On August 20 2015 07:30 ZeromuS wrote: I play toss, and yes, I do scout as soon as the game starts vs a random player. On 4 p maps, the final position scout is stupid vs random and just feels frustrating to be on the non random end.
This is actually a reasonable point. I think it's basically the only case when random gains significant advantage for being... well... random. Although you must admit that in all other cases (2 player maps, first scout on 4p maps, and non-P opponents) put randoms into disadvantage.
1) Does anyone realize random players only have 3 vetos, too? If a given map is imba, for example in TvP it has 80% winrate for T, every P vetos it and the problem is solved. But random players dont have more vetos. They can random the "crap race" on every map. Simply because random players cannot veto different for each race, the opponent has an advantage.
2) Random players have an advantage in knowing the opponents race. But every race has at least one opener which works against every race (reaper expand, 1gate expand, hatch first) combine it with a worker scout if needed and your fine. honestly: You scout anyway, even against non random.
3) Random players play 3 time as many matchups as other players.
4)If random really is a advantage, why dont play pros random? This point is the most important argument. Pros not choosing random proves choosing random being an disadvantage,
Nerfing random is comparable do buffing Z in the era of BL/Infestor.
This is Dave Dave is a Drone Dave is made from larva at a hatchery Dave is a good drone Dave works all day and mines minerals for you to build more daves Dave also likes to travel Be a good cerebrate and send dave off to travel to the enemy's base Dave doesnt care about race, he just wants to see new things Be sure to bring dave back home when hes done playing.
if random was such a advantage, you would see pros use random often. I think YOU must have a problem with random players. Yes Lotv starts faster, however I don't believe the impact isn't as big as you make it out to be, I've played random for awhile and played my race zerg, when I go up against a random, I didn't mind sending a drone to scout. " and sorry if someone maybe pointed out what I'm saying, I didn't want to read all comments posted. " and revealing what race random is just compensation you want for struggling with this, Random players don't know what race they will be, why should you??
So they want the one thing making random unique to be removed since they don't like playing against it.
To convince others to think the same way they do, they come up with some silly arguments that random have an unfair advantage over the other races.
Yet if this small information advantage actually made random better, the pros would be playing it. The disadvantages to playing random are much more then the small advantage gained by your opponent not knowing your race before they scout it - if this was not the case, pros would all be going random.
Random hiding your race is not a problem, and does not need to be fixed.
On August 20 2015 07:08 Brutaxilos wrote: Random player here. I would just like to say that if my race was revealed on the loading screen, I wouldn't really mind. The only reason I don't just role a dice is because for some reason I still want to get random achievement and want the credit of being a random player. That being said, I do firmly believe that a Random player will not beat a non-Random player of equal skill. I feel that I am significantly punished by the complexity of 9 matchups and rely much more on my mechanics than the understanding of the current meta-game. I believe that playing Random is about a nerf of about one League. (aka, if a Random player were to pick a single race, he would probably be a League higher than he is now).
My 2 cents.
I do the dice roll. But the reason for that is that a large amount of the player base sees random as it could be 1 of 3 races. And then they roll a dice and decide in their mind against what race they are playing. And either they are lucky and a good game comes up or they outright die.
That is because they don't want to bother to learn an opening against a "race" that you almost never encounter and if often used for just rushing games, since you get double achievements for random.
I like random the way it is because it adds more to the game for me. On the rare occasion you play against them. So if they add a race reveal then they should make it optional (they should make a whole tab and name it first world problems). Especially since i regularly play all random custom games and it would remove some fun of it.
On August 20 2015 06:22 ChristianS wrote: But the point is to reward skilled play. A skilled TvT player should beat a less skilled TvT player a majority of the time. If that is not the case, the matchup is imbalanced.
Yaha, TvT is imbalanced, got your point.
Hey, don't let me stop you from feeling superior, but the claim was not TvT is imbalanced, it was that TvR in which the R rolls T is imbalanced. Either you didn't read before scoffing, or you're being intentionally thick.
Your argument here is "oh, but it should be imbalanced in his favor, because his other matchups are stronger."
He didn't say that. The point is not that randoms other match ups might be stronger or weaker, but the need to be good in all of them. Being good enough in all of them to show good results is enough of skill demonstration.
It's also been mentioned here: just scout with a starting worker. The impact of random play contrairily should be smaller that in hots simply because of 12 worker start, as you won't sacrifice much by sending starting worker. On most maps you would find the opponent by the time your first supply/ovie/pylon is finished or around it. Can't see anything bad about it.
