I do since the genre is called "Real Time Strategy" suggesting that the base concept is the application of Strategy in Real Time - but eventually the point is moot, we can also simply call it Tactics or Macro or whatever.


The meaning of words is paramount to successful communication and logical argument. Exaggerated example: I assert that a Fighting Falcon, while unable to defeat a Zerg Mutalisk, could defeat a Zerg Zergling without a scratch. Someone in contention of this would have a difficult time even communicating in the first place with me if he believed I was talking about an actual bird of prey that was fighting.

Since Strategy is a key variable in the discussion of the impact of game speed on strategic depth, disagreement on its definition will make discussion impossible. Both dictionary wise and contextually, strategy, tactics, and macro management are distinct (with strategy and tactics in fact being defined relative to each other at times).

True that is why I never said that SC lacks Strategy. But the actuall difficulty in the adaption is the amount of commitment to the original strategy - SC has very little challenge or difficulty for the player when he has to adapt.


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.

Obviously very high level play has no room for error.
I will again use the BC/Nuke relationship as EXAMPLE-actuall implementation in gameplay is irrelevant here.
Imagine the game processing to the point where a Terran player has the option to tech to either Nukes or BCs. Our player now has to consider what he knows about his enemy to deice to either:
Tech to nukes
Tech to BC
Tech to both even though it will take longer
Keep usinc "conventional" means
Collect more information
something else

Of course, if our Player is good he won´t need long to make that desicion, he will have collected the information he needs before from the current match itself. The skill/strategic depht comes in how hard it actually is to make the right desicion (not how long how every naysayer suggests).
Yes, that means that a so called "solved" game where you can just google the right desicion has no strategic depht, and thats where Blizzard could really shine, by making it so complex that it isn´t reasonably solvable - or they simply patch it each time someone solved it (yeah right).


Given that your point is: Strategic depth comes from the difficulty in coming to the correct decision, I will not contend.

Exactly - but to make the right strategy more difficult than tic-tac-toe the game needs to reward and punish the application or lack of strategy/tactics/... . Imho you get too far in SC by the pure application of "brute force", meaning the plain optimisation of your BO, Macro cycles and basic micro(hotkeys FTW). Adaption is not needed if it´s enough to drown your enemys in Crystal Meth Marines - but maybe I have simply bad(?) luck with my opponents.


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.

I don´t have a justification-thats why I used it in the first place! It is essentially a forum mantra that SC has a perfect balance of Micro and Macro, everyone simply repeats it, no one deems is necessary to support that claim. Just check any thread with "MBS" in the title (warning: may be hazardous to state of mind!) Maybe I´m already to long on this forum, so feel free to regard that claim as what it is: a claim.


Admitted that such a forum-wide claim exists, the claim is that the balance is perfect, not symmetric. Perfection in something without a delimited completion point is so subjective that there's sense debating it.
面白くない世の中, 面白くすればいいさ
G5
Profile Blog Joined August 2005
United States2898 Posts
May 04 2008 02:48 GMT
#168
that speed will be interesting. I bet it will be the only speed played at a competative level
[image loading]
Wonders
Profile Blog Joined September 2006
Australia753 Posts
May 04 2008 03:14 GMT
#169
I think there's just no way to convince him that having more time won't mean that strategy gets better other than just making him play the game. I would've hoped that Klogon's post about prepared battle plans and what plays out at the two-minute timescale had enough clarity (I wonder if he read it) but apparently his experience with games is completely inadequate to understand how things work at a competitive level.
teamsolid
Profile Joined October 2007
Canada3668 Posts
May 04 2008 03:47 GMT
#170
Koven... wtf. Respond to his post, but you don't need to tell him YET again that he's ignorant, we already know that he's wrong and ignorant.
potchip
Profile Joined October 2004
Australia260 Posts
May 04 2008 04:01 GMT
#171
Funny how they asked 'where's the evidence?' when it is plainly obvious they won't understand the evidence if it is right under their eyes..

