On October 30 2011 01:35 BeMannerDuPenner wrote: worried? no since if we are honest its well known since the release of beta.
the only difference is that by now ive given up all hope that this will ever change.sc2 just rarely has that wow effect. in most games you see the same stuff and the caster hype/environment makes the excitement instead of the game/players.
also i think "skill ceiling" is not really the right term. esp in a game like starcraft you wont see "perfect" play. but what is the real problem is that people cant use and show their true skill since the game limits them and where it doesnt limit them it helps the player so much that the skill needed is very small. which is bad for competition, fun and viewing pleasure.
this is one of the main reasons i nowadays dont play sc2 anymore(atleast till hots), barely watch anymore and absolutely cannot watch any match without topnotch casters.
On October 30 2011 01:33 Chise wrote: If you compare SC2 to other Esports like DotA, Quake or whatever, it's pretty safe to say that none of those games is even close to being as hard mechanically as SC2. Yet, the skill ceiling isn't reached in any of those games.
I actually like that SC2 has "easy" macro. I don't want to watch machines playing, but smart people.
dota is a joke as esport. the ONLY reason its succesful is because the game attracts masses, not because its a good esport game in ANY way.a one handed monkey could play that game well. quake i would argue. beeing good at quake (with movement,timing and all) is one of the hardest.games to learn nowadays.
anyways that doesnt even matter. as i said, skill ceiling is a bad word for the problem. since we dont and wont see "perfect" play in the bigger picture(perfect execution yes. def.). the problem is that the game is build for very simple play and actually has mechanics AGAINST microing on many units (muta & hellion for example). and because of that players cant use their full potential and the difference between players gets smaller and smaller.
hots will remove one more spectator friendly tactic / general building placement for effitiency . that is to remove powering with pylon low / highground. i cant imagine protoss without that.
Anyone who thinks we will ever even begin to approach a skill ceiling is completely delusional. There will always be room to do more, and to do it faster.
On October 29 2011 18:21 Optimism wrote: 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.
edit: haha, beaten to it I see.
This is the closest thing for humans to hit automaton micro as of now
On October 29 2011 23:33 sh4w wrote: Those micro videos are a terrible example. You CANT do that. You would have to be psychic and know which zergling the tank was going to fire at and split it. The point is lesser skilled players beat more skilled opponents in SC2. How often do 'progamers' who practice 12 hours a day lost to people on the ladder? All the time. How often would average joe beat a BW progamer? Probably never. If your playing the game for 12 hours a day there needs to be a significant difference between you and someone playing it for fun. I don't see how that fact doesn't bother people who watch SC2.
But what you say has nothing o do with a skill ceiling. The fact that you CANT do that means that the skill ceiling is unreachable, and you can always practice to get closer to that. You never run out of room for improvement. By the way, stephano was once like 60-1 on the ladder, so really good players can differentiate themselves on the ladder.
Your post makes no sense whatsoever. So CAN'T get closer to those examples, because you CAN'T control two or more groups of units simultaneously. And those examples require you to control dozens of units individually, all at the same time. Not only is a human being incapable of mimicking them, but he's also not capable of making his imperfect effort give him any sort of advantage as as soon as he shifts his attention to another unit of his, his other units start clumping again. Not to mention he's limited by the input speed of the game...
This "argument" is stupid beyond reason... ;/
The faster he can shift his attention between his units and issue commands onto them, the better he gets.
The thing is, you can't be fast enough for it to be productive at all, not only because it's not humanly impossible (APM in range of 1000-3000 or such), but also because the input speed of the peripherals (and most likely the game itself) doesn't allow for that.
It's the same with microing units in several different places at the same time or doing dropship micro with a bunch of dropships simultaneously - it's possible in theory, AI can do it, but it's physically impossible (you can't issue several commands at the same time, and even if you could, you wouldn't be able to make your screen show several different locations at the same time because the game doesn't allow for that).
So those examples are completely irrelevant and it's pointless to bring them up.
