Comment by darkmighty | Hacker News Reader

Comment by darkmighty | Hacker News Reader

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In Dota for example the false complexity is what allows someone with not so great analytical thinking but great knowledge of the complexity (items and hero combinations) to fare pretty well. It helps level the field. Although comparing go to RTS is extremely misleading. RTS's have pretty deep of what I call 'continuous tactics' where you need to plan an optimal control of your character with a continuum rather than discrete set of plays. It presents incredibly rich situations which you cannot explain with the kind of strategy you see in go or chess, for instance. The same goes for games like counter-strike, once you take into account limited aiming capability. I think it's beautiful how those games can hide this richness into a very fun game at low levels, and how they don't seem so hard just because we're so good at spatial reasoning and planning.

Here's an illustration:

http://youtu.be/5e8HZqF3cyk?t=2m1s

I also like this quote by von Neumann:

"If people do not believe that mathematics is simple, it is only because they do not realize how complicated life is."

I confess I do wonder what would be the equivalent 'go of RTS games', where the minimal, essential dynamics are captured without all the bling.

It doesn't have the richness of Go but I believe https://www.gnu.org/software/liquidwar6/ captures the essence of the "action/micro" side of RTSs.

I prefer the old http://www.ufoot.org/liquidwar/v5 .

I didn't get the counter strike example. It is an example of a non-obvious mechanic, but I didn't see where the "rich strategy" was coming from.

In a single round, perhaps not. In a best of 30 rounds on three different maps with asymmetrical teams and a team economy, you can see the elements of what the original comment was talking about, "interesting risk/reward and provoking you opponent to overextending type stuff."

If you haven't seen a Counter-Strike game played competitively, this weekend a "Major" tournament is being played in Katowice[0]. It's well worth watching a match to get a glimpse of the mechanics. It might also be fun.

[0] http://www.esl-one.com/csgo/katowice-2015/

I'm not sure that kind of mechanical parts level the field. I'm terribly bad at learning repeatable, dumb, tasks - like checking your base at the beginning of SC2 for stray drones. For me, it's the lamest gameplay decision not to have the base fully covered with visibility at the beginning. It favors a different kind of player.

I'm playing a lot of CoH because it cuts all the base building ceremony down to minimum.

For a number of years, the common belief was that RTS Go = Starcraft Broodwar, especially in Asia.

You can maintain this belief until today if you measure "minimality/essentiality" by size (in MB).

Most probably there are other games out there that are even more minimalistic but for sure they're less popular and less known. You could make a case for DF (although there is no MP) or even C&C1 (just ignore the balance issues).

> 'continuous tactics'

I think the words you're looking for are "micromanagement" (if it's about dealing with more than one unit) and "mechanical skill" if it's about having twitch reaction times (for last hitting, landing spell-combos, etc.)

I play DotA on and off, and thi is the part that irritates me the most :x

Twitch reactions are what make it real-time. You might be more interested in a turn-based strategy game where you can plan out your moves before striking.

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