EPTAPM/mechanics vs strategy - Page 8
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zefreak
United States2731 Posts
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DavoS
United States4605 Posts
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Falling
Canada11355 Posts
If you are looking for pure strategy with no apm requirements, then it must be turn based or something equivalent. As soon as it is in real time, then speed and therefore apm/mechanics comes into play. There is good strategy, but then there is also just being faster than your opponent- faster at building, faster at executing strategies, faster at controlling units, etc. Now unit controls could be so sluggish that the speed of a player is effectively hampered thereby apm doesn't play as great a role as strategy. However, as I have contended before, the success of a RTS is not simply a strategy game, but a strategy game that combined the twitch control of fighter games in unit control. apm/mechanics sinks like chrono boost or inject larvae are kinda meh. But individual or small group control of units such as marine micro is what pushes a game into a spectacular spectating experience. And SC2 could really use more of that sort of unit control. Twitch control which is inherently more apm intensive adds to strategy. One doesn't simply make the right counter unit, but instead a group of mutalisks can be used to pick off small groups of marines, workers and turrets. A tactic that can be used as part of the overall strategy to keep the terran pinned to their base while the Zerg expands behind it. Correctly realized apm/mechanics particularly in unit control (moving shot, hold position micro, carrier micro, chinese triangle, shoot and scoot, marine splits etc) enhances strategy and does not detract or limit strategy. | ||
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Starstuff
Croatia60 Posts
Anyways... you need both elements if you want to be top tier and everything raising the skill cap is a good thing. | ||
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CrtBalorda
Slovenia704 Posts
Also stratagy is something you can learn completely wihtout ever playing the game and then you are god at it. You can also play only 1 stratagy per game. Ofc decison making is important but the game isnt complex. I also think the game is better with harder machenics which makes you unable to think you constantly have to do something, so if the game had more deeped you wouldnt be able to just sit there to devise a master plan in the middle of the game. The game doesnt have enough of either anyway. | ||
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pwnageoftheyear
United States64 Posts
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Kilby
Finland1069 Posts
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Penecks
United States600 Posts
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Account252508
3454 Posts
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iEchoic
United States1776 Posts
On December 31 2012 06:14 monkybone wrote: People suppress the strategic element of sc2 by a lot here. We all more or less play metagame builds, this is a direct result of a strategic development of the game. What you have learned to do without thinking now is a result of months and months of creative thinking and testing by the very best at this game. But I see this being largely ignored here. Whatever you do without active and creative thinking by yourself is labeled mechanics here. The Starcraft II metagame is the product of a lot of deep strategic thinking, but none of that strategic thinking is necessary to be good at the game, because you're consuming the product rather you're the one who did the thinking or not. The players who got the farthest with hellion/banshee openings in TvZ, for example, did none of the thinking on the strategical side to create the build, they simply consumed it. Starcraft II's "strategy" is manifested in the state of the metagame, but that information is free to all, so you don't need to possess the strategic skill to develop the metagame, just to copy it. I love the fact that information in this game is shared so openly (for example, replays allow you to copy a player's exact opening), but it comes at a price. This is the reason that, in a vast majority of pro games, both players are using well-known and well-understood builds and compositions. There's a lot of skill involved to win those games, but the skills required are tactical and mechanical, not strategical. On December 31 2012 05:59 Penecks wrote: iEchoic pretty much nailed it, for 95% of the playerbase you are barely playing against the opponent: most losses are because you screwed up some aspect of the mechanics of the game. It's like giving 2 people a shopping list and telling them to go into the store and get the items and whoever returns first will win. Sure you might run into the other guy and take his attention away for a second but essentially you are almost playing against yourself. Oops you didn't get X upgrade, forgot to build a depot here and there, weren't looking at your marines when they got fungaled because you were placing some rax, etc. I like the shopping cart analogy. Another way to visualize this is that, in games at all skill levels, it's usually clear what the correct course of action is at every point in the game for both players. When post-morteming a loss, the mistake the losing player made is usually immediately clear. Rarely do we see games where people fiercely debate what the cause of the loss is. It's almost always a tactical mistake (i.e. "shouldn't have tried that bio drop on the tanks"), a mechanics mistake ("got marines caught by fungal"), or an aggregate mechanics mistake ("x player microed much better"), etc. This is another sign of a mechanics and tactics-dominated game. Only in games that deviate very far from standard play do we see different discussions. | ||
