EPTOn April 27 2010 09:13 Ranix wrote:
I understand it is a hyperbole, but come on man!
I understand it is a hyperbole, but come on man!
It's actually true...
Oh Micro, Where Art Thou? - Page 19
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zazen
Brazil695 Posts
It's actually true... | ||
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Tin_Foil
United States243 Posts
On April 27 2010 13:21 DaEm0niCuS wrote: Id be suprised if any good players bw B+ or higher on iccup disagree with this. Anyone elses opinion doesn't really mean shit IMO, lol. Is this sarcasm? I hope it is... If not then its just utter crap... Also, if you'd looked through the posts Nony disagreed with it, and I think he was better than B+.... not to mention I'm sure a lot of others...Skill doesn't make a person intelligent. | ||
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DaEm0niCuS
United States60 Posts
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Xenocide_Knight
Korea (South)2625 Posts
On April 27 2010 12:36 Fallen wrote: I think this is all blown out of proportions. There's plenty of micro in sc2 to do. Have you seen that bob vs idra game? if thats not a micro win im not sure what to tell you. There's countless example! Leave brood war behind guys, this is a new game. Stop comparing them you're wasting your time and breath. oh wow, he fired, moved forward, then fired again. Ooo he set his melee units in from before a-moving. Oh look, he moved his damaged unit back. You really think that's the micro we're talking about? I guarantee more than half the D- players on iCCup could have performed the amount of micro in that game. Probably one handed. On April 27 2010 12:53 mOnion wrote: All i'm saying is if you had played SC competitively like a large percent of this forum, you would be reasonably upset about the lack of micro in this game. i understand your confusion. but the fact that you think muta stacking and dragoon mechanics are the micro we're referring to is naive. Gameoffear, just listen to monion and stop embarrassing yourself Listen, everyone who signed up on TL solely because you were looking for a starcraft 2 forum to join. Broodwar is History. And not the kind of History that is gone. The kind of History we all learn from, the kind of History we are ALL benefiting from right now. Talking about SC2 without knowing broodwar is like leaf that doesn't know it's part of a tree. PLAY broodwar and find out what it is to micro. You will get wrecked by armies not even half your size. Muta micro will dismantle you, even if you turtle on 1 base. a pair of corsairs and a pair of dts will force you to rage quit. Watch some big battles in progames. Count or estimate the units and recreate the battle. A battle that a progamer won, you won't even destroy half the enemies army. That was micro, that was what made Broodwar. Jaedong has 18 lings vs some D level player's 24 lings? Jaedong would probably kill you twice over. Look at sc2. And don't tell me there's micro yet to be found, yet to be discovered by legions of progamers, why the hell do we have to find it. If I wanted to find hidden things in the game I would have bought fucking Barbie Scavenger Hunt. Broodwar was a fluke. The micro was due to the primitive game engine and coding. However, it was amazing. Why are we trying to erase these incredible flukes and attempting to discover new ones. Especially flukes that took 10 years to figure out. The fact that life evolved on Earth is sort of a cosmic fluke. sc2 is basically like "Oh the fact that life developed on earth was a fluke. Let's put life on earth2.0! But we don't want life from original earth because that would be the same. Let's just throw shit together in a primordial soup on a new planet, wait millions of years, and hope life just works out." | ||
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Half
United States2554 Posts
On April 27 2010 13:26 Tin_Foil wrote: Is this sarcasm? I hope it is... If not then its just utter crap... Also, if you'd looked through the posts Nony disagreed with it, and I think he was better than B+.... not to mention I'm sure a lot of others...Skill doesn't make a person intelligent. Is this sarcasm? Because you realize you completely failed at reading right? Like, twice? | ||
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mOnion
United States5651 Posts
GASP your friend who was bad at BW beat Nony when he's spending a majority of his time trying to figure out new builds to do in a game with an easier learning curve than BW! gasp indeed! | ||
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Twilight Templar
99 Posts
