EPTPro level I think is more about creativity, which is a type of intelligence, sure. But I think if you're dumb you're not going to get into pro level period, as there will be too many smarter players that are more adaptable than you.
Do You Have to be Smart to Play Starcraft? - Page 10
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DuneBug
United States668 Posts
Pro level I think is more about creativity, which is a type of intelligence, sure. But I think if you're dumb you're not going to get into pro level period, as there will be too many smarter players that are more adaptable than you. | ||
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Cheerio
Ukraine3178 Posts
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eecs4ever
United States106 Posts
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Perkins1752
Germany214 Posts
+ Show Spoiler + Terran. | ||
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LittLeD
Sweden7973 Posts
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Valikyr
Sweden2653 Posts
On September 21 2010 10:24 Sanasante wrote: ""''and even in BW, players like Boxer, Nada, Bisu etc. showing that brilliant players will be able to rise over the less gifted ones""" While without a doubt I agree with Boxer and Bisu in this statement I would think about things before you spout them out. Nada was one of your first fundamentals "Mechanical style of play" that your referring to. Most people did not play SC1 this far back and may not be aware of that. I also find it funny that no one else has noticed it yet. Maybe people just settled with getting the point instead of bragging that they have some BW knowledge since that's OT and his point is clear wether every player he named was a creative player or not. I personally would've liked to see Nal_ra on that list. OnTopic: Intelligence does help but it's not necessary to be good. When you are at a very top level and the mechanics is nearly perfected (we're far from this in SC2 though) it will come down to intelligence basically. There's many kinds of intelligence though so this question is a bit weird to start with. It's pretty clear that intelligence, in whatever form it is, is an advantage when assuming that their mechanics are equally good. | ||
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GhostBusters
United States198 Posts
I don't like this argument b/c even though IdrA is a HUGE macro player, People don't relize how good he is at micro too, and how smart he truly is with his decision making.He knows exactly how many units he has to make down to the last roach so he can survive a push and save his xpo. | ||
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figq
12519 Posts
On September 22 2010 00:50 Energin wrote: You seem to have misunderstood my post, since you assume this contradicts it somehow.except everyone that's ever met TLO says he's a total genius. | ||
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Crackensan
United States479 Posts
Kidding aside, intelligence can also refers to the persons ability to keep track of several things simultaneously, or have the presence of mind to constantly keep tabs on several areas at once. The best starcraft players have this ability, which can be TRAINED. How quickly will depend on your base ability to learn and absorb lots of information. Intelligence. You could also argue that this skill is learnt through simple practice, and anyone can do it. True, but people with more intelligence nativeley will do better and learn faster. | ||
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McFoo
United Kingdom180 Posts
On September 21 2010 09:38 Hakker wrote: He loves gaming and is an amazing player and he's also a huge sports person, but he doesn't think games can be considered a sport because there's no physical effort involved in the players. He claimed that professional Starcraft doesn't take large amounts of intelligence because deficiencies in a players strategic thinking and tactics can be overcome by spamming games and perfecting mechanics. He pointed to the korean style, practicing for 12-14 hours a day, as proof of that concept as well as players like Idra who nearly completely rely on mechanics alone to bring them to the top. IdrA doesn't completely rely on mechanics, that statement is absurd. Nor is the "Korean style" completely reliant on mechanics. In the video I linked NaDa says that apm is the speed at which "you can draw your picture in the game." It doesn't matter how fast you can draw a picture if you don't know what picture you need to draw-- and that requires some intelligence, probably somewhere between Tic-Tac-Toe and chess (probably closer to chess). Deficiencies in a players strategic thinking CANNOT be overcome by perfect mechanics at a professional level. It doesn't matter how fast you are, if you do not know the ins-and-outs of your strategy (attack timings, expansion timings, upgrade timings, how to defend against all possible strategies from the opponent, how to react to the opponent properly, when and where to scout, when to save scan or stockpile lava, expansion paths, where/when to harrass, how much you need to spend in static defense etc. etc. etc.) then you are going to lose. | ||
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Dionyseus
United States2068 Posts
On September 21 2010 09:38 Hakker wrote: or can deficient strategy be overcome by spamming games and perfecting mechanics? I think you meant 'great strategy' instead of the opposite. | ||
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Hidden_MotiveS
Canada2562 Posts
