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On September 02 2015 02:01 KeksX wrote:
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.
My feeling on this was that zerg can stockpile larva. Forget to start a marine on time? You are out a marine. Same with protoss. Forget to build a unit as zerg? No issue, you can just wait until later. Now zerg have the added bonus of saving larva and not having to worry about injects while terrans are in the same old situation, but with no income. Talking about the current no mule patch. Will be interesting to see what automated mules do
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On September 02 2015 02:05 Crazychris1311 wrote:Show nested quote +On September 02 2015 02:01 KeksX wrote:
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.
My feeling on this was that zerg can stockpile larva. Forget to start a marine on time? You are out a marine. Same with protoss. Forget to build a unit as zerg? No issue, you can just wait until later. Now zerg have the added bonus of saving larva and not having to worry about injects while terrans are in the same old situation, but with no income. Talking about the current no mule patch. Will be interesting to see what automated mules do
Stockpiling larva usually happens when a) zerg is not building any units which is not good at all for the zerg or b) it's lategame and zerg is maxed, and then it's hard to talk about macro mechanics alone because terran/protoss could've done equally strong things(such as building up a ton of production while muling down a base or massive warpins etc etc).
But yeah it will be interesting to see what happens next patch.
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Well I don't know about the ceiling of skill got lowered but at least the floor got raised and that ladys and gentleman is a hella good thing and let me tell you, one ceiling got lowered for sure and that is the ceiling of boooooooring.
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Lots of people are making valid points about the abstract significance of the skill ceiling and skill floor, but I think what people are failing to realize / admit to themselves, is that just because the mechanical requirements for macro are lowered, it does not mean that they are not compensated for by contributing that APM towards micro.
You have to realize that this is not just a simple change, blizzard wants to shift the entire paradigm of the game of SC2. They don't want it to be a game where the goal is to make your opponent mess up his brainless (meaning that it is extremely repetitive and takes little or no thought besides remembering to do it) mechanics in order to gain an advantage to win.
What they want is the way that you win in SC2 now to be by prioritizing the utmost efficiency of each and every one of your units through great control, and in order to macro to similar levels as before you will have to stretch yourself out further than ever before, which opens yourself up to more harassment etc.. from your opponents.
In this new SC2 if you lose all your workers at a base you can't just build a ton of them immediately (unless you are zerg, because that is the core of the zerg race, but keep in mind that means you won't be able to make units with those larvae, whereas other races can continuously produce them) so now protecting your workers from harass can be a game deciding factor. (more than it was)
I dont understand how people cannot entertain the thought that this style of game COULD have a much higher skill ceiling (which makes the higher skill floor not very relevant, because great players will just as easily or moreso be able to separate themselves from average players)
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United States7483 Posts
Most people who complain about a lowering of the skill ceiling are actually complaining about a raising of the skill floor, and don't know the difference.
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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)
Thank you Lichter... for pointing this disparity of terminology out. Hopefully more people will get on board with this...
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Yes but what people aren't seeing is that even if the skill floor is raised, then if the skill ceiling is infinite (which it probably is) or if it also gets raised, then this effectively negates the raising of the skill floor.........
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Flash reached skill ceiling. He is on the rooftop now
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Is he impressed with the view?
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On September 02 2015 08:03 Communism wrote:
Yes but what people aren't seeing is that even if the skill floor is raised, then if the skill ceiling is infinite (which it probably is) or if it also gets raised, then this effectively negates the raising of the skill floor.........
The 'skill ceiling' is not infinite. Not even close, and it's irrelevant anyway. There have been many posts throughout this forum over the years addressing this. There are several great posts in this thread explaining why you are wrong about this. If you can't see where the error in your thinking is, than please try and accept that you might lack understanding of some key concepts.
People who have poor understanding of an issue are very unlikely to realize it because to become aware of the level of understanding you have about the issue requires understanding. A classic chicken and egg situation occurs.
'When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years.' - An apocryphal Mark Twain quote
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On September 02 2015 07:35 Whitewing wrote:
Most people who complain about a lowering of the skill ceiling are actually complaining about a raising of the skill floor, and don't know the difference.
Wait... So when people complain that the removal of MM will decrease the skill ceiling... They are actually complaining about raising the skill floor?
