The Elephant in the Room - Page 185

On November 30 2011 12:01 Sawamura wrote:



Let's use some real life sport analogy for comparison sake , Take professional sports as an example compared to a accomplish PGA tour professional to an amateur , What are they playing ? Golf of course , however in comparison between the two players , The amateur in tournament pressured situation will falter , because mechanically speaking he isn't trained to deal with this kind of situation , Having a sound swing requires tons of dedication and hours allocated to getting the swing to work they way you want it to be , these can be used as an example for broodwar micro and macro mechanics plus game sense .

An amateur golfer may have talent but can he do like what a pro golfer could do ? definitely not than every tom,dick and hary could just come to the golf scene and earn millions of bucks easily , Same goes to Professional broodwar , not matter how many hours ,I put in to the game , I could not even come close to any semi pro broodwar players these days , because the amount of hardwork they put in the game is just amazing , 14 hours of practice a day ? , 3 hours of sleep ? . Can I beat tiger wood now that I have better a golf swing ? nope I can't he's just miles ahead of me mentally ,physically and strategy wise through his superior game plan and scrambling.

Show me a sc2 in house practice regime that encompasses such dedication to a game like broodwar pro gamers do .

On November 30 2011 12:50 aristarchus wrote:

And the reason SC2 enthusiasts get mad at posts like this is that you didn't actually read the post you're responding to correctly. He didn't say BW was all about macro or micro. He said it was about strategy too. He just said that you could always have better strategy and still lose because the other guy had better mechanics. Yes, you could have a good enough strategy to make up for your bad mechanics, but you could also have good enough mechanics to make up for your bad strategy. And as the general mechanics of players improved, strategies that used to make sense became bad and needed to be reworked. Of course that's true in SC2 also. But because the interface is better, the marginal gains you get from good mechanics diminish faster, so the mechanical advantage someone needs to make up for a certain amount of strategy disadvantage is larger. So yeah, that means that as a percentage of the skill that distinguished between players, strategy was lower and mechanics were higher in BW. That doesn't mean there aren't amazingly deep strategies in BW. It means exactly what he said - that there's a higher entry bar before strategy starts to matter. If you aren't at least decent mechanically, the top players will always beat you, regardless of how good your strategy is. None of this probably matters much when you're talking about the spectator side of things - the pros will have good enough (or equal enough to each other) mechanics that the strategies come out. But it *is* a difference between the games, and it matters a lot for a casual player.

On November 30 2011 13:06 Phyrigian wrote:



Did you read my post? Please tell me you did and enlighten me on how i didn't address yours :3

On November 30 2011 12:57 GreyMasta wrote:


If BW's supremacy relies only on things like manual mining and smart casting, wow, I never played and watched the same game. I see human skill and prodigy in other fields than what a machine'AI can naturally do way better by itself.

Hey wouldn't it be nice for golf engage the stamina of golfers by having them to walking across the place trudging in the bunkers with their clubs ont heir backs?
Wouldn't it separate the true warriors of the green from all those lazy fat cart-huggers?

Nope.

We don't want to see pro golfers fail because they broke their ankle trying to climb a hill on their glorious walk to the green. We just freakin want to watch them FOCUS ON SWINGING, not to play a cross country, this is another sport!

Let's try another funny comparisons:

If non-assistance == Better gameplay
Than
Why not add those awesome feature to BW to make it an even better game, the better game ever created by man?

- Remove Units pathfind. Having the AI stirring units for you to reach a position is for SC2 sissies.
- Remove Patrol moves: What? You can't micro this simple stuff all by yourself?
- Remove Voice feedbacks: Why do you need to be warned that something is happening? Aren't you supposed to watch the minimap or your supply count at everyfreaking second?!!
- Remove rally points: Wtf is that noob stuff. Seriously.
- When you click-attack an enemy unit your units now attacks it ONCE: Dragoon micro for every micro!
- Remove control groups: Infinite groups <<<<< Groups of 12 <<<<<<<<< Groups of 1. Logic!
- Remove player colors: Enters the new the meta game of figuring out by yourself which zerglings are yours! FUN!
- Sounds are replaced with beeps and units by geometric shapes: The game was way TOO FANCY, Imma right?
- etc.

PS: I am not trying to turn BW bad!!
I am just saying: Sometimes we easily critisize SC2 on removing some of the very same clunky gameplay aspects than the "ridiculous" ones I am making up above. It really happens.

