Starcraft is talked about as one game, but in fact it is six: three symmetric and three asymmetric. These six have things in common, but the differences are quite large – at a glance it's hard to tell that, say, a TvZ and a PvP are even the same game.
On ladder, players can restrict the possibilities to three of these by selecting a race, but they also have the option to select random. In this case they can wind up in any of the six games, and for the three asymmetric ones they can wind up on either side, meaning there are nine matchups they need to learn. In game, though, they will find out which matchup they are in, provided their opponent is not also random. Their opponent, meanwhile, does not start with that information and is forced to play without knowing which of the three possible games they are playing until they have a chance to discover in-game what race they are facing, creating an apparent imbalance. This thread’s purpose is to discuss that imbalance, and whether it should be changed in Legacy of the Void.
Random Imbalance Balance is when more skilled players will beat less skilled players the majority of the time, and equally skilled players have equal chance of winning at the start of the game. Imbalance, then, is when a less skilled player still starts with a greater chance of winning, and between equally skilled players one is favored over the other from the start of the match. On this definition, does random advantage constitute imbalance?
If Starcraft is considered as one game, the question is difficult – the non-random player has missing information, but the random player must learn to play all the other matchups, so their skill in any one matchup will have less depth. Considering Starcraft as six games, though, the question is unequivocal. If a less skilled PvPer has a greater chance of winning than his more skilled opponent because he chose random, that PvP is imbalanced.
Edit: Since there's been some confusion on this point, let me rephrase like this: in a balanced game, if a player plays better than their opponent, they should win the majority of the time. If there's a game in which one player has to play better just to have an equal chance of winning, that would be called an imbalanced game. Random advantage creates exactly this situation: the non-random player has to either perform particularly well, or rely on his opponent making mistakes in order to retain an equal chance of winning with his opponent. The random player, meanwhile, can play worse than his opponent and still win more often than not.
Why Now? Random advantage has usually been fairly small. It only affected matchups where a significant deviation would occur early in the game, before you could scout your opponent, and Starcraft 2 has generally had a significant downtime at the beginning of each match where players are just building workers and starting their basic production, so it was usually possible to send an early worker scout and play more or less normally. There have been a few exceptions: ZvZ deviates very early from ZvT and ZvP builds; PvZ has at some times in SC2 history depended heavily on FFE, while FFE in PvP or PvT was not doable; and in HotS TvP, many early deviations are needed to defend blink and oracle rushes.
The advantage becomes much larger in LotV because early game downtime has been reduced. Now nearly every matchup is likely to have deviations that would occur before the opponent can be scouted. The metagame isn’t very resolved yet, and many changes to the game are still in store, so it is difficult to tell exactly how strong random advantage will be – but it seems likely that some matchups will have deviations in the first minute of the game that would only make sense against that race. Consider an all-in like this and imagine trying to hold it without even knowing your opponent is Protoss from the beginning of the game. Then consider that whatever early deviations Terran needs to take to defend this build are necessary in every game versus a random player, whether or not they even rolled Protoss.
The Solution The solution here is trivial: simply display the opponent’s race to the non-random player, just as in any other game. Many random players announce their race at the beginning of the game anyway, simply because they don’t want to use the crutch; the difficulty with this solution is that even if all random players did so, there is no way for their opponent to know whether they are telling the truth. With this adjustment that issue no longer exists.
This change might simply become necessary as a few matchups might be virtually unwinnable without some deviation in the first minute that, in any other matchup, would be a huge disadvantage. This happened in WoL and HotS even with the early game downtime, and LotV exacerbates the issue dramatically. Other solutions to the problem would be much more involved, such as removing any early-game threat that would require such a deviation from the game or limiting the map pool to small, 2 player maps where scouting can occur early enough to not be an issue.
Separate MMRs for each race This is a suggestion that came later in this thread, but I thought should be added to the OP. As the system exists now, your MMR is the same whatever race you choose at the beginning of the game. This is a bit counterintuitive, since if a Terran player decides to pick Zerg one game, they will surely be a lot worse at the game. The result is that if you want to learn a new race, you need to: a) buy a new account on which you main that new race b) repeatedly leave games to bomb your MMR down to a level where you can play competitively with that race c) lose a lot of games trying and failing with the new race while you try to figure things out (and probably bombing your MMR as a result anyway)
This subject perhaps merits its own thread, but I bring it up here because the situation is even more difficult if you play random. With one overall MMR for all three races, you will inevitably have some uneven arrangements. If, say, your Protoss is strongest, followed by your Terran, followed by your Zerg, then the games where you roll Protoss your opponents will be far too easy, and the games where you roll Zerg will be far too hard (even cushioned slightly by random advantage). Only for your Terran games will the MMR have achieved something like what it is intended to achieve: matching similarly skilled opponents together so the games are close.
The solution is easy enough: Give each player not one MMR, but three. For most players who only play one race, the off-race MMRs are insignificant, but for anyone seriously trying to learn an off-race they can do so without dropping their ranking down to a level where the games will be close. There is always some risk that players will abuse this to keep one race at low levels and try to give low-level players a hard time, although this isn't a very serious concern with the solution for a few reasons:
-This happens a lot anyway, and Blizzard has never seemed very interested in stopping it. Most commonly players do this to farm portraits, for which they would want to play random to get the associated portraits; in this system, you would have to bomb all three race's MMRs to do that.
-Blizzard could easily monitor this if they so desired. Any player who was maintaining a very high MMR with one race while keeping a very low one with another race would stand out as someone to keep an eye on, and if they showed other problematic signs (lots of very short games packed together, indicating that they were bombing their MMR intentionally, for instance), Blizzard could easily take appropriate action against such players.
-This might not be such a bad thing anyway. If I main Terran, but once in a while I like to do a bunch of dumb cannon rushes in silver or bronze, why is that bad? I'm cheesing like any other player can, and if those players want to learn to beat my dumb cheeses, they can get free wins off me and go about their business. I'm not violating ToS or anything, so why shouldn't I be able to play that way if it's fun for me?
FAQ -"If Random is so overpowered, why don't pros play it?" + Show Spoiler +
I don't mean to claim that Random is overpowered in the sense of WoL infestor/broodlord. Just that by selecting random, your opponent automatically receives a handicap that you don't have, which gives you an advantage. For professional players, there are a lot of ways you can spend your time to get an advantage. You can study the latest top Korean VODs to learn the latest strategies for a given matchup. You can study an upcoming opponent's replays to find potential weaknesses to exploit. You can practice your builds with teammates to learn how to respond to obscure strategies an opponent could throw at you. All of these will give you an advantage when you play, but you don't have time to do all of them all the time. With that in mind, learning to play all three races equally well has less pay-off than other ways to gain an advantage, particularly since unlike those other advantages, this one comes down to a coin flip. In some matchups on certain maps it might be worth getting the random advantage, but pro players would prefer something more reliable.
These forums get a lot of threads based on the premise of such-and-such strategy being too strong and needing a nerf. This is not one of those threads. The point is not that learning all three races to get an information advantage is too strong a strategy; the point is that it doesn't make sense in the first place for someone to get an advantage in the game just for choosing to roll dice for their race instead of picking one. No other game I can think of gives players an in-game advantage for choosing to randomly roll their race or character, and I don't see why Starcraft should be different.
-"Why don't you just send one of your starting workers? You have twelve now, problem solved!" + Show Spoiler +
First of all, this answer only works when the starting worker will still get there soon enough for you to do the deviations necessary to remain competitive in a matchup. Against a random opponent you have to make the choice of whether to go gas or gasless in the first minute or two before you scout them blind. On a four player map you might easily get a couple minutes into the game without knowing what race to prepare for, which is a lot of time for decisions to occur.
Second, even with maps and matchups which make the random advantage small, it still violates a fairly basic principle of competition, that ideally both players should start on equal footing. That means that if I play better than my opponent, I should win more often than not. Random advantage violates this principle, and the violation can be easily remedied by the above solution.
-"Random players are awesome for learning all nine matchups, don't they deserve some advantage for it?" + Show Spoiler +
Even if we accept that premise, why can't we have a conversation about what that advantage should be? The present system generally forces the non-random player to make some coin-flip decisions early game, so when they guess the right matchup they're on equal footing but when they guess wrong they're behind. Meanwhile the random player is insulated from any race-specific cheese, encouraging sloppiness in their builds because they never learn to defend those cheeses.
Why not give them a 5% discount on their units? or let units build a couple percent faster? or let them start the game ten seconds earlier? Or give them a 210 supply cap? All of those changes would achieve the goal of giving random players an advantage for their trouble, while avoiding the coin flips and sloppiness associated with the current system.
Poll: Do you play random? Do you think race info should be displayed?
I play random and I think both players' races should be displayed at the start. (31)
10%
I play random and I think the random player's race shouldn't be displayed at the start. (65)
21%
I don't play random and I think both player's races should be displayed at the start. (93)
30%
I don't play random and I think the random player's race shouldn't be displayed at the start. (112)
36%
I play random and I think neither player's race should be displayed at the start. (3)
1%
I don't play random and I think neither player's race should be displayed at the start. (6)
2%
310 total votes
Your vote: Do you play random? Do you think race info should be displayed?
(Vote): I play random and I think both players' races should be displayed at the start. (Vote): I play random and I think the random player's race shouldn't be displayed at the start. (Vote): I don't play random and I think both player's races should be displayed at the start. (Vote): I don't play random and I think the random player's race shouldn't be displayed at the start. (Vote): I play random and I think neither player's race should be displayed at the start. (Vote): I don't play random and I think neither player's race should be displayed at the start.
Edit: added a poll Edit: added FAQ Edit: Added a section about separating each player's MMR into different MMRs for each race.
i stopped playing lotv weeks ago because it's too unfinished to be fun for me, so i can't comment on what's viable currently, but is it really not possible to just make an immediate worker scout meta against random? is that still too late somehow?
if the only answer is that people don't want to sacrifice the economy, i don't buy it. on ladder against someone going random i think it's fair to sacrifice econ for intel and do an old-style scout, especially since the odds are so high that you'll be facing a specialized practiced build, and if it's standard macro they won't be as strong as a one race player
but again maybe there's a nuance that escapes me since i haven't played lotv since closer to beta opening
as for 4p maps i think that's a more general issue that needs to be solved by just finally restricting spawns to cross only
The random player has to be able to play all races. The race-picker not. Thus the random player has to learn 9 matchups against 3. It is literaly the reason to pick random in tournaments to have this starting advantage. Most random players want to learn all races best possible and thus announce what race they have, but dedicated random players who will attend in the automated tournaments will not. They not only pick random to play 3 races but also to win. If you want to be shure, use one of the starting workers to scout.
On August 20 2015 05:17 Clonester wrote: The random player has to be able to play all races. The race-picker not. Thus the random player has to learn 9 matchups against 3. It is literaly the reason to pick random in tournaments to have this starting advantage. Most random players want to learn all races best possible and thus announce what race they have, but dedicated random players who will attend in the automated tournaments will not. They not only pick random to play 3 races but also to win. If you want to be shure, use one of the starting workers to scout.
Yes, we are clear that is the tradeoff that the random player is accepting when they choose their race. The question is, is that a tradeoff we want to be in the game? Personally if I'm playing someone in TvZ I don't care how good their PvP is, and I don't see why it should affect the TvZ matchup.
Sending a starting worker is only a reasonable response if the deviations occur after the worker would get to their base. If one player needs to start gas in the first thirty seconds to defend some cheese, then against a random player, they need to start gas in the first thirty seconds every time. No matter that they're probably not even the race that can do that cheese, they're accepting 33% losses off the bat if they don't blindly take gas.
On August 20 2015 05:17 Clonester wrote: The random player has to be able to play all races. The race-picker not. Thus the random player has to learn 9 matchups against 3. It is literaly the reason to pick random in tournaments to have this starting advantage. Most random players want to learn all races best possible and thus announce what race they have, but dedicated random players who will attend in the automated tournaments will not. They not only pick random to play 3 races but also to win. If you want to be shure, use one of the starting workers to scout.
Apperently you're missing the point that taking advantage of picking random mainly consist of cheese plays. Beyond that, there isn't much to the advantage of picking random. The moment the opponent scouts you, all your advantages dissappear and you're in the same situation as if you picked a race right in the beginning.
If you arguement is that the random player actually has to learn 9 matchups, then why not remove the added huge incentive to just mindlessly cheese out from the equation so the random player actually has to learn 9 matchup. Unless all you care about is having that larger opening to purly cheese.
y not just roll a di6 1-2 terran 3-4 protoss 5-6 zerg. problem solved.
Wow, totally missing the point. Apperently someone is mad.
Random should display the race of the player on the loading screen. Better for the random player who can prepare his build mentally accordingly, better for the opponent that doesn't suffer the disadvantage of having to scout early. And don't give me some of that "but he has 9 mus to master instead of 3..." this is absolute bullshit.
If you want to random between two races, roll a dice. If odd, play race A, if even play race B.
Balance is when more skilled players will beat less skilled players the majority of the time, and equally skilled players have equal chance of winning at the start of the game. Imbalance, then, is when a less skilled player still starts with a greater chance of winning, and between equally skilled players one is favored over the other from the start of the match. On this definition, does random advantage constitute imbalance?
you said this. Then I tell you that it is much harder to learn 9 matchups over 3 matchups and every random player will improve more in his results, when he would focus only on one race. The random player is, even though he wins exactly 50% the games against the picker, not equally skilled but has a higher skill for me as he is able to do it with all 3 races. The random advantage in the early game does not cloes that gap, even in lotv. If you dont care if your enemy has to play 9 or 3 matchups and you just want to find out, who is the best in this TvZ then you have to accept, that trains this matchup only 1/3 of the time you do it.
And for the "I have to go blind whatever or I am fucked if he rolled race XY": The same problem was almost in HotS: There was a so called blink time, where terran had to play with 3 raxes every game against protoss or a blink all in was instand win. In TvZ on the otherhand a 3 rax opening was a "hello please ling or ling-bane all in me" sign, because without hellions it was really hard to hold such a play. Terran so had to scout very early or go blind for something, reacting after your reaper got the intel was not an option. This was patched out. Thanks to the buffes and nerfs terran can now open relativly save with 1-1-1 in TvP and thus this problem is going away. And I bet with you that the This is not a problem of TvR but of TvP. As you go gas every game against P due to the adept all in, it is way more likely that this all in gets nerfed then to nerf the random "race". The advantage is there for the P as much as for the R.
On August 20 2015 05:17 Clonester wrote: The random player has to be able to play all races. The race-picker not. Thus the random player has to learn 9 matchups against 3. It is literaly the reason to pick random in tournaments to have this starting advantage. Most random players want to learn all races best possible and thus announce what race they have, but dedicated random players who will attend in the automated tournaments will not. They not only pick random to play 3 races but also to win. If you want to be shure, use one of the starting workers to scout.
Apperently you're missing the point that taking advantage of picking random mainly consist of cheese plays. Beyond that, there isn't much to the advantage of picking random. The moment the opponent scouts you, all your advantages dissappear and you're in the same situation as if you picked a race right in the beginning. .
Picking random does not only give you an advantage against cheese play. It also limits the build the non random player can go. Example from HOTS, maybe in PVZ you go nexus first into forge. If you are playing PvR and it is a zerg, you can not go nexus first because you will die if it ends up being PVP.
So in a way, you have to learn extra build orders since your go to build order is not viable against random players, and thus more knowledge is required.
Essentially I agree with OP. Random race should be revealed. The games balance is already quite unstable without considering the effects random* has.
Every random player I have played against has used it to do a cheese build. So much for learning all match-ups.
Display the race of the player on the loading screen, decent random players announce their race anyway and the cheesers do not - so we piss off the people who generally piss us off - seems good.
Balance is when more skilled players will beat less skilled players the majority of the time, and equally skilled players have equal chance of winning at the start of the game. Imbalance, then, is when a less skilled player still starts with a greater chance of winning, and between equally skilled players one is favored over the other from the start of the match. On this definition, does random advantage constitute imbalance?
you said this. Then I tell you that it is much harder to learn 9 matchups over 3 matchups and every random player will improve more in his results, when he would focus only on one race. The random player is, even though he wins exactly 50% the games against the picker, not equally skilled but has a higher skill for me as he is able to do it with all 3 races. The random advantage in the early game does not cloes that gap, even in lotv. If you dont care if your enemy has to play 9 or 3 matchups and you just want to find out, who is the best in this TvZ then you have to accept, that trains this matchup only 1/3 of the time you do it.
And for the "I have to go blind whatever or I am fucked if he rolled race XY": The same problem was almost in HotS: There was a so called blink time, where terran had to play with 3 raxes every game against protoss or a blink all in was instand win. In TvZ on the otherhand a 3 rax opening was a "hello please ling or ling-bane all in me" sign, because without hellions it was really hard to hold such a play. Terran so had to scout very early or go blind for something, reacting after your reaper got the intel was not an option. This was patched out. Thanks to the buffes and nerfs terran can now open relativly save with 1-1-1 in TvP and thus this problem is going away. And I bet with you that the This is not a problem of TvR but of TvP. As you go gas every game against P due to the adept all in, it is way more likely that this all in gets nerfed then to nerf the random "race". The advantage is there for the P as much as for the R.
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. Your argument here is "oh, but it should be imbalanced in his favor, because his other matchups are stronger." The question at hand, then, is whether or not his skill in other matchups should be relevant here. I don't see why it should matter, and in general I disagree with a state of affairs in which right at the start of the game, one player has an advantage.
The TvP vs TvR problems you mention are different. There can be a balance problem in TvP where some early rush can kill the Terran, and Terran can't scout it – that would be a problem in TvP, not TvR. Terrans could learn there's some early deviation they can do, for instance going for a safe 1-1-1, that might resolve that problem. The TvR problem is when going 1-1-1 is bad in another matchup, say TvZ. Now when Terran hits a random, he has to go 1-1-1 if it's a Protoss, and will be significantly behind if it's a Zerg. Both TvP and TvZ might be fine, but TvR has a problem.
You have 12 workers to start with. Just sacrifice one to find out what race you're up against as soon as the game starts. Honestly the random advantage is diminished in LoTV just due to the fact you start with so many workers to scout with. It's not as crippling to a build order to lose one of 12 workers as it is to lose 1 of 6.
There's no excuse to die to those kinds of all ins. You have scouts, use them. All of this Random advantage bullshit is from people that simply don't like the fact that they have to scout before starting their own build order. Just play safe. If you can't win a particular match up against someone with less experience at it than you (Assuming equal skill the Random player will always have played whatever match up it is less than you have) while playing safe then that's your own fault.
There doesn't need to be any kind of punishment towards Random players. It's already punishing enough trying to keep up with 9 different metagames.
On August 20 2015 06:41 Vindicare605 wrote: You have 12 workers to start with. Just sacrifice one to find out what race you're up against as soon as the game starts. Honestly the random advantage is diminished in LoTV just due to the fact you start with so many workers to scout with. It's not as crippling to a build order to lose one of 12 workers as it is to lose 1 of 6.
There's no excuse to die to those kinds of all ins. You have scouts, use them. All of this Random advantage bullshit is from people that simply don't like the fact that they have to scout before starting their own build order. Just play safe. If you can't win a particular match up against someone with less experience at it than you (Assuming equal skill the Random player will always have played whatever match up it is less than you have) while playing safe then that's your own fault.
There doesn't need to be any kind of punishment towards Random players. It's already punishing enough trying to keep up with 9 different metagames.
You're missing the point. You've responded to the following claims: "I can't afford to sacrifice a worker at the beginning to scout! In HotS, that would have been unthinkable!" "I don't want to have to scout to decide what build to do!" "All-ins are bullshit, and I can't defend them!" But those aren't the claims we're making.
You mention "assuming equal skill," but that's a disputed point. If they were equally skilled at the matchup it would be balanced without random advantage. They're not, and the difference is being made up by a de facto handicap to the other player.
As long as we're going to give the random player a handicap to compensate their inexperience in the matchup, why not make it an explicit one? Why not make their units cost 5% less or give them a 210 supply cap or something? Custom games have the option to handicap your units' HP by a percentage – why not do that? At least something like that could approximately affect all matchups equally. The random advantage as it exists now hardly matters in some cases and in other cases it forces the other player to roll dice or start way behind.
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).
On August 20 2015 07:02 Vindicare605 wrote: You want an explicit handicap? Fine you got it. You start with one less worker than your opponent does. Problem solved.
You have 11 workers and 1 scout. Scout, react, play. There's no issue here.
You really like responding to positions no one is taking and then declaring victory. I didn't say there should be an explicit handicap, I said that as long as there's going to be an explicit handicap, why choose this weird early game information one?
There are two cases: either we decide that random players should be compensated for their knowledge of other matchups with a handicap, or they shouldn't. If they shouldn't, we should remove random advantage and let everyone see each other's races at the beginning. If they should, why don't we have a discussion about what that handicap should be? The current system doesn't do that job very well either – if a random player hits a TvZ and the zerg just opens hatch first like they would have anyway, the random player has been denied his rightful handicap! Now he's forced to play out the game like he had picked Terran at the outset, when he should have started with a nice advantage for being good at PvP, too!
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.
See my experience playing Random taught me something different.
I do better as Random in about 5 match ups than I do queueing up as single race for one simple reason. People don't do blind bullshit cheeses to me as often because they don't know which one to do.
I rarely cheese when I play Starcraft. So the random advantage to me doesn't really help me as much as it does for others, but what it does do is deny my opponent a lot of opportunities to blind cheese me, which I like a lot.
So, displaying my race does matter to me. The punishment I get for playing Random is that I get all kinds of fun shit like 9 ZvZs in a row (no kidding, this happened to me once, I broke a keyboard over it.) that simply queuing as Terran (my best race) doesn't allow. So I like to keep my race hidden because I like that comfort of knowing a lot of blind bullshit won't happen to me.
On August 20 2015 07:02 Vindicare605 wrote: You want an explicit handicap? Fine you got it. You start with one less worker than your opponent does. Problem solved.
You have 11 workers and 1 scout. Scout, react, play. There's no issue here.
You really like responding to positions no one is taking and then declaring victory. I didn't say there should be an explicit handicap, I said that as long as there's going to be an explicit handicap, why choose this weird early game information one?
There are two cases: either we decide that random players should be compensated for their knowledge of other matchups with a handicap, or they shouldn't. If they shouldn't, we should remove random advantage and let everyone see each other's races at the beginning. If they should, why don't we have a discussion about what that handicap should be? The current system doesn't do that job very well either – if a random player hits a TvZ and the zerg just opens hatch first like they would have anyway, the random player has been denied his rightful handicap! Now he's forced to play out the game like he had picked Terran at the outset, when he should have started with a nice advantage for being good at PvP, too!
There's a third solution. Leave it alone because it's fine the way it is.
You haven't convinced me that there's even a problem with the way Random works right now. You just convinced me that YOU have a problem with it.
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.
See my experience playing Random taught me something different.
I do better as Random in about 5 match ups than I do queueing up as single race for one simple reason. People don't do blind bullshit cheeses to me as often because they don't know which one to do.
I rarely cheese when I play Starcraft. So the random advantage to me doesn't really help me as much as it does for others, but what it does do is deny my opponent a lot of opportunities to blind cheese me, which I like a lot.
So, displaying my race does matter to me. The punishment I get for playing Random is that I get all kinds of fun shit like 9 ZvZs in a row (no kidding, this happened to me once, I broke a keyboard over it.) that simply queuing as Terran (my best race) doesn't allow. So I like to keep my race hidden because I like that comfort of knowing a lot of blind bullshit won't happen to me.
Hold on – you just got on your high horse about how we're just whining that we can't beat the cheeses random players throw at us and we need to scout and learn to react – and now you admit that you play random just to avoid having to learn to scout and beat early cheese?
Tell me, what's your trick for coping with cognitive dissonance? Do you do yoga or something? Because it sounds stressful to me.
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.
See my experience playing Random taught me something different.
I do better as Random in about 5 match ups than I do queueing up as single race for one simple reason. People don't do blind bullshit cheeses to me as often because they don't know which one to do.
I rarely cheese when I play Starcraft. So the random advantage to me doesn't really help me as much as it does for others, but what it does do is deny my opponent a lot of opportunities to blind cheese me, which I like a lot.
So, displaying my race does matter to me. The punishment I get for playing Random is that I get all kinds of fun shit like 9 ZvZs in a row (no kidding, this happened to me once, I broke a keyboard over it.) that simply queuing as Terran (my best race) doesn't allow. So I like to keep my race hidden because I like that comfort of knowing a lot of blind bullshit won't happen to me.
Hold on – you just got on your high horse about how we're just whining that we can't beat the cheeses random players throw at us and we need to scout and learn to react – and now you admit that you play random just to avoid having to learn to scout and beat early cheese?
Tell me, what's your trick for coping with cognitive dissonance? Do you do yoga or something? Because it sounds stressful to me.
I'm not saying I can't do it. I'm just saying I don't like to do it.
Playing Random forces my opponent to play a macro game with me (in non-mirror match ups anyway). I'm playing into HIS advantage when I do that since like we've already discussed he has more experience in the match up than I do.
I'm handicapping myself as a trade off of forcing a macro game. That's how I like to play. That's why I play Random.
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.
See my experience playing Random taught me something different.
I do better as Random in about 5 match ups than I do queueing up as single race for one simple reason. People don't do blind bullshit cheeses to me as often because they don't know which one to do.
I rarely cheese when I play Starcraft. So the random advantage to me doesn't really help me as much as it does for others, but what it does do is deny my opponent a lot of opportunities to blind cheese me, which I like a lot.
So, displaying my race does matter to me. The punishment I get for playing Random is that I get all kinds of fun shit like 9 ZvZs in a row (no kidding, this happened to me once, I broke a keyboard over it.) that simply queuing as Terran (my best race) doesn't allow. So I like to keep my race hidden because I like that comfort of knowing a lot of blind bullshit won't happen to me.
I actually feel like I get cheesed when playing Random more often than when I pick a race. When the opponent knows my race, the games tend to become macro games. But when I play Random, opponents assume I'm going to be doing sneaky shit and many times decide to cheese me first. And yes, I've gotten those 9 ZvZs in a row before too. Anyways, I guess I don't mind whatever Blizzard ends up deciding upon, but I just want to stress that playing Random is definitely not the easier route to take. (Just look at how many professional Randoms there are).
I personally just don't enjoy the fact that on four player maps, I need to try and play some build that is halfway decent vs all 3 races up until I scout their race. This can put me really behind vs Zerg or T, or put me in a really funny spot vs P.
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. I know random players need to learn more matchups, but its not about that. Its about how it feels to scout last and see that oh, I should have not taken my second gas or gotten that blind stargate vs Zerg who has a bunch of drones and saw my stargate. Great.
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.
See my experience playing Random taught me something different.
I do better as Random in about 5 match ups than I do queueing up as single race for one simple reason. People don't do blind bullshit cheeses to me as often because they don't know which one to do.
I rarely cheese when I play Starcraft. So the random advantage to me doesn't really help me as much as it does for others, but what it does do is deny my opponent a lot of opportunities to blind cheese me, which I like a lot.
So, displaying my race does matter to me. The punishment I get for playing Random is that I get all kinds of fun shit like 9 ZvZs in a row (no kidding, this happened to me once, I broke a keyboard over it.) that simply queuing as Terran (my best race) doesn't allow. So I like to keep my race hidden because I like that comfort of knowing a lot of blind bullshit won't happen to me.
Hold on – you just got on your high horse about how we're just whining that we can't beat the cheeses random players throw at us and we need to scout and learn to react – and now you admit that you play random just to avoid having to learn to scout and beat early cheese?
Tell me, what's your trick for coping with cognitive dissonance? Do you do yoga or something? Because it sounds stressful to me.
I'm not saying I can't do it. I'm just saying I don't like to do it.
Playing Random forces my opponent to play a macro game with me (in non-mirror match ups anyway). I'm playing into HIS advantage when I do that since like we've already discussed he has more experience in the match up than I do.
I'm handicapping myself as a trade off of forcing a macro game. That's how I like to play.
But you started by saying you prefer random because you do better at it than if you just queued as whatever race, so it is that you can't hold the cheeses. So rather than correct the errors in your play that cause you to lose to these cheeses, you use random as a crutch to help you survive to late game.
You keep asking what the problem with the current system is: it's exactly what you're talking about. It removes the strategy from the early game and lets people get away with sloppy play.
Edit: To Brutaxilos' point, I did not mean to imply that playing random is easier in general. Random players often get hate for a system they didn't create, and I don't mean to encourage that. If you want to learn all nine matchups that's great, it's an impressive undertaking and you deserve kudos. I don't think you deserve a handicap to reward you for your undertaking, though.
On August 20 2015 06:41 Vindicare605 wrote: You have 12 workers to start with. Just sacrifice one to find out what race you're up against as soon as the game starts. Honestly the random advantage is diminished in LoTV just due to the fact you start with so many workers to scout with. It's not as crippling to a build order to lose one of 12 workers as it is to lose 1 of 6.
There's no excuse to die to those kinds of all ins. You have scouts, use them. All of this Random advantage bullshit is from people that simply don't like the fact that they have to scout before starting their own build order. Just play safe. If you can't win a particular match up against someone with less experience at it than you (Assuming equal skill the Random player will always have played whatever match up it is less than you have) while playing safe then that's your own fault.
There doesn't need to be any kind of punishment towards Random players. It's already punishing enough trying to keep up with 9 different metagames.
I'll admit that as a protoss I have a significant bias against random players. To put it simply, I really dislike them. Whenever I face a random player on ladder, I try harder and actually worker stack to get that mineral boost and play as hard as I can.
I do this because there exist a real disadvantage vs random players on 4 player maps. If you get last scout, (and its not really a matter of if but when) you can easily lose to unscouted cheese, or will end up really far behind if you open gate expand vs a zerg or terran who ends up going expansion first. The worst part is that your opponent can be protoss; which simply elimates a fast expand build from your arsenal, if you want to play safe.
This is because you simply cannot safely expand early game in the PvP matchup.
On 4 player maps, not only do you on average lose more minerals scouting (because the map is larger) you do not get consistent scouting out of it. At least vs other races if you get last scout you can narrow down your play and not end up super behind because the meta games of each matchup has been significantly developed.
In LoTv, random either needs to show your opponent what race they get; or 4 player maps need to be removed.
yea you wait.. all the tournaments will be won by random players because of the early game advantage they get
then reality will set it... and no random player will ever win any tournament or thing of any significance ever
not because the advantage they get is strictly hypothetical.. but because no pro's want to expose how easy it is and fear becoming the next bonjwa in the one truly OP race.. raaannndddooommmmmm
First of all, I think we need to get rid of some misconceptions.
Argument: Random player is worse than single race player because random player has to learn 6 match ups and single race player has to learn 3.
I really think that this is false because of the way matchmaking works: a Silver league random player vs a Silver league zerg player would be of equal skill.. thats why the random player is in silver league (thats why they have the same MMR).
Granted if we were talking about time, it would be easier to reach silver league in a shorter amount of time with 1 race, vs reaching silver league playing random. But when you hit find match, playing against a random player does not mean that they are automatically worse, they are likely the same skill.. thats why the matchmaking put you together.
Argument: Random players are worse in late game scenarios.
This is also false. A silver league zerg could 6 pool every game. The other silver league random player might play macro every game. While both player's average skill across all games played is equal to silver, the random player may be better in the late game.
In the end: Playing random gives you an information advantage. There should be no debate about this. I don't think its right for this information advantage to be percieved as a 'reward' for learning more match ups. The best solution in achieving 'balance' or removing variance is simply to have the race of the random player displayed in the loading screen.
However, if we talk about 'fun'... there are those who play random because they enjoy all the matchups or playing different races. Many random players (like myself) wouldn't mind if the race was displayed. However, there ARE players who like having that small advantage. Or there are also players who simply find it more fun to have that information hidden from their opponent.
In that case... perhaps the next best solution to achieve balance in terms of advantages would be: If you play random, while your race is hidden from your opponent, your opponent's race is also hidden from you.
With this solution, I'm sure the single race players would not complain when matched against a random player because both sides have to scout/both sides get no information advantage.
TLDR: Random gives the random player (a very small) information (and build order) advantage Solution: Achieve fairness by displaying the random player's race in loading screen (both sides have race information) Alternate solution: Achieve fairness by masking the single race player's race in loading screen so both sides don't know (both sides do not have race information).
