I'm just gonna throw out an unpopular idea here that's been sitting at the back of my mind for a long time while watching Starcraft.
Is there something inherently wrong with a game where the supposed best players so often lose to players who are widely considered weaker than them? Like, is the skill ceiling not high enough? Is it too luck based? Why don't the best players beat the slightly less good players more often?
I know variance is a thing, and on paper the better player/team can and does lose to the weaker player/team, but this seems to happen a lot more in Starcraft than it does in other sports I watch. Federer can be injured or have a bad day, but 95% of the time he beats the lower ranked player that he faces.
Consider this: Artosis, perhaps the most knowledgable guy in all of Starcraft II, is constantly predicting certain players to do well and constantly getting it wrong. Hence, the "curse".
But what if this game is just inherently too luck based, too RNG, too coin flip-y, that to predict winners is very much like predicting winners in a tournament of people playing Rock, Paper, Scissors. Yeah, you can analyze and make up a bunch of depth and nuance that you think is there, but what if it's an illusion? You can say that PartinG is a much stronger player than Curious, he should win 3-1, maybe 3-2. But for then for him to get trounced 0-3, what does that say about this game we watch?
Here's something else. I am an avid liquibet voter. I've voted on every vote this season. I try to vote for the people I think will win, not hope will win. My correct liquibets is 125 of 236, or 53%. 53%! Only 3% higher than what a person would get if they closed their eyes and picked every answer at random (since all liquibets are 50/50).
And you know what? Even having a mere 53% correct voting rate puts me in the top 20% of people who vote every time. (There are 12310 people who have voted on liquibet this season, through the mystic arts of math and estimation, I've concluded that ~3100 people like me vote on every bet.) Isn't that weird?
The maximum number of liquibet points you can have this season right now is 242, if you got every vote correct. Obviously, this is essentially impossible, but how high do you think the #1 ranked person is?
The number 1 ranked person on liquibet, a fellow by the name of SpiZe, has 157 points. He has predicted the correct winner 64.9% of the time. There are 3 people tied for second (aznball123, Arla, and quannump) at 152 points, or 62.8%.
Don't those numbers seem low to you? Out of ~3100 people who vote every time (and these people who vote every time are probably gonna be pretty avid fans of Starcraft, not just casual viewers), the very best predictors, the Artosis of liquibet predictions, is only sitting at 64.9%, he's correct less than 2 out of 3 times. And he's an outlier, there are only 17, SEVENTEEN, people on liquibet who are right more than 60% of the time.
Consider if I were to look at any sport I don't watch at all, football or basketball, and predicted the winners of each game. Just by looking on wikipedia at the teams stats this season and last, I feel like I could probably be right around 65% of the time. Yet the absolute sickest nerd ballers of starcraft who know the game and players inside and out, have trouble being right 60% of the time.
Is there something wrong with the game? If so, is there anything that can be done to fix it?
edit: I originally submitted this as a thread on reddit, but long text posts by someone not famous have a habit of dying quick on that site. I wanted to hear some more opinions on the matter.
One point a couple of people made in that thread was that even back in Brood War, the best of the best maintained only a ~70% winrate. I would say that that's not good enough either. Additionally, there is no one in SC2 that can even reach that low watermark. Mvp, the King of Wings, has a lifetime TLPD winrate of 61%. Life, the most dominant player we've seen in a long time, has over the last 6 months a winrate of 68% (he also failed to reach the round of 8 the last two seasons). After Life, the very top pros are between ~54 and ~62% winrate over the last 6 months. This is for an expansion that's been played for nearly three years now and that's coming to an end soon, shouldn't the game be stable enough for it not to be so volatile?
The problem with your final summation is that the game changes as new builds, meta, maps and patches come along. Players get better as the game is more figured out, and of course you have to be able to account for player error in scouting, preparation, knowledge of your opponent, macro, micro and strategy. It isn't as cut and dried as "Life was really good for a few months so no one will be able to touch him if he continues to improve at that pace."
SC2 is a deep enough game that players can specialize in certain timings or micro or builds, and players can get very streaky until other players figure out how to counter what they're doing. Everyone improves, but players do not improve at the same pace.
On February 22 2013 15:38 Gatesleeper wrote: One point a couple of people made in that thread was that even back in Brood War, the best of the best maintained only a ~70% winrate. I would say that that's not good enough either. Additionally, there is no one in SC2 that can even reach that low watermark. Mvp, the King of Wings, has a lifetime TLPD winrate of 61%. Life, the most dominant player we've seen in a long time, has over the last 6 months a winrate of 68% (he also failed to reach the round of 8 the last two seasons). After Life, the very top pros are between ~54 and ~62% winrate over the last 6 months. This is for an expansion that's been played for nearly three years now and that's coming to an end soon, shouldn't the game be stable enough for it not to be so volatile?
At the end of 2011, MVP has a nearly 70% win ratio. He fell off quite a bit in 2012 because of his wrists. Besides, it's not only Artosis. There's Kim Carrier as well......
As much as people want it to be that the game doesn't have this imbalance factor. It simply does. Unlike games such as tennis where both players have the same things, their bodies and a racquet. Sc2 is not that simple with 3 unique races using different units.
Skill does still play a huge factor. If it was completely RNG how would you explain Nestea or MvP's run in the GSL winning 3 and 4 titles respectively.
I don't think Starcraft can ever be as balanced and 'fair' as other traditional sports. Its just the way it is really.
Is there something inherently wrong with a game where the supposed best players so often lose to players who are widely considered weaker than them? Like, is the skill ceiling not high enough? Is it too luck based? Why don't the best players beat the slightly less good players more often?
This is the biggest problem I see with SC2 as an eSport in general. It seems that luck plays such a significant roll in the outcome. I want to see the skill ceiling be so high that we can have players that generally never lose to weaker opponents.
I want to see the best player in Starcraft have a 90% win rate. Not a 60% win rate.
Edit: I think I over-estimated when I said 90% win rate, but the idea stands that I'd prefer higher win rates for the best players.
Artosis is not the most knowledgable guy in all of starcraft lol. the best players are.
the main reason why predictions are often wrong is the people who predict stuff dunno what the hell they are talking about because they know the players based on a couple games they have seen of them. even if they watched hundreds of games of a certain player it's still just like 0.5% of all the games the players have played.
the best people to predict stuff would be other good players who know both 2 players very well and played them both a shit ton of times.
Is there something inherently wrong with a game where the supposed best players so often lose to players who are widely considered weaker than them? Like, is the skill ceiling not high enough? Is it too luck based? Why don't the best players beat the slightly less good players more often?
This has been suggested by pros, writers, community figures since 2008 when we started playing alpha builds. It has been consistently complained about (especially by idra) for years now.
Keep in mind that these players' winrates are based on their entire careers, through their highs and lows (especially Mvp, considering his injuries). If a player's winrate is 60%, they win ~65% of all BO3's they play ON AVERAGE. I agree that it's hard to predict a match's winner, but a winrate like 60% is not to be underestimated.
On February 22 2013 15:38 Gatesleeper wrote: Consider this: Artosis, perhaps the most knowledgable guy in all of Starcraft II,
he is not. thats the biggest reason he predicts so much wrong.
another reason is because the game is kinda volatile and GSL allows you to have a long time to prepare a counter build against your opponent.
I think this explains it pretty well. I don't know where you got that Artosis is the most knowledgeable guy of SC2. He's often very off when hyping players, doing it for players that haven't been winning for two or three months because they were good back in the day. And although he sometimes speaks about new players, you can notice that he isn't always really aware about their actual style. Those two things combined with SC2 volatility makes his predictions often wrong.
And I'm not an antifan of Artosis, I enjoy his casting style.
On February 22 2013 15:47 inSeason wrote:I want to see the best player in Starcraft have a 90% win rate. Not a 60% win rate.
See this is what I want too. It seems people are split into two camps here, some that agree with me, and others who are saying that Starcraft is just not the game that's ever gonna be like that.
On February 22 2013 15:46 aznball123 wrote: wow lol OT, but didn't realize I was rank 2.
But if the same player won every single competition and had a 90% winrate, wouldn't everyone complain about the fact the outcome of every tournament is boring and obvious? I'm pretty sure they would.
Also a lot of other (non e-sports) are incredibly volatile. As much so as SC2, if not much more.
On February 22 2013 15:38 Gatesleeper wrote: Consider this: Artosis, perhaps the most knowledgable guy in all of Starcraft II,
he is not. thats the biggest reason he predicts so much wrong.
another reason is because the game is kinda volatile and GSL allows you to have a long time to prepare a counter build against your opponent.
I think this explains it pretty well. I don't know where you got that Artosis is the most knowledgeable guy of SC2. He's often very off when hyping players, doing it for players that haven't been winning for two or three months because they were good back in the day. And although he sometimes speaks about new players, you can notice that he isn't always really aware about their actual style. Those two things combined with SC2 volatility makes his predictions often wrong.
And I'm not an antifan of Artosis, I enjoy his casting style.
Well okay, maybe I should've said most knowledgable caster in SC2? I mean, if not him, who? Coaches and players? The thing is, I never hear their opinions on who is going to win every match. If I can't believe the pundits, the people whose job it is to know the game and the people who play it, who can I believe?
Is there something inherently wrong with a game where the supposed best players so often lose to players who are widely considered weaker than them? Like, is the skill ceiling not high enough? Is it too luck based? Why don't the best players beat the slightly less good players more often?
This has been suggested by pros, writers, community figures since 2008 when we started playing alpha builds. It has been consistently complained about (especially by idra) for years now.
Why doesn't this change? Why aren't we seeing steps taken for this to improve?
On February 22 2013 15:53 MCXD wrote: But if the same player won every single competition and had a 90% winrate, wouldn't everyone complain about the fact the outcome of every tournament is boring and obvious? I'm pretty sure they would.
Completely disagree. I want players to quiver in fear when they play against Flash. When a lesser player beats a better player, it would actually feel significant.
If you put it at a BO7, then a 70% win rate per game becomes a 87% on the series. Sure, it can be even less random, but not having upsets at all is also bad for the sport.
Pro players are human too, maybe they didn't get a good night sleep or ate some slightly bad bbq beef or fell prey to his own hubris. Not to mention you can't use % of people choosing winners on a voting site as evidence of game being too random cause none of the voters have any information apart from previous televised games. You also neglect to mention that unknown players facing famous "better" players have (and should) a big advantage in that they can study and prepare builds while the famous player takes much more of a risk if they try anything greedy or tricky as they don't know their opponents style
On February 22 2013 15:53 MCXD wrote: But if the same player won every single competition and had a 90% winrate, wouldn't everyone complain about the fact the outcome of every tournament is boring and obvious? I'm pretty sure they would.
if it was just one good player who won everything and everyone else sucked, it'd be boring. But if there were 3-4 players (or even two) who were at the top of the game and constantly battling for trophies, everyone would love it, like what we've had in tennis over the past years.
Artosis is the best analytical commentator in SC2. (At the very least, he is on almost everybody's list of good commentators, which says a lot). However, he loves to play favourites... pick something he loves about a player, and cheer for that player on the air. I wouldn't be surprised if he does it on purpose, it's one of the things that makes him so interesting to listen to. Unfortunately it seems to have created a sizable population of people who love to complain about the "best player losing".
And since I realize that the OP is saying more than that, let me add that some inherent unpredictability should be expected from a game of hidden information. Imagine if tennis had fog of war.
Is there something inherently wrong with a game where the supposed best players so often lose to players who are widely considered weaker than them? Like, is the skill ceiling not high enough? Is it too luck based? Why don't the best players beat the slightly less good players more often?
This has been suggested by pros, writers, community figures since 2008 when we started playing alpha builds. It has been consistently complained about (especially by idra) for years now.
On February 22 2013 15:53 MCXD wrote: But if the same player won every single competition and had a 90% winrate, wouldn't everyone complain about the fact the outcome of every tournament is boring and obvious? I'm pretty sure they would.
if it was just one good player who won everything and everyone else sucked, it'd be boring. But if there were 3-4 players (or even two) who were at the top of the game and constantly battling for trophies, everyone would love it, like what we've had in tennis over the past years.
But those players can't be having 90% win rates no longer, since they will battle each other, rather often.
I also don't think that increasing the game's skill cap would resolve the issue. There is just a point beyond which a person cannot become more skilled, and since people don't play anywhere near perfectly in either SC2 or BW, it's reasonable to say that the game's skill cap is not the issue.
Instead, the issue is that the top players all play a lot and improve at roughly the same rate, which prevents any one player from getting a ridiculous 90% winrate against other players.
Is there something inherently wrong with a game where the supposed best players so often lose to players who are widely considered weaker than them? Like, is the skill ceiling not high enough? Is it too luck based? Why don't the best players beat the slightly less good players more often?
This has been suggested by pros, writers, community figures since 2008 when we started playing alpha builds. It has been consistently complained about (especially by idra) for years now.
Why doesn't this change? Why aren't we seeing steps taken for this to improve?
Who says it needs improvement? Maybe being unpredictable is a good thing.
One of the main reasons the NFL is so popular is because teams can do well after having a bad year, and the "best" teams can fail to make the playoffs. Almost everybody feels like they have a chance when the season starts. Baseball on the other hand has about 12 teams that have a chance at the title.
On February 22 2013 15:53 MCXD wrote: But if the same player won every single competition and had a 90% winrate, wouldn't everyone complain about the fact the outcome of every tournament is boring and obvious? I'm pretty sure they would.
if it was just one good player who won everything and everyone else sucked, it'd be boring. But if there were 3-4 players (or even two) who were at the top of the game and constantly battling for trophies, everyone would love it, like what we've had in tennis over the past years.
But those players can't be having 90% win rates no longer, since they will battle each other, rather often.
okay, I don't really care about a player's win percentage, that number doesn't do anything for me. strong rivalries do.
I think it may boil down to a possible lack of mechanical skill based outlets. The type of skills that while in no way are required to play the game well, can be used to distinguish the better players from the best. The trick is not making mechanical godliness be a prerequisite for competitiveness, but not making streamlined type game play inherently the best or most efficient method possible. If you can master and utilized the streamlined features, you're good enough, while if you can master the subtle yet complex mechanical features you could be the best.
Maximum efficiency in most if not all aspects of the game should require mastery, but those aspects should also be efficient enough such that basic game play is not a chore.
Another thing is, while it may seem somewhat random if you pick player X to win/lose, if you look at the statistics of say Aligulac, it's actually pretty accurate on a person's chance of winning the game/series, up until ~80%.
Yeah like Kennigit said this has been brought up this the very first games of sc2. by making the game UI more efficient to fit into modern gaming it basically lowered the skill ceiling and the ability for naturally gifted dexterity to win all the time. it has made the game more fun to play, because i can do more stuff and control more things compared to something like BW, but has also made the game less fun to watch imo, because the stuff the pros do is not mind blowing insane and physically impossible looking like it was to watch a korean pro micro and macro in BW.
i think the game should have 2 modes. "casual mode", like we have now. and something like the SC2BW mod as a "hardcore mode" which is used for tournaments.
edit: the game is already very much rock paper scissors already, and by listening to artosis on state of the game, it looks like HotS is even worse. the game will be based completely on scouting and denying scouting because the build orders counter each other so much more now with such a wider variety of units and strategies.
i also want to throw out there that imo the top 100 players (completely arbitrary number) in the game are fairly equal and can take games off each other with around 50% win rate. for example, anyone in Code A, and even a lot of people in Code B, are good enough to beat anyone in Code S and win the GSL. the kespa players are not going to get any better at sc2 imo than they are now. they have already pretty much figured the game out and it just comes down to preparing build orders to counter the other guy.
we can go on and on about the relationships between the units and how they fare against in each other in a million situations but the random factor of the game is the fact that it revolves around incomplete information. You can't know the opponents intentions the whole time, nor can you make the correct responses every single time. The maps are so big and your usually depending on a single ability or unit to scout the correct information. If the opponent really wants to hide a tech/proxy, it will most likely not be scouted. Also we are dealing with hundreds of different pieces at once. Assuming you enter an engagement with your opponent, you cannot simply make each unit efficiently attack the perfect target. On some engagements you will attack better than others. That's why its just simply insane for a sc2 player to even have a 70% win ratio. The only way is if they are significantly faster and some insane game sense to "feel" what the opponent is trying to do.
edit: and also as stated above, we have so many replays/vods of other players, its not difficult to gain information on your opponent. There's really no offseason like in modern sports where teams can just lock down on training for a few months for creating new strategies or just training really hard on weaknesses in one's play.
On February 22 2013 15:53 MCXD wrote: But if the same player won every single competition and had a 90% winrate, wouldn't everyone complain about the fact the outcome of every tournament is boring and obvious? I'm pretty sure they would.
Think about every sport where there has been a team or player that has been that dominant. Did it play out like you described? No, people love champions. Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, Roger Federer, The Yankees, The Lakers, people love it when there's a dominant force in a game. Or even if there are 2 guys at the top, like Federer and Nadal, who just keep playing each other in the finals of every tournament. People don't get "bored" of the "obvious" outcome, they are excited to see a storyline being played out before their eyes.
On February 22 2013 15:38 Gatesleeper wrote: The number 1 ranked person on liquibet, a fellow by the name of SpiZe, has 157 points. He has predicted the correct winner 64.9% of the time. There are 3 people tied for second (aznball123, Arla, and quannump) at 152 points, or 62.8%.
Don't those numbers seem low to you?
No. Even regardless of balance, take a look at the numbers for professional sports betters. They usually post 55-58% win rates and occasionally 60%, but not for very long. DRG's highest matchup is 70% but his average is 66%, and he's your most reliable player (besides the really bad ones, who don't play much.)
We'll ignore money line bets here for the sake of clarity, and address only those bets wherein the player must risk as much as 11 to win 10; - pointspreads and over/under bets. Against this type of bet, anyone at all can expect to win 50 percent. After all, the only thing required is to flip a coin and pick a side. The bookmakers' profit comes from the difference between what a bettor must risk and what a bettor expects to win. Every time a player wins, the bookmaker withholds slightly more than 9 percent of the winnings ($1 for every $11 risked). Consequently, a bettor winning only half his bets will ultimately go broke.
Professional sports bettors, by comparison, rarely sustain a long term winning percentage higher than 57 or 58 percent, and it's often as low as 54 or 55 percent.
Now's a good chance to learn about binomials and how you only have a 54% chance of winning 65 or more out of 100, on a 65% bet.
Is there something inherently wrong with a game where the supposed best players so often lose to players who are widely considered weaker than them? Like, is the skill ceiling not high enough? Is it too luck based? Why don't the best players beat the slightly less good players more often?
This has been suggested by pros, writers, community figures since 2008 when we started playing alpha builds. It has been consistently complained about (especially by idra) for years now.
I think this has to be the case.
SC2 is not a bad game but the way it is designed it makes it so that even "inferior" players have a good shot against more talented folks.
There was a good topic (maybe the rise of the patchzergs one) that pointed out how each race has very different skill ceilings, and for instance, the skill that it takes a Zerg player to cast a fungal is absolutely nothing compared to the skill that a T player has to have in order to survive a swarm A-move, or for instance, how a group of Terran units can easily die if you do not watch for a sec, or for instance that if you miss by half a second a force field it makes the difference between surviving or maybe dying. m
Many of the game-design elements - regardless of the balance of the game which at times has been terrible (just look at it now) - make it so that it's extremely "luck" based or much more coin-flippy than it should be.
It's pretty sad as I really wish extremely talented players as MVP and co to utterly dominate against players who are not as good as them. I think this is a much bigger issue than people think as creating "Star" players is a key element in marketing E-sports. (look at Stephano) By having such a volatile game where a player is hot only for couple months at the time is not very good at all. Not to mention that because of this I know people (including myself) have lost interest for the game.
Reason: I feel hopeless rooting for my favorite player cause it's almost an even match every time they play. I once watched MVP player on the US server against some random patchzerg and he had to put so much effort, this guy - who also happened to be SUPER BM - was ALMOST giving MVP a run for his money. There were couple of moments were unless MVP wasn't MVP, he would have lost, so many moments were the game was so close or MVP was even behind. Eventually his multi-tasking brought him back and he ended up winning, but I had to stay there watch a 4 FREAKING TIME GSL CHAMPION having trouble vs a nobody.
Unfortunately I have no idea how Blizzard could fix the design of the races to make it so that every one has a good high ceiling and some are not easier than the others, but they MUST do it. Terran I think everyone can agree is the best designed race, I think Zerg and Protoss need a lot of work. Zerg at the current state needs some re-working and Protoss in particular, needs some SERIOUS design work.
My 2 cents from a very die-hard fan who is slowly but surely watching less and less and less SC2 - and this one being one of the biggest reasons.
On February 22 2013 15:38 Gatesleeper wrote: Consider this: Artosis, perhaps the most knowledgable guy in all of Starcraft II,
he is not. thats the biggest reason he predicts so much wrong.
another reason is because the game is kinda volatile and GSL allows you to have a long time to prepare a counter build against your opponent.
Yeah I really don't like this either. Artosis has never struck me as anything but average. He is perhaps the most popular guy in all of Sc2 though. I'd go as far as saying all casters have less knowledge than the player/casters who have less knowledge than the (top) players. It doesn't take a genius to memorize the openings in tvz and then say oh yeahhh here we go! Exactly what I thought, it's reactor hellions after he takes gas, builds reactor on rax, makes factory beside it. Anyways, Volatile = sc2 = revolving door of winners
Extremely strong mechanics and reaching skill caps can only take you so far in a game of strategy. Part of the fun of this game for me is when player's do their homework, find out how a player likes to play, and then construct strategies to counter their play style.
I think there's a certain level of skill you have to have in the game--whether it be in straightforward mechanics, ability to control the game, creativity, or a mixture of these and more--to remain competitive. For example, A GSL Code S player will have a 100% win rate against, for example, me.
However, once a player has developed the level of skill required to be competitive, I think as others have mentioned the variance develops in what risks the players take, what information they do not gather, and how the map factors into unit engagements.
I don't think this variance is a bad thing; personally I would be quite bored if in top play you could predict the winner 90% of the time.
I don't know if there is anything wrong with the game or what to fix but the game is definetely too volatile.
I dare to say, without having any statistics to back my claim up, that in most of the games one single fight will decide the outcome of the game.
You hardly see any comebacks. After the first successful attack the game is pretty much over for the other player. Even if casters are trying to tell the viewers how the other player can comeback it rarely ever happens.
The best season ever in baseball history in terms of wins was only a 71.6% win percentage. A very good season would have a win percentage of almost 62%. Is baseball considered too low of a skill ceiling because top teams lose to very bad teams occasionally? It could be debated for every sport what a high enough skill ceiling is and if they meet it, but the only thing that matters is if the games are fair. If each player has an equal opportunity at the beginning to win, then the better player, whether that be in terms of strategy or mechanics, will usually win. Remember, a 66% win percentage sounds good, but if you said that player was winning games twice as much as the competition, that would sound a lot better
On February 22 2013 16:09 papaz wrote: I don't know if there is anything wrong with the game or what to fix but the game is definetely too volatile.
I dare to say, without having any statistics to back my claim up, that in most of the games one single fight will decide the outcome of the game.
You hardly see any comebacks. After the first successful attack the game is pretty much over for the other player. Even if casters are trying to tell the viewers how the other player can comeback it rarely ever happens.
Somehow I think your statements are contradicting each other. Having a single battle is indeed volatile, but not allowing for comebacks isn't. In fact, I feel that the more often comebacks can occur, the more volatile the game is, since the superior players should not be in an inferior position often to start with.
On February 22 2013 15:45 Onlinejaguar wrote: As much as people want it to be that the game doesn't have this imbalance factor. It simply does. Unlike games such as tennis where both players have the same things, their bodies and a racquet. Sc2 is not that simple with 3 unique races using different units.
Skill does still play a huge factor. If it was completely RNG how would you explain Nestea or MvP's run in the GSL winning 3 and 4 titles respectively.
I don't think Starcraft can ever be as balanced and 'fair' as other traditional sports. Its just the way it is really.
I disagree. Brood War was arguably more imbalanced, and the balance was more similar to Rock Paper Scissor (P > T > Z > P) and highly dependent on maps. I mean these days in SC2 if a map isn't within 45%-55% for any matchup people will start flipping tables and shitting up forums, but for BW it was just a factor to consider when practicing or choosing who to send out from your roster of players. And yet in BW we've had far, far more consistency at the top levels. That is why we look back on glorious legacies of Bonjwas and TaekBangLeeSsang, players that rarely ever lost to anyone but one another in their periods of dominance, players that destroyed everyone else even more consistently than Mvp in SC2.
The reason why SC2 is so volatile lies in the game design. In their quest of both making the game more accessible and making it unique and significantly different from its predecessor (although it degenerated into a miserably pathetic mentality of "we won't even look at what made BW great, stop asking, we just do whatever we want") they've managed to get rid of a lot of the depth and intricacy that allowed a better player to distance himself from the crowd, that allowed him to shine and wipe the floor with his opponents even in unfavourable match-ups or maps.
The high skill ceiling wasn't only mechanical, it allowed players to experiment and come up with their own strategies, it allowed them to innovate. The "metagame" shifted not because of monthly patches released by people who don't even follow the latest tournaments, but thanks to the players' and coaches' creativity and innovative spirit. This is why we remember people like BoxeR, people like sAviOr, people like Bisu, people who managed to overcome extreme odds and carve their names into the stone monolith of BW history, people who single-handedly and irrevocably changed the way BW would be played in the future.
But alas, SC2 does not have that potential. And with Blizzard's attitude, do not expect that to change.
Is there something inherently wrong with a game where the supposed best players so often lose to players who are widely considered weaker than them? Like, is the skill ceiling not high enough? Is it too luck based? Why don't the best players beat the slightly less good players more often?
This has been suggested by pros, writers, community figures since 2008 when we started playing alpha builds. It has been consistently complained about (especially by idra) for years now.
Why doesn't this change? Why aren't we seeing steps taken for this to improve?
Because Blizzard doesn't want SC2 to be BW 2.0. Which somehow implies that they are to not even look at the good synergies and game design and implement it in a different way in SC2. It's funny, because at the same time they copy units from CnC... lol
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All that said, I have to echo OP's thoughts. I too have been an avid follower of the SC2 tournament scene for the most part, and it's generally extremely unpredictable, with very few exceptions that didn't last long anyway. It's sad.
On February 22 2013 15:38 Gatesleeper wrote: The number 1 ranked person on liquibet, a fellow by the name of SpiZe, has 157 points. He has predicted the correct winner 64.9% of the time. There are 3 people tied for second (aznball123, Arla, and quannump) at 152 points, or 62.8%.
Don't those numbers seem low to you?
No. Even regardless of balance, take a look at the numbers for professional sports betters. They usually post 55-58% win rates and occasionally 60%, but not for very long. DRG's highest matchup is 70% but his average is 66%, and he's your most reliable player (besides the really bad ones, who don't play much.)
We'll ignore money line bets here for the sake of clarity, and address only those bets wherein the player must risk as much as 11 to win 10; - pointspreads and over/under bets. Against this type of bet, anyone at all can expect to win 50 percent. After all, the only thing required is to flip a coin and pick a side. The bookmakers' profit comes from the difference between what a bettor must risk and what a bettor expects to win. Every time a player wins, the bookmaker withholds slightly more than 9 percent of the winnings ($1 for every $11 risked). Consequently, a bettor winning only half his bets will ultimately go broke.
Professional sports bettors, by comparison, rarely sustain a long term winning percentage higher than 57 or 58 percent, and it's often as low as 54 or 55 percent.
Now's a good chance to learn about binomials and how you only have a 54% chance of winning 65 or more out of 100, on a 65% bet.
This is really interesting, I haven't heard of any of this stuff before.
you pick tennis which seems to be pretty consistent at the very tip top... (I love seeing the big four of djoker, fed, nadal, murray) and it seems to be the exception.
but other sports can be just as random like american football (Baltimore winning the whole thing as a wild card), March Madness NCAA brackets being so hard to predict, NBA favored teams losing to lesser teams.
Starcraft can be hard to predict and to keep liquibets at high score due to a lot of factors; like new players emerging, different matchups that certain players are strong/weak against, the game being ever changing, the more you win = more people can study you to anti strat, etc.
but as random as it may seem, we do have repeat champions.
The only players, after the very early days, who have felt like real, superior, consistent "superstars" to me have been Nestea and MVP during their own hay-days. MVP might still have been a superstar today had it not been for his injury. Now please don't get me wrong; I love starcraft II and I am still going to watch it and support it... but this is definitely a problem. A sport really should have a lot of stability and consistency; you really want there to be a high amount of predictability in order to really make the unexpected and impressive stand out. For example: Story-lines becomes problematic to highlight when your "star" players keep getting knocked out...
Sadly though we are probably going to have to accept our flawed sport as it is. We need to really get behind and support the superstars when they do come around since the game simply seems to be designed with a lot of... instability.
Is there something inherently wrong with a game where the supposed best players so often lose to players who are widely considered weaker than them? Like, is the skill ceiling not high enough? Is it too luck based? Why don't the best players beat the slightly less good players more often?
Maybe when the final product of the game, with no more balance patches that change everything, has been around long enough to see Flash-level dominance, then this will be over. See you in a few years though.
In the meantime, if this is the kind of stuff you are looking to avoid but still want to watch RTS, watch some (Brood War) Flash games.
On February 22 2013 15:38 Gatesleeper wrote: The number 1 ranked person on liquibet, a fellow by the name of SpiZe, has 157 points. He has predicted the correct winner 64.9% of the time. There are 3 people tied for second (aznball123, Arla, and quannump) at 152 points, or 62.8%.
Don't those numbers seem low to you?
No. Even regardless of balance, take a look at the numbers for professional sports betters. They usually post 55-58% win rates and occasionally 60%, but not for very long. DRG's highest matchup is 70% but his average is 66%, and he's your most reliable player (besides the really bad ones, who don't play much.)
We'll ignore money line bets here for the sake of clarity, and address only those bets wherein the player must risk as much as 11 to win 10; - pointspreads and over/under bets. Against this type of bet, anyone at all can expect to win 50 percent. After all, the only thing required is to flip a coin and pick a side. The bookmakers' profit comes from the difference between what a bettor must risk and what a bettor expects to win. Every time a player wins, the bookmaker withholds slightly more than 9 percent of the winnings ($1 for every $11 risked). Consequently, a bettor winning only half his bets will ultimately go broke.
Professional sports bettors, by comparison, rarely sustain a long term winning percentage higher than 57 or 58 percent, and it's often as low as 54 or 55 percent.
Now's a good chance to learn about binomials and how you only have a 54% chance of winning 65 or more out of 100, on a 65% bet.
This is really interesting, I haven't heard of any of this stuff before.
There could still be skill ceiling/variance issues in the game, I'm just saying the evidence isn't in the win rates of bettors.
SC 2 will forever have issues with players making themselves consistent pillars of top level play. Being good for 18 months straight is actually incredibly impressive in SC 2, whereas in most sports dropping off after 2 years or so is downright bizarre. When you can't look up to some sort of pseudo pantheon of great players to be favorites (not guaranteed of course) to win most tournaments they prepare hard for, you miss out on a ton of story lines and rivalries that could brew. When you have so many players coming out of relative obscurity to beat what everyone though was a great player, you have problems imo.
I don't think the game is to blame so much as bias from viewers, including casters like Artosis. People thought Parting would beat Curious for no better reason than Parting's track record of consistently good play and Curious's curious habit of losing in the ro16.
Interestingly, Fionn wrote this in the preview even while predicting a 3-1 victory for Parting:
Watching Curious and Parting play in the first two rounds, you can make a strong case that Curious should be the favorite in this series.
It's not the players and it's not the game. It's you.
When Artosis predicts right = no one make a big deal out of it. When Artosis predicts wrong = people scream about the curse.
Until somoene watches every Code S game of a season and compare Artosis' prediction to the actual results, I don't believe it. Give us a statistics. Until then, Artosis Curse is a myth.
On February 22 2013 16:29 Orek wrote: Who says "Artosis Curse" is true?
When Artosis predicts right = no one make a big deal out of it. When Artosis predicts wrong = people scream about the curse.
Until somoene watches every Code S game of a season and compare Artosis' prediction to the actual results, I don't believe it. Give us a statistics. Until then, Artosis Curse is a myth.
I have a better idea. Lets start an ArtosiBet season, where we bet on whether Artosis' prediction will be right or wrong, and then the statistics of our bets will determine whether or not he is cursed.
It's definitely the type of game sc is since it's a game based on information and preparation. You won't always scout everything every time and people in tournaments like gsl and proleague often work on very specific builds to counter your play. Also, all ins are very strong for how easy they often are to execute (and much easier to execute than to defend). It's why a bo1 in a sc tournament means very, very little.
The top players have a 60-70% winrate, while in a game like SSBM the top player is at ~97% over the course of a 4+ years (and everyone in the top 5 is at least ~85%, mostly losing to each other).
On February 22 2013 16:29 Orek wrote: Who says "Artosis Curse" is true?
When Artosis predicts right = no one make a big deal out of it. When Artosis predicts wrong = people scream about the curse.
Until somoene watches every Code S game of a season and compare Artosis' prediction to the actual results, I don't believe it. Give us a statistics. Until then, Artosis Curse is a myth.
I think this sums it up pretty well. In fact, if Artosis has a prediction rate < 40%, then the game is also incredibly consistent.
On February 22 2013 16:29 Orek wrote: Who says "Artosis Curse" is true?
When Artosis predicts right = no one make a big deal out of it. When Artosis predicts wrong = people scream about the curse.
Until somoene watches every Code S game of a season and compare Artosis' prediction to the actual results, I don't believe it. Give us a statistics. Until then, Artosis Curse is a myth.
I have a better idea. Lets start an ArtosiBet season, where we bet on whether Artosis' prediction will be right or wrong, and then the statistics of our bets will determine whether or not he is cursed.
Oh wait.
I predict around 40-60% chance for both sides! Wanna bet on that?
On February 22 2013 16:29 Orek wrote: Who says "Artosis Curse" is true?
When Artosis predicts right = no one make a big deal out of it. When Artosis predicts wrong = people scream about the curse.
Until somoene watches every Code S game of a season and compare Artosis' prediction to the actual results, I don't believe it. Give us a statistics. Until then, Artosis Curse is a myth.
I have a better idea. Lets start an ArtosiBet season, where we bet on whether Artosis' prediction will be right or wrong, and then the statistics of our bets will determine whether or not he is cursed.
Oh wait.
I predict around 40-60% chance for both sides! Wanna bet on that?
Let's start RamoBet season, where we bet on... Fuck it.
The fact of the matter is that SC2 is more balance-dependent than we'd hoped (as much as I'd love to say otherwise). I'd also like to point out that it's very rare to see a legitimate come back in SC2 due to the nature of the game. Sure there have been comebacks but on the most part, these comebacks have happened due to a capitulation rather than a superior amount of decision making and skill (this has happened, sure but again I believe its more rare than it should be).
On February 22 2013 15:38 Gatesleeper wrote: The number 1 ranked person on liquibet, a fellow by the name of SpiZe, has 157 points. He has predicted the correct winner 64.9% of the time. There are 3 people tied for second (aznball123, Arla, and quannump) at 152 points, or 62.8%.
Don't those numbers seem low to you?
