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Keep "my game is better than yours"-slapfights out of this. If the discussion devolves into simple bashing, this thread will be closed. |
Canada11265 Posts
On February 05 2015 16:18 Thieving Magpie wrote:
Mechanics always limits strategy since anything you do is countered by the opponent making more (zero strategy by definition) until one player can't out produce the other there is zero strategy. In sc2 there is zero strategy till about masters when production is much less of an issue and the difference is in control and consistency of execution.
Non-RTS players will be stuck at silver/gold while casual RTS players get stuck around gold/platinum. And none of them get to the point where strategic decisions matter because MMR will make them face people with better macro and they have to reinvent the wheel every time they click the quick play button.
Strategy is only present far too high in the game.
BW didn't have auto matching so if you sucked you just kept playing with the same sucky players. Nothing automatically made you faced higher level players at the click of a button. You just learned strategies in your own limited talent pool. SC2 says fuck that and people only ladder where they will ALWAYS be matched against people who macro better than whatever new winning strat they are trying.
That is what people mean when they say that the mechanical requirements of SC2 is too high for casuals.
I very much disagree. If anything, I think mechanics open up new avenues of strategy But to avoid the immediate pushback, I think we need to define what we mean by strategy because I think RTS has rarely meant strategy in the strict sense and I think the strict sense is what maartendq is arguing when he says flanking is not strategy.
For the purposes of an RTS, what I mean by strategy and I think most people mean is all the methods both in planning and execution to defeat your opponent. You may plan a flank, but unless actually physically tell your units to flank, your planning amounts to nothing. Execution is necessary to the planning portion and execution necessarily requires mechanics.
Tangent for those whose who argue that RTS do not contain strategy in any sense of the word:
+ Show Spoiler +What do you mean by strategy. Do you expect RTS to revolve around grand strategy? They typically do not as one is not usually engaged in diplomacy and theatres of war except in free for all on Big Game Hunter. One is more likely to engage in grand strategy in a game like EVE where there are multiple sides, a giant piece of territory that cannot be conquered in a matter of minutes, hours, or even days. So then strategy? Depends "utilization of both peace and war, of all of the nation's forces, through large sale, long-range planning and development, to ensure secuirty and victory." That sounds more like a Civilization or Alpha Centurari sort of game. "the employment of battles to gain the end of war." That might be closer to what we see in an RTS.
But in reality, what we usually mean tactics when talking about RTS- how best deploy and employ forces on a small scale. And perhaps grand tactics, translating strategy in tactics, the operational level However, while it might be an interesting distinction on some level, the exact distinction in an RTS is perhaps not useful. "...Only the rankest pedant would expect theoretical distinctions to show direct results on the battlefield. The primary purpose of any theory is to clarify concepts and ideas that have become, as it were, confused and entangled."
It hardly matters whether it is called strategy or tactics- it's the decision making and execution of said decisions that matters in an RTS. Strategy and Mechanics
But as to your specific argument- that there is zero strategy until production is even- I don't think that is the case at all. I think a lot of people see the overwhelming army in the end game and assume the only thing that happened is they were out-macro'd. They certainly were out-macro'd, but very often a hundred decisions leading up to that point. . .strategic decisions (or if you are pedantic tactical) decisions that led to the overwhelming army. Strategy and mechanics are intricately inter-connected in an RTS. Different sides of the same coin and can therefore be difficult to separate.
For example- a ladder game I played yesterday: End game I (Protoss) had 3 bases to the Zerg's 2 and I had a 50 supply lead. I had 133 apm and he 108 apm. Did I simply out-macro and there was no strategy? Well, no.
There were small decisions at the beginning, my strategy is reactive, based on what I'm scouting. He expands before pool, while I scouted last position, I can still Nexus before cannons and indeed gate before cannon based on timings. Those corner cutting decisions allow me to get in a better macro position after he also aimed for a macro advantage.
