UC Berkeley Starcraft Class, Week 1
Thursday, January 29, 2009 at 9:45PM 
A screenshot of how StarCraft looked early in development.Tonight I attended the much-talked-about StarCraft class at UC Berkeley as an observer. (Insert StarCraft joke about Observers.)
The main lecturer is the young Alan Feng. Mr. Feng is a physics student who says he's been playing StarCraft "for 2.5 years, 6 months on the pro level." He also had help leading the class from a guy named Yosh (I forget his real name, but I call people by their chosen names anyway), and a third guy who I only remember as Mumbling Guy. I would call Feng by his gaming name too, but I forgot what it was because he only said it once.
Feng and Yosh are an interesting contrast. Feng is endearingly highfalutin while Yosh is an old-timer (StarCraft-wise) who tells the young-uns how it used to be. Feng began the class this way:
There are not more than five musical notes, yet the combinations of these five give rise to more melodies than can ever be heard.
There are not more than five primary colors, yet in combination they produce more hues than can ever been seen.
There are not more than five cardinal tastes, yet combinations of them yield more flavors than can ever be tasted.
In battle, there are not more than two methods of attack: the direct and the indirect; yet these two in combination give rise to an endless series of maneuvers.
--Sun Tzu
And he added:
In Starcraft, there are only three races, but more gameplay remaining than can be explored.
There was then a long stretch of administrative debris about notecards we were to turn in, about what percentage of the final grade the homework is worth, and other such banalities. Notably though, 40% of the final grade comes from the final project where students must attempt to make a new contribution to the StarCraft community in the form of an analysis of some part of the game. These final papers will be public and subject to peer review--no doubt incredibly merciless peer review, given the tone of most gaming communities.
Feng then gave us a short history lesson about the release of StarCraft. It was announced in 1995, though it didn't release until 1997. Feng showed us graphs and stats of how many people had computers back then, what power they were, how many had internet access, and so on. His point was that StarCraft had a dramatically larger chance for success in 1997 than it did in 1995, so their delay was fortuitous.
As an aside, I'll point out that this involved Microsoft Powerpoint slides. One student asked if the slides would be available and Feng said no, that the slides don't contain anything useful except pictures anyway. That's an interesting statement and he's right. I hope presenters will learn that Powerpoint slides are a generally terrible way of conveying information. Especially if they have terrible typography and blocky graphs as these did. (Apple Keynote can at least look nice.) But whatever, let's move on.
Yosh then gave us 20 or 25 minutes of reminiscing about the history of the best StarCraft players. Almost everyone he mentioned is Korean, of course. I felt I had something in common with Yosh as he told us he's been playing and following his game for 10 years now, competing in tournaments and trying to improve.
He explained how various players evolved or changed the game. Boxer's initial dominance gave hope for Terran players in the early days. In fact, when asked who in the room is a Terran player because of Boxer, several students raised their hands. (Nerdy joke: is Boxer overpowered in every game?) Apparently Boxer went to the army for 2 years, and although he didn't get to play as much there, he still did play and the army cadets created a special army StarCraft team, just so he could keep playing. When he returned to the game, he made up for his generally weaker game by becoming much more bold, and pulling off insane strategies that no one else would use, like a fake base in the middle of the map.
Yosh told us about the personalities of several players. One of them he said never smiles or frowns or makes any expression at all...except for the one in the picture he showed us. Another has bravado, another was extremely effeminate. Some were known for their micro-management skills, others for their creativity, others for their consistency. One top player is called "cheater Terran" because he always seems to have more units than you'd think he'd be able to at any given time. It seems that "every gaming community is a weird mirror image of every other gaming community."
After this walk down memory lane of Korean Starcraft champions, Yosh let Feng take over for the last leg of the lecture. Feng talked about the different kinds of resources in the game. There are raw resources, which he defines as those that the Starcraft game construct knows about. Minerals, gas, population limit, creep/pylon fields, energy (for casting psionic storm, etc). There are also physical resources, which he defines as things outside the game that exist in the physical world (perhaps a misnomer?). These are things like attention (arguably the most important one in StarCraft), APM: actions per minute (arguably the one that a supposed strategy game should NOT focus on at all), physical endurance, state of mind, knowledge of the game, analysis, etc. I asked him to add yomi to the list, the ability to read the opponent's mind. He did not know the term, but I had earlier given him my book, so I'm sure he will soon. Yes he said, ability to read the opponent is another resource to draw on that exists outside the game construct.
