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On October 08 2013 14:51 aZealot wrote:Show nested quote +On October 08 2013 14:37 Arco wrote:On October 08 2013 14:27 RampancyTW wrote:On October 08 2013 13:55 saddaromma wrote:On October 08 2013 13:16 RampancyTW wrote:On October 08 2013 12:14 saddaromma wrote:On October 08 2013 12:08 RampancyTW wrote:On October 08 2013 11:58 Highways wrote:
OMG the OP is post of the year!!!
Agree on all points.
I particularly like the point one SC2 being more of a simulation. When a battle starts everything is basically attack move, the player is required to have very little micro. Imagine from a spectator view, wait 20 minutes of nothing happening then a 5 second battle occurs that decides a game where the players barely need to micro.
Letting David Kim design this game is like letting a monkey fly a plane. This has very little to do with the game design and very much to do with player choices/lack of ability. Haven't it occured to you that lack of choices is due to design? There isn't a lack of choices. Some players just choose to play passively. Some players don't have the ability to play actively on the map without falling behind in other areas of their game. There have been a ton of matches lately between very good players with action all over the map; back-and-forth, long, micro-intensive engagements; and a solid game duration of ~20 minutes or more. While SC2 does allow players to play "competently" by being passive and engaging in big deathball fights, it isn't the ideal way to play, and those players usually get picked apart by the ones that can macro just as well as the passive guy while also being active on the map. Totally disagree. SC2 promotes deathballs rather than splitting army. Do you think it's pure coincidence that as the top players get better and better, they split up their army more and more? Do you think that those players would benefit from not splitting up their army? Considering your assertion runs counter to most of the evidence we have available to us, you're going to have to qualify it a bit. A couple expendable units here and there for harassment or flanks maybe. In Brood War, you would even split expensive tech units off from your main army to defend expansions. For example, late game PvZ, where you need Reavers/High Templars at multiple expansions. Even in an evenly matched by skill game if you leave 1 or 2 Colossus out of your army from the main fight, chances are you're going to lose that fight and the game. The problem here is that defender's advantage doesn't exist, so you can't afford to leave expensive units standing around defending. If you lose most/all of your army in a big engagement, it's over. In StarCraft: Brood War, it's much different. You can buy time to macro up some units on very low supply. Siege Tanks, Spider Mines, Lurkers, and Dark Swarm are all great at defending against innumerable odds. The high ground advantage and the increased difficulty of moving your whole army up the natural choke point and into the main production lines also adds to this defender's advantage. On October 08 2013 11:41 aZealot wrote:On October 08 2013 10:43 SpeghettiJoe wrote:
The bottom line is that SC2 is heavily macro based and very weak in the micro aspect. And macro is boring to watch - "oh look at how he's never missing an scv! Wow!"
People like it when fighting games are about fighting. That's why LoL, Dota are all more popular. They're always fighting. Laning phase: constant trading, ganking. Teamfights, fighting over dragon/baron, tower diving, etc etc.
The bottom line is, SC2 is just not that action packed - spend 20 min to build up a big deathball, then a 10 sec. fight and gg. Yeah there is some harass here and there, but it's nothing near the action of the games.
I repeat - SC2 is just not that action packed. Fix that and you fix its dying popularity.
Well, first of all the dying popularity of SC2 has to be established. Apart from that, I love seeing good macro play. I like seeing a great macro Protoss or Terran not missing a single worker, production cycle or supply point, especially if they are being active with scouting and army (either defensively or offensively); which is what you get at the highest level of play. I appreciate it all the more because as a low-mid level player, I know how hard it is to keep pressing 5E (or 4E) while doing these things (or in my case, trying to do these things without derping over the keyboard). When I see a top level Terran like Bomber, or a Protoss like Rain, manage their economy, I am awestruck. This is not to say that I don't appreciate good micro (I especially like Protoss micro by players like MC who somehow eke out an advantage), but to say that good macro is boring to watch misses one of the defining features of SC2. It is not just a fighting game. It is also a resource management game. SC2 would bore me if it were all about fighting. This may be one reason why I find DOTA and LOL boring. I've tried to give these games a chance and they have nothing for me. I've never thought too much about why, and this might be one reason. I find all that "action" just tedious. Now, it may be that I don't understand those games. Fair enough. But, I have no spark of interest in learning them, either. As to the 20 minute build up into gg this is one of those prevalent false statements that still keep getting bandied about. Sure SC2 is not action packed like MOBA games. It can't be. But, too often, I think players transpose their own ladder experience onto what everybody else is doing or what everybody else is seeing. At the highest level of play, many games are quite action packed. Certainly in comparison to where they were a year ago. As to ladder experience, there is nothing stopping players trying to play a more action intensive game and finding out more about the rules and limits of the game. Why does macro impress you when there is little difference in macro skill at the top level? Flash was the macro king in Brood War (among other important skills) and it would win him games, yet this does little for him in this game. This game is all about decision making and metagaming when you have solid fundamentals. There is very little difference in micro and macro skill at the upper echelons of SC2 progaming. You can't design a game with three completely difference races that's too easy for the top tier players to play. In StarCraft: Brood War, it wasn't perfectly balanced. You overcame racial balance and map balance by player skill. As we can see in StarCraft 2, with S Class Koreans losing to not even top tier foreigners, at a certain point, the skill requirement just drops off dramatically. It impresses me because I am bad at it. It also impresses me because I think there are players, at the highest level, who are better at it than others. As a Protoss, I really like seeing Rain do what he does, because I am torn apart by any halfway decent Terran (even if I prefer a more MC-esque style). As to decision making and metagaming, I also like these as good skills to have (although, if I am being honest, I am not overly a fan of metagaming). As to why Flash has not been able to mimic his skill in BW to SC2, I have no idea why. There could be other reasons than those above (such as putting in the same work to conquer a new game might be beyond him). Fact is, I don't know. And I have no inclination or interest to theorise as to the reasons. As to BW, like I said, I did not follow the scene (apart from playing it a little from 1998 - 1999/2000 and then giving it up like a lot of other people do with games) and didn't watch it. If I did, maybe I'd agree with you. But I did not. So, it's a moot point.
Regarding Flash, BW was less luckbased and snowbally, I still remember how crowd whould gasp when he loses couple of tanks but he'd still recover by good decision-making and solid mechanics. In SC2 if opponent catches you off-guard, its pretty much gg.
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alright I think u guys are bit too overboard with the argument. It's not binary like that.
You can't say the game is in bad shape purely because the players have the wrong style or the game design is lacking. It's both.
GIven all the fancy mechanics of bw players like oov was able to dominate with macro only, and it was a fun to watch him make a billions of units when nobody has done that, and you can't say macro is boring.
There is a huge amount of skill in starcraft 2 and it require just as much concentration and skill to play. However, it is just not very exciting to watch. Imagine someone spend his entire life mastering the art of pong, you still wouldn't go to a pong tournament would you? You'd respect his dedication and skill at pong, he probably does a billion things to play that well but in the end nobody wants to watch a game of pong.
tbh I havn't get the feeling of watching bw in a long long time... It's just not the same. I remember when bisu first beat savior I was literally crying.
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On October 08 2013 15:00 saddaromma wrote:Show nested quote +On October 08 2013 14:51 aZealot wrote:On October 08 2013 14:37 Arco wrote:On October 08 2013 14:27 RampancyTW wrote:On October 08 2013 13:55 saddaromma wrote:On October 08 2013 13:16 RampancyTW wrote:On October 08 2013 12:14 saddaromma wrote:On October 08 2013 12:08 RampancyTW wrote:On October 08 2013 11:58 Highways wrote:
OMG the OP is post of the year!!!
Agree on all points.
I particularly like the point one SC2 being more of a simulation. When a battle starts everything is basically attack move, the player is required to have very little micro. Imagine from a spectator view, wait 20 minutes of nothing happening then a 5 second battle occurs that decides a game where the players barely need to micro.
Letting David Kim design this game is like letting a monkey fly a plane. This has very little to do with the game design and very much to do with player choices/lack of ability. Haven't it occured to you that lack of choices is due to design? There isn't a lack of choices. Some players just choose to play passively. Some players don't have the ability to play actively on the map without falling behind in other areas of their game. There have been a ton of matches lately between very good players with action all over the map; back-and-forth, long, micro-intensive engagements; and a solid game duration of ~20 minutes or more. While SC2 does allow players to play "competently" by being passive and engaging in big deathball fights, it isn't the ideal way to play, and those players usually get picked apart by the ones that can macro just as well as the passive guy while also being active on the map. Totally disagree. SC2 promotes deathballs rather than splitting army. Do you think it's pure coincidence that as the top players get better and better, they split up their army more and more? Do you think that those players would benefit from not splitting up their army? Considering your assertion runs counter to most of the evidence we have available to us, you're going to have to qualify it a bit. A couple expendable units here and there for harassment or flanks maybe. In Brood War, you would even split expensive tech units off from your main army to defend expansions. For example, late game PvZ, where you need Reavers/High Templars at multiple expansions. Even in an evenly matched by skill game if you leave 1 or 2 Colossus out of your army from the main fight, chances are you're going to lose that fight and the game. The problem here is that defender's advantage doesn't exist, so you can't afford to leave expensive units standing around defending. If you lose most/all of your army in a big engagement, it's over. In StarCraft: Brood War, it's much different. You can buy time to macro up some units on very low supply. Siege Tanks, Spider Mines, Lurkers, and Dark Swarm are all great at defending against innumerable odds. The high ground advantage and the increased difficulty of moving your whole army up the natural choke point and into the main production lines also adds to this defender's advantage. On October 08 2013 11:41 aZealot wrote:On October 08 2013 10:43 SpeghettiJoe wrote:
The bottom line is that SC2 is heavily macro based and very weak in the micro aspect. And macro is boring to watch - "oh look at how he's never missing an scv! Wow!"
People like it when fighting games are about fighting. That's why LoL, Dota are all more popular. They're always fighting. Laning phase: constant trading, ganking. Teamfights, fighting over dragon/baron, tower diving, etc etc.
The bottom line is, SC2 is just not that action packed - spend 20 min to build up a big deathball, then a 10 sec. fight and gg. Yeah there is some harass here and there, but it's nothing near the action of the games.
I repeat - SC2 is just not that action packed. Fix that and you fix its dying popularity.
Well, first of all the dying popularity of SC2 has to be established. Apart from that, I love seeing good macro play. I like seeing a great macro Protoss or Terran not missing a single worker, production cycle or supply point, especially if they are being active with scouting and army (either defensively or offensively); which is what you get at the highest level of play. I appreciate it all the more because as a low-mid level player, I know how hard it is to keep pressing 5E (or 4E) while doing these things (or in my case, trying to do these things without derping over the keyboard). When I see a top level Terran like Bomber, or a Protoss like Rain, manage their economy, I am awestruck. This is not to say that I don't appreciate good micro (I especially like Protoss micro by players like MC who somehow eke out an advantage), but to say that good macro is boring to watch misses one of the defining features of SC2. It is not just a fighting game. It is also a resource management game. SC2 would bore me if it were all about fighting. This may be one reason why I find DOTA and LOL boring. I've tried to give these games a chance and they have nothing for me. I've never thought too much about why, and this might be one reason. I find all that "action" just tedious. Now, it may be that I don't understand those games. Fair enough. But, I have no spark of interest in learning them, either. As to the 20 minute build up into gg this is one of those prevalent false statements that still keep getting bandied about. Sure SC2 is not action packed like MOBA games. It can't be. But, too often, I think players transpose their own ladder experience onto what everybody else is doing or what everybody else is seeing. At the highest level of play, many games are quite action packed. Certainly in comparison to where they were a year ago. As to ladder experience, there is nothing stopping players trying to play a more action intensive game and finding out more about the rules and limits of the game. Why does macro impress you when there is little difference in macro skill at the top level? Flash was the macro king in Brood War (among other important skills) and it would win him games, yet this does little for him in this game. This game is all about decision making and metagaming when you have solid fundamentals. There is very little difference in micro and macro skill at the upper echelons of SC2 progaming. You can't design a game with three completely difference races that's too easy for the top tier players to play. In StarCraft: Brood War, it wasn't perfectly balanced. You overcame racial balance and map balance by player skill. As we can see in StarCraft 2, with S Class Koreans losing to not even top tier foreigners, at a certain point, the skill requirement just drops off dramatically. It impresses me because I am bad at it. It also impresses me because I think there are players, at the highest level, who are better at it than others. As a Protoss, I really like seeing Rain do what he does, because I am torn apart by any halfway decent Terran (even if I prefer a more MC-esque style). As to decision making and metagaming, I also like these as good skills to have (although, if I am being honest, I am not overly a fan of metagaming). As to why Flash has not been able to mimic his skill in BW to SC2, I have no idea why. There could be other reasons than those above (such as putting in the same work to conquer a new game might be beyond him). Fact is, I don't know. And I have no inclination or interest to theorise as to the reasons. As to BW, like I said, I did not follow the scene (apart from playing it a little from 1998 - 1999/2000 and then giving it up like a lot of other people do with games) and didn't watch it. If I did, maybe I'd agree with you. But I did not. So, it's a moot point. Regarding Flash, BW was less luckbased and snowbally, I still remember how crowd whould gasp when he loses couple of tanks but he'd still recover by good decision-making and solid mechanics. In SC2 if opponent catches you off-guard, its pretty much gg. SC2 is far less luck-based than BW was.
BW literally had randomness built into its architecture. High-ground advantage involved luck and randomness. Scarabs would randomly not detonate. The ONLY "luck" present in SC2 is slight differences in individual unit refire rates that extremely occasionally makes it so that in a 1 unit vs. 1 identical unit fight, the unit that fires first still ends up losing. Everything else is entirely within the player's control.
And the crowd would gasp if Flash lost 2 tanks because under normal conditions that could cost you the game, or at least put you in a severe disadvantage. This is no different in SC2. Losing 2 tanks is a bad, but potentially recoverable position provided you have good crisis management and outplay your opponent. The main difference in SC2 is that constant control and positioning throughout the game are far more important than they are in BW, because if you have a big army out on the map, that's a big army that you can potentially lose to a similarly-sized opponent's army that's better-controlled and microed than yours is. One-sided macro stompfests happened frequently in BW when players threw away too many units, the death animation just took longer because the game itself was slower.
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On October 08 2013 15:16 RampancyTW wrote:Show nested quote +On October 08 2013 15:00 saddaromma wrote:On October 08 2013 14:51 aZealot wrote:On October 08 2013 14:37 Arco wrote:On October 08 2013 14:27 RampancyTW wrote:On October 08 2013 13:55 saddaromma wrote:On October 08 2013 13:16 RampancyTW wrote:On October 08 2013 12:14 saddaromma wrote:On October 08 2013 12:08 RampancyTW wrote:On October 08 2013 11:58 Highways wrote:
OMG the OP is post of the year!!!
Agree on all points.
I particularly like the point one SC2 being more of a simulation. When a battle starts everything is basically attack move, the player is required to have very little micro. Imagine from a spectator view, wait 20 minutes of nothing happening then a 5 second battle occurs that decides a game where the players barely need to micro.