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Account252508
3454 Posts
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thezanursic
5485 Posts
On December 30 2012 23:34 thezanursic wrote: Here is the thing SC2 has both I do know a game that puts EVEN more emphasis on that + Show Spoiler + Yeah... It's BW Strategy driven game: + Show Spoiler + Mechanics driven game: I picked these two out of a plethora of unique and interesting games. The strategy driven game that I've posted above displays the fact that with good strategic thinking (and of course mechanics) you can make almost any unit in BW work. A good example is Forgg versus Kal where Kal uses Scouts *Fucking Scouts* viably to defend a 2 fact from Forgg on Colosseum after a 12 nexx. Showing that scouts could actually be used to defend a 2 fact on a map with long rush distances if you are going 12 nexx into 2 base carrier! (Who knew o.O?) And here is the thing he probably practiced using scouts in that situation it wasn't just a spur of the momment thing. These kinds of things are what sets apart SC2 from BW. + Show Spoiler + Ohh and if you don't understand how that worked. With scouts Kal forced Goliaths and the siege tank numbers were lower he basically couldn't use the Starport for anything else so that was his best option. It's a lot more complicated than this, but that's the just of it. There are a lot more examples of unique things working in unique situations and a sea of games where mechanics shone. Of course both are necessary to win a game of the lovely lovely game that we call BW, but often times one seems more apparent than the other! Note: I love SC2 and I want it improved for instance I really loved the TvZ match up in summer 2011, but that kinda devolved to something I don't like as much in early 2012 after some silly buffs and nerfs. MMA vs DRG Blizzard cup finals, anyone! Ohh and I hope that people actually take the time to read my spoiler because understanding what I have to say will help people understand what direction we need to push Blizzard towards to make the final product of SC2 amazing as fuck we have taken a couple of wrong turns in the last few months, but all that can be fixed with the communities dedication and actually understanding the problems that we face on the road of improving Starcraft 2 as a whole! You were supposed to read the spoiler not the last paragraph below... I noticed that the majority only read the last paragraph. I'll give you guys another chance -.- + Show Spoiler + Yeah... It's BW Strategy driven game: + Show Spoiler + 4 parts (Both players display a good understand of the game and deep strategic thinking) Mechanics driven game: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AuS-_rFnQR8 I picked these two out of a plethora of unique and interesting games. The strategy driven game that I've posted above displays the fact that with good strategic thinking (and of course mechanics) you can make almost any unit in BW work. A good example is Forgg versus Kal where Kal uses Scouts *Fucking Scouts* viably to defend a 2 fact from Forgg on Colosseum after a 12 nexx. Showing that scouts could actually be used to defend a 2 fact on a map with long rush distances if you are going 12 nexx into 2 base carrier! (Who knew o.O?) And here is the thing he probably practiced using scouts in that situation it wasn't just a spur of the momment thing. These kinds of things are what sets apart SC2 from BW. + Show Spoiler + http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XM7TZvLEqLg http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDUd4MzXRBI Ohh and if you don't understand how that worked. With scouts Kal forced Goliaths and the siege tank numbers were lower he basically couldn't use the Starport for anything else so that was his best option. It's a lot more complicated than this, but that's the just of it. There are a lot more examples of unique things working in unique situations and a sea of games where mechanics shone. Of course both are necessary to win a game of the lovely lovely game that we call BW, but often times one seems more apparent than the other! | ||
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fabiano
Brazil4644 Posts
On December 31 2012 03:49 Big J wrote: That's why the most popular games like football or basketball are only played by the masses and not by highlevel professionals... Of course you can have both. A game that is easy to learn and fun to be played will get picked up by a lot of players (assuming good marketing). That doesn't mean that it cannot be hard to master. Oh wow... I take it back then. I thought competitive games and casual games were mutually exclusive. I guess LoL nailed it then, must be one of the various reasons it currently is the biggest ESPORTS after the BW era. | ||