Then there are what Feng calls transformational resources. These are things you convert raw or physical resources into other resources. The most common one is simply your "army." You use your APM (clicking speed skills) along with minerals and gas and time, and you convert all that into units that compose your army. That army is capable of taking over territory or killing enemy units or defending a new expansions, etc.
Feng's point here is a good one. He's trying to get the students to think of the game as a big collection of resources and your decisions are about how to shift those resources around. It's easy to overlook how many resources are really involved in a decision, and if you overlook some, you aren't understanding the real implications of your decision. For example, if your population limit is 131/131, what do you do? As it stands, you cannot build more units. Should you build pylons? That means spending minerals and time. Should you attack with units you already have? That means spending units and possibly more of your attention resource. How long will it take the units to attack and trade with the enemy units? Did you scout enough to know what you'll be up against and what important thing you could attack?
Another example he gave was using raw resources to cover for a lack of physical resources. If you have very bad reaction time and you know this, then you are aware that in a surprise attack on your peons (resource gatherers), you might lose more than you really should. It might be worth it to spend minerals to build some cannons back there so that less depends on your slower reaction time. It's a tradeoff that might be worth it depending on your particular play skills.
The last example he gave was that of defending a choke point. If you control a choke point and put some cannons near it, but the enemy does not attack there, what have you spent and what have you gained? You spent time and minerals of course, but Feng was saying we shouldn't be so hasty in saying that we gained nothing. We did gain some resources here. If there is a pylon there, we increased our population limit. We also have vision to that part of the map. That means we have slightly better overall information about where the enemy is (or isn't, in this case). We prevented the enemy from scouting here, so the enemy has a slightly worse mental picture of the map. We control some territory that might not otherwise control (whatever is behind the choke point). So really there are a lot of resources to consider here, even in this very simple example where no one even attacked anyone.
And that was it for week one. A class about StarCraft at UC Berkeley.
--Sirlin
Reader Comments (238)
The high APM required to play StarCraft at a high level keeps the game inaccessible to new players. As a result, I personally have never started playing because the learning curve is so steep.
Re: Sirlin
I'm pretty certain that Blizzard game developers are aware of the "pointless apm" you speak of but its possible that they haven't deemed it pointless. What exactly are you calling pointless? Perhaps actions like telling new peons to mine minerals or gas? Or telling your workers to build new supply depots? If this is true, you seem to be saying that taking out all base management would make Starcraft a more strategic and better game. I don't actually think this is true.
Many pro level Starcraft players have a certain "macro" style that is very enjoyable to watch where they base their strategy around simply being bigger economically than their opponent. Take for example the popular "Sauron Zerg" build where you concentrate mostly on expansions and economy to overpower your opponent. Taking the necessary actions to carry out this strategy isn't like baking a cake, it's very much in line with what Starcraft is all about, even if it isn't directly combat related.
Many Starcraft professionals don't have 400 APM. Some of the strongest players hover around 250 and can be very competitive at 220 APM (Savior). This proves that it's not necessary to have the same APM as your opponent to have a chance to beat him. In fact, higher APM might not be an advantage at all since many players have a tendency to spam. Every wasted click can contribute to your APM, but actually detracts from a useful click that you could have done, thus making you a worse player.
I believe Blizzard developers already had to remove a lot of pointless APM prior to releasing Starcraft. We just don't know about it because we've never seen any of it. Now, all we're left with is Starcraft as it is now, which in my opinion is a perfect RTS game. (People who keep comparing Chess to Starcraft shouldn't. They are completely different... RTS vs Turn base)
"Unfortunately, [Starcraft HD Remix] will remain only an academic topic, because I've heard StarCraft 2 will continue the tradition of requiring high APM to compete. That actually sounds pretty boring to me and very disappointing because I bet the game will be A+ in every other area. I'd rather see a game more focused on the interaction between players, rather than a game of interaction between only very, very fast-clicking players, where the rest are pretty severely disadvantaged."
To me, it seems like a decent-sized piece of SC1 "mindless" APM won't be as present in SC2. For example, using Protoss terms, in SC1 you have to move the screen to all your Nexuses and keep them producing probes (the motion is: move the screen to the Nexus, click nexus, click probe / press P, repeat for each Nexus), move the screen to them all again to tell your probes to begin mining (Move screen, left click, right click, repeat), keep moving the screen around all your gateways to keep them producing (move screen, left click, click button/press hotkey, repeat), and finally gather all your new units into your current forces (Various motions required). I think this is all, as Sirlin said, "1P activity."
