Razzia of the Blizzsters - Page 2

They call this bogus approach “innovation”. In their fantasy, it's probably supposed to look flash.

Ironically, this frantic pattern of forced expanding may backfire and result… in increased passivity. Since the efficiency of harassment during the 3 bases phase will be reduced by hyper-development, even with the new tools on steroids, players may simply elect instead to proceed with their macro activities before being forced to consider confrontation because of the time bomb. In the end, the change might prolong the “passive period,” artificially filled with an explosion of semi-automated actions. Scouting might end up weakened too, with sudden, wild tech switches becoming the norm thanks to the increased mass of ressources stored each minute. Players might still build their max army, then dance around uncomfortably (knowing the initial clash would be the end as all alive expansions are nearby), and eventually proceed with the ritual sacrifice.

Sorry to insist so much, especially as the mechanism is a priori simple, but it's absolutely critical to understand the heart of the swindle. The question is not at all whether chess is a turn-based game while SC2 is RT. The mechanism is strictly identical in both cases, it's simply traduced differently—and in a much more complex way—in RTS (where the “time factor” is retroceded in various domains). Take for instance Marine vs Baneling splitting within a set time frame; say, 3 seconds (after that, your commands are greyed out). First mission: splitting 6 Marines vs 12 Banelings. Second mission: splitting 12 Marines vs 24 Banelings. Third mission: splitting 24 Marines vs 48 Banelings. The theoretical skill ceiling was unchanged: losing 0 Marine (assuming stim and offcreep). Why did the practical skill ceiling rise?

Completeness is the natural consequence of the intrusive creationist design. Players are dispossessed from their own creative potential and only have to apply the instruction manual. But players, whatever they might say out of bad faith after defeat, do not want to apply the instructions of a manual. They want to find their own solutions within the given frame. They don't want the game to be created “solved,” they want to solve the game themselves

The question is not at all whether chess is a turn-based game while SC2 is RT. The mechanism is strictly identical in both cases, it's simply traduced differently—and in a much more complex way—in RTS (where the “time factor” is retroceded in various domains).

The OP gives one screenshot of passive play from LotV. That is not at all the norm that I have witnessed from streams. The vast majority of games have had harassment from the beginning. Players attempt to deny 3rd and 4th bases repeatedly while harassing 1st and 2nd bases because the importance of expanding and thus expansion denying has gone way up while the tools to harass have improved more than the tools to prevent harassment. The current changes to LotV will almost undoubtedly create a more aggressive environment where 3 (or 4) base turtle will be the exception, not the norm. Showing one screenshot of the exception does not prove the point.

On the second topic from Hider's post, I would say there is a balance point. At the current speed, elite players can still separate themselves from the masses. If we played the game on 8x, I don't know that Maru could do any better than you or I, he'd just get run over by banelings.

The current speed is not bad, but in my opinion is just a touch too fast for marine splitting where even Maru often gets a small pack of marines smashed by banelines... just not as often as B-team Koreans, and far less often than typical players (who may get large packs of marines smashed by baneling

On April 11 2015 13:55 Vansetsu wrote:
Good points, but extremely convoluted OP.

DWF has never been good at making meaningful examples. In his article from year ago on how UP terran was and how everything else was amoving (which to an extent is correct, but that's not the point), he highlighted a game in order to show how good Mines were vs toss prenerf. However, the game he highlighted showed a protoss player having no idea about builds as it was 1 week after release (or so).

He would also try to argue how terran drops in HOTS were much weaker than in WOL by refering to one specific series between Flash and Liquid.Hero. The issue with that example was that it was one of the few games where dropplay actually occured. Dropplay in TvP HOTS was always far more common than dropplay in 2012.

This means players will control less and less what happens in the game: over-contracting time by force can only disfigure the necessary RTS equilibrium between “total control” (pure strategy) and “zero control” (pure luck).

Should you proceed for too long in that direction, skill itself would start to disappear, replaced with the functional equivalent of luck.

A contrario, if we give too much time, control becomes too easy—control becomes total.

There are different temporalities within the game which have to be carefully calibrated to ensure the survival of control and, ultimately, sense.

On April 11 2015 18:52 Beelzebro wrote:
Generally well written and a good read. I'm not sure what you mean by this though:



I didn't have a problem keeping up with the rest of the post, but here "traduced" and "retroceded" are both new words to me. Searching for the definitions simply leads me to infer that you have not used them correctly. Either that, or I'm just being a dunce. Could you explain?

EDIT: I really enjoyed your post and agree with most of your points but I have to say (and I mean no offence) it does feel somewhat like you have made it deliberately convoluted and inaccessible to read.