Letting David Kim design this game is like letting a monkey fly a plane. This has very little to do with the game design and very much to do with player choices/lack of ability. Haven't it occured to you that lack of choices is due to design? There isn't a lack of choices. Some players just choose to play passively. Some players don't have the ability to play actively on the map without falling behind in other areas of their game. There have been a ton of matches lately between very good players with action all over the map; back-and-forth, long, micro-intensive engagements; and a solid game duration of ~20 minutes or more. While SC2 does allow players to play "competently" by being passive and engaging in big deathball fights, it isn't the ideal way to play, and those players usually get picked apart by the ones that can macro just as well as the passive guy while also being active on the map. Totally disagree. SC2 promotes deathballs rather than splitting army. Do you think it's pure coincidence that as the top players get better and better, they split up their army more and more? Do you think that those players would benefit from not splitting up their army? Considering your assertion runs counter to most of the evidence we have available to us, you're going to have to qualify it a bit. A couple expendable units here and there for harassment or flanks maybe. In Brood War, you would even split expensive tech units off from your main army to defend expansions. For example, late game PvZ, where you need Reavers/High Templars at multiple expansions. Even in an evenly matched by skill game if you leave 1 or 2 Colossus out of your army from the main fight, chances are you're going to lose that fight and the game. The problem here is that defender's advantage doesn't exist, so you can't afford to leave expensive units standing around defending. If you lose most/all of your army in a big engagement, it's over. In StarCraft: Brood War, it's much different. You can buy time to macro up some units on very low supply. Siege Tanks, Spider Mines, Lurkers, and Dark Swarm are all great at defending against innumerable odds. The high ground advantage and the increased difficulty of moving your whole army up the natural choke point and into the main production lines also adds to this defender's advantage. On October 08 2013 11:41 aZealot wrote:On October 08 2013 10:43 SpeghettiJoe wrote:
The bottom line is that SC2 is heavily macro based and very weak in the micro aspect. And macro is boring to watch - "oh look at how he's never missing an scv! Wow!"
People like it when fighting games are about fighting. That's why LoL, Dota are all more popular. They're always fighting. Laning phase: constant trading, ganking. Teamfights, fighting over dragon/baron, tower diving, etc etc.
The bottom line is, SC2 is just not that action packed - spend 20 min to build up a big deathball, then a 10 sec. fight and gg. Yeah there is some harass here and there, but it's nothing near the action of the games.
I repeat - SC2 is just not that action packed. Fix that and you fix its dying popularity.
Well, first of all the dying popularity of SC2 has to be established. Apart from that, I love seeing good macro play. I like seeing a great macro Protoss or Terran not missing a single worker, production cycle or supply point, especially if they are being active with scouting and army (either defensively or offensively); which is what you get at the highest level of play. I appreciate it all the more because as a low-mid level player, I know how hard it is to keep pressing 5E (or 4E) while doing these things (or in my case, trying to do these things without derping over the keyboard). When I see a top level Terran like Bomber, or a Protoss like Rain, manage their economy, I am awestruck. This is not to say that I don't appreciate good micro (I especially like Protoss micro by players like MC who somehow eke out an advantage), but to say that good macro is boring to watch misses one of the defining features of SC2. It is not just a fighting game. It is also a resource management game. SC2 would bore me if it were all about fighting. This may be one reason why I find DOTA and LOL boring. I've tried to give these games a chance and they have nothing for me. I've never thought too much about why, and this might be one reason. I find all that "action" just tedious. Now, it may be that I don't understand those games. Fair enough. But, I have no spark of interest in learning them, either. As to the 20 minute build up into gg this is one of those prevalent false statements that still keep getting bandied about. Sure SC2 is not action packed like MOBA games. It can't be. But, too often, I think players transpose their own ladder experience onto what everybody else is doing or what everybody else is seeing. At the highest level of play, many games are quite action packed. Certainly in comparison to where they were a year ago. As to ladder experience, there is nothing stopping players trying to play a more action intensive game and finding out more about the rules and limits of the game. Why does macro impress you when there is little difference in macro skill at the top level? Flash was the macro king in Brood War (among other important skills) and it would win him games, yet this does little for him in this game. This game is all about decision making and metagaming when you have solid fundamentals. There is very little difference in micro and macro skill at the upper echelons of SC2 progaming. You can't design a game with three completely difference races that's too easy for the top tier players to play. In StarCraft: Brood War, it wasn't perfectly balanced. You overcame racial balance and map balance by player skill. As we can see in StarCraft 2, with S Class Koreans losing to not even top tier foreigners, at a certain point, the skill requirement just drops off dramatically. It impresses me because I am bad at it. It also impresses me because I think there are players, at the highest level, who are better at it than others. As a Protoss, I really like seeing Rain do what he does, because I am torn apart by any halfway decent Terran (even if I prefer a more MC-esque style). As to decision making and metagaming, I also like these as good skills to have (although, if I am being honest, I am not overly a fan of metagaming). As to why Flash has not been able to mimic his skill in BW to SC2, I have no idea why. There could be other reasons than those above (such as putting in the same work to conquer a new game might be beyond him). Fact is, I don't know. And I have no inclination or interest to theorise as to the reasons. As to BW, like I said, I did not follow the scene (apart from playing it a little from 1998 - 1999/2000 and then giving it up like a lot of other people do with games) and didn't watch it. If I did, maybe I'd agree with you. But I did not. So, it's a moot point. Regarding Flash, BW was less luckbased and snowbally, I still remember how crowd whould gasp when he loses couple of tanks but he'd still recover by good decision-making and solid mechanics. In SC2 if opponent catches you off-guard, its pretty much gg. SC2 is far less luck-based than BW was.
This is a brave statement.
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On October 08 2013 15:22 saddaromma wrote:Show nested quote +On October 08 2013 15:16 RampancyTW wrote:On October 08 2013 15:00 saddaromma wrote:On October 08 2013 14:51 aZealot wrote:On October 08 2013 14:37 Arco wrote:On October 08 2013 14:27 RampancyTW wrote:On October 08 2013 13:55 saddaromma wrote:On October 08 2013 13:16 RampancyTW wrote:On October 08 2013 12:14 saddaromma wrote:On October 08 2013 12:08 RampancyTW wrote:
[quote]This has very little to do with the game design and very much to do with player choices/lack of ability. Haven't it occured to you that lack of choices is due to design? There isn't a lack of choices. Some players just choose to play passively. Some players don't have the ability to play actively on the map without falling behind in other areas of their game. There have been a ton of matches lately between very good players with action all over the map; back-and-forth, long, micro-intensive engagements; and a solid game duration of ~20 minutes or more. While SC2 does allow players to play "competently" by being passive and engaging in big deathball fights, it isn't the ideal way to play, and those players usually get picked apart by the ones that can macro just as well as the passive guy while also being active on the map. Totally disagree. SC2 promotes deathballs rather than splitting army. Do you think it's pure coincidence that as the top players get better and better, they split up their army more and more? Do you think that those players would benefit from not splitting up their army? Considering your assertion runs counter to most of the evidence we have available to us, you're going to have to qualify it a bit. A couple expendable units here and there for harassment or flanks maybe. In Brood War, you would even split expensive tech units off from your main army to defend expansions. For example, late game PvZ, where you need Reavers/High Templars at multiple expansions. Even in an evenly matched by skill game if you leave 1 or 2 Colossus out of your army from the main fight, chances are you're going to lose that fight and the game. The problem here is that defender's advantage doesn't exist, so you can't afford to leave expensive units standing around defending. If you lose most/all of your army in a big engagement, it's over. In StarCraft: Brood War, it's much different. You can buy time to macro up some units on very low supply. Siege Tanks, Spider Mines, Lurkers, and Dark Swarm are all great at defending against innumerable odds. The high ground advantage and the increased difficulty of moving your whole army up the natural choke point and into the main production lines also adds to this defender's advantage. On October 08 2013 11:41 aZealot wrote:On October 08 2013 10:43 SpeghettiJoe wrote:
The bottom line is that SC2 is heavily macro based and very weak in the micro aspect. And macro is boring to watch - "oh look at how he's never missing an scv! Wow!"
People like it when fighting games are about fighting. That's why LoL, Dota are all more popular. They're always fighting. Laning phase: constant trading, ganking. Teamfights, fighting over dragon/baron, tower diving, etc etc.
The bottom line is, SC2 is just not that action packed - spend 20 min to build up a big deathball, then a 10 sec. fight and gg. Yeah there is some harass here and there, but it's nothing near the action of the games.
I repeat - SC2 is just not that action packed. Fix that and you fix its dying popularity.
Well, first of all the dying popularity of SC2 has to be established. Apart from that, I love seeing good macro play. I like seeing a great macro Protoss or Terran not missing a single worker, production cycle or supply point, especially if they are being active with scouting and army (either defensively or offensively); which is what you get at the highest level of play. I appreciate it all the more because as a low-mid level player, I know how hard it is to keep pressing 5E (or 4E) while doing these things (or in my case, trying to do these things without derping over the keyboard). When I see a top level Terran like Bomber, or a Protoss like Rain, manage their economy, I am awestruck. This is not to say that I don't appreciate good micro (I especially like Protoss micro by players like MC who somehow eke out an advantage), but to say that good macro is boring to watch misses one of the defining features of SC2. It is not just a fighting game. It is also a resource management game. SC2 would bore me if it were all about fighting. This may be one reason why I find DOTA and LOL boring. I've tried to give these games a chance and they have nothing for me. I've never thought too much about why, and this might be one reason. I find all that "action" just tedious. Now, it may be that I don't understand those games. Fair enough. But, I have no spark of interest in learning them, either. As to the 20 minute build up into gg this is one of those prevalent false statements that still keep getting bandied about. Sure SC2 is not action packed like MOBA games. It can't be. But, too often, I think players transpose their own ladder experience onto what everybody else is doing or what everybody else is seeing. At the highest level of play, many games are quite action packed. Certainly in comparison to where they were a year ago. As to ladder experience, there is nothing stopping players trying to play a more action intensive game and finding out more about the rules and limits of the game. Why does macro impress you when there is little difference in macro skill at the top level? Flash was the macro king in Brood War (among other important skills) and it would win him games, yet this does little for him in this game. This game is all about decision making and metagaming when you have solid fundamentals. There is very little difference in micro and macro skill at the upper echelons of SC2 progaming. You can't design a game with three completely difference races that's too easy for the top tier players to play. In StarCraft: Brood War, it wasn't perfectly balanced. You overcame racial balance and map balance by player skill. As we can see in StarCraft 2, with S Class Koreans losing to not even top tier foreigners, at a certain point, the skill requirement just drops off dramatically. It impresses me because I am bad at it. It also impresses me because I think there are players, at the highest level, who are better at it than others. As a Protoss, I really like seeing Rain do what he does, because I am torn apart by any halfway decent Terran (even if I prefer a more MC-esque style). As to decision making and metagaming, I also like these as good skills to have (although, if I am being honest, I am not overly a fan of metagaming). As to why Flash has not been able to mimic his skill in BW to SC2, I have no idea why. There could be other reasons than those above (such as putting in the same work to conquer a new game might be beyond him). Fact is, I don't know. And I have no inclination or interest to theorise as to the reasons. As to BW, like I said, I did not follow the scene (apart from playing it a little from 1998 - 1999/2000 and then giving it up like a lot of other people do with games) and didn't watch it. If I did, maybe I'd agree with you. But I did not. So, it's a moot point. Regarding Flash, BW was less luckbased and snowbally, I still remember how crowd whould gasp when he loses couple of tanks but he'd still recover by good decision-making and solid mechanics. In SC2 if opponent catches you off-guard, its pretty much gg. SC2 is far less luck-based than BW was. This is a brave statement. It's also a mathematically-accurate statement.
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Czech Republic12129 Posts
Well, I admit, that there are times when I am blind. BUT! I wanted to watch WCS EU finals. MC, MMA, Genius, great casters, great host - simply a lot of fun promised. So on Friday I looked at the TL and didn§t see WCS on the events tab and no advertisement either(and on Saturday morning as well). What was my surprise when I saw Monday TL homepage.
What I don't understand - why there wasn't some big promo? I'm sure as hell that I haven't seen this on Friday when I was playing ladder. Why it's not promoted during loading screens or something?
Damn...
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On October 08 2013 14:37 Arco wrote:
You can't design a game with three completely difference races that's too easy for the top tier players to play. In StarCraft: Brood War, it wasn't perfectly balanced. You overcame racial balance and map balance by player skill. As we can see in StarCraft 2, with S Class Koreans losing to not even top tier foreigners, at a certain point, the skill requirement just drops off dramatically.
I would love to see some data on this because I call bullshit.
When koreans play vs random foreigners and lose they are not code s level anymore.
You guys try way too hard to make an argument when it's really only your frustration with the game in general.
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On October 08 2013 15:16 RampancyTW wrote:Show nested quote +On October 08 2013 15:00 saddaromma wrote:On October 08 2013 14:51 aZealot wrote:On October 08 2013 14:37 Arco wrote:On October 08 2013 14:27 RampancyTW wrote:On October 08 2013 13:55 saddaromma wrote:On October 08 2013 13:16 RampancyTW wrote:On October 08 2013 12:14 saddaromma wrote:On October 08 2013 12:08 RampancyTW wrote:On October 08 2013 11:58 Highways wrote:
OMG the OP is post of the year!!!
Agree on all points.
I particularly like the point one SC2 being more of a simulation. When a battle starts everything is basically attack move, the player is required to have very little micro. Imagine from a spectator view, wait 20 minutes of nothing happening then a 5 second battle occurs that decides a game where the players barely need to micro.
Letting David Kim design this game is like letting a monkey fly a plane. This has very little to do with the game design and very much to do with player choices/lack of ability. Haven't it occured to you that lack of choices is due to design? There isn't a lack of choices. Some players just choose to play passively. Some players don't have the ability to play actively on the map without falling behind in other areas of their game. There have been a ton of matches lately between very good players with action all over the map; back-and-forth, long, micro-intensive engagements; and a solid game duration of ~20 minutes or more. While SC2 does allow players to play "competently" by being passive and engaging in big deathball fights, it isn't the ideal way to play, and those players usually get picked apart by the ones that can macro just as well as the passive guy while also being active on the map. Totally disagree. SC2 promotes deathballs rather than splitting army. Do you think it's pure coincidence that as the top players get better and better, they split up their army more and more? Do you think that those players would benefit from not splitting up their army? Considering your assertion runs counter to most of the evidence we have available to us, you're going to have to qualify it a bit. A couple expendable units here and there for harassment or flanks maybe. In Brood War, you would even split expensive tech units off from your main army to defend expansions. For example, late game PvZ, where you need Reavers/High Templars at multiple expansions. Even in an evenly matched by skill game if you leave 1 or 2 Colossus out of your army from the main fight, chances are you're going to lose that fight and the game. The problem here is that defender's advantage doesn't exist, so you can't afford to leave expensive units standing around defending. If you lose most/all of your army in a big engagement, it's over. In StarCraft: Brood War, it's much different. You can buy time to macro up some units on very low supply. Siege Tanks, Spider Mines, Lurkers, and Dark Swarm are all great at defending against innumerable odds. The high ground advantage and the increased difficulty of moving your whole army up the natural choke point and into the main production lines also adds to this defender's advantage. On October 08 2013 11:41 aZealot wrote:On October 08 2013 10:43 SpeghettiJoe wrote:
The bottom line is that SC2 is heavily macro based and very weak in the micro aspect. And macro is boring to watch - "oh look at how he's never missing an scv! Wow!"
People like it when fighting games are about fighting. That's why LoL, Dota are all more popular. They're always fighting. Laning phase: constant trading, ganking. Teamfights, fighting over dragon/baron, tower diving, etc etc.
