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United States33334 Posts
I hear people using the term “Rock, Paper, Scissors” a lot when they discuss game balance, especially with Starcraft 2 nowadays. I think a lot of people misunderstand the concept of RPS, and how it relates to Starcraft: Brood War. This could be an argument that’s mostly semantics, and I think most people who understand the game already realize this at some level, but I just want to throw in my opinion and clarify.
Starcraft is a game with very weak RPS relationships. In Rock, Paper, Scissors, it is simply win, lose, or draw. Rock will always beat scissors, and will never win against paper. There are very few unit relations in Starcraft like that. Barring fundamental counters like mutalisks vs SCVs, or siege tanks vs sunken colonies, there are few unit matchups that extremely bad for one unit. Only things like firebats vs ultralisks are truly hopeless. There isn’t anything in Starcraft that resembles flame tanks vs rifle infantry in any of the Command and Conquer games, or spellcasters vs magic immune units in Warcraft 3. In those cases, the countered unit cannot put up anything resembling a fight.
Starcraft is about units with enormous damage, low HP, and high mobility. There is a small to medium amount of predetermined advantage/disadvantage, but it is in many cases nullified by the quality of micro (to a small degree, probably an intentional balance choice on Blizzard’s part). Lurkers vs marines goes either way, goons vs vultures goes either way, carriers vs goliaths goes either way, + 1 armor mutas vs sairs goes either way, etc. That’s what everyone loves about Starcraft, the micro is very rewarding, and it is also immediately rewarding (usually within seconds). I guess you could say there is strong rock, scissor, paper with unmicroed units vs microed units, but there is barely any fundamental RPS in Starcraft.
That is also what makes mixed forces in Starcraft so interesting. If you combine unit A, B, and C, they aren’t there to counter units D, E, and F respectively. Let’s take the endgame PvZ army for example. Zealots, archons, templars, reavers, and dragoons. Zealots fill the role of meat shield and non-splash filler damage. Dragoons help increase total damage per area of space occupied with range attack (not all zeals can fight at once). Archons fulfill the weak/constant splash role, templars deal strong/slow burst splash, and reavers do very strong/quick burst splash. Units have been combined so they fill every damage role, maximizing efficiency. Okay, maybe that was an overly theoretical and mathematical way to look at it, but the point is, the units are creating a true synergy, and not countering a counter of a counter of a counter.
In conclusion, Starcraft 2 better be fucking awesome.
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2 things disturb me so far: specializing armor/attacks of each unit instead of an overall scheme (I think it will make certain units much better vs other units they were designed to counter, at least there is the possibility for this) and reduced mid-game AoE.
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I sort of agree and sort of disagree. There are rock-paper-scissor counters in Brood War, but there are no rules that prevent someone from playing more than just rock, paper, or scissors. So essentially you get rock-paper-scissors vs. paper-scissors-rock battles and that's what army focus is primarily made of.
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Have you heard of firebats vs zerglings? I'm not sure what the point of this thread is. RPS exists in Starcraft in varying degrees, but it's definitely there and an important part of the game.
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Belgium9947 Posts
I think you're forgetting the main use of the RPS principle: Build Orders, not units.
Think of ZvZ and PvP.
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This post is erotic wtf yer an admin wax
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United States33334 Posts
On August 08 2007 11:56 XG3 wrote:
Have you heard of firebats vs zerglings? I'm not sure what the point of this thread is. RPS exists in Starcraft in varying degrees, but it's definitely there and an important part of the game.
this is a bad way to respond, but bats get picked off by lings all the time
I'm just tired of people claiming SC is a hard counter game
anyway, I suppose it is mostly about how you want to define things
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On August 08 2007 11:56 XG3 wrote:
Have you heard of firebats vs zerglings? I'm not sure what the point of this thread is. RPS exists in Starcraft in varying degrees, but it's definitely there and an important part of the game.
I've seen burrow work quite well against groups of marines/medics/firebats.
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United States33334 Posts
On August 08 2007 11:59 RaGe wrote:
I think you're forgetting the main use of the RPS principle: Build Orders, not units.
Think of ZvZ and PvP.
Completely true, but I was just talking about units I guess
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8748 Posts
I agree with RaGe. The primary use of RPS in BW is with build orders and strategies, not units. Perhaps that is more evidence to support your case -- since no one has thought it useful to discuss RPS with regard to unit counters, it indeed is not an issue in BW. I think the interesting question is whether or not SC2 will have similar build order RPS as BW. But really that's a question that truly cannot be discussed for practical purposes until after release and Blizzard is faced with making balance patches.
In professional BW, we see players making RPS-decisions with fast rushes or fast expansions. Is that a part of the gameplay that people want to see persist in SC2? Should professionals sometimes feel obligated to take big risks in the first few minutes of the game? I would like to see less of the RPS principle in SC2 than there is in BW. I don't like the idea that a player can be granted a huge advantage just by luck. I haven't seen any convincing arguments that is anything but luck, either. Perhaps a year or two ago players could plan a cheese against a macro player or a fast expansion against a conservative player, but nowadays the players know to do something unpredictable every so often just for reputation's sake, to counter the phenomonen created by the RPS principle. It was cool at first, but now it just seems destructive to me.
