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This may not be thread worthy, but one thing that I would like to at least say to everyone who is chiming in on discussions about change X's effect on the skill ceiling of SC2 is that they have no credibility to make such claims.
It's one thing to talk about the effect that these changes will have on casual players, because there are players of that nature on here who can test the changes and report their experience.
Talking about the skill ceiling, on the other hand is something that ONLY affects the best players in the game, so if you wanted to get an accurate opinion of how the changes will affect the skill ceiling of the game you would have to talk to the BEST players in the game (Top Koreans).
This is exactly the same as the process of trying to improve your SC2 game right? You look to the highest level of play and learn from what those players are doing.
The part that is ironic to me is that people who are so concerned with "keeping the skill ceiling high" in SC2 should also know that they are no where near skilled enough to understand how a change this big will affect the skill ceiling of the game. These are the same players who will not entertain any strategy unless it comes from a GSL game. (i know this is a gross generalization and not 100% accurate but im trying to make a point)
One thing that I think is undeniable is that it isn't as simple as removing macro mechanics means lower skill ceiling because you have to spend less APM on macro. Doesn't this argument sound familiar? This is the same argument diehard BW fans had with SC2 players when SC2 came out... And correct me if I'm wrong but most of the people giving their opinions on this issue are SC2 players who embraced that change from BW to SC2...
I'm not saying that I know the correct answer for that I think we would have to have the changes playtested extensively by the best players in the game and then hear their thoughts.
Keep one thing in mind though, the more people we can get interested in/ playing SC2 the bigger the competitive scene will get regardless of where the skill ceiling is at, which is a good thing right?
So with that being said if its pretty obvious that even IF these changes lowered the skill ceiling of the game.... it wouldn't affect 99% of the people who play the game... so if it causes more people to get into SC2 by making the game more accessible and less frustrating to a casual player... then its hard for me to understand why it can be a bad thing.
Bigger playerbase == more viewers == more tourneys with bigger prize pools == BIGGER competitive scene.
TLDR:
IF you are really that concerned with keeping the skill ceiling high in SC2, then you shouldn't be dismissing it without giving the Top Koreans the time to EXTENSIVELY playtest these changes because in reality your opinion about it means nothing, since you aren't even remotely close to being limited by a skill ceiling in this game
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1001 YEARS KESPAJAIL22272 Posts
The term "skill ceiling" is the most misused term in all of Starcraft. The functional skill ceiling will never be reached. Never. What people are actually arguing about is the competitive skill floor—the amount of skill necessary to play the game competitively. Reducing mechanical requirements does shift the competitive skill floor, but the gap between that floor and the current average skill level of contenders is still significantly large, while the gap between the floor and ceiling still infinite. Reducing an infinite by 10 is still an infinite. I've explained this countless times, and people still like to invoke the term skill ceiling for their flawed arguments. I am this close to making the misuse of the term a bannable offense. :p
(Unfortunately, I can't actually do that. Probably)
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You and I are saying very much the same thing, that is the point I am trying to make. Even if people are talking about the skill floor required to play the game competitively, if the skill ceiling is something that is unattainable then there is no real effect on competitive gameplay. because the people who were at a certain level of competition will now be able to seperate themselves further from the people who are now "more competitive" because the skill floor has been increased.
To think about it in an another way that kind of continues your thoughts about the skill ceiling and floor relationship. If the difference between the skill ceiling and floor is infinity then raising the floor has no effect, because the the reasons why people were competitive in the first place was because they were higher above the skill floor than others, but by making changes to the game that "raise" the skill floor by making it easier to attain the results that took more skill previously, those players who were attaining those results will now be able to achieve even better results, and since there is no danger of those players actually hitting the skill ceiling, there is no effect on competitive play. (this is a hypothetical statement that assumes that as you said the relationship between the skill ceiling and floor is infinity because the skill ceiling is not possible to be reached by a human)
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What raising the skill floor will have an effect on though, which is something that is pretty easily discovered by the average person, is increase the accessibility to SC2 which means hopefully that it might become more popular than it has been since the decline of the golden age of SC2.
