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United States4883 Posts
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Skill: How To Build It
Introduction: As a gamer and one who has followed games for many years, I've been able to experience enjoyment in several games from several genres, and have always be exhilarated by the thrill of beating it. Perhaps not all games have the same goal in mind or the same enjoyment factor, but games always take our interest. In most games, however, we experience the feeling of “getting good at it”, which feels like a great accomplishment. From games like pictionary to minesweeper to chess to LoL to SC2, we all feel the same feeling of slowly understanding the game and becoming better at it, and this is an encouraging feeling. It's the feeling of skill. With the improved AI pathing, unit smart-firing, and overall updated appearance of SC2, many gamers have felt the game become too easy. With the addition of auto-mining and worker counts in HotS, we feel even moreso this way. Why? What is it that comprises skill and how does a game designer create an environment for players to continue to grow in skill and enjoyment?
Former topics: “Individual Freedom Vs. Collective Freedom” http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=377374
(TL;DR – Balances around the freedom of group synergy (i.e. gateway units) take freedoms and power from individual units, making all units within the group less dynamic.)
“Positional Balance Vs. Engagement Balance” http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=377941
(TL;DR – Balancing units to counter one another is useless without the ability to control space. Space control is absolutely essential in creating an environment for strategy with depth.)
What is Skill?
+ Show Spoiler +There was this thing called "skill" in video games. You could shoot a guy if you camped in the right spot and shot as he came around the corner. But a pro could do a 360 and do the same thing, and faster too. In BW, you could decimate a worker line with a reaver, but a pro could do that too...plus macro perfectly behind it as well as microing a push at the front. It was this thing called "skill" that separated the two players. Easy to learn, hard to master.
If skill is viewed as a closed system, there is a skill floor (the area where someone who has just picked up the game for the first time would be at), a skill ceiling (for lack of a better description, Perfection of the game), and a range of levels in between. In addition, this system as a pyramid where the majority of players occupy the bottom level while only a select few can reach the top tier.
When you look at any truly competitive game (the most obvious that come to mind are SC:BW, Counterstrike, and Halo), you see that the main design goal of the game was to create a very simple world with simple goals, but infinite ways to achieve them and an infinite amount of ways to execute them. Given infinite possibilities, players could develop skill in this system and rise through levels to reach as close to the skill ceiling as possible.
The skill floor and skill ceiling
+ Show Spoiler +The fun of games is generally designed around the skill floor and the skill ceiling. If the skill floor is too high, there isn't enough of a difference between new players and the best players (i.e. checkers or some kind of board game). If the skill ceiling is too low, the game is too easily mastered and players become bored quickly (i.e tic tac toe, minesweeper, RPGs, etc). In each case, there are too few levels to traverse between noob and pro. In order to have a dynamic game that allows for greater acquisition of skill, there needs to be a long series of levels for each player to achieve.
How does Blizzard want to design SC2
+ Show Spoiler +Blizzard has said several times that they wanted to implement ways for newer players to stay interested; however, they want to do this by encouraging wins, not learning. The fundamental problem here with the way Blizzard is trying to balance SC2 is that they want newer players to have bigger steps that are less rewarding as opposed to smaller steps that are quite rewarding. They don't want new/low level players to overcome little things like worker splitting, basic macro, basic micro, etc; they want them to instead be able to go into a game and be able to win.
While winning a game of SC2 is definitely enjoyable, the fun that we, as humans, as gamers, gain through playing a game is in the process rather than the outcome. The more small achievements we overcome, the more satisfied we are with our progress and feel as if we're really improving.
The problem with raising the skill floor for newer players is that it takes so much less work and achievement to reach a level where you are generally winning. Without mastering more steps, you find a game too easy and eventually get bored of it, which is where we are at now with SC2.
This is a big problem. It's the same approach Infinity Ward took when they destroyed CoD with MW3. Raising the skill floor and trying to balance the rest of the game around the misperceived notion of "fun by winning" only causes more and more problems in the competitive world as things that were commonly used in high level strategy and high level thought are done away with in favor of "helping the average joe out".