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shid0x
Korea (South)5014 Posts
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Rodiel3
France1158 Posts
On December 31 2012 07:32 shid0x wrote: I thinks there is other game than starcraft if you want to focus on these things OP (not saying there is none in sc2 but they are less developped than some other game ) we need to have starcraft being the APM game because if its not what game would do it ?:D SCBW ? :D | ||
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Doominator10
United States515 Posts
On December 30 2012 04:22 Marti wrote: Falling has made a GREAT blog about this : http://www.teamliquid.net/blogs/viewblog.php?id=322084 Broodwar is more mechanically demanding than SC2. Supreme commander 2 is even less mechanically demanding. In fact with supcom2 you cannot control your armies, and you can make a factory produce an unit continuously for the rest of the game ( infinite queuing, just click once and it'll keep making that unit ). So when you can't control your army ( no micro ) and macro is close to being non existent then what is left ? Army composition. Nothing more nothing less. I made unit A he made unit B; unit B counters unit A so i guess i lost. I belive what you are thinking about only works in a predeployed game, i'm thinking anything from advance wars to total war. This just doesn't suit the classical RTS genre. tldr : read falling's blog. edit : edited to make it easier to read i honestly dont care what the rest of the post says :D Thanks for the article | ||
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Mongoose
United Kingdom190 Posts
When I see protoss doing a warp prism strategy or other unorthodox strat, I just keep thinking what a gimmick it is. | ||
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Mstring
Australia510 Posts
I have been playing the game for over two years and have come up with one, a single tournament build order+strategy; and it took me a couple of hours to develop and another couple of hours to practice. While it was immensely satisfying to succeed and beat a GM player with it, it was just a single game for a specific map that hinged on him doing a specific opening and reacting with his units in a specific way. It was the most satisfaction I've had in the game by far, but took far too long and too much energy to do as often as I would like to-- every day. If it only took a few minutes to come up with a new build order tailored to doing whatever you wanted, do you think more players would become innovators? I certainly do. When you simply copy what others are doing, you aren't fully harnessing the technology of the strategy and thus you simply become good at winning with your copy at the current point in time, not 'good at the game' (by my definition at least). This results in forums filled with "what should I do here" questions. When you copy from the top, you don't learn to answer the real questions yourself; you stop playing the game on your own terms and become a slave to the external. I'm completely guilty of this and well aware of the detrimental effects (on both skill and mental state) and as such have been searching for ways to automate innovation ever since. I think SC2 is worthy of the "strategy" title, you just have to have the mechanical skill to execute your decision tree through to the end. When there are so few strategic innovators you get the appearance that it's all about mechanics... until a new innovation comes out, is executed well, and wipes the floor with everyone else. It's extremely interesting to compare the SC2 scene to the Magic: the Gathering scene. The way the top 'strategies' filter down to the masses is virtually identical. There are a handful of innovators and everyone else copies. The lower competitive tiers end up in the same situation: copy or die. If you aren't innovating at the top level, you will simply lose to something standard, even if it was executed below top level. I believe that stagnation of a meta-game is more to do with the difficulty of innovation. SC2 is obscenely complex. The sheer number of timings that are out there unexplored is mind boggling. The problem is that people don't have a framework (aside from trial and error) for evaluating the efficacy of these tactical snippets and no efficient method for incorporating them into their game. | ||
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FireMonkey
Australia105 Posts
On December 31 2012 04:05 zefreak wrote: I think most of you (and me included) don't even know how deep the strategy in SC2 gets. You see pro games and understand unit compositions and general build orders but when you get someone who is a pro to analyze games, the why and the how and not just the what, people are always astonished at how much more to it there is. It's like poker, sure you can grasp the basics and understand whats sort of going. You can be relatively decent/good and have a better idea than most. You will still only have a surface-level understanding of high level play. It's kind of like in English when you read a book, any normal person would read a page from a book and say what happened. However, an English teacher will go off about all these themes and meanings behind each sentence. | ||
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Rococo
United States331 Posts
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