On May 12 2011 22:43 Liquid`Drone wrote: I think to define skillcap you basically gotta do something like "how many layers of dominance are there?" like for example bw. prior to the release of sc2, I was very good at bw. yet there were hundreds of koreans who could beat me 10-0. (dominating me) I'm not sure you had any players that could beat me 10-0 that would be beaten 10-0 by anyone else, but I think flash or jd mightve made it fairly close. so you can probably argue that I had two layers of dominance over me, at the very least one and a half layer.
below me however, there were a lot more layers. I could beat someone 10-0, he could beat someone 10-0, that one could beat someone 10-0, that one could beat someone 10-0, that one could beat someone 10-0.. and now we're at something like D+ iccup. there are at least 5-6 more layers before you get to "has played a grand total of 50 sc games in his life". WoW doesn't come close here - there aren't 12+ giant steps of skill to overcome separating the best players and a newbie.
but some shooters like quake do come close. I was pretty good at quakeworld back in like 97 or whatever. but there you also had like, multiple layers of dominance. I can buy that a game like ssmb is also really high up - the one time I tried to play it I was wayyy out of my element, and street fighter is also pretty high. I can't see any game where there are as many layers of complete dominance as in bw though.
Although an interesting way to put it, it is still a very flawed way of looking at a games 'skillcap'. The reason why a game like wow you would not win 10-0 in a row, is because of the 'huge' luckfactor in the game (For the sake of this post lets just assume we are talking about some sort of mirror matchup where all other things are the same.) If they removed the luck in wow, then a person who was slightly better, would be able to win close to 10-0 of the time, as he would be able to remove all the straight up unlucky\lucky losses and the better player would come out ahead a lot more of the time. So removing the luck mechanics in wow would increase the layers of dominance. That being said, removing the 'luck factor' in wow, would not at increase the "skill cap". if anything it would make the game a lot 'easier' because one of the 'hard' things in wow is being able to handle the unpredictability that comes from sometimes being crit\sometimes missing etc.
The layers of dominance comes down to how much luck there is in a game to be honest. There is a lot of luck even in a game like BW, when you get into positions where you 'randomly' counter his build because you thought he might be going what he was going, whereas other times you might have been wrong and ended up being countered yourself. Also stuff like 'randomly' scouting a dropship or a proxy or something. Obviously the better you are, the better you are at starsensing out these things, and also the better you are at still winning even when you get 'unlucky'. But there is still a big luck factor in games like BW.
Ignoring the fact that nobody plays at the top of their game all the time, there will be games with absolutely no random factor, where there will be A lot more levels of "dominance" than sc:bw, as a person who is 1% better than you would dominate you (assuming you both played as well as you could) if no luck was involved. As I mentioned before, Poker is a game where there is basically no dominance, The best player in the world can often have a pretty large losing streak against a pretty bad player, yet there is still a tremendous amount of 'skill' in poker and it does not have a 'low skillcap'. And also as mentioned before, the theoretic levels of dominance is also directly related to the amount of people playing and competing in a game, not just the game itself.
bw does have a lot of luck in it, but that only makes it more amazing that there are so many layers of dominance. as for poker though, skill in poker is not measured in individual hands or even individual tournaments, it's measured in long, long stretches of hands and it's still very possible to come out dominant. the "10-0" as a sort of arbitrary way of distinctioning "dominance" from "non-dominance" is supposed to be strictly applicable to bw - winning 10 hands of poker in a row is impossible unless you are lucky.
you are right about luck being a factor I overlooked when making my initial post, and that lack of luck would greatly increase the frequency of someone being able to win 10-0, thus indicating dominance based on my "brood war dominance determiner". but a 10-0 victory by itself wouldn't necessarily constitute dominance if every win was a really narrow win and there was no luck involved, it'd mean "consistently slightly better" instead. in bw, a 10-0 victory implies dominance precisely because of the inherent luck in the game, as luck being present means you have to win by a lot, if you want to win every time.
I agree with LiquidDrone about the "definition" of skill cap. My way to put it would be something like: The difference in skill between an average competative player(pro gamer doing it for money) and the best player in the world is something I would call skill cap. The bigger the difference the higher the skill cap. This implies that of all the gaming scenes I'm familiar with, SC:BW is definately the one with the highest skillcap.
