Am I wrong? Definition of Skill Floor

General Discussion
1

I recently got into a heated argument about the definition of a skill floor. People allegedly saying my definition of skill floor is incorrect.

My definition of Skill floor: The opposite of the skill Ceiling. It is the absolute effectiveness of a hero, when skill level=0. For instance. In co-op Tychus has a high skill floor because you only need like 1 hotkey, and don’t need to have any macro or multitasking ability to be effective. However, raynor is a low skill floor because he just isn’t that powerful unless you have strong macro constantly build units, orbitals and stutter step. Mathematically drawn below.
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/e294/kingbiff/SKILL%20FLOOR_zpsuzb3mh4i.png

Their definition of skill floor: The opposite of skill ceiling. It is the “minimum” amount of skill needed to play a hero effectively.

However, when I ask them to point on the graph where the cutoff for “minimum skill to play effectively” should be, they just arbitrarily draw a line with no explanation. Even on an a fundamental level, if we take a floor to be the ground state, and ceiling to be the top state. A skill floor and skill ceiling should also be opposites. Hence, a skill ceiling is the maximum of the graph, and the floor is the minimum of the graph.

2

If I am to be that formal annoying guy, Tychus would be low skill floor instead. But I get your point.

The idea here is effective skill floor, rather than a graph of skill overall.

3

That don’t really works because the game is based on hardcounters, if there is no skill involved, then the unit can be good against something, and bad against other things so you can’t say that unit is effective or not, it depends on the scenario.

So skill floor is a broad term taht considers the meta, builds and basic stuff like macro (no supply blocks, no mineral banking), unit compositions and the basic micro that makes units being effective. Examples.

Marine: Zero skill would be amove them, skill floor would be hit and run, skill ceiling would be hit and run many times, split, focus firing banelings…
Stalker:Zero skill, amove, skill floor,hit and run and blink as group, skill ceiling blink individually, sniping things.
Drops:skill floor, just dropping and using the dropped units, skill ceiling using the units and juggling if necessary.
Melee units:skill floor amove, skill ceiling splitting, preparing a concave attack/defense/surround/backstab.

So you can see that skill ceiling refers to fancy micro and decision making that allow the unit to become even more effective.Skill floor would be mostly macro and mechanics.

4

I think you are mixing up base strength with skill?

5

If we apply the skill/floor-ceiling to units they both have different skill floor AND ceiling.
Let’s see two units:
Stalker mediun skill-floor super high skill-ceiling.
It’s not a big deal to use stalkers for mediocre players with mediocre results (they get rect by tanks/marauders).
In the hand of a Parting (the absolute skill in Stalker usage) the unit is turned in a nightmare for his victims due to insane value that only such stellar-players are able to get from Stalker.
Disruptor.
High skill-floor and mediocre skill-ceiling:
It’s not a meme that players of Bronze/Silver/Gold/Plat are advised to not build this unit at all due to the risk of causing more damage to their own army.
Their skill-ceiling is mediocre because beyond 6200MMR no matter what a skilled protoss can do with Disruptors an equally skilled terran can reduce the effectivity of Disruptors dramatically.
In simple words: low skill-floor is when a unit is effective using low-skill. High-skill-ceiling when in order to get value from a unit high-skill is required.
WP-micro is high skill floor and high skill ceiling.

6

They totally can build stalkers and win, stalker strenght is not the problem, the problem is the macro and decision making. Harstem had some videos about beating a T player with pure stalker with no blink, only good positioning and attacking at the right moment, but a bad player will sacrifice the eco to pump out some stalkers and they will blink into their death and while they are being controlled the bank goes up.

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7

Statistically you are right, but that is not how people use the terms.

Skill floor: lowest skill needed to be able to execute X build order

Skill ceiling: Highest skill beyond which additional game knowledge doesn’t increase potency.

So for example:
A 4gate would be low skill ceiling, low skill floor.
A cannon rush would be low skill ceiling, higher skill floor
A timing bio push would be mid skill ceiling, high skill floor
Or taking a fight versus skytoss as zerg in the current meta would be high skill ceiling high skill floor

and so on and so on.

