EPTOP is mistaken from an obviously terran biased point of view. A toss would say the same thing about forcefield and gateway/colosi as well as gaurdian shield and stalker as well as psi storm and colossus and well as psi storm/archon as well as phoenix and colossus as well as void ray and colossus as well as zealot/sentry.
Terrans Have Highest Skill Ceiling - Page 7
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NearPerfection
232 Posts
OP is mistaken from an obviously terran biased point of view. A toss would say the same thing about forcefield and gateway/colosi as well as gaurdian shield and stalker as well as psi storm and colossus and well as psi storm/archon as well as phoenix and colossus as well as void ray and colossus as well as zealot/sentry. | ||
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Sfydjklm
United States9218 Posts
Zergs are doing like shit in random tournaments that run over the course of few hours or few days. Yet all big GOM tournaments were won by zerg. How come? Simply because zerg has more leverage the more skill is involved in teh equation- when zerg has time to prepare and study their opponents they always have the upper leg. | ||
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Pyrrhuloxia
United States6700 Posts
On November 29 2010 18:45 NearPerfection wrote: i'm trying to imagine stim being more micro intensive than blink. ghost more micro intensive than ht, or medivac being more micro intensive than sentry... but i'm just not seeing it. OP is mistaken from an obviously terran biased point of view. A toss would say the same thing about forcefield and gateway/colosi as well as gaurdian shield and stalker as well as psi storm and colossus and well as psi storm/archon as well as phoenix and colossus as well as void ray and colossus as well as zealot/sentry. Yeah, I dunno about ghost vs ht - I would say ghost is harder. But stim is reallllly easy (not sure why they get wasted so often...) and incredibly powerful and easier than blink. Sentry is also a very tricky unit. When you think of gold level play and below, you can get hit with rushes where clutch sentry micro is essential and that's a tougher skill than what other races have to deal with at that level I think. | ||
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Pyrrhuloxia
United States6700 Posts
On November 29 2010 18:45 Sfydjklm wrote: actually zerg does. And not only are there ex-terran players like morrow or TLO telling you this but there is also statistical proof. Zergs are doing like shit in random tournaments that run over the course of few hours or few days. Yet all big GOM tournaments were won by zerg. How come? Simply because zerg has more leverage the more skill is involved in teh equation- when zerg has time to prepare and study their opponents they always have the upper leg. I'm not sure the fact that Zerg players require more intel on their opponents means the race has a higher skill ceiling. That would suggest that other races have a higher variability in what they can do which is the OP's claim. Now you can say that higher variability does not mean higher skill ceiling and I may agree, but that does not go against most of what the OP is saying. Also, the OP doesn't seem to be saying that Terran would be the best race if players were perfect (or maybe he is?) It seems like "Terran has the widest skill gradient," i.e. Terran has the most improvement yet to be discovered or something. Eh I'm babbling now. | ||
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Black Gun
Germany4482 Posts
for example, walling as terran in bw was (afaik) popularized by boxer, so everybody copied it. does this increase the skill ceiling of terrans? hell no, walling is easy. i dont know about which race has the highest skill ceiling in sc2, but in bw pretty much all pro´s agreed that playing the perfect game as zerg would be the hardest of all races. coordinating big lategame attacks as zerg required sick amounts of apm. so much that many pros, including jaedong himself, said that incorporating queens into the standard lategame zvt mix would not be feasilbe as they would require too many additional actions. | ||
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pure.Wasted
Canada4701 Posts
On November 29 2010 18:45 NearPerfection wrote:OP is mistaken from an obviously terran biased point of view. A toss would say the same thing about forcefield and gateway/colosi as well as gaurdian shield and stalker as well as psi storm and colossus and well as psi storm/archon as well as phoenix and colossus as well as void ray and colossus as well as zealot/sentry. I'm not really interested in unit micro, though. I only brought that up in the OP to show that it's a contested issue, and that I want to steer completely clear of it. When I talk about versatility, I don't mean "just how well can a perfect play Protoss use his High Templar?" I'm talking about the mechanics of the race, and how many mechanics exist to be taken advantage of in the first place. On November 29 2010 18:45 Sfydjklm wrote: actually zerg does. And not only are there