EPTnever miss your macro mechanic == win game (obviously this is a grossly oversimplified statement but it makes a point)
The irony of skill ceiling discussions - Page 5
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Communism
United States176 Posts
never miss your macro mechanic == win game (obviously this is a grossly oversimplified statement but it makes a point) | ||
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The_Red_Viper
19533 Posts
On September 03 2015 05:24 Communism wrote: SC2 macro mechanics are like in a game of chess where somebody has to jump rope constantly or else they lose the game (and call out there moves)... so you are the jump rope chess champion of the world... cool story bro... that doesnt mean you are the best CHESS player in the game We are playing a jump rope chess game though, so nobody gives a damn who the best chess player is. edit: you want a pure strategy game, which is rather boring tbh (cause there actually are these GTO strategies) | ||
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Bohemond
United States163 Posts
On September 03 2015 05:21 Communism wrote: And another thing that I have seen so many people make frankly just incorrect responses about is the fact that the skill ceiling is not infinite and relevant. If you know anything about Game Theory.... it is obvious that this is a relevant concept to this discussion. *snip* You are misapplying these concepts. This is about reducing variance. And Checkers and Tic-Tac-Toe have nothing to do with SC2, anymore than they have something to do with MMA or Tennis. There is a huge difference between games with mechanics and games without in terms of how relevant the concepts you mention are. But, since this is a discussion about variance mostly, that doesn't matter anyway. Think about Baseball variance vs. American Football variance (Baseball has vastly higher variance than American Football). Now tell me, what exactly does Nash's Equilibrium have to do with anything? Nothing at all. Here's a section of a post from an excellent thread. EngrishTeacher: BW was such that Flash could easily beat me with a mass marine strategy 100 times in a row in TvP because the importance of mechanics was overwhelming. SC2 is the case where I would feel confident beating Flash a few times if I could practice a snipe build X200 to get the early game macro/micro good enough to hit the timing that I need. Finding the right balance is extremely challenging, but vital to the success of the game. Real-time strategy games like SC2 have multiple components to them. Making the game easier in one area allows good players to have more time and energy to focus on other areas and thus hit the point of diminishing returns of focus in more places at once. Anything that makes any part of the game easier will narrow the gap between good players and increase variance. Most people don't want SC2 to have higher variance. I don't like to see star players get beat by nobodies because of a couple of cheap snipe builds that can't be stopped unless you scout them at exactly the right time and know what's coming. I don't want to see a best of three decided almost entirely by build orders and scouting. I want to see great play win games. The more attention players have to focus on unit control, by reducing other concerns, the better their unit control will be. Unfortunately, controlling units well is not that hard for a top player in SC2. Players will begin to look more alike in their games, and the variance will increase. And this is just from the spectating stand point. It will be equally as annoying from a players perspective. When I played League, there was close to no chance of me ever losing in my lane to a player more than 150-200 Elo lower than I was. In SC2 if I can't find that proxy in time, or my reaper dies inches away from scouting their Roach Warren/Baneling nest, there is a good chance a player with much worse mechanics and a much weaker understanding of the game will get an easy win. It makes the game less fun to watch and less fun to pay. Read some of TheDWF's threads. Learn more. Threads like this pop up every so often on here. I've been reading these forums for 4 years now and I've seen perhaps a dozen. The idea that reducing difficulty in one area won't matter because the 'skill ceiling is too high and blah blah' has been brought up over and over. Usually at some point Game Theory will get brought up. This isn't a new thread, these aren't new ideas, and if you take a step back, read a bit, and try to think about things from a different angle, maybe you'll see where the errors are. The fact is, there are empirical ways to show you're wrong. I'm sorry if you don't chose to look at them. | ||
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Superbanana
2369 Posts
I like "jump rope chess" tho. If i wanted a strictly strategy game i could play something else. Same for one of those action semi-strategic games that are so common nowdays. But SC2 is the only classical competitive RTS with a big player base. SC2 is a game about speed, precision and strategy. The strategy part is no big deal, there are tons of games with deeper strategy and a higher skill ceilling strategy-wise. Chess is an example. | ||
Excalibur_Z
United States12224 Posts
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Communism
United States176 Posts
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Communism
United States176 Posts
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Communism
United States176 Posts