Alternate solution: Achieve fairness by masking the single race player's race in loading screen so both sides don't know (both sides do not have race information).
This is a very good solution imo, or, at least a solution I'd like to try.
I don't really understand the concern here, to be honest. In LotV, you start with 12 workers. What keeps you from scouting immediately with one of your starting workers? This means you can send a scout literally before any strategic decision is made, before the first tech building or anything is started. If you are Protoss, for example, you can send a scout (slightly) before even the first Pylon is made. Or do you guys scout before you build your Pylon in PvR in HotS? I don't think so. Your scout may be a bit faster relative to the tech than in HotS, and you even sacrifice less economy because the economy is slightly ahead relative to tech in LotV early game.
On August 20 2015 07:51 Sholip wrote: I don't really understand the concern here, to be honest. In LotV, you start with 12 workers. What keeps you from scouting immediately with one of your starting workers? This means you can send a scout literally before any strategic decision is made, before the first tech building or anything is started. If you are Protoss, for example, you can send a scout (slightly) before even the first Pylon is made. Or do you guys scout before you build your Pylon in PvR in HotS? I don't think so. Your scout may be a bit faster relative to the tech than in HotS, and you even sacrifice less economy because the economy is slightly ahead relative to tech in LotV early game.
I think from a 'practical' or significance point of view... its hard to argue that playing against random causes you to lose against much worse players. Or that there is a huge advantage (thats why no pros with any results play random). However, esp in the most extreme cases (playing PvP on a 4 player map where you end out scouting the last position), it really does suck haha.
I believe the OP wants to address the 'principle' that sc should be a fair game. And in theory, if 100% equal skill, a random player would win against a non-random because (they are the same skill, and the random player started with a small advantage).
For all the reasons displayed I would rather the uniqueness of the random to remain.
Yes, race pickers have to make build orders specific to playing versus randoms, it is only fair that this not change.
On the other end, random players like to be known as random, mostly nothing more.
I think the current way is the best: - the random player can tell his opponent his race.. that means a lot and makes a lot of things possible (my favorite is typing "mirror") - some opponents ask and you can answer.. or not
- everyone scouts more
glhf tldr: if you put it to a vote, I vote NO, leave it as is.
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.
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.
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.
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.
On August 20 2015 07:30 ZeromuS wrote: I personally just don't enjoy the fact that on four player maps, I need to try and play some build that is halfway decent vs all 3 races up until I scout their race. This can put me really behind vs Zerg or T, or put me in a really funny spot vs P.
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. I know random players need to learn more matchups, but its not about that. Its about how it feels to scout last and see that oh, I should have not taken my second gas or gotten that blind stargate vs Zerg who has a bunch of drones and saw my stargate. Great.
I agree, scouting last sucks so hard, while f.e. the opponent is droning non stop. Also preparing for a cheese is different vs some races, so the one who doesnt play random is always behind.
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.
Also this
On August 20 2015 07:51 Sholip wrote: I don't really understand the concern here, to be honest. In LotV, you start with 12 workers. What keeps you from scouting immediately with one of your starting workers? This means you can send a scout literally before any strategic decision is made, before the first tech building or anything is started. If you are Protoss, for example, you can send a scout (slightly) before even the first Pylon is made. Or do you guys scout before you build your Pylon in PvR in HotS? I don't think so. Your scout may be a bit faster relative to the tech than in HotS, and you even sacrifice less economy because the economy is slightly ahead relative to tech in LotV early game.
+1. Literally when you send a starting worker in LoTV you (1 out of 12 workers) you send it a bit before the first supply building. To achieve the same mining efficiency loss in HoTS (1 out of 12 workers) it usually means you would send the scout right before or even after the first tech building is started.
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.
On August 20 2015 14:12 unifo wrote: 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.
What kind of statistical evidence would you even want? If they're in ladder, their win rate is probably 50% because if it weren't, they would rise or fall on the ladder until it was. That is no different for random players. You could compare their mmr with random to their mmr with their best race, but that wouldn't reflect random advantage; that would reflect how good their off race matchups are.
Now if you took two players with the same mmr who perform comparably in, say, PvP, then had one queue with their main race while the other queued as random, and then only looked at the PvPs, you could draw conclusions about the strength of the random advantage in PvP. I don't think anybody has done that kind of analysis, nor does anyone have the resources to do so.
On August 20 2015 14:27 JimmyJRaynor wrote: 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.
As a proud Random player, I think you should be ashamed of yourself. This kind of behavior gives all Random players a bad name.
On August 20 2015 14:12 unifo wrote: 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.
What kind of statistical evidence would you even want? If they're in ladder, their win rate is probably 50% because if it weren't, they would rise or fall on the ladder until it was. That is no different for random players. You could compare their mmr with random to their mmr with their best race, but that wouldn't reflect random advantage; that would reflect how good their off race matchups are.
Now if you took two players with the same mmr who perform comparably in, say, PvP, then had one queue with their main race while the other queued as random, and then only looked at the PvPs, you could draw conclusions about the strength of the random advantage in PvP. I don't think anybody has done that kind of analysis, nor does anyone have the resources to do so.
Yeuch. Random is clearly underrepresented in GM league. Random is extremely underrepresented in tournaments.
The underlying concept of ladder matchmaking would actually lead to random players being overrepresented in higher leagues and underrepresented in lower leagues - IF there was indeed a random advantage. We actually witness the opposite.
If we wanted 'balance', random players should be given extra minerals at game start until their - let's say Code S - representation mirrors the amount of random players in the game overall.
On August 20 2015 12:53 ChristianS wrote: 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.
There are randoms, btw if you look carefully at liquipedia tourney pages, they have race distribution on the bottom, and yes it has random there. Look http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/Random, not so many random players out there to be honest, and there still are some, so it's not like it's forbidden.
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.
The point of playing against random is actually not being able to play "the most popular builds", but playing the build which may fit against all races. I'm gonna shoot my leg now I guess, but I am very bad as P, so I don't really know its race early game problems all that well, but I still watch quite a few P streams.
So, let's get back to the point itself. I am pretty sure that P can play something like 13 gate 14/15 gas against any race right now in HoTS, followed by cybercore. How much time players needs to find opponents base? I assume it's fairly short time on majority of 2 player maps: smth around 30 seconds (I'm still using HoTS time though due to habit), and it's just over the time pylon takes to build. Perhaps 30s is way too low, let it be 60. It's gateway half-way done, if you scout with a probe building a pylon, and it is absolutely acceptable from my point of view.
Now things get worse on 4 player maps, that is true. You can still veto those maps btw, but ye last position scout is bad luck here. I wouldn't be surprised if map pools had purely 2p maps upon LoTV release. Even here you forget a very reasonable point, that even against specific opponent race scouting last can be devastating. This itself is bad, but my own feeling is that in LoTV this "advantage" of random is even smaller then that in HoTS.
On August 20 2015 14:12 unifo wrote: 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.
What kind of statistical evidence would you even want? If they're in ladder, their win rate is probably 50% because if it weren't, they would rise or fall on the ladder until it was. That is no different for random players. You could compare their mmr with random to their mmr with their best race, but that wouldn't reflect random advantage; that would reflect how good their off race matchups are.
Now if you took two players with the same mmr who perform comparably in, say, PvP, then had one queue with their main race while the other queued as random, and then only looked at the PvPs, you could draw conclusions about the strength of the random advantage in PvP. I don't think anybody has done that kind of analysis, nor does anyone have the resources to do so.
Yeuch. Random is clearly underrepresented in GM league. Random is extremely underrepresented in tournaments.
The underlying concept of ladder matchmaking would actually lead to random players being overrepresented in higher leagues and underrepresented in lower leagues - IF there was indeed a random advantage. We actually witness the opposite.
If we wanted 'balance', random players should be given extra minerals at game start until their - let's say Code S - representation mirrors the amount of random players in the game overall.
What exactly are you arguing? That the racial distribution at the top shouldn't be 33/33/33 T/Z/P, it should be 25/25/25/25 T/Z/P/R? You know there's way fewer random players than any of the other races, right?
For fuck's sake, I wasn't arguing that overall random players are imbalanced in a WoL broodlord/infestor kind of way, hence no claims about the top level being dominated by random. I didn't even say that, in general, it's easier to be a random player than to pick a race. If a player chooses random and winds up in a TvT, they are better off than if they chose Terran and wound up in that same TvT. That's the imbalance I'm talking about.
Highly ironic thread looking at your sig.
If you're going to imply that people you disagree with are stupid, go to battle.net forums or something. If you're on Team Liquid act like a fucking human being. And if you're gonna try to act superior, at least use the word "ironic" correctly.
On August 20 2015 14:27 JimmyJRaynor wrote: 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.
As a proud Random player, I think you should be ashamed of yourself. This kind of behavior gives all Random players a bad name.
if i can get my opponent thinking about the "morality" of my actions... i'm already diverting his mind from the task at hand and winning that aspect of the game.
deception is part of many games. someone once said "all war is deception". am i driving while drunk or making questionable tax deductions or even violating the games terms of service? nah, i'm playing a game for fun.
On August 20 2015 05:17 Clonester wrote: The random player has to be able to play all races. The race-picker not. Thus the random player has to learn 9 matchups against 3. It is literaly the reason to pick random in tournaments to have this starting advantage. Most random players want to learn all races best possible and thus announce what race they have, but dedicated random players who will attend in the automated tournaments will not. They not only pick random to play 3 races but also to win. If you want to be shure, use one of the starting workers to scout.
bullshit. The random player "has" to learn 9 different all-ins and execute them. he doesnt need to do jack besides that.
in LotV a workerscout sometimes aint enough.
a Random player will never play the real matchups either since hes forcing his opponent into suboptimal safer builds.
On August 20 2015 14:27 JimmyJRaynor wrote: 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.
As a proud Random player, I think you should be ashamed of yourself. This kind of behavior gives all Random players a bad name.
if i can get my opponent thinking about the "morality" of my actions... i'm already diverting his mind from the task at hand and winning that aspect of the game.
deception is part of many games. someone once said "all war is deception". am i driving while drunk or making questionable tax deductions or even violating the games terms of service? nah, i'm playing a game for fun.
deception is part of the game.
sorry but youre just being a shitlord. Is winning really that important to you? as you said, youre just playing a game for fun.
Just leave a game against Random every time as I do. Last time I was matched 5 times in a row against the same random player, I send some bullshit message like "I don't play random cheesing <insert a random profanity>" and I just left. I don't care that much and for him it had to be fun. He received a boost to his MMR and the next real game had to be really funny.
Who cares, you don't play for money anyway and those who do don't play random that often.
Iv'e gone through periods of playing random. At the start of every game I would tell the other player my race. Otherwise your practice won't be accurate because you will force your opponent to do a safe middle of the road build compared to a build optimized vs the race you are playing. So your practice will be shit.
You claim that a player playing random has some kind of advantage yet 0 professional players who spend countless hours grinding out every improvement they can have decided to play random even though quite a few are more than proficient with the other races. I think this is relatively strong evidence against your claim.
On August 20 2015 16:34 MoreFaSho wrote: You claim that a player playing random has some kind of advantage yet 0 professional players who spend countless hours grinding out every improvement they can have decided to play random even though quite a few are more than proficient with the other races. I think this is relatively strong evidence against your claim.
On August 20 2015 16:34 MoreFaSho wrote: You claim that a player playing random has some kind of advantage yet 0 professional players who spend countless hours grinding out every improvement they can have decided to play random even though quite a few are more than proficient with the other races. I think this is relatively strong evidence against your claim.
Pretty much this. Playing random isn't easier than playing a race.
On August 20 2015 05:17 Clonester wrote: The random player has to be able to play all races. The race-picker not. Thus the random player has to learn 9 matchups against 3. It is literaly the reason to pick random in tournaments to have this starting advantage. Most random players want to learn all races best possible and thus announce what race they have, but dedicated random players who will attend in the automated tournaments will not. They not only pick random to play 3 races but also to win. If you want to be shure, use one of the starting workers to scout.
bullshit. The random player "has" to learn 9 different all-ins and execute them. he doesnt need to do jack besides that.
in LotV a workerscout sometimes aint enough.
a Random player will never play the real matchups either since hes forcing his opponent into suboptimal safer builds.
Just like a random player can learn 9 all-ins, a person who plays a single race can learn 3 all-ins. Additionally everyone will assume the random player is going to all-in. Still harder for the random player.
On August 20 2015 14:12 unifo wrote: 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.
What kind of statistical evidence would you even want? If they're in ladder, their win rate is probably 50% because if it weren't, they would rise or fall on the ladder until it was. That is no different for random players. You could compare their mmr with random to their mmr with their best race, but that wouldn't reflect random advantage; that would reflect how good their off race matchups are.
Now if you took two players with the same mmr who perform comparably in, say, PvP, then had one queue with their main race while the other queued as random, and then only looked at the PvPs, you could draw conclusions about the strength of the random advantage in PvP. I don't think anybody has done that kind of analysis, nor does anyone have the resources to do so.
Yeuch. Random is clearly underrepresented in GM league. Random is extremely underrepresented in tournaments.
The underlying concept of ladder matchmaking would actually lead to random players being overrepresented in higher leagues and underrepresented in lower leagues - IF there was indeed a random advantage. We actually witness the opposite.
If we wanted 'balance', random players should be given extra minerals at game start until their - let's say Code S - representation mirrors the amount of random players in the game overall.
What exactly are you arguing? That the racial distribution at the top shouldn't be 33/33/33 T/Z/P, it should be 25/25/25/25 T/Z/P/R? You know there's way fewer random players than any of the other races, right?
For fuck's sake, I wasn't arguing that overall random players are imbalanced in a WoL broodlord/infestor kind of way, hence no claims about the top level being dominated by random. I didn't even say that, in general, it's easier to be a random player than to pick a race. If a player chooses random and winds up in a TvT, they are better off than if they chose Terran and wound up in that same TvT. That's the imbalance I'm talking about.
If you're going to imply that people you disagree with are stupid, go to battle.net forums or something. If you're on Team Liquid act like a fucking human being. And if you're gonna try to act superior, at least use the word "ironic" correctly.
I made it effing exceedingly clear that I do not expect a 25/25/25/25 distribution. I even wrote "...representation mirrors the amount of random players in the game overall." So you can shove your strawman where the sun doesn't shine.
And the TvT example is completely misleading as well. Obviously a random getting Terran in a mirror matchup with equal MMR is "better off" only under the assumption he trains Terran a third of his available time. If he spent all his training with one race, it's safe to assume his skill level should be higher. If he actually spent all his training with his strongest race, it *should* be significantly higher.
On August 20 2015 16:34 MoreFaSho wrote: You claim that a player playing random has some kind of advantage yet 0 professional players who spend countless hours grinding out every improvement they can have decided to play random even though quite a few are more than proficient with the other races. I think this is relatively strong evidence against your claim.
I claim that if a player were to queue as random and wind up in a TvT, he would have a better chance of winning than if he had queued as Terran and wound up in the same TvT. The situations are identical except that in the former case, his opponent has less information. That's the random advantage I'm talking about.
Do you honestly believe that advantage doesn't exist?
On August 20 2015 16:34 MoreFaSho wrote: You claim that a player playing random has some kind of advantage yet 0 professional players who spend countless hours grinding out every improvement they can have decided to play random even though quite a few are more than proficient with the other races. I think this is relatively strong evidence against your claim.
I claim that if a player were to queue as random and wind up in a TvT, he would have a better chance of winning than if he had queued as Terran and wound up in the same TvT. The situations are identical except that in the former case, his opponent has less information. That's the random advantage I'm talking about.
Do you honestly believe that advantage doesn't exist?
This is definitely an advantage that exists, the question is does it really make up for all of the downsides of playing random? Evidence seems to say not, otherwise people would be playing random at a competitive level.
On August 20 2015 14:12 unifo wrote: 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.
What kind of statistical evidence would you even want? If they're in ladder, their win rate is probably 50% because if it weren't, they would rise or fall on the ladder until it was. That is no different for random players. You could compare their mmr with random to their mmr with their best race, but that wouldn't reflect random advantage; that would reflect how good their off race matchups are.
Now if you took two players with the same mmr who perform comparably in, say, PvP, then had one queue with their main race while the other queued as random, and then only looked at the PvPs, you could draw conclusions about the strength of the random advantage in PvP. I don't think anybody has done that kind of analysis, nor does anyone have the resources to do so.
Yeuch. Random is clearly underrepresented in GM league. Random is extremely underrepresented in tournaments.
The underlying concept of ladder matchmaking would actually lead to random players being overrepresented in higher leagues and underrepresented in lower leagues - IF there was indeed a random advantage. We actually witness the opposite.
If we wanted 'balance', random players should be given extra minerals at game start until their - let's say Code S - representation mirrors the amount of random players in the game overall.
What exactly are you arguing? That the racial distribution at the top shouldn't be 33/33/33 T/Z/P, it should be 25/25/25/25 T/Z/P/R? You know there's way fewer random players than any of the other races, right?
For fuck's sake, I wasn't arguing that overall random players are imbalanced in a WoL broodlord/infestor kind of way, hence no claims about the top level being dominated by random. I didn't even say that, in general, it's easier to be a random player than to pick a race. If a player chooses random and winds up in a TvT, they are better off than if they chose Terran and wound up in that same TvT. That's the imbalance I'm talking about.
Highly ironic thread looking at your sig.
If you're going to imply that people you disagree with are stupid, go to battle.net forums or something. If you're on Team Liquid act like a fucking human being. And if you're gonna try to act superior, at least use the word "ironic" correctly.
I made it effing exceedingly clear that I do not expect a 25/25/25/25 distribution. I even wrote "...representation mirrors the amount of random players in the game overall." So you can shove your strawman where the sun doesn't shine.
You're misusing "strawman" too. A straw man is when I tell you what your position is, and misrepresent it. Since I was literally asking you what your position is, the term doesn't apply. As for where I can shove the not-strawman, I'll reiterate: be civil or go away. You're not contributing anything to the discussion by talking like that, and you're being a dick about it.
And the TvT example is completely misleading as well. Obviously a random getting Terran in a mirror matchup with equal MMR is "better off" only under the assumption he trains Terran a third of his available time. If he spent all his training with one race, it's safe to assume his skill level should be higher. If he actually spent all his training with his strongest race, it *should* be significantly higher.
The whole point of this thread is to discuss whether or not the random player should get an in-game advantage in a TvT just because he's skilled at other matchups. Do you see why you're not contributing anything, then, when you say "Well yeah he's given an in-game advantage, but that's because he's skilled at other matchups too"?
On August 20 2015 16:34 MoreFaSho wrote: You claim that a player playing random has some kind of advantage yet 0 professional players who spend countless hours grinding out every improvement they can have decided to play random even though quite a few are more than proficient with the other races. I think this is relatively strong evidence against your claim.
I claim that if a player were to queue as random and wind up in a TvT, he would have a better chance of winning than if he had queued as Terran and wound up in the same TvT. The situations are identical except that in the former case, his opponent has less information. That's the random advantage I'm talking about.
Do you honestly believe that advantage doesn't exist?
This is definitely an advantage that exists, the question is does it really make up for all of the downsides of playing random? Evidence seems to say not, otherwise people would be playing random at a competitive level.
Okay well once it exists, there's a few questions. The first is whether it's strong enough to be worth the cost in time spent learning all the races. The answer seems to be no, particularly on the professional level where learning to play even one race sufficiently well takes almost more time than there is in the day. Maybe that will change when macro mechanics are removed, since that's a pretty large part of the investment in learning a new race, but for now the answer seems to be no.
The question this thread is about, however, is whether that advantage should exist anyway. Even if it's not small enough to make it a smart strategy for most players, does it create unfair situations? Does it create fun gameplay? Is it in keeping with the principles that competitive Starcraft is built on? I argue that it is at its heart an unfair advantage, since one player starts the game with more information than the other. The gameplay it encourages is typically coin-flippy for the non-random player and sloppy play for the random player. And it seems like an important principle of Starcraft that both players should start on equal footing, which this system violates.
On August 20 2015 16:34 MoreFaSho wrote: You claim that a player playing random has some kind of advantage yet 0 professional players who spend countless hours grinding out every improvement they can have decided to play random even though quite a few are more than proficient with the other races. I think this is relatively strong evidence against your claim.
I claim that if a player were to queue as random and wind up in a TvT, he would have a better chance of winning than if he had queued as Terran and wound up in the same TvT. The situations are identical except that in the former case, his opponent has less information. That's the random advantage I'm talking about.
Do you honestly believe that advantage doesn't exist?
This is definitely an advantage that exists, the question is does it really make up for all of the downsides of playing random? Evidence seems to say not, otherwise people would be playing random at a competitive level.
Okay well once it exists, there's a few questions. The first is whether it's strong enough to be worth the cost in time spent learning all the races. The answer seems to be no, particularly on the professional level where learning to play even one race sufficiently well takes almost more time than there is in the day. Maybe that will change when macro mechanics are removed, since that's a pretty large part of the investment in learning a new race, but for now the answer seems to be no.
The question this thread is about, however, is whether that advantage should exist anyway. Even if it's not small enough to make it a smart strategy for most players, does it create unfair situations? Does it create fun gameplay? Is it in keeping with the principles that competitive Starcraft is built on? I argue that it is at its heart an unfair advantage, since one player starts the game with more information than the other. The gameplay it encourages is typically coin-flippy for the non-random player and sloppy play for the random player. And it seems like an important principle of Starcraft that both players should start on equal footing, which this system violates.
Unfair advantage? No. Unfun? I think it's safe to say yes given how many people complain about it.
There's no such thing as starting on equal footing. Maps will favor one race or position over another, players' experience and personal skill will be different, races will have different styles and strrengths based on the meta, some people play unorthodox strategies ect. Having all these different inequalities while still having a relatively balanced game it what makes it so fun. Giving random players a small advantage in information given the setbacks of playing random seems like an example of asymmetrical balance to me.
Personally I think playing vs random is usually fun, because it forces me to play a more organic game rather than following my usual flowchart, and random players often do wonky / quirky things that force me to think and adapt on the fly.
I think we all agree on the "balance" part of playing random:
- A terran player that picks random and gets terran is in a better position than picking terran from the start. This is what OP refers to as "the random advantage".
- Playing random isn't a good choice if you want to get high on the ladder or win tournaments. While there is the advantage above, the disadvantage of 9 MUs outweighs that advantage.
I think the question then is only if it is fun to play vs random. Some seem to find it extremely frustrating, others (like me) don't seem to mind as much. But that's opinion, which it isn't much use to discuss I feel.
On August 20 2015 16:34 MoreFaSho wrote: You claim that a player playing random has some kind of advantage yet 0 professional players who spend countless hours grinding out every improvement they can have decided to play random even though quite a few are more than proficient with the other races. I think this is relatively strong evidence against your claim.
I claim that if a player were to queue as random and wind up in a TvT, he would have a better chance of winning than if he had queued as Terran and wound up in the same TvT. The situations are identical except that in the former case, his opponent has less information. That's the random advantage I'm talking about.
Do you honestly believe that advantage doesn't exist?
This is definitely an advantage that exists, the question is does it really make up for all of the downsides of playing random? Evidence seems to say not, otherwise people would be playing random at a competitive level.
Okay well once it exists, there's a few questions. The first is whether it's strong enough to be worth the cost in time spent learning all the races. The answer seems to be no, particularly on the professional level where learning to play even one race sufficiently well takes almost more time than there is in the day. Maybe that will change when macro mechanics are removed, since that's a pretty large part of the investment in learning a new race, but for now the answer seems to be no.
The question this thread is about, however, is whether that advantage should exist anyway. Even if it's not small enough to make it a smart strategy for most players, does it create unfair situations? Does it create fun gameplay? Is it in keeping with the principles that competitive Starcraft is built on? I argue that it is at its heart an unfair advantage, since one player starts the game with more information than the other. The gameplay it encourages is typically coin-flippy for the non-random player and sloppy play for the random player. And it seems like an important principle of Starcraft that both players should start on equal footing, which this system violates.
Unfair advantage? No. Unfun? I think it's safe to say yes given how many people complain about it.
There's no such thing as starting on equal footing. Maps will favor one race or position over another, players' experience and personal skill will be different, races will have different styles and strrengths based on the meta, some people play unorthodox strategies ect. Having all these different inequalities while still having a relatively balanced game it what makes it so fun. Giving random players a small advantage in information given the setbacks of playing random seems like an example of asymmetrical balance to me.
Personally I think playing vs random is usually fun, because it forces me to play a more organic game rather than following my usual flowchart, and random players often do wonky / quirky things that force me to think and adapt on the fly.
Map imbalance is a bad example because if there's an obvious map imbalance we generally do remove it – we try to minimize map imbalance just like we try to minimize racial imbalance. Positional imbalance is also generally considered a bad thing that should be removed. Players having different levels of skill has no bearing on starting with equal footing – equal footing just means you're given equally strong tools, it says nothing about how you use them.
For instance, Chess does not start on equal footing. White is stronger than black. Chess competition has to try to address this by having players trade off being white, but the game is at its heart imbalanced. This would be true even if I were to play as white against a chess grandmaster. He would beat me, but it would be in spite of starting off at a disadvantage from being black.
Starcraft is the only game I can think of that specifically gives a player an advantage for choosing random. Many fighting games have the option to choose random, but they don't give your character better stats because you random'ed into them instead of just picking them. It would seem silly for Mario Kart to make Toad move a little faster if you picked random and rolled Toad than if you had just chosen him. Why do we think random players deserve a handicap to compensate them for having to learn so many matchups in Starcraft? In Street FIghter you'd have to learn dozens of characters, whereas in Starcraft you only need to learn three races. Shouldn't Street Fighter implement some random advantage, then?
If Random was unbalanced, one would think that many significant SC2 pros would be playing it. But in fact it appears that no thought at all went into this post, other than salt over losing to random players.
Isn't the difference between 2x proxy rax and cc first much larger than the difference between terran and protoss? None of them will be scouted early if you are unlucky on a 4 player map. I assume no one if arguing that the opening build order is displayed on the loading screen though. Why should random race be displayed, but not build order?
On August 20 2015 05:17 Clonester wrote: The random player has to be able to play all races. The race-picker not. Thus the random player has to learn 9 matchups against 3. It is literaly the reason to pick random in tournaments to have this starting advantage. Most random players want to learn all races best possible and thus announce what race they have, but dedicated random players who will attend in the automated tournaments will not. They not only pick random to play 3 races but also to win. If you want to be shure, use one of the starting workers to scout.
bullshit. The random player "has" to learn 9 different all-ins and execute them. he doesnt need to do jack besides that.
in LotV a workerscout sometimes aint enough.
a Random player will never play the real matchups either since hes forcing his opponent into suboptimal safer builds.
On August 20 2015 14:27 JimmyJRaynor wrote: 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.
As a proud Random player, I think you should be ashamed of yourself. This kind of behavior gives all Random players a bad name.
if i can get my opponent thinking about the "morality" of my actions... i'm already diverting his mind from the task at hand and winning that aspect of the game.
deception is part of many games. someone once said "all war is deception". am i driving while drunk or making questionable tax deductions or even violating the games terms of service? nah, i'm playing a game for fun.
deception is part of the game.
sorry but youre just being a shitlord. Is winning really that important to you? as you said, youre just playing a game for fun.
and sometimes deception is part of the fun ... as it is in many games and sports. ..for the record i do not lie every game about my race.. winning is not important... fun is...
there is nuttin' like 12 pooling a protoss on a 4 player map when u told him u were terran
On August 20 2015 18:01 Cascade wrote: Devils advocate here:
Isn't the difference between 2x proxy rax and cc first much larger than the difference between terran and protoss? None of them will be scouted early if you are unlucky on a 4 player map. I assume no one if arguing that the opening build order is displayed on the loading screen though. Why should random race be displayed, but not build order?
First, because there can actually be strategy and mind games going into choice of build. If I know the metagame or I'm in my opponent's head, I can get ahead of the guy by anticipating what build he went for. To do that with race I would have to literally mind game Blizzard's random number generator.
Second, the difference isn't bigger because the breadth of 2x proxy rax and cc first is included in the range of possibilities from random players. So against a random player I don't just have to account for 2x proxy rax or eco cheese, I also have to account for proxy oracle and blink all-in and baneling bust and fast mutas and DT and whatever the fuck other all-in my opponent does every time he rolls this matchup. It's like the old IdrA argument from back in WoL – it's possible to defend any one of the cheeses from a given race, but it's difficult to be safe against all of them. Now compound that two more times as you have to try to be safe against not one race, but three.
On August 20 2015 18:01 Cascade wrote: Devils advocate here:
Isn't the difference between 2x proxy rax and cc first much larger than the difference between terran and protoss? None of them will be scouted early if you are unlucky on a 4 player map. I assume no one if arguing that the opening build order is displayed on the loading screen though. Why should random race be displayed, but not build order?
First, because there can actually be strategy and mind games going into choice of build. If I know the metagame or I'm in my opponent's head, I can get ahead of the guy by anticipating what build he went for. To do that with race I would have to literally mind game Blizzard's random number generator.
Second, the difference isn't bigger because the breadth of 2x proxy rax and cc first is included in the range of possibilities from random players. So against a random player I don't just have to account for 2x proxy rax or eco cheese, I also have to account for proxy oracle and blink all-in and baneling bust and fast mutas and DT and whatever the fuck other all-in my opponent does every time he rolls this matchup. It's like the old IdrA argument from back in WoL – it's possible to defend any one of the cheeses from a given race, but it's difficult to be safe against all of them. Now compound that two more times as you have to try to be safe against not one race, but three.
Sorry it's way too difficult to be serious on this point anymore. You forgot to mention carrier, broodlord and battle cruises rushes against which you should be prepared when playing vs random.
On August 20 2015 18:01 Cascade wrote: Devils advocate here:
Isn't the difference between 2x proxy rax and cc first much larger than the difference between terran and protoss? None of them will be scouted early if you are unlucky on a 4 player map. I assume no one if arguing that the opening build order is displayed on the loading screen though. Why should random race be displayed, but not build order?
First, because there can actually be strategy and mind games going into choice of build. If I know the metagame or I'm in my opponent's head, I can get ahead of the guy by anticipating what build he went for. To do that with race I would have to literally mind game Blizzard's random number generator.
Second, the difference isn't bigger because the breadth of 2x proxy rax and cc first is included in the range of possibilities from random players. So against a random player I don't just have to account for 2x proxy rax or eco cheese, I also have to account for proxy oracle and blink all-in and baneling bust and fast mutas and DT and whatever the fuck other all-in my opponent does every time he rolls this matchup. It's like the old IdrA argument from back in WoL – it's possible to defend any one of the cheeses from a given race, but it's difficult to be safe against all of them. Now compound that two more times as you have to try to be safe against not one race, but three.
Sorry it's way too difficult to be serious on this point anymore. You forgot to mention carrier, broodlord and battle cruises rushes against which you should be prepared when playing vs random.
Thank you for your invaluable contribution, I'm sure we would be lost without you.
The fact is, Random doesn't give an advantage when everything is said and done. Pros don't Random, and for good reason, because it's hard to learn all the match-ups.
However, the problem that ChristianS has (and I concur) is that it's unfair on principle that there should be any starting advantage whatsoever simply by picking Random. There's the inevitable skill disadvantage as the match progresses, but a tangible build order advantage for those picking Random. It's a net disadvantage, but some people would rather do away with the starting coin-flip, forced scout, safe build, or what have you. I agree.
I have played plenty of Random, and I have neither managed to win nor lose simply based on someone picking Random. There have been plenty of PvR's where I go "crap he's Protoss" and I immediately drop a second gate and gas and hope I don't get cheesed. It's worked out so far. Nonetheless, I have problems with Random hiding information in principle and would like it if the starting race were displayed for Random players on the loading screen. I don't think that's too much to ask for from those who pick Random.
On August 20 2015 18:40 WhiteLuminous wrote: The fact is, Random doesn't give an advantage when everything is said and done. Pros don't Random, and for good reason, because it's hard to learn all the match-ups.
