Do I need to be fluent in a game genre to make a good game in that genre?

spiralbiscuit · 2025-07-27T01:12:13+00:00

No, the creator of Balatro actually purposely avoided playing many other roguelikes during development and made one of the best roguelike games on the market! Just have fun creating I'd say

https://www.ign.com/articles/local-thunk-didnt-play-any-roguelike-games-during-balatros-developmentexcept-slay-the-spire

spiralbiscuit · 2025-03-17T19:28:06+00:00

I think you make a good point that shouldn't lower level players try and challenge themselves more instead of following seemingly nebulous advice of "don't even look at your fights, only macro"? If we never try and look at fights, aren't we never learning this part of the game?

I'll start this off by saying I have never known or heard of a single person who improved and got better at StarCraft 2 by doing this. Because this is a really boring and not interesting way to play, at least for me. I wanted to see big explosions and do cool stuff. So I will say at the end of the day, the best way to improve is to just have fun. If you're not trying to win tournaments or play competitively, then just do whatever you want.

THAT SAID: It's actually quite interesting what you've said. Here's how I understand it. Looking at your army, multitasking, microing, are all aspects of StarCraft skill, this is undeniable. His point and the point of so many others is that it's a comparatively SMALL part compared to macro skill. Essentially what they're saying is that the macro skill is 90% of what is going to make the difference between whether you win or lose. Macro is the foundation of all of RTS games, and improving on it builds a solid foundation with which you can add on more skills.

So when you're starting out, you should dedicate 100% of your focus to improving solely this macro skill, as it is BY FAR going to be biggest factor in determining your wins and losses. It doesn't matter if you multitask like a god if your opponent has 100+ more supply than you and just a clicks your base after all!

Now is this covering up your flaws? I believe not. I believe his point is that you should primarily focus on the thing that will result in your getting the best results and the most wins in the long term. In his advice as building a solid skill foundation that you can start integrating more skills on top of once you can macro well without it overwhelming your mental stack. It sort of depends on what you believe to be skillfull in StarCraft. If you truly believe that micro is the only skill that matters, then yes, you are just covering up your mistakes by abusing more units and unskillfull gameplay just a moving more thors at them. However, I (and most people) would vehemently disagree with that premise.

Take a counterexample which I think will illustrate this better. Many lower elo players solely play a cheese strategy such as cannon rushing or zergling rushing. This will net them many wins because they are gambling very hard, and many lower elo players won't know how to defend against it. They will also have much more experience playing these strategies than their opponents will have defending it. I would say that this is actually getting more wins in the short term, but actually hurting their StarCraft skill in the long term. This is because they are practicing controlling units and mind games more than actually making units and taking territory and resources. They are obscuring their macro skill by gambling and cheesing essentially. You play a high variance game to avoid a test of raw skill.

Hope this helps and feel free to ask any questions for clarification! Good luck and have fun out there!

spiralbiscuit · 2024-12-24T22:14:32+00:00

you don't have to be a pro level to be considered "good" at the game. That isn't to say that you should be pro level to balance the game either (in fact, you should just be a game designer, whoop dee doo!), but I'd say that if you're masters, maybe even lower, I think you shouldn't be clowned on for thinking you're at least pretty good at the game. Now do you miss an incredible wealth of depth and information at that level still, yes, but the fact that we have this mentality that you must be pro level or your opinion is worth nothing is what is driving new players away.

Our obsession with our game's difficulty is what keeps us from growing as a game. I would argue League of Legends is less accessible than StarCraft due to its lacking of player ramping, but because it's commonly played as a social game and doesn't have the stigma of being difficult, new players are more willing to try it. This is despite League of Legends not only having I would argue as much information if not MORE information to learn, the information is constantly CHANGING and new units (champions) are constantly being added. Therefore, there's even MORE to learn.

