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On December 18 2010 22:48 AlexDeLarge wrote: I think it has to do with variables. The more variables a game has built in, the higher the variance is. Now i don't play SF, but i assume it is a very straightforward game, thus you can achieve perfection in it with enough practice. Tennis would probably be a good comparison to it as a real life sport. And we see that 80% of the finals in Tennis Grand Slams are between Federer and Nadal.
Whereas Starcraft has sooo many variables and so many determining factors and incomplete information (just like poker, minus the luck factor), that it becomes a lot harder to achieve constant utter dominance.
Just my 2 cents.
Well said. Another good comparison would be chess. Let's say chess was just invented this July and Bobby Fischer and Garry Kasparov from their prime are somehow transported here, would you expect them to dominate this year? I would think a lot of different players would become ranked 1st for the first year as everyone is still learning the game, and either Fischer or Kasparov would be determined as the chess god in the second year. Should be similar in SC2, it will take time for the Fischer and Kasparov of SC2 to be identified.
SC2 may seem to be very similar to BW but it is actually very different. Mechanics are no longer very important, you can no longer hit the keyboard like a pianist and expect to win games against the top players, you actually have to use your head to win. That's why we're seeing BW pros like July and Nada doing decent in SC2 but not as good as many expected. While their mechanics are great, their strategy and decision-making isn't up to par with the top of the top.
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The thing that made BW hard was time management, a combination of mechanics and decision making, not just one of them. In SC2, the balance between mechanics and decision-making is heavily tilted in favor of decision-making. This is not a good thing because no one can have perfect decision-making in a game of limited information, which Starcraft 2 is. You need mechanics to make up for disadvantageous build order choices. Right now, it's not difficult to beat a top-level player if you happen to choose a better build order, or an easy-to-execute all-in build order.
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On December 18 2010 22:35 TheLonelyCarrier wrote: 2,000 other contestants to play in a game that if they win will net them $87,000 dollars. This concept simply does not exist in the SF world. I think you don't know anything about the VS Figthing World. I don't play SF, I'm a Guilty player, but even in your game... Have you seen Vangief VS Ricky Ortiz in the Norcal 8 ????
It's FAR WORST in fighting games.
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I feel like another important thing is that starcraft features both skill and strategy, and these two features are interconnected. For instance, MKprime developed a new strategy of the marine SCV all-in, and he was able to make it work because he showed tremendous skill in his micro while executing it. Someone with lesser micro skill would be forced to use a different strategy.
Skill in starcraft can be rather specialized, such as MK's skill with marine micro. The strategy part of the game is making a decision as to how to apply your own particular skill set to the game. Starcraft isn't actually a strict test of mechanical skill, and isn't intended to be. If a player is able to invent or perfect a new strategy, I feel they should be able to bring down a top player with it, even if their mechanics are worse.
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As IdrA said, all it takes is a dice roll.
Say you played 7 games
Player 1 wins Player 1 wins Player 2 wins Player 2 wins Player 2 wins Player 1 wins Player 1 wins
In this situation
In A Bo3, such as Ro32, Player 1 wins. In Ro16, Player 2 wins. In Bo7, like the Semifinals, Player 1 wins again.
In a game with so many ways to lose from a single mistake, it's very easy to lose 2 games in a row even though normally you would beat them 8 out of 10 times.
People say "well the other player was more skilled during that best of 3....." No. That's bullshit. They were more lucky.
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It is all about knowledge. SC2 isn't a game where you can react to a player, it's a game where you have a plan, and have planned deviations based on what you see your opponent do, but timing is so absolutely critical that you have to often have react to something before your opponent does it. A large part of the game is restricting what your opponent can do, or at least hedging against it.
The easiest example, if the Zerg player has lots of larvae and every tech building, you have literally the travel distance to react, which can be a matter of seconds when dealing with a nydus/air attack.
So if you are able to pull off this relatively simple strategies, you can take a game or even a series off a higher level player just because of abusing game mechanics.
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can't understand this discussion .. the player having the highest winrate is the most skilled. ofc there is a high random variance (same as many sports e.g soccer). A bad player might win sometimes against a better, however if they play - say 100 games, he'll loose 70 of them. if its because of its race beeing OP, then choosing the correct race was part of his skill. A loosing player who excels in macro obviously has choosen the wrong strategy. He might win a drone-up-as-fast-as-possible contest, however that would be another game, not SC2
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I think any complaints right now are way too early. Perhaps we have been spoiled by Brood War, but that game had 10 years to age like a fine wine. Give SC2 that same patience and I'm sure the kinks will eventually be worked out.
