Khaldor's thoughts about the future of RTS - Page 11

On February 17 2014 10:02 NoobSkills wrote:


Wrong. Blizzard didn't support SCBW and it did just fine. To a casual (myself at least with WoW arena) that shit was boring as FUCK and you don't really understand the player's movements and because of that you cannot determine what is amazing and decide it is boring. Also how long it took for something to die was an issue in WoW arena which might be a part of the reason for the lack of success for Warcraft.

I've never really liked when Khaldor made these types of videos because his opinion seems very basic usually. There are a bunch of factors why SC2 isn't extremely popular his "opinion" doesn't begin to explain why the game isn't that popular. Just to list a few.

Blizzard's constant patching changing meta game which delays what happened is Broodwar where a full developed meta game allowed players to make/design builds to counter said metagame.
Blizzard's WCS system splitting up the best players in the world into 3 regions delaying the progression of the metagame in Korea and weakening the GOM tournament.
How spread out players and teams are delays the improvement and refinement of players and their strategies.
The lack of SC2 being played in PC bongs for one reason or another, decreasing the fan base.
The delayed solid UMS/casual play of the game also deterred people from playing casually.

Honestly if Blizzard just made the game and didn't touch it the esports side of the game would be much improved. Maybe perhaps in a situation of a metagame that was truly boring in one matchup or another change the game to modify that aspect, but other than that do nothing. After that SC2 will do great as far as attracting fans, being popular, ect. It might not overtake Dota or LoL, but I think the fans/player base will increase greatly.

On February 17 2014 12:29 WolfintheSheep wrote:


But the vast majority of BW viewers were Koreans who played at PC Bangs, which had cloned BW copies installed. Which meant you basically only had LAN melee maps.


The real difference between SC2 and Golf is that the Championship winners in SC2 make what the 70th place finishers do in Golf.

Unless it's a WCS Grand Final, and then the winner makes about the same as the 20th...

On February 17 2014 13:46 vthree wrote:


And that is just YOUR opinion? Not sure why you would post about it if you feel Khaldor shouldn't be making a video...

First of all, a lot of the NA/EU koreans are still playing in Korea on KR ladder, so the meta develops fine. If all the Koreans was just in WCS Korea, you would see a lot more retirements from KR pros since you can't support that many players with one tournament (and PL). So overall, you would have less korean pros playing and wouldn't that slow the meta farther?

As for the balancing and meta is BW, I think that has been overplayed. A lot of BW balancing came down to maps, imagine if the map pool didn't change for 3 years, you would see a lot more imbalances.

On February 16 2014 00:13 lastshadow wrote:
60 year olds who didn't play the game could see finess in SC1 micro situations if given a broad concept of how stuff worked in the game. Silly to hear opinions like this claiming flashiness is needed. Dota is pretty ugly to the non-trained eye, horrible aesthetics, terrible looking characteristics, but yet is one of the largest games because you can sorta(if untrained eye) still see the finess in everything. Starbow already has shown it looks much better in every way compared to SC2 when it comes to just "seeing" skill(opinion of course), and yet this game is "slowed down".

On February 17 2014 06:24 LaLuSh wrote:
Response to your second video about macro vs micro:

You're someone who undoubtedly was very familiar with WC3, but (correct me if I'm totally wrong) don't seem as familiar with BW.

I say this because, personally, I hold the belief that SC2 is closer to WC3 than it is to BW in terms of game flow and in its emphasis of micro versus macro.

To clarify what I mean: the amount of time you spend in SC2 controlling and moving your army about versus doing actual base/macro management makes SC2 a closer relative to WC3 than it ever was of BW.

If, in BW, you spent as much time staring at your army as you do in these games you'd be floating 5k minerals already in the midgame. Classifying SC2 as a macro heavy/focused game is just buying into the propaganda surrounding the game ever since its unveiling.

 Macro <- - - BW - - - - - - -  | - SC2 - - - - - WC3 - - -> Micro 

Anyway.

With that said: I don't disagree with you about a hero focused RTS being more intuitive to understand if it's a micro focused game. I just think that SC2 has always had something of a split identy disorder. It tries hard to portray itself as a macroesque swarmy game, even marketing itself as thus, but in reality it's really more about army control/movement/harass/drops. Your prowess with the aforementioned army control methods then creates the illusion of there being differences in macro performance between players.

In reality, all pro players in SC2 can achieve near perfect macro and pretty much always are achieving near perfect macro relative to and depending on the choices they make in a game. What I mean more specifically with that statement: It's not the difficulty of macro itself in SC2 that accounts for economy differences, but rather the imperfect choices players make in relation to safe/greedy play and in relation to their micro performance (losing workers to drops).

This is very different from BW where the difficulty of perfect base/macro management itself accounted for meaningful performance differences between players. In SC2, it may look like one player has significantly better macro, but really it's mostly because of and a result of decision making. The player with a lesser economy in an an SC2 game is rarely at that economy disadvantage because they macroed imperfectly, but rather because they made the decision to play too safe. They still had near perfect macro relative to their chosen safe play.

So to tie back into why I agree with you in regards to a hero based RTS being more intuitive when it comes to WC3 vs SC2: because SC2 is mostly about army movement & control. All players in SC2 macro near perfectly relative to their decision making in a given game. If you have 2 micro based competitive games where doing stuff with your army is what will differentiate you from an opponent: then yes, the hero based approach makes more sense. Creates something to care about in the fights. A hero in a way is a third resource, as the xp system gives incentives to attack and gives feedback as to the success/progress made.

