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The author talks of APM requirement as benign challenge; the RTS decline is caused by RSI, because once the player gets to high-level play - speed of execution

The author talks of APM requirement as benign challenge; the RTS decline is caused by RSI, because once the player gets to high-level play - speed of execution becomes dominant and players injure their muscles to win. Turn-based games are thriving because the cost-of-interaction is much less and APM is irrelevamt

6510 6y ago
I really hate the intentional crap UI to make actions more challenging. (sc2) Soldiers and creatures running into their death because they didn't get an attack command. Creating control groups and adding units manually. Producing units manually in as weird as possible ways. Those things just draw attention away from engagements of which you will simply have fewer at a time and they are won by catching the opponent while off guard, not by your distraction but by build in ones. :/
- Dylan16807 6y ago
  > Soldiers and creatures running into their death because they didn't get an attack command. I wouldn't say that's there to make the controls more challenging. You should default to doing an attack move instead of a non-attack move. > Creating control groups and adding units manually. While I would like to be able to make factories assign units to groups, that's still manual creation. What do you have in mind for automatic groups? There's always F2. > Producing units manually in as weird as possible ways. This one is definitely there to get in the way.
  - Iolaum 6y ago
    F2 is an anti-pattern. It can be OK if you play casually in bronze/silver. But if you want to play more competitively you need to be able to have units split in different locations on the map executing different orders.
    - Dylan16807 6y ago
      Well yes, but clever unit grouping is the opposite of automatic.
  - 6510 6y ago
    Right, making the controls more challenging is taking away attention from economic planning, scouting, harassment and fights. As some famous broodwar player (whoes name I forgot - hah) said: Attention is the only resource. If you by design suck more than half the attention out of the players preemptively there is very little wiggle room for the actual game. In the late[r] game most players need all their attention to manage the economy (at the expense of everything else). The game becomes so fragile without that wiggle room that you cant recover from one unfortunate situation. Its a classic really, the interface makes you feel dumb. I'm suppose to be in command. My new trainee marine comes out of the barrack, he is not at all afraid of the hoard of terrifying zerg monsters, he just walks into them not even bothering to return fire. The SCV leaves the mineral line, builds a building, he is truly sophisticated at it! Then when done he just sits there. >While I would like to be able to make factories assign units to groups You can already put the factory in the control group, its just really annoying and doesn't do anything useful besides save a control group key.
- yvdriess 6y ago
  There is a saying from game designers (e.g. Zachtronics) that the UI always has to have some element of frustration to it. The most elegant easy to use interface to a game is a 'push this button to win' button. This might be one of the reasons why you still have the physical interfaces design surviving in video games, while we don't see that in desktop UIs anymore (outside some niche software). That being said, SC2 goes out of its way to make it frustrating. They intentionally design such frustrating UI elements into the game to act as skill differentiators. For instance, a Zerg player needs to click every N-seconds on each of his queens to spawn eggs or risk getting behind. That makes SC2 overall one of the most /execution-/oriented esports, where the perfect execution of a good strategy is the largest differentiator in skill. In contrast, dota2 is a very strategy/game-sense oriented game, where the top players are not necessarily mechanically the best.
  - Too 6y ago
    Doesn't dota2 have last-hitting like dota1?
    - yvdriess 6y ago
      Yes, last-hitting is indeed one of the more important mechanics where execution is important in DotA2. However, there are a ton of tools to stack that deck in your favor such that a weak last-hitter can still do better than a strong last-hitting opponent. Today, players try to set up the situation in their favor: lane support bullies the opponent so he cannot contest the last hit, you get certain items to have a larger last-hit window, you use abilities to secure the more valuable ranged creep, etc. There is so much that it becomes more like a chess game than a 'who can click in the correct time window' game.

6510 6y ago

I really hate the intentional crap UI to make actions more challenging. (sc2) Soldiers and creatures running into their death because they didn't get an attack command. Creating control groups and adding units manually. Producing units manually in as weird as possible ways. Those things just draw attention away from engagements of which you will simply have fewer at a time and they are won by catching the opponent while off guard, not by your distraction but by build in ones. :/

Dylan16807 6y ago
> Soldiers and creatures running into their death because they didn't get an attack command. I wouldn't say that's there to make the controls more challenging. You should default to doing an attack move instead of a non-attack move. > Creating control groups and adding units manually. While I would like to be able to make factories assign units to groups, that's still manual creation. What do you have in mind for automatic groups? There's always F2. > Producing units manually in as weird as possible ways. This one is definitely there to get in the way.
- Iolaum 6y ago
  F2 is an anti-pattern. It can be OK if you play casually in bronze/silver. But if you want to play more competitively you need to be able to have units split in different locations on the map executing different orders.
  - Dylan16807 6y ago
    Well yes, but clever unit grouping is the opposite of automatic.
- 6510 6y ago
  Right, making the controls more challenging is taking away attention from economic planning, scouting, harassment and fights. As some famous broodwar player (whoes name I forgot - hah) said: Attention is the only resource. If you by design suck more than half the attention out of the players preemptively there is very little wiggle room for the actual game. In the late[r] game most players need all their attention to manage the economy (at the expense of everything else). The game becomes so fragile without that wiggle room that you cant recover from one unfortunate situation. Its a classic really, the interface makes you feel dumb. I'm suppose to be in command. My new trainee marine comes out of the barrack, he is not at all afraid of the hoard of terrifying zerg monsters, he just walks into them not even bothering to return fire. The SCV leaves the mineral line, builds a building, he is truly sophisticated at it! Then when done he just sits there. >While I would like to be able to make factories assign units to groups You can already put the factory in the control group, its just really annoying and doesn't do anything useful besides save a control group key.
yvdriess 6y ago
There is a saying from game designers (e.g. Zachtronics) that the UI always has to have some element of frustration to it. The most elegant easy to use interface to a game is a 'push this button to win' button. This might be one of the reasons why you still have the physical interfaces design surviving in video games, while we don't see that in desktop UIs anymore (outside some niche software). That being said, SC2 goes out of its way to make it frustrating. They intentionally design such frustrating UI elements into the game to act as skill differentiators. For instance, a Zerg player needs to click every N-seconds on each of his queens to spawn eggs or risk getting behind. That makes SC2 overall one of the most /execution-/oriented esports, where the perfect execution of a good strategy is the largest differentiator in skill. In contrast, dota2 is a very strategy/game-sense oriented game, where the top players are not necessarily mechanically the best.
- Too 6y ago
  Doesn't dota2 have last-hitting like dota1?
  - yvdriess 6y ago
    Yes, last-hitting is indeed one of the more important mechanics where execution is important in DotA2. However, there are a ton of tools to stack that deck in your favor such that a weak last-hitter can still do better than a strong last-hitting opponent. Today, players try to set up the situation in their favor: lane support bullies the opponent so he cannot contest the last hit, you get certain items to have a larger last-hit window, you use abilities to secure the more valuable ranged creep, etc. There is so much that it becomes more like a chess game than a 'who can click in the correct time window' game.