ex-terran players like morrow or TLO telling you this but there is also statistical proof. Zergs are doing like shit in random tournaments that run over the course of few hours or few days. Yet all big GOM tournaments were won by zerg. How come? Simply because zerg has more leverage the more skill is involved in teh equation- when zerg has time to prepare and study their opponents they always have the upper leg. I'm updating the OP to emphasize that I'm not talking about player skill or players' ability to win. Having more options (ie, the number of different buildings you can construct, the number of abilities your buildings can cast) doesn't necessarily translate into a victory. It just translates into a more dynamic playstyle. On November 29 2010 18:56 Pyrrhuloxia wrote: Also, the OP doesn't seem to be saying that Terran would be the best race if players were perfect (or maybe he is?) It seems like "Terran has the widest skill gradient," i.e. Terran has the most improvement yet to be discovered or something. Eh I'm babbling now. You read me exactly right.  This thread is not about Terran being OP... and if they are (regardless of this thread) I don't think it's because of the versatility of mechanics. Versatility of mechanics doesn't make a race inherently OP, just have more depth. A race can have complex, interesting mechanics and be seriously underpowered. | ||
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Sfydjklm
United States9218 Posts
On November 29 2010 19:04 pure.Wasted wrote: I'm updating the OP to emphasize that I'm not talking about player skill or players' ability to win. Having more options (ie, the number of different buildings you can construct, the number of abilities your buildings can cast) doesn't necessarily translate into a victory. It just translates into a more dynamic playstyle. yea i mostly agree with you, aside from the way you chose to title your post  | ||
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Pyrrhuloxia
United States6700 Posts
On November 29 2010 18:58 Black Gun wrote: variety of options or strategical depth doesnt equal skill ceiling. any cool idea, trick or synergy that is easy to use once u know about it wont substantially improve the skill ceiling of a race, it will just need someone to figure these things out, so that the rest of the world can copy it. for example, walling as terran in bw was (afaik) popularized by boxer, so everybody copied it. does this increase the skill ceiling of terrans? hell no, walling is easy. i dont know about which race has the highest skill ceiling in sc2, but in bw pretty much all pro´s agreed that playing the perfect game as zerg would be the hardest of all races. coordinating big lategame attacks as zerg required sick amounts of apm. so much that many pros, including jaedong himself, said that incorporating queens into the standard lategame zvt mix would not be feasilbe as they would require too many additional actions. I agree with those pros saying Zerg has the highest ceiling, but how much of that is out the window with SC2's lack of group selection limits? It kinda blew my mind when I saw what SC1 zerg had to deal with in Day 9's video covering his game vs... ( insert SC1 terran at WCG here - Silent Control or Xellos... I think Xellos). Zerg couldn't hotkey lings so you had to create piles of them to quickly drag, which is totally alien to me as a SC1 toss. I wonder how much of Toss's relative ease at D/C level Iccup is due to Protoss units' higher supply costs... I mean I would often beat Terrans with 180 APM with my 40 APM. Less to do means less to fuck up, so it could make a race more powerful at a lower level. And of course, Protosses have struggled at the highest levels due to that, perhaps? At the end of the day, though, skill ceilings are purely theoretical. Even if you think SC1 toss is the lowest skill ceiling in that game, and you agree with Nada and Boxer that SC2 requires more "intellect" due to more units and possibility space and what not, you have to agree that no one has maxed the protoss skill ceiling. Bisu still envies Stork's carrier micro and Stork still wishes for Bisu's PvZ and Jangbi's storming hand speed. | ||
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Sfydjklm
United States9218 Posts
On November 29 2010 18:56 Pyrrhuloxia wrote: I'm not sure the fact that Zerg players require more intel on their opponents means the race has a higher skill ceiling. That would suggest that other races have a higher variability in what they can do which is the OP's claim. Now you can say that higher variability does not mean higher skill ceiling and I may agree, but that does not go against most of what the OP is saying. well, i agree with you that "its not that simple" but not to derail OP its just generally accepted that more preparation= higher skill. Like a boxing match would be more indicative of fighters skill then a bar room brawl. | ||
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Pyrrhuloxia
United States6700 Posts
