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On March 17 2011 00:00 IdrA wrote:
yes it is too volatile and its not going to change
blizzards gone halfway between sc1 and chess and done a shitty job of it
sc1 had limited scouting and information but you could still hold a high winrate because the game was so difficult in terms of execution that it was possible to outplay your opponent in a million different ways. mbs, smartcasting, improved unit ai has changed that. we havent hit the skill ceiling yet, but it's low enough that theres not nearly as much differentiation between players already and thats only going to get worse as everyone improves.
I totally agree on easier mechanics but I'm not sure that easier scouting will make it better.
This is not a turn based strategy game after all , there aren't that deep and complex strategies requires hard work and practice.
If both players have almost perfect scouting information , it'll come to who will execute their build better and since mechanics are much easier in Sc2 , the difference between the execution of a top tier pro and a low level pro will be pretty low. Then a luck/unlucky moment is all it takes to beat superior player.
Easier mechanics raised the skill floor so much that , ceiling looks way lower compared to BW now. Kinda like , everyone can ride a bike , but the one who can ride it on a wire at the top of a sky scrapper is special.
I guess it's way too late for this kinda discussions tho , I highly doubt they'll chance such things after this.
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Yeah I think Idra is right about the lack of efficient scouting thing. Because "counter units" are much stronger in SC2 than SC1, if you can obtain knowledge of your opponents composition ahead of time you can win a huge advantage. This can lead to lesser players plucking games off of much stronger players. You can't win SC2 with just mechanics like you could in SC1, its more about strategy.
Ironically I think larger maps will actually make this problem worse. The larger the map, the more places you need to scout in order to ensure that you don't lose to a lesser player's all-in or cheese. We're not going to see people with 90%+ wlr in SC2 until Blizzard improves early game scouting for all three races.
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IdrA, thank you for your feedback in this thread. I love seeing pro-level commentary on these topics.
From a spectator perspective I feel that the game is a bit too volatile currently. People don't seem to be able to win consistently enough to keep true "superstars" around at the top level for long periods of time. MVP was being super hyped last season as the best player in SC2, and now he's down in Code A. MKP had to fight to get back into Code S. FruitDealer hasn't been looking stellar in general lately (although I personally was impressed by his two games the other night). Point being, there isn't really a person who can establish themselves as the "person to beat", because folks are just losing left and right. And having no real superstars makes the game less enjoyable as a spectator in my opinion.
I'll leave the commentary on how to actually fix the problem to the pros, but what IdrA says seems to make sense. Even if he traditionally has a tendency to QQ for zerg =) I just hope that this is something related to the newness of the SC2 scene and this is something that blizzard will work on to fix.
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If they lose then its their inability to win. Its not the games fault. Stop being a fanboy about everything, the game is still young, maybe one day your view of how it should be will become reality, but for now, it is not. I think a lot of top players are being very overrated, SlayerSBoxeR was never actually good enough to be hyped the way he was, not that he didn't deserve the hype or anything.
So far I only think MC is actually doing consistently good. Hoping July does good too, love watching his style.
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On March 17 2011 00:29 IdrA wrote:
well all your questions are about improving the strategy portion and personally i think itd be better to bring back the mechanical difficulty of sc1,
Well, it probably might help to distinguish the good players from the real masters, but on the other hand: Why make a game unreasonably difficult?
First of all, I don't think it will ever happen, cause then SC2 would become too much of an elite-game and Blizzard doesn't want that. Furthermore the popularity of a game also depends on how easy it is to access for new players. Making it mechanically more difficult would probably scare some people off. Why is that bad? Well, the more people care for SC2, the more do the sponsors and thus the bigger the prize money.
But even if we assume Blizz would make SC2 more difficult would it really have the desired results?
I don't know how much you were into WC3 but in terms of macro it is way easier than SC1 or SC2.
WC3 had automining, you could tab through units and yeah, you could only select 12 units at once, but there were fewer units to control so this limit didn't increase the difficulty as much as it did in SC1 (I still wonder how pros could handle a 200/200 zerg army with a maximum of 12 units being in a control group).
