So me and my friend had a discussion today about starcraft and pro-gaming in general. He's always been a skeptic when it comes to e-sports. 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. While he doesn't think it is sport in the traditional sense, he loves competitive gaming and follows it just as much as the next nerd.
Now, that discussion has been done to death, but it did lead us into an interesting debate. 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.
I countered his argument by pointing out some of the genius strategies that players like TLO employs. I pointed him to the legendary Nazgul vs. TLO game, where TLO makes extensive tactical use of nukes and battlecruisers. It's plays like that, something an average person wouldn't even be able to conceive, that prove that brilliant players like TLO, MorroW, Tester and even in BW, players like Boxer, Nada, Bisu etc. showing that brilliant players will be able to rise over the less gifted ones.
So I was wondering what TL thinks. Does intelligence matter when it comes to Starcraft, or can deficient strategy be overcome by spamming games and perfecting mechanics?
Of course intelligence matters, but there are many kinds of intelligence. It's perfectly possible to be intelligent about Starcraft but not about something else.
Flash has frequently talked in interviews about how he always tries to out-think his opponent. At the highest levels the game is very mentally taxing. However, your friend might be setting some unreachable standard
I don't think you need to be intelligent to become very good at SC. I agree entirely with the "practice makes perfect" argument that your friend supports.
There are obviously opportunities to be creative and to showcase your smarts. But I think that overall a lot of SC is mechanical and deals heavily in repetition/memory (even learning numbers like hits-to-kill).
Like many things in life, I think you simply need to be "smart enough" to understand and play the game. From there, intelligence will have rare opportunities to do more for you than mechanics.
Well, you certainly need to be somewhat intelligent (not retarded I guess), but I think by the way your posting you should be fine lol. It isn't like chess, and ultimately, intellect is not going to bar your progress. I'd say above average intellect, but everyone on the internet in complete and coherent sentences should be fine because average intellect is really low lol.
A lot of the intellectual skills in SC2 are learned. Its about thinking in terms of the structure of game, in terms of timing windows, positions, map awareness, etc. Not much of it relies on "hard" mental skills that can't really be improved beyond a certain point.
At the same time your friends pretty wrong in the sense that Starcraft doesn't require intellect. But hes true in the sense that it doesn't require too much innate intellect that can't be improved.
And people who characterize Idra as a mechanical player in the sense that he wins because his he has higher effective apm then his opponents don't really have a great understanding of the game, at least no in Starcraft 2.
Basically the ability to think on your feet is essential for high-level starcraft play. You can't anticipate everything your opponent can do, so real-time reaction is key.
However, usually that kind of interaction only occurs in the mid to late game, not with all the 1 base build that are commonly used.
I think you don't necessarily need to be intelligent to be able to from strategies and to know what to do in certain situations, but like you said, the truly intelligent ones will eventually separate themselves from the rest.
You have to be smart to be good at starcraft. Playing and being good are two different things Spamming games is a way to learn the game thus makes you a smarter player, so yes to both I guess.
if you're talking about intelligence as in do well in school and stuff like that, then no it isn't required to be good however game sense isn't something that you can achieve by practicing (otherwise everyone would be at flash's level)
there have been countless discussions on this already with starcraft 1, i dont think we should start another one here
"..Idra who nearly completely rely on mechanics alone.." common misconception with idra, people just think he plays like a robot without thinking, but i think his quick decision making is one of his strong points
IdrA is a smart player. He just players zerg which is a reactive race so his decisions aren't really in the spotlight. If you play a high level zerg then u can appreciate it but he is a smart player. Ofcourse if you think smart play is nukes than you might consider 4v4 games filled with child prodigies.
There are limitations to how good you can be without being at least halfway intelligent, but with enough playing you can beat someone who is more intelligent than you for sure. plus blind counters are super effective.
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.
I don't think it requires as much intelligence as say, chess, but generally speaking, most top Starcraft players I've seen come across as pretty intelligent.
Definitely no. Being smart will let you learn the metagame faster but by just practicing enough anybody will eventually learn all counters and strategies. While the game is new the smart guys will have an advantage, with time intelligence will be completely irrelevant compared to experience and mechanics.
Good mechanics or good strategy--you clearly have to have BOTH to be a top player. Sure, you can have a stronger area in one or the other, but both are absolutely essential to high level play, and honestly I find it mind blowing that your friend thought that--my guess is that he is not a serious RTS player, is he?
The term intelligence is vague of a word anyway. This is a game. A really popular video game at that. Requires practice to increase the skill level. But I doubt you have to be smart to play. If one is to realize they actually have a brain, professional gaming isn't something they would go into anyway.
It certainly helps, but it's hard to quantify as a pre-requisite. There's no paper-scissors-rock dynamic of brains > mechanics > practice > brains or something, and you can't measure how smart a player's decisionmaking or build order is, or how accurate they are mechanically.
However, regarding practice - that applies to ANYTHING so it's not really worth bringing up. You get the natural freaks vs hard workers in any sport or competition.
Also, while intelligence on its own might be trumped by pure mechanics and experience sometimes, things such as mental strength and motivation play a big part so there is definitely a mental side to it.
if uve ever played some1 whose = to you in that match up it becomes quite obvious u have to outsmart them or trick them to win. its like if u played chess and the other guy got to take 2 turns while u took one, ur going to lose no matter how good ur strategy is. its when u both have the same turns when the real strategy kicks in.
It is true that spamming games makes you better but you need inteligence to see where you have to deviate your build, when to scout etc, all of this need inteligence but i think other people can make that work instead the player (e.g coaches,forums,other players). If you have good coaches and they tell you what you are doing wrong and you play A LOT of games then you are pretty safe against a lot of strategies, of course a more inteligent player will reach faster to that conclusions but it isnt crucial imo.
It's not just intelligence. The argument that you had with your friend is an argument that I have with a lot of my friends. The answer depends on the person definition of a "sport."
For a person grinding so many games, its called practice. Practice practice practice. Skill isn't just a given talent. It's earned through practice. Whether is singing, dancing, physical sports, exercise. You have to practice and gain experience. And its not just all intelligence. For people like TLO, his tactics are clever but that's only his style. That sort of style, which isn't seen in the Korean servers will throw off a lot of players. Its practice that makes these Korean pro starcraft gamers on top. Building muscle memory and making everything second nature. There's so many things I can list that requires lots of repetitive practice that can make a person become better at it. (even if its considered a sport or not. I like to call it a talent/skill)
One example that comes to mind is Michael Jordon. Every time he had a game, he would warm up with atleast 100 free throws. Every athletic sport requires practice, not just intelligence. Even for the World Cup, even nations team practiced their hardest. Even the countries in South Africa because they were playing in their home country (and I give a lot of respect for that). Even singers. Not everyone is gifted an "amazing voice". They practice and practice to pull out that amazing voice that they never knew they had. Even playing an instrument. It's not that someone is intelligent that allows them to play the instrument. They practice and practice. They exercise their brain to adapt and grow. That's probably one of the reasons why parents would want their parents to play an instrument. I, personally, like to draw. Although I haven't drawn for a long time, I would doodle a lot when I was younger. I would grow the motor skills.
A person is the ideal AI or medium in which you can execute a sport/skill/talent. Through practice, you can grow on your knowledge. Every little detail that your brain absorbs becomes intelligence from the long hours of practice. And these little details also include actions that your muscles are doing without you knowing.
Think of everything as a challenge. Adapting and learning. It's probably the greatest skill. To think one is intelligent and perfect to begin with, is a fault.
On September 21 2010 09:46 awu25 wrote: if you're talking about intelligence as in do well in school and stuff like that, then no it isn't required to be good however game sense isn't something that you can achieve by practicing (otherwise everyone would be at flash's level)
Lol im pretty sure flash practices so much to the point where the muscles in his fingers start tearing.
I don't think theres alot of people outside of korea that practice that much.
IMO, you dont need to be very intelligent to be good. It's more about the ability to make quick decisions and perform a lot of tasks at once. There are a lot of decisions to be made, but most of them are not difficult decisions that require intellectual thinking. Scouting will give you the answer to many questions, and if you have to guess about something there are only limited possibilities which can be reduced with thoughts such as, .e.g. how much game time has passed, which dictates the units they can possibly have, what did their army consist of last time you saw it, what do you anticipate is the current enemy income, does it seem they would have a lot of gas in reserve based on what they currently have built, what buildings do they already have, or are near to having tech for.... etc etc. All these simple thoughts allow you to deduce what your opponent may do next, none of them are particularly taxing, but thinking about these things and being able to control all of your stuff effectively... now that is the skill. I don't think it's really intelligence, its more multitasking.
On September 21 2010 09:52 WhoaDrugs wrote: The term intelligence is vague of a word anyway. This is a game. A really popular video game at that. Requires practice to increase the skill level. But I doubt you have to be smart to play. If one is to realize they actually have a brain, professional gaming isn't something they would go into anyway.
I don't think that's an accurate assumption. If someone has the opportunity to turn something that they love into a lifestyle and career, the lesser person would shy away from the work and practice involved while the person with more initiative would take the opportunity and do everything he can to maximize the gain from it.
My old math teacher in Middle school used to be a professional computer scientist specializing in cryptology for IBM making huge amounts of money for a non-executive position. He became a Middle School math teacher because he didn't like the attention he got and felt like he was being regarded as a spectacle instead of another person. Sometimes the smartest people can be the craziest.
On September 21 2010 09:48 {88}iNcontroL wrote: Machine.
so bm
=)... jk
but ya... just cuz you can spam out mass hydras against toss doesn't mean you're gonna win every game.. it's the ability to think on the fly, react to what's going on in Real Time and adjust your Strategy based on that.... (see what i did there? eh? EH?!)
the players who make "creative" or "intuitive" plays are the ones who will always be at the top. Period.
""''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.
Imo, i think its game intelligence and game sense that matters. Once everyone's mechanics and multitasking and decision making are top tier, its their game sense that will bring them to the top. Intelligence would ideally help you as it helps you learn everything in life but some parts of the game comes from your innate talent imo.
There's always different kinds of intelligence and SC no doubt requires a certain kind of intellect, one that can try to anticipate what your opponent is going to do.
Maybe this doesn't happen in SC2 yet (still kind of limited) but there are so many strategies and openers in BW and it takes a good analytical mind to try to predict what your opponent will do and what you should do. A lot of it is game theory, and I'm sure many of the to pros are very good at that in tournaments.
Do you have to be smart to play? No. Anyone can play.
I think the problem with this topic is defining "smart." Something that I believe the entire world has been hard-pressed to do. We all have varying levels of ability, knowledge, ideas, and mechanical skill. How we use them can affect our games in varying ways. Does it need to be any more complicated than that?
It's pretty obvious that having good mechanics and build orders will get you a long way in SC2. Eventually though, the best build orders will be found, and mechanical skills will plateau. When that happens, the player who out-thinks his opponent will win. I don't think smarts will ever be a basic necessity for being decent at starcraft 2, but it will separate the merely good players from the great ones.
On September 21 2010 10:23 KezseN wrote: Whts with the machine joke? i dont get it
read muh quote
in BW machine was zerg. pure mechanics and apm. kid had like 300 apmz which is sick for a foreigner, especially US. but he was pants on head retarded when it came to anything but macro. his micro was terrible, spurring the quote by his team, EG
"MACHINEEEEE MICROOOOOO"
alluding to terrible micro occurring. its a normal joke on the team that machine is awful. mostly because he is.
I don't think it requires as much intelligence as say, chess, but generally speaking, most top Starcraft players I've seen come across as pretty intelligent.
Many people think that to become a professional chess player one needs to be very intelligent. To reach the top 10 in the world this is undoubtedly true, but there are ordinary professional chess players with IQ scores below average.
Intelligence helps of course, but becoming a professional chess player really just requires lots of memorisation and training. The most important trait is probably motivation (the desire to win). Many famous chess players are notoriously bad losers. If you want a chess equivalent of idrA probably the best example is Viktor Korchnoi, who levelled all sorts of accusations (hypnosis, psychology, spying etc etc) against his opponents, and frequently trash talked them (relatively speaking that is - obviously the things he said might seem tame to someone used to 21st-Century internet forums).
Anyway I suspect the same is true of starcraft 2. If you have a strong desire to win and you do the right kind of training those 2 things are more important than your intelligence.
I guess it depends how you define 'smart.' Will extreme in depth knowledge of Calculus help you? Doubtful. Will being a great poet and master wordsmith help you? Doubt it. Will having a perfect SAT help you? Doubt it. You just have to play a certain amount and you'll know what you need to do. Playing Starcraft isn't exactly rocket surgery out there.
Intelligence is not an unchangeable property of a person, or at least specialized intelligence isn't. It is true that Korean style mass gaming will win games. This is in large part because mass games make you smarter, at least when it comes to starcraft. The initial argument that "oh all you need to do is mass games to be good, therefore it requires no intelligence to play" is fundamentally flawed. If you put boxer and einstein in a match together, boxer is actually the more intelligent person as far as gameplay goes. This is because he has a deep understanding of the game, whereas einstein has to rely on his intuition, which in starcraft is often misleading.
Do you need to be smart to be a QB in football? No, you just need a general understanding of the game.
Being smart though makes players like Peyton Manning get constant praise for being brilliant for what the casual observer looks at simply as being a good QB not a smart QB.
If you don't have to have any intelligence for the game why is it that we only see certain players that are really able to effectively create great builds, or be able to make subtle modifications to builds.
If it didn't take any intelligence we should see almost every player being able to come up with great new strategies, yet most don't do so.
Yes, mechanics are still a major player, and if your mechanics are above the level of most of your opponents you can still do well, simple because there does exist a framework within which the game is played, so even if you can't innovate or improvise super well, by just microing better, macroing better, more multitask you can still give players a fight through sheer fundamental play. Think of a golfer that has the ability to hit genius shots, he has wonderful control of the ball, can really work a shot any way he wants, great imagination, etc, but he has kind of a lose and sloppy swing and hits the ball only 240 yards. He has genius, but not great fundamentals. Player B on the other hand only has one shot, but he does it well and has alot more distance. Player A is going to struggle with B because B is hitting such shorter shots that regardless of his lack of creativity hes just going to put the ball in their closer to the hole more regularly than A, despite A's genius. It's similar in starcraft; if you're able to out macro and out multitask your opponent you can still be able to win even without brilliant strategy because he can't keep up.
At the top level though that tends to be reduced because everyone has great mechanics. There is a reason the top BW players like Flash and Jaedong are also known to be some of the smartest and most creative players; they all have great mechanics at that level, so its your ability to innovate and adapt that really seperates very good from true S class.
You definitely need a good general understanding of the game to go with your mechanics, no matter how good they are, because everyone can get good at mechanics. However, i feel like if you want to separate yourself from the rest of the crop, you will need an even deeper understanding of the game, such as all the intricate timings in every matchup.
