EPT
On March 08 2010 20:59 Daigomi wrote:Anyway, if you want to continue this discussion, maybe just send a PM since I'm fairly sure we're the only two people in the world who still care about this.
Nope. I'm loving the thoughtful and mature debate going on between you two. I don't have any experience with Chess or Go, but I can understand the analogies with my understanding of SC/BW/SC2. Daigomi's metaphors are masterful
As to my own opinion, I'm going to have to agree with daigomi. I think the most important resource in SC/BW/SC2 is players' attention and focus. APM can be artificially inflated by performing meaningless or inefficient actions, and really is pretty useless by itself. What is really important in SC/BW/SC2, or any good RTS in my opinion, is the number of meaningful/efficient (and correct) actions a player can perform per minute, and that is more than a matter of mechanics or manipulation of a UI, it's a matter of strategic decision-making and tactical execution.
Oversimplifying or overautomating the tasks in a RTS would remove depth from it. The more meaningful (i.e. contribute to winning) actions or decisions that can be made, the more room there is for players to distinguish themselves from each other with their understanding of the game, their ability to react quickly and decisively to what their opponent is doing, and their ability to execute their strategies/tactics. The fact that many of the decisions have a mechanical element requiring the manipulation of a mouse and keyboard doesn't automatically make them non-strategic or not meaningful.
One way to look at it would be to imagine if we had the technology to allow players to connect their brains to their computers that would allow players to play SC/BW/SC2 with their minds instead of their arms/hands (I know the technology is out there, but it's far from the point it needs to be for the purposes of this discussion). Instead of microing with mouse and keyboard, they'd accomplish it by thinking of the action they want performed. Would there really be much of a difference between how the games are played now? The game would still come down to how many meaningful and correct decisions a player could make within the context of a strategy and how quickly and effectively they could execute them, albeit with their minds as opposed to their hands.