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Actually, it's a little something like this:
The game was intended to be RPS at pretty much all levels micro and macro and people found ways around it through intense micro.
Blizzard really needs to keep this in the back of its mind because I think they're already starting to screw up a bit here. For example - stalkers vs zealots, hell any ranged unit vs zealots. I think that the zealot charge upgrade is a really bad idea because dashing up to a unit really isn't helpful vs a ranged unit unless it's immobile. Zealots can barely get a single hit in on goons before legs kick in, now imagine your leg upgrade has a cooldown ;_;
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Brood war isn't rock paper scissors.
It's a fucking intricate dance of awesomeness on good maps and most matchups.
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I felt the same way you did as I was reading RPS material, but I minimized my feelings and summed it up to be people oversimplifying such a complex game, and that's what I was angry at.
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Starcraft is based around emergence: units are designed with vague strengths and weaknesses with rarely any assumptions about what they're "supposed" to counter or what their role has to be. It is then left to players to work out which the best combinations and usages of units are. Damage and armour (size) types are used as just another strength/weakness, they are not law (most units with explosive damage are still great against small units, for example).
This is how Starcraft gives the illusion of being designed to an incredibly deep level, where units seem to fit together in marvellous ways that couldn't possibly have all been imagined and explicitly designed (because of course they weren't). In fact it's part of the genius of Starcraft's design that, all the way back in 1998, they didn't need to imagine what pro Korean players might do to the game to still have confidence in the robustness of their design.
Games like Warcraft 3 which prescribe a unit's role a lot more with much stricter adherence to damage/armour types can potentially curb player freedom. They also foster a culture where it's sometimes viewed as "wrong" or a design or balance problem when a clever player finds a way of using a unit for a purpose for which it doesn't appear to have been originally designed.
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I always thought RPS means exactly same as Strategies, Counter-strategies sort of thing ;PPP
On August 08 2007 11:29 Waxangel wrote:
In conclusion, Starcraft 2 better be fucking awesome.
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On August 08 2007 12:36 MYM.Testie wrote:
Brood war isn't rock paper scissors.
It's a fucking intricate dance of awesomeness on good maps and most matchups.
well said my testicular friend
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On August 08 2007 12:43 Asgard wrote:
Starcraft is based around emergence: units are designed with vague strengths and weaknesses with rarely any assumptions about what they're "supposed" to counter or what their role has to be. It is then left to players to work out which the best combinations and usages of units are. Damage and armour (size) types are used as just another strength/weakness, they are not law (most units with explosive damage are still great against small units, for example).
This is how Starcraft gives the illusion of being designed to an incredibly deep level, where units seem to fit together in marvellous ways that couldn't possibly have all been imagined and explicitly designed (because of course they weren't). In fact it's part of the genius of Starcraft's design that, all the way back in 1998, they didn't need to imagine what pro Korean players might do to the game to still have confidence in the robustness of their design.
Games like Warcraft 3 which prescribe a unit's role a lot more with much stricter adherence to damage/armour types can potentially curb player freedom. They also foster a culture where it's sometimes viewed as "wrong" or a design or balance problem when a clever player finds a way of using a unit for a purpose for which it doesn't appear to have been originally designed.
this was also a very well written post props yo^^
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On August 08 2007 12:19 NonY[rC] wrote:
I agree with RaGe. The primary use of RPS in BW is with build orders and strategies, not units. Perhaps that is more evidence to support your case -- since no one has thought it useful to discuss RPS with regard to unit counters, it indeed is not an issue in BW. I think the interesting question is whether or not SC2 will have similar build order RPS as BW. But really that's a question that truly cannot be discussed for practical purposes until after release and Blizzard is faced with making balance patches.
In professional BW, we see players making RPS-decisions with fast rushes or fast expansions. Is that a part of the gameplay that people want to see persist in SC2? Should professionals sometimes feel obligated to take big risks in the first few minutes of the game? I would like to see less of the RPS principle in SC2 than there is in BW. I don't like the idea that a player can be granted a huge advantage just by luck. I haven't seen any convincing arguments that is anything but luck, either. Perhaps a year or two ago players could plan a cheese against a macro player or a fast expansion against a conservative player, but nowadays the players know to do something unpredictable every so often just for reputation's sake, to counter the phenomonen created by the RPS principle. It was cool at first, but now it just seems destructive to me.
I mostly agree. I think that only if scouting is made such that it totally allows you to prepare (i.e. not have to guess/gamble), then we are safe to have RPS build orders. But, I don't know how it'd be possible to scout early enough to account for this unless on some maps unless you sent one of your first workers. So, less luck = more skill wins = better I think.
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Well, if you start out with 6 workers it should be much easier to send one of them out....its only a 17% loss of money as opposed to a 25% loss.
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EPT
