Is Starcraft II one of the most demanding "modern" skill based game?

[Dumac]

A faster reaction time is not a skill. That is a trait. A lot of what you listed is a trait and not a skill. A skill is something you can learn. A trait is something that is inherent. What separates olympic athletes from you is that they not only train very aggressively but also have inherent traits that make them better. Same can be said about some pros.

But Starcraft isn't just a 'faster reaction time'. It is APPLYING your fast reaction time (as well as a whole other set of mental traits) to achieve something, and that application is a skill. Faster reaction time != being skilled at Starcraft.

 

[magomago]

yeah except adroit, deft, and dexterity are all synonyms.

Please define "the most demanding modern skill based game".

SC seems very similar to age of empires to me. Eco boom, scout, build, expand at fastest possible rate all while trying to pay attention to what the enemy is doing. Yes it requires skills. So does Wii dance revolution and a game of online chess.

Apples and Oranges? Both are fruity. Maybe Farmville is the best? I so prefer to virtually grow things than in real life. Wait what was the question again?

Synonyms don't necessarily mean the word is the exact same... ;-)

Carpentry requires a lot of skill, but that doesn't mean its done quickly.

AOE is my favorite game, but I think it requires less than skill than SC2. SC2 is far more punishing; in AOE2 I could simply turtle in and hide if i'm attacked and that helps to mitigate a LOT of early game rushing. The game also, while I enjoy it more, does have less tactical dimensions because you can't climb walls, fly through defenses, cloak an army, or transport immediately across the map. Combat is limited to the lay of the land, period.

Some games require quite a bit of skill, but that skill may be tactical; turned based games are like this, and in no way do turn based games require you to be quick with your keyboard. I just dont' play enough games to recall them specifically ha.

But again, I don't think SC2 requires a lack of skill at all; I think it needs a lot, but its definitely in a unique category because I can't think of another game where its players aren't impressed by 100 APM. We just don't have that many games, if at all, that require the level of depth that SC2 demands; maybe arcade style games that require quick reactions can be considered, but SC2 blows them away in depth.

 

[Rinaun]

The last sentence I said should have stopped you from writing all that but it didn't. Read it again.

I read your line I just don't agree with it in the context we are talking about.

I think it's a stretch to say that professional gamers could have some sort of genetic or physical traits that make them better just like Olympic athletes. Yes traits do account for a tiny amount of overall performance in tasks; Michael Phelps is a great example of what you are referring to in terms of traits enhancing overall performance (I believe he is like a sliver from clinically having marfan syndrome which affects his arm/body design for the better). This is the same way having cerebral palsy makes you react slower. Whether you want to call those "traits" or disabilities is a 150% argue of semantics I'm not even going to get into. I think any perks in a person's positive traits (IE given from ailments, body structure, etc) become a bit more noticeable in physical scenarios versus things like "can you hit this button the fastest". That isn't even remotely the same as "can you throw this shot-put 100 yards". I'm sure there are a few events in the olmypics with the same amount of skillcap as some chess/chess-like PC games but I just don't see something like traits applying in any significant amount to Starcraft two or any PC game. In 6 years I've yet to meet some jesus player that ranks #1 in all FPS's. Most paid pro players have one set game they become pro at, because it takes a large amount of investment and not having some special benefit from genetic disposition.

P.S. if what you were saying was true then how could you explain players like kim dotcom and other random people who happen to be globally ranked #1 in certain games? I really do think it's down to having the time and resources to become the best; not any sort of traits. He has no "traits" that make him any different at the game than you and I. Spending your whole day not worrying about money, in a decked out Xbox room playing multiplayer with the best players all day will make you skilled quickly. Bottom line is SC2 reaction time is so abysmally affected by your genetic "traits" that having your computer 20 feet closer to your router/removing 10ms would make a bigger difference than any traits given to a player.

P.P.S Another good example for how little I think any form of traits affect performance is arnold schwarzenegger as a kid before bodybuilding.
http://snakkle.wpengine.netdna-cdn....ld-schwarzenegger-yearbook-young-photo-GC.jpg
That's a picture of arnold before he started bodybuilding. He pretty much had ZERO traits that made him fit for bodybuilding; almost positive even he himself said this. He just started young after this pic and trained hard for tons of years afterwards to get where he is. Same thing with a lot of third world olympic atheletes: they started at ages of 12 and under perfecting their respective sports.

 

[Dumac]

I think a lot of people who are bad at SC2 like to call it a 'twitch game' and imply that it requires only spam clicking to win, but that really isn't the case. You can get pretty far on macro and strategy. Sure, to reach grandmaster you need some micro, but realistically its not a necessity until you reach diamond.

