On May 12 2011 10:00 Wasteland wrote: Street Fighter III: Third Strike -- Don't take this as SSF4/SSF4AE hating, or 3S elitism. The parry system, as well as secret arts requires a bit more mechanical skill than setting up a situation where ultras even things up without much thought (a la: Ryu random DP FADC ultra )
Watching pro Japanese dudes play 3S is awesome.
No its not. 3rd strike is a horrible game. I was unfortunate enough to watch the 3rd strike finals at Evo once. The final match was basically two chun players walking back and forth, and crouching a bunch. Neither player of course wanting to commit to an attack because a parry would mean death. Throw parry attack is a terrible rock paper scissor mechanic. And then I watched the Super Turbo finals which was night and day difference. And of course Marvel was awesome as usual.
If you like pros from Japan playing 3s, you would really enjoy watching them play Super Turbo which requires perfect execution, with none of the boring snoozefest of 3s.
On May 12 2011 08:05 Seide wrote: few things about WoW: really low skill cap, unitll you get into the top .5-1% of raiding, then it is actually quite higher.
Thought this skillcap is usually a skillcap on how good your teamwork and reaction skills are, not at how good you are at playing your specific character.
I'm sorry but no, the only thing easier than arena in WoW is the PvE unless you're talking about vanilla.
Judging from your post you were just a hardcore PvE player and you're trying to make it seem much harder than it actually is. Every single person in the world could clear tbc/wotlk/cata encounters, at least not every single person could get Gladiator(though I have no clue why).
Actually I was a gladiator for season 1, 2 and 4 as well as Warlord in Vanilla and only pvped casually afterwards. While PvE did interest me more (especially once Arena turned for the worse), I wasn't exactly a slouch at PvP.
Not nearly every person could clear a lot of the hardmodes, hell not every single person can even clear the non hardmodes, just look at the statistics on wowprogress if you want to deny that.
While yes it does not take a lot of skill clear the nonhardmode encounters, especially months after the content comes out and the encounter is already a non factor to high level guilds, that is akin to only playing Fastest Map ever and never laddering.
Blizzard implemented the hardmode system for a reason. That reason being that before hardmodes, few players got to experience the end game fights. The previous solution to this was to made those fights easier through design(read: nerfs) the longer the content is out (SSC/TK/BT boss nerfs in late TBC are an excellent example of this).
Now with the hardmode system they can let the more casual players see the content, while still giving higher end players a challenge. Are you really trying to tell me that everyone in the world could clear pre nerf Yogg+0 when it was the highest content available? Because if so, I will have to laugh in your face my good sir.
If you actually read my whole post I do mention that PvE difficulty has been steadily decreasing since TBC. As well as point out that it is hard to place because of outside factors that are not directly game skill related.
WoW content in high level guilds goes through cycles. When content first comes out there is a period of progression, where that progression actually requires work developing strategy, gear is still an issue, there are not easily availbable guides on how to clear every encounter etc etc.
After that period ends it goes into the farm phase, where you pretty much brainlessly clear content. We would often go from raiding 4-5 days a week for as long as people could focus during progression, to raiding 1-2 nights a week for 3-4 hours tops to clear all content during farm with a mix of mains and alts.
Progression takes of skill, farm takes almost none. 99% of the WoW population never really does progression in its truest sense. I have to mention that most of them probably wouldn't want to either.
Let me put it in SC Terms: In SC, players who sit at the top of the top have to initially develop their own builds, as well as adjust existing builds with every patch and metagame change. A player can still be good(even on the level of competing with a pro) just by copying known builds that work, but those players are still nowhere near the level of skill of a top player who sits on the bleeding edge.
Also theres a simple reason not every person could get gladiator: because of the way gladiator is awarded.
So not only are you replying to a post you didn't read all the way, you also have no clue what you are talking about.
I mean WoW doesn't take even close to the skill of most FPS/RTS, but it is hardly easy mode.
Tribes, while it probably isn't the highest has a pretty high skillcap. Even really skilled players still miss mid air discs. And thats not even getting into the teamwork part of the game.
On May 12 2011 10:00 Wasteland wrote: Street Fighter III: Third Strike -- Don't take this as SSF4/SSF4AE hating, or 3S elitism. The parry system, as well as secret arts requires a bit more mechanical skill than setting up a situation where ultras even things up without much thought (a la: Ryu random DP FADC ultra )
Watching pro Japanese dudes play 3S is awesome.
No its not. 3rd strike is a horrible game. I was unfortunate enough to watch the 3rd strike finals at Evo once. The final match was basically two chun players walking back and forth, and crouching a bunch. Neither player of course wanting to commit to an attack because a parry would mean death. Throw parry attack is a terrible rock paper scissor mechanic. And then I watched the Super Turbo finals which was night and day difference. And of course Marvel was awesome as usual.
