Random >> terran > zerg >>> protoss? for popularity. Only hit protoss once or twice in the first thirty games. All of these games were after the patch removing macro mechanics
Random Advantage - Page 12
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Cyro
United Kingdom20158 Posts
Random >> terran > zerg >>> protoss? for popularity. Only hit protoss once or twice in the first thirty games. All of these games were after the patch removing macro mechanics | ||
CheRRyKiTTy
Finland38 Posts
On August 30 2015 04:01 ChristianS wrote: Edit: you edited in your distribution before I could even ask! Actually, you bring up an interesting point: the macro changes make it a lot easier to learn to play all three races in LotV, at least in their current iteration. Personally my biggest issue in trying to off-race as Z was that I wasn't in the habit of injecting, and it would stop happening as soon as something distracted me (I would keep selecting hatcheries and building units, but I wouldn't go back and inject at them). And as Protoss I couldn't get the hang of knowing what to chrono boost and when. I doubt MULE is the biggest barrier to learning Terran though, so it might be harder for Z and P players to off-race as Terran with the new changes than vice versa. In any case, that makes the "nine matchups" argument a lot weaker in LotV as well. Indeed, althought there are at least two more subtle changes that make picking up Zerg and Protoss slightly easier than in WoL/HotS. Probably some more, but these are something I've figured out so far when testing the races. 1. Protoss early game is not centered around forcefields as much as before due to the adepts. 2. ZvT is not centered around lingbanemuta anymore. Forcefields were rather unforgiving spells, if you missed the FF you probably lost the game. This makes picking up protoss for a low level player rather miserable task. Rushing to higher tech whilst defending with forcefields is not a requirement to play the race anymore (Which is good in my opinion). Lingbanemuta vs 4m is miserable if you haven't gotten used to the dynamics from your races PoV. Especially on the zerg side, because being too cost inefficient usually results in the loss. Current metagame promotes less "1 misclick I lose the game" kind of gameplay and makes it easier for off racer to pick up. These were my personal annoyances for a long time when off racing. | ||
Pursuit_
United States1329 Posts
On August 29 2015 16:58 ChristianS wrote: But what in-game disadvantage does the random player have? His only 'disadvantage' is that he doesn't know how to play his race as well because he hasn't practiced it as much. In what other context do we feel the need to compensate inexperienced players with an in-game advantage so they can have an even chance of winning against more experienced opponents? It's not that the random player is 'less experienced', oftentimes a more experienced random player will lose to less experienced people who play just one race. They're just disadvantaged because they're choosing to play all three races instead of solely focusing on one. Even with the advantage of their opponent not knowing what race they are to begin with and with random being the least played race (and thus making it less likely their opponent has a refined response to playing vs random), random players still have a high learning curve. So yes they have an advantage, but no it isn't unfair. Honestly I think qxc had the best argument for his dislike of playing vs random when he said something to the effect of "I don't like playing vs random because it's bad practice for tournaments." For a pro player, playing vs random is a waste of time since they won't play vs a random player in a tournament. I think most ladder players have this same mentality, where the random player is 'wasting their time' because they 'cant practice their builds'. Rather than treating random as a fourth race and having new / different / unique responses to it, they just get frustrated. It's a poor mentality to have towards the game IMO, but I at least understand where it's coming from. On August 30 2015 04:02 Cyro wrote: I'd guess that random outnumbered protoss by at least 4 to 1 or so. There are a LOT of randoms in the queue. Random >> terran > zerg >>> protoss? for popularity. Only hit protoss once or twice in the first thirty games. All of these games were after the patch removing macro mechanics Archon mode I have no idea, but there's only 1 random player in the top 50 gm in LotV and playing 1v1 I almost never run into random. Played 42 games and I've played vs 1-2 random players. Frankly I think archon mode is more casual so you're more likely to run into people playing for fun, like how people who main a race in 1v1 will play random in team games. edit: Protoss is also fairly popular at higher levels in LotV 1v1. 11 in the top 16 of GM. | ||
ChristianS
United States3126 Posts