Sure in other games there are a group of people who win everything, but if the group on top consists of 20 people winning at times, it more or less means that its not possible for anyone to become significantly better than the other players. This leads us to the conclusion that the skillcap in that game is not that high.
Things like luck factor into this also and I would argue that any games that have significant focus on luck can't have as high of a skill cap than games with less emphasis on luck. Another thing that affects the theoretical skill cap in my opinion is the volatility of the game. Meaning that if the game contains a possibility for a single isolated event to dictate the winner and loser, there will be times that even the best fall. For example in my eyes RTS games don't have such events, because every situation you end in after the beginning are direct result of your previous decisions, and if those decisions are good you rarely if ever end up in a situation where decision made in under 0.5 seconds decide if you lose or not.
TL/DR: Basically, the more correct decisions you can make in one game to be better than your opponent, the higher the skill cap. In my eyes reaction speed in one event is not as demanding as doing the right stuff for a long period of time (with high APM requirement).
How can you consider wow pve highest skill cap?? If you spend time in wow you will increasingly get better regarless, comparing that to an rts game where the time spent literally means nothing its all dependant on if you actually learned something. completly incomparable imo wow takes least skill by far.
I'm surprised more people haven't said Chess. The rich history, the plethora of books and DVDs, the millions upon millions of games that have been preserved through time... hell, my personal database has over 4 million high-level games in it. And, there are so many layers of dominance that it's really become a continuum at this point. You also have blitz and standard games, which offer totally different experiences.
On May 15 2011 00:36 Rybka wrote: I'm surprised more people haven't said Chess. The rich history, the plethora of books and DVDs, the millions upon millions of games that have been preserved through time... hell, my personal database has over 4 million high-level games in it. And, there are so many layers of dominance that it's really become a continuum at this point. You also have blitz and standard games, which offer totally different experiences.
It really is the game to end all games imo
The problem is probably that most people are thinking PC-games here.
The question itself can't be answered for the simple fact that there are a lot of different games which are in a need of totally different skills to be the best at, so there can't be 'the one hardest' game.
For example take Flash or Jaedong, masters of Starcraft, and put them into chess. I am quite sure that (almost) no amount of learning would put them at the top in chess, because both games demand something very different. While chess needs only tactics and forward thinking, Starcraft needs MUCH less of that (it still needs a lot, but you can't compare it with chess) but it adds another layer which chess doesn't even have, the mechanics. In both games, you need to learn a lot (openers etc.) but even though being so similiar, there's a totally different way of playing them.
So if you take RTS games, Starcraft would probably be the one that needs the most skill. This is also due to it being the most popular. I'm sure other games would have the same potential like Starcraft had, but they just didn't/don't get picked up.
If you're going for sole strategy games, it would probably not even be Chess but Go that takes the first place there.
You can go on and on about that, but you need to specify exactly which genre you want. You can't really compare starcraft and WoW or DotA for example, as they need different ways to measure skill.
Really, regarding first person shooters its no contest. QuakeWorld on Aerowalk is the fastest FPS gameplay to date, requires the best acrobatic skills, powerup timing, best high speed aiming.
Dont believe me? Get QuakeWorld, join the most active pub server, and prepare to get you ass kicked with 5-100 stats for months, its that brutal. even CPMA which aimed to be pro oriented with advanced acrobatics and weapon style of QW doesnt come close.
FPS: Quake style shooters Team FPS: Tribes 1 RTS: BW
WoW does not come close to these games, and many other games, in terms of "skill cap". WoW has a level of situational awareness required that is respectable but the actual mechanical skill in executing in game is not very hard.
For fighters I'd toss in the Guilty Gear series. Mechanically more difficult with more options than the SF series (at least 3S and after) and much faster.
Can't really compare it to MvC2 or SSMB myself since they were never big in the scene I used to watch.
RTS : BW FPS : Quake 3 with whatever current pro mod
Lol @ those thinking WoW is one of the with such a huge skillcap. Yes the 0.2 % of the team experience "high level" pve play, but let's be sincere here, 98% of those team players can't have a job and farm mindlessly to prepare the raid night. It requires a lot of team sync' and situationnal awareness, but we are nowhere near the amount of skill required to be a tip top BW or Quake player...
