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EDIT: As I have added new queries and observations that are buried deep within this rather dense thread, I will bring my further observations and reactions to others thoughts to this original post to make it easier for people seeing the thread for the first time to participate.
I just finished watching the finals of GSL season 3. In case you haven't caught it yet, I will refrain from revealing the winner. The results are less important than the sentiments being expressed by many members of this fair community leading up to, during and after this seasons climax; the general thrust of that sentiment being that TSL Rain just didn't belong here. Some people agreed, others disagreed and it was all very passionate.
Let me back up for a moment. Though I enjoyed a lot of SC1 and BW in college with friends, I did not follow the pro scene of that game at all. I have much more history with the professional Street Fighter scene. I have only over the last 7 months starting with the SC2 beta, become interested (and quite engrossed) in the culture of the professional StarCraft scene. A lot of what I am reacting to here, and why I pose the question in the thread title comes from the great differences I see between the SF scene and SC scene.
I have detected an on-going trend within our community of feeling that the best players are quite often, not the ones winning. It makes sense that in a game of limited information that there may be perceptions from casual gamers that some wins are "cheesy" or just plain luck, but the more dedicated, educated players know enough to know that isn't strictly the case so I don't find that to be terribly damning.
What is a bit off putting for me, given what I am used to in the culture I know (that of Street Fighter) is that even at the level of TeamLiquid veterans, which I would classify as the educated enthusiast, comparabale in SF to the Shoryuken or iPlayWinner community, there remains a strong sentiment that players of lesser skill can beat players of greater skill. Not only beat as in grab a freak win off them, but consistently beat players above their skill level in the order that they are able to outlast 2,000 other contestants to play in a game that if they win will net them $87,000 dollars. This concept simply does not exist in the SF world.
In the SF world, the best of the best are nigh unbeatable gods who can only be challenged by other members of the pantheon. Even among them there is a pretty clear heirarchy. As an example: Daigo Umehara is as close to untouchable as we have. The number of players who can take even a single match off him would fit comfortably on one hand. He is in the middle of a slump right now. This year, 2 people actually beat him in a Bo3. Both of the ones who did it are top, top players whose ability is unquestionably extremely high. This guy travels the world playing in tournaments as a living. Losing 2 Bo3's inside a year is a slump. Process that.
While listening to the State of the Game podcast a couple of weeks back, I think it was inControl or Nony who said (they were discussing the whole MLG Extended Series debate) that even the best players win 70 to 75% of their matches. I am paraphrasing, but one of them said something to the order of:
"If FruitDealer hopped on the ladder, on any given night random diamond player #5 has a decent shot at beating him, maybe with a unique build, or a strange timing. Maybe in a tourney setting where it was Bo3 Fruit would figure the guy out and come back and win, but in a given match one of the best players in the world can lose to someone who isn't one of the best players in the world."
Again, paraphrasing, but this is what was said by a professional SC player. This is not, in my experience a rare sentiment amongst the professional community. While I admit it isn't the case that if a pro says it that it must be inarguably true, the words of the people doing this for as long as the last 13 years in some cases must have SOME merit.
Artosis was very vocal about how weak he felt BitByBit's skills were. Yet he made it through qualifiers (something guys like Tester haven't managed since season 1), knocked out Haypro and got all the way to Ro16 in the biggest, most competitive tourney SC2 has.
Right before Ro8, inControl was asked to make a prediction about who would win in NesTea vs Rain and he basically said Nestea was supposed to but that he had a bad feeling he wouldn't. He was right, Rain went all the way to the big dance.
In the same conversation MarineKing came up and IdrA said one of the ballsiest, most honest things I have ever heard a pro say about one of his contemporaries, again paraphrasing:
"MarineKing hasn't earned/doesn't deserve a single thing he has gotten."
Woah! Even more "woah" is that despite IdrA's infamy as a QQer, no one raised a point of contention with that statement. In fact Artosis concurred and said that MarineKing has to stop winning with the style of play he uses, because if he doesn't it may really prove that the marine is actually broken.
I re-iterate: These are professionals. They are not 12 year olds talking out their ass about things they know nothing about.
So in light of all these sentiments, which in the pro-gaming community I am more familiar with do not exist in any way shape or form, do you, the players and community members believe that:
1. These feelings/concepts are consistent with the way the community generally felt during the SC1/BW era?
2. In an appropriate percentage of situations SC2 rewards the more skilled player with victory?
I am fully aware that this may all be par for the course. But again, while say Super Street Fighter 4 isn't totally 100% balanced to the tee, I rarely if ever hear from that game's enthusiast or professional community that any win is less than 100% earned. I am willing to accept that the nature of these two competitive scenes may just have different dynamics. I want to know if its just that, or if you believe, for one reason or another, that SC2 is not rewarding skilled players acceptably.
**UPDATE**
So just a simple addition to the discussion since my initial questions have been well mined at this point:
We seem to have established that the state of things is to be expected, based both upon the win percentages established by BW, and on the idea that a limited information game will always have a higher degree of volatility and built in "randomness". A great majority of you feel this is all natural and that a degree of it will work itself out os the years go by and the game gets figured out. Great.
Going hand in hand with this is the notion that you all largley share that the moaning in the forums as well as the opinions of some pros such as IdrA, iNcontrol, Artosis and others is mostly baseless. Most of you seem to believe that despite their experience, and the likely fact that they understand as you do, that there is a degree of built in variation and that the game is still young, they are more or less over-reacting, whining or otherwise QQing. This plays in to my earlier example of American Football.
The players aren't sages, they are people. They can, and will deride fellow players whose methods they have issue with regardless of whether its valid or fair. I am not calling this a bad conclusion. Quite to the contrary, some people feel this kind of competition, trash talk and derisiveness is an important element to making esports compelling entertainment in a similar way as traditional sports.
So my question in light of this fact is, who ARE the sages? Who are the objective keepers of peace? the voices of reason who look into the camera and tell us who is just being a big baby and who is speaking the truth? In traditional sports it would be analysts, tv commentators and such. But our esport is so young, even with BW considered, that the people in those roles are also more or less still players caught up in the thick of things.
Someone has to be the voice of reason. If I am to understand the feedback here, even respected pros like IdrA, Artosis and iNcontrol don't qualify as authorities on the matter of what is and isn't good for the game. So who guides the player base then? The pro team coaches? The forum users? The players themselves? It's clear there is a pretty unhealthy divide in both the fanbase and player base about what "skill" is and what it means to "deserve" a win and how the game is "supposed" to be played. This doesn't seem very healthy for the game's future. Who, if anyone at all, is going to be responsible for resolving this growing rift if it's not going to be respected pro players?
**UPDATE 2**
Just to further clarify, I brought SF into the discussion more as a contrast of the communities and relative win percentages of the best players. I did not mean to imply the two genres were similar and should have similar results. Sorry if it came off that way.
Show nested quote +I have detected an on-going trend within our community of feeling that the best players are quite often, not the ones winning. Then plz tell us what the definition of "the best" is, because i always thought, the ones who win the most games are the best.
This is actually tantamount to why I brought the SF community into the picture. In the SF community, everyone thinks that the person who wins is the best.....because they won. Daigo is the best.....because he wins the most. In that sub-culture, the definitions of abstract concepts like "skill" and what being "the best" is are universally agreed upon. The guy who wins the most has the most "skill" and is "the best"
As the last 13 pages of this thread prove, no such certainty about how those terms are defined exists in the SC2 community. Some people agree with IdrA's statement about MK, others think its ludicrous and borderline ignorant. Artosis was complimenting/deriding Terran players by describing how dissimilar/similar their playstyle was to BitByBit's. I was just going through my twitter feed and found this gem from Day9:
"The GSL: where Koreans play terribly and cheese everytime, shaking their heads when they lose as though it was a close game!"
I think Morrow made a good point about what the common thread here may be:
i think the reason older starcraft 1 talk so much about who is real players and who are just abusive ppl who dont deserve wins is that they come from sc1 where the game was pretty much figured out so so much came down to detail scouting macro micro mechanics just overall playing beautifully perfect and calculated. when they see players come to top 4 without having an astonishing macro or wellprepered gameplan or perfected gamestructure they cant really approve too much of it since that was a sign of weak and cheesy players in sc1
All these pros I am hearing deride some of the successful SC2 players have BW in common. They are used to a "figured out" game. As many people in this thread have pointed out, SC2 is not figured out. It also occurs to me that these BW pros may never have had to play the game professionally before it was figured out. Vets feel free to correct me, but it is my understanding that the SC pro scene didn't really develop on a large scale until several years after BW and some fairly extensive patching. This would be significant in that no one was playing (or watching) with money on the line until the game was stable.
The current scenario is vastly different. SC2 had a pro scene while it was in beta testing. While I am sure BW's metagame evolved over time it sounds to me like there was never really a time where pro players felt completely in the dark or blindsided by new, extremely difficult to beat strats. SC2 on the other hand is growing up, starting from infancy, on camera with people all over the world watching and playing for incredibly large cash prizes. What's worse, most of the people watching and playing it have a pre-formed idea of what "skilled" play looks like and what they are seeing now couldn't possibly have any resemblance.
I guess it's no wonder the community is so divided on this topic.
**UPDATE 3**
On December 21 2010 01:29 Flarefly wrote:Show nested quote +On December 18 2010 22:35 TheLonelyCarrier wrote: Who, if anyone at all, is going to be responsible for resolving this growing rift if it's not going to be respected pro players?
The closest I have seen is day9, he always comes to the table with the least bias imo. He also isn't in the thick of things as you mentioned earlier, he is mainly a commentator/analyst of sc2. It seems like most players respect his advice also, Huk even thanking day9 at one point for some help he had given him. Not sure how long it will take to get someone of day9's caliber to come about, or if it will even happen. It would be cool to get more people analyzing games like day9 does, but it seems rare for someone with that much experience and skill to focus more on the community aspects of the game than playing the game pro. Hopefully this is what you were looking for with the last question in your post :-)
Yeah, I agree totally, he is one of the only glimmers of hope I see. The problem is that Sean is just one person. Also, if these feelings in the community end up being due to something Blizz deems a systemic problem with the game that needs fixing, then no matter how positive an influence Day9 is, the ball will be in Blizzard's court at that point. But given that the only right way to patch a game is carefully and incrementally, one must wonder how long it would take for them to fix such a problem while avoiding breaking other parts of the game.
And I get it, it took years for BW to be balanced to the point where it was perfect for competitive play so if we are worrying about this 5 months after release we are being short sided, I know. The difference is we don't have 4 years to get it perfect for competitive play. We had until late July, because the pro scene was pre-built and reay to go nearly from day 1.
My concern is that if the community is devided and it doesn't get resolved relatively soon, either through patches (IF this is in fact even a balance issue) or through a pardigm shift in the community whereby people figure certain things out and agree upon what constitutes"skill", the games professional scene will flounder. I just don't want to see that. Its a great game and a wonderful community and I want to see it around for a long time.
**UPDATE 4**
On December 21 2010 23:16 Kaniol wrote: So in SF scene there is no thing as "underdog won against the best player in the world because he studied his play a lot and focused on this match only"? That's quite sad, why even play at all if the player with more skill will win no matter what him and his opponent will do.
In SC if you read your enemy perfectly then you will have chance of beating opponent that has (not a lot better but still) better mechanics/macro/micro/experience than you.
This would be sad were it true, and I am pretty sure we don't want that to be the case in SC2. Do not mis-understand. Everyone loves to see an underdog win through great preparation, hard work and determination against an opponent who may be more mechanically gifted and have more experience. What most people do not really love to see is when someone with ALL those great attributes loses to someone who clearly just practiced a couple of gimmicky builds that haven't been figured out yet.
It's hard to watch someone who has exhibited talent, dedication, skill and understanding lose in that fashion. It's the kind of thing that makes fans walk away.
MilesTeg France. December 21 2010 17:31. Posts 73
It's painful to see you guys discuss imaginary numbers. As far as I know no one gave the exact win percentage of Daigo, and to be intellectually honest we'd need his win percentage from 4month after the release of SFIV. I don't think anyone was dominating at the time.
What I do remember, is that there was an ocean of mediocre Sagat players who constantly did well in tournaments. Eventually the matchups were figured out, and now they are not even remembered. Which is exactly what will happen to Rain.
As for the "any high rank player can beat Nestea online" argument, there were a lot of people showing videos of themselves beating Daigo...
It is a hard fact that he was not beaten in tournament play stateside by anyone through the duration of vanilla SF4. 2 people beat him in Bo5 money matches in that time frame. In the SSF4 era he has been bested in single tournament competition 4 times, which was considered unprecedented by the community. His current documented win% in the newly released SSF4AE is 86% competing in the highest class arcades in Japan and using one of the new characters who obviously haven't been figured out yet (Yun).
I have to totally agree with you about the first 4 months of SF4. So many scrubby Sagat players. Not that I think Rain deserves to be categorized similarly, but I hope the concerns being highlighted in this thread fade away the same way all those mediocre Sagat players did.
As far as people showing videos of them beating Daigo in an arcade, I believe you are actually referring to the vids from the first couple of weeks the game was out in arcades. I did see those vids. Like you said, those first few months were the wild west. That kind of stuff stopped happening real quickly.
Anyway, I don't mean to derail with SF discussion. Again, I don't think anyone (myself included) wants to see the same statistical level of dominance from one genre occur in another. The real purpose of bringing SF4 and Daigo into the discussion is because no one in his community thinks he doesn't deserve his wins and no one who beats him is seen as a lesser player who just got lucky. On the contrary, if you beat Daigo Umehara, the crowd errupts in ecstatic cheers and your name will be remembered for the rest of the year. And not because they hate Daigo, because they don't. They cheer because it's exciting to see an underdog find a way to have a revelation and truly play beyond the level they thought they could and beat a true master.
Right now, no one seems to find upsets in SC2 exciting or entertaining. Warranted or not, when Rain beat Nestea he felt compelled to apologize because of the outrage expressed by the community. When someone beats Daigo, the crowd errupts into an exhalted mob scene. Someone beat Nestea and people shook their heads and wrote angry message board threads. I think we can all agree thats a problem.
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I'd like to think that it would take longer for a clear defined line of "top" to be formed. If SC2 doesn't actually have this clear defined line, then we'll know after a few more months when we see various people become champions, and previous champions losing more often than they should.
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skill is defined by being able to win games. winning games is skill.
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On December 18 2010 22:41 Schnullerbacke13 wrote: skill is defined by being able to win games. winning games is skill.
He's saying the most skilled players should be relatively untouchable. Albeit in BW, Flash isn't completely untouchable, but he sure damn well comes close to be.
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Depends whether you call 2 rax, cannonrush, 6 pool skilled.
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SC2's mechanics works in a way that even someone who's head and shoulders above you can still lose games at a decent chance.
Pretty sure people like flash would rarely if ever lose to someone who isn't close to his ability.
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I completely understand your sentiments. To say a player who got to the top 8 isn't good or doesn't deserve to be there is complete nonsense. 'Cheese' is a strategy. If a player can't stop it then they deserve to lose to it. He is better than, because he beat them. There is no spreadsheet that determines who is the best really.. so results is what we have. The fact of the matter is Bitbybitprime, Marinekingprime... players like this who are often derided for their play... got there. So they deserve to be there. If you can't stop what they do, then what right do you have to complain. ##### would have won if it had been a macro game.. blah blah.. doesn't matter a damn thing. It's like saying he would have won if he only build ghosts.. or whatever. Speculation doesn't mean anything when you have the result infront of you. That is what happened, that is how it went.
I do find it annoying too, fanboys doing anything they can to discredit players is ridiculous. yes I like to see long back and forth macro games too, but this is a competition not a show match. I want to see people trying to win.
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I think it has to do with variables. The more variables a game has built in, the higher the variance is. Now i don't play SF, but i assume it is a very straightforward game, thus you can achieve perfection in it with enough practice. Tennis would probably be a good comparison to it as a real life sport. And we see that 80% of the finals in Tennis Grand Slams are between Federer and Nadal.
Whereas Starcraft has sooo many variables and so many determining factors and incomplete information (just like poker, minus the luck factor), that it becomes a lot harder to achieve constant utter dominance.
Just my 2 cents.
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Keep in mind the game is evolving at a rapid pace. Right now, it's hard to distinguish between a gameplay shift that people haven't adapted to yet (e.g., pre-rax nerf reapers) and a genuine flaw in sc2's core mechanics that inhibit the kind of reward of skill you're talking about. And realistically, it will take years for these shifts to be ironed out so that you can realistically tell the two apart.
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As AlexDeLarge pointed out, variables due to lack of information are what make for lesser players advancing. Now, obviously people aren't playing SC2 optimally yet, but without complete information you never can. That alone produces games where inferior players can win by sheer luck. Build Order wins can basically not be avoided. Now, as the game is continued to be ironed out you can expect series wins to go more and more frequently to skilled players, but the nature of the game and where it is at in its development (both from a player's skill perspective and map/balance changes) aren't necessarily there yet.
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If Flash can lose to fucking Ssak in the MSL then I don't really consider random Diamond player #5 beating Fruitdealer an upset =/
I agree that there is more a bit more variance in SC2 though, especially at this stage of development. As the guy above me said, it's hard to tell whether the strength of cheese and all-ins are just part of the evolving metagame or symptoms of a deeper flaw with the game.
Right now we don't even really know who the most skilled players are, take a look at the end of 2011 and we might have some idea.
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The way to know if SC2 rewards the most skilled players is the frequency with which the top players win big events over and over. If there's ever a SC2 Bonjwa that means that SC2 rewards the most skilled players.
That said it takes years for a game to stabilize to the point where a Bonjwa can grow and then sometimes there's just a gap where there's no Bonjwa (see gap between Savior and Flash, though there were some good candidates in between). I think with 2 more expansions coming along it will be quite a number of years until things have stabilized enough for us to be able to tell.
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Personally while I think all in build may be a bit too hard to scout/counter and needs a slight nerf I still think this game is quite new and therefore skill still isn't always the determining factor in the final outcome of a game. In the early BW days we had a few dominant players but I think that was mostly because of their mechanics (APM) was way above anyone elses at the time. Now mechanics are quite standard and noone is really above anyone elses in that field so my hypothesis is that as the game develops we will see the "better" players start dominating a bit more.
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******GSL 3 FINAL SPOILERS****** + Show Spoiler +Game is young and people are still learning. GSL S3 just showed how dramatically the general image of "balance" can change in a short period of time. There were no major game-changing balance patches during GSL S3 and protoss went from underdog to the top dog (at least in my eyes ). Game changes, and this game is extremely well balanced. I mean, just in the Ro8 or so people were still voicing loudly how "terran all-ins are toooo strong". Well, I'm not hearing THOSE cries any longer I'm very confident in saying that this game rewards the better player. At one point I may have been at the opinion of "protoss is underpowered", but I was wrong. Yeah, I was too hasty in my judgement.
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on one hand its true sometimes you can get lucky to victory. on the other hand there is much bm. people dont give some players the respect they deserv. you dont come with ONLY luck in the finals of a big trounement. people look down to players only because they dont like there race or playstyle. So i think your right that there is some kind of problem in the game but the bigger problem is in the comunity. if someone make his way to final of gsl and win it hes a good player. even if he would cheesed his hole way to victory he know when to do what cheese to counter the playstyle of his enemy.
I respekt the winner of a tournemnt but i respekt my enemy in every game that i play and i notice you dont see this very often anymore, i meet people who dont even understand why you should show respekt for your enemy if you loose or win... perhpas its a more generell social thing than a sc2 thing.
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hidden information: Starcraft Poker
complete information: Street Fighter Chess
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+ Show Spoiler +The result of the final and the winner's overall record through the tournament (17-3) argues that in this case at least the most skilled player WAS rewarded.
I think you've picked out the most negative examples about GSL3, of the 'lesserskilled' players losing. For example, inControl and the rest of the SOTG guys also thought that MK would beat MC in the RO8 (despite MC being the better player), and that didn't happen.
Also, Jinro is widely acknowledged as a great player, and he was rewarded for his skill this tournament. Realistically the only way he could have done any better would be if he'd been in the other half of the draw and that's nothing to do with the nature of SC2.
Referring to the fruitdealer example you give, I actually think that's quite a good situation - the chance of a weak player maybe taking a game off a top player makes it quite exciting, but then it also makes sense that FruitDealer wold win out over a BO3/5. There always has to be a balance between predictability and variability and maybe SC2 is slightly tipped towards variability at the moment, but it's not far off getting it right
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Two reasons:
1) Starcraft is a game of incomplete information. This means you can take a gamble (certain builds have more luck and less skill needed to succeed). How far a gamble run takes you, depends on luck.
2) SC2 is still very young, there are no Flashes or Jaedongs, there is no real S-class. The game is still shaping up, along with its players. In SCBW, Flash and JD are more untouchable then any player in sc2. (JD looses quite some ZvZś left and right, but thatś because ZvZ is intrinsically more luck/less skill based.)
3) what AlexDeLarge says sounds reasonable too.
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On December 18 2010 22:41 Schnullerbacke13 wrote: skill is defined by being able to win games. winning games is skill.
I don't know in what world skill is defined like that. Especially considering a complex game like SC2 that has so many facets to the skill of a player.
Clearly, in SC2 it's pretty easy for someone of inferior skill to win vs a better player. The main point here is cheese, which is (for my taste) too powerful in SC2 because of the lack of effective scouting. The main problem with cheese is that most cheeses need a specific response that needs to be practiced a lot.
Cheeses should be solely counterable by scouting them and adapting quickly ingame. You shouldn't have to practice specific cheese-counter-BOs that you need to execute close to perfectly in order to come out even against a cheese push.
The reason why someone can be considered inferior in skill to the player he beats if he cheeses is because most cheese builds are easier to execute than their respective counters. Much easier.
As such (even though there can be exceptions of course), the winning cheesers can often have a combination of lesser mechanics, lesser understanding of the game and therefore poorer decision making, and "lesser horizon". By that last point I mean that players who plan on cheesing in order to win usually have to prepare and practice a lot less BOs, counters, counter-counters and transitions and instead sometimes only have to focus one one or two BOs in certain matchups through their entire game plan.
But that's the way it is in SC2. As long as the game is going to progress, there will be new powerful cheeses popping up. Pros will take a week or two to adapt to them, and then the cheesy players will find other new cheeses. At this point, I hardly see any point where players can run out of cheeses and suddenly the more skilled player wins all games.
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I mean, just in the Ro8 or so people were still voicing loudly how "terran all-ins are toooo strong". Well, I'm not hearing THOSE cries any longer
I'm still sure that 2rax scv all in is quite hard to scout.
Especially if he feigns going gas just before your drone dies.
Prepare for something that never comes: you're behind Misprepare for something that comes: you're behind Prepare for something that comes: you're behind due to lack of drone production Misprepare for something that never comes: you're ahead because you blindly droned hard.
I'm quite sure terran all ins are still strong.
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On December 18 2010 23:00 Greentellon wrote:******GSL 3 FINAL SPOILERS******+ Show Spoiler +Game is young and people are still learning. GSL S3 just showed how dramatically the general image of "balance" can change in a short period of time. There were no major game-changing balance patches during GSL S3 and protoss went from underdog to the top dog (at least in my eyes ). Game changes, and this game is extremely well balanced. I mean, just in the Ro8 or so people were still voicing loudly how "terran all-ins are toooo strong". Well, I'm not hearing THOSE cries any longer I'm very confident in saying that this game rewards the better player.
Not really a spoiler, but I'll hide it just so I can't be accused of it: + Show Spoiler +Keep in mind, the complaints about terran all-ins being "toooo strong" were coming primarily from zerg. Also, just because the more skilled players wins doesn't mean suddenly all is well with the world. There is a reason Iron was favored to win by a huge % of people, and it wasn't balance reasons, but because Rain is/was a vastly inferior player to him.
The nature of SC will probably always be small win %. BW, a game with an immense skill ceiling, still doesn't have people pulling absolutely insane win % like there are in other genres. Maybe certain matchups due to a hot streak or map can result in a very good % for a while, but even then it steadies off usually. A game with incomplete information can never have those 90%+ victory chance unless the player is simply vastly, vastly superior to their opponent.
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I'm sorry but MarineKing is absolutely legit in my opinion. You can't talk about SC2 lacking good mechanics to separate good/bad players and then dismiss the one guy whose unit micro is basically unparalleled right now.
I like Artosis a lot but it really bothers me that he and other Zerg players like him try to 'illegitimize' terran rush builds or any kind of build that doesn't focus purely on a macro game as somehow not 'proper' starcraft. Zerg's entire strength comes from establishing a superior economy, any opponent that sits back and allows that to happen has a very poor understanding of the game and is very likely to lose. Therefore rushing and 'cheese' will always be a legitimate response to a zerg going for a hard eco build, unless blizzard decides to completely re-balance the dynamics of the TvZ matchup.
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On December 18 2010 23:11 virtualbreaks wrote: I'm sorry but MarineKing is absolutely legit in my opinion. You can't talk about SC2 lacking good mechanics to separate good/bad players and then dismiss the one guy whose unit micro is basically unparalleled right now.
I like Artosis a lot but it really bothers me that he and other Zerg players like him try to 'illegitimize' terran rush builds or any kind of build that doesn't focus purely on a macro game as somehow not 'proper' starcraft. Zerg's entire strength comes from establishing a superior economy, any opponent that sits back and allows that to happen has a very poor understanding of the game and is very likely to lose. Therefore rushing and 'cheese' will always be a legitimate response to a zerg going for a hard eco build, unless blizzard decides to re-balance the dynamics of the TvZ matchup.
Yah I agree, MK needs to work on his allround play but he's clearly really talented. I think their attitude towards him is partly due to the fact that he really popularised the TvZ marine/SCV push
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Albeit in BW, Flash isn't completely untouchable, but he sure damn well comes close to be.
SC2's mechanics works in a way that even someone who's head and shoulders above you can still lose games at a decent chance.
Pretty sure people like flash would rarely if ever lose to someone who isn't close to his ability.
Both of these are good examples of where my question lies. I never saw Flash or Jaedong play, and I am sure the intracacies of their performances would be lost on me now since I never really looked at BW in a true competitive sense, the way I have come to learn and understand SC2. But when I hear people talk of them they sound untouchable, as if one would have to channel the very hand of god to defeat them. In all competitive fields, I gravitate towards that. Being in awe of a true master is something I really enjoy about any professional scene.
Were/are they in fact, that dominant, or would they also fall in line with that 70-75% rule? Is that normal for this game? Is that what it was in BW? Does it seem low to people who have followed the scene?
The fact of the matter is Bitbybitprime, Marinekingprime... players like this who are often derided for their play... got there. So they deserve to be there.
In all competitive fields, this is a common notion. "A win is a win". I tend to agree. But when professionals and respected members of the field seem to pretty clearly disagree I must give pause. But maybe I am giving them too much credit just because they are respected professionals?
Think on that for a second. In say, American Football, are the players all wise sages who speak nothing but football truth? No way. They moan and complain and make excuses and deride one another's abilities and credentials even when it seems to make no sense. Sometimes its ego, sometimes its ignorance and every so often, it IS truth. I guess it's because I can readily identify with the sub-culture involved that I assume that the feelings of a pro must be based in some form of objective reality. Also, the nature of SC2 and all RTS is such that we tend to assume a certain ability of the players to be capable of objective analysis on a level beyond even a well versed forum goer.
Maybe they aren't. Maybe even guys like Artosis or inControl talk out their ass sometimes when it's a topic they feel passionately about and it just needs to be taken with a grain of salt rather than used as an indication that the pros feel the game is not rewarding good play. Again, since I lack a basis for comparison coming from a Street Fighter background where this kind of thing is undeard of, it's difficult for me to say.
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On December 18 2010 23:11 virtualbreaks wrote: I'm sorry but MarineKing is absolutely legit in my opinion. You can't talk about SC2 lacking good mechanics to separate good/bad players and then dismiss the one guy whose unit micro is basically unparalleled right now.
I like Artosis a lot but it really bothers me that he and other Zerg players like him try to 'illegitimize' terran rush builds or any kind of build that doesn't focus purely on a macro game as somehow not 'proper' starcraft. Zerg's entire strength comes from establishing a superior economy, any opponent that sits back and allows that to happen has a very poor understanding of the game and is very likely to lose. Therefore rushing and 'cheese' will always be a legitimate response to a zerg going for a hard eco build, unless blizzard decides to completely re-balance the dynamics of the TvZ matchup.
Cant do anything but completely agree with this. I dont like the rush builds because they keep games short and somewhat lacking, for the most part, but they are legit and stoppable meaning they should be a part of the game since it adds flavor.
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On December 18 2010 22:41 Schnullerbacke13 wrote: skill is defined by being able to win games. winning games is skill.
Nothing more to say. If someone always cheeses und do all in and wins the tournament, then he is the best player for now. People who thinks otherwise are scrubs. Blame the game not the player.
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SC2 maps are very small, which restricts games and therefore restricts the opportunities for the superior player to outplayer the inferior player. The extreme example is early all-in play; short distances reduce defender's advantage AND reduce the window to detect and respond to the all-in.
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I would say that its because the game is stilp evolving and far from complete. In BW most of the pros are almost untouchable. SC2 is still new and theres still gonna be 2 expansions that will change everything
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I dont even want to see the same two players in every single finals.
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InControl is wrong on one count - MKPrime oozes talent.
In BW it was around the same? The best player would win around 60% of their games, hence the need for BO5 or a series. Nothing like the 99% you see if SF, or whatever the figure is.
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The game has only been out for 5 months, personally I'm surprised its developed this fast. How was starcraft when it was out for 5 months? Everyone 4 pooled, mutalisks were almost unkillable, reaver drops were instant, and in general rushes reigned supreme. If you ask me sc2 is doing just fine, and perhaps by the time HoTS is out we'll see the "better" player win more often.
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On December 18 2010 22:41 Schnullerbacke13 wrote: skill is defined by being able to win games. winning games is skill.
You're gonna tell me with a straight face that BitByBit and HongunPrime are skilled players?
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I think its rewarding the people the understand the game the most at the moment. I dont think there is a clear line of the most skilled, but theyre skilled. I just think if fruitdealer hopped on the NA server and faced someone that knew the XvZ matchup realllllly good than he could lose. 50/50 shot.
(P.s) I love your name
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i dont know if you guys know, but flash basically cheesed in all of his games before he became a god of starcraft.
would anyone now look back and say that flash is just incredibly bad and unskilled? A win is a win, and people need to stop giving excuses as to why they lose.
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On December 19 2010 00:07 Zalfor wrote: i dont know if you guys know, but flash basically cheesed in all of his games before he became a god of starcraft.
would anyone now look back and say that flash is just incredibly bad and unskilled? A win is a win, and people need to stop giving excuses as to why they lose.
Except that with watered down mechanics cheese is a lot easier to pull off and it usually just comes down to whether your opponent scouts or blindly pulls of the right counter tactic as you attack move (with rare exceptions being players like marineking who genuinely have good micro), aka bitbybit prime style. Flash's cheeses were brilliantly microed and I have no idea where people get the idea that cheesing was all he did because he showed the ability to play macro from the start. He just had the guts to cheese more than others did and did so in big matches as well, making it seem like that was all he did. His series vs Bisu pretty much cemented this conception but to say he didn't have the skills to play standard games is shortsighted
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in sc1 i was an high C player and end up loseing to D players from iccup when playing sc2
at first thought oh well new game but sc2 removed alot of the little things that seperated good players and bad macro/micro the marine can fire while basically moving at same time since it has such high dps and giving new players options to hotkey every unit and buildings they have with a single hotkey
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On December 18 2010 23:46 nihoh wrote: InControl is wrong on one count - MKPrime oozes talent.
In BW it was around the same? The best player would win around 60% of their games, hence the need for BO5 or a series. Nothing like the 99% you see if SF, or whatever the figure is.
thats because when u watch bw games everyone is a progamer gsl brought in alot of starcraft players which alot where unknown and still did really good vs retired pro gamers
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Give it time. Eventually the pros, who spend soooo much time knowing how to beat every single strategy, will eventually be immune to lesser players' cheesy tactics. With a game that has so many variables and seperate skills to perfect, it's only normal that it will take time for the pros to be perfect at it.
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The reason why someone can be considered inferior in skill to the player he beats if he cheeses is because most cheese builds are easier to execute than their respective counters. Much easier.
I don't know if people universally agree with this, but this has been my perception too. To be more precise, it suggests that defense takes more skill and saavy to be good at than offense. It may be worth noting, that this is actually the exact opposite of Street Fighter and most fighting games in general.
In SF, defense is the easy part. Every possible attack can be blocked with a simple input and its always one of two inputs. The only thing not blockable are grabs, which can only be applied in extremely close quarters and can be escaped with no reprecussion with another simple input. With three simple inputs and average reflexes, you can stop any incoming attack without fault so long as you are not "open".
Offense, on the other hand is where the true skill of the player is. With defense being so mechanically simple, landing even one attack on a skilled player requires reading one's opponent, conditioning them to respond how you want them to, and then using the right move to defeat that response. Then, turning that one hit into an un-interrupted chain of hits requires timing as strict as 1/60 of a second and often requires the player to enter a sequence of 10-15 inputs or more in well under a second.
The end result is that in order to deafeat someone, you must have enough skill to overcome their easy to execute defense with a far more elaborate and challenging offense. There is no real scenario in which you can beat them without outclassing them, because the only way to even hurt them is to outstrip their mechanical skill with yours by nearly an order of magnitude.
Come to think of it, that fact may be why you don't hear these debates in the SF community. Your opponent simply cannot put you in a bad situation and harm you without exhibiting a higher degree of skill than you, barring some obvious mistake on your own part.
SC2 and most strategy games are kind of the opposite I suppose. Defending requires solid intel, knowledge and understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of your opponents attack, choosing the right course of action, preparing and finally executing it. Attacking can be as simple as "make probes, make pylons, make lots of units and attack".
It's also no coincidence, as several people have mentioned here that the game in which defense is easy features complete information and the one in which offense is easy features incomplete information.
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There are a few reasons why players who are not great go so far in tournaments.
1 Luck of the draw in opponents
2 A not fully evolved/patched game with an unstable meta game
3 The map pool
1e In the current "meta game" if there is a highly abusive strategy (reapers, 4 gate, baneling bust) and you wind up facing a race that an abusive strategy demolishes you will win almost ever game because their race as a whole has not yet adapted to it.
2e This allows for timing pushes that in BW would only damage an opponent and allow you to expand, but in this game can end it quite easily and even if it doesn't work it will do so much damage they cannot recover without you making a mistake.
3e The map pool is made up of maps that are very short and not that complex. This leads to more big army clashing rather than multiple attacks and a more evolved decision making, again making anyone who is executing an abusive style even stronger.
I don't know if/when the game will evolve, but it will most likely take the next 1-2 expansion games as well as a better map pool to truly make it so the best players advance and the weaker players drop off.
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Good points. I have two issues with Starcraft:
1. Games are "upset-tacular." Players considered "lower skill" can still beat pros by catching them off guard with rushes of some sort. This would never happen in other comparable sports like, say, tennis.
2. Individual games have no swing. Once you've gained an advantage, even minor (like killing workers with harass), you greatly increase your chance of winning the game. If you're ahead, you stay ahead. If you're behind, you inevitably lose. Just look how quickly Idra GGs when the balance swings against him.
Just my opinion.
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Doesnt sf4 have tiered charachters? Like 2 players of equal skill using an S and C class charachter, the S would probably win.
If so how can you even begin to make a comparison with sc2? The races arent even explored yet. (But people still try to rank them) You just saw the so called weak race win a GSL. Id say its still early days to be complaining about unskilled victories.
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On December 18 2010 23:19 TheLonelyCarrier wrote: Both of these are good examples of where my question lies. I never saw Flash or Jaedong play, and I am sure the intracacies of their performances would be lost on me now since I never really looked at BW in a true competitive sense, the way I have come to learn and understand SC2. But when I hear people talk of them they sound untouchable, as if one would have to channel the very hand of god to defeat them. In all competitive fields, I gravitate towards that. Being in awe of a true master is something I really enjoy about any professional scene.
Were/are they in fact, that dominant, or would they also fall in line with that 70-75% rule? Is that normal for this game? Is that what it was in BW? Does it seem low to people who have followed the scene?
By Flash and Jaedong then yes. They are without a doubt close to perfection but even if it's close it still means they can lose to others just like any other sport miracles / upsets can happen (in which this past week has happened).
If you want to have any indications how hard it is to jump into BW then it would be like playing your first sc2 game against a 2200+ diamond and then upwards.
Compare Flash to the 3500 diamond and the 2200+ diamond you faced to a silver/gold level player then that should come close I'd say. It's not accurate but it feels mentally like that if u see their games when you have it played it yourself and it might be even a bigger gap in reality.
On December 18 2010 23:19 TheLonelyCarrier wrote: Also, the nature of SC2 and all RTS is such that we tend to assume a certain ability of the players to be capable of objective analysis on a level beyond even a well versed forum goer.
Obviously this isn't always the case there are always exceptions to these kinds of things but when all players of a particular race who practices maybe 6-10+ hours a day and they all do the same thing in which they play at the highest level and come out as very close winners or losers out of a game then something should be said about it right? Obviously you need to take every opinion with a grain of salt but if every pro player is saying the same then there should be some truth in it like you said.
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I think SC2 is superior in terms of rewarding the most "SKILLED" player..
