Star of Alphas

AlphaStar is the newest and best Starcraft 2 AI that is attempting to end human dominance in the game forever.  It is built by the same people who made AlphaGo, that finally ended humans as the dominant force in Go, so expectations were high.


AlphaStar isn't quite there yet.  It only knows how to play Protoss vs. Protoss, and only on one map.  In a real tournament setting it would get massacred - basically it wouldn't know how to play.  But in that limited setting it beat LiquidTLO 5-0, which initially people thought wasn't such a huge deal - after all, TLO is a Zerg specialist, not Protoss.  But then it beat LiquidMana 5-0, and Mana is one of the best Protoss in the world.  Finally it lost a single game against Mana later on, once the team put some extra restrictions in place on AlphaStar.

The interesting thing is not the stuff that AlphaStar could do that no human could do.  It could micro in three places at once, and used that superior control and reaction time to smash the experts, no doubt, but we all knew that would happen.  Even though they limited its actions per second to mimic the maximum a pro can deliver, its efficacy with those actions was far superior.  The cool thing was what it did that humans *could* do, but don't.  It built a ton of extra probes in a way that pros simply do not do.  It also was cavalier about harassment early on, and seemed to not care about losing early economy so long as it got to build a perfect push and smash in the opponent's front gate.

It is hard to say if building those extra seemingly pointless probes was tech that AlphaStar has figured out that people haven't, or if it is a thing that only AlphaStar can capitalize on.  Perhaps it is just a way to compensate for it's weakness against harassment.  Hard to say, but when the commentators lose their minds over a play and make it clear that a human doing this would be laughed at, but then that player wins a crushing victory, you gotta pay attention.

This is much like it was around 2000 when Deep Blue was finally beating Kasparov at chess.  The machines haven't quite won yet and they need optimum conditions to take the best humans down.  However, it is totally crystal clear that in the next couple of years algorithms will improve, computers will quadruple in power, and humans will forever be second best.  Someone suggested that this will change how we think about Starcraft 2 competitions, but I think that is silly.  We didn't stop racing the 100 meter dash when we invented motorcycles, or substitute pitching machines for pitchers in baseball.  This won't change human competition at all.

I suspect that just like in chess people will train themselves against AIs to test out builds and theories. Everyone will accept that computers can't be beaten, but we will still be interested in watching the human personalities battle each other, just as we are in chess championships.

I love these moments where the tipping point is reached.  For decades AIs have been pathetic in Starcraft, obviously inferior, never able to compete.  For the rest of civilization AIs will be assumed to be unbeatable.  But today, right now, we are at a point where the AI is just on the edge, able to crush humans on certain days, in certain ways.  These moments are wonderful and fleeting and often teach us important things about what we have always taken for granted.

A happy ending

I finally bought and played the final chapter in the Starcraft 2 trilogy - Legacy of the Void.  I was disappointed enough with part 2 that I waited until I saw Legacy on sale to buy it, because I sure didn't want to be let down again.

I wasn't let down though.  Legacy wasn't all I might have hoped, but it was all it could have been.

Which sounds weird, but let me explain.  Part 1, Wings of Liberty, was one of the best games I have ever bought.  I played through the campaign over and over and I absolutely loved it.  The missions were themed well, had lots of variety, and were balanced to give me all the experiences I wanted.  I loved the characters and the story.

Legacy couldn't have been all those things.  It has good variety in missions, nice visuals, all of that.  The technical elements of the missions were all well done.  But there were some things that it could never be because it was a protoss game.  You just can't get people invested in aliens as easily or as well as you can get them invested in humans.  Little things like random signs on the wall or a look of utter exhaustion in a character's eyes don't come across when you are looking at an alien.  Jim Raynor and Sarah Kerrigan have appeal that Zeratul and Artanis just don't.  Blizzard could make all the great missions they wanted (and they did!) but it wouldn't tug at my heartstrings the same way.

The technical implementation isn't perfect though.  Part 1 was amazing in that it had four separate plot lines you could tackle at whatever pace you wanted.  Figuring out what to do next was actually an interesting puzzle.  Choosing what things to research was tricky.  Deciding what upgrades to buy took thought.  However, in Legacy those choices aren't there.  You can choose to do A first or B first, but you have to do AB or BA.  All the currency you gather for upgrades is refundable so all choices can be reversed on a whim.  The ability to make a hard plot choice, one mission or another, listen to Nova or Tosh, is not there.

Which is all to say that Legacy mostly just suffers by comparison.  It is a good game, and I liked it.  I will play through again on harder difficulties to hone my skills.  But it wasn't as good as the first.

Nothing would be though, really.  Just being about the Protoss made it certain that it would pale in comparison, even if the other technical bits were just as good.  And they weren't as good, though they were still quite solid.

When the Protoss campaign ended and the final cinematic was done I was just about ready to flip tables - where was the proper ending?  What happens to the characters?  But then I realized there was an epilogue where we finally get to see the threads tied up.  It was all kinds of nonsense, magic stacked on magic, but Sarah and Jim finally got their happy ending.  I loved that, nonsense be damned.

