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(As a former high level StarCraft / SC2 player / caster). It's not chess. That's why. There is a real physical aspect to the game. Training your fingers to hi

(As a former high level StarCraft / SC2 player / caster). It's not chess. That's why. There is a real physical aspect to the game. Training your fingers to hit certain combinations quickly to execute build orders, and mix in micro is key. Pro players use hot packs to warm up their hands, or glasses to aid their eyes. The game developer takes a lot of care to ensure the UI / hotkeys / peripheral setups are optimized for pro players. Using external tools to defeat this setup simply isn't fair and diminishes skill built into the hands and muscle memory of players. Even at a mid-level of skill, people learn simple combos. For example, a Protoss player hitting "4+e" because that's where they have hotkeyed all their Nexuses and e is the hotkey to build probes.

maerF0x0 8y ago
Many responses are saying the same thing, so I'm going to respond to you ... > It's not chess. I agree it's not chess, and chess often has a time component to it. The realtime nature of a game doesnt mean you should have to be able to "move" in realtime, IMO it would be superior if it tracked more closely to your ability to react, intellectually, in realtime. That is, real time thought more than realtime motion. Ergonomic aids would help people to convert their thoughts into real game plays without limiting them to their body's capabilities. But I also admit this is my opinion and it's clearly an arbitrarily decided dividing line between how much should a game be about myelinating certain move patterns (spread out troops, cast a spell, select production groups) and how much a game should be about quality of thought in realtime (I see he made units X, How am i going to respond? I have many minerals, should I spend them on tech or units?) ...
- bllguo 8y ago
  I don't understand why you're so intent on doubling down here. There are other strategy games out there that focus on strategy more than micro mechanics. Why not play those instead? I don't think "I want to play Starcraft but without micro" is a compelling argument for changing Starcraft. I actually think it's pretty selfish to make these demands. It's a reasonable premise for finding or even creating a new game.
  - maerF0x0 8y ago
    SC2 was simply an example. Clearly this is about the set of many RTS games more than just one game. And to be upfront, yes, "I want to play Starcraft but without micro" is a decent representation of my gaming desires. I may just go ahead and make such a game sometime and, I suppose, we'll see if anyone likes such a game dynamic. It would definitely introduce a very meta game where creating and tuning your "loadout" could matter greatly.
    - invalidOrTaken 8y ago
      You might enjoy Grey Goo, btw.
    - erulabs 8y ago
      Tooth and Tail is pretty close to what you're looking for, perhaps.
- vkou 8y ago
  With enough mechanical aides, the game balance breaks. For example, SC2 has a very cheap unit called the roach. When burrowed, it can't attack, but regenerates health incredibly quickly. It's trivial to write a cheat that will, whenever one of your roaches starts taking damage, causes it to burrow, and whenever it stops taking damage, unburrow. The unit is balanced around human control - no human can, with perfect accuracy, choreograph burrows and unburrows of individual roaches in a pack of ~60. With such a cheat, roaches punch way above their weight, completely breaking the rock-paper-scissors balance of the game.
  - maerF0x0 8y ago
    I do not deny that the game mechanics would vastly change. The strategy would shift away from "How can I micro these roaches" vs "How can i effectively attack burrowing/unburrowing roaches" to "How can i ensure I get roaches" vs "How can I frustrate/prevent my opponent from getting them in the first place"... As an aside, ANY change to a game is going to disrupt the equilibrium in some manner and I assume would require human intervention to re-establish a "fun" gameplay.
    - vkou 8y ago
      > How can i ensure I get roaches Which is trivial for any skilled player, because they are an incredibly cheap, low-tech unit, and passive base defenses are currently very good at fending off very early aggression. > As an aside, ANY change to a game is going to disrupt the equilibrium in some manner Yes, and sometimes, the equilibrium settles on an incredibly shallow, uninteresting game-space. StarCraft is a game of a number of rock-paper-scissors cycles, all operating at the same time. Greedy expansion - versus rushing versus safe plays. Economy versus army versus tech. Roaches versus marauders versus zerglings. Sometimes, due to patch changes, poor balancing, or because player skill improved, the game ends up stuck in a quagmire, where the risk/reward ratio for many of these options is completely out of whack. The game stagnates, and becomes incredibly unfun to play, and to watch. Throwing a wrench into balance, by allowing auto-scripts, which have an incredibly uneven effect on the different units, mechanics, and races in the game is far more likely to push it into an unfun equilibrium, then a fun one.
- echohack5 8y ago
  > Ergonomic aids would help people to convert their thoughts into real game plays without limiting them to their body's capabilities. StarCraft is physical - that's critical to the entire genre (RTS/MOBA/etc). Without it, it's not StarCraft. Improving your dexterity is a real part of improving your skill in a game like StarCraft. So using a program to do this for you instead is cheating. It sounds like you want to play something like Stellaris, Sins of a Solar Empire, or any other 4X-style genre game.
invalidOrTaken 8y ago
Meh. At the end of the day, "skill" is a meaningless term except in the context of a specific game. If Starcraft 3 came out tomorrow with no macro mechanics, no activated abilities, a pay-as-you-go economy rather than a pay-up-front one, then APM would be much less valuable and "skill" would mean something completely different. Overwatch has this issue right now where players are complaining about Mercy, a character who is fairly simple to pick up and can provide a lot of value. What they ignore is that she was intended to be that way, and that the "skill" Mercy introduces is not lightning-fast reflexes or similar, but the strategic response to her presence. I'm not campaigning for SC2 to be changed. But players' definition of "skill" generally shouldn't be trusted. Skill is what wins.

