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"Gamers also become good at these unintuitive systems, which seems to be another reason for resistance.
That debate happens in StarCraft. There is a unit selection limit, and you can only select certain number of units at once, but now, in modern era, we could have that anything we want. Maybe you could select hundreds of units in StarCraft II, but there are some players who are absolutely against the idea of making the limit whatever they want, because there is a skill in selecting the units you need to select in a game of StarCraft, particularly under time pressure.
Someone can make this argument, but I disagree with it. What these players are really saying is that they want a skill test in the game, which is fair enough, but they are also demanding that the test of skill be a specific skill test that they have all mastered. I think that's not only greedy and self-centred, but short sighted ― there are many ways to test a player's skill in a game like StarCraft, so why does it have to be a test of your ability to manipulate the interface?"
Full article here: http://www.edge-online.com/features/interview-david-sirlin
I agree with Sirlin...Do you?
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In the words of FA
This thread is so 2007
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Sirlin is still talking about SC2 eh. He even attended the Berkeley SC class right? I agree with him a little but maybe SC2s interface will bring a whole new way to test a players skill. Maybe it won't be the interface at all but something new and fun.
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As usual, he doesn't even bother to try to understand what we're actually arguing for. I had little respect for him to start with, but now I have even less.
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It isn't like being able to put your entire army into control group 1 and then sending it to your opponent's base is going to guarantee you wins. Anybody who has watched noobs conga their lings into a wall can attest to that. Going by the quote they're making it out to sound as though the old limit of 12 units to a control group makes it any more difficult for new players or less difficult for the old. Whether you could assign 30 units to a group or not, the skill resided in being able to break down your army into distinct control groups and manage them properly. It sounds like this will remain true for SC2. Even the matches we've seen in Battle Reports seem to be played with a familiar fluidity though we aren't able to fully observe the control involved. I suppose I can't agree or disagree with Sirlin because it currently sounds like a non-issue. I've seen so little of first-person gameplay, especially on a professional level, to formulate a solid opinion.
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According to Sirlin, Warcraft 2 did not have micro, players just patrolled and ignored their units apparently, and SC didn't until Zileas invented it. When challenged on this, he forwarded the e-mail to Zileas who then told me that yes, he did in fact invent micro.
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10387 Posts
Sirlin doesn't know what he's talking about when he talks about Starcraft. He should stick w/ SF
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Sirlin is really easy to understand when you look at it from a fighting game perspective. Unfortunately starcraft isn't a fighting game.
But I can relate my own experiences of just playing SF4 on xbox live to this argument. I played a lot of street fighter 2 growing up but I wouldn't call myself 'tournament worthy'. But all SF characters have special moves that require an amount of dexterity and skill to pull off. Like if I'm playing with Ryu in SF4, my opponent's low on health, and I want to shoryu focus cancel into my ultra, if I flub this up on the 360 controller, it doesn't land, and I end up losing the match due to this missed opportunity, then I wrestled with the interface which eventually lead to me losing the game. Sirlin came up with HD Remix which had easy inputs for the special moves to attract a new audience, I don't know how successful this was, but obviously he wants people to be able to do the moves they want to do cleanly to allow for the best competition possible among a wider audience.
Which makes me think about a game I was easily more skilled at than these games, super smash bros melee. The interface is simple yet refined. Controls are tight and responsive, and all moves being intuitive and easy to do doesn't hurt the gameplay nor the competitiveness. (yes I know wavedashing and L-canceling and whatnot take some precision to do, but I wouldn't compare the technicality of it to a move list from street fighter). Anyway, despite how blanced, fun, and competitive Melee was, Nintendo (or the new company Sora) kind of messed up a perfect formula with the sequel, Brawl, by lowering the game speed, changing the physics engine, making it harder to kill quickly, stickier edges, etc.
Which brings me back to SC2 and the nature of good game design vs bad game design. A 'good game' (such as melee) can have a simple interface and very intuitive controls, and it doesn't hurt the competitive nature of it because a. everyone's on the same playing field b. the game is inherently well made, is balanced, etc. In contrast, a worse game for competitive play (such as Brawl) suffers because while the game has the same interface and controls, it is not as balanced (see metaknight) and has characteristics that don't welcome high level play, or a significantly (drastically?) lower skill ceiling.
SC2, to me then, relies on what should be two obvious factors. Is the game naturally 'good' - well designed, balanced, polished, welcomes competitive play - and we know Blizzard is designing this game with all these characteristics in mind. Of that we can be assured. And second, does the intuitiveness of the interface lower the skill ceiling to a point where the game suffers in 'high level' competitive play (Brawl), or does it complement it to allow for depth in strategy, positioning, etc (Melee).
I can definitely see Sirlin's argument and I'm not necessarily against easier inputs in a game. In Street Fighter's (and almost all 2d fighters) case its just been a formality for so long that its integrated as part of the accepted gameplay. I don't feel like I would be mad if a player using the easier inputs in HD Remix beat a player using the traditional inputs, so long as his spacing, gameplan, and execution were all strategically sound.
I'm NOT good at Starcraft. Probably high D at best. I like to play Terran but I still find myself 'wrestling' with the interface when playing on iccup (full use of the F keys, hotkeys, unit control, etc). And to me, that is a formality of starcraft. If you're planning on playing competitively, don't you want to have ALL of these things down before even getting in a match? If you don't, then you're simply not playing at your full potential. I've come to learn at D level, mechanics (ability to macro properly and control attacks and defend properly), far above strategy or even a perfect build order, is what wins games. So to me its the most important step. The games I'm good at are the ones that have controls that feel perfectly natural.