My understanding is that the average Korean SC pro-gamer practices 12+ hours a day and earns less than someone working at McDonalds. Even if you want to bring "living the dream" or "doing what you love" into it, it doesn't exactly scream smart to me.
As with many strategy games, a lot of the thinking can be done for you, but the game is designed to ultimately become a battle of the wits. Once combatants' mechanics are perfected, a game of Starcraft is a clash of mental tenacity, agility, and perspicacity.
As many have said, though, for the vast majority of players with non-perfect mechanics, brilliance is not a prerequisite to ladder success.
To Sanasante: While NaDa did wield a famous 400 apm and cutting edge mechanics, I think his unquestionable game understanding, in-game quick thinking, and innovation in actually leveraging his mechanics-oriented style warrant him a place among any list of brilliant BW players. His role in pioneering mechanically demanding strategies has left an indelible mark on BW's history.
You don't have to be smart to be top shape, but it will definetly help. Actually many korean media featured about how progamer's brain is different from others, and they did have some special features, like better prediction and judgement calling.
To be answered we gotta consider the semantic question what does it mean to be smart. To answer that we gotta tackle the metaphysical and epistemic issues surrounding intelligence(smartness) and/or knowledge.
Long story short: the question is too vague to lead to a coherent discussion of possible answers.
This said, my 2 cents is that you don't *have* to be smart but it is certainly a huge asset: something akin smartness is to pro starcraft like tallness is to pro basketball.
This is never truly the case. Show me a player that has perfect micro/macro/multitask. On the ground level players may seem to have a perfect ability in one or more of these categories however in general practice this never truly be the case.
While macro and multitasking abilities can technically be completely mastered, micro cannot. There are too many variables and too many positions in which a player can prepare for.
An intelligent or "Smart" player only true key advantage is that he has an ability to think quickly on his feet and react in the best manner he can. Following my train of logic earlier while macro/multitasking abilities can be "technically perfect" or at least by our judge of standard damn close, the more intelligent player can think ahead to create a situation that might be favorable for himself/herself.
While in practice and over time these various seemingly random situations depart bits of information which we remember. Through repetition we can react mentally faster but it does not change the fact it is impossible to experience all the possible situations a player can find himself in. It is due to our ability to simplify these situations into responses that we come up with strategies that say "If my opponent does this... then I must do this".
If you want to take this a step further then you can understand why players become tunnel visioned into play styles.
I think at the beginning of any game, when players mechanics aren't very strong relative to what they will be in a few years, players who are smarter and more tactically inclined will always dominate. In Brood War, players like Grrrr... and Boxer dominated early because they were innovative. In the past few years,all levels of Brood War have been dominated by boring Macrobots, except for the very highest level, Like FlaSh and Jaedong right now. Those two can beat everyone else just by better mechanics, but when they play each other, that's where innovation happens.
I'm sorry but to all those who say you need to be intelligent to play the game, I counter by saying you're playing it wrong. There has already been studies in Korea where it shows that casual SC:BW players use logic when making decisions. But the logic is usually pretty simple (for example, my opponent is massing marines? I'll get banelings). Pros on the other hand, do not have time to think. They rely on instincts that have been ingrained in their mind from years of practice.
no you absolutely do not have to be smart to play starcraft, even at the professional level. with SC2 how it is now it is rewarding smart players because people don't know what to do in situations and nothing is really standard yet. Once the game is more figured out it will not require any real intelligence to play at even the very highest levels. Is it an advantage? Of course. But it is far from necessary, the game, once it is more solved, is mostly a mechanics challenge.
On the other hand there are different types of intelligence. If you mean critical thinking and problem solving skills which is how most people would interpret the question I would say no like above. However discipline is considered a type of intelligence, handling pressure, multitasking, etc. These are traits that fall under some definitions of intelligence and are very much required.
You have to smart and fast. You can't be one without the other and be really good. You have to memorize builds, react properly, have game sense, and make quick decisions and do this really fast
Take MMA and boxing. Fitness and constant repetition will make you excellent at executing techniques. Yet, when you get at the upper tier of competition, you will face other excellent fitness and hard work competitors. At this point, two finely tuned athletes require more than just technique execution to defeat the other. They need strategy, tactics, and timing in their decision making. At this point, the smartest competitor will win.
So constant repetition will allow you to master the basics. You will go very far with that type of "hard-work" and strong worth ethic mentality, leaving many in the way. At the top, everybody will have this and it will not be enough. It is thus that once you have perfected the mechanical part, you will be able to enter the elite group of strategists and tacticians of this game.
On September 21 2010 11:14 Reason.SC2 wrote: To be answered we gotta consider the semantic question what does it mean to be smart. To answer that we gotta tackle the metaphysical and epistemic issues surrounding intelligence(smartness) and/or knowledge.
Long story short: the question is too vague to lead to a coherent discussion of possible answers.
This said, my 2 cents is that you don't *have* to be smart but it is certainly a huge asset: something akin smartness is to pro starcraft like tallness is to pro basketball.
This. The OP question is much too vague.
The real question: What is intelligence? Are you talking about intelligence you are born with? Can't intelligence be acquired through a lot of practice? Aren't their different kinds of intelligence?
And further more what does it mean to be "smart"? An I.Q. greater than 100? Greater than 130?
When any one of us started playing starcraft or warcraft or whatever our first RTS was, we were all morons. After a while we learn the concepts and the feel for that game and our RTS knowledge, or intelligence, grows. And once you get to the pro level you know a TON of stuff about the game that your average person just wouldn't see. I'm tired of the BS that "players like Idra who nearly completely rely on mechanics alone" means you don't have to be smart to play sc2. First off, Idra has an incredible game sense and knows how to encounter many strategies and how to react to other "intelligent" players meaning he'd have to be intelligent himself. And second, why is playing a lot of games proof that you don't have to be intelligent? The more games you play, your knowledge of sc2 increases.
How is it that pros practicing 12-14 hours a day proof that you don't have to be smart? Great pianists practice 8+ hours a day, does that not make them smart musically? What about great chess players? They have to practice hours every day.
If the game basically takes mechanics alone, or you just have to be a "machine to play", why hasn't a good AI come out yet? Computers are much faster than us, and if all it takes is quick mechanics to be good, than there should be an impossibly good AI better than any of us slow humans.
On September 21 2010 09:38 Hakker wrote: Now, that discussion has been done to death, but it did lead us into an interesting debate. 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.
Your friend is completely right about this part.
Before my school started I played a lot of SC. I played like 6-8 hours a day. I got to the top 100 just because I played a lot. Anybody could have done it. It wasn't Starcraft skill because I didn't play BW and I haven't played a PC rts since AoE. Now that school's started and I can't play that much, I've been dropping down. For me, my skill on this game is pretty much purely a function of how much I play the game.
Before this game, I played a game called Halo Wars, which was a really simple RTS with a low mechanics-ceiling. But while at the time I thought it was a bit lame how 'easy' the game was, it was sort of a blessing in disguise. Because the APM/Mechanics part of the game was basically out of the window, the entire differentiating factor between players became purely strategy and mental processes. As a result, the game did not reward you for playing 12 hours a day because you did not improve your mechanics, and the game was a game entirely of thinking - pure talent/intelligence.
Shooter games like CoD approach that level. Aiming mechanics are not the pinnacle of skill on CoD4 because people die very quickly. Teamwork and game sense are the most important qualities on that game, and as a result, I believe they are much more intelligence/talent based.
Starcraft's mechanics ceiling is too high to ever reach that level, which is why it will always be a time vampire that requires many many thousands of hours to be pro, regardless of your skill level. We see players like WhiteRa who are clearly mentally qualified to be pros being basically forced out by people just because they play more. This isn't good for a competitive game.
I would say you need either exceptional strategic play or exceptional mechanics to do well in starcraft. Those few that possess both occupy the very highest tier. With the early sc2 scene, I think strategic play is first and foremost in determining how well you do, but this will likely change (ie: boxer no longer able to dominate bw).
I am yet to see a StarCraft 2 game where a player has truly showed strategic awesomeness. Some small decisions - yes, but nothing really cool.
However, SC:BW was a different story. I've had the chance to discuss strategies, including SC2 ones, with SC1 pros and it is obvious that they put a lot of thought into it. Also, the fact that so many SC1 pros became good poker players is also pointing at them being intelligent.
P.S. Being innovative as in finding new purposes of a specific unit does not require as much thinking as utilising the same old unit everyone knows as in positioning and transitions.
On September 21 2010 09:38 Hakker wrote: Now, that discussion has been done to death, but it did lead us into an interesting debate. 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.
Your friend is completely right about this part.
Before my school started I played a lot of SC. I played like 6-8 hours a day. I got to the top 100 just because I played a lot. Anybody could have done it. It wasn't Starcraft skill because I didn't play BW and I haven't played a PC rts since AoE. Now that school's started and I can't play that much, I've been dropping down. For me, my skill on this game is pretty much purely a function of how much I play the game.
Before this game, I played a game called Halo Wars, which was a really simple RTS with a low mechanics-ceiling. But while at the time I thought it was a bit lame how 'easy' the game was, it was sort of a blessing in disguise. Because the APM/Mechanics part of the game was basically out of the window, the entire differentiating factor between players became purely strategy and mental processes. As a result, the game did not reward you for playing 12 hours a day because you did not improve your mechanics, and the game was a game entirely of thinking - pure talent/intelligence.
Shooter games like CoD approach that level. Aiming mechanics are not the pinnacle of skill on CoD4 because people die very quickly. Teamwork and game sense are the most important qualities on that game, and as a result, I believe they are much more intelligence/talent based.
Starcraft's mechanics ceiling is too high to ever reach that level, which is why it will always be a time vampire that requires many many thousands of hours to be pro, regardless of your skill level. We see players like WhiteRa who are clearly mentally qualified to be pros being basically forced out by people just because they play more. This isn't good for a competitive game.
Food for thought.
Broodwar is like Basketball, or any other sport, where you must dedicate and train yourself to become anywhere near decent. Starcraft 2 is more like Risk or a board game (checkers/chess), where it requires much less practicing, but relies more on the mental aspect of things. Personally I think Broodwar is much more fulfilling.
On September 21 2010 09:38 Hakker wrote: Now, that discussion has been done to death, but it did lead us into an interesting debate. 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.
Your friend is completely right about this part.
Before my school started I played a lot of SC. I played like 6-8 hours a day. I got to the top 100 just because I played a lot. Anybody could have done it. It wasn't Starcraft skill because I didn't play BW and I haven't played a PC rts since AoE. Now that school's started and I can't play that much, I've been dropping down. For me, my skill on this game is pretty much purely a function of how much I play the game.
Before this game, I played a game called Halo Wars, which was a really simple RTS with a low mechanics-ceiling. But while at the time I thought it was a bit lame how 'easy' the game was, it was sort of a blessing in disguise. Because the APM/Mechanics part of the game was basically out of the window, the entire differentiating factor between players became purely strategy and mental processes. As a result, the game did not reward you for playing 12 hours a day because you did not improve your mechanics, and the game was a game entirely of thinking - pure talent/intelligence.
Shooter games like CoD approach that level. Aiming mechanics are not the pinnacle of skill on CoD4 because people die very quickly. Teamwork and game sense are the most important qualities on that game, and as a result, I believe they are much more intelligence/talent based.
Starcraft's mechanics ceiling is too high to ever reach that level, which is why it will always be a time vampire that requires many many thousands of hours to be pro, regardless of your skill level. We see players like WhiteRa who are clearly mentally qualified to be pros being basically forced out by people just because they play more. This isn't good for a competitive game.
Food for thought.
Broodwar is like Basketball, or any other sport, where you must dedicate and train yourself to become anywhere near decent. Starcraft 2 is more like Risk or a board game (checkers/chess), where it requires much less practicing, but relies more on the mental aspect of things. Personally I think Broodwar is much more fulfilling.
I guess I'm on the other side of the fence, I think the reliance on mechanics makes a game less about strategy and more about repetitive muscle memory techniques that require nothing but time. To take it to the logical extreme, if BW had literally no AI at all, and a worker would grab minerals, stop, wait for a command, return to the CC, stop, wait for a command, and you had to manually micro all of your workers, the game would reach a point where it eventually becomes literally 100% mechanics and 0% thinking as the importance of mechanics elevates above everything else.
Starcraft 2 takes less mechanics than BW, but it's still at such a level that it prevents it from being a talent-based game. Otherwise WhiteRa would still be one of the best Protoss players.
On the other hand being less mechanical doesn't mean a game becomes more strategic. There is only a limited set of strategies, if you "out-smart" your opponent most of the time that doesn't mean you were really smart but it just means you experienced the tactic before and you know the counter. Every moron can learn a list of counters. StarCraft simply is not deep enough to allow for real strategy, that's why it has to emphasize mechanics so much, otherwise there wouldn't be any competition (just randomness). If you want real strategy then you'd have to turn SC into a turn based game with a very different resource and unit mechanic. Think chess in space.
you dont really have to be that smart like IQ or anything like that. straight up mechanics could get you disgustingly far in bw so i think you could bring some of that over.
I agree with your friend with it not being a sport, to an extent.
While there is no real physical aspect of the game, other than fast (And sometimes really fast) Movement of the hands, there is defiantly an entertainment/spectator part of view that can put it somewhere near the definition of the word.
I disagree with no real intelligence, yes, practiced 12-14 hours a day may help, but if you don't know how to analyze a loss, like myself for a good part of the beta, practice goes nowhere. There is also the curve ball that is in some Proleague games, proxies, all-ins, hidden tech are all things that need to be adjusted too on a dime, which can't be done with success from a half-wit.
TL;DR: Practice helps, intelligence is what lets you learn from practice.
I find it surprising that no one has addressed the core issue here. Intelligence isn't some magical thing that you either have or don't. While genetics do play a big part on your brain's development, your intelligence is merely a compilation of learning experiences through-out life, emphasizing on the development in the earliest stages of life. However, even the dumbest person, when subjected to a subject for long enough, can develop an intelligence for that subject. So, the question isn't so much do you have to be "intelligent" to be good, it should be do you have to be "intelligent" to get good quickly, which is usually confirmed.
Where is the argument that practicing very good high level mechanics = good game sense? The same can be said of ANYTHING that needs practice to learn. This is about as old as the hard work vs. natural talent debate - if you've got natural talent it only accelerates your pace of learning. Being smart has nothing to do with it (being smart at all is a myth, but that's a different conversation).
Now, does this detract from a game's inherent competitiveness? Does practicing basketball for several hours detract from that game's competitiveness?
On September 21 2010 09:38 Hakker wrote: Now, that discussion has been done to death, but it did lead us into an interesting debate. 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.
Your friend is completely right about this part.