I'm confused what you are arguing though, do you think it is a good thing that a mediocre mechanical player should beat a strong mechanical player because of strategy? I think strategy should take place, but there has to be a limit. It's like, 100 troops should not beat 10000 troops in real life, that's just not realistic. But with good planning and positioning theres no reason 5000 can't beat 10000.

On November 30 2011 13:08 BarbieHsu wrote:


The difference isn't this big.

Mediocre Mechanics/Strong Strategy should beat Strong Mechanics/Mediocre Strategy. Crudely, it's like saying I believe starcraft is a comptition where the brainy weakling should beat the musclebound average IQ guy. Preemptively, yes mechanics needs brains too; that's why "crudely" was used.

On November 30 2011 13:02 1Eris1 wrote:



That's incorrect though. The amount of skill that translates from strategy and mechanics is very different than what you guys seem to think in BW. I really encourage you to watch a gamee and just try and actually go through the specific details.
I think you guys are confusing the overall structure of BW games a little too much. Flash, JD, Bisu aren't just on the top for 1-2 reasons. Bisu designed the PvZ build that revolutionized the game in such an immense way that it completely through off the metagame and has been the standard for 4 years. And he did that well having amazing mechanics. If mechanics are even easier in SC2, why would he not be able to do something similar, if not better? That is the point some of use are trying to make. Yes they're mechanic monsters, but they're also geniuses that can pick apart the smallest amount of details and put them to use.


I'm confused what you are arguing though, do you think it is a good thing that a mediocre mechanical player should beat a strong mechanical player because of strategy? I think strategy should take place, but there has to be a limit. It's like, 100 troops should not beat 10000 troops in real life, that's just not realistic. But with good planning and positioning theres no reason 5000 can't beat 10000.

Doesn't the casual player want to see mechanics though. If it's a TvT and guy A is at 100 supply vs guy B's 60 even casual players are going to pick up on and mock that kind of stuff. They will cheer on guy B's cool micro or strat, but ultimately even casual players are going to consider player A the better player.


I'm not sure that made sense, and I might have just been going in circles.

Look at it this way. Assuming Flash, JD, Bisu are the best RTS players in the world, they would have success in both BW and SC2. Their mechanics would be more displayable in BW, but I would disagree that their strategies would be better displayed in SC2 simply because of a lower skill ceiling. This is because I believe BW units are more microable, have more options, and are better designed. It doesn't matter what the skill ceiling is if the units themselves are just derp herp attack derp.
Again, that is my and other's opinions. If you disagree, I suggest you check out some BW games. I like to think my opinion holds weight though because I avidly follow and analyze BOTH SC2 and BW.

On November 30 2011 13:08 BarbieHsu wrote:


The difference isn't this big.

Mediocre Mechanics/Strong Strategy should beat Strong Mechanics/Mediocre Strategy. Crudely, it's like saying I believe starcraft is a comptition where the brainy weakling should beat the musclebound average IQ guy. Preemptively, yes mechanics needs brains too; that's why "crudely" was used.

On November 30 2011 13:18 aristarchus wrote:

I'm not arguing Bisu wouldn't be awesome at SC2. My guess is that he would be, though maybe not to the degree some people in this thread think. The point is that in BW, he was able to come up with this super revolutionary build only because he also had extremely good mechanics. If his mechanics weren't at that level, nothing would have worked the same way when he was playing and he wouldn't have been able to figure out that that build (when executed with excellent mechanics) is actually that good. It means that actually making strategic innovations is something that only a select few can even try to do. It seems logical to me to think that that means innovation has probably moved slower than it otherwise would have.

As for whether a player with bad mechanics but good strategy should be able to a player with stronger mechanics but weaker strategy, I don't think we disagree in principle. Obviously it should depend on how much better the strategy is and how much better the mechanics are. And that's true in both SC2 and BW. It's just that in SC2 the weight is a little heavier on the strategy, since the difference in mechanics translates to a little less (since no one is *that* bad). Neither is objectively better. It's just a personal taste thing. I as a spectator prefer more strategy, but that's just my preference.

When I talked about the casual player, though, I meant playing, not watching. I don't play enough to have mechanics anywhere near pro-level. I'm in diamond, and even there I have lower APM than most players. but my mechanics are good enough that I can get to the point where strategy matters. Obviously the pros would still beat me with almost any build, but the complexity of strategy that I can benefit from using is higher than it would be if my low APM was absolutely crippling. And for me that makes the game a lot more fun to play.

On November 30 2011 13:19 Phyrigian wrote:


:O?