Artosis says SC2 is more strategic than BW - Page 18

On July 01 2015 01:38 Rekrul wrote:
in other news

MOD EDIT: Removed NSFW pictures. Sorry, google doesn't like it.

On July 01 2015 07:57 Penev wrote:

Oh wow, women in bikini's is too much even..

On July 01 2015 06:29 The_Red_Viper wrote:


In sc2 there was a kid named Maru who played with his aggressive drop style vs phoenix+colossus.
He fought vs a style countering his, but in the end it didn't even matter.

Point is: In both sc2 and bw strategy being THE deciding factor (and in almost any other game/sports) starts being the case when both players/teams are close to each other in mechanical skill.

The question now is if at the top lvl (let's say top 30 players, arbitrarily) the mechanical skill differences between the players are comparable between the games (maybe we have to neglect the absolute top players here).
If it is somewhat comparable it's very hard to say that one game is more reliant on strategy than the other. (relatively to mechanics)
If we talk about strategic depth of each game this former part doesn't matter at all. (and i have no idea which game might have the edge here)
Probably the game which gives you more 'viable' actions/decisions for each situation.

On July 01 2015 08:23 Jaedrik wrote:
Merely because the balance has shifted towards 'strategy', more appropriately, the macro mechanics, does not mean that BW has a lesser absolute amount of strategic play. The proportion may have changed, but, I believe that BW is still comparable or superior in terms of amount of strategy involved.

On July 01 2015 01:38 Rekrul wrote:
in other news

MOD EDIT: Removed NSFW pictures. Sorry, google doesn't like it.

On July 01 2015 08:59 NonY wrote:
If I had to point out anything interesting or weird, it'd be that even though it seems that it's easier to achieve the mechanical skill required to be a pro SC2 player than it was for BW, there is about an equally significant range of mechanical skill amongst the pros. Honestly I think this is more of a socio-psychological thing than revealing something inherent about the games themselves.

On July 01 2015 08:59 NonY wrote:
The only thing I'd like to point out is that many pro-level games of SC2 are lost because of a lapse of mechanics. Pros don't think or talk about this too much because they figure mechanics are a thing that naturally improve with practice and strategy is important enough that it's what the mind should be focusing on. Commentators don't talk about it because they're too busy talking about other things. They typically talk about mechanics only when they're particularly good or particularly bad, but games are lost within a tighter variance of mechanics than they pay attention to, which gives the illusion that they aren't as important as they are. Analysts don't talk about it because mechanics can almost always be improved, so it's not interesting to say it every time, and people are more interested in hearing the narrative of strategy. And in general, it's impolite and not good for the tone of a competitive event for commentators and analysts to nitpick every lapse in mechanics.

It is possible for an SC2 player to have virtually completely unoriginal strategy, and very simple decision trees throughout games and very little improvisation, and to win tournaments by having the best mechanics. And it was possible for BW players to win on strategy. In fact, Proleague was definitely more focused on strategy than mechanics. There were also rock-paper-scissors relationships between trios of players based on matchup strength and strategical style, which you wouldn't expect to get from a game that valued mechanics significantly higher than SC2.

If I had to point out anything interesting or weird, it'd be that even though it seems that it's easier to achieve the mechanical skill required to be a pro SC2 player than it was for BW, there is about an equally significant range of mechanical skill amongst the pros in both games. Honestly I think this is more of a socio-psychological thing than revealing something inherent about the games themselves. Once players get "good enough" mechanics some settle for that while focusing on other things, but other players work to have the best mechanics.

On July 01 2015 08:42 TMagpie wrote:


You're not understanding what Artosis is talking about then.

His example of Sea being able to make X more units than most ladder players means that until you close that gap the average ladder game will be one sided. As such, before you can even worry about strategy in BW, you have to make certain your mechanics are crisp. And being that BW has a much higher skill floor than SC2, the amount of effort needed to reach that level is much higher. As such, a larger percentage of ladder games in SC2 requires good strategy as opposed to BW where a large majority of ladder games requires mechanics.

Notice that I'm not talking about "amount" of strategy--since that's kind of meaningless. How relevant is the strategy choice is the real question at hand. If you decided to mass stalkers and your opponent massed marauders--you lose. If you decided to mass dragoons and your opponent massed tanks--its still a game. Since you could micro out of hard counters the decision to counter your play is less important. Not unimportant mind you, just less so.