by uberge3k » 13 Jul 2012, 18:26
We're playing at a tiny fraction of what the game is capable of. That's a fact.
I've been at the top of the 1v1 ladder for some time, and yet I make hundreds of mistakes each game. I still make dumb moves, make the wrong counter, and lose the game because I wasn't paying attention to my ACU and it got sniped. Every game of FA, at the highest levels, comes down to who makes the fewest mistakes. Not balance, not "skill" - only who slightly edges out the other by making a few less mistakes, or making not as severe mistakes. This is why I do not believe that anyone truly understands the game yet. And no, not even myself - I know that I am, objectively, a terrible player who makes far too many mistakes.
I define a "perfect" game of FA as maximizing the use of your limited resources to create the best possible outcome. In any specific situation, there is always an optimal set of moves to make that could not be improved upon by substituting alternate moves.
This is certainly doable for the first few minutes. But as the game goes on, with exponentially larger quantities of units to take care of and responsibilities to attend to (scouting, defending, managing eco, micro'ing skirmishes, etc), it becomes increasingly difficult.
I doubt it would be possible to play a "perfect game" in the sense that you dodge every single shot by micro'ing every single tank individually. I suspect that engine limitations, and then human limitations such as how quickly you can physically move a mouse or the visual cortex can process sensory input, will eventually be the upper limit. But up until then, I believe there is an extremely large amount of undiscovered territory from where the current "high end" of FA gameplay is.
Sadly, due to the lack of competition, there is very little to drive the innovation that would eventually push the game to be played at this level. I don't think that we'll ever see it. But I think that we should keep this in mind when discussing things such as lategame balance, as we are balancing not for true "balance" (as it is exceeding difficult to test a unit that comes into play at minute 20 when both players have already make hundreds of compounding mistakes before then), but for the ease of use for casual players.
Experimental balance is a great example of this; many believe T3 land to be underpowered and T4s to be overpowered, because "everyone always makes experimentals to end games!". This is true, but I believe the real reason is that an exp is simply much easier and much safer to use than the equivalent value in T3 units, as they would require a great deal more of unit control. Additionally, by the time that T3/T4 is in play, the game has already been decided by a series of compounding mistakes of every player involved.
The game snowballs to an incredible amount. A very wise player, who is responsible for most of my improvement at the game, once said that "if both players are playing perfectly, losing a LAB at minute 2 is equivalent to losing an ML at minute 20".
This is perhaps the truest sentence I've ever heard on the subject.
Ze_PilOt wrote:If you want something to happen, do it yourself.