I'm only now beginning to realize that me focusing on micro up to diamond was a huuuuuge mistake, since this is a macro game.
Micro does not play a huge part in SC2, at least that's what I beginning to realize now. So far, I've seen pro-games being decided by the question "WHO CAN REMAX FIRST?" with Upgrades and greate unit control only playing a decent part when it comes to PvX, because Protoss cannot remax as quickly as the other 2 races, nor is it economy as forgiving as Terran economy, or Zerg economy, like OP pointed out.
I am, in fact, very worried about the state of this game and what it will become once the Big Guys switch over.
It may sound biased, but I see Protoss having the hardest of times from now on.
On October 29 2011 18:07 Mise wrote: 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.
I think this is kind of the OP's idea. We can never truly reach the skill cap, but will we hit the point where the builds we picked, the map choice, and slight imbalances will dictate the game MORE than the remaining micro/macro nuances some might have over others.
On October 30 2011 01:57 Avan wrote: I agree with OP.
I'm only now beginning to realize that me focusing on micro up to diamond was a huuuuuge mistake, since this is a macro game.
Micro does not play a huge part in SC2, at least that's what I beginning to realize now. So far, I've seen pro-games being decided by the question "WHO CAN REMAX FIRST?" with Upgrades and greate unit control only playing a decent part when it comes to PvX, because Protoss cannot remax as quickly as the other 2 races, nor is it economy as forgiving as Terran economy, or Zerg economy, like OP pointed out.
I am, in fact, very worried about the state of this game and what it will become once the Big Guys switch over.
It may sound biased, but I see Protoss having the hardest of times from now on.
Not sure what you're going on about, Protoss has the quickest remax of all the races. While the zerglings are still hatching, Stalkers are on the field.
On October 30 2011 01:57 Avan wrote: I agree with OP.
I'm only now beginning to realize that me focusing on micro up to diamond was a huuuuuge mistake, since this is a macro game.
Micro does not play a huge part in SC2, at least that's what I beginning to realize now. So far, I've seen pro-games being decided by the question "WHO CAN REMAX FIRST?" with Upgrades and greate unit control only playing a decent part when it comes to PvX, because Protoss cannot remax as quickly as the other 2 races, nor is it economy as forgiving as Terran economy, or Zerg economy, like OP pointed out.
I am, in fact, very worried about the state of this game and what it will become once the Big Guys switch over.
It may sound biased, but I see Protoss having the hardest of times from now on.
Not sure what you're going on about, Protoss has the quickest remax of all the races. While the zerglings are still hatching, Stalkers are on the field.
You are kidding, right?
For a Protoss to remax with gateway units, he needs at least 50 Gateways (each unit costing 2-supply, warping in 50 units stands for 100 supply, is that right?), whereas a Zerg player needs... Hatcheries?
So, for a Protoss to be able to keep up with a remax, he needs to spend minerals on expansions AND on structures. You can't even begin to compare how easy it is to remax as Zerg.
I for one am happy that some of the amazing BW players could switch over soon. This will push the game closer to the limits and might answer some of our questions. HOPEFULLY, if a lot of our predictions are true, this will force blizzard to change things up and make this game a lot harder. We can only hope, this is really what I'm pulling for.
On October 30 2011 01:57 Avan wrote: I agree with OP.
I'm only now beginning to realize that me focusing on micro up to diamond was a huuuuuge mistake, since this is a macro game.
Micro does not play a huge part in SC2, at least that's what I beginning to realize now. So far, I've seen pro-games being decided by the question "WHO CAN REMAX FIRST?" with Upgrades and greate unit control only playing a decent part when it comes to PvX, because Protoss cannot remax as quickly as the other 2 races, nor is it economy as forgiving as Terran economy, or Zerg economy, like OP pointed out.
I am, in fact, very worried about the state of this game and what it will become once the Big Guys switch over.
It may sound biased, but I see Protoss having the hardest of times from now on.
Not sure what you're going on about, Protoss has the quickest remax of all the races. While the zerglings are still hatching, Stalkers are on the field.
