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South Africa4316 Posts
On March 07 2010 05:48 imbecile wrote: @Hot_Bid The heavy burden on the SC1 player to constantly do menial tasks takes away a lot of the capacity ta actually implement the cool strategies you come up with. Yes, a strategy can be copied quite easily. But what is the saying? No plan survives contact with the enemy. If you lack on the spot decision making and situational awareness, copying strategies won't do you much good.
I'm just of the opinion that in a strategy game, the dominant factor in winning should be strategy, not button pressing. Sure, in a real time setting, fast and precise mechanics help a lot,and you will still have a big advantage over your opponent in SC2 with it. But I think it was far too dominant in SC1. Most of the spells weren't used, because it was mechanically too demanding. It's not like Jaedong was the only one to think of maybe using queens. The unit was there from day one. It's rather that the bad interface prevented everyone not at Jeadong level and practicing 14 hours a day from using it.
And it also doesn't take a genius to think of multi front attacks. But the bad interface prevents most people from even trying them. The thing is, it's never just button pressing. Everyone can get 300apm by button spamming. The point is that, thinking of 5 actions to do per second is way more difficult than actually implementing 5 actions per second. The mechanical requirement of BW is a much more of a mental requirement than a physical requirement. For example, I'm a bad played and I manage to get 250 apm during the base building stage. However, the moment I need to micro my scout and build things, my apm drops to 90. That's not because I can't do the actions fast enough, but because it takes me time to think of where Is should micro my probe to, and then trying to remember what I wanted to build. Making on the spot tactical decisions and strategical decisions at the same time is bloody difficult.
This is also the reason why people do not do two pronged attacks more often. Its not because they can't physically keep up with the actions, it's because your brain can't process what to do with your units fast enough to handle two battles at the same time while still macroing.
You mention queens. Queens aren't mechanically demanding to use at all. Click ensnare, click location. What is demanding is figuring out where an effective ensnare will be while keeping all other thoughts in your head at the same time. The only things that were technically demanding to use have been made easier, for example the spells that work like blind or lockdown can now be smartcast. From what I understand though, smartcasting is not why people are concerned that the game's lacking micro.
Like you say "An RTS is about quickly making decisions under pressure," and that is almost exactly what SC is. Decisions do not simply refer to large scale decisions of when to attack and when to retreat, or what to build or tech. Using your example, building a hatchery is not apm intensive, it is decision intensive. When to send out a drone is much more mentally taxing than pressing b+h+click.
Also, a final point to make is that if we think that SC can be as strategic as chess, we are fooling ourselves. It if it was up to pure strategy, SC would get boring within a year or so of release. Like HotBid said, out-thinking your opponent consistently in SC is just not realistic; its only realistic in turn-based strategies with incredible complexity (aka Civilizations or chess). The true strategy of RTS games is making strategical decisions within the limitations of humans, including physical limitations, but much more mental limitations. If an RTS does not require more from a player than that player is able to do, then the game turns stale very quickly. That would be like giving generals all the resources they need to win the war, and then seeing whose perfect strategy wins. While not bad, its much more interesting to see the different ways in which people spread out a limited number of resources effectively, and it allows for much more diversity in their style of play.
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@Daigomi
So when implementing something like "group of scourge, attack group of corsair" takes a few dozen keypresses and clicks to set up and execute the cloning, that means it increases the strategic depth to you?
My point is, don't make 200APM the prerequisite to do most basic things anyone can and does think of.
You wanna fight your opponent, not the interface.
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South Africa4316 Posts
On March 07 2010 20:45 imbecile wrote: @Daigomi
So when implementing something like "group of scourge, attack group of corsair" takes a few dozen keypresses and clicks to set up and execute the cloning, that means it increases the strategic depth to you?
My point is, don't make 200APM the prerequisite to do most basic things anyone can and does think of.
You wanna fight your opponent, not the interface. Yes there are occasions when you need to do additional clicking for little strategic gain. However, how much of your apm per game is spend on tasks like these, and how much is spent on other strategically valid tasks? I mean, even in an extreme example where you have 24 scourge that need to kill 12 science vessels, it would take you about 30 clicks to split the scourge effectively. The point remains that the apm requirement in SC is 90% a mental requirement rather than a physical requirement. I can split scourge into science vessels very easily and at a much higher apm than I can organise my base while microing at.
I also don't get your fight the interface statement. Admittedly, in SC you had to fight the interface occasionally, for example with dragoons getting stuck. But the examples you give are simply telling units what they are supposed to do. I don't exactly see how telling a scourge which unit it is supposed to attack is "fighting the interface." The apm required to do this can be decreased by implementing concepts like smartcasting, or having your units autoacquire targets, something which has been done in SC2. However, doing this should never interfere with players who would like specifically control their units, because these players clearly feel like they can get an advantage from spending their mental resources on making separate decisions for each unit, rather than letting them automatically do their thing. By having the auto-commands override manual commands, you're decreasing the decisions players can make, thus taking a bit of strategy out of RTS.