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Aron Times
United States312 Posts
Things that raise the skill floor: No multiple building selection, 12 unit selected maximum, no automine, poor pathfinding. Things that lower the skill floor: MBS, unlimited unit selection, automine, auto-inject, auto-MULE, permanent chronoboost, etc. Starcraft is a high skill floor, high skill ceiling game. Not everyone can play Starcraft, and very few of those will reach the top. Chess and Go/Baduk are low skill floor, high skill ceiling games. Virtually anyone can play these games, but very few will reach the top. | ||
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Bohemond
United States163 Posts
On September 03 2015 07:36 Communism wrote: I am not misapplying any concepts....when i made the analogue to game theory obviously i wasn't making a direct comparison because indeed we are playing "jump rope chess", but what I was trying to say is that reducing the difficulty of the jump roping doesn't necessarily mean that it is making the game as a whole easier, it just changes the dynamic of what it takes to be the best. You just said that making the game easier doesn't necessarily make the game easier? Read the quote in my previous post if you want an example of how silly your position is. Making unit control easier in SC2 relative to BW made the skill gap between someone like Flash and EngrishTeacher closer. The more you take away from the mechanics and the macro, the more focus will be placed on other things. But, by changing the focus of the game more towards microing units that don't benefit much from micro, the closer the skill gap will be between good players. It's all about balancing the various factors. You can see this in HotS vs. League or DotA, and in SC2 vs. BW. What makes Maru such an impressive player isn't that he can micro his MMM so well, it's that he can micro his MMM so well and not fall too far behind elsewhere. If you make the elsewhere easier, more players will look like Maru. It's that simple. Right now the level of variance in SC2 is a little higher than I'd like, but I'm happy with it as a whole. I'd prefer something closer to BW, but that's just me. But the bottom line is, making the game any easier, will have certain, obvious, effects. And those effects will, in my opinion, be negative for reasons I and others have already outlined many times in this thread and others. | ||
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Communism
United States176 Posts
I think that this approach is what Blizzard is TRYING to do. But like everything else they have ever done, they arent going to get it right the first time. Maybe not the second time, maybe not ever. But the point I am trying to make is that THIS SPECIFIC CHANGE does not necessarily have an easily predictable effect when its obvious they are intent on changing so many other things about the game at the same time. | ||
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Communism
United States176 Posts
The more you take away from the mechanics and the macro, the more focus will be placed on other things. But, by changing the focus of the game more towards microing units that don't benefit much from micro, the closer the skill gap will be between good players. It's all about balancing the various factors. But what if you made units which benefitted more from micro (or make units benefit more from micro) at the same time? What is the net effect of that change then. | ||
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Bohemond
United States163 Posts
On September 03 2015 08:32 Communism wrote: An example comes directly out of your last post The more you take away from the mechanics and the macro, the more focus will be placed on other things. But, by changing the focus of the game more towards microing units that don't benefit much from micro, the closer the skill gap will be between good players. It's all about balancing the various factors. But what if you made units which benefitted more from micro (or make units benefit more from micro) at the same time? What is the net effect of that change then. This is my last reply since this is flying miles over your head. Blizzard is not going to do anything major to make units benefit more from micro (other than giving them all spells and abilities). Do you think Blizzard is going to remove unlimited unit selection? Remove/redesign the Thor, the Viking, the Colossus, the Battlecruiser, Corruptors, etc... etc... etc...? The Roach, a mindless, a-move unit, has been in the game since the start, and sure as hell isn't going anywhere. Are they going to allow flying units to glide slightly so they can attack and move? No, because the engine can't even do it. Removing macro mechanics would require a massive rework of much of the game's units, build times, and research times. So, what's the solution? Automate everything. What does this do? It makes macro easier, especially for Zerg. And thus will narrow the skill gap between players. There is no way, other than a total redesign, to make SC2 a game based on micro. Except in a few situations (which also happen to be the game's most popular), like MMM vs. LingBlingMuta, in top level games there just isn't any way to get much more value out of your units by microing them better than your opponent. It is mostly about taking cost-efficient engagements while not slipping on your macro. Are Life's Roaches more cost efficient than Snutes? What about his Corruptors? If macro is made easier, in a Life vs. Snute match, who benefits? Sure as hell isn't Life. Your arguments are all over the place, based on a fantasy that the game will be heavily reworked before its looming release date and some guess as to Blizzard's approach. You bring up irrelevant things like Nash's Equilibrium. Have a nice day. | ||
