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On September 01 2015 20:19 bo1b wrote:Show nested quote +On September 01 2015 20:12 KeksX wrote: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.
Camera hotkeys + manually clicking every production building and building stuff out of it is actually surprisingly similar to the artificial macro mechanics in SC2. It didn't involve a strategic decision(apart from the decision to build stuff) and was, at least for the high level players, "mindless clicking".
So I don't think the comparison is too far off. I just pointed out Brood War to show that you can have "outmacroing" without artificial constrains/mechanics - you can have it naturally as part of your game.
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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 actually incorrect. Skill-ceiling is related to the importance of further improvement after you have learned the basics/fundamentals of the game.
So after you have decent macro/micro and builds, can you still feel that you benefit from getting better? Does working on your micro lead to better results?
If it's not the case, then the skill ceiling is very low, which we see in a game like Heroes of the Storm. However, in a game like Sc2 the skill ceiling is much higher. It is true that without inject, zerg would be quite easy in HOTS, but new micro opportunities will roughly maintain the skill ceiling in LOTV.
A high skill ceiling is extremely important to keep players interested in the game. It's not just something that matters for pro gamers.
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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..
What I mean specifically is the macro mechanics in general, not macro all around. Especially in ZvZ, being able to out inject your opponent might as well be a free win. Of course, MACRO is a much more broad term than that.
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On September 01 2015 20:32 LHK wrote:Show nested quote + 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.. What I mean specifically is the macro mechanics in general, not macro all around. Especially in ZvZ, being able to out inject your opponent might as well be a free win. Of course, MACRO is a much more broad term than that.
I'd argue that knowing when to get your gas and when to start droning up and to identify whether you have to go mutas/hit a roach/hydra timing etc was/is more important than out-injecting your opponent. Injects were definitely a factor, but not as strong as those.
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Top-tier Koreans are not the only people affected by lowering the skill requirements. Two players of similar skill and differing races will always be disproportionally affected by unequal skill requirements between their respective races.
The only irony here lies in the OP's attempt to appropriate the term to the misuse of the word "skill-ceiling," when in fact he's misused both the term skill-ceiling and irony.
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On September 01 2015 21:54 always_winter wrote:
Top-tier Koreans are not the only people affected by lowering the skill requirements. Two players of similar skill and differing races will always be disproportionally affected by unequal skill requirements between their respective races.
The only irony here lies in the OP's attempt to appropriate the term to the misuse of the word "skill-ceiling," when in fact he's misused both the term skill-ceiling and irony.
Explain more how 2 players of equal skills and different races will always be disproportionally affected by the unequal skill requirements. Doesn't that mean that there is... I dunno... DESIGN ISSUE THAT NEEDS TO BE FIXED?
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On September 01 2015 20:30 Hider wrote:Show nested quote +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 actually incorrect. Skill-ceiling is related to the importance of further improvement after you have learned the basics/fundamentals of the game. So after you have decent macro/micro and builds, can you still feel that you benefit from getting better? Does working on your micro lead to better results? If it's not the case, then the skill ceiling is very low, which we see in a game like Heroes of the Storm. However, in a game like Sc2 the skill ceiling is much higher. It is true that without inject, zerg would be quite easy in HOTS, but new micro opportunities will roughly maintain the skill ceiling in LOTV. A high skill ceiling is extremely important to keep players interested in the game. It's not just something that matters for pro gamers.
Rubbish. Lowering the skill ceiling has no impact on the difficulty of the game, when people are still lightyears from reaching it, and never will.
If improvement does not lead to better results, then what differentiates winning players from a losing players?
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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.
Good thing you have the time to do that, then.
Not all of us are so lucky, and casual players shouldn't be forced to commit that amount of time to enjoy the game at a base level.
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this is just my 2 cents but with the economy being capped on 3 base, and macro being much easier thus decreasing the impact of mechanics, SC2 shifts from being mechanically and macro based to become more and more about composition and defensive positional play (once aggression has been tweaked and understood), which is really god damn boring imo.
Why not increase the mechanical impact and allow for more multitasking to make a bigger difference, thus allowing suboptimal compositions to win games (like in brood war).
