Hi there. So I've been reading how Brood War teams are already practicing Starcraft 2 and are likely to switch to SC2 at least to some degree, possibly fully and we are going to see an influx of A team, top of the line players like Flash, Bisu, Jaedong, Stork, Leta, etc... start playing SC2.
And I'm really worried that the skill ceiling is going to be reached or at the very least came very, very close to it in that skill is going to play less factor in games and its going to be more luck based like trying to catch your opponent off guard with say a build like 1-1-1 or mass roach and hydra like Stephano is doing against protoss.
I feel like the macro mechanics as much as they provide something to do, they also in a way help with your bad macro.
For example as Zerg you can have 50 larva all at once and produce 100 zerglings all at once and it doesn't force you to build units all the time and pressure your opponent, it creates this cushion where even if you weren't macroing all that well the past minute you can just fall back to your 20 or 50 larvae from before when nothing was happening.
Same goes for Terran as I feel as much as it makes them do something, dropping mules actually closes the gap from someone who macroed great all the time and someone who didn't macro as well, but just dropped few mules that that he forgot to drop earlier and have 4x the income.
The current game where there is still a lot of skill ceiling left is micro as we are talking about hundreds of units on screen, but on the negative side there aren't that many micro opportunities.
I mean sure we have micro opportunities, we have the marine micro, we have the stalker micro, hellion micro and baneling micro, viking micro, phoenix micro and battlecruisers micro but other than that the possibilities are really limited. Yes you can somewhat micro your brood lord or roaches or zealots or void rays but its just one of those low reward microes that its much more beneficial to just A move, rather than try and micro and just focus on building more units.
And for example if we compared say the reaver/shuttle micro of SC1 with Colossus micro in SC2 it doesn't even begin to compare. SC1 micro was much more challenging, but also had much bigger rewards.
We are now seeing something along those lines with the warp prism/high templars and this is actually great, but compared to SC1 micro you are quite limited.
But my point is that I'm really worried about the skill ceiling and is it big enough and hard enough never to master or this one of those easy to learn, not that hard to master?
What are your thoughts?
EDIT: Nestea and MVP were both mid B level players in Brood War. Now imagine the high B level players and their skill, then imagine A level players and then imagine S level players like Bisu, Jaedong, Flash, Stork, etc... They are going to rip apart the game I feel and all possible things to improve would be small and insignificant sort of gimmicky things that don't really make you an advantage no matter how good you do them.
So my point is about diminishing returns. I mean microing 10 stalkers against 40 roaches is never going to work no matter how good you micro the 10 stalkers with blink. So my point is if you think the game will come to that level where yes you can do more things, but they are so gimmicky and do not represent real skill.
Another diminishing return example: Mircoing zealots against marine and marauders.
But ultimately I'm looking of how many high level micro/high level reward do we have in SC2?
In SC1 we had lurkers vs marines vs tanks vs dark swarm vs irradiate vs scourge, then you had firebats coming in late vs lurkers and zerglings, etc.... in SC1 we had shuttle/reaver vs terran or zerg either mineral line or armies, we had corsairs with disruption web in support of reaver/shuttle vs say in zerg hydralisks, zerglings and scourge.
In SC2 I can only think of marines and tanks vs zerglings and balenings vs fungal. And we see more tanks to counter infestors. Other is hellions vs zerglings and mutalisks vs marines, but notice how things stop within 3 to 4 units?
But again this is me and I'd like to hear your opinions and what you think of this!?
i am thinking the same way you are. a team bw progamers skill is pretty much wasted in sc2 because of how easy builds are to pull off.. there arent any builds that require such multi tasking and use of scouting information and star sense like bisus pvz.
Imo the Zerg skill ceiling is not nearly reached yet, whereas Terran and Protoss are much closer. I think we are nearing the point where skill can still be vastly improved upon, but the rewards for such skill have probably mostly passed the point of diminishing returns.
Right now I agree with you, but there is still two more expansions to go and the game will change, new units will be added. ( more spellcasters, increasing the skill cap )
The true skill ceiling of SC2 is humanly impossible to reach. To achieve the skill ceiling you need to macro perfectly and micro invidual units through the whole game. You can't play that fast you'd need thousands of APM.
There may not be a bigger skill gap between a Godly player like Flash vs. A class players. (whereas Flash is S class) Flash, as he showed over and over again, maintained 60-80% win rate vs. those A class players.
However, I will guarantee that once players like Flash, Leta, Bisu, Jaedong, etc comes into SC2, within 2-4 months they will clean out existing top SC2 players such as Nestea, MMA, etc.
Those players will simply have to work harder to stay in the playing field.
SC2's skill ceiling is much higher than what most of u guys think - imagine those players controlling 2-4 groups with near-perfect micro while maintaining perfect macro. (MMA comes close to that, but he falls short of what those LEGENDS could do)
On October 29 2011 17:59 Dodgin wrote: Right now I agree with you, but there is still two more expansions to go and the game will change, new units will be added. ( more spellcasters, increasing the skill cap )
Spellcasters are actually easier to micro than normal units to get the maximum use out of them. For instance, marines have to be babysit because they are so fragile, yet they have amazing mobility and dps. On the other hand, a spellcaster like an infestor will already be worth its cost once you smart cast a few fungals off. No amount of micro will make a spellcaster more efficient once it's run out of energy.