People assume Skill = apm and speed.. when that is not the truth. That was rewarded in BW, where in SC2 you just need enough to be able to not be sloppy..
what SHOULD win games, in BW or SC2.. is GAME SMARTS! Decision making, Handling pressure, being able to out-think your opponent and win the mental battle..
That wasnt so much the case in BW, because you had to focus so much on building.. Thats why every single game was basically a 40 minute macro battle (SNORE!).. in SC2, it really comes down to the smartest player who wins the games, after you take away the apm/macro "necessity".. (except for SCV/marine all-ins.. yea, thats abit stupid right now)
This is why IdrA was winning so much in beta, but hasnt done much since, because in beta he was head and shoulders above the macro "necessity" that other people couldnt keep up.. but NOW that people are practiced and caught up macro-wise, they totally outsmart idra, and obviously that is Idra's major weakness, adapting and being a smart player rather than a mechanical player.
TSL_Rain, say what you want about his lategame macro skills, but hes a SMART player, therefor he deserved to be in the finals or at least top 8. MC, on the otherhand, is just insanely talented and smart, and the best example is in the game on Lost Temple, where MC was facing like 6 tanks + mass marines, with a very little army, which most people would of GG'd right there.. MC didnt let the pressure get to him and eventually broke free, and won that game in the end. THAT is rewarding the most "skilled" player, someone who can handle the pressure and not be phased, someone who can come back in a macro game solely do to great decision making (DT in the gold expo while defending main won him the game).. APM/macro should have very little relevance on who wins, like it does in BW where Flash and Jaedong, obviously the two most talented macro players, are completely wrecking everyone with no contest.
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On December 19 2010 00:50 lowercase wrote: Good points. I have two issues with Starcraft:
1. Games are "upset-tacular." Players considered "lower skill" can still beat pros by catching them off guard with rushes of some sort. This would never happen in other comparable sports like, say, tennis.
2. Individual games have no swing. Once you've gained an advantage, even minor (like killing workers with harass), you greatly increase your chance of winning the game. If you're ahead, you stay ahead. If you're behind, you inevitably lose. Just look how quickly Idra GGs when the balance swings against him.
Just my opinion.
if the "pro" was really a "pro".. he wouldnt fall for any of those off guard rushes.. he would know how to SCOUT and see everything coming instantly and defend it.. This is why I disagree so largely with this whole "newbs can win in SC2" arguement.. Its retarded. Outside of this marine/mass SCV all-in right now, every single thing in this game is easily defendable if you scout and play smart. If you play too greedy and fast expo without scouting your opponents 9pool, you deserve to lose, regardless if you are a "pro" vs a bronze player.
I'll majorly disagree with your 2nd point too, example MC vs Rain today, on Lost temple. MC was WAYY behind but good decisions and he came back to win. its way more easier to come back and win a game with decision making and good micro than it was in BW.
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Well TBH I think looking at people's skill from BW and then SC2 shows a lot. Obviously SC2 requires skill but is a less mechanical game than its predecessor. I mean HuK was like C+ and yet he is able to go and become one of the best early SC2 players? Not to take anything away from him, but in a game like BW I would almost never have been able to take a game off even korean progamers, but right now I am certain I could... With (don't get me wrong, very skilled) amateurs getting really far, who had little chance of succeeding in BW are doing very well in SC2. As well, a lot of players can shine at the top for a period of time, but there is no single player who just dominates to the extent of Flash, Jaedong or Bisu. Obviously it is a different game, but in BW if I was confident I was much superior to my opponent I would lose maybe 5~10% of the time. In SC2 however I would put that % much higher, even if I know I am going to get cheesed (not to mention factors like close positions on LT or meta vs terran, where it is near impossible to stop cheese unless you hard counter it.)
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I believe part of the reason is that the sc2 has too many elements that are potentially game ending or gives advantages that are much greater than actual skill can overcome. For example, one DT or Banshee can be potentially game ending when not prepared. 2 rax marines or proxys can also be game ending or gives huge advantages to the aggressor that as long as that person isn't half bad at macro, it is very hard to come back. Blind build order counters auto wins games.
The issue is that it is impossible to be prepared for all the possibilities at once as there isn't enough resources. Players must pick and choose what they prepare for. When all the possibilities can be game ending, and it is difficult to get information to prepare for them (fog of war), actual skill differences between players become less significant (but not insignificant) to the outcome of the game. Hence even the best sc or sc 2 players will have 70-75% win max.
Whether the players who abuse the same strategies that are more effective and very easy to execute "deserve" their achievement or not is a whole different matter.
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On December 18 2010 23:39 Severedevil wrote: SC2 maps are very small, which restricts games and therefore restricts the opportunities for the superior player to outplayer the inferior player. The extreme example is early all-in play; short distances reduce defender's advantage AND reduce the window to detect and respond to the all-in. Superior player in what regards? Objectively you can't rank people. You can only rank them according to rules. I, too, have problems with the rules, but which are legitimate and which are not?
Due to the complexity and hidden information, in sc2 there are more random events and guessing involved. If I get to keep my macro play going, I often win. If the opponent 'by chance' picks the right opening, I often lose very hard.
On December 19 2010 00:50 lowercase wrote: 2. Individual games have no swing. Once you've gained an advantage, even minor (like killing workers with harass), you greatly increase your chance of winning the game. If you're ahead, you stay ahead. If you're behind, you inevitably lose. Just look how quickly Idra GGs when the balance swings against him.
Just my opinion.
It's the same in bw or many other sports. You then only win if the enemy drops his guard, but that should rarely happen. One miss-step with the force field or in a baneling war can decide the game.
That's a good training for real life.
On December 19 2010 01:02 Skyze wrote: If the "pro" was really a "pro".. he wouldnt fall for any of those off guard rushes.. he would know how to SCOUT and see everything coming instantly and defend it.. This is why I disagree so largely with this whole "newbs can win in SC2" arguement.. Its retarded. Outside of this marine/mass SCV all-in right now, every single thing in this game is easily defendable if you scout and play smart. Sometimes you can't receive scouting information.
Pros are not perfect, how should they see everything coming and instantly defend it? In the history of mankind has that ever been like that?
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Why are people trying to say that some players in bw don't have crazy high win percentages? flash is above 70% in every single MU!!!!!! I would like to see a single sc2 player that even gets close to that. Actually I would like to see a typical sc2 'pro' get close to 60% win rate. SC2 is an imbalanced game, and it will be until long after all 3 expansions are released. I don't understand why people are playing an inferior game, that will continue to be inferior until all three expansions are out. And by that time, the game will have so many units that trying to balance that monstrosity will be very difficult.
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On December 19 2010 01:04 PhatCop wrote: I believe part of the reason is that the sc2 has too many elements that are potentially game ending or gives advantages that are much greater than actual skill can overcome. For example, one DT or Banshee can be potentially game ending when not prepared. 2 rax marines or proxys can also be game ending or gives huge advantages to the aggressor that as long as that person isn't half bad at macro, it is very hard to come back. Blind build order counters auto wins games.
The issue is that it is impossible to be prepared for all the possibilities at once as there isn't enough resources. Players must pick and choose what they prepare for. When all the possibilities can be game ending, and it is difficult to get information to prepare for them (fog of war), actual skill differences between players become less significant (but not insignificant) to the outcome of the game. Hence even the best sc or sc 2 players will have 70-75% win max.
Whether the players who abuse the same strategies that are more effective and very easy to execute "deserve" their achievement or not is a whole different matter.
This. Some people already pointed out in other threads that in BW, should an unexpected wraith come into your base, you're not done, whereas in SC2, if a banshee shows up and you've got no detection, you're out.
I guess this is something that we'll have to keep in mind when looking at how the game evolves. Can't say yet whether this will prove problematic or sort itself out with time.
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******GSL 3 FINAL SPOILERS****** + Show Spoiler +On December 18 2010 23:00 Greentellon wrote: At one point I may have been at the opinion of "protoss is underpowered", but I was wrong. You really shouldnt base your opinion on protosses power level based on just one player. Personally I dont think toss is under or over powered. It is simply powered. + Show Spoiler +by the tears of zerg and terran scrubs
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MarineKing has the best pure micro of any SC2 player I've seen so far. For someone of the calibre of Incontrol (a strong player but not in the same league as MarineKing) to say such a low manner thing as MK deserves nothing he has achieved so far serves only to reflect very badly on Incontrol himself.
Quite a poor statement to make.
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You can not compare SC2 to SF4 because it is like comparing apples to oranges.
SF4 is a micro-orientated game. You pick a character and proceed to control him/her to win.
SC2 is a combination of micro and macro orientated. You can play pretty well if you choose to focus solely on micro. Like Foxer, his macro is somewhat average but his micro marines are just beastly. Macro players like Nestea or FD also do really well.
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On December 18 2010 23:19 TheLonelyCarrier wrote: Were/are they in fact, that dominant, or would they also fall in line with that 70-75% rule? Is that normal for this game? Is that what it was in BW? Does it seem low to people who have followed the scene?
70-75% win ratio in BW is godlike. Only in short bursts does people have higher than that, where they found an edge and the opponents havn't found how to counter it yet.
http://www.teamliquid.net/tlpd/korean/players/424_Flash/main
He is in the low 70's and is considered the best player, with some very minor doubts.
http://www.teamliquid.net/tlpd/korean/players/211_Jaedong/main
That is number two is in the high 60's. Where Flash has taken so many games from him that that drags his average down (it also seems to be his weakest over all matchup).
As others have stated, this is due to imperfect information.
To make it kind of make sense in a fighting game sense. You don't know which character your opponent has picked until the first strike is on the way and you have to dodge/block it with minor warning. There are only so many characters and attacks possible, so you have a decent chance of doing the right thing and then play from there. Except the enemy can jump up to a hider and you have to guess when and where the attack is coming from, but now you know the character at least.
Edit, part of the skill set is guessing what the opponent will do. Since that is part of the skill set it means 90's isn't possible when fighting others of near skill.
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Okay I read through the first page, and as none mentioned this, I thought I'd contribute. Imho, the MAIN reason for lesser players beating better players in SC2 is the map pool. All maps are relatively small, and you often times pretty much spawn in your enemy's face. The better player will almost always try to go for a macro game, as this is where luck is less of a factor, as every minute he gets a chance to prove himself, whereas the lesser player will try to go for as short games as possible, as there's less chances for him to screw up. With a tiny map this obviously turns into a big problem. I think the game is balanced and that cheese is not too powerful, however with super small maps, it's just not shown. Imagine 2 rax all ins on a huge map. I also feel like the game is alot more strategy based than BW, as players don't have to focus quite as much on the raw mechanics of the game, so a lesser player always has a chance to win if he has a chance to win if he uses a superior strategy. That's just the excitement with the game.
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The game isn't perfectly balanced yet. And to make it worse, the maps are pretty bad in general.
Rain had a pretty solid early to midgame PvT build, no doubt tested against Tester and SangHo with success. The game currently rewards these builds too much, both against zerg and against protoss.
At the same time, the game seems to disfavour terran in late game on bigger maps like metalopolis and so on. This obviously creates an incentive for terrans to either win or make significant damage before late game. And so obviously that is what they do. Just look at how NspGenius, ST_Squirtle, NesTea and others were sniped (all of those three incidentally by Rain...).
GSL FINAL SPOILERS + Show Spoiler +MC was able to beat this due to being such a much better player. In the first two games he was really up against the wall but he remained calm and cashed in on Rain's mistakes to be able to win the games. Those games really, really showed the difference in skill level. Note however that the games were really close. Clearly something is wrong there.
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The point has been brought up that it is generally easier to attack than defend, but I feel like this can be narrowed down to how much scouting has to be done by the attacking and defending player.
Let's say I am playing a standard game as Z. My Terran opponent is building 2 starports and has massed 4 banshees, however I still have only 2 queens. Since I have not scouted my opponent at all, many would agree that I deserve to lose the game here. BUT my opponent has not scouted me either. He has gone with a blind offense. If he arrives at my base and I have, 10 queens or something crazy, he can retreat the banshees, maybe expo, or start to create different units to counter what I am doing. Though we have both neglected to scout, the offensive scenario can easily lead to a quick win, while the defensive one does not.
Not saying there's any imbalance, just bringing up an example to think about.
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On December 19 2010 01:20 Euronyme wrote: Okay I read through the first page, and as none mentioned this, I thought I'd contribute. Imho, the MAIN reason for lesser players beating better players in SC2 is the map pool. I'm lolling here if you think you're the only person to mention map pool. :S
But, to be fair, if there were a few large, resource-thin maps, we might see some differing styles of play.
Fucking Blizzard, how can they not be producing maps? If I was a professional game designer I could easily make one polished map per day... I don't understand it.
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On December 19 2010 01:27 lowercase wrote: Fucking Blizzard, how can they not be producing maps? If I was a professional game designer I could easily make one polished map per day... I don't understand it.
You could make one decent map a day. Not one polished map a day, at least if you wanted different tones and play styles on them. You need to play test a map to see what you as the creator missed.
edit,
I can agree that the pace of map making is lower than it should be. Or at least that the popularity system makes custom maps impossible to get popular and into play for normal users.
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On December 18 2010 23:30 Quarz wrote:Show nested quote +On December 18 2010 22:41 Schnullerbacke13 wrote: skill is defined by being able to win games. winning games is skill. Nothing more to say. If someone always cheeses und do all in and wins the tournament, then he is the best player for now. People who thinks otherwise are scrubs. Blame the game not the player.
These are ridiculous posts. Skill isn't defined by being able to win at games. That's clearly wrong, whether you want to look at the dictionary, or look at how the word is used on a day to day basis. If you win at tic-tac-toe, do you have skill? No. Your opponent was simply a moron. If you win at roulette, do you have skill? No, you simply got lucky.
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On December 19 2010 01:16 Cade)Flayer wrote: MarineKing has the best pure micro of any SC2 player I've seen so far. For someone of the calibre of Incontrol (a strong player but not in the same league as MarineKing) to say such a low manner thing as MK deserves nothing he has achieved so far serves only to reflect very badly on Incontrol himself.
Quite a poor statement to make.
Actually I completely agree with incontrol on that. Neither MK nor Rain deserved what they achieved in my opinion. Being a GSL finalist shouldn't be this easy at all, but when we look at every past season, we see that one of the finalists is actually unable to play a macro game. And that type of players play the same race. And I really think that the game favors that race more than the other 2 races. Not because of having cheeser players, but because of this fact: If cheese is successful, cheeser wins. If cheese fails, they can just get away with that.
Yes, you may say that a win is a win and an achievement is an achievement. But neither every win nor every achievement lets you gain respect. You can not blame anyone for not respecting MK, Rain or anyone else.
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I think the problem is that SC2, in comparison with is predecessor, doesn't reward superior skill as much. Macro mechanics have been extremely simplified, to such a point that a skilled player as Ret wish not to be admire for his macro as he thinks it's just too easy. But on the other hand, SC2 doesn't offer much space for micromanagement of units. Smarcasting made useless to control your caster units at an individual level, and the most intensive stuff you can do is kiting against ranged units. Therefore, the problem is that a superior skill (either in macro on micro) doesn't translate itself of a truly superior gameplay. Of course, if you have a better understanding of macro and micro, you will probably win a Bo5 against a worst player, but you will always be at his reach, and that's exactly what Blizzard wanted, because they want to have happy customers ready to spent 100 bucks for a new expansion instead of dropping the franchise because it was too hard and frustrating.
I would like too add that i have huge respect for MarineKing because he's the only player who has show the will to control his units individually. And Incontrol is like the Bill O'Reilly of SC2, he's just being paid to stir stupid polemics for more viewers.
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I've noticed that people blame a lot of what is going on with cheeses and all-in builds upon the fact that the map sizes are small and I think the only reason they are small now is because larger maps would give the Protoss race the absolute best advantage early game with warp gate tech. All they need is a pylon somewhere near and bam, instant reinforcements. To counter that, I think Blizz needed to shorten maps so everybody has a chance to get quick reinforcements. And this is coming from a Toss player who would LOVE large maps haha.
That being said, I like to think that SC2 is in its infancy and since every BO or cheese or super strong unit compositions haven't been found yet, you can't expect that the strongest player in the game will always win. You can't compare SF to SC2 and you can't compare either of those to something like Halo because they are different games that require different styles and different skills. SF and Halo require quick reflexes above all else. SC2 may require some quick reflexes (noted by the APM) but it is a STRATEGY game first and foremost. I like to think that the person who pulled off their strategy better than the other player should be the one that wins.
Does that suck because people can do certain strategies over and over again blindly and continue to win. Possibly. I don't knock people down because they find a strategy that works for them and until someone can consistently stop them, why would they ever do something different?
That's why I think you can't compare the games of SF and SC2 in terms of skill because they both do require a fair bit of skill to be good at but as somebody said, everything in SF is completely laid out before either combatants enter the match. SC2 has more random variables that come into play. You won't find someone in SF suddenly pulling off a move no one has ever seen before but in SC2, that could happen almost every match. In SF, you just rely on your reflexes and the hours and hours of practice. In SC2, I think you have to rely more on being able to adapt to the situation.
Anyways, rambling rambling. I just don't think you can compare the different pro scenes because the games are totally different. And I don't care what anyone says, cheese is a strategy. Its a war game, you gotta do what you can to win.
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On December 19 2010 01:16 Cade)Flayer wrote: MarineKing has the best pure micro of any SC2 player I've seen so far. For someone of the calibre of Incontrol (a strong player but not in the same league as MarineKing) to say such a low manner thing as MK deserves nothing he has achieved so far serves only to reflect very badly on Incontrol himself.
Quite a poor statement to make.
I highly highly doubt he has the best pure micro. He came up with a somewhat new strategy (dont know if this existed in the brood war scene) where you pull off layers of marines to spread them out. He came up with a new cheese strategy where you pull all your SCVs and abuse basically the mid game protoss strenght (melee units and ranged units, and whatever you focus you still end up taking lots of damage of the other), and was able to get to the finals with it. That's it. He's not an awesome player, and he basically end up doing the same strategy far too much. SC2 is new, so an average player with a new strategy can be very hard to beat.
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The game is so so so young. Give it time.
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In almost every contest of skill, you will have people who are less skilled that win some of the time. Over the course of their careers, the more skilled players will have more success. I'll invoke the often used StarCraft to poker analogy here.
The best poker players in the world do not always win the big tournaments, there is a lot of volatility in a tournament where you can be eliminated at any stage. Sure, the less skilled player will pick up a few tournament wins, but over the course of their career the professional will make a lot more money and he will go a lot deeper in more tournaments. Just like poker, StarCraft is a game of incomplete information. Even the less skilled player can have success when the information they have is useful.
I really think that Code-S and Code-A will address a lot of these concerns. Going to a group format will surely separate the skilled from the less skilled and it will take away a lot of the all-in nature of the game. Sure there will still be some all-ins but they will be less frequent because the players who can play fundamentally solid and adapt their strategies will have more success over time.
An all-in is a high risk, high reward play; when the risk is getting eliminated and the reward is another $20,000-$40,000 dollars it seems quite logical for the less skilled player to attempt it. When the risk is lower (losing a group game would be less punishing than losing a game in a knockout round), so is the reward (winning a group game only puts you in better position in your group, it does not guarantee a lot more money).
At this point in time, I think it's the format of the tournament that gives less macro oriented players a better chance at advancing. As the group play begins next season, I think we will see the system truly start to reward the most skilled players in the game.
+ Show Spoiler +I am in no way implying that TSL_Rain is an unskilled player, he took a strategy that he could exploit against some of the best players in the game and he beat them with it. Were the games always entertaining? No, but the man is trying to make a living playing this game (our entertainment is secondary to his livelihood) and if he has the opportunity to win a substantial amount of money then who are we to judge what strategy he uses.
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I don't think mechanics = skill. They are simply a means to an end. What should be considered skill is the ability to out think your opponent. Starcraft should be a thinking game. If I wanted to play or watch a game with great primarily physical skill I'd spend my time with soccer or hokey.
Look, if you think, for example, rain can't play a macro game and you can why don't you just do a build which puts you abit behind in a long term macro game (where you should be able to beat him anyways) but keeps you safe against an early all-in? If you think that disadvantage it would cost you is too large then clearly you're not THAT much better than him at a macro game. Why not execute your own early attack then?
If you can play a great macro game but don't have the skills to get there, then you don't have a complete skillset. As the game develops we'll see more safe strategies come around and game lengths will probably extend. However, trying to just play a macro game right now is like being able to ride a horse but being unable to saddle up.
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Starcraft is a much deeper game than street fighter in terms of game tree- and state space-complexity. In street fighter there are just a handful positions in which a character can be in and each character can only perform a handful of moves.
It's like comparing marathon running to poker.
In a marathon race, there's not many factors to consider. If one runner clearly is superior he will win close to 100% of all races. In poker even a newb could win a pot from the best player in the world. That doesn't necessarily mean that there's more skill involved in marathon running than poker.
Starcraft is carefully designed to give a lesser player some chance against a superior opponent.
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Doesnt sf4 have tiered charachters? Like 2 players of equal skill using an S and C class charachter, the S would probably win.
If so how can you even begin to make a comparison with sc2? The races arent even explored yet. (But people still try to rank them)
An excellent question. You are correct that tier lists exist, essentially ranking all 35 characters from top to bottom, devided into separate groupings called "tiers" of which S or A+ is the top and D at the bottom.
As far as S tier characters vs C tier character, it doesn't work quite the way you think. A character's tier is determined as follows: First, each possible character matchup is analyzed and rated. The rating is expressed by expressing how 10 matches between players at the highest skill level would likely split. 5-5 is an even matchup. If Ryu v Ken is a 6-4 match (dunno if it is off the top of my head) then that means it slightly favors Ryu.
Once all matchups have been rated (by consulting with a broad spectrum of professional players) Each character's score across all matchups is added up. The characters with the higher numbers would be at the top of the tier list. What this means is that S tier characters aren't necessarily an order of magnitude better than C tier characters. They have a higher number of favorable matchups, but a particular S tier toon versus a C tier one might be 6-4, 5-5 or even 4-6, meaning that despite their placements on the tier list, a C tier character might only have a slight disadvantage against a particular S-tier one, or even slight advantage.
If for nothing else, this fact is significant because most tier lists put out by the reputable community sites (Shoryuken, iPlayWinner etc) are created solely through the feedback and analysis of either pro players, or knowledgable community veterans. When the worst matchups are 6-4 as far as the pros are concerned, thats an indication that the pros think the game is pretty balanced. You don't hear guys saying some match is 8-2 in a character's favor, even if they have a really tough time with that match personally.
I am not really drawing the comparison to say SSF4 is more balanced than SC2, since comparing RTS balance to fighting game balance would be pretty obtuse of me. What I would find interesting is if you tried to make a similar tier list of races, or even units using the same method. The the thing would never get written. I dont know that such a thing would even be useful, but the fact that no 2 high level players would say the same thing regarding whether Fungal Growth should affect air units or not seems troublesome.
It would appear to indicate that either a large part of the player base (pros included) do not have an accurate grasp of how the game is played or thatthere is some sort of systemic problem with the current state of the meta game. I think either of those is a troubling prospect for a burgeoning esport. Hopefully, either through community solidarity and understanding or through careful balancing by Blizz, this fissure will be sewn up in time.
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One thing I've noticed about the SC2 pro scene is that when somebody says a particular player is "skilled", what they really mean is that they can play a long duration macro game very well. The general consensus seems to be that players that focus on the early game are inferior to those who do well in the lategame, because the lategame is more complex. There could be a guy out there with 80% winrate winning all the tournaments, but he would still be considered "trash" if none of his games made it past the 10 minute mark.
In short, it seems like the sc2 crowd doesn't care about winning nearly as much as complex macro play...which makes it rather inevitable that fans (and pros) be disappointed. It just happens more often in sc2 because 1. The game is young, so people feel more justified using preceived imbalances to explain results 2. smaller maps, which encourage quicker play, which devalues "macro skill" 3. lowered mechanics ceiling that makes it easier to macro in general (and thus, easier to achieve "lucky wins" off of skilled players)
How does "preceived skill" compare in the war3 community? I would assume it would be more open to early game/micro skill simply because of the role hero units play there.
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On December 19 2010 01:02 Skyze wrote:Show nested quote +On December 19 2010 00:50 lowercase wrote: Good points. I have two issues with Starcraft:
1. Games are "upset-tacular." Players considered "lower skill" can still beat pros by catching them off guard with rushes of some sort. This would never happen in other comparable sports like, say, tennis.
2. Individual games have no swing. Once you've gained an advantage, even minor (like killing workers with harass), you greatly increase your chance of winning the game. If you're ahead, you stay ahead. If you're behind, you inevitably lose. Just look how quickly Idra GGs when the balance swings against him.
Just my opinion.
if the "pro" was really a "pro".. he wouldnt fall for any of those off guard rushes.. he would know how to SCOUT and see everything coming instantly and defend it.. This is why I disagree so largely with this whole "newbs can win in SC2" arguement.. Its retarded. Outside of this marine/mass SCV all-in right now, every single thing in this game is easily defendable if you scout and play smart. If you play too greedy and fast expo without scouting your opponents 9pool, you deserve to lose, regardless if you are a "pro" vs a bronze player. I'll majorly disagree with your 2nd point too, example MC vs Rain today, on Lost temple. MC was WAYY behind but good decisions and he came back to win. its way more easier to come back and win a game with decision making and good micro than it was in BW.
Lmao wat a joke, do you even play the game above platinum league? Try getting a zergling past a Terran wall or an overlord far enough into a Terran base to see his tech path when he has 2 marines out. Better yet, go try to defend a 4 warpgate as Zerg on Delta Quadrant against someone who actually knows the build order.
'll majorly disagree with your 2nd point too, example MC vs Rain today, on Lost temple. MC was WAYY behind but good decisions and he came back to win. its way more easier to come back and win a game with decision making and good micro than it was in BW.
Its funny cause almost all protoss pros (Nony, Huk, Nex, and MC himself) have cited Protoss' weakness as its inability to play from behind. I suppose you know better though.
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A note: The "MK doesn't deserve anything he has." line was actually stated by IdrA.
I better not come back in a week and see every poster here referring to it as some notorious Geoff Robinson quote because of the OP's misunderstanding.
Personally I have a lot of confidence in skilled players in BW because of results and the sum of knowledge and experience at everyone's disposal. Map balance is also far more studied and maps are crafted and tested rigorously by professionals.
In BW the "untouchables" lose mainly to players that we know to be really fucking good. They do drop games occasionally to lesser known players, but maps, or in the past, game evolution can contribute to that. Not just luck. When I look at Flash's recent results, his recent elimination losses in the MSL are basically the only losses to lesser known players in 4 months. Everyone else who beat him (free, Light, Kal, BeSt, Jaedong) is or has been considered really fucking good. Jaedong's record is similar, even a comparably unremarkable name like Hydra has been A-team material, rocking the Proleague for years.
SC2 hasn't even been around for years. Anyone who wants to infer that anybody, no matter how notorious, is a "favorite" or demonstrably more "skilled" simply doesn't have enough data to work with. Right now our assessments of skill are basically educated (sometimes highly educated in the case of MC due to our inside information from Jinro) guesses.
If SC2 doesn't have a bonjwa by the time HotS is out, I will start being skeptical of its effectiveness in rewarding skill, and hoping that HotS can remedy that... at least temporarily (because we all know it will be patched continuously thereafter.)
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Too many good long posts for me to read all of them right now, but in skimming them I saw a couple references to chess and to winning percentages. I just wanted to point out real quick that Gary Kasparov has a winning percentage less than 70% http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessplayer?pid=15940, and chess is the classic game of skill and thought.
One question I have is how much inborn skill plays a part in different games. For instance, I tried SF4, and was just flat-out terrible. I put ~100 hours of work into it and still just didn't have the dexterity or twitch reflexes to pull off relatively basic seeming moves and combos. It seems to me that the player whose reflexes are few ms faster than another's, with equal time and practice, should beat him a significant percentage of the time. Whereas in chess and StarCraft, there isn't as much of a specific thing you can be good at that can ensure your dominance.
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Street Fighter has less luck in it, it's mostly about mechanical play. SC1 is more about luck than Street Fighter, but a large part of the game is still about mechanics.
SC2 otth is hugely about luck (at high levels); the BO a player decides to use is vastly more important than the way he executes it (at high levels), and since niether player has perfect intel about what their opponant is doing, that means they're going to be playing blind to some extent. Fruit Dealer might scout MC getting an expansion and some forges, and that would lead him to believe that MC would be teching and macroing, but there's no way for FD to know that MC is secretly going to cancel the forges, cut probes and go for DT rush instead (this is hypothetical example). There are many ways for one player to "fake out" the other, and since faking out takes no or little skill, that leads to the favoured player dying.
In order for SC2 to reward the most "skilled" there needs to be a stronger emphasis on mechanics. If someone does 4 warp gate rush for example, it shouldn't entirely come down to what you built to counter it - there should be some sort of meaningful micro you can do to stop it, like in SC1. Sadly micro barely matters at all in most builds, against 4 warpgate for example your success is almost entirely tied to how many bunkers/units you built, not about how you micro those assets.
Also lol at iNcontrol saying MarineKing doesn't deserve his wins. He has probably the best SC2 micro in the world. I don't know about his macro, but SC2 doesn't give players much chance to show off their macro anyways so for all anyone knows he's a macro God as well. His strategies (or rather strategy) are fairly uninspired, but honestly I'm sure he knows how to use more than just marines. He just chooses not to because it's his schtick. Just like how Stork's schtick was to get carriers, except MK takes it further - much, much further.
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Right now, the untouchable god of BW, Flash, is at a 71% win percentage across his career. oGsMC, one of the most dominant players in SC2 at the moment, is sitting at a 76% win percentage. Fruitdealer is at 73%, Nestea at 72%, and Foxer at 62%. So to me, it looks like the dominant players of SC2 are holding the same win percentages as their BW counterparts, even though we have not had a clear Bonjwa emerge yet.
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On December 18 2010 23:19 TheLonelyCarrier wrote:Show nested quote +Albeit in BW, Flash isn't completely untouchable, but he sure damn well comes close to be. Show nested quote +SC2's mechanics works in a way that even someone who's head and shoulders above you can still lose games at a decent chance.
Pretty sure people like flash would rarely if ever lose to someone who isn't close to his ability. Both of these are good examples of where my question lies. I never saw Flash or Jaedong play, and I am sure the intracacies of their performances would be lost on me now since I never really looked at BW in a true competitive sense, the way I have come to learn and understand SC2. But when I hear people talk of them they sound untouchable, as if one would have to channel the very hand of god to defeat them. In all competitive fields, I gravitate towards that. Being in awe of a true master is something I really enjoy about any professional scene. Were/are they in fact, that dominant, or would they also fall in line with that 70-75% rule? Is that normal for this game? Is that what it was in BW? Does it seem low to people who have followed the scene? Show nested quote +The fact of the matter is Bitbybitprime, Marinekingprime... players like this who are often derided for their play... got there. So they deserve to be there. In all competitive fields, this is a common notion. "A win is a win". I tend to agree. But when professionals and respected members of the field seem to pretty clearly disagree I must give pause. But maybe I am giving them too much credit just because they are respected professionals? Think on that for a second. In say, American Football, are the players all wise sages who speak nothing but football truth? No way. They moan and complain and make excuses and deride one another's abilities and credentials even when it seems to make no sense. Sometimes its ego, sometimes its ignorance and every so often, it IS truth. I guess it's because I can readily identify with the sub-culture involved that I assume that the feelings of a pro must be based in some form of objective reality. Also, the nature of SC2 and all RTS is such that we tend to assume a certain ability of the players to be capable of objective analysis on a level beyond even a well versed forum goer. Maybe they aren't. Maybe even guys like Artosis or inControl talk out their ass sometimes when it's a topic they feel passionately about and it just needs to be taken with a grain of salt rather than used as an indication that the pros feel the game is not rewarding good play. Again, since I lack a basis for comparison coming from a Street Fighter background where this kind of thing is undeard of, it's difficult for me to say.
Let's put it this way, there are 6 individual and 2 team tournaments of consequence per year. Flash has been in all 8 finals (6+2) and has won 4 individuals and both team tournaments, while maintaining about an 80% win rate (in all matchups) for over a year now.
Now this is a bit of an extreme example as Flash had the best year that anyone has ever had in BW, period.
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On December 19 2010 02:14 TheNihilist wrote: Right now, the untouchable god of BW, Flash, is at a 71% win percentage across his career. oGsMC, one of the most dominant players in SC2 at the moment, is sitting at a 76% win percentage. Fruitdealer is at 73%, Nestea at 72%, and Foxer at 62%. So to me, it looks like the dominant players of SC2 are holding the same win percentages as their BW counterparts, even though we have not had a clear Bonjwa emerge yet.
Flash has 500 games ogcMC 30 plz dont compare those 2.
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A note: The "MK doesn't deserve anything he has." line was actually stated by IdrA.
I better not come back in a week and see every poster here referring to it as some notorious Geoff Robinson quote because of the OP's misunderstanding.
Thank you for that catch Echoe. My apologies, I will edit the OP to reflect this.
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On December 19 2010 02:17 Quarz wrote:Show nested quote +On December 19 2010 02:14 TheNihilist wrote: Right now, the untouchable god of BW, Flash, is at a 71% win percentage across his career. oGsMC, one of the most dominant players in SC2 at the moment, is sitting at a 76% win percentage. Fruitdealer is at 73%, Nestea at 72%, and Foxer at 62%. So to me, it looks like the dominant players of SC2 are holding the same win percentages as their BW counterparts, even though we have not had a clear Bonjwa emerge yet. Flash has 500 games ogcMC 30 plz dont compare those 2.
True, but we can only work with what we have available.
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On December 19 2010 00:42 TheLonelyCarrier wrote:Show nested quote +The reason why someone can be considered inferior in skill to the player he beats if he cheeses is because most cheese builds are easier to execute than their respective counters. Much easier. I don't know if people universally agree with this, but this has been my perception too. To be more precise, it suggests that defense takes more skill and saavy to be good at than offense. It may be worth noting, that this is actually the exact opposite of Street Fighter and most fighting games in general. In SF, defense is the easy part. Every possible attack can be blocked with a simple input and its always one of two inputs. The only thing not blockable are grabs, which can only be applied in extremely close quarters and can be escaped with no reprecussion with another simple input. With three simple inputs and average reflexes, you can stop any incoming attack without fault so long as you are not "open". Offense, on the other hand is where the true skill of the player is. With defense being so mechanically simple, landing even one attack on a skilled player requires reading one's opponent, conditioning them to respond how you want them to, and then using the right move to defeat that response. Then, turning that one hit into an un-interrupted chain of hits requires timing as strict as 1/60 of a second and often requires the player to enter a sequence of 10-15 inputs or more in well under a second. The end result is that in order to deafeat someone, you must have enough skill to overcome their easy to execute defense with a far more elaborate and challenging offense. There is no real scenario in which you can beat them without outclassing them, because the only way to even hurt them is to outstrip their mechanical skill with yours by nearly an order of magnitude. Come to think of it, that fact may be why you don't hear these debates in the SF community. Your opponent simply cannot put you in a bad situation and harm you without exhibiting a higher degree of skill than you, barring some obvious mistake on your own part. SC2 and most strategy games are kind of the opposite I suppose. Defending requires solid intel, knowledge and understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of your opponents attack, choosing the right course of action, preparing and finally executing it. Attacking can be as simple as "make probes, make pylons, make lots of units and attack". It's also no coincidence, as several people have mentioned here that the game in which defense is easy features complete information and the one in which offense is easy features incomplete information.
Wow, I never looked at it in this perspective but I think it's quite indicative of my thoughts as well and a great post. I watch a lot of professional sports along with the SC2 pro scene and also played several sports through high school and university. And the one thing I noticed through playing sports is that defense, in most sports I've played, is generally easier to understand and execute.
It is the offense in these sports that truly allows the 'more skilled' player to actually win when they 'should.' I agree that there is no coincidence that defense is easier in a game of complete information and vice versa when it comes to a game of incomplete information.
However, SC2 is only in its infant stages. There are too many unpredictable strategies, timing pushes, all-ins that just have not been seen or played against. As the game ages, I have full confidence that certain builds will be optimized and developed to be more effective against others. As these builds emerge, then the corresponding 'more skilled' players' will be winning more as well (just like how it happened in BW ).
Right now, we see a lot of build order counters and just random build orders dominating other ones. As a spectator, those games aren't that thrilling but, as the game progresses and is more refined, it will be a true spectacle to watch a highly skilled player 'outclass' another. It is the skills of interpretation and manipulation of incomplete information that is exciting to watch. Just at the moment, variance > skill, but as things get figured out, then skill > variance.
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On December 19 2010 02:14 TheNihilist wrote: Right now, the untouchable god of BW, Flash, is at a 71% win percentage across his career. oGsMC, one of the most dominant players in SC2 at the moment, is sitting at a 76% win percentage. Fruitdealer is at 73%, Nestea at 72%, and Foxer at 62%. So to me, it looks like the dominant players of SC2 are holding the same win percentages as their BW counterparts, even though we have not had a clear Bonjwa emerge yet.
Flash has worthy opponants. Many of MC's are crap imo. It's like one pro pub stomping and getting 100% win, while the other plays against the top players in the world and gets 50% win. Can't compare the two.