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On September 01 2015 22:06 paralleluniverse wrote:Show nested quote +On September 01 2015 20:30 Hider wrote: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 actually incorrect. Skill-ceiling is related to the importance of further improvement after you have learned the basics/fundamentals of the game. So after you have decent macro/micro and builds, can you still feel that you benefit from getting better? Does working on your micro lead to better results? If it's not the case, then the skill ceiling is very low, which we see in a game like Heroes of the Storm. However, in a game like Sc2 the skill ceiling is much higher. It is true that without inject, zerg would be quite easy in HOTS, but new micro opportunities will roughly maintain the skill ceiling in LOTV. A high skill ceiling is extremely important to keep players interested in the game. It's not just something that matters for pro gamers. Rubbish. Lowering the skill ceiling has no impact on the difficulty of the game, when people are still lightyears from reaching it, and never will. If improvement does not lead to better results, then what differentiates winning players from a losing players?
Rubbish. Here we go again: "if nobody can reach the theoretical absolute best play possible, the skill ceiling of the game is irrelevant".
Such an abstract and speculative definition of "skill ceiling" makes it unfit for any pratictal use at all. You have proudly demonstrated that every RTS has by definition an "infinite skill ceiling" because every player could be clicking faster than he/she is. Thank you.
On the contrary, we could ask ourself, as Hider suggested it, if different categories of players (let's say casual, hardcore, and pro players) are actually capable of improving significativelly enough that they feel it, and stay motivated to continue to play.
As a (bad zerg) player, I felt that the use of macro-mechanic was an easy chart of my progress in macro, and as such hugely contributes to my feeling that playing better was actually possible for me.
On the other hand, insta-loosing half my army because my attention slept during 2 seconds makes me feel like playing somme over-complicated avatar of "Operation"
+ Show Spoiler +
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Rubbish. Lowering the skill ceiling has no impact on the difficulty of the game, when people are still lightyears from reaching it, and never will.
If improvement does not lead to better results, then what differentiates winning players from a losing players?
It's about reliability. How often can the better player beat the lesser skilled player?
The more frequently you put players into situations where skills matters, the more reliably he can beat an inferior opponent.
In a game like Heroes of the Storm, the expected win/rate of a highly skilled soloq player who plays against inferior opponents might be 55%-60%, whereas in other MOBA's it could be 60-65%. In a similar situation, the expected win/rate in CS GO might be 70%.
This is due to the difficulty of making a difference in Heroes of the Storm as a decent soloq player will perform similarly (in many situations) as a highly skilled player.
In starcraft, if the mechanical skill ceiling is very low, very skilled players can no longer overcome a build order disadvantage. Further, if the skillcap in terms of decisionmaking is low as well (that implies that most decisions are very obvious), then a very skilled is less likely to consistently win against an inferior players.
Instead, small random occurences are more likely to determine the outcome.
Look at rock-scissor-paper as an example of a game with the worlds lowest skillcap. The outcome is almost random. Trying to study and further refine your skill is of little importance as it barely increases your expected win/rate. The less depth and the lower mechanical skill ceiling the game offers, the closer you get to rock-scissor paper.
In a game like Poker, the skillcap is actually also very low since 99% are the decisions you take are very obvious for decent players. However, players can circumvent that issue by playing on a doubledigit numbers of tables, which increases the hands/hours played, and therefore they more frequently get into "tough decisions".
In order to motivate decent players to get even better, they need to be convinced that further investment into the game is worth it, and that's where a high skillcap is neccasary.
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On September 01 2015 22:24 NEEDZMOAR wrote:
this is just my 2 cents but with the economy being capped on 3 base, and macro being much easier thus decreasing the impact of mechanics, we shift sc2 from being mechanically based to become more and more of composition, which is really god damn boring imo.
Why not increase the mechanical impact and allow for more multitasking to make a bigger difference, thus allowing suboptimal compositions to win games (like in brood war).
Which is precisely why alternative economy models should be introduced. DH is just one example.
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On September 01 2015 18:44 tokinho wrote:
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.