However, the problem that ChristianS has (and I concur) is that it's unfair on principle that there should be any starting advantage whatsoever simply by picking Random. There's the inevitable skill disadvantage as the match progresses, but a tangible build order advantage for those picking Random. It's a net disadvantage, but some people would rather do away with the starting coin-flip, forced scout, safe build, or what have you. I agree.
I have played plenty of Random, and I have neither managed to win nor lose simply based on someone picking Random. There have been plenty of PvR's where I go "crap he's Protoss" and I immediately drop a second gate and gas and hope I don't get cheesed. It's worked out so far. Nonetheless, I have problems with Random hiding information in principle and would like it if the starting race were displayed for Random players on the loading screen. I don't think that's too much to ask for from those who pick Random.
Or, I don't know, how about you know the starting location, so you can chose whether to play "greedy" yourself or go for immediate scout? Like forced cross spawn only, no random 4 players map
On August 20 2015 18:40 WhiteLuminous wrote: The fact is, Random doesn't give an advantage when everything is said and done. Pros don't Random, and for good reason, because it's hard to learn all the match-ups.
However, the problem that ChristianS has (and I concur) is that it's unfair on principle that there should be any starting advantage whatsoever simply by picking Random. There's the inevitable skill disadvantage as the match progresses, but a tangible build order advantage for those picking Random. It's a net disadvantage, but some people would rather do away with the starting coin-flip, forced scout, safe build, or what have you. I agree.
I have played plenty of Random, and I have neither managed to win nor lose simply based on someone picking Random. There have been plenty of PvR's where I go "crap he's Protoss" and I immediately drop a second gate and gas and hope I don't get cheesed. It's worked out so far. Nonetheless, I have problems with Random hiding information in principle and would like it if the starting race were displayed for Random players on the loading screen. I don't think that's too much to ask for from those who pick Random.
Or, I don't know, how about you know the starting location, so you can chose whether to play "greedy" yourself or go for immediate scout? Like forced cross spawn only, no random 4 players map
Forced cross spawns might be a good idea on some maps anyway, but why do we want to limit map makers like that just to make it so the 1% of players who play random can keep their information advantage?
In this entire thread, I don't think I've heard a single argument why the information advantage actually should be there. I've heard plenty of people saying they like it, and entirely too many people reiterating some variation of "it's not imbalanced, or pro players would random" or "just send a starting worker, problem solved."
What's actually good about it? Even if you think that Random players deserve some help because they have to learn so many matchups, why choose this advantage instead of some other handicap? Why should it be this way, other than that it is already and you're used to it?
On August 20 2015 18:40 WhiteLuminous wrote: The fact is, Random doesn't give an advantage when everything is said and done. Pros don't Random, and for good reason, because it's hard to learn all the match-ups.
However, the problem that ChristianS has (and I concur) is that it's unfair on principle that there should be any starting advantage whatsoever simply by picking Random. There's the inevitable skill disadvantage as the match progresses, but a tangible build order advantage for those picking Random. It's a net disadvantage, but some people would rather do away with the starting coin-flip, forced scout, safe build, or what have you. I agree.
I have played plenty of Random, and I have neither managed to win nor lose simply based on someone picking Random. There have been plenty of PvR's where I go "crap he's Protoss" and I immediately drop a second gate and gas and hope I don't get cheesed. It's worked out so far. Nonetheless, I have problems with Random hiding information in principle and would like it if the starting race were displayed for Random players on the loading screen. I don't think that's too much to ask for from those who pick Random.
Or, I don't know, how about you know the starting location, so you can chose whether to play "greedy" yourself or go for immediate scout? Like forced cross spawn only, no random 4 players map
Forced cross spawns might be a good idea on some maps anyway, but why do we want to limit map makers like that just to make it so the 1% of players who play random can keep their information advantage?
In this entire thread, I don't think I've heard a single argument why the information advantage actually should be there. I've heard plenty of people saying they like it, and entirely too many people reiterating some variation of "it's not imbalanced, or pro players would random" or "just send a starting worker, problem solved."
What's actually good about it? Even if you think that Random players deserve some help because they have to learn so many matchups, why choose this advantage instead of some other handicap? Why should it be this way, other than that it is already and you're used to it?
It removes randomness from pro play too Scout first vs. scout last is a huge deal in HotS and since LotV kills the starting time window for scouting...
On August 20 2015 18:40 WhiteLuminous wrote: The fact is, Random doesn't give an advantage when everything is said and done. Pros don't Random, and for good reason, because it's hard to learn all the match-ups.
However, the problem that ChristianS has (and I concur) is that it's unfair on principle that there should be any starting advantage whatsoever simply by picking Random. There's the inevitable skill disadvantage as the match progresses, but a tangible build order advantage for those picking Random. It's a net disadvantage, but some people would rather do away with the starting coin-flip, forced scout, safe build, or what have you. I agree.
I have played plenty of Random, and I have neither managed to win nor lose simply based on someone picking Random. There have been plenty of PvR's where I go "crap he's Protoss" and I immediately drop a second gate and gas and hope I don't get cheesed. It's worked out so far. Nonetheless, I have problems with Random hiding information in principle and would like it if the starting race were displayed for Random players on the loading screen. I don't think that's too much to ask for from those who pick Random.
Or, I don't know, how about you know the starting location, so you can chose whether to play "greedy" yourself or go for immediate scout? Like forced cross spawn only, no random 4 players map
Forced cross spawns might be a good idea on some maps anyway, but why do we want to limit map makers like that just to make it so the 1% of players who play random can keep their information advantage?
In this entire thread, I don't think I've heard a single argument why the information advantage actually should be there. I've heard plenty of people saying they like it, and entirely too many people reiterating some variation of "it's not imbalanced, or pro players would random" or "just send a starting worker, problem solved."
What's actually good about it? Even if you think that Random players deserve some help because they have to learn so many matchups, why choose this advantage instead of some other handicap? Why should it be this way, other than that it is already and you're used to it?
It removes randomness from pro play too Scout first vs. scout last is a huge deal in HotS and since LotV kills the starting time window for scouting...
I have no issue with force crossed spawns becoming a standard map-making practice, if that's what's best for the game. But random advantage creates a constraint on map makers, where they have to either create maps that allow very early scouting or else allow XvR matchups to potentially become kind of broken. What if map makers wanted to make a 6p map? Or a map with a really long, winding rush distance that can be reduced later by breaking destructible rocks? What about that crazy Proleague map a while back with all the destructible rocks that actually separated the two players entirely at the beginning of the game? As long as random advantage exists, we either can't have maps like that on ladder, or we have to accept that in games where one player is random, their opponent will be forced to either coin-flip to stay on equal footing, or start the game behind.
On August 20 2015 18:01 Cascade wrote: Devils advocate here:
Isn't the difference between 2x proxy rax and cc first much larger than the difference between terran and protoss? None of them will be scouted early if you are unlucky on a 4 player map. I assume no one if arguing that the opening build order is displayed on the loading screen though. Why should random race be displayed, but not build order?
First, because there can actually be strategy and mind games going into choice of build. If I know the metagame or I'm in my opponent's head, I can get ahead of the guy by anticipating what build he went for. To do that with race I would have to literally mind game Blizzard's random number generator.
Second, the difference isn't bigger because the breadth of 2x proxy rax and cc first is included in the range of possibilities from random players. So against a random player I don't just have to account for 2x proxy rax or eco cheese, I also have to account for proxy oracle and blink all-in and baneling bust and fast mutas and DT and whatever the fuck other all-in my opponent does every time he rolls this matchup. It's like the old IdrA argument from back in WoL – it's possible to defend any one of the cheeses from a given race, but it's difficult to be safe against all of them. Now compound that two more times as you have to try to be safe against not one race, but three.
Sorry it's way too difficult to be serious on this point anymore. You forgot to mention carrier, broodlord and battle cruises rushes against which you should be prepared when playing vs random.
Thank you for your invaluable contribution, I'm sure we would be lost without you.
Good to see that among all of my posts you chose the most sarcastic ones to reply to whilst ignoring those made on a serious note.
On August 20 2015 18:01 Cascade wrote: Devils advocate here:
Isn't the difference between 2x proxy rax and cc first much larger than the difference between terran and protoss? None of them will be scouted early if you are unlucky on a 4 player map. I assume no one if arguing that the opening build order is displayed on the loading screen though. Why should random race be displayed, but not build order?
First, because there can actually be strategy and mind games going into choice of build. If I know the metagame or I'm in my opponent's head, I can get ahead of the guy by anticipating what build he went for. To do that with race I would have to literally mind game Blizzard's random number generator.
Second, the difference isn't bigger because the breadth of 2x proxy rax and cc first is included in the range of possibilities from random players. So against a random player I don't just have to account for 2x proxy rax or eco cheese, I also have to account for proxy oracle and blink all-in and baneling bust and fast mutas and DT and whatever the fuck other all-in my opponent does every time he rolls this matchup. It's like the old IdrA argument from back in WoL – it's possible to defend any one of the cheeses from a given race, but it's difficult to be safe against all of them. Now compound that two more times as you have to try to be safe against not one race, but three.
Sorry it's way too difficult to be serious on this point anymore. You forgot to mention carrier, broodlord and battle cruises rushes against which you should be prepared when playing vs random.
Thank you for your invaluable contribution, I'm sure we would be lost without you.
Good to see that among all of my posts you chose the most sarcastic ones to reply to whilst ignoring those made on a serious note.
Alright, let's recap all your contributions to the thread (I'll skip quoting everything, just so this isn't as much of a wall of text). You entered on page two to scoff at the thread in general, scoff at me specifically by pretending I was claiming TvT had a racial imbalance, and say to "just scout with a starting worker" – a comment which, in addition to not addressing the actual issue, was not even a new contribution to the thread. It had already been stated and responded to.
I didn't respond to your response to Zeromus since it wasn't directed at me, although I would have one objection:
On August 20 2015 09:02 wasilix wrote: 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.
Not only does random advantage still exist even in these cases – random players do not start with a disadvantage. Starting with a disadvantage is when you are given weaker tools than your opponent. If you're given equally strong tools, and yo just use them worse, the game didn't start you at a disadvantage, you were just worse at the game.
Then on page four you gave a dead Liquipedia link and repeated the information Lunchador gave a page earlier, that tournaments do allow players to pick random and they just don't generally do it. Then there's a post of pure assertion, you saying that you think Protoss should always be fine doing a 13 gate 14/15 gas against any race so it doesn't matter that they don't know what race they're against at that point. Maybe that's the one you think I purposely skipped responding to? I'll do that now:
Simply by nature of how different they are, different matchups often require completely different openings. For example, in some metagames Terran might need to take gas first to have a good chance of winning for one matchup, while for another CC first or 1 rax expand is the clear choice. Protoss historically has done everything from 1-base tech as a standard build (PvP) to FFE or fall behind (ZvP), and everything in between. Those decisions happen very early in the game, particularly now that the early early game gets skipped.
Who knows where the metagame will go, but it easily could reach a point where for one matchup a player needs to go gas first to stand a chance, and in another they need to expand immediately or fall way behind. Random advantage breaks situations like that, and often by going for a generic build like your 13 gate 14/15 gas, you'll find yourself either missing the tech you need to stay alive or missing the economy you need to stay competitive. Even if the metagame isn't in a state where random advantage is particularly broken, strategic complexity is removed from the game by putting one player in the dark. The only builds they have available to them are coin flips, and any build that actually takes advantage of the specific strengths or weaknesses of the races is out of the question. Making a strategy game less strategic seems like a bad thing.
Then on page five you went back to scoffing and sarcasm. So when you insist on acting so snide and superior, without really contributing almost any substance to the discussion, what are you actually thinking you're going to accomplish? Are you just trolling to derail the thread? Or do you genuinely want to aid the discussion, and just can't still your tongue when you think of something snotty to say? And just in case there's any confusion what I mean by snotty, I think "This thread is so rich" and "Yaha, TvT is imbalanced, got your point" are sufficient examples of snotty.
I can not agree more with this. Random is a bad aspect of the game that forces randomness and too much difficulty to play competetively. Random can stay, but races should be defined in games.
There are many things about starcraft that is simply retro at not looked at because of the fact that starcraft may or may not have been competetive enough. Random races is one thing, only 10 control groups is another.
Almost ever All-In based, frustration intolerant ladder guy has the same aguments.
"I cant do RoachBane bust, because you might be Toss" "QQ Pathetic Random"
But well it's about virtual points. There are very,Very Few players on earth that ACTUALLY would count an early worker scout as "Gamelosing disadvantage"
On August 20 2015 17:28 Cascade wrote: I think we all agree on the "balance" part of playing random:
- A terran player that picks random and gets terran is in a better position than picking terran from the start. This is what OP refers to as "the random advantage".
- Playing random isn't a good choice if you want to get high on the ladder or win tournaments. While there is the advantage above, the disadvantage of 9 MUs outweighs that advantage.
I think the question then is only if it is fun to play vs random. Some seem to find it extremely frustrating, others (like me) don't seem to mind as much. But that's opinion, which it isn't much use to discuss I feel.
You're missing something. There's also a fun factor for playing Random to consider. It has to be fun to play Random or else why even bother having it in the game in the first place.
The Random advantage is a key part of making that happen.
What it ultimately comes down to is this. Random is not overpowered. I guarantee you that if playing Random brought you any kind of REAL advantage at the high levels it would be removed.
But it doesn't. In fact, playing Random is such a huge detriment to your ability to be successful at the high levels that even well known and high level random players like: TLO, Guineapig and Gumiho went to single races because they couldn't cut it playing as Random at that level.
There's no argument to be had for its removal other than "I don't like it!". Fortunately that isn't enough of an argument to change something that's as old and as engrained in the game as the way that Random works on the ladder.
So you don't like playing against Random players. Tough! There's a lot of shit in this game I don't like playing against either, but you don't see me arguing for their removal. That's all this comes down to eventually.
There are no balance concerns regarding Random. Random players DO NOT exist at the pro levels. Whatever advantage Random has only exists at the lower levels and in that regard, there are a ton of other imbalances at low levels that exist and will continue to exist because they are balanced at the higher levels. Random is exactly like that.
On August 20 2015 17:28 Cascade wrote: I think we all agree on the "balance" part of playing random:
- A terran player that picks random and gets terran is in a better position than picking terran from the start. This is what OP refers to as "the random advantage".
- Playing random isn't a good choice if you want to get high on the ladder or win tournaments. While there is the advantage above, the disadvantage of 9 MUs outweighs that advantage.
I think the question then is only if it is fun to play vs random. Some seem to find it extremely frustrating, others (like me) don't seem to mind as much. But that's opinion, which it isn't much use to discuss I feel.
You're missing something. There's also a fun factor for playing Random to consider. It has to be fun to play Random or else why even bother having it in the game in the first place.
The Random advantage is a key part of making that happen.
What it ultimately comes down to is this. Random is not overpowered. I guarantee you that if playing Random brought you any kind of REAL advantage at the high levels it would be removed.
But it doesn't. In fact, playing Random is such a huge detriment to your ability to be successful at the high levels that even well known and high level random players like: TLO, Guineapig and Gumiho went to single races because they couldn't cut it playing as Random at that level.
There's no argument to be had for its removal other than "I don't like it!". Fortunately that isn't enough of an argument to change something that's as old and as engrained in the game as the way that Random works on the ladder.
So you don't like playing against Random players. Tough! There's a lot of shit in this game I don't like playing against either, but you don't see me arguing for their removal. That's all this comes down to eventually.
There are no balance concerns regarding Random. Random players DO NOT exist at the pro levels. Whatever advantage Random has only exists at the lower levels and in that regard, there are a ton of other imbalances at low levels that exist and will continue to exist because they are balanced at the higher levels. Random is exactly like that.
Yes, you are right. Random players having fun is part of it as well, and I guess few random players would say that random is more boring than other choices, as they could simply switch. Some randoms, not all, seem to be fine with having their race shown to the opponent though, a few even desire it.
Anyway, in the end I simply don't believe that this small little random advantage really causes so much problems to people. Yeah, it'll be annoying that one time in I don't know how many you 1) play against a random (less than 10% play random) 2) on a 4-player map 3) scout them last 4) picked a bad build against that race and 5) picked a bad build against that build. But if that is even close to one of the major issues with sc2, the devs should be very happy with themselves imo. I really think it is just a small vocal minority that for whatever reason got stuck on it and can't get their mind off how unfair it is every time they run into a random player. I can even see people not scout immediately just to confirm how unfair it is.
In WoL and early HotS I maintained 4 GM accounts with all race options. Any build order advantage from random is pretty negligible in HotS. WoL was a different story as Random vs P was insanely broken.
Aside from having to learn all matchups, when you queue as random your games usually play out differently from the standard meta - making it much harder to get consistent takeaway after games that is helpful in building your skill.
The game is being played at such a level now that a random player will never make a serious splash in WCS or any high tier tournament.
On August 20 2015 14:27 JimmyJRaynor wrote: 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.
As a proud Random player, I think you should be ashamed of yourself. This kind of behavior gives all Random players a bad name.
Seconded. While difficult to differentiate troll from obliviousness, it still hurts!
On August 20 2015 21:57 Kerm wrote: Playing random = 9 matchups to master. Playing one race = 3 matchups to master.
There is your imbalance.
Not even going to the pro level, if random was really imbalanced there would be far more random player in GM, it's not the case (approx. 10%).
So i don't really see your point.
2.3% in GM according to that page above, most in the bottom part of GM and none in the top 100 or so. But I don't think anyone is trying to say that you chances of winning increase by choosing random, only that they don't like playing against it.
On August 20 2015 22:55 Little-Chimp wrote: So let me get this straight, the argument for keeping an in game information imbalance is "who cares" and "we have to learn more match ups" lol
Almost. "Who cares" and "the random players seem to enjoy it".
On August 20 2015 23:07 Cazimirbzh wrote: Hahah causals and noob players are so funny. Never seen a random player in a tournament^^
true, extremely serious players can't make random work. as i see it.. random just does not "scale up". but if you only play a few hours a week or have gaps in your playing time.. random is great fun and should just be enjoyed for that.
but for shits and giggles random is fun... that's why i play random. i just think some people take themselves and the game too seriously. i mean. even more seriously than Blizzard if u look at it the humour Blizzard injects into the game.
On August 20 2015 23:36 Cazimirbzh wrote: @deacon.frost You lost me.
That's good, otherwise you could found me ___
Anyway - on a high level random is not a big deal. But I still don't understand why Blizzard is treating everyone as a HC high level gamer instead of accepting that there are casuals and noobs. I am casual and noob. Treat me that way, why on Earth on my MMR I cannot see the race of Random player? I can see that in Silver you can see the starting location of the player(meaning actual starting location where the player spawned, not possible starting location). On my level is Random actually solid advantage, they either go super greedy unpunished(because when I scout them with my in the middle of the road build I don't have the tools to punish them) or they go super cheesy(different cheeses means different responses). Please, in high masters/GM, don't give them these helpers, I am low level noob, give me the tools I need, show me the race :-)
(as I stated before, I actually don't play random players, I think they have too big advantage)
Edit> The example with Silver - it would be nice for new players to have these helping things with Bronze players having most helpers and low masters having the least, obv. It's not happening now.
Edit 2> I am not Silver level and I used to play Random and I rarely play Random nowadays(but I do from time to time).
Ladder is focusing on 1v1 with requirements for main competition, wcs (1v1). Blizzard is trying to create a new generation of progamers to play his game. Seems right to me^^ I agree that on lotv random become more "powerful" at low level. But the best way to deal with it is to boost your gameplay not disable a fun option. Stop focusing on the others and on the ladder. To be 123/200 Gm may be consider good but to be the winner of Noob Night Edition N°325 that's a record
Random should display the race of the player on the loading screen. Better for the random player who can prepare his build mentally accordingly, better for the opponent that doesn't suffer the disadvantage of having to scout early. And don't give me some of that "but he has 9 mus to master instead of 3..." this is absolute bullshit.
If you want to random between two races, roll a dice. If odd, play race A, if even play race B.
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.
why are you so hostile?
im understanding what you're saying and i believe i'm reading into this thread just as much as you are. i get just as frustrated when i open a specific way because they are randoming and it turns out that the build i wanted to do would have been just fine once i see their race. the best part about lotv is that they've created a way for races to work around the "random advantage"
zerg: so lets say we open pool first vs a terran player that went cc first because he randomed and knows that the zerg has to play it safe lest he be a zerg or protoss player. now, we can drop off some lings into the back of their base and gain back some ground while we expand.
protoss: adepts are pretty good at a lot of things. you can safely open with 2 gate and once you scout, drop a 2nd gas or expand and still pressure.
terran: this is the one race i sorta feel bad for because you're forced to wall off when you may get another terran player. but i don't think that's a huge deal. vs all 3 races you can open 1 gas reaper and scout with an scv until your reaper gets out.
it's tougher than it used to be because the game is a lot quicker but i dont think its impossible.
On August 21 2015 00:09 Cazimirbzh wrote: @deacon.frost There you are , that's better ;p
Ladder is focusing on 1v1 with requirements for main competition, wcs (1v1). Blizzard is trying to create a new generation of progamers to play his game. Seems right to me^^ I agree that on lotv random become more "powerful" at low level. But the best way to deal with it is to boost your gameplay not disable a fun option. Stop focusing on the others and on the ladder. To be 123/200 Gm may be consider good but to be the winner of Noob Night Edition N°325 that's a record
I don't care that much about ladder, I play unranked and I leave pretty big number of games
Well, the question is if we have more people frustrated by random cheesers or random players. If we have more random players - keep the info hidden. If we have more frustrated players - show the race. This is a problem which doesn't have any good solution, someone will be upset.
And only Blizzard knows numbers.
It would be helpful to start with a setting for Random players to show their race if they want. This won't hurt anyone and will remove some frustration from ladder.
Hmmm. At first I thought this topic was total nonsense--and maybe it still is--but now I wonder if there is an argument here.
SC is a game of matchups. There are three races, not four. Random is not a race, it's a setting, a preference. So why should this player-preference affect the matchup? LotV already starts off super quick, and scouting can be an issue with such giant maps, and when versus a random player, several important early-game decisions are made without the most basic knowledge possible, i.e., what is the matchup?
This could go one of two ways, if it's going to change at all (which it won't).
(1) The random player cannot see the race of his opponent either, in the load screen, or the in-game info screen.
(2) The random player's race is revealed as soon as it is determined by the game engine.
I like both options, lol. Either both players are in the dark, or both are in-the-know. It's silly that there is a game preference that can affect your opponent in a way they actually have no recourse over.
On August 20 2015 05:17 Clonester wrote: The random player has to be able to play all races. The race-picker not. Thus the random player has to learn 9 matchups against 3. It is literaly the reason to pick random in tournaments to have this starting advantage. Most random players want to learn all races best possible and thus announce what race they have, but dedicated random players who will attend in the automated tournaments will not. They not only pick random to play 3 races but also to win. If you want to be shure, use one of the starting workers to scout.
bullshit. The random player "has" to learn 9 different all-ins and execute them. he doesnt need to do jack besides that.
in LotV a workerscout sometimes aint enough.
a Random player will never play the real matchups either since hes forcing his opponent into suboptimal safer builds.
On August 20 2015 16:13 JimmyJRaynor wrote:
On August 20 2015 14:46 Brutaxilos wrote:
On August 20 2015 14:27 JimmyJRaynor wrote: 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.
As a proud Random player, I think you should be ashamed of yourself. This kind of behavior gives all Random players a bad name.
if i can get my opponent thinking about the "morality" of my actions... i'm already diverting his mind from the task at hand and winning that aspect of the game.
deception is part of many games. someone once said "all war is deception". am i driving while drunk or making questionable tax deductions or even violating the games terms of service? nah, i'm playing a game for fun.
deception is part of the game.
sorry but youre just being a shitlord. Is winning really that important to you? as you said, youre just playing a game for fun.
and sometimes deception is part of the fun ... as it is in many games and sports. ..for the record i do not lie every game about my race.. winning is not important... fun is...
there is nuttin' like 12 pooling a protoss on a 4 player map when u told him u were terran
Still sounds like shitlordery to me, have fun doing your tampered coinflip for as long as you can.
Lets go with the latest circlejerk argument: Playing a random is not fun, you dont get decent practice in the real matchups due to opening with suboptimal builds. For pros, playing a random player is a waste of time because they can never use that experience in a tournament.
On top of that teres a higher bullshit-factor. They usually suck ass at macro and mechanics and most of them simply all-in.
do you know how easy it is to early pool/ proxy rax/ proxy gate/ in every matchup? Can we please stop with the "but they have to learn 9 matchups" argument already? It holds no meaning when most of them all-in and the game is basically over after the coinflip has been settled due to inferior mechanics/macro.
On August 20 2015 05:17 Clonester wrote: The random player has to be able to play all races. The race-picker not. Thus the random player has to learn 9 matchups against 3. It is literaly the reason to pick random in tournaments to have this starting advantage. Most random players want to learn all races best possible and thus announce what race they have, but dedicated random players who will attend in the automated tournaments will not. They not only pick random to play 3 races but also to win. If you want to be shure, use one of the starting workers to scout.
bullshit. The random player "has" to learn 9 different all-ins and execute them. he doesnt need to do jack besides that.
in LotV a workerscout sometimes aint enough.
a Random player will never play the real matchups either since hes forcing his opponent into suboptimal safer builds.
On August 20 2015 16:13 JimmyJRaynor wrote:
On August 20 2015 14:46 Brutaxilos wrote:
On August 20 2015 14:27 JimmyJRaynor wrote: 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.
As a proud Random player, I think you should be ashamed of yourself. This kind of behavior gives all Random players a bad name.
if i can get my opponent thinking about the "morality" of my actions... i'm already diverting his mind from the task at hand and winning that aspect of the game.
deception is part of many games. someone once said "all war is deception". am i driving while drunk or making questionable tax deductions or even violating the games terms of service? nah, i'm playing a game for fun.
deception is part of the game.
sorry but youre just being a shitlord. Is winning really that important to you? as you said, youre just playing a game for fun.
and sometimes deception is part of the fun ... as it is in many games and sports. ..for the record i do not lie every game about my race.. winning is not important... fun is...
there is nuttin' like 12 pooling a protoss on a 4 player map when u told him u were terran
Still sounds like shitlordery to me, have fun doing your tampered coinflip for as long as you can.
Lets go with the latest circlejerk argument: Playing a random is not fun, you dont get decent practice in the real matchups due to opening with suboptimal builds. For pros, playing a random player is a waste of time because they can never use that experience in a tournament.
On top of that teres a higher bullshit-factor. They usually suck ass at macro and mechanics and most of them simply all-in.
do you know how easy it is to early pool/ proxy rax/ proxy gate/ in every matchup? Can we please stop with the "but they have to learn 9 matchups" argument already? It holds no meaning when most of them all-in and the game is basically over after the coinflip has been settled due to inferior mechanics/macro.
Well now we know how you feel about it, thanks for sharing.
I do not cheese when I play Random, like I said earlier in the thread. I actually really enjoy using Random because I don't have to deal with blind metagame cheeses every fucking game especially vs Protoss because they have to scout me first so they don't get to tailor their build beforehand.
I play macro games 90% of the time. For me, playing Random increases the chances that the game will actually be a macro game rather than the other way around.
But go ahead and tell me how all I want to do as Random is coin flip and win with inferior mechanics and macro, I'd be delighted to know more about how I play from you.
On August 20 2015 05:17 Clonester wrote: The random player has to be able to play all races. The race-picker not. Thus the random player has to learn 9 matchups against 3. It is literaly the reason to pick random in tournaments to have this starting advantage. Most random players want to learn all races best possible and thus announce what race they have, but dedicated random players who will attend in the automated tournaments will not. They not only pick random to play 3 races but also to win. If you want to be shure, use one of the starting workers to scout.
bullshit. The random player "has" to learn 9 different all-ins and execute them. he doesnt need to do jack besides that.
in LotV a workerscout sometimes aint enough.
a Random player will never play the real matchups either since hes forcing his opponent into suboptimal safer builds.
On August 20 2015 16:13 JimmyJRaynor wrote:
On August 20 2015 14:46 Brutaxilos wrote:
On August 20 2015 14:27 JimmyJRaynor wrote: 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.
As a proud Random player, I think you should be ashamed of yourself. This kind of behavior gives all Random players a bad name.
if i can get my opponent thinking about the "morality" of my actions... i'm already diverting his mind from the task at hand and winning that aspect of the game.
deception is part of many games. someone once said "all war is deception". am i driving while drunk or making questionable tax deductions or even violating the games terms of service? nah, i'm playing a game for fun.
deception is part of the game.
sorry but youre just being a shitlord. Is winning really that important to you? as you said, youre just playing a game for fun.
and sometimes deception is part of the fun ... as it is in many games and sports. ..for the record i do not lie every game about my race.. winning is not important... fun is...
there is nuttin' like 12 pooling a protoss on a 4 player map when u told him u were terran
Still sounds like shitlordery to me, have fun doing your tampered coinflip for as long as you can.
Lets go with the latest circlejerk argument: Playing a random is not fun, you dont get decent practice in the real matchups due to opening with suboptimal builds. For pros, playing a random player is a waste of time because they can never use that experience in a tournament.
On top of that teres a higher bullshit-factor. They usually suck ass at macro and mechanics and most of them simply all-in.
do you know how easy it is to early pool/ proxy rax/ proxy gate/ in every matchup? Can we please stop with the "but they have to learn 9 matchups" argument already? It holds no meaning when most of them all-in and the game is basically over after the coinflip has been settled due to inferior mechanics/macro.
Well now we know how you feel about it, thanks for sharing.
I do not cheese when I play Random, like I said earlier in the thread. I actually really enjoy using Random because I don't have to deal with blind metagame cheeses every fucking game especially vs Protoss because they have to scout me first so they don't get to tailor their build beforehand.
I play macro games 90% of the time. For me, playing Random increases the chances that the game will actually be a macro game rather than the other way around.
But go ahead and tell me how all I want to do as Random is coin flip and win with inferior mechanics and macro, I'd be delighted to know more about how I play from you.
You're back again, with more misrepresenting what other people say!
He didn't say "Vindicare always cheeses," he said "most random players on ladder just cheese." If someone says "Random players tend to cheese, which takes little skill and it only works because due to random advantage, it ultimately comes down to a coin flip as I decide which cheeses from the three races I'm going to respond to and which I just have to accept as losses," it is not a cogent response to say "well I play random, and I don't cheese. What's the problem?"
TeamLiquid should show your rank so we know how serious to take the responses in here. no disrespect, but the impact of "random advantage" is relative to skill and straight knowledge of the game. it's simply not going to matter at all in the lower levels.
show some replays where you've lost simply because you didn't know your opponents race. As a random player the ONLY times I get a free win is when I spawn as terran and my opponent cheeses me blindly. ex: a zerg 6 pools me, or a protoss proxy 2 gates me... that was their decision.. i didn't win because random is OP.. I won because they chose a to flip a coin.
I tried to type up a specific response to a lot of people in the last couple pages, but my browser crashed. I'll maybe do a shorter version:
@Cascade: Saying it doesn't affect very many games or that Blizzard should be happy if this is the only issue isn't really an argument against. It's a question that's worth discussing, and if we're going to discuss it, it should be along the lines of "why should this be the way it is, or why should it change?" It shouldn't be along the lines of "well sure it's a problem, but how often does it really matter?" As for the "random players like it" argument:
Back in middle school I used to play SSBM quite a bit. My friend's little sister liked playing, but she was a lot worse than me, so we turned on handicap mode. I would hit her a lot more often than she hit me, but her hits would have way more impact so it wound up being a kind of even fight. She liked that mode because it let her compete evenly with people better than her.
But it would be horribly contrary to the spirit of competition to bring something like that into, say, a tournament. The player who plays better is supposed to win more often, and when things like racial imbalance or map imbalance get in the way of that, we tend to think those are bad things that should be adjusted. Well ladder, like a tournament, is a competitive venue in which the player that plays better is supposed to win more often, and random advantage changes that.
@Agh: So depending on the metagame it can either be minorly annoying or totally gamebreaking. Granted, the current metagame tends to lend itself to the former, particularly at the top level, and even if it moved in the other direction the skill level at the top is so high that no one could practically keep up all three races, so it's unlikely to affect the top level of play. Is that an argument why the advantage is good? It sounds to me like an argument why the advantage is less bad than it could be.