 

[sweenish]

I hope you guys realize that reaction time can be trained to an extent. Uber-fast reactions are typically something you have to born with, but you can still improve your reaction time with training.

 

[Rinaun]

I hope you guys realize that reaction time can be trained to an extent. Uber-fast reactions are typically something you have to born with, but you can still improve your reaction time with training.

http://www.humanbenchmark.com/tests/reactiontime/stats.php

At about 120 ms, it becomes apparent that most of these clicks are the result of clicking too soon, and just getting lucky. Otherwise, you might see a smoother ramp from 0 to 130, but it seems to just be noise.
The cutoff for leaderboard scores used to be 130, but some of the fastest 99.9 percentile of players on the site complained, pointing out how often they got legitimate scores in that range. Now it's 100 ms.

So while I agree, I'm still saying it's like a 97% skill 3% traits. Nothing at all worth writing home about. Eat your wheaties, practice micro and quit your day job. BAM! Now you have a better chance to become a pro than 99% of the people playing SC2.

 

[sweenish]

http://www.humanbenchmark.com/tests/reactiontime/stats.php

At about 120 ms, it becomes apparent that most of these clicks are the result of clicking too soon, and just getting lucky. Otherwise, you might see a smoother ramp from 0 to 130, but it seems to just be noise.
The cutoff for leaderboard scores used to be 130, but some of the fastest 99.9 percentile of players on the site complained, pointing out how often they got legitimate scores in that range. Now it's 100 ms.

So while I agree, I'm still saying it's like a 97% skill 3% traits. Nothing at all worth writing home about. Eat your wheaties, practice micro and quit your day job. BAM! Now you have a better chance to become a pro than 99% of the people playing SC2.

Not disagreeing with that skill trumps traits by a large margin, just pointing out that reaction time doesn't fall solely in the realm of "born with it."

Perfect DNA from on high means jack if you don't know how to play.

 

[magomago]

http://www.humanbenchmark.com/tests/reactiontime/stats.php

At about 120 ms, it becomes apparent that most of these clicks are the result of clicking too soon, and just getting lucky. Otherwise, you might see a smoother ramp from 0 to 130, but it seems to just be noise.
The cutoff for leaderboard scores used to be 130, but some of the fastest 99.9 percentile of players on the site complained, pointing out how often they got legitimate scores in that range. Now it's 100 ms.

So while I agree, I'm still saying it's like a 97% skill 3% traits. Nothing at all worth writing home about. Eat your wheaties, practice micro and quit your day job. BAM! Now you have a better chance to become a pro than 99% of the people playing SC2.

Not disagreeing with that skill trumps traits by a large margin, just pointing out that reaction time doesn't fall solely in the realm of "born with it."

Perfect DNA from on high means jack if you don't know how to play.

I agree that the bulk of skill is trained, but I don't think these results can be extended to SC2.

This test is largely about a feedback control loop: how fast can a person respond to the test. SC2 is nowhere near about responding - the best example off the top of my head would be a person noticing and responding to a Drop Ship in their base.
SC2 is all about prediction and knowing your next move; that is a feed forward loop. When the person in his mind has 'These are my next 5 actions' , they can executed much faster than if their brain was serially fed each action one at a time without knowledge of the next action.

To be fair, even that test isn't purely about response time: the more you play, the faster you can get as you 'prepare yourself' to better respond to the transition.
That is almost CERTAINLY the result with people who have ~100ms response times because the ACTION POTENTIAL (the electrical signal from your hand to your brain) alone takes ~40ms to travel in one direction. That doesn't include the time that your brain takes to process what it sees, send ANOTHER action potential back, and then contract your muscle. But if a person can time it will with a little bit of luck, they can initiate that action before the message actually appears to result in a faster time.

Edit:

This entire topic is definitely a tagent to the topic, but I'm not convinced that clicking a mouse 100ms faster than another person, over the course of a 20-30 minute game, is going to represent anything meaningful.

A lot of clicks in battle that doesn't effectively move your marines out of the path of high templars means nothing. You need to respond to it for sure, but a 50ms advantage isn't going to mean much especially given the lag with internet play.

Being able to mentally process parallel events, respond to them, and initiate your own actions is what matters the most...and that can also be trained.

 

[Udgnim]

in terms of pro level, there is a necessary APM threshold to compete against the best but the best isn't determined by who clicks the fastest

it's who is better prepared, has better decision making, has better map awareness, better micro/macro, etc

the threshold is probably around 250-300 APM. there are pros that can play at 400+ APM but are no where close in skill level to the best players.