I scout a third hatch in base, so I guess 2 base hydra, however my sair can't find his tech. He's making clever decisions like hiding his Spire. I have 3 cannons at my front wall when his mutalisks hit and none in my mineral lines. Based on a pure strategy game, is he supposed to win at this point? He made a plan and his plan hit when I had no defences. But wait, my plan was reactionary and so in that sense, flexible. My high templar preparing for hydra, I decide to turn into Archons, while I lure his scourge into my 3 cannons. I also decide to pull workers from my main to my natural and start building cannons at my natural. These are all decisions I am making. Decisions that require mechanics to implement. Strategy and mechanics combine. When he turns on my natural, my Archon and a couple corsairs hold him well enough that I can transfer back to my main and start making cannons in my main as well.
When he is beat back, I only lost only 4 probes and he lost most of his mutalisks. Was it mechanics or strategy that put me ahead in engagement? A bit of both. If my overall strategy hadn't included hight templar at that point, I would have had no archons. Not pulling probes at the right time would have resulted in more worker losses. If I had stood and fought with my two corsairs (I had lost my initial scouting sair), I would have lost them all to scourge and I would've had nothing to defend my natural. Each little decision put me one step closer to warding off the muta threat. Each decision had a mechanical demand. I had had also thrown my zealots at his natural during that attack, hoping he wouldn't have much- that decision didn't pay off as well as he had the forsight to make sufficient zerglings and sunkens.
After the attack, I had only a small army, but suspected his ground army was also small given how many mutas he made. Another strategic decision- take my archon and a few zealots and expand during that small window. Also, scout with a sair to see if he expanded in some random corner. My third goes up and I find he has started a third, but his newer then mine and unprotected- his strategic blunder. By now I have a full control group of zealots and 2 Archons and I run and knock out his third and his building sunkens and spores. Seeing his army closing in, I run out the other exit, saving most of my control group. Watching the replay, he did his hydra and zergling army to save his third, but for some reason didn't move to engage. Strategic blunder? Mechanical imitation? Maybe both? Regardless, the decision to not defend the expo initially with hydras and then to not engage cost him an expo and I got off scott free.
Three bases to two- I have strong advantage. But I keep scouting, build up a great army. Then I'm surprised by guardians in my natural. But now I have such an advantage, I can lose a natural and take both his bases, and expand to a 4th. Newly made high templars storm the guardians and it's game over. Rather than building up giant army and expanding, he chose to tech up to really expensive units, and that decision turned out to be poor.
I had giant advantage at the end. Yes, I think my mechanics were better, but so was my decision making. My decision making combined with better execution gave me the overwhelming advantage. But it wasn't the overwhelming army at the end that won me the game. It was every tactical move, counter-move, and decision up to that point allowed me to roll him over. The two develop together, each supporting the other. He had a better plan at the beginning, but I executed my defence better then his attack. I had a bad read, but my planning allowed enough flexibility that I could deal with a different threat. I was better able than he to see an opening to expand and to shut down his expansion.
Furthermore, considering production is an integral part of the game- it's not like chess where there are a set number of pieces in the game and the number can only go down- it's nonsensical to say that out-producing has zero to do with strategy. If you must produce units, then production must be a part of your strategy. Sometimes the main thing lost you the game was macro. Sometimes the main thing was decision making (strategy). Sometimes it was execution. However, very often these are all wrapped together. It's good to identify the main that lost you that game, but it simply is not true that until production is equal, there is zero strategy in an RTS.
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On February 06 2015 00:19 BluzMan wrote:
The easiest calculation of your life gives you the conclusion that just typing something (wikipedia reports 175 CPM being average) with a very little amount of clicking will send you over 200 APM which is well over what is required to play very decent starcraft. Since we all here, by definition, have the ability to type on the forums, it's safe to say that the problem with producing good starcraft doesn't come from being physically unable to click/keypress that fast. It comes from the inability to make the decisions that result in those clicks at the required speed. And decisions are closer to strategy than anything else. This whole "strategy should matter more than mechanics" argument repeats over and over again for years on all the gaming forums in the world, and it produces horrible monster games when game developers actually listen to it (well, say a small dev team hit the nail by making an RTS in a popular offline universe, and then they start wondering how to make it into a real multiplayer game with patch 1.3).
Wake up, people, you won't be able to beat anyone good "if only mechanics didn't matter that much", that's just a sorry excuse. The reality is that good players don't just click, they think faster than you, which is a direct consequence of their experience in the game and there's nothing wrong with experienced people beating new people in any kind of sport.