@BluemoonSC: I wasn't really intending to be hostile with that post, although I guess I was a little frustrated that people were still coming into the thread and making the same argument that had been made and discussed at length on every page already. At this point if you just came to the thread to say "random advantage is tough but so is learning 9 matchups" or "just send a starting worker," you're not adding anything to the discussion. Apologies for getting heated, otherwise I think I've only been hostile with the people that were openly scoffing or in some other way being snotty.
Edit: regarding your post, those responses might work well enough now but they depend heavily on where the metagame lands. It might turn out that ling drops versus Terran are extremely defendable, to the point that people think of ling drops on the level of nydus worm or 1-base muta in terms of gimmicky, bad plays. In that case your response would be exactly what the other player wants: delay your economy even further to throw out some gimmicky attack that fails to do damage, and then find yourself way behind. Same for adept aggression: maybe it will remain as strong as it is now in all matchups, and Protoss players could do it blind without knowing their opponent's race. Or maybe it turns out to be really bad against Zerg or something (or maybe it turns out to be bad in general if adepts get nerfed – remember, we're still in beta). The point is that with random advantage, any change in the metagame can suddenly make a vR matchup a massive coin-flip, and not even a coin-flip in the sense that you don't know what your opponent is doing. Even if you could mindgame them perfectly you'd still have a 1-in-3 of knowing what they're up to.
On August 20 2015 05:17 Clonester wrote: The random player has to be able to play all races. The race-picker not. Thus the random player has to learn 9 matchups against 3. It is literaly the reason to pick random in tournaments to have this starting advantage. Most random players want to learn all races best possible and thus announce what race they have, but dedicated random players who will attend in the automated tournaments will not. They not only pick random to play 3 races but also to win. If you want to be shure, use one of the starting workers to scout.
bullshit. The random player "has" to learn 9 different all-ins and execute them. he doesnt need to do jack besides that.
in LotV a workerscout sometimes aint enough.
a Random player will never play the real matchups either since hes forcing his opponent into suboptimal safer builds.
On August 20 2015 16:13 JimmyJRaynor wrote:
On August 20 2015 14:46 Brutaxilos wrote:
On August 20 2015 14:27 JimmyJRaynor wrote: 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.
As a proud Random player, I think you should be ashamed of yourself. This kind of behavior gives all Random players a bad name.
if i can get my opponent thinking about the "morality" of my actions... i'm already diverting his mind from the task at hand and winning that aspect of the game.
deception is part of many games. someone once said "all war is deception". am i driving while drunk or making questionable tax deductions or even violating the games terms of service? nah, i'm playing a game for fun.
deception is part of the game.
sorry but youre just being a shitlord. Is winning really that important to you? as you said, youre just playing a game for fun.
and sometimes deception is part of the fun ... as it is in many games and sports. ..for the record i do not lie every game about my race.. winning is not important... fun is...
there is nuttin' like 12 pooling a protoss on a 4 player map when u told him u were terran
Still sounds like shitlordery to me, have fun doing your tampered coinflip for as long as you can.
Lets go with the latest circlejerk argument: Playing a random is not fun, you dont get decent practice in the real matchups due to opening with suboptimal builds. For pros, playing a random player is a waste of time because they can never use that experience in a tournament.
On top of that teres a higher bullshit-factor. They usually suck ass at macro and mechanics and most of them simply all-in.
do you know how easy it is to early pool/ proxy rax/ proxy gate/ in every matchup? Can we please stop with the "but they have to learn 9 matchups" argument already? It holds no meaning when most of them all-in and the game is basically over after the coinflip has been settled due to inferior mechanics/macro.
Well now we know how you feel about it, thanks for sharing.
I do not cheese when I play Random, like I said earlier in the thread. I actually really enjoy using Random because I don't have to deal with blind metagame cheeses every fucking game especially vs Protoss because they have to scout me first so they don't get to tailor their build beforehand.
I play macro games 90% of the time. For me, playing Random increases the chances that the game will actually be a macro game rather than the other way around.
But go ahead and tell me how all I want to do as Random is coin flip and win with inferior mechanics and macro, I'd be delighted to know more about how I play from you.
You're back again, with more misrepresenting what other people say!
He didn't say "Vindicare always cheeses," he said "most random players on ladder just cheese." If someone says "Random players tend to cheese, which takes little skill and it only works because due to random advantage, it ultimately comes down to a coin flip as I decide which cheeses from the three races I'm going to respond to and which I just have to accept as losses," it is not a cogent response to say "well I play random, and I don't cheese. What's the problem?"
No, I didn't misrepresent what he said.
He's attempting to argue that Random is somehow a less valid way to play Starcraft because "most random players cheese" I'm disarming that argument by using myself as an example of someone that doesn't.
The fact is, a LOT of people cheese on the ladder. It happens to everyone regardless of what race they play, targetting random players in particular for it is fucking dumb. There's absolutely no reason for it. No one likes to lose to cheese but it's going to happen to all of us.
At the end of the day this argument is very simple. Random isn't imbalanced, because like we've discussed ad naseum already, if it were we'd at least be seeing SOME professional player abusing it at the pro level. We don't because the disadvantage of playing 3 races and 9 match ups outweighs the benefit you get at the start of an individual game when your opponent doesn't know what match up it is.
There's no reason to take that advantage away. None whatsoever. There's just this irrational bias towards Random players like the one I "misrepresented" that views Random players as just people who like to cheese. That isn't true.
Random has existed the way that it has since all the way back in Starcraft 1. It's fine the way it is. It's going to take more than a bunch of people whining about cheese strategies on the forums to change it.
On August 20 2015 05:17 Clonester wrote: The random player has to be able to play all races. The race-picker not. Thus the random player has to learn 9 matchups against 3. It is literaly the reason to pick random in tournaments to have this starting advantage. Most random players want to learn all races best possible and thus announce what race they have, but dedicated random players who will attend in the automated tournaments will not. They not only pick random to play 3 races but also to win. If you want to be shure, use one of the starting workers to scout.
bullshit. The random player "has" to learn 9 different all-ins and execute them. he doesnt need to do jack besides that.
in LotV a workerscout sometimes aint enough.
a Random player will never play the real matchups either since hes forcing his opponent into suboptimal safer builds.
On August 20 2015 16:13 JimmyJRaynor wrote:
On August 20 2015 14:46 Brutaxilos wrote:
On August 20 2015 14:27 JimmyJRaynor wrote: 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.
As a proud Random player, I think you should be ashamed of yourself. This kind of behavior gives all Random players a bad name.
if i can get my opponent thinking about the "morality" of my actions... i'm already diverting his mind from the task at hand and winning that aspect of the game.
deception is part of many games. someone once said "all war is deception". am i driving while drunk or making questionable tax deductions or even violating the games terms of service? nah, i'm playing a game for fun.
deception is part of the game.
sorry but youre just being a shitlord. Is winning really that important to you? as you said, youre just playing a game for fun.
and sometimes deception is part of the fun ... as it is in many games and sports. ..for the record i do not lie every game about my race.. winning is not important... fun is...
there is nuttin' like 12 pooling a protoss on a 4 player map when u told him u were terran
Still sounds like shitlordery to me, have fun doing your tampered coinflip for as long as you can.
Lets go with the latest circlejerk argument: Playing a random is not fun, you dont get decent practice in the real matchups due to opening with suboptimal builds. For pros, playing a random player is a waste of time because they can never use that experience in a tournament.
On top of that teres a higher bullshit-factor. They usually suck ass at macro and mechanics and most of them simply all-in.
do you know how easy it is to early pool/ proxy rax/ proxy gate/ in every matchup? Can we please stop with the "but they have to learn 9 matchups" argument already? It holds no meaning when most of them all-in and the game is basically over after the coinflip has been settled due to inferior mechanics/macro.
Well now we know how you feel about it, thanks for sharing.
I do not cheese when I play Random, like I said earlier in the thread. I actually really enjoy using Random because I don't have to deal with blind metagame cheeses every fucking game especially vs Protoss because they have to scout me first so they don't get to tailor their build beforehand.
I play macro games 90% of the time. For me, playing Random increases the chances that the game will actually be a macro game rather than the other way around.
But go ahead and tell me how all I want to do as Random is coin flip and win with inferior mechanics and macro, I'd be delighted to know more about how I play from you.
You're back again, with more misrepresenting what other people say!
He didn't say "Vindicare always cheeses," he said "most random players on ladder just cheese." If someone says "Random players tend to cheese, which takes little skill and it only works because due to random advantage, it ultimately comes down to a coin flip as I decide which cheeses from the three races I'm going to respond to and which I just have to accept as losses," it is not a cogent response to say "well I play random, and I don't cheese. What's the problem?"
No, I didn't misrepresent what he said.
He's attempting to argue that Random is somehow a less valid way to play Starcraft because "most random players cheese" I'm disarming that argument by using myself as an example of someone that doesn't.
The fact is, a LOT of people cheese on the ladder. It happens to everyone regardless of what race they play, targetting random players in particular for it is fucking dumb. There's absolutely no reason for it. No one likes to lose to cheese but it's going to happen to all of us.
At the end of the day this argument is very simple. Random isn't imbalanced, because like we've discussed ad naseum already, if it were we'd at least be seeing SOME professional player abusing it at the pro level. We don't because the disadvantage of playing 3 races and 9 match ups outweighs the benefit you get at the start of an individual game when your opponent doesn't know what match up it is.
There's no reason to take that advantage away. None whatsoever. There's just this irrational bias towards Random players like the one I "misrepresented" that views Random players as just people who like to cheese. That isn't true.
Random has existed the way that it has since all the way back in Starcraft 1. It's fine the way it is. It's going to take more than a bunch of people whining about cheese strategies on the forums to change it.
Do you understand how saying "most birds can fly" is not refuted by giving a single counter-example? You told him "go ahead, tell me how all I want to do as Random is coin-flip..." when he told you nothing about how you in particular want to play. He only talked about random players in general, and you tried to make it personal. That's a misrepresentation.
The fact is, cheesing is a lot more common from random players, and it makes sense for a couple of reasons. First, if you need to learn 9 matchups, its easier to do if you don't learn any one matchup in depth, and if you cheese you don't have to learn the matchup in depth. Second, the entire strength of cheese is based on your opponent lacking information. If they start with even less information, it makes cheese stronger.
Let's use a real world example. A common TvT cheese is the proxy marauder. I've gone proxy marauder a few times, but sometimes it gets so common in the metagame that my opponents actually start just sending a worker around at like ten supply to scout for the proxy (and proxy marauder is usually proxied very close). This makes it difficult to get the barracks up, preventing the build. If you play random, you can do proxy marauder more easily, because your opponent doesn't even know your race so there's no way they could anticipate the proxy marauder build – it's only possible 1 in 3 games. Not to mention they desperately need to send their worker to the enemy base to even find out which race's cheese to prepare for, so they can't send that worker around looking for proxies instead.
You keep reiterating "there's no reason to take it away" without responding to any of the reasons people give to take it away. How about responding directly to this one: in a competitive game, the person who plays better should win more often. Random advantage creates an offset where the random player has a comfortable margin within which to fuck up and still be even with their opponent. If Blizzard started turning on a 90% HP handicap for one player in 1% of games on ladder, it wouldn't be a balance issue exactly, but it would still be contrary to the spirit of competition.
By the way, someone in the thread made an argument about the advantage being necessary to incentivize people to play random, but I can't remember who. Why should you have an incentive? If you want to play random just because you wanna learn all the races, or because you want the achievements or something, go ahead. But you're not donating to charity or volunteering at the hospital or something. You're not doing a public good. It's a really entitled attitude to think that people owe you something for deciding to do something hard.
On August 21 2015 02:30 ChristianS wrote: @BluemoonSC: I wasn't really intending to be hostile with that post, although I guess I was a little frustrated that people were still coming into the thread and making the same argument that had been made and discussed at length on every page already. At this point if you just came to the thread to say "random advantage is tough but so is learning 9 matchups" or "just send a starting worker," you're not adding anything to the discussion. Apologies for getting heated, otherwise I think I've only been hostile with the people that were openly scoffing or in some other way being snotty.
Edit: regarding your post, those responses might work well enough now but they depend heavily on where the metagame lands. It might turn out that ling drops versus Terran are extremely defendable, to the point that people think of ling drops on the level of nydus worm or 1-base muta in terms of gimmicky, bad plays. In that case your response would be exactly what the other player wants: delay your economy even further to throw out some gimmicky attack that fails to do damage, and then find yourself way behind. Same for adept aggression: maybe it will remain as strong as it is now in all matchups, and Protoss players could do it blind without knowing their opponent's race. Or maybe it turns out to be really bad against Zerg or something (or maybe it turns out to be bad in general if adepts get nerfed – remember, we're still in beta). The point is that with random advantage, any change in the metagame can suddenly make a vR matchup a massive coin-flip, and not even a coin-flip in the sense that you don't know what your opponent is doing. Even if you could mindgame them perfectly you'd still have a 1-in-3 of knowing what they're up to.
you shouldn't say 'let's cut the bullshit' then on an internet forum because it does sound pretty hostile lol
anyway, yes the 1st half of my post is repetitive, but i felt like i needed to express my view point before going into further detail.
again, i do understand where you're coming from. as a zerg player playing zvz on 4 player maps and scouting him in the last position is absolutely brutal because you could be getting 14/14 all in'd and you won't know until lings are popping. zvz right now is the DEFINITION of a coin flip, it's so damn volatile.
but on 4 player maps, you have to account for this and either execute a safer opening, or scout insanely early. and the same is true for playing against random players. in fact, i have a friend who used to random before he realized that it really wasn't advantageous to him in WoL/HotS bc he could get scouted before any decisions needed to be made by his opponent.
personally, i think its time for some sort of advantage to a random player and LotV 'buffs' them by making builds start almost instantly from the start of the game. in my opinion, this is fair because you can still scout early or you can still have a build prepared that's a catch all vs a random. i think i did a decent job giving examples in my previous post, all of those can apply pressure, scout, and expand against a greedy random player that is using his "advantage".
i should also add that zerg now have the option to 1 base nydus, as highlighted by fenner's stream the other day.
On August 21 2015 02:30 ChristianS wrote: @BluemoonSC: I wasn't really intending to be hostile with that post, although I guess I was a little frustrated that people were still coming into the thread and making the same argument that had been made and discussed at length on every page already. At this point if you just came to the thread to say "random advantage is tough but so is learning 9 matchups" or "just send a starting worker," you're not adding anything to the discussion. Apologies for getting heated, otherwise I think I've only been hostile with the people that were openly scoffing or in some other way being snotty.
Edit: regarding your post, those responses might work well enough now but they depend heavily on where the metagame lands. It might turn out that ling drops versus Terran are extremely defendable, to the point that people think of ling drops on the level of nydus worm or 1-base muta in terms of gimmicky, bad plays. In that case your response would be exactly what the other player wants: delay your economy even further to throw out some gimmicky attack that fails to do damage, and then find yourself way behind. Same for adept aggression: maybe it will remain as strong as it is now in all matchups, and Protoss players could do it blind without knowing their opponent's race. Or maybe it turns out to be really bad against Zerg or something (or maybe it turns out to be bad in general if adepts get nerfed – remember, we're still in beta). The point is that with random advantage, any change in the metagame can suddenly make a vR matchup a massive coin-flip, and not even a coin-flip in the sense that you don't know what your opponent is doing. Even if you could mindgame them perfectly you'd still have a 1-in-3 of knowing what they're up to.
you shouldn't say 'let's cut the bullshit' then on an internet forum because it does sound pretty hostile lol
anyway, yes the 1st half of my post is repetitive, but i felt like i needed to express my view point before going into further detail.
again, i do understand where you're coming from. as a zerg player playing zvz on 4 player maps and scouting him in the last position is absolutely brutal because you could be getting 14/14 all in'd and you won't know until lings are popping. zvz right now is the DEFINITION of a coin flip, it's so damn volatile.
but on 4 player maps, you have to account for this and either execute a safer opening, or scout insanely early. and the same is true for playing against random players. in fact, i have a friend who used to random before he realized that it really wasn't advantageous to him in WoL/HotS bc he could get scouted before any decisions needed to be made by his opponent.
personally, i think its time for some sort of advantage to a random player and LotV 'buffs' them by making builds start almost instantly from the start of the game. in my opinion, this is fair because you can still scout early or you can still have a build prepared that's a catch all vs a random. i think i did a decent job giving examples in my previous post, all of those can apply pressure, scout, and expand against a greedy random player that is using his "advantage".
i should also add that zerg now have the option to 1 base nydus, as highlighted by fenner's stream the other day.
Okay, well before we talk about the merit of 'buffing' random, let me ask, why is it desirable for there to be a strategic advantage to playing random? It creates potentially game-breaking situations (e.g. PvR in WoL), and it makes ladder games go places that an actual professional game could never go. Note Naniwa leaving games against random players – having to do some generic build against a random is an artificial disadvantage that doesn't exist on the professional level. And on principle, there's something uncompetitive about a situation where from the start of the game, your opponent can play worse than you and still win just as often.
And if you understand the unpleasantness of coin flips in ZvZ, why would you want more coin flippiness in the game? If it's frustrating and stupid to lose in ZvZ to a 14/14 all in because you couldn't scout, how much more frustrating and stupid is it to lose a ZvZ to a 14/14 all in because you couldn't scout and you couldn't even know he was Zerg?
Almost all Random players on ladder use their BS advantage to cheese the fuck out of everyone. They don't use it as an opportunity to properly learn every race, sure that sounds good in theory but it rarely happens in practice.
Reveal their race to the opposing player. This RNG element has no place in SC2 and for the most part only has a negative impact on the game. Random on 4 player maps especially if you scout them last is a total joke. It's just really, really dumb.
i think naniwa leaving games against randoms is not a great example of there being a 'random advantage' because is it really advantageous for a pro player to play into a random player, where he needs to scout? probably not because in his pro games, he will not face a random player.
comparing lotv to pvr in WoL is comparing apples and oranges..the games are totally different with different strategies and units. plus that was the prime of the 4 gate, if you weren't sure who it was, protoss could just 4 gate them lol
ultimately, winning a game of starcraft comes down to making less mistakes than your opponent. if your opponent beats you it could potentially be because of his build beating yours in a coin flip. but you could have scouted and you could have played safer knowing that you're not sure what his build is bc you don't know his race, and that is definitely a mistake that you're making, that is not the fault of your opponent.
i'm sure you've been in a situation where you're playing against a player who is 'showing' his race and you got walked over because your scouting wasn't great and you didn't see something coming..its the same situation.
and here's the thing about 14/14..if i play hatch first i KNOW that i'm taking a risk of getting 14/14'd. if i play against a random player and take a hatch first i know that i'm running the same risk if i'm unlucky. such is the life of starcraft
@ChristianS, I have to ask now, since you seem to be pretty passionate about this topic. But why do you care so much? Random players make up like 10% of the Ladder and 0% of the competitive scene. Even if you quit every match vs Random it wouldn't make any significant difference on your ranking. But even so, let's assume 50% of ALL random games are cheese (which is absurdly generous btw). 2 of 7 maps are 4 player maps. And let's say 50% of the time you lose to the cheese because you didn't scout the race. That is literally .7% that this scenario even makes the difference (you will straight up lose 7 maps due to Random cheese not being scouted out of every 1000). Let's take a comparison to a Proxy 2 Rax. Terran is around 30% of the player base. Let''s say people do this 10% of the time. This build is pretty much feasible on every single map (those that aren't the best are vetoed out by the Terran player anyways). And let's assume you don't early scout 50% of the time as well (judging by your hostility against early scouting vs Random). That still is a solid 1.5% that you will lose to a proxy 2 rax. This is a .7% to a 1.5%. It's not that big of a deal dude.
On August 20 2015 14:27 JimmyJRaynor wrote: 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.
As a proud Random player, I think you should be ashamed of yourself. This kind of behavior gives all Random players a bad name.
Seconded. While difficult to differentiate troll from obliviousness, it still hurts!
you can pile on whatever negative labels you want while never directly addressing my rebuttal.
deception is part of the fun of many games. including SC2. deception creates an advantage. its my money and i'm playing SC2 my way and within the Blizzard TOS or EULA or whatever its called
On August 21 2015 02:24 Ignorant prodigy wrote: TeamLiquid should show your rank so we know how serious to take the responses in here. no disrespect, but the impact of "random advantage" is relative to skill and straight knowledge of the game. it's simply not going to matter at all in the lower levels.
show some replays where you've lost simply because you didn't know your opponents race. As a random player the ONLY times I get a free win is when I spawn as terran and my opponent cheeses me blindly. ex: a zerg 6 pools me, or a protoss proxy 2 gates me... that was their decision.. i didn't win because random is OP.. I won because they chose a to flip a coin.
You were in here earlier in the thread and you didn't seem interested in having a discussion, you just wanted to scoff at arguments nobody made. What makes you actually want to discuss now?
There's this common misconception that I made this thread because I was salty over a loss to a random player or something. I didn't. I usually do pretty well against random players. My experience is that they generally either do some gimmicky cheese, or they play macro but don't know how to defend any kind of early aggression. Hell, sometimes I just go for the fastest possible 1-base reactor hellion, run in and roast their workers, and they don't know how to defend because they were counting on me doing some middle-of-the-road build because I didn't know what they would do. Against most cheeses that build wins anyway (hellions pretty good against lings and marines).
If you want a replay, ask ZeromuS. He mentioned on page 2 how stupid it can be to suddenly find yourself way behind because you scouted a random player last on a 4p map, and had to make decisions which would be idiotic if you knew what matchup you were playing, so I'm guessing he speaks from experience. If he still has the replay saved, maybe he can share it with you.
The reason I made this thread is because another thread popped up about something else pertaining to random, and a lot of people seemed to want to talk about this. I couldn't find another thread dedicated to the subject, so I thought it warranted discussion. In keeping with TL Commandment # 4 I put together an OP to argue the point, with the intention that people could come and discuss the merit of changing this feature in LotV.
What happened? A lot of random players came out of the woodwork to call me stupid, or pretend I was arguing that Random was going to break the professional scene and scoff at me (hey, that was you!), or tell me I must just be salty over some loss to a random player. A few other people came in to say they disagreed with me, or they agreed with me. Almost no one has actually argued for why the random advantage is a good thing for the game, they've generally just argued that it isn't too bad if you scout with an early worker, and that playing random is really hard.
So let me be clear: I don't have a problem with you playing random. I think it's great that you decided to learn about this game from all angles, and I wish you luck in that endeavor. I don't mean to tell you that you don't deserve your rank on ladder, or that your wins are meaningless, or that you should feel bad for playing random. I just want to have a discussion about whether or not this advantage is good for the game, and whether it should be maintained in LotV.
On August 20 2015 14:27 JimmyJRaynor wrote: 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.
As a proud Random player, I think you should be ashamed of yourself. This kind of behavior gives all Random players a bad name.
Seconded. While difficult to differentiate troll from obliviousness, it still hurts!
you can pile on whatever negative labels you want while never directly addressing my rebuttal.
deception is part of the fun of many games. including SC2. its my money and as long as i'm playing within the Blizzard TOS or EULA or whatever its called .. its all good....
i've yet to receive any feedback from Blizzard about this tactic... and i've been doing it for years.. so i think i'm in the clear.
You're perfectly allowed to do this. But it just makes you an asshole for doing this. You keep mentioning things like "using deception to get into your opponents heads" and stuff. And I'm sure you're living by the whole "all's fair in love and war" idea. However, do realize that Starcraft is not war, it's a game/sport, and a social one at that. Have some sportsmanship and show some respect to your opponents.
On August 20 2015 14:27 JimmyJRaynor wrote: 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.
As a proud Random player, I think you should be ashamed of yourself. This kind of behavior gives all Random players a bad name.
Seconded. While difficult to differentiate troll from obliviousness, it still hurts!
you can pile on whatever negative labels you want while never directly addressing my rebuttal.
deception is part of the fun of many games. including SC2. its my money and as long as i'm playing within the Blizzard TOS or EULA or whatever its called .. its all good....
i'm sure Blizzard will be happy to take the money i spend on BlizzCon in November.
Nobody argued that you were breaking the law, they argued that you were being an asshole. You can also cuss out orphans or tell your friend that you just got off the phone with their mom and their dad died of a heart attack. Neither of those violates Blizzard TOS either!
That Blizzard will take your money neither proves nor refutes that you are an asshole. Blizzard does not generally discriminate against asshole customers.
On August 20 2015 14:27 JimmyJRaynor wrote: 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.
As a proud Random player, I think you should be ashamed of yourself. This kind of behavior gives all Random players a bad name.
Seconded. While difficult to differentiate troll from obliviousness, it still hurts!
you can pile on whatever negative labels you want while never directly addressing my rebuttal.
deception is part of the fun of many games. including SC2. its my money and as long as i'm playing within the Blizzard TOS or EULA or whatever its called .. its all good....
i'm sure Blizzard will be happy to take the money i spend on BlizzCon in November.
Nobody argued that you were breaking the law, they argued that you were being an asshole. You can also cuss out orphans or tell your friend that you just got off the phone with their mom and their dad died of a heart attack. Neither of those violates Blizzard TOS either!
That Blizzard will take your money neither proves nor refutes that you are an asshole. Blizzard does not generally discriminate against asshole customers.
The OP wants Blizzard to change the game. "The Solution The solution here is trivial: simply display the opponent’s race to the non-random player, just as in any other game"
Blizzard can change it if they want to which is why i brought it up. Complain to Blizzard, not me. its part of the game they made. i am merely a player looking for any and all advantages in playing Random. It is clear there are many disadvantages which is why the GSL has had 0 random champs.
the opponent wasting their energy getting angry about successful deceit by their opposition creates an advantage. its all part of the game. people do get angry about it; and it is part of the game that Blizzard made.
On August 20 2015 14:27 JimmyJRaynor wrote: 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.
As a proud Random player, I think you should be ashamed of yourself. This kind of behavior gives all Random players a bad name.
Seconded. While difficult to differentiate troll from obliviousness, it still hurts!
you can pile on whatever negative labels you want while never directly addressing my rebuttal.
deception is part of the fun of many games. including SC2. its my money and as long as i'm playing within the Blizzard TOS or EULA or whatever its called .. its all good....
i'm sure Blizzard will be happy to take the money i spend on BlizzCon in November.
Nobody argued that you were breaking the law, they argued that you were being an asshole. You can also cuss out orphans or tell your friend that you just got off the phone with their mom and their dad died of a heart attack. Neither of those violates Blizzard TOS either!
That Blizzard will take your money neither proves nor refutes that you are an asshole. Blizzard does not generally discriminate against asshole customers.
Blizzard can change it if they want to which is why i brought it up. Complain to Blizzard, not me. its part of the game they made. i am merely a player looking for any and all advantages in playing Random. It is clear there are many disadvantages which is why the GSL has had 0 random champs.
the opponent wasting their energy getting angry about successful deceit by their opposition creates an advantage. its all part of the game. people do get angry about it; and it is part of the game that Blizzard made.
Do you also blame car manufacturers for asshole drivers?
On August 20 2015 14:27 JimmyJRaynor wrote: 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.
As a proud Random player, I think you should be ashamed of yourself. This kind of behavior gives all Random players a bad name.
Seconded. While difficult to differentiate troll from obliviousness, it still hurts!
you can pile on whatever negative labels you want while never directly addressing my rebuttal.
deception is part of the fun of many games. including SC2. its my money and as long as i'm playing within the Blizzard TOS or EULA or whatever its called .. its all good....
i'm sure Blizzard will be happy to take the money i spend on BlizzCon in November.
Nobody argued that you were breaking the law, they argued that you were being an asshole. You can also cuss out orphans or tell your friend that you just got off the phone with their mom and their dad died of a heart attack. Neither of those violates Blizzard TOS either!
That Blizzard will take your money neither proves nor refutes that you are an asshole. Blizzard does not generally discriminate against asshole customers.
Blizzard can change it if they want to which is why i brought it up. Complain to Blizzard, not me. its part of the game they made. i am merely a player looking for any and all advantages in playing Random. It is clear there are many disadvantages which is why the GSL has had 0 random champs.
the opponent wasting their energy getting angry about successful deceit by their opposition creates an advantage. its all part of the game. people do get angry about it; and it is part of the game that Blizzard made.
It's funny you should mention it, I actually made a thread arguing that Blizzard should change the way Random works in SC2! I have yet to make a thread complaining that JimmyJRaynor should stop being an asshole. But since you seem to want an explanation of why you're being an asshole:
The current random mechanic introduces an information imbalance at the beginning of the game. Many players think this is stupid. Some people like to play random for various reasons, but don't want to use that imbalance as a crutch, so they inform their opponent of their race to remedy the situation. This is an imperfect solution because their opponent has no way of knowing that its the truth, but it's the best people can do without an adjustment from Blizzard, so honor system is the closest they can get.
If people mostly respected this system and didn't lie, it could work out. The non-random player could know that in 99% of cases the random player is telling the truth, so they can safely do their matchup-specific build. What you're doing is specifically taking advantage of this system, at the expense of poisoning it for everyone. The more people like you exist, the less possible it is for the non-random player to take his opponent at his word. That means that random players wind up not even having the option to not use the information advantage as a crutch, because even if they tell their opponent their race their opponent still has to do a generic build just to avoid losing to assholes like you.
Taking advantage of other people's trust, destroying an honor system by being unscrupulous and seizing every selfish advantage at the cost of taking away options other people might want constitutes being an asshole. You can try to argue that "Oh, it's a competitive space, and everybody agrees that in a competitive space anything within the rules of the game goes! My opponents agreed to that, too!" But that's obviously not true, or your opponents wouldn't get so mad about it.
Edit: Can everyone agree, at least, that it would be better if the random player had the option to reveal their race?
it'll be interesting to see if Blizzard changes the Random mechanic as the OP requested. i like it the way it is and i do not want a change. this honour system you mention only increases the potential value of the deceit. as you've mentioned there is nothing going on for the first 30 seconds of the game so its kinda boring. so i spice things up in the 1st 30 seconds or so.
labelling me an "asshole" is off base. i'm having fun playing a game. you're taking it too seriously. i want to have fun in the first 30 seconds of the game. so i make it fun. i play in Diamond league when i'm trying my absolute best. i think Blizzard came up with the best solution by starting us off with 12 workers. The first 30 seconds of HotS is really boring when i don't use my tactic.
as far as your honour system goes.... a substantial portion of the ladder purposely goes on a giant losing streak so they can have fun going 25-5 while climbing bakc up the ladder again.
now that Blizzard starts us with 12 workers in LotV i probably won't do it any more... because now i'll have important stuff to do at the start. great job by Blizz making the start of the game so much more fun and action packed.
i rarely use this tactic in LotV because i don't have time.
im down for rT rZ rP display just so the whiners can shut the fck up already. this gets rehashed so many times i dont even want to refute it. albeit not accounting for lotv, still, sounds more like whining than actual advantage, an advantage so tiny only losers would split hairs about it.
On August 21 2015 06:23 jinorazi wrote: im down for rT rZ rP display just so the whiners can shut the fck up already. this gets rehashed so many times i dont even want to refute it. albeit not accounting for lotv, still, sounds more like whining than actual advantage, an advantage so tiny only losers would split hairs about it.
Uh... thanks for the support, I guess? I'm curious what your refutation would be. You still went ahead and argued that you think the advantage is small, and I would probably agree that most of the time it is, but that's not an argument for why it should or shouldn't exist.
On August 21 2015 06:23 jinorazi wrote: im down for rT rZ rP display just so the whiners can shut the fck up already. this gets rehashed so many times i dont even want to refute it. albeit not accounting for lotv, still, sounds more like whining than actual advantage, an advantage so tiny only losers would split hairs about it.
Uh... thanks for the support, I guess? I'm curious what your refutation would be. You still went ahead and argued that you think the advantage is small, and I would probably agree that most of the time it is, but that's not an argument for why it should or shouldn't exist.
the simplest would be that its part of the game.
i say this without the knowledge in lotv and its variations however, i'd imagine there are early rushes that all races can do against other races or the same race. with that said:
-anticipating cheese against a random would be no different than anticipating cheese against a race chooser. as for defending against specific cheese, any super early game cheese should be universal in defending, ie "safe opening". if its a variation that requires specific response, i would call this standard aggression and something that can be responded with proper scouting.