The bottom line is, SC2 is just not that action packed - spend 20 min to build up a big deathball, then a 10 sec. fight and gg. Yeah there is some harass here and there, but it's nothing near the action of the games.
I repeat - SC2 is just not that action packed. Fix that and you fix its dying popularity.
Well, first of all the dying popularity of SC2 has to be established. Apart from that, I love seeing good macro play. I like seeing a great macro Protoss or Terran not missing a single worker, production cycle or supply point, especially if they are being active with scouting and army (either defensively or offensively); which is what you get at the highest level of play. I appreciate it all the more because as a low-mid level player, I know how hard it is to keep pressing 5E (or 4E) while doing these things (or in my case, trying to do these things without derping over the keyboard). When I see a top level Terran like Bomber, or a Protoss like Rain, manage their economy, I am awestruck. This is not to say that I don't appreciate good micro (I especially like Protoss micro by players like MC who somehow eke out an advantage), but to say that good macro is boring to watch misses one of the defining features of SC2. It is not just a fighting game. It is also a resource management game. SC2 would bore me if it were all about fighting. This may be one reason why I find DOTA and LOL boring. I've tried to give these games a chance and they have nothing for me. I've never thought too much about why, and this might be one reason. I find all that "action" just tedious. Now, it may be that I don't understand those games. Fair enough. But, I have no spark of interest in learning them, either. As to the 20 minute build up into gg this is one of those prevalent false statements that still keep getting bandied about. Sure SC2 is not action packed like MOBA games. It can't be. But, too often, I think players transpose their own ladder experience onto what everybody else is doing or what everybody else is seeing. At the highest level of play, many games are quite action packed. Certainly in comparison to where they were a year ago. As to ladder experience, there is nothing stopping players trying to play a more action intensive game and finding out more about the rules and limits of the game. Why does macro impress you when there is little difference in macro skill at the top level? Flash was the macro king in Brood War (among other important skills) and it would win him games, yet this does little for him in this game. This game is all about decision making and metagaming when you have solid fundamentals. There is very little difference in micro and macro skill at the upper echelons of SC2 progaming. You can't design a game with three completely difference races that's too easy for the top tier players to play. In StarCraft: Brood War, it wasn't perfectly balanced. You overcame racial balance and map balance by player skill. As we can see in StarCraft 2, with S Class Koreans losing to not even top tier foreigners, at a certain point, the skill requirement just drops off dramatically. It impresses me because I am bad at it. It also impresses me because I think there are players, at the highest level, who are better at it than others. As a Protoss, I really like seeing Rain do what he does, because I am torn apart by any halfway decent Terran (even if I prefer a more MC-esque style). As to decision making and metagaming, I also like these as good skills to have (although, if I am being honest, I am not overly a fan of metagaming). As to why Flash has not been able to mimic his skill in BW to SC2, I have no idea why. There could be other reasons than those above (such as putting in the same work to conquer a new game might be beyond him). Fact is, I don't know. And I have no inclination or interest to theorise as to the reasons. As to BW, like I said, I did not follow the scene (apart from playing it a little from 1998 - 1999/2000 and then giving it up like a lot of other people do with games) and didn't watch it. If I did, maybe I'd agree with you. But I did not. So, it's a moot point. Regarding Flash, BW was less luckbased and snowbally, I still remember how crowd whould gasp when he loses couple of tanks but he'd still recover by good decision-making and solid mechanics. In SC2 if opponent catches you off-guard, its pretty much gg. SC2 is far less luck-based than BW was. BW literally had randomness built into its architecture. High-ground advantage involved luck and randomness. Scarabs would randomly not detonate. The ONLY "luck" present in SC2 is slight differences in individual unit refire rates that extremely occasionally makes it so that in a 1 unit vs. 1 identical unit fight, the unit that fires first still ends up losing. Everything else is entirely within the player's control. And the crowd would gasp if Flash lost 2 tanks because under normal conditions that could cost you the game, or at least put you in a severe disadvantage. This is no different in SC2. Losing 2 tanks is a bad, but potentially recoverable position provided you have good crisis management and outplay your opponent. The main difference in SC2 is that constant control and positioning throughout the game are far more important than they are in BW, because if you have a big army out on the map, that's a big army that you can potentially lose to a similarly-sized opponent's army that's better-controlled and microed than yours is. One-sided macro stompfests happened frequently in BW when players threw away too many units, the death animation just took longer because the game itself was slower.
SC2 has less random number generation (RNG), yes. Meanwhile in practise BW seems to be a more stable game.
Both BW and SC2 play a lot on things like partitially hidden game state and players inability to get a complete read on the situation. As a result almost every decision made by the players is an educated guess. Obvioulsy with high level players it's an extremely good educated guess, but a guess nevertheless.
The problem with SC2 is that these educated guesses often get blown out of proportions. You make a bad guess and there's only a limited amount of things you can do to recover. You can't really decisively outmicro or outmacro your opponent and usually any kind of map control play is next to impossible if you're behind. The best players certainly are very good at their decisions, but we are still only talking likelyhoods here.
Meanwhile in BW you have a way wider set of tools to overcome the disadvantage. You can play map control in some ways, you can usually outmicro and outmacro your opponent, you can still find openings with good harass units and so on. There are loads of little things that slowly allow you to pull yourself even or ahead if you're really good. The good players seem to be able to find a ways to outplay their opponent in long run and win the match despite a bad guess or nasty mistake.
Another thing making SC2 luck based is how mistakes get blown out of proportions. You can mildly outplay your opponent 90% of the time and lose in first 2 seconds of a bad engagement. Obviously it's your fault making a mistake, but in pratise it seems that we are all human after all and it's roughly a coin flip on whether its your or your opponent that makes the criticial mistake. Once again, you have very limited ways to outplay your opponent decisively, so the relatively random mistake ends up being way too big of a deal.
Set up two computers playing SC2 without fog of war and we'll have almost a luck free game. Meanwhile in practise BW seems to have a more stable base for the skill based play. There's a reason why BW has had players showcasing immense dominance at times and why SC2 seems to have a different champion in almost every tournament.
---
On lower levels of SC2, the whole decisionmaking related mess gets far worse. Often two players throw armies at each other without much of an idea on how things are supposed to work. People are playing rock paper scissors with unoptimized build orders. Often you'll see players of vastly different skill levels being ranked even because executing one build order properly allows the players to surpass any actual skill tests until the opponents are able to consistently match the build order.
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On October 08 2013 15:16 RampancyTW wrote:Show nested quote +On October 08 2013 15:00 saddaromma wrote:On October 08 2013 14:51 aZealot wrote:On October 08 2013 14:37 Arco wrote:On October 08 2013 14:27 RampancyTW wrote:On October 08 2013 13:55 saddaromma wrote:On October 08 2013 13:16 RampancyTW wrote:On October 08 2013 12:14 saddaromma wrote:On October 08 2013 12:08 RampancyTW wrote:On October 08 2013 11:58 Highways wrote:
OMG the OP is post of the year!!!
Agree on all points.
I particularly like the point one SC2 being more of a simulation. When a battle starts everything is basically attack move, the player is required to have very little micro. Imagine from a spectator view, wait 20 minutes of nothing happening then a 5 second battle occurs that decides a game where the players barely need to micro.
Letting David Kim design this game is like letting a monkey fly a plane. This has very little to do with the game design and very much to do with player choices/lack of ability. Haven't it occured to you that lack of choices is due to design? There isn't a lack of choices. Some players just choose to play passively. Some players don't have the ability to play actively on the map without falling behind in other areas of their game. There have been a ton of matches lately between very good players with action all over the map; back-and-forth, long, micro-intensive engagements; and a solid game duration of ~20 minutes or more. While SC2 does allow players to play "competently" by being passive and engaging in big deathball fights, it isn't the ideal way to play, and those players usually get picked apart by the ones that can macro just as well as the passive guy while also being active on the map. Totally disagree. SC2 promotes deathballs rather than splitting army. Do you think it's pure coincidence that as the top players get better and better, they split up their army more and more? Do you think that those players would benefit from not splitting up their army? Considering your assertion runs counter to most of the evidence we have available to us, you're going to have to qualify it a bit. A couple expendable units here and there for harassment or flanks maybe. In Brood War, you would even split expensive tech units off from your main army to defend expansions. For example, late game PvZ, where you need Reavers/High Templars at multiple expansions. Even in an evenly matched by skill game if you leave 1 or 2 Colossus out of your army from the main fight, chances are you're going to lose that fight and the game. The problem here is that defender's advantage doesn't exist, so you can't afford to leave expensive units standing around defending. If you lose most/all of your army in a big engagement, it's over. In StarCraft: Brood War, it's much different. You can buy time to macro up some units on very low supply. Siege Tanks, Spider Mines, Lurkers, and Dark Swarm are all great at defending against innumerable odds. The high ground advantage and the increased difficulty of moving your whole army up the natural choke point and into the main production lines also adds to this defender's advantage. On October 08 2013 11:41 aZealot wrote:On October 08 2013 10:43 SpeghettiJoe wrote:
The bottom line is that SC2 is heavily macro based and very weak in the micro aspect. And macro is boring to watch - "oh look at how he's never missing an scv! Wow!"
People like it when fighting games are about fighting. That's why LoL, Dota are all more popular. They're always fighting. Laning phase: constant trading, ganking. Teamfights, fighting over dragon/baron, tower diving, etc etc.
The bottom line is, SC2 is just not that action packed - spend 20 min to build up a big deathball, then a 10 sec. fight and gg. Yeah there is some harass here and there, but it's nothing near the action of the games.
I repeat - SC2 is just not that action packed. Fix that and you fix its dying popularity.
Well, first of all the dying popularity of SC2 has to be established. Apart from that, I love seeing good macro play. I like seeing a great macro Protoss or Terran not missing a single worker, production cycle or supply point, especially if they are being active with scouting and army (either defensively or offensively); which is what you get at the highest level of play. I appreciate it all the more because as a low-mid level player, I know how hard it is to keep pressing 5E (or 4E) while doing these things (or in my case, trying to do these things without derping over the keyboard). When I see a top level Terran like Bomber, or a Protoss like Rain, manage their economy, I am awestruck. This is not to say that I don't appreciate good micro (I especially like Protoss micro by players like MC who somehow eke out an advantage), but to say that good macro is boring to watch misses one of the defining features of SC2. It is not just a fighting game. It is also a resource management game. SC2 would bore me if it were all about fighting. This may be one reason why I find DOTA and LOL boring. I've tried to give these games a chance and they have nothing for me. I've never thought too much about why, and this might be one reason. I find all that "action" just tedious. Now, it may be that I don't understand those games. Fair enough. But, I have no spark of interest in learning them, either. As to the 20 minute build up into gg this is one of those prevalent false statements that still keep getting bandied about. Sure SC2 is not action packed like MOBA games. It can't be. But, too often, I think players transpose their own ladder experience onto what everybody else is doing or what everybody else is seeing. At the highest level of play, many games are quite action packed. Certainly in comparison to where they were a year ago. As to ladder experience, there is nothing stopping players trying to play a more action intensive game and finding out more about the rules and limits of the game. Why does macro impress you when there is little difference in macro skill at the top level? Flash was the macro king in Brood War (among other important skills) and it would win him games, yet this does little for him in this game. This game is all about decision making and metagaming when you have solid fundamentals. There is very little difference in micro and macro skill at the upper echelons of SC2 progaming. You can't design a game with three completely difference races that's too easy for the top tier players to play. In StarCraft: Brood War, it wasn't perfectly balanced. You overcame racial balance and map balance by player skill. As we can see in StarCraft 2, with S Class Koreans losing to not even top tier foreigners, at a certain point, the skill requirement just drops off dramatically. It impresses me because I am bad at it. It also impresses me because I think there are players, at the highest level, who are better at it than others. As a Protoss, I really like seeing Rain do what he does, because I am torn apart by any halfway decent Terran (even if I prefer a more MC-esque style). As to decision making and metagaming, I also like these as good skills to have (although, if I am being honest, I am not overly a fan of metagaming). As to why Flash has not been able to mimic his skill in BW to SC2, I have no idea why. There could be other reasons than those above (such as putting in the same work to conquer a new game might be beyond him). Fact is, I don't know. And I have no inclination or interest to theorise as to the reasons. As to BW, like I said, I did not follow the scene (apart from playing it a little from 1998 - 1999/2000 and then giving it up like a lot of other people do with games) and didn't watch it. If I did, maybe I'd agree with you. But I did not. So, it's a moot point. Regarding Flash, BW was less luckbased and snowbally, I still remember how crowd whould gasp when he loses couple of tanks but he'd still recover by good decision-making and solid mechanics. In SC2 if opponent catches you off-guard, its pretty much gg. SC2 is far less luck-based than BW was.
I think you can say this. But at the same time, SC2 is far more randomness-based than BW was.
Nobody means the behaviour of the game itself, like high ground advantag in SCBW, that really seldom did decide games, like almost never.
But we are talking about the gameplay randomness that with less powerful units, only small defenders advantage, faster worker build rate and lower macro/micro skill ceiling it often comes to build order and all in wins. Given the lack of scouting for some races at some specific times this becomes only more severe.
In BW the better player always had the possibility to come back. In SC2 that's not the case because of the reasons above. That's the reason we have all these "upsets" and random looking results.
So at game mechanics level you're right, at gameplay and actual effects level you're wrong.
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On October 08 2013 15:16 RampancyTW wrote:Show nested quote +On October 08 2013 15:00 saddaromma wrote:On October 08 2013 14:51 aZealot wrote:On October 08 2013 14:37 Arco wrote:On October 08 2013 14:27 RampancyTW wrote:On October 08 2013 13:55 saddaromma wrote:On October 08 2013 13:16 RampancyTW wrote:On October 08 2013 12:14 saddaromma wrote:On October 08 2013 12:08 RampancyTW wrote:On October 08 2013 11:58 Highways wrote:
OMG the OP is post of the year!!!
Agree on all points.
I particularly like the point one SC2 being more of a simulation. When a battle starts everything is basically attack move, the player is required to have very little micro. Imagine from a spectator view, wait 20 minutes of nothing happening then a 5 second battle occurs that decides a game where the players barely need to micro.
Letting David Kim design this game is like letting a monkey fly a plane. This has very little to do with the game design and very much to do with player choices/lack of ability. Haven't it occured to you that lack of choices is due to design? There isn't a lack of choices. Some players just choose to play passively. Some players don't have the ability to play actively on the map without falling behind in other areas of their game. There have been a ton of matches lately between very good players with action all over the map; back-and-forth, long, micro-intensive engagements; and a solid game duration of ~20 minutes or more. While SC2 does allow players to play "competently" by being passive and engaging in big deathball fights, it isn't the ideal way to play, and those players usually get picked apart by the ones that can macro just as well as the passive guy while also being active on the map. Totally disagree. SC2 promotes deathballs rather than splitting army. Do you think it's pure coincidence that as the top players get better and better, they split up their army more and more? Do you think that those players would benefit from not splitting up their army? Considering your assertion runs counter to most of the evidence we have available to us, you're going to have to qualify it a bit. A couple expendable units here and there for harassment or flanks maybe. In Brood War, you would even split expensive tech units off from your main army to defend expansions. For example, late game PvZ, where you need Reavers/High Templars at multiple expansions. Even in an evenly matched by skill game if you leave 1 or 2 Colossus out of your army from the main fight, chances are you're going to lose that fight and the game. The problem here is that defender's advantage doesn't exist, so you can't afford to leave expensive units standing around defending. If you lose most/all of your army in a big engagement, it's over. In StarCraft: Brood War, it's much different. You can buy time to macro up some units on very low supply. Siege Tanks, Spider Mines, Lurkers, and Dark Swarm are all great at defending against innumerable odds. The high ground advantage and the increased difficulty of moving your whole army up the natural choke point and into the main production lines also adds to this defender's advantage. On October 08 2013 11:41 aZealot wrote:On October 08 2013 10:43 SpeghettiJoe wrote:
The bottom line is that SC2 is heavily macro based and very weak in the micro aspect. And macro is boring to watch - "oh look at how he's never missing an scv! Wow!"