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imo, the concept of skill floor is even more pointless... So poorly defined... "skill needed to play it competitively" What does that even mean?? Diamond? Master? GM? qualify for challenger? It surely depends on the player pool, so not an inherent property of the game, but of the game and the players that are currently playing it, and whatever you choose to put into the word "competitively". You wont find two people that agree on what it means.
Skill ceiling, while being a pointless thing to talk about as it is unreachable for humans, at least exists in theory and is well defined.
what people ACTUALLY should talk about is learning curve: power to win (MMR or ELO if you wish) as function of skill (or training time). If two people of the same basic talent and background start playing sc2, one plays a week, the other plays a month, what is the win probability of the 1 month player? More importantly, what do we WANT it to be in a good game? How about 1 year vs 1 month? How about averaging 8 hours a day for 2 years vs averaging 4 hours a day for 2 years? All this is summed up in the learning curve. We should think long and hard about how we want it to look (it'll be different for different people for sure), how it looks right now and how different changes affects the curve.
Some people complain that the learning curve is too steep at the start, talking about inaccessible games that feels too hard. Some complain about the flatness of the curve at the highest level (game too random, that noob beat me by using luck, etc). I guess it comes back to the old mantra of "easy to learn, hard to master" that was repeated in WoL development.
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Raising the skill floor shouldn't even be the goal......people enjoy getting better at the game.
What we don't enjoy is the feeling of grinding, like "today I'm going to practice this build order 100 times." Who likes to do that?
Instead, the focus should be on improving the pathway to greater skill. If you can improve just by playing the game (as opposed to grinding practicing), that is ideal.
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I like grinding out builds, and I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one.
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On September 01 2015 17:17 virpi wrote:
I like grinding out builds, and I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one.
I also do, and I like grinding mechanics practice too.
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On September 01 2015 17:17 virpi wrote:
I like grinding out builds, and I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one.
That's one of the most fun things for me.
It's fun to start out barely understanding a build and then slowly learn how to do it how to transition out of it etc.
It's like a whole different game 
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Actually, no one can possibly reach the skill ceiling and no one can reach it after the changes, so lowering it makes no difference to the difficulty of the game.
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A helpful way of looking at the problem of reducing the skill needed to play the game:
Player 1 is much worse than Player 2 (maybe low diamond level vs. top Master, though exact details aren't relevant). Both players macro for 10 mins and then do the same timing attack. Because the skill floor is low enough, both players have the exact same amount of units, and thus the fight is decided solely on the engagements and macro during the engagements.
Think of the same scenario, but with the mechanical skill floor much higher. In order to scout and macro (both players are powering for a timing attack, and not harassing each other) the players need a lot of mechanical skill and there are a few tricks (like worker pairing) that can be done to gain a slight edge. Player 1's army meets Players 2's army. P1's army is smaller. Player 2 has a large advantage and was able to get ahead simply by being a better player.
In the first example, Player 1 will take more games off Player 2. Maybe he gets lucky with positioning, maybe P2 wasn't looking when the fight breaks out. Who knows? In the second example, P2 wins more often. The problem I have with lowering the skill floor, and I think this is the objection most people who agree with me have as well, is that I with very little practice can hit timings that top pros can hit, with the same amount of stuff. My highest rank ever is Diamond.
Sure I don't micro the attack as well, I don't macro well during it either, and I sure as hell can't play a decent macro game. But I can still take games off much better players regularly by pulling off some bullshit they don't expect or under prepare for.
I used to be a pretty good League player (2k ELO season 2, Mid-Diamond season 3), though I stopped playing a few years ago. One of the nice things about being the better player in a 1v1 lane was that you didn't have to make something happen. If you were being camped by the jungler, or were vs. a hero that countered you in lane, you could just sit back and farm knowing that you'd out farm your opponent and do better than they would in teamfights. Every second that passed, you pulled farther ahead, by having better mechanics and making smarter decisions.