So what real strategic decisions ("2P activity") are made during those activites? The decision whether to continue making probes, and sometimes where to make them. Also the decision of what units to make in which proportions, and sometimes where to make them, too. But that's it, really.
From those wasted motions, nearly all of them will be fixed by the Auto-Mine (AM) and Multi-Building Selection (MBS) features in SC2. More specifically, because you can MBS, you get rid of a large part of the APM required to generate units - for three zealots, hit "0zzz". In SC1 that action is "F2-click-z-click-z-click-z-move screen". That's at least 50% less actions needed - and hitting 4 keys is faster than using the mouse. Plus, you don't have to look away from your army. Probe creation is also shortened by MBS, and probe management is shortened by AM. MBS also makes rally points much quicker to set.
I'll agree that some APM requirement can generate interesting decisions in a match. To me, APM just is a number affixed to the game's drain on your attention at any given time. One way to fight a player is to overwhelm his attention limits - Put your army in a group of dropships, split them up into three groups, and send each group to drop on a seperate critical location at the same time. You force your opponent to make a large number of difficult decisions all at once, involving how (or whether) he chooses to split up his army. Another way to play on his attention would be to attack one base with all your forces except one dark templar, who heads to another base and begins killing probes/drones - since the dark templar kills probes/drones in one hit, the opposing player will never recieve an "Our forces are under attack" prompt there, and he may not realize it's even happening until the damage is done. Even if you lose that main battle, you might have gained an advantage overall (Depends on how badly you lost that main battle). All of these things seem, to me, like interesting strategies that would not be possible if you were unable to either overwhelm your opponent's attention limits or trick him into focusing his limited attention somewhere so you can exploit his lack of attention elsewhere
What I'd like to see from SC2 is more APM that makes up the "meat" of the game rather than the mindless activities that made up a good chunk of SC1 APM, while still keeping APM slightly high. I understand the approach SC2 is taking in removing mindless APM. At the same time, I'm afraid that such a low required APM will create a situation where pros (or even intermediate players) will never reach their attention cap even under the toughest of situations, and therefore a lot of these attention-overwhelming and attention-diverting strategies might not work anymore. I feel like removing those strategies would remove an interesting piece from SC1's gameplay. Maybe SC2 should buff up the "meat" of the APM to replace all the hollow, meaningless APM tht was carved out of SC1 with MBS and AM. (Certain things, like the nydus tunnel and pylon warping, do seem like APM-buffers)
I like Three Ring's "Bang Howdy". It is more of a tactics game than an RTS, but the cool down time on each unit goes along way towards reducing APM.
"I'm not talking about completely removing execution in StarCraft or Street Fighter, remember, but only removing the pointless stuff that can be eliminated."
-I don't believe anything in starcraft is truly pointless. For example, one of the big issues in the sc community in regards to sc2 is that of multiple building selection. In sc1 you can only select one building at a time, but sc2 allows for mbs. Proponents of mbs generally argue that it's pointless to only allow one building to be selected at a time and that it's just an outdated, unnecessary mechanic. There may be some truth to that, but it does have strategic implications. How you build your base (building placement) is effected by this, which in turn effects different drop strategies. It also makes macroing a more intensive process, and gives you more decisions; knowing when you should be watching a specific battle/encounter and when you should go back to base and micro while letting the ai fight it out are crucial decisions.
I think the nature of RTS' is what makes this specifically applicable to the RTS genre over turn-based games; managing time is a fundamental skill in RTS', and any mechanic that requires time and attention will have strategic implications regardless of how minute or unnecessary it seems.
"Unfortunately, it will remain only an academic topic, because I've heard StarCraft 2 will continue the tradition of requiring high APM to compete."
-Sc2 will likely require lower apm than sc. MBS and auto-mine simplify macro greatly. Also, sc2 will have no limit on how many units can be selected into one group. Most of the sc community is actually pretty upset about these things and people who've played it complain that the game will be too easy. Sure this will 'level the playing field' in some sense and emphasize strategy over mechanics, but I don't see that as necessarily being a good thing. They physical skill required to play high level starcraft is a huge part of why the game is so great.
@Sirlin
I'm curious though about how much removing unneeded APM will help or to what extent it's really needed.