What this means: If Blizzard wants to make the game more fun and more exciting for everyone, they really need to look at creating smaller, more rewarding steps than instawin buttons. It's the mastery of something as relatively inconsequent and simple as a zealot rush that brings joy and excitement to a player; when that stops working, a player needs to find a new way to solve the same problem using the knowledge he learned from the zealot rush. And that's where fun begins.
Some possible solutions to this problem are:
+ Show Spoiler +-Adding in better space control so that players don't die to something they don't have the "unit counter" to -Adding an achievement system that pops up more frequently and more regularly -Adding daily tournaments -Improving the Arcade for casual gamers: http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/6893650563?page=1
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United States4883 Posts
Unashamedly bumped. :D
User was warned for this post
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nice post!
I dont know what to say but i agree in oveerall, i have thought for a long long time now that they did go an very easy
road in making sc2!
Blizzard is one of the biggest company in hostiry, and in our present time. Did they get lucky with starcraft:Broodwar, did they get lucky with Wc3?
Or was it skill that made those games.. I wonder now also one thing, if they didnt go this easy road. Would they be able to make a good game?
Iam not so sure anymore...they will have to proof themself!
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United States4883 Posts
I think Blizzard is working very hard to address the community's complaints and thoughts, but it's going to be a really long road and I hope the only thing they execute is patience. I want HotS to come out literally right now, but honestly, they need to make sure it's perfect upon release or everyone is going to be pissed as hell.
Also, was thinking another solution to making the game more accessible to lower skilled players is better space control. Better space control means that you won't instantly die to something you don't have the "unit-counter" to. In other words, if I get slammed by a bunch of roaches and I don't have a large number of immortals and sentries, I'm screwed. But if I had a better way to control that space and say "roaches can't come here or else most of them will die", things would look a lot different and probably the early- to mid-game would feel smoother and safer.
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I think a big part of skill comes down to uncertainty. Both in the game in question (scouting and stuff) but also in the theory of the game.
For example, if the opponent is attacking your fourth base, do you sacrifice it? Do you attempt to save it? How?
Counters are actually not a very good way to design the game for this very reason. With simple flowchart you can always build the "counter unit" to counter the opponents strategy. Or, let me rephrase. You need counters, as that is what strategy is. It should just be considerably less visible what the counter is in any situation.
For example, the marauder kills every armored ground unit, it is cheap, moves fast and synergizes well with the other units built from the barracks. If opponent builds armored, marauder is always a good option. I love the siege tank, because it is conditional. It can counter plenty of units, but it all depends on the context. Just like blink stalkers or mutalisks. Those are the kind of units that we want because there is skill in both playing with them and against them. And it does not come down to some silly timing where you have to have hit all your injects in order to defend.
What makes stephano such a good player is not because of his amazing micro. He has surprisingly poor mechanics for the level he plays on if you ask me. Instead, he just knows what he wants to do, and for a pretty long time into the future of the game as well.
Skill in the long game comes down to choices, not necessarily perfect micro or amazing unit compositions (the "death" in death balls). However, even with good knowledge and good casters, the longer game is not enough to keep us entertained as spectators. So we need a different approach to the very visible micro abilities.
Making things "look" spectacular is easy. But just like any game, you need some knowledge to know what truly "is" spectacular. LoL is a great example here. I can't watch it. No matter how good the players are, the LoL screen says absolutely nothing to me because I don't play it. Yet millions watch this game all the time. Why?
Somehow they made the casual player base (the majority) interested enough in the game to learn the basics. Then and only then does it become interesting to watch the game in a tournament.
I think unranked matchups is a great way to promote that, as is the concept clans/guilds/teams. Playing 1v1 is scary for most people. The stress is very much so a big reason why a lot of people dont do ladder. If you could make a more relaxed scenario, maybe even alter the game to some sort of "arcade mode", people could play with each other and have feelings other than pure hatred for their opponent. Right now, the biggest problem in sc2 is that you are always alone when you are on battle.net. Even people with 30+ friends on their list have no active chats or anything going. You need a third party program for that.