On August 31 2015 18:31 Pursuit_ wrote: It's not that the random player is 'less experienced', oftentimes a more experienced random player will lose to less experienced people who play just one race. They're just disadvantaged because they're choosing to play all three races instead of solely focusing on one. Even with the advantage of their opponent not knowing what race they are to begin with and with random being the least played race (and thus making it less likely their opponent has a refined response to playing vs random), random players still have a high learning curve. So yes they have an advantage, but no it isn't unfair. Honestly I think qxc had the best argument for his dislike of playing vs random when he said something to the effect of "I don't like playing vs random because it's bad practice for tournaments." For a pro player, playing vs random is a waste of time since they won't play vs a random player in a tournament. I think most ladder players have this same mentality, where the random player is 'wasting their time' because they 'cant practice their builds'. Rather than treating random as a fourth race and having new / different / unique responses to it, they just get frustrated. It's a poor mentality to have towards the game IMO, but I at least understand where it's coming from. Archon mode I have no idea, but there's only 1 random player in the top 50 gm in LotV and playing 1v1 I almost never run into random. Played 42 games and I've played vs 1-2 random players. Frankly I think archon mode is more casual so you're more likely to run into people playing for fun, like how people who main a race in 1v1 will play random in team games. Perhaps I was unclear when I said "less experienced." The reason random is harder is because you have to play all three races, so you accumulate skill with each one more slowly. This is because for any one of the three races you'll have less experience than someone who has played a comparable number of games to you. If every day I were to spend twenty minutes practicing piano, twenty minutes practicing violin, and twenty minutes practicing saxophone, I would progress at each more slowly than someone who spent an hour each day on one instrument. So the random player is more inexperienced - or practiced, or skilled - at any given race or matchup than their opponent is with theirs in the same matchup. Why should they be given an advantage to counteract this? If I were to enter a piano competition, should I be given extra points because I'm a better fiddler than my competitors? If not, why should I be given an advantage in TvT just because I'm also skilled in PvT and ZvT? | ||
Pursuit_
United States1329 Posts
On August 31 2015 19:13 ChristianS wrote: Perhaps I was unclear when I said "less experienced." The reason random is harder is because you have to play all three races, so you accumulate skill with each one more slowly. This is because for any one of the three races you'll have less experience than someone who has played a comparable number of games to you. If every day I were to spend twenty minutes practicing piano, twenty minutes practicing violin, and twenty minutes practicing saxophone, I would progress at each more slowly than someone who spent an hour each day on one instrument. So the random player is more inexperienced - or practiced, or skilled - at any given race or matchup than their opponent is with theirs in the same matchup. Why should they be given an advantage to counteract this? If I were to enter a piano competition, should I be given extra points because I'm a better fiddler than my competitors? If not, why should I be given an advantage in TvT just because I'm also skilled in PvT and ZvT? This is a pretty bad example. Everybody is playing a piano so everybody is on the same playing field. You'd need a competition where fiddlers and pianist's are competing against eachother, and then you can also choose to flip a coin to decide which you will play. You have to play 5+ songs and people choosing to flip a coin must flip it every time to decide which instrument they will play each song. It's easy to argue that players in the latter category deserve some kind of advantage for playing both instruments vs people who will only need to play one. There really aren't good examples of this multichoice random scenario in other scenarios that I can think of though. Most fighting games have perfect information, some MOBAs give a small advantage from random while others dont (but the team dynamic makes random pretty horrible for competitive play anyway), ect. | ||
Cyro
United Kingdom20158 Posts