On November 29 2010 19:04 pure.Wasted wrote: I'm not really interested in unit micro, though. I only brought that up in the OP to show that it's a contested issue, and that I want to steer completely clear of it. When I talk about versatility, I don't mean "just how well can a perfect play Protoss use his High Templar?" I'm talking about the mechanics of the race, and how many mechanics exist to be taken advantage of in the first place. I'm updating the OP to emphasize that I'm not talking about player skill or players' ability to win. Having more options (ie, the number of different buildings you can construct, the number of abilities your buildings can cast) doesn't necessarily translate into a victory. It just translates into a more dynamic playstyle. You read me exactly right. This thread is not about Terran being OP... and if they are (regardless of this thread) I don't think it's because of the versatility of mechanics. Versatility of mechanics doesn't make a race inherently OP, just have more depth. A race can have complex, interesting mechanics and be seriously underpowered. Don't forget, though, that too many mechanics can start to make the game worse. I dunno that we are at that point, but at some point there are so many possible builds that things become a crap shoot because there is no real meta-game. For example, in Total Annihilation when you can have 200+ types of units and stuff, it doesn't increase the strategic depth if there is no way to dig into a constantly sloshing mess with no concrete substance. | ||
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Pyrrhuloxia
United States6700 Posts
On November 29 2010 19:09 Sfydjklm wrote: well, i agree with you that "its not that simple" but not to derail OP its just generally accepted that more preparation= higher skill. Like a boxing match would be more indicative of fighters skill then a bar room brawl. This comes up often in Policy Debate, where the conventional wisdom agrees with you. I feel that impromptu play and play with long preparation are both worthy skills and I'm not sure one is superior. For example, if you are only good at fighting against someone who is also using boxing gloves, are you more skilled than someone who can fight against many different skills in many different contexts? That boxer who tried MMA sure got his butt kicked, because boxing does not work against someone with more skill diversity. I also find it more badass to, say, save lives by impromptu kicking someone's ass, like a plane hijacker or something, than it is to win a televised fight you've had a lot of fair warning about. | ||
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DarthXX
Australia998 Posts
I see a lot of what I consider failed attempts on the dev team's part in Z/P. First lets look at Z. The most obvious one here (imo) is the creep speed bonus. And like it seems like all the cool perks were added from this starting point in a 1 step at a time type process. Hey lets make units run faster on creep, now we need a way to spread creep, creep colonies won't do, I know we'll just cloak them and make them reproduce, give it to overlords too. Hey if units run faster what about buildings, we can make the buildings move faster on the creep too. Like it just seems like they took a very linear approach to zerg. They take the race defining feature (creep) and go from there and just buff stuff from sc1 to work with it (eg. nydus canal -> worms, sunkens -> crawlers) Then there are just random things they seem to have thrown in, like broodlings. I'm not entirely sure what the point of what the buildings dropping broolings are but it seems to be an anti rush mechanism. It just seems inherently flawed as it like requires ur tech building to DIE first so the damage is already done, perhaps if they spawned from dead crawlers or buildings had the ability to spawn them or queens or something. Its this kind of seemingly linear and random stuff that is absent from Terran where everything is made to work together in perfect synnergy as pointed out by the OP. Then there's protoss which largely follows the same pattern, they have pylon fields how can we change them, I know! warp in, since protoss units are meant to be buff and in small numbers this should work fine. I'm not sure if my point is getting across, its kind of hard to articulate, it just seems like they made Terran first, tried to bring Z to its level, then tried again with P. When you look at an ability like choroboost, in my mind it really looks like it was spawned out of "we gave terrans mules, zerg can make a shitton of drones with queens we gotta give protoss something, how about we just let them build fast ...." tl;dr I really do feel they put a lot more effort into terran each perk they gave terran seems to have a well reasoned reason for being there. Then they tried to make zerg and protoss be as interesting, with cool little abilities which resulted in some random stuff coming out that doesn't make a whole lot of sense (broodlings) and a few things were just added cus someone else had them (chronoboost) | ||
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terranghost
United States980 Posts