However even though WC3 was so easy (personally I find it easier than SC2 ) there was still an elite of progamers that consistently were on top of everyone else: Moon, Grubby, Lyn, Fly and some more. Well in the end it came down to the micro skills, I guess.
So I don't think that the fact that auto mining has been introduced in SC2 and that we have smart casting are reasons why SC2 is too volatile. WC3 was easier and still there were players who made to the very top.
Making the game mechanics more difficult for no reason is in my opinion not the way to go.
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Problem seems to be Blizzard and their balance. They've been working so hard to make the game balanced on the old map pool and didn't consider balance on larger maps. Consequently, some races are better than others on these new maps, and balance has to be remade. Hopefully the game will be complete balance wise by the 3rd expansion.
It is sad for me to see MVP in code A, but it's not for sure if he is the best player in SC2 at the moment. He's solid and good for sure. As long as he is in the GSL, he is safe.
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On March 16 2011 20:22 mr_tolkien wrote:
As for «MVP played poorly» : I agree. But does that mean you were thinking BEFORE the match he would play poorly ? He needs to work on his vP, but he is overall normally a very good gamer. I think nobody expected him to go 1-4 like that.
He was only 7-4 in TvP, so yes an all Protoss group was the worst for him. In his GSL win run he faced mostly Terrans and only a couple of Zergs. Squirtle beat him, and when he met MC, the match was just an showing of failed DT play.
Sure nobody was expecting him to lose, of course not, but that's only because we hadn't seen his limit before. His TvP was his weakest MU before, but we didn't know how weak it is. Just like NesTea's 10-0 ZvZ record, he hasn't faced all the best ZvZers in the world, so one can't assume how good he is, or what his weakness is, because it hadn't/hasn't been discovered yet.
If MVP was 700-400, this would be a huge upset, but right now the statistical polling is so small
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On March 17 2011 02:11 Iamyournoob wrote:Show nested quote +On March 17 2011 00:29 IdrA wrote:
well all your questions are about improving the strategy portion and personally i think itd be better to bring back the mechanical difficulty of sc1, Well, it probably might help to distinguish the good players from the real masters, but on the other hand: Why make a game unreasonably difficult? First of all, I don't think it will ever happen, cause then SC2 would become too much of an elite-game and Blizzard doesn't want that. Furthermore the popularity of a game also depends on how easy it is to access for new players. Making it mechanically more difficult would probably scare some people off. Why is that bad? Well, the more people care for SC2, the more do the sponsors and thus the bigger the prize money. But even if we assume Blizz would make SC2 more difficult would it really have the desired results? I don't know how much you were into WC3 but in terms of macro it is way easier than SC1 or SC2. WC3 had automining, you could tab through units and yeah, you could only select 12 units at once, but there were fewer units to control so this limit didn't increase the difficulty as much as it did in SC1 (I still wonder how pros could handle a 200/200 zerg army with a maximum of 12 units being in a control group). However even though WC3 was so easy (personally I find it easier than SC2 ) there was still an elite of progamers that consistently were on top of everyone else: Moon, Grubby, Lyn, Fly and some more. Well in the end it came down to the micro skills, I guess. So I don't think that the fact that auto mining has been introduced in SC2 and that we have smart casting are reasons why SC2 is too volatile. WC3 was easier and still there were players who made to the very top. Making the game mechanics more difficult for no reason is in my opinion not the way to go.
In WC3 it was more or less impossible to loose in the early game. You could basically take on almost all the early attack with a shop / a good hero / natural defense of your base.
In SC2 the main problem is that there is almost no defense advantage. WC3 was all about map control, creep path, building army and economy and harassing (harass, not attack) your opponent. There was almost no cheese that could work at high level except tower rush.
Having a DH and a few moonwell was almost good enough to rush to T2.
In WC3 at some level you could almost always reach the 15 minute (a moment where it actually skilled) mark on even foot or with a slight disadvantage. In SC2, loosing 2 bad rallying vikings early is almost GG in PvT, letting 3 hellion pass your ramp is also a GG case.
I think Jinro said it better than anyone: in SC2 blizzard is making it easy to kill your opponent. In WC3 it was easy to stay on even foot.