The fact is, 200 apm is not a prerequisite for doing the most basic things. AFAIK Kwark doesn't have a 200 apm, and he consistently performs at a top level. I have a 120 apm, and I can definitely do the most basic things. What I can't do is compete at anything above D-level, and even this is 95% due to my lack of knowledge and only 5% due to my apm. People seem to imply that the game cannot be played at anything less than 300 apm. That's like saying you can't play basketball unless you're 2 meters tall. You might never be world-class at 120 apm, but you can play the game just fine. Also, unlike in basketball, anyone can get 300 apm with practice.
So, what you actually meant to say is that players should be competitive at the highest levels without a 200 apm, not that players should be able to play the game without a 200 apm. Or, conversely, that you think players who make only 150 decisions per minute should be able to compete with players who make 300 decisions per minute. "An RTS is about quickly making decisions under pressure." These decisions should include large scale decisions like "should I expand early or go for an early push", and smaller scale decisions like "should I make my reaver shoot at that group of marines, or try to hit the tanks," and even the smallest decisions like where to move your scouting probe to next so that it doesn't get hit by a marine. These are all decisions first, and then actions, and players who can make these decisions the fastest and the most accurately should have the advantage. That's what an RTS is all about.
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Wow I love these podcasts so much. Sean and Tristan are so awesome.
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@Daigomi again
I'm not really complaining about how physically demanding it is. Although carpal tunnel seems to be a problem among pros. What I'm aiming at is this:
There are several different kind of mental tasks.
The boring repetitive, grindingly demanding robotic ones. Stuff like sorting files into shelves, doing long hand division on paper. Sudoku. E.g. all the stuff computers are good at and are used for to spare us poor humans from having to do them all the time.
And then there are the fun unpredictable, daringly demanding creative ones. Stuff like recognizing patterns, bluffing, making value judgments of importance, playing Go. E.g. all the stuff computers aren't good at and people don't really want computers to do for them.
The major part of the mechanically demanding stuff in SC1 (micro or macro) was of the repetitive grinding kind. The poster examples of tasks you would wanna automate and that are easy to automate.
If you like to have to manually "aim" with each melee unit separately, because the computer does such a horrible job of it, how would you like if you had aim manually aim with each ranged unit separately, because the computer does such a horrible job of it? And why not give all units the horrible pathing of dragoons if you like it so much (although pathing is not exactly easy for computers).
The aim of a strategy games, especially those that are primarily played aganst other humans, must be to reduce the first kind of task as much as possible and maximize the second kind of tasks. For puzzle games it is almost the other way around. Which is also fine, tetris is great.
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On March 07 2010 10:51 R1CH wrote:Show nested quote +On March 07 2010 00:47 jetpower wrote: Ok ,so the bandwith is that bad? However i want to point out that vorbis might not better for voice than lame abr mp3, especially because the version you're using (1.20) doesn't contain last improvements Minor versions don't change the encoder, I tested just to be sure and 1.2.3 produced an identical bitstream to 1.2.0. MP3 is really bad at low bitrates since the VBR can only operate in steps, even using 32kbps as a target bitrate results in a stream of primarily 80kbps frames. I'm talking about Aoyumi's branch which contains latest tunings, in great deal targeted at low bitrate: http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?title=Recommended_Ogg_Vorbis
If you get mostly 80kbps frames when targeting 32kbps then either encoder is b0rked, because bitrate will be way off, or else you're likely doing something wrong (like not resampling). And while its true that in mp3 frame sizes are fixed, there is also bit reservoir so in practice it's not a big problem. If you're using LAME, try this commandline below. I think you will be happy with the result (although by all means tweak it to your liking):
lame --abr 48 -m m --resample 24000 <input> <output>.mp3 (another thing: previous version, lame 3.97, should be a bit better here than 3.98.x)
Obviously nero/apple aac will sound still better than all these.
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yea, not sure if anyone else tried, but i just changed the file type from .ogg to .mp3 via the title and it plyed like any other mp3 would on the ipod (using the download it app). ^^
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On March 08 2010 02:43 skippy2591 wrote: yea, not sure if anyone else tried, but i just changed the file type from .ogg to .mp3 via the title and it plyed like any other mp3 would on the ipod (using the download it app). ^^ not possible without on-the-fly conversion or Rockbox firmware.
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South Africa4316 Posts
<font size=4>Low quality mp3 podcast for those interested</font>
On March 07 2010 23:47 imbecile wrote: @Daigomi again
I'm not really complaining about how physically demanding it is. Although carpal tunnel seems to be a problem among pros. What I'm aiming at is this:
There are several different kind of mental tasks.
The boring repetitive, grindingly demanding robotic ones. Stuff like sorting files into shelves, doing long hand division on paper. Sudoku. E.g. all the stuff computers are good at and are used for to spare us poor humans from having to do them all the time.
And then there are the fun unpredictable, daringly demanding creative ones. Stuff like recognizing patterns, bluffing, making value judgments of importance, playing Go. E.g. all the stuff computers aren't good at and people don't really want computers to do for them.
The major part of the mechanically demanding stuff in SC1 (micro or macro) was of the repetitive grinding kind. The poster examples of tasks you would wanna automate and that are easy to automate.
If you like to have to manually "aim" with each melee unit separately, because the computer does such a horrible job of it, how would you like if you had aim manually aim with each ranged unit separately, because the computer does such a horrible job of it? And why not give all units the horrible pathing of dragoons if you like it so much (although pathing is not exactly easy for computers).