If you like pros from Japan playing 3s, you would really enjoy watching them play Super Turbo which requires perfect execution, with none of the boring snoozefest of 3s.
While i agree that BW is prolly the hardest most demanding game, team games adds another sort of difficulty. I was quite a HC raider in wow and the biggest difficulty is to find ppl with the similar capacity. To have 25 ppl excell at something and syncronize themself should be harder then 1 person playing for himself, by himself.
I think there are many different ways to measure this. However to pick the best would be hard. Because there are different skills in every game. And also the people that play them. Take sc2 for example. To get a good idea what your opponent is doing you have to scout. Scouting also tells you if your behind and how far behind you are. Now many Sc2 Pros Are very fast have good everything. But if they scout wrong or not enough no matter what they do they will fall if someone is sneaky. Now with team games commutation is key! So how can someone base the best game on skill Leave I really can't say. There are so many angels and aspects of games and personality to the people that play them...
I think the unique thing is that BW is something that can be grinded and trained for to get good at but there are games, like fighting games and shooters, that require reactions that can only be trained to a certain limit (even the best 100m dashers in the world only have .185 second reactions.)
On May 13 2011 04:09 Zlasher wrote: I think the unique thing is that BW is something that can be grinded and trained for to get good at but there are games, like fighting games and shooters, that require reactions that can only be trained to a certain limit (even the best 100m dashers in the world only have .185 second reactions.)
Check out a defrag vid. It's a racing game made from quake 3... that's harder than any other racing game out there.
On May 12 2011 10:00 Wasteland wrote: Street Fighter III: Third Strike -- Don't take this as SSF4/SSF4AE hating, or 3S elitism. The parry system, as well as secret arts requires a bit more mechanical skill than setting up a situation where ultras even things up without much thought (a la: Ryu random DP FADC ultra )
Watching pro Japanese dudes play 3S is awesome.
No its not. 3rd strike is a horrible game. I was unfortunate enough to watch the 3rd strike finals at Evo once. The final match was basically two chun players walking back and forth, and crouching a bunch. Neither player of course wanting to commit to an attack because a parry would mean death. Throw parry attack is a terrible rock paper scissor mechanic. And then I watched the Super Turbo finals which was night and day difference. And of course Marvel was awesome as usual.
If you like pros from Japan playing 3s, you would really enjoy watching them play Super Turbo which requires perfect execution, with none of the boring snoozefest of 3s.
What a fucking cookie cutter SRK post, it's like Viscant laid out the template for everyone there who sucks at 3s
For the RTS genre, it has to be broodwar. Not only is it the most demanding in terms of skill, but the "skill ceiling" is infinite. There is quite literally, no feasible limit to how capably a player may execute a strategy. Even if you granted a player infinite apm, he would still lose with poor decision making.
On May 12 2011 07:44 Eppa! wrote: Some of the harder games that I know of are: CS 1.6, BW, SSBM, DotA all require huge amount of time to learn the basics of competitive play.
SSBM, no. You can learn basicallye verything there is to the competitive aspects of the game in a day, but its just the execution and footsies of it that take a while to learn, but the execution and footsies of other fighting games absolutely tears SSBM a new hole.
Pretty much accepted by the fighting game community as truth for the current gen of games
I can pretty much agree with this, but for a more specific top-right-area I'd put GG over BB since it's faster, has more matchups, and harsher timings (FRC's, slashbacks, etc.). Don't know enough about the other games to comment on them.
Yeah I'd have put BB a little further right as well, those anime fighters actually require ridiculous execution. I'd also put SSF4 more right than Marvel 3 since its REALLY not marvel 2 at all.
Massive amounts of boredom and/or frustration != skill. Skill is about the difference between the best player in the game and a reasonably competent player. The less chance the reasonably competent player has of winning, the more skillful a game is. This is why soccer is more skillful than poker.
I agreed up untill that point. While soccer of course has skill-based tasks such as tactical reasoning, spatial sense and kicking accuracy, traits such as kicking hard and running fast are not about skill at all, but rather physical conditioning. And that's where I'd put my arbitrary barrier of what's considered "skill" and what isn't - it should be based on cerebral and cognitive abilities rather than physical exercises. The reason I differensiate between physical tasks and mental / cognitive abilities is that while physical performance can "easilly" be drastically improved from the untrained state, mental and cognitive abilities are much harder to improve upon, if doable at all. This means that the best way to improve tasks requiring mental or cognitive "skill" is to improve your technique at that focused task, while any activity relying largely on physical conditioning can be largely improved and affected simply focusing on improving ones body while at the same time paying lesser attention to any learnable aspects of the activity. Also, at extremes, a competitor with vastly superior physical conditioning will win simply because his body is better for that activity, a gap that no matter of technical skill can gap - would you consider the heavyweight boxer beating a featherweight boxer in a slug-fest no-dodge fight a more "skilled" boxer, or simply winning due to his physical supeiority?