Archon mode I have no idea, but there's only 1 random player in the top 50 gm in LotV and playing 1v1 I almost never run into random. Played 42 games and I've played vs 1-2 random players. Frankly I think archon mode is more casual so you're more likely to run into people playing for fun, like how people who main a race in 1v1 will play random in team games. Archon is actually quite popular and we already see a tournament for it, wouldn't surprise me to see serious prize pools for it. Archon allows for higher levels of play in some ways, at the very least two minds are better than one but the macro and micro skillcaps are much more easily approached when you have two people who have that crucial synergy and don't fight against eachother. Random DEFINITELY has a significant advantage in the early game of every matchup, especially so in LOTV. You can argue that other stuff such as experience offsets that, but i don't think that's a valid excuse for allowing imbalance. If you want to take a disadvantage by playing races that you don't know as well (though it's very easy to know the first 3 minutes of every race for the abusive Random strategies) then that's on you - it's not an ideal solution, but it's a much better one than outright saying that Random has an unfair advantage, everyone else should deal with it at the cost of being forced to use coinflip openings. Right now it seems like the burden of proof is on people to show that random imbalance shouldn't exist - i say that's complete bullshit, it should be disallowed by default and if people want to argue for adding an imbalance, they can do so. The FREQUENCY of hitting random shouldn't influence perception this, it's just that when you play 50 games if you hit 20 randoms and many of them do abusive as fuck stuff, it's way more obvious than if you play 50 games and hit 1-2 randoms and they may or may not do anything abusive. It takes hitting random 20 times in 1-2 days and having to coinflip every time while potentially being hit by 12forge, 3hatch before pool and such all at the same time and having no way to find out until after you commit to your opening to really see how broken and unfair it is for high level play - and how frustrating it is for low level play! And by committing to opening, i mean the first like four buildings, it's a pretty huge deal. Random's often won't worker scout, they won't show their overlord - you won't have a clue of their race until a cannon is done 20 seconds before your gateway is finished with standard opening, or when you probe scout and fail to block the third hatchery while you opened gateway-gateway to be safe against random. It's an easy fix, not a technical problem - just a case of throwing up a "protoss", "terran" or "zerg" sign as the game starts, or preferably on the loading screen as that's a place for quick talk specific to map&race strategy on the ladder, as you have no idea which combination you'll hit until the game is loading. The most brutal rushes in HOTS build 3-6 probes before gateways/forges and such behind the income of an average of ~8 workers - in legacy they just start with 12, drop the pylon then drop gateways/forge without making any probes at all. Other races probably do very, very similar shit. There's no time to scout it and there's no opening to go neck and neck even with all three races after being prepared for any potential bullshit. It's unfair by definition - this shouldn't even be a discussion. Tournaments have even completely banned Random from being selected before because of this imbalance back before it was as big as now. | ||
ChristianS
United States3126 Posts
On August 31 2015 19:38 Pursuit_ wrote: This is a pretty bad example. Everybody is playing a piano so everybody is on the same playing field. You'd need a competition where fiddlers and pianist's are competing against eachother, and then you can also choose to flip a coin to decide which you will play. You have to play 5+ songs and people choosing to flip a coin must flip it every time to decide which instrument they will play each song. It's easy to argue that players in the latter category deserve some kind of advantage for playing both instruments vs people who will only need to play one. There really aren't good examples of this multichoice random scenario in other scenarios that I can think of though. Most fighting games have perfect information, some MOBAs give a small advantage from random while others dont (but the team dynamic makes random pretty horrible for competitive play anyway), ect. Admittedly examples are a little difficult, just because the present situation is so bizarre and convoluted. The most plausible example I can think of for a competitive environment in music where this might be applicable is musicians trying out for a group performance of some sort – let's say a string quartet. One musician steps up and tries out for the viola part, playing it stunningly. Another musician tries out next, and unconventionally, asks the director which part they should try out for, explaining that they are gifted at both viola and cello. The director flips a coin to determine that they should try out for the viola part; the bi-talented musician complies, and gives a slightly less impressive performance. Now the director might get a little dazzled by the fact that this person could play both instruments at such a high level and choose the second musician, but if they consider the matter coolly rationally, they should choose the musician that plays it better. This bi-talented individual might be useful for other things – the director could save money by hiring only one understudy for both parts! – but ultimately when you set the challenge of the viola part before someone, and they perform worse than their competitor, it seems