Before my school started I played a lot of SC. I played like 6-8 hours a day. I got to the top 100 just because I played a lot. Anybody could have done it. It wasn't Starcraft skill because I didn't play BW and I haven't played a PC rts since AoE. Now that school's started and I can't play that much, I've been dropping down. For me, my skill on this game is pretty much purely a function of how much I play the game.
Before this game, I played a game called Halo Wars, which was a really simple RTS with a low mechanics-ceiling. But while at the time I thought it was a bit lame how 'easy' the game was, it was sort of a blessing in disguise. Because the APM/Mechanics part of the game was basically out of the window, the entire differentiating factor between players became purely strategy and mental processes. As a result, the game did not reward you for playing 12 hours a day because you did not improve your mechanics, and the game was a game entirely of thinking - pure talent/intelligence.
Shooter games like CoD approach that level. Aiming mechanics are not the pinnacle of skill on CoD4 because people die very quickly. Teamwork and game sense are the most important qualities on that game, and as a result, I believe they are much more intelligence/talent based.
Starcraft's mechanics ceiling is too high to ever reach that level, which is why it will always be a time vampire that requires many many thousands of hours to be pro, regardless of your skill level. We see players like WhiteRa who are clearly mentally qualified to be pros being basically forced out by people just because they play more. This isn't good for a competitive game.
Food for thought.
Did you play Halo wars 6-8 hours a day? When you spend a lot of time on ANYTHING you are going to get good at it. Granted there are limitations, like you probably won't be great in basketball if you are 5 foot 0, but you could still be good.
I'll refer to my previous point which is if being good at SC or SC2 were purely/mostly mechanics wouldn't their be a super AI that could beat everybody? If speed and multi-tasking are all that are required to be good then a computer would be unbeatable.
It's true that WhiteRa has the intelligence to be mentally qualified and he still does very, very well(last I checked he was in the top 20 in EU). But I also don't think he's necessarily any more mentally qualified than Tester or IdrA, who have the mechanics AND the intelligence to be great at the game.
On September 21 2010 12:52 d3_crescentia wrote: Now, does this detract from a game's inherent competitiveness? Does practicing basketball for several hours detract from that game's competitiveness?
Basketball has built-in limitations on how much you can practice. Usually your body won't let you practice for more than 6-8 hours, and in addition practicing ceases to be effective after so much practice in a day and you need to give time for your muscles to rest. Even practicing large amounts of time takes a lot of willpower. It is hard as hell to do because your body will physically try to stop you.
Starcraft doesn't have those limitations, which is what makes Starcraft a really bad competitive game in my mind. Anybody with no real-life commitments can sit down and play the game 12 hours a day. It takes no willpower, it doesn't physically hurt, and there is no mechanism preventing you from doing so.
On September 21 2010 09:38 Hakker wrote: Now, that discussion has been done to death, but it did lead us into an interesting debate. 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.
Food for thought.
Did you play Halo wars 6-8 hours a day? When you spend a lot of time on ANYTHING you are going to get good at it. Granted there are limitations, like you probably won't be great in basketball if you are 5 foot 0, but you could still be good.
See above reply - basketball is much different than starcraft.
And no, I didn't play Halo Wars 6-8 hours a day - and the people who played mass games never really were top players. That's because the game's mechanics ceiling was very low and you couldn't differentiate yourself from others by getting good mechanically (which takes massing games). I disliked it at the time but I'm starting to like the idea of it more and more when I see the way Starcraft players exploit their lack of real-life commitments for an edge.
the real benefits of being intelligent is just understanding the game faster. Memorizing build orders doesn't take too much creativity, but being able to understand them is something completely different. You have to know why each piece of the build is there and what it does in relation to your opponent. You also have to be able to adapt your pre-designed plan to further advantages against your opponent's strategy as well as fill your own weaknesses. Even after all that, your strategy may go completely wrong and you need to improvise some solution with what you got. All of these decisions take different types of thought patterns and can be learned over time by anyone, but clever people will pick them up faster.
On September 21 2010 09:45 Half wrote: Well, you certainly need to be somewhat intelligent (not retarded I guess), but I think by the way your posting you should be fine lol. It isn't like chess, and ultimately, intellect is not going to bar your progress. I'd say above average intellect, but everyone on the internet in complete and coherent sentences should be fine because average intellect is really low lol.
A lot of the intellectual skills in SC2 are learned. Its about thinking in terms of the structure of game, in terms of timing windows, positions, map awareness, etc. Not much of it relies on "hard" mental skills that can't really be improved beyond a certain point.
At the same time your friends pretty wrong in the sense that Starcraft doesn't require intellect. But hes true in the sense that it doesn't require too much innate intellect that can't be improved.
And people who characterize Idra as a mechanical player in the sense that he wins because his he has higher effective apm then his opponents don't really have a great understanding of the game, at least no in Starcraft 2.
It is like chess. IQ doesn't really correspond to chess ability either. Being clever or talented helps but it's a learned skill.
See above reply - basketball is much different than starcraft.
And no, I didn't play Halo Wars 6-8 hours a day - and the people who played mass games never really were top players. That's because the game's mechanics ceiling was very low and you couldn't differentiate yourself from others by getting good mechanically (which takes massing games). I disliked it at the time but I'm starting to like the idea of it more and more when I see the way Starcraft players exploit their lack of real-life commitments for an edge.
Well, yes, I was just using basketball as an example that when it comes to being good at almost anything you need to both put in the time and have the talent. But did you read the rest of my post? If the game is mostly mechanically based, wouldn't it be possible to create an unbeatable AI?
I will agree that playing 10 or more hours a day is pretty excessive. But why do you think natural talent should trump practice? When it comes to mastery in most anything, whether it be music or sports or science etc., you can't rely on pure talent/smarts alone. Richard Feynman, a nobel-award winning physicist, was said to have an IQ of 125, which is much lower than the average nobel award winning scientist. So how was he so successful? Hard work.
And you bring up WhiteRa who is very intelligent and a very good player but doesn't quite have the time to have an edge. As I said earlier though the same is true for anything like a pro golfer or a concert pianist. You need to put in the time if you want to be among the best.
Also, how big is the Halo Wars scene compared to SC? If it were as big maybe to be among the best players you would have to mass a lot of games just for experience's sake.
I don't think I've ever seen a play in BW or SC2 where I went, "wow, I never would have thought of that!".
TLO's use of nukes are very good, but they are not genius. He simply uses them for zone control, which is the most obvious use of them.
I think some very high level players are also very smart; being smart lends itself to self improvement. However, many other top players probably aren't very smart, and rely upon endless practice.
Yes, you actually can just rely on mechanics to carry you to the top.
There's nothing genius about, "build an army and attack at an appropriate(timing attack? don't walk into a line of tanks?) time, perhaps getting a surround", or "harass while also attacking". Even an average person who has never played the game before could figure out those tactics, and yet they are the tactics used in the highest levels of play.
There is innovation and creativity, but not genius, in SC play.
On September 21 2010 09:38 Hakker wrote: Now, that discussion has been done to death, but it did lead us into an interesting debate. 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.
Your friend is completely right about this part.
Before my school started I played a lot of SC. I played like 6-8 hours a day. I got to the top 100 just because I played a lot. Anybody could have done it. It wasn't Starcraft skill because I didn't play BW and I haven't played a PC rts since AoE. Now that school's started and I can't play that much, I've been dropping down. For me, my skill on this game is pretty much purely a function of how much I play the game.
Before this game, I played a game called Halo Wars, which was a really simple RTS with a low mechanics-ceiling. But while at the time I thought it was a bit lame how 'easy' the game was, it was sort of a blessing in disguise. Because the APM/Mechanics part of the game was basically out of the window, the entire differentiating factor between players became purely strategy and mental processes. As a result, the game did not reward you for playing 12 hours a day because you did not improve your mechanics, and the game was a game entirely of thinking - pure talent/intelligence.
Shooter games like CoD approach that level. Aiming mechanics are not the pinnacle of skill on CoD4 because people die very quickly. Teamwork and game sense are the most important qualities on that game, and as a result, I believe they are much more intelligence/talent based.
Starcraft's mechanics ceiling is too high to ever reach that level, which is why it will always be a time vampire that requires many many thousands of hours to be pro, regardless of your skill level. We see players like WhiteRa who are clearly mentally qualified to be pros being basically forced out by people just because they play more. This isn't good for a competitive game.
Food for thought.
Broodwar is like Basketball, or any other sport, where you must dedicate and train yourself to become anywhere near decent. Starcraft 2 is more like Risk or a board game (checkers/chess), where it requires much less practicing, but relies more on the mental aspect of things. Personally I think Broodwar is much more fulfilling.
I guess I'm on the other side of the fence, I think the reliance on mechanics makes a game less about strategy and more about repetitive muscle memory techniques that require nothing but time. To take it to the logical extreme, if BW had literally no AI at all, and a worker would grab minerals, stop, wait for a command, return to the CC, stop, wait for a command, and you had to manually micro all of your workers, the game would reach a point where it eventually becomes literally 100% mechanics and 0% thinking as the importance of mechanics elevates above everything else.
Starcraft 2 takes less mechanics than BW, but it's still at such a level that it prevents it from being a talent-based game. Otherwise WhiteRa would still be one of the best Protoss players.
why dont you just play a turn based strategy game instead? ive read at least 10-15++ posts of yours over the past couple of months complaining about real time strategy mechanics and how its just practice and nothing else if you hate mechanics so much, play chess?
See above reply - basketball is much different than starcraft.
And no, I didn't play Halo Wars 6-8 hours a day - and the people who played mass games never really were top players. That's because the game's mechanics ceiling was very low and you couldn't differentiate yourself from others by getting good mechanically (which takes massing games). I disliked it at the time but I'm starting to like the idea of it more and more when I see the way Starcraft players exploit their lack of real-life commitments for an edge.
Go play chess and see how far your naturally smart self gets you.
Get over yourself kid. Saying you were good at Halo wars is like saying how you won your elementary school special Olympics :p. The games strategy mechanic was so low you couldn't differentiate yourself either.
why dont you just play a turn based strategy game instead? ive read at least 10-15++ posts of yours over the past couple of months complaining about real time strategy mechanics and how its just practice and nothing else if you hate mechanics so much, play chess.
Nah, terrible suggestion. People like him can't really excel at anything, all they do is whine about how broken the system is while parade how naturally gifted they are. I guess some people prefer delusion to despair.
TLO's use of nukes are very good, but they are not genius. He simply uses them for zone control, which is the most obvious use of them.
I think some very high level players are also very smart; being smart lends itself to self improvement. However, many other top players probably aren't very smart, and rely upon endless practice.
Yes, you actually can just rely on mechanics to carry you to the top.
There's nothing genius about, "build an army and attack at an appropriate(timing attack? don't walk into a line of tanks?) time, perhaps getting a surround", or "harass while also attacking". Even an average person who has never played the game before could figure out those tactics, and yet they are the tactics used in the highest levels of play.
There is innovation and creativity, but not genius, in SC play.
Mechanics alone will not get you to SC2 prodom, and in fact, Mechanics in SC2 are less useful then strategy.
I don't think I've ever seen a play in BW or SC2 where I went, "wow, I never would have thought of that!".
You wouldn't have ever thought of that given the imperfect information the player had available at the time, and a multitude of other considerations that had to be made in less then a second.
On September 21 2010 14:02 Half wrote: People like him can't really excel at anything, all they do is whine about how broken the system is while parade how naturally gifted they are. I guess some people prefer delusion to despair.
Why don't you learn how to read instead of attacking me. I'm just offering an opinion relevant to the thread. If you don't like it, troll somewhere else. The example I gave was WhiteRa, who was the motivation for my post. I think it's sad that WhiteRa doesn't compete in many tournaments anymore because I used to really like watching him play. I don't like watching mechanics-centric players like IdrA play. I love TLO's creativity but aside from him, not much creativity goes on. Almost all players of the same races do the same builds and people just try to out-mechanics eachother. It hurts the watchability of the game.
And I would love to play a turn based strategy game, unfortunately not many good ones exist.
Why don't you learn how to read instead of attacking me. I don't think I'm naturally gifted, I'm just offering an opinion relevant to the thread. If you don't like it, troll somewhere else. The example I gave was actually WhiteRa, not myself.
This was referring to Whitera?
Before this game, I played a game called Halo Wars, which was a really simple RTS with a low mechanics-ceiling. But while at the time I thought it was a bit lame how 'easy' the game was, it was sort of a blessing in disguise. Because the APM/Mechanics part of the game was basically out of the window, the entire differentiating factor between players became purely strategy and mental processes. As a result, the game did not reward you for playing 12 hours a day because you did not improve your mechanics, and the game was a game entirely of thinking - pure talent/intelligence.
Really? What the hell are you talking about? How did Whitera come into this?
And the implication of that, is indeed, that you are just smarter then everyone else except you don't have the time to practice your mechanics to be competitive because you have a life, but given a game where mechanics "don't matter", you naturally excel.
Which is really a load of self-serving bullshit.
And I would love to play a turn based strategy game, unfortunately not many good ones exist.
Chess. In video game format, yes, very few pure strategy games exist because pure strategy is really not as pure as you would think. Without mechanics the metagame developers at an absurd rate. The end result is that the metagame just self-terminates because the game is "imbalanced", or the other end result is Chess, a game of thousands of complex calculations. Creativity does exist in chess, but if you think Idra lacks creativity then you probably wouldn't appreciate the kind of "Creativity" found in high level chess.
The kind of Strategy you talk about is intuition. Games like Starcraft and Poker are driven by Intuition. Intuition is something almost every single one of us here is very good at. Sampling bias, so to speak. Intuition however, is only applicable, in an underdeveloped metagame before structures are allowed to form. The only kind of games this can occur is in games limited by mechanics (SC1 and to a lesser extent SC2), or games nobody fucking gives a shit about and plays (Halo Wars).
I don't like watching mechanics-centric players like IdrA play. I love TLO's creativity but aside from him, not much creativity goes on
If this is how you feel you would never appreciate the "creativity" of pure strategy games like chess. Idra is no less creative then TLO, but rather, he is less willing to gamble.
On September 21 2010 13:40 Buddhist wrote: I don't think I've ever seen a play in BW or SC2 where I went, "wow, I never would have thought of that!".
TLO's use of nukes are very good, but they are not genius. He simply uses them for zone control, which is the most obvious use of them.
I think some very high level players are also very smart; being smart lends itself to self improvement. However, many other top players probably aren't very smart, and rely upon endless practice.
Yes, you actually can just rely on mechanics to carry you to the top.
There's nothing genius about, "build an army and attack at an appropriate(timing attack? don't walk into a line of tanks?) time, perhaps getting a surround", or "harass while also attacking". Even an average person who has never played the game before could figure out those tactics, and yet they are the tactics used in the highest levels of play.