On April 27 2010 13:18 ZapRoffo wrote: Given a unit that does not have the capability to moving shot (phoenix for example), a player must make a strategical decision about whether to engage or not at any given point of the game when confronted with a group of mutalisks, for example. The phoenix is still perfectly under the player's control in sc2, because the player has full information of what happens when the phoenix is going to engage: it is going to slow down with a slight drift and shoot and be briefly disabled by it's attack. It is not a lack of control, because it's not random, the player enters into that situation with full knowledge of the phoenix's characteristics (including attack and movement animations). Therefore, in considering the decision of whether to engage, the player must consider the immediate reaction of his opponent's units as well as the many possible re-positions an opponent may make during the phoenix's characteristic animation delay to react, and judge the expected value of the result accordingly. This is a much more complicated decision than the engagement decision given a moving shot animation like the Brood War muta and stacking. In this scenario again there is full knowledge of the capabilities of the muta, but the engagement decision now only must consider the immediate reaction of his opponent's units; the opponent's response can barely even occur by the time the mutas are again out of range, so there is no split second analysis of a decision tree, there is only an analysis of what's on the screen. This is what causes the brood war mechanics to be labeled more mechanical and the sc2 mechanics to be more strategical. In the OP LaLush answers this quite clearly. you simply can't engage with an opposing air force larger than yours. There is no decision of whether or not to engage with the enemy, because if you do (and they have a larger force) you will be destroyed. In BW you could potentially get a few shots in with minimal damage to yourself using move shot with your units. SC2 lacks this possibility and in my opinion LIMITS the game of it's strategic decisions/depth. Also it's way more fun to watch micro battles than players "thinking" about whether or not to engage. My 2 cents | ||
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DaEm0niCuS
United States60 Posts
On April 27 2010 13:26 DaEm0niCuS wrote: It means everything, everyone has an opinion. The thing is most people are not good at bw or sc2, and as such their opinions do not really mean anything(except for rare instances). Where as a good B+ players opinion almost always has some merit(and yes there will be those who disagree). Nothing in life is 100%. This applies to anything really, if you have cancer your not going to listen to the interns advice. Yes they might know a thing or two, but the Oncologist with 30 years experience is where id put my money. | ||
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NicolBolas
United States1388 Posts
On move and shoot and engines: You state, on more than one occasion, that the SC2 engine is inferior to the SC1 engine because of the presence of move-and-shoot in SC1 and its "absence" in SC2 (we'll come to the accuracy of that statement a bit later). I contest this. On two basic arguments. 1: "Move and shoot", the specific sequence of commands that allows Vultures, Corsairs, Mutalisks and a few others to effectively move while shooting, was not a feature of the SC1 engine. At no time did the game designers tell the game engine developers, "Make it so that these specific units, and no others can do this moving and shooting thing if the player does X." It was simply an outgrowth of the subtle interaction between the unit AI, the different commands, and the physics model of the game. My evidence for this statement is one simple fact: the sheer difficulty of pulling it off correctly. To make units move and shoot, you must enter a precise sequence of fairly arcane commands. If you told a neophyte to the game that performing this particular command sequence would allow a unit to effectively move and shoot, they would be shocked. If Blizzard had intended move and shoot in SC1, it wouldn't have been something you had to discover. Units with move and shoot would have had it as an innate ability, and that ability would not require the specific input of an arcane sequence of commands. Now, this doesn't make move and shoot wrong or bad. Simply unintended; a "happy accident," if you prefer. So it would be more accurate to say that the imperfections of the SC1 engine were the cause of it, not that SC2 is somehow less perfect for its apparent absence. 2: SC2 can do "move and shoot." Indeed, there was a whole unit designed around it: the Cobra. This was one of the units shown in the Terran reveal. Moving and shooting was its signature move. It required no arcane sequence of commands; no discovery. It simply moved while shooting. Therefore, both parts of your commentary on the "perfectness" of SC1's engine over SC2's are incorrect. On Corsair micro vs. Mutalisks You've chosen an interesting example as your primary focus. It's interesting because Corsair vs. Mutalisk is not reliant on this kind of micro. 3 Corsairs are stronger than 8 Mutalisks for one reason and one reason only: splash damage. If Phoenixes attacked as Corsairs do, you would find the same circumstances. Oh, you might need an extra Phoenix. But it is the splash damage that really makes the difference. It's simple math: Regeneration aside, it takes 6 Phoenix shots to kill a single Mutalisk. It takes 48 Phoenix shots to kill eight Mutalisks. It takes 24 Corsair shots to kill a single Mutalisk. It takes 24 Corsair shots to kill eight Mutalisks. Corsairs win, on paper and in game. Moving shot or no, as long as those Mutalisks are in the AoE, they are taking... "Terrible, Terrible damage!" On AoE vs. Air You are very much correct on your observation. AoE against air units is almost non-existent. Yes, there are AoE abilities that affect them (Storm, EMP, Fungal, etc). But there are almost no AoE attacks against them. You attribute this to being a necessary outgrowth of the lack of shoot and move. I contest this. The SC1 air model was, well, terrible. You had