People like it when fighting games are about fighting. That's why LoL, Dota are all more popular. They're always fighting. Laning phase: constant trading, ganking. Teamfights, fighting over dragon/baron, tower diving, etc etc.
The bottom line is, SC2 is just not that action packed - spend 20 min to build up a big deathball, then a 10 sec. fight and gg. Yeah there is some harass here and there, but it's nothing near the action of the games.
I repeat - SC2 is just not that action packed. Fix that and you fix its dying popularity.
Well, first of all the dying popularity of SC2 has to be established. Apart from that, I love seeing good macro play. I like seeing a great macro Protoss or Terran not missing a single worker, production cycle or supply point, especially if they are being active with scouting and army (either defensively or offensively); which is what you get at the highest level of play. I appreciate it all the more because as a low-mid level player, I know how hard it is to keep pressing 5E (or 4E) while doing these things (or in my case, trying to do these things without derping over the keyboard). When I see a top level Terran like Bomber, or a Protoss like Rain, manage their economy, I am awestruck. This is not to say that I don't appreciate good micro (I especially like Protoss micro by players like MC who somehow eke out an advantage), but to say that good macro is boring to watch misses one of the defining features of SC2. It is not just a fighting game. It is also a resource management game. SC2 would bore me if it were all about fighting. This may be one reason why I find DOTA and LOL boring. I've tried to give these games a chance and they have nothing for me. I've never thought too much about why, and this might be one reason. I find all that "action" just tedious. Now, it may be that I don't understand those games. Fair enough. But, I have no spark of interest in learning them, either. As to the 20 minute build up into gg this is one of those prevalent false statements that still keep getting bandied about. Sure SC2 is not action packed like MOBA games. It can't be. But, too often, I think players transpose their own ladder experience onto what everybody else is doing or what everybody else is seeing. At the highest level of play, many games are quite action packed. Certainly in comparison to where they were a year ago. As to ladder experience, there is nothing stopping players trying to play a more action intensive game and finding out more about the rules and limits of the game. Why does macro impress you when there is little difference in macro skill at the top level? Flash was the macro king in Brood War (among other important skills) and it would win him games, yet this does little for him in this game. This game is all about decision making and metagaming when you have solid fundamentals. There is very little difference in micro and macro skill at the upper echelons of SC2 progaming. You can't design a game with three completely difference races that's too easy for the top tier players to play. In StarCraft: Brood War, it wasn't perfectly balanced. You overcame racial balance and map balance by player skill. As we can see in StarCraft 2, with S Class Koreans losing to not even top tier foreigners, at a certain point, the skill requirement just drops off dramatically. It impresses me because I am bad at it. It also impresses me because I think there are players, at the highest level, who are better at it than others. As a Protoss, I really like seeing Rain do what he does, because I am torn apart by any halfway decent Terran (even if I prefer a more MC-esque style). As to decision making and metagaming, I also like these as good skills to have (although, if I am being honest, I am not overly a fan of metagaming). As to why Flash has not been able to mimic his skill in BW to SC2, I have no idea why. There could be other reasons than those above (such as putting in the same work to conquer a new game might be beyond him). Fact is, I don't know. And I have no inclination or interest to theorise as to the reasons. As to BW, like I said, I did not follow the scene (apart from playing it a little from 1998 - 1999/2000 and then giving it up like a lot of other people do with games) and didn't watch it. If I did, maybe I'd agree with you. But I did not. So, it's a moot point. Regarding Flash, BW was less luckbased and snowbally, I still remember how crowd whould gasp when he loses couple of tanks but he'd still recover by good decision-making and solid mechanics. In SC2 if opponent catches you off-guard, its pretty much gg. SC2 is far less luck-based than BW was. BW literally had randomness built into its architecture. High-ground advantage involved luck and randomness. Scarabs would randomly not detonate. The ONLY "luck" present in SC2 is slight differences in individual unit refire rates that extremely occasionally makes it so that in a 1 unit vs. 1 identical unit fight, the unit that fires first still ends up losing. Everything else is entirely within the player's control. And the crowd would gasp if Flash lost 2 tanks because under normal conditions that could cost you the game, or at least put you in a severe disadvantage. This is no different in SC2. Losing 2 tanks is a bad, but potentially recoverable position provided you have good crisis management and outplay your opponent. The main difference in SC2 is that constant control and positioning throughout the game are far more important than they are in BW, because if you have a big army out on the map, that's a big army that you can potentially lose to a similarly-sized opponent's army that's better-controlled and microed than yours is. One-sided macro stompfests happened frequently in BW when players threw away too many units, the death animation just took longer because the game itself was slower.
I think you are missing the point of his post. He is trying to say that since BW was a much harder game, if you are someone like Flash who has amazing mechanic, micro/macro than even if you lost a few tanks at a crucial early part of the game, you can potentially over come this difference with your superior control. I think a better example is how sc2 macro is much easier and thus it isnt unreasonable to see 2 pro player have almost perfect macro. Having perfect macro mean if you fall behind, it extremely difficult to come back from since your opponent will always produce more than you. In BW, since macro is so difficult, if you have better macro you can stall the game and over time you can macro out enough unit to over come your opponent because of his inability to macro.
Regarding randomness, I think both game has a large chunk of randomness. Although BW does have more randomness, you can use your mechanic to overcome this randomness differences.
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Russian Federation221 Posts
On October 08 2013 15:39 RampancyTW wrote:Show nested quote +On October 08 2013 15:22 saddaromma wrote:On October 08 2013 15:16 RampancyTW wrote:On October 08 2013 15:00 saddaromma wrote:On October 08 2013 14:51 aZealot wrote:On October 08 2013 14:37 Arco wrote:On October 08 2013 14:27 RampancyTW wrote:On October 08 2013 13:55 saddaromma wrote:On October 08 2013 13:16 RampancyTW wrote:On October 08 2013 12:14 saddaromma wrote:
[quote]
Haven't it occured to you that lack of choices is due to design? There isn't a lack of choices. Some players just choose to play passively. Some players don't have the ability to play actively on the map without falling behind in other areas of their game. There have been a ton of matches lately between very good players with action all over the map; back-and-forth, long, micro-intensive engagements; and a solid game duration of ~20 minutes or more. While SC2 does allow players to play "competently" by being passive and engaging in big deathball fights, it isn't the ideal way to play, and those players usually get picked apart by the ones that can macro just as well as the passive guy while also being active on the map. Totally disagree. SC2 promotes deathballs rather than splitting army. Do you think it's pure coincidence that as the top players get better and better, they split up their army more and more? Do you think that those players would benefit from not splitting up their army? Considering your assertion runs counter to most of the evidence we have available to us, you're going to have to qualify it a bit. A couple expendable units here and there for harassment or flanks maybe. In Brood War, you would even split expensive tech units off from your main army to defend expansions. For example, late game PvZ, where you need Reavers/High Templars at multiple expansions. Even in an evenly matched by skill game if you leave 1 or 2 Colossus out of your army from the main fight, chances are you're going to lose that fight and the game. The problem here is that defender's advantage doesn't exist, so you can't afford to leave expensive units standing around defending. If you lose most/all of your army in a big engagement, it's over. In StarCraft: Brood War, it's much different. You can buy time to macro up some units on very low supply. Siege Tanks, Spider Mines, Lurkers, and Dark Swarm are all great at defending against innumerable odds. The high ground advantage and the increased difficulty of moving your whole army up the natural choke point and into the main production lines also adds to this defender's advantage. On October 08 2013 11:41 aZealot wrote:On October 08 2013 10:43 SpeghettiJoe wrote:
The bottom line is that SC2 is heavily macro based and very weak in the micro aspect. And macro is boring to watch - "oh look at how he's never missing an scv! Wow!"
People like it when fighting games are about fighting. That's why LoL, Dota are all more popular. They're always fighting. Laning phase: constant trading, ganking. Teamfights, fighting over dragon/baron, tower diving, etc etc.
The bottom line is, SC2 is just not that action packed - spend 20 min to build up a big deathball, then a 10 sec. fight and gg. Yeah there is some harass here and there, but it's nothing near the action of the games.
I repeat - SC2 is just not that action packed. Fix that and you fix its dying popularity.
Well, first of all the dying popularity of SC2 has to be established. Apart from that, I love seeing good macro play. I like seeing a great macro Protoss or Terran not missing a single worker, production cycle or supply point, especially if they are being active with scouting and army (either defensively or offensively); which is what you get at the highest level of play. I appreciate it all the more because as a low-mid level player, I know how hard it is to keep pressing 5E (or 4E) while doing these things (or in my case, trying to do these things without derping over the keyboard). When I see a top level Terran like Bomber, or a Protoss like Rain, manage their economy, I am awestruck. This is not to say that I don't appreciate good micro (I especially like Protoss micro by players like MC who somehow eke out an advantage), but to say that good macro is boring to watch misses one of the defining features of SC2. It is not just a fighting game. It is also a resource management game. SC2 would bore me if it were all about fighting. This may be one reason why I find DOTA and LOL boring. I've tried to give these games a chance and they have nothing for me. I've never thought too much about why, and this might be one reason. I find all that "action" just tedious. Now, it may be that I don't understand those games. Fair enough. But, I have no spark of interest in learning them, either. As to the 20 minute build up into gg this is one of those prevalent false statements that still keep getting bandied about. Sure SC2 is not action packed like MOBA games. It can't be. But, too often, I think players transpose their own ladder experience onto what everybody else is doing or what everybody else is seeing. At the highest level of play, many games are quite action packed. Certainly in comparison to where they were a year ago. As to ladder experience, there is nothing stopping players trying to play a more action intensive game and finding out more about the rules and limits of the game. Why does macro impress you when there is little difference in macro skill at the top level? Flash was the macro king in Brood War (among other important skills) and it would win him games, yet this does little for him in this game. This game is all about decision making and metagaming when you have solid fundamentals. There is very little difference in micro and macro skill at the upper echelons of SC2 progaming. You can't design a game with three completely difference races that's too easy for the top tier players to play. In StarCraft: Brood War, it wasn't perfectly balanced. You overcame racial balance and map balance by player skill. As we can see in StarCraft 2, with S Class Koreans losing to not even top tier foreigners, at a certain point, the skill requirement just drops off dramatically. It impresses me because I am bad at it. It also impresses me because I think there are players, at the highest level, who are better at it than others. As a Protoss, I really like seeing Rain do what he does, because I am torn apart by any halfway decent Terran (even if I prefer a more MC-esque style). As to decision making and metagaming, I also like these as good skills to have (although, if I am being honest, I am not overly a fan of metagaming). As to why Flash has not been able to mimic his skill in BW to SC2, I have no idea why. There could be other reasons than those above (such as putting in the same work to conquer a new game might be beyond him). Fact is, I don't know. And I have no inclination or interest to theorise as to the reasons. As to BW, like I said, I did not follow the scene (apart from playing it a little from 1998 - 1999/2000 and then giving it up like a lot of other people do with games) and didn't watch it. If I did, maybe I'd agree with you. But I did not. So, it's a moot point. Regarding Flash, BW was less luckbased and snowbally, I still remember how crowd whould gasp when he loses couple of tanks but he'd still recover by good decision-making and solid mechanics. In SC2 if opponent catches you off-guard, its pretty much gg. SC2 is far less luck-based than BW was. This is a brave statement. It's also a mathematically-accurate statement.
On the other hand SC2 is far less skill-based than BW was. Would you argue with that?
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On October 08 2013 15:39 RampancyTW wrote:Show nested quote +On October 08 2013 15:22 saddaromma wrote:On October 08 2013 15:16 RampancyTW wrote:On October 08 2013 15:00 saddaromma wrote:On October 08 2013 14:51 aZealot wrote:On October 08 2013 14:37 Arco wrote:On October 08 2013 14:27 RampancyTW wrote:On October 08 2013 13:55 saddaromma wrote:On October 08 2013 13:16 RampancyTW wrote:On October 08 2013 12:14 saddaromma wrote:
[quote]
Haven't it occured to you that lack of choices is due to design? There isn't a lack of choices. Some players just choose to play passively. Some players don't have the ability to play actively on the map without falling behind in other areas of their game. There have been a ton of matches lately between very good players with action all over the map; back-and-forth, long, micro-intensive engagements; and a solid game duration of ~20 minutes or more. While SC2 does allow players to play "competently" by being passive and engaging in big deathball fights, it isn't the ideal way to play, and those players usually get picked apart by the ones that can macro just as well as the passive guy while also being active on the map. Totally disagree. SC2 promotes deathballs rather than splitting army. Do you think it's pure coincidence that as the top players get better and better, they split up their army more and more? Do you think that those players would benefit from not splitting up their army? Considering your assertion runs counter to most of the evidence we have available to us, you're going to have to qualify it a bit. A couple expendable units here and there for harassment or flanks maybe. In Brood War, you would even split expensive tech units off from your main army to defend expansions. For example, late game PvZ, where you need Reavers/High Templars at multiple expansions. Even in an evenly matched by skill game if you leave 1 or 2 Colossus out of your army from the main fight, chances are you're going to lose that fight and the game. The problem here is that defender's advantage doesn't exist, so you can't afford to leave expensive units standing around defending. If you lose most/all of your army in a big engagement, it's over. In StarCraft: Brood War, it's much different. You can buy time to macro up some units on very low supply. Siege Tanks, Spider Mines, Lurkers, and Dark Swarm are all great at defending against innumerable odds. The high ground advantage and the increased difficulty of moving your whole army up the natural choke point and into the main production lines also adds to this defender's advantage. On October 08 2013 11:41 aZealot wrote:On October 08 2013 10:43 SpeghettiJoe wrote:
The bottom line is that SC2 is heavily macro based and very weak in the micro aspect. And macro is boring to watch - "oh look at how he's never missing an scv! Wow!"
People like it when fighting games are about fighting. That's why LoL, Dota are all more popular. They're always fighting. Laning phase: constant trading, ganking. Teamfights, fighting over dragon/baron, tower diving, etc etc.
The bottom line is, SC2 is just not that action packed - spend 20 min to build up a big deathball, then a 10 sec. fight and gg. Yeah there is some harass here and there, but it's nothing near the action of the games.
I repeat - SC2 is just not that action packed. Fix that and you fix its dying popularity.
