The irony of skill ceiling discussions - Page 6

On September 03 2015 10:09 PinheadXXXXXX wrote:

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.

On September 03 2015 12:44 Thieving Magpie wrote:


I don't want to butt into your guys argument--but are you saying that Chess Grandmasters are not strategic thinkers if they can't lift 300 pounds?

Mechanics are one thing, strategy is another.

Great soccer players are don't learn soccer when they diet and do push-ups. They learn soccer from studying soccer and practicing plays, and the become better athletes by dieting and exercising. Both are impressive, but separate feats. If you were to practice running everyday that would not make you a good soccer player for the same reason that practicing your shots all day will mean you will become a good runner.

On September 03 2015 14:21 PinheadXXXXXX wrote:

I'm not saying that they aren't strategic thinkers; in fact, they are 100% strategic thinkers. Starcraft is more than just strategic thinking though, hence my statement. The strategy side of starcraft isn't necessarily designed to work in isolation, so moving towards that is potentially problematic.

On September 03 2015 09:06 Bohemond wrote:
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.

On September 03 2015 17:31 Umpteen wrote:


Phoenix?

On September 03 2015 18:06 KeksX wrote:
Stop saying "the engine can't do it" - can the engine move units? It can, and therefore it can move units while they're attacking. (simple implemenation: when a unit starts attacking, continue to move it towards it's previous direction for a short amount of time with a decreasing velocity - done)
It's a matter of Blizzard wanting to implement this and not a matter of "the engine can't do it".

And even if the engine couldn't do, which should be only the cases with really fundamental stuff, it it doesn't take 200 engineers to change it.


Overkill protection, moving shot and all those other things aren't impossible to implement. Blizzard just doesn't want to do it.

On September 03 2015 17:36 Bohemond wrote:


What?
The Phoenix has moving shot like the Diamondback from the campaign or the Cyclone. That's not the same as allowing Probes and Flying units to let their momentum carry them slightly in the direction they were moving. Instead in SC2 flying units just instantly stop and turn to shoot.
There's a video on depth of micro you could look up that goes into things like this.

On September 04 2015 00:01 Thieving Magpie wrote:


What is the functional difference between Phoenix movement and moving shot other than a better feeling of arrogance?

On September 04 2015 01:22 Bohemond wrote:


It would make Vikings into more than just a 1-A unit. It'd make Corruptors more than just a 1-A unit. It would allow better players to get more value out of their Vikings and Corruptors than weaker players. Banshee's could kite better. Phoenix wouldn't hard counter Muta to the same extent.
It would basically allow most air units to benefit form control much more than they do now.
Think of the problem of Colossus. How often have you heard anyone say 'great Colossus micro'? There just isn't a big difference between low GM Colossus and Pro Colossus. It's the same deal with Viking vs. Colossus in TvP. The most the Terran player can do is target fire with the Vikings and move them away from Stalkers.
In what way would reducing the hard counters in the game and increasing the microability of air units be anything other than a positive?

On September 04 2015 01:22 Bohemond wrote:


It would make Vikings into more than just a 1-A unit. It'd make Corruptors more than just a 1-A unit. It would allow better players to get more value out of their Vikings and Corruptors than weaker players. Banshee's could kite better. Phoenix wouldn't hard counter Muta to the same extent.
It would basically allow most air units to benefit form control much more than they do now.
Think of the problem of Colossus. How often have you heard anyone say 'great Colossus micro'? There just isn't a big difference between low GM Colossus and Pro Colossus. It's the same deal with Viking vs. Colossus in TvP. The most the Terran player can do is target fire with the Vikings and move them away from Stalkers.
In what way would reducing the hard counters in the game and increasing the microability of air units be anything other than a positive?

On September 04 2015 01:57 Naracs_Duc wrote:


I don't think you understood his question...

If all air units had the same attack+movement as the phoenix--what is the functional difference from moving shot other than needing less clicks to do the same action?

On September 04 2015 02:10 Bohemond wrote:


What are you talking about?

On September 03 2015 18:12 Bohemond wrote:


Overkill protection is in the game.

As I understand from reading about the development/watching videos about it, they wanted to have moving shot, and scrapped the idea due to technical difficulties. The SC2 engine is actually quite limited it seems. The reason why Blizzard won't do skins or raise supply cap/lower supply costs on units is because of the engine not being able to handle it.

On September 04 2015 03:00 Excalibur_Z wrote:


There is no such thing as overkill protection. What you perceive to be overkill protection is actually a combination of the engine being more diligent about target acquisition and instant-travel weapons actually landing instantly. In BW, you could have situations where a Siege Tank, which supposedly has an "instant" weapon via firing a projectile of allegedly infinite speed, could miss its target if the target were lifted into a transport. The weapon cooldown triggers, which means the attack was fully executed, but the shot does no damage. That's because there is a slight delay between the time where a target is acquired, when the attack launches, when the projectile lands, and when the damage happens. Those are all, at minimum, 4 separate frames on a 30 fps game. SC2 runs at a higher framerate, which means it can run these checks twice as frequently, and it rolls together the target acquisition and firing frames and the damage and projectile-connection frames. It may even roll together those last two pairings so everything happens on the same frame, I don't know.

Moving shot is also entirely possible and has been done by fans in the Galaxy Editor simply by changing attack point and deceleration values. It was a design decision to make Phoenixes the way they are because moving shot is a weird arcane thing that's functionally the same as stutter-stepping only harder for an average user to identify and appreciate, and they were principally concerned with spectator value.

The skins/supply cap/supply costs thing is just completely wrong and nonsensical.

On September 04 2015 03:27 Bohemond wrote:


There is overkill protection, how it's programmed isn't really relevant. Whether it's intentional isn't relevant either. Its effect on gameplay is tangible.

I read that Blizz was going to have moving shot in SC2 but had trouble implementing it. I don't know if it's true or not, maybe they're just lazy, which is pretty likely I'll grant. As for the whole invisible micro crap and spectator value. I think it's obvious how well that worked in the long run. With all the spectators SC2 has these days, ya know?

The skins/supply cap is something that Blizzard has actually said. So, they're lying?

Are far as Phoenixes are concerned. They have horrible interaction with pretty much everything in the air, especially Mutas.

This is a stupid discussion.