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I think this game hasn't been out long enough for someone to be "untouchable". It's not that the skill isn't there, it exists in abundance. What is preventing this from happening is that no one has figured out the game yet, not even blizzard, which is why we are still seeing big changes happening in patchs. New tactics and build orders emerge weekly, almost daily, and something like this can take even the most skilled player by surprise. Once the game has reached a stable point (i.e. no more big changes from patches) and people really get to grips with the game, we will see untouchable players emerge. Once it is stable, you will be able to go into a base look around and be so much more specific about what is going to come out of it or what someone is up to. The game is too new for anyone to clearly be superior yet.
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On December 19 2010 02:17 Quarz wrote:Show nested quote +On December 19 2010 02:14 TheNihilist wrote: Right now, the untouchable god of BW, Flash, is at a 71% win percentage across his career. oGsMC, one of the most dominant players in SC2 at the moment, is sitting at a 76% win percentage. Fruitdealer is at 73%, Nestea at 72%, and Foxer at 62%. So to me, it looks like the dominant players of SC2 are holding the same win percentages as their BW counterparts, even though we have not had a clear Bonjwa emerge yet. Flash has 500 games ogcMC 30 plz dont compare those 2.
Yeah, that was a really bad comparison. Not only do the stats in TLPD only count games against pro's in leagues, they only count the games against pros in Kespa sanctioned leagues (I.E. the games people care about, largely BOX play).
You wont be able to make winrate comparisons between Flash now and Nestea/FD/Foxer in a minimum of 4 years.
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On December 19 2010 02:11 pullarius1 wrote:Too many good long posts for me to read all of them right now, but in skimming them I saw a couple references to chess and to winning percentages. I just wanted to point out real quick that Gary Kasparov has a winning percentage less than 70% http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessplayer?pid=15940, and chess is the classic game of skill and thought. One question I have is how much inborn skill plays a part in different games. For instance, I tried SF4, and was just flat-out terrible. I put ~100 hours of work into it and still just didn't have the dexterity or twitch reflexes to pull off relatively basic seeming moves and combos. It seems to me that the player whose reflexes are few ms faster than another's, with equal time and practice, should beat him a significant percentage of the time. Whereas in chess and StarCraft, there isn't as much of a specific thing you can be good at that can ensure your dominance.
Flash winning record is 71.54%, and Jaedong's 68.70%! Kasparov and S class BW players fight the best players of the world. They have a good record, but nobody expects them to win every game (well, i, fact, we do, but we know they are bound to lose from time to time). But if Jaedong played a really good amateur player (A+ ICCup like Idra at his best), he would win against him 99% of times. Kasparov would beat any national master (ELO 2200 to 2400) easily. In SC2, the best players lose often to mid diamonds...
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On December 18 2010 23:19 TheLonelyCarrier wrote:Show nested quote +Albeit in BW, Flash isn't completely untouchable, but he sure damn well comes close to be. Show nested quote +SC2's mechanics works in a way that even someone who's head and shoulders above you can still lose games at a decent chance.
Pretty sure people like flash would rarely if ever lose to someone who isn't close to his ability. Both of these are good examples of where my question lies. I never saw Flash or Jaedong play, and I am sure the intracacies of their performances would be lost on me now since I never really looked at BW in a true competitive sense, the way I have come to learn and understand SC2. But when I hear people talk of them they sound untouchable, as if one would have to channel the very hand of god to defeat them. In all competitive fields, I gravitate towards that. Being in awe of a true master is something I really enjoy about any professional scene. Were/are they in fact, that dominant, or would they also fall in line with that 70-75% rule? Is that normal for this game? Is that what it was in BW? Does it seem low to people who have followed the scene? Show nested quote +The fact of the matter is Bitbybitprime, Marinekingprime... players like this who are often derided for their play... got there. So they deserve to be there. In all competitive fields, this is a common notion. "A win is a win". I tend to agree. But when professionals and respected members of the field seem to pretty clearly disagree I must give pause. But maybe I am giving them too much credit just because they are respected professionals? Think on that for a second. In say, American Football, are the players all wise sages who speak nothing but football truth? No way. They moan and complain and make excuses and deride one another's abilities and credentials even when it seems to make no sense. Sometimes its ego, sometimes its ignorance and every so often, it IS truth. I guess it's because I can readily identify with the sub-culture involved that I assume that the feelings of a pro must be based in some form of objective reality. Also, the nature of SC2 and all RTS is such that we tend to assume a certain ability of the players to be capable of objective analysis on a level beyond even a well versed forum goer. Maybe they aren't. Maybe even guys like Artosis or inControl talk out their ass sometimes when it's a topic they feel passionately about and it just needs to be taken with a grain of salt rather than used as an indication that the pros feel the game is not rewarding good play. Again, since I lack a basis for comparison coming from a Street Fighter background where this kind of thing is undeard of, it's difficult for me to say. JD/Flash win 70-80% of their games. Occasionally you'll see JD lose some ZvZs from a misclick or a BO disadvantage, and occasionally you'll see Flash's plays anticipated and totally exploited. But more or less, you see a very very consistent level of play from these guys. That's not saying that the aces of other teams can't take games off these guys (they can and often do, simply because Flash/JD are the clear-cut most obvious Ace choice available and are thus easily sniped), but you won't see these guys lose to A-level players on ICCup _EVER_.
I think this is mostly because (ZvZ, and 13core PvP aside) BW is a game where a more skilled player can get the scouting information he/she needs to not get crushed with an all-in.
Even the most devious cheeses have their indicators, and the best players are rarely ever forced to play blind.
On December 19 2010 02:23 legaton wrote:Show nested quote +On December 19 2010 02:11 pullarius1 wrote:Too many good long posts for me to read all of them right now, but in skimming them I saw a couple references to chess and to winning percentages. I just wanted to point out real quick that Gary Kasparov has a winning percentage less than 70% http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessplayer?pid=15940, and chess is the classic game of skill and thought. One question I have is how much inborn skill plays a part in different games. For instance, I tried SF4, and was just flat-out terrible. I put ~100 hours of work into it and still just didn't have the dexterity or twitch reflexes to pull off relatively basic seeming moves and combos. It seems to me that the player whose reflexes are few ms faster than another's, with equal time and practice, should beat him a significant percentage of the time. Whereas in chess and StarCraft, there isn't as much of a specific thing you can be good at that can ensure your dominance. Flash winning record is 71.54%, and Jaedong's 68.70%! Kasparov and S class BW players fight the best players of the world. They have a good record, but nobody expects them to win every game (well, i, fact, we do, but we know they are bound to lose from time to time). But if Jaedong played a really good amateur player (A+ ICCup like Idra at his best), he would win against him 99% of times. Kasparov would beat any national master (ELO 2200 to 2400) easily. In SC2, the best players lose often to mid diamonds...
This pretty much sums up my point. SC2 is a game, right now, with huge variance. Games with huge variance need a lot of games to be played in order for the best players to consistently show up at the top, since standard deviation is inversely proportional to the square root of the number of samples/games played.
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1. These feelings/concepts are consistent with the way the community generally felt during the SC1/BW era?
Not at all. There is a reason the MSL/OSL finals were Flash vs Jaedong so many times in a row. I don't even know the last final that didn't have atleast one of them in it.
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I find it's definitely easier to take games off of much better players in SCII, but that's probably because the game is still relatively young, times haven't been entirely figured out yet, etc.
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On December 19 2010 01:00 Skyze wrote: I think SC2 is superior in terms of rewarding the most "SKILLED" player..
People assume Skill = apm and speed.. when that is not the truth. That was rewarded in BW, where in SC2 you just need enough to be able to not be sloppy..
what SHOULD win games, in BW or SC2.. is GAME SMARTS! Decision making, Handling pressure, being able to out-think your opponent and win the mental battle..
That wasnt so much the case in BW, because you had to focus so much on building.. Thats why every single game was basically a 40 minute macro battle (SNORE!).. in SC2, it really comes down to the smartest player who wins the games, after you take away the apm/macro "necessity".. (except for SCV/marine all-ins.. yea, thats abit stupid right now)
This is why IdrA was winning so much in beta, but hasnt done much since, because in beta he was head and shoulders above the macro "necessity" that other people couldnt keep up.. but NOW that people are practiced and caught up macro-wise, they totally outsmart idra, and obviously that is Idra's major weakness, adapting and being a smart player rather than a mechanical player.
TSL_Rain, say what you want about his lategame macro skills, but hes a SMART player, therefor he deserved to be in the finals or at least top 8. MC, on the otherhand, is just insanely talented and smart, and the best example is in the game on Lost Temple, where MC was facing like 6 tanks + mass marines, with a very little army, which most people would of GG'd right there.. MC didnt let the pressure get to him and eventually broke free, and won that game in the end. THAT is rewarding the most "skilled" player, someone who can handle the pressure and not be phased, someone who can come back in a macro game solely do to great decision making (DT in the gold expo while defending main won him the game).. APM/macro should have very little relevance on who wins, like it does in BW where Flash and Jaedong, obviously the two most talented macro players, are completely wrecking everyone with no contest.
APM * DOESN'T MEAN THAT MUCH * IN BW.
There's B-level players with 90 apm, and hell, decision-making in BW is MORE useful in my eyes.
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The reason Flash and Jaedong are so clearly at the top now is not just because their mechanics are perfect but also because they know every single build inside out. SC2 players don't have that luxoury yet. I think as time passes we will get a clear SC2 top aswell, but that might even take as long as it did for Broodwar
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On December 19 2010 02:11 pullarius1 wrote:Too many good long posts for me to read all of them right now, but in skimming them I saw a couple references to chess and to winning percentages. I just wanted to point out real quick that Gary Kasparov has a winning percentage less than 70% http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessplayer?pid=15940, and chess is the classic game of skill and thought. One question I have is how much inborn skill plays a part in different games. For instance, I tried SF4, and was just flat-out terrible. I put ~100 hours of work into it and still just didn't have the dexterity or twitch reflexes to pull off relatively basic seeming moves and combos. It seems to me that the player whose reflexes are few ms faster than another's, with equal time and practice, should beat him a significant percentage of the time. Whereas in chess and StarCraft, there isn't as much of a specific thing you can be good at that can ensure your dominance.
Interesting stuff. A game where everyone has complete information and the same exact set of tools and one of its grandmasters loses nearly a third of the time. Well that just blows all kinds of holes in what we have all been saying about complete knowledge vs incomplete knowledge. This may indicate that its theoretically possible that the best that a truly great player of SC2 could hope for may be as low 50 percent. If a grandmaster of a 95% balanced, complete information game can have as low a win rate as 70% then anything could be possible in a game like SC2.
As far as inborn skill, I wonder about that myself. I can watch an SF tournament and see some super high level player do some wacky combo, and then boot the game up and start landing it in practice mode after a few minutes of repetition. My friends will practice playing ranked on-line for weeks straight while I haven't played a single round in over a month. They come over, I pick a character I barely know how to play and crush them for 40 or 50 matches straight before dropping one. I don't know what that is, but some might say it's just inborn talent as you say.
On the other hand, I have been playing SC2 since beta phase 1 and I cannot get out of bronze to save my mother. I am embarrassed at the ammount of time I have spent practicing different builds, working on my mechanics, running unit tests, watching pro level play, studying my own replays and religously tuning in for Day 9, Husky and HD. I still can't put more than 2 wins together back to back in bronze 1v1. Its truly shameful. I have come to the conclusion that there must be some kind of aptitude or skill that I just completely lack, that cannot be learned (ie: is innate).
It seems clear to me that both require some sort of innate attribute or skill set. For my friends to put in all the work they have to improve at SSF4 and still not be able to make any quantifiable progress in gaining on me indicates this. Also indicative is how one of those friends qualified right into platinum with practically no knowledge of what a build order was or what units were effective against what. When we 2v2 together he will be like, "What Terran unit is good against Corruptors dude?" and I will facepalm because he rolls me without question when we 1v1 against eachother. He still doesn't really "get" build orders, he just builds stuff when he "has the money for it" and makes units until the cows come home.
He isn't smarter or faster and he certainly hasn't put more work into it, but something makes him better. I dont know what exactly that is, but whatever it is it must be innate.
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Bw was more mechanically and stregically taxing. Micro macro tactical choices and big picture build orders all more diverse and difficult to execute
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Hm lots of QQ, lots of good points.
One thing Blizz wont ever be able to patch is the players ATTITUDES... you could be in the most imba match of your life and come out on top because you were thinking about winning instead of T_T about how terran always lolmarines or how zerg mutalings.
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the way it is is great, you dont want the same people winning over and over, you want a game to be dynamic enough that even if you are better you COULD still lose.
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Very interesting about Kasparov, I had no idea. That does kind of shoot the poker comparison down, I do like Ruthless' point that BW was more mechanically taxing. That made pulling off the interesting and micro-intensive strategies that much more difficult. Even with all that, Flash is sitting right around a 70% win percentage in BW. He is certainly regarded as nearly untouchable but even the highest skilled players do not win every time.
It will be interesting after all the Code-S stuff next year to see what kind of percentages the top players can produce in SC2. If they are much lower than the top BW players, that could be cause for some discussion but I suppose it's all estimated guessing until we can get a statistically significant number of games played by the top SC2 players.
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Let me put it this way, strategy games like sc2 have something other games doesnt have, as everyboy know to win a game there are two integrals parts, economy, and the army/defense you are gonna use to win/defend, the balance between these two must be perfect cause if you have too much economy and nothing to defend youll die, if you have too many units too early and not much economy youll probably loose on the long term. but then another variable adds, the strategy, you have to think beforehand a gameplan youll use for the game, and considering there are thousand build orders , and counter build orders, its not gonna be constant your dominance, just by having a gameplan you can win a game without executting too hard ability or micro (example cheese) , but cheese is a part of the game so in order to beat this you must use the other part of the game, that is micro, movement of units and perfect executtion and choose of abilities to overcome your opponent. i think the best player in sc2 is the one wth the greatest accomplishment and wins, but i do agree its not like in SF, where one guy was the definetily god, and no one could touch it, even flash and jaedong in its dominace could loose a game or two versus some guys, but Flash is the best player atm and in 2010 he won all the important tournaments (in korea which are considered the most prestigious and skilled starcraft league of the world) with the exception of one who loss to Jaedong and other who loss to effort, so in bottom line he was in all finals, he won 2 OSL, 2 MSL and WCG grandfinal, and get second place in an MSL and in an OSL which means 5 golds and 2 silver, and its curious that 4 of all these finals were Flash vs Jaedong, the other three were flash vs effort, flash vs Goojila, and flash vs movie.
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Hey OP I'm a huge SF fan as well. I've played SSF2: Turbo, SF3: Third Strike, and both of the SF4's on a fairly competitive level. I also got really into CvS2 and Guilty Gear. Do you post on Shoryuken?
I'd say the main thing about StarCraft 2 compared to Street Fighter comes down to the 'control' of the game. You cite the excellent example of Daigo, and what a lot of people don't realize when you play Daigo is that he's making you do things you don't even realize. He knows how to bait you into jumping forward/backward, he knows how to bait you to guard for too long while you get thrown, and he knows exactly what every iota of floor space your character can cover actually means. Street Fighter pushes the pressure on, and it does it QUICKLY. This gives players with amazing execution, reflexes, and game sense a huge advantage.
Don't get me wrong, it takes the exact same kinds of skills to get good at StarCraft, but there's a load more wiggle room. Since you're not able to look at your opponent and all he's doing constantly, there's always the chance of you getting hit off guard just because he build a dark shrine in some random corner of the map you didn't see. In Street Fighter there's no 'wiggle room' out of the corner, and there's no magic trick that will ever take a really serious player completely by surprise. You might get a poke off against Daigo when he didn't expect you to punch, but he's still going to beat you with 95% of his life left.
This is both good and bad. I mean it's good if all you care about is the best of the best getting to win all the time, but it's bad if you care about variety. Anyone that watches Evo knows that Justin Wong is going to be the top American Street Fighter player more times than he's not, which is cool and all until you want to stop seeing his infamous turtle-style play. He wins games with it, but it's not the most exciting thing in the world.
It really just boils down to if you want to see Flash win every BW tournament or not. I'd suspect that would kill a majority of what makes StarCraft such a great spectator's sport.
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Its funny cause almost all protoss pros (Nony, Huk, Nex, and MC himself) have cited Protoss' weakness as its inability to play from behind. I suppose you know better though. Yet, the first 2 didn't even manage to qualify and the last one won the tournament. It's not about what you say, it's about what you do or achieve. IdrA is a pretty good player, but he is a whiner too, always complaining about something - that only shows something about his personality, not about the game he is playing. GSL 1 and 2 winners are proof of that.
But that was sheer luck, isn't it? FruitDealer and NesTea weren't ahead of the curve in GSL 1 and 2, it was all dumb luck that FD dealt with rushes amazingly and used Baneling drops when everyone else (even respected "pros" such as Artosis and Idra) were calling it an expensive, useless and all-in strategy. NesTea solid macro and decision making didn't win GSL 2 as well right? It was just dumb-luck.
Artosis may be respected, but he spent 3 GSL seasons stating how much 15 Hatch is suicide, that no smart Zerg does that, and Terrans always win against it, and even so during GSL 1 and 2 the players won doing exactly what he was criticizing, and guess what, they won the tournament, he didn't even qualify yet ¬¬ his cheering for anything that isn't Terran is also pretty dumb, shows how imparcial he is when talking about the game.
Regarding luck and skill, information about the game, the overall comparison with SF and chess, and dominating players in the SC2 scene, the other posters have said enough that I don't have anything to add.
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Starcraft even my beloved broodwar is a game that can involve a fair bit of luck as well as skill. Its not as bad as something like poker, but it does level the playing field. Think ZvZ on a 4-player map, if my overlord scouts in the right direction and yours does not, I have a huge advantage in the game. Is it enough for me to take down Jaedong?
No.
But it could be enough for ZergBong to take a game off of Jaedong
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a tourny is not to determine the skill level of a player but is rather a specticle, a league is a more appropriate way to measure skill. you may argue that manchester united is the most skillful football club in the world yet they dont win all the tournys every year however they do finish first or second in the league every year. i belive this is true in all sports. did tsl.rain deserve to be in the final?... yes, is he the most skillful player?.. who knows as the aim of the event is not to find the most skillful players.
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On December 19 2010 03:12 HeavyArmZ wrote: Artosis may be respected, but he spent 3 GSL seasons stating how much 15 Hatch is suicide, that no smart Zerg does that, and Terrans always win against it, and even so during GSL 1 and 2 the players won doing exactly what he was criticizing, and guess what, they won the tournament, he didn't even qualify yet ¬¬ his cheering for anything that isn't Terran is also pretty dumb, shows how imparcial he is when talking about the game.
Didn't he qualify for season 1?
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On December 18 2010 22:48 AlexDeLarge wrote: I think it has to do with variables. The more variables a game has built in, the higher the variance is. Now i don't play SF, but i assume it is a very straightforward game, thus you can achieve perfection in it with enough practice. Tennis would probably be a good comparison to it as a real life sport. And we see that 80% of the finals in Tennis Grand Slams are between Federer and Nadal.
Whereas Starcraft has sooo many variables and so many determining factors and incomplete information (just like poker, minus the luck factor), that it becomes a lot harder to achieve constant utter dominance.
Just my 2 cents.
Well said. Another good comparison would be chess. Let's say chess was just invented this July and Bobby Fischer and Garry Kasparov from their prime are somehow transported here, would you expect them to dominate this year? I would think a lot of different players would become ranked 1st for the first year as everyone is still learning the game, and either Fischer or Kasparov would be determined as the chess god in the second year. Should be similar in SC2, it will take time for the Fischer and Kasparov of SC2 to be identified.
SC2 may seem to be very similar to BW but it is actually very different. Mechanics are no longer very important, you can no longer hit the keyboard like a pianist and expect to win games against the top players, you actually have to use your head to win. That's why we're seeing BW pros like July and Nada doing decent in SC2 but not as good as many expected. While their mechanics are great, their strategy and decision-making isn't up to par with the top of the top.
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The thing that made BW hard was time management, a combination of mechanics and decision making, not just one of them. In SC2, the balance between mechanics and decision-making is heavily tilted in favor of decision-making. This is not a good thing because no one can have perfect decision-making in a game of limited information, which Starcraft 2 is. You need mechanics to make up for disadvantageous build order choices. Right now, it's not difficult to beat a top-level player if you happen to choose a better build order, or an easy-to-execute all-in build order.
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On December 18 2010 22:35 TheLonelyCarrier wrote: 2,000 other contestants to play in a game that if they win will net them $87,000 dollars. This concept simply does not exist in the SF world. I think you don't know anything about the VS Figthing World. I don't play SF, I'm a Guilty player, but even in your game... Have you seen Vangief VS Ricky Ortiz in the Norcal 8 ????
It's FAR WORST in fighting games.
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I feel like another important thing is that starcraft features both skill and strategy, and these two features are interconnected. For instance, MKprime developed a new strategy of the marine SCV all-in, and he was able to make it work because he showed tremendous skill in his micro while executing it. Someone with lesser micro skill would be forced to use a different strategy.
Skill in starcraft can be rather specialized, such as MK's skill with marine micro. The strategy part of the game is making a decision as to how to apply your own particular skill set to the game. Starcraft isn't actually a strict test of mechanical skill, and isn't intended to be. If a player is able to invent or perfect a new strategy, I feel they should be able to bring down a top player with it, even if their mechanics are worse.
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As IdrA said, all it takes is a dice roll.
Say you played 7 games
Player 1 wins Player 1 wins Player 2 wins Player 2 wins Player 2 wins Player 1 wins Player 1 wins
In this situation
In A Bo3, such as Ro32, Player 1 wins. In Ro16, Player 2 wins. In Bo7, like the Semifinals, Player 1 wins again.
In a game with so many ways to lose from a single mistake, it's very easy to lose 2 games in a row even though normally you would beat them 8 out of 10 times.
People say "well the other player was more skilled during that best of 3....." No. That's bullshit. They were more lucky.
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It is all about knowledge. SC2 isn't a game where you can react to a player, it's a game where you have a plan, and have planned deviations based on what you see your opponent do, but timing is so absolutely critical that you have to often have react to something before your opponent does it. A large part of the game is restricting what your opponent can do, or at least hedging against it.
The easiest example, if the Zerg player has lots of larvae and every tech building, you have literally the travel distance to react, which can be a matter of seconds when dealing with a nydus/air attack.
So if you are able to pull off this relatively simple strategies, you can take a game or even a series off a higher level player just because of abusing game mechanics.
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can't understand this discussion .. the player having the highest winrate is the most skilled. ofc there is a high random variance (same as many sports e.g soccer). A bad player might win sometimes against a better, however if they play - say 100 games, he'll loose 70 of them. if its because of its race beeing OP, then choosing the correct race was part of his skill. A loosing player who excels in macro obviously has choosen the wrong strategy. He might win a drone-up-as-fast-as-possible contest, however that would be another game, not SC2
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I think any complaints right now are way too early. Perhaps we have been spoiled by Brood War, but that game had 10 years to age like a fine wine. Give SC2 that same patience and I'm sure the kinks will eventually be worked out.
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On December 19 2010 03:45 echO [W] wrote: I think any complaints right now are way too early. Perhaps we have been spoiled by Brood War, but that game had 10 years to age like a fine wine. Give SC2 that same patience and I'm sure the kinks will eventually be worked out.
Agreed SC2 is fairly new and still being patched. It needs time to be explored more and balanced before we can be more objective about it.
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+ Show Spoiler +On December 19 2010 03:02 TheLonelyCarrier wrote: Interesting stuff. A game where everyone has complete information and the same exact set of tools and one of its grandmasters loses nearly a third of the time. Well that just blows all kinds of holes in what we have all been saying about complete knowledge vs incomplete knowledge. This may indicate that its theoretically possible that the best that a truly great player of SC2 could hope for may be as low 50 percent. If a grandmaster of a 95% balanced, complete information game can have as low a win rate as 70% then anything could be possible in a game like SC2.
As far as inborn skill, I wonder about that myself. I can watch an SF tournament and see some super high level player do some wacky combo, and then boot the game up and start landing it in practice mode after a few minutes of repetition. My friends will practice playing ranked on-line for weeks straight while I haven't played a single round in over a month. They come over, I pick a character I barely know how to play and crush them for 40 or 50 matches straight before dropping one. I don't know what that is, but some might say it's just inborn talent as you say.
On the other hand, I have been playing SC2 since beta phase 1 and I cannot get out of bronze to save my mother. I am embarrassed at the ammount of time I have spent practicing different builds, working on my mechanics, running unit tests, watching pro level play, studying my own replays and religously tuning in for Day 9, Husky and HD. I still can't put more than 2 wins together back to back in bronze 1v1. Its truly shameful. I have come to the conclusion that there must be some kind of aptitude or skill that I just completely lack, that cannot be learned (ie: is innate).
It seems clear to me that both require some sort of innate attribute or skill set. For my friends to put in all the work they have to improve at SSF4 and still not be able to make any quantifiable progress in gaining on me indicates this. Also indicative is how one of those friends qualified right into platinum with practically no knowledge of what a build order was or what units were effective against what. When we 2v2 together he will be like, "What Terran unit is good against Corruptors dude?" and I will facepalm because he rolls me without question when we 1v1 against eachother. He still doesn't really "get" build orders, he just builds stuff when he "has the money for it" and makes units until the cows come home.
He isn't smarter or faster and he certainly hasn't put more work into it, but something makes him better. I dont know what exactly that is, but whatever it is it must be innate.
Much like Irennicus, who is a complete scrub at Street Fighter BTW, I have been in the Pro SF scene since about 97.
I am posting mainly on your idea of a skill limit.
I have had the luxury to play the large majority of the best of the best SF players in America and from Japan. I would never consider myself in the same league as the elites, even though I have tried to make it there. I have had to come to the realization that while I am very good at SF I lack something that keeps me from being Elite. I would say that I am in that top 10% of players that are very dangerous to the top 1% but that will never reach that highest level.
Over the years I have been able to witness many players from all walks of life step up and play SF and try to become competitive. I would say that only about 30% of them have the natural talent and mental capacity to become anything more than an average player.
Of thoes 20% there are about 10% that can reach the level that they can compete on the Pro level with players like Alex Valle and Justin Wong. Of the last 10% there might be 1% that are able to be as good as the very best of the best.
IMO the core skills needed to be good at SF and SC2 seem to be very similar, granted I have only been playing for a month or so.
1. Reaction Time. In each game you need to have split second reaction time and the ability to make decisive moves. Either when you base is under attack and you need to move your SCVs or when you come under attack and didn't expect it. You need to have the ability to react to that situation, quickly anilize it and make the right decision as to how to handle it.
2. Knowledge of the game. In Street Fighter if you don't have match up knowledge vs everyone in the cast you will get caught off guard by someone who is using an obscure character to their fullest potential. This would be like playing someone new that has developed some odd/unique build order that you had no idea about and weren't prepared for at all.
3. Dexterity. Being able to Micro your army to be the most effective it can be is just as important as a Pro SF having the dexterity to land that clutch combo or to hold off his opponent's onslaught.
4. Adaptability. In each game you have to be able to adapt on the fly. You will be caught off guard by either a new build order or a few of your units going down when you thought you would be fine. In SF you have to be able to adapt instantly when your opponent pulls something new out of his ass that you didn't expect. Maybe some type of glitch like in Street Fighter Alpha 2 when Alex Valle used a situationaly unblockable trick to destroy everyone. Or maybe your opponent switched characters after he lost his first game and you weren't prepared for that at all.
5. Having a plan. If you dont think that you go into each match of high level Sf with out a game plan then you haven't an idea of what it is like to play high level SF. Understanding your opponent is essental to developing a game plan vs them and vs their character. You have to do it in that order. You can't just have a plan that deals with say Sagat you need to first have a plan to deal with how your opponent plays and then what tools Sagat can use vs your character of choice.
Much like SC where you need to scout and know what your opponent is building and what they are planning on doing. In Street Fighter you have to know who you are playing and what they are capable of doing.
Of course there are some areas that are vastly different and the main one is the Economy management and how to balance it and spend it. I think that this has been the hardest part of SC2 for me.
Again I could be wrong about all of this because I am so new to SC2. But this is the basic feeling I get when I play and how my current skill set has helped me learn this game and improve fairly fast.
Oh and TheLonelyCarrier who are you in the SF sceen?
BTW please forgive any spelling errors i have dyslexia and I don't care to comb over this to make sure its ok.
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I just want to point out that If you look a the Code Rankings (http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/GSL_Rankings#Current_Ranking), almost all of the top players have been in all three GSLs.
If that doesn't point out that the best players consistently do well then I don't know what does.
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SC2 perfected will end up being BW with easier mechanics. That would still mean a very variable oriented game. Look at BW and the top two players Flash/Jaedong. Neither of them have over 70% win ratios.Thats just how its going to be and there will never be any player to utterly dominate in SC2. The better skilled players are like the dealers in blackjack while the lesser players are the normal gamblers. The odds are always stacked in favor of the dealer but you just never know what will happen. In the end everything will average out and the better players will have better records. Thats all that matters and parity is what keeps things interesting rather than one player dominating everything.
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brackets decide and will continue to decide almost every single tournament placing(s) until either:
1) Some form of dynamics/gameplay are adjusted, (example: slight buff to static defenses) 2) Better maps.
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I don't think so, mainly because of the lack of mechanical demand that was such a huge skill differential in SC:BW.
With SC2 we'll have top players, we'll never ever have one dominant player for a long period of time like oov, savior and flash was in broodwar.
I will really miss this to be honest
Its hard to be a fan of someone when you know they can just die to some random all-in cheese in the first rounds since high ground advantage is also less important in SC2 which makes defending alot harder.
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On December 19 2010 03:48 Paperscraps wrote:Show nested quote +On December 19 2010 03:45 echO [W] wrote: I think any complaints right now are way too early. Perhaps we have been spoiled by Brood War, but that game had 10 years to age like a fine wine. Give SC2 that same patience and I'm sure the kinks will eventually be worked out.
Agreed SC2 is fairly new and still being patched. It needs time to be explored more and balanced before we can be more objective about it.
agree with this 2 above. The game is out for only 5 months without including the beta. I would actually be surprised if i see a continuous winner for GSL before legacy of the void(3rd sc2 expansion) is out and patched.
Do note: even after the game has underwent a major game patch and not anymore, champions did not hold their title forever. One example would be savior. There was a time period where there was a scbw event where he continuously thrashed every team's ace. Everyont thought him unstoppable. Then all of a sudden bisu came along and destroyed him.
The game itself is still in its infant stages. If changes are applied even before every strategy is used and perfected, how, then could anyone continuously hold an advantage over another? Supposedly a new patch came along, and there were many changes. It would take at least months before any sort of advantage can be found when using a certain unit composition/ build order. If the patch hits before such things are discovered, then of course nobody would know how to apply the counter and know its weakness. Any mid tier diamond could probably take games off pros like idra and huk when they found out a new strategy, to which the pros would not know the proper response since they themselves have never came across it.
Until the game reaches a stable level, i presume everything will stay unpredictable
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What constitutes dominance? If we can say SC2 is analogous to BW: Flash has been uncontestably the best player over the last year, right? Three straight OSL finals, three straight MSL finals - but only 4 titles between those six appearances, and we begin to see the problem. When EffOrt beat Flash with zerglings (basically), somebody made a ragepost alleging basically what you say here: "The best player didn't win, rawwr, cheese."
Flash the untouchable over the last year: 133-42 (76%). Flash the untouchable lost basically every fourth game. Jaedong, (almost) unquestioned #2: 116-48 (70.73%). Jaedong lost almost 3 of every ten. Fantasy, current #3 ELO: 86-44 (66.15%). If Flash didn't exist, he'd be the best Terran in the world, and he loses a third of his games.
For fun, here's the rest of the current ELO Top Ten's records over the last year: Stork: 56-36 (60.87%) Bisu: 65-38 (63.11%) Shine: 54-40 (57.45%) Light: 85-55 (60.71%) Kal: 79-62 (56.03%) RorO: 54-36 (60%) Hydra: 55-39 (58.51%) Plus Sea, because he's on the PR: 61-41 (59.80%) And for the hell of it, EffOrt's last year of play before retirement: 76-56 (57.58%)
I realize this looks like it's just stats-barf, but what I'm trying to get at is this: in the only scene we have to compare SC2 with, if you win 2/3 of your games you're an amazingly dominant player. Heck, if you pull over 55% wins, you're really really good. Factor in uncertainties of a new game, and the fact that the top RTS players in Korea mostly stuck with BW, and it's not at all surprising that you've got a bunch of different winners. First four OSL Finals? Eight different players, four different winners. (The MSL seems to to do a better job historically of reflecting the "dominance" of given players - but the OSL has historically been considered the harder tournament. The GSL, with straight brackets, is probably the hardest format of the three, so we should possibly expect even more variance than the OSL.)
EDIT: I realize I didn't really touch on the actual "skill" question. But this also is part of SC2 being a new game: as long as SC2 is played on small maps, and is fairly new, rushes are going to be "overpowered" - the rush timings are far more flexible because the defensive timings aren't as understood or precisely practiced. For a corollary, a triple bunker rush would *never* win a BW Starleague these days - it's something that's been done, defended against - people know how to defend it even if it's unexpected. So - new game, the "best players" won't have their full advantage yet because they haven't had time to get ahead of everybody else.
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Yes it rewards the best players. Its simple, the game is pretty balanced and its new, mechanics are not that big of a deal on pro-level, players with lower mechanical abilities (compared to BW-standart) are able to compete (thats a real improvement for the community and the game), it comes to tactical games, mindgames and maps ( you can argue alot about the current maps) and experience.
So, in a BoX series, or in other words, in alot of games, the better/skilled/experienced/better-conditioned player always will have the upper hand. The good thing here is that more people can learn to control the game correctly, and then its like other competive sports/games (like tekken for example).
You can ignore arrogant-posts/whines/complains about allin-1base-play, if it works the opponent played wrong against it. The game is new and standard-play isnt really etablished, more tournaments will show which direction it will go. You loose to allin-play and think the other player isnt as skilled as you? Well, he won, so better try to defend it and win , or STFU. ^^
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Why does everyone hate on marineking prime? He doesn't all in mostly, he just uses marines alot throughout the whole game. Does zerg stop using slings/roaches?
In fact 2 base - 3 base play is soemthing he often does, when the zergs survive that long. Hes showcasing a different style of build. I get ppl like Bitbybit who all-ins every game but why marineking? He plays pretty macro style
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I don't think it is rewarding the most skilled players. It is rewarding the people that mass ladder games and cheese.
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No offense to Street Fighter fans but it's a much less complex game w/ perfect information (as another poster said). There's no fog of war and you know at all times 100% of the capabilities of your opponent. If he's building up his super, it's right on the screen for you to see. The top players already "solved" the game.
BW took 10 years and I still doubt it's completely solved (or ever will be). Poker is an apt comparison. The top poker players get knocked out by random amateurs all the time. What makes them top players is the fact that they CONSISTENTLY get to the final tables at various tournaments or beat up other top pros at high stakes cash games. Starcraft is the same way. You deal with the variance and just try to be consistent.
I don't know if BitByBitPrime is a flash in the pan but I don't know how anyone can say MKPrime doesn't deserve what he's earned. He's twice had a finals finish (including all-stars) and made top 8 yet again (losing to probably this season's champion). Some people don't like his playstyle? Tough shit. If he's consistently getting results with it, who are you to say he's playing the game the wrong way? It's a new game. People's perception of what is or what is not optimal play is still being influenced by BW. Until Blizzard decides to change the rules/parameters (yet again), it's your job as a player to figure out winning strategies and be consistent with them.
A lot of the games end up as mind-games, like in poker. Everytime IdrA rages, it's like seeing Phil Helmuth blow up at a player because they called his pre-flop raise with a Q-10 offsuit (and it's not really that bad). Sure, random player X probably won't get much +EV out of it but someone like Phil Ivey can probably play it optimally enough where he can dominate Helmuth regardless. That's probably the difference between BitbyBit and MK (unless BitbyBit proves me wrong).
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On December 18 2010 23:19 TheLonelyCarrier wrote:Show nested quote +Albeit in BW, Flash isn't completely untouchable, but he sure damn well comes close to be. Show nested quote +SC2's mechanics works in a way that even someone who's head and shoulders above you can still lose games at a decent chance.
Pretty sure people like flash would rarely if ever lose to someone who isn't close to his ability. Both of these are good examples of where my question lies. I never saw Flash or Jaedong play, and I am sure the intracacies of their performances would be lost on me now since I never really looked at BW in a true competitive sense, the way I have come to learn and understand SC2. But when I hear people talk of them they sound untouchable, as if one would have to channel the very hand of god to defeat them. In all competitive fields, I gravitate towards that. Being in awe of a true master is something I really enjoy about any professional scene. Were/are they in fact, that dominant, or would they also fall in line with that 70-75% rule? Is that normal for this game? Is that what it was in BW? Does it seem low to people who have followed the scene?
Even when Jaedong was the absolute God of ZvZ, posting what may be the highest win percentage in a matchup... it was still only ~80%. Same goes for Flash in TvT. Flash and Jaedong are without question the best players in the game right now, and for the last year, they have been dominant.
But they still lose games to random pros. Note that these are not Bo3's; we're talking about just a single game. They still lose.
StarCraft is simply not a game that is conducive to a player being able to beat anyone of reasonable skill (ie: actual pros) in a single game. The best of the best will drop games. As strategies and knowledge develop, the skill floor you need to have to be able to take a game off of the best will rise. But it will never rise to the point where there are only a handful of players in that category.