There is innovation and creativity, but not genius, in SC play.
when you're talking about low level or casual game, intelligence counts. Even in a lot of the pro games today, intelligence makes a difference. Knowing when to push or how to react is an integral part of the game.
Right now at least. Just look at brood war play. Any moderate skill commentator can tell just how one player is going to react to the other player's strategy. Every once in a while, they deviate from this play, but it's still a strategy that has been seen before. Everyone remembers Bisu for his revolutionary Bisu build. But in all honesty, what are really the chances that Bisu came up with that strategy himself? Didn't Idra win a key game in the IEM tourney because he learned about the magic box trick?
My point is, at some point, mechanics will dominate the field. After playing so many games, the choices that the opponent has are limited. Every effective timing push will be accounted for, and there will be no in game decision making. Then, once every long while, a new strategy will surface from most likely the dregs of the ladder system, and then players will have to practice to account for this.
Though I do like being a causal player and beating my opponent through mid/late game strategies and tactics
Why don't you learn how to read instead of attacking me. I don't think I'm naturally gifted, I'm just offering an opinion relevant to the thread. If you don't like it, troll somewhere else. The example I gave was actually WhiteRa, not myself.
Self serving load of bullshit, etc
I don't feel like arguing with people who have nothing better to do than flame on TL and take my quotes out of context (because if you actually read I was talking about WhiteRa earlier), so if you don't have something to contribute, I'm just going to ignore you. But I'll respond to this, at least:
If this is how you feel you would never appreciate the "creativity" of pure strategy games like chess. Idra is no less creative then TLO, but rather, he is less willing to gamble.
How can you support this? What exactly does he do, reflected in his gameplay, that's creative? He does the same builds every game. He's a very good player, but I don't see how he's creative.
On September 21 2010 14:28 aelynir wrote: My point is, at some point, mechanics will dominate the field. After playing so many games, the choices that the opponent has are limited. Every effective timing push will be accounted for, and there will be no in game decision making.
Good post, I agree with this. This is what I'm really concerned about, and you expressed this much better than I did.
The differentiating factor in a game like SC2 inevitably becomes mechanics for the reasons you stated.
Why don't you learn how to read instead of attacking me. I don't think I'm naturally gifted, I'm just offering an opinion relevant to the thread. If you don't like it, troll somewhere else. The example I gave was actually WhiteRa, not myself.
Self serving load of bullshit, etc
I don't feel like arguing with people who have nothing better to do than flame on TL and take my quotes out of context (because if you actually read I was talking about WhiteRa earlier), so if you don't have something to contribute, I'm just going to ignore you. But I'll respond to this, at least:
If this is how you feel you would never appreciate the "creativity" of pure strategy games like chess. Idra is no less creative then TLO, but rather, he is less willing to gamble.
How can you support this? What exactly does he do, reflected in his gameplay, that's creative? He does the same builds every game. He's a very good player, but I don't see how he's creative.
He is able to quickly create strategies or tactics best adapted to his situation which maximize his chance of winning and minimize his chances of losing. He does not gamble. TLOs strategies are not hard to formulate. But most of them are gambles. They rely on catching the opponent unaware.
Chess is a game where the metagame has developed to a point where catching an opponent unaware with a general, overarching strategy (Im gonna build nukes, or I'm going to build BCS), and hoping he simply does not know how to respond is an impossibility. Chess is what ever turn based game becomes. In this framework, only the kind of logical creativity Idra displays is useful, and to appreciate chess you have to appreciate that kind of creativity. TLOs creativity no longer exists, and in fact, can only exist in competitive games with heavy emphasis on mechanics.
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In find people with your viewpoints incredibly annoying lol. Its incredibly hypocritical and arrogant. You yourself are in all likelihood, an intuitive thinker. You excel at making judgments from imperfect information based on trends and perceived relationships. Welcome to the club. That describes probably 99% of Teamliquid and most people who enjoy Starcraft 2. You aren't special.
Now the problem with intuitive thinking is that it only operates as a baseline. Once intuitive thinking creates a basis, logical thinking takes over. Chess is a primary example. Nobody takes "chances" in chess. Chess is a game of logic, taken to the extreme. It is something that requires a lot of talent and intelligence, and the average person, who can probably train themselves to think intuitively, will never really be able to become a top chess player. Top chess players brains literally function differently then ours, ours are simply not optimized to predict exponentially branch possibilities forty or fifty turns in advance. In game design terms, Chess has experienced incredible amounts of meta-game growth.
Mechanics is a way a game can artificially hinder strategic (or meta-game) development. Mechanics are the inevitable result of a game operating in real time. By slowing the development of the metagame (strategy), intuition remains a useful skill.
But theres a flip side to that. Mechanics. Learn them, or go play a game whos metagame is intensely shallow because nobody gives a crap.
Your core argument seems to be "omg I suck at starcraft cuz im like good with strategy but suck at mechanics". Aren't we all. The particular kind of strategy you "are good at" can only exist when the mechanics are prevalent as well. Because everyone is "good at" that kind of strategy, and without mechanical barriers, the meta game simply overdevelops and becomes chess, a game of pure rationale and prediction. (Or I guess, alternatively, a really complicated version of rock paper scissors)
I think Starcraft takes an absurd amount of intelligence... you have to be thinking extremely fast thru out the entire game, one of the biggest things in Starcraft is knowing whether or not u should fight... this is a HUGE calculation you have to be able to do all of the time.
On September 21 2010 14:35 Half wrote: Mechanics are the inevitable result of a game operating in real time. Intuition remains a useful skill.
I don't think this statement is necessarily true. I actually think games like Starcraft can approach higher strategic levels by removing some mechanical requirements and only forcing the user to make decisions that have strategic merit. Case in point: the queen spawn larva.
Most people disagree with me on this point, but I really think that spawn larva should be automatable. Remembering to vomit every 40 seconds only serves to shift the focus on skill to mechanics. This is just one small step. Make a bunch of them and we see big changes.
Look, I know you think I brought up HW because I played it, but I actually brought it up for this reason. It's just an example of a game for me that showed that you can have a strategic real-time game where mechanics aren't the defining skill factor.
A better example is probably Ruse (the new Ubisoft game). Ruse is very badly balanced for competitive play, so don't respond and go "OMG RUSE IS TERRIBLE LOL!", but I think it's an interesting game for the same reason. In Ruse, the mechanical skill required is very low. If it was well-balanced, it might be a very competitive strategic game.
As a side note:
In find people with your viewpoints incredibly annoying lol. Its incredibly hypocritical and arrogant.
Wtf man? I haven't talked about myself for like 4 posts and you just keep talking about me. It's actually starting to get creepy/obsessive. I've just been ignoring it but it's getting weird. Respond to my arguments, I don't care what you think about me.
On September 21 2010 14:02 Half wrote: People like him can't really excel at anything, all they do is whine about how broken the system is while parade how naturally gifted they are. I guess some people prefer delusion to despair.
Why don't you learn how to read instead of attacking me. I'm just offering an opinion relevant to the thread. If you don't like it, troll somewhere else. The example I gave was WhiteRa, who was the motivation for my post. I think it's sad that WhiteRa doesn't compete in many tournaments anymore because I used to really like watching him play. I don't like watching mechanics-centric players like IdrA play. I love TLO's creativity but aside from him, not much creativity goes on. Almost all players of the same races do the same builds and people just try to out-mechanics eachother. It hurts the watchability of the game.
And I would love to play a turn based strategy game, unfortunately not many good ones exist.
Half, calm down buddy.
iEchoic: it takes creativity to respond to TLO's play. I'm tired of this attitude that "IdrA is a mechanics-centric player therefore he isn't as smart as players like TLO" Just because TLO is unconventional doesn't automatically make him smarter than IdrA. IdrA knows how to respond to almost anything and has a game sense that neither of us could ever understand.
I've already made this point many times: IF ALL IT TOOK TO GET GOOD AT SC2 WAS SPEED AND MULTITASKING (i.e. mechanics), THEN A COMPUTER COULD PLAY BETTER THAN ANYONE. But AI currently can't play creatively and can't respond well to certain things but the human brain can.
As has already been said, it takes intelligence and well honed skill to be good at sc2.
Even if the mechanic ceiling were much lower, the game would still be unwatchable to you, because people would still follow conventional ways of playing deviating every now and then like they do now. And even with the conventional builds and such that currently exist, no two players play exactly alike. If it was a game of pure mechanics, then every top player would play exactly the same.
On September 21 2010 14:28 aelynir wrote: Right now at least. Just look at brood war play. Any moderate skill commentator can tell just how one player is going to react to the other player's strategy. Every once in a while, they deviate from this play, but it's still a strategy that has been seen before. Everyone remembers Bisu for his revolutionary Bisu build. But in all honesty, what are really the chances that Bisu came up with that strategy himself? Didn't Idra win a key game in the IEM tourney because he learned about the magic box trick?
My point is, at some point, mechanics will dominate the field. After playing so many games, the choices that the opponent has are limited. Every effective timing push will be accounted for, and there will be no in game decision making. Then, once every long while, a new strategy will surface from most likely the dregs of the ladder system, and then players will have to practice to account for this.
No, bisu didn't come up with the bisu build himself. I remember reading about how he combined 2 players build: Forge FE, sair/dt. What bisu did is he showed everyone its power and made it standard.
To the OP, no you do not need to be very smart to be good at sc, you just need to practice a lot. But to differientiate the great from the good, you need to have talent. It helps to have natural talent.
Just take a look at bw right now. Right now, there are 2 players who are obviously dominating: Flash and Jaedong. They have roughly around the same mechanics but one is dominating more than the other aka Flash who has better game sense overall. And I think that you are underestimating the amount of strategic play in bw. Most of it is very subtle though that the average player cannot understand and most of it I don't understand either, but of the ones I understand I just find it brilliant.
For example, cutting marine production to get an earlier expansion since you know that your opponent is not gonna be pressuring you soon. Every little advantage at that high level of play is quite huge. Eventually, those little advantages stacks up and can win you the game outright.
If you want a more obvious one of a mind game or strategical game or whatever you want to call it, just look at MSL finals on PR. PR is a map that is known for its huge T>Z mech imba so when JD saw goliaths(which you make when you go mech) he goes for 2 very fast expansion to have the advantage against mech. But Flash knew that JD was preparing for mech, and instead denied all scouting from the zerg and transitioned into bio which require a more tech heavy and less expansion type of play from the zerg which Jaedong was completely unprepared for.
I don't even know why I bother replying to you but I will anyways. That is just how a competitive scene works, everyone does what works best.
That's just how it is with all things: if someone found a good strategy, it is copied and used repetitively by other people. But then, people started catching on to it and starts disecting the strategy and creates a new one that counters that strategy. Then everyone copies it. Repeat cycle, until we get something like 9 pool>overpool>12 hatch> 9 pool or something like that.
And if you don't fucking like the mechanics-aspect of a REAL TIME Strategy game, then just stay away from RTS overall. That is what differientiates real time from turn based and imo what makes it a lot more exciting. From the sounds of it, you just like turn-based games better. If you like it better, that's your choice. But just go play that instead of bashing the premise of RTS in an RTS game forum.
On September 21 2010 14:02 Half wrote: People like him can't really excel at anything, all they do is whine about how broken the system is while parade how naturally gifted they are. I guess some people prefer delusion to despair.
Why don't you learn how to read instead of attacking me. I'm just offering an opinion relevant to the thread. If you don't like it, troll somewhere else. The example I gave was WhiteRa, who was the motivation for my post. I think it's sad that WhiteRa doesn't compete in many tournaments anymore because I used to really like watching him play. I don't like watching mechanics-centric players like IdrA play. I love TLO's creativity but aside from him, not much creativity goes on. Almost all players of the same races do the same builds and people just try to out-mechanics eachother. It hurts the watchability of the game.
And I would love to play a turn based strategy game, unfortunately not many good ones exist.
Half, calm down buddy.
iEchoic: it takes creativity to respond to TLO's play. I'm tired of this attitude that "IdrA is a mechanics-centric player therefore he isn't as smart as players like TLO" Just because TLO is unconventional doesn't automatically make him smarter than IdrA. IdrA knows how to respond to almost anything and has a game sense that neither of us could ever understand.
I've already made this point many times: IF ALL IT TOOK TO GET GOOD AT SC2 WAS SPEED AND MULTITASKING (i.e. mechanics), THEN A COMPUTER COULD PLAY BETTER THAN ANYONE. But AI currently can't play creatively and can't respond well to certain things but the human brain can.
Fair enough, let me clear up that I don't think idrA is less intelligent or a worse player. But you can't deny that idrA has a very clear gameplay focus, and that is to have solid macro mechanics. His practice most likely focuses more on remembering macro mechanics and timings than exploring new builds. Do you disagree with that? If not, do you disagree that exploring new builds requires more creative processes than working on macro mechanics?
I think the pinnacle of creativity on SC2 is creating new builds from scratch. It requires you to think about new things, requires you to create ideas using a non-standard thought process. There is no 'method' to create a new build. You can't follow step a, b, c and come out with a new build. On the other hand, if I want to refine my macro timings, I can follow a simple procedure. I can just test a bunch of them and compare. Scientific method. I see a lot of new builds from TLO, and I respect that creativity.
Also, the AI question is a bit misleading because it's implying that I think the game has zero strategic merit. I definitely think the game has strategic merit. But some parts, like very efficient macro, yes, could be done better by an AI. An AI could be written that out-macros idrA (assuming it doesn't die) because it's a largely mechanical process.
The things an AI couldn't do better are the game-theory-esque outsmarting-your-opponent kind of things. Two pronged attacks, stuff like that, I love, and it has a lot of strategic merit. Creating builds would be hard for an AI, etc.
On September 21 2010 15:02 Nemesis wrote: And if you don't fucking like the mechanics-aspect of a REAL TIME Strategy game, then just stay away from RTS overall. That is what differientiates real time from turn based and imo what makes it a lot more exciting. From the sounds of it, you just like turn-based games better. If you like it better, that's your choice. But just go play that instead of bashing the premise of RTS in an RTS game forum.
SC2 is a very good game, and a lot of people think I'm attacking it. I'm just taking a side that some changes (like the queen spawn larva change) would increase the quality of the game. No need to get offended.
The thread is about what I'm talking about, if you're incapable of hearing that opinion, read a different thread.
I don't think this statement is necessarily true. I actually think games like Starcraft can approach higher strategic levels by removing some mechanical requirements and only forcing the user to make decisions that have strategic merit. Case in point: the queen spawn larva.
Look, you don't really understand how this works :/.
Queens do have strategic choice. I can either make a creep tumor or spawn larvae at every cooldown. If for some reason I had a strategy that involved making a lot of creep tumors for whatever reason, I could do so.
That is strategic choice.
What it isn't is it isn't an intuitive strategic choice. I'm not spamming creep tumors because I know doing so is not optimal. You seem to only value intuitive strategic choices.