-automatically anticipating cheese from random would be the fault of player for blindly responding to cheese. this would make almost no difference for a terran player has they can wall but it is still no excuse for the player to blame random for cheese since any race can cheese in their own way.
-one might say protoss must open forge first against zerg, and this makes it difficult against random zerg. the fault of this would lie in blizzard's game balance, not random. (as in making forge opening the only viable option vs zerg is bad game design).
if they really changed the game so much that game deciding things can happen so early in the game...well, i think random would be the last thing to worry about.
the point is "random advantage" is completely gone after scouting, if the game allows so much variation to happen before the earliest scouting can be done, either remove random completely or balance/design the game better. so either there is a legitimate question to game design for allowing such OP variation for random users or people are crying about cheese and just point fingers at random. legitimate random complaint can be new with lotv, however everytime this gets rehashed was because of tears caused by cheese.
are there no safe openings in lotv to defend against the equivalents of 6pool and proxies? or are we talking about some 6 minute (pre-lotv) rush, because crying about that has nothing to do with random. or is the new worker and resources start so much different that there is a legitimate concern for random? doesnt this new start change apply to both aggressor and defender and therefore evened out for both sides?
On August 21 2015 06:23 jinorazi wrote: im down for rT rZ rP display just so the whiners can shut the fck up already. this gets rehashed so many times i dont even want to refute it. albeit not accounting for lotv, still, sounds more like whining than actual advantage, an advantage so tiny only losers would split hairs about it.
Uh... thanks for the support, I guess? I'm curious what your refutation would be. You still went ahead and argued that you think the advantage is small, and I would probably agree that most of the time it is, but that's not an argument for why it should or shouldn't exist.
the simplest would be that its part of the game.
i say this without the knowledge in lotv and its variations however, i'd imagine there are early rushes that all races can do against other races or the same race. with that said:
-anticipating cheese against a random would be no different than anticipating cheese against a race chooser. as for defending against specific cheese, any super early game cheese should be universal in defending, ie "safe opening". if its a variation that requires specific response, i would call this standard aggression and something that can be responded with proper scouting.
-automatically anticipating cheese from random would be the fault of player for blindly responding to cheese. and if the player does expect cheese, this would make almost no difference for a terran player has they can wall but it is still no excuse for the player to blame random for cheese since any race can cheese in their own way.
-one might say protoss must open forge first against zerg, and this makes it difficult against random zerg. the fault of this would lie in blizzard's game balance, not random. (as in making forge opening the only viable option vs zerg is bad game design).
if they really changed the game so much that game deciding things can happen so early in the game...well, i think random would be the last thing to worry about.
If I'm asking whether it should be part of the game, saying "it's part of the game" isn't an answer to the question. One can easily imagine something that:
-is part of the game and should be (example: most people think that Terran, Zerg, and Protoss should all remain in LotV) -is part of the game and shouldn't be (example: Steppes of War was part of the game) -isn't part of the game but should be (example: every proposed change for LotV is argued to be in this category) -isn't part of the game and shouldn't be (example: marines with 22 range)
So you can see that random advantage being in the game implies nothing about whether it should be in the game.
The rest of your arguments are about whether random advantage is very big or not, which also says nothing about whether it should exist in the first place. But I'll offer this hypothetical anyway:
You say that if you're anticipating cheese from a random player, you can just do a generic safe opening. But what if in one matchup a "safe" opening should take early gas, while in another matchup you shouldn't? For instance in current TvP your "safe" opening might be some kind of 1-1-1, while your "safe" opening in TvZ might be 1 rax expand. Then anticipating cheese is quite different against a random player than against a race picker. Then add in that "safe" play in some matchups involves scouting for proxies, while in others it involves scouting your opponent; in some it involves walling off while in others it involves keeping your buildings away from the ramp. Generic "safe" play is likely different versus different races, since different races have different early threats.
you're creating a lot of scenarios to support your view, while i generalize them and say defending against a random cheese shouldnt be so calculated. cheese and cheese. splitting hairs as i've said before. and many times defending against unknown rush isn't about having this and that beforehand, its about crisis management.
if someone is at a level to determine what is good in specific race vs race AND think about applying random in that scenario, yet not be able to play against random or think that random causes too much headache, well, im confused. shit i dont even follow meta or some popular build order or try to get this done by X minute mark, i just play. i think people think too much on strategy and not enough on good mechanics....the down side of playing strategically, if things dont happen the way someone plans, it can get frustrating....where we return to picking on random.
i've been a random user over a decade, it'll feel awkward not having random, hence, its part of the game, at least for me. through bw, wc3, sc2. if you want to remove it, i'd like a convincing argument, like lotv totally broke random but i assume that isnt the case.
This is an issue only in the lower levels of play. There are less high level random players than low ones. This being said, giving random players an option in their settings to reveal race to opponent is the best solution to this problem. It restores the "honor system" while letting players keep their advantage of not letting people know their race.
On August 21 2015 07:35 jinorazi wrote: you're creating a lot of scenarios to support your view, while i generalize them and say defending against a random cheese shouldnt be so calculated. cheese and cheese. splitting hairs as i've said before. and many times defending against unknown rush isn't about having this and that beforehand, its about crisis management.
i've been a random user over a decade, it'll feel awkward not having random, hence, its part of the game, at least for me. through bw, wc3, sc2. if you want to remove it, i'd like a convincing argument, like lotv totally broke random but i assume that isnt the case.
I mean I'm not arguing for removing random, just that their opponent should know their race just like they know their opponent's. It's not like it's expensive on dev time, or it would require a major change in the engine. Arguably being able to put creep tumors on ramps was both a smaller change, and way harder to implement. If it would really be such an adjustment for you to have your opponent know your race, isn't that evidence that it is, in fact, a fairly significant advantage?
Giving random players the option to reveal is a no brainer. No one here has even suggested a downside to that. The only argument is whether random advantage has a place at all, since it's giving one player a license to play worse and still be ahead or even.
On August 21 2015 07:35 jinorazi wrote: you're creating a lot of scenarios to support your view, while i generalize them and say defending against a random cheese shouldnt be so calculated. cheese and cheese. splitting hairs as i've said before. and many times defending against unknown rush isn't about having this and that beforehand, its about crisis management.
i've been a random user over a decade, it'll feel awkward not having random, hence, its part of the game, at least for me. through bw, wc3, sc2. if you want to remove it, i'd like a convincing argument, like lotv totally broke random but i assume that isnt the case.
I mean I'm not arguing for removing random, just that their opponent should know their race just like they know their opponent's. It's not like it's expensive on dev time, or it would require a major change in the engine. Arguably being able to put creep tumors on ramps was both a smaller change, and way harder to implement. If it would really be such an adjustment for you to have your opponent know your race, isn't that evidence that it is, in fact, a fairly significant advantage?
Giving random players the option to reveal is a no brainer. No one here has even suggested a downside to that. The only argument is whether random advantage has a place at all, since it's giving one player a license to play worse and still be ahead or even.
reveal of random is for the opponent's convenience, not benefit. what is mean is there is no advantage being taken off. it just says the opponent is inconvenienced for having to use a build vs a random player instead of his favorite build for a specific match up. infact this would apply to any race since you react to what opponent is doing. you find a random user going cheese, you react. how is that different than finding zerg going 6pool(pre-lotv) then you react. (it would be the player's fault for defaulting into one build order per race and getting lost when interrupted)
when you say "play worse and still be ahead" youre blowing it out of proportion. the moment player's race is scouted, unknown factor is gone, you cant say "play worse and still be ahead" when you're just 3 minutes into the game. now, if LOTV changed so much that those 3 minutes means everything, game has a problem, not random.
On August 21 2015 07:35 jinorazi wrote: you're creating a lot of scenarios to support your view, while i generalize them and say defending against a random cheese shouldnt be so calculated. cheese and cheese. splitting hairs as i've said before. and many times defending against unknown rush isn't about having this and that beforehand, its about crisis management.
i've been a random user over a decade, it'll feel awkward not having random, hence, its part of the game, at least for me. through bw, wc3, sc2. if you want to remove it, i'd like a convincing argument, like lotv totally broke random but i assume that isnt the case.
I mean I'm not arguing for removing random, just that their opponent should know their race just like they know their opponent's. It's not like it's expensive on dev time, or it would require a major change in the engine. Arguably being able to put creep tumors on ramps was both a smaller change, and way harder to implement. If it would really be such an adjustment for you to have your opponent know your race, isn't that evidence that it is, in fact, a fairly significant advantage?
Giving random players the option to reveal is a no brainer. No one here has even suggested a downside to that. The only argument is whether random advantage has a place at all, since it's giving one player a license to play worse and still be ahead or even.
reveal of random is for the opponent's convenience, not benefit. what is mean is there is no advantage being taken off. it just says the opponent is inconvenienced for having to use a build vs a random player instead of his favorite build for a specific match up. infact this would apply to any race since you react to what opponent is doing. you find a random user going cheese, you react. how is that different than finding zerg going 6pool(pre-lotv) then you react. (it would the player's fault for defaulting into one build order per race and getting lost when interrupted)
when you say "play worse and still be ahead" youre blowing it out of proportion. the moment player's race is scouted, unknown factor is gone, you cant say "play worse and still be ahead" when you're just 3 minutes into the game. now, if LOTV changed so much that those 3 minutes means everything, game has a problem, not random.
If the non-random player is not able to use their favorite (read: best) build for a specific matchup, obviously they're both inconvenienced and harmed in their likelihood of winning. Therefore if you then enable them to do their best, strongest build in the matchup, it is for both their convenience and the benefit of their win chances.
And earlier in this thread, we've had a person who admitted the main reason they play random is because they don't want to deal with early cheeses, and if they play random they don't have to plan or scout for any race-specific cheeses. That's "playing worse" when you don't learn to defend early cheese and don't get punished, while your opponent has to do all the preparation for any of the three races' cheese builds, and at the end of that early game you're still slightly ahead because your build is more relevant to the matchup and they had to send an early SCV just to find out if they were dealing with adepts or ling drops.
I don't see why it would mean the game was broken if the early game for one matchup became entirely early-gas focused while another was gasless. If it turned out that in TvT you basically have to go gas first, while in TvZ you basically have to go 1 rax expand, why would that be broken? It's only broken in TvR, otherwise you can just do take gas against Terrans and not against Zergs and everything's fine.
i dont know about others but the point of my game is to interrupt what my opponent wants to do. it makes no sense to me when someone argues one must do what they're best at, since what players do is to interrupt whatever the opponent is doing; stop them from doing their best.
a player picking random for whatever reason is no different than picking any other race, its personal preference. dont get rushed so pick random? a player can easily pick terran and just wall off. i have never considered that idea, ever. i've been rushed plenty of times. race specific cheese? cheese is cheese like i said before. or are we talking about some early rush in the 6 minutes (hots time), this would mean little in a talk of random since first thing you do would be to scout and react. if you're so paranoid, you can scout at start and if somehow even scouting at start doesnt work, that would be bad game design.
you keep saying specific things as if its the only way to play. i agree some are more optimal than the other but just like mule/depot/scan debate, you just use what is needed and it is completely pointless to argue what is more valuable than the other because every scenario calls for different actions. with this idea, add random to protoss, terran and zerg, hence why some people call random the 4th race. i'm not refuting you have to act different vs random, but that is my point. there is nothing wrong with doing something different vs a random. and if doing something different makes it too uncomfortable, its the player's fault. if doing something different causes too much variation which can lead to advantage to random, that's the game design's fault. neither puts the blame on random.
i think that is where our differences come. i think a player needs to be versatile, especially someone who is learning the game. i've seen plenty of good players fall apart from crisis management, they fall apart when what they want to do becomes interrupted and their flow is ruined. i'm saying this is a hardship a player must overcome, not remove that aspect of it since its inconvenient. crisis management is my favorite part of the game, i like getting rushed unexpectedly and trying to survive but i'd imagine i'm the minority and the reason why the talk of random keeps coming up.
for that, as i've said before, i'm ok with displaying race at the start of the game. however, i say this not because of some legitimate reason, but just to put some players at ease, however it removes complexity.
another argument is that playing random puts much more disadvantage than advantage to the player. i know you tried to mitigated this by saying your argument is for per game bases.
On August 21 2015 09:00 ChristianS wrote: If the non-random player is not able to use their favorite (read: best) build for a specific matchup, obviously they're both inconvenienced and harmed in their likelihood of winning. Therefore if you then enable them to do their best, strongest build in the matchup, it is for both their convenience and the benefit of their win chances.
And earlier in this thread, we've had a person who admitted the main reason they play random is because they don't want to deal with early cheeses, and if they play random they don't have to plan or scout for any race-specific cheeses. That's "playing worse" when you don't learn to defend early cheese and don't get punished, while your opponent has to do all the preparation for any of the three races' cheese builds, and at the end of that early game you're still slightly ahead because your build is more relevant to the matchup and they had to send an early SCV just to find out if they were dealing with adepts or ling drops.
I don't see why it would mean the game was broken if the early game for one matchup became entirely early-gas focused while another was gasless. If it turned out that in TvT you basically have to go gas first, while in TvZ you basically have to go 1 rax expand, why would that be broken? It's only broken in TvR, otherwise you can just do take gas against Terrans and not against Zergs and everything's fine.
you're throwing out a lot of hypotheticals, which i understand is your primary frustration. but you have to remember that this is beta and perhaps some of the most valuable feedback is what occurs when you cannot do your primary build and are forced into a more reserved, safer build because you're playing a random player.
ultimately, we don't really know what the meta will look like, however i doubt that there will only be one way to open per matchup in the future. blizzard seems pretty set in making sure that there are multiple play styles for each matchup.
i think maybe when the beta is more hashed out, we can come back to an argument like this..until then, its all hypotheticals and little to no experience.
On August 21 2015 09:42 jinorazi wrote: i dont know about others but the point of my game is to interrupt what my opponent wants to do. it makes no sense to me when someone argues one must do what they're best at, since what players do is to interrupt whatever the opponent is doing; stop them from doing their best.
a player picking random for whatever reason is no different than picking any other race, its personal preference. dont get rushed so pick random? a player can easily pick terran and just wall off. i have never considered that idea, ever. i've been rushed plenty of times. race specific cheese? cheese is cheese like i said before. or are we talking about some early rush in the 6 minutes (hots time), this would mean little in a talk of random since first thing you do would be to scout and react. if you're so paranoid, you can scout at start and if somehow even scouting at start doesnt work, that would be bad game design.
you keep saying specific things as if its the only way to play. i agree some are more optimal than the other but just like mule/depot/scan debate, you just use what is needed and it is completely pointless to argue what is more valuable than the other because every scenario calls for different actions. with this idea, add random to protoss, terran and zerg, hence why some people call random the 4th race. i'm not refuting you have to act different vs random, but that is my point. there is nothing wrong with doing something different vs a random. and if doing something different makes it too uncomfortable, its the player's fault. if doing something different causes too much variation which can lead to advantage to random, that's the game design's fault. neither puts the blame on random.
i think that is where our differences come. i think a player needs to be versatile, especially someone who is learning the game. i've seen plenty of good players fall apart from crisis management, they fall apart when what they want to do becomes interrupted and their flow is ruined. i'm saying this is a hardship a player must overcome, not remove that aspect of it since its inconvenient. crisis management is my favorite part of the game, i like getting rushed unexpectedly and trying to survive but i'd imagine i'm the minority and the reason why the talk of random keeps coming up.
for that, as i've said before, i'm ok with displaying race at the start of the game. however, i say this not because of some legitimate reason, but just to put some players at ease and allow sc2 to grow in popularity, however it removes complexity.
If you had to do a suboptimal build because of random advantage, how is that not a disadvantage? Sure, terrans could probably be "safe" in any matchup by 2raxing in their own base every game, and building marines just to defend. Of course that build would be, to put it kindly, fucking stupid, because if you're going to rush army like that you should attack with it, but at least you'd probably be "safe." The point is, if you're forced to do that just because they picked random, then random is giving a significant advantage over someone who just picked a race instead of rolling it randomly.
Random is considerably safer than picking Terran because your opponent can't even do a rush that works against Terran. You can't do a proxy marauder build, for instance, because that's bad against Z and P. Maybe you can do something goofy like proxy a rax and take gas, and then make proxy marauder if its T or make proxy reaper versus Z and P, but typically for a proxy reaper you'd want to start the barracks a lot earlier, like an 8-8-8. The person earlier in this thread mentioned his best race was Terran but he picks random so he won't have to deal with early cheese, so that's already pretty good evidence that Random is safer than Terran.
Particularly for people who are learning and new to the game, what they need is to learn a build order for each matchup and go. In lower leagues learning a build order and applying it is much more important than trying to learn vague skills like "versatility." Playing against random probably hurts most in lower leagues, not only because cheese is stronger but because it's harder for new players to deal with not being able to pick a build order until they can scout.
Random isn't a fourth race. It's just an RNG pick between the three races. Choosing random is functionally no different from choosing whatever race you rolled, with the one exception that you start with an information advantage. Any player who mains one race can learn a basic cheese as each other race (2 rax or bane bust or 4 gate or something), and start choosing random on ladder. What effect will it have? In 2 out of 3 cases they can just do their cheese, and win or lose, they move onto the next game. In the 1 out of 3 where they roll their main, they can just play out the game with an advantage. In a case like that, Random is essentially a game mechanic where my opponent can roll a die to have a 1/3 chance of having an advantage over me. That's a stupid mechanic.
Rushes are fine. Unexpected builds that force you to react differently are fine. What's not fine is players not starting the game on equal footing, so that one player has to play better than his opponent just to stay even.
On August 21 2015 09:00 ChristianS wrote: If the non-random player is not able to use their favorite (read: best) build for a specific matchup, obviously they're both inconvenienced and harmed in their likelihood of winning. Therefore if you then enable them to do their best, strongest build in the matchup, it is for both their convenience and the benefit of their win chances.
And earlier in this thread, we've had a person who admitted the main reason they play random is because they don't want to deal with early cheeses, and if they play random they don't have to plan or scout for any race-specific cheeses. That's "playing worse" when you don't learn to defend early cheese and don't get punished, while your opponent has to do all the preparation for any of the three races' cheese builds, and at the end of that early game you're still slightly ahead because your build is more relevant to the matchup and they had to send an early SCV just to find out if they were dealing with adepts or ling drops.
I don't see why it would mean the game was broken if the early game for one matchup became entirely early-gas focused while another was gasless. If it turned out that in TvT you basically have to go gas first, while in TvZ you basically have to go 1 rax expand, why would that be broken? It's only broken in TvR, otherwise you can just do take gas against Terrans and not against Zergs and everything's fine.
you're throwing out a lot of hypotheticals, which i understand is your primary frustration. but you have to remember that this is beta and perhaps some of the most valuable feedback is what occurs when you cannot do your primary build and are forced into a more reserved, safer build because you're playing a random player.
ultimately, we don't really know what the meta will look like, however i doubt that there will only be one way to open per matchup in the future. blizzard seems pretty set in making sure that there are multiple play styles for each matchup.
i think maybe when the beta is more hashed out, we can come back to an argument like this..until then, its all hypotheticals and little to no experience.
I'm using hypotheticals precisely because the meta isn't hashed out. I don't feel qualified to speak authoritatively about what are the best builds for all the matchups in the current meta. Even if I were qualified yesterday, the game changed really radically today. And even if I were qualified today, the metagame is likely to change a lot in the future.
But I think you're wrong to think that the metagame is unlikely to settle into one opening for a few matchups. TvT for a long time was pretty much just 1-1-1's, and TvZ has frequently favored either 1 rax expand or CC first. TvP has been all over the place as Terrans search for safe openers against oracle, blink, etc. so it's already pretty obnoxious when a Terran carefully learns the timings and deviations of, say, a 1-1-1 build in TvP and figures out how to stay alive, and then some Random player rolls Protoss and has an oracle in his base at five minutes and because of random advantage, the Terran has to try to figure out how to survive with another build on the fly.
As for the argument that random advantage promotes unorthodox play, which is more valuable for feedback, I see three problems. First, that's a really roundabout way to try to encourage unorthodox play, and since it only applies to a tiny percent of games and a lot of people don't take those games seriously because of random advantage, it doesn't do its job very well. Second, that defense would only apply for the duration of the beta, so you'd still want to remove random advantage on release. And third, you want feedback for situations that actually apply to real games that could happen on the pro level. The situations random advantage creates only happen on ladder, so the feedback would only be useful for design concerns pertaining to ladder games affected by random advantage. That feedback would be wholly unnecessary if you just removed random advantage in the first place.
"starting on equal footing" - random user has disadvantage of learning 9 match ups...unless he gets his best match up. however, this is player's preference and not "doing the best".
random is called a 4th race because you react to it much like you would with vs zerg, terran, protoss. because it influences your opening. you admitted this, thus im pointing out 4th race, 4th variable to your opening.
you talk as if sub optimal build is the end of the world. if you lose because you had to use a sub optimal build...well, damn. it almost feels like i've lost hope for mankind.
for newer players i dont think it matters what race they play against. knowing a build order is one thing, executing it is another, and doing other things while executing the build is also another. by versatility i mean mechanics. mechanics is more important than strategy at lower leagues in my opinion. it may not win you more games than cheesing every game at start but it will make you a lot better player overall in time.
you're giving waaaaay too much weight on random advantage when it can be mitigated with solid opening vs all three races (no, not optimal but SAFE and a build that can branch out, we're talking within 2 minutes here). if you blame your loss on your first 2 minutes, blame the game design or whatever, not "random advantage". again, if the complaint is "branching out is too hard", well, play more to get better. if there is a build order that goes up to 50 supply, it would be STUPID to follow that to the letter. build order is a guideline, not something you do exactly for every situation; the reason why i say optimal or sub optimal opening is irrelevant. if you really think every little detail counts, such as in proleague, dont you think there would be more random users? clearly not. it means the little details you speak of is not enough advantage to use random.
so the argument only applies to newbies, it doesnt matter what race they play against until they get better at the game and losing to a random player certainly wont be because they had "random advantage". its just something to point fingers at.
but you make it sound like lotv broke random. i havnt played lotv but perhaps? i'd blame blizzard for bad game design than random if thats the case.
On August 21 2015 10:56 jinorazi wrote: "starting on equal footing" - random user has disadvantage of learning 9 match ups...unless he gets his best match up. however, this is player's preference and not "doing the best".
random is called a 4th race because you react to it much like you would with vs zerg, terran, protoss. because it influences your opening. you admitted this, thus im pointing out 4th race, 4th variable to your opening.
you talk as if sub optimal build is the end of the world. if you lose because you had to use a sub optimal build...well, damn. it almost feels like i've lost hope for mankind.
for newer players i dont think it matters what race they play against. knowing a build order is one thing, executing is another, and doing other things while executing is also another. by versatility i mean mechanics. mechanics is more important than strategy at lower leagues in my opinion. it may not win you more games than cheesing every game at start but it will make you a lot better player overall in time.
you're giving waaaaay too much weight on random advantage when it can be mitigated with solid opening vs all three races (no, not optimal but SAFE and a build that can branch out, we're talking within 2 minutes here). if you blame your loss on your first 2 minutes, blame the game design or whatever, not "random advantage". again, if the complaint is "branching out is too hard", well, play more to get better. if there is a build order that goes up to 50 supply, it would be STUPID to follow that to the letter. build order is a guideline, not something you to exactly for every situation. i'm ok with following and learning a stable build order even up to 20 supply but there is so much variation, it'll be stupid to stick to something when a different action calls for it. this is why i say mechanics is important, it allows you to adapt to the situation directly instead of relying on build order to win.
but you make it sound like lotv broke random. i havnt played lotv but perhaps? i'd blame blizzard for bad game design than random if thats the case.
"Starting on equal footing" means that each player starts with equally powerful tools, such that if the players play equally well they each have a 50% chance of winning. It does not mean that the players will use those tools equally well. If I were to play a game against Innovation, we would start on equal footing, even though Innovation would be a much better player than me.
Random advantage does not start the players on equal footing, and the fact that the random player might be less skilled at the matchup because he doesn't focus on it is irrelevant. If Random players deserve a handicap because they haven't practiced the matchup as much, why don't we extend the same courtesy to players who just have less game time? If I switch races tomorrow I'll have less experience in all my matchups, but I won't expect a handicap to make up for it.
I never said a sub optimal build is the end of the world, although in some metagames it has been pretty punishing (most notably late WoL PvR, where you have to decide at the beginning of the game whether to FFE). The point is that if you had to do a sub optimal build, you're behind, and you have to play better just to make up the gap. If that burden is only put on one player, that's not fair design.
Branching is not the issue here. Branching is an entirely natural part of build orders, and part of improving at the game is encountering unexpected situations, trying strategies to deal with them, and eventually carving out a new branch for your build order that deals with that situation. But versus Random, you have to have some goofy fourth build order that you do no matter your opponent's race. In some metagames that's easy – a lot of Terrans in WoL went 1 rax expo every game, so it wasn't really a problem to do it against random, too. For WoL Protosses, on the other hand, it was broken as shit.
I have no claims about whether Random is broken in LotV. A massive patch today changed most everything anyway, so the metagame is up in the air. If, when the metagame settles, some XvR matchup turns out to be problematic, it wouldn't mean that the game design is bad (unless you're referring specifically to the design that allows for random advantage). WoL had its design problems, but hardly anyone would say the problem in WoL was that Protoss had different openings for different races. There's nothing wrong with Protoss needing to open FFE versus Zerg, but not versus Terran or Protoss. There is a problem when Protoss has to open differently versus different races, and he doesn't know what race he's facing.
On August 21 2015 09:00 ChristianS wrote: If the non-random player is not able to use their favorite (read: best) build for a specific matchup, obviously they're both inconvenienced and harmed in their likelihood of winning. Therefore if you then enable them to do their best, strongest build in the matchup, it is for both their convenience and the benefit of their win chances.
And earlier in this thread, we've had a person who admitted the main reason they play random is because they don't want to deal with early cheeses, and if they play random they don't have to plan or scout for any race-specific cheeses. That's "playing worse" when you don't learn to defend early cheese and don't get punished, while your opponent has to do all the preparation for any of the three races' cheese builds, and at the end of that early game you're still slightly ahead because your build is more relevant to the matchup and they had to send an early SCV just to find out if they were dealing with adepts or ling drops.
I don't see why it would mean the game was broken if the early game for one matchup became entirely early-gas focused while another was gasless. If it turned out that in TvT you basically have to go gas first, while in TvZ you basically have to go 1 rax expand, why would that be broken? It's only broken in TvR, otherwise you can just do take gas against Terrans and not against Zergs and everything's fine.
you're throwing out a lot of hypotheticals, which i understand is your primary frustration. but you have to remember that this is beta and perhaps some of the most valuable feedback is what occurs when you cannot do your primary build and are forced into a more reserved, safer build because you're playing a random player.
ultimately, we don't really know what the meta will look like, however i doubt that there will only be one way to open per matchup in the future. blizzard seems pretty set in making sure that there are multiple play styles for each matchup.
i think maybe when the beta is more hashed out, we can come back to an argument like this..until then, its all hypotheticals and little to no experience.
I'm using hypotheticals precisely because the meta isn't hashed out. I don't feel qualified to speak authoritatively about what are the best builds for all the matchups in the current meta. Even if I were qualified yesterday, the game changed really radically today. And even if I were qualified today, the metagame is likely to change a lot in the future.
But I think you're wrong to think that the metagame is unlikely to settle into one opening for a few matchups. TvT for a long time was pretty much just 1-1-1's, and TvZ has frequently favored either 1 rax expand or CC first. TvP has been all over the place as Terrans search for safe openers against oracle, blink, etc. so it's already pretty obnoxious when a Terran carefully learns the timings and deviations of, say, a 1-1-1 build in TvP and figures out how to stay alive, and then some Random player rolls Protoss and has an oracle in his base at five minutes and because of random advantage, the Terran has to try to figure out how to survive with another build on the fly.
As for the argument that random advantage promotes unorthodox play, which is more valuable for feedback, I see three problems. First, that's a really roundabout way to try to encourage unorthodox play, and since it only applies to a tiny percent of games and a lot of people don't take those games seriously because of random advantage, it doesn't do its job very well. Second, that defense would only apply for the duration of the beta, so you'd still want to remove random advantage on release. And third, you want feedback for situations that actually apply to real games that could happen on the pro level. The situations random advantage creates only happen on ladder, so the feedback would only be useful for design concerns pertaining to ladder games affected by random advantage. That feedback would be wholly unnecessary if you just removed random advantage in the first place.
i never said anything about unorthodox builds. i said different builds from a primary "best" build. again, you're making a ton of assumptions like implying that any game that people play vs random players is not taken seriously. there are plenty of players that would disagree with that. so while some might be throw aways, its ridiculous to provide a counter argument saying that the games are not valuable to feedback.
anyway, what i noticed about each of your examples is that you're saying that the first building you make as a terran is a rax..you're thinking you can't scout before the rax finishes? before a gateway finishes? if anything, zergs suffer the most, but i think with the new patch and reduced larva, the zvz all-ins will diminish.
every race should have a safe build for every race even if it is not optimal. being optimal or not is player preference, not a requirement. we're talking the first 2 minutes and there is plenty of time to branch out, hence not opening optimally or optimally is irrelevant in the game, merely a preference.
and so people say treat random as 4th race since it influences your opening build. this isnt really difficult yet you make it sound so difficult. you're not the first to bring up random complaints and wont be the last. and to be honest, if it keeps coming up, i think blizzard will do something bout it so i wish you luck.
i dont care either way, i just think it should noted that it is to please the whiners, not a legitimate balance issue.
On August 21 2015 11:35 jinorazi wrote: every race should have a safe build for every race even if it is not optimal. being optimal or not is player preference, not a requirement. we're talking the first 2 minutes and there is plenty of time to branch out, hence not opening optimally or optimally is irrelevant in the game, merely a preference.
and so people say treat random as 4th race since it influences your opening build. this isnt really difficult yet you make it sound so difficult. you're not the first to bring up random complaints and wont be the last. and to be honest, if it keeps coming up, i think blizzard will do something bout it so i wish you luck.
i dont care either way, i just think it should noted that it is to please the whiners, not a legitimate balance issue.
exactly. on a 4 player map, you just need to scout a little sooner so you know its safe to break away from your safe opener.
OP often cites competition as their main concern..if you want to be competitive, isn't it better to have a variety of builds vs each race? dunno, you don't want to do the same thing every time..there's gonna be someone out there that has a build that beats yours.
e: added the your edit into the quote because i agree ^^
@BluemoonSC: Sure you have different builds, but for the most part they'll usually open the same way. TvT might have a variety of 1-1-1 openers, but they all involve going gas first. In some metagames, that might really be the basis of the matchup. This isn't even a hypothetical – WoL PvZ was completely based on FFE. Nony was, like, the only guy not going FFE. Even when more than one build is viable, why should your opponent be able to force you down one path and not have to deal with the other, just because they lack experience in the matchup?
@jinorazi: So do you think it was a problem that WoL PvZ was centered around FFE while the other matchups weren't? For that matter, I don't know that much about Brood War strategy, but wasn't PvZ primarily FFE there, too? Why is it a game design issue that you have to open differently against different races? If the only reason is to make random advantage possible, why should the game design be suffocated by requiring that every race be able to open the same way in all matchups, just so you can keep this advantage anyway?
I'm Random, each time I play another random i feel a deep connection with another human being. She's one of me I think, she and I; we are linked in a special way that no-one else could possibly hope to understand. I feel a thrilling sense of excitement creep into my randomly damned soul. What adventure we will share, we are both utterly blind, but soon all shall be made clear and we shall see by discovery together what we will make of it all! Sure the games might not be as rigid and correct. For we do not play on strict timings or a hope for a perfect priming of our early tank push. We play on a fluid feeling of dynamic game sense alone ! Making us lose badly to none-randoms with their 10 more roaches, two more tanks or six more stalkers..
Sometimes I meet other "so-called randoms" that tell me their race and asks for mine. I cry a little inside when this happens. I wanted to discover your race on my own I think, you've spoiled it! Now I have to tell my race as well, otherwise I'll feel bad, because you'll think something weird like I'm only random to get some odd minute advantage. Your not sharing my connection. These,the fake randoms, haven't grasped the deep and humanistic bond that being Random gives. Your not really random, your a race-sayer! Deceiver! Pig! I think. But then I sigh and say "z.. t.t", hoping to end it quick: Because now I know it's a mirror, and I just don't get any fun out of a mirror match at all, unless I've just been watching Snute's stream and feel a slight tingling.
