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(hence, automine is good--I am not making an actual decision when I tell my workers to go mine after they're made)
This is incorrect, most of the time not having automine requires you to make important choices, every few seconds- can I afford to take my view away from this harassment/combat/minimap at this instant? By adding automine you remove a large number of skill testing choices and do not replace them, you just hope that the pre-existing decisions available magically become deeper. They do not. That's why automining is so shallow.
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macro isn't the exciting part of starcraft at all, if starcraft was all about who could make more marines the fastest no one would watch it and it wouldn't have survived 11 years.
at least, the clicking on buildings part of macro isn't exciting, because clicking on buildings fast doesn't make a good macro player. a good macro player knows what unit combinations he has to have at any given moment, and can go back to his base and produce that unit combination on the fly without thinking about it too much.
mbs without the tabbing function would be awkward because you'd have to regroup your buildings nearly every time you macroed. you could select all your barracks and press m in two clicks but you'd lose to someone who had used four clicks to make a good combination of zerglings and lurkers.
micro players need physical dexterity, macro players need mental dexterity, it's not about what decisions you make, it's about how fast you make them.
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On December 24 2009 10:10 ix wrote:Show nested quote +(hence, automine is good--I am not making an actual decision when I tell my workers to go mine after they're made) This is incorrect, most of the time not having automine requires you to make important choices, every few seconds- can I afford to take my view away from this harassment/combat/minimap at this instant? By adding automine you remove a large number of skill testing choices and do not replace them, you just hope that the pre-existing decisions available magically become deeper. They do not. That's why automining is so shallow.
No, you dont expect them to magically become deeper. They dont need to since nobody still wont reach the bottom. Or you can add more decisions, that are hopefully more interesting than the worker assignment. Granted that you can add new complexity while keeping manual mining in though. And here someone can do the always so relevant comparison to Dune 2
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Isn't the Dune 2 argument a bannable offense due to stupidity? I thought we got past that knowing that Starcraft and maybe Wc2 reached the perfect interface that presented a reasonable challenge while still hosting an acceptable amount of work.
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United States47024 Posts
On December 24 2009 09:39 theSAiNT wrote:
Finally, he's arguing that this also applies to Starcraft. The old UI imposes a high requirement of Manual Dexterity but at the top level, they have already mastered it. Winners and losers are decided almost completely by Strategic Decision Making. Updating the UI does reduce the game's ability to judge 'skill'.
This is the logical step I don't agree with in Sirlin's reasoning. The assumption that at the highest levels of play, the UI-imposed requirements have been mastered is untrue. Games are still won and lost on mechanical skill. Progamers still miss production rounds, mis-micro units, and have trouble occasionally maneuvering large armies. These factor DO decide games, and many of them. This is most apparent in the mirror matchups.
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On December 24 2009 10:10 ix wrote:Show nested quote +(hence, automine is good--I am not making an actual decision when I tell my workers to go mine after they're made) This is incorrect, most of the time not having automine requires you to make important choices, every few seconds- can I afford to take my view away from this harassment/combat/minimap at this instant? By adding automine you remove a large number of skill testing choices and do not replace them, you just hope that the pre-existing decisions available magically become deeper. They do not. That's why automining is so shallow.
No... Im pretty sure most players simply forget that they have workers queued up and need to send them to mine. I know for one that when I'm trying to go in for a harass or cast storms im not thinking about how many idle probes i have and when is it a good time to go back to my base. Im focused on what im doing at the moment cause i dont want to screw that up.
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On December 24 2009 11:01 Chen wrote:Show nested quote +On December 24 2009 10:10 ix wrote:(hence, automine is good--I am not making an actual decision when I tell my workers to go mine after they're made) This is incorrect, most of the time not having automine requires you to make important choices, every few seconds- can I afford to take my view away from this harassment/combat/minimap at this instant? By adding automine you remove a large number of skill testing choices and do not replace them, you just hope that the pre-existing decisions available magically become deeper. They do not. That's why automining is so shallow. No... Im pretty sure most players simply forget that they have workers queued up and need to send them to mine. I know for one that when I'm trying to go in for a harass or cast storms im not thinking about how many idle probes i have and when is it a good time to go back to my base. Im focused on what im doing at the moment cause i dont want to screw that up.
Yes - if you want to do multiple things at once, you have to multitask. It's an essential skill for high level play.