Well, first of all the dying popularity of SC2 has to be established. Apart from that, I love seeing good macro play. I like seeing a great macro Protoss or Terran not missing a single worker, production cycle or supply point, especially if they are being active with scouting and army (either defensively or offensively); which is what you get at the highest level of play. I appreciate it all the more because as a low-mid level player, I know how hard it is to keep pressing 5E (or 4E) while doing these things (or in my case, trying to do these things without derping over the keyboard). When I see a top level Terran like Bomber, or a Protoss like Rain, manage their economy, I am awestruck. This is not to say that I don't appreciate good micro (I especially like Protoss micro by players like MC who somehow eke out an advantage), but to say that good macro is boring to watch misses one of the defining features of SC2. It is not just a fighting game. It is also a resource management game. SC2 would bore me if it were all about fighting. This may be one reason why I find DOTA and LOL boring. I've tried to give these games a chance and they have nothing for me. I've never thought too much about why, and this might be one reason. I find all that "action" just tedious. Now, it may be that I don't understand those games. Fair enough. But, I have no spark of interest in learning them, either. As to the 20 minute build up into gg this is one of those prevalent false statements that still keep getting bandied about. Sure SC2 is not action packed like MOBA games. It can't be. But, too often, I think players transpose their own ladder experience onto what everybody else is doing or what everybody else is seeing. At the highest level of play, many games are quite action packed. Certainly in comparison to where they were a year ago. As to ladder experience, there is nothing stopping players trying to play a more action intensive game and finding out more about the rules and limits of the game. Why does macro impress you when there is little difference in macro skill at the top level? Flash was the macro king in Brood War (among other important skills) and it would win him games, yet this does little for him in this game. This game is all about decision making and metagaming when you have solid fundamentals. There is very little difference in micro and macro skill at the upper echelons of SC2 progaming. You can't design a game with three completely difference races that's too easy for the top tier players to play. In StarCraft: Brood War, it wasn't perfectly balanced. You overcame racial balance and map balance by player skill. As we can see in StarCraft 2, with S Class Koreans losing to not even top tier foreigners, at a certain point, the skill requirement just drops off dramatically. It impresses me because I am bad at it. It also impresses me because I think there are players, at the highest level, who are better at it than others. As a Protoss, I really like seeing Rain do what he does, because I am torn apart by any halfway decent Terran (even if I prefer a more MC-esque style). As to decision making and metagaming, I also like these as good skills to have (although, if I am being honest, I am not overly a fan of metagaming). As to why Flash has not been able to mimic his skill in BW to SC2, I have no idea why. There could be other reasons than those above (such as putting in the same work to conquer a new game might be beyond him). Fact is, I don't know. And I have no inclination or interest to theorise as to the reasons. As to BW, like I said, I did not follow the scene (apart from playing it a little from 1998 - 1999/2000 and then giving it up like a lot of other people do with games) and didn't watch it. If I did, maybe I'd agree with you. But I did not. So, it's a moot point. Regarding Flash, BW was less luckbased and snowbally, I still remember how crowd whould gasp when he loses couple of tanks but he'd still recover by good decision-making and solid mechanics. In SC2 if opponent catches you off-guard, its pretty much gg. SC2 is far less luck-based than BW was. This is a brave statement. It's also a mathematically-accurate statement.
Actually it isnt, because in SC2 there is no defenders advantage and the automatically perfect unit control gives the advantage to the attacker who chooses and initiates a fight. Thus a lot of times the result of a battle is based on LUCK ... the luck of choosing the moment when your opponent is occupied with something else. The perfect example for this is the Baneling ... if the defender is looking elsewhere he has basically lost, but since you cant know if he is looking elsewhere it is totally based on luck.
Stuff dies MUCH faster in SC2 than it did in BW and this really supports the "luck plays a big part in determining the outcome of a battle" for the simple reason that there is less control in SC2 than there was in BW.
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On October 08 2013 16:49 Caladan wrote:Show nested quote +On October 08 2013 15:16 RampancyTW wrote:On October 08 2013 15:00 saddaromma wrote:On October 08 2013 14:51 aZealot wrote:On October 08 2013 14:37 Arco wrote:On October 08 2013 14:27 RampancyTW wrote:On October 08 2013 13:55 saddaromma wrote:On October 08 2013 13:16 RampancyTW wrote:On October 08 2013 12:14 saddaromma wrote:On October 08 2013 12:08 RampancyTW wrote:
[quote]This has very little to do with the game design and very much to do with player choices/lack of ability. Haven't it occured to you that lack of choices is due to design? There isn't a lack of choices. Some players just choose to play passively. Some players don't have the ability to play actively on the map without falling behind in other areas of their game. There have been a ton of matches lately between very good players with action all over the map; back-and-forth, long, micro-intensive engagements; and a solid game duration of ~20 minutes or more. While SC2 does allow players to play "competently" by being passive and engaging in big deathball fights, it isn't the ideal way to play, and those players usually get picked apart by the ones that can macro just as well as the passive guy while also being active on the map. Totally disagree. SC2 promotes deathballs rather than splitting army. Do you think it's pure coincidence that as the top players get better and better, they split up their army more and more? Do you think that those players would benefit from not splitting up their army? Considering your assertion runs counter to most of the evidence we have available to us, you're going to have to qualify it a bit. A couple expendable units here and there for harassment or flanks maybe. In Brood War, you would even split expensive tech units off from your main army to defend expansions. For example, late game PvZ, where you need Reavers/High Templars at multiple expansions. Even in an evenly matched by skill game if you leave 1 or 2 Colossus out of your army from the main fight, chances are you're going to lose that fight and the game. The problem here is that defender's advantage doesn't exist, so you can't afford to leave expensive units standing around defending. If you lose most/all of your army in a big engagement, it's over. In StarCraft: Brood War, it's much different. You can buy time to macro up some units on very low supply. Siege Tanks, Spider Mines, Lurkers, and Dark Swarm are all great at defending against innumerable odds. The high ground advantage and the increased difficulty of moving your whole army up the natural choke point and into the main production lines also adds to this defender's advantage. On October 08 2013 11:41 aZealot wrote:On October 08 2013 10:43 SpeghettiJoe wrote:
The bottom line is that SC2 is heavily macro based and very weak in the micro aspect. And macro is boring to watch - "oh look at how he's never missing an scv! Wow!"
People like it when fighting games are about fighting. That's why LoL, Dota are all more popular. They're always fighting. Laning phase: constant trading, ganking. Teamfights, fighting over dragon/baron, tower diving, etc etc.
The bottom line is, SC2 is just not that action packed - spend 20 min to build up a big deathball, then a 10 sec. fight and gg. Yeah there is some harass here and there, but it's nothing near the action of the games.
I repeat - SC2 is just not that action packed. Fix that and you fix its dying popularity.
Well, first of all the dying popularity of SC2 has to be established. Apart from that, I love seeing good macro play. I like seeing a great macro Protoss or Terran not missing a single worker, production cycle or supply point, especially if they are being active with scouting and army (either defensively or offensively); which is what you get at the highest level of play. I appreciate it all the more because as a low-mid level player, I know how hard it is to keep pressing 5E (or 4E) while doing these things (or in my case, trying to do these things without derping over the keyboard). When I see a top level Terran like Bomber, or a Protoss like Rain, manage their economy, I am awestruck. This is not to say that I don't appreciate good micro (I especially like Protoss micro by players like MC who somehow eke out an advantage), but to say that good macro is boring to watch misses one of the defining features of SC2. It is not just a fighting game. It is also a resource management game. SC2 would bore me if it were all about fighting. This may be one reason why I find DOTA and LOL boring. I've tried to give these games a chance and they have nothing for me. I've never thought too much about why, and this might be one reason. I find all that "action" just tedious. Now, it may be that I don't understand those games. Fair enough. But, I have no spark of interest in learning them, either. As to the 20 minute build up into gg this is one of those prevalent false statements that still keep getting bandied about. Sure SC2 is not action packed like MOBA games. It can't be. But, too often, I think players transpose their own ladder experience onto what everybody else is doing or what everybody else is seeing. At the highest level of play, many games are quite action packed. Certainly in comparison to where they were a year ago. As to ladder experience, there is nothing stopping players trying to play a more action intensive game and finding out more about the rules and limits of the game. Why does macro impress you when there is little difference in macro skill at the top level? Flash was the macro king in Brood War (among other important skills) and it would win him games, yet this does little for him in this game. This game is all about decision making and metagaming when you have solid fundamentals. There is very little difference in micro and macro skill at the upper echelons of SC2 progaming. You can't design a game with three completely difference races that's too easy for the top tier players to play. In StarCraft: Brood War, it wasn't perfectly balanced. You overcame racial balance and map balance by player skill. As we can see in StarCraft 2, with S Class Koreans losing to not even top tier foreigners, at a certain point, the skill requirement just drops off dramatically. It impresses me because I am bad at it. It also impresses me because I think there are players, at the highest level, who are better at it than others. As a Protoss, I really like seeing Rain do what he does, because I am torn apart by any halfway decent Terran (even if I prefer a more MC-esque style). As to decision making and metagaming, I also like these as good skills to have (although, if I am being honest, I am not overly a fan of metagaming). As to why Flash has not been able to mimic his skill in BW to SC2, I have no idea why. There could be other reasons than those above (such as putting in the same work to conquer a new game might be beyond him). Fact is, I don't know. And I have no inclination or interest to theorise as to the reasons. As to BW, like I said, I did not follow the scene (apart from playing it a little from 1998 - 1999/2000 and then giving it up like a lot of other people do with games) and didn't watch it. If I did, maybe I'd agree with you. But I did not. So, it's a moot point. Regarding Flash, BW was less luckbased and snowbally, I still remember how crowd whould gasp when he loses couple of tanks but he'd still recover by good decision-making and solid mechanics. In SC2 if opponent catches you off-guard, its pretty much gg. SC2 is far less luck-based than BW was. I think you can say this. But at the same time, SC2 is far more randomness-based than BW was. Nobody means the behaviour of the game itself, like high ground advantag in SCBW, that really seldom did decide games, like almost never. But we are talking about the gameplay randomness that with less powerful units, only small defenders advantage, faster worker build rate and lower macro/micro skill ceiling it often comes to build order and all in wins. Given the lack of scouting for some races at some specific times this becomes only more severe. In BW the better player always had the possibility to come back. In SC2 that's not the case because of the reasons above. That's the reason we have all these "upsets" and random looking results. So at game mechanics level you're right, at gameplay and actual effects level you're wrong. Stealing this from a reddit post:
The "coin flip" variety of SC2 I feel is on the decline. At DeMuslim's level the coin flips will be more prevalent, but at the top of Code S that's not the case as much. It's like in tennis - sure Djokovic or Nadal could lose the odd match here or there, but generally they're only losing to each other. Meanwhile there are upsets galore to be had outside of the top ten where people will lose matches they really shouldn't (double fault on the only break point they got the whole set or something like that).
Anyway, we're seeing players more consistently get deep in tournaments. In Europe MC made the last two finals. Vortix made Ro8 then Ro4. MMA made Ro4 then won. Duckdeock won then made Ro8. I'd say season to season half the Ro8 staying the same is pretty good. Obviously it wasn't that way Season 1 to Season 2 where it was all different, but at least it's progressing. We'll see how WCS AM goes this season as well.
These are results from a few players dating back a few seasons (some are different, for example Innovation/Soulkey have only played five). I'll start from when they first broke into Code S. They are chronological from left to right:
Innovation: Ro4, Ro8, 2nd, Ro4, Ro16
Soulkey: Ro8, Ro8, 1st, 7/8th, Ro4 (at least)
Rain: Ro4, Ro32, Code A, Ro32, 2nd, Ro8 (at least)
PartinG: Ro8, Ro4, Ro32, Ro32, Ro16, Ro8, Ro8, Ro16, Ro8 (at least)
Symbol: Ro8, Ro8, Ro16, 2nd, Ro4, Ro8, Ro32
If this list looks like a list of the best players in the world, well, there's a reason for that. I'll make a score system. How often do these guys make Ro8:
Innovation: 4/5
Soulkey: 5/5
Rain: 3/6
PartinG: 5/9
Symbol: 5/7
I don't really know how much more consistent we expect people to be. Just a question: before Flash, did anyone make five Ro8s in a row in OSL/MSL? I can't think of anyone. Boxer was close (he did three, then didn't qualify, then did four). It's also a bit hard to compare the similar statistical difficulty of each one between how you have to qualify (Ro8 seeds you back into Ro32 in Code S which makes it easier, but then again in earlier BW there was only a Ro16). Anyway I think the consistency in SC2 from the top players over the last year has been pretty damn good, and you really can't demand consistency from those well below the top, no other sport has that.
Soulkey and Innovation broke into Code S in the same season, 2012 Season 5. Since then Innovation made Ro8 four times in a row and Soulkey made Ro8 five times in a row. Do you know who else has made Ro8 four times in a row? No one. EVER. Mvp's best results was three Ro4s, but he never made four Ro8s. Not that during these incredible runs the game released an expansion, meaning both players were both consistently good through the biggest shift ever in the game. Did I mention that these two had the highest winning percentage for their respective races in Proleague? Because that also happened over that time period. Soulkey is currently on the most impressive run in SC2 history. Coin flips be damned he just finds a way.
Is the game really flawed when players at Ro32 WCS AM level have trouble with "coin flip" games? I don't think so personally. If we looked at the similar level of play in BW you won't see this utopia of the better player always winning and cheesy all-in play not outright winning game after game. The results are no more "random" than they were in BW for the vast majority of players. People have a serious case of rose-colored glasses when looking at BW.
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On October 08 2013 16:49 Caladan wrote:Show nested quote +On October 08 2013 15:16 RampancyTW wrote:On October 08 2013 15:00 saddaromma wrote:On October 08 2013 14:51 aZealot wrote:On October 08 2013 14:37 Arco wrote:On October 08 2013 14:27 RampancyTW wrote:On October 08 2013 13:55 saddaromma wrote:On October 08 2013 13:16 RampancyTW wrote:On October 08 2013 12:14 saddaromma wrote:On October 08 2013 12:08 RampancyTW wrote:
[quote]This has very little to do with the game design and very much to do with player choices/lack of ability. Haven't it occured to you that lack of choices is due to design? There isn't a lack of choices. Some players just choose to play passively. Some players don't have the ability to play actively on the map without falling behind in other areas of their game. There have been a ton of matches lately between very good players with action all over the map; back-and-forth, long, micro-intensive engagements; and a solid game duration of ~20 minutes or more. While SC2 does allow players to play "competently" by being passive and engaging in big deathball fights, it isn't the ideal way to play, and those players usually get picked apart by the ones that can macro just as well as the passive guy while also being active on the map. Totally disagree. SC2 promotes deathballs rather than splitting army. Do you think it's pure coincidence that as the top players get better and better, they split up their army more and more? Do you think that those players would benefit from not splitting up their army? Considering your assertion runs counter to most of the evidence we have available to us, you're going to have to qualify it a bit. A couple expendable units here and there for harassment or flanks maybe. In Brood War, you would even split expensive tech units off from your main army to defend expansions. For example, late game PvZ, where you need Reavers/High Templars at multiple expansions. Even in an evenly matched by skill game if you leave 1 or 2 Colossus out of your army from the main fight, chances are you're going to lose that fight and the game. The problem here is that defender's advantage doesn't exist, so you can't afford to leave expensive units standing around defending. If you lose most/all of your army in a big engagement, it's over. In StarCraft: Brood War, it's much different. You can buy time to macro up some units on very low supply. Siege Tanks, Spider Mines, Lurkers, and Dark Swarm are all great at defending against innumerable odds. The high ground advantage and the increased difficulty of moving your whole army up the natural choke point and into the main production lines also adds to this defender's advantage. On October 08 2013 11:41 aZealot wrote:On October 08 2013 10:43 SpeghettiJoe wrote:
The bottom line is that SC2 is heavily macro based and very weak in the micro aspect. And macro is boring to watch - "oh look at how he's never missing an scv! Wow!"
People like it when fighting games are about fighting. That's why LoL, Dota are all more popular. They're always fighting. Laning phase: constant trading, ganking. Teamfights, fighting over dragon/baron, tower diving, etc etc.