(emphasis added) You're right, it has been mentioned! It's also been responded to. But to save you the scrolling, I'll reiterate: the issue is not that you can't send a worker from the start, the issue is that in many cases you might need to do some deviation for one matchup that would be suicidal in another. On some 4p maps, for instance, if they're in the last scout position you're totally screwed.
Alternately, the issue on the other side is that the random player can learn all the matchups more or less, but they don't have to delve very deep into the early game for any of them because their opponent can't do any race-specific cheese. So for the one side it forces dice rolls to stay on equal footing, for the other side it encourages sloppy play. What's good about that?
Your reference to PvT 8 adapts + warp prism rush makes zero sense in relation to this topic. Your opponent at very least built: pylon, gateway, cybercore (+ warp gate research), robotics and warp prism for it, and you ask what if Terran does not even know that their opponent is P? Let alone current strength of this build, if by the time when your opponent has this much stuff you didn't scout him you would lose horribly against multitude of builds in HoTS too.
I just gave this as an example of an early all-in that might require certain decisions to hold. But shit, fine, forget the PvT all-in. Let's talk PvP: if you're Protoss against a random, you don't have any choice to rush adept, do you? Otherwise you'll just lose if they rolled Protoss. Meanwhile if they roll anything else, they can anticipate the adept rush, defend it, and be way ahead.
All in all, random is the hardest to play as it was mentioned. If you don't trust people, check out the stats (seen many random players among top?). And if you believe that anything will change in LoTV, I suggest you to wait with the conclusions, as statistics very likely won't be any better for random with generally very early scouts.
I didn't claim that random was easier to play in general. In fact I claimed exactly the opposite. But it doesn't make sense to give a handicap to a player, just because they voluntarily chose to learn all nine matchups.
well the random player has to practice all 3 races and diff matchups. Unless the random player is cheesing early in the game its not an advantage. I play toss all throughout WoL and HotS but decided to go random in LotV I have around 200 games played already as random in the beta, and I don't really feel any advantage even I got my previous random race.
But your suggestion..showing the race in the loading screen, it don't really care. For me playing random made it 3x as fun.. more to learn, and I don't get bored playing the same race over and over again.
On August 20 2015 10:02 1rg3ndw3r wrote: 1) Does anyone realize random players only have 3 vetos, too? If a given map is imba, for example in TvP it has 80% winrate for T, every P vetos it and the problem is solved. But random players dont have more vetos. They can random the "crap race" on every map. Simply because random players cannot veto different for each race, the opponent has an advantage.
2) Random players have an advantage in knowing the opponents race. But every race has at least one opener which works against every race (reaper expand, 1gate expand, hatch first) combine it with a worker scout if needed and your fine. honestly: You scout anyway, even against non random.
3) Random players play 3 time as many matchups as other players.
4)If random really is a advantage, why dont play pros random? This point is the most important argument. Pros not choosing random proves choosing random being an disadvantage,
Nerfing random is comparable do buffing Z in the era of BL/Infestor.
Wow, that was a really nice point about the map vetos! I didn't consider that before.
However, your second point does not apply for protoss players. You cannot safely 1 gate expand in PvP, or else you will die to a blink all in; or any other various tech all ins.
Does anyone know whether tournaments even allow pros to select random? It seems unlikely that NO ONE would have tried it. Plenty of pros have pretty solid off-races and on some maps the advantage is pretty strong. TLO used to be strong with all three races, and in something like a Bo5 it would seem strong to throw your opponent off if nothing else.
I looked through the WCS handbook but it doesn't seem to address it. Players are allowed to request a "blind pick" where both players tell the tournament organizer their race before map selection, and they're allowed to switch race between matches but no mention of random.
why even bother with an option to random if it reveals their race at the start? on 4 player maps, yes scouting is difficult. but learning 9 matchups is also difficult.
you just might have to play a safer build until you can scout. honestly, 1 worker at the start is worth the intel on what race they are and what early indicators of their build they have.
Tournaments, even the GSL, have always allowed random. No pro in their right mind will choose random today. The "disadvantage" of facing a random is only there if you let it bother you. To blame a loss just because the other guy chose random is a very self-defeating mindset. That really all there is to it. I've lost many a macro game as a random player because my opponents were simply more skilled than I am. It would not have mattered if I hard picked a race or not.
Random has been here to stay for five years, even seventeen years if you want to go all the way back to the first StarCraft. The issues it can potentially bring are psychological at best, and it's still minor in my eyes. I really don't see any changes happening here.