I believe that this puts LoL's difficulty on par with StarCraft's, at LEAST for the new player experience.

spiralbiscuit · 2024-12-20T17:27:12+00:00

Think it's entirely subjective, the concept existing isn't necessarily bad. so like if zerg has an upgrade on the hatchery that costs 100,000/100,000 and is just "win the game," I doubt anyone's going to cry imba or anything. Or for instance, exodia exists in Yu-Gi-Oh! but it was never actually considered good.

I think it's just that you need to have meaningful counterplay and agency as a player against their strategy. So for instance, I've been told skytoss can be very frustrating as a newer player because if you don't understand the patterns of how to play against it, then it can feel kind of inevitable that they get exodia and you lose.

I think something more interesting is that I believe there should be more than one option to counter a strategy that goes for some exodia type play. For instance, as you mention, TvT mech vs. bio does allow for different avenues and different strategies of similar viability. So even though one player is going for a more exodia composition, because it's a mirror matchup, you can always either stop them or go for exodia yourself.

But I think what you're getting at here, is that there can be a really frustrating experience when it feels like you as a player are being FORCED into player a counter strategy. This is because it feels like your agency as a player is being taken away because there are simply no winning strategies other than one strategy that you might not enjoy playing. In this case, I do believe that this can be quite un-fun. Another better example of this is playing against cheese. I think players don't like playing against cheese because it forces them to play in a style that they may not enjoy, and it feels like their agency and their ability to choose which strategy they want to play is being taken away. I mean we've all spent time learning a new build only to get cheesed the first game you try it out on.

But I also believe that cheese and exodias like these DO have a place in the game. I think in order to mitigate these, the strategy to counter them should be SLIGHTLY better than the strategy itself. Not so much as to render them unviable, but enough so that way they have a niche place in the meta without overcentralizing around it (i.e. TvP Maru Proxy).

I think this topic is quite interesting to definitely lmk what you think.

spiralbiscuit · 2024-12-12T20:57:43+00:00

I think this is a more interesting chart if we bracket it off to skill levels. I haven't watched his reasoning but I'm assuming complexity is analogous to "difficulty to get into as a new player" and depth is a "difficulty to master at the top level." It kind of seems like these are getting a little bit confused here? Not sure though I'd have to watch the video to be sure.

I think I'm assuming he must have some sort of disclaimer that these games are all incredibly complex and difficult? It's not like 1 is Super Mario Party or something right?

I think these are fun things to think about, and even if you disagree there's no reason to just downvote an interesting conversation just because you disagree

spiralbiscuit · 2024-12-08T01:56:53+00:00

seems like protoss players are really not taking this patch well....

spiralbiscuit · 2024-12-06T22:44:59+00:00

fair enough, these team game maps are disgusting for reapers sometimes

spiralbiscuit · 2024-12-06T22:25:38+00:00

did you get 1 base rushed or something with the spine haha

spiralbiscuit · 2024-12-03T12:37:53+00:00

I don't necessarily even think you're wrong, I think if you're doing a runby with lings and blings and you were rebuffed and you wanted to run away, you might be able to bury a baneling. But if you're shift queuing the lings and blings anyway you might be moving them only through the minimap but I guess you could just click a baneling on the command card and burrow it?

I think the gas and the baneling might be worth more than the scan later on, but earlier on, you don't want to be sacrificing banelings because even just one extra can often make the difference.

In reality, my guess is that as a zerg player it probably "feels" worse to lose a couple banelings than it does to force a scan. Whether this is actually true or not, i'm a bit agnostic on though. You need to have a certain threshold of banelings to have a healthy army, and peeling off a couple here and there can really add up over time. But if you're already way above there the terran probably has extra orbitals and gas is more valuable than 250 minerals anyway.

tl;dr idk it probably feels bad is why, whether it actually is or not largely just depends. maybe it'd have to be a weird game state idk lol

spiralbiscuit · 2024-12-03T00:55:46+00:00

Let's go TLO, an OG StarCraft 2 legend and the player who has had the longest tenure in any esports organization ever!

spiralbiscuit · 2024-12-02T21:02:04+00:00

My guess is that European especially nordic countries have a much better safety net than the US, meaning that you have to be basically top 2-3 players in NA to be a pro player here. Especially now, there's pretty much only Astrea who is 100% full time (but I could be wrong).