The aim of a strategy games, especially those that are primarily played aganst other humans, must be to reduce the first kind of task as much as possible and maximize the second kind of tasks. For puzzle games it is almost the other way around. Which is also fine, tetris is great. Just to start off with, you keep attacking points I never made. I never said that units should be dumb, or that I think units' pathing should be bad. All I was doing was responding to your argument that SC is too APM driven and does not have enough strategy in it, and that there are certain tasks that should be automated. I still don't know what these tasks are.
What are these jobs that are repetitive and apm demanding in SC? I'm sure there are repetitive ones, but how many repetitive tasks are there that don't also add to the strategic content of the game? Yes, building a base can be fairly repetitive, but we don't want the computer to do that for us, since it has a substantial impact on strategy. Which tasks do you think they should change from SC to SC2?
When I was typing out my reply, I was thinking about exactly the things you mention now. In SC, your units do have automated tasks like choosing where to stand when attacking, and even attacking automatically with the attack-command. The difference is that all those commands can still be manually overridden if need be, meaning they can be improved upon if the player thinks its a worthy investment of his energy.
The main tasks that have been automated from SC to SC2 are things like automining, selecting multiple buildings (MBS), selecting multiple spellcasters (smart casting), selecting multiple miners (smart building), unit pathing (autosurround), and unit firing (only the necessary number of units shoot to kill a unit). I have no problem with this, as long as they can be overridden manually. Removing these actions do not, however, change the game from a 350apm to a 150apm game at the top level (except maybe for automining and MBS, both of which have been compensated for). They change the game from a 350apm game to a 310apm game if you wanted to have the same efficiency you did in SC. However, truth be told, players will still play at 350apm, and simply be slightly more efficient.
I mostly agree with your statement that "The aim of a strategy games, especially those that are primarily played aganst other humans, must be to reduce the first kind of task as much as possible and maximize the second kind of tasks." What I disagree with you with are these three things: 1) SC has a lot of repetitive actions; 2) these actions can be automated without without damaging the strategic choices of players; 3) Automating these tasks will decrease the mechanical element of SC; 4) That an RTS can have enough of task 2 to survive when players do not have to choose how to spend their own physical and mental resources.
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if bandwidth is an issue you could probably make a hidden second megaupload/rapidshare/mediafire mp3 link for those that are desperate for it
i personally am cool with ogg thanks
edit: lol a few months ago my friend who was B something on WGT a long time ago started coming back and playing and he went on ladder and kept doing that 3hatch ling evo build that y'all are talking about it and i was watching how he was beating people that were like B+ on ICCUP when he was D+ just because they did not know how to fight such a build it was funny.
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On March 07 2010 22:06 Daigomi wrote: I also don't get your fight the interface statement. Admittedly, in SC you had to fight the interface occasionally, for example with dragoons getting stuck. But the examples you give are simply telling units what they are supposed to do. I don't exactly see how telling a scourge which unit it is supposed to attack is "fighting the interface." The apm required to do this can be decreased by implementing concepts like smartcasting, or having your units autoacquire targets, something which has been done in SC2. However, doing this should never interfere with players who would like specifically control their units, because these players clearly feel like they can get an advantage from spending their mental resources on making separate decisions for each unit, rather than letting them automatically do their thing. By having the auto-commands override manual commands, you're decreasing the decisions players can make, thus taking a bit of strategy out of RTS.
How does controlling specific units add strategy? Strategy is an elaborate pre-planned action. Tactics would be closer to what you would be supporting, but it's not even that, really - more just mechanical control.
"An RTS is about quickly making decisions under pressure." These decisions should include large scale decisions like "should I expand early or go for an early push", and smaller scale decisions like "should I make my reaver shoot at that group of marines, or try to hit the tanks," and even the smallest decisions like where to move your scouting probe to next so that it doesn't get hit by a marine. These are all decisions first, and then actions, and players who can make these decisions the fastest and the most accurately should have the advantage. That's what an RTS is all about.
Yes, these decisions would be strategy and tactics - the implementation of them, not the control of them. SC2 rewards HOW you do things, instead of how often you do them.
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South Africa4316 Posts
On March 08 2010 05:20 Vedic wrote:Show nested quote +On March 07 2010 22:06 Daigomi wrote: I also don't get your fight the interface statement. Admittedly, in SC you had to fight the interface occasionally, for example with dragoons getting stuck. But the examples you give are simply telling units what they are supposed to do. I don't exactly see how telling a scourge which unit it is supposed to attack is "fighting the interface." The apm required to do this can be decreased by implementing concepts like smartcasting, or having your units autoacquire targets, something which has been done in SC2. However, doing this should never interfere with players who would like specifically control their units, because these players clearly feel like they can get an advantage from spending their mental resources on making separate decisions for each unit, rather than letting them automatically do their thing. By having the auto-commands override manual commands, you're decreasing the decisions players can make, thus taking a bit of strategy out of RTS. How does controlling specific units add strategy? Strategy is an elaborate pre-planned action. Tactics would be closer to what you would be supporting, but it's not even that, really - more just mechanical control. Show nested quote +"An RTS is about quickly making decisions under pressure." These decisions should include large scale decisions like "should I expand early or go for an early push", and smaller scale decisions like "should I make my reaver shoot at that group of marines, or try to hit the tanks," and even the smallest decisions like where to move your scouting probe to next so that it doesn't get hit by a marine. These are all decisions first, and then actions, and players who can make these decisions the fastest and the most accurately should have the advantage. That's what an RTS is all about. Yes, these decisions would be strategy and tactics - the implementation of them, not the control of them. SC2 rewards HOW you do things, instead of how often you do them. I know exactly what strategy means in a general sense. However, strategy as I used it there was used as part of the debate we were having, where strategy is more broadly defined as the making of decisions by a player. A player choosing between focusing on base control and microing his units is making a strategic choice, which is the point I was making. Also, how is microing your units "more just mechanical control"? An even better question is, how does your question contribute to the discussion we're having here?