That's why tournaments uses Bo3's and Bo5's. Even if you're able to steal a game away from a better player, you're far less likely to be able to do so in a Bo3. And even less able to do so in a Bo5.
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its the nature of the game and was the same in bw. The best players EVER won 70% of their games vs people in their relative skill bracket (fellow progamers). Its just how it works.
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On December 19 2010 04:26 SheerStress wrote: Why does everyone hate on marineking prime? He doesn't all in mostly, he just uses marines alot throughout the whole game. Does zerg stop using slings/roaches?
In fact 2 base - 3 base play is soemthing he often does, when the zergs survive that long. Hes showcasing a different style of build. I get ppl like Bitbybit who all-ins every game but why marineking? He plays pretty macro style
he found a niche that not exactly everyone can mimmick. most timing attacks/BO's can be copied, and everyones happy and jolly because they can play just like the big guys do. then MarineKing comes along with his so-called imba marine micro, no one can copy it, and everyones butthurt about it.
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i dont get it dont people realize this game is still young, we have years and years to go before anyone can become untouchable considering the balance of the game can change from month to month at this point
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Who are you people to proclaim what constitutes skill? MarineKing has been consistently performing well; if that's not skill, what is? Players like Idra are just whining when they proclaim that MarineKing didn't 'deserve' what he has achieved. This is an esport; the goal is to beat your opponent. This is exactly what MarineKing does. If winning does not denote skill, what does? Should the player with highest APM be granted victory? This is a real time STRATEGY game, not a button fest. If you're one of those player who worships speed as a benchmark of skill, go do something useful with your time. Learn to play an instrument well, and the "remarkable feat" of 300 APM will suddenly seem pretty dull. What, do pianists simply have "more skill" than Starcraft player? Gee, it must be.
Granted, MarineKing's victories might be short lived as player begin to adapt to the level of aggression he has displayed. However, until players have learned the skill of holding off this type of rush (which MC has shown), MarineKing will continue to do well. Fighting games are a good analogy here: Pros don't complain about the "cheap" locks and other strategies that can win games for low players, they simply learn to deal with them.
Incidentally, does Poker also require "little" skill? Indeed, top players will inevitably lose some games.
Edit: People really need to start reading the good ol' Play To Win article: http://www.sirlin.net/articles/playing-to-win-part-1.html
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People are still trying to figure this game out. There's not supposed to be any consistency. There is absolutely no metagame to speak of right now. We're still in "players gravitating towards one best strategy" mode. And the skill set required to play Starcraft II emphasizes much different skills than that of Brood War. So all of the Koreans and long-time foreign standouts who made their meal ticket with mechanically-strong play are now seeing whether they can adjust to a game that does negate their strengths on some level.
I just don't get why people seem surprised by this. This is something that everybody should have expected from the start. And other than Blizzard's necessity to legitimize Starcraft II in the face of the established Korean Brood War scene, there was no reason to begin playing major tournaments this early. Optimally, it would have been best to let the game simmer for about six to twelve months, let hype build for the players who are winning various regional tournaments, and then have them all go to war against each other. The game would still not be perfect, but it would be better than "Zerg is unstoppable we can't beat Zergs we can't harass them in the early-game fuck this I'm building a second Barracks and winning the game right here."
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The skill difference between all the pros isnt alot. Theres so many random factors in Starcraft II that if your somewhat good you can still win.
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I think you are missing something here. I believe that SF is a much simpler game - simpler as in not that complicated, not easier - than SC2.
The best players' understanding of the game is probably as close to 100% as mine is to 0. And in SC2? I don't think that all the players combined know half of what this game has to offer. The best have said how they don't feel comfortable with what they know, how the game still surprises them. Just think about MarineKing. Nobody thought it was possible to win games like he had. And I believe we will see much more breaking strategies like these in the future.
I would say that if any player was to understand the game as fully as SV IV top players, he would dominate just as much - it is just that being that good is much harder. To proof - MC says he has 95% ratio against Terrans. So it is possible for players to be dominating, only not in every matchup at this point of the game.
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Oh and TheLonelyCarrier who are you in the SF sceen?
Long time enthusiast. No notable tourney results. I competed in East Coast Throwdown 2 and Battlefield Arcadia under the name "Magnus", which is also my Bnet id.
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In a game like chess or go, you will almost never see the lesser player win, and games between two top players will never end as a result of early aggressive moves. If sc2 hopes to one day rank among the great games of skill, it will have to match those games in performance. It currently does not. One huge thing that needs to change, is that the game needs to be balanced to almost entirely preclude game that end as a result of early aggression at high levels of play. Early aggression should be a factor in how the late or mid-game develops, not the totality of the game.
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On December 18 2010 23:06 composition wrote: hidden information: Starcraft Poker
complete information: Street Fighter Chess
This
Really thats all there is to it. Street Fighter has been out for sometime now. Think of it as if Streetfighter had a Fog of War that only lifted as joystick commands where entered and only for a split second. (terrible analogy I know) If it was like that you would only know your opponents distance, Position(crouching, standing, Dashing) at that moment. Thats how Sc is you only know what is going on through scouting or what your opponent shows you(incomplete information).
It would be the other way around if Starcraft was played with no fog of war. Then you know exactly whats happening and then react accordingly. Then you have complete information. Then Top players would probably hardly lose also.
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I may be biased, being a 2k terran player. I feel like, in comparison to other RTS games where you generally have the same basic units, SC2 is more about knowledge of the matchup than actual player skill. At the highest levels, knowing how to exploit the weaknesses of your opponents race is more important than your ability to micro or macro.
I feel like Zerg is hard to play at first, but once you understand the game and develop the mechanics, it becomes too easy for less skilled Z players to beat more skilled T and P opponents, and by skilled I am inferring to their micro and macro ability.
I feel like protoss is generally too easy play once you discover how to 4 gate and 2gate robo and abuse force fields. The shields recharging so quickly, and ability to instantly warp in units makes it a really forgiving race to play. If you are knowledgeable about protoss you can easily do things to your opponents that will require not only knowledge, but ridiculous micro to overcome.
That's why you see quotes like this from the champ:
"When I watch other Protoss games, I feel that their understanding of Terran match up is low. I cannot reveal my own know-how, but once they understand it, victory will come a lot easier."
and blizzard is thinking of ways of buffing protoss because they didnt do well is past tourneys :[
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On December 19 2010 05:05 frumpylumps wrote: I may be biased, being a 2k terran player. I feel like, in comparison to other RTS games where you generally have the same basic units, SC2 is more about knowledge of the matchup than actual player skill. At the highest levels, knowing how to exploit the weaknesses of your opponents race is more important than your ability to micro or macro.
I feel like Zerg is hard to play at first, but once you understand the game and develop the mechanics, it becomes too easy for less skilled Z players to beat more skilled T and P opponents, and by skilled I am inferring to their micro and macro ability.
I feel like protoss is generally too easy play once you discover how to 4 gate and 2gate robo and abuse force fields. The shields recharging so quickly, and ability to instantly warp in units makes it a really forgiving race to play. If you are knowledgeable about protoss you can easily do things to your opponents that will require not only knowledge, but ridiculous micro to overcome.
I dunno about this, granted TvZ is my best MU but I feel like below a certain skill level a zerg wont be able to beat me due to zerg not really having viable all ins and my 2 rax marine essentially forcing them to build zerglings and the lesser skilled player probably cant manage the economy as well.
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i agree that in this game and any other rts, you have people lose to other people who they "should not lose to". it's kinda disappointing, i wished the best player of the world (arguably) should only lose to a handful of people near his skill level and never ever against somebody way lower skilled
but in sc2 you can have some random guy or severely lesser play win against a hardcore tourney player, being way out of his league on the same point look at nada and boxer, the old bw pros. look how terrible they are compared to their prime in bw in sc2 now. i would really want to know how good flash could get in a month together with jaedong and a toss player from bw, for example lock those three in a basement and let them fight each other 10h+ a day and see if in a month they can beat everybody in sc2 thus far
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I have to agree with the OP. It IS possible for a player of lesser skill to beat someone who is better. It wont happen often, but it is possible. There are things that factor in when we play SC2. The timing and luck factor are pretty intense. I lost a match to a play that is 600pts less than me on ladder just because his banshee got to my base just as my units passed the middle of the map. hurting my eco and forcing my vikings back to my main so I had no choice but to leave otherwise take the chance of him overwhelming my push because I had no income.
On the topic of bitbybit, I believe he shouldnt have made it that far. Any above average diamond player can practice marine/scv all in and get a lot of wins from it. Especially when your opponent doesnt or cant wall off.
MarineKing I think he has earned what he has gotten. We all know IdrA is a big baby, and is probably mad that MarineKing has been successful. His marines work because he knows how to micro, not because marines are "broken." That is just another example of someone bitching about something because they havent figured out a way to beat it yet.
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If the higher skilled player always wins, than what's the damn point of watching the pros compete? There would be no underdogs, no upsets, we would just watch the better player win every time. Yeah, real exciting...
SC and SC2 are excellent games for competitors, and spectators. The amount of viewer-ship and prize money is proof to this fact.
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On December 19 2010 05:11 ckcornflake wrote: If the higher skilled player always wins, than what's the damn point of watching the pros compete? There would be no underdogs, no upsets, we would just watch the better player win every time. Yeah, real exciting... You've got it mixed up. The better player shouldn't always win. But the player who played better should. The skill of every single player doesn't exist on a straight line. We all have off-days and days where we can't miss a shot.
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The only real truth is winning. I'm sure it would take more "skill" for Roger Federer to win Wimbledon with his off-hand only. That would be small comfort when Nadal takes it from him.
I don't understand the hubris of some players. They assume their way is the best way to play a 6 month old game. And, they somehow think the guy who beat them can't play the way they play. Maybe, just maybe, they tried it and had a difference of opinion on what's optimal. Or better yet, they decide to incorporate everything because they think there's a use for every starting hand depending on table position instead of waiting for pocket pairs or AK/AQ every damn time.
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On December 19 2010 05:11 ckcornflake wrote: If the higher skilled player always wins, than what's the damn point of watching the pros compete? There would be no underdogs, no upsets, we would just watch the better player win every time. Yeah, real exciting...
SC and SC2 are excellent games for competitors, and spectators. The amount of viewer-ship and prize money is proof to this fact. This, along with the earlier comment about hidden information vs perfect information.
It is pretty much indisputable that poker, despite the high luck factor (much much higher dependence on luck than SC2 even), requires a lot of skill to perform well. And yet, you see pros getting taken out by "newbies" all the time. The fact that there are so many people who are very very impressed by oGsMC, Nestea, and Fruitdealer indicates that people of high skill are being rewarded. Just because your favorite pro didnt make it through qualifiers doesnt mean that the game is broken.
And like ckcornflake said, if the "highest skilled" player was unbeatable, what would be the point of holding tournaments and watching pro games?
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"If FruitDealer hopped on the ladder, on any given night random diamond player #5 has a decent shot at beating him, maybe with a unique build, or a strange timing. Maybe in a tourney setting where it was Bo3 Fruit would figure the guy out and come back and win, but in a given match one of the best players in the world can lose to someone who isn't one of the best players in the world."
the problem with this is that the game is still being figured out. as we saw in idra vs kiwikaki at mlg, kiwikaki used a unique build relying on a warp prism to reinforce all this units. idra did his own personal analysis on the game and said if he brings over his second queen, he kills the warp prism and the entire rush is shut down and the game is won. once we examine all these silly builds and understand them the best players will not lose silly games
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i tire of these arguments. early lives of games are all riddled with inconsistency. in particular, RTS are riddled with inconsistency until people have an intuitive feel for timings. on top of that, the maps are just terrible, making skillless all-ins easy to win. combine that with difficulty scouting, and you find that all-ins are almost always very strong as they're first discovered. every all-in so far has seemed really strong for various amounts of time, then people figure it out and it just becomes a skill check where if you know how to handle it, you come out destroying it, if not or if you execute poorly, you die.
if these maps look to be staying this way for a long time, which as new maps begin to be rotated, they appear to be moving the opposite direction from easy to all in, and if people learn the timings of various all-ins and come to find that despite understanding the timings that it is unbeatable AND it isn't patched... if both of these things occur, begin complaining with all your might. until then, work on learning to play better.
beyond that, + Show Spoiler +MC won, and he is the better player. he destroyed rain, so what does GSL have to do with it? and if the finals doesn't, why are you making this thread now when the complete opposite happened?
and regarding SF... different game completely. it's not even remotely similar in so many ways that it just doesn't make sense. there's no such things as build orders and scouting in SF, which is what make those worse players win some games.
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I feel bad for people who thinks they are good just because they are super abusive. Being abusive relies on your players making mistakes which DOESNT mean your good. Foxer can do one freaken strategy that is super abusive. If you believe that the micro and interface is easier to do in SC2, then im sure you can agree with me that it is just play abusive. You don't have the retarded units in bw that you actually had to micro. Being able to spread and micro marines is no where near as hard as being able to consistently micro dragoons and macro at same time. He is just a trendy player who will lose consistently once people figure his one dimensional style out so I don't consider him as a good player at all. A good player is able to come up with best macro decision and a solid death push.(Jinro is actually pretty damn good example of this) I'm sick and tired of hearing about people not understand how hard it is to scout and play against a 2 rax build. You have so much marines build up in terran's base that it is near impossible to send something up and not have it die. Zerg does not have a observers or scan that instantly allows you to see what your opponent is doing. Their only option is just to let the drones build up and wait to see whether you going to get attacked or not. Zerg also don't have any good easy stationary defense like force field or bunkers. It is just super easy for a lesser terran to beat a superior zerg because of having such imperfect information. And I agree with people who thinks one base play to be consistently apparent through out the life of SC2. Chrono boost, warp in, mules, larvre inject just allows you to get such big force in early game that all ins will be super strong. The last point I want to make is whether I mind these cheese at all. To be quite honest, I enjoy watching these type of plays in a tournament. The main reason is that I know that there will be a FAR superior player will just be able to break this and just make a fool out of the other guy. I thank whoever bothered to read this long post and welcome any response ^_^
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SC2 is not the type of game where the better player wins every time. It's still in its infancy so I think it'll be a while before we have a true bonjwa. If you want a game where the better player always wins, try Quake Live. It requires a lot of mousing/strategic skill.
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if a single baneling can kill 8 marines at a time, then the marine is not broken. Idra is just a pathetic QQer and cries about everything, and I play zerg too.
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On December 19 2010 05:52 Avril_Lavigne wrote: if a single baneling can kill 8 marines at a time, then the marine is not broken. Idra is just a pathetic QQer and cries about everything, and I play zerg too.
a single baneling cant kill 8 marines lol
i would say the game doesnt always reward the best players as there are simply too much cheese options and im honestly convinced that cheesing is too easy and too sucessful atm plus there are several maps that heavily favor races in certain matchups
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Not every single cheese/all-in has been seen enough for everyone to know all of its tells. Once good players start figuring all of that out to a tee, then it'll separate the good from the cheese much better.
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there has always been a air of uncertanty in SC:BW and SC2, but in Sc2 it is much more magnified because it is so young and people are still feeling out the defensive timing.
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yeah im sure once sc2 stabilizes it will be less luck based. dont forget tho that element of luck can make the games extremely exciting because sometimes ppl can just pull out an unexpected win to wow everyone. i do agree with idra's statement that MK is getting kinda bad...i mean in gsl2 he dominated using basically 1 strategy (with the occasional clumsy banshee rush). admittedly MK has the most godly marine micro atm, he needs to stop being so completely 1-sided and mix is up more. i do hope he will adjust his style for GSL4 as i found his matches to be extremely exciting in gsl2. but also i think idra needs to look at himself as well...his early game isnt very good and hes quite a stubborn and mechanical player. not a lot of innovation. theres so many games of his ive seen where he could win easily, but refused to change his tactics (much like MK) and lost, even tho he couldve easily transitioned into something else and win.
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if the lakers or celtics lose a game of basketball vs a less skillful team; no one says that basketball doesn't reward skill. no one questions the height of the hoop or the courtsize. we just accept that even the best teams can't win every game. why should starcraft be different?
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China199 Posts
On December 18 2010 23:06 composition wrote: hidden information: Starcraft Poker
complete information: Street Fighter Chess
Pretty much this. Speaking as both an SC2 player and a Street Fighter player, that's the main difference. The complaints of cheese is that these builds catch the "better" player off guard and is able to sneak a win. There's no equivalent of that in Street Fighter, because both players see everything. If they get hit, it's because they didn't block correctly or sense the throw coming in time.
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On December 19 2010 05:47 JayDee_ wrote: SC2 is not the type of game where the better player wins every time. It's still in its infancy so I think it'll be a while before we have a true bonjwa. If you want a game where the better player always wins, try Quake Live. It requires a lot of mousing/strategic skill. The question is not whether the best player will win always, but rather they will win a majority of the time, and that skill is able to generally overcome luck and build order advantages, as was the case in starcraft broodwar. Personally, I'm not convinced this is true in sc2. We'll have to see. (anyone notice the lack of repeats in the GSL?, maybe an indicator, though the sample size is small.)
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some thoughts
Look at battlefield positioning alone. Difference landscape and unit positioning can lead to drastically different battle outcomes, especially if you play Zerg.
A single hand of poker doesn't reward the best player everytime, but over time, the best are rewarded, Same with SC2
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Well in relation to SF, there's a LOT more different factors going into the game. Anyone at a higher skill level can take games off of anyone, no one is ever going to have 100% win rates. From IdrA's statement "Hasn't earned blah blah", I believe that's a blatantly ignorant idea to toss out. Sure X person is able to do X strategy very well whereas everyone sees X strategy to be extremely cheesy and easy to beat but it takes some form of skill to do X strategy very well. Sure he may not have the highest overall skill but if he is good enough at X strategy and spent so much amount of time perfecting X strategy, I don't think he isn't entitled to win what he has.
This sort of bounces to the public apology that (Rain I think it was?) made and how SotG members reacted to it. "Sorry I did what it takes to win blahhhh" quoting Sean. So if one ranom person on the ladder has been hard at practice doing X strategy and manages to take... even a whole series vs FruitDealer, NesTea, or any other high level solid players, that doesn't mean that they don't deserve their win, they have done what it takes to win so there is never going to be an untouchable player. Not sure if this is on topic but that's what I have to say about that, I guess.
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On December 19 2010 05:52 Avril_Lavigne wrote: if a single baneling can kill 8 marines at a time, then the marine is not broken. Idra is just a pathetic QQer and cries about everything, and I play zerg too. This might be true in the bronze league your playing where terran actually JUST a clicks into without stim. I cannot tell you how ignorant your statement is, have you ever seen proper micro O_o
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On December 19 2010 06:25 Comeh wrote:Show nested quote +On December 19 2010 05:47 JayDee_ wrote: SC2 is not the type of game where the better player wins every time. It's still in its infancy so I think it'll be a while before we have a true bonjwa. If you want a game where the better player always wins, try Quake Live. It requires a lot of mousing/strategic skill. The question is not whether the best player will win always, but rather they will win a majority of the time, and that skill is able to generally overcome luck and build order advantages, as was the case in starcraft broodwar. Personally, I'm not convinced this is true in sc2. We'll have to see. (anyone notice the lack of repeats in the GSL?, maybe an indicator, though the sample size is small.) GSL Rankings
The good players are playing consistently. There is just not any one player that is clearly better than the rest. Maybe there will be at some point in the future. Maybe there will be 8 players who are consistently winning tournaments. We can't know until it happens. But to say that the good players aren't winning consistently is just not true.
Out of the top 32 players, only LiveForever, Jinro, sSKS, and NaDa have participated in just one gsl tournament. JookTo is ranked 32 and has once been in the Ro32 and twice in the Ro64. That means that except for the four players I mentioned earlier, the other top 32 players have all had to consistently place higher than just Ro64.
I think all we can infer from this is that right now, there is no one best player...
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the marine IS broken. something so low down the tech tree should not be so unbelievably versatile and upgradable. terran in general has to work half as hard for their wins (i am a random player btw).
the race is broken, and far too comprehensive for higher level play. toss and zerg require an extremely specific unit composition in order to combat their opponent. terran has a wide range of choices. that just is not right.
to quote idra
"i would play terran but i have self respect"
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On December 18 2010 22:41 Schnullerbacke13 wrote: skill is defined by being able to win games. winning games is skill.
Since he brought up Street Fighter, this is a significantly untrue statement. Daigo (one of the best ever at SSF2T) could lose in SSF2T to a much less skilled Akuma player. But that's because Akuma breaks the game. So the community, since there are no patch releases, has to "nerf" the game themselves and ban Akuma. In Japan there is a softban, anyone that could compete at the highest level never plays Akuma anyways, and in America it's a softban.
Point is, winning games isn't the only deciding factor of what skill is. A player could be really skilled mechanically, but lose on a build order counter. No denying Flash deserved every tournament he won, but he has lost in upsets before due to build order counters.
I think I'm a little disgusted by the disdain for people that win by doing a build order counter, or properly strategizing how to play the set. TSLRain played very smart in his match against Nestea. He knows Nestea is greedy, so he exploited that greed with 2 rax marine plus SCV. If he didn't, he wouldn't have stood a chance. But then isn't a slippery slope to say that a minor poke to the front of a zerg's base to force zerglings, and then retreating, is some broken cheesy no-skill tactic?
Fact is, people commonly misappropriate their grudges. Idra is a great example, highly skilled, he could just be gracious for the skills he has and all the practice that went into honing them. But instead he gets frustrated at everyone that decides to counter how he ALWAYS plays, rages at them on the internet, revels in being the "bad guy". That's his choice, but let it be known that the long-term champions of SC have all been relatively well-mannered, humble players. Definitely not the personality of Idra, that's for sure.
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All I know is it's pretty fucking random.
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So just a simple addition to the discussion since my initial questions have been well mined at this point:
We seem to have established that the state of things is to be expected, based both upon the win percentages established by BW, and on the idea that a limited information game will always have a higher degree of volatility and built in "randomness". A great majority of you feel this is all natural and that a degree of it will work itself out os the years go by and the game gets figured out. Great.
Going hand in hand with this is the notion that you all largley share that the moaning in the forums as well as the opinions of some pros such as IdrA, iNcontrol, Artosis and others is mostly baseless. Most of you seem to believe that despite their experience, and the likely fact that they understand as you do, that there is a degree of built in variation and that the game is still young, they are more or less over-reacting, whining or otherwise QQing. This plays in to my earlier example of American Football.
The players aren't sages, they are people. They can, and will deride fellow players whose methods they have issue with regardless of whether its valid or fair. I am not calling this a bad conclusion. Quite to the contrary, some people feel this kind of competition, trash talk and derisiveness is an important element to making esports compelling entertainment in a similar way as traditional sports.
So my question in light of this fact is, who ARE the sages? Who are the objective keepers of peace? the voices of reason who look into the camera and tell us who is just being a big baby and who is speaking the truth? In traditional sports it would be analysts, tv commentators and such. But our esport is so young, even with BW considered, that the people in those roles are also more or less still players caught up in the thick of things.
Someone has to be the voice of reason. If I am to understand the feedback here, even respected pros like IdrA, Artosis and iNcontrol don't qualify as authorities on the matter of what is and isn't good for the game. So who guides the player base then? The pro team coaches? The forum users? The players themselves? It's clear there is a pretty unhealthy divide in both the fanbase and player base about what "skill" is and what it means to "deserve" a win and how the game is "supposed" to be played. This doesn't seem very healthy for the game's future. Who, if anyone at all, is going to be responsible for resolving this growing rift if it's not going to be respected pro players?
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Musoeun Show nested quote +On December 19 2010 06:45 TENTHST wrote: the marine IS broken. something so low down the tech tree should not be so unbelievably versatile and upgradable. terran in general has to work half as hard for their wins (i am a random player btw).
the race is broken, and far too comprehensive for higher level play. toss and zerg require an extremely specific unit composition in order to combat their opponent. terran has a wide range of choices. that just is not right.
to quote idra
"i would play terran but i have self respect" Which is, you know, why top Terrans haven't managed to win a final yet despite making three of them.
EDIT: Sorry, this wasn't a good post. There are several things wrong with your statements, but let's be a little more logical about refuting them.
First, "The Marine is broken" can hardly be determined yet - see all the comments about only six months of play. Second, if you want versatile, essential, insanely upgradeable, and a huge problem to deal with, what about the zergling in BW? Though of course it wasn't anti-air as well. Additionally, the only thing the marine has in SC2 it didn't in BW is the combat shield, and I refused to believe a few extra HP are the difference between "can't use in late-game TvP and TvT" and "broken".
As for Terran having a "wide range of choices", this flies in the face of your contention about the marine. If the marine is broken, Terran should go all marine all the time and be unstoppable, but this isn't true - even the player best known for doing this lost. I found I had more to say, but it would just derail the topic - which is overall "best players", not race balance - further.
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Overall win percentages might be a bit misleading. If all you're play against are top level people, your win percentage won't be as high as if you were playing low level people. Also, most people might not be as good during the start of their careers.
Flash and Jaedong might be on a whole new level, but players like Fantasy, Kal, Stork, Bisu are still very good and can still take games off them.
Seven people, besides Flash, in BW currently have an ELO above 2200. If he plays against someone who is 2200, he has about a 72% chance of winning [1/(1+10^((2200-2360)/400))].
+ Show Spoiler +Ssak beat him in an upset, and using ELO predictions [1/(1+10^((2022-2247)/400))], Flash still had a 21% chance of losing despite how good he is.
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Starcraft 2 doesnt Reward the most skilled players - there are tons of factors why that often isnt the case. *The game is imbalanced - its impossible for a game with 3 different races to be balanced. Chess is balanced because every player starts with the same pieces at the same position but Starcraft will never be 100% balanced. *Players with bad mechanics can beat players with superior mechanics (APM,constant building etc.) *There is luck involved in Starcraft 2 - it begins with spawning positions(less gas/m - worse creep spread/ addon is attackable in the wall) and ends with build order wins (hatch first dies to 6 pool). *Incomplete Information - you dont know at all time what you opponent is doing. *Some Units are very strong and require specific counters - some crazy tactic can catch you totally off guard and you need to adapt with specific build orders - (thor rush in PvT) *Little samplesize in tourneys -> cheese is way more effective *Scouting can be denied very long. ... and the list would go on forever -
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I think the biggest problem with the game right now is the lack of defensive advantage. The expected return on blind aggression is often higher than careful defense since it is difficult to know and prepare for exactly what is coming. This relates to both the strength of certain units in general and current map design, and possibly the new macro mechanics and the removal of high ground advantage. You can either try to scout and prepare for your opponents rush, or make him worry about figuring out what you are doing and defending while you execute your well practiced plan.
Furthermore, the penalties for either poking and deciding to fall back after preparing an all-in or simply failing to do extensive damage are not great enough for people to worry about practicing other styles of play. A 2-rax push with half your scvs, as long as you kill several of his workers, often leaves you at an economic advantage even if he was able to fend it off because he had to pump straight units to stay alive. My hope is that this style will fade out as strategy progresses, but I fear it may take patching (I have no idea what kind), and definitely map pool changes, to make macro play as viable a style. Time will tell.
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If the best team won every year, then the yankees would win every world series. Obviously theres more to the game than just skill.
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I also follow the SF professional scene. BW didn't have untouchable gods as far as the top players are considered. Not quite like Daigo is.
-------------------------
Flash: http://www.teamliquid.net/tlpd/korean/players/424_Flash
Jaedong: http://www.teamliquid.net/tlpd/korean/players/211_Jaedong
-------------------------
Look at their win percentages at the bottom of the page. That's their win% vs other progamers. Surprised? 70% is pretty damn good, too. I remember when JD had 80% vs Z. Scary fucker, for sure. He still is, too. Easily my favorite player of all time.
Now, while this kind of refutes the BW untouchable gods concept... it doesn't exactly. Those % are vs other very practiced progamers. Some of them are also vs each other, since those two meet up pretty often. Those %'s are the result of the top 50 players in the world clashing. Among those players, Flash and Jaedong stand out.
Can a random player beat them, though? Fuck no. Cheese included. Not that cheese isn't your best chance to win (only chance), but the likelihood of a random non-progamer beating them even with cheese is pretty low.
EDIT: Ssak is in the top 50. Look how much of a surprise his match vs Flash was.
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On December 19 2010 07:41 idonthinksobro wrote:
*Players with bad mechanics can beat players with superior mechanics (APM,constant building etc.)
I've yet to hear why this is a bad thing. Because "players with bad mechanics" who can play the game at a competent level are probably making up for it by seeing several moves ahead of their opponent.
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chess isn't balanced white is always ahead by one tempi since white starts. But some people prefer to play with black just because of that.
In chess my opening is because of my lack of training complete non existant. But because I had a lot of lategame training and everyone is only training early game at the leagues i still play, i only have to survive the early game and win easily late game. So is the one training early game now bad or is it me being only good late game.
If you see pro games you often notice that they have one really strong match up, and if you see it more closely they are often really strong in the matchup early or late game. They train one thing alot and i guess it will take a few more month till they have trained every matchup that well, that they play constant in every way and won't lose that easy because you get em wrong footed.
Just my opinion maybe i am totally wrong. (know it from me that i am damn bad against zergs while being really good against toss and terra)
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I think the biggest issue is that the map pool and early availability of insanely strong terran units are making cheesy all-in plays more viable than they should be. There simply isn't much of a defenders advantage anymore. In BW you had alot more time to prepare before an opponent could get to your base and all-in you. In SC2 things like concussive shells, salvage, warpgates, and even stim result in situations where extremely agressive play is rewarded in the early game. I think the overwhelming majority of players who "don't deserve their wins" happen to be terran, and while I don't think I am qualified to use the word "imba" (only ~2500). I think the design of the race encourages abusive all-in plays. Terran is the hardest race to scout, has marines (proving to be the strongest tier 1 unit by far when microed well), concussive shells, AND the easiest time macroing. A terran player can often muster a powerful early push, WHILE expanding and matching P/Z econ. P and Z players who choose to use economy builds hardly pose a threat to a half decent terran before the midgame. Terran really just has too much strength in the early game without any cost to their economy imo.
I completely agree with what Idra said about MarineKing, and while I haven't watched the finals I have a terrible feeling that Rain may have eliminated the much more skilled MC. I cringed watching MarineKing and Rain win their games. It is obvious they are the inferior players, yet they make it to the finals with abusive MM play. I really hate to say it, but maybe there are balance issues? Whens the last time we saw a Zerg or Protoss who "didn't deserve their wins"? Maybe I'm missing something and the problem is across the board, but I've only noticed it with T players.
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On December 19 2010 08:12 Niji87 wrote:I also follow the SF professional scene. BW didn't have untouchable gods as far as the top players are considered. Not quite like Daigo is. ------------------------- Flash: http://www.teamliquid.net/tlpd/korean/players/424_FlashJaedong: http://www.teamliquid.net/tlpd/korean/players/211_Jaedong------------------------- Look at their win percentages at the bottom of the page. That's their win% vs other progamers. Surprised? 70% is pretty damn good, too. I remember when JD had 80% vs Z. Scary fucker, for sure. He still is, too. Easily my favorite player of all time. Now, while this kind of refutes the BW untouchable gods concept... it doesn't exactly. Those % are vs other very practiced progamers. Some of them are also vs each other, since those two meet up pretty often. Those %'s are the result of the top 50 players in the world clashing. Among those players, Flash and Jaedong stand out. Can a random player beat them, though? Fuck no. Cheese included. Not that cheese isn't your best chance to win (only chance), but the likelihood of a random non-progamer beating them even with cheese is pretty low. EDIT: Ssak is in the top 50. Look how much of a surprise his match vs Flash was.
For a comparison to a game of complete information, top Go professions (Lee Sedol, for example), only have ~70% win percentage against other professionals.
I would compare to chess win percentages, but I'm not sure that they are directly comparable, since chess has draws. If you count draws as counting as .5, Bobby Fischer only had a 73% win percentage, despite probably dominating his contemporaries harder than anyone in the modern era.
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Right now it isnt. But time will tell, SC 2 is young.
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Well, generally the more skilled players win, but not always. This is shown in how MC beat Rain (like everyone predicted) yet Rain beat a ton of other good players with "unskilled" tactics. The main problem I think is balancing t1 units and the map pool. Both of these things need some attention, but hopefully Blizz will do something about it. Especially the map pool, which will ultimately effect unit balance in the end.
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Is SC2 Rewarding The Most Skilled Players? The question answers itself.
Its exactly like what one of the first posters said: Reffering to the whole game sc2 skill is defined by winnnig games so the question answers itself. the one winning more games is more skilled and the one who is more skilled is by definition winning more games. However u cant predict the outcome of a single game by this but this is an overall(philosophical) problem of abstract concepts like "skill" and has 0 to do with the game itself
Surely u can distinguish between diffrent sub-skills u need to be good overall like micro, macro, game sense etc. but then making a corellation between the skill in the subskills and the overall skill is very hard
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On December 19 2010 08:27 Wr3k wrote: I think the biggest issue is that the map pool and early availability of insanely strong terran units are making cheesy all-in plays more viable than they should be. There simply isn't much of a defenders advantage anymore. In BW you had alot more time to prepare before an opponent could get to your base and all-in you. In SC2 things like concussive shells, salvage, warpgates, and even stim result in situations where extremely agressive play is rewarded in the early game. I think the overwhelming majority of players who "don't deserve their wins" happen to be terran, and while I don't think I am qualified to use the word "imba" (only ~2500). I think the design of the race encourages abusive all-in plays. Terran is the hardest race to scout, has marines (proving to be the strongest tier 1 unit by far when microed well), concussive shells, AND the easiest time macroing. A terran player can often muster a powerful early push, WHILE expanding and matching P/Z econ. P and Z players who choose to use economy builds hardly pose a threat to a half decent terran before the midgame. Terran really just has too much strength in the early game without any cost to their economy imo.
I completely agree with what Idra said about MarineKing, and while I haven't watched the finals I have a terrible feeling that Rain may have eliminated the much more skilled MC. I cringed watching MarineKing and Rain win their games. It is obvious they are the inferior players, yet they make it to the finals with abusive MM play. I really hate to say it, but maybe there are balance issues? Whens the last time we saw a Zerg or Protoss who "didn't deserve their wins"? Maybe I'm missing something and the problem is across the board, but I've only noticed it with T players.
Not deserving their wins is a load of bullshit.
And MarineKing is one of, if not THE, best and most consistant terrans in the world. Hes one of the best the race has to offer.
Its probably just an inherent design flaw in the game.
I mean do you want terran players to play macro games and lose? Terran doesnt even really have a safe opening to proceed with a macro game. Sure you can 1-2 rax expo vs Toss, but you still need 4 bunkers incase they 4 gate rush you and you really dont know what they are doing. If T didnt 2 rax zergs could just drone forever and run them over -__-
P has a million openings vs terran where as terran is relatively limited and preparing for the toss openings is pretty much entirely different where as preparing for the terarn openings essentially just includes getting a robo, and if you have a good build you can even do it while expanding.
Im not complaining about imbalance or anything but saying the terran players are bad when they are clearly the best the race has to offer atm is kinda a slap in the face to them and not looking at a possible indictment on blizzard for fucking the game up some so far.
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Also, this idea that SC=Poker and SF=Chess is incredibly backward. That's like the most backward thing I've heard yet in this thread. I can't imagine how anyone drew that out of the games.
SF is very hard to predict and revolves IMMENSELY around bluffs and forced ambigous game states. You may be able to see what they are doing right now, but you have almost no idea what they're going to do next. SC is far more like chess in that any situation takes time to set up. It's like chess with fog of war added in. You may not be able to see what they're doing right now, but if you get a glimpse it's much easier to predict what they'll do next.
EDIT: Daigo is known for ocassionally just walking right at his opponents and grabbing them randomly. He's a ballsy beast who knows how to condition an opponent and knows how to call his opponents bluffs.
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I think it is tough to derive the better player from just a few games. I don't think it is necessarily a problem with the game when someone less skilled beats a superior player; as many have said, there are many variables which can create this outcome if you are only judging skill based on a single game.
GSL would be a better tournament if it allowed players to really test each other. A Bo3 where unique cheeses can knock out a phenomenal player before this player could adapt to the new strategy doesn't demonstrate skill at all, a Bo5 might but a Bo3 is too fast without even a loser bracket to redeem oneself. From what I've seen, the best way to discern skill in SC2 is to pit players against each other in a prolonged series of games. Until we see more of this, I think we can expect more upsets like this. For what it's worth, I agree Rain did not belong in GSL final. It was the first grand final I've seen so far where I felt like there was no main event; if there was, it took place somewhere in the Ro16 or the Ro32, which IMO is pretty darn lame and reeks of bad tournament setup. I've heard they are improving the structure though, so I"m looking forward to season 4.
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On December 19 2010 08:39 Sadist wrote:Show nested quote +On December 19 2010 08:27 Wr3k wrote: I think the biggest issue is that the map pool and early availability of insanely strong terran units are making cheesy all-in plays more viable than they should be. There simply isn't much of a defenders advantage anymore. In BW you had alot more time to prepare before an opponent could get to your base and all-in you. In SC2 things like concussive shells, salvage, warpgates, and even stim result in situations where extremely agressive play is rewarded in the early game. I think the overwhelming majority of players who "don't deserve their wins" happen to be terran, and while I don't think I am qualified to use the word "imba" (only ~2500). I think the design of the race encourages abusive all-in plays. Terran is the hardest race to scout, has marines (proving to be the strongest tier 1 unit by far when microed well), concussive shells, AND the easiest time macroing. A terran player can often muster a powerful early push, WHILE expanding and matching P/Z econ. P and Z players who choose to use economy builds hardly pose a threat to a half decent terran before the midgame. Terran really just has too much strength in the early game without any cost to their economy imo.