These intuitive strategic choices can only exist because of mechanics. Only when the game cannot be turned into a structure and you have a split second to preform calculations will you be making intuitive strategic choices.
The queen spawn larvae, is not an intuitive choice. So what? It increases the mechanical demand of the game in a very intuitive (in this context I mean intuitive as in the sense: "Easy to pick up and understandable and relevant for new players) way, which increases the overall intuitive depth of the game as a whole.
A better example is probably Ruse (the new Ubisoft game). Ruse is very badly balanced for competitive play, so don't respond and go "OMG RUSE IS TERRIBLE LOL!", but I think it's an interesting game for the same reason. In Ruse, the mechanical skill required is very low. If it was well-balanced, it might be a very competitive strategic game.
As a side note:
Has it ever occurred to you Ruse is poorly balanced for competitive play, or intrinsically unbalance able for competitive play, because lack of mechanics? Mechanics restrict the structuralising of gameplay. As gameplay becomes more structural, minute differences are amplified. As you decrease the role of mechanics, the inherent structure of the game has to become more balanced. Likewise, a game heavily driven by mechanics has a much laxer requirement on balance. Once you approach zero mechanics, you need to be at perfect balance.
No, bisu didn't come up with the bisu build himself. I remember reading about how he combined 2 players build: Forge FE, sair/dt. What bisu did is he showed everyone its power and made it standard.
I just want to point out that for a good year, over half of pvz was the bisu build. I don't know about you, but I facepalmed every time after the first month because it stopped working. So many games were thrown away because pro players (making salary) kept on doing an old strategy that very seldom worked.
Fair enough, let me clear up that I don't think idrA is less intelligent or a worse player. But you can't deny that idrA has a very clear gameplay focus, and that is to have solid macro mechanics. His practice most likely focuses more on remembering macro mechanics and timings than exploring new builds. Do you disagree with that?
Yes, you are completely wrong.
In practices sessions, Idra runs a wide variety of builds to see if certain builds are viable, and to analyze there strengths and weaknesses, and plays ladder to remain up to date with the current metagame and how to react to it.
All these have woefully little to do mechanics.
I think the pinnacle of creativity on SC2 is creating new builds from scratch. It requires you to think about new things, requires you to create ideas using a non-standard thought process. There is no 'method' to create a new build. You can't follow step a, b, c and come out with a new build. On the other hand, if I want to refine my macro timings, I can follow a simple procedure. I can just test a bunch of them and compare. Scientific method. I see a lot of new builds from TLO, and I respect that creativity.
Literally anything you made will have been run 20x before you, to the point where "making your own build" is really just altering the timing of an already existing build. Maybe you were the first to play it publically, or the first to post about it.
TLO has only created "new" builds in the sense they varied from already existing builds in incredibly minute ways.
Even if you really did invent it, its hardly creative unless its markedly superior to an existing strategy. Otherwise you just reinvented the wheel.
On the other hand, if I want to refine my macro timings, I can follow a simple procedure. I can just test a bunch of them and compare. Scientific method. I see a lot of new builds from TLO, and I respect that creativity.
Realize that SC2 macro is easy enough that the only time a person fails at macroing is through getting "shook up" by the play of there opponents. While macro can still be refined, very games are lost because of macro. The vast majority of them are lost due to tactical or strategic blunders.
The things an AI couldn't do better are the game-theory-esque outsmarting-your-opponent kind of things. Two pronged attacks, stuff like that, I love, and it has a lot of strategic merit. Creating builds would be hard for an AI, etc.
Yes, AI possess exceptionally poor intuition. Sadly, humans are too good at it, and the result is in order to make a competition of intuition it needs to be either unknowably complex or tied to mechanical elements.
This thread seems to be going way off topic. Intelligence is relative to a specific activity or way of thinking. Starcraft intelligence is what other people have been saying - remembering things, making good decisions very fast, having and adjusting solid strategies, ect.
On September 21 2010 14:02 Half wrote: People like him can't really excel at anything, all they do is whine about how broken the system is while parade how naturally gifted they are. I guess some people prefer delusion to despair.
Why don't you learn how to read instead of attacking me. I'm just offering an opinion relevant to the thread. If you don't like it, troll somewhere else. The example I gave was WhiteRa, who was the motivation for my post. I think it's sad that WhiteRa doesn't compete in many tournaments anymore because I used to really like watching him play. I don't like watching mechanics-centric players like IdrA play. I love TLO's creativity but aside from him, not much creativity goes on. Almost all players of the same races do the same builds and people just try to out-mechanics eachother. It hurts the watchability of the game.
And I would love to play a turn based strategy game, unfortunately not many good ones exist.
Half, calm down buddy.
iEchoic: it takes creativity to respond to TLO's play. I'm tired of this attitude that "IdrA is a mechanics-centric player therefore he isn't as smart as players like TLO" Just because TLO is unconventional doesn't automatically make him smarter than IdrA. IdrA knows how to respond to almost anything and has a game sense that neither of us could ever understand.
I've already made this point many times: IF ALL IT TOOK TO GET GOOD AT SC2 WAS SPEED AND MULTITASKING (i.e. mechanics), THEN A COMPUTER COULD PLAY BETTER THAN ANYONE. But AI currently can't play creatively and can't respond well to certain things but the human brain can.
Fair enough, let me clear up that I don't think idrA is less intelligent or a worse player. But you can't deny that idrA has a very clear gameplay focus, and that is to have solid macro mechanics. His practice most likely focuses more on remembering macro mechanics and timings than exploring new builds. Do you disagree with that? If not, do you disagree that exploring new builds requires more creative processes than working on macro mechanics?
I think the pinnacle of creativity on SC2 is creating new builds from scratch. It requires you to think about new things, requires you to create ideas using a non-standard thought process. There is no 'method' to create a new build. You can't follow step a, b, c and come out with a new build. On the other hand, if I want to refine my macro timings, I can follow a simple procedure. I can just test a bunch of them and compare. Scientific method. I see a lot of new builds from TLO, and I respect that creativity.
Also, the AI question is a bit misleading because it's implying that I think the game has zero strategic merit. I definitely think the game has strategic merit. But some parts, like very efficient macro, yes, could be done better by an AI. An AI could be written that out-macros idrA (assuming it doesn't die) because it's a largely mechanical process.
The things an AI couldn't do better are the game-theory-esque outsmarting-your-opponent kind of things. Two pronged attacks, stuff like that, I love, and it has a lot of strategic merit. Creating builds would be hard for an AI, etc.
I see that sort of strategy in the top players' game, and I think that there are a lot of subtle things that go largely unnoticed.
When it comes to watchability, I think it really depends on how well you understand/enjoy the game. I don't enjoy watching chess because I don't understand the game. The same goes for BW. I don't see how someone who has played SC2 more than a few times couldn't enjoy watching it. There is still a very human element to their risk taking and blunders and yes, strategy. Not every match is going to have some crazy new build order, and some games will be boring. But really is there any sport or competitive game that is exciting every game? It really is pretty rare in anything to have close matches and in the case of sc2, two players who are so close mechanically that they have to rely on creative thinking.
not really, intelligence can make learning faster and you need a base level of intelligence to be able to understand everything, like if you're fayth level retarded you're never gonna be good, but its more about thinking quickly than thinking well. 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.
SC2 is a very good game, and a lot of people think I'm attacking it. I'm just taking a side that some changes (like the queen spawn larva change) would increase the quality of the game. No need to get offended.
The thread is about what I'm talking about, if you're incapable of hearing that opinion, read a different thread.
It's just that with every post I see of you, you seem to be on some crusade to make mechanics completely null and it just annoys me.
I enjoy seeing level of play that I can never achieve. I can truly see the difference between a pro-player and a regular player. I don't really see that so far in the sc2 scene, which is why I don't go out of my way to watch sc2 games like bw(wake up at 4am at least once a week) but whether that is because the game is still young and undeveloped or because of lower mechanics idk, but once I see that difference, I might actually keep track of the tournaments.
So, basically your argument is that you don't think that players should be rewarded for putting in the extra effort? That is how it works with all competitive sports, as been pointed out before, it's just that the limit this time instead of endurance or physical strength is APM. Our hands can only move so fast.
As for you pointing out that people do get tired from practicing sports after a while. It is kind of the same with sc, except this time it's mental exhaustion instead of physical exhaustion. Your brain also needs some rest and can only take in so much information in one day.
No, you dont have to smart. The game is really simple compared to other things. All you have to know is unit counters, strategies, build orders and that is pretty much it.
On September 21 2010 15:28 IdrA wrote: not really, intelligence can make learning faster and you need a base level of intelligence to be able to understand everything, like if you're fayth level retarded you're never gonna be good, but its more about thinking quickly than thinking well. 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.
I don't agree that 99% of the time you've experienced similar situations. Maybe its because im random or something, but I still see new awkward builds, not that many of them work, and most are pretty retarded, but its scary that people are trying to get this stuff to work.
On September 21 2010 15:28 IdrA wrote: not really, intelligence can make learning faster and you need a base level of intelligence to be able to understand everything, like if you're fayth level retarded you're never gonna be good, but its more about thinking quickly than thinking well. 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.
IdrA has spoken. This thread(and subsequent stupid arguments) should now end.
On September 21 2010 15:28 IdrA wrote: not really, intelligence can make learning faster and you need a base level of intelligence to be able to understand everything, like if you're fayth level retarded you're never gonna be good, but its more about thinking quickly than thinking well. 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.
I don't agree that 99% of the time you've experienced similar situations. Maybe its because im random or something, but I still see new awkward builds, not that many of them work, and most are pretty retarded, but its scary that people are trying to get this stuff to work.
i mean at a high level low level players dont know what theyre doing so they're far less predictable, you run into weird stuff a lot more. you've also practiced less and so experienced less.
On September 21 2010 15:39 Roffles wrote: Nope, not at all. Just take a look at Bisu when he plays. The guy plays like a moron trying to ram his head into a brick wall when he PvTs.
And just look at how he's doing now? Mechanics do have its limit aka we can only train our hands to move so fast. There comes a point when intelligence comes to play.
On September 21 2010 15:28 IdrA wrote: not really, intelligence can make learning faster and you need a base level of intelligence to be able to understand everything, like if you're fayth level retarded you're never gonna be good, but its more about thinking quickly than thinking well. 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.
I don't agree that 99% of the time you've experienced similar situations..
I believe it, I'm only a fraction as experienced at ~1500 diamond and i very very very very very rarely see new things I have no clue how to adapt to. When I lose to something unheard of I just add it to a mental database to recall later, and at this point, almost everything has been added. The only challenge is remembering it all and recalling it in time.
The exceptions are base trade scenarios, extremely lategame scenarios (minerals depleted), etc.
Edit: once you play against good players, as well, there's less to deal with because everyone runs optimized builds. There are less optimized builds than there are random bullshit that plat players do, so there's a lot less situations to account for.
You dont need to be intelligent necessarily, but you need to understand the game. By that I mean goals and how to achieve them. How to react to overall situations etc.
It's not like you need to be intelligent to play other sports either, you just need to understand those games.
I will say though, all the players that brought major revolutions in bw (boxer, savior, bisu...) didn't do so via mechanics but a new way of playing. I would argue that those three have done more for the sport then oov, nada, flash, or jaedong. They might not have won as much, but they set the blueprint for how everybody else plays teh game.
On September 21 2010 12:52 d3_crescentia wrote: Now, does this detract from a game's inherent competitiveness? Does practicing basketball for several hours detract from that game's competitiveness?
Basketball has built-in limitations on how much you can practice. Usually your body won't let you practice for more than 6-8 hours, and in addition practicing ceases to be effective after so much practice in a day and you need to give time for your muscles to rest. Even practicing large amounts of time takes a lot of willpower. It is hard as hell to do because your body will physically try to stop you.
Starcraft doesn't have those limitations, which is what makes Starcraft a really bad competitive game in my mind. Anybody with no real-life commitments can sit down and play the game 12 hours a day. It takes no willpower, it doesn't physically hurt, and there is no mechanism preventing you from doing so.
On September 21 2010 09:38 Hakker wrote: Now, that discussion has been done to death, but it did lead us into an interesting debate. 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.
Food for thought.
Did you play Halo wars 6-8 hours a day? When you spend a lot of time on ANYTHING you are going to get good at it. Granted there are limitations, like you probably won't be great in basketball if you are 5 foot 0, but you could still be good.
See above reply - basketball is much different than starcraft.
And no, I didn't play Halo Wars 6-8 hours a day - and the people who played mass games never really were top players. That's because the game's mechanics ceiling was very low and you couldn't differentiate yourself from others by getting good mechanically (which takes massing games). I disliked it at the time but I'm starting to like the idea of it more and more when I see the way Starcraft players exploit their lack of real-life commitments for an edge.
No. The physical limitation then becomes how much you can practice SC while maintaining optimal sleep. There are possible consequences from extended computer use that we haven't observed yet - eyesight deterioration, wrist problems, etc. simply because we don't know what the long-term effects of such a lifestyle are.
But, that wasn't my point. If you're trying to argue that it isn't a good competitive game because there are no physical constraints on how much you can practice, you're missing the point of a competitive game entirely. Anyone who professionally competes in a sport would practice more if it was physically possible. The question I asked was, does the fact that you can mass-game detract from the game's competitiveness? No, because competitiveness isn't determined by that standard.
On September 21 2010 09:49 NoXious90 wrote: I don't think it requires as much intelligence as say, chess, but generally speaking, most top Starcraft players I've seen come across as pretty intelligent.
You dont have to be intelligent to play chess well. Computers beat humans and no computer is really capable of having an individual thought, they only know what they have been taught and think really fast about the options.
Personally I think that playing Starcraft can help you become more intelligent ... if you do it the right way. The way is trying to solve "a problem" [of losing to X] instead of reacting like the usual kid "oh I lost, this game is dumb".
On September 21 2010 15:28 IdrA wrote: not really, intelligence can make learning faster and you need a base level of intelligence to be able to understand everything, like if you're fayth level retarded you're never gonna be good, but its more about thinking quickly than thinking well. 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.
I don't agree that 99% of the time you've experienced similar situations..
I believe it, I'm only a fraction as experienced at ~1500 diamond and i very very very very very rarely see new things I have no clue how to adapt to. When I lose to something unheard of I just add it to a mental database to recall later, and at this point, almost everything has been added. The only challenge is remembering it all and recalling it in time.
The exceptions are base trade scenarios, extremely lategame scenarios (minerals depleted), etc.
Edit: once you play against good players, as well, there's less to deal with because everyone runs optimized builds. There are less optimized builds than there are random bullshit that plat players do, so there's a lot less situations to account for.
I think we are both secretly agreeing with each other. Or it might be because i am a notch below you 1200ish random.
