EPTEvery click counts (or should it?) - Page 12
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Chill
Calgary25963 Posts
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Lachrymose
Australia1928 Posts
On December 23 2009 00:41 InFiNitY[pG] wrote: this is kind of OT, but I just need to say that I hate that cl sometimes looks like a small D bit late chill. =) | ||
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Severedevil
United States4830 Posts
I'd still rather mock David Sirlin for his comments on dicks. At least they'd be fresh. | ||
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HeartOfTofu
United States308 Posts
On December 25 2009 17:11 TeWy wrote: I noticed a lot of litigious points made by Tofu, let me point them out. Logical fallacy n°1. The false analogy with Civilisation. This is a common rethorical figure used by a lot of people on pretty much every forums nowadays. Terrible analogies to give substance to a weak point. Here is the logical fallacy, called a syllogism. Assumption a).Civilisation is not restricted by the user interface and is not a spectator friendly game. b). Starcraft is heavily restricted by the user interface and is a spectator friendly game. Conclusion: Restricting the user interface is needed to have a spectator friendly game. Logical fallacy n°2. Stating well-known facts such as 1+1=2 and acting like they were somehow proofing your point. Part a). Then he talks about "Starcraft" as a whole genre. SC2 is never directly mentionned, but is referred as an "alteration" of the first SC. You will see that this was needed for his second logical fallacy, Part b). The "less skilled players" refers to the less skilled SC1 players (who're having trouble mastering the SC1 skills) and vice-versa. Apart from this logical fallacy, no other argument than an obscure analogy will be used to explain why these "SC1 skills" should be all adopted by SC2. Part c). Hum hum... he will keep on using these false annalogies to somehow proof by induction his main point Conclusion. Keep in mind that he doesn't consider SC2 as a new game, merely an "alteration" of the original... Logical fallacy n°3. Lying by ommission. First of all, SC1 is not the Holy Graal, it has not held its place everywhere and is now internationaly dead compared to other games like War3 or CS. Of course if you don't acknowledge this fact you will have troubles finding reasons to modify SC1 stuffs. However, the scene remains strong in South Korea. Why ? Of course SC1 greatness has something to do with that, but they are other reasons than the game's "balance" behind this, cultural and economical factors. 1). Starcraft has been launched in 1998, just after Korea's economical recession and the introduction of the "cybercafés". Back at the time, it was considerd cheaper to go to the cybercafé rather than buying you own computer. This is where a lot of people has discovered SC. 2). During WW2, approximately 100,000 Koreans were forced to serve in the Japanese Army, and some Korean women have been used as sexual slaves.There is a deep anti-Japanese sentiment in South Korea. An embargo against Japanese made imports was even instaured (playstation, megadrive...) . This is the niche that SC1 has filled, it was the first really competitive PC game that wasn't already massively plaid oversea. Honestly, I'm not here to argue with you, especially since your post did nothing to show your particular stance. I really think you sat there and read my entire post and missed the whole point I was trying to get across. You say that my statements are "litigious" and maybe they are... Honestly I've no idea what exactly that means. I just wanted to get my thoughts across and the way I did it is the best way I could think of. I realize the analogies aren't perfect and quite frankly, they were never meant to be. I think most people reading can grasp the heart of my words without me having to turn it into a precise equation. The reason I talk about Starcraft as opposed to Starcraft 2 is because Starcraft 2 in its final form doesn't exist yet. I've not ever played it nor do I know anything definite about it until it comes out. My entire experience with Starcraft so far has been Starcraft and Brood War. The reason I talk about Starcraft 2 as if it was Starcraft with a "few alterations" is because of my belief that a spiritual successor of a game must have a similar core. If you understood the main point of my post, it was that there is a combination of game elements that makes Starcraft unique. Whether we think about it or not and whether we can articulate it or not, I imagine that when we play Starcraft, we know the game has a "feel" to it that is different from other games. It is this "feel" that defines Starcraft. The speed of the game, the complexity of the game, the way units move and are controlled, micro, macro, etc. These are all factors that comprise that feel. My belief is that what people want from Starcraft 2 is a game that "feels" similar enough to Starcraft while EXPANDING on the experience of the original with new units, game mechanics, and a new variety of skills. They keyword here is, of course, "EXPANDING" as opposed to "CHANGING". The reason I say this is because after a certain amount of changes the sequel of the game no longer holds true to the spirit of its predecessor. To give an extreme example, if the next Mortal Kombat game turned out to have Scorpion and Sub Zero doing autocross or playing tennis, I doubt any of us would consider the game a real sequel. You would probably write that off as an absurd hypothetical and I will admit that it is, but what if we made it more subtle? If we added a BLOCK button in Street Fighter, would that change the essence of the game? What if we then added a RUN button? What it we went further and took away the LIFE BAR and made the damage system like Bushido Blade? These could all in theory, be great ideas and may even benefit the game, but after a certain point, you would no longer recognize it as a Street Fighter game apart from Ken and Ryu being in it. This is because a large part of what makes Street Fighter unique is how it is played, not just the characters in it or the storyline. Likewise, what makes Starcraft unique is the gameplay itself, not just the fact that we have Zerg, Terran, and Protoss. The point at which the number of changes constitute a different game is arbitrary and entirely subjective, of course. This is why this argument can never really be resolved. Personally I always felt that Final Fantasy 7 should have never been marketed as a Final Fantasy game because it was so radically different from the 6 previous games that I had played. This doesn't mean I felt it was a bad game. It was a great game, but for me (and many other players at the time) there just wasn't that "Final Fantasy" feel to it. The Final Fantasy franchise has since changed