No. Even regardless of balance, take a look at the numbers for professional sports betters. They usually post 55-58% win rates and occasionally 60%, but not for very long. DRG's highest matchup is 70% but his average is 66%, and he's your most reliable player (besides the really bad ones, who don't play much.)
We'll ignore money line bets here for the sake of clarity, and address only those bets wherein the player must risk as much as 11 to win 10; - pointspreads and over/under bets. Against this type of bet, anyone at all can expect to win 50 percent. After all, the only thing required is to flip a coin and pick a side. The bookmakers' profit comes from the difference between what a bettor must risk and what a bettor expects to win. Every time a player wins, the bookmaker withholds slightly more than 9 percent of the winnings ($1 for every $11 risked). Consequently, a bettor winning only half his bets will ultimately go broke.
Professional sports bettors, by comparison, rarely sustain a long term winning percentage higher than 57 or 58 percent, and it's often as low as 54 or 55 percent.
Now's a good chance to learn about binomials and how you only have a 54% chance of winning 65 or more out of 100, on a 65% bet.
This is really interesting, I haven't heard of any of this stuff before.
There could still be skill ceiling/variance issues in the game, I'm just saying the evidence isn't in the win rates of bettors.
Just as an example, this is a quick look (which is why so many seasons are missing, you can find those posts yourselves ) at the Liquibet numbers from BW.
Year - Liquibet Edition - Highest Liquibet Winning % 2003 - Season 1 - 68% 2004 - Season 3 - 64.5% 2005 - Season 5 - 61.5% 2006 - Season 6 - 69.5% 2007 - Season 9 - 67% 2007 - Season 10 - 64.35% 2008 - Season 11 - 64.5% 2008 - Season 12 - 70.54% 2009 - Season 14 - 67.9%
There's probably some correlation there with bonjwas but it kind of shows this season's numbers probably shouldn't be taken as "low" since having an absolutely dominant player like prime-sAviOr, prime-Jaedong and prime-Flash isn't the norm.
Artosis is awesome, but you gotta remember that he's still just one dude. he has his own bias, and very much so in some cases. sometimes he just predicts players to win because he likes them, but even more importantly, he likes a certain kind of playstyle (solid, defensive macro players) and will praise anybody that plays that style. however, while a very impressive style to pull off well, that kind of play doesn't always win games.
On February 22 2013 16:32 Popkiller wrote: I'm sure people can give examples of Artosis being right... I just can't think of any off the top of my head...
I recall him really hyping up seed when he was still pretty unknown.
It seems like people are always bringing up unfair comparisons between BW and SC2. BW has had its metagame under development for a lot longer. Meanwhile SC2 is constantly being patched for various balance complaints, all of which would probably iron themselves out if left alone. This adds a ton of variance.
Always makes me laugh when someone actually believes there's a "skill ceiling" that has been reached in SC2.
Anyone betting on Curious losing ZvP hasn't studied Curious ZvP enough. He messed with Partings timings nice and early every game with nuanced and beautiful adjustments to his play and followed that through with well executed mid-lategame where Parting made more mistakes.
The issue with starcraft II is there is no physical factor which severely hampers a pro player from being the best. It's all about understanding, reactions, mindgames and builds. So if all you need to do is change your mindset of course you can suddenly play a much better game and beat someone whom historically has been smarter at the game than you.
Part of what makes Starcraft so awesome is it isn't like other sport where physicality tends to take precedence, the mental side of things is super dominant.
Also yes there are elements of Poker (limited and false information) in Starcraft so it will rely more on chance than a sport where its about putting a ball in a net.
Artosis has been consistently wrong since brood war, he was hyping up really as being the #2 best terran when he had like a 40% win rate, and there were at least 5 players that were obviously better.
This is a real problem and here is my take on it. I really think that the skill level ceiling is actually quite high in SC2. The problem however is what kind of skill that used and utilized and is most important is SC2? It turns out the most important of these skills are mostly achieved by simply "more practice".
There is very little room for ingenuity. Most of the game is figured out. You beat X by Y (X and Y can be strategies or timings not just units). If you don't do Y you loose. There is no magic skill that will not compensate for using the wrong set of units or for scouting late or for using a different strategy. Moreover there are strategies that are very easy to execute and very hard to counter. Then there is the game balance problems which for some wierd reason some people think that balance is just about winrates which is not the case. If a certain strategy is too powerful to force a certain race into a very limited set of game style; it is actually imbalanced. The winrates will not show that because simply players will limit themselves to the only viable strategies and this is again whey we have the game figured out and having very limited answers to each of the opponents move. Then we have death ball play which is caused by factors like economy, map design and unit aoe design.
We can go on for days however we know that in 1v1 games non luck based games "grandmasters" would rarely loose to lower tier player. This is true for both chess and martial arts.
This is also damaging for fans which is a great need for the game to develop. Fans need to pick a new "star" every few months that it's not really fan-friendly thing.
Is there something inherently wrong with a game where the supposed best players so often lose to players who are widely considered weaker than them? Like, is the skill ceiling not high enough? Is it too luck based? Why don't the best players beat the slightly less good players more often?
This has been suggested by pros, writers, community figures since 2008 when we started playing alpha builds. It has been consistently complained about (especially by idra) for years now.
Why doesn't this change? Why aren't we seeing steps taken for this to improve?
On February 22 2013 15:53 MCXD wrote: But if the same player won every single competition and had a 90% winrate, wouldn't everyone complain about the fact the outcome of every tournament is boring and obvious? I'm pretty sure they would.
Completely disagree. I want players to quiver in fear when they play against Flash. When a lesser player beats a better player, it would actually feel significant.
Even Flash over his career only had a 70% win ratio in brood war, but no one is complaining about brood war's skill differentiation. True, he had periods where he absolutely dominated, like his 15 win streak in SPL, but even that has parallels in starcraft 2 (think the second open season of GOM where nestea went undefeated until the finals). The truth is starcraft is such an intricate and involved game that demands excellence in so many areas that it is very very hard to become as absolutely dominant as some people would like the best players to be. Given how much damage can be done in response to even the littlest of mistakes in the highest level of play it is no wonder that we don't see astronomical win ratios by certain players. That said, we still do have some select, consistent winners whose win ratios exceed 65%.
The premise of the OP is completely wrong imo. Consider the statements comparing SC to pro sports:
If the measure of greatness of a team / player is utter domination to the point of predictability - where you could consistantly bet and win over (say) 70% of the time - bookies would be out of business. Sports gambling would be dead.
But it goes on day after day, month after month, year after year. Why?
Because the measure of an interesting / entertaining pro sport is NOT predictability by one team / player over a long period of time. The measure of an interesting / entertaining pro sport is having a roster of teams / players that are SO high level and closely matched when playing?
That predicting who will win is difficult. . Not easy.
Imo the reason why some people bring this up from time to time about this game is the fact that the game rules and factors vary over time with new patches. Football, baseball, hockey, tennis: The rules and factors stay basically the same and are even over long periods of time.
They don't have patches and expansions, and thousands of people bitching about "balance"
The players at the highest levels of Starcraft are extremely hardworking and talented and are essentially very closely matched. The smallest mistakes can lose a game in an eyeblink.
This is what makes it exciting (for most people). Not some expectation of predictability. Trust me, I'm 'just' a spectator. I don't even play the damn game.
But I am fascinated by this sport, spend money on merchandise, attend live tourneys when I can and probably blow at least an hour every day watching VODs and reading all sorts of essentially useless crap (lol) about what ya'll are doing and details about balance and units. I'm a diehard fan. Why?
On February 22 2013 16:49 PiGStarcraft wrote: Anyone betting on Curious losing ZvP hasn't studied Curious ZvP enough. He messed with Partings timings nice and early every game with nuanced and beautiful adjustments to his play and followed that through with well executed mid-lategame where Parting made more mistakes.
The issue with starcraft II is there is no physical factor which severely hampers a pro player from being the best. It's all about understanding, reactions, mindgames and builds. So if all you need to do is change your mindset of course you can suddenly play a much better game and beat someone whom historically has been smarter at the game than you.
Part of what makes Starcraft so awesome is it isn't like other sport where physicality tends to take precedence, the mental side of things is super dominant.
Also yes there are elements of Poker (limited and false information) in Starcraft so it will rely more on chance than a sport where its about putting a ball in a net.
Interesting points. I would just like to add though that the problem (for me at least) isn't really that Curious defeated Parting but that I wouldn't really be surprised if Curious fell of a little bit now. To me, as a sports spectator, that just gives his win so much less meaning. For instance; I can't really hype myself up that much for watching Sniper even though he won the last GSL (haha I really hope I'm wrong about that...) since that apparently didn't mean that he would make it that far in this one.
On February 22 2013 15:38 Gatesleeper wrote: I'm just gonna throw out an unpopular idea here that's been sitting at the back of my mind for a long time while watching Starcraft.
Is there something inherently wrong with a game where the supposed best players so often lose to players who are widely considered weaker than them? Like, is the skill ceiling not high enough? Is it too luck based? Why don't the best players beat the slightly less good players more often?
I know variance is a thing, and on paper the better player/team can and does lose to the weaker player/team, but this seems to happen a lot more in Starcraft than it does in other sports I watch. Federer can be injured or have a bad day, but 95% of the time he beats the lower ranked player that he faces.
Consider this: Artosis, perhaps the most knowledgable guy in all of Starcraft II, is constantly predicting certain players to do well and constantly getting it wrong. Hence, the "curse".
But what if this game is just inherently too luck based, too RNG, too coin flip-y, that to predict winners is very much like predicting winners in a tournament of people playing Rock, Paper, Scissors. Yeah, you can analyze and make up a bunch of depth and nuance that you think is there, but what if it's an illusion? You can say that PartinG is a much stronger player than Curious, he should win 3-1, maybe 3-2. But for then for him to get trounced 0-3, what does that say about this game we watch?
Here's something else. I am an avid liquibet voter. I've voted on every vote this season. I try to vote for the people I think will win, not hope will win. My correct liquibets is 125 of 236, or 53%. 53%! Only 3% higher than what a person would get if they closed their eyes and picked every answer at random (since all liquibets are 50/50).
And you know what? Even having a mere 53% correct voting rate puts me in the top 20% of people who vote every time. (There are 12310 people who have voted on liquibet this season, through the mystic arts of math and estimation, I've concluded that ~3100 people like me vote on every bet.) Isn't that weird?
The maximum number of liquibet points you can have this season right now is 242, if you got every vote correct. Obviously, this is essentially impossible, but how high do you think the #1 ranked person is?
The number 1 ranked person on liquibet, a fellow by the name of SpiZe, has 157 points. He has predicted the correct winner 64.9% of the time. There are 3 people tied for second (aznball123, Arla, and quannump) at 152 points, or 62.8%.
Don't those numbers seem low to you? Out of ~3100 people who vote every time (and these people who vote every time are probably gonna be pretty avid fans of Starcraft, not just casual viewers), the very best predictors, the Artosis of liquibet predictions, is only sitting at 64.9%, he's correct less than 2 out of 3 times. And he's an outlier, there are only 17, SEVENTEEN, people on liquibet who are right more than 60% of the time.
Consider if I were to look at any sport I don't watch at all, football or basketball, and predicted the winners of each game. Just by looking on wikipedia at the teams stats this season and last, I feel like I could probably be right around 65% of the time. Yet the absolute sickest nerd ballers of starcraft who know the game and players inside and out, have trouble being right 60% of the time.
Is there something wrong with the game? If so, is there anything that can be done to fix it?
edit: I originally submitted this as a thread on reddit, but long text posts by someone not famous have a habit of dying quick on that site. I wanted to hear some more opinions on the matter.
One point a couple of people made in that thread was that even back in Brood War, the best of the best maintained only a ~70% winrate. I would say that that's not good enough either. Additionally, there is no one in SC2 that can even reach that low watermark. Mvp, the King of Wings, has a lifetime TLPD winrate of 61%. Life, the most dominant player we've seen in a long time, has over the last 6 months a winrate of 68% (he also failed to reach the round of 8 the last two seasons). After Life, the very top pros are between ~54 and ~62% winrate over the last 6 months. This is for an expansion that's been played for nearly three years now and that's coming to an end soon, shouldn't the game be stable enough for it not to be so volatile?
Great point. The problem is game design. I think sc2 makes it too easy to cheese. If they made the game so you couldn't cheese and had to play standard every game, the best player would win more often. But this is less entertaining...
On February 22 2013 16:54 b0lt wrote: Artosis has been consistently wrong since brood war, he was hyping up really as being the #2 best terran when he had like a 40% win rate, and there were at least 5 players that were obviously better.
It blows my mind how people can feel like comparisons to sports and things of that nature to starcraft are valid or even relevant. People keep trying to theorize ways a game/scene could be better and do so with ridiculous methods. Enjoy the game, the scene, and help it grow. These ridiculous comparisons contribute nothing and have no basis whatsoever.
On February 22 2013 17:07 Mohdoo wrote: It blows my mind how people can feel like comparisons to sports and things of that nature to starcraft are valid or even relevant. People keep trying to theorize ways a game/scene could be better and do so with ridiculous methods. Enjoy the game, the scene, and help it grow. These ridiculous comparisons contribute nothing and have no basis whatsoever.
Oh such negativity! So sad to see.
We are just talking. Don't worry, we won't email any sponsors. We promise.
On February 22 2013 17:07 Mohdoo wrote: It blows my mind how people can feel like comparisons to sports and things of that nature to starcraft are valid or even relevant. People keep trying to theorize ways a game/scene could be better and do so with ridiculous methods. Enjoy the game, the scene, and help it grow. These ridiculous comparisons contribute nothing and have no basis whatsoever.
It blows MY mind when I read such pompous and close minded reactions like this one.
Agreed. The problem is that SC2 is too volatile. Units die so quickly, move so fast compared to the little fog of war, that a little wrong move/ attention going elsewhere can cost you the game. In addition, there's the luck of build order wins
Compared to WC3, where the top players like Moon, Fly, Lyn, Th000, Remind, during their top form, would barely ever lose to inferior opponents. In any tournament, you can almost always predict the ~5 players that would come out on top.
Sc2 is just way to hard, so even the best of the best don't know what they are doing and just rarely hit a spark of inspiration and win a few games in a row ... Just kidding. But I would actually think something is wrong with the game if some players had a win rate around 80%+ atleast in an rts. It would probably mean there is a wall in the game, an region where people wouldn't be able to win against those who crossed this wall and are only slightly better then the ones who didn't but basically win 95% of the time against them. Would be pretty uncompetitive in my eyes. So I think a winrate of ~70% for the best of the best is perfect as it shows that the better player will most likely win in a bo3 with there still being a chance for opponents to win.
Also RTS games have really high standards towards skill. They are fast and complex it is practically impossible to ever do everything that could be done. If Sc2 would be roundbased with no fog of war, there would most likely be players that would have a 90%ish win rate. But unknowns like Fog of War were added because you could add tools to reduce the effect of those unknowns. It made games more complex and harder to master.
Liquibets aren't all 50:50. Take GSL groups for example: 2 out of 4 players advance, that's 6 possible combinations. If you pick "blind" you have a 16.6% chance to pick the right one.
Asking for 90% winrate is ridiculous, most of the time the tournament format itself prevent that. Take GSL code S for example. - Best case scenario: in 2 group stage, you win every single game 2-0, and ro8, ro4 3-0, and lose the final 3-4. You win against 6 players and lose against 1 (85% winrate), but you actually only win 17/21 games, which makes it the 81% winrate.
- Worst case scenario: in 2 group stage, you win every single one 2-0, and ro8, ro4 3-2, and lose the final 0-4. Sure, you win against 6 and lose only to the champion (85% winrate), but actually you only win 14/24 games, which makes it only 58% winrate.
Using winrate based on the number of games will distort (in some way) the point we are trying to make. If you win two bo3 2-0 and lose 2-3 in a bo5, your winrate suddenly doesn't look as nice as it actually is anymore.
I do think, that the game is very volitile - some matchups more than others - but Artosis is way too certain of himself, before thinking too far. I myself am sitting at a 62% rate on liquibet, and I rarely watch GSL anymore. I tune in sometimes if it's live and then except for matches with my absolute favorites I just run it in the background and tab in sometimes... As it has been pointed out earlier, there are a lot mindgames going on in GSL and people prepare very long for a single boX.
I really like Artosis, but I have to point out, that he often unjustly discredits players, that haven't made it really far in GSL. Like Gumiho, Polt, and many many others in the past. He was laughing at Polt and how badly he was gonna lose, when he had been sitting on top of the korean ladder for weeks. Same can be said about many others.
At the very top, we are talking top 32 in the world, the tides are constantly changing. There are a lot of factors other than GSL results you have to take into account. Like how much time have they had to practice. How is their confidence. How are they able to handle being on camera and things like that.
And while I'm on the subject this has annoyed me for ages. When the stats show up for fanpredictions and mvp gets 95% of the votes and Tastosis go "jees, I'm really surprised by that, I would have given maybe 60%, UNDERSTAND that people choose who they think is more likely to win. They DON'T individually assign how big a chance they think the player has of winning... So if it's obvious that a player has a bigger chance to win, even if it's only 2%, if everyone voted correctly that player would have 100% in the fanprediction :-)
On February 22 2013 16:49 PiGStarcraft wrote: Anyone betting on Curious losing ZvP hasn't studied Curious ZvP enough. He messed with Partings timings nice and early every game with nuanced and beautiful adjustments to his play and followed that through with well executed mid-lategame where Parting made more mistakes.
The issue with starcraft II is there is no physical factor which severely hampers a pro player from being the best. It's all about understanding, reactions, mindgames and builds. So if all you need to do is change your mindset of course you can suddenly play a much better game and beat someone whom historically has been smarter at the game than you.
Part of what makes Starcraft so awesome is it isn't like other sport where physicality tends to take precedence, the mental side of things is super dominant.
Also yes there are elements of Poker (limited and false information) in Starcraft so it will rely more on chance than a sport where its about putting a ball in a net.
Interesting points. I would just like to add though that the problem (for me at least) isn't really that Curious defeated Parting but that I wouldn't really be surprised if Curious fell of a little bit now. To me, as a sports spectator, that just gives his win so much less meaning. For instance; I can't really hype myself up that much for watching Sniper even though he won the last GSL (haha I really hope I'm wrong about that...) since that apparently didn't mean that he would make it that far in this one.
Oh yeah well that point about curious dropping off shows how strength in different matchups lets players over or under perform. For instance JYP was SO good PvZ and PvP but had a dismal winrate vs Terran for a long time. So he could take out a potential Zerg or Terran champion, only to lose to an average Terran the next round. This sort of different races is what makes the game more random in tournament results too.
Starcraft will never be a predictable and as even a playing field as sports. We trade off stability and part of the predictability to see constant innovation and mental games going on. It both handicaps and enables Starcraft as a sport.
Haven't read every response to this post, but I think that there are some factors that aren't being considered. I think that the type of game that Starcraft is benefits from different type of competition structures than the ones currently being used. I'm not saying that the ones used are bad, but that they create more volatile situations.
Playing in longer seasons where you have a long time to accumulate results before an elimination playoff would probably lead to a better view of a player's skill, and you can see an individual's results versus everyone rather than seeding also affecting results.
Once in a playoff setting I think things would become volatile again, but the people who made it there would have proven themselves. And playoffs even in traditional sports can be just as volatile and unexpected. I'm from SF and a big Giants fan. Who would've thought they would win two World Series titles in 3 years? Probably not many "experts" who weren't biased in all honesty.
Well real sports do not have fog of war, and there arent unknown 'plays' that can suprise you according to current 'rules' aka metagame. It is best to compare sc2 to real war than real sports. Real war has a lot of unknown just like starcraft, while real sports have very little unknown factors.
Fog of war creates situations like right place at right time, wrong place at right time, etc. etc. There is more luck involved. If you want it to be just skilled based, remove fog of war, and this will happen. The best micro will always win.But that would only mean less exciting outcomes almost every time.
On February 22 2013 16:01 L0L wrote: Yeah like Kennigit said this has been brought up this the very first games of sc2. by making the game UI more efficient to fit into modern gaming it basically lowered the skill ceiling and the ability for naturally gifted dexterity to win all the time. it has made the game more fun to play, because i can do more stuff and control more things compared to something like BW, but has also made the game less fun to watch imo, because the stuff the pros do is not mind blowing insane and physically impossible looking like it was to watch a korean pro micro and macro in BW.
i think the game should have 2 modes. "casual mode", like we have now. and something like the SC2BW mod as a "hardcore mode" which is used for tournaments.
edit: the game is already very much rock paper scissors already, and by listening to artosis on state of the game, it looks like HotS is even worse. the game will be based completely on scouting and denying scouting because the build orders counter each other so much more now with such a wider variety of units and strategies.
i also want to throw out there that imo the top 100 players (completely arbitrary number) in the game are fairly equal and can take games off each other with around 50% win rate. for example, anyone in Code A, and even a lot of people in Code B, are good enough to beat anyone in Code S and win the GSL. the kespa players are not going to get any better at sc2 imo than they are now. they have already pretty much figured the game out and it just comes down to preparing build orders to counter the other guy.
That's not the way to make the game I highly disagree with that.
Actually, now that I think about it... MVP proves that you can be a consistent contender\winner of the hardest tournaments for a very long time by simply having been that. And while my personal opinion is that he is by far the most accomplished Wings of Liberty player I definitely don't think he has more natural talent, mentality or a better practice situation than for instance the top top Kespa players. Shouldn't that mean that guys like Flash and Jaedong could (should?) eventually dominate even more then MVP did?
Isn't that, at least part of, what we want? It might still be impossible to predict the round of 32, but we would have a good idea about who's going to reach the semifinals...
i dont feel as bad anymore having negative score in fantasy pro league tnx :D
as far as the game goes, i wish there was more basic way a better player could just be better and beat people. but the truth is sc2 comes down mostly to knowledge about build orders without nearly as heavy weight on execution
if you know what a guy is gonna do in sc2 - if your high level player you can find a way to win most likely. if you know what a guy will do in bw hes still going to rape the fuck out of you unless your super close to his skill level
On February 22 2013 17:29 Fionn wrote: I feel bad for Artosis. Must suck always making public predictions, being wrong and having people say you curse their favorite players.
yeah, I bet you've never felt like this ever. Have you, Fionn?
I hear a lot of people complain that the skill ceiling is too low (quite funny, considering noone on sc2 comes even CLOSE to reaching it, I have yet to see a guy drop 5 locactions at once and micro each drop perfectly) and how that results in noone dominating.
This is just wrong. You can create games with skill ceilings that far exceed a game like broodwar yet the best players wouldn't win more than 60%. What really matters are the random factors that one cannot control. Say you create a game exactly like bw but now you have to throw 4 dices every 10 seconds and you may not start using your mouse until you've thrown 1234. The skill ceiling would be identical to bw but it should be obvious that the outcome will be largely influenced by the dice throws (luck).
The reason why the best sc2 player loses a lot more often than say the best chess player is because there is a lot more luck involved in sc2, but Id argue that's also what makes sc2 fun to watch. In Tennis watching Federer play an unknown is not very interesting to me because the outcome will almost always be the same. I will not watch until he faces someone who has a decent shot at beating him and all his other games aren't very interesting to me. One easy to way to ensure that the best player wins more often in sc2 would be to remove the fog of war but that would be incredibly boring because it limits the game by removing strategical options.
I actually think sc2 is quite amazing in this aspect. Good players win enough that players like the old MVP/Life can win multiple championships and be favourites in any tournament they enter, but there's still so much luck involved that upsets regularily happen and even a ro 32 match between the former gsl champ and someone who just qualified for code S is interesting to watch. I still think the scouting options on sc2 should be a little bit better though and blind all ins should be a bit weaker.
On February 22 2013 17:38 NightOfTheDead wrote: Well real sports do not have fog of war, and there arent unknown 'plays' that can suprise you according to current 'rules' aka metagame. It is best to compare sc2 to real war than real sports. Real war has a lot of unknown just like starcraft, while real sports have very little unknown factors.
I am not sure about that. If you look at something like American football, there are lot of different 'plays' that can be run from the same formation. QBs also change their plays after looking at the defense's formation. And it has a meta game. Throwing the football is more common compare to 20 years ago. And even recently, there are things like spread offense, QB option, etc.
It is always offense uses some new plays, defense adjusts, then offense find other new plays and it just goes in circles. In this aspect, it is very similar to the evolving meta of starcraft2.
well, in poker there are some players who will get lucky and win something big one day but the better players are always going to win in the long run so it's just a matter of short-term and long-term. You can't win something based on luck in more you play
Winrates are funny things. Suppose you kept track of your winrate on ladder, thinking you could use that to measure your progress at the game. You'd find yourself awfully discouraged; no matter how much it felt like you were improving, your winrate would oscillate but always return to about 50%. Of course, this is not because you aren't improving, but rather because the ladder keeps matching you against harder opponents any time you start winning.
This affects players at the pro level, as well. As your winrate improves, you start advancing further in tournaments; as you advance further in tournaments, your opponents become more difficult. Thus any rise in your winrate is immediately resisted by negative feedback.
Theoretically, you might think this effect would disappear for the very best of the best, since there are no better players to encounter at higher levels. But for those best of the best, other factors come in. If your winrate skyrockets, all of a sudden every player is preparing specifically for facing you. Your builds are picked apart for any weakness imaginable, and those weaknesses are exploited mercilessly. It's not even just other players studying you; Parting's immortal sentry all-in, for example, had such a high win rate that the entire community was out for solutions (there's even statements from Dustin Browder discussing how to properly defend it). So even at the very top of the skill ladder, there's negative feedback effects preventing your winrate from jumping too high.
So it's not exactly that the game isn't skill-based. It's not even really that chance mechanics or "luck" are playing such a huge role. It's just that winrate has a lot of negative feedback effects preventing it from jumping too high or too low.
On February 22 2013 17:38 NightOfTheDead wrote: Well real sports do not have fog of war, and there arent unknown 'plays' that can suprise you according to current 'rules' aka metagame. It is best to compare sc2 to real war than real sports. Real war has a lot of unknown just like starcraft, while real sports have very little unknown factors.
I am not sure about that. If you look at something like American football, there are lot of different 'plays' that can be run from the same formation. QBs also change their plays after looking at the defense's formation. And it has a meta game. Throwing the football is more common compare to 20 years ago. And even recently, there are things like spread offense, QB option, etc.
It is always offense uses some new plays, defense adjusts, then offense find other new plays and it just goes in circles. In this aspect, it is very similar to the evolving meta of starcraft2.
I can agree to metagame in real sports, however, when you factor in fog of war, it kinda creates a lot more unknown factors than in sports. Although to my taste, having a bit of unclear factors doesnt take away from excitement, more so, it adds to it. Imagine chess with first move of both players being hidden. It kinda would be similar to what sc2 is. And that would add a whole level of play.
Starcraft is like poker in a way. There are some randomness that occur, mostly in the beginning of the game I suppose. But it's not all physical capabilities like sports or all strategies like team sports.
The best poker players will win tournament here and there, but never all of them, and can get bested by a no name on a bad read/hand early in the tournament. But for both the poker players and the SC2 player, consistency is what's keeping them on the pro scene.
The Kim Carrier curse was even worse, and that was in Brood War. Also, 70% is extremely high. In the NHL, during an 82 game season, the best team generally only wins around 60% of their games. In chess, draws are extremely common and often make for the bulk of a top player's games, but excluding draws, Carlsen, the highest rated player in the world, has around a 75% win rate over his last 500 games. Asking for players to consistently win 80%+ of their games is just too much.
Just to add some more interesting information to this thread, I'd just like to mention my own liquibet stats. I'm currently ranked 27th in liquibet, and actually around last week was tied for first. I've voted in all but 5 bets.
Now you might say, hey, this guy's doing pretty good. How does he pick his winners?
The answer? Pretty much at random. I don't follow starcraft anymore. Haven't for the past year or so. I have heard of less than perhaps 40% of the players I see on liquibet, and even those that I do, I don't follow anymore. I have no idea how good anyone really is. Thus, I bet essentially randomly more than 75% of the time. Usually I just kind of pick the name I like best. Yet this strategy has put me on-par, if not higher than many die-hard liquibetters who follow starcraft religiously.
I don't want to draw any conclusions from this, but it does tend to agree with the OP's suggestions.
The day someone in Starcraft is holding a 90% winrate consistently is the day I stop watching. In almost no competitive scenes does something go 90% winrate. That is absurd. Not even in 100 years of Baseball has somebody done that. The novelty of a "God" would wear off after a few tournaments of nothing being accomplished.
On February 22 2013 17:38 NightOfTheDead wrote: Well real sports do not have fog of war, and there arent unknown 'plays' that can suprise you according to current 'rules' aka metagame. It is best to compare sc2 to real war than real sports. Real war has a lot of unknown just like starcraft, while real sports have very little unknown factors.
I am not sure about that. If you look at something like American football, there are lot of different 'plays' that can be run from the same formation. QBs also change their plays after looking at the defense's formation. And it has a meta game. Throwing the football is more common compare to 20 years ago. And even recently, there are things like spread offense, QB option, etc.
It is always offense uses some new plays, defense adjusts, then offense find other new plays and it just goes in circles. In this aspect, it is very similar to the evolving meta of starcraft2.
I can agree to metagame in real sports, however, when you factor in fog of war, it kinda creates a lot more unknown factors than in sports. Although to my taste, having a bit of unclear factors doesnt take away from excitement, more so, it adds to it. Imagine chess with first move of both players being hidden. It kinda would be similar to what sc2 is. And that would add a whole level of play.
Why do "real sports" have to be full knowledge games? I don't know what you count as a sport, but poker is at the very least a highly competitive game that is taken seriously at the highest levels, and even winds up on ESPN once in a while. And poker's mechanics depend heavily on players only having partial knowledge. Interestingly, if poker were a full knowledge game it would be almost entirely luck-based, but because of the fact that hands are known only to the players that hold them, poker becomes a very skill-based game.
if you know what a guy is gonna do in sc2 - if your high level player you can find a way to win most likely. if you know what a guy will do in bw hes still going to rape the fuck out of you unless your super close to his skill level
I agree completely. I think a lot of that came down to mechanics. None of the races in SC2 are mechanically demanding in a way comparable to BW. Granted, most of the mechanics in BW came from a UI no sane person wants to go back to (no multi-select, 12 units per control, no automine etc.) but I am disappointed Blizzard didn't make a concerted effort when developing SC2 to introduce units that scaled with a players mechanics e.g. units you could dump apm into. Obviously, most players don't want pointless clicking introduced just for the sake of adding mechanical difficulty.
On February 22 2013 16:49 PiGStarcraft wrote: Anyone betting on Curious losing ZvP hasn't studied Curious ZvP enough. He messed with Partings timings nice and early every game with nuanced and beautiful adjustments to his play and followed that through with well executed mid-lategame where Parting made more mistakes.
The issue with starcraft II is there is no physical factor which severely hampers a pro player from being the best. It's all about understanding, reactions, mindgames and builds. So if all you need to do is change your mindset of course you can suddenly play a much better game and beat someone whom historically has been smarter at the game than you.
Part of what makes Starcraft so awesome is it isn't like other sport where physicality tends to take precedence, the mental side of things is super dominant.
Also yes there are elements of Poker (limited and false information) in Starcraft so it will rely more on chance than a sport where its about putting a ball in a net.
Interesting points. I would just like to add though that the problem (for me at least) isn't really that Curious defeated Parting but that I wouldn't really be surprised if Curious fell of a little bit now. To me, as a sports spectator, that just gives his win so much less meaning. For instance; I can't really hype myself up that much for watching Sniper even though he won the last GSL (haha I really hope I'm wrong about that...) since that apparently didn't mean that he would make it that far in this one.
Oh yeah well that point about curious dropping off shows how strength in different matchups lets players over or under perform. For instance JYP was SO good PvZ and PvP but had a dismal winrate vs Terran for a long time. So he could take out a potential Zerg or Terran champion, only to lose to an average Terran the next round. This sort of different races is what makes the game more random in tournament results too.
Starcraft will never be a predictable and as even a playing field as sports. We trade off stability and part of the predictability to see constant innovation and mental games going on. It both handicaps and enables Starcraft as a sport.
Yeah I remember poor JYP back in those days as well... And yes Starcraft II (and its expansions) will most likely never come close to the level of predictability that most of the established sports have. And yes that is both good and bad. I just wish we had a couple of MVPs man... A couple of that MVP who was in a class of his own. I would be fine with that. No sorry; I am fine with what we already have - I would be ecstatic(!) if we could get just a couple of MVP-level players... The extra stability and legitimacy that would add to the game would be great.
SC2 has a lower skill ceiling than desirable, definitely more so than traditional sports, but it's still there. I do wish there was a greater difference at the very top, but I think you just have to take it as it is and just enjoy it. There are many similar games in the same situation, and people still enjoy them.
I don't think we'll have a game with a truly high skill cap for a long while. Not until the controls have more depth than a mouse a keyboard, or at the least until a new RTS comes out with much less automation than SC2, but a better means for skill-based observation/analysis of an opponent.
On February 22 2013 17:38 NightOfTheDead wrote: Well real sports do not have fog of war, and there arent unknown 'plays' that can suprise you according to current 'rules' aka metagame. It is best to compare sc2 to real war than real sports. Real war has a lot of unknown just like starcraft, while real sports have very little unknown factors.
I am not sure about that. If you look at something like American football, there are lot of different 'plays' that can be run from the same formation. QBs also change their plays after looking at the defense's formation. And it has a meta game. Throwing the football is more common compare to 20 years ago. And even recently, there are things like spread offense, QB option, etc.
It is always offense uses some new plays, defense adjusts, then offense find other new plays and it just goes in circles. In this aspect, it is very similar to the evolving meta of starcraft2.
I honestly can't see why you can draw a parallel. Seriously, as someone who have watched the NFL for over a decade, I can't even begin to see how they compare.
Playing SC2 is like playing football where you can't see the defensive formations, whether its in base, nickel, where it's showing blitz or showing cover 2. Where defenses can't see whether it's 5 wide or jumbo formation. And that there's this extra element that the defender can "peek" into the offensive huddle to see perhaps a partial page of the actual play, the entire page, or nothing.
What you're describing with football is like playing SC2 without fog of war. Because even with maphack, your opponent can still do something different from what you imagined. He can still, for example, go early gas and then rax-expand to throw you off. Having no fog of war doesn't mean you can read your opponent's mind. It just means you see everything they do in real time.
I think that there is a large combernation of reason why te winrates and hence low predection rates. T
#1 yes this game could ave a larger skill cap but thats not really the biggest one.
the rest of the points are for the same reason, unlike other sports starcraft games can be won by devloping a strat before the game that will give you an advantage. IE; starcraft is not all about execution where most sports are.
#2 there are three races, unlike in basketball where there is only one (balck, i had to, it was there, or pollo, white) each races win rate rises and falls over time, terran winrate was high and now days zergs winrate is his. the playeys each stike to their own race and cope the loose in there races winrates personaly as well. make it harder to eb consitant.
#3 invidaul players who come up with a new strat or just know something that everyone else doesn't know about that game yet will do very very well, for a short time, this is why we see no namers often shoot all the way there out of no where to win a GSL and then fall down in a season or two and hover at less than code S winning level.
#4 unlike other sports, in starcraft, dffernt styles match up well against one another. Now this could be that a players does some research and blind counters a build, making it apear that the game is total build shit.