The bottom line is, SC2 is just not that action packed - spend 20 min to build up a big deathball, then a 10 sec. fight and gg. Yeah there is some harass here and there, but it's nothing near the action of the games.
I repeat - SC2 is just not that action packed. Fix that and you fix its dying popularity.
Well, first of all the dying popularity of SC2 has to be established. Apart from that, I love seeing good macro play. I like seeing a great macro Protoss or Terran not missing a single worker, production cycle or supply point, especially if they are being active with scouting and army (either defensively or offensively); which is what you get at the highest level of play. I appreciate it all the more because as a low-mid level player, I know how hard it is to keep pressing 5E (or 4E) while doing these things (or in my case, trying to do these things without derping over the keyboard). When I see a top level Terran like Bomber, or a Protoss like Rain, manage their economy, I am awestruck. This is not to say that I don't appreciate good micro (I especially like Protoss micro by players like MC who somehow eke out an advantage), but to say that good macro is boring to watch misses one of the defining features of SC2. It is not just a fighting game. It is also a resource management game. SC2 would bore me if it were all about fighting. This may be one reason why I find DOTA and LOL boring. I've tried to give these games a chance and they have nothing for me. I've never thought too much about why, and this might be one reason. I find all that "action" just tedious. Now, it may be that I don't understand those games. Fair enough. But, I have no spark of interest in learning them, either. As to the 20 minute build up into gg this is one of those prevalent false statements that still keep getting bandied about. Sure SC2 is not action packed like MOBA games. It can't be. But, too often, I think players transpose their own ladder experience onto what everybody else is doing or what everybody else is seeing. At the highest level of play, many games are quite action packed. Certainly in comparison to where they were a year ago. As to ladder experience, there is nothing stopping players trying to play a more action intensive game and finding out more about the rules and limits of the game. Why does macro impress you when there is little difference in macro skill at the top level? Flash was the macro king in Brood War (among other important skills) and it would win him games, yet this does little for him in this game. This game is all about decision making and metagaming when you have solid fundamentals. There is very little difference in micro and macro skill at the upper echelons of SC2 progaming. You can't design a game with three completely difference races that's too easy for the top tier players to play. In StarCraft: Brood War, it wasn't perfectly balanced. You overcame racial balance and map balance by player skill. As we can see in StarCraft 2, with S Class Koreans losing to not even top tier foreigners, at a certain point, the skill requirement just drops off dramatically. It impresses me because I am bad at it. It also impresses me because I think there are players, at the highest level, who are better at it than others. As a Protoss, I really like seeing Rain do what he does, because I am torn apart by any halfway decent Terran (even if I prefer a more MC-esque style). As to decision making and metagaming, I also like these as good skills to have (although, if I am being honest, I am not overly a fan of metagaming). As to why Flash has not been able to mimic his skill in BW to SC2, I have no idea why. There could be other reasons than those above (such as putting in the same work to conquer a new game might be beyond him). Fact is, I don't know. And I have no inclination or interest to theorise as to the reasons. As to BW, like I said, I did not follow the scene (apart from playing it a little from 1998 - 1999/2000 and then giving it up like a lot of other people do with games) and didn't watch it. If I did, maybe I'd agree with you. But I did not. So, it's a moot point. Regarding Flash, BW was less luckbased and snowbally, I still remember how crowd whould gasp when he loses couple of tanks but he'd still recover by good decision-making and solid mechanics. In SC2 if opponent catches you off-guard, its pretty much gg. SC2 is far less luck-based than BW was. I think you can say this. But at the same time, SC2 is far more randomness-based than BW was. Nobody means the behaviour of the game itself, like high ground advantag in SCBW, that really seldom did decide games, like almost never. But we are talking about the gameplay randomness that with less powerful units, only small defenders advantage, faster worker build rate and lower macro/micro skill ceiling it often comes to build order and all in wins. Given the lack of scouting for some races at some specific times this becomes only more severe. In BW the better player always had the possibility to come back. In SC2 that's not the case because of the reasons above. That's the reason we have all these "upsets" and random looking results. So at game mechanics level you're right, at gameplay and actual effects level you're wrong.
Actually it isnt, because in SC2 there is no defenders advantage and the automatically perfect unit control gives the advantage to the attacker who chooses and initiates a fight. Thus a lot of times the result of a battle is based on LUCK ... the luck of choosing the moment when your opponent is occupied with something else. The perfect example for this is the Baneling ... if the defender is looking elsewhere he has basically lost, but since you cant know if he is looking elsewhere it is totally based on luck.
Stuff dies MUCH faster in SC2 than it did in BW and this really supports the "luck plays a big part in determining the outcome of a battle" for the simple reason that there is less control in SC2 than there was in BW.
This.
The results are no more "random" than they were in BW for the vast majority of players. People have a serious case of rose-colored glasses when looking at BW.
You are a serious case of having no clue. Most likely didnt even play BW on a higher level. TBH there is no use to argue with you. Guys like you wont change their minds even if they are wrong.
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On October 08 2013 16:51 MikeMM wrote:Show nested quote +On October 08 2013 15:39 RampancyTW wrote:On October 08 2013 15:22 saddaromma wrote:On October 08 2013 15:16 RampancyTW wrote:On October 08 2013 15:00 saddaromma wrote:On October 08 2013 14:51 aZealot wrote:On October 08 2013 14:37 Arco wrote:On October 08 2013 14:27 RampancyTW wrote:On October 08 2013 13:55 saddaromma wrote:On October 08 2013 13:16 RampancyTW wrote:
[quote]There isn't a lack of choices. Some players just choose to play passively. Some players don't have the ability to play actively on the map without falling behind in other areas of their game.
There have been a ton of matches lately between very good players with action all over the map; back-and-forth, long, micro-intensive engagements; and a solid game duration of ~20 minutes or more.
While SC2 does allow players to play "competently" by being passive and engaging in big deathball fights, it isn't the ideal way to play, and those players usually get picked apart by the ones that can macro just as well as the passive guy while also being active on the map.
Totally disagree. SC2 promotes deathballs rather than splitting army. Do you think it's pure coincidence that as the top players get better and better, they split up their army more and more? Do you think that those players would benefit from not splitting up their army? Considering your assertion runs counter to most of the evidence we have available to us, you're going to have to qualify it a bit. A couple expendable units here and there for harassment or flanks maybe. In Brood War, you would even split expensive tech units off from your main army to defend expansions. For example, late game PvZ, where you need Reavers/High Templars at multiple expansions. Even in an evenly matched by skill game if you leave 1 or 2 Colossus out of your army from the main fight, chances are you're going to lose that fight and the game. The problem here is that defender's advantage doesn't exist, so you can't afford to leave expensive units standing around defending. If you lose most/all of your army in a big engagement, it's over. In StarCraft: Brood War, it's much different. You can buy time to macro up some units on very low supply. Siege Tanks, Spider Mines, Lurkers, and Dark Swarm are all great at defending against innumerable odds. The high ground advantage and the increased difficulty of moving your whole army up the natural choke point and into the main production lines also adds to this defender's advantage. On October 08 2013 11:41 aZealot wrote:On October 08 2013 10:43 SpeghettiJoe wrote:
The bottom line is that SC2 is heavily macro based and very weak in the micro aspect. And macro is boring to watch - "oh look at how he's never missing an scv! Wow!"
People like it when fighting games are about fighting. That's why LoL, Dota are all more popular. They're always fighting. Laning phase: constant trading, ganking. Teamfights, fighting over dragon/baron, tower diving, etc etc.
The bottom line is, SC2 is just not that action packed - spend 20 min to build up a big deathball, then a 10 sec. fight and gg. Yeah there is some harass here and there, but it's nothing near the action of the games.
I repeat - SC2 is just not that action packed. Fix that and you fix its dying popularity.
Well, first of all the dying popularity of SC2 has to be established. Apart from that, I love seeing good macro play. I like seeing a great macro Protoss or Terran not missing a single worker, production cycle or supply point, especially if they are being active with scouting and army (either defensively or offensively); which is what you get at the highest level of play. I appreciate it all the more because as a low-mid level player, I know how hard it is to keep pressing 5E (or 4E) while doing these things (or in my case, trying to do these things without derping over the keyboard). When I see a top level Terran like Bomber, or a Protoss like Rain, manage their economy, I am awestruck. This is not to say that I don't appreciate good micro (I especially like Protoss micro by players like MC who somehow eke out an advantage), but to say that good macro is boring to watch misses one of the defining features of SC2. It is not just a fighting game. It is also a resource management game. SC2 would bore me if it were all about fighting. This may be one reason why I find DOTA and LOL boring. I've tried to give these games a chance and they have nothing for me. I've never thought too much about why, and this might be one reason. I find all that "action" just tedious. Now, it may be that I don't understand those games. Fair enough. But, I have no spark of interest in learning them, either. As to the 20 minute build up into gg this is one of those prevalent false statements that still keep getting bandied about. Sure SC2 is not action packed like MOBA games. It can't be. But, too often, I think players transpose their own ladder experience onto what everybody else is doing or what everybody else is seeing. At the highest level of play, many games are quite action packed. Certainly in comparison to where they were a year ago. As to ladder experience, there is nothing stopping players trying to play a more action intensive game and finding out more about the rules and limits of the game. Why does macro impress you when there is little difference in macro skill at the top level? Flash was the macro king in Brood War (among other important skills) and it would win him games, yet this does little for him in this game. This game is all about decision making and metagaming when you have solid fundamentals. There is very little difference in micro and macro skill at the upper echelons of SC2 progaming. You can't design a game with three completely difference races that's too easy for the top tier players to play. In StarCraft: Brood War, it wasn't perfectly balanced. You overcame racial balance and map balance by player skill. As we can see in StarCraft 2, with S Class Koreans losing to not even top tier foreigners, at a certain point, the skill requirement just drops off dramatically. It impresses me because I am bad at it. It also impresses me because I think there are players, at the highest level, who are better at it than others. As a Protoss, I really like seeing Rain do what he does, because I am torn apart by any halfway decent Terran (even if I prefer a more MC-esque style). As to decision making and metagaming, I also like these as good skills to have (although, if I am being honest, I am not overly a fan of metagaming). As to why Flash has not been able to mimic his skill in BW to SC2, I have no idea why. There could be other reasons than those above (such as putting in the same work to conquer a new game might be beyond him). Fact is, I don't know. And I have no inclination or interest to theorise as to the reasons. As to BW, like I said, I did not follow the scene (apart from playing it a little from 1998 - 1999/2000 and then giving it up like a lot of other people do with games) and didn't watch it. If I did, maybe I'd agree with you. But I did not. So, it's a moot point. Regarding Flash, BW was less luckbased and snowbally, I still remember how crowd whould gasp when he loses couple of tanks but he'd still recover by good decision-making and solid mechanics. In SC2 if opponent catches you off-guard, its pretty much gg. SC2 is far less luck-based than BW was. This is a brave statement. It's also a mathematically-accurate statement. On the other hand SC2 is far less skill-based than BW was. Would you argue with that? Absolutely I would.
Unless you're defining skill to be sheer mechanical speed, SC2 is just as skill-based as BW.
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On October 08 2013 16:52 Rabiator wrote:Show nested quote +On October 08 2013 15:39 RampancyTW wrote:On October 08 2013 15:22 saddaromma wrote:On October 08 2013 15:16 RampancyTW wrote:On October 08 2013 15:00 saddaromma wrote:On October 08 2013 14:51 aZealot wrote:On October 08 2013 14:37 Arco wrote:On October 08 2013 14:27 RampancyTW wrote:On October 08 2013 13:55 saddaromma wrote:On October 08 2013 13:16 RampancyTW wrote:
[quote]There isn't a lack of choices. Some players just choose to play passively. Some players don't have the ability to play actively on the map without falling behind in other areas of their game.
There have been a ton of matches lately between very good players with action all over the map; back-and-forth, long, micro-intensive engagements; and a solid game duration of ~20 minutes or more.
While SC2 does allow players to play "competently" by being passive and engaging in big deathball fights, it isn't the ideal way to play, and those players usually get picked apart by the ones that can macro just as well as the passive guy while also being active on the map.
Totally disagree. SC2 promotes deathballs rather than splitting army. Do you think it's pure coincidence that as the top players get better and better, they split up their army more and more? Do you think that those players would benefit from not splitting up their army? Considering your assertion runs counter to most of the evidence we have available to us, you're going to have to qualify it a bit. A couple expendable units here and there for harassment or flanks maybe. In Brood War, you would even split expensive tech units off from your main army to defend expansions. For example, late game PvZ, where you need Reavers/High Templars at multiple expansions. Even in an evenly matched by skill game if you leave 1 or 2 Colossus out of your army from the main fight, chances are you're going to lose that fight and the game. The problem here is that defender's advantage doesn't exist, so you can't afford to leave expensive units standing around defending. If you lose most/all of your army in a big engagement, it's over. In StarCraft: Brood War, it's much different. You can buy time to macro up some units on very low supply. Siege Tanks, Spider Mines, Lurkers, and Dark Swarm are all great at defending against innumerable odds. The high ground advantage and the increased difficulty of moving your whole army up the natural choke point and into the main production lines also adds to this defender's advantage. On October 08 2013 11:41 aZealot wrote:On October 08 2013 10:43 SpeghettiJoe wrote:
The bottom line is that SC2 is heavily macro based and very weak in the micro aspect. And macro is boring to watch - "oh look at how he's never missing an scv! Wow!"
People like it when fighting games are about fighting. That's why LoL, Dota are all more popular. They're always fighting. Laning phase: constant trading, ganking. Teamfights, fighting over dragon/baron, tower diving, etc etc.
The bottom line is, SC2 is just not that action packed - spend 20 min to build up a big deathball, then a 10 sec. fight and gg. Yeah there is some harass here and there, but it's nothing near the action of the games.
I repeat - SC2 is just not that action packed. Fix that and you fix its dying popularity.
