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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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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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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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United States7483 Posts
On September 02 2015 22:08 bo1b wrote:
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)?
It does lower the skill required to play at a competitive level, but not significantly enough to make a noticeable difference.
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On September 02 2015 23:09 Whitewing wrote:Show nested quote +On September 02 2015 22:08 bo1b wrote:
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)? It does lower the skill required to play at a competitive level, but not significantly enough to make a noticeable difference.
I don't really think that is the case, as someone pointed in this threads "the game is only as hard as good is your oponent"
There is no such thing as a skill floor, competitive level is just the level the best play and that is defined by the human component.
As an example now being capable of doing "half decent" splits is a requirement to be able to play at competitive level, however in early WoL players didn't poses this skill and wasn't really a necesary skill to have.
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Skill Ceiling => Has nothing to do with how difficult it is to play the game perfectly in a vacuum. It is the difficulty of the game to be among the best in said game. (How much practice before you are considered top tier)
Skill Floor => This is a non-existent term that was developed when people complaining about "low skill ceiling" didn't have an argument why foreigners absolutely suck at SC2 despite how much they practiced. There is already a term for this called Barrier to Entry. SC2 has a very high barrier to entry which goes against what most people who bring up the term "skill floor" want the conclusion to be--so they make up random terms.
SC2 has a high skill ceiling and a high barrier to entry. The reason people don't play it is because its hard to play it casually and its hard to get good at it. What a popular game needs is a low barrier of entry and mid skill ceiling to be popular.
For example: It isn't hard to pass a ball in soccer. It is very hard to be physically fit. So soccer is popular because it has a low skill ceiling (decisions wise as a player) but has a high skill ceiling outside the game (physical fitness). Because of this, people watch the shit out of soccer and say things like "____ should have ____" and they feel smart about it because they know what the player should have done and can blame a non-soccer related limitation (if I wasn't fat/slow/etc...) to excuse why they themselves are not playing the game.
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On September 02 2015 23:09 Whitewing wrote:Show nested quote +On September 02 2015 22:08 bo1b wrote:
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)? It does lower the skill required to play at a competitive level, but not significantly enough to make a noticeable difference.
I disagree quite strongly with that. Competitive level to me is determined entirely by the skill level of the competition, changing macro mechanics isn't going to noticeably lower the skill floor of competing against a group practising 8+ hours daily in a centralised location.
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On September 03 2015 00:04 Thieving Magpie wrote:
Skill Ceiling => Has nothing to do with how difficult it is to play the game perfectly in a vacuum. It is the difficulty of the game to be among the best in said game. (How much practice before you are considered top tier)
Skill Floor => This is a non-existent term that was developed when people complaining about "low skill ceiling" didn't have an argument why foreigners absolutely suck at SC2 despite how much they practiced. There is already a term for this called Barrier to Entry. SC2 has a very high barrier to entry which goes against what most people who bring up the term "skill floor" want the conclusion to be--so they make up random terms.
SC2 has a high skill ceiling and a high barrier to entry. The reason people don't play it is because its hard to play it casually and its hard to get good at it. What a popular game needs is a low barrier of entry and mid skill ceiling to be popular.
For example: It isn't hard to pass a ball in soccer. It is very hard to be physically fit. So soccer is popular because it has a low skill ceiling (decisions wise as a player) but has a high skill ceiling outside the game (physical fitness). Because of this, people watch the shit out of soccer and say things like "____ should have ____" and they feel smart about it because they know what the player should have done and can blame a non-soccer related limitation (if I wasn't fat/slow/etc...) to excuse why they themselves are not playing the game.
Dota has a significantly higher barrier of entry then sc2. Skill floor wasn't made up after sc2's release. A high level of fitness being required for soccer is absolutely a higher barrier of entry then anything in sc2. Any high paying, physical sport is significantly harder to become competitive in then sc2. This post is worthless.
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On September 03 2015 00:16 bo1b wrote:Show nested quote +On September 03 2015 00:04 Thieving Magpie wrote:
Skill Ceiling => Has nothing to do with how difficult it is to play the game perfectly in a vacuum. It is the difficulty of the game to be among the best in said game. (How much practice before you are considered top tier)
Skill Floor => This is a non-existent term that was developed when people complaining about "low skill ceiling" didn't have an argument why foreigners absolutely suck at SC2 despite how much they practiced. There is already a term for this called Barrier to Entry. SC2 has a very high barrier to entry which goes against what most people who bring up the term "skill floor" want the conclusion to be--so they make up random terms.