As it stands in SC2, even though the game is 'harder' than LoL was back when I played it, if two players of different skill levels play against each other, but they're both above the skill floor needed to macro properly on 2-3 bases, they have the same income. Combine that with imperfect information, and you run into a lot of frustrating situations where you lose games to much weaker players due to not being able to find their proxy in time, a minor miscontrol, or missing a key structure during a scout.
But I'm sure all the people who think that because a player can theoretically increase their APM, the skill ceiling can't be hit, and therefore the skill floor doesn't matter, and they can always control their units slightly better, or not happen to be looking at the wrong spot on the map at the wrong time, and poker this and chess that and blah blah blah, will read this and tell me how I'm wrong.
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On September 01 2015 16:15 lichter wrote:
The term "skill ceiling" is the most misused term in all of Starcraft. The functional skill ceiling will never be reached. Never. What people are actually arguing about is the competitive skill floor—the amount of skill necessary to play the game competitively. Reducing mechanical requirements does shift the competitive skill floor, but the gap between that floor and the current average skill level of contenders is still significantly large, while the gap between the floor and ceiling still infinite. Reducing an infinite by 10 is still an infinite. I've explained this countless times, and people still like to invoke the term skill ceiling for their flawed arguments. I am this close to making the misuse of the term a bannable offense. :p
(Unfortunately, I can't actually do that. Probably)
I respectfully think that you're not helping meaningfull discussions with this definition of "skill ceiling".
Understood, as you implicitely do, as "the skill needed to achieve the best theoretical play", "the skill ceiling" is a an empty concept, with no relation whatsoever with the actual game. It's the good old argument of the speed of the game. Multiply it tenfold: you have raised the "skill ceiling" by your definition. But in reality, you have lowered the margin for the best players to differenciate, and by continuing to increase the speed, you would create in the end a pure game of luck, albeit the so called "skill ceiling" being infinite, as you said.
If we want to actually use the expression in a meaningfull way, we have to use it to refer to the best play that an actual (top) player could achive.
ie: It was actually possible to achieve a notably better macro play by using your macro-mechanics sharply. Maybe it is possible to achieve a better micro play with the spare APM. We could then have an empirical discussion about the impact of macro-mechanics removal on the skill ceiling of the game.
@edit: typo
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With that logic, no one is going to have perfect Micro of Bio units through all the game, so we can add auto-production in all Terran building without lowering the difficulty of the race.
The question is about the equilibrium between macro and micro. I thought it was (still is) good in HoTS and I was fine with LoTV being more difficult than HoTS before the patch, but Blizzard by introducing more micro intensive units has decided to make the macro part of the game easier, thus breaking what I found was a good equilibrium, especially for Zerg player for which macro has been made much more easier.
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+ Show Spoiler +On September 01 2015 15:43 Communism wrote:
This may not be thread worthy, but one thing that I would like to at least say to everyone who is chiming in on discussions about change X's effect on the skill ceiling of SC2 is that they have no credibility to make such claims.
It's one thing to talk about the effect that these changes will have on casual players, because there are players of that nature on here who can test the changes and report their experience.
Talking about the skill ceiling, on the other hand is something that ONLY affects the best players in the game, so if you wanted to get an accurate opinion of how the changes will affect the skill ceiling of the game you would have to talk to the BEST players in the game (Top Koreans).
This is exactly the same as the process of trying to improve your SC2 game right? You look to the highest level of play and learn from what those players are doing.
The part that is ironic to me is that people who are so concerned with "keeping the skill ceiling high" in SC2 should also know that they are no where near skilled enough to understand how a change this big will affect the skill ceiling of the game. These are the same players who will not entertain any strategy unless it comes from a GSL game. (i know this is a gross generalization and not 100% accurate but im trying to make a point)
One thing that I think is undeniable is that it isn't as simple as removing macro mechanics means lower skill ceiling because you have to spend less APM on macro. Doesn't this argument sound familiar? This is the same argument diehard BW fans had with SC2 players when SC2 came out... And correct me if I'm wrong but most of the people giving their opinions on this issue are SC2 players who embraced that change from BW to SC2...
I'm not saying that I know the correct answer for that I think we would have to have the changes playtested extensively by the best players in the game and then hear their thoughts.