I feel a deep sense of relief.  The series is done, the story is over.  The characters I loved so much walked off into the sunset together.  The game pushed me to be better.

Hell...it's about time.

SC2: Heart of the Swarm is meh

I posted my initial thoughts on SC2:  Heart of the Swarm earlier and at the time I was pretty positive about the game.  I finished it this weekend and I am leaning somewhat more negative having played through the entire thing.  It is still polished and had a solid launch - technically speaking there can be no significant complaints especially considering how bad other titles have been in the department recently.  Unfortunately for HotS it comes on the heels of what I consider to be one of the best titles in recent history... SC2: Wings of Liberty itself.

HotS has 27 missions but 7 of them are evolution missions which are utterly trivial and without merit or interest.  They are fine in the sense that they provide context for a choice you have to make but their very existence makes me not want to play through the game again on Brutal difficulty.  I played through the original WoL campaign a good half dozen times and enjoyed it each time but I find little enough incentive to do so with this expansion.

Evolution missions aren't the only sticking point though.  In WoL there was a much greater degree of choice in terms of how missions played out.  Although this often made the story seem somewhat nonsensical I really enjoyed the ability to choose what I tackled next and the fact that I could leave parts of the story behind and just finish the primary mission was great.  It gave me the sense of exploration and freedom instead of simply following a linear path with trivial deviations.  WoL also had choices in missions that determined the parameters of the mission and changed later cutscenes and plot developments.  These choices allowed me to feel like I was in some sense in control of the game.  HotS lacks both character decisions as well as tactical choices like mission ordering and it feels much less immersive.

I also feel like the very nature of the storytelling style leaves me less interested because the actors are so inhuman.  I honestly don't give a crap about Stukov, Dhaka, and the other zerg aliens that Kerrigan has so many conversations with.  The lore behind the conversations is really well done and they did a good job with what they had to work with but I am a human and I can't empathize with a big ole pack of monsters.  In WoL I really did like the characters and I felt a connection to them and their story simply because they were people.  I found it hard to care whether anyone aside from the marquee heroes lived or died.  Given that this expansion was all about zerg it does seem somewhat inevitable but it didn't work for me.

HotS feels analogous to Cataclysm for WOW.  Good looking, technically solid, but honestly not as much FUN as previous expansions.  Also the 'gaming on rails' aspect of Cataclysm and the lack of choice is definitely not something I enjoy going through again.  I figured after going through HotS completely on Hard I would then swap to Brutal and do it again.  Instead I find myself thinking that if I play SC2 right now I am just going to play through WoL on Brutal instead for my fourth time.  That is a sad fact for HotS.

Love Story of the Swarm

I love Jim Raynor.  His personality reads a lot like Mal from Firefly and I love Mal too - the tormented criminal with the heart of gold.  I wasn't sure what to expect from Heart of the Swarm (The Starcraft 2 xpac) but so far I absolutely love what they have done with the story.  Someday I really need to play that character in a tabletop RPG!

***spoiler alert***

The key to the bit is Kerrigan's motivation.  Why would she go back to being the Queen of Blades?  What is she doing on Team Zerg again?  Raynor rescued you, fool, why are you going and messing everything up?!? They did a great job making that switch work though and it reads like a tragic love story with the twists based on misunderstanding and mistake.  A little bit hackneyed and unoriginal to be sure but the best plots have all been done before so all you can do is try to do that same old thing well.

The mechanics of the game seem really solid too which I appreciate.  It is more of the same from SC2 with timed missions, crazy events to deal with, and new mechanics on nearly every mission once you get past the intro.  Pretty much they took the original campaign (which was great fun) and did the same thing again but with a new plot, new race, and everything shifted enough to make it great.  Nothing spectacularly innovative, just solid execution and polish which is what we have come to expect from Blizzard.

Thankfully HoTS bucked the trend of big titles bombing on launch day because the servers weren't up to the job.  Downloading took a little while and things were a mite choppy now and then but for a launch day experience it was excellent.  I played the game, it was tons of fun, the game worked as advertised.  I am sure a week after launch things will be smooth as anything because all the downloading will be done and the rush will have slowed a bit.

I should note that I haven't beat the game yet and am probably only about 1/3 of the way through.  I started out on Hard which seemed very appropriate - I am rusty as hell but I only died once so far though I had my share of close calls.  Clearly I will need to get better and practice up to beat Brutal but it should be quite doable; from my vantage point they got the difficulty just right.  Maybe my mind will change after beating the game or actually testing Brutal but so far Blizzard gets a massive thumbs up - HoTS is good stuff.