Well, first of all the dying popularity of SC2 has to be established. Apart from that, I love seeing good macro play. I like seeing a great macro Protoss or Terran not missing a single worker, production cycle or supply point, especially if they are being active with scouting and army (either defensively or offensively); which is what you get at the highest level of play. I appreciate it all the more because as a low-mid level player, I know how hard it is to keep pressing 5E (or 4E) while doing these things (or in my case, trying to do these things without derping over the keyboard). When I see a top level Terran like Bomber, or a Protoss like Rain, manage their economy, I am awestruck. This is not to say that I don't appreciate good micro (I especially like Protoss micro by players like MC who somehow eke out an advantage), but to say that good macro is boring to watch misses one of the defining features of SC2. It is not just a fighting game. It is also a resource management game. SC2 would bore me if it were all about fighting. This may be one reason why I find DOTA and LOL boring. I've tried to give these games a chance and they have nothing for me. I've never thought too much about why, and this might be one reason. I find all that "action" just tedious. Now, it may be that I don't understand those games. Fair enough. But, I have no spark of interest in learning them, either. As to the 20 minute build up into gg this is one of those prevalent false statements that still keep getting bandied about. Sure SC2 is not action packed like MOBA games. It can't be. But, too often, I think players transpose their own ladder experience onto what everybody else is doing or what everybody else is seeing. At the highest level of play, many games are quite action packed. Certainly in comparison to where they were a year ago. As to ladder experience, there is nothing stopping players trying to play a more action intensive game and finding out more about the rules and limits of the game. Why does macro impress you when there is little difference in macro skill at the top level? Flash was the macro king in Brood War (among other important skills) and it would win him games, yet this does little for him in this game. This game is all about decision making and metagaming when you have solid fundamentals. There is very little difference in micro and macro skill at the upper echelons of SC2 progaming. You can't design a game with three completely difference races that's too easy for the top tier players to play. In StarCraft: Brood War, it wasn't perfectly balanced. You overcame racial balance and map balance by player skill. As we can see in StarCraft 2, with S Class Koreans losing to not even top tier foreigners, at a certain point, the skill requirement just drops off dramatically. It impresses me because I am bad at it. It also impresses me because I think there are players, at the highest level, who are better at it than others. As a Protoss, I really like seeing Rain do what he does, because I am torn apart by any halfway decent Terran (even if I prefer a more MC-esque style). As to decision making and metagaming, I also like these as good skills to have (although, if I am being honest, I am not overly a fan of metagaming). As to why Flash has not been able to mimic his skill in BW to SC2, I have no idea why. There could be other reasons than those above (such as putting in the same work to conquer a new game might be beyond him). Fact is, I don't know. And I have no inclination or interest to theorise as to the reasons. As to BW, like I said, I did not follow the scene (apart from playing it a little from 1998 - 1999/2000 and then giving it up like a lot of other people do with games) and didn't watch it. If I did, maybe I'd agree with you. But I did not. So, it's a moot point. Regarding Flash, BW was less luckbased and snowbally, I still remember how crowd whould gasp when he loses couple of tanks but he'd still recover by good decision-making and solid mechanics. In SC2 if opponent catches you off-guard, its pretty much gg. SC2 is far less luck-based than BW was. This is a brave statement. It's also a mathematically-accurate statement. Actually it isnt, because in SC2 there is no defenders advantage and the automatically perfect unit control gives the advantage to the attacker who chooses and initiates a fight. Thus a lot of times the result of a battle is based on LUCK ... the luck of choosing the moment when your opponent is occupied with something else. The perfect example for this is the Baneling ... if the defender is looking elsewhere he has basically lost, but since you cant know if he is looking elsewhere it is totally based on luck. Stuff dies MUCH faster in SC2 than it did in BW and this really supports the "luck plays a big part in determining the outcome of a battle" for the simple reason that there is less control in SC2 than there was in BW. Yeahhh this just isn't really true. The entire point of initiating a fight is that you think you have an advantageous position over your opponent. Assuming you're pretty good at figuring out whether or not you have an advantageous position over your opponent (hint: at the pro level, you will be), most direct, non-forced army engagements will be won by the person initiating. It's not because initiating in and of itself gives an advantage, but rather because advantages will lead to initiations.
And there are definitely ways of taxing an opponent's APM to take their attention away from their main army. And at any level of competency, players will be pushing and pulling and feinting looking for an opening. Go mode gets activated when the opponent doesn't respond to one of their aggressive movements, indicating their attention is elsewhere.
Cliffs: It isn't random.
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On October 08 2013 17:01 TaShadan wrote:Show nested quote +On October 08 2013 16:49 Caladan wrote:On October 08 2013 15:16 RampancyTW wrote:On October 08 2013 15:00 saddaromma wrote:On October 08 2013 14:51 aZealot wrote:On October 08 2013 14:37 Arco wrote:On October 08 2013 14:27 RampancyTW wrote:On October 08 2013 13:55 saddaromma wrote:On October 08 2013 13:16 RampancyTW wrote:On October 08 2013 12:14 saddaromma wrote:
[quote]
Haven't it occured to you that lack of choices is due to design? There isn't a lack of choices. Some players just choose to play passively. Some players don't have the ability to play actively on the map without falling behind in other areas of their game. There have been a ton of matches lately between very good players with action all over the map; back-and-forth, long, micro-intensive engagements; and a solid game duration of ~20 minutes or more. While SC2 does allow players to play "competently" by being passive and engaging in big deathball fights, it isn't the ideal way to play, and those players usually get picked apart by the ones that can macro just as well as the passive guy while also being active on the map. Totally disagree. SC2 promotes deathballs rather than splitting army. Do you think it's pure coincidence that as the top players get better and better, they split up their army more and more? Do you think that those players would benefit from not splitting up their army? Considering your assertion runs counter to most of the evidence we have available to us, you're going to have to qualify it a bit. A couple expendable units here and there for harassment or flanks maybe. In Brood War, you would even split expensive tech units off from your main army to defend expansions. For example, late game PvZ, where you need Reavers/High Templars at multiple expansions. Even in an evenly matched by skill game if you leave 1 or 2 Colossus out of your army from the main fight, chances are you're going to lose that fight and the game. The problem here is that defender's advantage doesn't exist, so you can't afford to leave expensive units standing around defending. If you lose most/all of your army in a big engagement, it's over. In StarCraft: Brood War, it's much different. You can buy time to macro up some units on very low supply. Siege Tanks, Spider Mines, Lurkers, and Dark Swarm are all great at defending against innumerable odds. The high ground advantage and the increased difficulty of moving your whole army up the natural choke point and into the main production lines also adds to this defender's advantage. On October 08 2013 11:41 aZealot wrote:On October 08 2013 10:43 SpeghettiJoe wrote:
The bottom line is that SC2 is heavily macro based and very weak in the micro aspect. And macro is boring to watch - "oh look at how he's never missing an scv! Wow!"
People like it when fighting games are about fighting. That's why LoL, Dota are all more popular. They're always fighting. Laning phase: constant trading, ganking. Teamfights, fighting over dragon/baron, tower diving, etc etc.
The bottom line is, SC2 is just not that action packed - spend 20 min to build up a big deathball, then a 10 sec. fight and gg. Yeah there is some harass here and there, but it's nothing near the action of the games.
I repeat - SC2 is just not that action packed. Fix that and you fix its dying popularity.
Well, first of all the dying popularity of SC2 has to be established. Apart from that, I love seeing good macro play. I like seeing a great macro Protoss or Terran not missing a single worker, production cycle or supply point, especially if they are being active with scouting and army (either defensively or offensively); which is what you get at the highest level of play. I appreciate it all the more because as a low-mid level player, I know how hard it is to keep pressing 5E (or 4E) while doing these things (or in my case, trying to do these things without derping over the keyboard). When I see a top level Terran like Bomber, or a Protoss like Rain, manage their economy, I am awestruck. This is not to say that I don't appreciate good micro (I especially like Protoss micro by players like MC who somehow eke out an advantage), but to say that good macro is boring to watch misses one of the defining features of SC2. It is not just a fighting game. It is also a resource management game. SC2 would bore me if it were all about fighting. This may be one reason why I find DOTA and LOL boring. I've tried to give these games a chance and they have nothing for me. I've never thought too much about why, and this might be one reason. I find all that "action" just tedious. Now, it may be that I don't understand those games. Fair enough. But, I have no spark of interest in learning them, either. As to the 20 minute build up into gg this is one of those prevalent false statements that still keep getting bandied about. Sure SC2 is not action packed like MOBA games. It can't be. But, too often, I think players transpose their own ladder experience onto what everybody else is doing or what everybody else is seeing. At the highest level of play, many games are quite action packed. Certainly in comparison to where they were a year ago. As to ladder experience, there is nothing stopping players trying to play a more action intensive game and finding out more about the rules and limits of the game. Why does macro impress you when there is little difference in macro skill at the top level? Flash was the macro king in Brood War (among other important skills) and it would win him games, yet this does little for him in this game. This game is all about decision making and metagaming when you have solid fundamentals. There is very little difference in micro and macro skill at the upper echelons of SC2 progaming. You can't design a game with three completely difference races that's too easy for the top tier players to play. In StarCraft: Brood War, it wasn't perfectly balanced. You overcame racial balance and map balance by player skill. As we can see in StarCraft 2, with S Class Koreans losing to not even top tier foreigners, at a certain point, the skill requirement just drops off dramatically. It impresses me because I am bad at it. It also impresses me because I think there are players, at the highest level, who are better at it than others. As a Protoss, I really like seeing Rain do what he does, because I am torn apart by any halfway decent Terran (even if I prefer a more MC-esque style). As to decision making and metagaming, I also like these as good skills to have (although, if I am being honest, I am not overly a fan of metagaming). As to why Flash has not been able to mimic his skill in BW to SC2, I have no idea why. There could be other reasons than those above (such as putting in the same work to conquer a new game might be beyond him). Fact is, I don't know. And I have no inclination or interest to theorise as to the reasons. As to BW, like I said, I did not follow the scene (apart from playing it a little from 1998 - 1999/2000 and then giving it up like a lot of other people do with games) and didn't watch it. If I did, maybe I'd agree with you. But I did not. So, it's a moot point. Regarding Flash, BW was less luckbased and snowbally, I still remember how crowd whould gasp when he loses couple of tanks but he'd still recover by good decision-making and solid mechanics. In SC2 if opponent catches you off-guard, its pretty much gg. SC2 is far less luck-based than BW was. I think you can say this. But at the same time, SC2 is far more randomness-based than BW was. Nobody means the behaviour of the game itself, like high ground advantag in SCBW, that really seldom did decide games, like almost never. But we are talking about the gameplay randomness that with less powerful units, only small defenders advantage, faster worker build rate and lower macro/micro skill ceiling it often comes to build order and all in wins. Given the lack of scouting for some races at some specific times this becomes only more severe. In BW the better player always had the possibility to come back. In SC2 that's not the case because of the reasons above. That's the reason we have all these "upsets" and random looking results. So at game mechanics level you're right, at gameplay and actual effects level you're wrong. Show nested quote +Actually it isnt, because in SC2 there is no defenders advantage and the automatically perfect unit control gives the advantage to the attacker who chooses and initiates a fight. Thus a lot of times the result of a battle is based on LUCK ... the luck of choosing the moment when your opponent is occupied with something else. The perfect example for this is the Baneling ... if the defender is looking elsewhere he has basically lost, but since you cant know if he is looking elsewhere it is totally based on luck.
Stuff dies MUCH faster in SC2 than it did in BW and this really supports the "luck plays a big part in determining the outcome of a battle" for the simple reason that there is less control in SC2 than there was in BW. This. Show nested quote +The results are no more "random" than they were in BW for the vast majority of players. People have a serious case of rose-colored glasses when looking at BW. You are a serious case of having no clue. Most likely didnt even play BW on a higher level. TBH there is no use to argue with you. Guys like you wont change their minds even if they are wrong. By all means, continue to argue this with feelings when the stats and facts directly contradict the notion that SC2 is any more random than BW.
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On October 08 2013 17:00 RampancyTW wrote:Show nested quote +On October 08 2013 16:49 Caladan wrote:On October 08 2013 15:16 RampancyTW wrote:On October 08 2013 15:00 saddaromma wrote:On October 08 2013 14:51 aZealot wrote:On October 08 2013 14:37 Arco wrote:On October 08 2013 14:27 RampancyTW wrote:On October 08 2013 13:55 saddaromma wrote:On October 08 2013 13:16 RampancyTW wrote:On October 08 2013 12:14 saddaromma wrote:
[quote]
Haven't it occured to you that lack of choices is due to design? There isn't a lack of choices. Some players just choose to play passively. Some players don't have the ability to play actively on the map without falling behind in other areas of their game. There have been a ton of matches lately between very good players with action all over the map; back-and-forth, long, micro-intensive engagements; and a solid game duration of ~20 minutes or more. While SC2 does allow players to play "competently" by being passive and engaging in big deathball fights, it isn't the ideal way to play, and those players usually get picked apart by the ones that can macro just as well as the passive guy while also being active on the map. Totally disagree. SC2 promotes deathballs rather than splitting army. Do you think it's pure coincidence that as the top players get better and better, they split up their army more and more? Do you think that those players would benefit from not splitting up their army? Considering your assertion runs counter to most of the evidence we have available to us, you're going to have to qualify it a bit. A couple expendable units here and there for harassment or flanks maybe. In Brood War, you would even split expensive tech units off from your main army to defend expansions. For example, late game PvZ, where you need Reavers/High Templars at multiple expansions. Even in an evenly matched by skill game if you leave 1 or 2 Colossus out of your army from the main fight, chances are you're going to lose that fight and the game. The problem here is that defender's advantage doesn't exist, so you can't afford to leave expensive units standing around defending. If you lose most/all of your army in a big engagement, it's over. In StarCraft: Brood War, it's much different. You can buy time to macro up some units on very low supply. Siege Tanks, Spider Mines, Lurkers, and Dark Swarm are all great at defending against innumerable odds. The high ground advantage and the increased difficulty of moving your whole army up the natural choke point and into the main production lines also adds to this defender's advantage. On October 08 2013 11:41 aZealot wrote:On October 08 2013 10:43 SpeghettiJoe wrote:
The bottom line is that SC2 is heavily macro based and very weak in the micro aspect. And macro is boring to watch - "oh look at how he's never missing an scv! Wow!"
People like it when fighting games are about fighting. That's why LoL, Dota are all more popular. They're always fighting. Laning phase: constant trading, ganking. Teamfights, fighting over dragon/baron, tower diving, etc etc.
The bottom line is, SC2 is just not that action packed - spend 20 min to build up a big deathball, then a 10 sec. fight and gg. Yeah there is some harass here and there, but it's nothing near the action of the games.
I repeat - SC2 is just not that action packed. Fix that and you fix its dying popularity.
Well, first of all the dying popularity of SC2 has to be established. Apart from that, I love seeing good macro play. I like seeing a great macro Protoss or Terran not missing a single worker, production cycle or supply point, especially if they are being active with scouting and army (either defensively or offensively); which is what you get at the highest level of play. I appreciate it all the more because as a low-mid level player, I know how hard it is to keep pressing 5E (or 4E) while doing these things (or in my case, trying to do these things without derping over the keyboard). When I see a top level Terran like Bomber, or a Protoss like Rain, manage their economy, I am awestruck. This is not to say that I don't appreciate good micro (I especially like Protoss micro by players like MC who somehow eke out an advantage), but to say that good macro is boring to watch misses one of the defining features of SC2. It is not just a fighting game. It is also a resource management game. SC2 would bore me if it were all about fighting. This may be one reason why I find DOTA and LOL boring. I've tried to give these games a chance and they have nothing for me. I've never thought too much about why, and this might be one reason. I find all that "action" just tedious. Now, it may be that I don't understand those games. Fair enough. But, I have no spark of interest in learning them, either. As to the 20 minute build up into gg this is one of those prevalent false statements that still keep getting bandied about. Sure SC2 is not action packed like MOBA games. It can't be. But, too often, I think players transpose their own ladder experience onto what everybody else is doing or what everybody else is seeing. At the highest level of play, many games are quite action packed. Certainly in comparison to where they were a year ago. As to ladder experience, there is nothing stopping players trying to play a more action intensive game and finding out more about the rules and limits of the game. Why does macro impress you when there is little difference in macro skill at the top level? Flash was the macro king in Brood War (among other important skills) and it would win him games, yet this does little for him in this game. This game is all about decision making and metagaming when you have solid fundamentals. There is very little difference in micro and macro skill at the upper echelons of SC2 progaming. You can't design a game with three completely difference races that's too easy for the top tier players to play. In StarCraft: Brood War, it wasn't perfectly balanced. You overcame racial balance and map balance by player skill. As we can see in StarCraft 2, with S Class Koreans losing to not even top tier foreigners, at a certain point, the skill requirement just drops off dramatically. It impresses me because I am bad at it. It also impresses me because I think there are players, at the highest level, who are better at it than others. As a Protoss, I really like seeing Rain do what he does, because I am torn apart by any halfway decent Terran (even if I prefer a more MC-esque style). As to decision making and metagaming, I also like these as good skills to have (although, if I am being honest, I am not overly a fan of metagaming). As to why Flash has not been able to mimic his skill in BW to SC2, I have no idea why. There could be other reasons than those above (such as putting in the same work to conquer a new game might be beyond him). Fact is, I don't know. And I have no inclination or interest to theorise as to the reasons. As to BW, like I said, I did not follow the scene (apart from playing it a little from 1998 - 1999/2000 and then giving it up like a lot of other people do with games) and didn't watch it. If I did, maybe I'd agree with you. But I did not. So, it's a moot point. Regarding Flash, BW was less luckbased and snowbally, I still remember how crowd whould gasp when he loses couple of tanks but he'd still recover by good decision-making and solid mechanics. In SC2 if opponent catches you off-guard, its pretty much gg. SC2 is far less luck-based than BW was. I think you can say this. But at the same time, SC2 is far more randomness-based than BW was. Nobody means the behaviour of the game itself, like high ground advantag in SCBW, that really seldom did decide games, like almost never. But we are talking about the gameplay randomness that with less powerful units, only small defenders advantage, faster worker build rate and lower macro/micro skill ceiling it often comes to build order and all in wins. Given the lack of scouting for some races at some specific times this becomes only more severe. In BW the better player always had the possibility to come back. In SC2 that's not the case because of the reasons above. That's the reason we have all these "upsets" and random looking results. So at game mechanics level you're right, at gameplay and actual effects level you're wrong. Stealing this from a reddit post: Show nested quote +The "coin flip" variety of SC2 I feel is on the decline. At DeMuslim's level the coin flips will be more prevalent, but at the top of Code S that's not the case as much. It's like in tennis - sure Djokovic or Nadal could lose the odd match here or there, but generally they're only losing to each other. Meanwhile there are upsets galore to be had outside of the top ten where people will lose matches they really shouldn't (double fault on the only break point they got the whole set or something like that).