Sometimes I meet the 'normal people' that imagine there is just one perfect way of doing things, and by doing the ideal thing to excellence: they will find happiness(?). They are often effective in their execution, but bore me away from my absolution. Some things I ever so often wonder: Why would you limit your experience by setting a fixed path for yourself? Are you only playing to see Victory? How can you ever claim skill if your world is devoid of 1/4 of the game? Your only a master of 1/4 if you ever reach #1! If your not playing random, you'll never become the best.
On August 21 2015 11:55 ocoini wrote: I'm Random, each time I play another random i feel a deep connection with another human being. She's one of me I think, she and I; we are linked in a special way that no-one else could possibly hope to understand. I feel a thrilling sense of excitement creep into my randomly damned soul. What adventure we will share, we are both utterly blind, but soon all shall be made clear and we shall see by discovery together what we will make of it all! Sure the games might not be as rigid and correct. For we do not play on strict timings or a hope for a perfect priming of our early tank push. We play on a fluid feeling of dynamic game sense alone ! Making us lose badly to none-randoms with their 10 more roaches, two more tanks or six more stalkers..
Sometimes I meet other "so-called randoms" that tell me their race and asks for mine. I cry a little inside when this happens. I wanted to discover your race on my own I think, you've spoiled it! Now I have to tell my race as well, otherwise I'll feel bad, because you'll think something weird like I'm only random to get some odd minute advantage. Your not sharing my connection. These,the fake randoms, haven't grasped the deep and humanistic bond that being Random gives. Your not really random, your a race-sayer! Deceiver! Pig! I think. But then I sigh and say "z.. t.t", hoping to end it quick: Because now I know it's a mirror, and I just don't get any fun out of a mirror match at all, unless I've just been watching Snute's stream and feel a slight tingling.
Sometimes I meet the 'normal people' that imagine there is just one perfect way of doing things, and by doing the ideal thing to excellence: they will find happiness(?). They are often effective in their execution, but bore me away from my absolution. Some things I ever so often wonder: Why would you limit your experience by setting a fixed path for yourself? Are you only playing to see Victory? How can you ever claim skill if your world is devoid of 1/4 of the game? Your only a master of 1/4 if you ever reach #1! If your not playing random, you'll never become the best.
Sponsored by the Stigmatized Random Association.
Very romantic. I take it you support the third option, in which neither player's race is displayed? Or do you think this magic feeling of discovering your opponent's race mid-game should be restricted to those playing against enlightened individuals like yourself, and those 'normal people' should be punished for dully trying to... you know... win?
Also it's a small nitpick, but the 'normal people' know 1/3 of the game, not 1/4. Whatever "humanistic bonds" it might make you feel, random is not a full one fourth of the game. If random advantage is as small as most people in this thread are claiming, random is scarcely different from being put into one of the other thirds of the game by chance.
On August 21 2015 11:50 ChristianS wrote: @BluemoonSC: Sure you have different builds, but for the most part they'll usually open the same way. TvT might have a variety of 1-1-1 openers, but they all involve going gas first. In some metagames, that might really be the basis of the matchup. This isn't even a hypothetical – WoL PvZ was completely based on FFE. Nony was, like, the only guy not going FFE. Even when more than one build is viable, why should your opponent be able to force you down one path and not have to deal with the other, just because they lack experience in the matchup?
@jinorazi: So do you think it was a problem that WoL PvZ was centered around FFE while the other matchups weren't? For that matter, I don't know that much about Brood War strategy, but wasn't PvZ primarily FFE there, too? Why is it a game design issue that you have to open differently against different races? If the only reason is to make random advantage possible, why should the game design be suffocated by requiring that every race be able to open the same way in all matchups, just so you can keep this advantage anyway?
i did point out you open differently for every race...including random.
at a non competitive level, it doesnt matter how you open to be honest. i do stupid shit all the time and still win and im sure many others do the same. if you really want to point out the advantage of the first 2 minutes, please do acknowledge that random players by average must be worse players because they have to learn 9 match ups. a player can choose random for whatever reason, even the reason you mentioned. a player can choose protoss so he can dark templar rush all day, a player can pick zerg to 6pool all day. what difference does it make between random and these choices? nothing.
i get the feeling you love to theorycraft and think deeply about sc2 strategies. may i recommend that you focus more on mechanics and dont give a single fck about which build order to use? 14cc every game, mass marines every game. sure you may not be doing your best to win, but you're having fun. if that isn't your kind of fun, dont rub that off to other people because different people have different tastes.
claiming as if random advantage is some kind of factor in win/loss...this minuscule factor is eliminated upon scouting. if you want to complain about such detail, do so at a pro level's game, not your average joe's. but hey, pros dont random when they care about all the little details...because its more disadvantageous than advantageous.
my point: there are optimal builds but it doesnt matter, like, at all, nada, nothing, in your average joe's game. sure FFE was the best vs z in bw or wol, but it doesnt mean you cant lose if you do or can't win if you dont. want to increase your overall win ratio by playing best at all times using the best options available? your opening isn't as important as the rest of the game. want to get better? you dont learn more build orders or perfect one build order, you just get better by improving your mechanics which allows you to execute more build orders better, and most importantly, allows you to adapt on the fly to whatever situation calls for it. opening is such a small part of the game yet you focus so much on it.
Both player have their race hidden at the start of the game. The random player still get their much love of having their race hidden and the player who picks their race starts the game on equal footing.
Essentially every match is now random vs random, regardless if the player actually chooses random or not.
On August 21 2015 11:50 ChristianS wrote: @BluemoonSC: Sure you have different builds, but for the most part they'll usually open the same way. TvT might have a variety of 1-1-1 openers, but they all involve going gas first. In some metagames, that might really be the basis of the matchup. This isn't even a hypothetical – WoL PvZ was completely based on FFE. Nony was, like, the only guy not going FFE. Even when more than one build is viable, why should your opponent be able to force you down one path and not have to deal with the other, just because they lack experience in the matchup?
@jinorazi: So do you think it was a problem that WoL PvZ was centered around FFE while the other matchups weren't? For that matter, I don't know that much about Brood War strategy, but wasn't PvZ primarily FFE there, too? Why is it a game design issue that you have to open differently against different races? If the only reason is to make random advantage possible, why should the game design be suffocated by requiring that every race be able to open the same way in all matchups, just so you can keep this advantage anyway?
i did point out you open differently for every race...including random.
at a non competitive level, it doesnt matter how you open to be honest. i do stupid shit all the time and still win and im sure many others do the same. if you really want to point out the advantage of the first 2 minutes, please do acknowledge that random players by average must be worse players because they have to learn 9 match ups. a player can choose random for whatever reason, even the reason you mentioned. a player can choose protoss so he can dark templar rush all day, a player can pick zerg to 6pool all day. what difference does it make between random and these choices? nothing.
i get the feeling you love to theorycraft and think deeply about sc2 strategies. may i recommend that you focus more on mechanics and dont give a single fck about which build order to use? 14cc every game, mass marines every game. sure you may not be doing your best to win, but you're having fun. if that isn't your kind of fun, dont rub that off to other people because different people have different tastes.
claiming as if random advantage is some kind of factor in win/loss...this minuscule factor is eliminated upon scouting. if you want to complain about such detail, do so at a pro level's game, not your average joe's. but hey, pros dont random when they care about all the little details...because its more disadvantageous and advantageous.
my point: there are optimal builds but it doesnt matter, like at all, nada, nothing, in your average joe's game.
First of all: to reiterate, Random is not a race. It's a random number generator. It doesn't have its own units, buildings, or abilities. WC3 has four races. SC has three.
Sure you open differently against random, since you're forced to. The point is, if that opening was good against the race you rolled against the race you rolled, you could do it anyway. If it's not, you're behind. I don't know how much you followed things in WoL, but what do you think was the good opening in PvR back then?
Yes, everybody messes up a lot. Even professionals mess up a lot. But if I mess up less than my opponent, I should win more for it. It's not true that it doesn't matter how you open – in HotS TvP, at low levels, practically the only thing that matters is how you open, because the majority of games are decided by whether or not you hold the blink all-in or tempest all-in or oracle all-in or gateway all-in, and that is determined by your opening. It's not just a matter of "playing safe" or having good "crisis management." Your build needs to have six marines, a widow mine, or a turret by the time the oracle shows up. You need to have bunkers or tanks or whatever your tactic is to defend the blink all-in; if you don't, you die.
If the random players are less skilled players, they should lose like less skilled players. That's what competition is supposed to be – more skilled players beating less skilled players. Then your MMR will shift until you're playing people that are on the same skill level as you, and you won't need to lean on random advantage to win. That random advantage is a factor in wins and losses is obvious from the fact that you're acknowledging the random player is worse at the matchup than their opponent, and yet they're on the same MMR. That means random advantage must be inflating their MMR and compensating for their inexperience in particular matchups.
This isn't about my own skill, it's about whether the game is better or worse with random advantage in the game. Making this personal is called ad hominem, and it's nothing more than an attempt to derail the discussion.
On August 21 2015 12:21 ocoini wrote: Yes, It's a compliment You're colorful i meant Or is it Your? I'm always confused by the proper use..
It's "you're," although don't worry yourself too much about it. Thank you, I suppose? I'm not sure what it means. Am I bright and lively? Am I wearing colorful clothing? Or are you using it as a euphemism for vulgar? That one wouldn't be a compliment at all, would it?
On August 21 2015 12:23 Clear World wrote: I purpose a different solution.
Both player have their race hidden at the start of the game. The random player still get their much love of having their race hidden and the player who picks their race starts the game on equal footing.
Essentially every match is now random vs random, regardless if the player actually chooses random or not.
This hasn't been discussed much, but I did include it in the poll in the OP. It doesn't have the issue of players not starting on equal footing, so I don't object hugely to it. My only objection is that ladder games really ought to be able to mirror the games people see on the pro scene, and a system like that can't work in the pro scene. So if Innovation brings out some sweet TvP build and people wanna copy it, they can't do it on ladder because unlike Innovation, they don't know their opponent's race at the beginning of the game.
On August 21 2015 11:50 ChristianS wrote: @BluemoonSC: Sure you have different builds, but for the most part they'll usually open the same way. TvT might have a variety of 1-1-1 openers, but they all involve going gas first. In some metagames, that might really be the basis of the matchup. This isn't even a hypothetical – WoL PvZ was completely based on FFE. Nony was, like, the only guy not going FFE. Even when more than one build is viable, why should your opponent be able to force you down one path and not have to deal with the other, just because they lack experience in the matchup?
@jinorazi: So do you think it was a problem that WoL PvZ was centered around FFE while the other matchups weren't? For that matter, I don't know that much about Brood War strategy, but wasn't PvZ primarily FFE there, too? Why is it a game design issue that you have to open differently against different races? If the only reason is to make random advantage possible, why should the game design be suffocated by requiring that every race be able to open the same way in all matchups, just so you can keep this advantage anyway?
i did point out you open differently for every race...including random.
at a non competitive level, it doesnt matter how you open to be honest. i do stupid shit all the time and still win and im sure many others do the same. if you really want to point out the advantage of the first 2 minutes, please do acknowledge that random players by average must be worse players because they have to learn 9 match ups. a player can choose random for whatever reason, even the reason you mentioned. a player can choose protoss so he can dark templar rush all day, a player can pick zerg to 6pool all day. what difference does it make between random and these choices? nothing.
i get the feeling you love to theorycraft and think deeply about sc2 strategies. may i recommend that you focus more on mechanics and dont give a single fck about which build order to use? 14cc every game, mass marines every game. sure you may not be doing your best to win, but you're having fun. if that isn't your kind of fun, dont rub that off to other people because different people have different tastes.
claiming as if random advantage is some kind of factor in win/loss...this minuscule factor is eliminated upon scouting. if you want to complain about such detail, do so at a pro level's game, not your average joe's. but hey, pros dont random when they care about all the little details...because its more disadvantageous and advantageous.
my point: there are optimal builds but it doesnt matter, like at all, nada, nothing, in your average joe's game.
First of all: to reiterate, Random is not a race. It's a random number generator. It doesn't have its own units, buildings, or abilities. WC3 has four races. SC has three.
Sure you open differently against random, since you're forced to. The point is, if that opening was good against the race you rolled against the race you rolled, you could do it anyway. If it's not, you're behind. I don't know how much you followed things in WoL, but what do you think was the good opening in PvR back then?
Yes, everybody messes up a lot. Even professionals mess up a lot. But if I mess up less than my opponent, I should win more for it. It's not true that it doesn't matter how you open – in HotS TvP, at low levels, practically the only thing that matters is how you open, because the majority of games are decided by whether or not you hold the blink all-in or tempest all-in or oracle all-in or gateway all-in, and that is determined by your opening. It's not just a matter of "playing safe" or having good "crisis management." Your build needs to have six marines, a widow mine, or a turret by the time the oracle shows up. You need to have bunkers or tanks or whatever your tactic is to defend the blink all-in; if you don't, you die.
If the random players are less skilled players, they should lose like less skilled players. That's what competition is supposed to be – more skilled players beating less skilled players. Then your MMR will shift until you're playing people that are on the same skill level as you, and you won't need to lean on random advantage to win. That random advantage is a factor in wins and losses is obvious from the fact that you're acknowledging the random player is worse at the matchup than their opponent, and yet they're on the same MMR. That means random advantage must be inflating their MMR and compensating for their inexperience in particular matchups.
This isn't about my own skill, it's about whether the game is better or worse with random advantage in the game. Making this personal is called ad hominem, and it's nothing more than an attempt to derail the discussion.
to note, i wasnt attacking you, "you" was just a generalization.
opening is important to all-ins...sigh.
where are the details between the "opening" and the "all-in"? you open one way or another, you have to but after scouting you do what you have to do. you talk as if random player has an advantage until the moment of the attack! MMR doesnt care if you pick a race or not, if you lose to a random player, that random player was better than you in that game, or some lucky BO, and when i say lucky BO, this applies to any race vs race.
stop taking random being 4th race so literally, i said its LIKE a 4th race because it does indeed for your opening like any other race. but again, your opening isnt important because you still adapt to whatever your opponent is doing before the "all-in" comes.
its like you think protoss will do this, terran will do this, zerg will do this, so i must open with this. this is not the case.
On August 21 2015 11:50 ChristianS wrote: @BluemoonSC: Sure you have different builds, but for the most part they'll usually open the same way. TvT might have a variety of 1-1-1 openers, but they all involve going gas first. In some metagames, that might really be the basis of the matchup. This isn't even a hypothetical – WoL PvZ was completely based on FFE. Nony was, like, the only guy not going FFE. Even when more than one build is viable, why should your opponent be able to force you down one path and not have to deal with the other, just because they lack experience in the matchup?
@jinorazi: So do you think it was a problem that WoL PvZ was centered around FFE while the other matchups weren't? For that matter, I don't know that much about Brood War strategy, but wasn't PvZ primarily FFE there, too? Why is it a game design issue that you have to open differently against different races? If the only reason is to make random advantage possible, why should the game design be suffocated by requiring that every race be able to open the same way in all matchups, just so you can keep this advantage anyway?
i did point out you open differently for every race...including random.
at a non competitive level, it doesnt matter how you open to be honest. i do stupid shit all the time and still win and im sure many others do the same. if you really want to point out the advantage of the first 2 minutes, please do acknowledge that random players by average must be worse players because they have to learn 9 match ups. a player can choose random for whatever reason, even the reason you mentioned. a player can choose protoss so he can dark templar rush all day, a player can pick zerg to 6pool all day. what difference does it make between random and these choices? nothing.
i get the feeling you love to theorycraft and think deeply about sc2 strategies. may i recommend that you focus more on mechanics and dont give a single fck about which build order to use? 14cc every game, mass marines every game. sure you may not be doing your best to win, but you're having fun. if that isn't your kind of fun, dont rub that off to other people because different people have different tastes.
claiming as if random advantage is some kind of factor in win/loss...this minuscule factor is eliminated upon scouting. if you want to complain about such detail, do so at a pro level's game, not your average joe's. but hey, pros dont random when they care about all the little details...because its more disadvantageous and advantageous.
my point: there are optimal builds but it doesnt matter, like at all, nada, nothing, in your average joe's game.
First of all: to reiterate, Random is not a race. It's a random number generator. It doesn't have its own units, buildings, or abilities. WC3 has four races. SC has three.
Sure you open differently against random, since you're forced to. The point is, if that opening was good against the race you rolled against the race you rolled, you could do it anyway. If it's not, you're behind. I don't know how much you followed things in WoL, but what do you think was the good opening in PvR back then?
Yes, everybody messes up a lot. Even professionals mess up a lot. But if I mess up less than my opponent, I should win more for it. It's not true that it doesn't matter how you open – in HotS TvP, at low levels, practically the only thing that matters is how you open, because the majority of games are decided by whether or not you hold the blink all-in or tempest all-in or oracle all-in or gateway all-in, and that is determined by your opening. It's not just a matter of "playing safe" or having good "crisis management." Your build needs to have six marines, a widow mine, or a turret by the time the oracle shows up. You need to have bunkers or tanks or whatever your tactic is to defend the blink all-in; if you don't, you die.
If the random players are less skilled players, they should lose like less skilled players. That's what competition is supposed to be – more skilled players beating less skilled players. Then your MMR will shift until you're playing people that are on the same skill level as you, and you won't need to lean on random advantage to win. That random advantage is a factor in wins and losses is obvious from the fact that you're acknowledging the random player is worse at the matchup than their opponent, and yet they're on the same MMR. That means random advantage must be inflating their MMR and compensating for their inexperience in particular matchups.
This isn't about my own skill, it's about whether the game is better or worse with random advantage in the game. Making this personal is called ad hominem, and it's nothing more than an attempt to derail the discussion.
to note, i wasnt attacking you, "you" was just a generalization.
opening is important to all-ins...sigh.
where are the details between the "opening" and the "all-in"? you open one way or another, you have to but after scouting you do what you do. you talk as if random player has an advantage until the moment of the attack! MMR doesnt care if you pick a race or not, if you lose to a random player, that random player was better than you in that game, or some lucky BO, and when i say lucky BO, this applies to any race vs race.
stop taking random being 4th race so literally, i said its LIKE a 4th race because it does indeed for your opening like any other race. but again, your opening isnt important because you still adapt to whatever your opponent is doing before the "all-in" comes.
You said, and I quote:
i get the feeling you love to theorycraft and think deeply about sc2 strategies. may i recommend that you focus more on mechanics and dont give a single fck about which build order to use?
That's making it about me, specifically, not using "you" as a generic pronoun.
The opening informs what you do after you scout. If I open 1 rax expand, and then I scout and see he's gonna have an oracle in my mineral line at 5 minutes, I'm probably dead. Therefore I don't open 1 rax expand TvP. If I did for some reason, yes, I would try to "adapt" when I saw his build, but I would be in pretty desperate straits at that point.
Strictly speaking, the random player might not have been better. They started at an advantage, and they didn't lose it. In many matchups the advantage is small, so I wouldn't have had to play much better to beat that advantage, but the advantage is there. It's true that MMR doesn't care how they won, but that doesn't mean it was balanced; if Blizzard patched in 22-range marines tomorrow, my MMR would shoot up versus P and Z, but I wouldn't be a more skilled player.
I never did get an answer from you: what was the good answer to WoL PvR? in PvZ, they're behind if they don't FFE. In PvP and PvT, they die if they do.
On August 21 2015 12:23 Clear World wrote: I purpose a different solution.
Both player have their race hidden at the start of the game. The random player still get their much love of having their race hidden and the player who picks their race starts the game on equal footing.
Essentially every match is now random vs random, regardless if the player actually chooses random or not.
This hasn't been discussed much, but I did include it in the poll in the OP. It doesn't have the issue of players not starting on equal footing, so I don't object hugely to it. My only objection is that ladder games really ought to be able to mirror the games people see on the pro scene, and a system like that can't work in the pro scene. So if Innovation brings out some sweet TvP build and people wanna copy it, they can't do it on ladder because unlike Innovation, they don't know their opponent's race at the beginning of the game.
I only bring up this because this is proof of how much a 'non-race' random is. As I write, by simply hiding the information, all games essentially becomes random vs random, regardless if a person chooses random or not. That is a fact that you can use in your argument.
Secondly, the people who argue for the advantage tends to focus on 'balance' concerns rather than 'design'. The random advantage is not game breaking or overpowered, completely disappearing once they are scouted. But they ignore that the advantage given by choosing random only incentives the player to perform a cheese, hence the issue. That is the only benefit, therefore, the opponent who did not choose random has to play against the cheeses.
It's essentially the same in how people refer the Protoss race as a 'All-In' or 'Deathball' race, even though both Terran and Zerg can also perform both 'All-in' or 'Deathball' themselves. The important fact is the advantages that exist and what it promotes. No player has to use the advantages if they don't want to, but as long as they exist, the opponent has to always prepare against it because they don't know what the player will do.
And the 'honor-system' is really stupid. It's like asking the Protoss player to not do an 'All-in' or make a 'Deathball', and just see how well that goes. Therefore, it just creates a natural disdain for 'Random Players' since the advantages of choosing random is just performing cheeses.
On August 21 2015 12:23 Clear World wrote: I purpose a different solution.
Both player have their race hidden at the start of the game. The random player still get their much love of having their race hidden and the player who picks their race starts the game on equal footing.
Essentially every match is now random vs random, regardless if the player actually chooses random or not.
This hasn't been discussed much, but I did include it in the poll in the OP. It doesn't have the issue of players not starting on equal footing, so I don't object hugely to it. My only objection is that ladder games really ought to be able to mirror the games people see on the pro scene, and a system like that can't work in the pro scene. So if Innovation brings out some sweet TvP build and people wanna copy it, they can't do it on ladder because unlike Innovation, they don't know their opponent's race at the beginning of the game.
I only bring up this because this is proof of how much a 'non-race' random is. As I write, by simply hiding the information, all games essentially becomes random vs random, regardless if a person chooses random or not. That is a fact that you can use in your argument.
Secondly, the people who argue for the advantage tends to focus on 'balance' concerns rather than 'design'. The random advantage is not game breaking or overpowered, but they ignore that the advantage given by choosing random only incentives the player to perform a cheese. That is the only benefit, therefore, the opponent who did not choose random has to play against the cheeses.
It's essentially the same in how people refer the Protoss race as a 'All-In' or 'Deathball' race, even though both Terran and Zerg can also perform both 'All-in' or 'Deathball' themselves. The important fact is the advantages that exist and what it promotes. No one has to use the advantages, if they don't want to. And the 'honor-system' is really stupid. It's like asking the Protoss player to not do an 'All-in' or make a 'Deathball'. Therefore, it just creates a natural disdain since the advantages of choosing random is just performing cheeses.
Ah, I misunderstood. Well I think most players would be pretty upset about it if they took away race information at the beginning of the game, and it'd be worth talking about why.
When you don't know your opponent's race, it removes strategy from the game. The whole point of most strategies in Starcraft 2 is to exploit some circumstance in which your race is strong and theirs is weak. That's a big part of why mirror matches are always weird – you don't have different strengths and weaknesses. That means there's not really very clear "timing attacks," since if there's a moment when your army is particularly strong, your opponent's army will be particularly strong at that moment, too. If you go for different compositions or something, then it kind of simulates asymmetric design – mech might have particular timings where it's strong or weak versus bio, because for all intents and purposes, it's almost like the players are playing different races.
Without information about what race your opponent is playing, until you have that information, you can't plan on exploiting any particular weakness. Should you go for fast 1-base reactor hellions? Versus Zerg that might be a strong strategy, and it was a common opening in WoL. Versus Terran or Protoss, though, 1-base hellion is shit. Every opening has to have a deviation that's strong versus every race, or else you're accepting a loss if your opponent is that race. So if you cut SCVs for a moment at 10 supply to get a faster gas, instantly build a factory after rax and start a reactor, and then scout your opponent, you'd better have a plan for if your opponent's not Zerg, or else a perfectly good opening is dead.
On August 21 2015 11:50 ChristianS wrote: @BluemoonSC: Sure you have different builds, but for the most part they'll usually open the same way. TvT might have a variety of 1-1-1 openers, but they all involve going gas first. In some metagames, that might really be the basis of the matchup. This isn't even a hypothetical – WoL PvZ was completely based on FFE. Nony was, like, the only guy not going FFE. Even when more than one build is viable, why should your opponent be able to force you down one path and not have to deal with the other, just because they lack experience in the matchup?
@jinorazi: So do you think it was a problem that WoL PvZ was centered around FFE while the other matchups weren't? For that matter, I don't know that much about Brood War strategy, but wasn't PvZ primarily FFE there, too? Why is it a game design issue that you have to open differently against different races? If the only reason is to make random advantage possible, why should the game design be suffocated by requiring that every race be able to open the same way in all matchups, just so you can keep this advantage anyway?
i did point out you open differently for every race...including random.
at a non competitive level, it doesnt matter how you open to be honest. i do stupid shit all the time and still win and im sure many others do the same. if you really want to point out the advantage of the first 2 minutes, please do acknowledge that random players by average must be worse players because they have to learn 9 match ups. a player can choose random for whatever reason, even the reason you mentioned. a player can choose protoss so he can dark templar rush all day, a player can pick zerg to 6pool all day. what difference does it make between random and these choices? nothing.
i get the feeling you love to theorycraft and think deeply about sc2 strategies. may i recommend that you focus more on mechanics and dont give a single fck about which build order to use? 14cc every game, mass marines every game. sure you may not be doing your best to win, but you're having fun. if that isn't your kind of fun, dont rub that off to other people because different people have different tastes.
claiming as if random advantage is some kind of factor in win/loss...this minuscule factor is eliminated upon scouting. if you want to complain about such detail, do so at a pro level's game, not your average joe's. but hey, pros dont random when they care about all the little details...because its more disadvantageous and advantageous.
my point: there are optimal builds but it doesnt matter, like at all, nada, nothing, in your average joe's game.
First of all: to reiterate, Random is not a race. It's a random number generator. It doesn't have its own units, buildings, or abilities. WC3 has four races. SC has three.
Sure you open differently against random, since you're forced to. The point is, if that opening was good against the race you rolled against the race you rolled, you could do it anyway. If it's not, you're behind. I don't know how much you followed things in WoL, but what do you think was the good opening in PvR back then?
Yes, everybody messes up a lot. Even professionals mess up a lot. But if I mess up less than my opponent, I should win more for it. It's not true that it doesn't matter how you open – in HotS TvP, at low levels, practically the only thing that matters is how you open, because the majority of games are decided by whether or not you hold the blink all-in or tempest all-in or oracle all-in or gateway all-in, and that is determined by your opening. It's not just a matter of "playing safe" or having good "crisis management." Your build needs to have six marines, a widow mine, or a turret by the time the oracle shows up. You need to have bunkers or tanks or whatever your tactic is to defend the blink all-in; if you don't, you die.
If the random players are less skilled players, they should lose like less skilled players. That's what competition is supposed to be – more skilled players beating less skilled players. Then your MMR will shift until you're playing people that are on the same skill level as you, and you won't need to lean on random advantage to win. That random advantage is a factor in wins and losses is obvious from the fact that you're acknowledging the random player is worse at the matchup than their opponent, and yet they're on the same MMR. That means random advantage must be inflating their MMR and compensating for their inexperience in particular matchups.
This isn't about my own skill, it's about whether the game is better or worse with random advantage in the game. Making this personal is called ad hominem, and it's nothing more than an attempt to derail the discussion.
to note, i wasnt attacking you, "you" was just a generalization.
opening is important to all-ins...sigh.
where are the details between the "opening" and the "all-in"? you open one way or another, you have to but after scouting you do what you do. you talk as if random player has an advantage until the moment of the attack! MMR doesnt care if you pick a race or not, if you lose to a random player, that random player was better than you in that game, or some lucky BO, and when i say lucky BO, this applies to any race vs race.
stop taking random being 4th race so literally, i said its LIKE a 4th race because it does indeed for your opening like any other race. but again, your opening isnt important because you still adapt to whatever your opponent is doing before the "all-in" comes.
i get the feeling you love to theorycraft and think deeply about sc2 strategies. may i recommend that you focus more on mechanics and dont give a single fck about which build order to use?
That's making it about me, specifically, not using "you" as a generic pronoun.
The opening informs what you do after you scout. If I open 1 rax expand, and then I scout and see he's gonna have an oracle in my mineral line at 5 minutes, I'm probably dead. Therefore I don't open 1 rax expand TvP. If I did for some reason, yes, I would try to "adapt" when I saw his build, but I would be in pretty desperate straits at that point.
Strictly speaking, the random player might not have been better. They started at an advantage, and they didn't lose it. In many matchups the advantage is small, so I wouldn't have had to play much better to beat that advantage, but the advantage is there. It's true that MMR doesn't care how they won, but that doesn't mean it was balanced; if Blizzard patched in 22-range marines tomorrow, my MMR would shoot up versus P and Z, but I wouldn't be a more skilled player.
I never did get an answer from you: what was the good answer to WoL PvR? in PvZ, they're behind if they don't FFE. In PvP and PvT, they die if they do.
whoa sorry if that looked like an attack to you, i was merely suggesting something that seems to be the opposite of what you'd prefer. you like details, what i suggested did not, it was in suggestion to broaden your perspective: i dislike strict builds, looks like you do.
so you would not do 1rax exp against protoss...why would you 1rax exp against random if that matters to you? i personally wouldnt care and would 1rax exp again vR.
if you're asking me what i did vs what race, you're asking the wrong person. i honestly dont remember what i did in RvR or PvR, as you can tell, i'm not picky with builds. i'm the type that would open 14cc then move onto next game when i get 6pooled. with that said i probably nexus first or ffe vR in wol. albeit, i play random, i guess this is the type of advantage you speak of? i wouldnt play any different if i picked a race and wouldnt care how opponent react to it.
why should your opening matter so much when there are so many variables after it? when i say opening i mean the first couple of buildings, i'd consider expanding in this situation to be greedy.
On August 21 2015 12:51 Clear World wrote: Secondly, the people who argue for the advantage tends to focus on 'balance' concerns rather than 'design'. The random advantage is not game breaking or overpowered, completely disappearing once they are scouted. But they ignore that the advantage given by choosing random only incentives the player to perform a cheese, hence the issue. That is the only benefit, therefore, the opponent who did not choose random has to play against the cheeses.
It's essentially the same in how people refer the Protoss race as a 'All-In' or 'Deathball' race, even though both Terran and Zerg can also perform both 'All-in' or 'Deathball' themselves. The important fact is the advantages that exist and what it promotes. No player has to use the advantages if they don't want to, but as long as they exist, the opponent has to always prepare against it because they don't know what the player will do.
And the 'honor-system' is really stupid. It's like asking the Protoss player to not do an 'All-in' or make a 'Deathball', and just see how well that goes. Therefore, it just creates a natural disdain for 'Random Players' since the advantages of choosing random is just performing cheeses.
It's actually pretty untrue that the advantage of playing random only incentivizes cheese. A counterexample would be Random Z vs P in WoL, the Protoss player was forced into going gateway expand (since forge wasn't viable vT or vP), so the Random Z could safely hatch first (whereas normal Z couldn't since FFE was the norm).
You can also avoid race specific cheese (to an extent) by playing random since your opponent would be taking a huge gamble. Like a Random T v P doesn't need to worry about proxy 1 gate since proxy one gate is really only viable vT, so the opposing P only has a 1/3 chance of it working if they use it. So SCV scout before barracks isn't essential like it would be for a 'Real' T v P.
So basically random players can get an advantage from playing greedy or aggressive, and therefor they're disincentivized to play 'safe'. But a lot of people just cheese vs random players, which means playing random usually involves a lot of playing safe anyway. I actually find it pretty hypocritical how many people complain about random players just cheesing as if cheesing is somehting bad, then just cheese vs random players all the time anyway.
And again, yes the random player's advantage promotes them to cheese, but everyone also knows random players are more likely to cheese, so they're more likely to scout / play defensive. Having to deviate from your normal build orders isn't a bad thing IMO.
