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Note: This is my response to The Elephant in the Room. This wasn't written to support or condemn that article, but just provide an alternate conclusion.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/hUYAa.jpg)
+ Show Spoiler +Awful graphics by aimless. Because if you want it done poorly, ask me.
The Elephant in the Room gave birth to this Rhino. Or at least the concept it represents. (I'm not sure I want to think too long about an elephant actually giving birth; to a rhino or otherwise, but feel free to enjoy the mental image now that you're thinking about it). After reading the article, I had a nagging idea. I don't know if I've ever heard anyone discuss this idea, so here goes nothing.
What if StarCraft2 competitors can't be as good as their Brood War counterparts?
And what if this has nothing to do with the players at all, but the game itself that has changed the nature of the competition? Note that before you claim the competition in StarCraft2 is already just as good, watch a few Brood War replays. If I agreed with anything in The Elephant in the Room, it was that Brood War has higher quality game play. It just does. Watch them play. There, now that we dispelled that myth, let me elaborate on my point.
As far as I understand everything, in Brood War, the "strategy" part of the game was a secondary concern. Mechanics are the driving force behind skill development for everyone up to the very top players. You didn't worry about strategy until you had incredibly solid mechanics and could actually play the game at a fast pace. Due to the enormous physical and mental output needed to sustain constant production and resource management, it was a skill to just keep constant production. Only the best pro players could think and react and develop a strategy and keep their macro and micro going. It was just too hard for everyone else.
To put it another way, there is an almost-unattainably high skill ceiling in Brood War, and that ceiling spans multiple dimensions of game play. You want to be better at macro? Practice keeping constant worker production and always send them to mine right as they come out (and building structures and checking that they are all making units and expoing and so on). You want to be better at micro? Practice keeping those dragoons from running in a single file zigzag toward the enemy (and drop harassing and burrowing lurkers and so on). Everything required lots of clicking and button pressing.
But what Blizzard has done with StarCraft2 was they pulled that ceiling down a little. Need another worker? Press two hotkeys and wait. The game will do the rest. Automatically sent to mine. Heck, you can change which hotkeys you have to press to get the worker out. You can put them right next to each other (instead of the pre-defined locations of BW that are all over the keyboard). Want to build out of all your buildings? Just control+click on and hold down a key. Now you're macroing gosu-style.
While it's great for normal people and certainly makes average games more entertaining, at the very highest levels, it creates a logjam of talent. Players who used to struggle to keep up their macro and couldn't spot drops while rallying units and checking upgrades and scouting expansions? Well, now they can do that. SC2 all players a bunch of free time. The game took some of the heavy lifting off players' shoulders.
Just look at the tournament results
Intrigue argued that poor quality of players was responsible for the revolving door that is GSL Champion. But I think the reason GSL champs keep rotating (and why players go from the top of Code S on out to Code B and back up again) is the lower skill ceiling. It turns the outcomes into more a dice roll. The units are more efficient at killing each other and more spells/abilities can be automated. A good player, caught out of position at one unlucky moment, can lost his entire army in 10 seconds. Poof. The poor unit AI in Brood War meant just getting into position was a APM spamming struggle. So bad BW players have a harder time just wandering up and killing good players' armies. In SC2, there aren't as many ways a good player can be head and shoulders above your opponent. Sure, better players have an small edge, but in Brood War, that edge was a cliff and the great ones could drop opponent after opponent off it.
Just take it to its logical extreme. Imagine if macroing were just a toggle button. One click and the insane computer AI took control of your workers and structures. You simply toggled which units you wanted and the computer built them as efficiently as it could. The only thing that separated you from your opponent was unit control. Unit control and unit selection. Do you really think Flash would still be Flash and Jaedong would still be Jaedong? Sure they would win games, but the margin of error would be razor thin. Normal players would become much, much better. Pros who who already do everything flawlessly? Doesn't help them as much.
I don't know if it matters to pro players, whether or not the game is fundamentally easier to play. don't know if it ever factors into a pro players decision to stay or leave Brood War. But it's my suspicion that SC2 can't have players who are beyond dominant. It's just not part of the game.
Let's let Riley, the ESPORTS Rhino weigh in:
Am I convinced this position is necessary true? No, not entirely. StarCraft2 could, in fact, be more strategically complex since players have more free energy to expend on tactics and thinking about the game while it's happening. But I absolutely think that SC2 cannot be great in the same way BW is. The very top players in BW can mechanically outplay virtually anyone, while still maintaining all the other facets of the game. For SC2 pros it doesn't matter as much because so many more people will be able to mechanically play at the highest level. SC2 pros will have to utilize more intelligent plays, more outsmarting opponents rather than outplaying them.