Keep one thing in mind though, the more people we can get interested in/ playing SC2 the bigger the competitive scene will get regardless of where the skill ceiling is at, which is a good thing right?
So with that being said if its pretty obvious that even IF these changes lowered the skill ceiling of the game.... it wouldn't affect 99% of the people who play the game... so if it causes more people to get into SC2 by making the game more accessible and less frustrating to a casual player... then its hard for me to understand why it can be a bad thing.
Bigger playerbase == more viewers == more tourneys with bigger prize pools == BIGGER competitive scene.
TLDR:
IF you are really that concerned with keeping the skill ceiling high in SC2, then you shouldn't be dismissing it without giving the Top Koreans the time to EXTENSIVELY playtest these changes because in reality your opinion about it means nothing, since you aren't even remotely close to being limited by a skill ceiling in this game
Now, you are also losing a lot of the big picture here. I don't think removing or keeping macro mechanics really makes any difference as to who the player base will be. I don't think the reason why most people have stopped playing/watching starcraft 2 has anything to do with the skill ceiling.I think its more of the social aspect/rewards/replayability/entertainment of the presentation of starcraft. Obviously something in your head led you to make this post with a point of challenging credibility; People saying lowering the skill ceiling is bad for the competive nature of the game and that point can be said by only the best. I see no reason at all to believe this. There would not be coaches if this were the case. A lot of people here have played starcraft for 15 years and can take games off high level players. I don't think the credibility is an issue. (I can show you replays where I beat koreans like rain, jaedong, soo, crank, supernova, top on the ladder and I'm not even a pro player it doesn't make me any more credible.)
In addition to playing, as far as people watching, starcraft itself has no real resources to update people. There is not regular thread on teamliquid which has to many trends in the game, who was traded where. The closest things we have are shows not even about the games like the late game and remax. I don't think its near as exciting has having someone talk about starcraft like day 9 did. Mobas have much more information on this, most of the tournaments as well happen on a weekend and require watching most of the tournament to get a feel for what happened. There are a lot of ways to remedy this, but the foreign players don't do the things necessary to develop that culture. Creating a thread like this accomplishes nothing except demonstrate your sense of elitism. I'm not convinced at all that the player base has anything to really do much with skill ceiling credibility. The biggest thing that would help the community is a show about the games and players. Something like some brief news on top of what basetrade does would be ideal.
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"Skill ceiling" is a term that's used in order to dress up the desire for heroes and cool stories in jargon.
We want to know who is the best at any given time, we want to know who is in great form, we want to know when someone makes a sudden improvement or when they suddenly lose form. We want to see when someone goes on tilt, or when they are inspired. We want dynasties and revolutionaries. We want heroes and stories.
When people ask for a higher skill ceiling what they want is a dominant narrative that they can share with other fans. They want to meet people and have a conversation where some sort of consensus exists so that when someone says something they can know weather the statement is part of that consensus or outside it and therefore controversial.
If you dislike this analysis then think of it like this: If you and everyone you know in the scene agrees on a list of top 3 players and that list doesn't change for 12 months what happens to the argument "this game has a low skill ceiling"? If you look closely you may find that what makes you uncomfortable is that I've moved the term skill ceiling from the realm of objective fact, to subjective opinion. A realm where it firmly belongs. If you're looking for a slice of comfort try this: Just because something is subjective, that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Just like "value" or "freedom" or "justice", "skill" is a useful term to describe something that exists and is worth discussing but it is also something that we can never really measure.
"Skill ceiling" is more than simple group think, the consensus of "who are the best 3 players" is based on more than just the opinions of other people, it's based on evidence given through the test of play from game to game, series to series, tournament to tournament, evidence which can be seen and understood by most of the audience simply by watching games.
However we have to admit that this property, whatever you want to call it, relies on many more factors than game design, it's a function of game design, number of active players, tournament design, tournament frequency, rate of information flow between players, concentration of audiences around information sources etc. etc.
We should also admit that this property is important and it is influenced by game design and if we're not going to call it "skill ceiling" then we need another name for it.
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It feels a lot like every time Masters opens up to a bigger %.