I completely agree with what Idra said about MarineKing, and while I haven't watched the finals I have a terrible feeling that Rain may have eliminated the much more skilled MC. I cringed watching MarineKing and Rain win their games. It is obvious they are the inferior players, yet they make it to the finals with abusive MM play. I really hate to say it, but maybe there are balance issues? Whens the last time we saw a Zerg or Protoss who "didn't deserve their wins"? Maybe I'm missing something and the problem is across the board, but I've only noticed it with T players. Not deserving their wins is a load of bullshit. And MarineKing is one of, if not THE, best and most consistant terrans in the world. Hes one of the best the race has to offer. Its probably just an inherent design flaw in the game. I mean do you want terran players to play macro games and lose? Terran doesnt even really have a safe opening to proceed with a macro game. Sure you can 1-2 rax expo vs Toss, but you still need 4 bunkers incase they 4 gate rush you and you really dont know what they are doing. If T didnt 2 rax zergs could just drone forever and run them over -__- P has a million openings vs terran where as terran is relatively limited and preparing for the toss openings is pretty much entirely different where as preparing for the terarn openings essentially just includes getting a robo, and if you have a good build you can even do it while expanding. Im not complaining about imbalance or anything but saying the terran players are bad when they are clearly the best the race has to offer atm is kinda a slap in the face to them and not looking at a possible indictment on blizzard for fucking the game up some so far.
I never said they were bad, just quoted someone elses statement, obviously anyone who makes it to GSL finals is amazingly good. I just feel that they eliminated alot of players who were in fact better than them. I don't blame the players for doing what they do either, it obviously works, and I elaborated as to why I think it does. We have no evidence that terran players will always lose macro games, because we rarely see macro games out of terran players. A pre-requisite to seeing if T can handle a macro game is an end to the trend of everyone using all-in plays which are disproportionately rewarding.
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Cheesing, rushing, all-ins (any quick plays) can be considered part of strategy. It keeps the opponent guessing when used here and there in a best-of series. And if one or a few player in the world can win regularly with quick plays I'd say that is special talent since he has already given his strategy before the game even started. They don't need to answer to anyone. I actually find MarineKingPrime matches exciting and different than the norm. People should quit complaining and thank MKP for contributing to variety in playstyles.
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the small maps make BO losses way too common
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On December 19 2010 09:07 zyzski wrote: the small maps make BO losses way too common
big maps make warp gates too powerful
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On December 19 2010 08:13 MichaelJLowell wrote:Show nested quote +On December 19 2010 07:41 idonthinksobro wrote:
*Players with bad mechanics can beat players with superior mechanics (APM,constant building etc.)
I've yet to hear why this is a bad thing. Because "players with bad mechanics" who can play the game at a competent level are probably making up for it by seeing several moves ahead of their opponent.
Sounds like someone has an insecurity issue about his mechanics!
Basically just to reiterate what I believe to be true and what I have seen posted in this thread several times as well, Starcraft is a game of incomplete information. Any game of incomplete information is going to have some amount of chance involved. Therefore, any game of incomplete information is going to have more potential for variance than any game of complete information.
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On December 19 2010 09:10 Sadist wrote:Show nested quote +On December 19 2010 09:07 zyzski wrote: the small maps make BO losses way too common big maps make warp gates too powerful Would putting a range on how far pylons can be from warpgates ruin them? I feel it would obviously hurt them, but they would still be useful at least in defense. Maybe make them able to warp in anywhere you have a nexus with pylons to compensate so you can defend on big maps with lots of expos.
So for example a pylon is out of range of a warpgate, but within a certain range of a nexus so you can still warp in to it.
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On December 19 2010 09:13 Serpico wrote:Show nested quote +On December 19 2010 09:10 Sadist wrote:On December 19 2010 09:07 zyzski wrote: the small maps make BO losses way too common big maps make warp gates too powerful Would putting a range on how far pylons can be from warpgates ruin them? I feel it would obviously hurt them, but they would still be useful at least in defense. Maybe make them able to warp in anywhere you have a nexus with pylons to compensate so you can defend on big maps with lots of expos. So for example a pylon is out of range of a warpgate, but within a certain range of a nexus so you can still warp in to it.
I'm interested in what evidence you have that this is even a problem that needs to be fixed.
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On December 19 2010 09:17 MiniTsunami wrote:Show nested quote +On December 19 2010 09:13 Serpico wrote:On December 19 2010 09:10 Sadist wrote:On December 19 2010 09:07 zyzski wrote: the small maps make BO losses way too common big maps make warp gates too powerful Would putting a range on how far pylons can be from warpgates ruin them? I feel it would obviously hurt them, but they would still be useful at least in defense. Maybe make them able to warp in anywhere you have a nexus with pylons to compensate so you can defend on big maps with lots of expos. So for example a pylon is out of range of a warpgate, but within a certain range of a nexus so you can still warp in to it. I'm interested in what evidence you have that this is even a problem that needs to be fixed.
So you dont think warpgates would be imbalanced on huge maps? I never actually said they were imbalanced if you read my post carefully. We dont have enough large maps to even test it properly but they only get stronger the bigger a map gets. They scale in a sense while other abilities dont as maps get bigger.
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On December 18 2010 22:48 AlexDeLarge wrote: Whereas Starcraft has sooo many variables and so many determining factors and incomplete information (just like poker, minus the luck factor), that it becomes a lot harder to achieve constant utter dominance.
This.
Another example of a dissimilar game, where there are no hidden variables, is chess. I think if we took out fog of war and gave everyone a maphack, we would see a much smaller pool of consistent winners. Pros are excellent players, but they aren't psychics or magicians.
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On December 19 2010 09:11 MiniTsunami wrote:
Sounds like someone has an insecurity issue about his mechanics! Uh, yeah. I'd whoop your ass. Don't delude yourself.
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On December 19 2010 09:56 MichaelJLowell wrote:Show nested quote +On December 19 2010 09:11 MiniTsunami wrote:
Sounds like someone has an insecurity issue about his mechanics! Uh, yeah. I'd whoop your ass. Don't delude yourself.
Lol, I was making a joke and you came back with an even better joke! Props :D
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On December 19 2010 08:27 Wr3k wrote: I think the biggest issue is that the map pool and early availability of insanely strong terran units are making cheesy all-in plays more viable than they should be. There simply isn't much of a defenders advantage anymore. In BW you had alot more time to prepare before an opponent could get to your base and all-in you. SC2 things like concussive shells, salvage, warpgates, and even stim result in situations where extremely agressive play is rewarded in the early game. I think the overwhelming majority of players who "don't deserve their wins" happen to be terran, and while I don't think I am qualified to use the word "imba" (only ~2500). I think the design of the race encourages abusive all-in plays. Terran is the hardest race to scout, has marines (proving to be the strongest tier 1 unit by far when microed well), concussive shells, AND the easiest time macroing. A terran player can often muster a powerful early push, WHILE expanding and matching P/Z econ. P and Z players who choose to use economy builds hardly pose a threat to a half decent terran before the midgame. Terran really just has too much strength in the early game without any cost to their economy imo. The thing is, how do you really go about fixing it. The biggest "defenders advantage" in SC2 is the fact that all the T1 units remain strong throughout the entire game, so winning the tech race doesn't necessarily result in an auto-win. (like some people would argue the amulet in pvt is like right now)
Another thing to keep in mind is that the ability to project force can be almost as important as the force itself. SC2 T1 units are a perfect example of that. It's easy to look at the stats of an individual marine and cry OP, however there are many other intangibles that are needed to take into account...like Zealots being able to instanteously reinforce via any pylon field, and regenerate shields, or zerglings being able to be produced from any production facility on the map, as well as speed bonuses on creep. And that's limiting the analysis to just 3 units, to get a fully accurate analysis you'd also need to account for synergistic results such as concussive shells pairing up with the only ranged-based T1 unit. So there is no real way to quantify a "balanced game", especially a strategy game where Nash equilibriums are more important than absolute results. You'd be far better off with a results-based analysis, and that's exactly what blizzard has done. And they've done a pretty good job thus far both in ladder results and tournament results imo. Terran=autowin is pretty much gone in almost every metric you can think of. Clinging to bigotry is just bigotry.
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On December 19 2010 10:00 MiniTsunami wrote:Show nested quote +On December 19 2010 09:56 MichaelJLowell wrote:On December 19 2010 09:11 MiniTsunami wrote:
Sounds like someone has an insecurity issue about his mechanics! Uh, yeah. I'd whoop your ass. Don't delude yourself. Lol, I was making a joke and you came back with an even better joke! Props :D Your posts terrify and confuse me.
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On December 19 2010 10:17 MichaelJLowell wrote:Show nested quote +On December 19 2010 10:00 MiniTsunami wrote:On December 19 2010 09:56 MichaelJLowell wrote:On December 19 2010 09:11 MiniTsunami wrote:
Sounds like someone has an insecurity issue about his mechanics! Uh, yeah. I'd whoop your ass. Don't delude yourself. Lol, I was making a joke and you came back with an even better joke! Props :D Your posts terrify and confuse me.
Haha damn you trolled me into participating in the derailment of this thread Sorry everyone.
Also MichaelJ feel free to PM me if you really want to get beat down
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Terran is OP, know that song? It was in BW era, it is now. At least, in BW it was the most difficult race to play, whereas in SC2 it's the easiest.
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On December 19 2010 09:48 SnakeBasket wrote:Show nested quote +On December 18 2010 22:48 AlexDeLarge wrote: Whereas Starcraft has sooo many variables and so many determining factors and incomplete information (just like poker, minus the luck factor), that it becomes a lot harder to achieve constant utter dominance.
This. Another example of a dissimilar game, where there are no hidden variables, is chess. I think if we took out fog of war and gave everyone a maphack, we would see a much smaller pool of consistent winners. Pros are excellent players, but they aren't psychics or magicians.
Not this. As mentioned before, even in games of perfect information, complete dominance is incredibly rare, practically never observed (only person I can think of is Marion Tinsely). As I mentioned earlier, almost nobody in chess or go has a >70% win percentage against other top players, and nobody >80% over and meaningful period of time.
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the reason we see so many upsets and such a low win precentage of the top players is because its such a new game so daily new builds and timings come which just throws them offguard forcing them to learn new things
also that the game is new so its not balanced and top players could lose to underdogs for that reason aswell
in sc2 the key part is to have good scouting and see everything thats coming and be ready for everything, most street fighting games u can see everything the opponent is doing so that part is completely different
but ye you cant expect gods like flash or the street fighter top players to exist in sc2 just yet because players need at least another year to figure out more about the game so they can win and play solid
the reason many players talk about "he doesnt deserve a win" etc could be because they are abusing something thats broken in the game or just relying on luck like i also mentioned about the lack of scouting possibilities
im not taking any credits away from anyone who wins alot in sc2. if you get to finals of gsl you clearly know the state of the game and at the moment you know how to play it
i think the reason older starcraft 1 talk so much about who is real players and who are just abusive ppl who dont deserve wins is that they come from sc1 where the game was pretty much figured out so so much came down to detail scouting macro micro mechanics just overall playing beautifully perfect and calculated. when they see players come to top 4 without having an astonishing macro or wellprepered gameplan or perfected gamestructure they cant really approve too much of it since that was a sign of weak and cheesy players in sc1
if you figure out a way "abuse" ur way to top4 in gsl i say cheers to this man is brilliant because its not easy to find broken or imbalanced things to abuse in the game. to do so u need to have prepared and practiced insanely much to figure out the "flaws" in the game that u can use to ur advantage.
now im not talking that any players did this or so im just saying this is the general idea sc1 players think of ppl who dont shine on the qualities which were most important in sc1
id just overall say that its alot more so luck than imbalanced at the state of the game we have now. the maps just scream coinflip because some positions favor some race heavily vise versa could even be on same map...
so yea, short rushdistances with lack of scouting possibilties and a huge variety of opening build orders. its pretty obvious your gonna end up with a dice fest imho
when we get more welldesigned maps that are properly designed for macro games i promise u we will see less of the "wrong player won". majority of the times i do think its pretty stupid to say something like that in general tho
On December 19 2010 09:10 Sadist wrote:Show nested quote +On December 19 2010 09:07 zyzski wrote: the small maps make BO losses way too common big maps make warp gates too powerful he says the issue is luck
you say if you reduce the luck the actual balance of the game will be more apperent, well whats wrong with that. reduce the luck and lets see if warpgates was imba and then we can work on the balance. i really dont see how blizzard can even begin to try to balance some things when we see so many coinflip situations in starcraft 2. while when they get crosspos on metalopolis is where they actually can draw conclusions from.
a game thats based on scouting needs possibilities to scout whats necessarily and enough time gap to make it possible to adapt and respond accordingly. most of times in sc2 you cant scout something and once u can its too late anyways, i dont see how they think when they have so small maps :/
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I think the OP got some good points. What I think is that since SC2 is pretty new, we still haven't been able to sort out the really top players. Many are good, really good, but I believe that as the game progresses we will se some players advance faster than others and we will see some sort of SC2 elite.
However, there will always be some randoms factors since even solid players might lose to some weird/random/new strat he has ever seen. I find this to be some of the fun of the starcraft scene, it's not given 100% who the winner will be.
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The game is only half a year old compared to the decade BW has had, there's two expansions planned, who knows how that will affect SC2 gameplay or extra units. If anything every patch will change the game up, the problem is that Blizz either nerfs units into them no longer being useful (I haven't seen a single reaper since the patch) or buffs a unit so much everyone will abuse it. The "balancing" seems more just about heeding the spam of complaints they hear the most on their SC2 forums from geeks who can't accept losing.
The original Bnet had so much more freedom...compared to bnet 2.0 which personally the restrictions, crap interface/navigation and Activision influence pisses me off on a daily basis. It doesn't help that the map pools sucks, the rush distances are laughably close and the design is race favoring and obviously they're going to use the same maps in tournaments as on the ladder, custom maps won't be accepted, once again Blizz is in control...
Oh and gold expansions are sooooo imbalanced, 1 expo+a gold one and you're 200/200 in no time. Drop 10 mules and you've got thousands of minerals in a few mins, gas is still the same, but even so why the hell did they even put them in the game. Imagine having that in BW, gold minerals should be removed, Zerg's seem to have an easy time taking them as a 3rd.
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Of course Zerg's have an easier third. That's because we NEED to even stay remotely competitive. 2 base versus 2 base, Zerg gets crushed almost everytime by a semi-competent player.
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This is why most tournaments tend to use bo3's in early rounds leading up to a bo7 in the final. Hell even I might be able to take a lone game off Fruitdealer if it's steppes of war tvz and I 2rax cheese but am I going to be able to win a best of 7 with a large map pool? God no.
Though this does have a precedent. It's almost an unwritten rule in the GSL that a big name doesn't qualify for round64. Nada this season anyone?
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Everyone who picks a race is cheesing. Truly skilled players pick Random.
Seriously though, Starcraft is a strategy game. It is not a game of who can click the fastest, or who can click at the most regular intervals. It is a game of decision-making. Good game mechanics open up new possibilities for you, but you will lose to a player who makes better decisions than you.
If you look at the GSL for example, most games were won by the player who made the best strategic choices, a few were won on luck, and very few were won due to superior game mechanics. + Show Spoiler + Nestea lost to Rain because he refused to build preemptive spinecrawlers to defend his fast expansions. Fruitdealer lost to Hongun because he inexplicably decided to one-base every single game. Jinro lost to MC because he didn't deviate from his regular playstyle at all, even though MC has a reputation for targeting his opponent's style.
And Rain got steamrolled by MC not because of any mechanical deficiencies, but because of a string of terrible decisions: Game 1: Milled around indecisively with his army outside MC's base. He knew his build only gave a small window of opportunity, but just sat around wasting time. Game 2: Again, milled around indecisively with his army outside MC's base. Made way too many siege tanks even after seeing a heap of immortals. Game 3: MC lost because he fell for Rain's bluff. But Rain almost gave it back by continuing to pump medivacs out of his reactored starport after seeing colossi. Game 4: Built a refinery after seeing the proxy gateway. WTF? I'm not convinced his response would even beat the AI zealot rush challenge. Game 5: I think after the demoralising defeat in Game 4, he just stopped trying. How was his blue flame hellion drop backed up by no army and no expansion ever going to work? At the end, he had a chance to lift off and try for a draw (or a sneaky new base), but just gave up.
So why are Starcraft2 pros so inconsistent? 1. Because decision-making is a very mental thing, and no one has the same state of mind every game. 2. Because the game is new and no one has that much experience (which really matters for a decision-making game). 3. Because the game punishes bad decisions very harshly, so mistakes are exaggerated.
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The only reason SC2 is like this is because the maps are absolute shit. There is no reason not to cheese because most of the maps reward it.
It would be like setting it to 30 seconds, 1 round in Super. Of course I'm going to do some dumb shit, and not play legit.
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On December 19 2010 11:07 ChaseR wrote: The game is only half a year old compared to the decade BW has had, there's two expansions planned, who knows how that will affect SC2 gameplay or extra units. If anything every patch will change the game up, the problem is that Blizz either nerfs units into them no longer being useful (I haven't seen a single reaper since the patch) or buffs a unit so much everyone will abuse it. The "balancing" seems more just about heeding the spam of complaints they hear the most on their SC2 forums from geeks who can't accept losing.
The original Bnet had so much more freedom...compared to bnet 2.0 which personally the restrictions, crap interface/navigation and Activision influence pisses me off on a daily basis. It doesn't help that the map pools sucks, the rush distances are laughably close and the design is race favoring and obviously they're going to use the same maps in tournaments as on the ladder, custom maps won't be accepted, once again Blizz is in control...
Oh and gold expansions are sooooo imbalanced, 1 expo+a gold one and you're 200/200 in no time. Drop 10 mules and you've got thousands of minerals in a few mins, gas is still the same, but even so why the hell did they even put them in the game. Imagine having that in BW, gold minerals should be removed, Zerg's seem to have an easy time taking them as a 3rd.
Gold expos are also the hardest expos to defend, if you're able to defend that expo you deserve to win.
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TSL_Rain got what he deserved. Not as in him losing the finals but all the hate he recieved for playing the way he did against NesTea. If a player keeps winning the way he did then the player wont be popular. It might not seem like much but your fan base means a lot to a person. It even helps you play better when you know you have thousands of people rooting for you.
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It's about consistent results. Those who produce consistent results are the better players.
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On December 18 2010 23:08 Navane wrote: 1) Starcraft is a game of incomplete information. This means you can take a gamble (certain builds have more luck and less skill needed to succeed). How far a gamble run takes you, depends on luck. There's no luck in Starcraft. Beyond spawning positions, everything that occurs in the game is a direct result of player actions. If you lose, it's never luck. It's because the other player played better than you did.
"Build order losses" are also not due to luck. If you do a build that automatically loses to other builds, then you are taking a risk. Some builds are riskier than others, and what success they achieve is due to opponents not reacting properly or quickly enough. Other builds are safer, reducing the likelihood of losing to many things, but set you behind if your opponent played a certain way. But that's ALL due to how your opponent plays, not luck.
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On December 18 2010 22:48 AlexDeLarge wrote: I think it has to do with variables. The more variables a game has built in, the higher the variance is. Now i don't play SF, but i assume it is a very straightforward game, thus you can achieve perfection in it with enough practice. Tennis would probably be a good comparison to it as a real life sport. And we see that 80% of the finals in Tennis Grand Slams are between Federer and Nadal.
Whereas Starcraft has sooo many variables and so many determining factors and incomplete information (just like poker, minus the luck factor), that it becomes a lot harder to achieve constant utter dominance.
Just my 2 cents.
People have been honing their skills in Street Fighter 2 for almost 20 years now, longer than Brood War, no one is perfect at it, it's not that simple.
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This thread is ridiculous, one guy actually compared SC2 to tic-tac-toe. LOL. Apparently to everyone here, the only way to show skill in SC2, is to have some crazy off the wall macro build that lets you control the game for 30 minutes in till you decide to roll over your enemy.
Brilliant theory.
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intrigue
Washington, D.C9931 Posts
On December 19 2010 12:54 out4blood wrote:Show nested quote +On December 18 2010 23:08 Navane wrote: 1) Starcraft is a game of incomplete information. This means you can take a gamble (certain builds have more luck and less skill needed to succeed). How far a gamble run takes you, depends on luck. There's no luck in Starcraft. Beyond spawning positions, everything that occurs in the game is a direct result of player actions. If you lose, it's never luck. It's because the other player played better than you did. "Build order losses" are also not due to luck. If you do a build that automatically loses to other builds, then you are taking a risk. Some builds are riskier than others, and what success they achieve is due to opponents not reacting properly or quickly enough. Other builds are safer, reducing the likelihood of losing to many things, but set you behind if your opponent played a certain way. But that's ALL due to how your opponent plays, not luck. it is absurd to say that there is no luck in starcraft. much smaller element than say in poker (lol) but 100% still there.
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Also a someone who's more in the SF base than the SC one but loves both, I thought we were all friends here (gloating in our competitive superiority to other games), all the hating on SF in here makes me sad.
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Even the Ultimate Weapon and the Tyrant don't win every single game they play in BW. I don't believe in many competitive games it is possible to have the level of dominance that you describe in the SF scene. It's certainly not true in sport. Perhaps in Chess although I don't know much about that. But I suspect SF is really the exception rather than the rule.
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On December 18 2010 22:47 Gingerninja wrote: If a player can't stop it then they deserve to lose to it.
This man hits the nail on the head.
The most "skilled" players will not always win. Sc2 is Sc2, it is not BW, it is not Street Fighter or chess. You cannot just throw up an arbitrary number and expect the best skilled pros to match that expectation of winning. The game is not supposed to reward the best players with victory. A win is earned.
Maybe this game just doesn't need players to have 95% winrates. Having new winners frequently makes it more exciting.
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On December 18 2010 23:06 composition wrote: hidden information: Starcraft Poker
complete information: Street Fighter Chess
It's really just this simple.
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On December 18 2010 22:41 Schnullerbacke13 wrote: skill is defined by being able to win games. winning games is skill. I disagree. The means one wins by is important. A lot of GSL players just all in and are actually HORRIBLE (by pro standards).
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THE GAME IS A FEW MONTHS OLD
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And it's a much simpler game than SC1 so we can pretty easily predict what will happen.
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We didn't have any bonjwas in BW in the first year it was out. I think that this game just needs time.
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On December 19 2010 13:45 gr8ape wrote: THE GAME IS A FEW MONTHS OLD
Exactly, calm down internet. Skill will never be absolute in a game with incomplete information. Unless they decide to give every player a dual monitor which shows the opposing players 1st person cam, it'll always have luck/chance or whatever you want to call it.
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Australia8532 Posts
I find it so entertaining how people keep comparing SC2 to other games like BW or in this case SF. Many people above me have made some great points like "hidden" knowledge etc. How long has SF been around? How many SF tournaments have there been? A new game comes out and everyone expects it to be 100% perfect - its just not possible! It's a nice OP really thought out but you are pretty much saying "why isn't sc2 as stable as SF" .. That seems fairly obvious to me-even outside of hidden knowledge and high variables this game is just not old enough to be stable; it isn't as polished, the mechanics aren't totally established by players. A 2 rax rush didn't even exist until a few months ago. Everyone just needs to be patient.
As for IdrA's comments -well that's just IdrA. being IdrA .. If he can't respect someone that makes a final of the GSL, the final of the Gstar all stars tournament and the Ro8 this season then that's something he has to figure out.. Love the guy as a player n personality but yeah.. Oh well
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Honestly it comes down to the factor of luck which separates Starcraft from let's say Street Fighter. There's an unknown variable, you have to scout what the opponent is doing. All the cards aren't flat out on the table where the better player will win 100% of the time, but that's what makes it exciting imo.
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It's all about consistency. Yes, in sports, a team like Greece might fluke their win to Euro trophy etc., but if a team is there or thereabouts every year/season, you gotta respect that. Similarly, a player can show a one-off great result like Davit or NexLiveForever or even Rain himself (some might add some foreigners here). But if these guys show good results next year, that would mean they didn't fluke.
So yeah, it's about consistency.
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of course there's luck in starcraft. if on exactly even terrain you choose to scout right instead of left, and the proxy stargate is on the left, you've been unlucky
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I think everything you said about street fighter was wayyy off. People like Daigo are not even close to unbeatable and he's a sort of special case anyway, players who are accepted as godlike lose in tournaments all the time. The two games are actually pretty well comparable to eachother at the moment. If you are less skilled than someone you can go for the long shot/risky plays and hope to get lucky or play your A/solid game and hope they play a little too loose(Which top players do sometimes). Your top player envy is pretty obvious : \
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there seem to be almost as much variance in SC2 as there is in poker lolz
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We're, what, 4 months out from the release of Starcraft 2? I don't believe there are any players near perfection yet, and right now, playing smart is still far superior to playing hard. Terran allins are strong, blizzard will likely have to tweak them still, but I don't think there's many players who have really mastered playing against them yet, they've only been the dominant strategy in the game for about a month, if even that.
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Honestly I think the reason why it is possible for better players to lose to worse players is simply because StarCraft is a different type of game then Street Fighter. Like you said in the original post, StarCraft is a game where there is a lot of deception and unknown information on both ends. If the "lesser skilled" player is planning some sort of cheese strategy, or even just a very odd strategy, it will likely throw the better player off.
The reason for this is, in my opinion, largely because StarCraft 2 is a very new game in the grand scheme of things. If you take a look at some of the early Brood War strategies and compare them to what the strategies of today are, you'd look at the old strategies and be like "really? how the hell did that work?!?!" Now, since a lot of knowledge from Brood War has transferred over to StarCraft 2 I don't think it will take quite as long to figure out, but it definitely hasn't been figured out yet. Plus if you talk to a lot of the highest level players they would probably agree that the maps definitely contribute to these strong cheesy/deception based strategies, and that may change in the future as StarCraft 2 becomes more and more competitive.
Lastly, you have to realize why some players are considered "more skilled" then others in the eyes of pros. If you think about it, a player's level of skill is still being judged by Brood War standards. not necessarily by their win/loss record. What I mean by that is that once Brood War was relatively "figured out" the best players were the most solid, mechanically sound, smartest players. That isn't necessarily the case now. As we have seen in many tournaments, most notably GSL, a lot of players win consistently with very 1 dimensional strategies that are simply based on abusing a lack of knowledge in the current metagame. Once the metagame becomes stable these types of abuse based strategies will start to fade and the "more skilled" players will start to really shine.
Anyways I think you will always see that better players don't have the same "invulnerability" as pros of other games do because of the type of game it is. In a game like Street Fighter, or even the infamous Halo :p, I think there are just less variables and therefore things are more consistent. There are tons of variables in a good RTS game and one little slip up can cost you the game and that is bound to happen occasionally to everyone, even the best of the best.
As a side note:
When I read the title of this thread I was like oh god, another moron starting a thread to try to start controversy, but you were actually well spoken and brought up a decent question. So that was a pleasant surprise... lol.
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I believe that the scene is still to young to that of the BW. Where local maximums of build efficiency isn't yet stable as players research and develop new techniques.
That`s why we see drastic changes in the heirarchy structure of pro players.
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I think its because of the Sc2 community and how Sc2 is so competitive. I follow SSF4 also and personally I believe the pros like Daigo and Justin Wong are just incredibly hyped up. Those players are so overrated. Even Daigo knows that he is not the best, its only the American glamour that makes him so (Sako, the world's best Cammy, is considered to be a top player but he is never well recognized). The reason why Starcraft itself is such a successful esport is because the players are not unbeatable. I would give an analogy of how Michael Jordan was stopped by the Spurs playing a strategy specifically designed to shut him down. It just makes the game much more exciting to see how even underdogs can undermine the pros.
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On December 18 2010 23:08 ryan1894 wrote:Show nested quote +I mean, just in the Ro8 or so people were still voicing loudly how "terran all-ins are toooo strong". Well, I'm not hearing THOSE cries any longer I'm still sure that 2rax scv all in is quite hard to scout. Especially if he feigns going gas just before your drone dies. Prepare for something that never comes: you're behind Misprepare for something that comes: you're behind Prepare for something that comes: you're behind due to lack of drone production Misprepare for something that never comes: you're ahead because you blindly droned hard. I'm quite sure terran all ins are still strong.
One thing to take note is that you can be the one cheesing as zerg, then your opponent is in the same situation. If they don't prepare for a baneling bust/roach bust then you win. If they do prepare and you go for an expand instead then he is behind. Your reasoning is flawed beyond reasonable doubt since you have the assumption that the you will never cheese, go think about it a little more.
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Australia326 Posts
To answer the OP's broad question, I'd say yes, SC2 does reward the most skilled players. However, we haven't had enough time to separate the 'pretty good' from the 'omG he's insane' players.
Given time, this will happen.
On a side note, I still think it's ridiculous that regular players as well as 'pros' get hung up about 'cheese', and 'abuse' and 'all-ins'. You're basically upset that the game is been played in a way that you don't like, or in a way that decreases your chances of winning, or that you can't pull off yourself, and you thus discredit the players and their achievements because of it.
I don't need to name names, but I find it hard to respect pros when they use these incredible subjective and narrow-minded judgements to put down others. Some of these idiots are in their mid twenties and somehow their maturity got lost in adolescence.
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On December 19 2010 12:54 out4blood wrote:Show nested quote +On December 18 2010 23:08 Navane wrote: 1) Starcraft is a game of incomplete information. This means you can take a gamble (certain builds have more luck and less skill needed to succeed). How far a gamble run takes you, depends on luck. There's no luck in Starcraft. Beyond spawning positions, everything that occurs in the game is a direct result of player actions. If you lose, it's never luck. It's because the other player played better than you did. "Build order losses" are also not due to luck. If you do a build that automatically loses to other builds, then you are taking a risk. Some builds are riskier than others, and what success they achieve is due to opponents not reacting properly or quickly enough. Other builds are safer, reducing the likelihood of losing to many things, but set you behind if your opponent played a certain way. But that's ALL due to how your opponent plays, not luck.
Theres luck, someone can blindly enter your base as you leave and kill all your shit. Theres TONS of luck.
You dont know what you are talking about.
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On December 19 2010 12:51 Dionyseus wrote:Show nested quote +On December 19 2010 11:07 ChaseR wrote: The game is only half a year old compared to the decade BW has had, there's two expansions planned, who knows how that will affect SC2 gameplay or extra units. If anything every patch will change the game up, the problem is that Blizz either nerfs units into them no longer being useful (I haven't seen a single reaper since the patch) or buffs a unit so much everyone will abuse it. The "balancing" seems more just about heeding the spam of complaints they hear the most on their SC2 forums from geeks who can't accept losing.
The original Bnet had so much more freedom...compared to bnet 2.0 which personally the restrictions, crap interface/navigation and Activision influence pisses me off on a daily basis. It doesn't help that the map pools sucks, the rush distances are laughably close and the design is race favoring and obviously they're going to use the same maps in tournaments as on the ladder, custom maps won't be accepted, once again Blizz is in control...
Oh and gold expansions are sooooo imbalanced, 1 expo+a gold one and you're 200/200 in no time. Drop 10 mules and you've got thousands of minerals in a few mins, gas is still the same, but even so why the hell did they even put them in the game. Imagine having that in BW, gold minerals should be removed, Zerg's seem to have an easy time taking them as a 3rd.
Gold expos are also the hardest expos to defend, if you're able to defend that expo you deserve to win.
You ever play vs 4 gate -> gold expo TvP on metalopolis ? :D
Hard to defend my ass
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SF is not a good comparison point - it's is a game of perfect information, of course it's going to reward skill more than a game of imperfect information like SC2.
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On December 19 2010 17:09 Sadist wrote:Show nested quote +On December 19 2010 12:54 out4blood wrote:On December 18 2010 23:08 Navane wrote: 1) Starcraft is a game of incomplete information. This means you can take a gamble (certain builds have more luck and less skill needed to succeed). How far a gamble run takes you, depends on luck. There's no luck in Starcraft. Beyond spawning positions, everything that occurs in the game is a direct result of player actions. If you lose, it's never luck. It's because the other player played better than you did. "Build order losses" are also not due to luck. If you do a build that automatically loses to other builds, then you are taking a risk. Some builds are riskier than others, and what success they achieve is due to opponents not reacting properly or quickly enough. Other builds are safer, reducing the likelihood of losing to many things, but set you behind if your opponent played a certain way. But that's ALL due to how your opponent plays, not luck. Theres luck, someone can blindly enter your base as you leave and kill all your shit. Theres TONS of luck. You dont know what you are talking about.
This just means there is a problem with your build order. You should never be able to lose a game just for walking out of your base. It might mean you need to stay in your base longer, build base defenses, or just find another way to scout, but any build that relies on luck is not a good build order.
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The SF4 scene is a lot smaller than the SC2 scene. This means that the 5th best player in the world in SF4 is way farther from the 1st than the 5th in SC2.
And to those claiming SF4 is a game of complete information, it still doesn't mean there's no gamble. There are a lot of mixups, option selects and wild guesses that people simply consider to be mind games. Sure, the best players will guess right more often than the rest because they can more or less guess how their opponents think, but there's still a load of variance. Obviously it helps that a SF4 round is 2 minutes top, so you can have Bo3 of 3 rounds each early in the tournament.
And finally, SF4 is also a lot more balanced than SC2, simply because there are a lot more matchups. If a matchup is broken, you just stay away from it. It's also arguably easier to switch characters in SF4 than switching race in SC2.
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On December 19 2010 19:23 KevinIX wrote:Show nested quote +On December 19 2010 17:09 Sadist wrote:On December 19 2010 12:54 out4blood wrote:On December 18 2010 23:08 Navane wrote: 1) Starcraft is a game of incomplete information. This means you can take a gamble (certain builds have more luck and less skill needed to succeed). How far a gamble run takes you, depends on luck. There's no luck in Starcraft. Beyond spawning positions, everything that occurs in the game is a direct result of player actions. If you lose, it's never luck. It's because the other player played better than you did. "Build order losses" are also not due to luck. If you do a build that automatically loses to other builds, then you are taking a risk. Some builds are riskier than others, and what success they achieve is due to opponents not reacting properly or quickly enough. Other builds are safer, reducing the likelihood of losing to many things, but set you behind if your opponent played a certain way. But that's ALL due to how your opponent plays, not luck. Theres luck, someone can blindly enter your base as you leave and kill all your shit. Theres TONS of luck. You dont know what you are talking about. This just means there is a problem with your build order. You should never be able to lose a game just for walking out of your base. It might mean you need to stay in your base longer, build base defenses, or just find another way to scout, but any build that relies on luck is not a good build order.
This is just too stupid... ALL build orders have an element of luck. You stay in your base longer? Other player takes a risky expo and techs, BAM he's now at an advantage due to luck. And don't say "but you can scout it!!!!" - you can't scout everything there's always a chance for something to blindside you.
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I played SC:BW for about 7 - 8 years i hopped onto SC2, I play about 5 games a week and...
i'm able to easily beat or have close games with up to 2,8k players. and that without a lot of training.
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On December 19 2010 21:17 attackfighter wrote:Show nested quote +On December 19 2010 19:23 KevinIX wrote:On December 19 2010 17:09 Sadist wrote:On December 19 2010 12:54 out4blood wrote:On December 18 2010 23:08 Navane wrote: 1) Starcraft is a game of incomplete information. This means you can take a gamble (certain builds have more luck and less skill needed to succeed). How far a gamble run takes you, depends on luck. There's no luck in Starcraft. Beyond spawning positions, everything that occurs in the game is a direct result of player actions. If you lose, it's never luck. It's because the other player played better than you did. "Build order losses" are also not due to luck. If you do a build that automatically loses to other builds, then you are taking a risk. Some builds are riskier than others, and what success they achieve is due to opponents not reacting properly or quickly enough. Other builds are safer, reducing the likelihood of losing to many things, but set you behind if your opponent played a certain way. But that's ALL due to how your opponent plays, not luck. Theres luck, someone can blindly enter your base as you leave and kill all your shit. Theres TONS of luck. You dont know what you are talking about. This just means there is a problem with your build order. You should never be able to lose a game just for walking out of your base. It might mean you need to stay in your base longer, build base defenses, or just find another way to scout, but any build that relies on luck is not a good build order. This is just too stupid... ALL build orders have an element of luck. You stay in your base longer? Other player takes a risky expo and techs, BAM he's now at an advantage due to luck. And don't say "but you can scout it!!!!" - you can't scout everything there's always a chance for something to blindside you.
There is indeed an element of luck in SC2, but expos are always scoutable though.
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On December 19 2010 19:54 Pwere wrote: The SF4 scene is a lot smaller than the SC2 scene. This means that the 5th best player in the world in SF4 is way farther from the 1st than the 5th in SC2.
And to those claiming SF4 is a game of complete information, it still doesn't mean there's no gamble. There are a lot of mixups, option selects and wild guesses that people simply consider to be mind games. Sure, the best players will guess right more often than the rest because they can more or less guess how their opponents think, but there's still a load of variance. Obviously it helps that a SF4 round is 2 minutes top, so you can have Bo3 of 3 rounds each early in the tournament.