Don't get me wrong. I'm completely for the removal of MM including the inject. But it does sound weird when you put it that way.
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On September 02 2015 02:08 KeksX wrote:Show nested quote +On September 02 2015 02:05 Crazychris1311 wrote:On September 02 2015 02:01 KeksX wrote:
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.
My feeling on this was that zerg can stockpile larva. Forget to start a marine on time? You are out a marine. Same with protoss. Forget to build a unit as zerg? No issue, you can just wait until later. Now zerg have the added bonus of saving larva and not having to worry about injects while terrans are in the same old situation, but with no income. Talking about the current no mule patch. Will be interesting to see what automated mules do Stockpiling larva usually happens when a) zerg is not building any units which is not good at all for the zerg or b) it's lategame and zerg is maxed, and then it's hard to talk about macro mechanics alone because terran/protoss could've done equally strong things(such as building up a ton of production while muling down a base or massive warpins etc etc). But yeah it will be interesting to see what happens next patch.
Pro zergs do things like build 8 overlords at once when they are at 130 supply and then build all their units after that; that's a luxury that's enabled by larva.
On September 02 2015 02:03 xTJx wrote:
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.
Starcraft is just as much about efficient allocation of a limited amount of attention and actions at any point in the game...
Players get better at this as the game gets older, even though you might not see it. There's a reason why a lot of Kespa terrans, like Cure, or even Flash, don't impress with their micro--because they have trained to a degree where they can take reasonably efficient trades without spending too much attention on their units. Someone like Taeja didn't always do this perfectly; it's a skill that's undervalued. The amount of actions required for macro make this a viable skill.
On September 02 2015 08:03 Communism wrote:
Yes but what people aren't seeing is that even if the skill floor is raised, then if the skill ceiling is infinite (which it probably is) or if it also gets raised, then this effectively negates the raising of the skill floor.........
There's usually a point for a lot of specific skills in starcraft where it's not worth practicing them anymore, because they are good enough. This isn't a literal skill ceiling but it serves as one, in a way. This is most relevant with the mechanical aspects of starcraft, in my opinion. Mechanical aspects of the game are the most prone to hit this "ceiling," but that doesn't necessarily mean they win or lose off of good strategic play. Sometimes the game ends up being won or lost off of build orders. Less emphasis on macro only raises the skill ceiling if there are actually genuinely useful and effective ways to use one's units at all points in the game.
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Lots of people are making valid points about the abstract significance of the skill ceiling and skill floor, but I think what people are failing to realize / admit to themselves, is that just because the mechanical requirements for macro are lowered, it does not mean that they are not compensated for by contributing that APM towards micro.
It depends on how valued the micro is. For instance in Roach Wars, it's of very limited value to spend extra APM microing your units. But I think that if you use Ravagers, Lurkers and overlord drops frequently that the skillcap will be high enough.
One can look at terran in later game when playing bio. Even though the macro is quite easy since you almost never look at your own base, the skillcap in terms of unit control is almost infinitive.
There's usually a point for a lot of specific skills in starcraft where it's not worth practicing them anymore, because they are good enough. This isn't a literal skill ceiling but it serves as one, in a way. This is most relevant with the mechanical aspects of starcraft, in my opinion. Mechanical aspects of the game are the most prone to hit this "ceiling," but that doesn't necessarily mean they win or lose off of good strategic play
Do you define mechanics = macro?
I would define mechanics as the combination of micro, multitasking and macro.
But I do agree that if we look at macro in isolation, the skill-ceiling isn't actually very high. For instance, I do not believe that macro is what differentiates pro players atm.
However, when you are forced to micro and macro at the same time, it adds more multitasking to the game, and thus (indirectly I guess) raises the skillcap.
That said, it also raises the entrance barrier, whereas a game that has easy macro but a very high skill ceiling in terms of unit control typically has a lower entrance barrier but can maintain the same skill ceiling.
The reason for the latter is that great designed unit interactions are player vs player dependant. So if you play against a bad player, you will perhaps only be rewarded for 50 APM in a battle since he doesn't micro his units very well. However, if you play against a great player whom micro his units during an engagmeent, you'll get rewarded for counter-microing your own units. Thus 150 APM might be rewarded.