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On December 19 2010 03:45 echO [W] wrote: I think any complaints right now are way too early. Perhaps we have been spoiled by Brood War, but that game had 10 years to age like a fine wine. Give SC2 that same patience and I'm sure the kinks will eventually be worked out.
Agreed SC2 is fairly new and still being patched. It needs time to be explored more and balanced before we can be more objective about it.
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+ Show Spoiler +On December 19 2010 03:02 TheLonelyCarrier wrote: Interesting stuff. A game where everyone has complete information and the same exact set of tools and one of its grandmasters loses nearly a third of the time. Well that just blows all kinds of holes in what we have all been saying about complete knowledge vs incomplete knowledge. This may indicate that its theoretically possible that the best that a truly great player of SC2 could hope for may be as low 50 percent. If a grandmaster of a 95% balanced, complete information game can have as low a win rate as 70% then anything could be possible in a game like SC2.
As far as inborn skill, I wonder about that myself. I can watch an SF tournament and see some super high level player do some wacky combo, and then boot the game up and start landing it in practice mode after a few minutes of repetition. My friends will practice playing ranked on-line for weeks straight while I haven't played a single round in over a month. They come over, I pick a character I barely know how to play and crush them for 40 or 50 matches straight before dropping one. I don't know what that is, but some might say it's just inborn talent as you say.
On the other hand, I have been playing SC2 since beta phase 1 and I cannot get out of bronze to save my mother. I am embarrassed at the ammount of time I have spent practicing different builds, working on my mechanics, running unit tests, watching pro level play, studying my own replays and religously tuning in for Day 9, Husky and HD. I still can't put more than 2 wins together back to back in bronze 1v1. Its truly shameful. I have come to the conclusion that there must be some kind of aptitude or skill that I just completely lack, that cannot be learned (ie: is innate).
It seems clear to me that both require some sort of innate attribute or skill set. For my friends to put in all the work they have to improve at SSF4 and still not be able to make any quantifiable progress in gaining on me indicates this. Also indicative is how one of those friends qualified right into platinum with practically no knowledge of what a build order was or what units were effective against what. When we 2v2 together he will be like, "What Terran unit is good against Corruptors dude?" and I will facepalm because he rolls me without question when we 1v1 against eachother. He still doesn't really "get" build orders, he just builds stuff when he "has the money for it" and makes units until the cows come home.
He isn't smarter or faster and he certainly hasn't put more work into it, but something makes him better. I dont know what exactly that is, but whatever it is it must be innate.
Much like Irennicus, who is a complete scrub at Street Fighter BTW, I have been in the Pro SF scene since about 97.
I am posting mainly on your idea of a skill limit.
I have had the luxury to play the large majority of the best of the best SF players in America and from Japan. I would never consider myself in the same league as the elites, even though I have tried to make it there. I have had to come to the realization that while I am very good at SF I lack something that keeps me from being Elite. I would say that I am in that top 10% of players that are very dangerous to the top 1% but that will never reach that highest level.
Over the years I have been able to witness many players from all walks of life step up and play SF and try to become competitive. I would say that only about 30% of them have the natural talent and mental capacity to become anything more than an average player.
Of thoes 20% there are about 10% that can reach the level that they can compete on the Pro level with players like Alex Valle and Justin Wong. Of the last 10% there might be 1% that are able to be as good as the very best of the best.
IMO the core skills needed to be good at SF and SC2 seem to be very similar, granted I have only been playing for a month or so.
1. Reaction Time. In each game you need to have split second reaction time and the ability to make decisive moves. Either when you base is under attack and you need to move your SCVs or when you come under attack and didn't expect it. You need to have the ability to react to that situation, quickly anilize it and make the right decision as to how to handle it.
2. Knowledge of the game. In Street Fighter if you don't have match up knowledge vs everyone in the cast you will get caught off guard by someone who is using an obscure character to their fullest potential. This would be like playing someone new that has developed some odd/unique build order that you had no idea about and weren't prepared for at all.
3. Dexterity. Being able to Micro your army to be the most effective it can be is just as important as a Pro SF having the dexterity to land that clutch combo or to hold off his opponent's onslaught.
4. Adaptability. In each game you have to be able to adapt on the fly. You will be caught off guard by either a new build order or a few of your units going down when you thought you would be fine. In SF you have to be able to adapt instantly when your opponent pulls something new out of his ass that you didn't expect. Maybe some type of glitch like in Street Fighter Alpha 2 when Alex Valle used a situationaly unblockable trick to destroy everyone. Or maybe your opponent switched characters after he lost his first game and you weren't prepared for that at all.