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the most common criticism i read of starcraft is that there's too much clicking and not enough strategy (mostly from fans of turn-based strategy games).
and i don't really have a response to that, i like the physical part of it but it's all just personal taste i suppose
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Once StarCraft II comes out with all the promised interface improvements, I'm going to bump this thread and point out what a waste it is for you guys to piss in the wind the way that you are.
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On December 24 2009 19:38 ComradeDover wrote:
Once StarCraft II comes out with all the promised interface improvements, I'm going to bump this thread and point out what a waste it is for you guys to piss in the wind the way that you are.
How about you stop posting crap?
Nobody is arguing for the removal of MBS or AM. T____T
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On December 24 2009 22:34 maybenexttime wrote:Show nested quote +On December 24 2009 19:38 ComradeDover wrote:
Once StarCraft II comes out with all the promised interface improvements, I'm going to bump this thread and point out what a waste it is for you guys to piss in the wind the way that you are. How about you stop posting crap? Nobody is arguing for the removal of MBS or AM. T____T
There are allot of people here who do argue for that.
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Everything about that topic has been said already. Blizzard already read the arguments of both sides. Ultimately they will decide what fits best for SC2.
I don't find this particular example interesting. In a battle, you will want to group your units a bit anyway, especially if you want to flank the enemy army, so it's not like being able to have all units in 1 group is going to give you a general advantage. In a few cases at best.
When I still played SC1, I would have loved to select all zerglings at once because zerglings are kind of a special case because you just have *SO* many of them that it's really tedious to not have them in a single group. Even the pros lose a lot of lings here and there due to not being able to retreat them all back at once (pathfinding issues play a role here too, though).
Another example where I think it's beneficial is when you run workers from an incoming storm drop or similar. In SC1, this means you can run 12 workers away - if there were more, the others will just stay there (because they didn't fit into the group anymore) and get slaughtered, even though you reacted fast enough to give the retreat command. That's kind of stupid.
But ultimately, it's not a big deal because most of your army needs to be grouped separately anyway, and you also won't have so many workers mining at one place as well (especially not as Zerg), so that the losses are tolerable.
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On December 25 2009 02:23 Archerofaiur wrote:Show nested quote +On December 24 2009 22:34 maybenexttime wrote:On December 24 2009 19:38 ComradeDover wrote:
Once StarCraft II comes out with all the promised interface improvements, I'm going to bump this thread and point out what a waste it is for you guys to piss in the wind the way that you are. How about you stop posting crap? Nobody is arguing for the removal of MBS or AM. T____T There are allot of people here who do argue for that.
But there has been relatively little explicit argument for removing MBS or AM in this thread. Most of the discussion has focused on Sirlin and his viewpoint on the role of mechanics vs strategy. Even people who have mentioned that AM does in fact reduce strategic decision making have not then gone on to say that we should remove it or that manual mining is irreplaceable.
Let's just keep this thread on topic then, shall we?
I think the point that was made about AM actually affecting strategic decision making is excellent. Another example actually comes from the realm of fighting games, Super Smash Bros: Melee's l-canceling. There is never a situation where you wouldn't want to l-cancel. But by shielding an attack rather than dodging it you can mess up someone's l-cancel timing and then punish them. So you're given a strategic option to try to trip up your opponent despite l-canceling being a "mindless" decision.
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I don't think it is so much about underlying decision-making/multitasking as it is the level of work involved. I was proud of myself when I finally learned to move all my marines in TvZ. I want a game where you have to train fundamentals and do work. What this does is REALLY make you appreciate the upper eschelon of players. Bringing up my MMA example again, if every joe blow on the street could do a perfect hook, roundhouse kick, and SBK, then it just sucks the impressiveness out of the higher level fights. As well as makes it less rewarding for figuring out how to finally do those things. There needs to be some fundamental to work on that heavily distinguishes players of different levels.
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Read through most of the thread, there's a huge gulf between what people's definitions of 'skill'.
Sometimes I wish SC2 would be exactly like SC1 except with automining, improved/customized interface and easier access to what you want to do, and some unknowns come out of nowhere and stomp all the established pros into the ground. I want to be there when half the posters in this thread call them skill-less.
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On December 24 2009 19:38 ComradeDover wrote:
Once StarCraft II comes out with all the promised interface improvements, I'm going to bump this thread and point out what a waste it is for you guys to piss in the wind the way that you are.
Who the fuck are you talking to?
On December 25 2009 04:30 tissue wrote:
Read through most of the thread, there's a huge gulf between what people's definitions of 'skill'.