And if you play against a world-class player whom is great at counter-counter micro, you also need to counter-counter-counter micro to beat him... Thus the skillcap almost becomes infinitive.
If you look at a game like CS GO, and you play against an absolute noob who just stands whenever he attempts to attack you, it can be quite easy to kill him. However, a better player will be better at moving around while aiming well, and the skillcap here is almost infinitive while the learning barrier is relatively low.
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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.
SC2 and HotS, unlike RPS, are non-random games. Due to the fog of war, SC2 does contain uncertainty. But mitigating that by scouting is part of the skill required to play the game. So if you lose to an opponent, that is because you were outplayed, that's what differentiates winning players from losing players, not randomness.
The skillcap is infinitely high, even if they removed ALL macro and made SC2 perfectly mind-controllable. No one will ever reach it.
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So if you lose to an opponent, that is because you were outplayed, that's what differentiates winning players from losing players, not randomness
You need to look at this in terms of probability. Being the better player doens't always guarantee that you win a game. Rather it just means that you have a 50%+ probability of winning.
I think there are 3 elements you are ignoring:
1. There is a variance in terms of performance, which increases as the skillcap is reduced.
2. If you make the mechanical skillcap low enough, then decent players will execute it similarly as higher skilled players.
3. Some actions are probability/not-guranteed-based.
Element 1
For instance if you sit and turtle for 20 minutes until 1 big deathball battle happens --> GG afterwards --> Huge variance in terms of performance.
That's the case even if the skillcap of that specific 2-3 second engagement is pretty high. While a better player is likely to outperform an inferior player in one instance, even Parting will have 1 or 2 suboptimal Forcefields and the best terran players will misclick at times when trying to do a drop.
Thus, you may lose an engagement even if you are the better player, and the performance of the better player will therefore stabilize if there are multiple engagements in a game.
So the point here is that the skillcap increases as the frequency of situations where the performance of a highly skilled player differs from that of a lower skilled player goes up
As an example of the second point, I can mule as good as any terran in the world. So hypothetically speaking, assume that all there was to playing terran was muling and then you would a-move your army in a certain direction (mechanics are baiscally removed from the game here).
Element 2
You may then argue that there would be skill in terms of figuring out which direction to go. But if the game is poorly designed in terms of making sure tradeoffs exists, then it will be quite easy to figure out the optimal path. That means that both the decent and the worldclass player will perform similarly.
Element 3
Alternatively, we can assume that the optimal decision on where to move your army is not nearly as easy to figure out, but it's not a guaranteed win. E.g. you can choose between path A and path B.
Path A = 60% of the time you win
Path B = 40% of the time you win.
This is actually somewhat realistic (in Sc2) as you do not always know for certain what your opponent is doing or where he is moving your army, but need to rely on "most likely" case.
Therefore the worse player will win 40% of the time.
On the other hand, if you are constantly tested in terms of mechanics, it will be almost impossible for the worse player to outperform the better player. For instance, I am going to win a TvZ bio vs Muta/bling macrogame against a gold player 99%+ of the time, as the mechanical skillcap is very high.
It requires hundreds of hours to inject while defending drops and engaging properly vs Widow Mines (and vice versa for the terran perspective) at the same time, and a mid/low ranked player doesn't have that skillset.
However, getting good at mules requires less practice and many of the decisions you take in Starcraft are either quite obvious or "probability/not-guaranteed"-based which increases variance in the outcome.
TLDR
The higher the skillcap, the more likely it is that the better player will win (ceteris paribus).
Your definition of skillcap seems to imply that as long as there is a difference in terms of a bad player and a good player at one point during the game, then there is an infinitive skillcap.
However, that's a very impractical definition as its basically useful, and this definition isn't shared by anyone else. Most definitions are created based on how the general public understands and uses the term.
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Personally I'm optimistic about the direction the changes are taking.
I think what made BW great was not the mechanical difficulty of macro in and of itself. I think what made BW great was the narrative arc it took as a game as a result of that difficulty.
I remember Day9 talking about how he and everyone else used to play BW: mouse only (actual forum arguments over whether hotkeys were worth using). And it was super popular. Then, out of that popularity and enthusiasm and competitiveness, there emerged this whole new axis of being good that took everyone by surprise. And as players pushed out into the new wild west of good macro, and good macro and micro, the meta was constantly refreshed.