I never thought about the problem this way, but your point is actually very true. Nevertheless, it is still the case that most people can't necessarily think fast enough; and it is no comfort for them that they are not good enough at the game not because they can't click fast, but because they can't think fast.
However, this should not be a problem at all, I think. Because RTS is real-time, speed will always have a great impact on the success of a player, unless the game has a skill cap so that having more than, say, 100 APM is worthless because you literally can't spend it on anything. Such a game would be terribly boring and slow, though.
To compare it to a more traditional sport: guess what matters a lot in soccer. Yeah, you guessed it, speed. If time is a factor, then speed always is as well.
And just as you mentioned, it should be obvious that more experienced players are just better at a game/sport than you. In fact, if they weren't, that would be a game totally unsuitable for not only an e-sport, but a game in general.
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It sounds to me like a lot of people here are arguing for some kind of grand scale heavily strategic turn based strategy game. They exist you know, and while some are doing ok (civ series for an example), they're not super popular. The games tend to be too long and the strategic element wears thin.
And honestly, how is this catering to casual players anyways? The more experienced player is always going to win over the less experienced simply due to knowing more of the strategic possibilities, and casuals generally aren't extremely fond of trying to sit down and learn them.
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On February 06 2015 07:16 Starecat wrote:
AoE is not slow o_o
AoE is so slow. Lol. You need like 30 apm to play it perfectly.
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Maybe I'm alone in this but for SC2 to be more successful as an esport I think it just needs more awesome unit interactions. Any game I've ever enjoyed watching competitively was because of the insane maneuvers the pros pull off. When I first watched pro BW I was blown away by vulture micro vs zealots, shuttle/reaver micro, etc. It was just the coolest shit to me. Then SC2 came out and it was stuff like marine splitting, blink micro, etc. that blew me away. And then I randomly tuned into EVO 2013 and watched competitive Smash Melee for the first time ever and was completely blown away by Armada's Peach play and while I didn't know how he was doing it I knew that my limited Smash 64 skills would not allow me to pull off what he was doing. Obviously, there is more to appreciate than just cool maneuvers but that is what initially drew me into each game in the competitive sense. My appreciation for the strategic depth, decision making, etc. came later on once I had a decent handle on each game.
IMO, that is what the future of RTS needs, more awesome unit interactions. SC2 definitely has this but it could use more to bring it up to BW levels of awesome maneuvers and LotV is looking quite promising. Regardless of what happens I will still enjoy the game but it would be nice if more people watched and enjoyed it with me  .
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On February 06 2015 07:23 Excludos wrote:
It sounds to me like a lot of people here are arguing for some kind of grand scale heavily strategic turn based strategy game. They exist you know, and while some are doing ok (civ series for an example), they're not super popular. The games tend to be too long and the strategic element wears thin.
You don't have to go overboard with the "grand strategy element". However, Starcraft is strongly limited in the bigger gameplay choices you can make, often so heavily that one side can make a strategic choice and the other side then has to make one specific counter choice or lose. (most allins play like that; PvX often comes down to that; Protoss makes a certain allin choice which then reduces the good opponent's strategic choices to 1; maybe 2; then the game is over)
Only in very few matchups you actually get to play rather freely with multiple decision paths, mainly TvT and to some extend PvZ (though that has been decreasing over time with Skytoss and Melee/Muta-Zerg styles being figured out better). In those, strategically deeper matchups you often get gameplay aspects like the mentioned below while only playing one single 20-30min game:
- do I focus on the one, or the other unit set
- do I play aggressive with the unit set I have chosen
- which support units and transitions do I chose
- how do I balance expanding/teching/army to achieve the above
- what is my Plan B
- I have scouted something, which of the possible reactions do I play
However, if we take a look at most other matchups there is one and only one right way to play or if there are multiple ways to play, the follow up plan is immediately layed out. I open muta and you open muta? Well, then the follow up is mutas. I don't have a choice to break the cycle most of the time. You don't see the burrowed infestor transition in 95% of the MutaVsMuta games, because the strategic choice is plainly worse than building more mutas. Or TvZ, you open bio so my only stable choice is banelings and outexpanding you. I don't have an equally good roach-based choice besides this. I don't have an equally good infestor/hydra/corruptor choice against your medivac besides mutas.