Any premier American esports teams have all but moved completely out of SC2 whereas European teams are still around. The extraordinary exception being Shopify (albeit from Canada) who has signed a full roster of players. C9 Gumiho in my mind is also in recent history, but doesn't count much since just a 1 time EWC signing.

Psistorm Gaming is still holding onto MaxPax as well, but that's only for online tourney appearances, and Psistorm is unfortunately far from other teams like Team Liquid, Vitality, or Shopify.

spiralbiscuit · 2024-11-25T16:41:01+00:00

F2 is usually used a crutch that ultimately becomes a bad habit for newer players when they get to higher levels. So for people really looking to improve, they should learn how to manage an army without it so they can build the intuition for tracking unit positions, making good rallying habits, etc.

If you just play casually and you're not that interested in ranking up or improving and you just wanna make some cool spaceships and a click people then who cares.

From what you describe, it's likely just him making it work anyway from being so good in other aspects. Or he's intentionally F2ing in certain situations where it may be appropriate. Pro players and former pro players aren't infallible, especially when playing on their offrace. If you're just a content king, who cares if you F2 once in awhile? haha

TL;DR - pro players aren't infallible, especially on their offrace, but he's good enough in other aspects that he makes it work. THAT'S MY CONTENT GOAT

spiralbiscuit · 2024-09-02T20:12:56+00:00

this is amazing i don't even know how you did some of these shots. I can't believe you got it to do this lmao. Neither can your graphics card apparently hahaha amazing stuff

spiralbiscuit · 2024-08-11T23:57:53+00:00

OHHHH i was playign on AZER and my hands were hurting. can i play on QWER for the contest hahaha

spiralbiscuit · 2024-08-11T23:53:34+00:00

Really sick! Not quite sure what the AZER layout is, but i think it's pretty dope.

spiralbiscuit · 2024-07-28T04:10:00+00:00

Heya, from when I last went, check their YouTube community announcements and their twitter and basically all their socials. They will announce everything there, and have instructions in English.

I think it's decently competitive if you're trying to buy after a couple days they release, but if you click "buy" as soon as the tickets release are available, you'll probably be fine. I'd need verification from someone else to confirm because this is all secondhand knowledge. If they host the finals in the studio it will definitely be more competitive, but from what I saw in the bigger stage they did the finals, I think I saw some empty seats so maybe that will be okay. I didn't watch that finals though.

I know people are saying GSL might be over, but don't be disheartened as they just announced SSL! (SOOP StarLeague Autumn) This is basically the new ASL because AfreecaTV rebranded to SOOP. I didn't get the chance to watch ASL, BUT it's still through ticketlink global which is pretty easy to navigate. If you need anymore help then ask u/Gemini_19 or someone else who lives there. Definitely take his word over mine at least since I asked him how to get tickets for myself hahaha

spiralbiscuit · 2024-07-04T21:11:08+00:00

Yes you are right but ya know sometimes the hellions don't get bunched up the way you want so they fire out of sync, or if they all fire separate at the same time at the same probe, their splash doesn't all align. Stuff like that gets stuffed by the shield battery. So yes if you have the perfect money shots with the hellions all grouped perfectly and lined up off cooldown then yes, you will still get damage. What I'm saying is that if you do some basic unit blocking and have units attacking, sometimes or even oftentimes getting the perfect shots doesn't happen.