virtually useless air units like Scouts and Queens. You had strong and essential units like Mutalisks and... well, just Mutalisks. And you had a few one-trick ponies like Wraiths. All other air units were either capital ships or specific counters. This all basically meant that those specific counters were Mutalisk killers. And how do you kill Mutalisks? As we saw with my Corsair rebuttal, with AoE. StarCraft 2 wants to have a more useful air model. It wants to make air units a more integral part of a force, rather than just harassment or whatever. There are two parts to this. One part is the addition of strong AtG units, like Banshees and Void Rays (not limited to AtG, of course). The Vikings alt-form that you deride as a "gimmick" exists to allow Vikings to have some secondary utility on the ground. They can take out air units and then drop down to help the ground army. All of this ensures that spending money on air units is not a one-time investment. It is a legitimate strategy with transitions and other strengths. All of that is for naught, however, without the second part: you can't make air units that fragile. Goliaths in SC1 killed off so many air possibilities. Cheap, massable, and wicked strong against air, Goliaths dominated just about everything that flew. In order to make air units a legitimate part of an army composition, killing air units must be hard. The natural counter of anything massable is AoE. Thus, in order to have cheap, massable air units, you cannot have lots of anti-air AoE. What good are Banshees in a game with Corsairs? What good are a group of Void Rays when Valkyries can annihilate them en-masse? You cannot simultaneously have cheap, massable air units and cheap counters to massable air units. You have to pick one. SC1 picked the latter; SC2 picked the former. On shoot and move being "perfect control" Towards the end, you make the point that whether other micro appears to replace shoot and move is irrelevant. You suggest that not having shoot and move is a fundamental regression of play, tantamount to making an inferior game, regardless of whether something comes along to replace it. What makes SC1-style shoot and move so special? Why do you say that shoot and move is so much more important to StarCraft than, say, Devourers or Scouts? Or even Goliaths? Now, understand: the idea of a unit that can move and shoot simultaneously is not bad. Indeed, I would be interested to see certain specific units that had such abilities. However, calling what StarCraft 1 "perfect control" and considering it the most important form of StarCraft micro? Odds are, you're a better SC1 player than I am (note: this isn't saying much). So there's a good chance that you don't even feel the patrol micro anymore; you just do it. You've mentally abstracted that arcane sequence of commands into a single directive: shoot and move. But to anyone who has not done so, "perfect" is not the term any of them would use for this. Doing patrol micro makes no sense. It doesn't make sense why it would have the effect that it does. And you would only ever discover this if you were just randomly bashing stuff and seeing what happened. A "perfect" form of shoot and move would simply be what the Cobra was/is: a unit that fires on the move. This required no arcanum, no patrol commands. It simply fired on the move. Somehow, I get the impression that this is not what you want when you talk about shooting and moving. That what you want specifically is not merely a unit that can shoot on the move, but a unit that does so using the SC1 sequence of commands. On missing the forest for the trees The real failing of the article is that you're so focused on your own pet micro (move and shoot) that you missed a much larger, more important issue. The ability to use micro techniques, whatever micro techniques, to defeat a superior force with an inferior one. There are quite a few methods for doing this in SC2. Most of them tend to be unit abilities (Force Field probably being the biggest one), but many of these certainly exist. However, if you list these abilities out, you're likely to notice an interesting trend: the Zerg don't have very many. Maybe the reason that people find Zerg play so uninteresting is that the only way to win is to get a superior force, period. There are no tricks, whether shoot & move, whether designed abilities, or anything else, that you can use. Creep will make your units better, but it's not going to let an inferior force defeat a superior one. Nor will Nydus play. Even Infestors aren't very good force multipliers; their abilities are strong, but they're not devastating. They don't make the enemy react (and the most powerful one specifically makes it so that they can't). Broodwar was a fluke. The micro was due to the primitive game engine and coding. However, it was amazing. Why are we trying to erase these incredible flukes and attempting to discover new ones. Especially flukes that took 10 years to figure out. The fact that life evolved on Earth is sort of a cosmic fluke. This is a good question. Why erase these flukes? Because maybe they're not as incredible as you suspect. | ||
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ymirheim
Sweden300 Posts
It never happens, some people move on, some people stay and each of the blizzard games continues to exist for another day. All this internet hysteria will neither change nor delay anything. We're all just along for the ride. | ||
