Bump these teams to SuperTitan please!!!

[CombatEX]

(03-03-2013 09:43 AM)GreatGonzales Wrote:  Chess is a deeper game than Outwitters in my estimation. Yes, FOW adds a different sort of skill component, but I still think that there's going to be a much broader range of skill fidelity in chess as opposed to Outwitters.

It was never my intention to imply Outwitters or Starcraft 2 was more skillful than chess. What I took issue with was the extent to which you pushed your original point.

(03-03-2013 08:21 AM)GreatGonzales Wrote:  Everyone knows the rules, can count wits, and is familiar with winning strategies at this point. Fog of war prevents this game from having the depth of skill of a game like chess; we do not have 100% knowledge, so capacity for using tactical prowess to control the battlefield is limited. The edge comes out more in one team making mistakes, rather than a teeam making the big play. But, just one man's opinion.

Your sentence on winning strategies makes it sound like there is very little room for variation in Outwitters. Of course, there are general ways people have learned to play each map just as there are general ways you try to control the flow of the game in chess. However, we are still seeing new variations every day. Perhaps Outwitters will reach this dull state you imagine a year from now or sooner, but it certainly isn't there yet.

Anyway, FoW may lower the skill ceiling of Outwitters, I don't disagree nor did I ever disagree. However, I took issue with your following statement that the edge comes out more in one team making mistakes. This is true, but also is the case in chess and any other skill-based game for that matter. I will elaborate below. Furthermore, "the capacity for using tactical prowess to control the battlefield is limited [as a result of FoW]," that is true. But, HOW limited? What I was trying to get at in my original response is that FoW does not simply make Outwitters a game in which everyone plays to some strategy which is accepted to be the best and whoever was luckier with the FoW wins. Instead there is a significant aspect of 'playing the FoW'.

FoW does limit the 'pure skill' ceiling of Outwitters, but that does not make it as shallow as one may think.

What is a mistake?
Is a mistake when you make a move which loses you strategic ground over your opponent? Well in that case, that's exactly the same in chess as it is in Outwitters. I imagine you must have instead meant mistakes due to limited information that you wouldn't have made had you had full vision. If this is indeed the case, then that is another issue I was trying to address which I summarize in my following point.

Teams don't win by making a 'big play' (but instead from the mistakes of their opponents)
The way you phrased your sentence made it seem like this: Player X wins simply from Player Y making more careless moves due to FoW rather than as a result of any real work on Player X's part. This is what I was responding to in my original post. I was stating that FoW does not just make Outwitters a game of chance where you move and pray, but rather that there is still a significant strategic component regarding FoW. That is, compiling possible scenarios with what information you do possess and assessing the risk of each move you can make. Yes, you will misstep due to limited knowledge, but there is significant aspect of skill regardless.

1. Considering your opponent's possible movements in the fog based on what you can see. (Minimizing your mistakes)
2. Considering what your opponent can see and attempting to determine what their top priorities would be as a result of their vision and/or general map strategies. (Minimizing your mistakes)
3. Limiting what your opponent can see. (Maximizing opponent's mistakes)
4. Intentionally moving or revealing a particular unit to bluff your opponent. (Maximizing opponent's mistakes)

Outwitters and chess both involve minimizing your own mistakes. What does FoW do? It gives you less control over minimizing your own mistakes, but also adds a component of maximizing your opponent's mistakes. Net result? It probably requires less skill, but the skill it requires possesses more depth than one might originally assume.

So you see, I only meant to contest a trivialization of the depth of Outwitters as a result of FoW and not to argue it was somehow better or more strategic than chess.

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The above is all on topic as far as my original post was concerned, the following isn't relevant to my initial point. However, since you brought it up, I'll address it anyway.
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(03-03-2013 09:43 AM)GreatGonzales Wrote:  Yeah I see that point. Fog of war requires a different kind of thinking than chess - instead of discovering the best possible move, as in chess, you are trying to consider all possible scenarios to come up with the maximally great move. SC2 is a good example of this....except that you can't really compare SC2 to chess because SC2 requires a level of physical prowess.

The goal of the analogy was to show that FoW does not significantly limit the depth of SC2, and by extension, the depth of Outwitters. The fact that SC2 has an additional layer of skill in the form of micro is irrelevant in this regard as I don't perceive micro as an enhancement of strategic depth (just an aspect of physical aptitude). It is only pertinent if my intention was to suggest SC2 was more skillful than chess (in which case all forms of skill should be considered, physical included), but this was not my goal.

(03-03-2013 09:43 AM)GreatGonzales Wrote:  Speaking of depth (non-physical) of the game, I think you'd certainly have to say that chess takes the cake over SC2.

I see how you could argue either way. What I do not see is how you can say either one certainly takes the cake over the other. This primarily stems from the fact that the games have so many differences in fundamental mechanics that to claim one has more depth than another is just silly. It's not like comparing checkers with chess which are similar in basic mechanics (each turn you move one piece on an 8x8 board). SC2 and chess play out very differently in this regard. On top of that there is also an issue of legacy. Chess has an amazingly rich history and has been studied extensively. As a result, we've seen just how much depth there is to chess. By comparison, a game like SC2 has barely been explored and as a result it is hardly fair to compare them in this regard. Strategies are constantly evolving as people discover them. This aspect slows over time as a game becomes increasingly 'solved', but it still occurs regardless. Even when players use similar builds because they are currently perceived as optimal, there is still strategy in the way of positioning and harassing with small attacks just as in chess (if not more so due to the increased freedom of movement).

Please note that I am not arguing that SC2 has more depth than chess, but rather that you cannot so easily say one is more strategic than they the other as they are so different in terms of how they are played. I compared the two previously because at the core they both rely heavily on good positioning and outmaneuvering your opponent. SC2 was a good candidate due to this core similarity it shares with chess and Outwitters AND the fact that it has FoW which is what we were considering. My goal was simply to argue that the inclusion of FoW didn't make it a shallow game. My intention was NOT to say one requires more skill than the other.

Sorry for any misunderstanding and hope that clears things up.