The crucial thing, I think, is that the fans were along for that ride, watching players emerge from the pack and streak away. Because everyone was looking for that edge, and everyone felt like they had a chance of finding it.
SC2 didn't and couldn't follow that same narrative arc. Experienced BW players and fans were fundamentally disconnected from newbies: they knew the most important secret, and had learned it in a way that was fun and exciting. How many threads in WoL and HotS boiled down to "Just macro better. You're not over that hump yet"? How many Dailies, the same? A billion? Because both BW and SC2 tell you, explicitly, that the counter to these units is those units, and it's a lie.
Not only do new players not intuit that the counter to these units is in fact "not forgetting an inject three minutes ago", we don't want that to be the answer. We don't necessarily get why that being the answer is fun and exciting, because we weren't along for the ride when that answer was unearthed.
For SC2 to have a BW narrative, we can't rely on pre-planned ways for players to distinguish themselves. All they do is serve to string us all out along a predetermined bell curve right from the off, and (for the majority of us) hold us there however we struggle. I can't dream of playing SC2 competitively, or even of reaching Diamond league, because I know exactly what it takes. That knowledge has been drummed into me. SC2 isn't a solved game, but 99% of what matters is solved.
That's why I like the direction of the current changes: levelling the playingfield somewhat along what is currently the most significant yet least intuitive or enjoyable axis, and throwing a bunch of new units and active skills into the mix to tax players in new ways, to throw us all back into the pot and let us fight our way out again.
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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)
That is just stupid! Of course it can be reached and we are not talking about meaningless actions like a bot does, where it selects the units hundreds of times and has an APM of 1000+, we are talking about meaningless actions, actions whose effects affect the outcome of the game in a meaningful way. This meaningful way can be relatively small, but its still meaningful or it can be a big way, it doesn't matter!
When talking about skill ceiling we are not talking that you can click your units hundred of times in a minute or press a-click hundred of times, we are talking about meaningful actions like using spells, abilities, training units, etc...
Sure the THEORETICAL skill ceiling can never be reached, there are always useless stuff you can do, its never ending, but meaningful stuff that builds up your advantage is limited, and by removing the macro mechanics it does reduce skill and you don't need to be a pro player to know it, okay? All you need is a brain, decent skill at the game and critical thinking!
This is why football coaches don't need to be best players or even players at all to be good at it, look at Jose Mourinho, he's never played football professionally, most coaches have played professional football but at lower levels, which of the top players have become coaches? Very little!
So your post saying you need to be a pro player to know about balance and design is just stupid!
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On September 02 2015 20:36 BillGates wrote:Show nested quote +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) That is just stupid! Of course it can be reached
Ok, so point out to me who is playing the game mechanically perfectly right now.
meaningful stuff that builds up your advantage is limited, and by removing the macro mechanics it does reduce skill and you don't need to be a pro player to know it, okay? All you need is a brain, decent skill at the game and critical thinking!
While simplifying macro mechanics might in principle make two players who are currently distinguishable primarily through macro more equal in terms of macro, I see no reason to suppose that the superior mechanics, insight and congnitive capacity of the better player could not be leveraged elsewhere to secure a similar advantage, especially when so many more active skills are being added to the game.
So your post saying you need to be a pro player to know about balance and design is just stupid!
And by this point you've lost me completely, because the post you quoted had nothing to do with who was qualified to discuss balance and design. It was purely a criticism of the term 'skill ceiling' as a metric of whether a change should be seen as good or bad.
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Are so few people concerned about the diminishing returns associated with ways a player can distinguish themselves every time a change to "lower the skill floor" goes through (theres no such thing btw, this doesn't help a new player beat a good player at all)?
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In all honesty the criticisms levelled against macro mechanics are mostly true given that blizzard has reduced the ways people can shine with micro to such a small level. If the balance of the game is then shifted so heavily into macro (it actually isn't past a certain point) then the rewards are noticeably skewed.
I would argue that as people get better and macro becomes more even then, that the focus shifts back onto multitasking and micro as most pro players are able to macro within a certain range of another, barring mechanical heavyweights (drg, innovation, soo etc).
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EPT