Ask them to describe what is going on behind a normal 1 sided rape of a replay?
Player A made zerglings, Player A wins by many zerglings...

Dan has actually retracted from his originial conclusion that SC lacks strategy to one of SC favors mechanics. A shifty move, like how Bush shifted from the intention of the WOT towards the result of the WOT in later years.
Last Romantic
Profile Blog Joined June 2006
United States20661 Posts
Last Edited: 2008-05-04 04:17:02
May 04 2008 04:15 GMT
#172
Does anyone have that NaDa replay I just mentioned in that thread ?

I used to have it but I can't find it -_- maybe it's on other comp.

Severe lag issues meant the game proceeded at about 2/3 of usual speed; it's actually a pretty funny game.

On May 04 2008 13:01 potchip wrote:
Funny how they asked 'where's the evidence?' when it is plainly obvious they won't understand the evidence if it is right under their eyes..

Ask them to describe what is going on behind a normal 1 sided rape of a replay?
Player A made zerglings, Player A wins by many zerglings...

Dan has actually retracted from his originial conclusion that SC lacks strategy to one of SC favors mechanics. A shifty move, like how Bush shifted from the intention of the WOT towards the result of the WOT in later years.


I am arguing that everyone at high levels has good micro/macro, and it is in fact time that is the critical 'resource' in question; removing time constraints actually removes strategy by that fact alone.
ㅋㄲㅈㅁ
Centric
Profile Blog Joined March 2008
United States1989 Posts
May 04 2008 04:34 GMT
#173
I don't know if this is the one you're talking about, but I have one from ReplayHome (against 88)starrbren) where NaDa had 566 APM. Here's the link.
Super serious.
Last Romantic
Profile Blog Joined June 2006
United States20661 Posts
May 04 2008 04:37 GMT
#174
On May 04 2008 13:34 Centric wrote:
I don't know if this is the one you're talking about, but I have one from ReplayHome (against 88)starrbren) where NaDa had 566 APM. Here's the link.