and varied its image and today it wouldn't be a surprise if the next one was focused around a magical pinball machine so it affects me less now, but to me it is a franchise that has varied itself so much that it's lost all identity apart from the marketing power of the name. To that extent, I am admittedly a bit more of a purist when it comes to franchise names and sequels than most. As I said, there are plenty of people out there that don't mind a lot of change and there are also people that will fight tooth and nail over every single update you can propose. Nobody is necessarily right or wrong, but it's a matter of preference and personal belief. Going along my line of thinking (and yes, this is MY line of thinking), where Starcraft 2 should be similar enough to Starcraft, we need to take a look at Starcraft to see why it is people play it and what sets the game apart from its competitors. The UI is a big part of the Starcraft experience as it is how we interact with the game. The abilities and limitations of the UI has had a heavy hand in shaping the way we play. As I said in my previous post, I do not disagree that the UI is indeed a limitation and that it could vastly be improved, but my question was more about whether these limitations are inherently bad and whether they SHOULD be improved. I do not believe that limitations in the UI have to always be seen as a bad thing and while I believe that things could be changed, I think that some things are better left the way they are lest we stray too far and end up changing the game completely. You're right about my Civilization analogy. Players, of course, are limited to some degree by the UI of the game just like our sports games are limited to some degree by the laws of physics that govern our universe. The fact is that everything and everyone on some level will be limited by something. The reason I brought up the Civilization analogy is not because I felt that it was the best example, but rather because it was a game where time is taken out of the equation and therefore, the "click-fest" argument does not apply. When we start talking about the UI, it seems that automatically the issue of APM and mechanical dexterity come up and it seems that people have this feeling that the necessity of high APM to compete in higher levels of gameplay is the result of a faulty interface. The point I merely wanted to assert across my post was that this necessity isn't a result of the interface, but rather a result of TIME being a resource in the game. Also, I will concede that you're technically right that it is faulty logic on my part to assume that a game of Civilization would make for horrible TV, but if ever we were put into a position where we would have to make a wager, I'm sure that just about all of us would bet that it would. Yes, we COULD all be wrong about our wager, but let's be honest, we probably wouldn't. I realize that Starcraft is not the "holy grail" of RTS games and yes, it is "dead" when you compare it to many of the newer games with much more players. Quite frankly, I don't remember ever calling it a holy grail of any kind. It has it's flaws just like any other game. Do you think Street Fighter is the "holy grail" of all fighting games? Is World of Warcraft the "holy grail" of all MMORPG's? No, because there is no such thing. Each game fills a niche and has a target audience. I am well aware of the reasons for Starcraft's popularity in Korea, but I don't see how that has anything to do with why we still have Starcraft players all over the world. Starcraft lives on today because it fills a niche that the games released after it just haven't filled. I think you must have misunderstood me when I said "balance" in that paragraph. I wasn't trying to suggest that it was the racial balance in the game that causes us to play Starcraft so much as I was saying that it is the particular balance of speed and strategy in the game that makes it what it is. As for my mentioning of my personal enjoyment of the game, it was never meant to be some sort of universal truth. There are plenty of people that are perpetually frustrated when they play Starcraft, but is their frustration because of the game itself or because of what they expect to achieve in it? I believe personal experience is not a "false analogy", but a valuable tool for understanding how different people are affected differently by the game. Frankly I'm sorry if you were unsatisfied with my stance or my examples, but they were honestly the best I could think of at the time. I'm admittedly not the most articulate person in the world and because of this, I have a tendency to be excessively verbose in trying to get my points across and apparently even with all my words, I failed to get that point across to you. That's fine and well, I guess, but I would like to make a suggestion that I hope you will take into mind. Logic and reason are great tools for expressing and backing ideas, but they aren't everything. There's a whole lot that is said and understood outside of technicalities of precise logical argument. When you take some time to look at the underlying intent of someone's post rather than read through it a rip a person for speaking in the abstract as opposed to spelling out every single detail, maybe you'll be more open to seeing that there is a message there that maybe you could on some level, relate to. Was that message given in a perfect manner? Of course not and very few messages ever are delivered with perfection. But despite this, we can understand one another and make sense of our thoughts and opinions. I feel that you're an incredibly intelligent person, probably far more intelligent than I, but I cannot help but feel that to some extent you have let that intelligence blind your ability to interpret my post. I do hope that others, at least, understand what I am trying to say. Whether my views are valid or not is an entirely different story, of course.. | ||
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RaptorX
Germany646 Posts
I said what he said but he is more precise and conveys exactly the meaning of the cry of some of us over the changes to SC2... I really believe that you are 100% correct and this: I'm admittedly not the most articulate person in the world and because of this, I have a tendency to be excessively verbose in trying to get my points across and apparently even with all my words, I failed to get that point across to you. is simply bullshit... Dude you are the most articulate person in this thread... and you do make your point clear, it is that some people like to argue without valid points, or even having an idea of what they are talking about... "starcraft dead in the international community" are you fucking serious?? it is not "dead"... I actually consider that now it is being played more than few years ago, and hey it is an 11 year game so go figure. HeartOfTofu, kudos for your 3 posts. :D | ||