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Naracs_Duc
746 Posts
On September 03 2015 05:29 The_Red_Viper wrote: We are playing a jump rope chess game though, so nobody gives a damn who the best chess player is. edit: you want a pure strategy game, which is rather boring tbh (cause there actually are these GTO strategies) In this magical world of "Jump Rope Chess" Making it harder to jump rope does not make the chess portion deeper. Conversely Making it easier to jump rope does not make the chess portion weaker. Before discussing how to fix the game of "Jump Rope Chess" you have to discuss each part separately from the other so that the people discussing knows what is being talked about. The LOTV forum has had a lot of stupid long threads that fails to grasp this concept. Everything from the silly econ threads, to the anti-noob DWF thread, etc... People want to make a causative relationship between mechanics and strategy when its stupid to think the two are related in any way apart from difficulty of execution. As an example: Chess does not become more impressive if each piece weighed 300 kilos to increase mechanical difficulty. | ||
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TimeSpiral
United States1010 Posts
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 thought cheese or all-in were the most misused terms in Starcraft? Haha. | ||
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Qwyn
United States2779 Posts
Adding a bunch of new fancy abilities to every unit does not suddenly introduce more "micro potential" into the game. The same core problems that have existed for years still exist...they haven't suddenly disappeared because players have "more time to micro" now. It has everything to do with design philosophy. So many people here are calling macro mechanics "mindless, boring, painful..." without considering at all the dynamics they introduce to the game. The result? They're removed (or worse, automated) and another skill gradient is axed out of the game. LOTV is all fresh and new. No one has any idea what's going on...1 base builds are returning...this is all well and good. But it's not this honeymoon phase people should be worried about. Ask yourself...how will the game feel when the meta is figured out and the game stops shifting so rapidly? Everyone was enthralled with SC2 when it came out. The meta was shifting left and right. But then it began to stale... How does the core tempo of the game feel? What does the mechanical baseline feel like for the average master level player? These are the players you want to entertain. Does he/she feel like there is a lot left to improve mechanically? Or is there a obvious plateau? Communism, your talk about an APM limit is ridiculous. SC2 has never even come close to stressing any sort of APM limit. Professional players with powerhouse mechanics in Brood War do twice as much as players do in SC2 and they have no problem exhibiting incredible micro/multitasking. Go watch an old Jaedong FPVOD from 2009 and then watch some of his FPV in SC2. My concern has much less to do with any sort of "mechanical limit" and more to do with how the design of the game limits a player like Jaedong from utilizing his full potential. This is what people should be concerned about in LOTV - does the game enable players to exert themselves mechanically and achieve an even greater potential? Or does it homogenize and weaken aspects of mechanical play? What is lost, and what is gained? Micro is only one mechanical aspect of the game. Think about the whole. | ||
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PinheadXXXXXX
United States897 Posts
On September 03 2015 09:30 Naracs_Duc wrote: In this magical world of "Jump Rope Chess" Making it harder to jump rope does not make the chess portion deeper. Conversely Making it easier to jump rope does not make the chess portion weaker. Before discussing how to fix the game of "Jump Rope Chess" you have to discuss each part separately from the other so that the people discussing knows what is being talked about. The LOTV forum has had a lot of stupid long threads that fails to grasp this concept. Everything from the silly econ threads, to the anti-noob DWF thread, etc... People want to make a causative relationship between mechanics and strategy when its stupid to think the two are related in any way apart from difficulty of execution. As an example: Chess does not become more impressive if each piece weighed 300 kilos to increase mechanical difficulty. You talk about people failing to grasp this concept but there are things you are forgetting. Pretending starcraft is jump-rope chess is silly because what many of us are afraid of is that the strategic part of the game won't live up to expectations. Think about matchups that are generally less dependent on mechanics (which I'll define as macro, micro, and build execution), such as TvT or PvP. Ideally we'd get something like older TvT but I don't think most people would say that TvT and PvP right now are great matchups--there's a lot of build order advantages and luckier plays than other matchups. There's a diminishing return on strategic play in TvT and PvP and the skill ceiling isn't that high. Perhaps the importance of mechanics