On August 20 2015 13:09 BluemoonSC wrote: why even bother with an option to random if it reveals their race at the start? on 4 player maps, yes scouting is difficult. but learning 9 matchups is also difficult.
you just might have to play a safer build until you can scout. honestly, 1 worker at the start is worth the intel on what race they are and what early indicators of their build they have.
Alright let's cut the bullshit. I'm not sure anyone is reading this far into the thread but let's try it.
Nobody knows what the metagame will look like a year from now, particularly since the design is still up in the air, so imagine a hypothetical which I think isn't too implausible. Imagine that PvP is at a point where everything is adept versus adept, and if you don't go adept you lose (isn't that more or less where we are now?). Because of this the most popular build is to take gas more or less immediately in order to start on your adepts and warpgate as soon as possible. The later you take gas, the further behind you get.
Meanwhile imagine one of the other matchups becomes extremely macro focused. The most popular build by far is nexus first, followed by a gasless 1 gate expand. If you take early gas in this matchup you're at least moderately behind.
Even if the Protoss player sends a worker right at the beginning to scout, should they take gas immediately? In one of three cases they're dead without it, while another puts them behind with it. It's not even rock paper scissors, because even if they could mind game their opponent perfectly they'd still have no way to predict their race. It's a pure dice roll.
Now maybe nothing like this hypothetical metagame will ever happen, but there's no reason it can't. With random advantage left in the game the imbalance can range from miniscule to game-breaking just depending on the whims of the metagame. Even if you think random players should have an in-game advantage for being willing to play all nine matchups, why choose such a weird and unpredictable one like this? If you just made their units cost slightly less, or shortened their build times by 1%, or let them spawn ten seconds earlier, you could achieve the same effect (giving random players an edge to make up for having to learn so many matchups) without potentially game-breaking situations coming up.
They should show you because random isn't competitively viable so it's just annoying when you play vs. random on ladder and have to screw up your opening potentially. Reminds me of Naniwa's stream like 3 years ago in Korea where he would just leave straight away vs random. Nobody on ladder is going to be playing random because of the advantage any ways, they're playing random for fun.
I'm a Random Player have been since the beginning of WoL. The only times I play a specific race is if I'm playing team games and messing around with builds or if I'm playing team games and my friend(s) are offracing or are weaker players than me.
To be honest, I'd like it to remain the way it is - the randoming player has the load screen to think of what they're gonna do vs the other player and the other player has to think of one middle of the road build to cover all three possible match ups (excl. Random vs Random).
In saying that, I always generally tell my opponent what race I've rolled after 10 seconds. I hate cheese and by playing random you tend to remove a large % of cheeses. I don't think one 1/12 workers to scout your opponent is going to severely damage your economy (especially in the lower leagues).
How much of an advantage playing random really is?
Where is the STATISTICAL evidence to support the advantage or disadvantage of being random? I would like to see current stats of random players win rates before really diving deeper into this issue.
Another small point about playing as Random~ You know how most people have a matchup they are bad at and a matchup they are good at? Random players have even bigger variations, for some seasons I've had 70%s for certain matchups and 20% for other matchups. In fact, almost all my wins were in matchups I was good at and almost all my losses were in matchups I was bad it. What does this mean? The Matchmaking system takes your average MMR of all your matchups. So if my best matchup was PvT was Masters League level, and my ZvT was Platinum League level I might be placed into Diamond League. Due to this, in a PvT when I select Random I do truly feel like I am better than the opponent and outplayed them. But for other matchups, I do feel outclassed. In fact, I would probably go as far to say that I could probably beat that Terran in PvT even with a race revealed.
My point? Don't assume that if a Random beats you its because of luck, he may actually be significantly better at said matchup and is only being held back by his other matchups. The race reveal really doesn't make too huge of a difference in these scenarios.
HOWEVER I do want to reaffirm that I am not speaking for all Randoms and I understand some Randoms are cheesy shits. I am merely replying to the one point OP made that
If a less skilled PvPer has a greater chance of winning than his more skilled opponent because he chose random, that PvP is imbalanced.
TL;DR I don't believe most wins by Random players are due to the pregame advantage but by Matchup inconsistencies
i play as Random because its the most fun. to add to my advantage sometimes i'll lie to my opponent and act "manner" by immediately telling him my race. but, i'm lying to my opponent. the additional advantage is higher when my opponent believes i'm being honest.