On September 21 2010 09:49 Confuse wrote: It comes down to the definition of intelligence in the context of the argument. You can argue semantics all day, but i think most people will agree that starcraft, at the highest level is more tactical then strategic; once the "best" strategies are done by both players mechanics is what it comes down to, which cannot be done by everyone, in my belief, means a good starcraft player is very intelligent at starcraft. Just going along with this post. There are many types and categories of intelligence. Someone who knows more about computer software may know less about girls. No you don't have to have a super high IQ to be a starcraft pro. | ||
Cambam
United States360 Posts
On September 21 2010 15:28 IdrA wrote: 99% of the time in games you've experienced similar situations before, no one good is really coming up with entirely new creative responses on the spot. its just about how quickly you can call up and execute knowledge from similar situations in the past. One of the big benefits of practice has to do with automatic vs. normal cognition. Here's a quick lesson in psychology: Your brain has a limited amount of cognitive resources; this means you can only process a certain amount of information at one time. As you add more things to think about, you start doing poorly at one or all of the things demanding your attention. If you want an example of this, try playing a game of starcraft while counting backwards by 4's from 753 or naming all of the cities you can think of in your home state or country. You'll see your performance drop significantly in either sc or the task. Enter in: the automatic process. The automatic process is a task that takes little to no mental resources. Something you can do with your eyes closed, or in your sleep. A good example is driving. If you're an experienced driver and are driving a route that you drive everyday, you can talk to passengers or on your cell phone or just let your mind wander and you'll still end up at the correct destination. Automatization is the act of changing a task from being highly conscious to relatively automatic. Herein lies the benefit of practicing starcraft 12 hours a day. Practice is how you achieve automatization. If you practice 100 games vs. fast cloaked banshees, it will become second nature to you to recognize it and respond to it. From then on, when you scout fast banshees, instead of freaking out and spending cognitive resources on trying to figure out what to do, you will respond easily and go into auto-pilot. This frees up your cognitive resources for other things such as continuing to macro and deciding what to do after you deal with the banshees. Now, just expand this example from only cloaked banshees to every viable strat out there. Wouldn't it be nice to not be freaked out by anything? To always have cognitive resources available for macro? I'm just a lowly 1000 point diamond player and I certainly don't practice 12 hours a day, but this is my speculation as to the main benefits of lots of practice. I'd love to hear from some pros (Idra?) to see if they agree with my description or not. | ||
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AlgeriaT
Sweden2197 Posts
On September 21 2010 14:24 Harem wrote: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=81288 Please read this. Amazing article. Lots to be learned there. | ||
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Supamang
United States2298 Posts
In my opinion, sports require the same amount of intelligence. Just like SC, theres a lot of muscle memory and a lot of knowledge specific to the game, but there is still room for intelligence and good on-the-spot decision making to make a difference. A lot of people who want to claim that SC can be consider a sport seem to convince themselves that games like football or basketball require little to no intelligence. I think this is completely stupid. As a QB, you have to be able to make good calls in terms of general strategy. When the play starts, you have like 5 or 6 seconds (and many times even less time than that) to judge the circumstances and make a decision before you have a 300 pound guy (or several more) jumping on you. I would argue that playing sports can take as much intelligence as playing SC, and you usually have to make your decisions much quicker. This is what separates mainstream sports from video games. Athletes have to exert themselves 110% physically while being able to make good decisions. If you make a bad decision, you even have to possibility of severe physical injury along with losing the match. In SC, you move your wrists and your fingers and I guess your eyes, and there really are no secondary consequences to a bad decision. I honestly believe that athletic sports just take much more effort to play well, which is why people respect them much more. | ||
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Twist-O-Fate
Canada38 Posts
On September 22 2010 12:43 Cambam wrote: One of the big benefits of practice has to do with automatic vs. normal cognition. Here's a quick lesson in psychology: Your brain has a limited amount of cognitive resources; this means you can only process a certain amount of information at one time. As you add more things to think about, you start doing poorly at one or all of the things demanding your attention. If you want an example of this, try playing a game of starcraft while counting backwards by 4's from 753 or naming all of the cities you can think of in your home state or country. You'll see your performance drop significantly in either sc or the task. Enter in: the automatic process. The automatic process is a task that takes little to no mental resources. Something you can do with your eyes closed, or in your sleep. A good example is driving. If you're an experienced driver and are driving a route that you drive everyday, you can talk to passengers or on your cell phone