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MorroW
Sweden3522 Posts
the thing that makes sc so challanging is that its maximum hard in all aspects that u can possibly come to think of | ||
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L
Canada4732 Posts
If we added a BLOCK button in Street Fighter, would that change the essence of the game? What if we then added a RUN button? What it we went further and took away the LIFE BAR and made the damage system like Bushido Blade? What if we added parries, focus attacks, a revenge ultra meter, let whiffed normals build meter or put in a meter at all? Oh, all of those were actually put in, and they all substantially changed the game. Third strike isn't SF4, which isn't SF2, which isnt' Super turbo. Given you acknowledge this, and the fact that you probably acknowledge these changes as fairly large, you're forced to state this: The point at which the number of changes constitute a different game is arbitrary and entirely subjective, of course. This is why this argument can never really be resolved. Personally I always felt that Final Fantasy 7 should have never been marketed as a Final Fantasy game because it was so radically different from the 6 previous games that I had played. Yet it was a final fantasy game, arguably the most famous one. Final Fantasy Tactics, or FFXII are also final fantasy games. Even Warcraft 2 was a huge departure from its roots in WC1, wherein the game defining road system was completely removed. Warcraft 3 took a similarly huge step and completely removed one of the ingame resources and eliminated all naval combat on top of completely changing the game's lethality, speed and focus by adding heros. Many games completely revamp their combat systems, atmosphere and game focus and attempt to improve upon them. In fact, early sequel development was pretty radical in that respect; Mario 2, Zelda 2, Dragon Quest 2, Final fantasy 2, Wizards and warriors 2 off the top of my head completely changed the way each game was played. Compare those differences to the differences between guitar hero 2 and 3, wherein the games are virtually identical; Clearly the 'feel' has been replicated between the two games, but is there an improvement worth purchasing? So when it comes to starcraft, you need to go beyond just positing the existence of a 'feel'; you need to justify that feel as foundational. You need to deal with the fact that many people have played SC2 with its ingame MBS and automine and say almost unanimously that the game 'feels' like starcraft. You need to define why the 'feel' needs to exist to the exclusion of other 'feels' so to speak. If someone decided to make an FPS in the starcraft world, and put me in the shoes of, I dunno, a starcraft ghost, I'd probably market the game as a starcraft game. Maybe I'd be cute and call it Starcraft: Ghost. But let me ask this: If starcraft is so defined by its mechanical difficulty, who would be up for increasing said difficulty in starcraft 2? Say you need to tell hatcheries to produce larva, for instance. Or that you need to have gateways retune their warp matrix for different units when you switch production cycles. Or you need to manually select an appropriate boot camp trainee from an incoming roster of recruits when you train any terran unit. Sounds like it would sure make time an even more useful resource, don't you think? But is that 'starcraft'? What's more, do you think the newly 'difficult' starcraft, lets call it Starcraft D, would make a better spectator sport? Is the difficulty of the game interesting to watch in that respect? I'm just curious, that's all. | ||
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cascades
Singapore6122 Posts
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ix
United Kingdom184 Posts
but my question was more about whether these limitations are inherently bad and whether they SHOULD be improved Blizzard are only doing it for new players to make the game more 'accessible'. As an FPS player who's been through this dumbing down sequel process I've already seen that that doesn't work out. | ||
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HeartOfTofu
United States308 Posts
On a personal level, I've no problem with features like Infinite Unit Selection and even Auto-Mine is something I see as a relatively minor change overall. Let's be honest, of all the changes between Starcraft and Starcraft 2, do you think Auto-Mining is going to really stand out as some huge change that we're all going to still be discussing a few months after the game's release? As I've said, I do believe there is room for progress. In the original Street Fighter, you couldn't block in the air. You also didn't have counters or super bars. And yes, these features have been added over the course of the franchise's development and I will agree that they've made the game more enjoyable for me. My intent was merely to point out that a lot of small changes can become a major transformation once you step back and take a look at the game as a whole. Also, in the case of Street Fighter, these changes happened over the course many installments and from one game to the next really didn't feel like such a big leap even though we've come quite far from where we started. Yes, I'm well aware of Starcraft:Ghost (a game I had looked forward to playing for the longest time) as are plenty of other people. However, Starcraft:Ghost was never intended to be a sequel to Starcraft. It was being developed as another type of game that took place within the same setting. Nobody goes around believing that World of Warcraft is a sequel to Warcraft 3 for the same reason. It's a completely different genre. In the case of Starcraft to Starcraft 2, we are looking at the case of a game that's intended to be a sequel to the first and one that is staying within the genre of the first. I can understand your view that a new game should be different enough from the first to warrant paying for it and I do agree with you, but that doesn't mean that we need to completely revamp or alter the game for each new release. There are plenty of features in Starcraft that do work just fine and have made the game popular. What a sequel should be doing is identifying these features and building upon them while at the same time removing or updating some of the features that haven't worked. As I've said, we all differ in regard to what we like and what we don't like about the game and ultimately Blizzard will make a judgement call as to what they feel is best for the game regardless of all of our disagreement. I never said that Starcraft is defined by it's mechanical difficulty. I said that Starcraft is defined by it's current balance of mechanical difficulty and strategy. If you were to make it more difficult that would have the same effect as making it