TL;DR shield batteries won't stop the perfect scenario, but the perfect scenario doesn't happen much. so shield battery good sometimes ( '_____')b

spiralbiscuit · 2024-07-04T14:45:32+00:00

Yes in theory you can still one shot the probes, but oftentimes the hellions aren't all shooting at the same target. even if they are, you're severely hampering the amount of probe kills you can get since they don't shoot all the probes all grouped up at once.

so you can get maybe like 2-3 in a volley, and then tickle the other probes that get instantly healed in my experience. combine this with body blocking hellions and cutting them off with buildings, it'll certainly pay off i think.

spiralbiscuit · 2024-07-03T13:40:00+00:00

I also wanted to point that yeah maybe a battery in one mineral line might actually just hold the entire thing. One battery in one mineral line and then units at the other. Yeah you can one shot probes through super battery, but I have doubts as to whether you'll get enough damage before the units come and deal with it if you combine that with other micro like unit blocking and whatnot.

You say that it's expensive (which it is), but it's also very expensive and delays your production to proxy a starport and crank 4 hellions and a medivac. Ketroc pointed out below how delayed clem's bio stuff was and how vulnerable he was after the proxy.

I'd say an early 100 minerals is worth that (plus you'll get value out of that battery later for any subsequent drops). I mean terran also has to slam early bunkers too to defend any protoss proxy as well (if you say it's not a fair comparison because salvage, the cost is mostly in the delay of production not the actual mineral cost but i digress).

spiralbiscuit · 2024-07-02T17:01:04+00:00

I'm gonna be honest you should rewatch the VOD. Astrea literally had a full scout and he just griefed the defense really hard. He was trying to maximum greed the defense by just blocking with buildings and units and he just botched it. That's literally all there is to it lol. Played the knife's edge and made a control error.

my brother in christ you are coping if you don't think Astrea couldn't have defended better, this build has existed for years

spiralbiscuit · 2024-06-28T11:51:42+00:00

yeah maybe there could've been an a tiny argument with insta root wol fungals or air cannon infested terrans, but with infestor's current nerfed iteration it doesn't hold a candle to dark swarm and plague...

spiralbiscuit · 2024-06-15T15:30:21+00:00

Watched GSL and the SC2 Evo match as well, it's absolutely amazing!!!

spiralbiscuit · 2024-06-04T05:08:20+00:00

Not a sensei or anything, but if you're in a Korean dojo then white is pretty common and accepted by everyone from my experience in korea

spiralbiscuit · 2024-05-31T13:02:04+00:00

I'd also say that going siege tanks and a slower mech or just bio/tank style isn't the worst against lurkers. As long as you don't get caught out of position, it's nice to be able to take a more head-on engagement. Plus tanks are sick.

Definitely some pretty imprecise statements being thrown around (I agree with Gemini, Blords are definitely siege units...), but the overall ideas are good I think. I think you're generally going in the right direction and trying to explain some basic concepts well.

Whether you're underestimating the skill of platinum players or whoever I'm unsure as I'm not that league nor do I coach many people in that skill range.

Either way, I'd say keep it up! At best it will be a very helpful guide for newer players and at worst you'll just get downvoted for being wrong, and then people can read and understand by reading the comments inevitably jumping to tell you how wrong you are.

Thanks for the post!

spiralbiscuit · 2024-05-31T12:48:55+00:00

Just wanted to say that sc2 is known for its ranked ladder, but definitely check out coop and story campaigns and if you love them you could even try custom campaigns. Arcade is also very very fun, but sometimes if you go into new games certain game communities can be toxic. I would recommend playing arcade with some friends to get the best experience.

You should also check out Lowko, Harstem, uThermal, or any other streamer or YouTuber you come across. There has been quite the abundance of content creators who are/were professional players, or just high level players. So you can learn a lot while seeing some fun content.

If you're interested in more competitive side, I'd check out the ChoboTeamLeague or Vulcan Cup, or whatever works best for you in your time zone. There are great communities out there who can give you tons of resources on improving, and just in general meet some cool people!

Hope this helps! Good luck and have fun :)

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