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A lot of it is that the current understanding of the metagame seems to give protoss the advantage in PvT. I'm not saying that the game is imbalanced I'm just saying that terran in general just doesn't seem to have an answer for a lot of what protoss can do. We're seeing a lot of it in the gsl right now with players like sanzenith, Hongun and anypro getting further than they probably should not to mention MC's continued dominance.
The terrans will figure out new timings, better unit compositions, etc or a patch will come out. Either way the game is going to be in this constant state of flux for a few years (remember how terrans will supposedly unbeatable a few months ago).
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Yes, the game is volatile, which adds another dimension of skill into the picture. The ability to think spontaneously and make the correct decisions instantly is becoming increasingly crucial, and it's whats separating good from great right now. It's difficult to say if the game will ever be completely figured out and slowed down, but there the element of surprise is probably the greatest asset a player can have right now. There are still endless strategies out there to be developed, and if you're hoping to win off of pure mechanics then you're going to have to wait a long while. Does that make it less interesting to watch and play for me? Nope, it's the opposite of that. For me at least. : )
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On March 17 2011 02:21 WhiteDog wrote:Show nested quote +On March 17 2011 02:11 Iamyournoob wrote:On March 17 2011 00:29 IdrA wrote:
well all your questions are about improving the strategy portion and personally i think itd be better to bring back the mechanical difficulty of sc1, Well, it probably might help to distinguish the good players from the real masters, but on the other hand: Why make a game unreasonably difficult? First of all, I don't think it will ever happen, cause then SC2 would become too much of an elite-game and Blizzard doesn't want that. Furthermore the popularity of a game also depends on how easy it is to access for new players. Making it mechanically more difficult would probably scare some people off. Why is that bad? Well, the more people care for SC2, the more do the sponsors and thus the bigger the prize money. But even if we assume Blizz would make SC2 more difficult would it really have the desired results? I don't know how much you were into WC3 but in terms of macro it is way easier than SC1 or SC2. WC3 had automining, you could tab through units and yeah, you could only select 12 units at once, but there were fewer units to control so this limit didn't increase the difficulty as much as it did in SC1 (I still wonder how pros could handle a 200/200 zerg army with a maximum of 12 units being in a control group). However even though WC3 was so easy (personally I find it easier than SC2 ) there was still an elite of progamers that consistently were on top of everyone else: Moon, Grubby, Lyn, Fly and some more. Well in the end it came down to the micro skills, I guess. So I don't think that the fact that auto mining has been introduced in SC2 and that we have smart casting are reasons why SC2 is too volatile. WC3 was easier and still there were players who made to the very top. Making the game mechanics more difficult for no reason is in my opinion not the way to go. In WC3 it was more or less impossible to loose in the early game. You could basically take on almost all the early attack with a shop / a good hero / natural defense of your base. In SC2 the main problem is that there is almost no defense advantage. WC3 was all about map control, creep path, building army and economy and harassing (harass, not attack) your opponent. There was almost no cheese that could work at high level except tower rush. Having a DH and a few moonwell was almost good enough to rush to T2. In WC3 at some level you could almost always reach the 15 minute (a moment where it actually skilled) mark on even foot or with a slight disadvantage. In SC2, loosing 2 bad rallying vikings early is almost GG in PvT, letting 3 hellion pass your ramp is also a GG case.
Yea warpgate is probably one of the worst mechanics ever invented. Defender advantage is pretty much key in all rts but warpgate negated that and to balance that they had to make warpgate units cost for cost weak which in turn needed to make non-support unit super strong to balance. This complex interaction it is just hard to balance. A slightly weaker aoe unit might cause the balance to shift a lot as they are the balance they keep the game fair in mid/late game but a slightly strong suppoer(gateway) unit would make warpgate rush so much stronger. It is really a fine line to tread. I really wish that warpgates had been a super late or mid game tech that allowed protoss to have better mobility(make it cost a lot like 200/200). Then buff the gateway units. This way we can actually see some non 4-gate pvp and more interesting gateway army based army.