To touch on the last portion first is 200+ APM really even that fast? Many Actions actually count as 2 or more actions even though they can be completely very quickly. For example building a building will count as 4 actions towards your APM (select worker, select build... menu, select building to build, place building) while really only the select worker and place building actions will take any amount of time. So if you were to queue up a building in 1 second then you're hitting 240 APM. Meanwhile two of the actions require separate hands (mouse to select and place building, keyboard to select building type) which also helps with speed. I do agree that perhaps games like SC are demanding too much APM (at 300+) but at what level do we reach a good APM that is all inclusive without slowing the game down or removing the 'real-time' element completely. I'd be really curious to see the APM requirements of a fighter in comparison.
My next point is will is even help ? Many actions can be removed (having a Build... menu, some worker tasks, etc.) but how do you actually cut down on a big chunk of the APM? Do you remove game elements like kiting, harassing, focus fire, withdrawing units, surrounds, drop ship reavers, activated abilities? Those elements some of what makes SC so exciting and enjoyable while also requiring high amounts of APM? How do you remove a significant amount of APM without hindering these gameplay elements. Sure you can clean up the base management a bit in starcraft (high demand on supply depos/pylons/overlords and new buildings) but games like WC3 have done that and still demand 200ish APM at top end from what I've seen. Meanwhile (in my opinion) WC3 removes a lot of the fun and charm that SC had due to the smaller sized conflicts and more single-front focused gameplay (among other reasons I hate WC3 that I won't go into). I'm sure it's possible to incorporate more APM reducing things into RTS genres but reducing the APM to a significant degree is going to be tough. Doing it without harming the enjoyable game play is going to be even harder.
The thing about APM is that the less APM you demand the slower the game is going to play. Simply put if you're inputting less commands in a given time frame then less is going to happen of importance over that time frame. You can streamline the process and try to lower the APM requirements but players are going to have many ways to find more use for their extra time. I can't claim to be completely knowledgable about the WC3 scene but from my understanding many 'tricks' in the WC3 engine aren't put to use in ladder play (things that are put to use in DotA though). For example if ladder only took 80-150 APM as designed then we'd likely see more players using animation-canceling and orb-walking (when possible) as well as picking up several other tricks that might be too micro intensive to otherwise execute. My point is how do you feasibly clamp down on APM without squeezing the game with an iron fist or cutting back significantly on gameplay as fast players will almost always find something to do with those few extra 1/20ths of a second when money is on the line.
"If only I could give you a Starcraft HD Remix, but I can't because it's cost-prohibitive...."
Actually Blizzard's world editing tools are pretty good. While you can't do anything for SC directly you can mod SC2 and WC3 to be more like to you want and see how fun that is.
I'd like to add that the term "strategy" isn't fitting of the RTS genre, since all good games require strategy. They should really be called RTT - realtime tactics (this is what many CoH players claim their game actually is). It isn't just about players fighting each other with copied strategies. It's about making quick tactical decisions in combat when many units are under your control, and while strategy certainly has a heavy hand in things, it isn't all that determines the winner.
Just to mention Dawn of War 2 again... anyone who is interested in a game like Starcraft but with a focus on combat tactics/micro should definitely check it out.
Note that asdf's post implies 1. that Chess is boring and 2. that the tactics and strategies used in chess used in games like chess won't change over time. Chess is in many ways simpler than a game like starcraft and its strategy has undergone continual evolution for the thousands of years of its existence.
Re: Sirlin
Actually, one of the major complaints against SC2 is that, at the moment, it has a dramatically lower APM requirement. It will still be an APM-intensive game (like all competitive RTS games -- that is simply inevitable), but it's supposed to be noticeably less APM-intensive than SC1.
Re: asdf
Your post has a lot of thought in it, so I think you'll understand my response.
Game design is essentially the ethics of fun. There are certain obvious things that you should or should not do, but when you get down to the details it can get quite fuzzy. The question that every designer faces (or ignores at their peril) over and over again is "does X add fun to my game?" To answer that, they have to make assumptions about what fun is, and what their audience thinks fun is.
Figuring that out isn't too difficult as long as you don't try to make the game suitable for competition. But as soon as you decide to create a fun AND competitive multiplayer game, you have a host of issues to address. Since competitions are tests of ability, you have to decide what abilities will be tested. You have to decide how they will be tested and how often. And you have to decide what the rewards are for passing those tests.