less difficult. It would throw off the balance and end up changing the game into something it's not and I'm certainly not a proponent of either extreme. Starcraft isn't a game where mechanical dexterity counts and strategy doesn't nor it is a game where strategy counts and mechanical dexterity doesn't. The balance between the two is key. The tricky part for Blizzard is going to be trying to keep the balance of micro, macro, and strategy close to where it currently is and fine-tuning some points of it all while introducing new units, new game dynamics, new features, and new interface functions. It's really not an easy task and of course things will change. My only hope is that they change in a way where it feels like we're still playing the same game at heart, but a better version of it. This doesn't mean in any way that Starcraft 2 needs to be a clone of Starcraft, but more like the relationship between Street Fighter II and Street Fighter III. They came years apart, several installments apart, and have a different style of gameplay, but when it comes down to the heart of it, you KNOW and you FEEL like you're playing a Street Fighter game. That's all I want from Starcraft 2 and I think most people will be satisfied with the same. As for your hypothetical about an insanely difficult and control-driven Starcraft D, I don't believe it would make for a better spectator sport for the same reason I don't believe Civilization or Romance of the Three Kingdoms would make for good spectator sports. Both are incredibly complex, management-driven games (which I love), but they take it too far to be interesting for a televised audience. When you increase the amount of management that needs to take place too much, it has a tendency to slow down the overall gameplay simply because a person can only process so much information at a time. Starcraft in its current state, played on FASTEST game speed at the professional level is probably pushing near, if not at the limit that a person can think, react, and act in a game. But at the same time it's strategic depth (admittedly not much) is at a level where you can still reasonably play at these speeds. The result is a pretty nice balance of game pace and strategy that has been enjoyable to both players and viewers alike. If we were to keep it at its current speed and add another layer of strategic depth such as tax rates or officers, that too would throw off the balance and you would see people slow down because they have more stuff to manage. Of course this wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing per say, it would just be different from the Starcraft we know and probably too different for many people. I remember a lot of people that complained about Warcraft 3's slower game pace and lower unit supply limit and while a lot of it probably had to do with the limitations of technology at the time, the truth is that it would have probably been difficult to make the hero system work reasonably if the game was played at the speed of Starcraft or if there was as much stuff to manage as Starcraft because of the increased unit supply and hence, larger armies and more macro. I don't view Warcraft 3 as a bad game. The gameplay and pace simply don't suit my tastes, which is why I play Starcraft. For the longest time I had a friend that still played Warcraft 2 because Warcraft 3 and Starcraft didn't suit him. Preferences are fine because they create niches in the genre for which there is a demand. The niche Starcraft currently fills is for people that like a certain level of strategy, but a game in which speed also is to some extent a determining factor. At the same time, I don't think we want to have to run recruiting units into towns and assign bootcamp instructors for our Marines either... Certainly an argument could be made for accessibility and user-friendliness and it would be a valid argument, but I'd just like to remind everyone that there was once a time when Starcraft was brand new. We knew nothing about Zerg, Terran, or Protoss. There was a time when nobody was counting APM (the term didn't exist in a gaming sense) and there was no understanding of micro and macro-management. This was a time when the game was new and we all collectively sucked at it. Despite all of the supposed "difficulty" of the game, over time we learned and developed our skill to a point where most of us really don't see these "difficulties" as all that difficult. The skills of the players will naturally start low and increase over time with growing familiarity with the game. Also keep in mind that Starcraft at its core is a very simple game. Nobody is forcing you to play at 150APM and for a long time nobody did. I guess my point is that despite all the supposed difficulty we've adapted to match it with no real problems so I don't see why some people make it seem like the game is impossible in its current state... Whatever happens, we'll just adapt. I think a lot of people prefer the "mastery" of the game to be as challenging as it currently is, even though nobody has truly mastered the game. Long story short: BALANCE IS KEY | ||
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phyvo
United States5635 Posts
On December 26 2009 02:06 L wrote: What if we added parries, focus attacks, a revenge ultra meter, let whiffed normals build meter or put in a meter at all? Oh, all of those were actually put in, and they all substantially changed the game. Third strike isn't SF4, which isn't SF2, which isnt' Super turbo. While the SF series has certainly varied in many mechanics, there are a few basic constants: move backwards to block is one of them. As far as I know that's always been the way to block in SF games. In this case it is my feeling that Tofu was giving examples of things that would change the fundamental core and feel of SF games themselves at all playing levels, whereas all the things you listed are more technical changes that, while changing the nature of the game, have merely been different expansions and forks on the base concept of SF. Yet it was a final fantasy game, arguably the most famous one. Final Fantasy Tactics, or FFXII are also final fantasy games. Even Warcraft 2 was a huge departure from its roots in WC1, wherein the game defining road system was completely removed. Warcraft 3 took a similarly huge step and completely removed one of the ingame resources and eliminated all naval combat on top of completely changing the game's lethality, speed and focus by adding heros. Many games completely revamp their combat systems, atmosphere and game focus and attempt to improve upon them. In fact, early sequel development was pretty radical in that respect; Mario 2, Zelda 2, Dragon Quest 2, Final fantasy 2, Wizards and warriors 2 off the top of my head completely changed the way each game was played. Compare those differences to the differences between guitar