8

Warp prism micro is baby easy, I don’t play toss but I’ve done it in Archon mode with my friend and destroyed like 10 tanks without losing a single unit. Macroing behind the prism micro is hard, but the prism micro by itself isn’t mechanically difficult, unlike the BS micro Parting can pull off, or splitting bio versus banes.

9

Do it in 1v1 where the enemy can snipe your prism or attack you and come again to share your opinion.

10

Sure, that’s why every Bronze/Silver toss excels in doing it. Following this line of thought even Disruptor is “baby easy”: it’s enough to bring Disruptor in range (enemy units in 9 Range so to have 4 range tolerance to follow the escaping terran/zerg), then press the key for Nova, then guide the nova in destination…
All this for 7 Disruptors that should fire from time to time in order to scare the terran/zerg (if you mass-fire you are toast with a kind of SH with no locusts)…
Main problem for novices is what to micro and when to micro. They tend to overmicro a couple of Reapers collecting back on base resources worth 4 Battlecruisers by min 4 of the game.

11

Cause in Archon mode the enemy didn’t try to snipe my prism, right, thanks for the input bro.

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12

Idk what you mean by warp prism micro then. I meant juggling units, which I could do very very easily. Right click on the unit with low health, click on the unit in the prism, anyone can do that. On the contrary, managing disruptors individually while there is a big engagement going on is very, very difficult and I sure as hell couldn’t pull it off.

13

When i say that WP micro is hard i mean that while you are managing the army stacker focusing, Sentry FF ing and the rest, on top of that doing the WP micro for saving key units.
Doing exclusively WP micro ignoring all the rest is easy (and i agree with you there).

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14

Eh, I’d argue both can be accurate, depending on the specifics of the discussion, but I’d generally go with this one. IE: it’s associated with the learning curve/effectiveness for low skilled players, whereas the skill ceiling is associated with the effectiveness at peak skill levels (low skill ceiling = low effectiveness at peak skill, since any extra “skill” beyond that point isn’t as relevant).

IE; On a graph, it’d look something like this, because the skill floor/skill ceiling are both reference points on a “skill” graph:
Peak skill
|
|
Skill Ceiling
|
|
|
|
|
Skill floor
|
|
Bottom skill

The lower the skill floor, the easier it is to be effective with something. The lower the skill ceiling, the less effective it is beyond that point/at peak skill levels.

The range between the skill floor and the skill ceiling are the points where whatever is being referenced is effective between two otherwise equally skilled players. Outside of that range, you’re putting yourself at a potential disadvantage by using it.

A specific skill level could also be referenced. Ex: Protoss has a lower skill floor for pro play than Terran/Zerg in current balance. - ie: the level of skill needed to compete at the lower end of the pro level is lower for Protoss.

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15

Cause in archon mode only scrubs are playing (the phrase tvp, 10 tanks, and no loses sounds like low level gameplay with afk enemies) same with team games.

Exactly, what kind of game is that someone can babysit the prism until 10 tanks die?, in a normal game at the moment you try to kill tanks with a prism you encounter vikings 25s later, and then all the rest of the things you must manage, you can’t just stare at your prism while the enemy units die slowly.

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16

That’s the magic of the prism speed upgrade. Vikings struggle to keep up with the speed which opens up 100x the opportunities for damage. That’s what Tehbatz was trying to illustrate.

17

But he says fast units are hard to micro, so that would mean that prism is not easy to use.

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18

$.02, the floor is assumed to be variable, e.g. the floor required to win at X level of play.

19

Here is where your definition of anything related to ‘skill’ is wrong.

Coop requires no skill at all…

To have any skill is to play in 1v1.

Coop game play was designed for the skill-less as a place for that population to play ‘comfortably.’

gg

20

Technically someone would need to be given the authority to create an operational definition of “skill floor”. If neither of you agrees on said operational definition then all you are arguing is semantics and both idiots because neither has the authority to make the call.