When picking abilities to test, you can either test abilities that are natural (genetic), learned (from practice and training), or a combination of both. If you create a game that is a rigorous test of largely genetic abilities such as reflexes, height, physical speed, and the like, those who succeed at your game can be accurately said to be genetically gifted. They have "the right stuff" so to speak; they were essentially born superior players. Alternatively, you can test abilities that are largely learned, such as strategic thinking, pattern recognition, yomi, and the like. Those who succeed at that kind of game can be said to be personally gifted. Because of some combination of hard work, study, training, and practice, they have made themselves superior players.
In reality, of course, it's not that simple. To some degree, reflexes, physical speed, and other attributes that are usually considered genetic can be refined by practice and training. The point, however, is that a competitive game is a test. And the game designer has to make an ethical decision about what is most worth testing. I believe that the chief distinction between games and sports is that games focus more on testing learned abilities rather than genetic abilities, and I believe that this is ethically right.
Sports stay essentially the same for long periods of time, which is convenient for coaches as it allows them to understand the game and recruit talent based on the physical abilities of the potential recruits. Games, on the other hand, change rapidly as new strategies are discovered. They are mostly a learning exercise. Even chess, which you consider boring (I partly agree), is still evolving because it is still a learning-based game. Starcraft may have reached the point where it is completely, or almost completely, figured out, but that doesn't mean that it's good for the game to become all about execution. The amount of fun present in such a game is very debatable, in fact. And no matter how many Korean fangirls faint over an impressive display of macro, the spectator value of a game will dwindle as it becomes clear that the game is no longer evolving. In my experience, the fangirls always became the most excited when somebody made a clever or bold move, rather than when somebody kept continuous production from 15 Gateways.
Some further clarifications on what I was proposing. MJAnoname's post is part of what I'm talking about. His examples of multiple base selection and automine are interface improvements that get rid of non-strategic clicks. Whether to build, what to build, and when to build are strategic decisions that are all preserved. These interface enhancements will help new players get to the "real game" (the strategy...) without such a heavy APM tax.
Next, do I propose removing strategic (or tactical) maneuvers so that APM can be lower? No. For example, focus fire is important to the game (I'm choosing that feature at random). So we'd want the simplest possible interface to focus fire. If anyone is suggesting that we want an intentionally bad interface to keep focus fire out of the hands of some players, I don't even know what to say.
Finally, do I propose the gameplay become slower? No, not really. The high concept I mean is that there is a "maximum useful APM" beyond which clicking faster is inherently kind of worthless. The MUAPM is basically the price of admission. You must play at that level or you might as well retire because you're too disadvantages. It can be set fairly high, but not crazily high. The actual game of StarCraft seems to have no real MUAPM. More is better, unbounded. That pushes things uncomfortably far toward favoring APM over any kind of skill we should are about testing.
Note to angry mobs: I didn't say the game has no strategy, I'm saying there is a mix of strategy and APM and that an unbounded MUAPM inherently places pretty huge emphasis on APM. Thomas, above, mentioned Bang Howdy, which does enforce a MUAPM, but chose to set that at a pretty slow level. A actual RTS could shoot for a fairly high level to keep the overall game speed pretty much the same, but to shift the balance of skill tests to where it belongs. If we want to reclassify the game out of the RTS genre and into the RTAPM(With Some Strategy) genre, then I retract my statements.
As usual, any thoughts that the game would somehow be less interesting or less strategic when the focus is more on strategy than execution sound pretty crazy!
Regarding the real StarCraft 2, I don't even know the status. Things like MBS and automine do seem to remove some pointless APM, but I've also heard rumors that new things were added specifically to keep the APM tax high. Things that ensure that players with absurdly high APM still have advantage over players with merely "very high" APM. Why they need such an advantage is still kind of beyond me. Maybe in StarCraft 3 can start with a video camera that records you as you juggle tennis balls right before the match. If you are able to juggle at least 5 balls for 15 seconds, you could start with more minerals so we can make sure "the right people" have an advantage in this "real-time strategy" game. ;)
I've also been very confused as to why so many people are upset over changes to a game that probably won't even be released until next year.
I suppose if MBS and automine were the only changes they made then that could be cause for concern, but I'm reasonably sure there will be several changes so being upset over anything is pointless until you can, you know, try it out.
In Supreme commander the game has alot of features that lower apm tax. The strategic zoom makes macro easier, factories can be set to repeat a sequence of units, you can create templates for building formations. In addition there is a built in latency of 500 ms. So any latency below that is not noticeable.