5. Having a plan. If you dont think that you go into each match of high level Sf with out a game plan then you haven't an idea of what it is like to play high level SF. Understanding your opponent is essental to developing a game plan vs them and vs their character. You have to do it in that order. You can't just have a plan that deals with say Sagat you need to first have a plan to deal with how your opponent plays and then what tools Sagat can use vs your character of choice.
Much like SC where you need to scout and know what your opponent is building and what they are planning on doing. In Street Fighter you have to know who you are playing and what they are capable of doing.
Of course there are some areas that are vastly different and the main one is the Economy management and how to balance it and spend it. I think that this has been the hardest part of SC2 for me.
Again I could be wrong about all of this because I am so new to SC2. But this is the basic feeling I get when I play and how my current skill set has helped me learn this game and improve fairly fast.
Oh and TheLonelyCarrier who are you in the SF sceen?
BTW please forgive any spelling errors i have dyslexia and I don't care to comb over this to make sure its ok.
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I just want to point out that If you look a the Code Rankings (http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/GSL_Rankings#Current_Ranking), almost all of the top players have been in all three GSLs.
If that doesn't point out that the best players consistently do well then I don't know what does.
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SC2 perfected will end up being BW with easier mechanics. That would still mean a very variable oriented game. Look at BW and the top two players Flash/Jaedong. Neither of them have over 70% win ratios.Thats just how its going to be and there will never be any player to utterly dominate in SC2. The better skilled players are like the dealers in blackjack while the lesser players are the normal gamblers. The odds are always stacked in favor of the dealer but you just never know what will happen. In the end everything will average out and the better players will have better records. Thats all that matters and parity is what keeps things interesting rather than one player dominating everything.
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brackets decide and will continue to decide almost every single tournament placing(s) until either:
1) Some form of dynamics/gameplay are adjusted, (example: slight buff to static defenses) 2) Better maps.
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I don't think so, mainly because of the lack of mechanical demand that was such a huge skill differential in SC:BW.
With SC2 we'll have top players, we'll never ever have one dominant player for a long period of time like oov, savior and flash was in broodwar.
I will really miss this to be honest
Its hard to be a fan of someone when you know they can just die to some random all-in cheese in the first rounds since high ground advantage is also less important in SC2 which makes defending alot harder.
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On December 19 2010 03:48 Paperscraps wrote:Show nested quote +On December 19 2010 03:45 echO [W] wrote: I think any complaints right now are way too early. Perhaps we have been spoiled by Brood War, but that game had 10 years to age like a fine wine. Give SC2 that same patience and I'm sure the kinks will eventually be worked out.
Agreed SC2 is fairly new and still being patched. It needs time to be explored more and balanced before we can be more objective about it.
agree with this 2 above. The game is out for only 5 months without including the beta. I would actually be surprised if i see a continuous winner for GSL before legacy of the void(3rd sc2 expansion) is out and patched.
Do note: even after the game has underwent a major game patch and not anymore, champions did not hold their title forever. One example would be savior. There was a time period where there was a scbw event where he continuously thrashed every team's ace. Everyont thought him unstoppable. Then all of a sudden bisu came along and destroyed him.
The game itself is still in its infant stages. If changes are applied even before every strategy is used and perfected, how, then could anyone continuously hold an advantage over another? Supposedly a new patch came along, and there were many changes. It would take at least months before any sort of advantage can be found when using a certain unit composition/ build order. If the patch hits before such things are discovered, then of course nobody would know how to apply the counter and know its weakness. Any mid tier diamond could probably take games off pros like idra and huk when they found out a new strategy, to which the pros would not know the proper response since they themselves have never came across it.
Until the game reaches a stable level, i presume everything will stay unpredictable
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What constitutes dominance? If we can say SC2 is analogous to BW: Flash has been uncontestably the best player over the last year, right? Three straight OSL finals, three straight MSL finals - but only 4 titles between those six appearances, and we begin to see the problem. When EffOrt beat Flash with zerglings (basically), somebody made a ragepost alleging basically what you say here: "The best player didn't win, rawwr, cheese."
Flash the untouchable over the last year: 133-42 (76%). Flash the untouchable lost basically every fourth game. Jaedong, (almost) unquestioned #2: 116-48 (70.73%). Jaedong lost almost 3 of every ten. Fantasy, current #3 ELO: 86-44 (66.15%). If Flash didn't exist, he'd be the best Terran in the world, and he loses a third of his games.