On November 29 2010 14:18 Loser777 wrote: If you're not walling off, placing the depot next to the mineral line is the most efficient use of resources, as SCVs can return to mining immediately after --there's a reason for that, it's not "because they can". A lot of the points you're making are common sense to Brood War players and while I'm on the subject of Brood War, if you want a real management game, try playing SK Terran in Brood War. To add onto this just like zerg or toss might want to learn timings like 2port banshee. Terrans learn timings as well putting the depo by my cc gives that scv more mining time keeps the weak building safer and unless I am being 6 pooled or 2 gate proxied I have more than enough time to get a barracks up and if I feel unsafe I can clog the remaining crack with an addon to the rax plus a salvageable bunker. (although this might enforce the ops point a bit.) If there were a variety of builds that zerg and toss could do to punish terrans for not walling off with their first depo like in BW then we would see more terrans choosing to use it in the wall off even though it may turn into a liability later on. On November 29 2010 14:25 -{Cake}- wrote: Well obviously you put in a lot of time/effort on this, Traditionally, zerg is about quantity, toss is about quality, and terran is about versatility Terran's options are part of racial identity. I think skill ceiling is the wrong phrase here, It doesn't really matter what race has the highest skill cap because even the top pros are probably not going to reach it So what i got from this is that you are saying terran has more options than the other races, solid point, arguable a issue with the game, but could have been said in much less time/words Well said. Starcraft is not a game of identical races they should not all be completely parallel. | ||
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pure.Wasted
Canada4701 Posts
On November 29 2010 19:30 terranghost wrote:Well said. Starcraft is not a game of identical races they should not all be completely parallel. What do you think of my response (found on this page, and edited into the bottom of the OP)? | ||
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Goobahfish
Australia71 Posts
Fundamentally, Zerg should have the highest skill ceiling. A zerg player has more to worry about than a terran or protoss. Chrono/Mule are pathetic to manage compared to tumors (which require thoughtful placement rather than repetitive routine. To posit an experiment, if the duties of a terran player were split into ten players there would be appreciable gains up to a point. Beyond three players a terran really wouldn't gain too much advantage other than drop/harass tactics. Zerg on the other hand could have 1 player designated to larvae, 1 for creep tumors, 1 for overlord scouting, 1 for other macro (teching) and then gain advantage from harassing in small groups. A zerg would still gain benefit up to the seventh player at least (especially mid-late game). Simply put, I think it is comparably easier to play 'perfect terran' than it is to play 'perfect zerg'. As to your argument which is really about versatility. Well, I imagine though versatile, metagame will narrow/throw out many of the viable tactics and narrow the dynamic down from a creative to a prescriptive play. Terran having the largest unit/ability groups will probably still be the most versatile. | ||
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Mooncat
Germany1228 Posts
On November 29 2010 14:23 ForPony wrote: If there's one company that cares about its product and community enough to do something like that, it's Blizzard. Where have you been in the last 5 years? | ||
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dakalro
Romania525 Posts
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Panoptic
United Kingdom515 Posts
It would be really interesting to see a list of terran units, buildings and abilities and the multiple kinds of ways in which they can/could be used. No doubt that a comparative list for the other races would be much smaller. | ||
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Kitani
United States44 Posts
But yeah, total agreement for the Terran versatility bit. | ||
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ShadowIord
Spain32 Posts
On November 29 2010 18:27 iPlaY.NettleS wrote: Sorry but most T's just spam tier 1 units and add a small number of higher tier units like medivac and viking as support whilst still spamming the same tier 1 units 30 minutes into the game.They then just stim and a click. Hardly ground breakingly high skill ceiling when compared to brood war. So... Zerg do not spam lings/Blings and toss do not spam leglots/stalkers... isnt it? To OP "A Planetary Fortress is a powerful defensive tool… only thing is, combined with the Command Center’s ability to fly and its ability to carry SCVs, it can even be used offensively in the early game." line. No PF cant fly an if i do not remember bad, neither PF or OC, can carry SCVs. and PF rush do not work vs a good player. | ||
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