Sometimes I wish SC2 would be exactly like SC1 except with automining, improved/customized interface and easier access to what you want to do, and some unknowns come out of nowhere and stomp all the established pros into the ground. I want to be there when half the posters in this thread call them skill-less.
I wish I had a billion dollars. Also, the premise of your post is incredibly stupid. Yeah, I'm sure suddenly Jaedong (do you even know who he is?) would suddenly start dropping games to B-rank ICCUPers if auto-mine and MBS were implemented into SC1.
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noobs aren't going to start stomping pros because of mbs because:
On December 24 2009 10:18 jalstar wrote:
clicking on buildings fast doesn't make a good macro player. a good macro player knows what unit combinations he has to have at any given moment, and can go back to his base and produce that unit combination on the fly without thinking about it too much.
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Starcraft and maybe Wc2 reached the perfect interface Intentional troll, or hilarious prejudice. You be the judge.
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Before people make assumptions based on misinformation about WC3 lemme make some points clear.
edahl
This is an important point which should not be forgotten. The absolute newbies want the macro to be easy for a quick way to catch up with an 11 year development in a game, instead of just sitting down practicing macro for a few weeks. What this does is shifting the focus to micro instead, which is equivalent to locking the game in to the state it was 11 years ago, way before iloveoov etc., which is equivalent to making it WC3 without heroes and creeps. The micro is going to be just a difficult as the macro is now, and there is a reason I don't play WC3.
The main reasons that WC3 has "micro > macro" and a low unit count is when they created the engine back to begin with, it couldn't run a 200 food army for 12 players.
They had to cut the army size down and through that they had to deal with the fact that they weren't gonna have armies the same size of Starcraft. So they designed the gameplay differently.
Because of this, units in WC3 have like 6~ times the amount of hp they'd have if they were Starcraft units.
This design wasn't based on them not wanting to make WC3 with big armies like Starcraft, it was because of the engine limits.
If you make a custom map and set the food limit high allowing each player to have 150~ units, they won't respond instantly and you get a specific type of delay.
Basically what I'm trying to say is that when they made WC3, like when they made Starcraft, they had limitations that set a frame for how they could make the game.
In Starcraft we can assume that the single building selection, 12 unit selection etc. and these kinds of things weren't mechanics that were implemented to make the game more competitive or anything of the sort.
Starcraft, like most games from back in the day, is "broken" in some ways and luckily these flaws served to help the game by adding depth and strategy, which is great and I'm very happy it did. Just realize that a lot of the stuff you might hate in regards to other games, say WC3's lack of macro, small armies, slow battles, comes from the same kinds of mistakes that just didn't work out for the "benefit" of the game, according to some.
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I think Sirlin along with many people here are missing the most important point of a game, which is why it is that people play that game. The simple fact is that Starcraft is not a purely strategic game and the "real-time" aspect of it means that time is supposed to be a resource for a player. In any game where time is a resource, it is expected that a player that can execute more actions within a given frame of time has at least a mechanical advantage. The method by which we execute actions in Starcraft just happens to be clicking the mouse. I don't believe anyone here cares to make Starcraft into a meaningless "click-fest" where victory is solely dependent on a player's dexterity. APM in and of itself is meaningless unless it is used in a purposeful way. What separates a good player from a bad player in this game is not APM, but how that APM is used. This is where the strategic aspect of Starcraft really comes into play. Starcraft was never meant to be a game where all things are equal aside from the strategies the players decide to execute. I don't believe it is a selfish notion to want the sequel of the game to hold true to the spirit of its prequel.
This isn't to say that I don't believe that there are changes that could benefit the overall gameplay. I think anyone would agree that we've learned a lot over the years that Starcraft has been played and advances in computer capabilities do allow for certain improvements to be made. I do believe, however, that any changes to the interface or game dynamics should also keep true to the spirit of the game. I think someone earlier in the thread said that an ideal game for televised competition would be one in which the players aren't "restricted" by the interface limitations (or something of the sort). I would like to argue by bringing up a hypothetical situation where there was a televised league for Civilization or some other turn-based strategy game. Civilization is exactly such a game where players are not restricted in any way by the interface and it's probably FAR more strategic than Starcraft ever will be. That being said, do you believe that Civilization would make for a good televised game? Despite the fact that I love that game, the truth is that it would make for horrible TV simply because of the dreadful pace. The only way to bring up the pace to a somewhat acceptable level would be to disable the "turn-based" option that requires you to wait for the other player to move. But then if you did this, the advantage would quickly go to the person who can do more in the game in a given time frame, the quicker and sharper player. So then you'd argue that it is the interface restrictions that are limiting the other player and we'd be here all over again starting the same argument. It is not the interface placing a restriction on the player. The interface for both players is the same. What makes the difference is that player's dexterity and mastery of the given interface. How is this a bad thing at all?