For fun, here's the rest of the current ELO Top Ten's records over the last year: Stork: 56-36 (60.87%) Bisu: 65-38 (63.11%) Shine: 54-40 (57.45%) Light: 85-55 (60.71%) Kal: 79-62 (56.03%) RorO: 54-36 (60%) Hydra: 55-39 (58.51%) Plus Sea, because he's on the PR: 61-41 (59.80%) And for the hell of it, EffOrt's last year of play before retirement: 76-56 (57.58%)
I realize this looks like it's just stats-barf, but what I'm trying to get at is this: in the only scene we have to compare SC2 with, if you win 2/3 of your games you're an amazingly dominant player. Heck, if you pull over 55% wins, you're really really good. Factor in uncertainties of a new game, and the fact that the top RTS players in Korea mostly stuck with BW, and it's not at all surprising that you've got a bunch of different winners. First four OSL Finals? Eight different players, four different winners. (The MSL seems to to do a better job historically of reflecting the "dominance" of given players - but the OSL has historically been considered the harder tournament. The GSL, with straight brackets, is probably the hardest format of the three, so we should possibly expect even more variance than the OSL.)
EDIT: I realize I didn't really touch on the actual "skill" question. But this also is part of SC2 being a new game: as long as SC2 is played on small maps, and is fairly new, rushes are going to be "overpowered" - the rush timings are far more flexible because the defensive timings aren't as understood or precisely practiced. For a corollary, a triple bunker rush would *never* win a BW Starleague these days - it's something that's been done, defended against - people know how to defend it even if it's unexpected. So - new game, the "best players" won't have their full advantage yet because they haven't had time to get ahead of everybody else.
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Yes it rewards the best players. Its simple, the game is pretty balanced and its new, mechanics are not that big of a deal on pro-level, players with lower mechanical abilities (compared to BW-standart) are able to compete (thats a real improvement for the community and the game), it comes to tactical games, mindgames and maps ( you can argue alot about the current maps) and experience.
So, in a BoX series, or in other words, in alot of games, the better/skilled/experienced/better-conditioned player always will have the upper hand. The good thing here is that more people can learn to control the game correctly, and then its like other competive sports/games (like tekken for example).
You can ignore arrogant-posts/whines/complains about allin-1base-play, if it works the opponent played wrong against it. The game is new and standard-play isnt really etablished, more tournaments will show which direction it will go. You loose to allin-play and think the other player isnt as skilled as you? Well, he won, so better try to defend it and win , or STFU. ^^
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Why does everyone hate on marineking prime? He doesn't all in mostly, he just uses marines alot throughout the whole game. Does zerg stop using slings/roaches?
In fact 2 base - 3 base play is soemthing he often does, when the zergs survive that long. Hes showcasing a different style of build. I get ppl like Bitbybit who all-ins every game but why marineking? He plays pretty macro style
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I don't think it is rewarding the most skilled players. It is rewarding the people that mass ladder games and cheese.
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No offense to Street Fighter fans but it's a much less complex game w/ perfect information (as another poster said). There's no fog of war and you know at all times 100% of the capabilities of your opponent. If he's building up his super, it's right on the screen for you to see. The top players already "solved" the game.
BW took 10 years and I still doubt it's completely solved (or ever will be). Poker is an apt comparison. The top poker players get knocked out by random amateurs all the time. What makes them top players is the fact that they CONSISTENTLY get to the final tables at various tournaments or beat up other top pros at high stakes cash games. Starcraft is the same way. You deal with the variance and just try to be consistent.
I don't know if BitByBitPrime is a flash in the pan but I don't know how anyone can say MKPrime doesn't deserve what he's earned. He's twice had a finals finish (including all-stars) and made top 8 yet again (losing to probably this season's champion). Some people don't like his playstyle? Tough shit. If he's consistently getting results with it, who are you to say he's playing the game the wrong way? It's a new game. People's perception of what is or what is not optimal play is still being influenced by BW. Until Blizzard decides to change the rules/parameters (yet again), it's your job as a player to figure out winning strategies and be consistent with them.
A lot of the games end up as mind-games, like in poker. Everytime IdrA rages, it's like seeing Phil Helmuth blow up at a player because they called his pre-flop raise with a Q-10 offsuit (and it's not really that bad). Sure, random player X probably won't get much +EV out of it but someone like Phil Ivey can probably play it optimally enough where he can dominate Helmuth regardless. That's probably the difference between BitbyBit and MK (unless BitbyBit proves me wrong).
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