Not Optional

I have been reading my DnD 2nd edition manual for ideas and amusement.  It is fun to read over old rulesets and laugh at what sort of information was provided and what was left out.  For example, there are rules on how you get away from enemies you have engaged in melee but those rules leave out how you know if you are engaged, how close you have to be, how many people a combatant can engage, whether you engage someone if you just move past them, etc.  The simplest questions like "what happens if I walk past that guy to get next to that other guy?" are not at all answered.  On the other hand you have precisely 18 different kinds of polearms, each of which has detailed instructions on its historical uses and origin and a punching and wrestling chart that has 21 different results.  Because obviously massive selection and backstory of polearms and fracking punching charts are more useful than knowing *how to move around*.

One thing I did notice was that there are an awful lot of optional rules in the old DnD and they didn't feel particularly optional most of the time when I was playing back in the old days.  We used pretty much everything and doing so really increased the complexity of the game.  We used hovering on death's door, spell components, encumbrance, the entire proficiencies chapter, individual initiative, parrying, and more.  The notable exception to our "use it all!" mentality was the complex, awful, and ridiculous weapon type vs. armour type rule.  Barring that one outlier optional rules simply weren't optional; even when two choices were presented we always went with the more complex option.

I think this tendency for players to always gravitate towards the most hardcore game possible is something that appears across genres.  Look at WOW, for example, where the complaints that everyone cannot complete the most hardcore content were never ending.  People were never satisfied to play the game that suited them but rather wanted to play the biggest, baddest game around and often would quit if that game wasn't what they wanted.  Even if a game they would like was available they weren't interested unless that was the premiere game.  I saw tons of people complaining that the Brutal setting on SC2 was too hard even though there was absolutely no necessity to finish it whatsoever.  I felt like Brutal was a challenge, but quite a reasonable one really, and why would you complain when you can always just do it on Hard instead if that is more your speed?

I think this is going to present massive problems for Wizards in their concept for DnD Next.  They want a massively tiered system with gajillions of optional rules and dials that can be used or not all bolted onto a very simple game.  Somehow they think they can balance this and make simple, no decisions characters work alongside massively customizable characters in a system where the rules are mostly unknown.  This is a disaster waiting to happen.  Nearly everybody is going to use the most complex rule system that gets published and incorporate every optional rule they can possibly stuff into the game.  They are going to end up with a really complex, intimidating ruleset that has been bastardized so that a simple ruleset that doesn't get used lies somewhere within it.

Don't make a game that is a heinous mess of optional rules.  Don't make a game with so many settings that balancing things is impossible and don't make a game that sacrifices being good for being nostalgic.  Just make one good game.

A strange challenge in SC2

Sthenno told me awhile ago about an interesting challenge he went after in Starcraft 2.  The idea was to play through the campaign building *only* the special units that appear only in the campaign on Hard difficulty.  This is really tricky because the units that only appear in the campaign are pretty much all completely trash.  It isn't winnable on Brutal I think but Hard is doable.  The roughest part so far has been getting started since I am restricted to using only Firebats.  Firebats have this problem that they do very little damage, have low range, can't hit flyers and are big so they have tremendous trouble concentrating fire.  Most missions have the problem that although Firebats can kill off much of the enemy force eventually a flyer shows up and then I have to beat them with the two Marines I start with.  It is possible to aggro flyers with my Firebats and drag them across the map to a well placed Missile Turret but it isn't feasible when the mission is actually challenging otherwise.

I ended up doing a really complicated dance trying to figure out which missions I could actually beat by spamming Firebats, the most useless unit known to Terrankind.  Though I have already beaten all the missions several times trying this bizarre little twist really got me back into playing the game and made it fresh and new again.  I had a blast trying to figure out how I was going to beat Xil in particular because normally you beat this mission by stacking up a billion Siege Tanks and ruining the enemies.  Not having access to Siege Tanks makes it really quite tricky though, especially since the only units I was allowed to build at this point were Firebats and the execrable Diamondback.  I ended up building a full 10 Planetary Fortresses and plastering the world with my base from wall to wall.  This is exactly the sort of gaming experience that I love, experiencing that desperation, that rush of hunting for solutions and stretching to find a new, creative solution to a problem.  Most of these missions have really obvious solutions that either include Medic/Marine or 'Spam the new unit for the mission' but when you aren't allowed to build the new unit you have to search for some other way.

I think this illustrates very well how important it is that bad decisions exist within a game.  I have said it before and I will say it again - it is critical for a game to have many ways to play well and even more ways to play badly.    It is of course not true that randomly penalizing yourself makes a game good but sometimes one can find a strange way to play badly that otherwise makes the game really tough and interesting.  It could have been that the arbitrary restriction I chose ended up being either impossible or utterly trivial and neither would have been much fun but I got lucky and there ended up being a tremendous number of challenging maps and difficult decisions.  Somehow I got in the sweet spot where there were both a bunch of tricky strategic decisions and a bunch of great moment to moment gameplay.

Much of the replayability of single player games comes from this source.  People seek out strange ways to play their games and go through them multiple times under their bizarre restrictions.  Some of them are good, like this one, and some are bloody brutal, like when Ziggyny decided to beat FF1 with just one Thief.  Not that the Thief challenge isn't challenging, it was, but 20 hours of mindless grinding in the middle really kicks the fun factor in the junk...