Obviously we see these sorts of things happen from time to time. But rarely, because the strategic depths of the matchups aren't really there. The strategies are fairly static, stale as most people call it.
I think what most people are missing when they say that Starcraft isn't strategically deep is that, yes, there is a good, standard way to play the a game in general. But no, there isn't a better, dynamically deduced decision that depends on a very certain aspect about my opponents play that I could make. There are few decision to begin with, and those that are there are made blindly or at least still heavily chancebased most of the time.
And honestly, how is this catering to casual players anyways? The more experienced player is always going to win over the less experienced simply due to knowing more of the strategic possibilities, and casuals generally aren't extremely fond of trying to sit down and learn them.
There are two aspects to be looked at. One is that the game is usually decided by better mechanics and just the ability to implement your decisions quicker than your opponent.
The other is not so much connected to strategy but plainly to the fact that it is very hard to just implement your decisions in the game. Say you are new to the game and you watched Innovation play TvZ. You obviously know that you cannot do all the fancy pick up and splitting micro, but you saw he his play and identified that the core of his play is to build a lot of marines, medivacs, mines and 3bases and then attack your opponent. Now you try that against the easy AI. You fail with just making workers, at 20mins you are below 100supply. Your opponent isn't even bothering you at all at this point. You just fail with the production of 4 different unit types because the amounts of clicks needed to select, build, build, build is just too damn high. You are miles, months of training away from the point where you should even think about doing anything fancy. It's frustrating! Like even in diamond or low masters I'm catching myself just sitting there and thinking: no, I don't want to inject now. I know I should. I MUST to win. But god damn it, can I please just play this fun back and forth battle and runby style now and fuck all of the unit building and creep spreading shit for once? I don't want to inject right now, injecting gives me zero satisfaction but blowing those marines up with my banelings does. So why the fuck isn't that interactive play the most essential part of the game and not the single player click work that has nothing to do whatsoever with what my opponent does right now.
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On February 06 2015 08:29 Mistakes wrote:AoE is so slow. Lol. You need like 30 apm to play it perfectly.
Prove it.
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This is my first post on here in a few years so forgive if I can't make a well constructed post, but I really like the ranking up and unlockable aspect that Blizz has in WoL & hots. I'm talking about the unlockable portraits and unique unit skins that can be unlocked. I know the hardcore guys mostly just want to ladder, but as a casual fan getting the unlockables keeps me interested in the game & keeps me coming back.
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I dont think he has played aoe competetively. Neither have I but I have tried. I got tired of learning the meta but it's a fun game. There's a lot of micro involved at least in the early stages of the game and the macro mechanics are pretty similar to sc2.
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Russian Federation4235 Posts
I also think that the single-player part of RTS gaming is vastly underestimated on this site. RTS single-player can actually be very interesting and challenging (and, most importantly, it lacks the "get out of your comfort zone" feeling that makes many many people shun away from multiplayer, since there is pause and save/load and difficulty levels), but many games ship with a very weak or short campaign and then leave you with nothing to do offline. Like, Grey Goo has 10-15 hours of gameplay, potentially 5-10 more if you go for all missions on hard, and then you only have skirmish with abysmal levels of AI that is not really worth it to play against. Dawn of War which ultimately turned into a stricly single-player game didn't have campaigns for 3 out of 4 races when it shipped!
And then you have C&C3 which was doomed as an online RTS (hello 10 minute full map mineouts, hardcounters that make SC2 immortals pale and other unhealthy stuff) had an amazing campaign I replayed many times. Imo making up a good story and missions is actually easier (and cheaper) than creating an online community and balancing the game to be competetively viable. I don't quite understand why more developers don't go that route. Hell, even. say HotS which should be an example of a good single-player campaign is actually only 25-ish mission for a lot of bucks and 2 (or was it 3) years in development. Yeah, it has evolutions and fancy stuff and cinematics but the original Brood War had just as many missions, took like 6 month to build, and it wasn't that much worse. They could keep releasing quality mini-campaigns monthly for like 3 bucks each and I would be happy to buy! Just a thought.