SC2 has a high skill ceiling and a high barrier to entry. The reason people don't play it is because its hard to play it casually and its hard to get good at it. What a popular game needs is a low barrier of entry and mid skill ceiling to be popular.
For example: It isn't hard to pass a ball in soccer. It is very hard to be physically fit. So soccer is popular because it has a low skill ceiling (decisions wise as a player) but has a high skill ceiling outside the game (physical fitness). Because of this, people watch the shit out of soccer and say things like "____ should have ____" and they feel smart about it because they know what the player should have done and can blame a non-soccer related limitation (if I wasn't fat/slow/etc...) to excuse why they themselves are not playing the game. Dota has a significantly higher barrier of entry then sc2. Skill floor wasn't made up after sc2's release. A high level of fitness being required for soccer is absolutely a higher barrier of entry then anything in sc2. Any high paying, physical sport is significantly harder to become competitive in then sc2. This post is worthless.
I can go to the store, get a soccer ball, and I already 90% of what's needed to play soccer. I can kick the ball around, read up on plays, and I already know 90% of what I need to know about playing soccer. You don't get payed to play soccer--you get payed to be an athelete. It doesn't matter if you play soccer, or baseball, or football, or basketball--the system is the same. You do all this hard work shit getting your body as perfect as possible, and then you play a game using the body you sculpted. The game itself is not some deep level Kasporov/Bobby Fisher bullshit.
And really? DOTA is your example? I can log in to DOTA, click on the screen a few times, and I already know 75% of the mechanics of DOTA. I walk around the map I already know 80%-90% of what needs to happen. You know what happens if you do that in SC2? Your workers are now exploring the map with no workers in production.
In SC2 you need to know "Build Workers" to make "Buildings" to make "units" to "Do shit with" unlike DOTA where you start with the unit you're using and just clicking with a mouse gets you most of what you can do with said unit.
Don't mistake high end strategy with barrier of entry. Barrier of entry is "how easy can someone learn how to play this game if they just started it from scratch having never played it before" which is something done all the time in board game development. Get 2-5 players in a room with a board game theyve never seen before, and see how quickly it takes for them to get it right.
With FPS, MOBA, and most games its easy since you start with your character and you quickly find out how to move around. With an RTS you have to play the game for 5-15 minutes before you even get characters to play with, and you have to work hard just to keep those characters existing. Most games just respawns you automatically if you die. With SC2 you have to be the respawn mechanic.
Don't be an idiot, you know this, don't let your emotions dictate what you say.
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I think you're reaching pretty hard by saying what you say about dota. Most of the people I played dota with (who hadn't had experience in it or the genre before) had no clue what they were doing, had to have literally everything explained to them, had no clue how items etc worked, had no clue about how last hitting/denying worked. If barrier for entry for dota is surpassed as soon as you select a hero and randomly walk around the map before feeding 20 times then the barrier for entry in sc2 is picking a race then losing 10 minutes later.
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On September 03 2015 00:16 bo1b wrote:Show nested quote +On September 03 2015 00:04 Thieving Magpie wrote:
Skill Ceiling => Has nothing to do with how difficult it is to play the game perfectly in a vacuum. It is the difficulty of the game to be among the best in said game. (How much practice before you are considered top tier)
Skill Floor => This is a non-existent term that was developed when people complaining about "low skill ceiling" didn't have an argument why foreigners absolutely suck at SC2 despite how much they practiced. There is already a term for this called Barrier to Entry. SC2 has a very high barrier to entry which goes against what most people who bring up the term "skill floor" want the conclusion to be--so they make up random terms.
SC2 has a high skill ceiling and a high barrier to entry. The reason people don't play it is because its hard to play it casually and its hard to get good at it. What a popular game needs is a low barrier of entry and mid skill ceiling to be popular.
