APM/mechanics vs strategy - Page 3

On December 30 2012 07:28 BlackPanther wrote:
People like to knock sc2 because it isn't as mechanically difficult to play as BW but I'd disagree. I think that the changes in the game such as MBS and Automine are more about removing APM from monotonous and uninteresting actions and shifting them towards more interesting actions like increasing the amount of micro in battles and greater army multitasking.

On December 30 2012 07:28 BlackPanther wrote:
People like to knock sc2 because it isn't as mechanically difficult to play as BW but I'd disagree. I think that the changes in the game such as MBS and Automine are more about removing APM from monotonous and uninteresting actions and shifting them towards more interesting actions like increasing the amount of micro in battles and greater army multitasking.

On December 30 2012 07:51 rysecake wrote:


this would make sense if half the units in this game rewarded good micro

colos, roaches, marauders, good gawd

On December 30 2012 07:43 Qwyn wrote:


How is it interesting if everyone can do it?

What is great about requiring players to invest actions in sending workers to mine - selecting buildings and manually building units...is that all the essential actions REQUIRE mechanical investment. Simply having good macro will stress a player.

If you remove these base stressors then everything else in the game that you would consider "important" becomes that much easier.

There are two main parts of mechanical difficulty:

1. The difficulty of performing a single action.
2. The sum difficulty of performing all actions.

If you remove the difficulty in performing a single action (smart casting, no smart-fire, unlimited unit cap) then mechanical difficulty is going to lie in the sum difficulty of performing all actions...which is lessened by things like MBS, automine...

Which leaves you in a situation where "strategies" which require high level mechanics are simply not worth the investment...because the opponent is not stressed.

There are people here saying that there is so much more players can be doing to improve their game...then why aren't they doing it? Because it does not have a good ROI. And why is that? Because baseline actions are so much easier, and the difficulty of individual actions also so much easier, that your opponent is not going to be stressed nearly as much by your "strategy" as you are in executing it.

On December 30 2012 07:52 Fragile51 wrote:


Marauders? In what universe do marauders not reward good micro?

On December 30 2012 07:55 rysecake wrote:


what micro? a, click, a, click, a, click?

marines reward micro much more. marauders are a lot more 1aish

On December 30 2012 07:55 rysecake wrote:


what micro? a, click, a, click, a, click?

On December 30 2012 07:27 Najda wrote:
I think a player should be able to excel at either. Sort of like in quake you had the guys who had amazing map control and moved around the map so fluidly and there were the guys with perfect aim who could hit those perfect shots all the time. Both playstyles are entertaining, and it's really up to what the person prefers. Similarly in Starcraft, someone could have very strong strategic skills and always use very strong builds and has a good gameplan, whereas another player might just use brute force to get the win forcing the other player to make mistakes with constant agression.

On December 30 2012 08:03 Talin wrote:


How are those two similar, exactly? Map control and movement in Quake are still execution oriented - obviously some players have a very good feel of it and know exactly where to go, but the whole idea is still being executed by moving quickly and always being in the right place at the right time. It's exciting to see. It's exciting to do. You can still screw up at any point in a blink of a second.

On the other hand, build orders and game plans are boring at best and annoying at worst. The game that stands out very sharply in my mind was when Creator was playing against some Terran (can't remember who) on Ohana - he put 3 Observers on the points of the map where they couldn't be sniped, thus automatically denying any kind of drop or harassment, then he proceeded to play super greedy and defensive until he got a super army and rolled the poor dude over. The game lasted for 20 minutes and there was NOTHING to see - and that game was supposed to be the highest level of competitive Starcraft, and according to the LR thread, a "display of dominance".

In fact, too many games end this way, with a player securing a relatively early strategic advantage due to how their builds play out and then either destroying the opponent (which is boring) or throwing the game away (which is terrible). Inversely, the game doesn't give almost any leeway for a faster, mechanical player to abuse a competent enough player.

Strategy plays some part in almost all games in existence. But in a competitive game, it's the display of skill - mostly in terms of some sort of physical ability, that makes most games exciting to play and watch them being played competitively.
Strategy isn't a skill, it's just knowledge mixed with decision making and some coin flipping.

On December 30 2012 08:04 ymir233 wrote:
Can someone explain to me how there is a gap between mechanics and strategy that can't be conceptually connected somehow in an RTS?

As tautological as it may sound, the distinction between a turn-based and a real-time strategy game is that time flows continuously in an RTS, separate from the actions of each player. It would be absurd to simply push a strategy called "make lings" on a Zerg player because it doesn't explain the context, but more importantly, it doesn't explain the timeline - when to do what. The people arguing "more strategy, less mechanics" don't understand that unique strategy in an RTS is dependent on the existence, limits, and differences in mechanics in players. Why do you think phrases like "tight builds" or "this build is ok if the opponent sucks" or "I don't know what the opponent is doing because his timings are weird" exist?

Furthermore, general strategy (that is, beyond the bare-bones timing stuff) is also almost always focused on attacking at a point where the results of the mechanics the opponent has used is weaker than what you've done so far OR attacking at a time where his mechanics will be unequipped to deal with what you're doing. Would anybody even think about doing multiple -pronged drops if just enough ling/bane/infestors were dispatched to each base in time to defend against the drops? Of course not.

I don't necessarily think I support a game that is more mechanically focused, per se, but I would like to point out that we can't just 'magically' have strategy over mechanics. They are inextricably linked.

On December 30 2012 08:13 decado90 wrote:
I'd like for someone to say MKP bio vs Z isn't more entertaining than Protoss deathball turtle.