The result of this is that apm's only need to be around 40 apm to compete. The problem for the players who are casual, who would typically be part of the low APM crowd, is that the economy of the game is so complex and unforgiving that they lose because they don't know what they are doing. They still complain about 40 apm being too high, and some of them claim they can't imagine giving 40 actions in a minute. This blows my mind. Others play hundreds or thousands of games without improving. That's not an exaggeration.
Arguably in apm's favor is the idea that you become more engaged by trying to focus that much attention. Hopefully you even think. Thoughts like "I should build radar, so I can know where my opponent has units from the protection of my base" are obvious, but many players don't build radar. This isn't an issue with mechanics or the game. The players who actually complain about APM in supreme commander don't appear to think. I assume this is why there is a divide in the community. On one side are the players that are actually competent and competitive with high APM, many of whom are also asses, and on the other side are players who A: don't want to put the effort into learning to play the game and B: don't think when they play and C: the honest players who just don't really have the time to invest in the game. The C portion of the group has a hell of a time arguing with the competitive players because they're grouped with a bunch of lazy lackwits, and they don't really want to argue with a bunch of assholes. People characterize groups by their most conspicuous members.
Basically, since this argument just stays around even when the apm tax is gone, it's implies that the argument is about something else. Elitists and casual players are basically arguing over one of their differences. Apm gets singled out because unlike knowledge of the game and intelligence, it's not a natural construct. There are games that don't have it, but it's not why so many of the casual players are also bad.
@sirlin
Re: Zentry
You're correct that the crux of the APM argument isn't about APM. It's about what kinds of skills are important in a RTS game (or any other game for that matter) and should determine who wins and who loses. It's a physical skill vs learned skill debate. It's not really an argument between "elitists and casuals" but an argument (mostly) between competitive players who have different ideas on what a worthwhile competition is like.
Mechanics can be trained. Very much so. Many of you forget this. Players with 400apm once had 50. I started Starcraft with a mere 30apm. A lot of people just blame their inability to get better mechanically on genetics and are essentially crying "cheap!" much like the players that cry cheap on tick throws. Practice makes perfect. And that's how it should be. That's how you can build solid, safe play. And maybe solid, safe play is bad for tricksters like me... but who would love the trickster when there's no "boring" solid mechanical player? If everyone is a trickster what makes that unique?
For the most part APM is a mental block, you have to THINK quickly of things to do. Every decision to do one thing is a decision to NOT do another thing. Every click is a mindful click in Starcraft, there are no mindless clicks. A big part of the strategic evolution of Starcraft revolves around mechanics. Bisu's corsair-dark templar against zerg strategy in 2006 was a strategic revolution not because nobody thought of it before... plenty of people thought of it. But Bisu was the one who showed us how to execute it.
And no, Starcraft has not been "figured out". There are still bold strategic moves and the game evolves. Perhaps the very basics like which units to use and not use will remain the same (ex. protoss scouts simply suck because they role overlap with corsairs and carriers. corsairs will always be better at being an early antizerg scout and antiair, carriers will always be better at being harrass and air-to-ground). But there will always be better timings to attack and the strategy will also shift as nothing is purely better than anything else. Fantasy's tank-based early vulture drop into valkyrie build revolutionized terran vs. zerg a few months ago, but some forget that the build existed 10 years ago and was just mostly forgotten as zergs became so much better at dealing with it.
And fangirls will scream when players with insane mechanics play. When Forgg overwhelms an opponent with his massive army despite strategic knowledge saying he should be weaker than the opponent at that timing, defying strategy, fangirls scream. Just as when Upmagic tricks the opponent with a hidden barracks, faking a proxy build, defying mechanics, fangirls scream. Without BOTH, the game would not be as beautiful. Being a trickster wouldn't be as cool, it would be expected. And that's boring. Being a mechanical beast wouldn't be as cool, it would be the NORM.
A lot of the strategy in Starcraft goes over the heads of the viewers. The commentators help to a degree but it's not perfect. Most viewers don't understand why a terran pushing when the protoss gets his third is strong, they just kinda heard that it is. But when someone has more units than should be possible people go "oh my god" and they do. Go watch many a korean promatch and you can hear the yelling when a macro player shows his style.
THE most famous event in Street Fighter 3: 3rd Strike's history, when Daigo parried Justin Wong's entire super with 1 pixel of health left and responded with the PERFECT punish without missing a beat, without choking, is a beautiful feat of MECHANICS. The crowd didn't start screaming insanely because it was a good strategy.