hero 2 and 3, wherein the games are virtually identical; Clearly the 'feel' has been replicated between the two games, but is there an improvement worth purchasing? So when it comes to starcraft, you need to go beyond just positing the existence of a 'feel'; you need to justify that feel as foundational. You need to deal with the fact that many people have played SC2 with its ingame MBS and automine and say almost unanimously that the game 'feels' like starcraft. You need to define why the 'feel' needs to exist to the exclusion of other 'feels' so to speak. If someone decided to make an FPS in the starcraft world, and put me in the shoes of, I dunno, a starcraft ghost, I'd probably market the game as a starcraft game. Maybe I'd be cute and call it Starcraft: Ghost. Short beginning note here: I don't think Tofu ever said that we should remove automine or MBS, or said that they, specifically, have killed the feel. He has only said that mechanical skill is an integral part of the spirit of SC. You're mistaking a discussion of the role of mechanics in SC2 for an automine/MBS discussion, which is easy to do I think. Regarding what you said about franchises though, I think one key thing to acknowledge here is that there are many different ways of using a franchise name. I think that Starcraft shares a lot of things with Metroid in this respect. Metroid was left for dead for years until Metroid Prime came out. As a result, a core of very loyal fans had remained around the excellent original Metroid series and their core concern was a nostalgic one: how could a new Metroid game possibly live up to the legacy, the spirit, of the old game? Strange things were done, like the lock on FPS system to make the game less twitch FPSy, but many were obviously skeptical. Many ended up disappointed, but many others were impressed by how well Metroid Prime, despite being really different, managed to definitively stay a Metroid game and reproduce some of the same feeling that Super Metroid did before it. Now, there are many things different about SC->SC2. But all these concerns, like the concerns about Metroid Prime, are still a the spirit of the game itself and the transition to a new game with new technologies, new stories, new experiences. SC2 has to both be new and exciting for newcomers, a nostalgia trip for old fogies, and even win the support of the current competitive SC community. All this just to meet the high bar set by SC in every way. You can see that this is the approach Blizzard is currently taking. People complained about the old Zerg graphics not being zergy. Blizzard pretty much fixed that complaint and other nostalgic aesthetic complaints, and definitive race units were kept while others were thrown away. MBS and automine show their commitment to newcomers while the macro mechanics show they're paying some attention to the current competitive community. Every action they've taken show that they're trying to produce a closely linked, but new, spiritual successor to an old classic. I don't think that Starcraft 2 even has the option of taking a vastly different tack a la FF:T or Mario 2. Regardless, this is not Blizzard's strategy to begin with. But let me ask this: If starcraft is so defined by its mechanical difficulty, who would be up for increasing said difficulty in starcraft 2? Say you need to tell hatcheries to produce larva, for instance. Or that you need to have gateways retune their warp matrix for different units when you switch production cycles. Or you need to manually select an appropriate boot camp trainee from an incoming roster of recruits when you train any terran unit. Sounds like it would sure make time an even more useful resource, don't you think? But is that 'starcraft'? Most people I think would not be up for increasing mechanical difficulty in such a way for two reasons. For one, it isn't necessary. SC already has an unreachable skill ceiling. Why make it higher than it is? Indeed, because the skill ceiling is already unreachable you technically aren't really making the game definitively harder anyways. You're just putting the same clicks in a different place. Secondly, we all should know that it would be economic suicide. Supporters of MBS/automine have already pointed out that it's most likely a marketing move to meet expectations of new players. SC2 is already pretty old school in insisting that you build lots of workers to harvest resources and build a base. Newbies would see manual mining, let alone manual larva, as spit in the face from conservative elitist players. What's more, do you think the newly 'difficult' starcraft, lets call it Starcraft D, would make a better spectator sport? Is the difficulty of the game interesting to watch in that respect? I'm just curious, that's all. I think it's an interesting balance. Starcraft D would just be more boring because less could happen. Starcraft 2 might possibly be too frantic if lots of things are going on in different places that make following the action really hard. So far though it seems fine spectator-wise. | ||
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L
Canada4732 Posts
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L
Canada4732 Posts
On December 26 2009 03:26 phyvo wrote: Yet if you changed something between SF1 and SF2 regarding blocking, it might seem relatively minor; many other games at the time had similarly radical changes implemented to them. At this point, there are many games that have 'hold back to block' as one of their mechanics. If genre standards are used instead of game title standards, the problem becomes even more acute; RTS games and games in general have been moving towards more automation. While the SF series has certainly varied in many mechanics, there are a few basic constants: move backwards to block is one of them. As far as I know that's always been the way to block in SF games. In this case it is my feeling that Tofu was giving examples of things that would change the fundamental core and feel of SF games themselves at all playing levels, whereas all the things you listed are more technical changes that, while changing the nature of the game, have merely been different expansions and forks on the base concept of SF. Either way, the point is rather clear that you can maintain the 'feel' of a game despite revamping the game mechanics. Short beginning note here: I don't think Tofu ever said that we should remove automine or MBS, or said that they, specifically, have killed the feel. He has only said that mechanical skill is an integral part of the spirit of SC. You're mistaking a discussion of the role of mechanics in SC2 for an automine/MBS discussion, which is easy to do I think. Most people I think would not be up for increasing mechanical difficulty in such a way for two reasons. For one, it isn't necessary. SC already has an unreachable skill ceiling. Why make it