For example: It isn't hard to pass a ball in soccer. It is very hard to be physically fit. So soccer is popular because it has a low skill ceiling (decisions wise as a player) but has a high skill ceiling outside the game (physical fitness). Because of this, people watch the shit out of soccer and say things like "____ should have ____" and they feel smart about it because they know what the player should have done and can blame a non-soccer related limitation (if I wasn't fat/slow/etc...) to excuse why they themselves are not playing the game. Dota has a significantly higher barrier of entry then sc2. Skill floor wasn't made up after sc2's release. A high level of fitness being required for soccer is absolutely a higher barrier of entry then anything in sc2. Any high paying, physical sport is significantly harder to become competitive in then sc2. This post is worthless.
No you are also just kinda confusing skill floor with skill cap. I known lots of players who aren't in good shape and a bit oveweight who plays soccer casually.
With regards to DOTA, it doens't matter if you don't know a lot about the game. As long as you know the basics like buying items, using hotkeys to cast abilities, then you have "learned" the basics of the game. Everything above that is related to mastering it.
Sc2 is different as the whole macro aspect, unit counters and "decent builds" is something you need to learn and that's a ton more time consuming.
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Skill floor and skill ceiling are illogical concepts to apply to this game. People should be mostly concerned with skill sensitivity (disclaimer: I just made this term up). In measurements sensitivity is defined as the ratio of change in output to the change in the measurable property. An example would be how much the voltage of a thermocouple changes in comparison to the change in temperature.
TSL3 was the first high-profile tournament I watched and I remember people complaining that the difference between players of different skill levels wasn't entirely apparent. Obviously the game was new back then so this was to be expected. That's the only thing I worry about: not that the best can't ever get better but that the difference between the best and mid-tier players will become less apparent.
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Yeah, I'm not going to come down on either side of some of what's being said here, but SC2's barrier to entry is really super high. Heck, the multiplayer has different units, and the units that are the same have different stats and abilities, to the campaign! Winning and losing feel near-random at low levels, especially when viewed through the distorted lens of 'unit counters' helpfully supplied by the game. Just figuring out how to get better at the game is beyond most players - including me; I wouldn't have understood without help from experienced BW players.
This was all true of BW too, of course, but the difference there was, everyone was in the same fun, chaotic boat to begin with. They weren't just dumped in perma-bronze wondering what the hell they were doing.
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On September 03 2015 00:45 bo1b wrote:
I think you're reaching pretty hard by saying what you say about dota. Most of the people I played dota with (who hadn't had experience in it or the genre before) had no clue what they were doing, had to have literally everything explained to them, had no clue how items etc worked, had no clue about how last hitting/denying worked. If barrier for entry for dota is surpassed as soon as you select a hero and randomly walk around the map before feeding 20 times then the barrier for entry in sc2 is picking a race then losing 10 minutes later.
People choosing a bad strategy is not the same as not knowing how the game works.
People don't naturally just make workers. Just like people don't just naturally develop build orders. Those are things that you need to research before hand.
People do click around a screen to see what happens, and in Dota they will immediately see their character moving. They walk around and bump into creep/enemy and see themselves getting attacked/attacking said foes. They now know 90% of the mechanics of the game. They can move around, attack things, run away from things.
Now if they want, they can also learn the strategies of the game. Item choices, last hitting, etc... But those are literally the last 10% of what you do in that game. Most of it is right clicking on the screen.
The same is not true in SC2. If you just right click randomly on the screen in SC2 jack shit will happen. If you click the town hall and then click around--jack shit will happen other than rally which you wouldn't know what that is yet. You need to tell people "This is how workers work, its different from how non-workers work" "This is how buildings work, each building works differently than the other" "buildings makes units" "No, you can't make units from the refinery or engineering bay even though its a building" "I meant that most buildings make units, not all" "There is no way to know which units you should make unless you study the matchup, the metagame, the game state, and scout properly" and so on and so forth. RTS games are very complex for people who have just experienced them for the first time. Not so with MOBAs.
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On September 03 2015 00:52 Umpteen wrote:
Yeah, I'm not going to come down on either side of some of what's being said here, but SC2's barrier to entry is really super high. Heck, the multiplayer has different units, and the units that are the same have different stats and abilities, to the campaign! Winning and losing feel near-random at low levels, especially when viewed through the distorted lens of 'unit counters' helpfully supplied by the game. Just figuring out how to get better at the game is beyond most players - including me; I wouldn't have understood without help from experienced BW players.