Now having said aaallll of that, I have no idea how much of a difference each of those things (plus ll the stuf i havn't thought of) rally make. But it will be some, and i would say its quite a bit of a difference.
On February 22 2013 18:03 Sephiren wrote: SC2 has a lower skill ceiling than desirable, definitely more so than traditional sports, but it's still there. I do wish there was a greater difference at the very top, but I think you just have to take it as it is and just enjoy it. There are many similar games in the same situation, and people still enjoy them.
I don't think we'll have a game with a truly high skill cap for a long while. Not until the controls have more depth than a mouse a keyboard, or at the least until a new RTS comes out with much less automation than SC2, but a better means for skill-based observation/analysis of an opponent.
Until someone can beat the control of Automaton 2000, I would consider the skill ceiling of SC2 more than sufficient.
On February 22 2013 18:11 JazzNL wrote: Vote for Zergs and watch your fortunes rise!
You don't watch much HotS do you ? And your not much of a bettng man either.
OT:
Sc2 has alot lower "mechanical" skill ceiling for sure, though it seems to make it up in faster gameplay. The only real problem with faster gameplay is you get 1 big army and try to melt the other, a single good engagement can win you the game. Hence lower so called "skilled" players can beat those that are considered higher "skilled" players with a good position or some would say luck.
On February 22 2013 15:38 Gatesleeper wrote: IYou can say that PartinG is a much stronger player than Curious, he should win 3-1, maybe 3-2. But for then for him to get trounced 0-3, what does that say about this game we watch?
Nothing, absolutely nothing. Curious is really good. That's why that happened. And Artosis agreed on that on stream btw and talked about him being one of the best in practice but despite that always falling down to code A when it counted. But not this time. Also Zerg is still slightly imba (in WoL) imho, let's not forget that. So there you go. The game is a bit too volatile though. Just a little bit. But that's ok.
Also, correct me if I am wrong, but there is a much higher population of SC2 games between high level players in a give time frame (say 1 year) then was in BW. Couldn't it be possible some of the discrepancy is due to two different sample sizes?
You compare win rates of top players in SC2 and conventional sports. I claim that in sports the top players/teams are really close to the weaker ones in terms of what we call "skill", but there are other factors which differentiate them. The most obvious one is money. A team with more money can hire better players. In individual sports it may not seem as important, but still, top players spend a fuckton of money on equipment and professional training. And the main issue about money is that it snowballs. The best player/team gets the most money from sponsors, so they can get even more ahead of the others. Thus, insane win rates can occur. In SC2 the only factor that decides the outcome of a match is the skill of both players. As there are a lot of pros who train really hard, it's nigh impossible for one of them to get ahead of the rest.
On February 22 2013 15:54 inSeason wrote: Why doesn't this change? Why aren't we seeing steps taken for this to improve?
Because now, just like then, Blizzard do not care. Their main goal is not to make a great esports title like BW, they want to make an RTS which even casual gamers will buy and enjoy. Of course, they love the esport scene, it brings a lot of attention and money their way, but they most certainly aren't willing to risk their userbase to make the skillceiling higher.
I think the game is still young. If you look at code B compared to code S today there is a much bigger difference in skill than there was in 2011. Also when you look at high profile matches, people still make a lot of stupid mistakes.
Looking at the whole picture, Mvp has 4 GSL golds and 2 silvers. That is enough for me.
I feel like I'm the only one who remembers not so long ago we all praised Artosis for rarely predicting a set wrong, in the early days of sotg he even stopped predicting so he wouldn't lose his sick streak. Its just a run of bad luck; Artosis knows what hes talking about as much as anyone who is in his position of analyzing high level starcraft.
There is no point in discussing these things here. For every well-thought out rational argument on how to fix this game there are a hundred fan bois licking Blizzards asshole and paying them money for more. I have the SC2 forum blocked on this site and every time I unblock it so I can see if HotS had major changes I see 3 threads like this one at once, and you know what? Nothings going to change, you know why? Money All these pros/casters could come together and lead a boycott which would actually change something but they wont because they like money more than they like a good game. EDIT: spelling
Consider this: Artosis, perhaps the most knowledgable guy in all of Starcraft II, is constantly predicting certain players to do well and constantly getting it wrong. Hence, the "curse".
There's so many things wrong with this.
The best players lose because it's impossible to play a perfect game of Starcraft. It's as easy as that.
Is there something inherently wrong with a game where the supposed best players so often lose to players who are widely considered weaker than them? Like, is the skill ceiling not high enough? Is it too luck based? Why don't the best players beat the slightly less good players more often?
This is the biggest problem I see with SC2 as an eSport in general. It seems that luck plays such a significant roll in the outcome. I want to see the skill ceiling be so high that we can have players that generally never lose to weaker opponents.
I want to see the best player in Starcraft have a 90% win rate. Not a 60% win rate.
Edit: I think I over-estimated when I said 90% win rate, but the idea stands that I'd prefer higher win rates for the best players.
Again with the ridiculous comparisons of SC2 to real sports... when will it end?
SC2 is a volatile game. If Federer goes into a tennis match and a lower ranked player surprises him with a unique playing style, he still has plenty of time over the sets to adjust and counter it. But in SC2 you don't have that. You get hit with a unique strat or cheese, you're probably already dead. Then you're one game down in a Bo3 against someone that is probably really close to you in skill anyway, and you lose 2-0 despite being favoured. It happens.
People underestimate GSL players so much, these guys practice hours upon hours every single freaking day, they can all take games off of one another. There's a ridiculous amount of pressure and tactical strategy that comes into a (on average) 15-16 minute game. SC2 is punishing as hell, as it should be.
Not to mention map balance and metagame comes into play as well. These things don't exist in real sports.
I have no issues with this. Players like MVP have showed us 70%+ win rates are possible in SC2, you just have to be good enough to earn it. It's just a difference in preference I'd say, I'd rather see the player that played better in a series win than have long periods of dominance by fan favourites for the sake of a high skill ceiling.
Also, other sports are volaltile as well. Tennis is an exception, not the rule. Look at a game like soccer which is arguably the most popular sport in the world. Is Barca(The (BW)Flash of Soccer) winning every CL-Final? Not as far as i know.
There's no way someone will have like 90% career winrate. BW's top players had 60-70% winrate which is pretty much the same as SC2's top players. SC2's players have to play more games per year too. If skillcap is high enough for someone like Mvp to win everthing in 1 year then it's high enough. The problem with people is that they saw their favourite players lost and think they were defeated because they were unlucky. Which is simply BS most of the time. Your title as "the best player" won't help you to win when you play like shit. If you want to stay at the top forever then you have to keep getting better forever. People who play better are supposed to win not people who people think are better.
A lot has to do with how good they play on the day, mindgames, how much preparation, imbalance, jetlag. Many of the best betters probably is comparing x players best shape vs y players best shape + skewing it a little towards his own bias as who he wants to see win. I'm guessing many betters even bet on matches they're not so sure about. I consider myself a pretty good better and has predicted many unlikely outcomes, who wins a mlg or something, which is really ridiculous actually, when you think about the small amount of chance there is to win a mlg with all the contenders that there is, even so the korean domination is already one evidence that the game is not really random at all, the reason why one player isn't beating everything like in SC1/WC3 is that now, there's even more competition.
I would say personally it's because there's a lot of good players, but very few excellent players (say Flash and Jaedong in BW) of course in BW there were some others, but in SC2 there may be a lot of players who play at a high level, but in SC2 I'd say there just isn't anyone who's shown they can be as good as Flash was in SC1. Nobody has looked completely solid outside of maybe MVP and he's been losing recently due to his neck injury.
Tennis is random: 1. top players take points off each other all the time, because you can take risks. 2. some points are a lot more important than others. You can win games without winning the majority of the points.
Chess is random: 1. if your game veers into a type of play that you prepared for then you have an advantage. 2. you can't know the consequences of your moves, since you can't look more than x moves ahead.
Both games have moments where you take calculated risks, but in the end the winner is almost always the better ranked player. In SC2 this is not the case. I think it's not a question of calculated risks existing, it's that there aren't enough of them, not enough moments in the game where you have to make some interesting decision of engagement with multiple good choices, and so on. If that was the case then the build order advantages wouldn't matter so much, since with good play you could still catch up.
A few more comments:
People should stop dredging up MVP's 70% winrate. This was during a time with less players at the top, he was far and away the strongest player, and therefore it's meaningless. Look at the stats now: Life is 66% for the last six months, that's with him being both the strongest player and playing zerg. Furthermore, he's an outlier. This season of GSL is prospected (maybe Taeja and MC will prove me wrong) to have yet another completely new Ro4, there again will be no repeat winner, the game seems like it's getting more volatile as time goes on, not less.
Calling Tennis or Chess random compared to SC2 is just ridicilous. In those two sports (if chess can be labelled as one) the best players consistently win; In SC2 they don't, unless they belong to a certain race, but that's an entirely different discussion.
I think the reasons it's so hard to predict the outcome of a match is because the metagame isn't stable at all. SC2:WoL has had a lot of patches that is partially the reason for these shifts in metagame, in addition you have players that are just really good at a certain thing (for instance MC and his 2-base pushes with forcefields).
Cross-country skiing had a "metagame" shift when the changed from just the classic style to also include freestyle. Different people adapted differently to these changes and we had a massive shift in who could win what. This is what's happening in SC2 as well, but it shifts much more rapidly.
Looking at who has won the GSL, we have people like Nesta, Mvp and MC that to me looks like they have been in a league of their own. For various reasons they have been in a bit of a slump now, but it's obvious that their skill makes them win more often than less skilled players. In other words, the carreer results of a player tells us how good he is at the game, not the individual games.
In football (soccer for Americans) we have a saying in Norwegian "Cup is cup" and it's about how in a sport like football you are going to have upsets when you play in a cup as opposed to a league. Nearly all tournaments in SC2 are cup-based (single or double elimination), while a lot of sports are league based.
The skill ceiling in SC2 is infinite. At least in my opinion, it's impossible to reach a peak where you can split 100% perfectly while stutter stepping your marines and combine it with macro/drops/transfers/upgrades. Automaton 2000 shows the true cap of which no human can reach. The game is too fast of a speed compared to BW.
Gretorp mentioned this to me: The brokenness of BW wasn't exactly the reason why it was balanced. Rather, it was the incredible difficulty to execute the brokenness of a build.
In SC2, it's very easy to abuse for easy wins. Gateway timings, Void Ray/Colossus, TvP Mass Thors, Roach max, Fungals, or even Ghosts in TvZ. Therefore, players need less mechanical skill to execute optimized play.
To remedy this, the game needs the seemingly-OP strategies to require more skill to pull off. In Wings, the best strats which are extremely powerful are too easy to execute. I have high hopes for HotS to guide the game in the right direction ^^
On February 22 2013 19:37 Grumbels wrote: Tennis is random: 1. top players take points off each other all the time, because you can take risks. 2. some points are a lot more important than others. You can win games without winning the majority of the points.
Chess is random: 1. if your game veers into a type of play that you prepared for then you have an advantage. 2. you can't know the consequences of your moves, since you can't look more than x moves ahead.
Both games have moments where you take calculated risks, but in the end the winner is almost always the better ranked player. In SC2 this is not the case. I think it's not a question of calculated risks existing, it's that there aren't enough of them, not enough moments in the game where you have to make some interesting decision of engagement with multiple good choices, and so on. If that was the case then the build order advantages wouldn't matter so much, since with good play you could still catch up.
A few more comments:
People should stop dredging up MVP's 70% winrate. This was during a time with less players at the top, he was far and away the strongest player, and therefore it's meaningless. Look at the stats now: Life is 66% for the last six months, that's with him being both the strongest player and playing zerg. Furthermore, he's an outlier. This season of GSL is prospected (maybe Taeja and MC will prove me wrong) to have yet another completely new Ro4, there again will be no repeat winner, the game seems like it's getting more volatile as time goes on, not less.
What happened in the last 6 months were the flooding in of a massive amount of players, some of them extremely good. That contributed to a lot of instability.
On February 22 2013 15:38 Gatesleeper wrote: Consider this: Artosis, perhaps the most knowledgable guy in all of Starcraft II,
he is not. thats the biggest reason he predicts so much wrong.
another reason is because the game is kinda volatile and GSL allows you to have a long time to prepare a counter build against your opponent.
Knowledgeable isn't not the same is completely objective and psychic. As far as casters or commentators go, it's hard to argue for the "most knowledgeable" title for anyone else but Artosis.
On February 22 2013 15:38 Gatesleeper wrote: Consider this: Artosis, perhaps the most knowledgable guy in all of Starcraft II,
he is not. thats the biggest reason he predicts so much wrong.
another reason is because the game is kinda volatile and GSL allows you to have a long time to prepare a counter build against your opponent.
Knowledgeable isn't not the same is completely objective and psychic. As far as casters or commentators go, it's hard to argue for the "most knowledgeable" title for anyone else but Artosis.
Uh... Wolf? I'd definitely say he's more knowledgeable 300 times over. I obviously won't have popular opinion/people agreeing with me on that because of the amount of Tastosis fanboys but Wolf has insane knowledge of the game and players, precise casting and very little banter.
Is there something inherently wrong with a game where the supposed best players so often lose to players who are widely considered weaker than them? Like, is the skill ceiling not high enough? Is it too luck based? Why don't the best players beat the slightly less good players more often?
This has been suggested by pros, writers, community figures since 2008 when we started playing alpha builds. It has been consistently complained about (especially by idra) for years now.
Ironically, if there was one game where the best player won all the time, it was Warcraft III, not Starcraft Brood War. Flash dropped lots of bo1 and bo3 against lesser players and his win ratio never exceeded 75% in proleague. While in Warcraft3, even at the peak of the game, there always was a group of ~10 players (moon, remind, grubby, lyn, fly, xiaot, tod, sky, infi, fov, sweet, ted) that were almost undefeated in lan bo1, and litteraly undefeatable in a lan bo3 against lesser players.
I don't understand this thread. It's a Curse, there's no scientific explanation for magic. Tide goes in, tide goes out. Artosis says player will win, player loses. You can't explain that.
What happened in the last 6 months were the flooding in of a massive amount of players, some of them extremely good. That contributed to a lot of instability.
What flooding of players are you talking about? They have always been there. Pros don't pop up like balloons. Recent results have gave popularity to new players that are either mostly Zerg foreigners or Kespa players
What happened in the last 6 months were the flooding in of a massive amount of players, some of them extremely good. That contributed to a lot of instability.
What flooding of players are you talking about? They have always been there. Pros don't pop up like balloons. Recent results have gave popularity to new players that are either mostly Zerg foreigners or Kespa players
KeSPA players weren't always here. Well, they are, but they were playing BW back then.
On February 22 2013 15:38 Gatesleeper wrote: Consider this: Artosis, perhaps the most knowledgable guy in all of Starcraft II,
he is not. thats the biggest reason he predicts so much wrong.
another reason is because the game is kinda volatile and GSL allows you to have a long time to prepare a counter build against your opponent.
Knowledgeable isn't not the same is completely objective and psychic. As far as casters or commentators go, it's hard to argue for the "most knowledgeable" title for anyone else but Artosis.
Uh... Wolf? I'd definitely say he's more knowledgeable 300 times over. I obviously won't have popular opinion/people agreeing with me on that because of the amount of Tastosis fanboys but Wolf has insane knowledge of the game and players, precise casting and very little banter.
Banter and entertainment skills doesn't mean a person lacks knowledge. Wolf is one of very few people that could be argued for that title, I would agree.
On February 22 2013 15:38 Gatesleeper wrote: Consider this: Artosis, perhaps the most knowledgable guy in all of Starcraft II,
he is not. thats the biggest reason he predicts so much wrong.
another reason is because the game is kinda volatile and GSL allows you to have a long time to prepare a counter build against your opponent.
Knowledgeable isn't not the same is completely objective and psychic. As far as casters or commentators go, it's hard to argue for the "most knowledgeable" title for anyone else but Artosis.
Uh... Wolf? I'd definitely say he's more knowledgeable 300 times over. I obviously won't have popular opinion/people agreeing with me on that because of the amount of Tastosis fanboys but Wolf has insane knowledge of the game and players, precise casting and very little banter.
Banter and entertainment skills doesn't mean a person lacks knowledge. Wolf is one of very few people that could be argued for that title, I would agree.
No, it doesn't mean they lack knowledge. I just appreciate hearing more about players and statistics and what players usually do in certain situations over banter. It's a personal preference.
On February 22 2013 15:38 Gatesleeper wrote:Why don't the best players beat the slightly less good players more often??
I actually know the answer to this question. Why is because just as for you, it has been on my mind for a very long time aswell and I have thought about this very much.
At a time, always when I liked a player and bet on him to win, he is the player who looses first. And I ask myself why.
The answer to that question is that: We do not know who the best player is. We think we know, but we actually do not know. Why we do not know who the best player is, is simply because we are not sitting at their teamhouse watching how much they practice. Since we don't see who practices hardcore and who takes a lot of breaks, chats, goes to facebook etc. We cannot predict who is going to win.
We think that say for example, MC is a favourite going into a tournament. But we actually have no clue of how much MC practices in that very moment as he enters the tournament. Maybe someone unknown has practice 12 h/day when MC practiced 8h/day. Then when the unknown win we call it an upset. Is it an upset? Not at all, the unknown should win since he is playing harder. But we don't know that because we don't see how much they practice.
How do I get to know more of who practices and who doesn't? Well, 6 months back I started adding most pro players to my friend list in Battle Net to see what people are online a lot and what people are not. Of course pro players can use secret accounts and not to talk about the |||||||| censorship, but it gives a picture.
For example, now when I go into HotS Beta, those players I see online are all Korean pro players. And IdrA is actually a player who has impressed me a lot, IdrA is the foreign player who I see online the most. Therefore I expect IdrA to be able to perform pretty decently when HotS hits. KTFlash has also been online a lot, the same for M¤ForGG. Nerchio used to be online all the time when I played WoL and it shows off by Nerchio's performance in tournaments.
When we know how the pro players practice, that's when we will be able to predict who wins and who doesnt.
On February 22 2013 16:43 SuperYo1000 wrote: sc2 has gotten significantly more stale in the last year. Lets not ruin it and have almost predetermined tourny outcomes as our goal as a community
Good point.
...Poor Artois, what's his prediction rate this season now?
For example, now when I go into HotS Beta, those players I see online are all Korean pro players. And IdrA is actually a player who has impressed me a lot, IdrA is the foreign player who I see online the most. Therefore I expect IdrA to be able to perform pretty decently when HotS hits. KTFlash has also been online a lot. Nerchio used to be online all the time when I played WoL and it shows off by Nerchio's performance in tournaments.
KTFlash on HotS beta is actually Marineking just in-case you didn't know.
On February 22 2013 15:38 Gatesleeper wrote:Why don't the best players beat the slightly less good players more often??
I actually know the answer to this question. Why is because just as for you, it has been on my mind for a very long time aswell and I have thought about this very much.
At a time, always when I liked a player and bet on him to win, he is the player who looses first. And I ask myself why.
The answer to that question is that: We do not know who the best player is. We think we know, but we actually do not know. Why we do not know who the best player is, is simply because we are not sitting at their teamhouse watching how much they practice. Since we don't see who practices hardcore and who takes a lot of breaks, chats, goes to facebook etc. We cannot predict who is going to win.
We think that say for example, MC is a favourite going into a tournament. But we actually have no clue of how much MC practices in that very moment as he enters the tournament. Maybe someone unknown has practice 12 h/day when MC practiced 8h/day. Then when the unknown win we call it an upset. Is it an upset? Not at all, the unknown should win since he is playing harder. But we don't know that because we don't see how much they practice.
How do I get to know more of who practices and who doesn't? Well, 6 months back I started adding most pro players to my friend list in Battle Net to see what people are online a lot and what people are not. Of course pro players can use secret accounts and not to talk about the |||||||| censorship, but it gives a picture.
For example, now when I go into HotS Beta, those players I see online are all Korean pro players. And IdrA is actually a player who has impressed me a lot, IdrA is the foreign player who I see online the most. Therefore I expect IdrA to be able to perform pretty decently when HotS hits. KTFlash has also been online a lot, the same for M¤ForGG. Nerchio used to be online all the time when I played WoL and it shows off by Nerchio's performance in tournaments.
When we know how the pro players practice, that's when we will be able to predict who wins and who doesnt.
For example, now when I go into HotS Beta, those players I see online are all Korean pro players. And IdrA is actually a player who has impressed me a lot, IdrA is the foreign player who I see online the most. Therefore I expect IdrA to be able to perform pretty decently when HotS hits. KTFlash has also been online a lot. Nerchio used to be online all the time when I played WoL and it shows off by Nerchio's performance in tournaments.
KTFlash on HotS beta is actually Marineking just in-case you didn't know.
I heard some people saying so on a stream, calling KTFlash Marineking. And I said on that chat as I say now that I want someone to confirm this is true before I believe it. But say that it is true, it still shows the same picture that then Marineking should be performing well in upcoming tournaments...
MVP must be the luckiest guy alive being able to consecutively win tournaments. I mean the chance of that are those of lottery statistics!
honestly artosis is bad at predicting players because he is simply not that good at scouting talents. Some people can be good at the game, but are shit at adapting the meta and follow new builds. Some people are good at theorycrafting, but are terrible at execution.
Just because artosis follows sc2 for a long time does not mean he is anymore knowledgeable than you are predicting X or Y pro at advancing. Besides, if you bet against artosis you would be swimming in liquidbet and probably have 70%+ success rates. That's not luck, that is simply not being observant on strength of players
p.s I am honestly surprised at how many people bet on parting advancing. If you pay attention to his playstyle at all he is no good outside of a specific execution timing. I knew he would not have advanced when I saw him go against symbol, an incredibly underrated player who have been very stable since his debut.
I don't remember what Korean it was, either it was Hwanni or Reis or someone. MLG Providence 2011, people were speculating about who was going to win and who wasn't. The Korean guy (can't remember but I think it was Hwanni) he was like "haha you guys just don't know, Leenock will obviously win". And Leenock completely dominated everyone in the open bracket and played like ~40 games and won the whole MLG.
Obviously, that guy whoever it was has more insight than us into how the pro's practice and has seen Leenocks discipline and hard work. Therefore he could accurately predict Leenock to be the winner.
Actually, one of the reason that so many sports are random is because they were designed in 1890. :p
If football was a computer game we would call it badly designed. It has outdated arbitration, too many players in the field and it could benefit from some rule changes. In the knock-out phases in the world cup there are so many games that end in 0-0, 1-0, 1-1, which really should be unacceptable because often the skill differences are there. It's too easy to slow down games with defensive play and it makes for so many games that come down to penalty shootouts or to one lucky moment.
In Starcraft 2 we should know better. There are a few factors that come into play I think: 1. If the top players can consistently win it allows us to build up story lines more and get more engaged with the game. See tennis, but also Brood War. 2. If the outcome of matches is predetermined there is no real need to watch early rounds, the games themselves might be boring and frustrating to watch. This is not necessarily a bad thing, in most sports the majority of viewers will turn up for the finals.
I think the solution should be to start out with making the gameplay as interesting as possible, this should be the first priority. I would be bored with a game that's simply about who can macro the biggest army and attack-move to victory, even if it could reward skill almost linearly. I wouldn't be bored with a game where you constantly had to make interesting decisions, and since you couldn't see into the future, sometimes you would end up making the wrong decisions and get a disadvantage, but it wouldn't matter so much because the gameplay itself was interesting. It adds some volatility, but it still allows the better players to win and engage the viewers while they do so, while they constantly explore new situations and try to make the most of it.
(chess is basically an exact match of this description, by the way)
Edit:
To put it another way: is it really a surprise that people complain about volatility when we have had to put up with so many broken match-ups in the last year?
When ZvZ hits that roach-hydra-infestor stage it becomes weird and boring, ZvT with brood lord infestor was a nightmare in the past, same with ZvP (not to mention immortal-sentry). PvP late-game is devoid of interest as well, early game used to be a complete coinflip.
TvT and ZvZ have their share of randomness in the openings, but I honestly think that the community doesn't really mind those, because you still need good micro and decision making for most of the game. I think if there were less complaints about the match-up that mysteriously the complaints about volatility would mostly go away.
The game still hasn't had enough time to stabilize especially with the influx of Kespa players. Expect it to be like this for years to come until after LotV.
Yes it's way too volatile. Hot streaks frequently turn instantly into major losing streaks without a slow fall. The top players change once a month. It's extremely rare to have someone win 2 tournaments in a row. They almost always have a falling out inbetween or just a permanent fall off. There are so many players who have won 1 premiere event and then never won anything else. There are tons of players who string together a set of wins against top players and then just disappear. No one has maintained a win-rate higher than 60% or so for more than a few months.
Protoss is probably the biggest problem. Zerg and Terran have had some consistency while it seems like the best Protoss changes every month. In 2012 it went from Genius, Squirtle, Seed, Creator, Rain, Parting... MC was probably the best at certain points in there too. Then there is the PvP matchup itself which is just hilariously impossible to predict. There have been so many A>B>C>A scenarios with PvP that happened within the same month or even within the same tournament. It's also worth noting that it is the matchup with the highest foreigner vs korean win-rate.
At least with Terran and Zerg it's been a bit less volatile. The best player has always only been between a couple players. Terran in 2012 was obviously MVP and Taeja. Zerg was Life and DRG. Maybe throw Leenock in there at certain points.
I completely agree with this. For me it was StarCraft 2 which showed me what a sports should be like: the best players should win consistently. Right now we don't see anything like this. It's nearly impossible to predict the winner of a match.
I am a soccer/football fan but the fact no team ever defended the Champions League title kinda shows that even in football the luck factor is to large. Normally this doesn't apply to individual sports like Darts (16 time world champion there), Tennis (top four of the world also in the top 4 in the australian open). But for Starcraft this doesn't apply and imho this is clearly due to the lack of a greater skill ceiling. The fact how fast the Kespa players catched up shows this clearly. The sad thing is many people don't see this problem obviously. And I don't see how HotS will change anything. Because the new units aren't harder to use then the old ones.
I don't see the validity of the skill ceiling argument in this instance.
There are way too many factors involved with tourney results in SC2 than to just say that some imaginary skill ceiling alone is responsible for volatility in predicting the winners. I would urge you to consider the history of BW, which was split between individual and team leagues. There were some players who excelled in team league who may not have showed as great results in individual leagues. But when we looked at their overall match histories, we see a large portion of players who are capable of taking games off of the top players favored to win individual leagues.
The same scenario is definitely in play in the WoL scene, maybe even to a larger extent. There's a large pool of really good players. I don't think this implies a hard skill cap so much as a combination of a stagnant meta, player sniping builds, and loads of other factors. It really isn't simple enough to pin down to one conclusion.
Is there something inherently wrong with a game where the supposed best players so often lose to players who are widely considered weaker than them? Like, is the skill ceiling not high enough? Is it too luck based? Why don't the best players beat the slightly less good players more often?
This has been suggested by pros, writers, community figures since 2008 when we started playing alpha builds. It has been consistently complained about (especially by idra) for years now.
Starcraft is not tennis. In Starcraft there are three match ups for every player. First of all you would need to measure skill in one match up and compare them at only that match up to determine the likelyness of one player winning. Second thing is we don't just have one map, but a variety of maps. It has less to do with random generation , being coinflippy or flaws of the game. It simply the is complexity of it.
On one field doing the same thing over and over again, you need to be consistent. On the other hand; on multiple fields in multiple match ups against (in addition) opponents that are more or less likely to just be weaker on paper, you sometimes lose and you sometimes win. In my opinion the chance of losing a game in Starcraft is higher, but the aspects I named a reason for it, not bad design even though the skill ceiling could be raised for sure.
On February 22 2013 20:55 roym899 wrote: I completely agree with this. For me it was StarCraft 2 which showed me what a sports should be like: the best players should win consistently. Right now we don't see anything like this. It's nearly impossible to predict the winner of a match.
I am a soccer/football fan but the fact no team ever defended the Champions League title kinda shows that even in football the luck factor is to large. Normally this doesn't apply to individual sports like Darts (16 time world champion there), Tennis (top four of the world also in the top 4 in the australian open). But for Starcraft this doesn't apply and imho this is clearly due to the lack of a greater skill ceiling. The fact how fast the Kespa players catched up shows this clearly. The sad thing is many people don't see this problem obviously. And I don't see how HotS will change anything. Because the new units aren't harder to use then the old ones.
But what about BW? Excepting the unmentionable one, VERY few players ever exceed 70% win rate in all matchups. Like, almost never! Yet we all know how high the skill ceiling is.
Looking at TL official article predictions, I was thinking the same thing. If even the best at prediction can't predict it with decent consistency - then the game itself must be pretty inconsistent.
On February 22 2013 20:55 roym899 wrote: I completely agree with this. For me it was StarCraft 2 which showed me what a sports should be like: the best players should win consistently. Right now we don't see anything like this. It's nearly impossible to predict the winner of a match.
I am a soccer/football fan but the fact no team ever defended the Champions League title kinda shows that even in football the luck factor is to large. Normally this doesn't apply to individual sports like Darts (16 time world champion there), Tennis (top four of the world also in the top 4 in the australian open). But for Starcraft this doesn't apply and imho this is clearly due to the lack of a greater skill ceiling. The fact how fast the Kespa players catched up shows this clearly. The sad thing is many people don't see this problem obviously. And I don't see how HotS will change anything. Because the new units aren't harder to use then the old ones.
But what about BW? Excepting the unmentionable one, VERY few players ever exceed 70% win rate in all matchups. Like, almost never! Yet we all know how high the skill ceiling is.
I wasn't into BW so I can't comment on that. But probably the luck factor was even larger in BW then it is in WoL.
Imho it really splits up into Luck factor and Skill ceiling. When the luck factor is very large it doesn't matter how high the skill ceiling is because after all you will probably still lose to a certain BO. When the Skill ceiling isn't very high it doesn't matter how small the luck factor is because the differences between the top players are too small and thus it's coming down to luck again who wins.
So the luck factor has to be smaller and the skill ceiling has to be higher to make this game a better viewing sport.
On February 22 2013 21:20 figq wrote: Looking at TL official article predictions, I was thinking the same thing. If even the best at prediction can't predict it with decent consistency - then the game itself must be pretty inconsistent.
Edit: NM, not really a fair question since regular sports have lines and not picking straight up.
On February 22 2013 15:53 MCXD wrote: But if the same player won every single competition and had a 90% winrate, wouldn't everyone complain about the fact the outcome of every tournament is boring and obvious? I'm pretty sure they would.
Also a lot of other (non e-sports) are incredibly volatile. As much so as SC2, if not much more.
I don't know. Having someone extremely solid to cheer for feels good. One of the reasons it sucks to be a Protoss player and fan is because the Protoss players in WoL are all so inconsistent. There is literally no one you can rely on to be consistently top-form. The closest we have/had to someone like this is MC, Parting and Squirtle, but then they all like to follow up their extremely brief periods of dominance with epic fails. As opposed to what Terrans have in The Summer of Taeja and The King of Wings, who can at least be expected to reliably deliver results more than half the time.
I'm not complaining about Protoss being weak, but about how it sucks to not have someone whom we can cheer for everytime without worrying too hard about the possibly that they'd flop and do stupid builds. I for one think it would be sweet to have a Bonjwa-class emerge in Sc2.
man, i have serious doubts about the "seventeen over 60% in liquibet" statistic, would like to see how you figure that's accurate. are you only including the (obviously very, very) small minority of people who get to bet on every match? i doubt that includes more than 5%, at most 10%, of the active+semi-active liquibet users. much less out of the 12k users who have bet on something. of whom you could straight up drop the lowest 2/3 of the ladder out of the deal, unless you presume that as the top ladder is voting 60% right, the bottom is managing to get 80%, or 99% wrong. i'm on a huge wrong-wrong-wrong-wrong-wrong streak and have yet to go under 60%, think i was 63% a few weeks ago and can't remember a single point in my liquibetting history (2½ years maybe?) i've had a voting average of less than 57, maybe 56%. and i really don't even watch/follow starcraft that much, rather skimming through recent match statistics to make an assessment of the players' current form. also my point average has always been like 3-7% under my voting average
honestly, you should get better results than 53% correct - which you strangely claimed was top 20% - just by voting on players based on their lifetime win rates in their relevant match ups, which isn't really a very good way to go about things. 53% is likely pretty close to the median voting average, definitely no more than 1,5% better than that.
anyway, any tennis analogies are kind of null and void because tennis is a game of complete information and starcraft is the opposite in that regard. it is not (even theoretically) possible for it to be played perfectly even if you're the best player of the game in the world. neither in terms of micro, macro or strategy. much like poker, the better player will always win in sc2 (let's put in the limitations of a mirror match up right here just to ignore the topic of balance which should be a discussion held separate). sometimes that will not be immediately evident. considering this a flaw in a game, be it poker, starcraft or battleship, is kind of ignoring that it is also one of its defining factors and strengths.
On February 22 2013 15:53 MCXD wrote: But if the same player won every single competition and had a 90% winrate, wouldn't everyone complain about the fact the outcome of every tournament is boring and obvious? I'm pretty sure they would.
if it was just one good player who won everything and everyone else sucked, it'd be boring. But if there were 3-4 players (or even two) who were at the top of the game and constantly battling for trophies, everyone would love it, like what we've had in tennis over the past years.
I agree with this, but he never said everyone other than the 1 dominating sucks.
It is more fun when there's 2-4 guys who usually beat everyone else (let's say Mvp, Nestea, MC) (Federer, Nadal, Djokovic), but play amazing games vs each other.
When you talk about a format like the GSL too it isn't as cut and dry as it seems. Factors like available replays of your opponent, one player doing a style you didn't prepare for, and what practice partners you have toss things up in the air. For example, Curious beating Parting 3-0 was so huge because StarTale doesn't have any Protoss players left at Parting's level for Curious to practice against, and it didn't involve Curious hard-countering the wonwonwon in any games. On the other hand, there are tons of Parting replays available, and Curious' style was "standard," so his early aggression and timing attacks probably threw Parting off. Another example; look at the success of Innovation and Mvp. Their performances outside the GSL lately have been lackluster at best, but Mvp's ability to prepare and throw any of his opponents knowledge of him off by tossing out all ins got him another gold pin. Likewise, Innovation went up against Stephano twice, and Stephano, who in a spontaneous BoX could compete with anyone in the world, used the same build he does in pretty much every game. Stephano won a few games when Innovation let him get to the late game, but otherwise Innovation just took advantage of how greedy Stephano opens and killed him with a timing attack. So you can't just rely on pure skill in game for a GSL win, knowledge and preparation beforehand matter just as much
On February 22 2013 15:48 Kaitokid wrote: Artosis is not the most knowledgable guy in all of starcraft lol. the best players are.
the main reason why predictions are often wrong is the people who predict stuff dunno what the hell they are talking about because they know the players based on a couple games they have seen of them. even if they watched hundreds of games of a certain player it's still just like 0.5% of all the games the players have played.
the best people to predict stuff would be other good players who know both 2 players very well and played them both a shit ton of times.
i completely agree with this post !
i just noticed that i very rarely write something myself, i tend to just read the comments till i find one that says what i want to say :D thanks Kaitokid
On February 22 2013 19:37 Grumbels wrote: Tennis is random: 1. top players take points off each other all the time, because you can take risks. 2. some points are a lot more important than others. You can win games without winning the majority of the points.