higher than it is? Indeed, because the skill ceiling is already unreachable you technically aren't really making the game definitively harder anyways. This is another portion of his argument, but I think you're mixing something up, here. The game might be objectively harder: you might autodie unless you can maintain 300 apm or something, but the real game 'difficulty' in a 1v1 doesn't lie in fighting the interface, its in outdoing your opponent. Since the difficulty of the game actually comes from the opponent you're playing, and not the interface itself, why is the interface's effect on difficulty itself (and not on feel) important? If you answer that the mechanical difficulty of the game equates to the game 'feel', then you essentially grant sirlin's 'selfish oldschool' argument. Secondly, we all should know that it would be economic suicide. Supporters of MBS/automine have already pointed out that it's most likely a marketing move to meet expectations of new players. SC2 is already pretty old school in insisting that you build lots of workers to harvest resources and build a base. Newbies would see manual mining, let alone manual larva, as spit in the face from conservative elitist players. The argument which has already been presented against Sirlin's opinion is that newbies play a completely different game from those that the elitist players are playing, and thus can enjoy it in that respect. Why does this change with current levels of interface interference as opposed with increased levels? Isn't any form of barrier to enjoying the 'true' version of the game detrimental to the game's community? Sorry if this was very quote intensive, but there were a few statements that I want to look further into here, because I think they're somewhat recurring and that they've been used as unexamined assumptions throughout the conversation. | ||
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HeartOfTofu
United States308 Posts
My biggest question to you (and maybe to Sirlin), I think would be, "Why do you feel that the current Starcraft interface is a "barrier to enjoying the 'true' version of the game"? Or for the matter, "What exactly is the "true" version of Starcraft that we are supposedly aiming for but can't attain because of the "broken" interface?" There seems to be a lot of talk about all of the problems with "old school" thinking or "elitism" (a stupid term to describe it), but my problem is that I really just don't understand what we're supposed to be striving toward. What exactly is the ultimate goal? | ||
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Vortok
United States830 Posts
In regards to MBS, I don't think I'm informed enough either way to form a decent opinion on its actual impact to the game. However, It likely just goes hand in hand with allowing unlimited unit selection. In SC1, you can theoretically hotkey 10 barracks and just build from them without going back to your base to click on each building. Obviously you want to use those hotkeys for other things than just those buildings, though. Given that they are freeing up control groups in regards to units (which as has been mentioned, practically nobody is against), I can see how they would simply take it a step further and extend that to production buildings, thinking that otherwise production buildings would just take up the newly available hotkeys. [joke] And for those that miss having to click a building and a key for each unit they produce, they can just play Protoss with warpgates. A click and a key for every unit, just like old times! [/joke] Simply put, if something seems like a no-brainer, it should be. I, as the commander of all the forces of whoever, should be able to tell the guy running local Command Center 724-A that "When you get new workers in, just send them to gather resources unless I tell you to send them somewhere else. Don't bother me every time you get a new recruit, I have a war to run." Mechanically, I don't think it'll make the game too easy. Players will just adapt and find some other task to spend time on. The balance of time spent where and doing what is obviously one of the things that Blizzard is working on (macro vs. micro, in essence), but to force some of that time to be taken up with telling every new recruit to walk 5 feet and do his job feels a tad arbitrary. At the end of the day, Blizzard has one of the best records for improving and polishing their products even after shipping them. Most companies ship and forget. They also have some experience in competitive gaming/e-sports (hai2u WoW arena). I'm sure it'll be fine, but we're all bored and need something to talk about while we hold our knees to our chests rocking back and forth in a corner while waiting for beta keys to appear. | ||
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L
Canada4732 Posts
"Why do you feel that the current Starcraft interface is a "barrier to enjoying the 'true' version of the game"? Its rather simple. I can make a decision and simply not be able to execute it because of a mechanical requirement and not because my mind isn't able to multitask. That's not always a bad thing, but when its as pervasive as it is in starcraft, it becomes an issue with the ability of the game to serve as a competitive medium, which is another one of its core attributes.Put another way; If i want to move 40 units from point A to point B, why is it that i need 4 hotkeys and 12 interface interactions to issue a single command? The onus here shouldn't be on my justification that this restriction is restrictive, but rather the reverse; why is it a part of the starcraft 'feel' and is it a part of the 'feel' that has aged well? No one has, thus far, moved forward and suggested a single reason other than 'time management', yet by the above admissions regarding the skill ceiling, as long as useful actions can be taken, useless interface hassles aren't required to fill that gap. From the prior admission about the downright terrible nature of starcraft D and the current insistence that its the balance of mechanical requirement and strategy that makes starcraft fun, or defines its 'feel' (which isn't a given, mind you) are both very interesting. When we add the prior question "should strategy be easy" which was responded negatively to, we come to a rather universal theory. -\Interfaces should cleanly accept decisions with as little impediment as possible, but the game should be complex enough to require important decisions to be made at high speed, while designed so that it is simple to watch. Does this statement sound valid? If so, you gain a few things by ricochet: your game becomes more accessible because people spend more time engaged with the units, buildings and worlds you've created instead of the system you've build to showcase it to them. This accessibility leads to more people being interested in the 'true' game, as it where, because there is less standing between them and it. This in turn creates a larger competitive pool, which then boils down to better competition as you have a larger talent pool to draw opponents from. So why would we argue against a win/win/win/win/win scenario, unless we're worried that the years and years of practice we've put into overcoming our initial interface obstacles in SC would be shoved aside? The simplest reason is the one presented by sirlin; people on top like to stay there. I would, as I normally do, suggest that people play zero hour or watch some replays of good players to see how a game with very little macro can be an intense multitask challenge due to rewarding micro; the difference is that while newer players might lose continually there as here, they aren't tripped up on the interface itself; they're losing to tactical moves made by their opponent. | ||