This was all true of BW too, of course, but the difference there was, everyone was in the same fun, chaotic boat to begin with. They weren't just dumped in perma-bronze wondering what the hell they were doing.
Well, Bnet 1.0 was a failure. BW ladder was a failure. Literally a country had to make their own server to get people to play BW it was that bad of a game popularity wise. There was only about 10 maps that ever got played. 90% of the player base only played money maps with zero expansion, zero terrain, and was just no action for 30 minutes into deathballs.
If we take BW as an example people just want deathballs and no bases.
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On September 02 2015 18:44 paralleluniverse wrote:
SC2 and HotS, unlike RPS, are non-random games..
Creep spread is randomized as far as I know
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United States7483 Posts
On September 03 2015 00:06 bo1b wrote:Show nested quote +On September 02 2015 23:09 Whitewing wrote:On September 02 2015 22:08 bo1b wrote:
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)? It does lower the skill required to play at a competitive level, but not significantly enough to make a noticeable difference. I disagree quite strongly with that. Competitive level to me is determined entirely by the skill level of the competition, changing macro mechanics isn't going to noticeably lower the skill floor of competing against a group practising 8+ hours daily in a centralised location.
By competitive, I don't mean professional. When I use the term competitive, I mean both players understand the basic mechanics and are sufficiently skilled for their decisions to be relevant. Low bronze is not competitive, but you don't have to be much better than that to be competitive. I mean that the players are thinking about how to improve and attempting to be competitive, and not just dicking around.
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On September 03 2015 00:56 Thieving Magpie wrote:Show nested quote +On September 03 2015 00:52 Umpteen wrote:
Yeah, I'm not going to come down on either side of some of what's being said here, but SC2's barrier to entry is really super high. Heck, the multiplayer has different units, and the units that are the same have different stats and abilities, to the campaign! Winning and losing feel near-random at low levels, especially when viewed through the distorted lens of 'unit counters' helpfully supplied by the game. Just figuring out how to get better at the game is beyond most players - including me; I wouldn't have understood without help from experienced BW players.
This was all true of BW too, of course, but the difference there was, everyone was in the same fun, chaotic boat to begin with. They weren't just dumped in perma-bronze wondering what the hell they were doing. Well, Bnet 1.0 was a failure. BW ladder was a failure. Literally a country had to make their own server to get people to play BW it was that bad of a game popularity wise. There was only about 10 maps that ever got played. 90% of the player base only played money maps with zero expansion, zero terrain, and was just no action for 30 minutes into deathballs. If we take BW as an example people just want deathballs and no bases.
Yes! That's exactly the point I'm trying to make 
In BW the right way to play the game was nothing like the way people intuitively tried to play it. It took an emerging competitive ecosystem to dig down and expose the underlying principles. But the key word there is emerging. It was of the people. Players felt connected to the burgeoning pro scene.
Exactly the same has happened with LoL. The pro scene emerged from the swell of popular competition. Players can watch high level games and relate to what's going on (I suspect often thinking "That's what would happen if people in my games would just do what I fucking tell them").
But it didn't happen with SC2. The pro scene was designed in from the start, and the thing that separated it from everyday gamers was well known and understood to those who would eventually participate, but not at all intuitive or obvious to the majority of ordinary players.
Imagine for a moment BW in SC2's place. A pro scene of experts right from the start, trying to engage the interest of players working their way through a one-race campaign. Players dutifully heading for 1v1 rather than the more fun, communal, less stressful game modes they played in real-life BW history, and being lectured right from the off that nothing they try matters until they master worker micro and macro. Is that a recipe for grass-roots engagement?
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This is a bit besides the actual discussion I guess, but I thought I would just try to make a graphical point on skill floors, their (not necessary) existance within a mechanic and how I see them.
Behold, insane paint skillZ incoming!
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/OTP0TOK.png)
Why do I call this a good model for a mechanic? Well, it allows you to pick up the game and relatively quickly reach the skill floor. You eventually reach a point at which you can say to yourself: "Yes, I can do this thing." You might not be the best at it and there are people still way better at it, but you are now free to focus on training a different mechanic to the skill floor without feeling bad about not improving in that one aspect. What this especially does is also that it sets a baseline that helps differentiating players.