Oh, hm. It's 'only' 566. How unfortunate
ㅋㄲㅈㅁ
talismania
Profile Blog Joined December 2007
United States2364 Posts
May 04 2008 04:45 GMT
#175
he seems to be under the mistake impression that most strategic thinking should occur in-game. Yet, even as in the case of chess or speed chess, the strategic planning happens prior to the game, when players decide on their builds and their counter-builds and whatnot. Sure, there's plenty of room for improvisation, but the actual performance of the game is about executing the pre-planned strategy, not generating a new one on the fly.
XDawn
Profile Blog Joined February 2004
Canada4040 Posts
May 04 2008 04:56 GMT
#176
I think he needs to realize it's a VIDEO GAME. DO you REALLY want to spend a long period of "REAL TIME" over ONE game? NO. because then it's no fun?
Use it or lose it
Djabanete
Profile Blog Joined May 2008
United States2786 Posts
May 04 2008 05:13 GMT
#177
Long-time lurker, first time poster. The editorial kind of ticked me off so I started an account over there and made my reply, and I thought I'd copy it over here even though I'm just preaching to the choir. =p
~~~

<< At high speed, a game ceases to be a simulation of a real battlefield. Yes, we're playing in the far future with aliens and lasers and everything else, but come on. everybody's zipping around so fast that the screen looks like a shaken-up ant farm-which might make sense for the Zerg, but for marines to move like that en enormous suits of power armor is ridiculous, unless those resources crystals are supposed to be crystal meth. (that would explain why they're always out to score more.) >>

Failure to accurately simulate a battlefield is not a valid criticism. Can I have that chess set if you're done with it?

<< What's worse, though, is wthat when you're playing at that rate, you can go ahead and toss strategy out the window along with the realism. Min/maxers (people who bust out Microsoft Excel to figure out how to build the strongest possible force with the minimum possible time/resource investment) make the real strategic value of many RTS games debatable at normal speeds, but when sped up to two or three or four times as fast, it's not even a questions. It's no longer about out-thinking your opponent and the big picture, it's about reflexes, rehearsal of a super effecient build order, and micromanaging individual unit movement and abilities-no higher-level thinking required. >>

No, you can't toss strategy out the window, even at Fastest. If you do, someone who has not tossed their strategy out the window will beat you, using strategy.

Also, please realize that those spreadsheets apply equally well to Fastest, Normal, and Slowest. The most efficient builds are the most efficient no matter what speed you play at; the best strategies are the best no matter what speed you play at. A lot of the thinking (about build orders and counters and so on) has already been done for you; this is because StarCraft is an old game, not because it's a fast game.

<< In their Q&A and feedback time with Browder, some of the pro players noted that due to the changes made between Starcraft 1 and 2 there were a few moments when, while waiting for resources to acumulate or units to build, they felt they "didn't have anything to do." Isn't that when you're supposed to think? >>

Sorry, what's the point here? Speed setting has no effect on whether or not there are "empty times" within the game. The faster you go, the shorter the "empty times" are; the slower you go, the longer they are. Whether or not you think such "empty times" are desirable from a gameplay standpoint, is completely unrelated to speed setting.

<< I got yelled at a couple times during that trip for hosting a game and setting the speed to normal instead of fast or faster. I yelled back that if the game was supposed to be played at those speeds, they would be called normal. >>

If there was a setting you were "supposed" to play at, there would only be one setting.

Dan, to me this article seems very poorly thought-out. What you've done is to shed darkness on a very simple situation: Faster speed has no effect on optimal strategy but increases physical demand (for players) and adrenaline rush (for viewers). If you want to play a more relaxing game of StarCraft, that's fine; but I wish you wouldn't cast aspersions on everyone else's ability to think and move their hands at the same time.
May the BeSt man win.
Zelc
Profile Blog Joined April 2008
129 Posts
Last Edited: 2008-05-04 06:05:05
May 04 2008 06:04 GMT
#178
Here's what I posted there:

Adding on to what LR said about time being another resource to be managed, playing at a slower speed will alter the risk-reward ratio of all strategies and several would no longer be viable in competitive play. Strategies that requires your opponent to respond are better in a faster speed setting than a slower one. Strategies that rely on surprise are better in a faster speed setting than a slower one. Strategies that require a great deal of management are worse in a faster speed setting than a slower one.

There are several commonly used strategies in competitive Starcraft that rely on surprise. One common strategy is to raid your enemy's workers by dropping units by their resources. These units often kill workers quickly. However, your opponent can minimize or completely nullify the effect of a drop by pulling the workers to safety and bringing his forces back to defend the resource line to quickly kill the dropped units. Obviously, the more time he has to react between when the drop shows up on his minimap and when the payload is dropped, the less effective dropping as a strategy becomes. Because players usually gain vision of a drop before it actually delivers its payload, playing in slower speeds would make drops far less rewarding then they are now because the defending player has more time to notice it and react. Right now, drops are a viable but balanced strategy: they sometimes work (and sometimes they work beautifully to the point of winning the game), and sometimes the opponent reacts fast enough to counter it and the strategy sets you behind. They may be a poor strategy in a slower speed setting.