Like i said, i see people TRYING weird stuff, but most of the time its so obscure I can use my strong game sense (some from playing random) to quickly find an appropriate counter.
On September 21 2010 14:02 Half wrote: People like him can't really excel at anything, all they do is whine about how broken the system is while parade how naturally gifted they are. I guess some people prefer delusion to despair.
Why don't you learn how to read instead of attacking me. I'm just offering an opinion relevant to the thread. If you don't like it, troll somewhere else. The example I gave was WhiteRa, who was the motivation for my post. I think it's sad that WhiteRa doesn't compete in many tournaments anymore because I used to really like watching him play. I don't like watching mechanics-centric players like IdrA play. I love TLO's creativity but aside from him, not much creativity goes on. Almost all players of the same races do the same builds and people just try to out-mechanics eachother. It hurts the watchability of the game.
And I would love to play a turn based strategy game, unfortunately not many good ones exist.
Some ideas are stupid like yours and well this is a discussion isn't it? He isnt attacking you he is attacking your stupid ideas and gives reasons for how they are stupid--not that you are stupid, per se. What you are though is another random terran newbie who claims to be so good if only the game was based on intelligence. Games based around mechanics are shown to be more successful than "pure strategy" games, because well pure strategy games are boring to most people. If all starcraft was mind games like IdrA v Lotze g2 hardly anyone would watch it, you might as well watch people play rock paper scissors for money. So no Mechanics-centric games are better to watch than these 'strategy' games because none of the other RTS games that focus around that are successful.
And having a focus on mechanics doesn't detract from strategy or thought, they can both coexist side by side. The main reason is that mechanics are driven by the cerebellum while conscious active thinking is controlled by the frontal lobe. You just seem to not be able to appreciate all the subtle decision making that goes on.
"Being smart", "intelligence", and "IQ" are pretty much bullshit concepts. SC takes a skill set, whether you want to arbitrarily throw some of those skills under the category of "being smart" or not is up to you.
On September 21 2010 13:30 happyness wrote: When it comes to mastery in most anything, whether it be music or sports or science etc., you can't rely on pure talent/smarts alone. Richard Feynman, a nobel-award winning physicist, was said to have an IQ of 125, which is much lower than the average nobel award winning scientist. So how was he so successful? Hard work.
This is an incredibly misleading statement which has to be rectified. Let's look at the rest of his wiki
In high school, his IQ was determined to be 125: high, but "merely respectable" according to biographer Gleick.[11] Feynman later scoffed at psychometric testing. By 15, he had learned differential and integral calculus.
in his last year in high school, Feynman won the New York University Math Championship; the large difference between his score and those of his closest competitors shocked the judges.[14]
Self-taught in mathematics as in everything else, in his senior college year he won the nation's most difficult and prestigious mathematics competition -- the Putnam -- by a score so far ahead of the next four finishers as to astound the scorers. In many years, more than half the entrants fail to complete a single problem in the allotted time: Feynman left early.
Yeah, he obviously so well because of "hard work", and not because he had genius level intelligence far surpassing most people who score 160 or higher. The only thing you can take from his "125 iq score" is that he didn't do particularly well on iq test style (probably verbal) problems. Don't compare pure intellectual activities like theoretical physics or math to mechanical ones.
Understanding starcraft scenarios requires no abstract knowledge that hundreds to thousands of games will fail to drill into you. If you don't like to think, maybe it will take longer to sink in.
no physical effort ? Tell your friend to try to maintain avarege APM 300+ for 10 hours a day... My hand get tired after 5 games with 100 APM... And yes you need to be smart, you can't just mechanicaly do anything... Its not I will do 1,2,3,4,5,6 and win. Its more like I will do this but then game start and you constantly think what will be best. So someone who is not smart enought won't be able to do anything becouse even the smallest things will put him off balance.
On September 21 2010 16:41 AcOrP wrote: no physical effort ? Tell your friend to try to maintain avarege APM 300+ for 10 hours a day... My hand get tired after 5 games with 100 APM... And yes you need to be smart, you can't just mechanicaly do anything... Its not I will do 1,2,3,4,5,6 and win. Its more like I will do this but then game start and you constantly think what will be best. So someone who is not smart enought won't be able to do anything becouse even the smallest things will put him off balance.
So you have to be smart to play pretty much any sport/game?
In every sport you have to think about what the next best move is, and you have to know what your opponent is going to do, starcraft isnt much different.
So yea, you have to be just as smart to play starcraft as you have to play basketball.
The only reason that some people think that you have to be smart to play starcraft is because alot of smart people play starcraft.
Being smart helps you to solve many problems, but I don't think it is absolutely mandatory to be good at RTS. You can learn through habit and conditioning. I think there is some sorta natural skill that some players have though, I wouldn't equate it with intelligence, but some players just have a strong knack for the tempo of the game and a good feel at all times for what is going on.
On September 21 2010 09:47 Zelniq wrote: "..Idra who nearly completely rely on mechanics alone.." common misconception with idra, people just think he plays like a robot without thinking, but i think his quick decision making is one of his strong points
Agreed, but good decision is a different matter.
To OP: best example i could think of is WhiteRa. 110 average APM spikes to 200...that's basic good diamond. What makes him great is the insight of the game he has.
Idra's decision making stems from conditioned playstyle. Any player can learn that and can make "quick" decisions that have been programmed into them through hundreds if not thousands of games. There is a difference between being conditioned and reacting a way that you have reacted countless times vs similar scenarios before, and getting into a completely unorthodox situation and using your analytical skills and critical thinking to work your way out. Keep in mind a robot can be programmed to make quick choices based on certain parameters.
If idra was more of a thinker like some believe, and less of a robot, you would see his playstyle being a bit more varied. As it stands now he is very set in his ways, like a robot.
Those that say "No, it does not take intelligence , being the best can be achieved through repetition and memorization" are obviously contradicting themselves as it has been proven that memorization or learning from experience is one of the basic traits of human intelligence. So yes, ppl that are good at starcraft are intelligent ppl.
On September 21 2010 17:04 SpaceAnt wrote: Those that say "No, it does not take intelligence , being the best can be achieved through repetition and memorization" are obviously contradicting themselves as it has been proven that memorization or learning from experience is one of the basic traits of human intelligence. So yes, ppl that are good at starcraft are intelligent ppl.
He asked if you had to be smart to be good at starcraft2, not "do you have to possess a basic trait of human intelligence".
You do not need to be exceptionally smart to memorize things.
Imho you need to be smart to get good fast, especially in these early stages of the game. If you only copy things from other people blindly, it will only get you so far. Furthermore, to be exceptionally good, good enough to win the GSL or something, you also need to be smart. If you only play the same shit over and over again and espcially if you play without knowing what exactly you're doing and why you're doing it, a smarter player will just rip you apart in a series, even if his mechanics are worse.
Conclusion? Do you need to be smart to be 'good'? No. Do you need to be smart to be exceptionally good? Yes. Do you need to be smart to win series and tournaments? Absolutely.
You definitely need to have good decision making to excel at a strategy game but I wouldn't say theres clear casuality between intelligence and good decision making.
A good example would be Bobby Fischer, who's arguably the best chess player of all time but a complete retard really :S
On September 21 2010 17:17 Mylin wrote: You definitely need to have good decision making to excel at a strategy game but I wouldn't say theres clear casuality between intelligence and good decision making.
A good example would be Bobby Fischer, who's arguably the best chess player of all time but a complete retard really :S
Decisions can also be conditioned. For example when you have harass on your economy and you don't have any units in the immediate area. Do you sit there and go through a decision making process on pulling your workers, or has it become a conditioned response that in that situation you pull your workers so that enemy units don't get full UP-time on them.
On September 21 2010 09:42 Mastermind wrote: Mechanics will only bring you so far. If you cant make good decisions, then you cant compete with the best.
Strategy will only bring you so far. If you can't keep up in mechanics, then you can't compete with the best.
If you define "smart" by your average member of society, then yeah, you probably have to be pretty smart to play starcraft well. But in terms of playing any competitive game at a high level, I'd say you might need only slightly above average intelligence, even if only to manage your mechanics and strategies at the same time.
i have a feeling when asking this youre asking whether a person playing starcraft will have above average ability to learn conventional subjects which is a rather narrow outlook on the "intelligence" It's not uncommon for people to just succeed in one particular subject while having the hardest times with everything else.
at the very top, u need to have a certain intelligence to compete. but for anything else, it largely depends on the age of the game and how figured out it is. when a game is new, like e.g. sc2 atm, nobody knows the best tactics and buildorders, so creative and intelligent players got an edge. when a game is figured out very well, like bw, these features play a smaller role compared to mechanics. even a really stupid guy can copy some superior buildorders like 3 hatch spire into 5 hatch hydra and be decent if he has good mechanics.
You have to be just as smart as it takes to play any video game or sport. There are tons of nuances but practice makes perfect and intelligence has very little to do with it unless you statistically create special build orders like the pros.
You can be a top player without being intelligent. People tend to romanticize the strategy involved in RTS games, especially Starcraft. It's very mechanical and the strategy is based on choices you are both aware of through practice and experience rather than through some bout of intelligence. Being an intelligent player will help you, but it is far from required to have consistent tournament placings. Solid mechanics and a lot of experience are required, though.
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My favorite moment in SC:BW was when a terran player got proxy gated and lifted off his base and ran all his scvs in to the protoss' base, walled it off, and went on to win by killing all his stuff while the zealots were stuck outside. At some point the guy had to have done this (or seen someone who did) against a proxy, but I doubt it's something he practiced.
On September 21 2010 17:04 robertdinh wrote: Idra's decision making stems from conditioned playstyle. Any player can learn that and can make "quick" decisions that have been programmed into them through hundreds if not thousands of games. There is a difference between being conditioned and reacting a way that you have reacted countless times vs similar scenarios before, and getting into a completely unorthodox situation and using your analytical skills and critical thinking to work your way out. Keep in mind a robot can be programmed to make quick choices based on certain parameters.
If idra was more of a thinker like some believe, and less of a robot, you would see his playstyle being a bit more varied. As it stands now he is very set in his ways, like a robot.
Why do people feel Idra plays like a robot with zero variation? He is a really good and smart player. he has one very good macro build order that he "creatively" uses to hold off every single rush cheese etc. that gets thrown at him. Try laddering up with one good eco build order and see how hard it is to learn all the subtle nuances and timings that allow you to use that build to hold off everything from cheese, 1 base all ins as well as build a solid econ for long macro games (where the better player usually shines). Some people like and appreciate this style of play and it takes way more skill then cutesy 1 base plays that won't work more than one or two times and rely mostly on your opponent making a mistake rather than solid play from your side.
Also to downplay someones practice and dedication by saying "oh he just masses many many games and conditions himself" is pretty lame. You can do that with anything -E.g.My friend doesn't have to think much when he plays the guitar because he has conditioned himself from years of practice but that doesn't mean he is not creative and comes up with good music all the time. You can't say, oh he just plays for hours a day so his stuff not creative just programmed shit from all that practice.
I have seen robotic mechanical players and they can only do well if their opponent does what they expect them to do and they end up being above average at best E.g. this guy last night called me a "gay wiggler" because I went for an early reaper into fe and was completely thrown off as he was expecting standard 1-1-1 play, another player I know who is top diamond can only win if his opponent does standard 1 base plays etc.
Edit: Just to clarify, I agree with you in that you don't have to be Einstein to be good st SC2 but all that experience is for developing a game sense which you can use to make good decisions when you need to. IMO this is a hard point to get to and should not be downplayed (which is how your post comes off as)..
On September 21 2010 17:04 robertdinh wrote: Idra's decision making stems from conditioned playstyle. Any player can learn that and can make "quick" decisions that have been programmed into them through hundreds if not thousands of games. There is a difference between being conditioned and reacting a way that you have reacted countless times vs similar scenarios before, and getting into a completely unorthodox situation and using your analytical skills and critical thinking to work your way out. Keep in mind a robot can be programmed to make quick choices based on certain parameters.
If idra was more of a thinker like some believe, and less of a robot, you would see his playstyle being a bit more varied. As it stands now he is very set in his ways, like a robot.
Why do people feel Idra plays like a robot with zero variation? He is a really good and smart player. he has one very good macro build order that he "creatively" uses to hold off every single rush cheese etc. that gets thrown at him. Try laddering up with one good eco build order and see how hard it is to learn all the subtle nuances and timings that allow you to use that build to hold off everything from cheese, 1 base all ins as well as build a solid econ for long macro games (where the better player usually shines). Some people like and appreciate this style of play and it takes way more skill then cutesy 1 base plays that won't work more than one or two times and rely mostly on your opponent making a mistake rather than solid play from your side.
Also to downplay someones practice and dedication by saying "oh he just masses many many games and conditions himself" is pretty lame. You can do that with anything -E.g.My friend doesn't have to think much when he plays the guitar because he has conditioned himself from years of practice but that doesn't mean he is not creative and comes up with good music all the time. You can't say, oh he just plays for hours a day so his stuff not creative just programmed shit from all that practice.
I have seen robotic mechanical players and they can only do well if their opponent does what they expect them to do and they end up being above average at best E.g. this guy last night called me a "gay wiggler" because I went for an early reaper into fe and was completely thrown off as he was expecting standard 1-1-1 play, another player I know who is top diamond can only win if his opponent does standard 1 base plays etc.
I'm not downplaying idra's play, I am calling it what it is, extremely conditioned and predictable playstyle. He has a limited arsenal of strats that he will execute, but he is very good within executing those strats. I think a lot of people underestimate how much of an rts can be conditioned into you simply because for them they don't play at that idra-like level so a lot of things that are habit to other players, are still serious decisions they have to consciously make as a game transpires.
How to put it better - you don't have to be smart to be smart. TLO always insists on the fact that his creativity is the result of practice. So it's not "smart vs practice", it's rather "smart via practice". Applies to other areas of life as well.
Somewhere on TL i read that some of the progamers don't seem too smart in rl. I especially remember someone saying that NaDa wasn't the brightest. I have no source though, but it seems reasonable since they don't further their education but nerd away 14h/day -.-
On September 21 2010 17:04 robertdinh wrote: Idra's decision making stems from conditioned playstyle. Any player can learn that and can make "quick" decisions that have been programmed into them through hundreds if not thousands of games. There is a difference between being conditioned and reacting a way that you have reacted countless times vs similar scenarios before, and getting into a completely unorthodox situation and using your analytical skills and critical thinking to work your way out. Keep in mind a robot can be programmed to make quick choices based on certain parameters.
If idra was more of a thinker like some believe, and less of a robot, you would see his playstyle being a bit more varied. As it stands now he is very set in his ways, like a robot.