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There is a very bad logical fallacy in this thread that keeps getting stated or implied that say a masters player is better in everything than a platinum player, etc. often it's only one or two things that separate...maybe it's commands per minute, scouting quantity or quality (like the guy that goes in and out of the base too early), maybe it's hotkeys, maybe it's pre engagement positioning, maybe it is anticipation (you opened Phoenix but then had nothing to defend the hydra push back? Etc), sometimes it is just experience.
I play people with 200 apm that get absolutely crush by three prong attacks...So they are fast enough but can't divide their attention or be prepared for the possibility.
And in sc little edges snowball.
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On February 07 2015 01:20 Eliezar wrote:
There is a very bad logical fallacy in this thread that keeps getting stated or implied that say a masters player is better in everything than a platinum player, etc. often it's only one or two things that separate...maybe it's commands per minute, scouting quantity or quality (like the guy that goes in and out of the base too early), maybe it's hotkeys, maybe it's pre engagement positioning, maybe it is anticipation (you opened Phoenix but then had nothing to defend the hydra push back? Etc), sometimes it is just experience.
I play people with 200 apm that get absolutely crush by three prong attacks...So they are fast enough but can't divide their attention or be prepared for the possibility.
And in sc little edges snowball.
It's very hard to pin down at what exactly someone is worse at, but in general it is mechanics. The platinum player that can execute macro or micro as well as a Masters player, yet loses because of other aspects like game knowledge, scouting or similar is very rare.
I think most of the people that have high APM at lower leagues are just clickspammers who repeat commands unnecessarily, but when it comes to actually giving a completely new command they are just as good as anyone else at their level. They aren't actually fast enough, rather the opposite. Because they aren't fast enough, they fear selecting something else than what they have currently selected and then they pass the time with meaningless clicks.
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If your "strategy" is beaten by simply the opponent making more stuff than you--then you did no have a strategy you were just gimping yourself an it is only something relevant vs other self-gimpers.
There is only one Good strategic gameplay in all leagues below masters--make more than the opponent. All other strategies before masters is bad/null/hindering to your development as a player. For you to pursue those avenues of game play is to literally be training yourself to be ba at the game and you will get stuck at gold/plat/Diamond wondering why you can never rank up even though you know all the right strategies.
Being unable to "implement" a strategy because of mechanical limitations is *exactly* what people are talking about when they say mechanics are given higher priority than mechanics.
Someone with just mechanics will beat someone with just strategy in a BoX match. And whenever a strategy that does not need as much mechanic shows up, it is then hated on by the same forum posters that talk about how mechanics is not everything in an RTS. It's called cheesy and bad just because it's strategically effective, but not mechanically difficult.
This type of community mindset is why an RTS will never become as big as most other "casual" games.
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On February 07 2015 02:45 Thieving Magpie wrote:
Someone with just mechanics will beat someone with just strategy in a BoX match.
You seem to be conveniently ignoring Falling's post at the top of the page. You can't separate mechanics and strategy that simply. I'm a very mediocre player but I am always doing my best to scout and make decisions based on what I scout. Doing so involves strategy and mechanics being intertwined. You are trying to look at this whole argument in some sort of vacuum and that just isn't the reality. Regardless, I've given my 2 cents in a previous post on what I think the future of RTS needs and it has nothing to do with developing some sort of superior thinking power that allows me to will my strategy into existence.
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Canada13379 Posts
On February 07 2015 02:45 Thieving Magpie wrote:
If your "strategy" is beaten by simply the opponent making more stuff than you--then you did no have a strategy you were just gimping yourself an it is only something relevant vs other self-gimpers.
There is only one Good strategic gameplay in all leagues below masters--make more than the opponent. All other strategies before masters is bad/null/hindering to your development as a player. For you to pursue those avenues of game play is to literally be training yourself to be ba at the game and you will get stuck at gold/plat/Diamond wondering why you can never rank up even though you know all the right strategies.
Being unable to "implement" a strategy because of mechanical limitations is *exactly* what people are talking about when they say mechanics are given higher priority than mechanics.
Someone with just mechanics will beat someone with just strategy in a BoX match. And whenever a strategy that does not need as much mechanic shows up, it is then hated on by the same forum posters that talk about how mechanics is not everything in an RTS. It's called cheesy and bad just because it's strategically effective, but not mechanically difficult.
This type of community mindset is why an RTS will never become as big as most other "casual" games.