Another strategy that would be significantly harmed by slower speeds was one that was recently showcased in this game between two Korean progamers. The Zerg has a unit called the Lurker that hits all enemy units in a line. Because of their high damage, they're really good against Marines in the Zerg vs. Terran matchup, especially since marines are small units and there's a lot of them (they kill Marines in 2 hits). Usually, the Lurker automatically attacks as soon as an enemy is within range, but this alerts the opponent of its presence (they still can't see it without a detector, but they can see its attack). However, there's a way to make them not attack until you give them a command; this is called a Hold Lurker. This gives the enemy less time to react, and often allows the Lurkers to hit more units at once. Of course, the Hold Lurker's effectiveness is entirely based on how quickly the opponent responds. In this game, the Terran player responded in about 3 seconds and pulled his Marines out of range. Unfortunately, three volleys of Lurker Spines had ripped through his army. He lost 24 of his 25 Marines, and with them his chances of winning the game. Had the game been on a slower speed setting, he might have been able to remove his army from danger after a loss of a few more than 11 Marines. The Zerg army was small at that time, and his remaining 10 or so Marines may have been able to hold off until reinforcements came. In a slower game, the Zerg player's strategy of quickly moving up the tech tree relying only on a small army and the surprise value of Hold Lurkers for defense would not be viable, and this early candidate for a Pimpest Play 2008 would not have been so awesome.

Of course, some strategies are no longer viable under faster speed settings because of the amount of execution needed to pull them off. Are there a lot of these strategies? We don't know. But we do know that slower speed settings will make a lot of presently-used strategies far less viable, and may impact the balance of certain racial matchups. It's not at all certain that a slower speed setting will allow for greater strategic depth.

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).

Here, you're making a different argument: faster speeds reduces the importance of thinking ability relative to the importance of execution ability. You're right in that sense, but it's mostly due to the increased importance of execution rather than the decrease in thinking. Much of the thinking is done outside of a given match. Strategies are often theorycrafted outside of playing the game. They'll be tested and refined in practice matches and their application and counters will be determined. This will happen regardless of game speed, and makes up most of the thinking ability required to play the game. The thinking ability required inside a given match will be mostly to decide, given the situation, which strategy is the best response. This, however, should take little time; it's mostly a quick intuitive judgment based on the game state, and not some complex math problem that requires conscious thinking or Excel (and even if set on the Normal speed, you won't be enough time to pull out Excel anyway).

What a slower game speed would really do is reward those who hadn't practiced as much before hand, and hurt those who come up with surprise strategies that the opponent hasn't prepared for. The effect is probably minimal. In higher level play, the speed of the game should not have an effect on the amount of thinking required to develop strategies.

EDIT TO ADD:
most games i jump into on battlenet that i lose, something hits me about 30 seconds to a couple of minutes later along the lines of (oh if i had done THAT (made a couple of reavers for front d, researched maelstrom, etc.) then i'd have won.. i do agree that if i had that additional time WITHIN THE GAME i could have thought of and executed those strategies

I'd like to point out that even if the speed is set to Slowest instead of Fastest, you probably wouldn't get an extra 30 seconds to think and put your plan in action. Fastest isn't that much faster .
SpiritoftheTunA
Profile Blog Joined August 2006
United States20903 Posts
May 04 2008 06:24 GMT
#179
On May 04 2008 15:04 Zelc wrote:
EDIT TO ADD:
Show nested quote +
most games i jump into on battlenet that i lose, something hits me about 30 seconds to a couple of minutes later along the lines of (oh if i had done THAT (made a couple of reavers for front d, researched maelstrom, etc.) then i'd have won.. i do agree that if i had that additional time WITHIN THE GAME i could have thought of and executed those strategies

I'd like to point out that even if the speed is set to Slowest instead of Fastest, you probably wouldn't get an extra 30 seconds to think and put your plan in action. Fastest isn't that much faster .

.... go play slowest please
posting on liquid sites in current year
Klogon
Profile Blog Joined November 2002
MURICA15980 Posts
May 04 2008 06:36 GMT
#180
No, the fact is that hindsight is 20-20 vision. It doesn't matter if you gave him four days to think of whether to upgrade or put a reaver somewhere if the battle he was talking about did not happen yet. This is because he had incomplete information, which is the nature of the game. Only after the battle happened and he is able to assess it is he able to make the call of "I should have done something."

Fact remains that had that battle not happened, he would not have upgraded jack, no matter how much time he had because he was already going about a pre-determined strategy based on the information he has previously collected. And it being a slower setting doesn't let you upgrade or build units to let you use in that battle once it happens because the units themselves build even slower. So in the end, it's a fruitless argument.
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