Anyhow, about ADOM and Dwarf Fortress - these games have horrible documentation, unintuitive graphics and gameplay and complex controls, which makes it hard to learn. That does not make them hard to master, though, and as thus is not a skill-based task at all. Skill is about mastering a task, not about learning the basics, and the basics of these two is the hard part.
That said, I love both games <3.
Being in physical shape is just a prerequisite for being good at soccer, just like being able to move you hands fast is a prereq for being good at SCII.
I played CS in CAL-i, and imo it's definitely behind Q3 for skill.
I'd like a steamID because I honestly don't believe this in the slightest.
With that being said, being CAL-i is like being a master league player in sc2 or a semi-pro foreigner in BW. You would still be getting stomped 16-0 by any halfway decent team. I've played Q3 for quite a while and most of the thinking is very, very simple, which isn't the case for CS. The aiming portion is quite true though, although recoil control becomes a factor.
On topic,
IIDX is extremely difficult, as is ITG/Stepmania (on pad), although I guess both of those are inherently more "computer vs. person" than pvp.
honestly i pretty much only know BW and fighters so BW and GG/mvc2/melee for fighters. i hardly even play smash but once u get past the "its a kids party game", its a pretty deep game. i just hate the smash community from my area in tournaments :/
On May 13 2011 04:27 Zlasher wrote: Yeah I'd have put BB a little further right as well, those anime fighters actually require ridiculous execution.
its not as quite high as u'd imagine. i can teach u some braindead 400-500k pretty easily. haven't tried CS2 yet though
On May 13 2011 03:00 fishjie wrote: 3rd strike is a horrible game. I was unfortunate enough to watch the 3rd strike finals at Evo once. The final match was basically two chun players walking back and forth, and crouching a bunch. Neither player of course wanting to commit to an attack because a parry would mean death. Throw parry attack is a terrible rock paper scissor mechanic. And then I watched the Super Turbo finals which was night and day difference. And of course Marvel was awesome as usual.
If you like pros from Japan playing 3s, you would really enjoy watching them play Super Turbo which requires perfect execution, with none of the boring snoozefest of 3s.
lol i bet it was the fun fun fun nuki/justin chun mirrors. lemme just say don't judge an entire game on a mirror match (which happens to be really fuckin boring)
Short introduction: I've been involved in eSports and competitive gaming since Brood War and transitioned semi-competitively in every genre. I participated in Kali/Cloud Ladder in vanilla SC (a ladder created by [i'm]ClouD, Nazgul's former clan leader) and WGTour in BW (at a above-average level with a clan called [e]lement on USEast). Left Brood War and did decent in CS (CAL-M and CAL-I with a team called -si- or suck it). Picked up WC3 right when it came out and broke top 50 in ladder at the launch (when IN-TillerMaN was a big deal).
Took a break from gaming until WoW started. In WoW, I created a guild called Eminence on Blackrock. By the end of Vanilla, we had the #4US/#10World on KT in Naxx40. I was also involved in creating all the BG9 hype with the first WSG league in back then. By TBC and arena starting, I was on the 2nd team ever sponsored in WoW by CheckSix Gaming (there's an article written by Jp McDaniel on GotFrag, he's been a great friend over the years). After playing competitive arena for awhile, I transitioned to helping run the scene. When MLG picked up WoW for it's PC circuit, I was one of the first people hired to run their WoW tournaments and I've been running tournaments for MLG ever since (started in 2008, still helping run the SC2 tournaments today).
Currently, I'm in position for Glad, 11/13 in Hmodes, and I was in Master's League last season in SC2 (only in Diamond this season though).
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Sorry to bore you with my introduction, but here's my take on skill caps with the above games from various pro-gamers I've met over the years.
It's fairly easy to break into a semi-competitive level in any game if you're an intelligent and mechanically talented individual. The two skill sets needed to be good at most games is, first, having a mechanical understand on how to improve and, second, knowing how to analyze your decisions/mistakes in any situation then remembering to not repeat them.
Becoming "pro" at any game takes a high level of work ethic and the ability to "increase" your skillcap. When you think you've reached your given skillcap at any game, you're not trying hard enough. You can always improve your situational awareness and handspeed, it's just takes practice. Hand speed is the only skill-set that has somewhat of a "cap".
SC2 has broken boundaries in the amount of APM needed to succeed at a high level, but it's obvious to everyone that plays StarCraft that some Koreans and other special individuals are given faster hands in their genes. That's an accepted fact.