in other matchups (I'll use TvZ as an example) makes us look past this, but if mechanics in TvZ mattered less, most of the games would be decided on coinflips over whether the Terran went 2base starport or 3OC and the zerg went for aggression, 2base muta, or 3hatch macro play. TvZ is largely a mechanical matchup with a few exceptions (see any of Taeja's games ever.) If mechanics were erased from TvZ it might become absurdly awful. You talk about mechanics and strategy and claim that they are separate. Strategy is enabled and supported and revolves around mechanics to such a high degree I don't know how you can think this. Furthermore, you discount the skill involved in allocating attention and actions in starcraft between mechanics and positioning/army movement/attacks. Also, your chess with heavy pieces analogy is silly and wrong. You say that chess with 300 pound pieces wouldn't be any more impressive than chess currently. But that's silly and almost certainly wrong--a game played exclusively by people who are both very athletic and smart is more impressive than a game that requires people to just be smart. It demands more. Having moving the pieces be easy to do doesn't raise the skill ceiling; if anything, all it does is enable people with 1-dimensional skills to excel. | ||
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Big J
Austria16289 Posts
They seriously need to try and rebrand the game as LotV and try not to emphasize the "SC2" part of it that has shooed away millions of (potential) players in 2010-11. | ||
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Communism
United States176 Posts
On September 03 2015 08:21 Bohemond wrote: You just said that making the game easier doesn't necessarily make the game easier? Read the quote in my previous post if you want an example of how silly your position is. Making unit control easier in SC2 relative to BW made the skill gap between someone like Flash and EngrishTeacher closer. The more you take away from the mechanics and the macro, the more focus will be placed on other things. But, by changing the focus of the game more towards microing units that don't benefit much from micro, the closer the skill gap will be between good players. It's all about balancing the various factors. You can see this in HotS vs. League or DotA, and in SC2 vs. BW. What makes Maru such an impressive player isn't that he can micro his MMM so well, it's that he can micro his MMM so well and not fall too far behind elsewhere. If you make the elsewhere easier, more players will look like Maru. It's that simple. Right now the level of variance in SC2 is a little higher than I'd like, but I'm happy with it as a whole. I'd prefer something closer to BW, but that's just me. But the bottom line is, making the game any easier, will have certain, obvious, effects. And those effects will, in my opinion, be negative for reasons I and others have already outlined many times in this thread and others. All you have done in every single one of your posts is rehash the same muddled understanding of other peoples posts on this site over and over, with the same resounding conclusion.... that "what im saying is wrong" when I don't even think that you know "what" that is. Then you say elitist BS like "this is going miles above you" and "this is my last post on this thread" which the reason why is obvious. Because you don't actually have anything of substance to say besides this statement; "whatever is the opposite of everything that you say is true". Me bringing up GTO and Nash Equilibrium was not irrelevant, the only reason that I did it was to qualify the description of APM that followed. There is a GTO solution to SC2 just like checkers, except it also obvoiusly involves physical mechanics as well. (for example if you were to program a computer to do absolutely everything in the game perfectly) I was just trying to introduce the concept of your actions contributing towards your "skill" like in the graphs that Big J put up in his post immediately before that one. The "skill ceiling" of any game is the GTO strategy, which is obviously the point on his graphs that goes out to infinity in these cases. I know you have been "reading these forums for 4 years" (just like me and everyone else) and you have had plenty of time to halfway read through information and form your own twisted viewpoints, but if you actually read theDHF's really good thread on LOTV... what I am saying is basically right in line with his post. I'm going to outline this in all caps so that hopefully even you can understand it. I AM NOT SAYING THAT BLIZZARD IS GOING TO FIX LOTV AND THAT EVERYTHING WILL BE FIXED! im going to repeat that one more time just to prevent you from mis interpreting it I AM NOT SAYING THAT BLIZZARD IS GOING TO FIX LOTV AND THAT EVERYTHING WILL BE FIXED! What I am saying is that (as theDHF stated in his thread) sorry everyone else for caps again but i think it is needed REMOVING MACRO MECHANICS BY ITSELF IS NOT DEFINITELY GOING TO BE A BAD THING BECAUSE THEY WERE A BAD IDEA FROM THE START SO with this possibly being SC2 last hurrah, I am at least hopeful that Blizzard recognizes the need for major change, and is trying (albeit misguidedly) to do something about it. Doing something > Doing nothing | ||
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HewTheTitan
Canada331 Posts
Does that sound right? ...also trying to decide if "ironic" was used correctly or not... I think so in this case. gg wp | ||
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