On an unrelated matter, some top french teams (I have a friend in one of those) buy gold from chineses to stay on top, paid by sponsors.... I wonder if it is "normal" at this kind of level to ""cheat"" the game using RL money to buy stuff in game like that. Doesn't sound very sane tbh ^^
Different games require different things, FPS players have the best mouse control of anyone, fighting game players have the best reactions of anyone and BW players have the best strategy of anyone. Apples to oranges, basically.
Oh, and someone earlier said that BW bar none because it has 13 years of history. Well guess what, other games have history too, QuakeWorld is basically 15 years old, and there are loads of top players still around that have been playing Quake for a decade. (I am unable to comment on fighting games as I don't know the history that well)
On May 12 2011 07:41 nymfaw wrote: WoW probably has the lowest skillcap of all games in gaming history.. dont be mad
There are so many games out there that it's hard to name certains but i think RTS is #1
<_< Someone hasn't done a single bit of hardcore pvp or raiding.
You believe WoW is hard compared to SC2? And then SC2 is 10x easier than BW according to the BW players... WoW is so easy once you figure tactics out and raiding has to be one of the easiest things ever, even LK HC 25 was easy after a few patches and people like Ensidia only downs them early because they have 25 people dedicating their lives to that game and raids 8hrs /day for 7 days per week. This is coming from a former multi-glad 3v3 player and a hardcore PvEr (quit in January)
This man knows. BW was demanding as was ssbm but Go has more mental depth then everygame I can think of combined and this includes chess.
In response to the WOW argument lets be honest guys its not hard. PVE being difficult? Imagine your playing a game of starcraft where your opponent ALWAYS DOES the same thing at the same time. He beats you once maybe even twice but then your realize how to win and that never beats you again. This is the grind of wow pve. Beat a boss learn the next one rinse and repeat.
This is my first real post here but I have been lurking since the Beta of Starcraft 2 so if I do something wrong with my posting please be forgiving.
I have not read the the whole thread but what I have seen there is only fan boys all over the place.
I think that you can't compare from game to game what game it is hardest to be a pro at, simply because you got to be good at different things. Many people says that World of Warcraft is the easiest game to be a pro at, maybe it is easy to be decent at the game but i still think the top tier players have worked very hard to be where they are now. I have not play World of Warcraft all that much, i have played it for about 3 months total so i don't know it that well.
Many people in the thread says that Starcraft: Broodwar is the hardest game to be a pro at and some says Counter-Strike 1.6, we can compare those games.
Counter-Strike 1.6 is a team game that you got to have an unbelievable team play along with some good players to be a pro. You do not necessary need to have the best players to be the best at CS because if you have that great team play it will compensate for the lack of the top tier control handling someone in your team might have. Do not get me wrong, I do not say that you can be awful at the game as long as you have great team play, you got to have really god players in your team but the most important i would say is the team play.
Starcraft: Broodwar is a different thing, you got to have almost perfect control and you have not a team to fall back to if you having a bad day. I do not know how to develop my thoughts of SC:BW more than it is the complete opposite of what i wrote of CS.
Maybe the easiest game to be a pro at is the game who has most pros compared to the amount of players playing the game.
almost people are making the wrong arguments about wow, and it's pretty frustrating
"oh, it's not hard except at the top 0.5%" this is not a valid argument, since in the skillcap thread we are talking about the top end "oh, it's just a timesink - most people don't have the time to do it" playing wow at the high end requires may less time than top players of other games, and those complaining about hours of farming before raids are complaining about something that literally has not been a problem for 4 years (minus a couple days) "anybody could be a top end wow player" there is nothing preventing the legions of awful wow players from being good except a lack of something on their part, so this clearly isn't true
now, i won't comment on pvp since i played about 50 arena games total and there are others here are much more qualified to speak on the subject like trancey or nadagast (not sure if zyz has hit the thread)
but with multiple world firsts in my pocket, i think i'm pretty qualified to talk about pve. and while wow does require some skill at the top end, as many bad players i've met have attested to, I think the bigger factor is commitment. not time commitment, but simply commitment to play the correct way. it's SO EASY to play lazily, and expect others to pick up the slack. 99.9999% of people in wow would rather play like they want to instead of the correct way, and these selfish players are in fact only holding themselves back.
frankly i don't think any discussion that's not person against person belongs in this type of thread. not that a game like wow pve or any of the bullet hell games or what have you don't require skill, it's just that it's too different from the person vs person game to really compare adequately.