Maybe I give off the impression of overstating the differences between BW and SC2. But I really personally do hold this belief that SC2 is a BW-WC3-hybrid rather than a BW successor. BW was a game where you managed bases full time and intermittently checked in on your army. In SC2, conversely, you manage your army full time and intermittently check in on your bases. The later into a game you get the more true this SC2 vs BW split becomes.

In that sense, and from that perspective, I would agree a hero design would benefit something like SC2 (which is not a macro game in the truest sense). In thinking and arguing SC2 is a macro based game you're, in my opinion, misrepresenting what a real macro esports RTS title would look and behave like. It wouldn't be one where people stare and micromanage their armies with the level of obsession that they do in SC2.

A macro based RTS by my definition is one where there's simply not enough time to both manage bases/economy and to micro an army. In a macro based RTS you are forced to allocate your time to either one or the other. And after the choice the effect of neglecting one of them should be palpable. I simply don't think that it is true in SC2 once you get about halfway through a game and have your core bases and production set up.

TL;DR:

Don't treat SC2 as a good example of a macro game. It's more of a hybrid micro-macro game that's confused about its identity and its "orientation".

I haven't really disproven your point with this argument -- I've only really had myself a rant on using SC2 as an example of a macro based RTS.

I don't really think WC3 was much of the esports juggernaut you portray it as when compared to contemporary titles like Counterstrike. And if I'd make an argument to try and disprove your point, I'd base that argument on that it's likely wholly other factors that decide the success of an RTS esport than their supposed casual spectator appeal.

I think social connectivity and cultural permeation were more important factors for both the success of BW and WC3. And in both cases it likely had little to do with the quality or casual accessability of the RTS itself, but rather that WC3 gained familiarization and cultural permeation from DotA; and likewise the stars aligned for BW in Korea with UMS/money maps/4v4s/3v3s and the PCBang culture.

 Macro <BW - -SC2  - - - -- - - -  | - - WC3 - - - - -- -WiC> Micro 

On February 17 2014 13:56 NoobSkills wrote:


1. From what I recall Koreans didn't play "clones" they played the full game nothing excluded. I played against many of Korean on Iccup and they didn't have any trouble with the maps or multiplayer.
2. There isn't really a need to compare the money. It isn't relevant to much of what the video is about. Again the players who win a tournament and live for free in a team house probably aren't struggling. And even still the ones at the bottom who are starving have something to strive for, but in either scenario even if I'm wrong it doesn't affect the popularity of SC2

On February 17 2014 06:24 LaLuSh wrote:
I don't really think WC3 was much of the esports juggernaut you portray it as when compared to contemporary titles like Counterstrike. And if I'd make an argument to try and disprove your point, I'd base that argument on that it's likely wholly other factors that decide the success of an RTS esport than their supposed casual spectator appeal.

On February 17 2014 20:07 LaLuSh wrote:
@ Big J

SC2 is very macro intensive the first half of a game. It's probably closer to your macro-micro scale than mine in that period.

My definition of this is more: Can top players regularly perform near-optimal macro in relation to their decision making? I mean most BW top players could also perform near optimally the first 6-8 minutes of a game, regardless of there not existing automining and such.

But I definitely think that the latter half of a SC2 game slips more and more into the micro-macro scale I used. And that's because the intensity/difficulty/time requirement for macro doesn't increase in a meaningful way once you move into the later parts of an SC2 game. If you make a relative macro-micro scale, BW just moved a whole lot further to the left relatively speaking because of how insanely the mechanical requirements scale up with increased production.

On February 17 2014 22:24 Khaldor wrote:


You misunderstood me, I didn't try to say WC3 is better. I don't care for which game is "better" or "worse". At the end of the day I'm the guy watching SC2 for several hours.

Only thing I'm saying is that I feel in the long run RTS has to develop into something that has a stronger focus on micro. Heroes are an extreme to that. To motivate a player to micro you have to make microing worth his while. Meaning you need to make the individual unit worth more. A hero takes that to an extreme.

I didn't want to say game A is better than game B or that one genre is superior to another. I'm just seeing the development and the shift in ESports and was trying to add something to the discussion. Thanks for your post though, there have been a lot of good points in this thread. I actually enjoyed the discussion in here quite a lot, so thx for all your thoughts

On February 18 2014 00:12 Big J wrote:


Ok, I get what you say and I think it makes sense.
Still I think you undervalue SC2's macro aspect. At least as Zerg I think most of the mid-lategame still comes down to reproducing the right units (and building the according tech/upgrades), spreading creep/injecting and setting up the right amount of defenses.
I know, same thing is even more important in Broodwar, but having (very casually for some) played lots of other RTS games (from CnC RA2 to CnC RA3, SupCom, WC3, World in Conflict, DoW, OpenRA...) I still feel like SC2 is on the left of most of them. Just the fact that economy and production is so continuous (compare it to something like CnCs where you usually build your 1-3 refineries in an area and then you are often done building up economy; or you built that one barracks, factory and whatever-the-name-of-the-Starport-was in CnC and you are done building your infrastructure) makes you spend so much time on macro. Not to mention the whole principle of supply and how little one depot provides (though there are equivalents like "power" in many other games).


The thing is, I'm not sure we even want it to be further to the left of the scale than it is currently. Like, even the people who do prefer BW over SC2 (which I don't belong to) usually refer to BWs strengths in terms of microabilities and mostly talk about the implications to strategy when talking about economy. I think having complicated macro is great (--> strategical implications), but it should be action/attentionlight and I do think it is a good thing if proplayers and regular players can both reach similar setups in their games. Imo the difference should be what you make of that setup, which I relate to the positional/compositional decisions and the unit control/multitasking - which are the most tense/fun parts of the game. And I definitely believe that another big RTS could be improved in that aspect compared to Starcraft (both).