This topic seems sooo old, but I never really wrote my thoughts about it relating to my own experience with competitive games, so thought I might as well chime in while I could. I hope it made some sense and I don't get flamed too bad.
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I think he's wrong. The ability to use the interface is the physical part of starcraft. Remove that and it turns into a pure strategy game. Perhaps limited unit selection is part of an outdated interface, but having skill outside of actually being able to control buildings and units is useless.
Its like saying being able to dribble, pass, and shoot is a bad skill test in basketball because the good players have mastered this and there's plenty of other ways to test players in basketball.
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In some ways i think the idea that the skill set for sc2 will be slightly different is true and it will take us all time to get used to it. While it is true that you can have infinite unit selection, you will still have to have sub groups hotkeyed within your army because so many units have some sort of micro involved. Group selection makes it easier to 1a your way across the map, but once u get in combat, it will have to go back to using all your hotkeys. This i think, accomplishes the goal of having distinct possible playstyles.
For example, a terran ball marches across the map, you can just 1a click, but when you engage an army you will want to have hotkeyed your hellions to position correctly in front of your tanks and hold position. You will want to have your tanks hotkeyed to be able to siege and unsiege quickly. You will want to have medivacs/mauraders together, yet seperate from ghosts so you can emp/nuke/stim appropriately.
For players who just aren't that good like me(D+ on a GOOD day) we get the awesome feeling of attack moving a huge army so we can feel heroic like our favorite pro player. I get why people don't like the new mechanics/interface, i just think in the end, we will all get used to it and agree it was the best thing to do for the game.
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I totally agree with randombum. I play StarCraft because of how difficult it is. Your macro can always be better, you could always be a little faster, and it seems to me like sc2 is going to lose too much of this feeling.
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What he (Sirlin) is saying is he'd rather have more strategy and less dexterity.
What some here are saying is they're rather keep the dexterity.
What puzzles me is why a strategy game would require such high dexterity before you even got to competing in the strategy aspect of it.
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On December 21 2009 16:54 Kaneh wrote:
What he (Sirlin) is saying is he'd rather have more strategy and less dexterity.
What some here are saying is they're rather keep the dexterity.
What puzzles me is why a strategy game would require such high dexterity before you even got to competing in the strategy aspect of it.
if you want pure strategy play chess
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Katowice25012 Posts
Sirlin needs to actually play some starcraft before he can understand why his SF analogy doesn't work here, I don't know what has kept him from putting in some time learning the game over the past 2 years.
Its funny that he brought up the unit selection limit specifically as that seems to be the one interface change no one gives a shit about.
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On December 21 2009 17:46 heyoka wrote:
Its funny that he brought up the unit selection limit specifically as that seems to be the one interface change no one gives a shit about.
its because hes never bothered to understand why people argued against mbs and automining and easy micro, he just assumed it was stubborn attachment to the old interface, which would included limited unit selection.
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United States2497 Posts
On December 21 2009 16:54 Kaneh wrote:
What puzzles me is why a strategy game would require such high dexterity before you even got to competing in the strategy aspect of it.
Starcraft wasn't designed with fastest speed in mind. "Normal" was supposed to be normal! Even the original ladder was played on the "fast" setting. Starcraft requires such high dexterity because that's what the community wanted, not what Blizzard intended. Even in e-sports we still value physical attributes, interestingly enough.
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There are a few steps to general unit control (i.e. mechanics).
1) Knowing/Deciding what your units should do.
2) Knowing/Deciding how to best approximate your desired unit behavior as orders within the Starcraft interface.
3) Executing those orders.
All three steps must occur quickly and precisely for good control. #1 is tactical thought, honed to occur subconsciously for faster processing. #2 is a translation job, converting #1 into the language of Starcraft. #3 is physical execution with mouse + keyboard.
#1 is uncontroversial. #2 and #3 are the point of contention. Some players see them as merely a means (or an obstacle) to the perfect expression of #1, and therefore they should be as convenient and clean as possible. Others see value in them as a process, or for the way they affect step #0 - prioritizing focus. If you can perform a round of production by pressing "5m", you never have to decide whether or not to pop away in the middle of a fight to build more stuff. (Or queue units beforehand, which is less efficient.)
On December 21 2009 16:54 Kaneh wrote:
What he (Sirlin) is saying is he'd rather have more strategy and less dexterity.
What some here are saying is they're rather keep the dexterity.
What puzzles me is why a strategy game would require such high dexterity before you even got to competing in the strategy aspect of it.
You're copying several years of hundreds of players' strategic developments (on top of thousands of years of theory in war/competition, which often apply). If you were building your own strategies from scratch, they would be far more important than your ability to point at a screen with a mouse. (Which is not that big a deal for a habitual user of the PC.)
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I remember the last time Sirlin tried to use his SF analogy in StarCraft, it did not turn out pretty.
The guy should either learn StarCraft or just shut up.
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I agree that the ideal scenario would be to have some sort of innovative dexterity challenge.
But since that is likely to turn out forced and unnatural, it'll be similar to SC.
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Sirlin has no clue about Bw or competitive RTS.
I don't want to be rude but i also think that he is an ignorant idiot.
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EPT