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Ballistixz
United States1269 Posts
On April 27 2010 13:26 DaEm0niCuS wrote: It means everything, everyone has an opinion. The thing is most people are not good at bw or sc2, and as such their opinions do not really mean anything(except for rare instances). Where as a good B+ players opinion almost always has some merit(and yes there will be those who disagree). Nothing in life is 100%. you just totaly contradicted yourself and show true elitism there. basically what your saying is B+ is the only ppl that should voice there opinion where as anyone below B+ doesnt mean anything and has no merit to it. and in the same paragraph you said everyone is entitled to there own opinion... lalush even used a D player in his post as one of his examples to the moving shots. so how can they not matter when theres alot of D to C players giving very valid points in this thread? like are you for real? | ||
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Magus
Canada450 Posts
"You can choose when to engage with your Pheonixes! They don't need moveshot!" Yes. But they have no chance of winning against a superior air force, which MICRO in BW would have allowed similar units to do. E.G.  Jaedong vs Hydra, Jaedong dances around Hydra's mutas with his own and gets off move shot after move shot while Hydra's mutas are turning, changing it from a coin toss battle, to utter rape. This is the kind of epic micro we wish to see continue. (Although to be fair I think Jaedong had 1 or 2 more mutalisks than Hydra and probably would have won anyway...) | ||
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Spawkuring
United States755 Posts
On April 27 2010 09:33 Liquid`NonY wrote: Yeah I'm saying he went waaaaaaay too far talking about design philosophy, game engines, how and why SC:BW was such a good game, etc. It was a bunch of bullshit that will make it easy for a Blizzard employee reading it get a bad feeling. A straight article about how the mechanics of moving shot micro worked in SC:BW along with a reason why it was so great for everyone (healthy for competition, fun to use, fun to watch) and a quick proof that it doesn't really exist in SC2 would have been great. This perfectly describes how I feel. The core of the argument is just "Put Moving Shot Back In". There was really no need for all the Anti-Dustin Browder/Blizzard sentiment, nor all the ridiculous commentary about game design, especially since the moving shot mechanic in SC1 was purely by accident and not by some genius of design. Now keep in mind that I'm COMPLETELY in support for a real moving shot mechanic, but I just hope Blizzard doesn't brush it off because of the article's rude tone. | ||
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heyitsme
153 Posts
except that when strategies are optimized and the game is solved... then the RTS loses all its appeal. After 2 years, all people will do is copy a select few build orders that they seen in replays. Why can't we have both strategy and micro at the same time? Wouldn't the game simply become even better? The interesting thing about favoring micro is that it opens up new viable strategies, and its not just ''filling'' some strategical holes... 2 hatch muta went from some form of all-in build to a stable strategy because players became better overall at exploiting the skill ceiling provided by muta micro. | ||
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DaEm0niCuS
United States60 Posts
On April 27 2010 13:31 Ballistixz wrote: you just totaly contradicted yourself and show true elitism there. basically what your saying is B+ is the only ppl that should voice there opinion where as anyone below B+ doesnt mean anything and has no merit to it. and in the same paragraph you said everyone is entitled to there own opinion... lalush even used a D player in his post as one of his examples to the moving shots. so how can they not matter when theres alot of D to C players giving very valid points in this thread? like are you for real? experience, certain sc skills only come at a very high level, good timing for example(and good opinions usually only come with these skills). How can a D+ player know the difference between himself and a B+ player?(sure he can speculate as to why hes worse, but he will only ever truely know if he reachs B+) The B+ player on the other hand has achieved this level. Yet both players still have opinions on everything, and both with think themselves correct. But which would you listen to? There are simply too many bad players with bad opinions. | ||
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Deviation
United States134 Posts
Awesome article. Although I'm a pessimist and with Blizzard completely ignoring the extremely strong arguments in favor of HGA (High Ground Advantage) I've got a feeling they'll probably ignore this as well. | ||
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iheartpurplez
Canada54 Posts
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Ballistixz
United States1269 Posts