Also, I question how many of you have played Starcraft on any sort of competitive skill level. I'd like to point out that Sirlin was one of the people who implied that you shouldn't judge a game you haven't played on at least a competitive level.
Starcraft is a love close to my heart. The mechanical difficulty is a part of the reason for that. I am not a mechanical player.... but I would hate it if mechanical playstyle was invalidated. It's not fun to be forced into a certain type of playstyle. Being FAST is fun. That's why a lot of people like starcraft, it's not just about outwitting people, it's an adrenaline rush, a high after a game when you're tired out and drained. Every action is a tax on your thought process and the TRULY intelligent players are those that can think of strategies DESPITE being bogged down in the speed. Mechanics really makes Starcraft a deeper game. Sure, it would be extremely deep without mechanics. But why remove depth? Just because people think it's not fair? People say throws aren't fair either, but did people listen to them? Hell no. And the fighting game genre was better off because of it.
Part of the strategies of starcraft involve keeping track of your opponent's invisible player, what he can and cannot have at any one time. Doing so requires an accurate model of your opponent's mechanical skill. If you overestimate, you will think they are rushing when they are fast expanding, if you underestimate, you will not defend in time (this is a very simplified example but I hope you can see what I mean).
@Sirlin:
When I was talking about Street Fighter mechanics being a yes or no question, I was talking exactly about what you referred to as MUAPM. In Street Fighter, if you can't reversal shoryu, you will not be able to defeat any good gief or dhalsim for example. In Starcraft, there are very few issues like this. 100APM players can and have defeated 300apm monsters.
"Next, do I propose removing strategic (or tactical) maneuvers so that APM can be lower? No. For example, focus fire is important to the game (I'm choosing that feature at random)."
But the thing is, if you remove other "mindless" clicks, focus fire becomes no longer a STRATEGIC CHOICE not to spend that click on building more units but rather a REQUIREMENT. Suddenly focus fire becomes a MINDLESS click. Don't you see the problem here?
You talk about pointless actions, but in Starcraft there are NO SUCH ACTIONS. You have to think to do every action. Sure, with less actions, Starcraft would still be a competitive game with a lot of depth, more depth than 99% of other games. But it would still have less depth.
"Note to angry mobs: I didn't say the game has no strategy,"
I understand that. Sometimes we take it the wrong way in the starcraft community though, a lot of us have to deal with these people who have never played a competitive RTS at any level and they make comments the equivalent of "MAN WHAT THE HELL IS THIS STREET FIGHTER STUFF I THINK WE SHOULD PLAY MORTAL COMBAT AND DEAD OR ALIVE INSTEAD ITS GOT STRATEGY ITS NOT THIS THROW FIREBALLS OVER AND OVER CRAP THATS JUST REWARDING MECHANICAL SKILL". I won't name any specific RTSes here but a lot of the RTSes that get named as being strategic games generally lack much depth at high level because of bad game design by people that haven't played RTSes at a high level. A lot of these RTSes that claim to be as deep as Chess have major issues. For example, maybe 1 unit is incredibly good for example and is cheap and beyond cost effective so the optimal strategy is quite obvious: rush that 1 unit. And top level play on the ladder consists of that. Perhaps even the finals of major tournaments like WCG (if the game even gets major tournaments) contain everyone playing 1 race and rushing that one unit and whoever rushes that one unit better wins. And people in the Starcraft community have to listen to it when magazines like PC Gamer start to write articles and call our beloved players "Speed Freaks" with "no lives". Sometimes we can be a bit overly defensive, sorry if I come off as such. I guess this is mostly unrelated, but I just wanted you to understand where we may be coming from. Many other RTSes tried the approach of making the game easy and they generally ended up being degenerate games with no strategic depth.
"I'm saying there is a mix of strategy and APM and that an unbounded MUAPM inherently places pretty huge emphasis on APM."
In a way you're right, and in a way you're wrong. Street Fighter (even HD Remix) could have this finger pointed at it for being too hard. There are people that can't haduken. At all. They hate Street Fighter because they can't even do it. And then they'll sit down at Starcraft and they'll have a blast with their 10apm not ever realizing how bad they are but that's perfectly okay.
A good game should be easy to pick up and hard to master. Starcraft is extremely easy to pick, easier than Super Turbo. You sit down at ST and you get hadukened to death by the computer. You sit down at Starcraft and the first campaign mission is pretty easy.