You may not be much above the skill floor in one mechanic, but you can be a player that is much above the skill floor in a different mechanic and make it "your trademark".
Despite all of that, it allows players to excel at that one thing. Someone may be the best "creep spreader". It doesn't plainly win him/her the game (opposed to something that follows "the blue model below"), but it gives an advantage to that player over a lesser player.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/7dprUkg.png)
The blue model is a bit hard to describe to begin with. A mechanic that gives you more and more returns the better you get at it is a bit of an exotic occurance. Think of it like "If you double your click-speed, you get 4 times as much money." Basically what this does is that it enforces you to exclusively train such a mechanic and not even try to use a different one at all. In SC2 that would be like: "It's better to micro your hellion and never ever do anything else, than to divide your attention".
The green model is a bit easier to understand. It is a bit similar to the blue one in that regard that just training this one mechanic is often better than dividing your attention on various tasks. This is basically what HotS inject is, at least until you are very, very high up the curve. You are bottom of the ladder? Train injects! You are mid ladder because you trained your injects? Well, training them more is still one of the most efficient ways to imrove! You are top of the ladder? Well, you reached a level at which you are finally free to prioritize something different over training injects. Eventually you won't get that much out of it whether you have 90% or 85% inject-efficiancy. But up to those 85% you really should always prioritize inject-training over most other things.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/DvwYFhL.png)
The most typical problem mechanics fall into is the following: They run into a deadend very fast. This is the typical problem most RTS games have when they make "realistically moving" units that then feel very sluggish and have very long animiations. In SC2 a typical case of this would be high damage point units like the hydralisk. You are capped heavily in a combat on your hydralisk micro because the unit just isn't able to do a lot besides sitting and shooting or running and not shooting at all.
In reality the models are ovbiously not as vanilia as painted. I already mentioned injects, which would be a bit like the green "bad" model with a red "good" curve for the last little bit of the curve before the Human Skill Cap. Other mechanics may be pretty hard to learn initially (i.e. start on a blue curve) but eventually transition into a red curve, which basically means they have a realtively high skill floor, but are otherwise well-implemented.
It also isn't that bad if a few mechanics have the "theoretical skill cap under human skill cap" problem in a game with many, many different mechanics. You can just compensate somewhere else and it's not necessary to get all crazy about that one thing that doesn't scale past a certain point. Every game has a lot of those. The important "e-sport" aspect is that it has enough of the scaling ones.
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I was actually about to make a post with graphs almost exactly like the ones Big J uses, because he is really hitting the nail on the head here.
This is exactly why these changes COULD Be a good thing.... because the macro mechanics that Blizzard are trying to move away from are close to those linear relationship reward scenarios, so removing them from the game might actually make the game HARDER because you won't get so much reward out of a brainless mechanic that takes no strategic thinking it is just muscle memory that you practice grinding until you can do it in your sleep. This will FORCE players to put more effort into more exponential type reward mechanics which might actually cause MORE separation between bad, good, and great players.
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Bisutopia19240 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)
ded game is pretty misused too :D
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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.
The skill ceiling of any game is the GTO (game theory optimal) solution to that game, where a nash equilibrium is reached between 2 players and because of a certain strategy, nothing that the opponent does matters in any way, because unless he plays in the EXACT same way then he will lose in the long term. It is a strategy that cannot be exploited.
Now lets look at some games and see what this means:
Tic Tac Toe :
The game theory optimal solution is pretty simple and is something that can be replicated easily by a human being. If you don't know it you can read about it and never lose a game of Tic Tac Toe ever. You will win or tie every game.
Checkers:
Checkers was solved relatively recently and in order to play the GTO solution a human would have to learn an completely impossible amount of rules to follow.
Think about the simplicity of the game of checkers vs the game of starcraft and it is easy to see why the skill ceiling of starcraft is so high, and because that is so there is a lot of room for players to be better than other players.
Now looking at the Macro Mechanics, here is the problem with those mechanics.