Without others, there is only the win or die kind of mentality and most people are quite obviously not interested in that. And most importantly, without others, there is no community to watch the pros.
Wow, I really went to all the corners of the earth in this post.
I guess that short, what I wanted to say is:
We need skill because that attracts spectators. But in order to see true skill, spectators must play the game at least a little. That is why we should care about the casuals.
However, visual graphics have nothing to do with skill, people still watch CS 1.6 for example. It is the underlying decisions and the fact that the game is not completely figured out that makes skill truly interesting. So we need to stay clear of pure "unit<counter" unit philosophies. The gray zone that I don't really know how to treat is the apm part. More actions with units like mutas or banshees are of course nice, I like watching that too, but I am unsure of how to approach it from a design POV.
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United States4883 Posts
On October 29 2012 02:07 Fenris420 wrote:
I think a big part of skill comes down to uncertainty. Both in the game in question (scouting and stuff) but also in the theory of the game.
Skill in the long game comes down to choices, not necessarily perfect micro or amazing unit compositions (the "death" in death balls). However, even with good knowledge and good casters, the longer game is not enough to keep us entertained as spectators. So we need a different approach to the very visible micro abilities.
Making things "look" spectacular is easy. But just like any game, you need some knowledge to know what truly "is" spectacular. LoL is a great example here. I can't watch it. No matter how good the players are, the LoL screen says absolutely nothing to me because I don't play it. Yet millions watch this game all the time. Why?
Somehow they made the casual player base (the majority) interested enough in the game to learn the basics. Then and only then does it become interesting to watch the game in a tournament.
I think unranked matchups is a great way to promote that, as is the concept clans/guilds/teams. Playing 1v1 is scary for most people. The stress is very much so a big reason why a lot of people dont do ladder. If you could make a more relaxed scenario, maybe even alter the game to some sort of "arcade mode", people could play with each other and have feelings other than pure hatred for their opponent. Right now, the biggest problem in sc2 is that you are always alone when you are on battle.net. Even people with 30+ friends on their list have no active chats or anything going. You need a third party program for that.
Without others, there is only the win or die kind of mentality and most people are quite obviously not interested in that. And most importantly, without others, there is no community to watch the pros.
I've always thought that BW and SC2 were both equally hard, but for different reasons. In BW, you were fighting the interface and just trying to do simple things like basic macro and moving 25 units at a time. In SC2, a lot of the difficulty of basic macro and micro has been removed, leaving just a LOT of decision making.
And while I think that decision making is great and all, it's hard for someone who is completely new to an RTS game to figure out something like "Oh, I need to prepare for a 10:30 roach timing. I need to make sure I have 3 immortals and some sentries out by then so I don't die." In other words, all the decision making feels REALLY high level, making the game in general less accessible to lower level players because there are less "low level steps" for players to climb. It would be nice to see a game that doesn't feel so coinflippy (i.e. I do a 1rax expand, get 3 rax up, start making marines, only to find out my opponent is just doing a 1-base spine/hydra nydus into my main or some bullshit like that). I know you can say "just scout better and make better decisions", but once again, this skips a few levels and goes completely over a lower level player's head.
As for unranked matchups...we'll see how that works. I think at the moment they are dangerous as they would be mixed with players playing ranked matches and we might just see a lot of useless bullshit on ladder. I think perhaps just giving the community a better area for custom games would be more beneficial as well as giving people clan support so they can do fun inhouse stuff without pressure, etc.
EDIT: P.S. I appreciate your comments on all of my topics, Fenris420. It means a lot that someone would sit down and read through all of it and give such insightful comments.
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Maybe you are right, it is very easy to lose early in this game, which is part of the charm I guess in some ways. I think part of this is what I mean when I mentioned "arcade mode". A simplified version of playing 1v1 that skips those steps where you can lose in a rather disappointing way without even playing poorly.
I guess a lot of exactly what needs to be done comes down to testing as well.