Regarding your second argument, how does implementation differ from control? Are you saying that players should implement "reaver hitting all tanks" or "probe running away from marines" and then it should happen without any additional control? In general it will work, unless the other player specifically implements a counter-movement (eg. splitting tanks, moving marine to intercept probe), in which case you need to change your first movement. Unless you are saying that the computer should make these adjustments for you?
Regardless, my point was that micro is not about apm, but about decision making. Most people can do the mechanical part of micro (except for the most absurd pieces of micro, like dodging lurker spines), but combining the decision making of micro with macro is where the problems come in. If you've ever seen a new player's minerals go above 1000 when muta-microing, you'll realise that clicking 3sd4sd is not difficult, it's remembering to do that while microing that's difficult. Whether apm is mechanical or mental is not really that important in the big scheme of things, but it does undermine the argument that its all about having fast hands. Its about having fast hands and knowing what to do with those fast hands.
Anyway, if you read my posts you'll see I have no problem with SC2, I was simply replying to a post by imbecile in which he said that SC2 should be more about decision making than hand speed.
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Lol at all the peolpe complaining about ogg, that format is pretty mainstream nowadays and almost every player plays it. Many games (even sc2 apparently) use it to store music. It's been out for quite some time now, and it's better than mp3. The funny thing is that mp3 is still the dominant format, even though it's somewhat inferior - people like to stick to their traditional things.
Also, for the crowd that uses iStuff, learn something new and just dl some free program to change the format, it takes just a few clicks (it's simple) and a minute. After that, you'll be able to brag to your less computer skilled friends how you can "hack mp3" and reduce it's size because it's inefficient. xD
(or just use Daigomi's link)
Thanks for the podcast! I always love those. <3
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Great cast, keep em rollin' :D
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Fires of Heaven <3's Artosis.
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On March 08 2010 05:58 Daigomi wrote:Show nested quote +On March 08 2010 05:20 Vedic wrote:On March 07 2010 22:06 Daigomi wrote: I also don't get your fight the interface statement. Admittedly, in SC you had to fight the interface occasionally, for example with dragoons getting stuck. But the examples you give are simply telling units what they are supposed to do. I don't exactly see how telling a scourge which unit it is supposed to attack is "fighting the interface." The apm required to do this can be decreased by implementing concepts like smartcasting, or having your units autoacquire targets, something which has been done in SC2. However, doing this should never interfere with players who would like specifically control their units, because these players clearly feel like they can get an advantage from spending their mental resources on making separate decisions for each unit, rather than letting them automatically do their thing. By having the auto-commands override manual commands, you're decreasing the decisions players can make, thus taking a bit of strategy out of RTS. How does controlling specific units add strategy? Strategy is an elaborate pre-planned action. Tactics would be closer to what you would be supporting, but it's not even that, really - more just mechanical control. "An RTS is about quickly making decisions under pressure." These decisions should include large scale decisions like "should I expand early or go for an early push", and smaller scale decisions like "should I make my reaver shoot at that group of marines, or try to hit the tanks," and even the smallest decisions like where to move your scouting probe to next so that it doesn't get hit by a marine. These are all decisions first, and then actions, and players who can make these decisions the fastest and the most accurately should have the advantage. That's what an RTS is all about. Yes, these decisions would be strategy and tactics - the implementation of them, not the control of them. SC2 rewards HOW you do things, instead of how often you do them. I know exactly what strategy means in a general sense. However, strategy as I used it there was used as part of the debate we were having, where strategy is more broadly defined as the making of decisions by a player. A player choosing between focusing on base control and microing his units is making a strategic choice, which is the point I was making. Also, how is microing your units "more just mechanical control"? An even better question is, how does your question contribute to the discussion we're having here?
That isn't strategic, though - that is tactical. Strategy would be build order, and pre-planned out responses to variable reaction of your opponent. This is a common mistake. You're discussion is on the merits of mechanical control to a strategy game, which is like arguing the merits of APM in Chess. The more you introduce such mechanics, the less it is about strategy, and the more it is about tactics.
Regarding your second argument, how does implementation differ from control? Are you saying that players should implement "reaver hitting all tanks" or "probe running away from marines" and then it should happen without any additional control? In general it will work, unless the other player specifically implements a counter-movement (eg. splitting tanks, moving marine to intercept probe), in which case you need to change your first movement. Unless you are saying that the computer should make these adjustments for you?
There is a middle ground, otherwise we could just play Chess or Go.