Reading through this thread, came across this. It's an extremely good point. In tennis matches between closely matched players, total points scored are often extremely, extremely close, like 51-49%, 52-48%.
Even in a straightforward 6-4, 6-3 affair (say), the final points score will be around 55-45%. Even in the most outrageously one-sided match, it's extremely rare for the points difference to be greater than a 2:1 ratio.
Also, even in a very one-sided tennis match, it's likely to take 1h15 or 1h30, something like that. Say a SC2 player beat someone 5-1, with games of 10-15 real-time minutes each (say 15-20m average SC2 time). That's a best of 9. If every match was BO9, BO11, BO13... things would be different. If tennis matches were best of 1 set, which is the functional equivalent of a BO3 or even BO5 in SC2, then tennis would look remarkably different, too.
I don't feel like results are that random, however it does changes a lot. StarCraft is a game with a lot of variables (race, map, composition, openers, players, state of mind ...) and as expected it is very hard to be prepared for all of these aspects, especially when knowing that if one of these aspects crumbles, the rest usually follow. I think every player has had that feeling in a game where you play vs a build that you don't like and immediately tilt a bit. So it's a bit obvious and even expected that the results shift wildly. Even in BW, predicting the winner wasn't as easy. Yes you had the very good players that have always been very consistent but the other match were still there, even if you see way more upsets in SC2. I feel like in SC2 we haven't seen a champion that was ... hum flawless maybe ? And by flawless I don't mean their play but factors exterior to the game. Like every dominant player has had some sort of flaw drawing back their play. Nestea was older than the rest of the competition, MKP has always been too emotional, goes on tilt too easily. Life still had to focus on school, MVP was very good but he was injured, same with Taeja. Only exception would be MC. Maybe we've just been unlucky.
Now for the betting part, is it random or not. It's probably more random that we seem to think. As spectators we are exterior to the game and have limited information prior to match. We don't know what player are practicing (even IF they are practicing), we don't know their state of mind and so on. We lack a lot of information that would help us make a "good" guess. The only thing we can rely on is the previous winner interview (which is PR, so not that reliable but it can still help, if a player publicly admits he's not confident for his next match maybe he's not a safe bet) and previous results. We only see the past.
Now onto my opinions of liquibet : Liquibet in themselves are volatile. There is no benefit to not vote on match. If I have no idea, I should go at random because even if I don't vote it doesn't matter. The way they distribute points is also another factor. Like for example, the quarterfinals were worth 3 points each. I correctly got both Curious vs Parting and Symbol vs Bogus, putting me 1st by a "large" margin even tho it was very close for the past two months. We always were at like one or two points of each other max. These two match were east for me while MC vs Roro and Taeja vs Soulkey was a way bigger toss up. We don't really know what Taeja's medical condition is, so he's taken pleasure at fucking up my bets all season long so he's a wildcard here. Then you have MC vs Roro, MC just popped out of nowhere going all like "sup im back" and you don't really know for how long he's gonna keep it up. Same with Roro, he's good and somehow he's in the quarterfinals. I'm not saying they are not deserving, just that I wouldn't have thought they would make it this far looking a Ro32 groups. So this match is another wildcard. If we look at yesterday Curious vs Parting was a close one (despite the result) and Bogus vs Symbol was very clear in my mind.
So yeah, some times you have easy match and you have to get them right to stay in the race, then you have the ones that can go both ways and you have to "get lucky" to stay first. I got lucky yesterday, and got put in a comfortable lead as a result. I got unlucky today and will end up second if anyone that is currently second gets both bet correctly ( so I'm probably second as soon as the results are updated, kinda sad, I held this position for a while, I like the smiley ).
Betting is a lot like gambling. You have good gamblers, but you kinda have to be lucky to become one.
I don't really get it. Have you looked at MVP's liquipedia page? Do you realize that 12 of the 17 GSLs have had either MVP, MC, or Nestea in the code S finals? Did you look at any of their liquipedia pages? Did you watch Hyun win 14 consecutive best of 9s in IPL Fight Club? Did you see Parting and Life in the past 6 months win multiple major tournaments each? Do you not recognize every name in code S and almost every name in code A?
The GSL, which you are referencing, as with many other SCII tournaments, has you play 2-3 best of 3s for your tournament life. Some favorites getting knocked out early should not be surprising. That does not mean the player is on the decline, and it does not mean that the game has too low of a skill ceiling. It is not the MLB, NBA, NHL ect.. There is no regular season with 80ish (MLB 160ish) games. Remember when the Red Sox didn't win a world series for like 100 years, despite being an excellent team and bigtime championship contenders for many of them (even in the finals for a few)? Did "The Curse of the Billy Goat" with the Cubs mean baseball was broken? Tennis has been mentioned in this thread; a professional mens tennis match is a best of 5 in sets, each of which is a best of 13 games. Do you think that playing at most 50+ games per match as opposed to at most 5 will reduce the variance?
Do you know what sport has variance? How about the extremely popular college football, where like 10 team all finish the season with 1 loss and they literally have a computer just pick the teams. Apparently that doesn't stop college football from being awesome, so I don't know why Parting losing a best of 5 vs Curious (another consistently top 32 in the world player in case anyone forgot) would be so much worse.
Its amazing to me that there isn't way MORE variance. Anyway, I would wait on the whole 'SCII has too much variance" thing until people who haven't proven themselves to be top-caliber even qualify for the GSL (foreign code A qualification: probably 0 for 50ish), let alone consistently beat any of the pros.
On February 22 2013 16:43 SuperYo1000 wrote: sc2 has gotten significantly more stale in the last year. Lets not ruin it and have almost predetermined tourny outcomes as our goal as a community
That's your opinion. Except for the Las Vegas portion of the GSL, I think the games have gotten better and better.
My Personal Opinion is that SC2 isn't nearly as luck based as seems. Maybe it's a matter of perspective. Say, when you take people with a noticeable difference of skill level and pit them against each other, (such as a korean vs non-korean, GM league vs master league, Master vs Diamond, Diamond vs plat. and so on) then They'd have a much closer to 100% win rate.
Because Win rates go up so drastically when there is a difference of skill level, then perhaps luck isn't as big a factor after all. After all, It isn't that rare that best of 7's end up in a 4 - 0. Which should be unlikely that win rates were always at most 60%. There's people that have one the GSL more than twice, Which would also be very unlikely if win rates were capped low.
I believe the reason predictions are so hard, is that Liquibet based on its function pits people against people with similar skill level. That's just how the GSL system works, There's so many levels of the tournament that it seems like Skill level wise, the players tend to be where they belong.
So No, There isn't too much "luck" in sc2, The people at the top level in korea are just very similar in skill. Which isn't surprising, with how much time they spend on practicing, and the fact they all have access to a plethora of information involving build orders ect.
Edit: I'd simply love, however as far as matches go. That when possible tournaments should have a format, in which it is necessary for players to be ahead by at least 2 games to win a best-of. So when a Best of 3 was 1-1, it would turn into a BO 5, and if a BO 5 was 2-2, it would turn into a BO 7, and so on. Scores like 3-2, and 4-3, are so inconclusive as to which is the better player.
If the same 2 or 3 people won all the time people would complain about that too. MVP has been consistently dominant enough despite having no wrists for me to not worry about this too much.
Wasn't Parting totally outplayed by Curious yesterday? It looked so to me at least. I think it's more that players are not consitent than that the game is chancy. I didn't feel Curious won on a coin-flip. Also, MVP having won so many GSL championships surely tells a tale of that skill actually pays off. If it were a 50/50 chance for a player to win each game, what are the chances that MVP wins that many titles you think?
I'm scared to reply to this post because I've been banned before for posting anything approaching the negativity spectrum..
This whole post is bogus. It seems to me that you're looking for events that confirm what you already believe, that the game is too luck based, or the skill ceiling is low, or whatever.
You list Artosis as evidence of this. You choose to believe he must know who should or should not win a RoX game in a very highly competitive Code S, and when he's wrong, it must be due to some game shortcoming. Betraying your own argument though, as you mentioned, he is wrong most of the time. This would really suggest to me that Artosis is just bad at predictions in general, and never would I assume anything about Starcraft's gameplay, or even begin to even think about a "fix" to this imaginary problem.
With respect to Liquibet, your probability assumptions (and hence the whole argument) are complete bogus to it's not even worth discussing.
You go on to mention win rates of Mvp and Life in Starcraft as they compare to Federer in tennis. A literally 5 second Google search on Federer's lifetime win rate returns 69%, so I literally have no idea what you're on about here.
Is there something wrong with the game? If so, is there anything that can be done to fix it?
On February 22 2013 15:38 Gatesleeper wrote: Is there something wrong with the game? If so, is there anything that can be done to fix it?
No, stop thinking up imaginary problems and imaginary solutions to these problems.
To me the real gross assumption here is that you can even properly determine who the better on any 1 on 1 match is. Starcraft is inherently a vastly more complex game than say football, tennis, swimming, sprinting, whatever. Through statistics, we can formulate predictions on who is maybe the best player overall over some period of time, but I really don't think we can accurately predict any given pairing with very strong confidence.
Is there something inherently wrong with a game where the supposed best players so often lose to players who are widely considered weaker than them? Like, is the skill ceiling not high enough? Is it too luck based? Why don't the best players beat the slightly less good players more often?
This has been suggested by pros, writers, community figures since 2008 when we started playing alpha builds. It has been consistently complained about (especially by idra) for years now.
fer what you are saying is pretty dumb and ignorant to be honest. Referring to the 69% of Federer shows that you have no idea about the Tennissport. So please stop taking some no-sense stats from google. Federer isn't nearly in form anymore and Djokjovic is the current top player. Top 4 players in the world ranking list also in the top4 of the australien open shows how great of a sport it is.
Ofc it's true that you can't compare SC2 to Tennis because of the differences in each game. But at the same time it's just a bad specatator sport when you as a fan never know who is going to win in the most prestigious tournament (the GSL). I'm pretty sure it will continue to be like it and maybe get even worse when more players catch up to the level where it seems like it comes down more to luck then to skill.
I wasn't interested in BW so much but I wonder how much did the automining affected the skill ceiling? For me it seems like an impossible task to keep up through out the whole game especially when getting herrassed at the same time. It's such a little thing which lowers the skill cap immensely. Same thing goes for the smaller control groups. These are the things sepereating great players from good players. Right now every one in Master league can perform a certain build order without any problem. As there is nothing hard in remembering the supply counts you are supposed to build something. I'm not saying they can perform it at the same level as pros do but when you see some random GM player beating pro players like Stephano in ZvZ i really feel like there's a huge problem with the skill ceiling. Pro players with much more apm then these random GM players should have no problem defeating these guys.
I think the comparisons to Brood War are slightly unfair. You could say that Flash only had 70% winrate or whatever, but that's including proleague, where people specifically snipe him in a Bo1. Furthermore, he only plays vs the strongest players over and over. If you look at the current proleague there is nobody that gets to 70%. There is sOS, who has 68%, but the next best players are Hydra, Zero, Rain and RoRo at 63%. To take a random example, if you look at the 2010-2011 proleague, then over the entire season there are five players that have at least 65% or higher winrates, Flash, Bisu and Jaedong being far over 70%.
I did a recent count for this and the number of different (i.e. non-repeating) players each Ro8 in Starcraft 2 compared to Brood War is like 30% higher, so you can see that in Brood War there is more consistency and there are bigger stars.
I think if SC2 had balance issues and bad match-ups fixed that we would be in a much better position to judge whether it's really too volatile or not. I think the recent zerg balance issues have made it difficult to really say anything meaningful about the recent results.
I dont get what you are complaining about. Its not like they are loosing to some random guys( lets say XlorD,Bratok,Titan,Idra,qxc,masa .. any mid tier progamers) - they wouldnt even make it there. in GSL. They are playing vs the very very very best. As all, in this thread, mentioned there are so many factors - and so easily distrubable ones that its very hard to have yours consitency at level to not loose at such high level for extended periods of time.
I think artosis gets too excited about players and becomes a bit of a fanboy. The latest example was innovation. By Artosis hype, he seemed to be leagues above the competition. He beat DRG convincingly in ro16, but was trounced in the ro32. This doesn't tell us innovation is miles better than DRG. It tell us these two are about the same level, and one of them having a not so good day is enough to snowball into a crushng defeat.
The same goes for Innovation vs Symbol. The final score was 3-2, but the 1st map was really close, Symbol could have won. If Symbol had won, the final score would be a 3-0 for Symbol. That wouldn't mean Symbol is miles better either.
In short, Artosis is a bit passional in his predictions.
On February 23 2013 01:12 Veriol wrote: I dont get what you are complaining about. Its not like they are loosing to some random guys in GSL. They are playing vs the very very very best. As all, in this thread, mentioned there are so many factors - and so easily distrubable ones that its very hard to have yours consitency at level to not loose at such high level for extended periods of time.
Because it seems like on this level it comes down to luck. Or how do you explain that every tournament there is another Korean winning? It is as if on this level theres not enough skill difference anymore between these people so you can predict the outcome of a game. That's just a bad spectator sport and should be fixed.
Edit: In 2012 we didn't had a single player winning the GSL twice and we will have another champion again. You actually have to go back 9 GSL seasons until theres MVP winning two GSLs.
On February 23 2013 00:49 fer wrote: You go on to mention win rates of Mvp and Life in Starcraft as they compare to Federer in tennis. A literally 5 second Google search on Federer's lifetime win rate returns 69%, so I literally have no idea what you're on about here.
"McEnroe won 13 of 15 tournaments that year and though he "only" won two grand slams, in terms of pure statistics, his exploits put him top of the tree, with a 96.47% win-rate. That puts him just ahead of Connors, who won 93 of 97 matches in 1974, including three grand slams, with a win rate of 95.88%.
Federer compiled an 81-4 record in 2005, with two grand slams and nine other titles, to place third at 95.29%. In 2006, when the Swiss won three grand slams, the ATP World Tour Finals and eight other tournaments, his 92-5 record gave him a win rate of 94.85%. Djokovic goes into London with a 69-4 record, at 94.52%, fifth on the all-time list. Even if he wins all five matches in London, the best he can do is fourth."
Nobody in Starcraft gets close to these numbers.
On February 23 2013 00:49 fer wrote: To me the real gross assumption here is that you can even properly determine who the better on any 1 on 1 match is. Starcraft is inherently a vastly more complex game than say football, tennis, swimming, sprinting, whatever. Through statistics, we can formulate predictions on who is maybe the best player overall over some period of time, but I really don't think we can accurately predict any given pairing with very strong confidence.
Starcraft is not more complicated than football or any other team sport. Tennis also hardly comes down to pure athleticism, someone like Federer is as good as he is because he understands the game on a higher level than his opponents. He often starts out losing the first few games to physically superior opponents, only to devise a way to counter them and crush them.
--
Another thing that people mention with regards to tennis is that a typical tennis match can last two hours and that a typical starcraft series is maybe an hour, so it's an unfair comparison. I would say in response that even if you let tennis play out with only one set it would still be way less volatile. Top players often slip up and accidentally lose a set, but that also has to do with underestimating the competition and knowing that even if you lose the first set it doesn't really matter. Top players can't afford to spend all their energy on the opponents early in the tournament, they have to use them for training pretty much.
--
In case someone has seen the Jjakji vs Dream match in the GSTL last week, it was a constant back-and-forth TvT game that lasted 48 minutes. I think that it was pretty obvious that the best player had won in that game, and that if all games were like that, we would be able to have Bo1 for the majority of tournaments. But it's not possible because games are so varied, some are way less eventful than others.
On February 23 2013 01:12 Veriol wrote: I dont get what you are complaining about. Its not like they are loosing to some random guys in GSL. They are playing vs the very very very best. As all, in this thread, mentioned there are so many factors - and so easily distrubable ones that its very hard to have yours consitency at level to not loose at such high level for extended periods of time.
Because it seems like on this level it comes down to luck. Or how do you explain that every tournament there is another Korean winning? It is as if on this level theres not enough skill difference anymore between these people so you can predict the outcome of a game. That's just a bad spectator sport and should be fixed.
Edit: In 2012 we didn't had a single player winning the GSL twice and we will have another champion again. You actually have to go back 9 GSL seasons until theres MVP winning two GSLs.
Not enough skill difference? Parting got totally outplayed for example..
Its more about the mental state and physical feel. I think any sportsman could loose to lets say anyone in top32 if he felt shitty.
On February 23 2013 01:10 roym899 wrote: fer what you are saying is pretty dumb and ignorant to be honest. Referring to the 69% of Federer shows that you have no idea about the Tennissport. So please stop taking some no-sense stats from google. Federer isn't nearly in form anymore and Djokjovic is the current top player. Top 4 players in the world ranking list also in the top4 of the australien open shows how great of a sport it is.
They're not non-sense. That's his lifetime win rate. I thought it was fair to use his lifetime win rate if he was talking about Mvp's lifetime win rate, don't you agree?
What you call random number generation is what I call "a game which has an average of one metagame change every three weeks." The "metagame" of football hasn't changed since the rise of Barcelona in 2006-2007 and their new brand of "total football". The period of Michael Schumacher's dominance of Formula One came at a period where Ferrari had by far and away the best cars apart from McLaren. The metagame of tennis has not evolved in fifteen years, with the only changes in the metagame of tennis coming in rules against shouting on court and racket developments.
The only reason BW stabilised is because they stopped patching it. In the process they left half the units in the game completely useless. Starcraft 2 is constantly getting rebalanced and the metagame shifts ever so slightly every single time someone discovers a new build.
I'm going to nail this (and Idra's) complaint with one final bit of statistics:
Football - metagame hasn't changed in 20 years. Manchester United, the most dominant club in English football. They have survived at least four challengers rising to meet them, all under one manager. All those challengers are better funded than they are.
What's their win rate?
59.77%
Goal difference of +2014. 2199 games played. 1245 won. 486 drawn. 408 lost.
Football is a completely skill based game. There is no random number generation involved beyond simple physics. The most dominant club in the HISTORY of English football has a win rate of just under 60%.
If you genuinely think someone should have a 90% win rate to be dominant, you don't know what you're talking about.
I can tell you as a spectator it makes it really really difficult for me to have a favorite player. And because of that I am not as engaged in the community as I want to be. I am not a fan of anyone in particular. I am a fan of my favorite race. (protoss)
In BW Stork, Bisu and Flash were my boys. I was a stork and bisu fanboy. I would try to watch all their games. And that's because BW had some consistency with winners.
SC2 every season or patch brings someone new. And I can't keep up.
On February 23 2013 01:10 roym899 wrote: fer what you are saying is pretty dumb and ignorant to be honest. Referring to the 69% of Federer shows that you have no idea about the Tennissport. So please stop taking some no-sense stats from google. Federer isn't nearly in form anymore and Djokjovic is the current top player. Top 4 players in the world ranking list also in the top4 of the australien open shows how great of a sport it is.
They're not non-sense. That's his lifetime win rate. I thought it was fair to use his lifetime win rate if he was talking about Mvp's lifetime win rate, don't you agree?
Life only has 66% winrate over the last six months, where he is the strongest player at his peak.
It's true, we do need better presentation of data for these topics, but I would suggest you actually contribute instead of just sniping on other people's comments.
Is there something inherently wrong with a game where the supposed best players so often lose to players who are widely considered weaker than them? Like, is the skill ceiling not high enough? Is it too luck based? Why don't the best players beat the slightly less good players more often?
This has been suggested by pros, writers, community figures since 2008 when we started playing alpha builds. It has been consistently complained about (especially by idra) for years now.
I agree with this. They also got rid of the early/mid game (sort of) with the economy boosters that they gave each race, so they eliminated the early game which is a place where the truly talented would gain an edge in the game. They would use their small army as efficiently as possible, while macroing up economy and upgrades. With no early game, if it is just max or a solid army vs solid army battle, one mistake can win a lesser player a game, where in the past a truly talented BW player would have capitalized on those mistakes.
I've been thinking what the OP has been thinking since mid-2011.
Balance patches may have been too drastic during the Wings of Liberty phase, throwing things out of wack for many players, but that doesn't explain a solid player just falling off the face of the earth (Danger Days of Code A - the abyss).
It may be a very mental game and it may involve lots of preparation time between games in some tournaments, but a mechanically superior player getting crushed because of some lucky spells in the last game of a close series is actually pretty disgraceful. There is way too much volatility and the metagame of Wings is ridiculously stagnant. We'll have to see if HotS sees a little more consistency, but my mind is made up about Wings. Now, if only I could log on and play some games...
Is there something inherently wrong with a game where the supposed best players so often lose to players who are widely considered weaker than them? Like, is the skill ceiling not high enough? Is it too luck based? Why don't the best players beat the slightly less good players more often?
This has been suggested by pros, writers, community figures since 2008 when we started playing alpha builds. It has been consistently complained about (especially by idra) for years now.
I agree with this. They also got rid of the early/mid game (sort of) with the economy boosters that they gave each race, so they eliminated the early game which is a place where the truly talented would gain an edge in the game. They would use their small army as efficiently as possible, while macroing up economy and upgrades. With no early game, if it is just max or a solid army vs solid army battle, one mistake can win a lesser player a game, where in the past a truly talented BW player would have capitalized on those mistakes.
This is complete nonsense. The reason we have no more early game vs early game mistakes is because the community has forced the maps to be continent sized (since they want more macro games) and the standard is now 3 base 200 supply macro games.
When you have maps that are continent sized you are ALWAYS going to have room for error. That's why the only race capable of punishing early mistakes is Protoss now, which is why TvP and ZvP are so punishing if the Protoss all ins and you aren't prepared for it. It is no longer true the other way around. Why do they have this ability? THEY CAN SPAWN THEIR UNITS 6 FEET FROM YOUR BASE.
Rather than acknowledging this as a good part in the game (the part everyone wants to see), instead we have amateur game designers trying to remove warpgate from the game because it "punishes diversity". No, just make the fucking maps smaller so terrans and zerg can put on some basic pressure without requiring hellions or zergling/roach speed.
On February 23 2013 01:36 dUTtrOACh wrote: I've been thinking what the OP has been thinking since mid-2011.
Balance patches may have been too drastic during the Wings of Liberty phase, throwing things out of wack for many players, but that doesn't explain a solid player just falling off the face of the earth (Danger Days of Code A - the abyss).
It may be a very mental game and it may involve lots of preparation time between games in some tournaments, but a mechanically superior player getting crushed because of some lucky spells in the last game of a close series is actually pretty disgraceful. There is way too much volatility and the metagame of Wings is ridiculously stagnant. We'll have to see if HotS sees a little more consistency, but my mind is made up about Wings. Now, if only I could log on and play some games...
No, it completely explains it. The fact that Mvp fell through Code S into Code A is proof alone that the ability to play at your best matters hugely in WoL. The guy's not well. Players get found out, players adjust their builds. Maps change, they get bigger and smaller. Dodgy little bits of geometry get abused. Occasionally there is an overpowered unit (infestor) but usually most of it is that someone hasn't figured out how to play against a unit.
Maybe their "dominance" as you ascribe to believe they have, is mostly down to coming out with a new tactic no one had seen before and then playing an absolute fuckton of games. It takes time to adapt to something and some people do it quicker than others. In Code S for example, Life played a really unique style of zerg that was super strong. The only person who really adapted to it was Mvp, in the finals. Same with Rain. Really strong style of defensive Protoss. Who beat it? Mvp.
Those players get found out. Some get found out sooner rather than later. HuK was really strong until people got used to defending protoss early pressure builds, at which point HE was found out. Thorzain is still the most mechanically strong foreigner we had, but Koreans and zerg take advantage of his lack of aggression to overrun him with units.
The only truly dominant players we have had are Mvp and Nestea and of those two, why Mvp? Well, look at who adapted to Life and Rain first.
HoTS, I anticipate a fantastic blow for blow rivalry between a healed Mvp and Flash, who is increasingly looking like God again.
On February 23 2013 01:30 Evangelist wrote: What you call random number generation is what I call "a game which has an average of one metagame change every three weeks." The "metagame" of football hasn't changed since the rise of Barcelona in 2006-2007 and their new brand of "total football". The period of Michael Schumacher's dominance of Formula One came at a period where Ferrari had by far and away the best cars apart from McLaren. The metagame of tennis has not evolved in fifteen years, with the only changes in the metagame of tennis coming in rules against shouting on court and racket developments.
The only reason BW stabilised is because they stopped patching it. In the process they left half the units in the game completely useless. Starcraft 2 is constantly getting rebalanced and the metagame shifts ever so slightly every single time someone discovers a new build.
I'm going to nail this (and Idra's) complaint with one final bit of statistics:
Football - metagame hasn't changed in 20 years. Manchester United, the most dominant club in English football. They have survived at least four challengers rising to meet them, all under one manager. All those challengers are better funded than they are.
What's their win rate?
59.77%
Goal difference of +2014. 2199 games played. 1245 won. 486 drawn. 408 lost.
Football is a completely skill based game. There is no random number generation involved beyond simple physics. The most dominant club in the HISTORY of English football has a win rate of just under 60%.
If you genuinely think someone should have a 90% win rate to be dominant, you don't know what you're talking about.
60% winrate, because soccer has ties. Their percentage of either tying or wining is about 80%. You're comparing a game with ties to a game that for the most part is exclusively win-lose
On February 23 2013 01:30 Evangelist wrote: Football - metagame hasn't changed in 20 years. Manchester United, the most dominant club in English football. They have survived at least four challengers rising to meet them, all under one manager. All those challengers are better funded than they are.
What's their win rate?
59.77%
Goal difference of +2014. 2199 games played. 1245 won. 486 drawn. 408 lost.
Football is a completely skill based game. There is no random number generation involved beyond simple physics. The most dominant club in the HISTORY of English football has a win rate of just under 60%.
If you genuinely think someone should have a 90% win rate to be dominant, you don't know what you're talking about.
A team wins 1245 times, loses 408 times, and you manage to present that as "only 59% winrate"?
And football is too volatile anyway, it's a common complaint there as well, so even if you used your statistics properly it would still be meaningless for Starcraft 2.
Okay, how old is this game? 3 years. Then if you want you can count in the 12 years of BW... still only 15 years and in that period we had 2 Games and countless patches. Now take your consistent sport ( tennis, or whatever) and change the size of the field, bring in new rules about clothing or the raquet and so on... consistency = gone. Think about swimming when they introduced the full body suits: everything changed in a very short time! Also I don´t think you really can build order counter a pro tennis player...
On February 23 2013 01:30 Evangelist wrote: What you call random number generation is what I call "a game which has an average of one metagame change every three weeks." The "metagame" of football hasn't changed since the rise of Barcelona in 2006-2007 and their new brand of "total football". The period of Michael Schumacher's dominance of Formula One came at a period where Ferrari had by far and away the best cars apart from McLaren. The metagame of tennis has not evolved in fifteen years, with the only changes in the metagame of tennis coming in rules against shouting on court and racket developments.
The only reason BW stabilised is because they stopped patching it. In the process they left half the units in the game completely useless. Starcraft 2 is constantly getting rebalanced and the metagame shifts ever so slightly every single time someone discovers a new build.
I'm going to nail this (and Idra's) complaint with one final bit of statistics:
Football - metagame hasn't changed in 20 years. Manchester United, the most dominant club in English football. They have survived at least four challengers rising to meet them, all under one manager. All those challengers are better funded than they are.
What's their win rate?
59.77%
Goal difference of +2014. 2199 games played. 1245 won. 486 drawn. 408 lost.
Football is a completely skill based game. There is no random number generation involved beyond simple physics. The most dominant club in the HISTORY of English football has a win rate of just under 60%.
If you genuinely think someone should have a 90% win rate to be dominant, you don't know what you're talking about.
60% winrate, because soccer has ties. Their percentage of either tying or wining is about 80%. You're comparing a game with ties to a game that for the most part is exclusively win-lose
Other people are comparing it to golf which has absolutely no comparison to Starcraft 2 AT ALL. What about tennis, where the players play maybe 4-5 games in total, usually taking the best part of a day and are seeded based upon previous performance or qualifiers.
Simply put, Manchester United are the most dominant team in the history of English football. They have won around one in six of all potential top flight trophies since the English football league was instituted. There are very few sports where one person, one team will be completely dominant for over twenty years. It just doesn't happen. That's why United are rare.
The draws are also potentially counted as either wins or losses because some of them came in cup competitions (and thus counted towards either statistic). Even then, assuming a half and half split you still have them only winning 70% of their potential bouts, which considering some of those draws have come against Norwich, most United fans would be gutted at.
Even they do not dominate all the time. Even they lose championships, go out to League One cup sides in the FA Cup. Even they lose to no name European teams, teams that United SHOULD score 6 against.
Fluke results happen. They happen a fuckload more often if you play 20 games on different maps in a single day.
Please do not tell an avid football watcher how my own game works, thanks. Nevermind a Manchester United fan from OId Trafford. I know what it is I am talking about.
A team wins 1245 times, loses 408 times, and you manage to present that as "only 59% winrate"?
And football is too volatile anyway, it's a common complaint there as well, so even if you used your statistics properly it would still be meaningless for Starcraft 2.
This is just a thread for whining about why we haven't had Flash or someone else win 90% of games so they can name a bonjwa. Everyone parroting this viewpoint has already decided what they think and no evidence will convince them otherwise. Some of them are even parroting Idra, who knows about as much about statistical analysis or sample sizes as I do about build order timings.
BW had a much more stable metagame spread over a longer period of time with maps specifically designed to balance out issues - again, leaving half the units completely useless. SC2 balances both at the same time, aiming to make units useful while keeping the maps in balance. There is a fundamental difference in the way that alters balance - when a unit changes, tactics that allowed the unit to function change. When maps change, tactics and timings that previously worked change.
When a team introduces a new player, it changes the dynamic of the team. United without Kagawa and Van Persie are a different side to United with those players. Tell you what. Go into the pro history of a single pro and see if there is a correlation between the matchups and maps they won on and the matchups and maps they lost on. Using that information, try and determine whether they will win their next map based on an equivalent analysis of their opponent and a head to head of recent matches.
Only when you do this for every single player will you be able to properly predict how well they will do. Thus, 40-60% is about as good as most people will EVER be able to do. To think otherwise is to fundamentally misunderstand the nature of analysis.
Is there something inherently wrong with a game where the supposed best players so often lose to players who are widely considered weaker than them? Like, is the skill ceiling not high enough? Is it too luck based? Why don't the best players beat the slightly less good players more often?
This has been suggested by pros, writers, community figures since 2008 when we started playing alpha builds. It has been consistently complained about (especially by idra) for years now.
I agree with this. They also got rid of the early/mid game (sort of) with the economy boosters that they gave each race, so they eliminated the early game which is a place where the truly talented would gain an edge in the game. They would use their small army as efficiently as possible, while macroing up economy and upgrades. With no early game, if it is just max or a solid army vs solid army battle, one mistake can win a lesser player a game, where in the past a truly talented BW player would have capitalized on those mistakes.
This is complete nonsense. The reason we have no more early game vs early game mistakes is because the community has forced the maps to be continent sized (since they want more macro games) and the standard is now 3 base 200 supply macro games.
When you have maps that are continent sized you are ALWAYS going to have room for error. That's why the only race capable of punishing early mistakes is Protoss now, which is why TvP and ZvP are so punishing if the Protoss all ins and you aren't prepared for it. It is no longer true the other way around. Why do they have this ability? THEY CAN SPAWN THEIR UNITS 6 FEET FROM YOUR BASE.
Rather than acknowledging this as a good part in the game (the part everyone wants to see), instead we have amateur game designers trying to remove warpgate from the game because it "punishes diversity". No, just make the fucking maps smaller so terrans and zerg can put on some basic pressure without requiring hellions or zergling/roach speed.
On February 23 2013 01:36 dUTtrOACh wrote: I've been thinking what the OP has been thinking since mid-2011.
Balance patches may have been too drastic during the Wings of Liberty phase, throwing things out of wack for many players, but that doesn't explain a solid player just falling off the face of the earth (Danger Days of Code A - the abyss).
It may be a very mental game and it may involve lots of preparation time between games in some tournaments, but a mechanically superior player getting crushed because of some lucky spells in the last game of a close series is actually pretty disgraceful. There is way too much volatility and the metagame of Wings is ridiculously stagnant. We'll have to see if HotS sees a little more consistency, but my mind is made up about Wings. Now, if only I could log on and play some games...
No, it completely explains it. The fact that Mvp fell through Code S into Code A is proof alone that the ability to play at your best matters hugely in WoL. The guy's not well. Players get found out, players adjust their builds. Maps change, they get bigger and smaller. Dodgy little bits of geometry get abused. Occasionally there is an overpowered unit (infestor) but usually most of it is that someone hasn't figured out how to play against a unit.
Maybe their "dominance" as you ascribe to believe they have, is mostly down to coming out with a new tactic no one had seen before and then playing an absolute fuckton of games. It takes time to adapt to something and some people do it quicker than others. In Code S for example, Life played a really unique style of zerg that was super strong. The only person who really adapted to it was Mvp, in the finals. Same with Rain. Really strong style of defensive Protoss. Who beat it? Mvp.
Those players get found out. Some get found out sooner rather than later. HuK was really strong until people got used to defending protoss early pressure builds, at which point HE was found out. Thorzain is still the most mechanically strong foreigner we had, but Koreans and zerg take advantage of his lack of aggression to overrun him with units.
The only truly dominant players we have had are Mvp and Nestea and of those two, why Mvp? Well, look at who adapted to Life and Rain first.
HoTS, I anticipate a fantastic blow for blow rivalry between a healed Mvp and Flash, who is increasingly looking like God again.
You sound pretty salty which doesn't help anyone make their point, only sound angry. Huge maps doesn't make the early game last longer. Again a full economy is easier to obtain than in BW, so windows for pressures are closed almost completely. That doesn't mean they cannot work, but that they are less profitable. If I destroy an expansion worth of workers, but sacrifice my own economy to do so, then chances are my opponent is still going to have the same economic force that I have. Then after the early game is done, both players just work on upgrades and maxing their armies which comes very quickly in this game.
Well, I guess comparing tennis to starcraft is really difficult. First of all, tennis would always be a mirror match and the longest the match goes, more chance the better player have to win.
How many games or sets do Federer, Nadal, Djokovic and etc. lose each match? I bet they don't win 95% of them.
On February 22 2013 15:38 Gatesleeper wrote: The number 1 ranked person on liquibet, a fellow by the name of SpiZe, has 157 points. He has predicted the correct winner 64.9% of the time. There are 3 people tied for second (aznball123, Arla, and quannump) at 152 points, or 62.8%.
Don't those numbers seem low to you?
No. Even regardless of balance, take a look at the numbers for professional sports betters. They usually post 55-58% win rates and occasionally 60%, but not for very long. DRG's highest matchup is 70% but his average is 66%, and he's your most reliable player (besides the really bad ones, who don't play much.)
We'll ignore money line bets here for the sake of clarity, and address only those bets wherein the player must risk as much as 11 to win 10; - pointspreads and over/under bets. Against this type of bet, anyone at all can expect to win 50 percent. After all, the only thing required is to flip a coin and pick a side. The bookmakers' profit comes from the difference between what a bettor must risk and what a bettor expects to win. Every time a player wins, the bookmaker withholds slightly more than 9 percent of the winnings ($1 for every $11 risked). Consequently, a bettor winning only half his bets will ultimately go broke.