Elitism??? You realize that the point I am trying to make is exactly that?? I am just sick of all of these threads arguing about "Blizzard's changes suck! Not in my SC2" and "these changes are going to help the game" when as you said that type of discourse does nothing to help the game. The entire purpose of my post was to attempt to show the people who are arguing how pointless their argument was (because no one really knows how it will affect the learning curve of the game)... but obviously since the human race is a hopeless endeavor that is an exercise in futility......
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On September 01 2015 17:37 Vanadiel wrote:Show nested quote +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.
Me as well. The fun I get out of playing SC2 is in improving my mechanics. I liked that no one could ever have perfect mechanics all game long. It always left room to improve. That is why I am against automatic injects; it is one less thing to improve on, and makes other aspects of macro "easier" simply by removing something.
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On September 01 2015 22:45 Hider wrote:Show nested quote +Rubbish. Lowering the skill ceiling has no impact on the difficulty of the game, when people are still lightyears from reaching it, and never will.
If improvement does not lead to better results, then what differentiates winning players from a losing players? It's about reliability. How often can the better player beat the lesser skilled player? The more frequently you put players into situations where skills matters, the more reliably he can beat an inferior opponent. In a game like Heroes of the Storm, the expected win/rate of a highly skilled soloq player who plays against inferior opponents might be 55%-60%, whereas in other MOBA's it could be 60-65%. In a similar situation, the expected win/rate in CS GO might be 70%. This is due to the difficulty of making a difference in Heroes of the Storm as a decent soloq player will perform similarly (in many situations) as a highly skilled player. In starcraft, if the mechanical skill ceiling is very low, very skilled players can no longer overcome a build order disadvantage. Further, if the skillcap in terms of decisionmaking is low as well (that implies that most decisions are very obvious), then a very skilled is less likely to consistently win against an inferior players. Instead, small random occurences are more likely to determine the outcome. Look at rock-scissor-paper as an example of a game with the worlds lowest skillcap. The outcome is almost random. Trying to study and further refine your skill is of little importance as it barely increases your expected win/rate. The less depth and the lower mechanical skill ceiling the game offers, the closer you get to rock-scissor paper. In a game like Poker, the skillcap is actually also very low since 99% are the decisions you take are very obvious for decent players. However, players can circumvent that issue by playing on a doubledigit numbers of tables, which increases the hands/hours played, and therefore they more frequently get into "tough decisions". In order to motivate decent players to get even better, they need to be convinced that further investment into the game is worth it, and that's where a high skillcap is neccasary.
This is very well said.
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On September 01 2015 22:45 Hider wrote:Show nested quote +Rubbish. Lowering the skill ceiling has no impact on the difficulty of the game, when people are still lightyears from reaching it, and never will.
If improvement does not lead to better results, then what differentiates winning players from a losing players? It's about reliability. How often can the better player beat the lesser skilled player? The more frequently you put players into situations where skills matters, the more reliably he can beat an inferior opponent. In a game like Heroes of the Storm, the expected win/rate of a highly skilled soloq player who plays against inferior opponents might be 55%-60%, whereas in other MOBA's it could be 60-65%. In a similar situation, the expected win/rate in CS GO might be 70%. This is due to the difficulty of making a difference in Heroes of the Storm as a decent soloq player will perform similarly (in many situations) as a highly skilled player. In starcraft, if the mechanical skill ceiling is very low, very skilled players can no longer overcome a build order disadvantage. Further, if the skillcap in terms of decisionmaking is low as well (that implies that most decisions are very obvious), then a very skilled is less likely to consistently win against an inferior players. Instead, small random occurences are more likely to determine the outcome. Look at rock-scissor-paper as an example of a game with the worlds lowest skillcap. The outcome is almost random. Trying to study and further refine your skill is of little importance as it barely increases your expected win/rate. The less depth and the lower mechanical skill ceiling the game offers, the closer you get to rock-scissor paper. In a game like Poker, the skillcap is actually also very low since 99% are the decisions you take are very obvious for decent players. However, players can circumvent that issue by playing on a doubledigit numbers of tables, which increases the hands/hours played, and therefore they more frequently get into "tough decisions". In order to motivate decent players to get even better, they need to be convinced that further investment into the game is worth it, and that's where a high skillcap is neccasary.