irrelevant to the question at hand that if you had chosen a closely related challenge, they might have performed better. Of course this example differs from the situation in Starcraft in that the director has a concrete goal in mind (an well-reviewed, high-grossing performance from his quartet) and therefore it is easy enough to demonstrate that his goal will be better met by choosing the first musician – regardless of the second's musician's double talent, the performance will sell more tickets and be reviewed more positively if the final production is of a higher quality. Starcraft doesn't have so clear a goal in choosing its winners, so it's difficult to find the analogous proof. But I think a common principle can be discerned: The player who played better should win. Granted a lot of things can get in the way of that – map imbalances, racial imbalances, or even unlucky scouting on 4-player maps. But we try to eliminate map and racial imbalances where possible; a lot of players also think maps with 4 spawn locations should be restricted in some way to prevent situations where one player, through no merit of their own, gains a huge informational advantage. Starting the game with an informational advantage for one player just as clearly violates the above principle; unlike the other examples given, though, it is not difficult to prove that it violates it, and completely trivial to remedy the situation. | ||
TelecoM
United States10583 Posts
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Cyro
United Kingdom20158 Posts
Once again it seems like the burden of proof should be on the people who want there to be an imbalance in the game. You shouldn't have to spend 3 months studying an imbalance and writing essays on the subject that may or may not change anything when it's clearly and unarguably imbalanced for no good reason, the only question is how imbalanced it is. | ||
ChristianS
United States3126 Posts
I can't speak for other critics of random advantage, but I, at least, have not had any particularly salty experience against random in recent memory. I don't have particular trouble winning against random players on ladder. I'm just earnestly of the opinion that random advantage makes Starcraft a worse game. If you disagree that's fine, but why can't we at least have a discussion about it? | ||
Cyro
United Kingdom20158 Posts
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Ryndika
1489 Posts
Eg. randoming zerg against protoss felt like autowin because no FFE. Worker scouting early doesn't feel that bad either atm but that might change later when builds get too tight. | ||
ChristianS
United States3126 Posts
On September 06 2015 13:33 Ryndika wrote: After playing lotv now for a bit it feels like some adventages as random aren't as great as in wol/hots. Eg. randoming zerg against protoss felt like autowin because no FFE. Worker scouting early doesn't feel that bad either atm but that might change later when builds get too tight. That's interesting. Do you think that might result from the fact that the standard builds aren't very well-defined yet? Obviously the random advantage is strongest when the early game for each race is a bit more predictable, and you can force someone off the standard opening by choosing random. Since everything is a bit up in the air in beta, maybe the advantage isn't so strong yet? I don't think WoL PvR is a good reference point for you to judge by, though. WoL PvR was probably the most broken random has ever been, so yeah, I should hope it's weaker than that. That doesn't mean it's in a good spot, though. | ||
a_flayer
Netherlands2826 Posts
That said, I announce my race when asked or when I spawn as zerg vs protoss because otherwise the games would just be so sad (although people will often refuse to believe you, which was slightly frustrating). | ||
Ryndika
1489 Posts
They should make finals of automated torunament Bo3 so you could take calculated risks but now it's 100% coinflip where you lose against 2 leagues below player because of luck. (Worst part for me personally is that you are not really playing any style or your own style. You just have to coinflip or do random shit to coinflip) | ||
fluidrone
France1478 Posts
You seem to think it was oversight to leave it in sc2? I think it is an extra match up and you are lobbying to kill the passion / game experience for "us" randoms, an experience you do not understand / agree with apparently.. an experience that has been there from the start. #we should all play random | ||
NeThZOR
South Africa7387 Posts
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LDaVinci
France130 Posts