 

[coffeejunkee]

UI and AI tweaks would make the game easier for normal people, but the game designers have made it so that micro-managing, massive actions per second/clickfest, etc. are rewarded in an artificial attempt to raise the "skill ceiling." Even if you have a strategic and tactical mind, the sheer amount of clicking involved is a huge barrier for most people. They also artificially constrained the FOV unlike other games where you can zoom out, sometimes all the way out to planetary levels, which makes it even more infuriating to control. It's still fun to watch, though.

Supreme Commander (and expansion Forged Alliance) is an example of an rts where the ui tries to stay as much out of the way of the player by using many automated actions. This results in it not so much being a clickfest as Starcraft but none the less clicking faster still gives a player a considerable advantage.

It also lets you zoom out so you can see the entire map. But this also has the result of the minimap becoming less important and time being spent on zooming in and out. And time is a very important resource in an rts.

Between the two I'd say Starcraft focuses more on small scale tactics and Supcom more on resource management. But what makes them both real hard games is the metagame, having a plan and executing the steps necessary in the most efficient manner.

Personally I think rts is harder than fps, certainly more exhausting anyway, but fps also requires more than just fast reflexes. Map awareness probably being the most important.

 

[Turbonium]

I'd personally pick games like LoL and DotA as the hardest, at least for me. They are the ones that have WAY to many intricacies and character options and all of that for me to grasp well. The mechanics are rather clunky, in my opinion, but some like them. They're the genre of game I struggle to pick up on, though.

I've been playing Dota for years, but even early on, I didn't consider it difficult compared to RTS.

I honestly think I'm not that well suited to RTS. It took me years of hard work to get good at WC3 (where I could beat level ~35 players in 1v1 about 50% of the time). It took way, way less time to become comparitively much better at Dota.

I mean, you know you're not well-suited to RTS anymore when a 16 year old Chinese friend of mine (who isn't even that good) always beats, and sometimes doubles my score, in SC2. I was playing the original SC when this kid wasn't even born ffs, essentially. That's pretty sad, and the reason why I haven't really pursued playing SC2 (yet).

Note: I was actually decent at SC1, but again, that took years, and I'd only be good at LANs, where for some reason the fact that people that knew me were watching made me take my play to a higher level. On Bnet though, I was very "meh".

 

[alcoholbob]

LoL and DotA are the some of the easiest games out there and have the lowest skill gap between pro players and completely new players. That's why they are slowly pushing out more difficult games like Starcraft, and why DotA was probably more popular than Warcraft 3 ladder back in the day. Anyone can pick up on it and compete.

This is for sure. Back when I used to play Warcraft 3 ladder religiously, I went to play Tower Defense and Dota to RELAX from the ladder gaming sessions, even though I was playing Dota at a semi-competitive level. Dota and Lol basically just borrow the battle engines from games like Warcraft 3 except all you do is battle with 1 unit with 3 spells against a few other units in a controlled battle...instead of battling with dozens of units all with their own unique abilities in a pitched battle.

Even noobs in LoL or Dota can get a lucky kill against a pro player...a noob cannot win a single encounter against a good Starcraft or Warcraft player in 1,000,000 battles.

 

[Turbonium]

I just played SC2 for the first time in months, and man was it ever boring. I mean, it's ok as a game, but I just find it isn't fun like other games.

I know this doesn't contribute much to the discussion, but I just thought I'd say it.

 

[Zak_]

This is for sure. Back when I used to play Warcraft 3 ladder religiously, I went to play Tower Defense and Dota to RELAX from the ladder gaming sessions, even though I was playing Dota at a semi-competitive level. Dota and Lol basically just borrow the battle engines from games like Warcraft 3 except all you do is battle with 1 unit with 3 spells against a few other units in a controlled battle...instead of battling with dozens of units all with their own unique abilities in a pitched battle.

Even noobs in LoL or Dota can get a lucky kill against a pro player...a noob cannot win a single encounter against a good Starcraft or Warcraft player in 1,000,000 battles.

Agreed, I do the same thing. With Dota and Lol, team mechanics play a larger role than individual skill. A pro player with an noob team would have a hard time against even an average organized team.

 

[Rezist]

in terms of pro level, there is a necessary APM threshold to compete against the best but the best isn't determined by who clicks the fastest

it's who is better prepared, has better decision making, has better map awareness, better micro/macro, etc

the threshold is probably around 250-300 APM. there are pros that can play at 400+ APM but are no where close in skill level to the best players.

Those levels are of the "old" way of recording APM, now most even Korean pro's idle around 200ish and will get up to 250~ish during battles (some still break 300). But with the average player playing below 100 I'd say the minimum to be competitive is 150.