Why do people feel Idra plays like a robot with zero variation? He is a really good and smart player. he has one very good macro build order that he "creatively" uses to hold off every single rush cheese etc. that gets thrown at him. Try laddering up with one good eco build order and see how hard it is to learn all the subtle nuances and timings that allow you to use that build to hold off everything from cheese, 1 base all ins as well as build a solid econ for long macro games (where the better player usually shines). Some people like and appreciate this style of play and it takes way more skill then cutesy 1 base plays that won't work more than one or two times and rely mostly on your opponent making a mistake rather than solid play from your side.
Also to downplay someones practice and dedication by saying "oh he just masses many many games and conditions himself" is pretty lame. You can do that with anything -E.g.My friend doesn't have to think much when he plays the guitar because he has conditioned himself from years of practice but that doesn't mean he is not creative and comes up with good music all the time. You can't say, oh he just plays for hours a day so his stuff not creative just programmed shit from all that practice.
I have seen robotic mechanical players and they can only do well if their opponent does what they expect them to do and they end up being above average at best E.g. this guy last night called me a "gay wiggler" because I went for an early reaper into fe and was completely thrown off as he was expecting standard 1-1-1 play, another player I know who is top diamond can only win if his opponent does standard 1 base plays etc.
I'm not downplaying idra's play, I am calling it what it is, extremely conditioned and predictable playstyle. He has a limited arsenal of strats that he will execute, but he is very good within executing those strats. I think a lot of people underestimate how much of an rts can be conditioned into you simply because for them they don't play at that idra-like level so a lot of things that are habit to other players, are still serious decisions they have to consciously make as a game transpires.
I would agree with you, if the Zerg race itself wasn't geared towards a mechanical, predictable play style in order to survive the various cheeses that Terran and toss can throw at us. Idra is doing very well with what he has to work with, a reactive race with limited "creative" options, which are all easily countered by general strategies from the other races.
On September 21 2010 17:04 robertdinh wrote: Idra's decision making stems from conditioned playstyle. Any player can learn that and can make "quick" decisions that have been programmed into them through hundreds if not thousands of games. There is a difference between being conditioned and reacting a way that you have reacted countless times vs similar scenarios before, and getting into a completely unorthodox situation and using your analytical skills and critical thinking to work your way out. Keep in mind a robot can be programmed to make quick choices based on certain parameters.
If idra was more of a thinker like some believe, and less of a robot, you would see his playstyle being a bit more varied. As it stands now he is very set in his ways, like a robot.
Why do people feel Idra plays like a robot with zero variation? He is a really good and smart player. he has one very good macro build order that he "creatively" uses to hold off every single rush cheese etc. that gets thrown at him. Try laddering up with one good eco build order and see how hard it is to learn all the subtle nuances and timings that allow you to use that build to hold off everything from cheese, 1 base all ins as well as build a solid econ for long macro games (where the better player usually shines). Some people like and appreciate this style of play and it takes way more skill then cutesy 1 base plays that won't work more than one or two times and rely mostly on your opponent making a mistake rather than solid play from your side.
Also to downplay someones practice and dedication by saying "oh he just masses many many games and conditions himself" is pretty lame. You can do that with anything -E.g.My friend doesn't have to think much when he plays the guitar because he has conditioned himself from years of practice but that doesn't mean he is not creative and comes up with good music all the time. You can't say, oh he just plays for hours a day so his stuff not creative just programmed shit from all that practice.
I have seen robotic mechanical players and they can only do well if their opponent does what they expect them to do and they end up being above average at best E.g. this guy last night called me a "gay wiggler" because I went for an early reaper into fe and was completely thrown off as he was expecting standard 1-1-1 play, another player I know who is top diamond can only win if his opponent does standard 1 base plays etc.
I'm not downplaying idra's play, I am calling it what it is, extremely conditioned and predictable playstyle. He has a limited arsenal of strats that he will execute, but he is very good within executing those strats. I think a lot of people underestimate how much of an rts can be conditioned into you simply because for them they don't play at that idra-like level so a lot of things that are habit to other players, are still serious decisions they have to consciously make as a game transpires.
I would agree with you, if the Zerg race itself wasn't geared towards a mechanical, predictable play style in order to survive the various cheeses that Terran and toss can throw at us. Idra is doing very well with what he has to work with, a reactive race with limited "creative" options, which are all easily countered by general strategies from the other races.
Well if you know idra's history throughout sc2 and bw you know that he has never been known as a creative player. Also even within zerg's limits he further limits himself whereas some great players are capable of doing any strat under the sun.
On September 21 2010 17:04 robertdinh wrote: Idra's decision making stems from conditioned playstyle. Any player can learn that and can make "quick" decisions that have been programmed into them through hundreds if not thousands of games. There is a difference between being conditioned and reacting a way that you have reacted countless times vs similar scenarios before, and getting into a completely unorthodox situation and using your analytical skills and critical thinking to work your way out. Keep in mind a robot can be programmed to make quick choices based on certain parameters.
If idra was more of a thinker like some believe, and less of a robot, you would see his playstyle being a bit more varied. As it stands now he is very set in his ways, like a robot.
Why do people feel Idra plays like a robot with zero variation? He is a really good and smart player. he has one very good macro build order that he "creatively" uses to hold off every single rush cheese etc. that gets thrown at him. Try laddering up with one good eco build order and see how hard it is to learn all the subtle nuances and timings that allow you to use that build to hold off everything from cheese, 1 base all ins as well as build a solid econ for long macro games (where the better player usually shines). Some people like and appreciate this style of play and it takes way more skill then cutesy 1 base plays that won't work more than one or two times and rely mostly on your opponent making a mistake rather than solid play from your side.
Also to downplay someones practice and dedication by saying "oh he just masses many many games and conditions himself" is pretty lame. You can do that with anything -E.g.My friend doesn't have to think much when he plays the guitar because he has conditioned himself from years of practice but that doesn't mean he is not creative and comes up with good music all the time. You can't say, oh he just plays for hours a day so his stuff not creative just programmed shit from all that practice.
I have seen robotic mechanical players and they can only do well if their opponent does what they expect them to do and they end up being above average at best E.g. this guy last night called me a "gay wiggler" because I went for an early reaper into fe and was completely thrown off as he was expecting standard 1-1-1 play, another player I know who is top diamond can only win if his opponent does standard 1 base plays etc.
I'm not downplaying idra's play, I am calling it what it is, extremely conditioned and predictable playstyle. He has a limited arsenal of strats that he will execute, but he is very good within executing those strats. I think a lot of people underestimate how much of an rts can be conditioned into you simply because for them they don't play at that idra-like level so a lot of things that are habit to other players, are still serious decisions they have to consciously make as a game transpires.
Ok I can understand that. I guess we are saying the same thing in different words. Yeah his general play is predictable but that comes with trying to learn a standard BO inside out. What I appreciate about his play is how many things he can deal with using the limited amount of strats that he knows well and his build still allows powering econ.
I feel he is the kind of player who will not invest in coming up with something new if he already has a tool that can deal with some situation. I like it, it is a minimal style of play and it is very effective. I think it is quite creative atleast in the part of coming up with the limited tools and their uses from the build to stop all sorts of shit. I am sure once the game matures and most optimal BOs are figured out, a lot of the better players will be doing the same thing too.
On September 21 2010 17:04 robertdinh wrote: Idra's decision making stems from conditioned playstyle. Any player can learn that and can make "quick" decisions that have been programmed into them through hundreds if not thousands of games. There is a difference between being conditioned and reacting a way that you have reacted countless times vs similar scenarios before, and getting into a completely unorthodox situation and using your analytical skills and critical thinking to work your way out. Keep in mind a robot can be programmed to make quick choices based on certain parameters.
If idra was more of a thinker like some believe, and less of a robot, you would see his playstyle being a bit more varied. As it stands now he is very set in his ways, like a robot.
Why do people feel Idra plays like a robot with zero variation? He is a really good and smart player. he has one very good macro build order that he "creatively" uses to hold off every single rush cheese etc. that gets thrown at him. Try laddering up with one good eco build order and see how hard it is to learn all the subtle nuances and timings that allow you to use that build to hold off everything from cheese, 1 base all ins as well as build a solid econ for long macro games (where the better player usually shines). Some people like and appreciate this style of play and it takes way more skill then cutesy 1 base plays that won't work more than one or two times and rely mostly on your opponent making a mistake rather than solid play from your side.
Also to downplay someones practice and dedication by saying "oh he just masses many many games and conditions himself" is pretty lame. You can do that with anything -E.g.My friend doesn't have to think much when he plays the guitar because he has conditioned himself from years of practice but that doesn't mean he is not creative and comes up with good music all the time. You can't say, oh he just plays for hours a day so his stuff not creative just programmed shit from all that practice.
I have seen robotic mechanical players and they can only do well if their opponent does what they expect them to do and they end up being above average at best E.g. this guy last night called me a "gay wiggler" because I went for an early reaper into fe and was completely thrown off as he was expecting standard 1-1-1 play, another player I know who is top diamond can only win if his opponent does standard 1 base plays etc.
I'm not downplaying idra's play, I am calling it what it is, extremely conditioned and predictable playstyle. He has a limited arsenal of strats that he will execute, but he is very good within executing those strats. I think a lot of people underestimate how much of an rts can be conditioned into you simply because for them they don't play at that idra-like level so a lot of things that are habit to other players, are still serious decisions they have to consciously make as a game transpires.
I would agree with you, if the Zerg race itself wasn't geared towards a mechanical, predictable play style in order to survive the various cheeses that Terran and toss can throw at us. Idra is doing very well with what he has to work with, a reactive race with limited "creative" options, which are all easily countered by general strategies from the other races.
Alot of people remember his BW days though when they bring this up and well he was sort of known for lacking in game sense and decision making but having great mechanics.
I don't think this statement is necessarily true. I actually think games like Starcraft can approach higher strategic levels by removing some mechanical requirements and only forcing the user to make decisions that have strategic merit. Case in point: the queen spawn larva.
Look, you don't really understand how this works :/.
Queens do have strategic choice. I can either make a creep tumor or spawn larvae at every cooldown. If for some reason I had a strategy that involved making a lot of creep tumors for whatever reason, I could do so.
That is strategic choice.
What it isn't is it isn't an intuitive strategic choice. I'm not spamming creep tumors because I know doing so is not optimal. You seem to only value intuitive strategic choices.
These intuitive strategic choices can only exist because of mechanics. Only when the game cannot be turned into a structure and you have a split second to preform calculations will you be making intuitive strategic choices.
The queen spawn larvae, is not an intuitive choice. So what? It increases the mechanical demand of the game in a very intuitive (in this context I mean intuitive as in the sense: "Easy to pick up and understandable and relevant for new players) way, which increases the overall intuitive depth of the game as a whole.
A better example is probably Ruse (the new Ubisoft game). Ruse is very badly balanced for competitive play, so don't respond and go "OMG RUSE IS TERRIBLE LOL!", but I think it's an interesting game for the same reason. In Ruse, the mechanical skill required is very low. If it was well-balanced, it might be a very competitive strategic game.
As a side note:
Has it ever occurred to you Ruse is poorly balanced for competitive play, or intrinsically unbalance able for competitive play, because lack of mechanics? Mechanics restrict the structuralising of gameplay. As gameplay becomes more structural, minute differences are amplified. As you decrease the role of mechanics, the inherent structure of the game has to become more balanced. Likewise, a game heavily driven by mechanics has a much laxer requirement on balance. Once you approach zero mechanics, you need to be at perfect balance.
Sir, you are a genius. I shall endeavor to learn from you.
Mechanics create strategies not everyone can use. Units have different properties when micro'd properly or when macro'd up to a critical mass at an early stage of the game.
This gives people avenues for advantage beyond abstract strategies, which problematically are easy for any person of similar intelligence to emulate.
I can see a pro play, know the strategy, execute it to the best of my ability, and fail miserably. Is the pro smarter than me? Maybe, but the reason I fail is poor execution. The mechanics give me another avenue of improvement. They are mentally stimulating because I'm always trying to develop strategies which fully exploit, but do not overtax, my mechanical ability.
On September 21 2010 10:28 dave333 wrote: There's always different kinds of intelligence and SC no doubt requires a certain kind of intellect, one that can try to anticipate what your opponent is going to do.
Maybe this doesn't happen in SC2 yet (still kind of limited) but there are so many strategies and openers in BW and it takes a good analytical mind to try to predict what your opponent will do and what you should do. A lot of it is game theory, and I'm sure many of the to pros are very good at that in tournaments.
This.
But ultimately, as others have said, it comes down to the definition of intelligence. However, in everyday speech, intelligence is usually referred to as analytical skill: i.e. the ability to deduce logical conclusions based the evidence at hand. And problem solving is a very huge part of SC.
I would also like to give intuition a bit more attention. On the Myers-Briggs profiles, intuition is usually described as the ability to come to deep conclusions about very complex problems. For you people who reguarly experience those "eureka!"-moments out there, you know what I mean. If you don't, well chances are you are just not very intuitive as a person.
Intuition and intelligence go hand in hand. Not necessarily, but a great combination of both will lead to innovative gameplay, and people who deploy both well will be those players who can turn the tide of a game that already seemed like a loss.
Another aspect of SC gameplay is anticipation. This with combination of intuition is usually what people are referring to with "game sense". What I am trying to say here is that first of all you need some kind of analytical skill. If you are completely void of any ability to analyze your opponent, then you are most likely the kind of person who will just go with the same strategy every time and expect it to win every time even though it won't.
After you have analyzed the situation, you need intuition in order to figure out what your opponent is doing. This will give you an ability to anticipate your opponent's actions. All these three variables work in very complex ways in a SC game, and you have to constantly deploy them in order to ensure victory. If your opponent won over you going MMM, the reason why you lost wasn't because your opponent was predictable and went MMM, the reason why you lost was because you failed to analytically deduce this and come up with a solution (counter-army).
So does SC require at least some kind of remote analytical, intuitive and anticipative skill? Yes, of course it does. When we see two great players play; what is actually going on is a mind-battle. Like some others have said, multitasking is crucial, especially in large macro-games, but it's still all about outsmarting your opponent, be the one who is better to analytically deduce how to find a good counter to the opponent.
But what's important, and what people seem to miss, is that these things can be IMPROVED. Intellectual abilities are not set in stone, even though we may have been lead to think they are. You can train your IQ by studying, similarly, a person can likely train his or her analytical abilities, intuition and anticipation skills over time by simply playing a lot of games. And this will improve as other areas will improve such as high APM etc. This is why we consider skilled players to have a great game sense. They have because they have practiced so much. Of course experience is a variable here, there are after all only so many options a player from each race can do in order to ensure victory, which is limited to the amount of units each race has access to.
And again, regardless of what you think is a sport or not, anything you want to excel at requires practice. This is because of the law of diminishing returns: the better you become the longer it takes for you to improve. There are individual differences here, some may take more time than others, but the diminishing returns still remains true.
