I also made a couple posts to support him as well, but I find it odd the BN forums don't let you send PMs >.>

I'll have to try adding him on SCII to drag him out here.

Mike

I don't know, but there was definitely someone named monkeylord posting there.
Here's the thing: Would SC2's best players still be able to differentiate themselves from the worse players if busywork was removed? If yes, I see no reason not to remove it, because successfully macroing X many bases is never going to feel as rewarding and "fun" as outpositioning and outplaying the other player. If no, I feel people who play should look at exactly what it is they look for in a game (Hint, dance dance revolution might be a good choice for you).


Things like larvae injection aren't about player interaction. You're not adapting how much you inject larvae to how the enemy is playing, you just do it or fall behind by default.

The busywork increases skillcap. While that part doesnt make the game deeper, it increases stress on your multitasking. Even pros mess up multitasking a lot, because when in an engagement, you cannot control different control groups, defend a harass, macro, and do a bunch of othert things at the same time. You compromise. You cut corners and divide attention. The people who have most APM to spend and the best methods of dividing attention effectively usually end up on top, not considering giant blunders and build order losses.

If you take that away, you end up with supcom2, where every noob with over 20 apm can play the game if he simply figures out what builds work on what maps, what tech routes to take and a few micro tricks. There is simply less stuff the people who play way, way, way more can excel at, and so even casual players can play at pro level.

Now, im pretty sure a case could be made for removing busywork anyways, which I would even support, but the gap will have to be filled - more decisions to be made in other ways. I would prefer that to be increasing scale, and giving a huge value to map control AND fighting on multiple fronts. You could do the latter by making AoE units very strong, so units are much less effective when clustered (yay death balls /tank blobs of doom -_-) If you have to constantly adjust rally points and fight at 4 fronts, youll still have plenty of stuff to do.

You're one of them.

I keep telling you to play FA. There you can see a game that takes away Starcraft's needless multitasking, and see it done in such a way that it still requires a good deal of skill to play. You basically get what you say you want in your last paragraph.

No it doesn't. If you drop the busywork, then your opponent also won't have to busywork, so you'll just have to do the other tasks better to compete. It *lowers* the skillcap because you can suck more at the other tasks but get away with it by doing better, but unskilled, busywork.

In other words what you're saying neph is that you can't remove the busywork, because then everyone would be as good as each other.

AKA the game isn't very deep, but is made artificially more difficult to play by virtue of forcing you to play a second, entirely seperate game while also playing the main game at the same time.

To which I say: Why bother playing?

There's a question that actually needs to be answered;

While removing busywork does reduce the skill cap, does it do so to a degree that makes it more shallow than other games?

What I mean to say is: would the upper echelons of SCII players develop better strategies and tactics if they were free to do so?


If so: then busywork is holding back the game.

If not: then SCII is naturally a shallow game.