Random are more present than other races in lotv : of course ... come on dudes, it's a beta... players want to test it, it's a beta. (do I have to say it more ?) Random has advantages, so they should all die painfully : Random is a race in itself, this is pure racism. Random are imbalanced cause I don't know what it is : Random comes with advantages and disadvantages. Overall this balanced itself. I hate Protoss cause they cheese a lot, or so I think. So I'm going to make a thread about it and that they should get a nerf cause I cannot scout properly a proxy whatever. Random are all cheeser, and every time I try to counter cheese them, it happens that they countered my counter cheese by macro cheesing. Jerks : Or you can learn to play, get better. Some random try the qualifications for WCS and GSL. They all fail in the first rounds. Maybe with the stronger start of lotv they will have a slightly bigger advantage. Or should I say a slighlty lesser disadvantage ? Ouin, Ouin Mom comes help me ! : stop whining and get better | ||
ChristianS
United States3126 Posts
On September 10 2015 23:07 LDaVinci wrote: I have seen some points here. Random are more present than other races in lotv : of course ... come on dudes, it's a beta... players want to test it, it's a beta. (do I have to say it more ?) Random has advantages, so they should all die painfully : Random is a race in itself, this is pure racism. Random are imbalanced cause I don't know what it is : Random comes with advantages and disadvantages. Overall this balanced itself. I hate Protoss cause they cheese a lot, or so I think. So I'm going to make a thread about it and that they should get a nerf cause I cannot scout properly a proxy whatever. Random are all cheeser, and every time I try to counter cheese them, it happens that they countered my counter cheese by macro cheesing. Jerks : Or you can learn to play, get better. Some random try the qualifications for WCS and GSL. They all fail in the first rounds. Maybe with the stronger start of lotv they will have a slightly bigger advantage. Or should I say a slighlty lesser disadvantage ? Ouin, Ouin Mom comes help me ! : stop whining and get better Jesus, I cannot believe when people bring out the word "racism" regarding Starcraft races and think it's going to get some kind of work done. Not only does it not, but it's kind of offensive to compare this to legitimate racial issues that exist and have existed in the world. You really think someone wanting random players' race to be revealed is akin to Jim Crow? Random isn't a race. It's an RNG choice between the three existing races. It doesn't have its own units, upgrades, buildings, or spells. It has no lore. The only disadvantage or random is out-of-game: random players are generally worse at whatever race they wind up with, just because they agreed to be randomly put into one of the three races, instead of just one. With the new LotV macro changes that is less punishing anyway, but even aside from that, why should you be compensated with an in-game advantage just because you volunteered to be shoved into a situation in which you have less idea what you're doing? If random advantage is strong enough to make up for your inexperience, you'll win despite playing worse and making worse decisions than your opponent. If it isn't, you'll lose because you volunteered for a handicap going into the game. Most likely your three races aren't very similar in skill anyway. If they're far enough apart in skill, you get stupid situations where the win or loss is decided mostly by which race you roll. If you roll your good race, you're probably better than your opponent at the matchup since your other two races are dragging down your MMR, plus you have random advantage on top. If you roll your bad race, you don't know what you're doing and you'll lose. The only time the game will even be close if if you roll your middle race, the only one for which your MMR is remotely accurate. A better system (and not just for everyone who has to put up with starting games at a disadvantage in the current system – random players should be better off here, too!) would be to have separate MMRs for each race, and have random players' race revealed. Then the 'random disadvantage' of learning all three races doesn't exist, because your MMR will match you with opponents who are about as skilled as you are with that race anyway. So if you don't know what you're doing with Zerg, neither will your opponents. Edit: "Stop whining and get better" has absolutely nothing to do with this discussion, so stop saying it. The point of this thread is to talk about whether random advantage should exist. If you don't want to talk about that, nobody's making you post in the thread. If I were arguing "random too stronk win too many GSL" that point would be relevant. Since I'm not, it's not. | ||
quillian
United States318 Posts
It's not very hard to learn to execute cheese. A random player could easily learn, say, 12 cheese openings, 2 for each matchup. Unless this is a tournament situation (where often random is forbidden anyway) or the opponent knows you, the random player seems to have a significant advantage. The defender has no intel and probably little experience with the gambit the Random is using, while the random has both surprise, and intel advantage, and negates the skill deficit completely by practicing only this specific build. Of course, this would get boring for most players, but for someone just grinding the ladder it seems to have clear advantages. | ||
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