Regardless, my point was that micro is not about apm, but about decision making. Most people can do the mechanical part of micro (except for the most absurd pieces of micro, like dodging lurker spines), but combining the decision making of micro with macro is where the problems come in. If you've ever seen a new player's minerals go above 1000 when muta-microing, you'll realise that clicking 3sd4sd is not difficult, it's remembering to do that while microing that's difficult. Whether apm is mechanical or mental is not really that important in the big scheme of things, but it does undermine the argument that its all about having fast hands. Its about having fast hands and knowing what to do with those fast hands.
Anyway, if you read my posts you'll see I have no problem with SC2, I was simply replying to a post by imbecile in which he said that SC2 should be more about decision making than hand speed.
His argument is that you shouldn't need absurd hand speed for the most basic of tactical activities - a valid point in a strategy game. Just because I can't control 2 muta groups at once like Jaedong doesn't mean I can't understand how it's done, or the reasons to do it. In the grand scheme of a strategy game, it's the reasons that matter, not the manipulation of the interface.
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South Africa4316 Posts
On March 08 2010 14:56 Vedic wrote:Show nested quote +On March 08 2010 05:58 Daigomi wrote:On March 08 2010 05:20 Vedic wrote:On March 07 2010 22:06 Daigomi wrote: I also don't get your fight the interface statement. Admittedly, in SC you had to fight the interface occasionally, for example with dragoons getting stuck. But the examples you give are simply telling units what they are supposed to do. I don't exactly see how telling a scourge which unit it is supposed to attack is "fighting the interface." The apm required to do this can be decreased by implementing concepts like smartcasting, or having your units autoacquire targets, something which has been done in SC2. However, doing this should never interfere with players who would like specifically control their units, because these players clearly feel like they can get an advantage from spending their mental resources on making separate decisions for each unit, rather than letting them automatically do their thing. By having the auto-commands override manual commands, you're decreasing the decisions players can make, thus taking a bit of strategy out of RTS. How does controlling specific units add strategy? Strategy is an elaborate pre-planned action. Tactics would be closer to what you would be supporting, but it's not even that, really - more just mechanical control. "An RTS is about quickly making decisions under pressure." These decisions should include large scale decisions like "should I expand early or go for an early push", and smaller scale decisions like "should I make my reaver shoot at that group of marines, or try to hit the tanks," and even the smallest decisions like where to move your scouting probe to next so that it doesn't get hit by a marine. These are all decisions first, and then actions, and players who can make these decisions the fastest and the most accurately should have the advantage. That's what an RTS is all about. Yes, these decisions would be strategy and tactics - the implementation of them, not the control of them. SC2 rewards HOW you do things, instead of how often you do them. I know exactly what strategy means in a general sense. However, strategy as I used it there was used as part of the debate we were having, where strategy is more broadly defined as the making of decisions by a player. A player choosing between focusing on base control and microing his units is making a strategic choice, which is the point I was making. Also, how is microing your units "more just mechanical control"? An even better question is, how does your question contribute to the discussion we're having here? That isn't strategic, though - that is tactical. Strategy would be build order, and pre-planned out responses to variable reaction of your opponent. This is a common mistake. You're discussion is on the merits of mechanical control to a strategy game, which is like arguing the merits of APM in Chess. The more you introduce such mechanics, the less it is about strategy, and the more it is about tactics. It is strategic because it concerns a large-scale decision regarding the distribution of resources, with the resources being your own physical and mental capacities. Its funny that you mention Chess or Go, because that is what you are arguing for.
Giving players enough time to make perfect decisions would actually decrease the strategy of the game rather than increasing it. Distribution of your own resources, decision making while your mind is taxed, these things form such an integral part of an RTS: look at the difference between players like Oov and IntotheRainbow, or alternatively July and the zerg before him. July didn't have a greater aptitiude for micro than any previous players, he simply saw it as a worthy investment to spend time on mastering micro in the first place, and then giving time in game to microing his muta. Before him, players used the attack and rebuild zerg strategy. Now, if microing your mutes did not require effort, then there would have been no choice between the two builds, all players would do both, micro their mutes perfectly while keeping production up perfectly (something which most players do today). The fact is that players' ability to make decisions is their most valuable resource, and how it is distributed adds greatly to the strategy of the game, even more so at the lower levels.
Show nested quote +Regarding your second argument, how does implementation differ from control? Are you saying that players should implement "reaver hitting all tanks" or "probe running away from marines" and then it should happen without any additional control? In general it will work, unless the other player specifically implements a counter-movement (eg. splitting tanks, moving marine to intercept probe), in which case you need to change your first movement. Unless you are saying that the computer should make these adjustments for you? There is a middle ground, otherwise we could just play Chess or Go. I agree with you that there is a middle-ground, a middle-ground which has been reached in SC2. What more would you like changed is what I would like to know? Also, and I've said this so many times, the automation in place is perfect as long as it can be overturned by player commands, giving players the strategic option to spend their resources on making tactical decisions.