or just let your mind wander and you'll still end up at the correct destination. Automatization is the act of changing a task from being highly conscious to relatively automatic. Herein lies the benefit of practicing starcraft 12 hours a day. Practice is how you achieve automatization. If you practice 100 games vs. fast cloaked banshees, it will become second nature to you to recognize it and respond to it. From then on, when you scout fast banshees, instead of freaking out and spending cognitive resources on trying to figure out what to do, you will respond easily and go into auto-pilot. This frees up your cognitive resources for other things such as continuing to macro and deciding what to do after you deal with the banshees. Now, just expand this example from only cloaked banshees to every viable strat out there. Wouldn't it be nice to not be freaked out by anything? To always have cognitive resources available for macro? I'm just a lowly 1000 point diamond player and I certainly don't practice 12 hours a day, but this is my speculation as to the main benefits of lots of practice. I'd love to hear from some pros (Idra?) to see if they agree with my description or not. LOL this is basically a heavy winded version of the second post in this thread. Mechanics(automatization) only get you so far; over and above is IQ. And all of you pedantic fucks who feel the need to chime in and wax philosophical about the meaning of IQ...save it. To get back to the OP's question, you don't need high IQ to play starcraft, nor do you need it to play very well, but you DO need it to play it better than those who play it very well. As with almost every discussion of this type, it no doubt follows the bell-curve rule. ![[image loading]](http://classes.kumc.edu/sah/resources/sensory_processing/images/bell_curve.gif) For arguments sake, populate this curve with starcraft players according to there skill(determining skill is a whole other can of worms, but a moot question in regards to the present point. Again, pedants bug off). Now take that same player pool, give them IQ tests, and populate a second graph with them. The CORRELATION % would be very high.....way above statistically significant. Of course there will be statistical anomalies(mostly affected by differences in peoples DRIVE to play the game). To make a perfect comparison we would need the player pool to have no differences in playing time, amongst a boatload of other factors. So for all the middle schoolers on TL ( and yes there are loads and loads), you don't HAVE to be crazy smart to be awesome at starcraft, but it sure does fuckin help. Over and out | ||
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robertdinh
803 Posts
I personally think as rts genre has progressed there has been a dumbing down process. From warcraft2 where there were no replays and you had to develop your own strats and counter strats based on experience and analytical skills, you went into bw, which still gave the player a lot of freedom to shine but information was a little more accessible than in warcraft2, to now what we have with sc2. In sc2 you can look at build orders in match history, anytime someone plays a game they have a replay created that can be watched from their perspective and they can get their builds and play broken down quite easily. They can be copied or countered for that specific build. And now you add things like an in-game clock to really dumb down some of the timings. As things go through that dumbing down process there is less reliance on intelligence. Someone who plays a ton and just copies build orders from replays of top players is going to be pretty efficient with those builds and can defeat the majority of players with ease. Based on SC2's RPS nature he may even fluke games vs "top" players. | ||
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SilverPotato
United States560 Posts
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Coeus1
Finland160 Posts
1) Drive to play the game, practice practice practice 2) Focus on getting better, identifying flaws in your game and practicing the right things 3) Mental stuff, focus etc 4) Speed of execution (mechanics) | ||
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End406
United States8 Posts
Players that excel in SC2 like TLO are remembered from their unique decision making abilities and seemingly flawless foresight. The strategies on forums and commentaries that we try to employ into our own matches were thought up by someone who had a much better understanding of the game and for this reason I perceive those players will be able to do things in the game that most of us would initially think "that's never going to work". Not only does making viable strategies require a bunch of effort, it also takes a keen general game sense such as, *What race does my opponent have*,  oes the map that I'm on make sense for this strategy*, *Am I getting 6 pooled or proxy gated?*. There are so many small factors in this game that add up and will eventually snowball into either absolute domination to your opponent or complete demise for yourself if the person you are playing is more intellectual or "creative". Lastly, by your friend cutting down SC2 or any RTS and saying it doesn't require much intellect to be good at can be easily taken as a insult for the pro gamers and for everyone else that devotes time to learn more and more about the game. In Starcraft2 a single player divides up his/her attention to manage tons and tons of things going on all at one time. As in contact sports such as football there are many people on the field but each as a individual have only a few tasks to perform. The the QB being the exception. WIN ON TLO! | ||
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