And finally, SF4 is also a lot more balanced than SC2, simply because there are a lot more matchups. If a matchup is broken, you just stay away from it. It's also arguably easier to switch characters in SF4 than switching race in SC2.
Of course there's a gamble in SF4. Just like in boxing a fighter can switch styles multiple times throughout the fight. You could be having an easy time against one style but struggle with another. Still SF4 and boxing are games/sports of complete information because nothing is hidden it's all on the screen or right in front of you, you just need to do your homework to know your opponent's style and strategy. Also, staying away from a matchup doesn't make a game balanced, it just happens to have more choices.
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[B]
I have detected an on-going trend within our community of feeling that the best players are quite often, not the ones winning.
Then plz tell us what the definition of "the best" is, because i always thought, the ones who win the most games are the best.
Its just so ridiculous to whine about the so called best players not winning the tournaments. The Best is only the best if he can beat any other player. Thats the definition of the best.
Of course, even the best can lose sometimes. I myself went to a LAN and won against many very good Diamond Players, just to get 6pooled by a platin player. It was my failure, because i didnt scout early enough or didnt react perfectly. But i know that i would win most of the games, if i would have to play him more often.
I hope you get what i want to say. Even the best can lose games. But if they "quite often" are not the ones winning, then they clearly arent "the best".
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i think that apart from the gsl 3 champ the gsl 1 and 2 champs were kind of one trick ponys. in other words we still have a long way to go before we find our first sc2 bonjwa(s). (for those of you who dont know what a bonjwa is just look it up in liquipedia) it was 2 years after the release of bw when the reign of boxer started so i think we just will have to be patient for a few more years.
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That's because street fighter and starcraft are two wildly different games. You just can't compare them, in starcraft deception is strong and you can feign things and do something else and that may help a lesser player take a game from a top player. In street fighters, reaction is a more important factor and "the cards" are on the table and deception is less of an option.
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In my honest opinion the one thing that seperates fighting games from RTS is the fact that, in fighting games, the fight is generally within a small frame. What I mean by this is you can see things happen, so you can just react (as long as your reactions are sharp enough to keep up that is). For example:
In SF, even if someone is trying to zone you out with hadukens, there's multiple venues of dodging it, as long as you don't fall into a shoryuken trap. However in SC2, catching cheese is sometimes luck of the draw, even if you catch it in time, what's to say that your opener could stop it in time/hold it off? In SC2, the early game is such a delicate balance of can you hold of early pressure/cheese so that you can come back comfortably? I know in SF, as long as you don't sustain too much chip damage from blocking all the hadukens you can punish someone with combos to bring you back into the game. That's not the case in SC2, especially if you're zerg. That early pressure takes away from you making drones, so now you're economically behind, and even if you do pull off defending the early pressure/cheese, you can't just immediately throw a combo right back at someone, you need to rebuild/regroup and hope that you can balance the board without him stuffing something down your throat again. A good SF referrence: Daigo Vs. Justin Wong in the SF3 EVO finals. Daigo had .00000001% on his health bar, but he ended up parrying Justin Wong's chun li meteor special and countered with his own meteor and won. if you're at .000001% of your base, that means you have 1 worker and your CC, not an OC, not a pf but a CC, with no minerals and no more mineral fields left, vs. his army, you're gauranteed to lose, there's no parrying.
Back in BW there were Bonjwas, real bonafied players that could roflstomp someone 9/10 times (NaDa, SaviOr, July, Flash, Jaedong, just to name a few). All I'll say is that, back in BW defending and coming back were alot easier than it is in SC2. Flash did some "cheesy" things when he first came onto the scene, but he grew up to be a solid all around player in the end, and really there's nothing much someone can say about his game that could say otherwise.
But to sum it all up, as well as answer your last question, I believe that SC2 rewards players with a better plan. Whether they're "better" or more "skilled" doesn't really matter at this point, it feels. To me, and from experience, and from watching all sorts of replays/casts/VODs, it's whoever can execute their plan.
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Too many gimmicky noobs in this game with delusions of skill. Purposely randomizing the game up and forcing build order wins will net you a high win % against more solid "idra-like" players, but this doesn't by any stretch of the imagination mean that you're better.
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So far, the biggest tournament in the world (GSL), the most deserving player has won it every single time.
MLG, the best players won (Huk, Idra, Jinro).
Don't really know what else to say...
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Just experienced it again today: the opening gambling.
PvZ on Blistering Sands. He didn't chose to build an early expansion, instead he played something like 14 gas, 14 pool. Since Zerg is unscoutable after the first zerglings emerge, I didn't know if his expansion is delayed or if he had chosen to build either banelings or roaches.
The banelings need to be answered by a sentry, the roaches are answered by stalkers, because they can crack the backdoor. I couldn't leave the base, because of the many possibilities of losing my whole army against the perfect counter. The Xel'Naga towers are possessed by the Zerg.
You'll experience the same timing windows, where you can't scout your opponent, in ZvZ and PvT etc. It's such a nuisance for a macro player to have to 'split' your unit composition to be able to minimize the risk to lose.
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On December 20 2010 05:00 Perscienter wrote: Just experienced it again today: the opening gambling.
PvZ on Blistering Sands. He didn't chose to build an early expansion, instead he played something like 14 gas, 14 pool. Since Zerg is unscoutable after the first zerglings emerge, I didn't know if his expansion is delayed or if he had chosen to build either banelings or roaches.
The banelings need to be answered by a sentry, the roaches are answered by stalkers, because they can crack the backdoor. I couldn't leave the base, because of the many possibilities of losing my whole army against the perfect counter. The Xel'Naga towers are possessed by the Zerg.
You'll experience the same timing windows, where you can't scout your opponent, in ZvZ and PvT etc. It's such a nuisance for a macro player to have to 'split' your unit composition to be able to minimize the risk to lose.
hint: sentries are good against roaches.
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On December 20 2010 02:52 HalfAmazing wrote: Too many gimmicky noobs in this game with delusions of skill. Purposely randomizing the game up and forcing build order wins will net you a high win % against more solid "idra-like" players, but this doesn't by any stretch of the imagination mean that you're better.
If I randomize my opening builds in such a way that I win >50% against someone like idra (assuming that I can do this against other good players as well...), how does that not make me better than him? I would say that strategical victories are meaningful.
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On December 20 2010 05:23 PJA wrote:Show nested quote +On December 20 2010 05:00 Perscienter wrote: Just experienced it again today: the opening gambling.
PvZ on Blistering Sands. He didn't chose to build an early expansion, instead he played something like 14 gas, 14 pool. Since Zerg is unscoutable after the first zerglings emerge, I didn't know if his expansion is delayed or if he had chosen to build either banelings or roaches.
The banelings need to be answered by a sentry, the roaches are answered by stalkers, because they can crack the backdoor. I couldn't leave the base, because of the many possibilities of losing my whole army against the perfect counter. The Xel'Naga towers are possessed by the Zerg.
You'll experience the same timing windows, where you can't scout your opponent, in ZvZ and PvT etc. It's such a nuisance for a macro player to have to 'split' your unit composition to be able to minimize the risk to lose. hint: sentries are good against roaches. No, not at all. One is worthless. at the backdoor. For every sentry you have to forego stalkers and in turn make more zealots. Zealots are really, really bad against roaches. Build more than four sentries against any roach heavy push and you are dead, unless there is only one small entrance to your base.
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On December 20 2010 05:48 Perscienter wrote:Show nested quote +On December 20 2010 05:23 PJA wrote:On December 20 2010 05:00 Perscienter wrote: Just experienced it again today: the opening gambling.
PvZ on Blistering Sands. He didn't chose to build an early expansion, instead he played something like 14 gas, 14 pool. Since Zerg is unscoutable after the first zerglings emerge, I didn't know if his expansion is delayed or if he had chosen to build either banelings or roaches.
The banelings need to be answered by a sentry, the roaches are answered by stalkers, because they can crack the backdoor. I couldn't leave the base, because of the many possibilities of losing my whole army against the perfect counter. The Xel'Naga towers are possessed by the Zerg.
You'll experience the same timing windows, where you can't scout your opponent, in ZvZ and PvT etc. It's such a nuisance for a macro player to have to 'split' your unit composition to be able to minimize the risk to lose. hint: sentries are good against roaches. No, not at all. One is worthless. at the backdoor. For every sentry you have to forego stalkers and in turn make more zealots. Zealots are really, really bad against roaches. Build more than four sentries against any roach heavy push and you are dead, unless there is only one small entrance to your base.
3 gate expand with multiple sentries is one of the safest PvZ builds, and it's perfectly safe against roaches, even on blistering sands (though you may have to delay the expansion against some roach builds).
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The problem is that
1: They removed most of the micro and game is verry fast- paced , meaning that units like stalkers hydra etc. do a lot of damage but don't have that much hp , basically every unit is made like that . This means that battles will go really fast and players have really just a verry limited time to do things and are mostly just unable to micro units . Sure they can split groups to avoid storms and let units that do + armored damage kill armored damage and units with + light damagek kill light and of course contol bigger units like collosus / Motherships but that's it .
2: There is a lot of hidden information in SC 2 , meaning someone in the PvP match up can let's say strike at u when ur both at 200/200 with about 8 DT's behind ur army and u have no observer or cannon , u instantly lose .
3: As I stated a bit in numer 1 , the developers intended Starcraft 2 to be a real numbers game and they took that concept to the core . Meaning that in a 200/200 battle and 1 side haves about 18 more workers then the other that the one with 18 less workers will likely lose ( if they both have a kind of neutral mixed army ) despite the player with 18 more workers having significantly more skill.
I really hope Blizzard tries to invest time into making SC 2 more like SC BW instead of making it like poker . Maybe they can also return the 1 a 2 a 3 a 4 a mechanic . I was never really good at 1 a 2 a 3 a 4 a and assigning control groups , but if it makes for better games and that the player with more skill can win I say they should implent max control groups of 12 .
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On December 20 2010 05:55 PJA wrote:Show nested quote +On December 20 2010 05:48 Perscienter wrote:On December 20 2010 05:23 PJA wrote:On December 20 2010 05:00 Perscienter wrote: Just experienced it again today: the opening gambling.
PvZ on Blistering Sands. He didn't chose to build an early expansion, instead he played something like 14 gas, 14 pool. Since Zerg is unscoutable after the first zerglings emerge, I didn't know if his expansion is delayed or if he had chosen to build either banelings or roaches.
The banelings need to be answered by a sentry, the roaches are answered by stalkers, because they can crack the backdoor. I couldn't leave the base, because of the many possibilities of losing my whole army against the perfect counter. The Xel'Naga towers are possessed by the Zerg.
You'll experience the same timing windows, where you can't scout your opponent, in ZvZ and PvT etc. It's such a nuisance for a macro player to have to 'split' your unit composition to be able to minimize the risk to lose. hint: sentries are good against roaches. No, not at all. One is worthless. at the backdoor. For every sentry you have to forego stalkers and in turn make more zealots. Zealots are really, really bad against roaches. Build more than four sentries against any roach heavy push and you are dead, unless there is only one small entrance to your base. 3 gate expand with multiple sentries is one of the safest PvZ builds, and it's perfectly safe against roaches, even on blistering sands (though you may have to delay the expansion against some roach builds). Please show me the replay, where you hold this off against a decent Zerg with roaches poking at your natural and the backdoor simultaneously.
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On December 20 2010 07:15 Perscienter wrote:Show nested quote +On December 20 2010 05:55 PJA wrote:On December 20 2010 05:48 Perscienter wrote:On December 20 2010 05:23 PJA wrote:On December 20 2010 05:00 Perscienter wrote: Just experienced it again today: the opening gambling.
PvZ on Blistering Sands. He didn't chose to build an early expansion, instead he played something like 14 gas, 14 pool. Since Zerg is unscoutable after the first zerglings emerge, I didn't know if his expansion is delayed or if he had chosen to build either banelings or roaches.
The banelings need to be answered by a sentry, the roaches are answered by stalkers, because they can crack the backdoor. I couldn't leave the base, because of the many possibilities of losing my whole army against the perfect counter. The Xel'Naga towers are possessed by the Zerg.
You'll experience the same timing windows, where you can't scout your opponent, in ZvZ and PvT etc. It's such a nuisance for a macro player to have to 'split' your unit composition to be able to minimize the risk to lose. hint: sentries are good against roaches. No, not at all. One is worthless. at the backdoor. For every sentry you have to forego stalkers and in turn make more zealots. Zealots are really, really bad against roaches. Build more than four sentries against any roach heavy push and you are dead, unless there is only one small entrance to your base. 3 gate expand with multiple sentries is one of the safest PvZ builds, and it's perfectly safe against roaches, even on blistering sands (though you may have to delay the expansion against some roach builds). Please show me the replay, where you hold this off against a decent Zerg with roaches poking at your natural and the backdoor simultaneously. That's a problem with the map. Not a problem with the players or the core gameplay balance.
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On December 19 2010 17:09 Sadist wrote:Show nested quote +On December 19 2010 12:54 out4blood wrote:On December 18 2010 23:08 Navane wrote: 1) Starcraft is a game of incomplete information. This means you can take a gamble (certain builds have more luck and less skill needed to succeed). How far a gamble run takes you, depends on luck. There's no luck in Starcraft. Beyond spawning positions, everything that occurs in the game is a direct result of player actions. If you lose, it's never luck. It's because the other player played better than you did. "Build order losses" are also not due to luck. If you do a build that automatically loses to other builds, then you are taking a risk. Some builds are riskier than others, and what success they achieve is due to opponents not reacting properly or quickly enough. Other builds are safer, reducing the likelihood of losing to many things, but set you behind if your opponent played a certain way. But that's ALL due to how your opponent plays, not luck. Theres luck, someone can blindly enter your base as you leave and kill all your shit. Theres TONS of luck. You dont know what you are talking about. How is someone coming into your base killing stuff "lucky?" It's not random, and it's not chance. He had to take the actions to do it. You had to take the actions to NOT have stuff there. It's not luck at all. It all comes from player actions.
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I guess the term rewarding is whats really questionable. Pro's are a league above the majority of players so they are kind of out of the picture as they can usually overcome any balance/map issues usually and there games are decided on razors edges of luck/sneakyness/micro battle/timing.
Protoss is easy to pickup and climb the ranks and points with, Terran has many builds to pick up and excel with right up to near pro level. Zerg isn't easy to pickup or excel with.
I would argue that Zerg is the most rewarding satisfaction wise. You feel you usually won a game because of your skill rather then a BO,Cheese,Map Favour, Rush/Spam of the season type of win. Ofc i'm biased.
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we will adapt, I play as protoss so I don't know about anyone else but I find myself playing increasingly longer games on average and playing vs less cheese (and getting better at adapting to it) as it is, even on pvp. (largely due to better scouting and having written "Do Not Lose Your Army For No Reason" on my wall)
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People don't know what they really want.
If you want a game where the best player wins 95% of the time, get into chess. Very few popular sports gives the top teams a 70%+ of winning. The patriots (arguably the best team in the NFL right now) lost to the BROWNS. The Celtics have lost to the Cavs, and the Lakers have lost to he Grizzlies. These facts don't mean that basketball is less fun to watch or a shitty sport because the better team doesn't always win.
Some days you just miss small random things (could probably think of several in-game examples), just like some days a basketball team's shots just don't seem to go in.
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1001 YEARS KESPAJAIL22271 Posts
Mechanical skill (micro/macro) is not enough. Because SC2 has a lower mechanical skill ceiling (because of things like multiple building select, bigger control groups, etc), you won't see a dominating margin between pros and normal players, between 200 and 100 apm, when it comes to macro/micro. Strategic thinking, timing, game sense, planning.. these are all skills with much higher ceilings that no one has mastered (and likely, no one will ever truly master) yet. There are just too many variables and uncertainties in each game for a truly dominating player to emerge yet.
tl;dr ver. Lower mechanical skill ceiling = 500apm vs 100apm is a smaller margin than in SCBW. Strategy, game sense, etc are important too, and no one has mastered this yet.
Starcraft is a strategy game. I want strategy to be the determining factor in games, not the ability to do 500 actions per minute.
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On December 20 2010 11:19 ploy wrote: People don't know what they really want.
If you want a game where the best player wins 95% of the time, get into chess. Very few popular sports gives the top teams a 70%+ of winning. The patriots (arguably the best team in the NFL right now) lost to the BROWNS. The Celtics have lost to the Cavs, and the Lakers have lost to he Grizzlies. These facts don't mean that basketball is less fun to watch or a shitty sport because the better team doesn't always win.
Some days you just miss small random things (could probably think of several in-game examples), just like some days a basketball team's shots just don't seem to go in.
what you are talking about can be simplified into shape so even the best players/teams cant be stable for an entire season
sc2 is far different from this situation as maps are different and have a huge influence on the gameplay right now plus the game is still not balanced completely balanced imo while a bb or football field is balanced and everyone is using the same ball
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On December 20 2010 10:05 out4blood wrote:Show nested quote +On December 19 2010 17:09 Sadist wrote:On December 19 2010 12:54 out4blood wrote:On December 18 2010 23:08 Navane wrote: 1) Starcraft is a game of incomplete information. This means you can take a gamble (certain builds have more luck and less skill needed to succeed). How far a gamble run takes you, depends on luck. There's no luck in Starcraft. Beyond spawning positions, everything that occurs in the game is a direct result of player actions. If you lose, it's never luck. It's because the other player played better than you did. "Build order losses" are also not due to luck. If you do a build that automatically loses to other builds, then you are taking a risk. Some builds are riskier than others, and what success they achieve is due to opponents not reacting properly or quickly enough. Other builds are safer, reducing the likelihood of losing to many things, but set you behind if your opponent played a certain way. But that's ALL due to how your opponent plays, not luck. Theres luck, someone can blindly enter your base as you leave and kill all your shit. Theres TONS of luck. You dont know what you are talking about. How is someone coming into your base killing stuff "lucky?" It's not random, and it's not chance. He had to take the actions to do it. You had to take the actions to NOT have stuff there. It's not luck at all. It all comes from player actions.
Your mutas just skimmed by a dropship, and you lose your spire, your fault clearly. Next game, your mutas meet the dropship halfway because you accidently supplied blocked yourself, WOW tactical genius!
It's clearly NOT luck, amirite?
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On December 20 2010 12:24 buhhy wrote: Your mutas just skimmed by a dropship, and you lose your spire, your fault clearly. Next game, your mutas meet the dropship halfway because you accidently supplied blocked yourself, WOW tactical genius!
It's clearly NOT luck, amirite?
Right.
The tactical genius would try and position his units in such a way to see the dropship well before it hit their base.
It's up to the attacking player to pick the route the dropship take that will help it get to the enemy base unsighted.
If either of these events happen, it's because someone performed their plan better. I don't see how this is luck?
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It's an issue that has to do with time.. the game is really fresh. Brood War had been played for years before the truly solid strategies emerged and with that decision making and overall skill became the biggest factor. With the huge number of good players and the knowledge from BW it won't be as long but it still needs more time. Eventually because the game has the same fundamental emphasis it will reward the better player as much as it's predecessor.
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Re the OP: Fighters are very different from RTS.
I main fighters as opposed to RTS and when I started SC2 I remember watching VoDs of pros showing a rax then canceling tricking opponents. I remeber thinking, this is very interesting mind games that's happening here. But when you try it on ladder, most people dont react to those things. Zerg will continue to go ling banes maybe make an extra queen or 2 to defend against the void ray and thats about it. Timing, BO and raft of other things means there's very little option to deviate from your original plan.
Fighters are different, what you do 5 secs into the round has little to no impact on what you do 40 secs into the round. The fact that you started with a lot of lows doesnt mean you have to keep doing it, while if you started with a lot of bio tech, you cannot suddenly switch to mech. As such theres a lot of games decided by build order basically right at the start.
This means the mind game factor is there 100% of the time.
The other point is most definetly time to adapt to a certain play style. In a tourament situation, you have a decent amount of time to adapt for SC2. Sure you're losing game 1 or have even lost it. You stick around in the game for a bit and think about your next round. You cant do that in a fighter. Each round is 60 secs and the game is fast pace. Moves comes out in less then a second and in succession. Much of the game is thinking on your feet, a lesser skilled player does not have the time to think "oh his doing this to me lets think about a way I can counter this" and the better player will always have the advantage in this situation because he can do what he normally does and win since his the better player.
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Ultimately skill is just a measure of how attuned a player is to the game, and the more attuned player always wins. The winner is always the more skilled player..
And why do people insist on being as wordy as possible? Is conciseness dead?
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It's hard to balance SC2. It's like comparing apples to oranges and having to pick a standard for them both. The races have to be unique and different, while requiring the same amount of skill to play and win with. That is of course impossible. I sympathize with Blizzard that it is difficult to balance a game like this.
What is annoying are the players who defend the status quo like it's perfectly balanced already. Don't spew all that bull about greater skill is the only thing affecting the outcome. If that is truly the case then you won't need a patch anymore. Ever.
And the idea that only the pros performance matters is a question as well. I'll use an example from a MUD game I used to play. The necromancer guild was a new guild. The concept is that you train your minions, sweat out the grinding and years (I do mean years) later you have a godly character able to solo eq mobs. People cried foul and the necromancer was nerfed to the ground. Nevermind the effort and false expectations, the end balance is all that matters right? Well this is like Starcraft. If a certain race (zerg) requires a higher degree of control and understanding to play, and mastery means a degree of imba, the question is, is it fair for everyone else who will probably never reach that level of mastery? Where's the balance?
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I think the problem is, in all these other sports that you mention (bball, NFL, etc) when the underdog wins you generally feel good for the underdog because they did something great/deserving to obtain victory.
Watching the past two GSLs the novelty of spectating "esport" has totally worn off because of the trashy games that get lesser players through. I generally feel that when a Terran does something like 2 rax + SCV all in and wins, he doesn't necessarily deserve it. Players better than the people doing these strategies lose to this cheapness FAR too often even when they know its coming.
This just lowers the overall quality of games that spectators get to see as a tournament progresses. Eg: the all-in works -> gameover OR it failed -> gameover. This is fine to happen once in a while but not how frequently it is currently happening.
In other sports when you get underdogs that progress through a tournament you root/cheer for them to do well and if they do well it's not by some lame ass tactic. It's exciting to an underdog outplay a champion.
I think the game state is still fairly broken and that spectating games is becoming very stale because of the success of cheap strategies.
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On December 19 2010 02:14 TheNihilist wrote: Right now, the untouchable god of BW, Flash, is at a 71% win percentage across his career. oGsMC, one of the most dominant players in SC2 at the moment, is sitting at a 76% win percentage. Fruitdealer is at 73%, Nestea at 72%, and Foxer at 62%. So to me, it looks like the dominant players of SC2 are holding the same win percentages as their BW counterparts, even though we have not had a clear Bonjwa emerge yet. MK has a win ratio of 74%(his new id) on korean ladder:270win 90 lost.
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Just to further clarify, I brought SF into the discussion more as a contrast of the communities and relative win percentages of the best players. I did not mean to imply the two genres were similar and should have similar results. Sorry if it came off that way.
Show nested quote +I have detected an on-going trend within our community of feeling that the best players are quite often, not the ones winning. Then plz tell us what the definition of "the best" is, because i always thought, the ones who win the most games are the best.
This is actually tantamount to why I brought the SF community into the picture. In the SF community, everyone thinks that the person who wins is the best.....because they won. Daigo is the best.....because he wins the most. In that sub-culture, the definitions of abstract concepts like "skill" and what being "the best" is are universally agreed upon. The guy who wins the most has the most "skill" and is "the best"
As the last 13 pages of this thread prove, no such certainty about how those terms are defined exists in the SC2 community. Some people agree with IdrA's statement about MK, others think its ludicrous and borderline ignorant. Artosis was complimenting/deriding Terran players by describing how dissimilar/similar their playstyle was to BitByBit's. I was just going through my twitter feed and found this gem from Day9:
"The GSL: where Koreans play terribly and cheese everytime, shaking their heads when they lose as though it was a close game!"
I think Morrow made a good point about what the common thread here may be:
i think the reason older starcraft 1 talk so much about who is real players and who are just abusive ppl who dont deserve wins is that they come from sc1 where the game was pretty much figured out so so much came down to detail scouting macro micro mechanics just overall playing beautifully perfect and calculated. when they see players come to top 4 without having an astonishing macro or wellprepered gameplan or perfected gamestructure they cant really approve too much of it since that was a sign of weak and cheesy players in sc1
All these pros I am hearing deride some of the successful SC2 players have BW in common. They are used to a "figured out" game. As many people in this thread have pointed out, SC2 is not figured out. It also occurs to me that these BW pros may never have had to play the game professionally before it was figured out. Vets feel free to correct me, but it is my understanding that the SC pro scene didn't really develop on a large scale until several years after BW and some fairly extensive patching. This would be significant in that no one was playing (or watching) with money on the line until the game was stable.
The current scenario is vastly different. SC2 had a pro scene while it was in beta testing. While I am sure BW's metagame evolved over time it sounds to me like there was never really a time where pro players felt completely in the dark or blindsided by new, extremely difficult to beat strats. SC2 on the other hand is growing up, starting from infancy, on camera with people all over the world watching and playing for incredibly large cash prizes. What's worse, most of the people watching and playing it have a pre-formed idea of what "skilled" play looks like and what they are seeing now couldn't possibly have any resemblance.
I guess it's no wonder the community is so divided on this topic.
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Games like Starcraft2 can be solved. I had a 3v3 team in Warcraft3 that went 200-1. The loss was because my allies decided they were bored of winning and wanted to screw around.
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On December 20 2010 15:20 GoodNewsJim wrote: Games like Starcraft2 can be solved. I had a 3v3 team in Warcraft3 that went 200-1. The loss was because my allies decided they were bored of winning and wanted to screw around. 3v3s are not 1v1s, and neither this game nor warcraft 3 were balanced with a focus on team games, especially teams of 3+.
So, how exactly is SC:BW solved? Or even WC3? Moon doesn't go 200-1. Are you better than him? Ha.
The game is young, a lot of this early cheese hasn't been solved the way it has in BW (Compare BBS vs 2rax all-in. It's much more well known how to stop a BBS SCV all-in attack in BW.)
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you know, I used to be on the bandwagon of "sc2 will never be as skill skewed as BW". But im currently witnessing Catz going 52+W's - 6 L's against the best players that the LA server can muster, and most (45%+) of these are mirrors (ZvZ)!
The game is in its most infant stages right now (2 xpacs to fill in gaps!), and given time I'm sure sc2 will indeed have a player(s) on the level of BW masters. Right now it seems people are pushing build/map/timing advantages to their limits (4gate, hatch first, 2 rax scv-allin,stim push, etc.) people dont want to play a middle of the road strat that can "live" to all-ins simply because nobody is good enough to overcome the economic tradeoff. That will not be the case eventually.
in other words, once the game is "stable" all-ins wont win near as consistantly, and greedy builds will get shut down. And even NOW the better player wins ALMOST all the time.
What fun would ANY sport be without upsets anyway? why even play the game if the outcome is predetermined? Why not just take the seeded positions in a tournament and hand out prizes? Because its not about who/how someone SHOULD win, Its about who actually wins! Winning being the key objective in anything competitive.
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yeah it's pretty silly.
We loved boxer because his cheeses are actually very smart, and different each time, and his micro is phenomenal (at his time) that people actually can't copy it.
Now we get these people doing retard shit that everyone can pull off and can consistently win, that's where I am a bit angry.
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i dont think it does so much at this point. I was pretty angry about marinekings performance in gsl, and players like incontrol among many others not qualifying while much worse players do qualify, only to lose instantly. I think it will even out in the future obviously and i also dont think a tournament should be a measure of skill, however the better skilled players should have a better chance of coming out of a match. Theres just too much variance and although some is good, i just dont like how far people can get without knowing how to play the game.
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I think a lot of the problem comes from the assumption that because a player plays a certain way, that is the only way he can play. Rain is a perfect example of this, in his R8 match against NesTea he decided to go all-in early builds. After the match he got flamed by people saying that he was only a cheesy player and that NesTea was the better player. The general consencus was that Rain could only do all-ins and cheesy builds, because that was what he did in that series.
In R4 he instead opted to go for longer macro-games, and still ended up winning. Thus proving that he did not only use early all-ins against NesTea because that was all he could do, he choose to do because he judged that would be the best way to win. Choosing the strategy most likely to succed.
I think part of the problem right now is that we have to small a sample to make broader guesses of peoples skill.
Another part is that it is hard to put a finger on what makes a player the best, or even good. Jinro said in an interview that MC had jokingly called him "early game Chobo, late game Gosu" (i think that was the quote word for word). If he meets a player that is the opposite "early game Gosu, late game Chobo" Jinro would most likely loose, since the early game comes first. Does this makes Jinro the worse player? Even if Jinro has a vastly superior overall win% ?
As far as i am concerned, that day, in that match Jinro would be the worse player. Because he lost. But a lot of people would disagree with me, since late game skill and macro is valued a lot more than knowing the early-game timings to make all-in attacks succesful.
Now knowing all that, start mixing in that the players are not equally good at the different match-ups, Mirrors, vT, vP and vZ and fans will be even more confused over who the "best" player is before, and after, any given match.
The main error i see repeated over and over again by fans is blaiming the winner for exploiting a weakness in the losers play. If Jinro happens to be weak against marine+SCV all-ins around the 7 min mark and a player uses this tactic four times in a row to score four easy wins in a Bo7 fans would be furious, this is something i dont see in any other sport.
Blaming the winner for exploiting the opponents weakness is, as far as i know, only frowned upon in SC2. If a boxer was week against left hooks, his opponent would have to be retarded not to use left hooks against him, you attack the opponents weakness, always. That is a golden rule in any 1v1-competition. In Tennis, if the opponent has a hard time dealing with backhands, you dont go "oh okay no problem, i wont hit any". You pummel that backhand side of his, exploiting that weakness all the way.
I try to have the same mentality watching SC2 matches, and that is what makes it so much fun for me. If a player loses 3-times in a row to the same marine+scv-push i would not go online and whine how cheesy his oponent was. Actually i would not say much anything (to polite to flame most of the time), but if i would say anything i would flame the looser for not being able to defend it. And give the winner his due respect, for seeing a weakness and exploiting it to its fullest.
Just as any serious competitior, would do. In any sport.
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I think an issue related to the question is the conception of "skill". As already mentioned a player usually gets perceived as skilled if he has good macro/micro and apm. This conception mainly derived from the more recent developements in korean BW where mechanics really made the difference in the end. But while this conception seems plausible at first sight it is not self-evident as it degrades factors such as decision making or creativity. As an example one of the most successful foreigners in BW, Fisheye, wouldn`t match the criterias to be regarded as really skilled and thus would be labeled as gimmicky. A similar sort of criticism is pointed towards players like Sjow or Goody who are very successful in tourneys but do not impress with their overall mechanics. On the other hand IdrA is regarded as a paradigm case for skill even though his play arguably lacks in creativity. So maybe we need to use a broader idea of skill in order to discuss the OP question properly.
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From what I watched in SF4, I feel there's a lot of randomness involved (probably a lot less in SF3.3 though). You never know if he's spamming shoryuken, defending, grabbing... it's a guessing game, a lot closer to rock paper scissor than starcraft IMO. And when you watch the top level, say Daigo versus a top Rufus player, it's still the same "is he mashing DP?" guessing game.
The "offense is hard, therefore the most skilled player wins" argument also doesn't work for SF4, where it isn't rare to see most of the damage come from "reversal" defensive moves (which are typically seen as gambles).
To be honest I think there's just a completely different mentality in the two communities. I don't think Idra would have the same reputation in the land of David Sirlin and Seth Killian. I don't think any SF player could get away with saying "I don't play Ryu because I have self respect" without being accused of being a scrub.
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TL;DR
In SF4 defense is easy and attacking is hard but there is complete information. In SC2 defense is hard and attacking is easy but there is incomplete information.
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the game is still new* in the grand scheme of professional games weather is be real life sports or electronic, yes its simular to sc1bw but it's not the same by any standards.
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heard mc had a good run in osl/msl late bw scene where the level is ridiculously high compared to sc2, no wonder he literally rolled over sc2 current scene as he is the 1st "good player" from bw switching to sc2 late bw scene speaking
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On December 18 2010 22:35 TheLonelyCarrier wrote: ... So my question in light of this fact is, who ARE the sages? ....
there is only one sage; day9
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not more than bw, in the end, with perfectplay the most advantageous BO will win
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I haven't read the full 14 pages of this thread, so this might have been mentioned before, but if the accepted "best" win% of an SC2 player is say 65%, you can obtain relatively deterministic results by using a best of X match.
Here's a table depicting this, the leftmost column is the single game win%, and the cells are the combined win% in a best of X series. Orange cells are 70%-80%, Yellow is 80%-90%, and green is >90%.
Note that this is dry statistics, as usually a loss or win streak changes the state of mind of the player and it affects subsequent sets in the match. Also, people may be inclined to repeat a winning strategy in a set in subsequent sets... But anyway, this is a baseline.
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On December 20 2010 09:29 MichaelJLowell wrote:Show nested quote +On December 20 2010 07:15 Perscienter wrote:On December 20 2010 05:55 PJA wrote:On December 20 2010 05:48 Perscienter wrote:On December 20 2010 05:23 PJA wrote:On December 20 2010 05:00 Perscienter wrote: Just experienced it again today: the opening gambling.
PvZ on Blistering Sands. He didn't chose to build an early expansion, instead he played something like 14 gas, 14 pool. Since Zerg is unscoutable after the first zerglings emerge, I didn't know if his expansion is delayed or if he had chosen to build either banelings or roaches.
The banelings need to be answered by a sentry, the roaches are answered by stalkers, because they can crack the backdoor. I couldn't leave the base, because of the many possibilities of losing my whole army against the perfect counter. The Xel'Naga towers are possessed by the Zerg.
You'll experience the same timing windows, where you can't scout your opponent, in ZvZ and PvT etc. It's such a nuisance for a macro player to have to 'split' your unit composition to be able to minimize the risk to lose. hint: sentries are good against roaches. No, not at all. One is worthless. at the backdoor. For every sentry you have to forego stalkers and in turn make more zealots. Zealots are really, really bad against roaches. Build more than four sentries against any roach heavy push and you are dead, unless there is only one small entrance to your base. 3 gate expand with multiple sentries is one of the safest PvZ builds, and it's perfectly safe against roaches, even on blistering sands (though you may have to delay the expansion against some roach builds). Please show me the replay, where you hold this off against a decent Zerg with roaches poking at your natural and the backdoor simultaneously. That's a problem with the map. Not a problem with the players or the core gameplay balance. You can't separate maps from players and core gameplay balance.
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I'm impressed with the first post in this topic, it's of quite high caliber regarding such an infected topic.
My 5 cents: Alot of the pro's have good if not great ideas at how the game would be best balanced. I would not always agree with these ideas because every player will, regardless of what they say, have an underlying feeling and prejudice towards changes that favour their played race and most importanly their way of playing. IdrA will always want the maps to be bigger, to be more macro oriented. Whilst players like MarineKingPrime will always want more micro maps (I'd atleast think, since he realises that is his best skill.) Now who is to say Micro is less than Macro? I would argue it is, but I can not denay that even though I hate Rain and the way he playes... he deserved his spot, one way or another. Just as vietnam beat USA with "dirty" tactics, we can't denay their success and their strife and reason in doing so.
So, what do we do then? You ask. Well I'd try, just as blizzard, to show restraint and conservitism when it comes to implementing changes. But the biggest problem as I see it is easy to view;
Starcraft 2 was made with the intent of competative play from the start, but it was built wrongly from the very beginning. (Almost) Every map is balanced with the thought of base Ramps and small size (in contrast to SC1). This results in skewed stratigies that almost always need some degree of similarity making all players bound by the same stupid and basic rules. If they do not follow them, they're considered radical or cheese... usually because it is because if they do not wall in or follow these basic rules they're exposed.
Had the maps been larger I'd argue most of the race "imbalances" would go away. Good players would Micro good still, but not able to only win on it. Good players could Macro, and mostly win on it. But the best players would combine Macro and Micro.
Todays Starcraft 2 is win-able without the combination of these. This is, atleast how I see it, why people rage: A player can win with almost no Macro, whereas a Macro player (and usually a more fun match to watch) does not always have the upper hand because the maps are to small and he can be easily overrun. I agree with the sentiment that over time people learn to combat most of these things better or worse... but as IdrA put it greatly "It doesn't matter if they're valid strategies or not, most of these builds make for boring games to watch from a spectator viewpoint and that is detremental to the game/sport".
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Of course it rewards the most skilled player, the question is what the skillset is.
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I just recently watched a few replays from sc2rep.com and was alarmed by the amount of cheese. I wanted to educate myself about sophisticated high level play. Instead I encountered 12 drone all-ins on Steppes of War against a high level player, who didn't built his first supply depot at the choke. How stupid is that?
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The only reason "better" players lose to "worse" players is the idea that there is only one true, respectable way to play SC2, and that's to make 5 bases and win a macro game.
Once the idea that the game can be played in many ways sets in, you will quickly stop talking about "cheese" etc.
A win's a win, a playstyle's a playstyle. L2P and stop whining imo.