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Kiarip
United States1835 Posts
On December 25 2009 16:38 L wrote: How so? Assume there's zero interface barrier; the execution of the strategy becomes a given, while the creation of it becomes by default more difficult. No it doesn't become more difficult by default. The magnitude of how different the two difficulties are is the object of the discussion itself. As the interface barrier decreases, the amount of difficulty that a variably complex strategy component needs to kick in increases in order to reach a similar plateau. Ok... so if there's zero interface barrier, then the game is as good as a TBS. Meaning it will be solved by computers, and you'll be looking at a sheet of paper, or a long text file for all your strategies. Or you could program an AI to play it perfectly with ease. Either way, you're still left answering 'should strategy be easy'. What you call strategy will always be easy. What strategy actually is, isn't easy because it includes a lot of small strategical decisions about the players' allocation of attention, and multitask, which exponentiates the possibilities in the game, and therefore its depth. If you think it should, the execution needs to pick up the slack. If you think it should be hard, then it can either be hard enough to supplant an execution barrier, or it can be too simple to warrant an elimination of said barrier. As I said before, what you call "strategy." Can not be hard in an RTS. Both RTS's and TBS use methods of creating ACTUAL strategic depth in the respective genres. In TBS (chess for instance,) you can only make 1 move per turn, so this opens up a lot of different positions and possibilities, and it creates depth, because you have to chose between several moves, all of which may look good. RTS is similar on a small scale, because you have to prioritize your actions, and even though you do a lot of things in a small frame of time there's a limit to how many things you can actually do. A perfect execution RTS will be like Chess where you can make more than one move per turn... Except, RTS isn't a full information game, so it's probably going to completely degenerate into rock paper scissors. So yes, RTS's always have to retain a small "physical" factor of APM in order to retain its strategic depth. I say "physical" because that's what people argue when they say that high apm requirements should be done away with in "strategy" games, but in reality APM is barely if at all physical. I can spam away random keys on the keyboard, and mouse at the same time and get like 1200 APM, but as you can probably guess I can't play starcraft at that APM, it's because APM mostly isn't physical (it's largely muscle memory which has more to do with your brain than your muscles.) The only semi-viable argument is that you're doing repetitive mindless tasks, which I guess you are, but as I said earlier it's not the tasks that you are doing that counts, it's the decisions you make when you decide that that's what you're gonna do with your attention instead of some other thing that you may have wanted to do. | ||
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NatsuTerran
United States364 Posts
On December 26 2009 07:43 L wrote: Its rather simple. I can make a decision and simply not be able to execute it because of a mechanical requirement and not because my mind isn't able to multitask. That's not always a bad thing, but when its as pervasive as it is in starcraft, it becomes an issue with the ability of the game to serve as a competitive medium, which is another one of its core attributes. Put another way; If i want to move 40 units from point A to point B, why is it that i need 4 hotkeys and 12 interface interactions to issue a single command? The onus here shouldn't be on my justification that this restriction is restrictive, but rather the reverse; why is it a part of the starcraft 'feel' and is it a part of the 'feel' that has aged well? The reason is because the game scales as it goes on. Producing from three command centers SHOULD be harder than producing SCV's from one. Moving a large army should be harder than moving a squad. Consider this: There are many, MANY players out there whose first 1-2 minutes of gameplay is IDENTICAL to that of progamers. But once the game scales outward, these players start losing track of all the increase in production. The pro gamers still manage everything, and that's what makes them great. Again, building one zealot should be considerably easier than making ten at once. There are B-A level ICCuppers that can pull a 2 gate or 9 pool exactly the same as a pro, but as the game goes on they taper off in small areas. The beauty of Starcraft is that there is always something to improve on. There are fundamentals to the game that are a JOURNEY to go through. Practicing them fulfills you mentally and physically. Macro, micro, and timing of Broodwar is just like back spins, side spins, and spikes of Ping Pong. Where mechanics are the Yin, decision-making is the Yang. They go together in a package. | ||
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ucsdt
United States4 Posts