Of course, they may decide to add in more combat-spellcasters, which would have the best of both worlds.
For example as Zerg you can have 50 larva all at once and produce 100 zerglings all at once and it doesn't force you to build units all the time and pressure your opponent, it creates this cushion where even if you weren't macroing all that well the past minute you can just fall back to your 20 or 50 larvae from before when nothing was happening.
I'm sorry but I don not understand this example at all.
The mark of a good macroing zerg is keeping his larvae injects up. Thus, having a cushion of 50 larvae (which very rarely happens unless you're in late game) is a mark of a good zerg. You are punished by the game for not keeping up with your injects, as you will not be able to reinforce fast enough or with enough numbers and will be crushed by either a larger or more powerful army. I do not see how the larvae management system is forgiving of bad players at all.
You do realise that each hatchery has a maximum of 3 larvae spawned right? It doesn't keep making larvae for bad players because they can't keep up. Nestea told yellow, if your queen energy ever goes above 25 energy, consider the game lost. And yet how many zergs have you seen with queens well over 100 energy? Obviously the skill ceiling has not been reached for larvae management or creep spreading, and to claim otherwise would be baseless.
The skill ceiling in SC2 has not been reached, and I don't believe its close to being reached yet.
Unfortunately, it is good on one end and bad on another. Lower skill cap? of course, we have automine and boxes with more than 12 workers for @#$ sake!
Is it better.......................i say yes. Why? look at us. Look at all of these people on TL, 2000 logged in atm, all revolving around this game because, even Jimmy in bronze league can make the build that MVP did and feel a little like him. The ease of starcraft 2 (relative to BW) allows for lesser skilled players to enjoy builds and strats popularised by the pros, so it is good on that side, something we would never change because we would never have this mainstream audience again
I believe you guys under-estimate the 'skill ceiling'
True automining exists, u can group multiple production buildings, yada yada.
However on the other side of the mirror, those elements allow for flashier players (like what MMA does). I for one can't wait to see what those BW legends would be able to do once they move into SC2.
no worried at all. currently there's noone with perfect mechanics. there's so many tricks we don't know about yet, and a new expansion is coming that is gonna reset most of the stuff (builds, timings) we know.
Nope . Pros will always find something to improve on , just like in BW . I am excited and waiting to find what the human limits can do with SC 2 , but i hope this doesn't kill BW , because i still enjoy watching it more then SC2 .
Now, I don't think we're going to be seeing that in the near future, nor do I think we realistically ever will. However, that is the skill ceiling for Zergling micro. You could make more videos about the other skill ceilings for mutli-tasking, spell casting, Colossus control - whatever, and these can all be done in conjunction, theoretically. That's the skill ceiling in SC2.
The question is, are these skill ceilings even remotely attainable? I'd say no, but then you look at what people would have thought when talking about BW in 1998 and I don't think anyone would have expected the ridiculous ability of people 13 years down the line. The ceiling is high, the question is how high people can get to it. Certainly, the game is not the limiting factor here.
The SQ thread provides some interesting context for this, and the answer is even among pro-gamers there's still quite a bit of variance in macro ability.
As for micro, I'll just post this:
Now it may be that improving your skill leads to dimishing returns beyond a certain point, I could completely buy that. And it could be that the point of diminishing returns is too low to separate the very best players from the merely very good. But as for actually reaching the ceiling? That will never happen. It cannot be done by any human being.
If this skill ceiling were reached, we wouldn't see as many mistakes made by the pros. There are many instances of games even between the best players that I can see that there are possibilities to do better - showing that they will have a fair way to go.
Yes. I am worried. I'm afraid there will never be dominant players, long standing solid build orders, and with those the epic shifts in meta game that define eras and breakthroughs in the game.
People may think, well- its a good thing if one player doesn't dominate the scene for years because of the game design, that is not fair. Though, this is what makes the game exciting. If MVP loses every other GSL in the ro4 or ro8 to random players, and can ever be dominant, you will never have the huge upsets that define eras and revolutions.
A dominant BO, like 1 rax expand or 3 hatch muta or even 1-1-1 can be a good thing- because when with NO balance changes, a hero appears with a brilliant BO that can stop it 90% of the time, a legend is born. I am worried that long term, SC2 will not produce these legacies and hence will always be subject to a restricted skill ceiling that doesn't allow for separation of the top 1% into distinct .001%, .002% brackets that define Pro's and TRUE S-Class players. If the top 1% is just a big jumble that can take games off each other, and best of 3's at any given time. You wont have legacies like Savior, or even the 49'ers of late 80's in football, or the Yankee's of baseball, that when a team takes a series off of them- it really matters. It is legendary. Right now it just seems like anything is possible all the time.
EPT