As a real life example from my own experiences, it took me a couple of months to understand the basics of guitar playing by practicing once in a while and seeing my teacher once a week. It took me a year to learn barré chords and two years to play three strings somewhat all right. Due to lack of practice, I still don't feel I play the guitar sufficiently. I am stuck at the 2-year skill level, more or less. Sure, I can play the first riffs in Episode 666 by In Flames like they do it at the same speed, but I can't really do more than that. If I would continue practice, I would ultimately be able to play most of the song, but I didn't. I only practiced the first riffs. That's the law of diminishing returns. If I had continued to practice my guitar playing much more than what I did, I would be much better and way more skilled now and would probably be able to play songs like Episode 666 without any real problems. But I didn't.
Why I am mentioning all this is that it is important to understand. If you really want to be really good at anything in life you have to practice regularly and a lot. I want to take a Ph.D. title in social anthropology, this requires me to read huge piles of books on various subjects in order to accumulate sufficient knowledge in order to be classified as a scientist, along with a great analytical ability, of course.
You don't have to be book smart in order to be smart. Some people might be completely unable to put their skills in practice outside the context where they were learnt in the first place. How often do you need to use maths (especially stuff more advanced than arithmetics) in order to get by in your every day life? Not that often. Being good at SC is the same thing.
Your list kinda threw me off. Brilliant players like TLO, Nada, Boxer...then MorroW in the same sentence? MorroW pretty much wins by doing BOs better than the other player.
On September 22 2010 00:06 mierin wrote: Your list kinda threw me off. Brilliant players like TLO, Nada, Boxer...then MorroW in the same sentence? MorroW pretty much wins by doing BOs better than the other player.
Game senses and mechanics all come from practicing and hardwork. Strategies are theorycrafts and it requires some skill to back it up. Mechanics will improve you in the long run, not strategies. Once you got your mechanics up, you can have the spare time to think about strats when you're used to the long macro games.
However SC2 mechanics are way easier than those of BW, so mechanics aren't as important given the MBS and huge ass groups of armys attack move.
Being smart gives people the POTENTIAL to be good at a higher level than people of less intelligence than them. It's up to how much they practice and the effort they put in beyond that. Someone can make up for a large intelligence gap by simply putting in more effort.
The things that really sabotage people; the things that keep them from improving, are toxic mindsets. People who blame losses on game imbalance and cheese, wasting their effort raging against them instead of trying to analyze how they could've defeated it and where they went wrong.
In my experience, less intelligent people are more likely to take on a toxic mindset and start raging, but I've also seen otherwise smart people do it as well.
On September 21 2010 23:08 figq wrote: How to put it better - you don't have to be smart to be smart. TLO always insists on the fact that his creativity is the result of practice. So it's not "smart vs practice", it's rather "smart via practice". Applies to other areas of life as well.
except everyone that's ever met TLO says he's a total genius.
It is absolutely essential to be smart. Mechanics won't get you anywhere at all. Having good mechanics and no intelligence will get you as far as someone with good intelligence and no mechanics. You need both to be good. Starcraft also is just as physically demanding as other sports as well, you just use less body parts. The average player cannot go above 600 APM even just spamming random keys. July peaked 808 APM, which goes beyond what is humanly possible. Efforts needs to use heat pads on his wrists before a game. Backho broke his back playing an intense PvZ match.
This is my approach. In theory, you don't need to be "smart" in the sense that you need to go through a set of responses and evaluate whether it's a good response or not. All you need is the knowledge of how to respond in the ideal way to a certain set of conditions. For instance:
Condition: He's on X bases with Y units of type Z. Response: Make A units of type B.
However, this is simply unrealistic for any human to perfect, because there's virtually an infinite number of possible situations. The above example only has three conditional factors, but just try thinking about the number of in-game factors, the number of values each factor could have and even metagame factors. Also, a response could have their own conditions as well, such as "Make A units of type B, but make C if he tech switches to D" and so on. No one is ever going to get even remotely close to such an extensive set of conditions and responses. We just have to generalize our conditions.
A thinking player, or "smart" if you will, will iterate through different responses, created on-the-fly or already known ones, by evaluating them and ultimately deciding on the best response. I think it's safe to say that it's also unrealistic to rely solely on this method, as no human being could possibly iterate fast enough to find the best response. Generalization must also take place by choosing a response that seems like the best one, because time's primarily the limiting factor here.
I think top of the top players will have approximately equally good condition/response play, but being "smart" is what pulls one player ahead of the other. This post is mostly directed at those stating either "yes" or "no". It really depends on whether people can reach good enough levels of condition/response play that makes "smart" play obsolete (because I'm pretty sure it's not the other way around), and I don't think we can measure that.
Alright, I'm done.
tl;dr: In theory, no. In reality, perhaps, but inconclusive. That is, using the definition of smart presented in the first paragraph.
I feel like to get 'good' at starcraft you need some intelligence. I'm not sure it would translate to other fields, but I at least feel really smart when I play.
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.
On a higher level of play, "intelligence" or rather game understanding is greatly important. You need to anticipate your opponent's actions and react properly. Its a lot of it outside of the actual gaming as well, like analyzing replays, thinking out a nice strategy to use et cetera. Intelligence will help you with this.
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.
" as proof of that concept as well as players like Idra who nearly completely rely on mechanics alone to bring them to the top." 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.
On September 21 2010 23:08 figq wrote: How to put it better - you don't have to be smart to be smart. TLO always insists on the fact that his creativity is the result of practice. So it's not "smart vs practice", it's rather "smart via practice". Applies to other areas of life as well.
except everyone that's ever met TLO says he's a total genius.
You seem to have misunderstood my post, since you assume this contradicts it somehow.
To do anything well takes a certain degree of intelligence. With Starcraft, there's a lot of analysis going on at any given moment; how many workers do I have is that gas/mineral field saturated enough, is my income rate/spend rate good or do I need to build more unit producing structures, what in Gods name is my opponent OMG MAURA....
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.
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.
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.
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.
On September 21 2010 13:40 Buddhist wrote: I don't think I've ever seen a play in BW or SC2 where I went, "wow, I never would have thought of that!".
TLO's use of nukes are very good, but they are not genius. He simply uses them for zone control, which is the most obvious use of them.
I think some very high level players are also very smart; being smart lends itself to self improvement. However, many other top players probably aren't very smart, and rely upon endless practice.
Yes, you actually can just rely on mechanics to carry you to the top.
There's nothing genius about, "build an army and attack at an appropriate(timing attack? don't walk into a line of tanks?) time, perhaps getting a surround", or "harass while also attacking". Even an average person who has never played the game before could figure out those tactics, and yet they are the tactics used in the highest levels of play.
There is innovation and creativity, but not genius, in SC play.
I dont think you NEED to be smart to be good at SC, but you definitely cant be an idiot and be a pro. Theres a lot of specific knowledge and automatic processing that a complete genius wouldnt have access to within the first couple of weeks in playing the game. If someone of moderate intelligence played 12-14 hours a day with the objective of becoming a pro, he could probably become a pro simply because he will have all of the muscle memory to keep his APM up and he could automatically respond to new circumstances simply because hes seen so many of them.
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.
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.
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.
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.
As I said before things that are habitual to very practiced players are things that take a conscious effort for weaker players, so they think the game requires more thinking than it actually does.
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.
I think SC2 has a while before it gets to the point where BW got to, also the fact that BW had so many loop holes and silly micro's (like the wraith muta thing) could only be done in a game that old. Being a newer game makes it hard for SC2 to have those issues. Also, SC2 is still a fledgling game, I'm sure in 2 years time everyone will have different oppinions on the matter.
Intellegence helps, but there are more important things to be really good.
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)
Intellectual by definition, a person who uses the mind creatively.
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.
There are reasons why there are players that just dominate consistently like Flash and Jaedong, it stupid to think that pure mechanics and pure practice/repetition will get you success in Starcraft.
It's the same with any physical sports, great players are born and can't be manufactured. Only smart people will be successful in Starcraft. There's a reason why it's classified as a strategy game.
it doesnt require intelligents because i thought someone did a study that showed even top chess masters only have an average to below average IQ's, and they just memorized all the moves and when to do it, as well as practicing an insane amount. if you dont have to be a genius to be a pro chess player, you dont to be a genius to be a pro starcraft 2 player
^ wrong, you can only get so good being a korean robot and doing the same shit over and over and relying on solid mechanics/micro. Strategic players can abuse things that make them able to beat people with better micro/mechanics. In leagues I don't even scout because i know my opponents so well i already know what they are doing when they are doing and where they are, I don't know many people that can do that and it be as reliable.
On September 22 2010 23:07 x7i wrote: i knew 78 iq person who played competitively bw with decent results
While I understand that you might not want to "out" the player in question, you have to understand that some people will be skeptical without an ID.
At least give us some more details. How did you know his IQ? Did he every win any tournaments? Did he ever win any lans? What was his Iccup ranking, etc...
On September 22 2010 23:07 x7i wrote: i knew 78 iq person who played competitively bw with decent results
While I understand that you might not want to "out" the player in question, you have to understand that some people will be skeptical without an ID.
At least give us some more details. How did you know his IQ? Did he every win any tournaments? Did he ever win any lans? What was his Iccup ranking, etc...
On September 22 2010 23:42 peachsncream wrote: ^ wrong, you can only get so good being a korean robot and doing the same shit over and over and relying on solid mechanics/micro. Strategic players can abuse things that make them able to beat people with better micro/mechanics. In leagues I don't even scout because i know my opponents so well i already know what they are doing when they are doing and where they are, I don't know many people that can do that and it be as reliable.
assuming your talking to me, cause no idea how often you refresh your page.
Im not saying you you can be a robot and be good, im saying you dont need to be a super genius to be good at chess, and shouldnt have to be too intelligent to be good at starcraft if you practice alot. playing alot will get you good mechanics and micro, but since the people im refering to are also human beings, can develop game sense and strategies that dont require 400 IQ to perform.
like i said, chess masters dont need high IQ's but they're predicting and basing their strategies off of moves 4-5 ahead of whats actually on the board, and they are doing this by playing alot, and knowing whats possible, and understanding what someone might try to do in situations, aka, game sense from experience, not being intellectually smart.
An interesting reminder: there are HUGE opening libraries in chess. Many, many years ago I was proud owner of a pocket chess computer and took him to a card game meeting where one guy would play a quick game against it.
After like 5 turns he was, "Hmmm, a xxyv-opening, quite interesting".
I was so seriously impressed. He also beat the poor little machine into the ground, even though it was trying it's hardest *sniff*
On September 21 2010 13:30 happyness wrote: When it comes to mastery in most anything, whether it be music or sports or science etc., you can't rely on pure talent/smarts alone. Richard Feynman, a nobel-award winning physicist, was said to have an IQ of 125, which is much lower than the average nobel award winning scientist. So how was he so successful? Hard work.
This is an incredibly misleading statement which has to be rectified. Let's look at the rest of his wiki
In high school, his IQ was determined to be 125: high, but "merely respectable" according to biographer Gleick.[11] Feynman later scoffed at psychometric testing. By 15, he had learned differential and integral calculus.
in his last year in high school, Feynman won the New York University Math Championship; the large difference between his score and those of his closest competitors shocked the judges.[14]
Self-taught in mathematics as in everything else, in his senior college year he won the nation's most difficult and prestigious mathematics competition -- the Putnam -- by a score so far ahead of the next four finishers as to astound the scorers. In many years, more than half the entrants fail to complete a single problem in the allotted time: Feynman left early.
Yeah, he obviously so well because of "hard work", and not because he had genius level intelligence far surpassing most people who score 160 or higher. The only thing you can take from his "125 iq score" is that he didn't do particularly well on iq test style (probably verbal) problems. Don't compare pure intellectual activities like theoretical physics or math to mechanical ones.
Understanding starcraft scenarios requires no abstract knowledge that hundreds to thousands of games will fail to drill into you. If you don't like to think, maybe it will take longer to sink in.
Yeah Feynman was a supergenius:
Feynman's 124: in this context one often hears of Feynman's modest grade school IQ score of 124. To understand this score we have to remember that typical IQ tests (e.g., administered to public school children) tend to have low ceilings. They are not of the kind that Roe used in her study. One can imagine that the ceiling on Feynman's exam was roughly 135 (say, 99th percentile). If Feynman received the highest score on the mathematical portion, and a modest score of 115 on the verbal, we can easily understand the resulting average of 124. However, it is well known that Feynman was extremely strong mathematically. He was asked on short notice to take the Putnam exam for MIT as a senior, and received the top score in the country that year! On Roe's test Feynman's math score would presumably have been > 190, with a correspondingly higher composite IQ.
Intelligence is certainly helpful especially since sc2 is a newer game, but like any game there is a limited amount of knowledge and once you have all of it intelligence wont do much anymore. If you have practiced enough that you know the perfect counter and execution to everything then intelligence wont do squat. Therefore intelligence doesnt play much of a role once everyone gets to a very high level and perfects the game. The only exception to this would be new map releases where more intelligent people would be able to come up with strategies faster. This is why they should rotate maps often imo.
On a side note I think it would be interesting to see pros play on maps they have little to no experience on to showcase intelligent play more.
You need to be "smart" at playing starcraft to play starcraft. It means skill of recognizing and reading the interactions between all the moving parts (and potential moving parts) of an finite, albeit large, closed system. I think it is somewhat similar to Chess in that respect--nobody is ever going to have a strategy in Chess that involves a piece that is a combination of a Bishop and a Queen, and nobody you play in the ladder will ever have come at you with a Carrier that can launch nukes or punch a hole in the map to change the gameplay (blizzard you need to add this now, planet cracker returnzz). If you need to be "smart" to be really good at Chess, you need to be "smart" to play starcraft at a high level. It might be considered similar to mastering any technique or system: people who study languages eventually are able to guess new words they've never heard before based on the rules of the language they've discovered while studying. As for whether starcraft "smarts" applies outside of SC, that depends on whether what you do in life involves taking a finite set of moving parts and determining their relationships. If you need to do that sort of thing, it might be helpful. If you're not, it probably won't.
There is an invisible ceiling. If you do a physical activity most of the time you will gain natural muscle memory think Nada’s Amp he looks like a pianist .However this has a invisible ceiling where intellect and trickery and cerebral play comes into it but being smart doesn’t nearly mean you’re going to be good in these things . However the greatest tacticians are usually the ones of high intellect.
If you have a friend who studies for five hours a day on math, then he will do better on math tests than someone who's smarter, but studies for one hour a day.
EPT
Spamming games is a way to learn the game thus makes you a smarter player, so yes to both I guess.
![[image loading]](http://classes.kumc.edu/sah/resources/sensory_processing/images/bell_curve.gif)
oes the map that I'm on make sense for this strategy*, *Am I getting 6 pooled or proxy gated?*. 