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On March 17 2011 02:11 Iamyournoob wrote:Show nested quote +On March 17 2011 00:29 IdrA wrote:
well all your questions are about improving the strategy portion and personally i think itd be better to bring back the mechanical difficulty of sc1, Well, it probably might help to distinguish the good players from the real masters, but on the other hand: Why make a game unreasonably difficult? First of all, I don't think it will ever happen, cause then SC2 would become too much of an elite-game and Blizzard doesn't want that. Furthermore the popularity of a game also depends on how easy it is to access for new players. Making it mechanically more difficult would probably scare some people off. Why is that bad? Well, the more people care for SC2, the more do the sponsors and thus the bigger the prize money. But even if we assume Blizz would make SC2 more difficult would it really have the desired results? I don't know how much you were into WC3 but in terms of macro it is way easier than SC1 or SC2. WC3 had automining, you could tab through units and yeah, you could only select 12 units at once, but there were fewer units to control so this limit didn't increase the difficulty as much as it did in SC1 (I still wonder how pros could handle a 200/200 zerg army with a maximum of 12 units being in a control group). However even though WC3 was so easy (personally I find it easier than SC2 ) there was still an elite of progamers that consistently were on top of everyone else: Moon, Grubby, Lyn, Fly and some more. Well in the end it came down to the micro skills, I guess. So I don't think that the fact that auto mining has been introduced in SC2 and that we have smart casting are reasons why SC2 is too volatile. WC3 was easier and still there were players who made to the very top. Making the game mechanics more difficult for no reason is in my opinion not the way to go.
i suspect if war3 had had the korean sc1 progaming infrastructure behind it it would look a lot more like sc2 is looking right now.
and i still think the idea that mbs would scare off newbies is a bit of a myth. truly bad sc1 players are not inefficient about making units because they dont have mbs, they dont have bad control because theres no smart casting. people who are really unfamiliar with rts play, the casual gamers who are likely to be scared off by difficult and are gonna change to the next big game in a few months, aren't even aware of those features and what they mean.
automine is the only thing i can see an argument for from that standpoint.
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I don't care if it's volatile, I care if the more skilled players win more often. If you watch the games in which "favorites" have been knocked out the winners have played very well. SC2 is still very new and I don't care if MVP, MC, MKP, Nestea, FD, and other "favorites" get dethroned by newer, better players.
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On March 17 2011 02:21 WhiteDog wrote:Show nested quote +On March 17 2011 02:11 Iamyournoob wrote:On March 17 2011 00:29 IdrA wrote:
well all your questions are about improving the strategy portion and personally i think itd be better to bring back the mechanical difficulty of sc1, Well, it probably might help to distinguish the good players from the real masters, but on the other hand: Why make a game unreasonably difficult? First of all, I don't think it will ever happen, cause then SC2 would become too much of an elite-game and Blizzard doesn't want that. Furthermore the popularity of a game also depends on how easy it is to access for new players. Making it mechanically more difficult would probably scare some people off. Why is that bad? Well, the more people care for SC2, the more do the sponsors and thus the bigger the prize money. But even if we assume Blizz would make SC2 more difficult would it really have the desired results? I don't know how much you were into WC3 but in terms of macro it is way easier than SC1 or SC2. WC3 had automining, you could tab through units and yeah, you could only select 12 units at once, but there were fewer units to control so this limit didn't increase the difficulty as much as it did in SC1 (I still wonder how pros could handle a 200/200 zerg army with a maximum of 12 units being in a control group). However even though WC3 was so easy (personally I find it easier than SC2 ) there was still an elite of progamers that consistently were on top of everyone else: Moon, Grubby, Lyn, Fly and some more. Well in the end it came down to the micro skills, I guess. So I don't think that the fact that auto mining has been introduced in SC2 and that we have smart casting are reasons why SC2 is too volatile. WC3 was easier and still there were players who made to the very top. Making the game mechanics more difficult for no reason is in my opinion not the way to go. In WC3 it was more or less impossible to loose in the early game. You could basically take on almost all the early attack with a shop / a good hero / natural defense of your base. In SC2 the main problem is that there is almost no defense advantage. WC3 was all about map control, creep path, building army and economy and harassing (harass, not attack) your opponent. There was almost no cheese that could work at high level except tower rush. Having a DH and a few moonwell was almost good enough to rush to T2. In WC3 at some level you could almost always reach the 15 minute (a moment where it actually skilled) mark on even foot or with a slight disadvantage. In SC2, loosing 2 bad rallying vikings early is almost GG in PvT, letting 3 hellion pass your ramp is also a GG case.