Want proof? I can't offer that, but there is one barometer that suggests the skill ceiling is at work: the foreign scene. How many BW players came from outside of Korea to play and win in Korea? It wasn't a whole lot. But now? Koreans and foreigners are playing each other constantly and foreigners are winning games from even the current top Korean players. Sure, Koreans are still winning more, but the gap has narrowed. Magically. In a year. 12 years of BW and the foreign scene can't touch Korea, but in 1 year SC2 has a robust competitive group of foreigners? Maybe it's the lack of BW Koreans making the switch, but maybe not.
So what do I think?
I think everyone should stop pretending that BW is anything like SC2. It's not good for either game. Being a BW pro is a gradual ascent; you get better and better and better until finally you sit on top of the ESPORTS mountain. The SC2 learning curve is not as steep or long; it's much more like king-of-the-hill. I think that the community should embrace SC2 for the ups and downs, the constant changing of leaders, the up-and-comers winning. I don't think SC2 will be anything like BW, where the "bonjwas" of the game took turns controlling the scene before passing the torch to the next juggernaut. SC2 isn't designed to have unstoppable force-of-nature players. It was designed to update the times, to bring everyone closer together and let the underdog have a real shot at toppling the better player.
+ Show Spoiler +Thanks for making it to the bottom. Greatly appreciated. :-)
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How about we all just watch the game and enjoy it.
User was warned for this post
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I completely agree and have been thinking this since the beta began and we saw competitive play.
If  Flash  Jaedong  Bisu et cetera switched they would immediately be among the best, but weaker players could take games from them more often than expected. (this is the same reason your favorite foreigner can take games from ex-progamers.)
We may never see a true  bonjwa in StarCraft 2. Can anyone honestly see a player completely dominating for over a year?
and for new players saying "give the game time",
1. Star2 rests on 10 years of BW progaming development
2. Boxer was bonjwa in 2001 after roughly 1.5 years of progaming in Korea, and Grrrr... was the dominant player in 2000 before him
The high winrates of current top Koreans are incomparable to S-class progamers like Flash/Jaedong who play at a ridiculously high level of competition.
Lessen the number of differentiators of skill in a game, and you get something more like WarCraft 3, where the top group of players are indistinguishable from one another and trade spots at the podium because after so long they're all slamming their head against the ceiling. It is NOT solely a matter of mechanics. Oh, and the chess analogy is flawed--StarCraft is a game of execution as well as strategy. This isn't Civilization.
fun and relevant throwback
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Any game given competitors will gradually become increasingly competitive. Players have stated that they wanted to play SC2 because it is less competitive than brood war and they can be the best without working hard. This is slowly becoming untrue.
SlayerS plays on a schedule similar to that of broodwar pros, as a result they came out of nowhere and wrecked the competition (see GSTL 1 & 2). They haven't had the same results in the current team league and that is not because they haven't been working hard, it is because other teams started working harder to stay relevant.
Brood war took years to become as competitive as it is, SC2 is becoming more competitive at a fast pace. Even though it isn't as competitive as BW doesn't mean it won't be.
The idea that SC2 cannot be as competitive as BW is because it is less testing mechanically is a farce. Any decent game can be more competitive than BW if people put more effort and thought into it than people put into BW. When playing Starcraft you aren't testing yourself against the game, you are testing yourself against your opponent. It is impossible for a human to micro perfectly, this is mechanically impossible for a human. Because it is not possible Starcraft 2 has a skill ceiling that is essentially unreachable.
Long story short, if someone puts in 10 hours of practice a day they will beat the person who puts in 8 that defeat will cause the person who practices 8 hours to practice more. That is what drives competition, it is why all sports were less competitive early in their conception.
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I agree wholeheartedly with this sentiment.
As often as it gets expressed, the games are different. You can actually enjoy both for different reasons, but hey everyone knows BW is better right?
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yeah this is all way over thought out especially on the elephant article. You cant blame a brand new game for not holding up to a game of 10years professional. If Hockey v.2 came out and it was the same but you ran instead of skated, then yea a lot of NHLers would destroy Hockey v.2 at the start. And you cant blame a game because it hasnt had time to grow and develop.... Its all so rediculas I hope this chat gets banned (not this article specifically) but the was sc bw vs. sc2 was sort of banned in forums because it was super redundant
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United States33454 Posts
Riley is a much more suitable name
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Canada5155 Posts
That ESPORTS Rhino is just swell
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You're right obviously about the macro. I disagree about the micro though. MKP and Polt and MC have proved that insane micro can overcome bo losses. Mkp most notably with the hold against an unscouted proxy 2 gate in his base, or his marine splits against kyrix. But he and polt also do subtle things like targeting collosi with a small groups of marauders mid battle. Polt also with that dropship micro on dual sight where he lifted two full dropships over forcefields against blink stalkers. MC anytime he has sentries.
Macro limits out really quickly, but I think the micro ceiling is really high.