Anyway, we're seeing players more consistently get deep in tournaments. In Europe MC made the last two finals. Vortix made Ro8 then Ro4. MMA made Ro4 then won. Duckdeock won then made Ro8. I'd say season to season half the Ro8 staying the same is pretty good. Obviously it wasn't that way Season 1 to Season 2 where it was all different, but at least it's progressing. We'll see how WCS AM goes this season as well.
These are results from a few players dating back a few seasons (some are different, for example Innovation/Soulkey have only played five). I'll start from when they first broke into Code S. They are chronological from left to right:
Innovation: Ro4, Ro8, 2nd, Ro4, Ro16
Soulkey: Ro8, Ro8, 1st, 7/8th, Ro4 (at least)
Rain: Ro4, Ro32, Code A, Ro32, 2nd, Ro8 (at least)
PartinG: Ro8, Ro4, Ro32, Ro32, Ro16, Ro8, Ro8, Ro16, Ro8 (at least)
Symbol: Ro8, Ro8, Ro16, 2nd, Ro4, Ro8, Ro32
If this list looks like a list of the best players in the world, well, there's a reason for that. I'll make a score system. How often do these guys make Ro8:
Innovation: 4/5
Soulkey: 5/5
Rain: 3/6
PartinG: 5/9
Symbol: 5/7
I don't really know how much more consistent we expect people to be. Just a question: before Flash, did anyone make five Ro8s in a row in OSL/MSL? I can't think of anyone. Boxer was close (he did three, then didn't qualify, then did four). It's also a bit hard to compare the similar statistical difficulty of each one between how you have to qualify (Ro8 seeds you back into Ro32 in Code S which makes it easier, but then again in earlier BW there was only a Ro16). Anyway I think the consistency in SC2 from the top players over the last year has been pretty damn good, and you really can't demand consistency from those well below the top, no other sport has that.
Soulkey and Innovation broke into Code S in the same season, 2012 Season 5. Since then Innovation made Ro8 four times in a row and Soulkey made Ro8 five times in a row. Do you know who else has made Ro8 four times in a row? No one. EVER. Mvp's best results was three Ro4s, but he never made four Ro8s. Not that during these incredible runs the game released an expansion, meaning both players were both consistently good through the biggest shift ever in the game. Did I mention that these two had the highest winning percentage for their respective races in Proleague? Because that also happened over that time period. Soulkey is currently on the most impressive run in SC2 history. Coin flips be damned he just finds a way.
Is the game really flawed when players at Ro32 WCS AM level have trouble with "coin flip" games? I don't think so personally. If we looked at the similar level of play in BW you won't see this utopia of the better player always winning and cheesy all-in play not outright winning game after game. The results are no more "random" than they were in BW for the vast majority of players. People have a serious case of rose-colored glasses when looking at BW.
Yet there are no bonjwas in SC2 who could consistently dominate the scene for a long time.
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More shameless stealing from reddit:
In the last 20 Brood War OSLs, there were 13 different winners, and in the last 20 MSLs there were 12. Or combined, 21 unique winners in 40 different star leagues over eight years (i.e. five leagues per year).
The Liquipedia page for the OSL even talks about the "Curse of the OSL Champion":
The champion of the previous Starleague would fail to advance out of the Round of 16, usually with a victory in their opening match and then two subsequent losses.
It's worth noting that even at their most dominant, Jaedong-level Korean BW pros had around 70% win ratios over the calendar year. That is, they lost more than a quarter of their games. Flash was considered impossibly dominant, sustaining a ~75% win rate through 2009-2011.
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On October 08 2013 17:11 saddaromma wrote:Show nested quote +On October 08 2013 17:00 RampancyTW wrote:On October 08 2013 16:49 Caladan wrote:On October 08 2013 15:16 RampancyTW wrote:On October 08 2013 15:00 saddaromma wrote:On October 08 2013 14:51 aZealot wrote:On October 08 2013 14:37 Arco wrote:On October 08 2013 14:27 RampancyTW wrote:On October 08 2013 13:55 saddaromma wrote:On October 08 2013 13:16 RampancyTW wrote:
[quote]There isn't a lack of choices. Some players just choose to play passively. Some players don't have the ability to play actively on the map without falling behind in other areas of their game.
There have been a ton of matches lately between very good players with action all over the map; back-and-forth, long, micro-intensive engagements; and a solid game duration of ~20 minutes or more.
While SC2 does allow players to play "competently" by being passive and engaging in big deathball fights, it isn't the ideal way to play, and those players usually get picked apart by the ones that can macro just as well as the passive guy while also being active on the map.
Totally disagree. SC2 promotes deathballs rather than splitting army. Do you think it's pure coincidence that as the top players get better and better, they split up their army more and more? Do you think that those players would benefit from not splitting up their army? Considering your assertion runs counter to most of the evidence we have available to us, you're going to have to qualify it a bit. A couple expendable units here and there for harassment or flanks maybe. In Brood War, you would even split expensive tech units off from your main army to defend expansions. For example, late game PvZ, where you need Reavers/High Templars at multiple expansions. Even in an evenly matched by skill game if you leave 1 or 2 Colossus out of your army from the main fight, chances are you're going to lose that fight and the game. The problem here is that defender's advantage doesn't exist, so you can't afford to leave expensive units standing around defending. If you lose most/all of your army in a big engagement, it's over. In StarCraft: Brood War, it's much different. You can buy time to macro up some units on very low supply. Siege Tanks, Spider Mines, Lurkers, and Dark Swarm are all great at defending against innumerable odds. The high ground advantage and the increased difficulty of moving your whole army up the natural choke point and into the main production lines also adds to this defender's advantage. On October 08 2013 11:41 aZealot wrote:On October 08 2013 10:43 SpeghettiJoe wrote:
The bottom line is that SC2 is heavily macro based and very weak in the micro aspect. And macro is boring to watch - "oh look at how he's never missing an scv! Wow!"
People like it when fighting games are about fighting. That's why LoL, Dota are all more popular. They're always fighting. Laning phase: constant trading, ganking. Teamfights, fighting over dragon/baron, tower diving, etc etc.
The bottom line is, SC2 is just not that action packed - spend 20 min to build up a big deathball, then a 10 sec. fight and gg. Yeah there is some harass here and there, but it's nothing near the action of the games.
I repeat - SC2 is just not that action packed. Fix that and you fix its dying popularity.
Well, first of all the dying popularity of SC2 has to be established. Apart from that, I love seeing good macro play. I like seeing a great macro Protoss or Terran not missing a single worker, production cycle or supply point, especially if they are being active with scouting and army (either defensively or offensively); which is what you get at the highest level of play. I appreciate it all the more because as a low-mid level player, I know how hard it is to keep pressing 5E (or 4E) while doing these things (or in my case, trying to do these things without derping over the keyboard). When I see a top level Terran like Bomber, or a Protoss like Rain, manage their economy, I am awestruck. This is not to say that I don't appreciate good micro (I especially like Protoss micro by players like MC who somehow eke out an advantage), but to say that good macro is boring to watch misses one of the defining features of SC2. It is not just a fighting game. It is also a resource management game. SC2 would bore me if it were all about fighting. This may be one reason why I find DOTA and LOL boring. I've tried to give these games a chance and they have nothing for me. I've never thought too much about why, and this might be one reason. I find all that "action" just tedious. Now, it may be that I don't understand those games. Fair enough. But, I have no spark of interest in learning them, either. As to the 20 minute build up into gg this is one of those prevalent false statements that still keep getting bandied about. Sure SC2 is not action packed like MOBA games. It can't be. But, too often, I think players transpose their own ladder experience onto what everybody else is doing or what everybody else is seeing. At the highest level of play, many games are quite action packed. Certainly in comparison to where they were a year ago. As to ladder experience, there is nothing stopping players trying to play a more action intensive game and finding out more about the rules and limits of the game. Why does macro impress you when there is little difference in macro skill at the top level? Flash was the macro king in Brood War (among other important skills) and it would win him games, yet this does little for him in this game. This game is all about decision making and metagaming when you have solid fundamentals. There is very little difference in micro and macro skill at the upper echelons of SC2 progaming. You can't design a game with three completely difference races that's too easy for the top tier players to play. In StarCraft: Brood War, it wasn't perfectly balanced. You overcame racial balance and map balance by player skill. As we can see in StarCraft 2, with S Class Koreans losing to not even top tier foreigners, at a certain point, the skill requirement just drops off dramatically. It impresses me because I am bad at it. It also impresses me because I think there are players, at the highest level, who are better at it than others. As a Protoss, I really like seeing Rain do what he does, because I am torn apart by any halfway decent Terran (even if I prefer a more MC-esque style). As to decision making and metagaming, I also like these as good skills to have (although, if I am being honest, I am not overly a fan of metagaming). As to why Flash has not been able to mimic his skill in BW to SC2, I have no idea why. There could be other reasons than those above (such as putting in the same work to conquer a new game might be beyond him). Fact is, I don't know. And I have no inclination or interest to theorise as to the reasons. As to BW, like I said, I did not follow the scene (apart from playing it a little from 1998 - 1999/2000 and then giving it up like a lot of other people do with games) and didn't watch it. If I did, maybe I'd agree with you. But I did not. So, it's a moot point. Regarding Flash, BW was less luckbased and snowbally, I still remember how crowd whould gasp when he loses couple of tanks but he'd still recover by good decision-making and solid mechanics. In SC2 if opponent catches you off-guard, its pretty much gg. SC2 is far less luck-based than BW was. I think you can say this. But at the same time, SC2 is far more randomness-based than BW was. Nobody means the behaviour of the game itself, like high ground advantag in SCBW, that really seldom did decide games, like almost never. But we are talking about the gameplay randomness that with less powerful units, only small defenders advantage, faster worker build rate and lower macro/micro skill ceiling it often comes to build order and all in wins. Given the lack of scouting for some races at some specific times this becomes only more severe. In BW the better player always had the possibility to come back. In SC2 that's not the case because of the reasons above. That's the reason we have all these "upsets" and random looking results. So at game mechanics level you're right, at gameplay and actual effects level you're wrong. Stealing this from a reddit post: The "coin flip" variety of SC2 I feel is on the decline. At DeMuslim's level the coin flips will be more prevalent, but at the top of Code S that's not the case as much. It's like in tennis - sure Djokovic or Nadal could lose the odd match here or there, but generally they're only losing to each other. Meanwhile there are upsets galore to be had outside of the top ten where people will lose matches they really shouldn't (double fault on the only break point they got the whole set or something like that).
Anyway, we're seeing players more consistently get deep in tournaments. In Europe MC made the last two finals. Vortix made Ro8 then Ro4. MMA made Ro4 then won. Duckdeock won then made Ro8. I'd say season to season half the Ro8 staying the same is pretty good. Obviously it wasn't that way Season 1 to Season 2 where it was all different, but at least it's progressing. We'll see how WCS AM goes this season as well.
These are results from a few players dating back a few seasons (some are different, for example Innovation/Soulkey have only played five). I'll start from when they first broke into Code S. They are chronological from left to right:
Innovation: Ro4, Ro8, 2nd, Ro4, Ro16
Soulkey: Ro8, Ro8, 1st, 7/8th, Ro4 (at least)
Rain: Ro4, Ro32, Code A, Ro32, 2nd, Ro8 (at least)
PartinG: Ro8, Ro4, Ro32, Ro32, Ro16, Ro8, Ro8, Ro16, Ro8 (at least)
Symbol: Ro8, Ro8, Ro16, 2nd, Ro4, Ro8, Ro32
If this list looks like a list of the best players in the world, well, there's a reason for that. I'll make a score system. How often do these guys make Ro8:
Innovation: 4/5
Soulkey: 5/5
Rain: 3/6
PartinG: 5/9
Symbol: 5/7
I don't really know how much more consistent we expect people to be. Just a question: before Flash, did anyone make five Ro8s in a row in OSL/MSL? I can't think of anyone. Boxer was close (he did three, then didn't qualify, then did four). It's also a bit hard to compare the similar statistical difficulty of each one between how you have to qualify (Ro8 seeds you back into Ro32 in Code S which makes it easier, but then again in earlier BW there was only a Ro16). Anyway I think the consistency in SC2 from the top players over the last year has been pretty damn good, and you really can't demand consistency from those well below the top, no other sport has that.
Soulkey and Innovation broke into Code S in the same season, 2012 Season 5. Since then Innovation made Ro8 four times in a row and Soulkey made Ro8 five times in a row. Do you know who else has made Ro8 four times in a row? No one. EVER. Mvp's best results was three Ro4s, but he never made four Ro8s. Not that during these incredible runs the game released an expansion, meaning both players were both consistently good through the biggest shift ever in the game. Did I mention that these two had the highest winning percentage for their respective races in Proleague? Because that also happened over that time period. Soulkey is currently on the most impressive run in SC2 history. Coin flips be damned he just finds a way.
Is the game really flawed when players at Ro32 WCS AM level have trouble with "coin flip" games? I don't think so personally. If we looked at the similar level of play in BW you won't see this utopia of the better player always winning and cheesy all-in play not outright winning game after game. The results are no more "random" than they were in BW for the vast majority of players. People have a serious case of rose-colored glasses when looking at BW. Yet there are no bonjwas in SC2 who could consistently dominate the scene for a long time. MVP is absolutely dominant when in good health. Has had health/injury issues, though.
SC2 also has far more/far more frequent tournaments than BW did. Makes a 1:1 time comparison much less valid.
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EPT