Professional sports bettors, by comparison, rarely sustain a long term winning percentage higher than 57 or 58 percent, and it's often as low as 54 or 55 percent.
Now's a good chance to learn about binomials and how you only have a 54% chance of winning 65 or more out of 100, on a 65% bet.
This is really interesting, I haven't heard of any of this stuff before.
There could still be skill ceiling/variance issues in the game, I'm just saying the evidence isn't in the win rates of bettors.
Just as an example, this is a quick look (which is why so many seasons are missing, you can find those posts yourselves ) at the Liquibet numbers from BW.
Year - Liquibet Edition - Highest Liquibet Winning % 2003 - Season 1 - 68% 2004 - Season 3 - 64.5% 2005 - Season 5 - 61.5% 2006 - Season 6 - 69.5% 2007 - Season 9 - 67% 2007 - Season 10 - 64.35% 2008 - Season 11 - 64.5% 2008 - Season 12 - 70.54% 2009 - Season 14 - 67.9%
There's probably some correlation there with bonjwas but it kind of shows this season's numbers probably shouldn't be taken as "low" since having an absolutely dominant player like prime-sAviOr, prime-Jaedong and prime-Flash isn't the norm.
Okay ... so OP says: 64.9% is too low! Whereas archives tell us: it's pretty average!
Conclusion? We are pretty fine were we are considering the youth of the game.
Is there something inherently wrong with a game where the supposed best players so often lose to players who are widely considered weaker than them? Like, is the skill ceiling not high enough? Is it too luck based? Why don't the best players beat the slightly less good players more often?
This has been suggested by pros, writers, community figures since 2008 when we started playing alpha builds. It has been consistently complained about (especially by idra) for years now.
I agree with this. They also got rid of the early/mid game (sort of) with the economy boosters that they gave each race, so they eliminated the early game which is a place where the truly talented would gain an edge in the game. They would use their small army as efficiently as possible, while macroing up economy and upgrades. With no early game, if it is just max or a solid army vs solid army battle, one mistake can win a lesser player a game, where in the past a truly talented BW player would have capitalized on those mistakes.
This is complete nonsense. The reason we have no more early game vs early game mistakes is because the community has forced the maps to be continent sized (since they want more macro games) and the standard is now 3 base 200 supply macro games.
When you have maps that are continent sized you are ALWAYS going to have room for error. That's why the only race capable of punishing early mistakes is Protoss now, which is why TvP and ZvP are so punishing if the Protoss all ins and you aren't prepared for it. It is no longer true the other way around. Why do they have this ability? THEY CAN SPAWN THEIR UNITS 6 FEET FROM YOUR BASE.
Rather than acknowledging this as a good part in the game (the part everyone wants to see), instead we have amateur game designers trying to remove warpgate from the game because it "punishes diversity". No, just make the fucking maps smaller so terrans and zerg can put on some basic pressure without requiring hellions or zergling/roach speed.
On February 23 2013 01:36 dUTtrOACh wrote: I've been thinking what the OP has been thinking since mid-2011.
Balance patches may have been too drastic during the Wings of Liberty phase, throwing things out of wack for many players, but that doesn't explain a solid player just falling off the face of the earth (Danger Days of Code A - the abyss).
It may be a very mental game and it may involve lots of preparation time between games in some tournaments, but a mechanically superior player getting crushed because of some lucky spells in the last game of a close series is actually pretty disgraceful. There is way too much volatility and the metagame of Wings is ridiculously stagnant. We'll have to see if HotS sees a little more consistency, but my mind is made up about Wings. Now, if only I could log on and play some games...
No, it completely explains it. The fact that Mvp fell through Code S into Code A is proof alone that the ability to play at your best matters hugely in WoL. The guy's not well. Players get found out, players adjust their builds. Maps change, they get bigger and smaller. Dodgy little bits of geometry get abused. Occasionally there is an overpowered unit (infestor) but usually most of it is that someone hasn't figured out how to play against a unit.
Maybe their "dominance" as you ascribe to believe they have, is mostly down to coming out with a new tactic no one had seen before and then playing an absolute fuckton of games. It takes time to adapt to something and some people do it quicker than others. In Code S for example, Life played a really unique style of zerg that was super strong. The only person who really adapted to it was Mvp, in the finals. Same with Rain. Really strong style of defensive Protoss. Who beat it? Mvp.
Those players get found out. Some get found out sooner rather than later. HuK was really strong until people got used to defending protoss early pressure builds, at which point HE was found out. Thorzain is still the most mechanically strong foreigner we had, but Koreans and zerg take advantage of his lack of aggression to overrun him with units.
The only truly dominant players we have had are Mvp and Nestea and of those two, why Mvp? Well, look at who adapted to Life and Rain first.
HoTS, I anticipate a fantastic blow for blow rivalry between a healed Mvp and Flash, who is increasingly looking like God again.
You sound pretty salty which doesn't help anyone make their point, only sound angry. Huge maps doesn't make the early game last longer. Again a full economy is easier to obtain than in BW, so windows for pressures are closed almost completely. That doesn't mean they cannot work, but that they are less profitable. If I destroy an expansion worth of workers, but sacrifice my own economy to do so, then chances are my opponent is still going to have the same economic force that I have. Then after the early game is done, both players just work on upgrades and maxing their armies which comes very quickly in this game.
Huge maps make the early game shorter. Huge maps give safety. They allow players to cut corners, cut units, get more expansions earlier, get earlier upgrades.
On some of the continent sized maps you have now, the early game for TvZ biotank ends as soon as the zerg has enough zerglings to force away whatever number of hellions the terran is taking map control with. That's it. Sometimes they'll get in and do damage, but they're not actually going to DO anything more than economical damage. There are no game ending mistakes that a zerg can make which means 6 hellions will destroy their whole base.
Reduce the size of the map by half and all of a sudden six hellions are followed up by a 2 tank marine push three minutes later. All of a sudden getting an actual early defense up is important. That third might have to wait.
The reason protoss are unique in this is because if the toss wants to, they can pile on pressure continually due to having a near zero travel time between their unit spawn and the battle itself. I am not complaining about toss when I say this, btw. I am just stating that their method of spawning units is uniquely suited for all ins to some of the enormous maps that exist atm.
If you want an early game filled with fun and mental micro heavy defenses then lobby to have maps made smaller. If you want a big 3-4 base 200 200 macro war then lobby to make maps bigger. Or you do what HoTS has done - make harassing units much, much stronger.
Starcraft is not the best competitive game. Go play Quake and Chess. Really.
Because my post felt empty, I'll add more. Innovation is far more talented than Symbol, it's a sad truth which is apparent if you study games closely. Innovation makes TONS of intelligent decisions on basically everything. Symbol on the other hand, just carries out his build and it wins or it doesn't win. Symbol makes those small decisions occasionally, but when compared to a player like Bomber or Polt or Innovation (lolterranfanboy) you will see that there is so much more to those players than what you see out of many other pros. Naniwa also makes a lot of small intelligent decisions, but he isn't as refined. But the sad thing is, those small decisions don't even pay off in the long run. Sometimes it's just better to herpderp your way to victory (look at all the roach-rush builds out there, total herpderp). And that my friends, is Starcraft Poo.
Note that you drew the example of tennis, which is basically (along with chess) THE MOST consistent sport (that i know of). I mean Federer and Nadal meeting in i don't know how many consecutive finals is really sick.
But my roommate is a huge Hockey fan and he was telling me about this curse, where last Stanley Cup winner never makes it into the playoffs. Reminded me of the GSL curse where winner doesn't break Ro32.
There are two reasons SC2 is so volatile: yes it does have a luck factor, but also the fact that it's so unforgiving. It doesn't matter if you're the best, if you let your army get fungaled, that 1 second loses you the game. That's it. Because of this, the best players tend to be the ones who make less mistakes; but nobody is perfect, and sometimes you will get caught with your units in a ball.
I do, however, agree with you. In fact, I always find myself cheering for the most accomplished player just because i want to feel like sc2 is consistent. The only player i really cheer for is PartinG, cause i've been his fan since the beginning of 2012.
Please do not tell an avid football watcher how my own game works, thanks. Nevermind a Manchester United fan from OId Trafford. I know what it is I am talking about.
Wow can you get any more pretentious ? Just because you are from Manchester and watch the team all the time; doesn't change the fact that football has draws. You're also comparing a team sport with draws to an individual one that doesn't. By the way, this season in La liga Barcelona's win percentage is 87.5%; and it's not because la liga is terrible, it's because Barcelona are that much better than everyone.
Starcraft is not the best competitive game. Go play Quake and Chess. Really.
Chess is build order rules. Your build order usually determines whether you win or not up to the very high level. This was proven by the fact that computers are essentially unbeatable by grandmasters now. This is not like Starcraft where they have an innate APM advantage. They can just analyse every single move using breadth analysis and follow a logical tree down to the end result. We can do this because chess is an essentially solvable game with quantized movement rules. It is impossible to program a computer to win Starcraft without giving them advantages that no human is capable of following. A human is more than capable of reading a chess book for the length of time required to beat a chess computer, but not necessarily following every single logical strand right the way down to its end.
Quake is no different than Starcraft 2 in that map advantage comes into play as does timing on powerups and a certain amount of luck in that your strategy might directly counter the strategy of your opponent. Essentially Quake is an A-B simulator while taking the minimum amount of damage from A - B while taking the maximum amount of damage. Pro Quake is not like regular Quake. Pro Quake is as much about timings on an individual map and wierd geometry as it is about skill.
FlasH had 85% one season and 65% the next depending on his shape. The other bonjwas winrates were also scewed during their pre and after bonjwa eras and you seem to forget that FlasH had a 74% winrate over all match ups for 4 years... Thats longer than the entierty of SC2s life span + it's beta.
Soo MVP doesn't really compare in any shape or form because he was only dominant for a year and even calling that a dominance is questionable.
Please do not tell an avid football watcher how my own game works, thanks. Nevermind a Manchester United fan from OId Trafford. I know what it is I am talking about.
Wow can you get any more pretentious ? Just because you are from Manchester and watch the team all the time; doesn't change the fact that football has draws. You're also comparing a team sport with draws to an individual one that doesn't. By the way, this season in La liga Barcelona's win percentage is 87.5%; and it's not because la liga is terrible, it's because Barcelona are that much better than everyone.
Its not pretentious. It's just annoying when people with no background in statistical analysis with clear bias issues and no understanding, at all, of computer AI design or game theory come on here and pretend that because someone isn't completely dominant, it means the game is broken.
I've provided no less than six examples of why this is not true. The fact you are picking up on regional examples rather than career averages over a variety of cups (tell me, what was the result between Barca and AC Milan the other night?) suggests that you should probably reconsider your position.
It is very rare in sport that someone is as dominant as Manchester United have been. Extremely rare. Michael Schumacher, maybe Tiger Woods and possibly Kasparov. Even Kasparov was known more for playing opponents into submission (usually forcing draws) which is the usual case in high level chess.
Starcraft is not the best competitive game. Go play Quake and Chess. Really.
Because my post felt empty, I'll add more. Innovation is far more talented than Symbol, it's a sad truth which is apparent if you study games closely. Innovation makes TONS of intelligent decisions on basically everything. Symbol on the other hand, just carries out his build and it wins or it doesn't win. Symbol makes those small decisions occasionally, but when compared to a player like Bomber or Polt or Innovation (lolterranfanboy) you will see that there is so much more to those players than what you see out of many other pros. Naniwa also makes a lot of small intelligent decisions, but he isn't as refined. But the sad thing is, those small decisions don't even pay off in the long run. Sometimes it's just better to herpderp your way to victory (look at all the roach-rush builds out there, total herpderp). And that my friends, is Starcraft Poo.
I'm not happy to say I agree with you, but I definitely do. I wish the game was designed better, as it happened me so many times to lose in tournaments against players much worse than me and win against players much better than me just by gambling or doing stuff that didn't make sense to them because they were a level above or below me.
What is actually going on is not that the game is insanely variable, but that the players themselves are insanely variable. When the best players go on a rampage, anyone who watches can see that they're clearly outplaying and dominating the opposition. Generally, they've found an extremely powerful build or tactic and are exploiting the hell out of it, but sometimes it's just that the stars have aligned and they're in perfect shape to play. But just as much as they can go on a tear and win, they can also be struck down by someone else who's at their best.
Maybe Starcraft is a game that encourages that kind of inconsistency. Maybe the ability to innovate builds and the huge amount of focus required is what causes players to spike up and down. But is that a bad thing? Does that show that the game is skill-free, or does it rather that the game is so skill-intensive that nobody's managed to keep everything under control for very long?
Is there something inherently wrong with a game where the supposed best players so often lose to players who are widely considered weaker than them? Like, is the skill ceiling not high enough? Is it too luck based? Why don't the best players beat the slightly less good players more often?
This has been suggested by pros, writers, community figures since 2008 when we started playing alpha builds. It has been consistently complained about (especially by idra) for years now.
I agree with this. They also got rid of the early/mid game (sort of) with the economy boosters that they gave each race, so they eliminated the early game which is a place where the truly talented would gain an edge in the game. They would use their small army as efficiently as possible, while macroing up economy and upgrades. With no early game, if it is just max or a solid army vs solid army battle, one mistake can win a lesser player a game, where in the past a truly talented BW player would have capitalized on those mistakes.
This is complete nonsense. The reason we have no more early game vs early game mistakes is because the community has forced the maps to be continent sized (since they want more macro games) and the standard is now 3 base 200 supply macro games.
When you have maps that are continent sized you are ALWAYS going to have room for error. That's why the only race capable of punishing early mistakes is Protoss now, which is why TvP and ZvP are so punishing if the Protoss all ins and you aren't prepared for it. It is no longer true the other way around. Why do they have this ability? THEY CAN SPAWN THEIR UNITS 6 FEET FROM YOUR BASE.
Rather than acknowledging this as a good part in the game (the part everyone wants to see), instead we have amateur game designers trying to remove warpgate from the game because it "punishes diversity". No, just make the fucking maps smaller so terrans and zerg can put on some basic pressure without requiring hellions or zergling/roach speed.
On February 23 2013 01:36 dUTtrOACh wrote: I've been thinking what the OP has been thinking since mid-2011.
Balance patches may have been too drastic during the Wings of Liberty phase, throwing things out of wack for many players, but that doesn't explain a solid player just falling off the face of the earth (Danger Days of Code A - the abyss).
It may be a very mental game and it may involve lots of preparation time between games in some tournaments, but a mechanically superior player getting crushed because of some lucky spells in the last game of a close series is actually pretty disgraceful. There is way too much volatility and the metagame of Wings is ridiculously stagnant. We'll have to see if HotS sees a little more consistency, but my mind is made up about Wings. Now, if only I could log on and play some games...
No, it completely explains it. The fact that Mvp fell through Code S into Code A is proof alone that the ability to play at your best matters hugely in WoL. The guy's not well. Players get found out, players adjust their builds. Maps change, they get bigger and smaller. Dodgy little bits of geometry get abused. Occasionally there is an overpowered unit (infestor) but usually most of it is that someone hasn't figured out how to play against a unit.
Maybe their "dominance" as you ascribe to believe they have, is mostly down to coming out with a new tactic no one had seen before and then playing an absolute fuckton of games. It takes time to adapt to something and some people do it quicker than others. In Code S for example, Life played a really unique style of zerg that was super strong. The only person who really adapted to it was Mvp, in the finals. Same with Rain. Really strong style of defensive Protoss. Who beat it? Mvp.
Those players get found out. Some get found out sooner rather than later. HuK was really strong until people got used to defending protoss early pressure builds, at which point HE was found out. Thorzain is still the most mechanically strong foreigner we had, but Koreans and zerg take advantage of his lack of aggression to overrun him with units.
The only truly dominant players we have had are Mvp and Nestea and of those two, why Mvp? Well, look at who adapted to Life and Rain first.
HoTS, I anticipate a fantastic blow for blow rivalry between a healed Mvp and Flash, who is increasingly looking like God again.
You sound pretty salty which doesn't help anyone make their point, only sound angry. Huge maps doesn't make the early game last longer. Again a full economy is easier to obtain than in BW, so windows for pressures are closed almost completely. That doesn't mean they cannot work, but that they are less profitable. If I destroy an expansion worth of workers, but sacrifice my own economy to do so, then chances are my opponent is still going to have the same economic force that I have. Then after the early game is done, both players just work on upgrades and maxing their armies which comes very quickly in this game.
Huge maps make the early game shorter. Huge maps give safety. They allow players to cut corners, cut units, get more expansions earlier, get earlier upgrades.
On some of the continent sized maps you have now, the early game for TvZ biotank ends as soon as the zerg has enough zerglings to force away whatever number of hellions the terran is taking map control with. That's it. Sometimes they'll get in and do damage, but they're not actually going to DO anything more than economical damage. There are no game ending mistakes that a zerg can make which means 6 hellions will destroy their whole base.
Reduce the size of the map by half and all of a sudden six hellions are followed up by a 2 tank marine push three minutes later. All of a sudden getting an actual early defense up is important. That third might have to wait.
The reason protoss are unique in this is because if the toss wants to, they can pile on pressure continually due to having a near zero travel time between their unit spawn and the battle itself. I am not complaining about toss when I say this, btw. I am just stating that their method of spawning units is uniquely suited for all ins to some of the enormous maps that exist atm.
If you want an early game filled with fun and mental micro heavy defenses then lobby to have maps made smaller. If you want a big 3-4 base 200 200 macro war then lobby to make maps bigger. Or you do what HoTS has done - make harassing units much, much stronger.
In BroodWar matches would consistently have action very early on and their maps were even larger than WoL maps. And yes, I do agree that protoss warp in does allow them to do different pressure when compared to the other races, but their gateway units when compared to BW gateway units are weak. If you want to specifically talk about an immortal timing vs zerg, even those are now being crushed. What really ends the early game is that the capacity for mining is maxed very early, so why would you sacrifice having a full base of economy to attempt an attack if when you reach the enemy's base they will have their max on mining and be able to pump out more units, and possibly have more/better upgrades. That leaves only a small window where you can attack an enemy and they are under prepared, and with static defense+immortal/sentry, the zergs ability to mass produce, and terrans salvageable bunkers there is an easy chance they can defend without much stress.
The thing is Artosis know the game, and knows how players should play out, considering top form, and 100% correct decisions, if you leave the equation to this, Artosis would always have the answers, however you need to add HUMANS to the equation, this makes the game a million times more hard to predict. It just adds things up, like Mindset, Mindgames, Reads, Mistakes, this makes for the interesting things in betting :D
@Evangelist Your post was like, totally wasted because you didn't actually make any useful points in it. Chess has one of the most CONSISTENT win rates because skill is so clearly reflected. You can see your opponent and so it eliminates much of the RISK involved. You can still play "risky" because humans are not perfect and do not know every perfect move at every moment. There is such a thing as perfect moves in Chess.
Quake 1v1 is SO much better than SC2 just because of how well skill is reflected. It isn't as good as chess, but the game itself takes tons of talent (SC2 does too, except it's horribly reflected, aka all-in herpderp builds can win games). There's some elements of randomness to Quake, but Quake 1v1 is very heavily based on skill. Proper timing of shots, positioning, general map layout knowledge, every bit makes a huge difference, but almost every element also falls under the category of "skill".
Anyway, a game where a more talented player is not rewarded at nearly 100% is flawed. A perfect competitive game should always reward the more skilled player, always. The whole idea of randomness in a competitive game sounds like a joke. Why would anyone EVER have any elements of randomness, ever?
On February 22 2013 15:38 Gatesleeper wrote: Consider this: Artosis, perhaps the most knowledgable guy in all of Starcraft II,
he is not. thats the biggest reason he predicts so much wrong.
another reason is because the game is kinda volatile and GSL allows you to have a long time to prepare a counter build against your opponent.
was predicting Life to get out of the Ro16 really the wrong prediction?
Well, when his only losses are against Zergs, and he for some reason always picks Zergs who he knows will pick other Zergs for his group, then yes. Absolutely wrong.
Quake is no different than Starcraft 2 in that map advantage comes into play as does timing on powerups and a certain amount of luck in that your strategy might directly counter the strategy of your opponent. Essentially Quake is an A-B simulator while taking the minimum amount of damage from A - B while taking the maximum amount of damage. Pro Quake is not like regular Quake. Pro Quake is as much about timings on an individual map and wierd geometry as it is about skill.
Funny how that works.
Wait a minute, map advantage what? There's not such thing as "map advantage" when you have access to the same tools then you opponent does. Sure, some people can be better on certain maps than others but that has nothing to do with "map advantage", that just means you're better than certain maps then your opponent. This is completely different compared to "zerg has a huge advantage on this map" or "terran is gimped when he plays on this map". What you're referring to is taking advantage of the map, which is similar to SC2, but like I said before, both of you have access to the same tools so there's no inherent imbalances like you do with the maps in SC2.
On February 23 2013 02:17 thezanursic wrote: FlasH had 85% one season and 65% the next depending on his shape. The other bonjwas winrates were also scewed during their pre and after bonjwa eras and you seem to forget that FlasH had a 74% winrate over all match ups for 4 years... Thats longer than the entierty of SC2s life span + it's beta.
Soo MVP doesn't really compare in any shape or form because he was only dominant for a year and even calling that a dominance is questionable.
He is also comparing apples to oranges. Flash dominated late in BroodWar where the meta game was pretty much figured out, but he perfected the BO, knowledge of his enemy, and use of every tool at his disposal. MvP dominated where one could say Boxer dominated in BW with more micro than perfection of BO, macro, micro, the whole game.
Edit: I would also like to say that people comparing this to tennis/soccer there is only ONE matchup in Tennis/soccer (the other player/team). They might play differently (build order), but they're all the same and have the same tools. MU specific players do exist and can even thrive which makes SC2 more volatile.
ohh and in BW there were players who practiced just as much as FlasH and never got out of the B team or the worse of the practice partner category and the last thing to note is that in BW some players were so beastly that random B teamers prepared a specific build just for that player and only that match up on a predetermined map months ahead of time just so they could get that 1 win for the team. Of course we see nothing of the sort in SC2 because of several reasons: -The higher luck factor -The lesser importance of build orders (If you don't believe me go watch Hiya vs Boxer on bluestorm there is actually a VOD with subbed Korean commentary and not even the casters know whats going on) -The volatilty -The much lower skilling (Donn't bash just go watch Iris vs Jaedong where Jaedong micros 2 control groups of mutas in a fashion that we haven't seen since)
Honestly this thread is just another spinoff of Lings of Liberty in essence, only Lings of Liberty goes a little more specific about what the OP is referring to.
It's weird...I feel there is consistency to some degree. You can see mainly the difference in skill between a Code S player and and Code B player, but I definitely agree whether it be the state of balance, the design of the races...there is definitely a high chance for inferior players to win. Too much.. but this will only be fixed over time with better design and better balance. So unfortunately there's nothing to do but complain and enjoy gems like "lings of liberty" and hope it gets better.
Also one point about the "superstars" in real sports as opposed to progamers. You have to realize that the sample size to become a superstar and experience to become a superstar in a traditional sport is just insane in comparison, and that these people are acclimated and used to being a champion and in the spotlight for years before they become these national/global figures. They already will have that killer instinct, that confidence and professionalism in them.. they are also older than 18 years old and are probably know themselves a lot better. So its just harder to become that superstar level and maintain it as a young kid to begin with.
On February 23 2013 02:17 thezanursic wrote: FlasH had 85% one season and 65% the next depending on his shape. The other bonjwas winrates were also scewed during their pre and after bonjwa eras and you seem to forget that FlasH had a 74% winrate over all match ups for 4 years... Thats longer than the entierty of SC2s life span + it's beta.
Soo MVP doesn't really compare in any shape or form because he was only dominant for a year and even calling that a dominance is questionable.
He is also comparing apples to oranges. Flash dominated late in BroodWar where the meta game was pretty much figured out, but he perfected the BO, knowledge of his enemy, and use of every tool at his disposal. MvP dominated where one could say Boxer dominated in BW with more micro than perfection of BO, macro, micro, the whole game.
Edit: I would also like to say that people comparing this to tennis/soccer there is only ONE matchup in Tennis/soccer (the other player/team). They might play differently (build order), but they're all the same and have the same tools. MU specific players do exist and can even thrive which makes SC2 more volatile.
This also I would have mentioned it in my post, but I didn't want to make the post to long.
Ohh and just to emphasise this again
MVP's best winratio over a year was 68% Flash's best winratio over a year was somewhere around 85%
On February 22 2013 15:45 Onlinejaguar wrote: As much as people want it to be that the game doesn't have this imbalance factor. It simply does. Unlike games such as tennis where both players have the same things, their bodies and a racquet. Sc2 is not that simple with 3 unique races using different units.
Skill does still play a huge factor. If it was completely RNG how would you explain Nestea or MvP's run in the GSL winning 3 and 4 titles respectively.
I don't think Starcraft can ever be as balanced and 'fair' as other traditional sports. Its just the way it is really.
I would explain it via skill + a good understanding of the developing game which really gave them the edge
The "Artosis curse" is simply that the guy is really good at sounding way more intelligent and knowledgeable than he really is. I love his casting, but lets be honest and admit he has basically zero humility and he can't come close to playing on the level of the players he regularly critiques and predicts.
On February 23 2013 02:17 thezanursic wrote: FlasH had 85% one season and 65% the next depending on his shape. The other bonjwas winrates were also scewed during their pre and after bonjwa eras and you seem to forget that FlasH had a 74% winrate over all match ups for 4 years... Thats longer than the entierty of SC2s life span + it's beta.
Soo MVP doesn't really compare in any shape or form because he was only dominant for a year and even calling that a dominance is questionable.
He is also comparing apples to oranges. Flash dominated late in BroodWar where the meta game was pretty much figured out, but he perfected the BO, knowledge of his enemy, and use of every tool at his disposal. MvP dominated where one could say Boxer dominated in BW with more micro than perfection of BO, macro, micro, the whole game.
Edit: I would also like to say that people comparing this to tennis/soccer there is only ONE matchup in Tennis/soccer (the other player/team). They might play differently (build order), but they're all the same and have the same tools. MU specific players do exist and can even thrive which makes SC2 more volatile.
This also I would have mentioned it in my post, but I didn't want to make the post to long.
Ohh and just to emphasise this again
MVP's best winratio over a year was 68% Flash's best winratio over a year was somewhere around 85%
What year was he close to 85%? That is simply incredible, a source or link from TLPD would be great.
On February 23 2013 02:17 thezanursic wrote: FlasH had 85% one season and 65% the next depending on his shape. The other bonjwas winrates were also scewed during their pre and after bonjwa eras and you seem to forget that FlasH had a 74% winrate over all match ups for 4 years... Thats longer than the entierty of SC2s life span + it's beta.
Soo MVP doesn't really compare in any shape or form because he was only dominant for a year and even calling that a dominance is questionable.
He is also comparing apples to oranges. Flash dominated late in BroodWar where the meta game was pretty much figured out, but he perfected the BO, knowledge of his enemy, and use of every tool at his disposal. MvP dominated where one could say Boxer dominated in BW with more micro than perfection of BO, macro, micro, the whole game.
Edit: I would also like to say that people comparing this to tennis/soccer there is only ONE matchup in Tennis/soccer (the other player/team). They might play differently (build order), but they're all the same and have the same tools. MU specific players do exist and can even thrive which makes SC2 more volatile.
This also I would have mentioned it in my post, but I didn't want to make the post to long.
Ohh and just to emphasise this again
MVP's best winratio over a year was 68% Flash's best winratio over a year was somewhere around 85%
What year was he close to 85%? That is simply incredible, a source or link from TLPD would be great.
over a year or over a season? The best I saw on TLPD for calendar years were 2010 and 2011 at 75% which is by no means bad (it's still really fucking good) but it's not 85% for a year 2008 69.12% 2009 74.10% 2010 75.15% (76.11% if you add in his 10-1 WCG run) 2011 74.73% 2012 67.44%
Mvp's win rate was 70.16% (214 - 91) if you combine both TLPDs for 2011. International TLPD contains the GSL World Championship he won, WCG, MLG Anaheim, MLG Providence, and a few other tournaments
On February 23 2013 02:17 thezanursic wrote: FlasH had 85% one season and 65% the next depending on his shape. The other bonjwas winrates were also scewed during their pre and after bonjwa eras and you seem to forget that FlasH had a 74% winrate over all match ups for 4 years... Thats longer than the entierty of SC2s life span + it's beta.
Soo MVP doesn't really compare in any shape or form because he was only dominant for a year and even calling that a dominance is questionable.
He is also comparing apples to oranges. Flash dominated late in BroodWar where the meta game was pretty much figured out, but he perfected the BO, knowledge of his enemy, and use of every tool at his disposal. MvP dominated where one could say Boxer dominated in BW with more micro than perfection of BO, macro, micro, the whole game.
Edit: I would also like to say that people comparing this to tennis/soccer there is only ONE matchup in Tennis/soccer (the other player/team). They might play differently (build order), but they're all the same and have the same tools. MU specific players do exist and can even thrive which makes SC2 more volatile.
This also I would have mentioned it in my post, but I didn't want to make the post to long.
Ohh and just to emphasise this again
MVP's best winratio over a year was 68% Flash's best winratio over a year was somewhere around 85%
What year was he close to 85%? That is simply incredible, a source or link from TLPD would be great.
over a year or over a season? The best I saw on TLPD for calendar years were 2010 and 2011 at 75% which is by no means bad (it's still really fucking good) but it's not 85% for a year 2008 69.12% 2009 74.10% 2010 75.15% 2011 74.73% 2012 67.44%
Yeah same, i didnt know if he meant year like starting in April and ending in March of the next year. 75 is still crazy. 85 % just seems too nuts though. He would win 5 out of 6 games his win rate would go down lol.
On February 22 2013 17:29 Fionn wrote: I feel bad for Artosis. Must suck always making public predictions, being wrong and having people say you curse their favorite players.
Does anybody have any stats on the best players from bw in like, 2003? I mean even then, that is 5 years experience with BW, but I imagine itll be pretty different than stats from like 2008+
On February 23 2013 03:27 TheRabidDeer wrote: Does anybody have any stats on the best players from bw in like, 2003? I mean even then, that is 5 years experience with BW, but I imagine itll be pretty different than stats from like 2008+
On February 23 2013 03:27 TheRabidDeer wrote: Does anybody have any stats on the best players from bw in like, 2003? I mean even then, that is 5 years experience with BW, but I imagine itll be pretty different than stats from like 2008+
What you have to realize is that everyone didn't lose the 10+ years of learning to analyze RTS games they gained from BW, AOE, WaR3, ect.
When BW came out maximizing efficiency in macro and builds wasn't nearly at the level it was at when SC2 hit the scene. In the first 6 months of Sc2 we had thread after thread, of mathematical breakdowns of each race and it's optimization. We had lengthy analysis of maximizing economy, zerg expansion and pool timing were broken down scientifically before sc2 beta ended, terran expansion and mule timing also became set in stone very early (the only change now is we often see expansion 1st builds) but these were also popular in BW. Keep in mind, it took BW 5 years to reach that point in the meta, where it took Sc2 less than 2 years (and that is a big deal considering all of the terrain negating and crazy all ins that exist in Sc2 compared to BW.
I think BW was a virgin experience, no one really knew how to play an RTS when the original starcraft came out, the RTS games before it didn't have the complexity in econ or the unit diversity to warrant the depth of understanding that starcraft requires at top levels.
Any new mainstream RTS that ever is released, will be analyzed and understood in it's first year, better than BW was understood in it's first 5. Just look how long BW was out when players like iLuvoov rose up, think about how elementary his "revolutionary macro play" seems by today's standards. He started 1 rax expanding against zerg, and it changed everything, it took another 5 years after that when flash came along and started CC first all the time in BW. Starcraft 2 when through these changes in under 2 years, with constant and drastic balance changes.
On February 23 2013 03:27 TheRabidDeer wrote: Does anybody have any stats on the best players from bw in like, 2003? I mean even then, that is 5 years experience with BW, but I imagine itll be pretty different than stats from like 2008+
On February 23 2013 03:27 TheRabidDeer wrote: Does anybody have any stats on the best players from bw in like, 2003? I mean even then, that is 5 years experience with BW, but I imagine itll be pretty different than stats from like 2008+
What you have to realize is that everyone didn't lose the 10+ years of learning to analyze RTS games they gained from BW, AOE, WaR3, ect.
When BW came out maximizing efficiency in macro and builds wasn't nearly at the level it was at when SC2 hit the scene. In the first 6 months of Sc2 we had thread after thread, of mathematical breakdowns of each race and it's optimization. We had lengthy analysis of maximizing economy, zerg expansion and pool timing were broken down scientifically before sc2 beta ended, terran expansion and mule timing also became set in stone very early (the only change now is we often see expansion 1st builds) but these were also popular in BW. Keep in mind, it took BW 5 years to reach that point in the meta, where it took Sc2 less than 2 years (and that is a big deal considering all of the terrain negating and crazy all ins that exist in Sc2 compared to BW.
I think BW was a virgin experience, no one really knew how to play an RTS when the original starcraft came out, the RTS games before it didn't have the complexity in econ or the unit diversity to warrant the depth of understanding that starcraft requires at top levels.
Any new mainstream RTS that ever is released, will be analyzed and understood in it's first year, better than BW was understood in it's first 5. Just look how long BW was out when players like iLuvoov rose up, think about how elementary his "revolutionary macro play" seems by today's standards. He started 1 rax expanding against zerg, and it changed everything, it took another 5 years after that when flash came along and started CC first all the time in BW. Starcraft 2 when through these changes in under 2 years, with constant and drastic balance changes.
THANK YOU. Been trying to express this notion clearly but failing to do so for years.
EDIT: So sick of the "give it time" argument. The only time this game requires is the time it artificially creates by expanding the game to multiple expansions and numerous drastic patches. + A few months for any dedicated Korean proteam to massgame post-change and determine what winning should look like.
On February 23 2013 02:54 Treemonkeys wrote: The "Artosis curse" is simply that the guy is really good at sounding way more intelligent and knowledgeable than he really is. I love his casting, but lets be honest and admit he has basically zero humility and he can't come close to playing on the level of the players he regularly critiques and predicts.
Yeah, if people have listened to Artosis from the very beginning, they'd realise that he only like players who play a certain style of play or play the way he theorizes as the optimal way of playing. Anyone who deviates from that is a "bad" player. He has toned down a lot since those days but it showed he doesn't really know what good play or good decisions are. All the Protoss players he hyped up are a year ago who played Protoss "correctly" are nowhere near the top while the Protoss players he heavily criticised during the days of "Sad Zealot" are still here. Artosis's days of heavily criticizing the Protoss players were one of the most frustrating periods of SC2 for me. It's just a shame that the top Protosses who are still here today just did not get the credit they deserve.
The player who plays better will win roughly 90% of the time (cheese and build order losses notwithstanding).
One player may be "better" than another, which only means his average performance in a given game is higher than the other's. However, the "better" player may still have bad games, and the "worse" player can have good ones. The player who plays better always wins, it's just that in StarCraft it is hard to consistently play better than everyone else every single game. You have off games, it's just the nature of the [e]sport.
On February 23 2013 02:54 Treemonkeys wrote: The "Artosis curse" is simply that the guy is really good at sounding way more intelligent and knowledgeable than he really is. I love his casting, but lets be honest and admit he has basically zero humility and he can't come close to playing on the level of the players he regularly critiques and predicts.