Edit: And yes, I am extremely bored atm, thats why I am writing in every thread more or less 
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I feel ya man. I think I got the worst off it. While others were practicing many aspects of sc2 I only focusing on counting the probes in my bases and also worker splits. These two parts of the game are the most important and have the greatest impact on the outcome of both casual and pro level games.
I've spent 10000 hours total on starting games/ splitting working and then leaving. Simply great practice.
I used the unit tester map to create 20 nexus and place 6 probes in the same position as the beginning of normal games. I would race through all the nexus and split my workers for hours.
I also save games against the AI at different times throughout so I could go back into the game and count my probes/ load a new game and continue this process.
I felt my worker counting and splitting were at master level, and was ready to move on to making a 7th probe (the next hardest skill) and then the worst thing ever happened...........
Blizzard announced that with HOTS the workers would be automatically sent to the minerals and the number of workers would be displayed on top of the mining bases! I couldn't believe how much skill was being taken from this game!
I'm so far behind now. While others were practicing building units/ pylons at specific times/ buildings at specific times/ expanding/ defending/ attacking/ at specific times/ scouting the enemy for information/ keeping up with the metagame/ Improving mechanics (All of which I feel are second to worker splitting and worker counting when it comes to measuring skill), I was busting my ass on THE HARDEST skills to develop.
Nobody is going to want to play with me anymore. That's what I was known for, that's how I made a name for myself. I'm just a nobody now. Good bye Starcraft 2, Blizzard and most importantly Team liquid, for I loved every minute.
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United States4883 Posts
On October 29 2012 03:05 MostGroce wrote:
I feel ya man. I think I got the worst off it. While others were practicing many aspects of sc2 I only focusing on counting the probes in my bases and also worker splits. These two parts of the game are the most important and have the greatest impact on the outcome of both casual and pro level games.
I've spent 10000 hours total on starting games/ splitting working and then leaving. Simply great practice.
I used the unit tester map to create 20 nexus and place 6 probes in the same position as the beginning of normal games. I would race through all the nexus and split my workers for hours.
I also save games against the AI at different times throughout so I could go back into the game and count my probes/ load a new game and continue this process.
I felt my worker counting and splitting were at master level, and was ready to move on to making a 7th probe (the next hardest skill) and then the worst thing ever happened...........
Blizzard announced that with HOTS the workers would be automatically sent to the minerals and the number of workers would be displayed on top of the mining bases! I couldn't believe how much skill was being taken from this game!
I'm so far behind now. While others were practicing building units/ pylons at specific times/ buildings at specific times/ expanding/ defending/ attacking/ at specific times/ scouting the enemy for information/ keeping up with the metagame/ Improving mechanics (All of which I feel our second to worker splitting and worker counting when it comes to measuring skill), I was busting my ass on THE HARDEST skills to develop.
Nobody is going to want to play with me anymore. That's what I was know for, that's how I made a name for myself. I'm just a nobody now. Good bye Starcraft 2, Blizzard and most importantly Team liquid, for I loved ever minute.
Hahahahaha, I've been making jokes like this ever since they introduced auto-mine. God, it has to be so painful for all those people who would go to a custom game and practice splitting workers for hours hahaha.
Still, I think it's fun and enjoyable to do worker splitting, and, in a way, it's saddening to get rid of that facet of the game completely (I know you can turn it off, but why would you do that if auto-mine is faster?). I enjoyed your post nonetheless, it gave me a good laugh .
P.S. BTW, I think we can all agree that the correct sequence for worker splitting is making the 7th probe BEFORE splitting. Oops.
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F1 splits work out the best for me. You can get two pairs of close patch mining immidiately and the last two workers on patches that are nearer. It is slightly slower on the first worker you make, but with a fast enough split you can put down a pylon at 46 seconds if I recall correctly.
Then I saw white-ra talking to his chat one day during the first 15 seconds only to proceed to beat some grandmaster league player anyways.
Personally though, thats just me. I fixate on details like that and I can't help myself.
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EPT