I am going to use APM as a model to explain this, but keep in mind when I say APM I am talking about useful APM that contribute towards reaching a GTO solution of the game.
A human being is only capable of X APM (whatever that number may be)
Macro mechanics are simple actions that are easy to practice and are actions independent of what your opponent is doing... so you HAVE To do them all the time regardless of your opponents actions in order to compete with him IF he is doing them as well. These mechanics do not require thinking or reaction or strategy you just repeat them over and over like a checklist
Lets say that Macro mechanics require Y APM to complete
So... using some pretty complicated math (lol)
we can see that a human being has X - Y = Z APM to spend on things that are not the core macro mechanics. (because those mechanics currently are the absolute most efficient way to get towards a GTO strategy)
By taking the Y APM out of the equation, we are making it so that this braindead autopilot mechanic that is super easy to practice even by yourself is no longer the single biggest factor in your skill level.
This does not reduce "multitasking" in the game it will just allow players to multitask EVEN better in more exciting ways. (because of X the human APM limit)
I dont understand why this is so complicated for people to grasp
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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
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You just have to decide whether you want to play jump rope SC2 or possibly develop a much more rich and complex metagame then just :
never miss your macro mechanic == win game (obviously this is a grossly oversimplified statement but it makes a point)
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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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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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I made an analogy similar to the "jump rope chess" as a joke some threads ago. It kinda makes sense.
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.
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United States12235 Posts
I just had to say that this thread has an amazing title/author name pairing.
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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.
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And I agree with what you are saying about diminishing returns of focus but it seems like blizzards goal at the same time as reducing the macro mechanics is to increase the returns of focus in other areas besides inject chrono and mules. You do realize that the macro change is not the only thing different from HOTS to LOTV right?
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And also I would love to see your empirical ways to prove I am wrong
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Guys, the skill floor is not being raised. It is being lowered.
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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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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I think you are misunderstanding my position, and after reading theDWFs thread I understand why. I am not saying that I agree with the route Blizzard is taking as a whole with LOTV to accomplish their goal of making everyone happy. I am saying that in a vacuum, removing the macro mechanics DOESNT have to be a bad thing, because it is POSSIBLE to restructure the game in such a way that it actually becomes a welcome change that benefits the game as whole. (towards decreasing variance and inceasing the players control)
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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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.
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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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On September 03 2015 05:29 The_Red_Viper wrote:Show nested quote +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)
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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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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Well, I can't help but express my disappointment. The removal of macro mechanics clearly illustrate Blizzard's design paradigm in LOTV. And now, in an attempt to justify it, people are arguing that somehow, by removing macro mechanics (the only semblance of BW style base management that SC2 has) players will be able to demonstrate more skill than ever before? I'm sorry, but it's not like the top players of SC2 are just so overwhelmed by macro mechanics that they are unable to demonstrate their skill in the micro/battle micro side of the game. Perhaps...consider whether or not the lack of micro may have more to do with in-game limitations rather than mechanical demands?
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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On September 03 2015 09:30 Naracs_Duc wrote:Show nested quote +On September 03 2015 05:29 The_Red_Viper wrote: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) 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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As much as I dislike certain LotV features, I'm glad that blizzard is finally getting back to the "fuck what you want, we make the game we like"-attitude that made them great. They let them get bullied too much on SC2 up to now, and I hope it's not too late...
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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On September 03 2015 08:21 Bohemond wrote:Show nested quote +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.
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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I think people talk about skill ceiling when they mean "ability to differentiate themselves from worse players." The ceiling is mostly just to make sure that still happens in pro matches.
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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On September 03 2015 10:09 PinheadXXXXXX wrote:Show nested quote +On September 03 2015 09:30 Naracs_Duc wrote:On September 03 2015 05:29 The_Red_Viper wrote: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) 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.
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.
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On September 01 2015 17:00 phantomfive wrote:
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.
Right here. The grind and pursuit of perfection while settling for small improvements is the only reason I've played this game the last 5 years.
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On September 03 2015 12:44 Thieving Magpie wrote:Show nested quote +On September 03 2015 10:09 PinheadXXXXXX wrote:On September 03 2015 09:30 Naracs_Duc wrote:On September 03 2015 05:29 The_Red_Viper wrote: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) 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. 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.
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.