It'd be nice to have a world where all things were equal and individual differences wouldn't separate players, but where would that leave us? Isn't the better chess player the one who can read a move or two deeper than the other one? Isn't the better basketball player the one that can do more with the ball, the court, and the hoop? Isn't the better Street Fighter player the one that can execute the moves in the right timing and react better to the other player's attacks? Somewhere along the line, every game separates those who are better from those who are worse. This is the nature of games. For Starcraft, the speed at which you can move the mouse does matter just like the speed at which you can think and react matter. That is the game Starcraft is and that is the game Starcraft was meant to be. The people who play the game accept this reality and accept that PART (not all) of being a better Starcraft player than the next guy over is the ability to be faster at managing your units and production.
The irony evident in trying to alter the game in an effort "not to restrict players" is that you end up helping players who are less skilled and feel "restricted" by the difficulty of mastering the skills needed and in turn, you hurt more skilled players by placing an arbitrary ceiling on their skills. We could entirely eliminate the time-factor and completely remove the "click-fest", but then what's to stop someone from complaining about the other guy knowing how to use his resources better or knowing how to better make use of the terrain? I don't understand the entire train of thought that leads people to believe that the Starcraft interface and game mechanics are somehow bad or that they hinder a person's enjoyment of the game. I play at 70APM average and I honestly enjoy the game just fine playing with my friends. Do I expect to be able to compete with better players or professionals? Of course not, just like I wouldn't expect to beat Kobe Bryant in a 1-on-1 on the basketball court. Does my inability to compete with Kobe Bryant signify some sort of inherent problem in basketball?
Having a high APM is not a "pre-requisite" to one's enjoyment of Starcraft. It is simply required to compete at certain levels and even then, it does not determine the outcome of a game. Plenty of people with crappy reaction time and aim enjoy playing Counterstrike just fine. Plenty of people who will never play in the World Cup enjoy playing soccer just fine. And plenty of people with low APM enjoy playing Starcraft just fine. Your enjoyment of a game is determined not by your skill at the game, but rather your skill in relation to your goal. Obviously if you want to be highly competitive, you need to be quick with your hands in Starcraft because the game is designed that way. Complaining about this fact is like complaining that there's some sort of unfairness in the faster runner's ability to break away from the defense and score more often. Speed in both running and Starcraft can be trained and honed if you desire. Instead of complaining that it matters that people are faster than you, why not train yourself to be faster than you are if you care so much about it? Change yourself to match the game or find a game that better suits you. Don't sit there and demand that the game change to match you.
Starcraft isn't a perfect game by any means, but it fills a niche in its balance of speed and strategy that isn't currently available in other games. There have been many, many RTS games released since Starcraft's release, some slower, some faster, some more complex, and some easier, but Starcraft has held its place because there is simply no other game that has the right balance to replace it at the moment. I think what a lot of us are looking for in a sequel is a game that will hold true to this balance and one that will serve as a suitable "replacement". We're not looking for Warcraft III because that game has already been released and it obviously didn't suit us. We are not looking for another Civilization nor are we looking for a game that mimicks Company of Heroes, Sins of a Solar Empire, or any other game. We're looking for something that is a sequel in SPIRIT to Starcraft, not just in storyline.
Of course I'm just speaking for myself here, but I'm sure many people will agree with me. Of course it's not wrong to want certain features in a game and to fight for it. However, Sirlin in the article strikes me as assuming that current Starcraft players have some sort of selfish agenda to make things harder for newer players by forcing them to master what we've apparently already mastered ourselves (arguable...). But what's so selfish about wanting the sequel to a game to be similar in spirit and gameplay to the prequel? How well would Street Fighter players accept the addition of a separate Block, Run, and Throw button? If your argument is that it would make the game too much harder, then what about if the next Street Fighter added a "Projectile" and "Anti-Air Move" button that would automatically fire a Hadoken or Shoryuken for you? I'm sure most people would see it as a stupid and unnecessary change that at least partially betrays the spirit of the game... Would it be "selfish" for Street Fighter fans to complain about such a change?
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