Show nested quote +Regardless, my point was that micro is not about apm, but about decision making. Most people can do the mechanical part of micro (except for the most absurd pieces of micro, like dodging lurker spines), but combining the decision making of micro with macro is where the problems come in. If you've ever seen a new player's minerals go above 1000 when muta-microing, you'll realise that clicking 3sd4sd is not difficult, it's remembering to do that while microing that's difficult. Whether apm is mechanical or mental is not really that important in the big scheme of things, but it does undermine the argument that its all about having fast hands. Its about having fast hands and knowing what to do with those fast hands.
Anyway, if you read my posts you'll see I have no problem with SC2, I was simply replying to a post by imbecile in which he said that SC2 should be more about decision making than hand speed. His argument is that you shouldn't need absurd hand speed for the most basic of tactical activities - a valid point in a strategy game. Just because I can't control 2 muta groups at once like Jaedong doesn't mean I can't understand how it's done, or the reasons to do it. In the grand scheme of a strategy game, it's the reasons that matter, not the manipulation of the interface. I have two points regarding this, both of which I've made already.
Firstly, extreme handspeed is not difficult. Have you ever typed an essay for school? I can type at roughly 125 words per minute, which means I should be able to type a fairly standard undergraduate essay of 2000 words in 16 minutes. Yet, even though I feel like I'm constantly typing most of the time, it rarely takes less than 2 hours to do 2000 words. The fact is that, even when you know what you want to say, the fact that you need to put a sentence together while typing it still slows down your typing speed.
Doing 300 actions per minute is incredibly easy; doing 100 useful actions per minute is bloody hard. This is because your focus on the limitations of handspeed is misplaced. The primary limitation of most gamers is in their ability of thinking of actions to do. Microing a scouting probe while managing your base is exactly like typing a sentence when you know what you want to say. You know you want to move your probe away from the marine, but figuring out where exactly to move it to is what costs you time, not the microsecond it takes to click the mouse there. The limitation is a mental one not a physical one.
If you had a game where you had to press A then click on large red dots that appeared on the screen and move by 1 millimeter everytime you click while at the same time pressing 11 or 22 every five seconds, you could easily do it at 300 apm with very little practice. That's exactly what microing two groups of muta entails. What slows you down is not the clicking in SC, its making the decision where to click.
Secondly, all your arguments seem to boil down to the removal of tactics which even a game as strategic as chess cannot live without. In chess, getting your knight to the outpost on D5 is a fine strategy, but you still need to actually control it. Just being able to think that that would be good is not enough. Similarly in SC, thinking that you want your mutas to go in and snipe scvs is a good plan, but you need to actually do it. And in doing it, just like in chess, the opponent may implement something to stop you, and you need to be there to counteract his movement. In chess your resource is your moves, if you had an infinite number of moves you could implement any strategy perfectly, but you don't, so the challenge is how to best use your limited resources to achieve multiple simultaneous goals. In starcraft, your resource is how quickly you can make decisions, decisions which include the precise movement of your pieces and the overall gameplan, and the fun is seeing how effectively you manage your limited resources to achieve your goals.
Microing two groups of muta is like launching a queen-side attack while getting the D5 outpost. You can either try to integrate them to do both at the same time, or you can focus your energy on one, or you can compromise and do both slightly less efficiently. In the end, that players have to make this decision improves the strategic depth of the game.
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On March 08 2010 18:36 Daigomi wrote:Show nested quote +On March 08 2010 14:56 Vedic wrote:On March 08 2010 05:58 Daigomi wrote:On March 08 2010 05:20 Vedic wrote:On March 07 2010 22:06 Daigomi wrote: I also don't get your fight the interface statement. Admittedly, in SC you had to fight the interface occasionally, for example with dragoons getting stuck. But the examples you give are simply telling units what they are supposed to do. I don't exactly see how telling a scourge which unit it is supposed to attack is "fighting the interface." The apm required to do this can be decreased by implementing concepts like smartcasting, or having your units autoacquire targets, something which has been done in SC2. However, doing this should never interfere with players who would like specifically control their units, because these players clearly feel like they can get an advantage from spending their mental resources on making separate decisions for each unit, rather than letting them automatically do their thing. By having the auto-commands override manual commands, you're decreasing the decisions players can make, thus taking a bit of strategy out of RTS. How does controlling specific units add strategy? Strategy is an elaborate pre-planned action. Tactics would be closer to what you would be supporting, but it's not even that, really - more just mechanical control. "An RTS is about quickly making decisions under pressure." These decisions should include large scale decisions like "should I expand early or go for an early push", and smaller scale decisions like "should I make my reaver shoot at that group of marines, or try to hit the tanks," and even the smallest decisions like where to move your scouting probe to next so that it doesn't get hit by a marine. These are all decisions first, and then actions, and players who can make these decisions the fastest and the most accurately should have the advantage. That's what an RTS is all about. Yes, these decisions would be strategy and tactics - the implementation of them, not the control of them. SC2 rewards HOW you do things, instead of how often you do them. I know exactly what strategy means in a general sense. However, strategy as I used it there was used as part of the debate we were having, where strategy is more broadly defined as the making of decisions by a player. A player choosing between focusing on base control and microing his units is making a strategic choice, which is the point I was making. Also, how is microing your units "more just mechanical control"? An even better question is, how does your question contribute to the discussion we're having here? That isn't strategic, though - that is tactical. Strategy would be build order, and pre-planned out responses to variable reaction of your opponent. This is a common mistake. You're discussion is on the merits of mechanical control to a strategy game, which is like arguing the merits of APM in Chess. The more you introduce such mechanics, the less it is about strategy, and the more it is about tactics. It is strategic because it concerns a large-scale decision regarding the distribution of resources, with the resources being your own physical and mental capacities. Its funny that you mention Chess or Go, because that is what you are arguing for. Giving players enough time to make perfect decisions would actually decrease the strategy of the game rather than increasing it. (...) The fact is that players' ability to make decisions is their most valuable resource, and how it is distributed adds greatly to the strategy of the game, even more so at the lower levels.