Well you are right with everything you say, but the reason these mistakes in SC2 mean "Game over" (or rather "gg") is not due to the skill ceiling being so low, but rather because of the design of maps/units and the resulting gameplay. Making SC2 more difficult wouldn't prevent you from losing to 4 hellions wreaking havoc in your mineral line.
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Just because someone was amazing at Brood War doesn't make them amazing at SC. Sure it helps a lot but if you look at other competive games with sequels almost all the time with the new game you see new top players. (the exception being Ogre 2 of Final Boss) It's just since it's been the same game for so long now people forget the change in style forced by the new game and haven't adapted.
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The issue is that even the worst of amateurs can pull off strats like a seasoned pro. Which makes performance much more important then the actual strategies/mechanics because that part of the game is quite easy to execute.
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On March 17 2011 02:33 The_Piper42 wrote:
I don't care if it's volatile, I care if the more skilled players win more often. If you watch the games in which "favorites" have been knocked out the winners have played very well. SC2 is still very new and I don't care if MVP, MC, MKP, Nestea, FD, and other "favorites" get dethroned by newer, better players.
Well the game being volatile and the better players winning more often doesn't exactly go hand in hand, it's actually the reason for this thread.
Add more mechanical stuff to be good at. Who cares, newbies won't, they don't even know. I didn't give crap that I had one siege tank or 4 zealots by the 12 min mark back when sc came out. Everybody at my skill level would also be around as bad. Bronze leaguers don't mind having 25 workers and 2k in the bank 20 min into the game, they sure wouldn't really notice the difference with ~15 instead.
If it's to easy to play somewhat almost looking close'ish to optimal without the most ridiculous superhuman abilities then the game will likely result in a bit of a lottery. If I, having played ~200 1v1 games of starcraft 2 perhaps can macro and not mess up all that severly on two base and transfer that into a potent timing attack or whatever. How is someone going to be able to consitently stop that crap without being miles and miles ahead of me.
You can give a pro BW player a severe build order disadvantage and he won't be grazed by even top ladder players, he makes more stuff, he mines more minerals and decision making is just better. Do the same in Sc2 and it's game over at the 7 min mark all to often, there is a lot less to be better at in sc2 and therefore there is a lot less to stand out in. Result: the stuff you can't really be good at starts playing more of a role.
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On March 17 2011 02:28 IdrA wrote:
i suspect if war3 had had the korean sc1 progaming infrastructure behind it it would look a lot more like sc2 is looking right now.
and i still think the idea that mbs would scare off newbies is a bit of a myth. truly bad sc1 players are not inefficient about making units because they dont have mbs, they dont have bad control because theres no smart casting. people who are really unfamiliar with rts play, the casual gamers who are likely to be scared off by difficult and are gonna change to the next big game in a few months, aren't even aware of those features and what they mean.
automine is the only thing i can see an argument for from that standpoint.
That's kind of interesting, because automining would probably be the easiest to remove without significant changes to other game mechanics. For instance, say you remove MBS, how do warpgates function? If you just keep them the way they are, and remove the "w" hotkey, then Protoss macro suddenly becomes extremely difficult compared to the other races. You could just remove warpgates, and I, for one, would readily embrace that idea, but some (major) change would have to happen.
Likewise, removing smartcasting practically makes it necessary to redesign abilities like Forcefield, where you need to cast a lot of them in a small timeframe very precisely. The other problem, from my perspective at least, is that SC1's engine made it quite easy, even for a noob like me, to just click on a Templar and Storm, since everything spread out nicely and was easy to make out. In SC2, it's a huge headache to select a specific unit from a huge deathball, because of how everything clumps up, not to mention Colossi standing over it with their fat hitboxes.
Btw. I notice you're not addressing unlimited unit selection. Do you think that should definitely stay?
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this game requires not just skill also require some luck factors to win games.
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The codes S/A system rewards consistency
being in Code S for multiple seasons is consistency imo
as time goes on being in Code S for 1 year will probably be a feat achieved by 1 or 2 people
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EPT