Now, speaking on other games, I've been blessed to have watched many #1 players from CS, WoW, and other games perform fairly well in SC2 but completely slip under the radar for various reasons.
Rambo of Team 3D fame in CS was at one point a very high rated SC2 player, he even managed to play some games at MLG Dallas (2010). He was removed from the tournament after winning his first couple matches though because of a conflict of interest (he was a contractor working for Astro at the time). It was notable that his decision making and strategies were great, but his hand speed was ridiculously low (I think he was around 40-60 APM). I talked to him in length later about CS strategy, he basically gave me a crash course on how different hand-positions while holding the mouse and variously sensitivities optimized your aim/effectiveness with certain weapons. It's pretty awesome to learn the trade secrets of the pros later on that made them so great.
My favorite example of a superstar gamer is Nadagast from WoW/SC2 MLG fame. If you've paid attention to MLG events during out first season, you may have noticed the superstar warlock placed top 16 in almost every event he's played at MLG (even defeating iNcontrol, KawaiiRice, and other notables along the way each time). At MLG Raleigh, he placed 12th overall and 3rd in the WoW competition. He was also the highest ranked player in the World in arena per AJ rankings at this time too. PainUser always speaks very highly of Nadagast and has said that Nadagast was the person that taught him how to analyze his mistakes and gameplay. SycknesS of LG, Nadagast's brother and PainUser's best friend, is also a former pro TF2 player for Pandemic Gaming (the #1 team in the US at the time). Pro-gaming talent just runs in their family's genes.
Basically, GOOD GAMERS WILL BE GOOD AT GAMES So, here's my ranks for skillcaps:
Highest Overall Skill-Cap: Brood War (strategic knowledge and handspeed utilized is almost infinite).
Lowest Skill-Cap: Gears of War (I refereed one tournament for this game... it was all about camping an area and auto-aim.)
The Genre with the Most Transitional Skill-Sets: Fighting Games (SF4, MvC3, MK) -- Once you build your feel for fighting games, you can pretty much jump into any game and learn how to master one character. Justin Wong of Team EG managed to win all 3 tournaments for SF4, MvC3, and MK at the same event recently.
Hardest Pro-Gaming Scene to Break Into: WoW Arena -- After watching over the scene for nearly 5 years, there are some players that have their class and mechanical game understanding down to a science to the point where it's muscle memory of years of play. It also does take somewhat of a bit of social-networking/meta-game play, where you need to know what composition is the strongest and find players of top-level caliber to run it. That's probably the hardest part is finding teammates talented enough to compete at the highest level in the top tier comps.
It's also worthy to note that players like Reckul (Rogue), Orangemarmalade (KR Mage), Hoodrych (Warrior), Hydra (Priest), etc... have been playing the game so long and with such an in-depth understanding of how the game works that the only way to pass them in knowledge is to hope they quit so you can catch up (and if they keep playing, you'll never catch up).
The Game with the Most Maintenance Needed: StarCraft II -- I had a longtalk with some old school WC3 pros, that went pro in WoW, but decided to not get into SC2. SC2 has such a deep competitive field, you literally need to practice your balls off for each tournament. If you invent new strategies and tactics, you also need to attempt to keep them secret from the rest of the competition until you use them in the given tournament of your choice. The field is just too broad, it's not easy for a talented gamer to step in and expect to be pro right away.
On May 12 2011 08:05 Seide wrote: few things about WoW: really low skill cap, unitll you get into the top .5-1% of raiding, then it is actually quite higher.
Thought this skillcap is usually a skillcap on how good your teamwork and reaction skills are, not at how good you are at playing your specific character.
Every single person in the world could clear tbc/wotlk/cata encounters
I'm not trying by any means to say that WoW has a really high skill cap, but this statement is just wrong. At any point in time the amount of raiders that have cleared the top end hard mode encounters is something like .5-2% possibly even less. Finding people good enough to do these encounters is very difficult.
In regards to PvE progression... The biggest factors to making a top raiding team is: 1) having good leadership and 2) attendance and progression time.
I'm actually in guild that's 13/13 (Insomnia on Tichondrius, various NrG members are in our guild as well). I raided with the 10man team thats 13/13 and I couldn't keep up because I didn't want to raid 4-5 days a week for 4+ hours.... Too much fucking time man. Our 10 man was also the 4th team to kill Sinesta in the world, btw.
It's also a known fact among hardcore old schoolers that top arena players make great raiders if they want to put the time into it. Mostly because it takes a ton of time to become a great arena player and master the fundamentals, if you transition those skills that make you a good player into a raider -- it just comes down to learning the script of the encounter.
EPT
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