Yeah, it's too bad I can make 10 immortals at once like you can make 30 mutalisks.
On October 30 2011 01:57 Avan wrote: I agree with OP.
I'm only now beginning to realize that me focusing on micro up to diamond was a huuuuuge mistake, since this is a macro game.
Micro does not play a huge part in SC2, at least that's what I beginning to realize now. So far, I've seen pro-games being decided by the question "WHO CAN REMAX FIRST?" with Upgrades and greate unit control only playing a decent part when it comes to PvX, because Protoss cannot remax as quickly as the other 2 races, nor is it economy as forgiving as Terran economy, or Zerg economy, like OP pointed out.
I am, in fact, very worried about the state of this game and what it will become once the Big Guys switch over.
It may sound biased, but I see Protoss having the hardest of times from now on.
Not sure what you're going on about, Protoss has the quickest remax of all the races. While the zerglings are still hatching, Stalkers are on the field.
You're a fool if you think Protoss can remax quicker than Zerg.
On October 29 2011 19:04 iky43210 wrote: I guess the skill ceiling is so low that championships are consistently won by nobodies.
wait, no. MVP and Nestea is clearly dominating sc2 scene consistently. There goes your skill ceiling theory
LOL this is so true... how can you even say that the skill ceiling is reached when these two guys enter a tournament and are almost guaranteed to win it
On October 29 2011 17:54 TheBomb wrote: 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?
Untill you see a game when player that lost could not possibly have done anything better, it's a useless conversation.
The only worry I have is that a lot of the delicate things you can improve upon won't be AS significant as in BW, but the true skill ceiling can obviously not be reached.
Not at all. A game like this will always have an optimal way to be played, and just because we haven't seen it doesn't mean we wont . Every indication suggests you get better the more things you can do and the higher your skill is.
In brood war my tactics and all that might be top notch but you have superior mechanics so much so that you make up for your inferior tactics ... i lose.
I said quickest remax, not strongest. 50 Warpgates is a little out there, but 25 is quite feasible in 3+ base scenarios. That allows for a double round of warp-ins that give 100 supply in the space of 20 seconds, i.e. before zerglings have even hatched, let alone higher tech units.
On October 29 2011 19:04 iky43210 wrote: I guess the skill ceiling is so low that championships are consistently won by nobodies.
wait, no. MVP and Nestea is clearly dominating sc2 scene consistently. There goes your skill ceiling theory
LOL this is so true... how can you even say that the skill ceiling is reached when these two guys enter a tournament and are almost guaranteed to win it
And their macro isn't even that good either, they still queue a lot. A teamers from BW will be a lot better in both macro and micro.
On October 30 2011 01:57 Avan wrote: I agree with OP.
I'm only now beginning to realize that me focusing on micro up to diamond was a huuuuuge mistake, since this is a macro game.
Micro does not play a huge part in SC2, at least that's what I beginning to realize now. So far, I've seen pro-games being decided by the question "WHO CAN REMAX FIRST?" with Upgrades and greate unit control only playing a decent part when it comes to PvX, because Protoss cannot remax as quickly as the other 2 races, nor is it economy as forgiving as Terran economy, or Zerg economy, like OP pointed out.
I am, in fact, very worried about the state of this game and what it will become once the Big Guys switch over.
It may sound biased, but I see Protoss having the hardest of times from now on.
Not sure what you're going on about, Protoss has the quickest remax of all the races. While the zerglings are still hatching, Stalkers are on the field.
You're a fool if you think Protoss can remax quicker than Zerg.
It can remax faster in the sense that protoss supply cost per unit is higher :o
On October 30 2011 02:15 Alzadar wrote: I said quickest remax, not strongest. 50 Warpgates is a little out there, but 25 is quite feasible in 3+ base scenarios. That allows for a double round of warp-ins that give 100 supply in the space of 20 seconds, i.e. before zerglings have even hatched, let alone higher tech units.
EPT
. Every indication suggests you get better the more things you can do and the higher your skill is. 