It would decrease the tactics, not the strategy. Again, you seem to misuse these concepts. I'm not against the use of decision making in a fast-paced scenario that is directly involved in strategy, but merely against the idea of artificially inflating it with unrelated mechanical fluff. Perhaps an example would make the difference more obvious... Would you assert that Chess and Go are not strategic, merely because you have the time to make decisions? Would you believe that adding mechanical ability to them would be more strategic? For instance, would it be more strategic to have to dribble a basketball while playing Chess? How about doing it while playing SC? Would it be even more strategic if you could do it with 2 balls?
Firstly, extreme handspeed is not difficult. Have you ever typed an essay for school? I can type at roughly 125 words per minute, which means I should be able to type a fairly standard undergraduate essay of 2000 words in 16 minutes. Yet, even though I feel like I'm constantly typing most of the time, it rarely takes less than 2 hours to do 2000 words. The fact is that, even when you know what you want to say, the fact that you need to put a sentence together while typing it still slows down your typing speed.
It's not about the range of difficulty, it's about unnecessary difficulty. I type at roughly 120 words per minute, but I used to have to find each key with my pointer fingers. The GOAL of typing is to produce words, and so typing on a keyboard would represent straight strategy. On the other hand, if I had to use a controller to move a robot that hit keys, and the controller only had a limited axis joystick with 2 buttons, that would be an example of the hoops you are jumping through for the manipulation of the interface in Brood War.
Secondly, all your arguments seem to boil down to the removal of tactics which even a game as strategic as chess cannot live without. In chess, getting your knight to the outpost on D5 is a fine strategy, but you still need to actually control it. Just being able to think that that would be good is not enough. Similarly in SC, thinking that you want your mutas to go in and snipe scvs is a good plan, but you need to actually do it. And in doing it, just like in chess, the opponent may implement something to stop you, and you need to be there to counteract his movement. In chess your resource is your moves, if you had an infinite number of moves you could implement any strategy perfectly, but you don't, so the challenge is how to best use your limited resources to achieve multiple simultaneous goals. In starcraft, your resource is how quickly you can make decisions, decisions which include the precise movement of your pieces and the overall gameplan, and the fun is seeing how effectively you manage your limited resources to achieve your goals.
To be fair, Chess does degenerate into tactics at the higher levels of play (mainly due to the limited and static layout), but this isn't true of Go.
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South Africa4316 Posts
On March 08 2010 20:21 Vedic wrote:Show nested quote +On March 08 2010 18:36 Daigomi wrote:On March 08 2010 14:56 Vedic wrote:On March 08 2010 05:58 Daigomi wrote:On March 08 2010 05:20 Vedic wrote:On March 07 2010 22:06 Daigomi wrote: I also don't get your fight the interface statement. Admittedly, in SC you had to fight the interface occasionally, for example with dragoons getting stuck. But the examples you give are simply telling units what they are supposed to do. I don't exactly see how telling a scourge which unit it is supposed to attack is "fighting the interface." The apm required to do this can be decreased by implementing concepts like smartcasting, or having your units autoacquire targets, something which has been done in SC2. However, doing this should never interfere with players who would like specifically control their units, because these players clearly feel like they can get an advantage from spending their mental resources on making separate decisions for each unit, rather than letting them automatically do their thing. By having the auto-commands override manual commands, you're decreasing the decisions players can make, thus taking a bit of strategy out of RTS. How does controlling specific units add strategy? Strategy is an elaborate pre-planned action. Tactics would be closer to what you would be supporting, but it's not even that, really - more just mechanical control. "An RTS is about quickly making decisions under pressure." These decisions should include large scale decisions like "should I expand early or go for an early push", and smaller scale decisions like "should I make my reaver shoot at that group of marines, or try to hit the tanks," and even the smallest decisions like where to move your scouting probe to next so that it doesn't get hit by a marine. These are all decisions first, and then actions, and players who can make these decisions the fastest and the most accurately should have the advantage. That's what an RTS is all about. Yes, these decisions would be strategy and tactics - the implementation of them, not the control of them. SC2 rewards HOW you do things, instead of how often you do them. I know exactly what strategy means in a general sense. However, strategy as I used it there was used as part of the debate we were having, where strategy is more broadly defined as the making of decisions by a player. A player choosing between focusing on base control and microing his units is making a strategic choice, which is the point I was making. Also, how is microing your units "more just mechanical control"? An even better question is, how does your question contribute to the discussion we're having here? That isn't strategic, though - that is tactical. Strategy would be build order, and pre-planned out responses to variable reaction of your opponent. This is a common mistake. You're discussion is on the merits of mechanical control to a strategy game, which is like arguing the merits of APM in Chess. The more you introduce such mechanics, the less it is about strategy, and the more it is about tactics. It is strategic because it concerns a large-scale decision regarding the distribution of resources, with the resources being your own physical and mental capacities. Its funny that you mention Chess or Go, because that is what you are arguing for. Giving players enough time to make perfect decisions would actually decrease the strategy of the game rather than increasing it. (...) The fact is that players' ability to make decisions is their most valuable resource, and how it is distributed adds greatly to the strategy of the game, even more so at the lower levels. It would decrease the tactics, not the strategy. Again, you seem to misuse these concepts. I'm not against the use of decision making in a fast-paced scenario that is directly involved in strategy, but merely against the idea of artificially inflating it with unrelated mechanical fluff. Perhaps an example would make the difference more obvious... Would you assert that Chess and Go are not strategic, merely because you have the time to make decisions? Would you believe that adding mechanical ability to them would be more strategic? For instance, would it be more strategic to have to dribble a basketball while playing Chess? How about doing it while playing SC? Would it be even more strategic if you could do it with 2 balls? I don't misuse the concepts, I just use strategy in a meta-sense. Microing your troops is tactics. Choosing how much of your gameplan should focus on microing your troops or macroing your base is strategy.