Every game involves mechanics.
If you are playing LoL or DotA, but have half the CS of your opponents, and can't execute chaining your abilities or use the hero/champions kit effectively (missing skill shots etc) then you can't win. These are mechanics. People with better mechanics will win more often than not.
If you are playing Counter Strike and can't hit shots, can't spray even small bursts, don't know how to position your crosshair when coming around a corner, you won't get kills. Its that simple.
You do need mechanics in every competitive game.
Smash needs mechanics, StreetFighter, etc.
Every game needs mechanics. Every game needs you to be able to do X in a certain way to reach skill level of Y.
the real difference imo is the approximation of ultimate strategy
In LoL its much easier to use a malphite ultimate to engage and approximate the penultimate strategy than it is to do the same thing in Starcraft (BW or SC2)
In StarCraft if you need to split your marines from banes, or split mutas from irradiated muta you NEED to be able to mechanically do it or you lose. There is no approximation. There is no splitting the irradiated muta away and doing it poorly. There is just doing it.
The snowball potential from mechanics within each game's world is different. The more popular games allow more casual players to approximate the ideal play - not achieve it exactly the same, but to get the feeling of "I DID IT" even if they didn't do it ENTIRELY optimally, they did it.
You also have more chances to fail and try again without outright losing in other games, but StarCraft isn't this way. Losing is losing. there is almost never an I lost and I'm gonna try again and again until I ultimately win or lose.
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On February 06 2015 08:29 Mistakes wrote:AoE is so slow. Lol. You need like 30 apm to play it perfectly.
See a stream of an expert playing and see the 30 APM lol, you have no clue about it, but is ok, Internet allows ignorant comments all the time.
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On February 07 2015 02:45 Thieving Magpie wrote:
If your "strategy" is beaten by simply the opponent making more stuff than you--then you did no have a strategy you were just gimping yourself an it is only something relevant vs other self-gimpers.
There is only one Good strategic gameplay in all leagues below masters--make more than the opponent. All other strategies before masters is bad/null/hindering to your development as a player. For you to pursue those avenues of game play is to literally be training yourself to be ba at the game and you will get stuck at gold/plat/Diamond wondering why you can never rank up even though you know all the right strategies.
You are implying that having a strategy takes away from having better mechanics. But both of those have effort-reward curves and with most things it has diminishing returns. I agree that spending your effort on improving mechanics does vastly out-value doing the same on improving strategy. However after spending a certain amount of effort on mechanics, due to diminishing returns it becomes attractive to get a little bit better strategically as well.
Example to make it clear if it isn't:
+ Show Spoiler +1 point of effort spend on
mechanics: gives you 9% better production. Now with diminishing returns the next point of effort gives you 6% more production. Another point of effort gives you 3% more production.
strategy: gives you a 5% better composition.
Now with diminishing returns the next point of effort gives you a 2% better composition. Another point of effort gives you a 1% better composition.
So if you have 3points of effort, it is best to spend 2 on training mechanics and 1 on training strategy because that makes for the maximum of attainable efficiency (20% compared to everything on mechanics being 18%).
So I think having a certain amount of strategic knowledge is pretty much needed to rank up. It is plainly better to build hellions against zerglings than vikings. But as this shows, reaching certain strategic soft limits (so when the returns on efforts get really low) is quite easily attainable, while with mechanics you get faster returns if you are low on skill, and later on the returns are quite better than spending a comparable amount on strategy because the soft limit is much higher.
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I remember back in the day Day9 gave a speech in front of an audience about esports and he explained that sc2 is the largest esport because its spectator friendly and how games like counter-strike could never become as big as sc2 because the game is not spectator friendly. Fast forward 5 years and it turns out CS:GO is 10x bigger than sc2.
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Canada13379 Posts
On February 07 2015 05:01 SuperFanBoy wrote:
I remember back in the day Day9 gave a speech in front of an audience about esports and he explained that sc2 is the largest esport because its spectator friendly and how games like counter-strike could never become as big as sc2 because the game is not spectator friendly. Fast forward 5 years and it turns out CS:GO is 10x bigger than sc2.
To be fair spectating 1.6 was brutal. And the 1.6 and source communities were verydivided. Go has improved both of those things.
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EPT