Yeah, if people have listened to Artosis from the very beginning, they'd realise that he only like players who play a certain style of play or play the way he theorizes as the optimal way of playing. Anyone who deviates from that is a "bad" player. He has toned down a lot since those days but it showed he doesn't really know what good play or good decisions are. All the Protoss players he hyped up are a year ago who played Protoss "correctly" are nowhere near the top while the Protoss players he heavily criticised during the days of "Sad Zealot" are still here. Artosis's days of heavily criticizing the Protoss players were one of the most frustrating periods of SC2 for me. It's just a shame that the top Protosses who are still here today just did not get the credit they deserve.
Yeah this is definitely true. He's not afraid to go overboard on the hype either. For example, during Innovation's latest series vs Symbol, they mentioned that he had unbelievable army control, yet if you just watched the games you could see that Innovation wasn't splitting well against banelings at all. I was also very surprised when they admitted this season that Nestea's play was actually terrible.
Starcraft is not the best competitive game. Go play Quake and Chess. Really.
Because my post felt empty, I'll add more. Innovation is far more talented than Symbol, it's a sad truth which is apparent if you study games closely. Innovation makes TONS of intelligent decisions on basically everything. Symbol on the other hand, just carries out his build and it wins or it doesn't win. Symbol makes those small decisions occasionally, but when compared to a player like Bomber or Polt or Innovation (lolterranfanboy) you will see that there is so much more to those players than what you see out of many other pros. Naniwa also makes a lot of small intelligent decisions, but he isn't as refined. But the sad thing is, those small decisions don't even pay off in the long run. Sometimes it's just better to herpderp your way to victory (look at all the roach-rush builds out there, total herpderp). And that my friends, is Starcraft Poo.
This guy wrote the truth. Starcraft just isnt the competitive game that you want it to be.
The game itself runs way too fast to give a human enough time to make smart decisions during combat, the only thing you can really do is to try and position the army (as a whole) in a better fashion, by splitting off certain segments or moving certain segments, or stutter stepping the whole army, or move certain big type units like the colossus to the back. These measures are all easily done and trivial. When it comes to doing smart micro stuff, it becomes a complete shitfest in big combat, because everything dies way too quickly The game just runs too fast to allow for actual PROPER micro, like the one we saw in wc3. In wc3, A-moving your army against a microing player, will always lose you the battle. In sc2, A-moving your army against a microing player, will probably result in you winning the battle even more decisively, because any micro the opponent does might actually hurt the smart AI focus fire. What is left? A-moving your army and then macroing, and then the occassional stutter step and splitting off of segments and moving them around.
Sc2 will never achieve the depth of skill that wc3 had.
On February 23 2013 02:54 Treemonkeys wrote: The "Artosis curse" is simply that the guy is really good at sounding way more intelligent and knowledgeable than he really is. I love his casting, but lets be honest and admit he has basically zero humility and he can't come close to playing on the level of the players he regularly critiques and predicts.
Yeah, if people have listened to Artosis from the very beginning, they'd realise that he only like players who play a certain style of play or play the way he theorizes as the optimal way of playing. Anyone who deviates from that is a "bad" player. He has toned down a lot since those days but it showed he doesn't really know what good play or good decisions are. All the Protoss players he hyped up are a year ago who played Protoss "correctly" are nowhere near the top while the Protoss players he heavily criticised during the days of "Sad Zealot" are still here. Artosis's days of heavily criticizing the Protoss players were one of the most frustrating periods of SC2 for me. It's just a shame that the top Protosses who are still here today just did not get the credit they deserve.
Yeah this is definitely true. He's not afraid to go overboard on the hype either. For example, during Innovation's latest series vs Symbol, they mentioned that he had unbelievable army control, yet if you just watched the games you could see that Innovation wasn't splitting well against banelings at all. I was also very surprised when they admitted this season that Nestea's play was actually terrible.
I don't remember which player it was but there was a game where Arotosis said that the Terran Kespa player had unbelievable macro. When he saw how many supply drops that the player used instead of mules, he began theorizing why using supply drops are better than mules.
On February 23 2013 02:54 Treemonkeys wrote: The "Artosis curse" is simply that the guy is really good at sounding way more intelligent and knowledgeable than he really is. I love his casting, but lets be honest and admit he has basically zero humility and he can't come close to playing on the level of the players he regularly critiques and predicts.
Yeah, if people have listened to Artosis from the very beginning, they'd realise that he only like players who play a certain style of play or play the way he theorizes as the optimal way of playing. Anyone who deviates from that is a "bad" player. He has toned down a lot since those days but it showed he doesn't really know what good play or good decisions are. All the Protoss players he hyped up are a year ago who played Protoss "correctly" are nowhere near the top while the Protoss players he heavily criticised during the days of "Sad Zealot" are still here. Artosis's days of heavily criticizing the Protoss players were one of the most frustrating periods of SC2 for me. It's just a shame that the top Protosses who are still here today just did not get the credit they deserve.
Yeah this is definitely true. He's not afraid to go overboard on the hype either. For example, during Innovation's latest series vs Symbol, they mentioned that he had unbelievable army control, yet if you just watched the games you could see that Innovation wasn't splitting well against banelings at all. I was also very surprised when they admitted this season that Nestea's play was actually terrible.
I don't remember which player it was but there was a game where Arotosis said that the Terran Kespa player had unbelievable macro. When he saw how many supply drops that the player used instead of mules, he began theorizing why using supply drops are better than mules.
Starcraft is not the best competitive game. Go play Quake and Chess. Really.
Because my post felt empty, I'll add more. Innovation is far more talented than Symbol, it's a sad truth which is apparent if you study games closely. Innovation makes TONS of intelligent decisions on basically everything. Symbol on the other hand, just carries out his build and it wins or it doesn't win. Symbol makes those small decisions occasionally, but when compared to a player like Bomber or Polt or Innovation (lolterranfanboy) you will see that there is so much more to those players than what you see out of many other pros. Naniwa also makes a lot of small intelligent decisions, but he isn't as refined. But the sad thing is, those small decisions don't even pay off in the long run. Sometimes it's just better to herpderp your way to victory (look at all the roach-rush builds out there, total herpderp). And that my friends, is Starcraft Poo.
This guy wrote the truth. Starcraft just isnt the competitive game that you want it to be.
The game itself runs way too fast to give a human enough time to make smart decisions during combat, the only thing you can really do is to try and position the army (as a whole) in a better fashion, by splitting off certain segments or moving certain segments, or stutter stepping the whole army, or move certain big type units like the colossus to the back. These measures are all easily done. When it comes to doing smart micro stuff, it becomes a complete shitfest in big combat, because everything dies way too quickly The game just runs too fast to allow for actual PROPER micro, like the one we saw in wc3. In wc3, A-moving your army against a microing player, will always lose you the battle. In sc2, A-moving your army against a microing player, will probably result in you winning the battle even more decisively, because any micro the opponent does might actually hurt the smart AI focus fire. What is left? A-moving your army and then macroing, and then the occassional stutter step and splitting off of segments and moving them around.
Sc2 will never achieve the depth of skill that wc3 had.
You do realize that SC2 has adjustable game speed right? No Pro has argued for playing at a slower speed.
On February 23 2013 02:17 thezanursic wrote: FlasH had 85% one season and 65% the next depending on his shape. The other bonjwas winrates were also scewed during their pre and after bonjwa eras and you seem to forget that FlasH had a 74% winrate over all match ups for 4 years... Thats longer than the entierty of SC2s life span + it's beta.
Soo MVP doesn't really compare in any shape or form because he was only dominant for a year and even calling that a dominance is questionable.
He is also comparing apples to oranges. Flash dominated late in BroodWar where the meta game was pretty much figured out, but he perfected the BO, knowledge of his enemy, and use of every tool at his disposal. MvP dominated where one could say Boxer dominated in BW with more micro than perfection of BO, macro, micro, the whole game.
Edit: I would also like to say that people comparing this to tennis/soccer there is only ONE matchup in Tennis/soccer (the other player/team). They might play differently (build order), but they're all the same and have the same tools. MU specific players do exist and can even thrive which makes SC2 more volatile.
This also I would have mentioned it in my post, but I didn't want to make the post to long.
Ohh and just to emphasise this again
MVP's best winratio over a year was 68% Flash's best winratio over a year was somewhere around 85%
What year was he close to 85%? That is simply incredible, a source or link from TLPD would be great.
Gonna throw out there that MVP at his peak was playing a less balanced game than flash and wasn't nearly as dominant as Flash was.
Starcraft is not the best competitive game. Go play Quake and Chess. Really.
Because my post felt empty, I'll add more. Innovation is far more talented than Symbol, it's a sad truth which is apparent if you study games closely. Innovation makes TONS of intelligent decisions on basically everything. Symbol on the other hand, just carries out his build and it wins or it doesn't win. Symbol makes those small decisions occasionally, but when compared to a player like Bomber or Polt or Innovation (lolterranfanboy) you will see that there is so much more to those players than what you see out of many other pros. Naniwa also makes a lot of small intelligent decisions, but he isn't as refined. But the sad thing is, those small decisions don't even pay off in the long run. Sometimes it's just better to herpderp your way to victory (look at all the roach-rush builds out there, total herpderp). And that my friends, is Starcraft Poo.
This guy wrote the truth. Starcraft just isnt the competitive game that you want it to be.
The game itself runs way too fast to give a human enough time to make smart decisions during combat, the only thing you can really do is to try and position the army (as a whole) in a better fashion, by splitting off certain segments or moving certain segments, or stutter stepping the whole army, or move certain big type units like the colossus to the back. These measures are all easily done. When it comes to doing smart micro stuff, it becomes a complete shitfest in big combat, because everything dies way too quickly The game just runs too fast to allow for actual PROPER micro, like the one we saw in wc3. In wc3, A-moving your army against a microing player, will always lose you the battle. In sc2, A-moving your army against a microing player, will probably result in you winning the battle even more decisively, because any micro the opponent does might actually hurt the smart AI focus fire. What is left? A-moving your army and then macroing, and then the occassional stutter step and splitting off of segments and moving them around.
Sc2 will never achieve the depth of skill that wc3 had.
You do realize that SC2 has adjustable game speed right? No Pro has argued for playing at a slower speed.
Its not really the gamespeed itself i am talking about, though it would definitely be more beneficial to tone it down quite significantly. What i was talking about is how fast stuff happens in the game itself, regardless of gamespeed. Whether the game runs with super fast speed or slow speed, if you A-move your armies at each other in super slowmotion, you still wont have time to micro away targets, since they are prone to dying to a single volley of marine/roach/hydra/viking/colossus etc etc. The units dont have enough health and deal too much damage, leaving no room for correction once the engagement starts, the best thing you can do is A-Move and then try to stutter certain segments, or position yourself better beforehand. An example of a game that is very slow but has stuff happen very fast? Chess. You have all the time in the world to make your decision, the gameplay itself is extremely slow, but stuff happens extremely fast once something happens: you can lose the whole game with a single bad move/mistake. I will get to this in a second.
There is a time when you have to realize that being good at a game (you can call it pro) doesnt make that person a good game designer that understands what a game really needs to be competitive. I am game designer and i can tell you that the speed isnt the only thing that sc2 is being held back by. A competitive game should do atleast one of the following two things in order to be a competitive game: 1. Give the player enough room for error in order to not immediately lose on the first mistake they do (sc2 is heavily prone to this, vortex winning/losing the game is just one example of this, in reality this happens all the time in every single game) Good example of a game that achieves this? Any team based game, since 1 mistake does not immediately lose you the game, you can make mistakes, but the team that does less mistakes in the long run wins the game. This also includes games like quake, because one death does not immediately lose you the game, you can die several times in a row, but you can still win by making less mistakes in the long run. What would an application of this be in sc2? BO 20 or more, which isnt really possible because one game takes so long, but since a single game (or a few games) dont give enough room for error, you can easily lose while being the better player. What would a feasible application of this be in sc2? Making the armies robust enough to not immediately die in a badly taken fight and making bases slightly easier to defend (thus you can still defend with your slightly weaker army if you took a bad fight). If you do several of these mistakes, you lose, but you wont lose instantly if you do a mistake once, which sc2 is popular for. 2. If you dont give enough room for error, then you have to give the player enough time to make the correct decision instead of a mistake. This is how games like chess achieve its´ competitiveness. They dont give much room for error, one mistake can lead to you losing the game, but they give you enough time to do the correct thing, thus you are less prone to simple mistakes. Sc2 does not give enough time to make the correct decision during a combat, thus you cant always do the correct thing during combat, thus you are prone to doing random mistakes and losing to a worse player on the first mistake you do and since 1. doesnt apply either, we got a bad competitive game at our hands.
Sc2 does not achieve any of these two points i mention, and and thats a huge part of why the game is actually terribad for competitiveness.
On February 23 2013 03:27 TheRabidDeer wrote: Does anybody have any stats on the best players from bw in like, 2003? I mean even then, that is 5 years experience with BW, but I imagine itll be pretty different than stats from like 2008+
What you have to realize is that everyone didn't lose the 10+ years of learning to analyze RTS games they gained from BW, AOE, WaR3, ect.
When BW came out maximizing efficiency in macro and builds wasn't nearly at the level it was at when SC2 hit the scene. In the first 6 months of Sc2 we had thread after thread, of mathematical breakdowns of each race and it's optimization. We had lengthy analysis of maximizing economy, zerg expansion and pool timing were broken down scientifically before sc2 beta ended, terran expansion and mule timing also became set in stone very early (the only change now is we often see expansion 1st builds) but these were also popular in BW. Keep in mind, it took BW 5 years to reach that point in the meta, where it took Sc2 less than 2 years (and that is a big deal considering all of the terrain negating and crazy all ins that exist in Sc2 compared to BW.
I think BW was a virgin experience, no one really knew how to play an RTS when the original starcraft came out, the RTS games before it didn't have the complexity in econ or the unit diversity to warrant the depth of understanding that starcraft requires at top levels.
Any new mainstream RTS that ever is released, will be analyzed and understood in it's first year, better than BW was understood in it's first 5. Just look how long BW was out when players like iLuvoov rose up, think about how elementary his "revolutionary macro play" seems by today's standards. He started 1 rax expanding against zerg, and it changed everything, it took another 5 years after that when flash came along and started CC first all the time in BW. Starcraft 2 when through these changes in under 2 years, with constant and drastic balance changes.
Yes, this is true. This is also why we are currently at a point where we are close to the probably 2009 area of BW in terms of game knowledge (in WoL). However, a year ago even we were much much lower in skill.
Also, this rapid rapid change that we have undergone is another reason things seem so volatile. In BW, players saw a year of dominance. It took a lot of time for people to figure out what to do, then get it known throughout all of the players to be able to consistently beat them. Just look at the stats posted about boxer/iloveoov/Nada. They had stellar YEARS then fell off a bit as people learned how to play against them. Now compare that to SC2, people had stellar SEASONS then started to fall off. To go 4-5 months with a 70% win rate is the equivalent of a dominant year in BW just because of how quickly information and strategy travels.
Once the game is truly figured out, only then will we see a Flash in SC2. Flash was so dominant because he knew everything about the game, had great play and mechanics and everything. You cant have a dominant force when things are still changing so quickly.
True starcraft fans will never be the very best at game prediction as no matter how 'good' you are passion will always cloud your judgement. You are human after all.
However if you take purely gambling/profiting and objective approach then prediction become much easier. Then given you have inside information regarding player conditions, health and other internal factors that would affect the outcome of a games and taking everything into account in making a weight bet. Wasn't there some person who was showing off their pinnacle account statement with winnings over 10K+ net profits over the course of a month? They probably lost it all now as it was much easier to predict back in the day but its possible!
I wonder if anyone would like to do math, and do some probability calculations.
If you were to take 3100 coins, and each on of them 'makes a prediction' on every liquibet match (by being flipped). What is the highest guessing percentage we can expect? ^^
Federer is a bad example because domination like the current top 4 in tennis is quite rare. If you look at women's tennis or any other sport you will see that it's quite random and has lots of variance too..
Sc2 is fairly luck based make it quite variable i think but there are also some other factors.. Competition is tight and the way invites and ranking works you often have players of nearly equal skill meeting eachother. In other sports with set competitions like soccer or any american sport this is not the case at all because the teams vary much more in resources etc. Also the formats in sc2 are not really aimed at reducing this variability. There is almost no protection for higher ranked players like there is in other sports through seeding, bye's etc. There is hardly any large competition style formats either where you can offset losses easily. Also a single match is usually just BO3 with each game being fairly luck dependant, a tennis match in important tournaments is BO5 and each set is has many points each basically unrelated so just being a bit better causes a high win chance overall..
Basically you can protect higher tiers as much as you want by just making it longer series, adding protection for winners, playing more in competition form etc. The question is do you want this.. As long as the names are recognizable I think sc2 is in a fine spot. Tennis is too predictable for men's at the moment making it very boring. Stuff like poker and magic is too random with different guys winning all the time.. Sc2 is quite in the middle of those, at bit more random than champions league soccer i'd say but in that area. I would favor a slightly longer format for GSL though just so the top players don't get knocked out so randomly so often as they do now.. The game itself will just stay quite random but I think that's just the nature of the beast with hidden information playing such a big role as do other random things you don't have exact control over...
For example the lure of soccer is greatly in it's randomness I think, almost any game even the underdog has a chance and even during the game it often is still very much possible for both teams to improve their result within minutes making it so interesting to keep watching..
On February 23 2013 05:24 niteReloaded wrote: I wonder if anyone would like to do math, and do some probability calculations.
If you were to take 3100 coins, and each on of them 'makes a prediction' on every liquibet match (by being flipped). What is the highest guessing percentage we can expect? ^^
On February 23 2013 05:24 niteReloaded wrote: I wonder if anyone would like to do math, and do some probability calculations.
If you were to take 3100 coins, and each on of them 'makes a prediction' on every liquibet match (by being flipped). What is the highest guessing percentage we can expect? ^^
Just going to quickly throw out an idea that may have already been mentioned earlier in the thread - only read about half of it.
Is it not possible that at least part of the reason we see less consistently dominant players in SC2 as opposed to BW is that the game is constantly evolving (literally) through patches. BWs last even remotely significant patch was almost a decade ago iirc. Flash dominated in BW long after the game had 'officially' entered its final version. It was entirely up to other players to work out how to beat his style. That can take time. In SC2 if a player/race enters a period of dominance it has been, on at least a few occasions I can think of, ended abruptly/arguably prematurely by a balance 'fix'.
5 rax reaper was obviously ludicrously strong vs zerg early on in SC2s lifetime. It was patched. Does anyone honestly think that if this patch was not introduced zerg players of today would STILL be facing 5 rax reaper every game and find themselves completely oblivious as to how to stop it? I feel this gives far too little respect to the abilities of hard working professional players. It, and many other styles/builds/units were/are certainly very, very powerful - even overly so. That doesnt mean there isnt a way to stop it that can be found eventually. (Note here: I am not entirely sure that 5 rax reaper or any other patched strategy could have 100% been figured out - I do think its reasonable to suggest that theres at least a chance it could have been though. Theres some pretty smart people playing BW/SC2.)
BW has gone through many balance 'flips' in matchups when a new style has been figured out - even sometimes lasting for a year or more. A common misconception expressed when discussing BW (as opposed to SC2) is that all the matchups are completely balanced. This simply isnt the case in a way thats relevant to SC2s history. If you look at the BW matchups over 5 years or so, sure - the %s all come out to roughly 50% give or take a few % depending on the matchup. What you dont see is that at any point of time in BWs history generally each matchup is roughly a 60/40 in one direction or at some times even more skewed. Someone pioneering comes up with a new way to play a matchup or two, does very well for a period of time, other people of his race begin to copy him at which point the other races playerpools start to really go into the lab to figure out ways to beat these styles as theyre now running into them every game vs that race. Over time some progress is made and eventually pioneering player #2 comes along with the last bit of the puzzle, dethroning pioneering player #1 and we repeat.
In SC2s history, pioneering player #1 comes along, does really well and is then 'fixed' a couple of months or less down the line and they fade into obscurity. The playerpool resets with everyone having to learn/figure out fresh builds again and random new 'best of the current moment' players pop up and do well for a tournament or two. A large part of their success is the knowledge reset of the patch, so they too fade into obscurity when their new tricks are figured out within a couple of weeks. Other random people win the occasional tournament due to having little bits of knowledge other people dont have yet but it only works for one significant tournament because then youre studied and what you were doing really isnt that special/difficult to counter so long as you know about its existence. Eventually a potential Flash/iloveoov/savior equivalent comes along with something very powerful that is not easily countered within 1-2 weeks. They get fixed. Repeat. <1 month dominance periods by the occasional player with the rest of the time filled in with random dare I say flavour of the month players winning random tournaments.
SC2 has always felt pretty disappointing in many respects personally but I think its progress as a truly interesting strategy game has been stifled to at least some degree by zealous over patching. In a sufficiently complex game with interesting mechanics almost anything should be counterable. If 5 rax reaper or other builds are literally uncounterable the problem doesnt exist because of the strategy itself but in the lack of viable options given to the opposing player in general. If things like 5 rax reaper cause significant problems its due to the game not being complex/objectively 'interesting' enough. If thats the case with SC2 (Im not completely sure it is), fix the game overall. Dont just hotfix little parts of it and most definitely dont patch just because a bunch of people are whining about being unable to use their old strategies when a metagame shift occurs. The only strategy that should be nerfed directly through a patch is something that happens very, very early into the game (as in pre 2-3 minutes) such that the opponent has barely any options at this point and none of them work. The old Starcraft1 150 mineral pools leading to hilariously early 4 pools are a decent example in that they were essentially uncounterable by any strategy that didnt lose to everything else and they would happen at a stage in the game where utilizing scouting or anything remotely clever was not possible. By the time you get to strategies kicking in at the 5 minute point the amount of positions any player can be in with regards to economy/army/tech are VAST in both BW and SC2 and it should be up to the players to work out the position that works favorably while not putting themselves at a disadvantage vs other builds/styles. This isnt allowed to happen in SC2 for the most part and I think its a shame.
This has probably been pointed out but everyone comparing it to lifetime sports records of times is being foolish since teams are constantly changing. I'm sure there was a 3 year period where some football team had a gigantic win-rate. In this 3 year period of SC2 no one has stayed above the low 60s.
Isn't the assumption that blind picking on Liquibet would give you an average of 50% false, since for the GSL group picks, you have to pick the two players coming out of the group, giving you odds of 1 over (4 choose 2) or 1/6.
The inconsistency happens because if you lose a big fight in sc2 you lose the game in most cases, while in BW it doesn't necessarily mean that. Also, stuff dies/moves too fast and a lot of maps are/feel smaller compared to BW, while the chokes feel too big. No high ground/vision advantage invalidates a lot of positional/strategic/macro/defensive play as well. The unit composition countering might be too important as well. Also it's a lot easier to all-in.
Making a small mistake can cause a lot more damage in SC2 than BW I feel, in general.
On February 23 2013 07:46 BrokenMirage wrote: Isn't the assumption that blind picking on Liquibet would give you an average of 50% false, since for the GSL group picks, you have to pick the two players coming out of the group, giving you odds of 1 over (4 choose 2) or 1/6.
The expectancy value of points you get when picking at random will still be 50% of the maximum amount.
I'm not sure that's correct. Each group seems to be worth 1 point if you get it right. At random I think you have a 1/6th chance of getting the group right. So if you only bet on the GSL groups blind then you would be at about 16.6%?
I'm pretty sure most of the counter points to this line of thinking have already been raised.
But let me just say one thing: StarCraft CANNOT be compared to traditional sports. SC2 has an evolving meta-game influenced by many agents: Blizzard constantly changes the balance of the game by tweaking units. Maps change. And of course, optimal builds change based on those changes.
Basketball and football only change slightly insofar as players change; but players are only ever slightly better or worse than one another. Even 20 Michael Jordans per season does not change the game that much.
It's a huge leap of logic/category mistake to suggest the predictability of a game like this should be any different than what it is.
On February 23 2013 07:46 BrokenMirage wrote: Isn't the assumption that blind picking on Liquibet would give you an average of 50% false, since for the GSL group picks, you have to pick the two players coming out of the group, giving you odds of 1 over (4 choose 2) or 1/6.
The expectancy value of points you get when picking at random will still be 50% of the maximum amount.
I'm not sure that's correct. Each group seems to be worth 1 point if you get it right. At random I think you have a 1/6th chance of getting the group right. So if you only bet on the GSL groups blind then you would be at about 16.6%?
Well, that would be a very odd way of calculating the percentage of correct liquibets. My guess is that guessing two players correctly to advance contributes double that of guessing one player correctly.
If you only get one player right, you didn't get it right, and you don't get any points.
On February 23 2013 07:46 BrokenMirage wrote: Isn't the assumption that blind picking on Liquibet would give you an average of 50% false, since for the GSL group picks, you have to pick the two players coming out of the group, giving you odds of 1 over (4 choose 2) or 1/6.
The expectancy value of points you get when picking at random will still be 50% of the maximum amount.
I'm not sure that's correct. Each group seems to be worth 1 point if you get it right. At random I think you have a 1/6th chance of getting the group right. So if you only bet on the GSL groups blind then you would be at about 16.6%?
Well, that would be a very odd way of calculating the percentage of correct liquibets. My guess is that guessing two players correctly to advance contributes double that of guessing one player correctly.
If you only get one player right, you didn't get it right, and you don't get any points.
Oh, I didn't know that. And how many points do you get for getting it right, compared to one vs one matches?
just 1 point, I think they should change it to 1 point per correct player instead of 1 point for the whole group, but w/e
On February 23 2013 07:46 BrokenMirage wrote: Isn't the assumption that blind picking on Liquibet would give you an average of 50% false, since for the GSL group picks, you have to pick the two players coming out of the group, giving you odds of 1 over (4 choose 2) or 1/6.
The expectancy value of points you get when picking at random will still be 50% of the maximum amount.
I'm not sure that's correct. Each group seems to be worth 1 point if you get it right. At random I think you have a 1/6th chance of getting the group right. So if you only bet on the GSL groups blind then you would be at about 16.6%?
Well, that would be a very odd way of calculating the percentage of correct liquibets. My guess is that guessing two players correctly to advance contributes double that of guessing one player correctly.
If you only get one player right, you didn't get it right, and you don't get any points.
Oh, I didn't know that. And how many points do you get for getting it right, compared to one vs one matches?
1 point. When you look at the liquibets, the number on the left is how many points you get. So you are left with a lot bets that are very hard to predict since there are 6 outcomes, and then all the Code A matches between relatively unknown players that obviously are gonna be hard to predict if you don't know half the players.
I don't think SC2 is significantly more volatile than BW, and the champs' winrates seem to support that. In both games, dominating players rarely go much above 70% over longer periods of time.
1 big thing you gotta factor in is that for SC2 the format is completely different from typical sports like the NBA/NHL/MLB.etc Most of the liquibets and predictions are centered around GSL, which is a league where each player has a lot of time to prepare for their opponent. This makes it harder to predict as one player may prepare more than the other, which could slant things in their favour. This is especially true if one of the players plays in a lot of foreign tournaments as well as they have less time to focus and study/prepare for their GSL opponent. These are all things none of us can really account for when we do predictions as none of us really know how much time they spend preparing for a specific opponent.
The only reason BW stabilised is because they stopped patching it. In the process they left half the units in the game completely useless. Starcraft 2 is constantly getting rebalanced and the metagame shifts ever so slightly every single time someone discovers a new build.
I don't know what game you play, but this is not remotely true. Even if one is being extremely generous by discounting wraiths and Dark Archons that do have pretty specific use.
On February 23 2013 07:46 BrokenMirage wrote: Isn't the assumption that blind picking on Liquibet would give you an average of 50% false, since for the GSL group picks, you have to pick the two players coming out of the group, giving you odds of 1 over (4 choose 2) or 1/6.
The expectancy value of points you get when picking at random will still be 50% of the maximum amount.
I'm not sure that's correct. Each group seems to be worth 1 point if you get it right. At random I think you have a 1/6th chance of getting the group right. So if you only bet on the GSL groups blind then you would be at about 16.6%?
Well, that would be a very odd way of calculating the percentage of correct liquibets. My guess is that guessing two players correctly to advance contributes double that of guessing one player correctly.
It seems to me that you only need to correctly predict 1 player getting through to get the point. Guessing both players correctly still yields only 1 point.
So, in a GSL group you have 4 players, and 2 will advance. You select 2 players, and if at least one of your picks advances, you receive the point. I don't know the math, but looking at it intuitively that looks like a 50% chance of getting the point.
In previous seasons of liquibet the voting system for GSL groups was a little different, but this season they simplified it.
The only reason BW stabilised is because they stopped patching it. In the process they left half the units in the game completely useless. Starcraft 2 is constantly getting rebalanced and the metagame shifts ever so slightly every single time someone discovers a new build.
I don't know what game you play, but this is not remotely true. Even if one is being extremely generous by discounting wraiths and Dark Archons that do have pretty specific use.
On February 23 2013 07:46 BrokenMirage wrote: Isn't the assumption that blind picking on Liquibet would give you an average of 50% false, since for the GSL group picks, you have to pick the two players coming out of the group, giving you odds of 1 over (4 choose 2) or 1/6.
The expectancy value of points you get when picking at random will still be 50% of the maximum amount.
I'm not sure that's correct. Each group seems to be worth 1 point if you get it right. At random I think you have a 1/6th chance of getting the group right. So if you only bet on the GSL groups blind then you would be at about 16.6%?
Well, that would be a very odd way of calculating the percentage of correct liquibets. My guess is that guessing two players correctly to advance contributes double that of guessing one player correctly.
It seems to me that you only need to correctly predict 1 player getting through to get the point. Guessing both players correctly still yields only 1 point.
So, in a GSL group you have 4 players, and 2 will advance. You select 2 players, and if at least one of your picks advances, you receive the point. I don't know the math, but looking at it intuitively that looks like a 50% chance of getting the point.
In previous seasons of liquibet the voting system for GSL groups was a little different, but this season they simplified it.
That can't be right, since a random bet would have a 5/6 chance of getting 1 point.
The only reason BW stabilised is because they stopped patching it. In the process they left half the units in the game completely useless. Starcraft 2 is constantly getting rebalanced and the metagame shifts ever so slightly every single time someone discovers a new build.
I don't know what game you play, but this is not remotely true. Even if one is being extremely generous by discounting wraiths and Dark Archons that do have pretty specific use.
On February 23 2013 07:46 BrokenMirage wrote: Isn't the assumption that blind picking on Liquibet would give you an average of 50% false, since for the GSL group picks, you have to pick the two players coming out of the group, giving you odds of 1 over (4 choose 2) or 1/6.
The expectancy value of points you get when picking at random will still be 50% of the maximum amount.
I'm not sure that's correct. Each group seems to be worth 1 point if you get it right. At random I think you have a 1/6th chance of getting the group right. So if you only bet on the GSL groups blind then you would be at about 16.6%?
Well, that would be a very odd way of calculating the percentage of correct liquibets. My guess is that guessing two players correctly to advance contributes double that of guessing one player correctly.
It seems to me that you only need to correctly predict 1 player getting through to get the point. Guessing both players correctly still yields only 1 point.
So, in a GSL group you have 4 players, and 2 will advance. You select 2 players, and if at least one of your picks advances, you receive the point. I don't know the math, but looking at it intuitively that looks like a 50% chance of getting the point.
In previous seasons of liquibet the voting system for GSL groups was a little different, but this season they simplified it.
That can't be right, since a random bet would have a 5/6 chance of getting 1 point.
Yup, you're right. After thinking about it for a minute, a random guess yields 5/6.
4 players, pick 2.
A B C D
you pick A B
possible outcomes:
A B A C A D B C B D C D
if you pick any two players, there is only 1/6 chance neither of those players will win.
But I am pretty sure that's how liquibet works. When I pick 2 players and 1 of them goes through, I receive 1 point. If both my picks are correct, I believe I still only received 1 point.
The only reason BW stabilised is because they stopped patching it. In the process they left half the units in the game completely useless. Starcraft 2 is constantly getting rebalanced and the metagame shifts ever so slightly every single time someone discovers a new build.
I don't know what game you play, but this is not remotely true. Even if one is being extremely generous by discounting wraiths and Dark Archons that do have pretty specific use.
You mean scout? I thought wraiths were a staple.
Like I said, I'm trying to be really, really generous. The closest you can get is with zerg simply because of how few units they have to begin with so the percentages change easily. Protoss is over 90% in 1v1 anyways.
On February 22 2013 15:38 Gatesleeper wrote: I'm just gonna throw out an unpopular idea here that's been sitting at the back of my mind for a long time while watching Starcraft.
Is there something inherently wrong with a game where the supposed best players so often lose to players who are widely considered weaker than them? Like, is the skill ceiling not high enough? Is it too luck based? Why don't the best players beat the slightly less good players more often?
In any game that requires this much concentration, psychological factors are also huge. Injuries, bad nights sleep, etc all affect it.
But there's a bigger gripe here: How do you know that a certain player is 'better'? Who decides who 'should win'?
I know Idra goes on about how lesser players can beat better players, but he literally thinks he's one of the top players who shouldn't ever be beaten. His standards for deciding skill are totally biased, are much of the fanbases.
That is the main problem: The only was to determine how good a player is, is to look at who he beats. Then, by comparing "Person A beat Person B who beat Person C", you end up with "Person A beats Person C". That's not how Starcraft works.
TSLCenter vs IM_Seed. OMG WHAT AN UPSET, LESSER PLAYER BEATS THE GUY WHO SHOULD HAVE WON THIS GAME BLOWS.
Who's to say Center isn't actually better?
Just because Seed has a championship, it actually doesnt matter. People focus too much on past history, when all that matters in Starcraft is that game, right then and there. Center went on to beat Seed again, showing it wasn't a fluke, and that he actually is the better players.
Skill level is always developing. So is meta-game. Stop setting ridiculous rigid standards for who is better. People lose because they aren't good enough. Not because of the game.
If you actually watch the games, you'll see that 9/10, the person who wins actually plays better than the loser. Amazing, right?! Nothing to do with game design.
Consider this: Artosis, perhaps the most knowledgable guy in all of Starcraft II, is constantly predicting certain players to do well and constantly getting it wrong. Hence, the "curse".
Lol.
Pretty sure he is nowhere near. Sure he knows a lot about the game itself, but I don't think he's in touch with the pro scene at all. Hence why Wolf and Khaldor can actually predict scores, because they talk to players and know who is up and coming through all the stuff they cast.
Artosis just turns up and tell you who he thinks is a sick nerd baller based off....god knows what.
Pretty sure he trashed Bogus in his first season, now he's all over his dick saying he's the best ever.
i think if it's too luck based we wouldn't have had 3 time and 4 time GSL champions, we'd have 1 or 2 at the absolute most, especially when won of those championships was won without dropping a game.
theres other factors at play here namely the lack of ways to outplay your opponent with better control and mechanics. Something HOTS is addressing in some ways with fast units, more reliability on detection ect ect which will give people with better control, multi-tasking and mechanics the edge over those that dont.
If player A is a complete beginner to games and player B is a 2 to 1 favourite against player A, then we can say that players A and B are on different "levels of skill". Then of course there's player C who is a 2 to 1 favourite against player B, player D who is a 2 to 1 favourite against player C, and so on until we hit the very top. How many "levels of skill" are there in Starcraft 2?