On August 21 2015 02:30 ChristianS wrote: @Cascade: Saying it doesn't affect very many games or that Blizzard should be happy if this is the only issue isn't really an argument against. It's a question that's worth discussing, and if we're going to discuss it, it should be along the lines of "why should this be the way it is, or why should it change?" It shouldn't be along the lines of "well sure it's a problem, but how often does it really matter?" As for the "random players like it" argument:
Back in middle school I used to play SSBM quite a bit. My friend's little sister liked playing, but she was a lot worse than me, so we turned on handicap mode. I would hit her a lot more often than she hit me, but her hits would have way more impact so it wound up being a kind of even fight. She liked that mode because it let her compete evenly with people better than her.
But it would be horribly contrary to the spirit of competition to bring something like that into, say, a tournament. The player who plays better is supposed to win more often, and when things like racial imbalance or map imbalance get in the way of that, we tend to think those are bad things that should be adjusted. Well ladder, like a tournament, is a competitive venue in which the player that plays better is supposed to win more often, and random advantage changes that.
I acknowledge that scouting a random last is annoying. (As is scouting anyone last for that matter.) But it happens rarely, so it is a small problem. Random players presumably like to play random. That is 10% of the players. Changing the way random works will impact many, and can be a larger problem. So that is why I feel that the benefits or removing hidden random (less annoying when you scout last) isn't worth the cost (the decently large fraction of randoms that want their race to stay hidden). Is that clear enough for you? I don't have any personal interest in this as I don't play random and I don't mind playing them, so no win or loss for me either way.
There is no discussion that playing random will give you a lower MMR than picking your best race. Even if you play someone in a single game, you will have a smaller chance of winning if you press "random" rather than your best race, unless your three races are extremely similar in skill. There is plenty of data supporting that, sc2ranks and GSL to start with.
I am trying my best to give you the benefit of the doubt here, and I try to read your post as if it is not contradicting the previous paragraph. Your comparison with a handicap doesn't hold, as the handicap increases the chance of winning, but playing random doesn't. You are talking about playing random as if they get to have the secret race AND play their main race in every game. So well, if you indeed don't agree with the previous paragraph, I will leave you to your own world, and my part of the discussion ends here. Otherwise, can you please explain a bit better what your point is, without using that analogy that doesn't fit for me.
On August 21 2015 11:50 ChristianS wrote: @BluemoonSC: Sure you have different builds, but for the most part they'll usually open the same way. TvT might have a variety of 1-1-1 openers, but they all involve going gas first. In some metagames, that might really be the basis of the matchup. This isn't even a hypothetical – WoL PvZ was completely based on FFE. Nony was, like, the only guy not going FFE. Even when more than one build is viable, why should your opponent be able to force you down one path and not have to deal with the other, just because they lack experience in the matchup?
@jinorazi: So do you think it was a problem that WoL PvZ was centered around FFE while the other matchups weren't? For that matter, I don't know that much about Brood War strategy, but wasn't PvZ primarily FFE there, too? Why is it a game design issue that you have to open differently against different races? If the only reason is to make random advantage possible, why should the game design be suffocated by requiring that every race be able to open the same way in all matchups, just so you can keep this advantage anyway?
i did point out you open differently for every race...including random.
at a non competitive level, it doesnt matter how you open to be honest. i do stupid shit all the time and still win and im sure many others do the same. if you really want to point out the advantage of the first 2 minutes, please do acknowledge that random players by average must be worse players because they have to learn 9 match ups. a player can choose random for whatever reason, even the reason you mentioned. a player can choose protoss so he can dark templar rush all day, a player can pick zerg to 6pool all day. what difference does it make between random and these choices? nothing.
i get the feeling you love to theorycraft and think deeply about sc2 strategies. may i recommend that you focus more on mechanics and dont give a single fck about which build order to use? 14cc every game, mass marines every game. sure you may not be doing your best to win, but you're having fun. if that isn't your kind of fun, dont rub that off to other people because different people have different tastes.
claiming as if random advantage is some kind of factor in win/loss...this minuscule factor is eliminated upon scouting. if you want to complain about such detail, do so at a pro level's game, not your average joe's. but hey, pros dont random when they care about all the little details...because its more disadvantageous and advantageous.
my point: there are optimal builds but it doesnt matter, like at all, nada, nothing, in your average joe's game.
First of all: to reiterate, Random is not a race. It's a random number generator. It doesn't have its own units, buildings, or abilities. WC3 has four races. SC has three.
Sure you open differently against random, since you're forced to. The point is, if that opening was good against the race you rolled against the race you rolled, you could do it anyway. If it's not, you're behind. I don't know how much you followed things in WoL, but what do you think was the good opening in PvR back then?
Yes, everybody messes up a lot. Even professionals mess up a lot. But if I mess up less than my opponent, I should win more for it. It's not true that it doesn't matter how you open – in HotS TvP, at low levels, practically the only thing that matters is how you open, because the majority of games are decided by whether or not you hold the blink all-in or tempest all-in or oracle all-in or gateway all-in, and that is determined by your opening. It's not just a matter of "playing safe" or having good "crisis management." Your build needs to have six marines, a widow mine, or a turret by the time the oracle shows up. You need to have bunkers or tanks or whatever your tactic is to defend the blink all-in; if you don't, you die.
If the random players are less skilled players, they should lose like less skilled players. That's what competition is supposed to be – more skilled players beating less skilled players. Then your MMR will shift until you're playing people that are on the same skill level as you, and you won't need to lean on random advantage to win. That random advantage is a factor in wins and losses is obvious from the fact that you're acknowledging the random player is worse at the matchup than their opponent, and yet they're on the same MMR. That means random advantage must be inflating their MMR and compensating for their inexperience in particular matchups.
This isn't about my own skill, it's about whether the game is better or worse with random advantage in the game. Making this personal is called ad hominem, and it's nothing more than an attempt to derail the discussion.
to note, i wasnt attacking you, "you" was just a generalization.
opening is important to all-ins...sigh.
where are the details between the "opening" and the "all-in"? you open one way or another, you have to but after scouting you do what you do. you talk as if random player has an advantage until the moment of the attack! MMR doesnt care if you pick a race or not, if you lose to a random player, that random player was better than you in that game, or some lucky BO, and when i say lucky BO, this applies to any race vs race.
stop taking random being 4th race so literally, i said its LIKE a 4th race because it does indeed for your opening like any other race. but again, your opening isnt important because you still adapt to whatever your opponent is doing before the "all-in" comes.
You said, and I quote:
i get the feeling you love to theorycraft and think deeply about sc2 strategies. may i recommend that you focus more on mechanics and dont give a single fck about which build order to use?
That's making it about me, specifically, not using "you" as a generic pronoun.
The opening informs what you do after you scout. If I open 1 rax expand, and then I scout and see he's gonna have an oracle in my mineral line at 5 minutes, I'm probably dead. Therefore I don't open 1 rax expand TvP. If I did for some reason, yes, I would try to "adapt" when I saw his build, but I would be in pretty desperate straits at that point.
Strictly speaking, the random player might not have been better. They started at an advantage, and they didn't lose it. In many matchups the advantage is small, so I wouldn't have had to play much better to beat that advantage, but the advantage is there. It's true that MMR doesn't care how they won, but that doesn't mean it was balanced; if Blizzard patched in 22-range marines tomorrow, my MMR would shoot up versus P and Z, but I wouldn't be a more skilled player.
I never did get an answer from you: what was the good answer to WoL PvR? in PvZ, they're behind if they don't FFE. In PvP and PvT, they die if they do.
whoa sorry if that looked like an attack to you, i was merely suggesting something that seems to be the opposite of what you'd prefer. you like details, what i suggested did not, it was in suggestion to broaden your perspective: i dislike strict builds, looks like you do.
so you would not do 1rax exp against protoss...why would you 1rax exp against random if that matters to you? i personally wouldnt care and would 1rax exp again vR.
if you're asking me what i did vs what race, you're asking the wrong person. i honestly dont remember what i did in RvR or PvR, as you can tell, i'm not picky with builds. i'm the type that would open 14cc then move onto next game when i get 6pooled. with that said i probably nexus first or ffe vR in wol. albeit, i play random, i guess this is the type of advantage you speak of? i wouldnt play any different if i picked a race and wouldnt care how opponent react to it.
why should your opening matter so much when there are so many variables after it?
Ad hominem just means you're making it about the person instead of the ideas. I didn't take it as an attack, I'm just trying to keep the discussion relevant.
If you were opening FFE in PvP in WoL, I can't imagine that went very well for you. For the record, the problem in PvR was that opening gateway, most pros thought it wasn't possible to expand fast enough and safe enough PvZ. So you had to FFE. But Terrans could just kill FFE. And in PvP, if you weren't doing 1-base builds you were doing it wrong. Until the ramp vision change you absolutely had to 4-gate, and even after the change you still couldn't expand.
Now maybe your opponents were bad and didn't know how to punish. Or maybe because you were random yourself, you never found yourself on the bad end of that (although you probably at least noticed at the time that when you played random, you tended to get 4-gated a lot). But that situation was broken. The only reason it wasn't a big enough issue to get changed then was because Blizzard didn't care, because random players are so rare that it didn't affect very many games, and none on the top level.
The variables after your opening are all affected by your opening. If you opened 2-rax, you can't very well play a macro game. If you opened one gate expand, you couldn't very well try to rush DTs before he got detection. Openings obviously matter in SC2, and a lot of the strategy in the game is modulated by what opening you choose. You seem to be trying to argue that it doesn't matter because there's a lot of other variables that matter, too, but that's kind of beside the point. If someone complains that they got a build order disadvantage because their opponent was playing random, it's not a cogent response to say "yeah, but macroing is important to winning, too!"
The pvz ffe issue has nothing to do with random yet you're pointing fingers at it. The situation, where ffe being the only viable option was a design flaw, not random. Changing how random worked would have done nothing to it. Changing random would have been only a bandaid for a single situation of the larger problem.
I consider openings vs random no different than disadvantages and advantages caused in regular race picked games as they can vary too depending on how players open. You can't pick cheerypick scenarios argue, same examples can exist in regular games. 2rax to expand? Fe to dt rush before detection? Cmon
The PvZ issue was only an issue versus random. Otherwise, what's wrong with having to open FFE? If you really hated it you could try to make something else work (like Nony), you were just fighting an uphill battle. And there were a lot of different ways to do it if you wanted to be more aggressive, or more defensive, or more greedy. You could do nexus before forge, or you could cannon rush his hatch before expanding, or you could build your cannon before nexus if you were really scared of getting rushed. Or you could throw out a 4 gate figuring your opponent will plan on FFE. That design is perfectly fine, and unless I'm mistaken, the situation is more or less similar for Brood War.
Those examples were just to prove that the rest of the game is going to play out differently depending on your opening. The whole point was that those examples are absurd. You can't play a macro game starting with a 2-rax opening, because the opening prevents it. You can't rush tech with a gasless expand because the opening prevents it. Thus your opening is very important in determining how the game plays out. Given that, it seems silly to try and argue that opening doesn't matter that much really. And even if it were true, it doesn't address the original question: why should random players have an advantage in the opening anyway?
i think the mods need to consider closing this thread. at this point you're just arguing around in circles, expressing your viewpoint and it's clear that no one is going to change your mind.
You even used 1rax exp to finding oracle too late....you really don't scout until they have an oracle?? lotv really changed that much??
Stop saying advantage, all it does is influence your opening like any other 3 races. And you continue doing whatever it is you need to do after you scout. You're talking around this fact, as if this is unfair, using very specifics situations when the things you say can apply to any race vs race.
You dislike the unordinary that doesn't go by each 9 match up standards, I get that and it is knwon. However there is nothing wrong with that; being forced not to go by match up standards.
On August 21 2015 02:30 ChristianS wrote: @Cascade: Saying it doesn't affect very many games or that Blizzard should be happy if this is the only issue isn't really an argument against. It's a question that's worth discussing, and if we're going to discuss it, it should be along the lines of "why should this be the way it is, or why should it change?" It shouldn't be along the lines of "well sure it's a problem, but how often does it really matter?" As for the "random players like it" argument:
Back in middle school I used to play SSBM quite a bit. My friend's little sister liked playing, but she was a lot worse than me, so we turned on handicap mode. I would hit her a lot more often than she hit me, but her hits would have way more impact so it wound up being a kind of even fight. She liked that mode because it let her compete evenly with people better than her.
But it would be horribly contrary to the spirit of competition to bring something like that into, say, a tournament. The player who plays better is supposed to win more often, and when things like racial imbalance or map imbalance get in the way of that, we tend to think those are bad things that should be adjusted. Well ladder, like a tournament, is a competitive venue in which the player that plays better is supposed to win more often, and random advantage changes that.
I acknowledge that scouting a random last is annoying. (As is scouting anyone last for that matter.) But it happens rarely, so it is a small problem. Random players presumably like to play random. That is 10% of the players. Changing the way random works will impact many, and can be a larger problem. So that is why I feel that the benefits or removing hidden random (less annoying when you scout last) isn't worth the cost (the decently large fraction of randoms that want their race to stay hidden). Is that clear enough for you? I don't have any personal interest in this as I don't play random and I don't mind playing them, so no win or loss for me either way.
There is no discussion that playing random will give you a lower MMR than picking your best race. Even if you play someone in a single game, you will have a smaller chance of winning if you press "random" rather than your best race, unless your three races are extremely similar in skill. There is plenty of data supporting that, sc2ranks and GSL to start with.
I am trying my best to give you the benefit of the doubt here, and I try to read your post as if it is not contradicting the previous paragraph. Your comparison with a handicap doesn't hold, as the handicap increases the chance of winning, but playing random doesn't. You are talking about playing random as if they get to have the secret race AND play their main race in every game. So well, if you indeed don't agree with the previous paragraph, I will leave you to your own world, and my part of the discussion ends here. Otherwise, can you please explain a bit better what your point is, without using that analogy that doesn't fit for me.
So what's wrong with the following solution:
-Give each race on a ladder account a separate MMR -take away random advantage
Other than "random players like their advantage," to which the obvious response is "yeah, and their opponents don't," it doesn't seem to create any problems. If you roll Z and you're bad with Z, you'll be playing bad opponents because your Z has a worse MMR.
I acknowledge that playing random is harder for the majority of players because they have worse off-races than their main race. The result is that in the average game the random player has less experience in the matchup. But we don't give handicaps to people if they're inexperienced in a matchup for any other reason.
Imagine a friend just started playing Starcraft, and they start on ladder. They play three placement matches – one TvZ, one TvP, and one TvT. Then they hit a TvR. You're friend asks you, "hey what the hell, why don't I get to see his race? He gets to see mine, right?" You can respond "well yeah, but since he's playing random he'll have less experience than you in... wait..." The fact is your friend has no advantage in that game, he's just starting off at a disadvantage and he'll have to play better than his opponent just to get on even ground.
@BluemoonSC: They can close it if they want. At this point I don't think the discussion is particularly heated or anything, so I don't really see the problem, but if you don't think the discussion is productive any more you don't have to keep contributing. Thanks for your contributions so far, anyway, and sorry again for getting a bit more hostile than I meant to.
@Jinorazi: I guess I was unclear. Let me clarify:
The 1 rax fe vs. oracle example was just a response to you claiming that openings don't matter very much, particularly on low levels. In TvP the opening determines whether you can defend the numerous cheeses Protoss throws at you, and that's a majority of what happens, at least in my experience coming back to the game and fighting through gold and platinum league. And to be clear, that example was from HotS. Yes, you can scout the Protoss to figure out if he's going oracle, but not until you've already had to decide whether to open gasless or not.
To justify the term advantage, I just need to refer you an argument from a while back in the thread. If I queue on ladder and go into a TvT, we're on even ground. If instead I queue on ladder as random, roll T, and get placed in the same TvT, I have an advantage over the previous situation. The game isn't just 'different,' because the only differences are things that hurt him and help me. Do I have to worry about proxy marauder? Nope! Does he? You betcha. As a matter of fact even has to worry about proxy gate and early pool, too, until he scouts. Can I go for a gas first into 1-base banshee build (an extremely standard build in TvT)? Sure! Can he? Not unless he wants to find himself 1-basing against Zerg, which is usually a losing prospect.
Maybe the advantage is small in some matchups, but it isn't just 'different play.' I love different play! I like going for crazy builds that throw the game off its tracks and send us in a whole different direction. My standard TvZ for a very long time involved an engi bay hatch block. But throwing someone off their normal play is great if you actually did something to force it, or if something crazy happened and you're both forced off of normal play. But you didn't do anything to throw them off, and you're not equally thrown off. They just start with that disadvantage already in play, and they have to try to make it up somehow.
@Pursuit_: It's true, there's a whole mind game that goes into whether or not the random player cheeses. In my experience they still usually just do, because even if you know they're going to do some gimmicky cheese you have to figure out which cheese to defend against. I'm surprised you used WoL PvZ as an example though. Yeah, the Protoss has to go gateway first, and most people think that automatically put him behind. A gateway first expands too slowly to stay competitive in WoL, or else you expand quickly and can't defend it. Z's advantage isn't just getting to go hatch first, that was possible even with FFE (you just had to be good at defending cannon rushes with workers). Z's advantage was that by disallowing his opponent's safe economic opening, he forces his opponent to either play safe and fall behind, or play greedy and risk straight-up dying. He's having to flip a coin, but even if he wins the coin flip he's on even ground, not ahead. If you want to force someone off their standard build order, just do a non-standard build order yourself so they have to react.
I play random instead of dice roll because I want those sweet portraits. When I play, I try to write my race in chat at the beginning. Of course some people don't believe you, but at that point, who cares? If you don't let them know, you're not really playing the game.
Historically, the matchups have been drastically altered when one is playing against a random player whose race is unknown: In WoL/Hots, Protoss can't forge FE against a random who rolls zerg, Zerg has to risk photon cannons if they go hatchery first, and terran has to cut hellions vs zerg, and must go bio in tvt. People say to scout, but with the 6 worker start, there's no way you can scout early enough without disrupting your economy significantly, if you want to know in time for these build order decisions.
Now, some argue that it's harder to play all three races. This is true. But firstly, the game shouldn't compensate for this choice of yours by distorting the way it opens. Secondly, this argument is incoherent in context of sc2's matchmaking. You'll be competing against players whose skill is considered to be similar to yours, which is the goal of competitive games. No matter how good or bad they are, they'll still be going 50/50 (unless they're at the very top or bottom of the skill ladder, in which case they are irrelevant to this discussion anyway).
Now of course, this distortion could change in Lotv. Already, I feel like you can scout earlier because of the changed start. But a lot of cheeses also hit a lot faster because of that start, meaning the hidden race advantage that we're discussing is even stronger. It'll take more time to determine if this change is needed, but even if it's not required, there's no harm in implementing it.
On August 22 2015 02:05 Ignorant prodigy wrote: lol + Show Spoiler +
My standard TvZ for a very long time involved an engi bay hatch block.
and there we finally have it
Got something to say? Wanna enlighten me as to why engi bay block is bad? Because I kept doing it just to find out, and I never did find a Zerg response that seemed to put me behind if I played it right (aside from maybe a few blind cheeses like a 1 base roach rush; 6 pool and 10 pool went pretty well for me).
More info, to not derail the thread too much: link
As you can tell from the maps I talk about in that blog, it was a long time ago
Edit: On the subject of cheesing randoms on ladder, a lot of people just leave the game against random anyway because they don't want to bother with it. Have you tried instead just doing a race specific cheese anyway? I sometimes just to a blind proxy marauder. If they turn out to be P or Z I have to awkwardly go for reapers instead and try to pull it back, but I don't think I've hit a random player yet that can defend it as T. They're too used to not having to deal with that kind of thing.
On August 22 2015 00:26 BluemoonSC wrote: i think the mods need to consider closing this thread. at this point you're just arguing around in circles, expressing your viewpoint and it's clear that no one is going to change your mind.
This whole discussion is based on the assumption, that scouting comes too late in Legacy. I don't agree with this. If you scout ASAP, you arrive at his base before you would in HotS with normal scout timing, comparatively. Consequently, random advantage is less of a problem than it is in HotS. And it really is not a problem in HotS. This discussion is moot, in my opinion.
On August 22 2015 20:27 MyrionSC wrote: This whole discussion is based on the assumption, that scouting comes too late in Legacy. I don't agree with this. If you scout ASAP, you arrive at his base before you would in HotS with normal scout timing, comparatively. Consequently, random advantage is less of a problem than it is in HotS. And it really is not a problem in HotS. This discussion is moot, in my opinion.
The best part is you're only sacrificing 1/12 workers vs 1/9 workers!
I mean aRyuujin kind of summed it up perfectly. More qualified people than me have expressed how it can have an impact in LotV (see ZeromuS in this thread). And aRyuujin notes that both scouting and most timings are faster in LotV, so it's hard to say at this point whether random advantage will be stronger or weaker.
I've been accused in talking in circles, but it's hard not to when you're just facing the same arguments over and over again. For instance, no one has answered yet, what's wrong with the following solution:
-give each race for each ladder account a separate mmr -take away random advantage
In this case the disadvantage of being random is removed, because even if you're bad with one race you'll only be matched with people at your same skill level with that race.
im curious, are people really good with one race is oblivious with the other two? i'd imagine any enthusiastic player has one best race and the other two not as good and nothing like diamond with one and gold with other two, only different range in diamond if you will and not a whole leagues different.
reason why i come back to my argument saying mechanics play a bigger role to win you games, not your opening build order. because if your mechanics are good, you can easily adapt using other two races.
On August 23 2015 01:37 ChristianS wrote: I mean aRyuujin kind of summed it up perfectly. More qualified people than me have expressed how it can have an impact in LotV (see ZeromuS in this thread). And aRyuujin notes that both scouting and most timings are faster in LotV, so it's hard to say at this point whether random advantage will be stronger or weaker.
I've been accused in talking in circles, but it's hard not to when you're just facing the same arguments over and over again. For instance, no one has answered yet, what's wrong with the following solution:
-give each race for each ladder account a separate mmr -take away random advantage
In this case the disadvantage of being random is removed, because even if you're bad with one race you'll only be matched with people at your same skill level with that race.
you can't even say for sure there's a problem but you have a solution?
blizzard clearly like it this way.. this is not a new "issue"
On August 23 2015 02:03 jinorazi wrote: im curious, are people really good with one race is oblivious with the other two? i'd imagine any enthusiastic player has one best race and the other two not as good and nothing like diamond with one and gold with other two, only different range in diamond if you will and not a whole leagues different.
reason why i come back to my argument saying mechanics play a bigger role to win you games, not your opening build order. because if your mechanics are good, you can easily adapt using other two races.
Then your mmr for different races will be similar! I know my Protoss is waaaay worse then my Terran though.
@ignorant prodigy: that they haven't changed it in a long time doesn't mean they're happy with it. How'd that work out for the colossus or macro mechanics?
On August 23 2015 02:03 jinorazi wrote: im curious, are people really good with one race is oblivious with the other two? i'd imagine any enthusiastic player has one best race and the other two not as good and nothing like diamond with one and gold with other two, only different range in diamond if you will and not a whole leagues different.
reason why i come back to my argument saying mechanics play a bigger role to win you games, not your opening build order. because if your mechanics are good, you can easily adapt using other two races.
Yes and no. I feel like there's an emphasis on micro and decision making right now in most matchups, less on macro especially with the new patch.
People keep saying randoms have to learn 9 matchups like none of them are connected at all. I play protoss, and have used T and Z to beat other people playing protoss, with little practice actually playing the races. My first win in ZvP i was in diamond(with 100% of my ladder games as toss) and the protoss was masters.
It is true that learning both sides of a MU is harder than learning one, but trying to say it like there is 9 unrelated MU's is just not true. I think you playing as a X, then playing vs X, gives you a better understanding of any race in the long run.
On August 20 2015 16:34 MoreFaSho wrote: You claim that a player playing random has some kind of advantage yet 0 professional players who spend countless hours grinding out every improvement they can have decided to play random even though quite a few are more than proficient with the other races. I think this is relatively strong evidence against your claim.
I claim that if a player were to queue as random and wind up in a TvT, he would have a better chance of winning than if he had queued as Terran and wound up in the same TvT. The situations are identical except that in the former case, his opponent has less information. That's the random advantage I'm talking about.
Do you honestly believe that advantage doesn't exist?
Okay, but there's also no evidence that it needs to be fixed either. Let's say you could queue up in a mode where MBS, automine, and control groups larger than 12 were all turned off. In exchange your units built 5% faster. This would be be "unfair" but completely symmetrical.
By the way, the original arguments that this didn't apply in WoL and matters a ton now don't really hold water. Just think about ZvR on pretty much any early map.
ZvP and ZvZ were both pool before hatch matchups and pool before hatch was basically an auto-loss in ZvT against a strong build. If anything speeding up the economy makes it easier. The proprotional sacrifice of scouting is much lower and the extreme deviations weren't possible.
ZvZ: no more six pool makes it signicantly safer to hatch first. Same with ZvP Hatch first (especially since there's no risk of it getting blocked).
Early game scouting was most important for hard deviation cheeses which are less powerful now because econ approaches sacrifice less. Just imagine in WoL if you could guarantee that every game your opponent would go up to at least 12 workers, that reduces the early game options it doesn't increase it.
By the way I think the pro player argument totally matters. It would be awesome if some day there were a Random Bonjwa, but it'll never happen if you remove any advantage from being random at all.
People that play Random will argue to the death that... there is no advantage... and even if there was... they deserve it bc its so much more difficult to play all three races.... but the truth of the matter is.... if the vast majority of players could pick bt playing random and never playing random they would opt for the latter. Especially on big maps or non mirror matchups where the early build can change drastically depending on what race you're against....... Remove random.... if you want to be surprised by what race you're playing... maybe you can just close your eyes and click all over the screen till u hear the sound that means searching for a game....
On August 26 2015 12:22 MoreFaSho wrote: By the way I think the pro player argument totally matters. It would be awesome if some day there were a Random Bonjwa, but it'll never happen if you remove any advantage from being random at all.
Most of the players here are not even on the level to understand all the small hints pro players see and according to them they do their shortcuts in builds. The argument is OK for the top level of SC2, which means less than 1 % of players. What about the rest 99 %?
On August 20 2015 16:34 MoreFaSho wrote: You claim that a player playing random has some kind of advantage yet 0 professional players who spend countless hours grinding out every improvement they can have decided to play random even though quite a few are more than proficient with the other races. I think this is relatively strong evidence against your claim.
I claim that if a player were to queue as random and wind up in a TvT, he would have a better chance of winning than if he had queued as Terran and wound up in the same TvT. The situations are identical except that in the former case, his opponent has less information. That's the random advantage I'm talking about.
Do you honestly believe that advantage doesn't exist?
Okay, but there's also no evidence that it needs to be fixed either. Let's say you could queue up in a mode where MBS, automine, and control groups larger than 12 were all turned off. In exchange your units built 5% faster. This would be be "unfair" but completely symmetrical.
By the way, the original arguments that this didn't apply in WoL and matters a ton now don't really hold water. Just think about ZvR on pretty much any early map.
ZvP and ZvZ were both pool before hatch matchups and pool before hatch was basically an auto-loss in ZvT against a strong build. If anything speeding up the economy makes it easier. The proprotional sacrifice of scouting is much lower and the extreme deviations weren't possible.
ZvZ: no more six pool makes it signicantly safer to hatch first. Same with ZvP Hatch first (especially since there's no risk of it getting blocked).
Early game scouting was most important for hard deviation cheeses which are less powerful now because econ approaches sacrifice less. Just imagine in WoL if you could guarantee that every game your opponent would go up to at least 12 workers, that reduces the early game options it doesn't increase it.
Addressing your points in no particular order:
-I didn't argue that this didn't apply in WoL. The most drastic example of random advantage is WoL PvR, where PvZ you were behind without FFE and PvP or PvT you died if you FFE.
-Turning off MBS, automine, and unlimited unit selection isn't a good comparison. It's no harder for a random player who rolls a given race to play that race than it is for someone who selected it. Even if the comparison were apt, I think most people would think that a feature in which you could turn off MBS, automine, and unlimited unit selection for an in-game advantage would be bad, and shouldn't be in the game.
-You can guarantee that your opponent will go to 12 workers but you can't scout until 12 workers either. Meaning the advantage now comes in what decisions you make from 12 workers on before you can know your opponent's race. In WoL or HotS I could scout early enough and still do a race-specific build that involved early gas, while doing a gasless build against another race. In LotV that is no longer possible.
-There will never be a Random Bonjwa anyway, so if that's your reason for keeping the advantage around we might as well remove it.
Crown77 brings up a point worth mentioning. Suppose that somewhere in an options menu there were a box that, when checked, made it so you never hit random opponents (or maybe only hit random opponents if they checked the corresponding box that let their opponent see their race). Honestly, how many people do you think would leave the box unchecked?
It's really hard to say that anyone has an early game advantage when LOTV builds are still in beta.
I think my biggest objection to not revealing the random player's race is that I actually want people to be forced to worker scout more (even double worker scouting on 4 player maps). This is also why I would advocate neither player knowing the other's race on ladder :D
I can't remember the last time I saw a random player even playing in anything that was big enough to be streamed...
I play Random. I do it because I think it's cool, and because it gives me a small advantage. There. You happy? I play Random and admit to doing it because it's (very slightly) overpowered.
I've been asking random players for their race since 2011. It's just annoying as hell to play against a random on 4 player maps as protoss. No matter how early you scout, you can never be sure to get the necessary information to adjust your build in time. You can't open forge or nexus first (they might be terran or protoss), but that leaves you massively behind if they spawned as zerg -> random zerg gets away with blind 3 hatch before pool on 4p maps every time against protoss.
You can't account for all the possible cheeses blindly (there is no catch-all build that, without scouting, defends both a 10gate 3 gate all in (or later PvP all ins), a one base terran build, be it a hellion drop or 2rax, or zerg all ins like a 7 roach all in, speedling all in or early pool). You 100% have to gamble and if your opponent is smart enough about it, they will ALWAYS have a head start against you. That makes PvR absolutely no fun to play.
I would love to see both races shown at the start. Yes, random players have to learn all three races. But I think separate MMR is a much better solution than having people gamble on openings blindly.
On August 20 2015 06:41 Vindicare605 wrote: You have 12 workers to start with. Just sacrifice one to find out what race you're up against as soon as the game starts. Honestly the random advantage is diminished in LoTV just due to the fact you start with so many workers to scout with. It's not as crippling to a build order to lose one of 12 workers as it is to lose 1 of 6.
There's no excuse to die to those kinds of all ins. You have scouts, use them. All of this Random advantage bullshit is from people that simply don't like the fact that they have to scout before starting their own build order. Just play safe. If you can't win a particular match up against someone with less experience at it than you (Assuming equal skill the Random player will always have played whatever match up it is less than you have) while playing safe then that's your own fault.
There doesn't need to be any kind of punishment towards Random players. It's already punishing enough trying to keep up with 9 different metagames.
On a 4 player map in LotV your scout may arrive too late to the random players base. So, there's that. Double scouting would be way too much to ask from the players.
I'm not sure why anyone would like to give the all-inners a random advantage. It promotes the use of random for cheese and impacts the community's view of random players. Ie. people are very rude if you don't announce your race, you get cheesed by some half assed all ins slightly more because people are annoyed to play against random etc.
The punishment by having to keep up with 9 different match ups is a myth. This has an effect only in the very highest and lowest ends of the gameplay. Everywhere else you will be matched up against a player who is around the same level with your effective skill. If you are performing worse because there are more match ups to learn you will be matched up against weaker players.
Considering Starcraft as six games, though, the question is unequivocal. If a less skilled PvPer has a greater chance of winning than his more skilled opponent because he chose random, that PvP is imbalanced.
I don't agree with this statement at all.
Let's say skill can somehow be measured with a number, from 1 to 100. If there's a Protoss and his skill in PvP, PvT and PvZ are all 60. In other matchups his skill is 15. So his average skill across all 9 matchups is 30. He's playing a random player who rolled P, who has a skill 55 in all 9 matchups, and hence an average skill of 55.
I would argue that the advantage that the Random player in PvP gets by virtue of playing random (perhaps enough to win) is justified because he has a higher overall skill. To get to 55 skill in 9 matchups takes more practice than getting to 60 in only 3. So the Random player deserves to win, even though his PvP skill is lower, because he has practiced the game more overall: he isn't the better PvP player, but he is the better Starcraft player.