@Thomas:
"Note that asdf's post implies 1. that Chess is boring and 2. that the tactics and strategies used in chess used in games like chess won't change over time."
Chess IS boring. To watch at least (for most people). Yeah, it's plenty of fun to play. But competitive games should be good to watch, which is something a lot of people seem to miss. I love starcraft not just as a player but as a spectator. I never implied that the strategies don't change over time though. They do.
Command & Conquer 3 is a great example of a full-featured, fast-paced RTS with a low MUAPM. Viable rush tactics, limited gather rates, and a focus on unit warfare keep matches from descending too deeply into the exponential spiral of ever-faster clicking that has become a staple of RTS games. An excellent interface makes it easy to manage production, basebuilding, and unit control. Every action in C&C3 is substantially more productive than its SC counterpart. The game takes full advantage of this fact to deliver gameplay that's substantially faster-paced than Starcraft, an amazing feat made possible by a slew of good design decisions that allow players to do more with less.
"THE most famous event in Street Fighter 3: 3rd Strike's history, when Daigo parried Justin Wong's entire super with 1 pixel of health left and responded with the PERFECT punish without missing a beat, without choking, is a beautiful feat of MECHANICS. The crowd didn't start screaming insanely because it was a good strategy."
You know, I was about to bring up this very example. You make an excellent point. Contests that require physical skill and perfect execution generally up the enjoyment for spectators. How many people play soccer? Quite possibly somewhere in the billions. How many people are capable of playing at the highest level? Somewhere in the hundreds, with turnover each year. People enjoying watching pros do something the spectators love to do, but know they can't. The fact that <<0.01% of soccer lovers can play soccer competitively doesn't stop the >>99.99% from playing recreationally. It might be the greatest game humanity ever invented (I don't follow nor play, but I can recognize its popularity), it's highly exclusive at the competitive level, but people still play and more feverishly enjoy watching. If you need an example closer to home, just go to the local gym and see how many "scrubs" passionately play basketball, even if they're small, clumsy, or can't shoot or dribble.
I don't believe a game needs to be highly accessible to the average gamer for high level of competition in order for it to be a great game. The more important criteria are that it has a lot of appealing qualities, and has enough tiers of competitiveness that I can play a tight match no matter how much I improve or slide in skill. I really enjoy StarCraft, but I will be the first to admit that I'm far below average. I think my strategy is better than my execution, but the fact that I can't execute like a pro doesn't prevent me from playing. It just coerces me to find people who stink as much as I do, or tweak the game settings to accommodate the disparity (e.g. 2 vs. 1 play).
Whether you like it or not, the requirement of high APM is a big draw for a lot of people. It's part of the game. I don't believe StarCraft has anything close to a perfect battle engine, and the game can use a lot of mechanical tweaks, but the execution aspect is neither boring nor unimportant.
In the end, we're just splitting hairs about the degrees of how important execution is, but I wanted to reinforce the idea of how valuable execution can be for competition.
I credited this blog entry in the little interview with Alan =)
http://www.starcraftwire.net/articles/comments/inside-the-starcraft-college-course/
"Basically, since this argument just stays around even when the apm tax is gone, it's implies that the argument is about something else."
Not to take the discussion on a tangent but I think it has to do with blame and perceived success. In an FPS you can blame your teammates, be proud of the kills you did get, or be proud of the position you placed in a DM. In a MMORPG you can blame gear, class balance, team/guild/realmmates, etc. In a sports game you can blame the QB's rating, the receiver's bad catch, etc. In DotA you can blame hero selection, teammates, etc. In 1v1 Fighting and RTS games though there's no one to blame but yourself. From my experience most people can't handle blaming themselves and will quickly find something else to blame no matter how bizarre or off base it is.
Why people complain about APM? It's like saying "no fair, he's faster than me, I can't win against him". [ReD]NaDa have like 300-400 APM and he's not doing great right now because people outsmart him. There's a lot of great proplayers with rather low APM(200-250) who wins mostly because of strategic thinking than dexterity.
If you played Armies of Exigo(a game made by Starcraft fans, kind of a rip-off), you know that some of the flaws of Starcraft can be replaced to do a better job for people with low APM(like bigger group selection, multi construction selection, or groups of groups for zerg players), but in the end, higher APM sometimes mean better micro and macromanagement control. So how can you curcinvent that? Hard counters and strategic plays.
But please, people, stop bashing APM. It's a resource, but it's not everything.