Both Chess and Go are definitely strategic even though they are turn based, but they are both significantly more complex than any RTS. If chess could truly be mastered, then introducing artificial limitations (for example, time limitations per move, or even better, a time limitation per game which players can choose to distribute as they see fit) would be the only way to keep the game interesting.
Introducing artificial constraints may lead to the physical chess being less perfect (for example, compare a tournament game to a correspondence game), but players playing will need to be more strategic with the constraints. I gave this example earlier, but it's like having two generals with perfect resources (all the money, soldiers, weapons they need) fighting against each other, compared with two generals that have only a limited number of resources. The actual battles may be more perfectly strategic when they have full resources, as they can counter each other perfectly, always use the perfect weapons they need, etc. However, the battle which would have the most space for differentiation and where the most strategic choices would need to be made is the one where they cannot do everything perfectly, where they have to have imperfect counters, sacrifice troops, make do with limited cash, etc.
Show nested quote +Firstly, extreme handspeed is not difficult. Have you ever typed an essay for school? I can type at roughly 125 words per minute, which means I should be able to type a fairly standard undergraduate essay of 2000 words in 16 minutes. Yet, even though I feel like I'm constantly typing most of the time, it rarely takes less than 2 hours to do 2000 words. The fact is that, even when you know what you want to say, the fact that you need to put a sentence together while typing it still slows down your typing speed. It's not about the range of difficulty, it's about unnecessary difficulty. I type at roughly 120 words per minute, but I used to have to find each key with my pointer fingers. The GOAL of typing is to produce words, and so typing on a keyboard would represent straight strategy. On the other hand, if I had to use a controller to move a robot that hit keys, and the controller only had a limited axis joystick with 2 buttons, that would be an example of the hoops you are jumping through for the manipulation of the interface in Brood War. Just like imbecile, you never actually indicate what the artificial constraints are that SC's controls force on you. Units do exactly what you tell them to do, and they can do more, within reason, while never taking control out of the player's hands. A better typing comparison than your robot one would be having a keyboard that types exactly what you tell it to (which is what SC is) compared with a word-processor that auto-completes your words for you. I have no problem with some auto-completion, as long as it firstly doesn't start choosing words for you to write, and secondly you can override it manually when you want to.
Secondly, all your arguments seem to boil down to the removal of tactics which even a game as strategic as chess cannot live without. In chess, getting your knight to the outpost on D5 is a fine strategy, but you still need to actually control it. Just being able to think that that would be good is not enough. Similarly in SC, thinking that you want your mutas to go in and snipe scvs is a good plan, but you need to actually do it. And in doing it, just like in chess, the opponent may implement something to stop you, and you need to be there to counteract his movement. In chess your resource is your moves, if you had an infinite number of moves you could implement any strategy perfectly, but you don't, so the challenge is how to best use your limited resources to achieve multiple simultaneous goals. In starcraft, your resource is how quickly you can make decisions, decisions which include the precise movement of your pieces and the overall gameplan, and the fun is seeing how effectively you manage your limited resources to achieve your goals.
To be fair, Chess does degenerate into tactics at the higher levels of play (mainly due to the limited and static layout), but this isn't true of Go. Your comment, regardless it's truth, proves my point exactly. Unless you believe that SC has more strategic depth than a game that has lasted us a four hundred years, then you have to believe that Starcraft requires both tactics and strategy. It is not just about formulating plans, but about the way in which you implement them as well. Would you agree with this?
Also, just to mix my metaphors wonderfully, the auto-completion analogy given earlier, taking it too far in chess would be like having your computer tell you all the potential tactics that the opponent has available to him at the start of each move ("He can move Nf7 for a fork; the exchange in the middle will leave you a pawn down; etc"). While this will free up your thoughts, allowing you to focus on strategy, I'm fairly sure I don't speak for just myself when I say that that would suck, especially at the lower levels.
Anyway, if you want to continue this discussion, maybe just send a PM since I'm fairly sure we're the only two people in the world who still care about this.
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That embedded player is really cool!
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