maerF0x0 8y ago

Many responses are saying the same thing, so I'm going to respond to you ... > It's not chess. I agree it's not chess, and chess often has a time component to it. The realtime nature of a game doesnt mean you should have to be able to "move" in realtime, IMO it would be superior if it tracked more closely to your ability to react, intellectually, in realtime. That is, real time thought more than realtime motion. Ergonomic aids would help people to convert their thoughts into real game plays without limiting them to their body's capabilities. But I also admit this is my opinion and it's clearly an arbitrarily decided dividing line between how much should a game be about myelinating certain move patterns (spread out troops, cast a spell, select production groups) and how much a game should be about quality of thought in realtime (I see he made units X, How am i going to respond? I have many minerals, should I spend them on tech or units?) ...

bllguo 8y ago
I don't understand why you're so intent on doubling down here. There are other strategy games out there that focus on strategy more than micro mechanics. Why not play those instead? I don't think "I want to play Starcraft but without micro" is a compelling argument for changing Starcraft. I actually think it's pretty selfish to make these demands. It's a reasonable premise for finding or even creating a new game.
- maerF0x0 8y ago
  SC2 was simply an example. Clearly this is about the set of many RTS games more than just one game. And to be upfront, yes, "I want to play Starcraft but without micro" is a decent representation of my gaming desires. I may just go ahead and make such a game sometime and, I suppose, we'll see if anyone likes such a game dynamic. It would definitely introduce a very meta game where creating and tuning your "loadout" could matter greatly.
  - invalidOrTaken 8y ago
    You might enjoy Grey Goo, btw.
  - erulabs 8y ago
    Tooth and Tail is pretty close to what you're looking for, perhaps.
vkou 8y ago
With enough mechanical aides, the game balance breaks. For example, SC2 has a very cheap unit called the roach. When burrowed, it can't attack, but regenerates health incredibly quickly. It's trivial to write a cheat that will, whenever one of your roaches starts taking damage, causes it to burrow, and whenever it stops taking damage, unburrow. The unit is balanced around human control - no human can, with perfect accuracy, choreograph burrows and unburrows of individual roaches in a pack of ~60. With such a cheat, roaches punch way above their weight, completely breaking the rock-paper-scissors balance of the game.
- maerF0x0 8y ago
  I do not deny that the game mechanics would vastly change. The strategy would shift away from "How can I micro these roaches" vs "How can i effectively attack burrowing/unburrowing roaches" to "How can i ensure I get roaches" vs "How can I frustrate/prevent my opponent from getting them in the first place"... As an aside, ANY change to a game is going to disrupt the equilibrium in some manner and I assume would require human intervention to re-establish a "fun" gameplay.
  - vkou 8y ago
    > How can i ensure I get roaches Which is trivial for any skilled player, because they are an incredibly cheap, low-tech unit, and passive base defenses are currently very good at fending off very early aggression. > As an aside, ANY change to a game is going to disrupt the equilibrium in some manner Yes, and sometimes, the equilibrium settles on an incredibly shallow, uninteresting game-space. StarCraft is a game of a number of rock-paper-scissors cycles, all operating at the same time. Greedy expansion - versus rushing versus safe plays. Economy versus army versus tech. Roaches versus marauders versus zerglings. Sometimes, due to patch changes, poor balancing, or because player skill improved, the game ends up stuck in a quagmire, where the risk/reward ratio for many of these options is completely out of whack. The game stagnates, and becomes incredibly unfun to play, and to watch. Throwing a wrench into balance, by allowing auto-scripts, which have an incredibly uneven effect on the different units, mechanics, and races in the game is far more likely to push it into an unfun equilibrium, then a fun one.
echohack5 8y ago
> Ergonomic aids would help people to convert their thoughts into real game plays without limiting them to their body's capabilities. StarCraft is physical - that's critical to the entire genre (RTS/MOBA/etc). Without it, it's not StarCraft. Improving your dexterity is a real part of improving your skill in a game like StarCraft. So using a program to do this for you instead is cheating. It sounds like you want to play something like Stellaris, Sins of a Solar Empire, or any other 4X-style genre game.

invalidOrTaken 8y ago

Meh. At the end of the day, "skill" is a meaningless term except in the context of a specific game. If Starcraft 3 came out tomorrow with no macro mechanics, no activated abilities, a pay-as-you-go economy rather than a pay-up-front one, then APM would be much less valuable and "skill" would mean something completely different. Overwatch has this issue right now where players are complaining about Mercy, a character who is fairly simple to pick up and can provide a lot of value. What they ignore is that she was intended to be that way, and that the "skill" Mercy introduces is not lightning-fast reflexes or similar, but the strategic response to her presence. I'm not campaigning for SC2 to be changed. But players' definition of "skill" generally shouldn't be trusted. Skill is what wins.