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The only thing I'd like to add to this is that SC2 is not SC1 and people that come from SC1 seem to assume they are superior due to MOST of the skills transferring. Unfortunately as IdrA pointed out in one of the SotGs the defenders advantage is very minimal in this game due to things like warp in and mules coupled with the fact that you always hit shooting up hill. All ins are a HUGE part of this game because they are just more effective than they were in brood war. Even zerg has started to do this BS with 12 drone rush. Granted deflecting a rush and going into macro mode can still win you the game and some people base skill on how well you can macro and multitask(myself included) but there is another kind of skill set in the all in including relentless Jaedongesque micro and there is still quite a bit of base management too. Do I think it's fair that a kid with 45 apm can 4 gate me and I can't stop it? Hell no. Do I think that I need to sacrifice my late game plans to be safer in the early game? Unfortunately yes. Gone are the days when you can pull 6 drones to stop a bunker rush.
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To be honest I think there's just a completely different mentality in the two communities. I don't think Idra would have the same reputation in the land of David Sirlin and Seth Killian. I don't think any SF player could get away with saying "I don't play Ryu because I have self respect" without being accused of being a scrub.
You are completely right here. It just doesn't fly. People who do anything that could be considered "bad manner" are severely looked down on and become kind of a joke to the community. As an example, Warhawk was a respected Guile/Rufus player until he literally stood up and walked away during his match with Buktooth at Super NorCal Regionals. He stood up and just walked away with 20% of his life left in front of a live audience. For better or worse, no one really respects him anymore.
It's different in SC2. IdrA is not only still respected despite his shenannigans, it has actually made him more popular to a degree. I mean, there are a percentage of people who find it obnoxious, but people still respect and fear him. Perhaps this is because there are a strong contingent of people who feel, on some level, that his grievances are justified?
If there were no one who didn't kind of agree when he says stuff like, "I don't play Terran because I have self respect." or "Imagine how different this match would be if protoss units actually cost money." then he probably wouldn't have any fans left. Obviously there are enough people who think it's at least somewhat justifiable righteous fury rather than just being a sore loser.
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On December 20 2010 23:15 TheLonelyCarrier wrote:Show nested quote +To be honest I think there's just a completely different mentality in the two communities. I don't think Idra would have the same reputation in the land of David Sirlin and Seth Killian. I don't think any SF player could get away with saying "I don't play Ryu because I have self respect" without being accused of being a scrub. You are completely right here. It just doesn't fly. People who do anything that could be considered "bad manner" are severely looked down on and become kind of a joke to the community. As an example, Warhawk was a respected Guile/Rufus player until he literally stood up and walked away during his match with Buktooth at Super NorCal Regionals. He stood up and just walked away with 20% of his life left in front of a live audience. For better or worse, no one really respects him anymore. It's different in SC2. IdrA is not only still respected despite his shenannigans, it has actually made him more popular to a degree. I mean, there are a percentage of people who find it obnoxious, but people still respect and fear him. Perhaps this is because there are a strong contingent of people who feel, on some level, that his grievances are justified? If there were no one who didn't kind of agree when he says stuff like, "I don't play Terran because I have self respect." or "Imagine how different this match would be if protoss units actually cost money." then he probably wouldn't have any fans left. Obviously there are enough people who think it's at least somewhat justifiable righteous fury rather than just being a sore loser. Well... if IdrA stood up and walked away during a match in front of a live audience he would lose all respect too.
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Isn't rushing/all-in a bit like a serve/volley player in tennis?
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On December 20 2010 23:27 w0mble wrote: Isn't rushing/all-in a bit like a serve/volley player in tennis?
Yeah, but i have never heard anyone come out and say that a serve/volley-player in tennis is worse than his opponent even if he wins decisively. They might say that baseline players are more fun to watch, even go as far as to try to adjust the rules in favor of baseline-players but better players? Never.
Hell, some of the great tennis players of all times frequently used serve and volley, Federer still employes it on occasion on grass i belive. But mostly due to the new rackets making it easier to hit the return it is getting rarer.
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On December 18 2010 22:35 TheLonelyCarrier wrote: I have detected an on-going trend within our community of feeling that the best players are quite often, not the ones winning. If the best players would win anyway, there would be no need for an actual tournament to play it out.
You don't need to be the "best player" (how to determine that?) to win, just to play the best games. If a strategy is easy to execute, yet powerful, it is a good strategy. If you can bring down a player which was considered the better one, his fans should reconsider: Why did he let it happen?
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On December 19 2010 03:57 Bijan wrote: I just want to point out that If you look a the Code Rankings (http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/GSL_Rankings#Current_Ranking), almost all of the top players have been in all three GSLs.
If that doesn't point out that the best players consistently do well then I don't know what does.
QFT.
People here are acting like the "best" players/teams always win in most sports. That is just so completely wrong. You see this in every single team/individual sport.
Just like ANY OTHER SPORT, the top players are finishing at the tops of tournaments consistently. No, the "best" team/individual doesn't win every single game/tournament. At times, they get OUTPLAYED, just like sc2.
I've yet to watch many games where one player wasn't capable of NOT making a game-losing mistake. Sometimes it is a scouting error. Sometimes it is a micro error. Sometimes it is a positioning error.
I just don't understand most of the posts here. Those that lost to early cheese, lost because of how they handles it. I never saw a game where the loser never had a chance to win. They either micro fail or scout fail.
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The best player does not necessarily win. The same happens in any game to an extent. If it didn't, you wouldn't need a Bo3 in Street Fighter, (which, remember, is a Bo3 Bo3s because each match is a best of 3 rounds). So why not play one round rather than a Bo3 format where you might end up playing 9 (!) rounds? Because in almost any game there's an element of chance.
So now we're looking at the degree of chance. Starcraft, due in large part to it's incomplete information, has a larger degree of chance than games like chess and Street fighter. But it also has less chance than games like poker, which have incredibly high amounts of unknown information. Yet even in a game like poker it's possible for your skill to give you an edge.
So then you define success and skill differently - the higher the randomness, the less of a win %age you require to show your skill edge. A 60% SF winner is not the same as a 60% starcraft winner, or a 60% poker winner. And there's no problem there.
Aside from randomness, there's also a great deal of depth in starcraft. Not that there isn't in street fighter, but the way it manifests itself in starcraft may well have more temporarily powerful tactics.
So in SF, you might find that (this is hypothetical) you can repeat a certain combo and that normal defences don't work against it. So you could go into a tourney and get a whole lot of wins against 'better' players, even someone like Daigo, because it's unusual and there's no standard defence to it. Then everyone online starts doing the same combo series and for a few weeks, all over the internet, fellow nerds are doing the same combo. Then suddenly, someone works out that if you perform a certain move at a certain point it breaks the combo. Suddenly that strategy becomes obsolete and the 'good' players rise back up to the top.
So even though the 'best' players were losing, the community still acknowledged that their fundamentals and understanding of the game made them BETTER PLAYERS than those who were beating them. They had better zoning, better dexterity, better yomi - it was just a particular tactic that for a while didn't have a known standard defence.
Ok - so this doesn't happen so much in SF. But in Starcraft there are so many different timings, and so many different openings and combinations of units that until the game has had years of constant playtesting they will keep coming up. These early pushes will either have solutions found by the community or will be patched out, and those players considered 'good' players will rise up, and those relying on the cheesier strategies will sink back down. That's why people can comfortably say that a losing player is 'better' than a winning one.
Also, it might be rarer, but there's no doubt there's similar situations in SF. Think of Sirlin's 30-odd low strongs in a row - if your opponent doesn't know how to beat it, you can force a win even against a better player. If I beat Daigo with some similar strategy he couldn't work out the answer to in one match, noone would begrudge you saying that the worse player won.
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Cba reading the entire thread, and someone has probably already said this but: Doesn't it atleast take a few years for a game to develop to the point that SF is at according to you..? I very much doubt there were SF pros that could dominate in the way you described a few months after its release.
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Has anyone thought about htis: if Fog of War were removed.. I think we would see 99% win rates from certain players, for certain.
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Sc2 isn't even balanced completely, as you almost pointed with out with marineking point. and with a game that is imba, skill is not clearly defined. like multiple previous posts, 6pool is not skill no matter how u look at it. Hell, it's prolly the noobiest thing you can do. I've had people at lan parties b4 with scbw and they didnt know, so i just told them how to 6pool, and they executed almost perfectly.
So no, SC2 is NOT rewarding skilled players.
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I think the main problem with how SC2 is played right now is the differences between Cheeses, All-Ins, and Macro/Long-Game Strategies. These three types of play are simply not very compatible with one another they way they are currently played. Yes, I know that a Cheese is also technically an earlier All-In, but in this case I'm basically talking about the Bunker Rush, Cannon Rush, and 6pool.
Simply put, Macro players can't handle the early pressure of All-In players, and All-In players can't handle the long game. (I often joke that most Terrans can't play games over 8 minutes. They crumble after their 3Rax fails because they are so used to it succeeding.)
What basically has to happen is Macro players have to learn to defend against these plays and force the game to go long. This is funny because All-Ins exist due to the very reason that they are hard to defend. (i.e. Try misplacing your Force Field while defending a 3Rax push and see how that works out for you.) Similarly, if All-In players want to win games, they'll have to learn to play the long game too. This is again funny because an All-In has no contingency for failure, it is meant to win now or never. This is why even the pros sometimes can't stop cheesy All-In plays, and those that All-In don't always recover (not for lack of skill but due to the nature of the move itself).
I don't know whether this is a sign of good or bad balance, but constant patches from Blizzard are welcome in my opinion, if only to change up the game. Nerfs to Terran have slowed Reaper Rushes and Bunker Rushes, but things like Roach Rushes and Cannon Rushes and 6pools seem here to stay.
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On December 20 2010 23:27 w0mble wrote: Isn't rushing/all-in a bit like a serve/volley player in tennis?
Serving and volleying take infinitely more skill than 4 gate or the marine/banshee/SCV rush.
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On December 18 2010 22:35 TheLonelyCarrier wrote: Who, if anyone at all, is going to be responsible for resolving this growing rift if it's not going to be respected pro players?
The closest I have seen is day9, he always comes to the table with the least bias imo. He also isn't in the thick of things as you mentioned earlier, he is mainly a commentator/analyst of sc2. It seems like most players respect his advice also, Huk even thanking day9 at one point for some help he had given him. Not sure how long it will take to get someone of day9's caliber to come about, or if it will even happen. It would be cool to get more people analyzing games like day9 does, but it seems rare for someone with that much experience and skill to focus more on the community aspects of the game than playing the game pro.
Hopefully this is what you were looking for with the last question in your post :-)
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On December 21 2010 01:23 TheGiz wrote:3 Roach Rushes could be nerfed by making the Roach Warren require a Spawing Pool, but just imagine the outcry of Zergs everywhere if that were to happen. ?
A roach warren DOES require a spawning pool.
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I think the Street Fighter comparison might not quite be fair. The degree to which Street Fighter is both solved and completely dominated by top players is unusual.
Let's take a look at some other sports. In baseball, getting a 65% winning percentage in the regular season is a dominating performance. Only six teams have done better than 70% in the last century. Only half of those went on to win the World Series.
During most of his career, Tiger Woods has been the most dominant player in golfing history and was the favorite to win at any given event. Yet he's won only 28.4% of his starts - which is a record.
Even if you look at games where there is no chance element, and perfect information, you don't see that kind of dominance. Garry Kasparov was probably the best chess player in history, but even he had something like a 70% win rate (yes, I realized draws make it a little bit apples-to-oranges). This is in a game that has had centuries of study. The performance of Go players is similar, and people have been working on cracking that nut for at least 2500 years!
Occasionally a prodigy will show up and completely dominate all rivals (e.g. Paul Morphy in Chess, Honinbo Dosaku or Huang Longshi in Go), but that's usually a consequence of them having a fundamentally more advanced understanding of the game than their contemporaries, to the point of radically changing the game for the generations that follow. It's probably not possible to maintain that kind of dominance in most games in the information age.
Given that SC2 is only a few months old, and is a game of imperfect information, I don't think it's reasonable to expect to be at all like Street Fighter.
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I think this is an important thing for a competitive game.
Unfortunately I don't feel like SC2 has the clear cut gameplay where the more skilled person will always win.
SC1 was way ahead in those terms.
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When people say the game is not figured out, do you mean that players don't know how to defend against all-ins ?
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On December 21 2010 03:37 Zog wrote: When people say the game is not figured out, do you mean that players don't know how to defend against all-ins ?
they mean people don't know the best safe build orders yet, they are either too safe (so if the opponent doesn't all in you fall behind) or not safe enough so you lose to all-ins. I'm not saying these builds exist, but personally I think the builds aren't optimal yet
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Yes. You don't consistently win without skill.
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On December 21 2010 02:31 epik640x wrote: SC1 was way ahead in those terms. To a normal person, scbw was just an apm fest. The macro with Zerg was just ridiculously annoying.
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The thing about "skill" in this game is it is largely based on the amount of knowledge the player has. Because of this a player can be better at executing and winning with the majority of builds but if his opponent catches him off guard with one unfamiliar build it will cost him the game. Because of how skill and knowledge go hand in hand, this does not mean the lesser skilled player won. I think the irony of Rain vs. Nestea was that fruitdealer already showed how easily all-ins could be stopped, I just don't think Nestea reacted properly. Just because Nestea might be better in 90% of other situations, does not mean that there is a problem with the game, or that the game should somehow reward him when he was not playing optimally in that specific situation. I really don't see how there is a balance problem will all-ins, outside steps of war, which is already universally agreed to be a bad map.
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SC2 is not like Mario Kart where if you fall behind you get a blue turtle shell, the playing field is even, therefor it rewards the best players, simply because one player does not have a given advantage over the other. Maybe the issue is defining skill?
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On December 21 2010 04:56 Treemonkeys wrote: outside steps of war, which is already universally agreed to be a bad map.
Don't get me wrong, Steppes has its problems (rush distance, air space), but I find that it is a pretty decent map (layout). As a macro player I am consistently able to play long games on Steppes, control the map, and win vs. all-in style players.
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On December 18 2010 22:45 klauz619 wrote: SC2's mechanics works in a way that even someone who's head and shoulders above you can still lose games at a decent chance.
Pretty sure people like flash would rarely if ever lose to someone who isn't close to his ability.
errr... what abot to someone like Ssak and Classic? xd seriously, yes, there seems to be too many variables in the game right now that the levels have not really been established. is the game broken, though? after GSL 6/7/8 maybe and semi pros still manage to beat top players consistently, then SC2 needs to be reconsider some game mechanics, or perhaps we should reconsider who the top players are xd
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I think it also has a lot to do with how hard it is to scout particularly early - mid game. (particularly for zerg)
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On December 18 2010 22:42 JinDesu wrote:Show nested quote +On December 18 2010 22:41 Schnullerbacke13 wrote: skill is defined by being able to win games. winning games is skill. He's saying the most skilled players should be relatively untouchable. Albeit in BW, Flash isn't completely untouchable, but he sure damn well comes close to be. That's not really true at all though. Even Flash has about a 75% win rate in BW. That's not untouchable. The odds of loosing a best of three are about 15% which is small but they're not astronomical. The odds of his opponent taking a match off of him in a best of three no matter who wins or looses in the end are about 44%. That's not small at all.
Honestly I would see the best of the best being untouchable by more than a hanful of players as being a very bad thing for the sport of Starcraft II. One sided matches that are decided before they really begin aren't exactly entertaining. The best sports tournaments in the world are ones like the World Cup or NCAA basketball where the format and the rules of the game are carefully designed so that the best player doesn't always win. The purpose of a tournament isn't to decide who is the best player overall, after all, it's to decide who wins the tournament.
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An important thing to note is that while BW progamers don't have near 100% win records (even 60+% is considered extremely good) these win records are against extremely skilled professionals who dedicate large portions of their days to practice and have beat out the competition to be where they are. And even then, there is a clear disparity between the very top S-Class players and the rest of the herd. Conversely, SC2 is littered with washed up BW pros, foreigners, and converts from other games. Your top SC2 player is not even close to the level of a JD or Flash. So to see one of these guys lose to Joe Diamond isn't all that crazy. And as it is, the game might allow for fluky wins quite a bit. But it will be even more clear once top gamers get into this game.
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On December 21 2010 01:29 Flarefly wrote:Show nested quote +On December 18 2010 22:35 TheLonelyCarrier wrote: Who, if anyone at all, is going to be responsible for resolving this growing rift if it's not going to be respected pro players?
The closest I have seen is day9, he always comes to the table with the least bias imo. He also isn't in the thick of things as you mentioned earlier, he is mainly a commentator/analyst of sc2. It seems like most players respect his advice also, Huk even thanking day9 at one point for some help he had given him. Not sure how long it will take to get someone of day9's caliber to come about, or if it will even happen. It would be cool to get more people analyzing games like day9 does, but it seems rare for someone with that much experience and skill to focus more on the community aspects of the game than playing the game pro. Hopefully this is what you were looking for with the last question in your post :-)
Yeah, I agree totally, he is one of the only glimmers of hope I see. The problem is that Sean is just one person. Also, if these feelings in the community end up being due to something Blizz deems a systemic problem with the game that needs fixing, then no matter how positive an influence Day9 is, the ball will be in Blizzard's court at that point. But given that the only right way to patch a game is carefully and incrementally, one must wonder how long it would take for them to fix such a problem while avoiding breaking other parts of the game.
And I get it, it took years for BW to be balanced to the point where it was perfect for competitive play so if we are worrying about this 5 months after release we are being short sided, I know. The difference is we don't have 4 years to get it perfect for competitive play. We had until late July, because the pro scene was pre-built and reay to go nearly from day 1.
My concern is that if the community is devided and it doesn't get resolved relatively soon, either through patches (IF this is in fact even a balance issue) or through a pardigm shift in the community whereby people figure certain things out and agree upon what constitutes"skill", the games professional scene will flounder. I just don't want to see that. Its a great game and a wonderful community and I want to see it around for a long time.
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This entire thread is a question of variance. If you want top pro's to stand out, change best of 5 matches to best of 9 or even best of 21 marathon's. Also use the the same map several times in a row (which would be necessary in a bo21).
The original complaint is a bit like complaints that the World Series of Poker is never won by a known pro. If you want a known pro to win, increase the starting chip count from 10,000 to 5,000,000 with the same blind/ante structure.
While a single hand of poker may be one of the highest deviations, the board game Go (pictured above) is the best illustration of a non-deviating game. Players receive a rank that is very closely tied to standard deviation chances of winning. A 7dan ranked player will beat a 6dan 68% of the time (1 standard deviation); a 7dan will beat a 5dan 95% (2 standard deviations), a 7dan beats a 4dan 99.7% (3 standard deviations), and a 1dan beating a 7dan is a slightly lower probability than winning the lottery.
What is amazing is that there are a full 35 ranks in GO! This means we can conclude something like: Player 1 looks to player 2 with god-like status and will lose 997 out of 1,000 games, but player 2 will lose 99.7% of his games to player 3 who has a 99.7% chance of losing to player 4 who has a 99.7% chance of losing to player 5 who...all the way up to player 10 or 11.
In starcraft 2 I suspect there are only 3 or 4 levels of 99.7% win chance skill like this. Something like a 200 point bronze will lose 99.7% vs a 600 point Gold who loses 99.7% vs a 1500 point diamond who will lose 99.7% vs the top player in the world (though obviously real numbers would have to be based on players MMR). If you modify the parameters to bo3 matches maybe there are 5 levels and bo21 matches maybe there are 7 or 8 levels. That is the only way to make skilled players win more tournaments. The question of balance issues or Marines being "broken" are important, but pales in comparison to this underlying principal.
The question for Blizzard is if they want to have a community of professional gamers. In a way they may prefer high variance tournament winners (based on bo3 and bo5 matches instead of bo9+, and easy to hide hard to prepare for units/strategies) since that means the top 2,000 players in the world have a credible chance at winning the $80k MLG prize. If sc2 tourneys were lower variance and only the top ~50 players had a credible chance, there could be a pro sc2 scene (but maybe not as many sales of sc2). As it stands now, the only way to be an sc2 pro is charging for lessons and probably working a day job (or getting $ from mom and dad). Can't expect to do it on tournament winnings.
Texas Hold'em was growing modestly, then exploded when the slightly overweight skilless Chris "Moneymaker" won $2.5 million at the main event in 2003. If a max cheesing, sub 100 apm, painful yet fun to watch player somehow made it to the MLG finals it could be a big boost for esports. Could also be stupid and cause a mass wave of depression and sc2 uninstalls.
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It's interesting that you mention the relationship between a high variance and Blizzard's self-interest. Divide et impera. They won't severely reform the game. They belong to a profit-seeking corporation, which means that the educated community is politically ignored.
Two questions come into my mind.
1. What is the social function of variance (or chaos)?
2. Has Blizzard (or corporations in general, especially in the gaming software branch) an interest in introducing variance to the game?
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starcraft is harder to not make mistakes because you're controlling many pieces instead of just one and you don't know everything that's going on in the map. this means even the best players, if they aren't looking at the right spot at the right time, or if they make one bad decision they can lose quite easily.
the beauty of starcraft is both players are walking on a tight rope, and the first to fall off loses. nobody said it was easy but even the best of the best aren't good. in 10 years people will look back and say IdrA was a shit player compared to the gods of starcraft 2. If the game survives as an e-sport that long.
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On December 21 2010 08:06 Perscienter wrote: It's interesting that you mention the relationship between a high variance and Blizzard's self-interest. Divide et impera. They won't severely reform the game. They belong to a profit-seeking corporation, which means that the educated community is politically ignored.
Two questions come into my mind.
1. What is the social function of variance (or chaos)?
2. Has Blizzard (or corporations in general, especially in the gaming software branch) an interest in introducing variance to the game?
Well, question 1 is a bigger question for a different thread (possibly a different web site) but as far as question 2 goes the only interest they could possibly have in variance is if it leads to their game catching on as an esport across the world. Reforming the game (if in fact it needs reforming) is actually in the best interest of the bottom line for them. Twelve years later, SC/BW continues to make money for Blizzard and the sole reason for that is the success and longevity of it's professional scene. That is why Blizzard has poured tremedous resources into making the SC2 pro scene happen, it's good for business.
What won't be good for business is if after they spend the metric ton of money they have. the pro scene falls apart when people stop watching because they have a perception that it's a game of luck and abuse. Again, to be perfectly clear, I am not saying that it is or is not a game of luck and abuse. My opinion is categorically irrelevant to this discussion as far as I am concerned. All that is relevant is that the perception exists and not at just the uneducated laymen level, but at the enthusiast level and the professional level.
The bottom line is that if variance emerges as a force that drives professionals to want to play it and spectators to want to watch and support it, then variance will remain. But if it becomes clear that a certain level of variance alienates players and fans, you would be foolish to think Blizzard won't do something to fix it. Them and their shareholders want this game to sell for the next 15 years. Believe that.
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>1. These feelings/concepts are consistent with the way the community generally felt during the SC1/BW era? For anyone not named "Flash", that's correct. Flash is an unstoppable beastly juggernaut who doesn't lose to anything.
>2. In an appropriate percentage of situations SC2 rewards the more skilled player with victory? Most of the time, though we're still working out the timings and the relative strengths of the early pushes. Obviously you can't just build a defensive force for every possible push, because that sacrifices economy, and if your opponent FEs then you lose. On the flip side, if you play for Econ blindly, the early rushes can kill you. We're still learning exactly how to scout, and what information means, so we know when it's a good idea to expand, when it's a good idea to build defensive units, and when it's a good idea to push and apply pressure. On the whole, a skilled player is rewarded, but anyone with a toolbox of 3 unorthodox (but cost-effective) rushes has a chance of winning a Bo3.
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Prepare for something that never comes: you're behind Misprepare for something that comes: you're behind Prepare for something that comes: you're behind due to lack of drone production Misprepare for something that never comes: you're ahead because you blindly droned hard.
SC2 is not like Mario Kart where if you fall behind you get a blue turtle shell, the playing field is even,
It's not like if you fall behind in minerals there's a unit that can ignore saturation or anything.
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To sum it all up: The game is new, there are still way too many new builds popping up that players don't know how to deal with. This is a temporary "skill" that wins tournaments, but won't last a month. The map pool (and the maps) is too small, and too bad. Sc2 doesn't have a jaedong or flash, and new good players transfer from brood war and w3 into the scene all the time, making it very fluid, which to some might make it seem that the game doesn't reward good players. Sc2 is a game of incomplete information, thus making losses inevitable. The metagame and player pool is still so inconsistant, that unknown players will beat known ones. And that's what makes tournaments, and especially GSL so fun to watch. Imho it wouldn't be very interesting if the same like 4 people had ended up in the semi finals 3 GSLs in a row.
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On December 21 2010 09:16 QQmonster wrote: the beauty of starcraft is both players are walking on a tight rope, and the first to fall off loses. nobody said it was easy but even the best of the best aren't good. in 10 years people will look back and say IdrA was a shit player compared to the gods of starcraft 2. If the game survives as an e-sport that long.
Not really. When you think about how the builds have already evolved in SC2 compared to SC1's long history (and also thanks to SC1 knowledge), it's not going to reflect that initial 5 years of "omg look at these noobs who can't macro," waiting for iloveoov to come and completely break/change the game. If in 10 years SC2 is still widely competitive, Idra would still be a top player, he has the mechanics and will to do so. Not to mention there's no way to predict how the expansions will change the game, another reason there will be no comparison
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On December 21 2010 05:09 TheGiz wrote:Show nested quote +On December 21 2010 04:56 Treemonkeys wrote: outside steps of war, which is already universally agreed to be a bad map. Don't get me wrong, Steppes has its problems (rush distance, air space), but I find that it is a pretty decent map (layout). As a macro player I am consistently able to play long games on Steppes, control the map, and win vs. all-in style players. Yeah although SoW has a stupidly short rush distance, it still is an okay map compared to some of the other maps, for instance its easy enough to take a third (a must have for a map) unlike some maps, such as BS
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On December 21 2010 06:30 texmix wrote: As it stands now, the only way to be an sc2 pro is charging for lessons and probably working a day job (or getting $ from mom and dad). Can't expect to do it on tournament winnings.
Maybe in NA, but in Korea and Europe to an extent, progamers are able to support themselves with sponsorships and tournament winnings. If it's possible there, it's possible here, meaning that the skill gap is big enough for full flung pros to thrive.
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The reason SC is different from SF is that SF is a completely open game. You know who you are playing, tendencies, and the entire moveset of the other character. You know the frame windows and what to do.
SC is more of a hidden game. You still know the possible moves the opponent can make, but it isn't readily obvious what they are doing or are going to do. This is why scouting is so important, but even scouting can be fooled by cancelled buildings, or buildings hidden well enough.
It's like you seeing the opponent jump, but him not really jumping. Your reaction to his "jump" leaves you vulnerable to what he is really doing. This is why lesser skilled players can take games off of better skilled players. If Daigo couldn't see his opponents character, he would have a harder time winning games even if the opponent couldn't see his either.
Having said that, if you extended the build orders, the better player would eventually start winning, and start winning consistently.
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The OP is clearly a fanboy of Daigo Umehara. Yes, Daigo is a legend, but his win percentage isn't as impeccable as he makes us believe. There are a lot of pro sf players that can beat him, also he doesn't win every tournament he attends.
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The best player is the one that wins. Is the game in an ideal state? No, far from it. Does Blizzard need to make balance changes and adjust the maps? Yes
This is all based on a period of time. Some players are winning right now with a style that probably won't be viable in the future. That means they may not be a consistent player, but right now they are the best.
Just because people are upset with the state of the game, doesn't mean that the players winning right now aren't the best players currently. If they weren't better than their opponent, then they wouldn't have won, period.
A large part of any RTS is adjusting to the current trends in game play, and taking advantage of any strategy or style that's going to help you win. The best players are going to be able to do that, it's a significant part of the game.
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On December 21 2010 15:12 fnaticAugury wrote: The best player is the one that wins. Is the game in an ideal state? No, far from it. Does Blizzard need to make balance changes and adjust the maps? Yes
This is all based on a period of time. Some players are winning right now with a style that probably won't be viable in the future. That means they may not be a consistent player, but right now they are the best.
Just because people are upset with the state of the game, doesn't mean that the players winning right now aren't the best players currently. If they weren't better than their opponent, then they wouldn't have won, period.
A large part of any RTS is adjusting to the current trends in game play, and taking advantage of any strategy or style that's going to help you win. The best players are going to be able to do that, it's a significant part of the game. Can you really call the player who calls the coin flip correctly the "better player"? The problem isn't that SC2 rewards a skill set that we aren't happy with, its that SC2 allows luck to give weaker players a decent chance of winning.
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On December 21 2010 14:50 Cranky- wrote: The OP is clearly a fanboy of Daigo Umehara. Yes, Daigo is a legend, but his win percentage isn't as impeccable as he makes us believe. There are a lot of pro sf players that can beat him, also he doesn't win every tournament he attends.
Lol to this. I can't even try to hide it. I LOVE The Beast!!
But seriously any time he loses it becomes like a huge news story. I can only think of 2 times since SSF4 came out that I know of where he lost a Bo3 or Bo5. Him and EG Justin Wong fought to a draw during the premier event, but he was using Guile and not his main (Ryu). Arturo Sanchez ALMOST did it during the Salty Suite Invitational on the saturday night of EVO. The only people to actually do it were FilipinoChamp and EG Marn to my knowledge and they are both super top tier players.
I may have missed a loss, possibly two. But the integrity of my original point stands. Daigo cannot even be challenegd by some guy who is highly ranked in on-line play. That is 99.9% win for him. The only people who even come close are the other super top tier players, and he beats them at least 85-90% of the time.
EDIT: Lol. I just watched the year end edition of Cross Counter (a popular SF web show). They counted down the biggest game changing things in the entire scene of SF in 2010. Number 1 was that Daigo could be beaten, as he dropped 4 BO3's in singles tournaments this year. So I was right, I missed a couple of losses. But him actually losing was such a big deal, it was considered the biggest game changer in the scene all year.
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No no and no, look at MC's scbw record and u'll know y.... incase u dont know, his scbw name is IrOn
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I think that as the game progresses, a clearer distinction between the top and the lower levels of play will emerge, and so will certain people that seem to be considerably above other. We're not at that level yet, SC2 simply hasn't been out long enough for that to happen. I don't follow the SF scene but I can only assume that Daigo didn't emerge as the best immediately after the release of the game.
Also I think the point about SC's unpredictability and the lack of knowledge of what your opponent is doing plays a huge part in this issue. The reason DTs work is that people didn't scout them. If SC was SF and you could see what your opponent was doing, DTs wouldn't work. But as it is in SC discovering what your opponent is doing is a direct result of your scouting, not knowledge that's readily available no matter what. This aspect of the game won't change, as that's just the way Starcraft works.
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You wrote that post beautifully, and I just want to congratulate you on that.
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On December 21 2010 04:44 Hawk wrote: Yes. You don't consistently win without skill.
TSL_Rain doesn't approve that.
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On December 18 2010 23:06 composition wrote: hidden information: Starcraft Poker
complete information: Street Fighter Chess
actually this is not 100% correct, in SF you have current and past complete information, but not the future in SC you have to scout to get those current and past information, but after that you can predict the future based on the intel you gathered
for example, in SF you know that the opponent is standing there with a full Ultra and Super gauge, but you wont know when or if he will use them and the advantage is on the opponent while you must react when he finally decide to use them. Though the more skilled player will know how to bait them using fake/etc to make the future less unpredictable
in SC if you scout your opponent and see him have 6 drone and a spawning pool, then you know that 6 ling are coming your way soon and you can react accordingly, same when you scout 2 refinery and a starport with tech lab attached then you make detector asap
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It's painful to see you guys discuss imaginary numbers. As far as I know no one gave the exact win percentage of Daigo, and to be intellectually honest we'd need his win percentage from 4month after the release of SFIV. I don't think anyone was dominating at the time.
What I do remember, is that there was an ocean of mediocre Sagat players who constantly did well in tournaments. Eventually the matchups were figured out, and now they are not even remembered. Which is exactly what will happen to Rain.
As for the "any high rank player can beat Nestea online" argument, there were a lot of people showing videos of themselves beating Daigo...
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On December 21 2010 17:17 sandyph wrote:Show nested quote +On December 18 2010 23:06 composition wrote: hidden information: Starcraft Poker
complete information: Street Fighter Chess actually this is not 100% correct, in SF you have current and past complete information, but not the future in SC you have to scout to get those current and past information, but after that you can predict the future based on the intel you gathered for example, in SF you know that the opponent is standing there with a full Ultra and Super gauge, but you wont know when or if he will use them and the advantage is on the opponent while you must react when he finally decide to use them. Though the more skilled player will know how to bait them using fake/etc to make the future less unpredictable in SC if you scout your opponent and see him have 6 drone and a spawning pool, then you know that 6 ling are coming your way soon and you can react accordingly, same when you scout 2 refinery and a starport with tech lab attached then you make detector asap
I'm glad someone said that. You have better information of what your opponent is doing in Starcraft compared to SF. In SF any move can be countered, but you constantly have to guess what he's doing. There's a lot more randomness involved IMHO.
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Why are we comparing SC to other games?
The sole goal in SC2 is to win. Thus, the best player is the one who wins the most.
Take a look at Flash. He, like some Terrans in SC2, was hated at first for cheesing: he cheesed Bisu out of the OSL one year and many fans and people in the community hated his play and thought it was boring, that he was bad. Boxer, likewise, was known for his bunker rushes and his marine micro. Foxer in SC2 is known for his marine micro and aggressive 2 rax bunker play as well; how does this make him a bad player? If he's winning, then clearly the onus is on his opponents to play better or figure out a counter.
Nothing is wrong or backward in the SC2 scene right now. People are just too impatient; innovation and change takes time, and it's also possible that SC2 will turn into a lower economy game overall because of all the changes, particularly to mechanics and early game units. Even things like comparative unit sizes, clumping, and formation make the game different. For example, now lings are much weaker vs zealots because the pathing AI and the clumping of units is different.
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No, it isn't rewarding me.
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On December 18 2010 22:35 TheLonelyCarrier wrote: Also, if these feelings in the community end up being due to something Blizz deems a systemic problem with the game that needs fixing, then no matter how positive an influence Day9 is, the ball will be in Blizzard's court at that point. But given that the only right way to patch a game is carefully and incrementally, one must wonder how long it would take for them to fix such a problem while avoiding breaking other parts of the game. With two expansions yet to be released, I consider the current state an extended beta phase.
Blizzard tries to stabilize the current gameplay and then will see what can they add to make it deeper. Both SC1 and WC3 were not too good for multiplayer before we had the expansion.
On December 18 2010 22:35 TheLonelyCarrier wrote:My concern is that if the community is devided and it doesn't get resolved relatively soon, either through patches (IF this is in fact even a balance issue) or through a pardigm shift in the community whereby people figure certain things out and agree upon what constitutes"skill", the games professional scene will flounder. I just don't want to see that. Its a great game and a wonderful community and I want to see it around for a long time. I think, we will. There is no real competitor game on the horizon which possibly could dethrone Starcraft 2.
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This is a classic example of a thread with 5000 different arguments going on at once. Everyone has a different goal in mind when it comes to what we should be discussing.
To answer the question directly. If we define skill as "hand speed, co-ordination and strategic understanding" does SC2 reward the player with the most skill? Well yes with enough games played the most skilled player would win more. There's a lot of conditions to that such as race balance, map balance, how many games you have to play to remove the luck factor etc... Each of those things are many threads of discussion.
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Not sure if this has been brought up already, but it's quite obvious why you virtually never see top players lose to lesser players in SF: the competition format and game settings don't allow it happen often.
In a SF tourney, competitors typically play best-out-of 3 games, each game being best out of 3 rounds. This means the winner needs to either win 4 or 5 rounds to advance, out of anywhere from 4 to 9 rounds.
Furthermore, in SF, you can't lose the entire round off a single mistake. Earlier games in the series yes, but not in SSF4. There are 100% combos against Seth, but the probability of that occurring is virtually 0. If you're behind, you can always make a comeback. There is no direct disadvantage from having lower health other than being close to being KO'ed; in fact in SF4 your defense increases and so does the strength of your Ultra.
Given all those things, it's very difficult for a noticeably inferior player to win in SF. The better player has so much time, and so many opportunities to learn the opponent and use his/her superior skill to win. Great players will lose rounds and games to worse players, but not the match.
Compare that to SC2, where matches are normally best-out-of 3 or 5 games. A build order mistake in the first 5 minutes can kill you. And if you're behind, both your offense and defense suffer.
If SF tourneys used a single best out of 3 game, along with 200% damage and no ultras, then the two games would be comparable. Or for SC2, matches are best-out-of 7, and every game starts at the 9 minute mark, with both players having an expansion.
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MarineKing doesn't do all-ins (Except for the GSL 2 Season Finals). How is being able to micro the most basic unit of a certain race NOT skill? Can you do what he actually does? If you don't know how he plays, go watch those VODs. SC2 rewards MarineKing for his excellent micro and makes the unit a.k.a marine look so imbalanced.
IdrA can macro like a god when he needs to, but his decision making isn't the best out there. Does he actually belong in the GSL Ro64? I'm sure there are many out there who can macro as well as IdrA, and have better game sense and decision making, but they are not there. SC2 is basically just rewarding him for his good macro. I personally believe that IdrA has no right to say about others and should change his freaking attitude. Know his own place.