"Yeah, you're not a real masters! I was in when it was 1.8%"!
Alright. What does that even mean? The problem is a lot of people want to feel some sense of superiority to other players, regardless of if they're actually better or not. Its all about that appearance of being better.
I've played zerg for 5 years. I've spent so much time (trying to) perfect my injects, creep spread, and multi task.
Am I a little salty about all of that inject time being wasted with LotV? Somewhat. However, if that means I can play more than 10 games a day before I'm worn out mentally, then that's great. If i can do things I couldn't' do before because of injects, thats great. If more people play because of this, it's great.
The biggest thing I'm taking away from this is that I'll be able to focus more on overarching strategy and tactics instead of just outmacroing my opponent and steamrolling them. Thats' why I really can respect mech, for example. It's all about strategy and having the right things at the right time in the right position <-- (That being the most important thing, and is such a fun concept)
I think these changes, if balanced properly, can be great. It'll suck a little that I can't outmacro my opponent, but that means I have to work more on other parts of my play, and thats fine.
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On September 01 2015 20:01 LHK wrote:
I think these changes, if balanced properly, can be great. It'll suck a little that I can't outmacro my opponent, but that means I have to work more on other parts of my play, and thats fine.
Since when is macro only about special/artificial macro mechanics? There's more to macro than just hitting the inject or mule button. You can still outmacro your opponent, it just takes more effort and isn't always noticable, and DH could be a change to look into to improve that.
But even for now you have:
1) Get the right amount of production relative to economy
2) Balance out tech and army investment
3) Expand at appropriate times and ahead of your economy(i.e. if you are expanding when your main is depleted, it's too late, but if you have to get defense up it's too early)
4) Reaction to scouting/opponent is all part of this, proper scoutin + reading is a huge part of the whole macro thing.
And even fights are part of your macro: Can I take this fight? And if I take it and lose it, can I produce fast enough to make up for that loss?
There are a ton of things involved in Macro, it never was just about getting your injects right or having to chronoboost. Those were additions and arguably Chronoboost was the only mechanic that wasn't a mindless click like inject or mule.
Brood War has no special macro mechanics at all yet it is quite obvious that you can "outmacro" your opponent on multiple levels.
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Has anyone brought up that by narrowing the skill range, more variance is naturally introduced? Has anyone brought up that the micro ability of units in sc2 is no where near high enough to justify neutering macro? The gains when microing full time instead of just most of the time might be like 10-20%.
All this is going to do is reduce the amount of minor mistakes a player is allowed to make.
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On September 01 2015 20:15 bo1b wrote:
Has anyone brought up that by narrowing the skill range, more variance is naturally introduced? Has anyone brought up that the micro ability of units in sc2 is no where near high enough to justify neutering macro? The gains when microing full time instead of just most of the time might be like 10-20%.
Yes. There's tons of threads about it.
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On September 01 2015 20:12 KeksX wrote:Show nested quote +On September 01 2015 20:01 LHK wrote:
I think these changes, if balanced properly, can be great. It'll suck a little that I can't outmacro my opponent, but that means I have to work more on other parts of my play, and thats fine. Since when is macro only about special/artificial macro mechanics? There's more to macro than just hitting the inject or mule button. You can still outmacro your opponent, it just takes more effort and isn't always noticable, and DH could be a change to look into to improve that. But even for now you have: 1) Get the right amount of production relative to economy 2) Balance out tech and army investment 3) Expand at appropriate times and ahead of your economy(i.e. if you are expanding when your main is depleted, it's too late) And even fights are part of your macro: Can I take this fight? And if I take it and lose it, can I produce fast enough to make up for that loss? There are a ton of things involved in Macro, it never was just about getting your injects right or having to chronoboost. Those were additions and arguably Chronoboost was the only mechanic that wasn't a mindless click like inject or mule. Brood War has no special macro mechanics at all yet it is quite obvious that you can "outmacro" your opponent on multiple levels.
That's a terrible comparison, broodwar had so many ways of people being able to out macro someone else. It didn't rely on tiny gains from out managing your opponent.
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EPT