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On September 03 2015 14:21 PinheadXXXXXX wrote:Show nested quote +On September 03 2015 12:44 Thieving Magpie wrote:On September 03 2015 10:09 PinheadXXXXXX wrote:On September 03 2015 09:30 Naracs_Duc wrote:On September 03 2015 05:29 The_Red_Viper wrote: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) 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. 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. 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.
I would say moving towards either is problematic.
If we wanted pure mechanics where we can easily see who the best people are--we should just stick to watching long distance runners and swimmers.
If we want pure thinkers then we should watch A.I. championships to see which algorithm is more adaptive and complex than the others.
But if we want to talk about SC2, lets not conflate the two things to mean the same thing. Mechanically demanding does not mean strategically deeper while strategical play should not outweigh physical limitations. So when we talk about mechanically demanding--always remember that the barrier of entry to SC2 is already ridiculously high. The goal should not be to make it less intuitive.
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That is all I've been trying to say the entire time is just Blizzard is trying to change the balance somewhat with good intent, so I'm just saying lets not just write it all off without giving them a chance to develop their position a little.
If you guys want to play superman starcraft just make a custom map where you can only select 1 unit or building at a time
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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.
Phoenix?
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On September 03 2015 17:31 Umpteen wrote:Show nested quote +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. Phoenix?
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.
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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.
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 something, which should be only the cases with really fundamental stuff, it doesn't take 200 engineers to change it.
Getting rid of overkill protection(which is something they built in, not something that just happened), implementing moving shot and all those other things aren't impossible to do. Blizzard just doesn't want to do it.
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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.
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.
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On September 03 2015 18:12 Bohemond wrote:Show nested quote +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. 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.
I edited the post to clear up what I meant. Too late
The thing is, these aren't things the engine can't do. These are simply things Blizzard hasn't implemented. They could do it, but it would require a bit more effort than to open up Galaxy Editor and change some parameters which seems to be their way of doing unit updates. But they could definitely put an engineer or two on it and get it done.
But - if they don't even want to do it, investing money into getting a new feature implemented is completely unlikely.
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On September 03 2015 17:36 Bohemond wrote:Show nested quote +On September 03 2015 17:31 Umpteen wrote: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. Phoenix? 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.
What is the functional difference between Phoenix movement and moving shot other than a better feeling of arrogance?
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On September 04 2015 00:01 Thieving Magpie wrote:Show nested quote +On September 03 2015 17:36 Bohemond wrote:On September 03 2015 17:31 Umpteen wrote: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. Phoenix? 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. What is the functional difference between Phoenix movement and moving shot other than a better feeling of arrogance?
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?
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On September 04 2015 00:01 Thieving Magpie wrote:Show nested quote +On September 03 2015 17:36 Bohemond wrote:On September 03 2015 17:31 Umpteen wrote: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. Phoenix? 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. What is the functional difference between Phoenix movement and moving shot other than a better feeling of arrogance?
a higher skill floor and a higher skill cap
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On September 04 2015 01:22 Bohemond wrote:Show nested quote +On September 04 2015 00:01 Thieving Magpie wrote:On September 03 2015 17:36 Bohemond wrote:On September 03 2015 17:31 Umpteen wrote: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. Phoenix? 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. What is the functional difference between Phoenix movement and moving shot other than a better feeling of arrogance? 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?
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?
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On September 04 2015 01:22 Bohemond wrote:Show nested quote +On September 04 2015 00:01 Thieving Magpie wrote:On September 03 2015 17:36 Bohemond wrote:On September 03 2015 17:31 Umpteen wrote: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. Phoenix? 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. What is the functional difference between Phoenix movement and moving shot other than a better feeling of arrogance? 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?
He is only talking about the phoenix one. The functional difference wouldn't be that great in that regard. It would surely be harder for the phoenix player to achieve the same level of functionality. Personally I'm not sure if moving shot is the best solution. I very much like the stutter shooting that the regular, no glide and no damage point produces, like with marines and marauders.
It is very visible how much skill someone invests, by seeing how smooth the movement becomes. However, it is impossible to achieve a real moving shot, hence there is still an advantage of running over kiting if you just want to get away. And a guy chasing you will always have to take little blows to his movement if he wants to shoot - but because of the 0damage point it is basically 100% a question of skill how big those blows are.