In SC2, good decision making counts, so the more skills you are, the more you should be able to win games because you can hold off many kinds of strategy people throws at you, INCLUDING ALL-INS AND CHEESE. Since IdrA QQs about such stuff, I doubt he is the most skilled player out there. Even MarineKing said that he never liked to all-in, and that he prefers just bringing attacking units. Now that's what I call skills.
Then again, the best players out there can make a mistake and leave openings. That's why inferior / less skilled players are able to pull something out of their magical bag and win against such skilled players. This happens in many games, and is not new. So, on the overall, SC2 is rewarding the most skill players.
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To have a game that would put amazing players way above those with lesser skill would be to increase the execution of what needs to happen for all gameplay mechanics, but by doing so you start to alienate the lower player base. Its not good for a game you need to make money off of especially in this economy.
If you ever played fighting games take a player who plays Marvel vs capcom 2 at a lower level and pit him amongst the top players they simply wont win. a will possibly be oCVd (one character victory). You take those same 2 players and put them in a game like Street Fighter IV. and one random ultra can cost you a match. You decrease execution requirements and increase randomness and comeback factor you have a game that all the masses can play on a relatively equal footing.
Likewise if you did the opposite, If you increase execution requirements and decrease randomness to close to nil and comeback factor you have a game that alienates the lower fan base but makes an enourmous gap in between amazing players and average players. This is usually the 'reward' i feel like most people esp the sc1 crowd call out for, but imo isnt good for business(or for sales).
my 2cents. Thats what i feel about it.
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A question from a somebody who is very, very far from a pro (Rank 1 Gold League, currently playing mostly against Platinum and mostly winning):
I've stopped losing to cheese from players at or below my skill level. Out of the last 100 games, I may have lost 3 to 5 to cheese. The people who cheese mostly have horrible micro and I often end up killing 6 zealots with 6 lings and 2 roaches or something ridiculous like that.
How is it that at the higher end of the game, cheese becomes viable again? What mechanics are at work there?
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Can you really call the player who calls the coin flip correctly the "better player"? The problem isn't that SC2 rewards a skill set that we aren't happy with, its that SC2 allows luck to give weaker players a decent chance of winning.
In one single game: no. But over a series or even a carreer: of course!
Limited information guesses are not coin-flips by any means. Some people are just consistently better at guessing what their opponent is doing, or at setting themselves up in very flexible positions that have the lowest possible number of downsides.
It's called game-sense, and it has very little to do with luck.
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On December 21 2010 19:32 Esjihn wrote: You take those same 2 players and put them in a game like Street Fighter IV. and one random ultra can cost you a match. You decrease execution requirements and increase randomness and comeback factor you have a game that all the masses can play on a relatively equal footing.
You are very wrong about the ultra in SF4. At the highest level competition, you rarely see random ultras connect, except against fireball characters. Most non-grab ultras take at least 8-9 frames to connect, and that's with your opponent right next to you. More often than not, your opponent could be in the middle of a move when you do the ultra, and still block it easily.
The time it takes an ultra to actually land, in SC2-sense, is like building a PF in your opponents base. Your opponent has to make a horrible timing mistake or be using a very risky strategy to fall for it.
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I think the difference in mentality in the 2 communities comes from 2 things:
1) Fighting games have historically been more criticised for encouraging "lame tactics" like fireball spam. The fans had to respond to this by explaining why fireballs don't break the game, and that you can react and punish. If you lose to it, it's your fault, not the game's. This maybe made them a little over defensive, and now any complaining about balance or "cheapness" is automatically dismissed. Thus the idea that results are all that matters.
2) There are more balance changes in a RTS. This is both Starcraft's blessing and its curse. SF fans have to accept the game as it is because they know it's not going to change for a while. Starcraft players wouldn't whine near as much, or blame their losses on imbalance, if their wasn't the possibility that Blizzard would patch it. Frankly, I don't want to learn how to counter a 2-rax cheese near as much as I want to see it simply removed from the game.
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On December 21 2010 20:20 dookudooku wrote:Show nested quote +On December 21 2010 19:32 Esjihn wrote: You take those same 2 players and put them in a game like Street Fighter IV. and one random ultra can cost you a match. You decrease execution requirements and increase randomness and comeback factor you have a game that all the masses can play on a relatively equal footing. You are very wrong about the ultra in SF4. At the highest level competition, you rarely see random ultras connect, except against fireball characters. Most non-grab ultras take at least 8-9 frames to connect, and that's with your opponent right next to you. More often than not, your opponent could be in the middle of a move when you do the ultra, and still block it easily. The time it takes an ultra to actually land, in SC2-sense, is like building a PF in your opponents base. Your opponent has to make a horrible timing mistake or be using a very risky strategy to fall for it.
How many fighting game tournaments have you been to? I used to goto all the Major East Coast ones, and the amount of wakeup/random ultras ive seen admittedly not like an absurd amount but i have seen it cost top players games. Example would be gootecks getting hit by iloveujoe/longislandjoe random wakeup ultra from sagat in (sfivvanilla) 2s teams at i think devastation '09. It wont catch you all the time but there is that factor that is there. Which also sets up for a meta game and the threat of it being there.
Id say that factor could more closely be compared to like the 2 rax scs rine push or the 12/10 drone rush on steppes. Stuff thats relatively easy execution wise, and stuff that while you wont see very often can still catch better players off guard.
If there was somehow a way to take out of the game you wouldnt see 2300k diamonds with wins from games being 6:30 min long lol.
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On December 21 2010 19:54 CaptRoadkill wrote: A question from a somebody who is very, very far from a pro (Rank 1 Gold League, currently playing mostly against Platinum and mostly winning):
I've stopped losing to cheese from players at or below my skill level. Out of the last 100 games, I may have lost 3 to 5 to cheese. The people who cheese mostly have horrible micro and I often end up killing 6 zealots with 6 lings and 2 roaches or something ridiculous like that.
How is it that at the higher end of the game, cheese becomes viable again? What mechanics are at work there?
Cheese like 6 pools and proxy gates actually happen quite rarely at the pro-level. People are obsessed with calling all-in builds "cheese" when it's really not the case.
Off the top of my head, I can think only of two cheese games in GSL3: MC's proxy gate vs Marineking and leenock's 6 pool against guineapig.
On the other hand, early-midgame one base all-ins, particularly from Terrans, are exceedingly popular, and really strong right now: this is what many players refer to when they complain that "low-skilled" players like Rain and Marineking are getting undeserved wins. They look cheesy, but they are, in fact, not cheese. It just so happens that the results hinge on micro so much that they look cheesy. If the Terran pulls every SCV, it becomes truly all-in, but the game can actually continue if the Terran player pulls half of his SCVs or something and the resulting engagement is an even exchange. This can happen with cheeses too (Leenock's six pool) but that's really rare.
Also, cheese at high level is effective because pros know how to micro, unlike your plat level cheesers. Cheese is unexpected. All-ins are powerful at the pro level because pros practice the timings and micro nonstop. At lower levels, these all-ins (in my opinion) are more easily deflected because average Terran players don't have the micro and multitasking necessary to make them work as well.
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On December 21 2010 21:34 wherebugsgo wrote:Show nested quote +On December 21 2010 19:54 CaptRoadkill wrote: A question from a somebody who is very, very far from a pro (Rank 1 Gold League, currently playing mostly against Platinum and mostly winning):
I've stopped losing to cheese from players at or below my skill level. Out of the last 100 games, I may have lost 3 to 5 to cheese. The people who cheese mostly have horrible micro and I often end up killing 6 zealots with 6 lings and 2 roaches or something ridiculous like that.
How is it that at the higher end of the game, cheese becomes viable again? What mechanics are at work there? Cheese like 6 pools and proxy gates actually happen quite rarely at the pro-level. People are obsessed with calling all-in builds "cheese" when it's really not the case. Off the top of my head, I can think only of two cheese games in GSL3: MC's proxy gate vs Marineking and leenock's 6 pool against guineapig. On the other hand, early-midgame one base all-ins, particularly from Terrans, are exceedingly popular, and really strong right now: this is what many players refer to when they complain that "low-skilled" players like Rain and Marineking are getting undeserved wins. They look cheesy, but they are, in fact, not cheese. It just so happens that the results hinge on micro so much that they look cheesy. If the Terran pulls every SCV, it becomes truly all-in, but the game can actually continue if the Terran player pulls half of his SCVs or something and the resulting engagement is an even exchange. This can happen with cheeses too (Leenock's six pool) but that's really rare. Also, cheese at high level is effective because pros know how to micro, unlike your plat level cheesers. Cheese is unexpected. All-ins are powerful at the pro level because pros practice the timings and micro nonstop. At lower levels, these all-ins (in my opinion) are more easily deflected because average Terran players don't have the micro and multitasking necessary to make them work as well.
So you're saying that it's not cheese because only some people can do it and get 100% wins from it? and when you lose it's because YOU make the mistake? (i.e mis microing?)
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As far as the GSL goes which is what I think you're refering to, the game rewards the best player for that series that day because they won the games. If you're getting cheesed and you defend it you're miles ahead. If you don't scout it, you will wind up miles behind. It is up to the individual player to spot and know what is coming and prepare for it by any means possible. If a zerg chooses to make 5 extra drones instead of making more spine crawlers and roaches against a 2 rax play then they DESERVE to lose. Anyone could argue that their "late game" is better than the others, but that doesn't win tournaments you must present your A game 100% of the time.
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So in SF scene there is no thing as "underdog won against the best player in the world because he studied his play a lot and focused on this match only"? That's quite sad, why even play at all if the player with more skill will win no matter what him and his opponent will do.
In SC if you read your enemy perfectly then you will have chance of beating opponent that has (not a lot better but still) better mechanics/macro/micro/experience than you.
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There is, for damn sure, luck and skill involved everytime. The only way in which it is 100% skill and no luck involved, is if there was permanent vision of the entire map in SC2; just think about that. Luck coming into play, however, is reduced by ridiculous amount of experience. Like if you were to send in the overlord at so-and-so time and see the bla bla bla getting chrono boosted you immediately can sense how the game flow is going to be, the immediate response, how much more you can afford on investing into economy etc. Back to the point, there is definitely luck involved while omniscience does not exist in a game.
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Upon closer look, there is no one single "skill" required for starcraft, rather a combination of very different skillsets, i.e. strategic preparation, remembering stuff, being able to react correctly upon surprises, precision in unit control, gambling skills and a lot more....
Its highly unlikely that a player will be better in all of these categories than his opponent, and to add to that, each of these categories can be instant game deciders depending on how everything plays out.
What you call "not rewarding the most skilled players (whatever you exactly mean by skilled)" is in fact, a sign that the game is not as one-dimensional as a lot of other simpler games, where if you're the best in one ability, you're just the best.
In basketball you also have different skills, although by far not as drastically different in nature, and the game simply will not be decided by single mistakes, but rather by a continuous performance over a given length of time. So there is less chance of a team winning which is considered "worse overall".
If you really want to compare it to a team-based sport a better example would be football, where also oftentimes teams from the 3rd division are able to cause an upset to a premier division club.
Still this does not mean that there is any "randomness" in the outcome. The game doesn't grant any player a random advantage during any stage of the game, and both are in full control of all parameters of their play (I'll skip any eventual discussion about match fixing in football here. ). Anyways, for every single match you will be able to find a critical skillset which was the deciding factor in which the loser/losing team was lacking.
In Starcraft, much like in football its not enough to be the overall better player/team on paper. You have to make your skill-advantages count in the game, and prevent your opponent from making his possible strengths count. This adds a lot of excitement to a match and adds aditional depth to the game, because now even another type of skill (a meta-skill if you want to call it that way) is required, it is how you succesful you make use of all the (mis-)information about strenghts and weaknesses you have of your opponent and adjust your play or strategy. If you play ladder against someone unknown for example this comes down to knowing what type of builds are currently popular with the race that your opponent is playing. In the end it also always some gambling involved, but even this is a meta-skill of its own. In the end the "overall most-skilled" player was the one who won, nothing else.
tl;dr Starcraft requires very different skillsets, ranging from simple mouse precision to adjusting your play to abstract information you have about the opponents playstyle, and a lack in any of these might be an instant game decider. Since nobody can play perfect or be the best in all of the needed categories, and players dont't develop linearly at all these skills, the outcomes will always vary to a certain degree.
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On December 21 2010 13:42 TheLonelyCarrier wrote:Show nested quote +On December 21 2010 08:06 Perscienter wrote: It's interesting that you mention the relationship between a high variance and Blizzard's self-interest. Divide et impera. They won't severely reform the game. They belong to a profit-seeking corporation, which means that the educated community is politically ignored.
Two questions come into my mind.
1. What is the social function of variance (or chaos)?
2. Has Blizzard (or corporations in general, especially in the gaming software branch) an interest in introducing variance to the game? Well, question 1 is a bigger question for a different thread (possibly a different web site) but as far as question 2 goes the only interest they could possibly have in variance is if it leads to their game catching on as an esport across the world. Reforming the game (if in fact it needs reforming) is actually in the best interest of the bottom line for them. Twelve years later, SC/BW continues to make money for Blizzard and the sole reason for that is the success and longevity of it's professional scene. That is why Blizzard has poured tremedous resources into making the SC2 pro scene happen, it's good for business. What won't be good for business is if after they spend the metric ton of money they have. the pro scene falls apart when people stop watching because they have a perception that it's a game of luck and abuse. Again, to be perfectly clear, I am not saying that it is or is not a game of luck and abuse. My opinion is categorically irrelevant to this discussion as far as I am concerned. All that is relevant is that the perception exists and not at just the uneducated laymen level, but at the enthusiast level and the professional level. The bottom line is that if variance emerges as a force that drives professionals to want to play it and spectators to want to watch and support it, then variance will remain. But if it becomes clear that a certain level of variance alienates players and fans, you would be foolish to think Blizzard won't do something to fix it. Them and their shareholders want this game to sell for the next 15 years. Believe that. Many people just embrace variance. WC3/TFT is full of it and it didn't hurt the non-pro scene. MMORPGs and board games are full of it. The non-analytical players will win more often against analytical players when variance is introduced so it will probably boost sales to a degree.
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Very good post, and I agree with you except on one point : Day9 being only one person. Yes technically he is not a double entity, but IMO his role in the community is bigger than one person. He knows the game, the players, he watches pretty much everything, and he's way less affected by win/loss in tournament as he doesn't participate. His opinion cannot be altered by hate or rage like IdrA (dont get me wrong I like the guy and I watch all of his games and analysis), and even incontrol seems to get pissed at a few things quite easily (for everybody's enjoyment, god that guy is funny). But again, dont get me wrong, these guys do know what they're talking about, but going as far as saying MK doesn't deserve anything he got.... I highly doubt that, the guy impressed me almost as much as Jinro (btw Jinro makes me wanna try terran sometimes). That being said, I dont think the opinion of players concerned is very viable, we need a clear pair of eyes on neutral ground to take a look and really tell us what's going on. And I highly believe Day9 is that pair of eyes (with glasses, fixed glasses no less).
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If both players could see each others' bases and what they are doing, cheese play would become much much less viable. No more surprise, no more luck involved. I'm pretty sure it would solve a lot of problems, probably create some balance issues related to scanning and scouting, but nothing that couldn't be fixed. It would become much more strategical than it is. No more "Oh, i can't see what he's doing... i'll just have to blindly guess and hope to have luck on this strategy." For me at least, luck, guesses and all hoping-to-get-lucky related based gameplay, takes a lot of respect from the players, and i wouldn't mind if it was completely removed or at least reduced by a great amount by facilitating scouting for all races.
For the OP, this is probably a reason why there's no luck involved in SF, you know what skills your oponnent can do, it's not like he has a very risky combo of skills he put on his char before the combat, hoping that the other didn't chose an appropriate skill sombination that beats them.
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Excellent OP (read it after Update 3).
The situation in SC2 is not very different from professional golf. Any player in the golf top 100 can win a major. The SC2 scene simply is too young for a Tiger Woods or Jack Nicklaus to have emerged.
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On December 21 2010 23:16 Kaniol wrote: So in SF scene there is no thing as "underdog won against the best player in the world because he studied his play a lot and focused on this match only"? That's quite sad, why even play at all if the player with more skill will win no matter what him and his opponent will do.
In SC if you read your enemy perfectly then you will have chance of beating opponent that has (not a lot better but still) better mechanics/macro/micro/experience than you.
No no there most definitely is. Where not saying that its not no more than were saying that the underdogs havent beat people like idra in sc2. It happens im just talking about that randomness factor that has appeared in recent games.
Like compare Super Turbo and 3s to sfiv. in both those games the japanese DOMINATED us because of the just overall better skill, but in ssfiv (albiet US players as a whole improved) are on a pretty equal footing, due to the lower experience requirement of the game (there still skill involved in it no doubt, where not talking about extremes here)
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On December 22 2010 01:08 Esjihn wrote: Like compare Super Turbo and 3s to sfiv. in both those games the japanese DOMINATED us because of the just overall better skill, but in ssfiv (albiet US players as a whole improved) are on a pretty equal footing, due to the lower experience requirement of the game (there still skill involved in it no doubt, where not talking about extremes here) LOL? Japanese dominate foreign players just as much as they ever have in SF4... You've got no idea buddy.
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On December 22 2010 01:55 Bluey wrote:Show nested quote +On December 22 2010 01:08 Esjihn wrote: Like compare Super Turbo and 3s to sfiv. in both those games the japanese DOMINATED us because of the just overall better skill, but in ssfiv (albiet US players as a whole improved) are on a pretty equal footing, due to the lower experience requirement of the game (there still skill involved in it no doubt, where not talking about extremes here) LOL? Japanese dominate foreign players just as much as they ever have in SF4... You've got no idea buddy.
You mean just like how filipino champ dominated daigo in a recent MM in socal, or how about the states best sim player arturo going on a long standing win streak vs him sim vs ryu? Do you even watch live streams or keep up with current events?
Even Daigo himself has stated that the level of comp is on a pretty equal footing. (for those of you who dont know who daigo is hes arguably the worlds best SF player)
Better yet before this thread gets derailed. Troll once for your response and then let these fine folks get back to the discussion.
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On December 21 2010 23:16 Kaniol wrote: So in SF scene there is no thing as "underdog won against the best player in the world because he studied his play a lot and focused on this match only"? That's quite sad, why even play at all if the player with more skill will win no matter what him and his opponent will do.
In SC if you read your enemy perfectly then you will have chance of beating opponent that has (not a lot better but still) better mechanics/macro/micro/experience than you.
This would be sad were it true, and I am pretty sure we don't want that to be the case in SC2. Do not mis-understand. Everyone loves to see an underdog win through great preparation, hard work and determination against an opponent who may be more mechanically gifted and have more experience. What most people do not really love to see is when someone with ALL those great attributes loses to someone who clearly just practiced a couple of gimmicky builds that haven't been figured out yet.
It's hard to watch someone who has exhibited talent, dedication, skill and understanding lose in that fashion. It's the kind of thing that makes fans walk away.
MilesTeg France. December 21 2010 17:31. Posts 73
It's painful to see you guys discuss imaginary numbers. As far as I know no one gave the exact win percentage of Daigo, and to be intellectually honest we'd need his win percentage from 4month after the release of SFIV. I don't think anyone was dominating at the time.
What I do remember, is that there was an ocean of mediocre Sagat players who constantly did well in tournaments. Eventually the matchups were figured out, and now they are not even remembered. Which is exactly what will happen to Rain.
As for the "any high rank player can beat Nestea online" argument, there were a lot of people showing videos of themselves beating Daigo...
It is a hard fact that he was not beaten in tournament play stateside by anyone through the duration of vanilla SF4. 2 people beat him in Bo5 money matches in that time frame. In the SSF4 era he has bean bested in single tournament competition 4 times, which was considered unprecedented by the community. His current documented win% in the newly released SSF4AE is 86% competing in the highest class arcades in Japan and using one of the new characters who obviously haven't been figured out yet (Yun).
I have to totally agree with you about the first 4 months of SF4. So many scrubby Sagat players. Not that I think Rain deserves to be categorized similarly, but I hope the concerns being highlighted in this thread fade away the same way all those mediocre Sagat players did.
As far as people showing videos of them beating Daigo in an arcade, I believe you are actually referring to the vids from the first couple of weeks the game was out in arcades. I did see those vids. Like you said, those first few months were the wild west. That kind of stuff stopped happening real quickly.
Anyway, I don't mean to derail with SF discussion. Again, I don't think anyone (myself included) wants to see the same statistical level of dominance from one genre occur in another. The real purpose of bringing SF4 and Daigo into the discussion is because no one in his community thinks he doesn't deserve his wins and no one who beats him is seen as a lesser player who just got lucky. On the contrary, if you beat Daigo Umehara, the crowd errupts in ecstatic cheers and your name will be remembered for the rest of the year. And not because they hate Daigo, because they don't. They cheer because it's exciting to see an underdog find a way to have a revelation and truly play beyond the level they thought they could and beat a true master.
Right now, no one seems to find upsets in SC2 exciting or entertaining. Warranted or not, when Rain beat Nestea he felt compelled to apologize because of the outrage expressed by the community. When someone beats Daigo, the crowd errupts into an exhalted mob scene. Someone beat Nestea and people shook their heads and wrote angry message board threads. I think we can all agree thats a problem.
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You know what happen to all those mediocre sagats? Super. You know why they played him in the first place? take shit loads of risks because you have high health and retarded damage output. Trade uppercuts meant ultra (something they took out of super) Sagat is still just about as good but since the execution requirement on him went up. Those folks who played him before all but dropped off the face of the planet ( to other characters )
I do agree with you i am sad that when the underdog wins in sc2 fucking people hate that dude, and thats just really silly. Even when its not from cheese :\
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On December 18 2010 23:06 composition wrote: hidden information: Starcraft Poker
complete information: Street Fighter Chess
I have to agree
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On December 22 2010 02:10 TheLonelyCarrier wrote:Show nested quote +On December 21 2010 23:16 Kaniol wrote: So in SF scene there is no thing as "underdog won against the best player in the world because he studied his play a lot and focused on this match only"? That's quite sad, why even play at all if the player with more skill will win no matter what him and his opponent will do.
In SC if you read your enemy perfectly then you will have chance of beating opponent that has (not a lot better but still) better mechanics/macro/micro/experience than you. This would be sad were it true, and I am pretty sure we don't want that to be the case in SC2. Do not mis-understand. Everyone loves to see an underdog win through great preparation, hard work and determination against an opponent who may be more mechanically gifted and have more experience. What most people do not really love to see is when someone with ALL those great attributes loses to someone who clearly just practiced a couple of gimmicky builds that haven't been figured out yet. It's hard to watch someone who has exhibited talent, dedication, skill and understanding lose in that fashion. It's the kind of thing that makes fans walk away. Show nested quote +MilesTeg France. December 21 2010 17:31. Posts 73
It's painful to see you guys discuss imaginary numbers. As far as I know no one gave the exact win percentage of Daigo, and to be intellectually honest we'd need his win percentage from 4month after the release of SFIV. I don't think anyone was dominating at the time.
What I do remember, is that there was an ocean of mediocre Sagat players who constantly did well in tournaments. Eventually the matchups were figured out, and now they are not even remembered. Which is exactly what will happen to Rain.
As for the "any high rank player can beat Nestea online" argument, there were a lot of people showing videos of themselves beating Daigo... It is a hard fact that he was not beaten in tournament play stateside by anyone through the duration of vanilla SF4. 2 people beat him in Bo5 money matches in that time frame. In the SSF4 era he has bean bested in single tournament competition 4 times, which was considered unprecedented by the community. His current documented win% in the newly released SSF4AE is 86% competing in the highest class arcades in Japan and using one of the new characters who obviously haven't been figured out yet (Yun). I have to totally agree with you about the first 4 months of SF4. So many scrubby Sagat players. Not that I think Rain deserves to be categorized similarly, but I hope the concerns being highlighted in this thread fade away the same way all those mediocre Sagat players did. As far as people showing videos of them beating Daigo in an arcade, I believe you are actually referring to the vids from the first couple of weeks the game was out in arcades. I did see those vids. Like you said, those first few months were the wild west. That kind of stuff stopped happening real quickly. Anyway, I don't mean to derail with SF discussion. Again, I don't think anyone (myself included) wants to see the same statistical level of dominance from one genre occur in another. The real purpose of bringing SF4 and Daigo into the discussion is because no one in his community thinks he doesn't deserve his wins and no one who beats him is seen as a lesser player who just got lucky. On the contrary, if you beat Daigo Umehara, the crowd errupts in ecstatic cheers and your name will be remembered for the rest of the year. And not because they hate Daigo, because they don't. They cheer because it's exciting to see an underdog find a way to have a revelation and truly play beyond the level they thought they could and beat a true master. Right now, no one seems to find upsets in SC2 exciting or entertaining. Warranted or not, when Rain beat Nestea he felt compelled to apologize because of the outrage expressed by the community. When someone beats Daigo, the crowd errupts into an exhalted mob scene. Someone beat Nestea and people shook their heads and wrote angry message board threads. I think we can all agree thats a problem.
The problem isn't the players. It's the community surrounding it. -_-
That old cliche is popping into my head. You know the one:
"Don't hate the player; hate the game."
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I followed the SF4 scene religiously for a duration of a year about three months after its japanese release.
While Daigo was always a strong card (and maintained a solid 90%+ win ratio), he didn't win many tournaments the first year. In fact, I don't recall seeing him in many finals at all. What most people seemed happy about was the fact that he more or less stopped playing competetively for years and then came back with the release of SF4 - and placed #1 on the ranking for almost a whole year.
Also, Daigo played a character who actually had a good shot at beating Sagat. To be honest, I can't remember any unfavourable matchups for Ryu. He was just not as overly broken as Sagat in comparison to the rest of the cast.
Although "you lose, you deserve to lose" and vice versa seemed to be a dominant attitude in the SF community, there was of course a vocal whining part of it too. And people whined when close to noname Sagats beat "better" players, just like in SC2. They just didn't expect anyone to patch it
Edit:
It is a hard fact that he was not beaten in tournament play stateside by anyone through the duration of vanilla SF4. 2 people beat him in Bo5 money matches in that time frame. In the SSF4 era he has bean bested in single tournament competition 4 times, which was considered unprecedented by the community. His current documented win% in the newly released SSF4AE is 86% competing in the highest class arcades in Japan and using one of the new characters who obviously haven't been figured out yet (Yun).
To be perfectly honest, comparing the top Japanese scene to the US (with the US leading the foreign scene) is like comparing the top GSL players to MLG. Sure, there might be close games every now and then but apart from the very elite dominating the US scene no one (used to be, at least) is in the same league as the Japanese.
While I understand your point, it hardly makes a fair comparison :>
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Well... you know how even the casual baseball fan can go, "WOW!" at certain points in a game, because they are not able to execute that level of skill or athleticism.
When Jangbi littered the field with 1,000 storms, everyone went "WOW!" because the casual fan could not do that.
Get the picture? But that's off topic, or maybe a sub topic to the main topic if you want to talk about lack-luster entertainment.
Is SC2 rewarding the most skilled players? Somewhat, but not totally. Not like Brood War - yet, and perhaps never will, who's to say?
Defining skill by wins is... it's okay to a point but it's not exactly true. Within 2 weeks of me having this game I 2-1'd an inflow member, and not by cheese. That doesn't mean I was more skillful than him at the time, though.
I think it's important to define what a skill is. Thanks to the interwebs: proficiency, facility, or dexterity that is acquired or developed through training or experience. a. An art, trade, or technique, particularly one requiring use of the hands or body. b. A developed talent or ability: writing skills.
So the question remains: does the skillful player win more times than not? Yes. But is there more of a chance for the not-as-skilled player to take a game off the more-skilled one in SC2? You're damn right there is.
Bringing this back to Brood War, if Flash were to play some amateur A-ranked person on iccup, everyone watching would go, "I wonder how bad Flash is going to beat this guy." The majority of the people would not have the feeling of, "This could go either way."
In Starcraft 2, if some high level gamer played some random 2800-3000 player on the ladder, the majority of the people - in my opinion - would have the feeling of, "Wow, this guy could lose."
That's the big difference, in my opinion.
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completely agree with this post erosannin, and its what i was kinda trying to point out with the SSFIV reference.
"Bringing this back to Brood War, if Flash were to play some amateur A-ranked person on iccup, everyone watching would go, "I wonder how bad Flash is going to beat this guy." The majority of the people would not have the feeling of, "This could go either way."
In Starcraft 2, if some high level gamer played some random 2800-3000 player on the ladder, the majority of the people - in my opinion - would have the feeling of, "Wow, this guy could lose."
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I truly believe this phenomenon is 100% due to how hard it is to scout.
unless you're terran (not sure if I'm actually joking, I do think the knowledge thing is 10x easier for Terran...) : D
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On December 22 2010 02:05 Esjihn wrote: You mean just like how filipino champ dominated daigo in a recent MM in socal, or how about the states best sim player arturo going on a long standing win streak vs him sim vs ryu? Do you even watch live streams or keep up with current events?
Of course there is a handful of players who can compete with top Japanese players, but as a whole the Japanese players dominate foreigners.. You think one or two people beating Daigo means that the foreign scene is on even footing? lol
Top 100 Japanese players would smash the top 100 foreigners.
Even Daigo himself has stated that the level of comp is on a pretty equal footing. (for those of you who dont know who daigo is hes arguably the worlds best SF player).
Yeah of course Daigo's gonna say that, you think when he's asked that question he's gonna say that they crush foreigners..
Mago and Tokido want a word with you.
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Its better than coming from australia a country where nothing good comes from outside of tae kwon do, and mild mannered reporters looking to run through swamps and drink their own piss water.
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On December 22 2010 04:01 skirmisheR wrote:Show nested quote +On December 18 2010 23:06 composition wrote: hidden information: Starcraft Poker
complete information: Street Fighter Chess I have to agree Yea Sc2 is a game of luck as well as it is skill.
But I think what's important is how you use that luck, how you play with the hand your dealt. That truly separates a good player from a poor player imo.
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On December 21 2010 21:48 Asparagus wrote:Show nested quote +On December 21 2010 21:34 wherebugsgo wrote:On December 21 2010 19:54 CaptRoadkill wrote: A question from a somebody who is very, very far from a pro (Rank 1 Gold League, currently playing mostly against Platinum and mostly winning):
I've stopped losing to cheese from players at or below my skill level. Out of the last 100 games, I may have lost 3 to 5 to cheese. The people who cheese mostly have horrible micro and I often end up killing 6 zealots with 6 lings and 2 roaches or something ridiculous like that.
How is it that at the higher end of the game, cheese becomes viable again? What mechanics are at work there? Cheese like 6 pools and proxy gates actually happen quite rarely at the pro-level. People are obsessed with calling all-in builds "cheese" when it's really not the case. Off the top of my head, I can think only of two cheese games in GSL3: MC's proxy gate vs Marineking and leenock's 6 pool against guineapig. On the other hand, early-midgame one base all-ins, particularly from Terrans, are exceedingly popular, and really strong right now: this is what many players refer to when they complain that "low-skilled" players like Rain and Marineking are getting undeserved wins. They look cheesy, but they are, in fact, not cheese. It just so happens that the results hinge on micro so much that they look cheesy. If the Terran pulls every SCV, it becomes truly all-in, but the game can actually continue if the Terran player pulls half of his SCVs or something and the resulting engagement is an even exchange. This can happen with cheeses too (Leenock's six pool) but that's really rare. Also, cheese at high level is effective because pros know how to micro, unlike your plat level cheesers. Cheese is unexpected. All-ins are powerful at the pro level because pros practice the timings and micro nonstop. At lower levels, these all-ins (in my opinion) are more easily deflected because average Terran players don't have the micro and multitasking necessary to make them work as well. So you're saying that it's not cheese because only some people can do it and get 100% wins from it? and when you lose it's because YOU make the mistake? (i.e mis microing?)
What? No. I clearly differentiated cheeses from all-ins that come during the early-midgame.
People have difficulty holding off cheese because it's unexpected. People have difficulty holding off all-ins because it's entirely micro-centric. A lot of the time, pros who have practiced all-ins extensively know how to micro very well in order to make the all-in effective. Their opponents, often professionals as well, have good micro too, but because there are many all-ins (and this game is very young) they have less experience holding off that particular all-in, and don't have the micro /techniques perfected like the all-inner does.
I can guarantee you that those who all-in with Terran are more experienced with using the all-in than their recipients are at holding it off. Zerg players rarely practice JUST to hold off an all-in, but a prepared build such as the SCV+marine all-in is often practiced by the aggressor extensively and exclusively.
However, this doesn't mean that low-skilled players can all-in and win "100%" of the time. No one can, and no one can make all-ins effective against better players more than 50% of the time, either. It takes a skilled player to execute an effective all-in, it takes an even better one to execute an effective rush that isn't all-in (but certainly looks like it) and it takes an equally skilled player, who doesn't panic, to hold off that aggression.
EDIT: You can see the result of this in Rain's matches. One can tell that Rain has extensively practiced builds in TvZ particularly all-in builds. He is capable of winning that way because that is his strength, that is what he is good at. Most Zergs aren't good enough at holding off all-ins because they're often tunneled into "macro-mode" and they often have their sights set on a part of the game that may never happen. Of course, in an all-in situation, their priorities are often too far ahead.
However, Rain did not practice TvP all-ins as extensively. You can see that MC's preparation was superior to Rain's preparation, and obviously Rain suffered as a result. One can extrapolate that this is likely because Protoss numbered the fewest in GSL, or because Rain was previously comfortable in TvP, or whatever; we may never know and it doesn't matter.
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You apparently missed the part in SoTG where they talked about the guy who "studied to beat boxer". He accomplished that and lost EVERY game after that. Now think of this. Who is better? Well duh everyone would say Boxer. And boxer could have beaten anybody else in the tourny. But he got sniped by a worse player. Every team/player drops games.
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On December 22 2010 16:28 DyEnasTy wrote: You apparently missed the part in SoTG where they talked about the guy who "studied to beat boxer". He accomplished that and lost EVERY game after that. Now think of this. Who is better? Well duh everyone would say Boxer. And boxer could have beaten anybody else in the tourny. But he got sniped by a worse player. Every team/player drops games.
Yeah, but SC didn't reward the "worse" player, now did it?
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Nope it didn't, but, more importantly, with SC, when there's a better player against a worse player, you never got the feeling of, "Wow, he might lose."
With SC2, that feeling is prevalent.
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But you just pointed out an example of that!
No one expected Bisu to get cheesed out of OSL. Yet, that's what happened when Flash defeated Bisu 3 years ago.
No one cried when Boxer won with marine bunker rushes. People thought it was brilliant.
All this "worse players are winning" crap is completely subjective; no one can agree on what defines the "worse" or "better" player, besides the assertion that players who all-in frequently are bad. Just because someone all-ins, and then wins, doesn't make them bad. By definition, an all-in is a win now or lose now situation. It just so happens that those who choose to all-in often practice enough so that they are capable of winning more than 50% of the time against opponents who have not prepared against all-ins sufficiently.
If you look at GSL 2 finals, you'll see that the all-in coin-flip is nearly exactly 50% between two EVENLY matched players. You can't identify the "better skilled" player, as that is hotly contested between Foxer and Nestea.
If you look at GSL 3, the players who prepared (like MC) did well against all-ins, while those who didn't prepare so much (like most of Rain's opponents other than MC) died to all-ins. Nothing shocking or surprising there.
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well you can tell who are the "good" players and who are the bad based on their consistency. yeah, in a single game or bo3 the better player can often lose, but as the number of those games go up so does the accuracy with which it measures skill. a bo53 would be much more accurate than a bo7 for example
if we think of the game in its entirety the same way you can see that as more and more games are played on sc2 the more obvious it will be who the best players are. look at the gsls. which players have been consistently qualifying? which are consistently getting to the ro16? etc. as more gsls come and go the picture will get clearer as to who are really the best players
you ask who should we listen to. i propose we listen to these players. are they sages? no. are they unbiased? no, everyone has a bias, but these are the players who have consistently shown that they understand the game better than anyone else.
to use your street fighter anology, just because one of the best players in the world usually uses a certain character doesn't mean we shouldn't listen to him. he clearly understands the game very well to be at thew top. just like anyone else he has a bias and just like anyone else we should take what he says with a grain of salt
since bias is unavoidable, why not listen to the people who really know what theyre talking about?
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Let's wait several years... It's clear that there are upset losses. I would only get nervous if there won't be any players winning the GSL or other events more than once. Because that would mean that too much luck is involved. However, it even took Boxer several years to become dominant (and there were no replays!).
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On December 21 2010 21:09 Esjihn wrote: How many fighting game tournaments have you been to? I used to goto all the Major East Coast ones, and the amount of wakeup/random ultras ive seen admittedly not like an absurd amount but i have seen it cost top players games. Example would be gootecks getting hit by iloveujoe/longislandjoe random wakeup ultra from sagat in (sfivvanilla) 2s teams at i think devastation '09. It wont catch you all the time but there is that factor that is there. Which also sets up for a meta game and the threat of it being there.
No offense to the players mentioned, but neither of them are at top level players like Daigo and Justin Wong are. Also, you realize how long ago devstation '09 was? SFIV was still pretty new then, at least to players who didn't have access to the arcade version. At the last Evo, how many random ultras did you see in the final 8 matches? Maybe one random Rufus Ultra II against Ryu.
Just like how people have figured out that random Ultra's don't reward the lesser skilled player, people will eventually figure out random early game cheese don't reword the lesser skilled player in SC2. Just wait 2 or 3 years.
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