In chess there's about 20 levels of skill, whereas in a game like Go there's as many as 40. Does this mean that Go is a more skillful game? It's not necessarily so - in a given position finding the best move in chess is about as difficult as finding the best move in Go, and I don't think anyone could argue that reaching the top level is harder to achieve in Go than in chess. But the difference is that a single game of Go is much longer, and can last for well over a hundred moves, whereas a single game of chess lasts maybe 40 moves. In Go, a better player has many more opportunities to distinguish himself.
So the issue with chess here may be that just a single game, a bo1, is too small a unit to be measuring player's levels by, and this is much, much, more so in Starcraft 2. A single game isn't nearly enough for a player to distinguish himself. If all liquibets were best of 5s then you'd have a significantly better success rate than 53%.
The game is simply played to fast for players to be consistently better. Take just one example: marines in a mineral line. In SC2 drones pop like bubbles, while in SC they take a few hits before dying. Something like this changes a game too much and even the best and fastest players won't always be able to react fast enough to keep game changing things from happening.
Ugh...liquidbet, I knew it was a mistake not to bet on all the zergs making Ro4. As a result I only got 1/4 right on the quarterfinals. Dropped down to rank 40 something now
Because you are putting a volatile game ON TOP of volatile tournament formats.
In a game where one small micro mistake can cause you the game, or one cheese/all-in can win/lose you a game, a Bo3 format to see who advances is NOT good enough (and sometimes even Bo1's like up and downs).
The OP compares it to other sports; well look at NBA or NHL for example, the teams play a entire season, multiple games against every other team; and then during the play-off, they play a Bo9. Take Tennis for example, each player has to win at least 2-3 SETS to advance, and within those sets, they have to win 7 games, and within each games, they must score 4 points; and even then, the additional rule where you must win by at least 2 points for games/sets/match makes it even less volatile. Do upset games happen in these sports? Of course, but the fact the formats prevent the better team/player from advancing due to a simple upset makes the sport feels alot less volatile.
Starcraft would have similar result too if everyone were to play a year long league, and then play a Bo7 or Bo9 single elimination playoff. But the length of the game makes it impractical, and there is really no way around it from a tournament format standpoint. So the only thing really is to make the game itself less volatile
a drastically lesser player wouldn't be in the round of 8, so the entire underlying assumption is wrong to begin with.
Whenever artosis predicts X stomping Y just makes me laugh. Artosis knows absolutely zit about each pro's condition and their practicing regime, as those are house secrets. And when two players meet at ro8, or 4, they are already best of the best sc2 have to offer and it is actually not that likely for one side to completely stomp the other.
Meanwhile, if this game is anywhere close to volatile as people are suggesting it to be. Koreans would not be able to destroying the open bracket of every foreign tournament they enter and then proceed to destroy the rest of the tourneys. The sheer mass of foreigners they go through should get lucky and knock the koreans out, but they don't. And we wouldn't be seeing the same faces over and over in code S where there are hundreds in code A and B trying to take their spots
On February 23 2013 08:57 BigKahunaBurger wrote: That is the main problem: The only was to determine how good a player is, is to look at who he beats. Then, by comparing "Person A beat Person B who beat Person C", you end up with "Person A beats Person C". That's not how Starcraft works.
TSLCenter vs IM_Seed. OMG WHAT AN UPSET, LESSER PLAYER BEATS THE GUY WHO SHOULD HAVE WON THIS GAME BLOWS.
Who's to say Center isn't actually better?
Just because Seed has a championship, it actually doesnt matter. People focus too much on past history, when all that matters in Starcraft is that game, right then and there. Center went on to beat Seed again, showing it wasn't a fluke, and that he actually is the better players.
I feel like your argument is a bit contradictory, because according to you there is no way to determine who is a better player. You can't then use the argument of Center beating Seed to say that Center is a better player.
And winning a major tournament does matter - it clearly implies that the player is quite skilled, so people expect those people to play better than those who haven't shown good results in a long time.
You're talking as if history doesn't matter at all, that its impossible to judge skill except for in the moment. Do you expect pro-athletes like Djokovic to do well in grand slam tennis tournaments, or do you really have no expectations about how well the world number 1 will do against some random player ranked 220th in the world?
You can't just say "that's not how Starcraft works", but not back it up with any reasoning. Every sport has the psychological pressures you're talking about, and they all have their own revolutions as far as play styles and strategies are concerned. But we observe consistency in every other sport; its not a "ridiculous standard", its standard practice.
So clearly there is something different with the game. Maybe it has to do with the over reliance on the so-called "metagame" (aka statistically glorified guesswork), leading to flaws in a playstyle that can be exposed (metametagaming)? But then why would they do it so much if it was so flawed? Maybe its the best option?
Maybe there is too much of a luck element, in terms of how difficult it is to scout your opponent (i.e. Stephano losing to a dark templar rush that wasn't done since the beta, just because he missed scouting the dark shrine with his overlord). You say in 9/10 games a player just plays "better". But this is a vague and arbitrary appeal to your authority about what constitutes "better" play. How much do we *really* know about playing SC2 at the top level?
The point remains, why would a top player somehow not play as well as a less accomplished player, and why would it happen with such regularity?
I'm not sure how bad it really is anyway. MVP won several GSL titles, and so did Nestea. And they still do fairly well; so there is some constancy. But we certainly have seen the rise and fall of many, many progamers.
Koreans have been raping foreigners pretty consistently, and increasingly consistently as WoL matured.
Also half the time when good players are beaten by "inferior" players you can usually see exactly why in the games themselves, where the good player was either figured out or was just slumping/outplayed.
It's a 1v1 game with relatively easy mechanics, unlike Brood War or to go on an extreme tangent, tennis. Golf is a little more volatile but you still see consistent winners.
The reason teams can be so dominant in team games regardless of mechanics is because executing strategies with 5+ people, even if the game is easy for individuals, is much more difficult.
I think a lot of people don't realise that actual game winrates at the top of the top are a lot closer to 50%, in practice most of the players would have very close to 50% winrates, on the KR ladder 70% winrates are reserved for the top of the GM ladder. Basically this means 2 things imo, 1 skill gap at the top is not too large and 2 sc2 is pretty luck based and naturally makes winrates go closer to 50:50 due to things like build order choices being somewhat like scissor paper rock.
Why is it that in physical sports like tennis we see the top players with far superior winrates? Easy, unlike sc2 which has simple mechanics which pretty much most average people can get to a pro-level-skill close to the skill ceiling of the game tennis is different in that if you lack the physical talent, strength or stamina you pretty much have no chance while in sc2 150 apm can easily beat 300 apm.
On February 23 2013 11:03 TheNthMemory wrote: It's a 1v1 game with relatively easy mechanics, unlike Brood War or to go on an extreme tangent, tennis. Golf is a little more volatile but you still see consistent winners.
The reason teams can be so dominant in team games regardless of mechanics is because executing strategies with 5+ people, even if the game is easy for individuals, is much more difficult.
you might have a point except broodwar pros don't have any better winrates than most sc2 pros. Even the very best of the best (flash) have only ever achieved 75% winrates while most others averages out 60%.
And team games are not as dominant as you think. If you bother to break down team win statistics on games like CS, dota or LoL I am willing to bet they are actually much worse than sc2 given the ban features and very volatile gameplay
On February 23 2013 12:15 Khai wrote: I think a lot of people don't realise that actual game winrates at the top of the top are a lot closer to 50%, in practice most of the players would have very close to 50% winrates, on the KR ladder 70% winrates are reserved for the top of the GM ladder. Basically this means 2 things imo, 1 skill gap at the top is not too large and 2 sc2 is pretty luck based and naturally makes winrates go closer to 50:50 due to things like build order choices being somewhat like scissor paper rock.
Why is it that in physical sports like tennis we see the top players with far superior winrates? Easy, unlike sc2 which has simple mechanics which pretty much most average people can get to a pro-level-skill close to the skill ceiling of the game tennis is different in that if you lack the physical talent, strength or stamina you pretty much have no chance while in sc2 150 apm can easily beat 300 apm.
50:50 winrates is because that is how Blizzard design the ladder. If you aren't getting 50:50, then the system is not doing its job correctly. There are alot of sc2 pros, so even the ladder at the very top are still very packed and tiered with those that are better than the one below them.
Only in a dying game without fresh blood or one with inactive ladder would you have a ladder where there is a huge gap for those at top (outside of a 1 or 2 that are exceptionally at the game).
you can improve 10 folds from where you're standing and your resulting ladder stat should be 50:50.
Example: you beat clide 10 times in a row because you are much better player than he is, skyrocket your winrates. Then you get push to MVP's tier and get stomp back down to 50%
Again people kept talking about how they feel the game is "luck based" and very volatile, but facts just don't support it. Why do we always see the same face in code S, why do Korean keep stomping foreigners, and why is it always the same few players that keep appearing in GSL ro8, round 4, and finalist? All those players must either be extremely lucky or they deserve to be there through skill and dedication
If you're 5% better than someone, that means that you should win about 11 games out of 20. Not 20 out of 20. There's too many ways to lose including some luck, but even tennis has luck. Theoretically if you play enough games, luck would balance out.
The reasons tennis is so easy to predict (ie Serena Williams winning everything for years) is that between the matches, set, and games, you have to consistently beat someone over and over, even if by a little to actually win. The luck ends up equal, if you had 2 SC2 players play best of 39s or something, I'd imagine it would be a pretty good indication of who the better player is just like tennis. Much better than best of 3 which is usually the case. If you had tennis players go first to 30 points (two scores), it'd be a miracle to get past 60% win rates for anyone.
Pretty sure anyone who looks at StarCraft 2 as a highly competitive e-sport would absolutely love to have a more mechanically difficult game like Brood War was. Looks like that isn't the direction Blizzard wants to go in though. Warp gates kind of completely ruin the idea of bringing back single building selection but I'd like it if they removed automine at least.
On February 23 2013 14:09 theinfamousone wrote: If you're 5% better than someone, that means that you should win about 11 games out of 20. Not 20 out of 20. There's too many ways to lose including some luck, but even tennis has luck. Theoretically if you play enough games, luck would balance out.
The reasons tennis is so easy to predict (ie Serena Williams winning everything for years) is that between the matches, set, and games, you have to consistently beat someone over and over, even if by a little to actually win. The luck ends up equal, if you had 2 SC2 players play best of 39s or something, I'd imagine it would be a pretty good indication of who the better player is just like tennis. Much better than best of 3 which is usually the case. If you had tennis players go first to 30 points (two scores), it'd be a miracle to get past 60% win rates for anyone.
Pretty much this, In tennis you can think of each point as a seperate event, so a set has at least 7x4 = 21 events, and a match 63 events, all theoretically independent (not really; because of serves and streaks and mentality etc, but close enough) however starcraft usually boils down to fewer points per match, there are probably 5-6 in a game, and these are definelty not independent ( much easier to block his 3rd expo if you successfully predictively defended his banshees, much harder if you diddnt.) The problem with Starcraft if it takes much longer for events to play out, and there is much more time in between events. However the more balanced the game gets (and blizz is doing a great job in my eyes), and the more players begin to engage multiple times in a game, the less "random" the games will get, resulting in higher winrates for the top players. If Hots is to WoL as BW was to SC, hold onto your panties.
On February 23 2013 13:10 Cele wrote: skill ceiling isnt high enough, thats why koreans still own in Broodwar. Nough said
Are Koreans not dominating in SC2? I know they were absolutely untouchable in BW but wasn't that due more to the fact there was almost zero legitimate teams for foreigners ?
Here's something I think you are missing, over a large sample size, 64% is AMAZING as a winrate in the majority of professional sports. Here's a good example. Let's take a look at what is universally considered one of the dominant sports franchises in America, the New York Yankees. They play 162 game seasons every year so they have a large sample size. In 2009 they had the best record in all of baseball and won the world series, (for those who don't know that's the championship for baseball). They had a 63.6 winning percentage over the course of that season. In baseball just about every season there are teams with under a 60% win rate that win their division consisting of 5 teams.
In hockey and basketball, sports with half the sample size of a baseball season, you see the same thing, teams with 60% win rates being contenders for championships.
Now what does this have to do with your original thought? Simple, if a team is thought of as the best team and it only acheives its intended result around 60% of the time, does that mean that skill is not involved? Of course not.
On February 23 2013 15:12 Mozzery wrote: Here's something I think you are missing, over a large sample size, 64% is AMAZING as a winrate in the majority of professional sports. Here's a good example. Let's take a look at what is universally considered one of the dominant sports franchises in America, the New York Yankees. They play 162 game seasons every year so they have a large sample size. In 2009 they had the best record in all of baseball and won the world series, (for those who don't know that's the championship for baseball). They had a 63.6 winning percentage over the course of that season. In baseball just about every season there are teams with under a 60% win rate that win their division consisting of 5 teams.
In hockey and basketball, sports with half the sample size of a baseball season, you see the same thing, teams with 60% win rates being contenders for championships.
Now what does this have to do with your original thought? Simple, if a team is thought of as the best team and it only acheives its intended result around 60% of the time, does that mean that skill is not involved? Of course not.
American professional sports have amateur drafts and some kind of salary cap (baseball's is a soft cap which means half the teams almost never win a World Series) so all the teams are relatively equal. In a 1v1 sport like tennis you see players like Roger Federer win nearly everything. An esport with a high mechanical skill cap would be similar.
There is no curse. The real reason players who seem the strongest lose is the same reason the #1 ranked team in pro basketball loses all the time. The reason is because the margin that separates the top 16 teams in the world or the top 100 players in sc2 is such a small amount that even a week of bad practice lack of sleep or any one of a plethora of small events could lead to a seemingly stronger player to lose to a weaker one.
But starcraft unlike basketball has a constantly evolving meta game, build order loses and what i believe is a much more muscle memory demanding sport (not to say basketball isn't but take a week of from sc2 and ur trash again. take a week off from basketball and ur likely the same) gives starcraft a wider margin for seemingly weaker players to win games from stronger players.
Competition is good the games are exciting and the best player that season normally wins these days. WE can all agree nestea and mvp were not the best this season and that LIFE maybe the best player in the season lost to mind-games and a very strong player. SO its all good.
On February 23 2013 16:12 SpaceSaKe wrote: There is no curse. The real reason players who seem the strongest lose is the same reason the #1 ranked team in pro basketball loses all the time. The reason is because the margin that separates the top 16 teams in the world or the top 100 players in sc2 is such a small amount that even a week of bad practice lack of sleep or any one of a plethora of small events could lead to a seemingly stronger player to lose to a weaker one.
But starcraft unlike basketball has a constantly evolving meta game, build order loses and what i believe is a much more muscle memory demanding sport (not to say basketball isn't but take a week of from sc2 and ur trash again. take a week off from basketball and ur likely the same) gives starcraft a wider margin for seemingly weaker players to win games from stronger players.
Competition is good the games are exciting and the best player that season normally wins these days. WE can all agree nestea and mvp were not the best this season and that LIFE maybe the best player in the season lost to mind-games and a very strong player. SO its all good.
People dont seems to understand that in a game like sc2 one wrong thought can ruin an entire game for a player. Its literally close to impossible to play consistent in a game like this for more then 3 months with the metagame changes.
On February 23 2013 15:12 Mozzery wrote: Here's something I think you are missing, over a large sample size, 64% is AMAZING as a winrate in the majority of professional sports. Here's a good example. Let's take a look at what is universally considered one of the dominant sports franchises in America, the New York Yankees. They play 162 game seasons every year so they have a large sample size. In 2009 they had the best record in all of baseball and won the world series, (for those who don't know that's the championship for baseball). They had a 63.6 winning percentage over the course of that season. In baseball just about every season there are teams with under a 60% win rate that win their division consisting of 5 teams.
In hockey and basketball, sports with half the sample size of a baseball season, you see the same thing, teams with 60% win rates being contenders for championships.
Now what does this have to do with your original thought? Simple, if a team is thought of as the best team and it only acheives its intended result around 60% of the time, does that mean that skill is not involved? Of course not.
American professional sports have amateur drafts and some kind of salary cap (baseball's is a soft cap which means half the teams almost never win a World Series) so all the teams are relatively equal. In a 1v1 sport like tennis you see players like Roger Federer win nearly everything. An esport with a high mechanical skill cap would be similar.
Immvp is literally the tiger woods of sc2. Yes yes small sample size, but just illustrating a point about the illusion of winrates
Btw, here's roger federer total statistics
Total 84 39 123 0.68 (68%)
Its not the same winrates as used in sc2, as it is the win rates he have in the final. But if you really want to have an exact conversion, count up the points he scored vs the one he lost over the course of a season. Don't expect anything more than 75%
That is one of the main problems i see with this game, and why it isn't as successfull as it could be. People seem to generally root for the best player to win (see the tournament threads polls about people's predictions), and it's an uneasy feeling seeing him loose, specially by things that are out of his hands such as build order losses, a single mistake caused by a distraction (that could happen to anyone) at the wrong time making someone lose the entire game, and so on.
Complain to Blizzard because their game design is revolved around people playing many short games. Remember Steppes of War right? Metalopolis was the first "big" map.... though it's actually so small. The high DPS of units, the skills that impede retreat, and so on. With this in mind, Blizzard can't allow comebacks, or give the defender an advantage, decrease the DPS of units, or else, games would get longer (and also more interesting imo), and that would be bad! The battle has to end right there and now, so the game can end. The player losing the battle has almost no time to react. And the remaining units under fire of a lot of DPS can't even escape, (fungal, forcefield, concussive, hellions, abduct) so that you really have no chance of coming back. They want you to have huge numbers on your statistics. A lot of games played, a lot of wins, etc, even if many of those suck as hell.
I think the only curse apparent here is threads like this to keep popping up for two years and counting. Skill cap versus Player Winrates. Skill with limited technology versus skilless with advanced technology. Criticism leveled against the game development goals and philosophy, with particular hate directed against David Kim and Dustin Browder. It's discussed to death; it frequently keeps popping up when progamers like IdrA (perhaps the most famous one to make the case) criticize game mechanics that can snowball a simple mistake (EMP/Fungal/ForceField/Drops) into a game defeat.
Changes to the map size have been beneficial, if any of you remember steppes of war. Most patches have been beneficial to game balance. So go play the game and root on your favorites without getting bogged down in philosophically where the balance should lie between the interplay of luck and skill, dice and chess.
no the problem isn't what ever random bull crap most of you are spouting. the problem/cause of the randomness compared to most quote sports unquote is the number of people who have the opportunity to play against the pros in starcraft is hugely disproportionate to the number of people who can play the pro's in any other actual sport.
In starcraft if you put the work in you can become as great as you ever want to be/play who ever you want to play all that's need is for you to literally eat breath sleep starcraft. in any sport you care to name no matter how many peple eat/breath/ sleep (insert sport name here) there is still an absolute limit on the number of players that are needed/wanted in the sport.
if a thousand people said hey I have he skill and want to be the best basketball player and I am going to do nothing but basketball 24/7 for how ever many years it takes to reach that goal 900 of them atleast are going to be completely out of luck no matter how good they actually get. there just isn't and won't be the teams/management/what ever to support them nor is there any desire to have such.
not so with starcraft there is no actual limit to the number of teams/players theres no ok we are drafting these many people for the nba and no more. if they get the skill there is nothing but perhaps common sense that says there can't be millions of pro players.
You cant compare Tennis to SC2 as the tennis employs a game + set system which is designed to let the quality of the player to rise to the top. It takes approximately 2 weeks for a major tournament to complete
Could you imagine Federer playing the Wimbledon final as a best of 5 games,two bad games and he is basically out? The 5 set system lets the players adjust to each other tactics and skill thus eventually the best player on the day will win, hence the stability at the top tier
60% win rate is exceptional for SC players, in order to get better best of 7 games would have to be standard at the very least imho
Whoa, I'm going to stay out of what probably has been an extremely heated back-and-forth (16 pages' worth in a matter of days!! D: ) but I definitely also have to say that I've kind of noticed the same thing. It's really quite odd how the top players really can't dominate that hard, and we instead have a multitude of players considered super top-tier and yet....they're not particularly consistent either by most other standards.
And yeah, people have raised the tennis comparison, but honestly you can only compare specific (and extremely limited) aspects. Extrapolating from the analogy with tennis won't get you anywhere; it's different in many, many ways.
On February 23 2013 17:16 magicallypuzzled wrote: no the problem isn't what ever random bull crap most of you are spouting. the problem/cause of the randomness compared to most quote sports unquote is the number of people who have the opportunity to play against the pros in starcraft is hugely disproportionate to the number of people who can play the pro's in any other actual sport.
In starcraft if you put the work in you can become as great as you ever want to be/play who ever you want to play all that's need is for you to literally eat breath sleep starcraft. in any sport you care to name no matter how many peple eat/breath/ sleep (insert sport name here) there is still an absolute limit on the number of players that are needed/wanted in the sport.
if a thousand people said hey I want to be the best basketball player and I am going to do nothing but basketball 24/7 for how ever many years it takes to reach that goal 900 of them atleast are going to be completely out of luck no matter how good they actually get. there just isn't and won't be the teams/management/what ever to support them nor is there any desire to have such.
not so with starcraft there is no actual limit to the number of teams/players theres no ok we are drafting these many people for the nba and no more. if they get the skill there is nothing but perhaps common sense that says there can't be millions of pro players.
You can't really compare a sport that has been around for 90+ years ?? (give or take) to something very new though. This simply is not fair.
I don't know why people keep doing this, sports like Basketball managed to get such an structure over the years that you simply can not compare it to any new sport be it "real" or an E-sport.
^your saying there is ever going to be a way to say random starcraft player number 10029293 we have enough pro players you can't be pro? the very format forbids it from ever happening.
On February 23 2013 03:27 TheRabidDeer wrote: Does anybody have any stats on the best players from bw in like, 2003? I mean even then, that is 5 years experience with BW, but I imagine itll be pretty different than stats from like 2008+
What you have to realize is that everyone didn't lose the 10+ years of learning to analyze RTS games they gained from BW, AOE, WaR3, ect.
When BW came out maximizing efficiency in macro and builds wasn't nearly at the level it was at when SC2 hit the scene. In the first 6 months of Sc2 we had thread after thread, of mathematical breakdowns of each race and it's optimization. We had lengthy analysis of maximizing economy, zerg expansion and pool timing were broken down scientifically before sc2 beta ended, terran expansion and mule timing also became set in stone very early (the only change now is we often see expansion 1st builds) but these were also popular in BW. Keep in mind, it took BW 5 years to reach that point in the meta, where it took Sc2 less than 2 years (and that is a big deal considering all of the terrain negating and crazy all ins that exist in Sc2 compared to BW.
I think BW was a virgin experience, no one really knew how to play an RTS when the original starcraft came out, the RTS games before it didn't have the complexity in econ or the unit diversity to warrant the depth of understanding that starcraft requires at top levels.
Any new mainstream RTS that ever is released, will be analyzed and understood in it's first year, better than BW was understood in it's first 5. Just look how long BW was out when players like iLuvoov rose up, think about how elementary his "revolutionary macro play" seems by today's standards. He started 1 rax expanding against zerg, and it changed everything, it took another 5 years after that when flash came along and started CC first all the time in BW. Starcraft 2 when through these changes in under 2 years, with constant and drastic balance changes.
Yes, this is true. This is also why we are currently at a point where we are close to the probably 2009 area of BW in terms of game knowledge (in WoL). However, a year ago even we were much much lower in skill.
Also, this rapid rapid change that we have undergone is another reason things seem so volatile. In BW, players saw a year of dominance. It took a lot of time for people to figure out what to do, then get it known throughout all of the players to be able to consistently beat them. Just look at the stats posted about boxer/iloveoov/Nada. They had stellar YEARS then fell off a bit as people learned how to play against them. Now compare that to SC2, people had stellar SEASONS then started to fall off. To go 4-5 months with a 70% win rate is the equivalent of a dominant year in BW just because of how quickly information and strategy travels.
Once the game is truly figured out, only then will we see a Flash in SC2. Flash was so dominant because he knew everything about the game, had great play and mechanics and everything. You cant have a dominant force when things are still changing so quickly.
NO actually once the game gets fully figured out (I would argue that it already is) we will have a lot of people being " the best " because they won't be able to differantiate themselves from others and while I agree mostly on what you've said the mechanical restrictions were also a reason for it being figured out so late in it's life span. The mechanical restrictions was THE one and only reason for BWs strategies being more complex and taking longer for them to be figured out
Unlike sport where it's always mirror, the better player will always win. But when you have 3 races, there will always be imbalance. And the bigger the imbalance, the more you see lesser players win.
I really want to see a TERRAN/ZERG/PROTOSS ONLY TOURNAMENT. That is more like other sports, both are given the same premises
On February 23 2013 17:16 magicallypuzzled wrote: no the problem isn't what ever random bull crap most of you are spouting. the problem/cause of the randomness compared to most quote sports unquote is the number of people who have the opportunity to play against the pros in starcraft is hugely disproportionate to the number of people who can play the pro's in any other actual sport.
In starcraft if you put the work in you can become as great as you ever want to be/play who ever you want to play all that's need is for you to literally eat breath sleep starcraft. in any sport you care to name no matter how many peple eat/breath/ sleep (insert sport name here) there is still an absolute limit on the number of players that are needed/wanted in the sport.
if a thousand people said hey I have he skill and want to be the best basketball player and I am going to do nothing but basketball 24/7 for how ever many years it takes to reach that goal 900 of them atleast are going to be completely out of luck no matter how good they actually get. there just isn't and won't be the teams/management/what ever to support them nor is there any desire to have such.
not so with starcraft there is no actual limit to the number of teams/players theres no ok we are drafting these many people for the nba and no more. if they get the skill there is nothing but perhaps common sense that says there can't be millions of pro players.
That's a bunch of BS while it might be true to small extent it just doesn't work that way. Have you never watched any olympic sport? If you did you would know what kinds of differences there are.
In skiing for instance (I used to compete when I was younger although I didn't achieve anything I am still pretty good at it and understand the sport) in woman's league a competitor from my country Tina Maze has been totally dominating this season with 8 wins this season over several disciplines, she was also 2nd and 3rd several times and if you look at the sport itself you will NEVER see a no-name take a championship the difference between the winner and the 30th is often above 3 secs which is fucking a lot if you've ever competed like I have.
The dame goes for chess a top grandmaster in FIDE rating usually doesn't lose to a lower tier GM (and both of them are among the best) you could put a Grandmaster against as many national champions that aren't as established and he just wouldn't lose (if he played to the best of his abilities that is).
I am not very into sports I follow a couple of winter sports since they are close to heart, but I can tell you that everyone who has ever followed or better yet competed at a sport can tell you that what you've spouted is utter bullshit. There are sports of course that are more luck based and teamsports are also a little bit more unpredictable because of the larger number of competitors
On February 23 2013 17:35 Aerisky wrote: Whoa, I'm going to stay out of what probably has been an extremely heated back-and-forth (16 pages' worth in a matter of days!! D: ) but I definitely also have to say that I've kind of noticed the same thing. It's really quite odd how the top players really can't dominate that hard, and we instead have a multitude of players considered super top-tier and yet....they're not particularly consistent either by most other standards.
And yeah, people have raised the tennis comparison, but honestly you can only compare specific (and extremely limited) aspects. Extrapolating from the analogy with tennis won't get you anywhere; it's different in many, many ways.
The thing is that the way that SC2 is designed doesn't give you enough ways to express your skill (yes one player is better than the other, but witha little luck thrown in the better player will lose because he can't over come that luck) The former is proven by the fact that team houses are much more relaxed now than in BW players still play a lot, but significantly less because they know that the jump from 8 hours a day to 12-14 hours will give you a 1% winrate instead of anything from 1 to 25% giving you a 75% winrate as several players had for half a year or so, but that is obviously really hard to maintain.
iF for instance in BW everybody would be on a 8 hour schedule except for 1 talented player who would be practising 14 hours a day his winrate would surpass FlasH's by far (of course that didnydt happen since everybody practised as much and it came down to the player and how he practised during that time)
A good example of above would be grrr although he was very intelligent which kind of gave him the edge in the beginning lesser players just overcame him by deciding to practise a lot more than him.
On February 23 2013 17:16 magicallypuzzled wrote: no the problem isn't what ever random bull crap most of you are spouting. The problem/cause of the randomness compared to most quote sports unquote is the number of people who have the opportunity to play against the pros in starcraft is hugely disproportionate to the number of people who can play the pro's in any other actual sport.
In starcraft if you put the work in you can become as great as you ever want to be/play who ever you want to play all that's need is for you to literally eat breath sleep starcraft. in any sport you care to name no matter how many peple eat/breath/ sleep (insert sport name here) there is still an absolute limit on the number of players that are needed/wanted in the sport.
if a thousand people said hey I have he skill and want to be the best basketball player and I am going to do nothing but basketball 24/7 for how ever many years it takes to reach that goal 900 of them atleast are going to be completely out of luck no matter how good they actually get. there just isn't and won't be the teams/management/what ever to support them nor is there any desire to have such.
not so with starcraft there is no actual limit to the number of teams/players theres no ok we are drafting these many people for the nba and no more. if they get the skill there is nothing but perhaps common sense that says there can't be millions of pro players.
Let's disconstruct this bullshit so everyone sees that there are a lot of people like this guy, just throwing things out and creating a baseless discussion. Learn to fundament your opinions or simply don't voice them. This guy for instance, created a stupid discussion because he didn't gave reasons for his arguments and now people are arguing like confused angry babuins beating around the bush.
[Starts by ridiculling other peoples' opinions, then proceeds]
Other sports [that is, other than SC2] have a different mechanism which limits the number of players needed at any time. [care to explain?] (1) ∴ In other sports there is a limit of pro players that can exist at any time. (from 1) (2)
If you put in the effort, you can become good (Pro) at what you do. (3) The number of players being needed at any time is reflected in a team accepting or not applicants. (assumed) (4) ∴ Even if you are a pro player, you have a chance of not getting accepted into any team. (from 1-4)(5)
Not getting accepted into a team means you fail at the sport. [why? does it happen to all sports?] (6) ∴ Even if you are a pro player, you have a chance of failing at the sport. [what chance is that? where did you get that from? how do you know those sports have reached or surpassed the limit you talked about?] (from1-6) (7)
There are many more people that can play aggainst pros in SC2 than any other sport. [how do you know that? what do you mean by "can play"? if i'm in diamond it's very unlikely i'll ever play aggainst a pro for instance. Of course if i improve, the likelyhood increases. But doesn't that happen as well in other sports?] (8) In SC2 there is no limit of pro players that can exist at any time. [why not?] (9) If you put in the effort, you can become good (Pro) at what you do. (10) ∴ If you put in the effort, you can become a ProSC2 player. (from 9,10) (11) [does this really follow? why don't you mention teams? how does success in SC2 depend on being a team? how do you know you'll get accepted into a team? how do you know there isn't a limit for players a team can accept? how do you know there isn't a limit for teams that can exist in SC2? You just assume the answers are the ones that best support your view, and don't explain why.]
There. I know thinking is a lot of work, but at least try to do it before you post.
On February 23 2013 15:31 Cuce wrote: its not abour skill ceeling, or luck. simply game is too hard. its impossible to perform perfectly everygame.
best players are best players when they play their best, on his avarage day best players is no better than a less good players prime.
OHh I see now everything makes sense BW is a lot easier FlasH was playing perfectly and the rest of the koreans who also played 14 hours a day were just to stupid to play an easy game perfectly!
On February 23 2013 15:31 Cuce wrote: its not abour skill ceeling, or luck. simply game is too hard. its impossible to perform perfectly everygame.
best players are best players when they play their best, on his avarage day best players is no better than a less good players prime.
OHh I see now everything makes sense BW is a lot easier FlasH was playing perfectly and the rest of the koreans who also played 14 hours a day were just to stupid to play an easy game perfectly!
/close thread
SC2 foreigners like EG.Stephano are such horrible players that they can't get into Code S or even Code A even though the game is so easy and does not require much training. They kept getting dominated even in foreign events because they are just so terrible. You have an entire world vs one country and yet you can't produce players that beat Koreans in an easy, luck-based game.
On February 23 2013 17:16 magicallypuzzled wrote: no the problem isn't what ever random bull crap most of you are spouting. the problem/cause of the randomness compared to most quote sports unquote is the number of people who have the opportunity to play against the pros in starcraft is hugely disproportionate to the number of people who can play the pro's in any other actual sport.
In starcraft if you put the work in you can become as great as you ever want to be/play who ever you want to play all that's need is for you to literally eat breath sleep starcraft. in any sport you care to name no matter how many peple eat/breath/ sleep (insert sport name here) there is still an absolute limit on the number of players that are needed/wanted in the sport.
if a thousand people said hey I have he skill and want to be the best basketball player and I am going to do nothing but basketball 24/7 for how ever many years it takes to reach that goal 900 of them atleast are going to be completely out of luck no matter how good they actually get. there just isn't and won't be the teams/management/what ever to support them nor is there any desire to have such.
not so with starcraft there is no actual limit to the number of teams/players theres no ok we are drafting these many people for the nba and no more. if they get the skill there is nothing but perhaps common sense that says there can't be millions of pro players.
Why people compare it to sports that had been around for decades even a century ? 20 years ago, most football players in Spain except the very top notch had two proffessions because they couldn't really make a living out of football.
On February 23 2013 15:31 Cuce wrote: its not abour skill ceeling, or luck. simply game is too hard. its impossible to perform perfectly everygame.
best players are best players when they play their best, on his avarage day best players is no better than a less good players prime.
OHh I see now everything makes sense BW is a lot easier FlasH was playing perfectly and the rest of the koreans who also played 14 hours a day were just to stupid to play an easy game perfectly!
/close thread
SC2 foreigners like EG.Stephano are such horrible players that they can't get into Code S or even Code A even though the game is so easy and does not require much training. They kept getting dominated even in foreign events because they are just so terrible. You have an entire world vs one country and yet you can't produce players that beat Koreans in an easy, luck-based game.
Yes but how long will Korean dominance last once LOL and DOTA2 start to become really popular with large prize pools to fight for, perhaps in 3 years time the SC2 may be on a decline by then( GOMTV are already experimenting with LOL arnt they?). Who knows !!!
On February 23 2013 15:31 Cuce wrote: its not abour skill ceeling, or luck. simply game is too hard. its impossible to perform perfectly everygame.
best players are best players when they play their best, on his avarage day best players is no better than a less good players prime.
OHh I see now everything makes sense BW is a lot easier FlasH was playing perfectly and the rest of the koreans who also played 14 hours a day were just to stupid to play an easy game perfectly!
/close thread
SC2 foreigners like EG.Stephano are such horrible players that they can't get into Code S or even Code A even though the game is so easy and does not require much training. They kept getting dominated even in foreign events because they are just so terrible. You have an entire world vs one country and yet you can't produce players that beat Koreans in an easy, luck-based game.
Denmark, with a population of 5.5 million, is the only country outside of Asia who can compete in Badminton. We are so good at it that we have a player in top10 in all categories, most categories we are top 5 and in mens doubles were are nr 1.
Sometimes it doesn't matter if you are outnumbered by billions - what matters is your foundation, tradition and methods. No one is saying that there is NO possibility to showcase skill in SC2. It is quite obvious that there are tiers of players which a completely random game would not. People are saying that these tiers are not distinct enough and that luck therefore still plays too big of a factor.