Also the implication of a moving shot so far has been gliding units, hence units that don't exactly stop how you want them to stop, which is a sluggish behaviour, something I really don't like within RTS units. Even if it is a very slight one in this case.
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On September 04 2015 01:57 Naracs_Duc wrote:Show nested quote +On September 04 2015 01:22 Bohemond wrote:On September 04 2015 00:01 Thieving Magpie wrote:On September 03 2015 17:36 Bohemond wrote:On September 03 2015 17:31 Umpteen wrote: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. Phoenix? 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. What is the functional difference between Phoenix movement and moving shot other than a better feeling of arrogance? 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? 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?
What are you talking about?
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On September 04 2015 02:10 Bohemond wrote:Show nested quote +On September 04 2015 01:57 Naracs_Duc wrote:On September 04 2015 01:22 Bohemond wrote:On September 04 2015 00:01 Thieving Magpie wrote:On September 03 2015 17:36 Bohemond wrote:On September 03 2015 17:31 Umpteen wrote: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. Phoenix? 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. What is the functional difference between Phoenix movement and moving shot other than a better feeling of arrogance? 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? 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? What are you talking about?
If i have to click once to move while shooting or if I have to click multiple times to move while shooting--what is the functional difference other than lower barrier of entry and more gloating from try-hards?
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United States12235 Posts
On September 03 2015 18:12 Bohemond wrote:Show nested quote +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. 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.
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.
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On September 04 2015 03:00 Excalibur_Z wrote:Show nested quote +On September 03 2015 18:12 Bohemond wrote: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. 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. 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.
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.
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On September 04 2015 03:27 Bohemond wrote:Show nested quote +On September 04 2015 03:00 Excalibur_Z wrote:On September 03 2015 18:12 Bohemond wrote: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. 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. 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. 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.
If Phoenixes look stupid doing moving shot--then why argue for bringing back moving shot that requires more clicks?
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On September 04 2015 05:26 Naracs_Duc wrote:Show nested quote +On September 04 2015 03:27 Bohemond wrote:On September 04 2015 03:00 Excalibur_Z wrote:On September 03 2015 18:12 Bohemond wrote: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. 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. 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. 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.
If Phoenixes look stupid doing moving shot--then why argue for bringing back moving shot that requires more clicks?
What the hell are you talking about? I didn't say anything pertaining to the aesthetic appeal of Phoenixes. I said they interact poorly with other units.
Discussing whether or not Blizzard employees lie in their posts is what I was calling stupid.
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On September 04 2015 03:27 Bohemond wrote:Show nested quote +On September 04 2015 03:00 Excalibur_Z wrote:On September 03 2015 18:12 Bohemond wrote: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. 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. 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. 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.
Not only that but Blizzard did lie multiple times about the moving shot.
First lie was that it is hard to understand by viewers which was obvious as fuck that it was more obvious than the spam clicks and go yolo with units like disruptors. The next time after the community feedback started they said that the reason is trying having 0 damage point on all air units will leave huge impact on the game and they can't afford that. At that time we were like 3 months left with time to do big testing. Lately Blizzard comes and say we have 1 month to do big changes and the last few months to polish everything up, so they come and say "hey lets see how the game with no macro mechanincs". So either Blizzard does really think that 0 damage point test on air units will leave great impact that 3 months won't be enough but removing macro mechanics for 2 weeks and return them with different tune in other 2 weeks can be afford. Or Blizzard is lying again and for some unknown reason they just want to test the 0 damage point.
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I'm confused--are we still on skill ceiling discussion or are some folks trying to derail this discussion with snipes against blizzard employees?
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Moving shot is also entirely possible and has been done by fans in the Galaxy Editor simply by changing attack point and deceleration values.
No it's not entirely possible. It required a huge workaround and alot up follow up big fixes by the Starbow team to "fix" that. The problem is that the engine is bugged in HOTS, however, Blizzard has fixed this in LOTV.
Damage point and deacceleration fixes doesn't create a proper moving shot as we saw in BW: Deacceeration is in fact useless.
Damage point of 0 is on the other hand a very good start, but not enough.
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EPT