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I think you have a lot of really sound points. I would like to add that while mechanics were the hallmark of the dominating players in BW, I think strategic adaptability with spectacular unit control will be the hallmark of the hypothetical dominant players of SC2. The "macro" skill ceiling will not be a factor in this game.
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My problem with the elephant article was that RIDICULOUS "The competition is a farce." line.
How is it a farce? Even if they were the worst players ever, even if the GSL was full of Bronze leaguers, that doesn't make the competition a farce. It would be a farce if the matches were rigged, but that's the only way.
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On July 13 2011 14:16 Carkis wrote:
yeah this is all way over thought out especially on the elephant article. You cant blame a brand new game for not holding up to a game of 10years professional. If Hockey v.2 came out and it was the same but you ran instead of skated, then yea a lot of NHLers would destroy Hockey v.2 at the start. And you cant blame a game because it hasnt had time to grow and develop.... Its all so rediculas I hope this chat gets banned (not this article specifically) but the was sc bw vs. sc2 was sort of banned in forums because it was super redundant
it is just a counterpoint to an overly discussed article. The points are well considered, thought-out and presented. The argument is cogent and the writing simple enough to read. What is the problem?
Edit: Spelling
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I think I agree with the OP to an extent, I believe we should give sc2 a bit more of a chance to show its inner workings.
Let us not conclude just yet that because certain things were made easier, that the time it took to do those actions did not end up going to more complex actions (freeing up more time for scouting, harassing, positioning??).
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Really, i don't understand where this "strategy isn't that important in BW except if you're super high level" idea comes from. Just watch some of the early daily's if you want to get a glimpse of what's going on in BW besides macro.
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Want proof? I can't offer that, but there is one barometer that suggests the skill ceiling is at work: the foreign scene. How many BW players came from outside of Korea to play and win in Korea? It wasn't a whole lot. But now? Koreans and foreigners are playing each other constantly and foreigners are winning games from even the current top Korean players.
I'm not disagreeing with your post but if this is what your using as a "barometer" then I think you are mistaken. The skill gap in SC2 is smaller right now because Korean pro's haven't had literally thousands of extra hours of practice at SC2 yet, like they did/do in BW. Even still, foreign players are already struggling to keep up. Time will tell, and for all we know the foreign scene might develop an equally impressive practice regime in the face of this stiff competition given SC2's popularity among foreigners.
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United States33454 Posts
To give a more serious response, I think that players ARE starting to do some great things with the free time that the easier macro/micro gives them. If you watch some of the highest level games lately, there's a lot of multi-pronged tactics and harassment going on.
Case in point: The Puma vs MC games at the NASL grand final.
I don't think this level of play has spread to everyone, but I think it will be much more commonplace within three~six months.
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My response to the original article: Different game, practice for SC1 doesn't necessarily convert to SC2 - results will be determined by practice in SC2. Current best SC2 players are SC2 players.
My response to this article: There is plenty to do with extra multitask and apm, if you say otherwise you're just a bw elitist. We still see players miscontrol or fail at army positioning or engagement or don't even attempt drop or harassment. Game isn't figured out yet, strategies have yet to reach any sort of steady state, yet there are still players with high win % (like ~70%). Flash/JD lose games in BW all the time (these articles really make it seem like they don't, sometimes you get unlucky brackets and get knocked out early - this happened to both flash and JD in the last year) When the game settles down the best SC2 players will be those who are the most skilled and practice the most.
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On July 13 2011 14:21 deafhobbit wrote:
Really, i don't understand where this "strategy isn't that important in BW except if you're super high level" idea comes from. Just watch some of the early daily's if you want to get a glimpse of what's going on in BW besides macro.
Swing and a miss...
All he is saying is that relative to mechanics, strategy comes second. Now obviously you can' be way off base but the there is some truth in the statement. To compete at the highest level you had to have immacualte mechanics, only then would your strategy become a point of difference.
He never suggested that strategy is non-existent, it just that mechanics are relatively more important.
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This article is terrible.
It is terrible because it consists entirely of conjectures and false analogies with no evidence or data to back it up. The central premise: that the skill ceiling is low, completely counters all existing tournament results everywhere. The one "evidence" you point to, that foreigners are beating koreans (on rare occasions), relies on a false pretext that all koreans necessarily are better than all foreigners.
Elephant was bad, but this was infinitely worse. There are plenty of resources available if you know or bother to look to which to back your assertions, but no effort were made. Shame on you.
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On July 13 2011 14:17 Waxangel wrote:
Riley is a much more suitable name
Agreed. Especially since the previous name really wasn't one.
On July 13 2011 14:17 HawaiianPig wrote:
That ESPORTS Rhino is just swell
Thank you very much. Although to become a real ESPORTS mascot, I probably should have made the body a little stouter and the legs shorter. More rhino-y.
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EPT![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/LMBJo.png)