On April 27 2010 13:40 DaEm0niCuS wrote: experience, certain sc skills only come at a very high level, good timing for example(and good opinions usually only come with these skills). How can a D+ player know the difference between himself and a B+ player?(sure he can speculate as to why hes worse, but he will only ever truely know if he reachs B+) The B+ player on the other hand has achieved this level. Yet both players still have opinions on everything, and both with think themselves correct. But which would you listen to? There are simply too many bad players with bad opinions. theres B+ players in this thread that disagree with him tho while at the same time theres a few average players that agree with him. with your logic the only ppl who should even be posting in this thread are B+ players where everyone else does not count for anything even tho average players have gave very valid points in this whether they agreed or disagreed with the OP thread lol, you agree with the OP and thus your trying to strengthen your own points of agreement by saying "Id be suprised if any good players bw B+ or higher on iccup disagree with this. Anyone elses opinion doesn't really mean shit IMO, lol." just look at what you said and how biased it is. | ||
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Xenocide_Knight
Korea (South)2625 Posts
On April 27 2010 13:08 Archerofaiur wrote: /facepalm Chronoboost/MULE is a replacement for SBS and manual mining. And if you want to argue that CB/MULEs are more mundane than SBS and manual mining well sir ill take that fight >  I'll take that fight, glady. Chronoboosting and MULEing, once standard builds roll around, will be precisely figured out. You will know exactly when to do what, and your reasoning will be mathematical logic. Thus, you will then click, press a hotkey, then click. When you put down a barracks at 8 supply, you click (an scv), press a hotkey (B), then click (where you want it). Chronoboositng and MULEing is going to be part of a BO. It will be as exciting as having to put down a barracks every 7-10 supply. On the other hand, SBS, or the macro system in broodwar was DIFFICULT. I practiced countless times macroing with 5sz6sh7sh8sh9sm0sm. But even then, in the middle of a big battle, or during muta micro vs sairs or storm, I freaked out. I would mispress keys all over the place. My hand was basically spasming trying to preform the actions required. Mentally, I KNEW It was time for a production round, but physically, I just couldn't do it. Kind of like how Mentally, I know I have to cross the finishline in a 100m dash, but physically, I'm never going to win the olympics. You watch progamers macro and it's beastly how accurate and fast their hands are. Chronoboosting/MULEing is literally about the same level of difficulty as manual mining. You look back at your main, click twice, and move on. You do it a few seconds late, whatever, energy saves up at the OC or Nexus anyway. On April 27 2010 13:18 ZapRoffo wrote: Given a unit that does not have the capability to moving shot (phoenix for example), a player must make a strategical decision about whether to engage or not at any given point of the game when confronted with a group of mutalisks, for example. The phoenix is still perfectly under the player's control in sc2, because the player has full information of what happens when the phoenix is going to engage: it is going to slow down with a slight drift and shoot and be briefly disabled by it's attack. It is not a lack of control, because it's not random, the player enters into that situation with full knowledge of the phoenix's characteristics (including attack and movement animations). Therefore, in considering the decision of whether to engage, the player must consider the immediate reaction of his opponent's units as well as the many possible re-positions an opponent may make during the phoenix's characteristic animation delay to react, and judge the expected value of the result accordingly. This is a much more complicated decision than the engagement decision given a moving shot animation like the Brood War muta and stacking. In this scenario again there is full knowledge of the capabilities of the muta, but the engagement decision now only must consider the immediate reaction of his opponent's units; the opponent's response can barely even occur by the time the mutas are again out of range, so there is no split second analysis of a decision tree, there is only an analysis of what's on the screen. This is what causes the brood war mechanics to be labeled more mechanical and the sc2 mechanics to be more strategical. Let me tell you exactly how the thought tree goes in sair vs Muta or Pheonix vs Muta SC2: Phoenix vs Muta I have 8 pheonix, he has 8 mutas. I can right click his muta and he has to run away I have 5 phoenix and he has 8 muta. If I right click his muta I die so i have to run away SCBW Muta vs Sair I have 9 Mutas, he has 5 sairs. If I rightclick his sair, I die so I run away I have 9 Mutas, he has 5 sairs. I practiced my muta micro. If I use patrol shot, and split my mutas well, I can win the fight with minimal losses. The problem with SC2 is that there is no micro that will cause such a huge impact in an engagement. 10 marauders will always rape 8 roaches, I dont care how well either side micro. In BW, 11 Mutas vs 30 marines with medic and turret support comes down to how much you practiced your muta or marine micro. Me vs flash, I probably would kill 3 rines and lose all my mutas. Jaedong vs flash, they might split even. Jaedong vs me, I would lose all my marines and maybe kill a muta. | ||
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nuclear_scarab
United States43 Posts
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