The reason no Randoms are in GSL is that the advantage you get from your race being hidden does not outweigh the advantage of practicing only 3 matchups rather than 9. The fact no Random players are in GSL specifically proves unequivocally that there is not an unfair imbalance in favor of the random player. The Random advantage must already be outweighed by his average matchup skill deficit.
If we were to see a Random reach code S it would be really exciting - removing the tiny information advantage they get for making that choice would make that small chance impossible.
Let me be clear: I don't play Random, and I hate playing against Random. I get frustrated when I play a safe "catch-all" build on a 4 player map until I scout my opponent's race, and then when I find he's played greedy and has an advantage I let out a big sigh. But if I can't overcome that build order advantage due to my higher skill in this matchup, then he deserves to win. I appreciate that to get that build order advantage and win because of it, he will have had to practice a lot more than me, so although if I knew his race I would win, he won fair and square because he worked hard for that Random advantage.
If you lose to a random player, and you are not one, chances are he or she is a better Starcraft player overall than you.
Personally, I think the race of random should be shown at the start of the game.
The reason being that the game starts with a set of rules upon which we all agreed as soon as we clicked to play a game. Those rules being that everyone starts with equal amount of information and to win one must destroy all the opponents buildings.
Choosing random is a self-applied handicap. Why should it affect the other person? That would be like me choosing to play with only the mouse and as a compensation there is no fog-of-war for me. Or the other player's units would sometimes uncontrolably start to dance.
At least that is how I see it.
P.S. - The handicap part comes from the fact most Random players say that playing Random is harder because they must learn 6 matchups.
It depends if we value more accuracy of MMR as indicator of average skill, or if we want (or not want) games featuring opponent race uncertainty. So perhaps both options are good.
Artificially inflated random player MMR doesn't mean anything. It overestimates his skill in each matchup and it fails very hard to give any idea how his skill/knowledge encompass whole game. So since it's completely wrong, it might be better to have normal MMR without giving random player artificial advantage. That way it at least represent average skill in all matchups.
What you forgot to say is that's it's easier to go from let's say 30 to 50 in your scale than 50 to 70. The better you are with a race, the harder it is to progress. Overall, unless you're practicing a ton, you'll probably have better results going random and cheese almost every time than stick to one race and play more or less standard.
But it doesn't matter anyway. It's just frustrating to play against random because you can't use your usual builds as you may be screwed by picking up the wrong one.
Considering Starcraft as six games, though, the question is unequivocal. If a less skilled PvPer has a greater chance of winning than his more skilled opponent because he chose random, that PvP is imbalanced.
I don't agree with this statement at all.
Let's say skill can somehow be measured with a number, from 1 to 100. If there's a Protoss and his skill in PvP, PvT and PvZ are all 60. In other matchups his skill is 15. So his average skill across all 9 matchups is 30. He's playing a random player who rolled P, who has a skill 55 in all 9 matchups, and hence an average skill of 55.
I would argue that the advantage that the Random player in PvP gets by virtue of playing random (perhaps enough to win) is justified because he has a higher overall skill. To get to 55 skill in 9 matchups takes more practice than getting to 60 in only 3. So the Random player deserves to win, even though his PvP skill is lower, because he has practiced the game more overall: he isn't the better PvP player, but he is the better Starcraft player.
The reason no Randoms are in GSL is that the advantage you get from your race being hidden does not outweigh the advantage of practicing only 3 matchups rather than 9. The fact no Random players are in GSL specifically proves unequivocally that there is not an unfair imbalance in favor of the random player. The Random advantage must already be outweighed by his average matchup skill deficit.
If we were to see a Random reach code S it would be really exciting - removing the tiny information advantage they get for making that choice would make that small chance impossible.
Let me be clear: I don't play Random, and I hate playing against Random. I get frustrated when I play a safe "catch-all" build on a 4 player map until I scout my opponent's race, and then when I find he's played greedy and has an advantage I let out a big sigh. But if I can't overcome that build order advantage due to my higher skill in this matchup, then he deserves to win. I appreciate that to get that build order advantage and win because of it, he will have had to practice a lot more than me, so although if I knew his race I would win, he won fair and square because he worked hard for that Random advantage.
If you lose to a random player, and you are not one, chances are he or she is a better Starcraft player overall than you.
But the point is that (on your scale) the one player made decisions in accordance with a skill of 60 in PvP. The other made decisions in accordance with a skill of 55. And despite making worse decisions, he wins more often. His skill in, say, TvZ ought to be irrelevant to his PvP. True, it can be hard to keep up TvZ and PvP at the same time, but that just points to another reason this can be kind of broken – a random player will frequently have dramatically different skill levels with different races. So if he's great with P, okay with T, and terrible with Z, then all his PvX games he'll win by a stupid margin because his "true" skill there is much higher than his MMR; he'll lose all his Z games by a stupid margin because he's nowhere near as good in ZvX as his MMR gives him credit for; and only his TvX games will be at all competitive. This is dumb for a few reasons – first, it seems stupid for the outcome of the game to be determined more than anything else by Blizzard's RNG at the start of the match. Second, it hurts the random player's practice, because if you play against people way better or way worse than you, it's hard to improve. And third, in two out of three games the MMR system has failed to do what it's designed to do: match similarly skilled players together.
Compare with a system in which race is displayed, but race MMRs are different. Then if he's a 55 in PvX, he'll get matched with other players near 55 when he rolls Protoss. If his TvX is a 30, he won' have to be matched with 55 level players as T and he won't have to be matched against 30-level players as P. What's bad about this system?
there is a reason why random players have never won anything and thats because its just too hard to play at the same level with all 3 races. leave random as it is
On August 28 2015 21:07 Haighstrom wrote: The fact no Random players are in GSL specifically proves unequivocally that there is not an unfair imbalance in favor of the random player. The Random advantage must already be outweighed by his average matchup skill deficit.
Actually, No I don't think so. It proves that Starcraft has such a high skill cap that it's impossible to play all the races on the highest skill level at the same time. If someone could play all three races on the same level as Maru plays Terran he would be enjoying an advantage over the other pro players. Now the advantage created by random is negated because the time investment required to be pro is far too much to multiply it by three.
The problem here lies with the fact that when ladder matches you with another player you and your opponent are around the same general skill level. Hence the advantage enjoyed by the random players is considerably larger in an casual environment than in the high end tournaments where all the skills are honed to the perfection. The random player and the mono race player can have similar amount of experience in X vs Y.
There's this 20-60-20 theory in DotA 2. It goes like this.
1. In 20% of your games, your teammates are so good and/or your opponents so bad that you will most likely win. 2. In 20% of your games, your teammates are so bad and/or your opponents so good that you will most likely lose. 3. In 60% of your games, the teams are balanced and it could go either way. These are the games that you need to play your best at because your skill actually makes a difference.
How often do you face Random players on the ladder? Is it higher than the 20% of games in DotA where your teammates are shit and you can't possibly win? I seriously doubt that, as I rarely encounter fellow Random players on the ladder. Random does provide an advantage, but not enough in the long run.
Suppose you lost to a lesser-skilled Random player who got his best race thanks to the RNG gods. How many times does this happen to you? How many times have you roflstomped a Random player who got his worst race in the die roll? And how many times have you had an even match against a Random player?
On August 29 2015 01:21 Wrathsc2 wrote: there is a reason why random players have never won anything and thats because its just too hard to play at the same level with all 3 races. leave random as it is
As random and randompicker player.
Playing ladder as random doesn't require much at all to play efficiently (macro games.) If you generally play 3+hours a day your skills translate incredibly well already. You just basically have to know meta and timings for each MU. What people don't understand is that when you play as both races from certain MU you do get extra benefit from that. My PvZ was precisily fucking good because of that imo.
The real con of playing random comes in tournaments. You can't practice efficiently enough builds for EVERY race. I guess some pro could do it at lower megatier level but limiting yourself as pro is silly.
on topic: I hope they change something because if game "starts" faster than before the earlier wol/hots adventage becomes just ridiculous.
On August 29 2015 05:21 Eternal Dalek wrote: There's this 20-60-20 theory in DotA 2. It goes like this.
1. In 20% of your games, your teammates are so good and/or your opponents so bad that you will most likely win. 2. In 20% of your games, your teammates are so bad and/or your opponents so good that you will most likely lose. 3. In 60% of your games, the teams are balanced and it could go either way. These are the games that you need to play your best at because your skill actually makes a difference.
How often do you face Random players on the ladder? Is it higher than the 20% of games in DotA where your teammates are shit and you can't possibly win? I seriously doubt that, as I rarely encounter fellow Random players on the ladder. Random does provide an advantage, but not enough in the long run.
Suppose you lost to a lesser-skilled Random player who got his best race thanks to the RNG gods. How many times does this happen to you? How many times have you roflstomped a Random player who got his worst race in the die roll? And how many times have you had an even match against a Random player?
DotA 2 is a team game. Inevitably you have to accept that some wins or losses will not hinge on your skill because of that fact. Starcraft 2, as it's usually played, is not, and therefore does not need to accept a circumstance where in 40% of games you can't really impact the outcome of the game.
Random players are rare, and as a result, the impact is fairly small on the ladder at all. But why should it exist at all? If it were possible, wouldn't DotA 2 be better off with a 0-100-0 distribution? Because this circumstance with random can easily be changed.
To reiterate for WrathSC2 and others: it's true, the issue doesn't apply at the highest level of play, because nobody has been able to play random there. That is to say, you will still win more by practicing one race thoroughly than by trying to learn all three races and capitalize on random advantage. That doesn't mean this circumstance is good though. That was still true in WoL, even when a good random player should be able to get an automatic advantage against all Protoss. That situation was broken, and the fact that random was still too taxing for anybody to win at the top level with it didn't change that.
On August 29 2015 05:21 Eternal Dalek wrote: There's this 20-60-20 theory in DotA 2. It goes like this.
1. In 20% of your games, your teammates are so good and/or your opponents so bad that you will most likely win. 2. In 20% of your games, your teammates are so bad and/or your opponents so good that you will most likely lose. 3. In 60% of your games, the teams are balanced and it could go either way. These are the games that you need to play your best at because your skill actually makes a difference.
How often do you face Random players on the ladder? Is it higher than the 20% of games in DotA where your teammates are shit and you can't possibly win? I seriously doubt that, as I rarely encounter fellow Random players on the ladder. Random does provide an advantage, but not enough in the long run.
Suppose you lost to a lesser-skilled Random player who got his best race thanks to the RNG gods. How many times does this happen to you? How many times have you roflstomped a Random player who got his worst race in the die roll? And how many times have you had an even match against a Random player?
DotA 2 is a team game. Inevitably you have to accept that some wins or losses will not hinge on your skill because of that fact. Starcraft 2, as it's usually played, is not, and therefore does not need to accept a circumstance where in 40% of games you can't really impact the outcome of the game.
Random players are rare, and as a result, the impact is fairly small on the ladder at all. But why should it exist at all? If it were possible, wouldn't DotA 2 be better off with a 0-100-0 distribution? Because this circumstance with random can easily be changed.
To reiterate for WrathSC2 and others: it's true, the issue doesn't apply at the highest level of play, because nobody has been able to play random there. That is to say, you will still win more by practicing one race thoroughly than by trying to learn all three races and capitalize on random advantage. That doesn't mean this circumstance is good though. That was still true in WoL, even when a good random player should be able to get an automatic advantage against all Protoss. That situation was broken, and the fact that random was still too taxing for anybody to win at the top level with it didn't change that.
This is like those people trying to combat voter fraud in the USA. Does voter fraud exist in the USA? Technically, yes, but the percentage is so tiny that most of the proposed and implemented changes actually hinder real voters much more than they prevent fraud.
And you can't really have 0-100-0 in SC2 either, because there are some aspects of randomness to the game. How many times have you seen pro games getting decided because the scout stops just short of a hidden tech building? How many times have you see scouts getting sent to the wrong starting location? What about mismicros or other mistakes like double tech buildings? And what about outside factors like jet lag, hunter, illness, power loss, and other stuff you can't possibly counter with skill? The point is, even in SC2, there are things that are simply out of your control.
And you know what, you can at least feel proud that you pick a specific race compared to us Random folks who do it for the early game advantage. Morale is a real thing, even in a 1v1 game like SC2.
On August 29 2015 05:21 Eternal Dalek wrote: There's this 20-60-20 theory in DotA 2. It goes like this.
1. In 20% of your games, your teammates are so good and/or your opponents so bad that you will most likely win. 2. In 20% of your games, your teammates are so bad and/or your opponents so good that you will most likely lose. 3. In 60% of your games, the teams are balanced and it could go either way. These are the games that you need to play your best at because your skill actually makes a difference.
How often do you face Random players on the ladder? Is it higher than the 20% of games in DotA where your teammates are shit and you can't possibly win? I seriously doubt that, as I rarely encounter fellow Random players on the ladder. Random does provide an advantage, but not enough in the long run.
Suppose you lost to a lesser-skilled Random player who got his best race thanks to the RNG gods. How many times does this happen to you? How many times have you roflstomped a Random player who got his worst race in the die roll? And how many times have you had an even match against a Random player?
DotA 2 is a team game. Inevitably you have to accept that some wins or losses will not hinge on your skill because of that fact. Starcraft 2, as it's usually played, is not, and therefore does not need to accept a circumstance where in 40% of games you can't really impact the outcome of the game.
Random players are rare, and as a result, the impact is fairly small on the ladder at all. But why should it exist at all? If it were possible, wouldn't DotA 2 be better off with a 0-100-0 distribution? Because this circumstance with random can easily be changed.
To reiterate for WrathSC2 and others: it's true, the issue doesn't apply at the highest level of play, because nobody has been able to play random there. That is to say, you will still win more by practicing one race thoroughly than by trying to learn all three races and capitalize on random advantage. That doesn't mean this circumstance is good though. That was still true in WoL, even when a good random player should be able to get an automatic advantage against all Protoss. That situation was broken, and the fact that random was still too taxing for anybody to win at the top level with it didn't change that.
This is like those people trying to combat voter fraud in the USA. Does voter fraud exist in the USA? Technically, yes, but the percentage is so tiny that most of the proposed and implemented changes actually hinder real voters much more than they prevent fraud.
And you can't really have 0-100-0 in SC2 either, because there are some aspects of randomness to the game. How many times have you seen pro games getting decided because the scout stops just short of a hidden tech building? How many times have you see scouts getting sent to the wrong starting location? What about mismicros or other mistakes like double tech buildings? And what about outside factors like jet lag, hunter, illness, power loss, and other stuff you can't possibly counter with skill? The point is, even in SC2, there are things that are simply out of your control.
And you know what, you can at least feel proud that you pick a specific race compared to us Random folks who do it for the early game advantage. Morale is a real thing, even in a 1v1 game like SC2.
Unlike the voter fraud case, the suggested change does not hinder ordinary players. The only reason you're right that the problem is rare is because there aren't very many random players, and this change only impacts those rare cases. Whereas the voter fraud people generally want everyone to have to bring a driver's license or something, even though only a few people will actually commit fraud (if any).
Yes, there are other random aspects to the game. Many of those you mentioned either aren't actually randomness (stopping just short of scouting the hidden tech building isn't random, it means that player wasn't thorough enough in their scouting that game), or are undesirable and we would remove them if we could. If we could somehow eliminate jet lag as a factor in SC2, I think most people would like that – there's just no obvious way to do so. Random advantage has a clear and easy solution that would take very little dev time to change (it easily might just be a matter of changing which variable the game reads out when it tells the opponent's race).
My pride has nothing to do with it. I think random players should be very proud for playing all three races – that's very hard, and kudos for doing it. But I don't think just because you did a hard thing, you deserve an in-game advantage against opponents who haven't. That's one of the most important things separating SC2 from something like WoW, where because you've raided such and such dungeon over and over again you're rewarded with gear that (all skill aside) will make you stronger than players who haven't done the same. In SC2, both players should start out on even footing, and only the decisions you make in that match should put you ahead or behind.
As an aside, I've added the suggestion to have separate MMRs for each race to the OP. I think that suggestion would give random players a much easier time on ladder, and make it a lot easier in general for people to learn off-races. Paired with the removal of random advantage, I think that would handle SC2's 3-race, 6-matchup system much better.
On August 28 2015 21:07 Haighstrom wrote: The fact no Random players are in GSL specifically proves unequivocally that there is not an unfair imbalance in favor of the random player. The Random advantage must already be outweighed by his average matchup skill deficit.
The problem here lies with the fact that when ladder matches you with another player you and your opponent are around the same general skill level. Hence the advantage enjoyed by the random players is considerably larger in an casual environment than in the high end tournaments where all the skills are honed to the perfection.
But the random player gets to where he is with this 'advantage' of his race not being revealed. Relatively he has no advantage at all because you're of equivalent skill after all advantages for both players are taken into account.
This is like saying Race A is better in 3 ways but worse in 1 than Race B, but because on ladder only players of equivalent skill play eachother, Race B's advantage is greater than the advantages of Race A. It doesn't work like that, sorry.
On August 28 2015 21:07 Haighstrom wrote: The fact no Random players are in GSL specifically proves unequivocally that there is not an unfair imbalance in favor of the random player. The Random advantage must already be outweighed by his average matchup skill deficit.
The problem here lies with the fact that when ladder matches you with another player you and your opponent are around the same general skill level. Hence the advantage enjoyed by the random players is considerably larger in an casual environment than in the high end tournaments where all the skills are honed to the perfection.
But the random player gets to where he is with this 'advantage' of his race not being revealed. Relatively he has no advantage at all because you're of equivalent skill after all advantages for both players are taken into account.
This is like saying Race A is better in 3 ways but worse in 1 than Race B, but because on ladder only players of equivalent skill play eachother, Race B's advantage is greater than the advantages of Race A. It doesn't work like that, sorry.
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?
This is like those people trying to combat voter fraud in the USA. Does voter fraud exist in the USA? Technically, yes, but the percentage is so tiny that most of the proposed and implemented changes actually hinder real voters much more than they prevent fraud.
What the actual uh, what's the word again. Bunny. Yeah. Anyways, it's pretty god damn standard in European countries that you need a freaking ID to vote "Bringing an ID is hindering real voters?". I will never understand the USA. Anyway, if someone wants to update my knowledge of the situation do that by PM please.
Back to the actual topic. Like it was said removing random from the start screen does not hinder the game play for anyone.
Further more, I like how majority of random players announce their race. Kinda cool, but then there's that one asshole who announces a wrong race and picks up a free win. ;<
I just can't see how random is making the gameplay experience better for majority of players. Can someone explain me in clear words why not knowing opponents race in tiny amount of games is making the game more fun for majority of the players? I think number one here is having fun. Random actively annoys people. I think that's the best argument for removing random.
This is like those people trying to combat voter fraud in the USA. Does voter fraud exist in the USA? Technically, yes, but the percentage is so tiny that most of the proposed and implemented changes actually hinder real voters much more than they prevent fraud.
What the actual uh, what's the word again. Bunny. Yeah. Anyways, it's pretty god damn standard in European countries that you need a freaking ID to vote "Bringing an ID is hindering real voters?". I will never understand the USA. Anyway, if someone wants to update my knowledge of the situation do that by PM please.
Back to the actual topic. Like it was said removing random from the start screen does not hinder the game play for anyone.
Further more, I like how majority of random players announce their race. Kinda cool, but then there's that one asshole who announces a wrong race and picks up a free win. ;<
I just can't see how random is making the gameplay experience better for majority of players. Can someone explain me in clear words why not knowing opponents race in tiny amount of games is making the game more fun for majority of the players? I think number one here is having fun. Random actively annoys people. I think that's the best argument for removing random.
Well I don't think I'm very qualified to answer your question, but iirc jinorazi and ocoini back on page 8 or so were arguing that they like the game to be less about rigid build orders. They play random, so they have to improvise quite a bit since they don't know all the races. Their opponents are forced to improvise because they can't do a race-specific build order. The result is that the game kind of goes off the rails, instead of going into something more standard. They think that's fun.
For my part I like the idea of forcing non-standard gameplay, but I think random advantage is a terrible way to do it. For one thing, the random player isn't even forced to play non-standard or improvise or anything, because they can see their opponent's race, so only their opponent is forced to improvise. Far better, I think, to have another option you can click to (kind of like you can click to unranked play instead of ranked) which hides both players' races from the start. Then you're actually forced to improvise somewhat, on both sides. But I think most people would be mad if that was just applied to ranked play generally, so it shouldn't be applied to the whole ladder.
I understand the argument is not yours, but it makes my head explode. Eh. I...
Okay, let's put this in words. That's certainly not how random works. People prepare one cookie cutter safe build for the XvsRandom match up and do that all eternity, because not knowing your opponents race actually limits your options instead of having more options (you need a catch all build and there's literally no point to figure out more than one catch all build due to the amount of randoms in the ladder).
Improvised gameplay is not born off 'not knowing what to do' but instead by choosing to play a style that differs from the others and making it work. At bronze to gold level you see a lot of improvision because nobody actually knows what to do, but this is not limited to playing random. Instead it's spread equally around all races. High level random players do not bring these "oh I can't play this game uh. let's do something" builds on the table. Cheese, and a few specific builds can exploit the fact that opponent does not know their race. (Early WoL TvR for example you needed to wall off in case opponent plays zerg, but that puts you at disadvantage against Voidray / Tank all ins). Not exactly my definition of interesting gameplay, let's randomize if I'm at disadvantage or not! Fun!
To certain extend Starcraft is always playing rock-paper-scissors on the build order advangtage, but at least nowadays people have a chance to scout what's coming. Random sometimes forces your hand into making a bad move because you do not have information you either should have in all games or in none.
The advantage becomes much larger in LotV because early game downtime has been reduced. Now nearly every matchup is likely to have deviations that would occur before the opponent can be scouted
Random imbalance is a problem at the moment because Random is the most popular race in LOTV, at least in Archon.
How often do you face Random players on the ladder? Is it higher than the 20% of games in DotA where your teammates are shit and you can't possibly win? I seriously doubt that, as I rarely encounter fellow Random players on the ladder.
I'm 50 games deep into LOTV archon in the last 4 days or so @ GM MMR and probably half of them were randoms - so yes, it's waaaaaaaay more than 20%. In WOL and HOTS it was way less, but with LOTV changes and the availability of archon mode (people don't really have weak races when there are two people behind the keyboard) it's much easier to abuse the Random advantage and a lot more people are doing it.
The advantage becomes much larger in LotV because early game downtime has been reduced. Now nearly every matchup is likely to have deviations that would occur before the opponent can be scouted
Random imbalance is a problem at the moment because Random is the most popular race in LOTV, at least in Archon.
How often do you face Random players on the ladder? Is it higher than the 20% of games in DotA where your teammates are shit and you can't possibly win? I seriously doubt that, as I rarely encounter fellow Random players on the ladder.
I'm 40 games deep into LOTV archon @ GM MMR and probably 20-24 of them were Randoms.
That's very interesting. Any idea off the top of your head about what the distribution is? It's crazy to me that a majority or even plurality of players would choose random consistently, although I guess in archon mode it might be less punishing to have to play all three races.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Racial imbalance has also been relevant since brood war but if you tell people to expect terran to win 1.5 games for every loss in a tournament against players of equal skill you'd be laughed out of the room. There was extensive effort to improve racial balance through specially tweaked and designed maps.
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.
If there's one thing that's frustrated me in this thread, it's people who just want to dismiss the issue, and/or seem upset with me for bringing it up. The game is in beta. What other time should this question be discussed? GGzerG, for instance: you're a GM level Zerg. That's awesome. But "just play better" is completely useless in this discussion. It doesn't have anything to do with the question of whether or not random advantage should exist. It just distracts from the issue, and instead tries to paint some narrative about how critics of random advantage are just whining because they had some bad experience losing to random.
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?
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.
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.
I play random and I literally don't even know what I want in terms of displaying my race. I don't even know what race to pick, so how am I supposed to pick an opinion on something much more nuanced than that? Please stop asking me such difficult questions.
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).
After 10 days of lotv gotta say that random is still like 80% win in mirror matchups. Especially in ZvZ. 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)
You think it would make the game "purer" to take an option which has been in the game from the start, yes? 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.
I do not want to deny Random players their identity or playing a race at random, but why not assign a race randomly to those who choose to have that and then, as mentioned in the post, show the race of the randoming player.
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
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.
Would this problem be exacerbated by playing very cheesy openings?
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.
the point is random advantage doesn't exist. Or at least it's far from compensating there disadvantages.
I can choose to play random for two main reason : 1. I want to play with the three races cause I think it's fun. In that case I don't care that my race is shown. But I don't either that it's not shown. 2. I want to play random cause random is fun in itself. Then I don't want my race to be shown.
Maybe some random players would desagree with me but I think those are the two main categories. If you display the race of the player, then there is no good side (competitively speaking) of playing random. As a competitive point of view, I would even go as far as to say random needs a buff. Maybe lotv is this. The point of my troll was, instead of considering random as a roll of dice, consider it as a choice of competition, as is the other races.
The idea for the MMR is good though, maybe the only think that makes sense in what you're saying.
And stop accusing other people to be favored against you because you lose, but you to good to lose so it's not your fault it's imbalanced. Just get better, really. Or quit every game against a random.
On September 11 2015 04:35 LDaVinci wrote: the point is random advantage doesn't exist. Or at least it's far from compensating there disadvantages.
I can choose to play random for two main reason : 1. I want to play with the three races cause I think it's fun. In that case I don't care that my race is shown. But I don't either that it's not shown. 2. I want to play random cause random is fun in itself. Then I don't want my race to be shown.
Maybe some random players would desagree with me but I think those are the two main categories. If you display the race of the player, then there is no good side (competitively speaking) of playing random. As a competitive point of view, I would even go as far as to say random needs a buff. Maybe lotv is this. The point of my troll was, instead of considering random as a roll of dice, consider it as a choice of competition, as is the other races.
The idea for the MMR is good though, maybe the only think that makes sense in what you're saying.
And stop accusing other people to be favored against you because you lose, but you to good to lose so it's not your fault it's imbalanced. Just get better, really. Or quit every game against a random.
Not-an-edit : haters gonna hate. Don't change bro
Random doesn't need to be a competitive strategy, which is why it's good that, on a high level, it isn't one. The strategies it would encourage, were it more popular in high-level competition, would be really obnoxious build-order wins that knock players out of tournaments because they lost a coin flip. The dynamic is, by nature, coin-flippy and random, so from a competitive design point of view, you don't want it to be strong or popular.
Why should it exist in the first place? If the argument is "random players generally like having an advantage," that's a worthless argument. Of course if one player is handed an advantage, they're usually going to like it, and the other player is going to dislike it.
For simplicity lets consider a mirror matchup – one player plays T, the other randomly rolled T. One player is better at TvT, the other one starts off knowing what matchup he's in. In this case Terran usually goes gas first TvT, but only the random player has the option to do that without the possibility finding himself in a gas first TvZ or TvP. So one player is better at TvT, the other player starts off with an information advantage, which he can translate into a build order advantage and try to win off that advantage.
Yes, there are advantages and disadvantages here, but the point is: one player's advantage is that he's better at TvT. The player that's better at TvT should win the TvT. In a competitive atmosphere the less skilled player shouldn't be given some handicap to compensate him for being less skilled. The whole point is that whoever plays better is supposed to win.
And for fuck's sake, how many times do I need to say it? This is not about my own personal experience playing against random. I've said plenty of times in the thread, my winrate against random isn't particularly bad. I don't even play Protoss, who easily has the worst vR matchup. This thread isn't about my specific experiences winning or losing to random players, it's a discussion thread for why random advantage should or should not be in the game.
So "just play better" is a complete red herring. It's just you trying to derail the discussion into "Is ChristianS just mad because he's not good at the game?" It doesn't matter if I'm good at the game, and whether random advantage should exist is a conversation worth having regardless of whether I am or not.
Side note: It's always funny to see someone say something stupid and/or offensive, get called on it, and then say "haha! I was just trolling! I got you, didn't I?" I wonder if they're only retconning the comment into a troll for public purposes, or if they actually convince themselves in their head that they didn't mean what they said.
No I meant to troll you, my entire first post is a troll. I'm not a 10 year old boy who doesn't know what he is talking about. But I'm convinced that you believe I meant what I said. You take this topic so personally it becomes funny. You say, it doesn't need to be a competitive strategy. And this would only bring cheeses. Well I dunno. Some suboptimal build could become interesting to play, even on high level. As a viewer, I guess I would like that quite much.
For the advantages and disadvantages, I completely disagree with you. Protoss has a huge advantages on having colossus, and Terrans have widow mines, and Zerg had swarm host (ok this one is a bad example). It's not because they have those advantages over the other races than the game is not fair. I also would love to have a range unit that overrange any other, or a burrow one that triggers itself, or whatever you want. I play Zerg so I'm of course biased on that. But give zerg hellbats/mines/medivac/(any Terran unit actually) and colossus/blink hydra they would be happy. Those race have advantages, ok but they also have disadvantages. You will say that this is ingame design and random is out of game design. True but the out of game advantages of random (the opponent doesn't know against what to play) is compensated by the out of game disadvantages. For a high level random player, doing only 9 cheeses is quite impossible. If a player only cheeses, he can surely go to GM but he won't go far in major tournaments, cause people will expect cheeses. So if a random player wants to win or at least go far in a tournament, he will have to work on his macro strat as well.
Now if you're talking about plat/diamond or even master ranking, I don't care. Those rank doesn't matter as a rank (I'm diamond btw). If a player as a small advantage it is compensated by is badness at the game (I mean compared to tournament winning skills). If it's what you're talking about, then just play some games, and enjoy. If you're not able to enjoy a loss from a player who do a unusual start, then don't play strategy games. I know what I'm talking about, as I'm a chess player also. Some of the games I enjoyed more were against better opponent (not much better I agree) doing sacrifices I didn't expect and creating great imbalance in the game (for example Tower versus 5-6 pawns). It's the same in SC2 for me, some games I lose but really enjoy them cause they are fun to play, intense force you to think outside of the meta (that someone else prepared for you cause you're too lazy to think by yourself)
Okay then, you're trolling. My mistake attempting to have a discussion with you. If you want responses to your points, I've responded to all of them at various times in the thread.
so random is the most popular race there. I'd say fairly confidently it's probably the most common i've hit in ~75 games of LOTV in the last couple of weeks, matching up with those numbers.
67.1% of players (just over two thirds) would be playing against the random advantage.
The popularity of random shouldn't really influence if it's alright for it to be imbalanced without a good reason - but if you're playing 1v1 in WOL/HOTS, you didn't have to change your strategy that much and you hit a random like one in every 15 games. It didn't affect many people very much, there wasn't need for an outcry against it because you could just leave those games or all-in and shrug them off.
Now it matters more for strategy, you have to play suboptimally into every matchup vs a random because you cannot scout before comitting and you'll hit random five times as often. That's not ok.
the point is random advantage doesn't exist. Or at least it's far from compensating there disadvantages.
Random has no disadvantage aside from user lacking skill/familiarity. Even if it did, that's on the user for selecting it. It's entirely consensual to play AS random - while playing AGAINST random is NOT an option - you cannot pick the race of your opponent.
Being able to see your opponents race while s/he cannot see yours is a rock solid advantage no matter how you try to spin it. You'll force your opponent to choose between suboptimal openings every game (probably safe/passive but not economically agressive) or take build order losses at random.
Hiding both races would be silly and make weird games that are unusable for practice against specific races, the very easy and obvious solution is to show a race on the loading screen or as you spawn.
Not only that, random advantage asymmetrically hurts races. There have been plenty of times in the past where 1-2 races get hurt way more than another for playing against random.
You don't really play your randomed race worse than your other respective players of said race if you have practiced your strategy beforehand. Your disadventage gets you if you play Bo7 against someone because you can't rotate builds in a same way and your 1v1 ladder adventage becomes disadventage. The amount of free MMR I get as random is a lot bigger than I get when I pick race.
Best ppl can do is to figure out meta and find ways to do every build in your mirror matchups. Random adventage would be diminished by half if mirror matchups worked in less punishing way.
Your random disadventage can be fixed and practiced but your adventage can't be taken away from you.