On December 26 2009 08:09 Kiarip wrote: As I said before, what you call "strategy." Can not be hard in an RTS. Both RTS's and TBS use methods of creating ACTUAL strategic depth in the respective genres. In TBS (chess for instance,) you can only make 1 move per turn, so this opens up a lot of different positions and possibilities, and it creates depth, because you have to chose between several moves, all of which may look good. RTS is similar on a small scale, because you have to prioritize your actions, and even though you do a lot of things in a small frame of time there's a limit to how many things you can actually do. A perfect execution RTS will be like Chess where you can make more than one move per turn... Except, RTS isn't a full information game, so it's probably going to completely degenerate into rock paper scissors. So yes, RTS's always have to retain a small "physical" factor of APM in order to retain its strategic depth. I say "physical" because that's what people argue when they say that high apm requirements should be done away with in "strategy" games, but in reality APM is barely if at all physical. I can spam away random keys on the keyboard, and mouse at the same time and get like 1200 APM, but as you can probably guess I can't play starcraft at that APM, it's because APM mostly isn't physical (it's largely muscle memory which has more to do with your brain than your muscles.) The only semi-viable argument is that you're doing repetitive mindless tasks, which I guess you are, but as I said earlier it's not the tasks that you are doing that counts, it's the decisions you make when you decide that that's what you're gonna do with your attention instead of some other thing that you may have wanted to do. Perfect execution in RTS would be nothing at all like Chess where you can make more than one move per turn, because units are still limited by their movement speed. Additionally, even though RTSs are not complete information games, they do not degenerate into rock paper scissors because people can and do scout. "Perfect" execution does not change that at all. You are right in that its the decisions you make that count. An arbitrary apm sink only gets in the way of that. | ||
TheYango
United States47024 Posts
On December 26 2009 07:43 L wrote: Its rather simple. I can make a decision and simply not be able to execute it because of a mechanical requirement and not because my mind isn't able to multitask. That's not always a bad thing, but when its as pervasive as it is in starcraft, it becomes an issue with the ability of the game to serve as a competitive medium, which is another one of its core attributes. For 90% of the people who say this, this isn't true. A reasonable typing speed on a normal QWERTY keyboard is 40 words per minute. Approximating to a word length of 5 letters, and including spaces, that's about 240 APM. If you can type at 40 WPM, you are capable of that speed. The only thing separating you from a player who can actually harness that into useful actions is the *mental* ability to string those into sensible actions. On December 26 2009 07:43 L wrote: Put another way; If i want to move 40 units from point A to point B, why is it that i need 4 hotkeys and 12 interface interactions to issue a single command? The onus here shouldn't be on my justification that this restriction is restrictive, but rather the reverse; why is it a part of the starcraft 'feel' and is it a part of the 'feel' that has aged well? Except that's not a physical limitation. It's a mental multitasking one. Hitting "1a2a3a4a" takes a negligible amount of time. Hitting Shift-1 on a drag-selected bunch of new unit takes a negligible amount of time. What takes time is dealing with units that are in a jumble of different hotkeys, but this happens not because the interface is making things hard for you physically, but because it is demanding a minimum amount of *mental* attention to your units. In other words, you would have no trouble dealing with your units if you mentally devoted the time every production round to add them to existing hotkeys. It only becomes a physical mess (e.g. you have 40 units jumbled up) if you neglect that mental demand, because you will never have a single production round that pumps out 40 units. On December 26 2009 07:43 L wrote: -\Interfaces should cleanly accept decisions with as little impediment as possible, but the game should be complex enough to require important decisions to be made at high speed, while designed so that it is simple to watch. Does this statement sound valid? Agreed, but with one thing of note: Just because you *can* replace "meaningless" actions with mechanics such as the macro mechanics doesn't mean you can do it in a way that's reasonable to balance, and that creates enough actions to fill the void. In other words, just because it's POSSIBLE to try and force "meaningful decisions" into the place of mining assignments and production rounds doesn't mean that it's possible to do them all in a successful way in one go. The macro mechanics are a suitable step in the right direction, but to try and reform the RTS standard in a sweeping fashion is far too ambitious for a single game. On December 26 2009 07:43 L wrote: If so, you gain a few things by ricochet: your game becomes more accessible because people spend more time engaged with the units, buildings and worlds you've created instead of the system you've build to showcase it to them. This accessibility leads to more people being interested in the 'true' game, as it where, because there is less standing between them and it. This in turn creates a larger competitive pool, which then boils down to better competition as you have a larger talent pool to draw opponents from. I disagree with this. The competitive pool is always driven by those with the attitude and the will to compete: that regardless of the barriers in place, there is a desire to compete and to win. Ultimately, no interface restrictions will bar those with the will to compete at the highest level (particularly since most people, with practice, are perfectly capable of playing at the speed required for the higher levels of play). Conversely, no interface enhancements will turn those who do not have the right attitude for competition into suitable competitors. The fact that the guy who's strategically strong, but whines about the interface inhibiting his progression would be able to beat C-level players instead of D-level players is irrelevant: the fact that he would rather complain than improve means that he doesn't have the suitable attitude for competition, and would sooner or later find a level of play that he will give up on, and revert to whining about. By extension, that player makes no significant addition to the talent pool. On December 26 2009 07:43 L wrote: I would, as I normally do, suggest that people play zero hour or watch some replays of good players to see how a game with very little macro can be an intense multitask challenge due to rewarding micro; the difference is that while newer players might lose continually there as here, they aren't tripped up on the interface itself; they're losing to tactical moves made by their opponent. Zero Hour's mechanics are an example brought up in a thread from several months back, but the admission was also made that because it's a game made to model modern combat, which takes place primarily at range, many of the abilities that force mapwide awareness don't have suitable analogues in the Starcraft universe. For one, the idea of melee combat is almost entirely incombatible with the type of combat Zero Hour was meant to simulate. | ||
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