^this 100%
On top of lowering the skill-ceiling removing macro mechanics shifts the things you have to be good at more from macro to micro what not everyone likes.
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The issue isn't with the skill ceiling, its with the skill floor. Removing macro mechanics does lower the actual skill ceiling, but not even pros have hit the actual skill ceiling in SC2. What it does do is raise the skill floor drastically. The difference between a bronze and gold player will be much smaller and very race dependent. This is why the current patch is so broken for zergs. Zergs essentially kept their old mechanic, but its automated so now a bronze player and a grandmaster's inject skills are the same, but for terran and protoss the macro difference is still huge. This causes a huge jump in effectiveness from lower level players. I think the intention of the next patch is to essentially remove this zerg advantage because it would take way too much work to re balance the entire game by removing all macro mechanics completely.
Is this good for the game? Well, that depends on what you want SC2 to be about. With automated macro mechanics, the lower skill groups will lump together and I don't know if the game needs that. I suppose it will be nice to newer players as they don't see such a huge mountain of challenges in front of them, but I liked the clear difference between players. It also is going to make zerg the easiest race to play and we will probably see a large influx of new players picking zerg, while making terran the hardest to play with a large drop in the number of terrans in lower levels.
I hope that made sense
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On September 02 2015 01:47 Crazychris1311 wrote:
The issue isn't with the skill ceiling, its with the skill floor. Removing macro mechanics does lower the actual skill ceiling, but not even pros have hit the actual skill ceiling in SC2. What it does do is raise the skill floor drastically. The difference between a bronze and gold player will be much smaller and very race dependent. This is why the current patch is so broken for zergs. Zergs essentially kept their old mechanic, but its automated so now a bronze player and a grandmaster's inject skills are the same, but for terran and protoss the macro difference is still huge. This causes a huge jump in effectiveness from lower level players. I think the intention of the next patch is to essentially remove this zerg advantage because it would take way too much work to re balance the entire game by removing all macro mechanics completely.
Is this good for the game? Well, that depends on what you want SC2 to be about. With automated macro mechanics, the lower skill groups will lump together and I don't know if the game needs that. I suppose it will be nice to newer players as they don't see such a huge mountain of challenges in front of them, but I liked the clear difference between players. It also is going to make zerg the easiest race to play and we will probably see a large influx of new players picking zerg, while making terran the hardest to play with a large drop in the number of terrans in lower levels.
I hope that made sense
You're forgetting one thing though:
The only reason injects made such a huge difference is that they're completely unforgiving. You cannot make up for a missed inject by injecting multiple buildings or injecting multiple times like chronoboost/mule, you just can inject at a later stage.
This resulted in players generally having a harder time to learn zerg: It's not forgiving at all, whether it'd be to know when to drone/build units or injects. Terrans and Protoss had it easier in that regard. If you are teaching a new player to play terran and he misses a mule you can tell him "oh well just drop 2" - a zerg would probably just lose the game since he's missing a full round of units.
The auto inject levels this aspect as injects are still unforgiving(misplace/lose a queen and you're out of luck) but now zerg players have to do fewer clicks and can concentrate on other things more.
On a high level it really depends on data. How big are the difference between pros in terms of injecting? Is soO really THAT much better in injecting and was that what won him games? Those are questions that seems to be answered very differently in the community. Some say injects barely made a difference at pro level, some say some pros were winning almost purely because of their injects. But I don't think we have any hard data on this.
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As many people pointed out, the term skill ceilling is misused.
When it comes to macro mechanics its relevant to discuss the learning curve.
Arguably, removing the macro mechanics makes the game easier to learn, but those mechanics represent and huge and steady (a bit slow, but its as intended) skill set that can be improved all the way to the top. Others think its not an issue since other skill sets will immediately take the macro mechanics place.
The discussion is a bit ahead, im sorry, but this deserves a place in the sea of comments in other threads to be left behind, just like the opinions of many others. There is nothing new here.
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SC2 is all about build orders and unit composition, macro mechanics were just a detail. I was against autoinject, but it really made the game less annoying, so that works for me. And it's not like a gold player will face masters players after the last patch, you still have to understand the game and keep up with your production to be high level.
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EPT