One thing to keep in mind: Starcraft players are often very young. Imagine Federer in a big final game being 16. I bet he would be more nervous then now, in the age of 32. Same goes for consistency. I guess a younger player is more likely to become cocky and train not as hard when he reaches the top then an older player.
The factor of the players being very young may not be the biggest in regards of predictability, but im sure it has its part.
I think it's said a few times already, but the main reason for this "luck factor" in SC2 is the lack of knowledge / information during the games. Unlike chess, tennis, badminton, basketball etc, where both parties have all the information at hand. In SC2 there are certain points in time where choices need to be made to let the game go in your favor. Even when you have limited knowledge (scouting information for instance) you still need to make those choices.
Other factors have also been mentioned, such as high dps, no retreat possibilities because of Fungal etc etc. But these are the abilities that punish the lack of information in the game, the problem is still the lack of information.
So you can formulate solutions whatever you like, the problem remains and theres always a (high) possibility for a lower player to win.
On February 23 2013 03:27 TheRabidDeer wrote: Does anybody have any stats on the best players from bw in like, 2003? I mean even then, that is 5 years experience with BW, but I imagine itll be pretty different than stats from like 2008+
What you have to realize is that everyone didn't lose the 10+ years of learning to analyze RTS games they gained from BW, AOE, WaR3, ect.
When BW came out maximizing efficiency in macro and builds wasn't nearly at the level it was at when SC2 hit the scene. In the first 6 months of Sc2 we had thread after thread, of mathematical breakdowns of each race and it's optimization. We had lengthy analysis of maximizing economy, zerg expansion and pool timing were broken down scientifically before sc2 beta ended, terran expansion and mule timing also became set in stone very early (the only change now is we often see expansion 1st builds) but these were also popular in BW. Keep in mind, it took BW 5 years to reach that point in the meta, where it took Sc2 less than 2 years (and that is a big deal considering all of the terrain negating and crazy all ins that exist in Sc2 compared to BW.
I think BW was a virgin experience, no one really knew how to play an RTS when the original starcraft came out, the RTS games before it didn't have the complexity in econ or the unit diversity to warrant the depth of understanding that starcraft requires at top levels.
Any new mainstream RTS that ever is released, will be analyzed and understood in it's first year, better than BW was understood in it's first 5. Just look how long BW was out when players like iLuvoov rose up, think about how elementary his "revolutionary macro play" seems by today's standards. He started 1 rax expanding against zerg, and it changed everything, it took another 5 years after that when flash came along and started CC first all the time in BW. Starcraft 2 when through these changes in under 2 years, with constant and drastic balance changes.
Yes, this is true. This is also why we are currently at a point where we are close to the probably 2009 area of BW in terms of game knowledge (in WoL). However, a year ago even we were much much lower in skill.
Also, this rapid rapid change that we have undergone is another reason things seem so volatile. In BW, players saw a year of dominance. It took a lot of time for people to figure out what to do, then get it known throughout all of the players to be able to consistently beat them. Just look at the stats posted about boxer/iloveoov/Nada. They had stellar YEARS then fell off a bit as people learned how to play against them. Now compare that to SC2, people had stellar SEASONS then started to fall off. To go 4-5 months with a 70% win rate is the equivalent of a dominant year in BW just because of how quickly information and strategy travels.
Once the game is truly figured out, only then will we see a Flash in SC2. Flash was so dominant because he knew everything about the game, had great play and mechanics and everything. You cant have a dominant force when things are still changing so quickly.
NO actually once the game gets fully figured out (I would argue that it already is) we will have a lot of people being " the best " because they won't be able to differantiate themselves from others and while I agree mostly on what you've said the mechanical restrictions were also a reason for it being figured out so late in it's life span. The mechanical restrictions was THE one and only reason for BWs strategies being more complex and taking longer for them to be figured out
How can you possibly make this claim? There's no way to know whether it was solely the mechanical skill ceiling or whether BW is inherently more complex strategically. In fact I'm pretty sure most people would completely disagree with you. If BW had SC2's mechanics (mbs, autocast, etc) I think winrates of top players would still be higher than in SC2.
SC2 Foreigners are like pop singers and Kespa pros are like opera singers. Foreigners appeal and can relate more to the masses due to their personalities and culture but they're a completely different product from Kespa pros.
Artosis is like a classical /opera music elitist, He judges things by vocals (mechanics) instead of who won the American Idol Contest (tournament). Being a Broodwar Terran myself like Artosis I can completely understand his elitism and tastes.
A lot of people have been discussing this with the correct factor in mind. However a lot of people seem to ignore it and have missed the point. Perhaps people aren't reading the rest of the replies not sure.
The reason SC2 seems volatile is down solely to BO1 and BO3 formats. Mechanical skill ceilings etc are just not relevant at all. The reason for this is that we are so far away from the skill ceilings that any difference between games in that regard won't manifest themselves in win% at the top level unless you compare exactly like for like, which is impossible. What is the equivalent of one map of SC2 to one game of Quake? Who knows, its way way too complicated.
The analogy with tennis is interesting because tennis, being arranged into BO3 or BO5 set matches in tennis is a hugely longer format and allows the better player to win much more often. If a Grand Slam was a BO5 games format, Roger Federer wouldn't have 17 grand slams, he'd be lucky to have 4 or 5 such would be the massive variance in terms of who wins. The top tennis players win rates would be 55% or something in Grand Slams. Instead in BO5 matches it is (I think) over 80% for the top 4 players.
If a top top player in SC2 has a 65% WR by mapscore against his average opponent. Something which apparently is unacceptable to many people here. Then in a BO3 this will increase to 72%. In a BO5 this will increase again. By the time you get to BO11's, BO21's etc the top players win rates would be the magical 90%+ people desire.
TL;DR: This is purely a function of number of games in a series. Nothing else is remotely relevant in comparison.
On February 23 2013 17:16 magicallypuzzled wrote: no the problem isn't what ever random bull crap most of you are spouting. the problem/cause of the randomness compared to most quote sports unquote is the number of people who have the opportunity to play against the pros in starcraft is hugely disproportionate to the number of people who can play the pro's in any other actual sport.
In starcraft if you put the work in you can become as great as you ever want to be/play who ever you want to play all that's need is for you to literally eat breath sleep starcraft. in any sport you care to name no matter how many peple eat/breath/ sleep (insert sport name here) there is still an absolute limit on the number of players that are needed/wanted in the sport.
if a thousand people said hey I have he skill and want to be the best basketball player and I am going to do nothing but basketball 24/7 for how ever many years it takes to reach that goal 900 of them atleast are going to be completely out of luck no matter how good they actually get. there just isn't and won't be the teams/management/what ever to support them nor is there any desire to have such.
not so with starcraft there is no actual limit to the number of teams/players theres no ok we are drafting these many people for the nba and no more. if they get the skill there is nothing but perhaps common sense that says there can't be millions of pro players.
That's a bunch of BS while it might be true to small extent it just doesn't work that way. Have you never watched any olympic sport? If you did you would know what kinds of differences there are.
In skiing for instance (I used to compete when I was younger although I didn't achieve anything I am still pretty good at it and understand the sport) in woman's league a competitor from my country Tina Maze has been totally dominating this season with 8 wins this season over several disciplines, she was also 2nd and 3rd several times and if you look at the sport itself you will NEVER see a no-name take a championship the difference between the winner and the 30th is often above 3 secs which is fucking a lot if you've ever competed like I have.
The dame goes for chess a top grandmaster in FIDE rating usually doesn't lose to a lower tier GM (and both of them are among the best) you could put a Grandmaster against as many national champions that aren't as established and he just wouldn't lose (if he played to the best of his abilities that is).
I am not very into sports I follow a couple of winter sports since they are close to heart, but I can tell you that everyone who has ever followed or better yet competed at a sport can tell you that what you've spouted is utter bullshit. There are sports of course that are more luck based and teamsports are also a little bit more unpredictable because of the larger number of competitors
you didn't understand my point at all your post is saying there isn't any one in those sports that could compete with the top pros which is exactly what I was saying soooo? what exactly are you saying?
On February 24 2013 00:09 _SpiRaL_ wrote: A lot of people have been discussing this with the correct factor in mind. However a lot of people seem to ignore it and have missed the point. Perhaps people aren't reading the rest of the replies not sure.
The reason SC2 seems volatile is down solely to BO1 and BO3 formats. Mechanical skill ceilings etc are just not relevant at all. The reason for this is that we are so far away from the skill ceilings that any difference between games in that regard won't manifest themselves in win% at the top level unless you compare exactly like for like, which is impossible. What is the equivalent of one map of SC2 to one game of Quake? Who knows, its way way too complicated.
The analogy with tennis is interesting because tennis, being arranged into BO3 or BO5 set matches in tennis is a hugely longer format and allows the better player to win much more often. If a Grand Slam was a BO5 games format, Roger Federer wouldn't have 17 grand slams, he'd be lucky to have 4 or 5 such would be the massive variance in terms of who wins. The top tennis players win rates would be 55% or something in Grand Slams. Instead in BO5 matches it is (I think) over 80% for the top 4 players.
If a top top player in SC2 has a 65% WR by mapscore against his average opponent. Something which apparently is unacceptable to many people here. Then in a BO3 this will increase to 72%. In a BO5 this will increase again. By the time you get to BO11's, BO21's etc the top players win rates would be the magical 90%+ people desire.
TL;DR: This is purely a function of number of games in a series. Nothing else is remotely relevant in comparison.
Of course you are correct, but the game could still be changed to allow higher mapscore winrates, which is what people are talking about here. If you did bo11 sure you'd get 85%+ match winrates, but the matches would take a long time, if you tweaked/redesigned the game to allow 75%+ mapscore winrates then you could do bo3 with way less variance and it wouldn't take so long.
On February 24 2013 00:09 _SpiRaL_ wrote: A lot of people have been discussing this with the correct factor in mind. However a lot of people seem to ignore it and have missed the point. Perhaps people aren't reading the rest of the replies not sure.
The reason SC2 seems volatile is down solely to BO1 and BO3 formats. Mechanical skill ceilings etc are just not relevant at all. The reason for this is that we are so far away from the skill ceilings that any difference between games in that regard won't manifest themselves in win% at the top level unless you compare exactly like for like, which is impossible. What is the equivalent of one map of SC2 to one game of Quake? Who knows, its way way too complicated.
The analogy with tennis is interesting because tennis, being arranged into BO3 or BO5 set matches in tennis is a hugely longer format and allows the better player to win much more often. If a Grand Slam was a BO5 games format, Roger Federer wouldn't have 17 grand slams, he'd be lucky to have 4 or 5 such would be the massive variance in terms of who wins. The top tennis players win rates would be 55% or something in Grand Slams. Instead in BO5 matches it is (I think) over 80% for the top 4 players.
If a top top player in SC2 has a 65% WR by mapscore against his average opponent. Something which apparently is unacceptable to many people here. Then in a BO3 this will increase to 72%. In a BO5 this will increase again. By the time you get to BO11's, BO21's etc the top players win rates would be the magical 90%+ people desire.
TL;DR: This is purely a function of number of games in a series. Nothing else is remotely relevant in comparison.
Of course you are correct, but the game could still be changed to allow higher mapscore winrates, which is what people are talking about here. If you did bo11 sure you'd get 85%+ match winrates, but the matches would take a long time, if you tweaked/redesigned the game to allow 75%+ mapscore winrates then you could do bo3 with way less variance and it wouldn't take so long.
but such thing just isn't possible, its human limitation. If you have 100 pros who all put in same amount of training time, what you get is a graph that looks alot like a Binomial distribution with a low p value (not the graph's value i wanted to use, but I don't remember the term)
Alot of people in this thread that keeps comparing sc2 winrates to tennis either don't understand basic math. 60%+ winrates for games is very amazing for any athletes in any sports.
I think part of the problem especially with the artosis piece is that a lot of his predictions (at least in my eyes) are on entire tournaments, where he mentions a few names that he thinks will do really well. The only thing we will focus on is when said player/players lose, as is inevitable at some point given the amount of maches played.. Also calling it an artosis curse calls extra attention to when he gets predictions wrong as opposed to the substantial amount of times where he is right. I think the artosis curse is just a made up thing and if we could somehow get all the statistics together regarding his predictions wed all be surprised at how often hes right. As to the other points about when seemingly better players lose to inferior opponents: its a volatile game. Looking away at the wrong time for just a second or two can be the difference.
I feel like when the best players have a 70% win rate in a match up that's normal for competition. Most people aren't going to be able to win as consistently as the best. And to be honest, in most sports the best is an extremely small pool of people and they don't last forever. In tennis, Djokovic, Nadal and Federer are the best players around right now bar non, and they win way more often than not. But they still lose. And most players below them are significantly worse and lose randomly way more often. In competition shit happens. Get over it.
On February 24 2013 00:09 _SpiRaL_ wrote: A lot of people have been discussing this with the correct factor in mind. However a lot of people seem to ignore it and have missed the point. Perhaps people aren't reading the rest of the replies not sure.
The reason SC2 seems volatile is down solely to BO1 and BO3 formats. Mechanical skill ceilings etc are just not relevant at all. The reason for this is that we are so far away from the skill ceilings that any difference between games in that regard won't manifest themselves in win% at the top level unless you compare exactly like for like, which is impossible. What is the equivalent of one map of SC2 to one game of Quake? Who knows, its way way too complicated.
The analogy with tennis is interesting because tennis, being arranged into BO3 or BO5 set matches in tennis is a hugely longer format and allows the better player to win much more often. If a Grand Slam was a BO5 games format, Roger Federer wouldn't have 17 grand slams, he'd be lucky to have 4 or 5 such would be the massive variance in terms of who wins. The top tennis players win rates would be 55% or something in Grand Slams. Instead in BO5 matches it is (I think) over 80% for the top 4 players.
If a top top player in SC2 has a 65% WR by mapscore against his average opponent. Something which apparently is unacceptable to many people here. Then in a BO3 this will increase to 72%. In a BO5 this will increase again. By the time you get to BO11's, BO21's etc the top players win rates would be the magical 90%+ people desire.
TL;DR: This is purely a function of number of games in a series. Nothing else is remotely relevant in comparison.
Of course you are correct, but the game could still be changed to allow higher mapscore winrates, which is what people are talking about here. If you did bo11 sure you'd get 85%+ match winrates, but the matches would take a long time, if you tweaked/redesigned the game to allow 75%+ mapscore winrates then you could do bo3 with way less variance and it wouldn't take so long.
Except that win rate is not only determined by the game design alone.
A lot of people here have used tennis as an example. Because in the current game. There is the 'big' four. But if you looked at the pre Federer era, there was a lot more variance. Did tennis get 'patched' to affect this? No, sometimes you just get dominant competitors who are just above the rest of the field.
On February 24 2013 13:47 Megabuster123 wrote: I feel like when the best players have a 70% win rate in a match up that's normal for competition. Most people aren't going to be able to win as consistently as the best. And to be honest, in most sports the best is an extremely small pool of people and they don't last forever. In tennis, Djokovic, Nadal and Federer are the best players around right now bar non, and they win way more often than not. But they still lose. And most players below them are significantly worse and lose randomly way more often. In competition shit happens. Get over it.
I am not sure why it has to be 70%.
But anyways, it depends on the format as well. Remember something like Code S is top 32 players. For tennis, it is 128 for Grand Slams. So players play more of the low 'tier' players. Remember that Koreans had 90%+ win rates on the international TLPD when only a few of them travelled to foreign events. So the win percentage also depends on who you play.
That is also why a win rate of 55% compare with 60% is not just 5%. Because the 60% player is advancing further in tournaments more often and thus play 'better' players more often.
I think comparing SC2 to sports like football, soccer, tennis etc are incorrect, since those are simple sports which focus much more on mechanical skill whereas SC2 is a combination "special tactics", incomplete information and mechanical skill.
Watching SC2 feels a lot more like watching poker, where although the pros win more than they lose, you don't get total domination as per other sports for what I think are similar reasons to SC2.
I think sc2 is a lot like basketball actually. The best teams clearly have strong winning percentages, but every now and then even very good teams lose to bad teams. Does that mean basketball needs to be changed so that a good team never loses to a bad team? Of course not.
As others have said, the limitation really is the sample size of games/tournaments. If one player is 10% better than another player, it would take at the very least a bo7 to figure that out, and even then you can't really know who is the better player. My math skills are totally atrophied, but there is a way to calculate it and I'm sure to be actually certain about small skill differences you would need like a best of 20 series or something like that.
In game like SC2, the skill cap is so high that its impossible for humans to play perfectly, there is ALWAYS something that people could do better plus you cant know everything because of fog of war, and its also inevitable that players make mistakes in every game also.
Also, in brood war there is no total domination by any player, even flash has only about 70% total winrate. Its high, but far from absolute dominance which I would define as near 100% winrate.
Just chiming in with my two (or maybe a few more) cents.
First, the comparison to other sports and the lack of a truly dominating single individual. Last year, if you're a hockey fan, was an amazing playoffs in the NHL. The Los Angeles Kings needed all 82 games of the regular season to make it in. As in, they won their very last game of the season which gave them just the right amount of points to take the 8th playoff spot. They then proceeded to absolutely flatten every single team they were matched up against in the playoffs, on their way to the franchise's first Stanley Cup. Their championship run included dominating wins over the Vancouver Canucks (owners of the best team record, and pretty much everything else in the league that year - they also have been one of the top 5 teams in the league for the past 4 years or so) and New Jersey Devils (one of the most dominant defensive teams of the past decade). No one was unexcited by this fact, in actuality, TV numbers showed it was the most popular televised playoffs of all time. So clearly, a less-winning record (like the Kings') does not in and of itself indicate inferior play even in team sports.
Second, the comments about the skill ceiling. The amount of people saying that they believe SC2 either has or hasn't a high enough skill ceiling is mind-boggling to me. Mostly because, if there is a person who has seen and/or mastered the skill ceiling of SC2, I would love to meet them, shake their hand, and ask them why they aren't out there flattening MVP, Life, and other pros. What our opinion is of the skill ceiling is irrelevant. Until someone arrives to show us the next level of the skill 'ceiling' (note the qualified nature of that term), we don't know how high the potential of SC2 is. The original Starcraft had less of a skill ceiling and a higher rate of imbalance than Broodwar did, and look how that expansion turned out (after a pretty substantial series of patches, I might add).
To sum up, anyone who believes they know for a fact what the skill ceiling of SC2 is is probably deceiving themselves, and having 80%+ dominance in any sporting/competitive event is not indicative of spectator enjoyment or quality of the game.
I think the ultimate goal is to have the better player winning 100% of the time. Don't even get me started on the CoD's.
So yes, there is a "problem" when a game doesn't have a high skill ceiling. It doesn't allow a better player to fully flourish. In sc2 we commonly see worse players beat better players- mostly through cheese, short series, and prepared builds. This isn't the case in long series with mostly macro games, so that is good.
There are a lots of things that Blizzard should have done differently in game design. 1) Units that reward micro instead of relying on the opponent to be unprepared. 2) Highground advantage for positioning and micro 3) APM heavy macro and interface mechanics - automine, hotkeys, etc.
I think it's a bit sensationalized that Artosis is the most knowledgeable player, but he certainly does have enough knowledge of the game in which he could make remarks about who is favored in a given series.
Watching all different kind of sports over the years, it is very easy to remember when someone says a team is going to lose relative to someone saying that a team is going to win.
On February 24 2013 13:47 Megabuster123 wrote: I feel like when the best players have a 70% win rate in a match up that's normal for competition. Most people aren't going to be able to win as consistently as the best. And to be honest, in most sports the best is an extremely small pool of people and they don't last forever. In tennis, Djokovic, Nadal and Federer are the best players around right now bar non, and they win way more often than not. But they still lose. And most players below them are significantly worse and lose randomly way more often. In competition shit happens. Get over it.
I am not sure why it has to be 70%.
But anyways, it depends on the format as well. Remember something like Code S is top 32 players. For tennis, it is 128 for Grand Slams. So players play more of the low 'tier' players. Remember that Koreans had 90%+ win rates on the international TLPD when only a few of them travelled to foreign events. So the win percentage also depends on who you play.
That is also why a win rate of 55% compare with 60% is not just 5%. Because the 60% player is advancing further in tournaments more often and thus play 'better' players more often.
I just threw out a number I remembered hearing in the thread. But I agree, the tournament format in Esports has a lot to do with it as well. Very few people in the world are so good at something as to gain the win rates that people are expecting sc2 players to get.
On February 24 2013 14:34 monitor wrote: I think the ultimate goal is to have the better player winning 100% of the time. Don't even get me started on the CoD's.
So yes, there is a "problem" when a game doesn't have a high skill ceiling. It doesn't allow a better player to fully flourish. In sc2 we commonly see worse players beat better players- mostly through cheese, short series, and prepared builds. This isn't the case in long series with mostly macro games, so that is good.
There are a lots of things that Blizzard should have done differently in game design. 1) Units that reward micro instead of relying on the opponent to be unprepared. 2) Highground advantage for positioning and micro 3) APM heavy macro and interface mechanics - automine, hotkeys, etc.
Uh, Monitor... Brood War wasn't any different. Fantasy, #1 in all the rankings at the time of the KeSPA transition to SC2, had an all-time win rate of 62.41%. Then we look at the current #1 in the SC2 Korean rankings, and we have Life at 62.05%. Even the man who earned the nicknames "Ultimate Weapon" and "God" boasted a 71.74% win rate. Yes, even Flash lost more than 1 in every 4 games, most against statistically inferior opponents, in BW.
Moving toward traditional sports, which feature purely physical skill and no information hiding or other such "luck"-based concepts, even the best teams don't win all their games and lose to inferior teams, statistically speaking. Last season, the Vancouver Canucks were the highest-ranked team; they won 62.19% of the time (51-22-9). Life's 2012 record was 181 wins - 108 losses (62.63%). His 2013 stats so far are 8 wins - 4 losses (66.67%). In the sports world, that's textbook consistency.
I know you don't like SC2 personally, but frankly I find the general idea of this thread to be faulty.
On February 24 2013 13:44 ShynZ wrote: artosis predicted that FXO is gonna win tonight. oh well, we will see
cursed...
On stream he said roro would win gsl.
Artosis should just start predicting the opposite of what he normally would predict. Hopefully, that would break his "curse".
The curse knows what you really want in your heart. It wouldn't work. I guess it would make him look good on paper but all his favorites would still lose
Indeed, even Grubby said that in wc3 he would almost beat players who were weaker than him every time, but on sc2 its not so much. It was the same with red alert 3, if you know you were better than someone than your chance of winning was 90%.
On February 24 2013 16:30 SuperFanBoy wrote: Indeed, even Grubby said that in wc3 he would almost beat players who were weaker than him every time, but on sc2 its not so much. It was the same with red alert 3, if you know you were better than someone than your chance of winning was 90%.
Naniwa in one of the teamliquid attack episodes countered that by saying that the resources given to Grubby is a lot more than what other players have access to. HasuObs confirmed that there are external barriers unrelated to player skill that prevented mid-tier player from reaching top tier. SC2 is just a lot more open. If you're good enough, you can get sent to Korea and unlike in BW, you won't get treated like a fifth-class citizen. You won't be forced to sacrifice the improvement of your own play for the sake of the top team players.
On February 24 2013 16:30 SuperFanBoy wrote: Indeed, even Grubby said that in wc3 he would almost beat players who were weaker than him every time, but on sc2 its not so much. It was the same with red alert 3, if you know you were better than someone than your chance of winning was 90%.
I call bullshit. Just because there isn't any worthy statistic analysis available for wc3 doesn't mean you can make things up. Nobody can have 90% win rate in any healthy game, welcome to reality
I feel like your tennis analogy is pretty poor. Sure men's tennis has been dominated by the top 3-4 for years now, but look at the women's tennis. The rankings switch around all the time and the favourite is often beaten a few rounds before the finals.
As other people have said, when you have a game with 3 distinctly different races, a volatile metagame and constant patches you are not going to get a huge level of consistency...
On February 24 2013 19:24 TigerKarl wrote: Why is anyone even posting here? Everything is said and if you think otherwise you should improve your knowledge about statistics.
To prove you wrong. See? I just proved you wrong!
While statistics are good and well, I think a better discussion, which is still somewhat on-topic would be: Should a competitive game ever have it so a lesser player can win, ever? Shouldn't the better player always win 100% simply because they are better? Obviously, some days you perform worse than others, but that would somewhat imply that he wasn't better on that day. A perfect competitive game should reward only the best player. The GSL finalists are NOT the best players. Would you have ever said that Sniper is the best player, after he won that GSL? I sure as hell wouldn't. Chess does pretty well with this. Players are very consistent at the high levels. There are many many draws, which are okay, but they also play multiple matches. The fact that players lose one match and win another versus the same player seems flawed to me, but it's balanced out (a SC2 pro wins 60% of matches, but do they win 60% of series? That's the more important question!)
You talk about the Artosis curse because he casts GSL. Half the problem is GSL, SC2 most volatile tournament, now that people really know the game (aka pass the first year). Of course, sometimes favorites win the tournament, but for example the fact that only about two players managed to get twice to ro8 in 2012 is a good tell. Many reasons : the bracket system for group play and the no elimination format are really entertaining to watch but not the most fair system for players. The time to study your opponent and build tailored strat coupled with the really fast pace of the game and the lack of info during the game makes it easy to produce upset.
On February 24 2013 14:34 monitor wrote: I think the ultimate goal is to have the better player winning 100% of the time. Don't even get me started on the CoD's.
So yes, there is a "problem" when a game doesn't have a high skill ceiling. It doesn't allow a better player to fully flourish. In sc2 we commonly see worse players beat better players- mostly through cheese, short series, and prepared builds. This isn't the case in long series with mostly macro games, so that is good.
There are a lots of things that Blizzard should have done differently in game design. 1) Units that reward micro instead of relying on the opponent to be unprepared. 2) Highground advantage for positioning and micro 3) APM heavy macro and interface mechanics - automine, hotkeys, etc.
Uh, Monitor... Brood War wasn't any different. Fantasy, #1 in all the rankings at the time of the KeSPA transition to SC2, had an all-time win rate of 62.41%. Then we look at the current #1 in the SC2 Korean rankings, and we have Life at 62.05%. Even the man who earned the nicknames "Ultimate Weapon" and "God" boasted a 71.74% win rate. Yes, even Flash lost more than 1 in every 4 games, most against statistically inferior opponents, in BW.
Moving toward traditional sports, which feature purely physical skill and no information hiding or other such "luck"-based concepts, even the best teams don't win all their games and lose to inferior teams, statistically speaking. Last season, the Vancouver Canucks were the highest-ranked team; they won 62.19% of the time (51-22-9). Life's 2012 record was 181 wins - 108 losses (62.63%). His 2013 stats so far are 8 wins - 4 losses (66.67%). In the sports world, that's textbook consistency.
I know you don't like SC2 personally, but frankly I find the general idea of this thread to be faulty.
Also, I think people also sensationalize players such as Flash and MVP and assume that they should 100% win every game. Just because you are the "Best" doesn't mean that you can't have bad games occasionally. People just have to realize that the skill difference between someone like Life relative to a code A player isn't all that huge, and when I say not huge I mean Life might only be 4-5% more efficient in his play (It's just an estimate). That's not to say that this game doesn't have a large skill ceiling, but getting an edge over other players that train 12 hours a day is really hard, so if you are able to gain even 1% more efficiency than them.... then that is impressive.
I realized this some time ago - Any player can beat any other player at anytime.
SC reminds me of poker - the best players will have the best results in the long term but at any given day a newbie can just destroy them (Roro vs. Bear comes to mind as a recent example of this). Why? Because skill is not as dominant factor as many might think. Too many things happen during games and players are simply not capable of controlling everything.
Here's something else. I am an avid liquibet voter. I've voted on every vote this season. I try to vote for the people I think will win, not hope will win. My correct liquibets is 125 of 236, or 53%. 53%! Only 3% higher than what a person would get if they closed their eyes and picked every answer at random (since all liquibets are 50/50).
why hasn't anyone called bullshit on that yet?
a person that randomly bets would have had a probability of B(118;236;0.5)=0,05 of guessing half of the bets right
Is there something inherently wrong with a game where the supposed best players so often lose to players who are widely considered weaker than them? Like, is the skill ceiling not high enough? Is it too luck based? Why don't the best players beat the slightly less good players more often?
This has been suggested by pros, writers, community figures since 2008 when we started playing alpha builds. It has been consistently complained about (especially by idra) for years now.
If the Artosis curse gets a bit more popular it will break just like the eg curse did. Though EG would need to pick up another player so we could see if the curse still works.
On February 24 2013 19:24 TigerKarl wrote: Why is anyone even posting here? Everything is said and if you think otherwise you should improve your knowledge about statistics.
To prove you wrong. See? I just proved you wrong!
While statistics are good and well, I think a better discussion, which is still somewhat on-topic would be: Should a competitive game ever have it so a lesser player can win, ever? Shouldn't the better player always win 100% simply because they are better? Obviously, some days you perform worse than others, but that would somewhat imply that he wasn't better on that day. A perfect competitive game should reward only the best player. The GSL finalists are NOT the best players. Would you have ever said that Sniper is the best player, after he won that GSL? I sure as hell wouldn't. Chess does pretty well with this. Players are very consistent at the high levels. There are many many draws, which are okay, but they also play multiple matches. The fact that players lose one match and win another versus the same player seems flawed to me, but it's balanced out (a SC2 pro wins 60% of matches, but do they win 60% of series? That's the more important question!)
lol what a retardedly stupid question you ask... If the better player won 100% of the time competition would be useless as everyone would know what would happen... Randomness makes it interesting.. Also people should stop citing chess as some example of a game without luck and the better player always winning.. That is completely untrue.. Just because chess is an open information boardgame doesn't mean it's without luck.. There is a lot of hidden information in the complexity of the game and the openings. If you've played chess a bit more serious you know you can get lucky your opponent plays an opening variant you've just studied well, you can beat much better players by this happening for example. Also the impact of moves is not all known, sometimes through sheer luck your move ends up working out quite well without you knowing it beforehand, which happens just as much at the pro level too...
Very nice read and good analyzes! I think it's mainly because of the switches in the meta game. Only now are we starting to get WoL figured out... but HotS is around the corner.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts and have a nice day, Gatesleeper.
On February 24 2013 19:24 TigerKarl wrote: Why is anyone even posting here? Everything is said and if you think otherwise you should improve your knowledge about statistics.
To prove you wrong. See? I just proved you wrong!
While statistics are good and well, I think a better discussion, which is still somewhat on-topic would be: Should a competitive game ever have it so a lesser player can win, ever? Shouldn't the better player always win 100% simply because they are better? Obviously, some days you perform worse than others, but that would somewhat imply that he wasn't better on that day. A perfect competitive game should reward only the best player. The GSL finalists are NOT the best players. Would you have ever said that Sniper is the best player, after he won that GSL? I sure as hell wouldn't. Chess does pretty well with this. Players are very consistent at the high levels. There are many many draws, which are okay, but they also play multiple matches. The fact that players lose one match and win another versus the same player seems flawed to me, but it's balanced out (a SC2 pro wins 60% of matches, but do they win 60% of series? That's the more important question!)
lol what a retardedly stupid question you ask... If the better player won 100% of the time competition would be useless as everyone would know what would happen... Randomness makes it interesting.. Also people should stop citing chess as some example of a game without luck and the better player always winning.. That is completely untrue.. Just because chess is an open information boardgame doesn't mean it's without luck.. There is a lot of hidden information in the complexity of the game and the openings. If you've played chess a bit more serious you know you can get lucky your opponent plays an opening variant you've just studied well, you can beat much better players by this happening for example. Also the impact of moves is not all known, sometimes through sheer luck your move ends up working out quite well without you knowing it beforehand, which happens just as much at the pro level too...
Some randomness makes it interesting. Like that slim sliver of light that the underdog will win. When it's so much closer to even, it's not a sliver, there's no excitement then.
On February 25 2013 00:56 Markwerf wrote: lol what a retardedly stupid question you ask... If the better player won 100% of the time competition would be useless as everyone would know what would happen... Randomness makes it interesting.. Also people should stop citing chess as some example of a game without luck and the better player always winning.. That is completely untrue.. Just because chess is an open information boardgame doesn't mean it's without luck.. There is a lot of hidden information in the complexity of the game and the openings. If you've played chess a bit more serious you know you can get lucky your opponent plays an opening variant you've just studied well, you can beat much better players by this happening for example. Also the impact of moves is not all known, sometimes through sheer luck your move ends up working out quite well without you knowing it beforehand, which happens just as much at the pro level too...
It's not randomness, though. You aren't "hoping" they do something (usually). You are playing the best move you can. There are more offensive approaches to chess. Magnus Carlsen (he's highest ranked chess player at the moment I think) used to play a lot more aggressive. It was more risky and lead to more error, but it's not due to randomness that he lost/won. There is a "good move" at every point. There is also a "best move" at every point. The best choice would obviously be to choose the "best" one, but Chess is far more complicated than that, so no one is capable of doing that. Instead, every chess player is thinking everything out and playing what seems to them as the best move they can do. You'd be lucky if they made a blunder, but you aren't lucky for choosing the better moves more of the time. If I went for some silly gambit every game against random people in hopes that SOMEONE would miss it, then I'd be taking huge amounts of risks, relying on my opponent either missing it (blunder) or being stupid (being bad at chess). In this case, I'd be hoping they fall into my trap. A high risk play/opening usually punishes you after it fails to win the game. And at the first point, players don't stay "the best" forever. When you're playing for money (a pro gamer's whole career basically), the last thing you want is to lose due to randomness. Randomness makes it so when a SC2 player does the "best move", they could still lose just out of luck (they cut the wrong corner or got hard countered just out of chance). You call my question retardedly stupid, but I'm afraid it's you, who is retardedly stupid. What a redundant insult. You should have just left it at retarded or just stupid.
Also, if you look at WC3, due to how the game was so focused on microing and not so much scouting opponent (SC2!) the top 16/32 were very very consistent. The top 5 was consistent. It wouldn't be crazy to call WC3 a better game due to this. Moon and Grubby were both exceptional players. The only thing that wasn't good about WC3 was race balance. It could have used some work, but 4 races is so much harder to balance than 3.
As long as there is fog of war, RTS-games are inherently doomed to be very much luck based compared to chess for an example, or some traditional sports.
On February 25 2013 03:18 Mongolbonjwa wrote: As long as there is fog of war, RTS-games are inherently doomed to be very much luck based compared to chess for an example, or some traditional sports.
speaking about fog of war and RTS games, has there ever been an RTS without fog of war?
On February 25 2013 03:18 Mongolbonjwa wrote: As long as there is fog of war, RTS-games are inherently doomed to be very much luck based compared to chess for an example, or some traditional sports.
speaking about fog of war and RTS games, has there ever been an RTS without fog of war?
Hm, I'm not sure if there has been. Maybe some spaceship RTS. Sins of a Solar Empire? Not sure if that even fits under the RTS category. It's more of a just plain strategy kind of game, but I suppose it's in real time too, so literally speaking, I guess so! Though, I think there are other elements of "randomness" or lack of knowledge. WC3 had FoW, but scouting was not nearly as difficult as in SC2. It was much less focused on that element.
On February 25 2013 03:37 Mongolbonjwa wrote: Scouting should be easier
It is in HotS at least. A lot of zergs have been going for early overlord speed (in the GSTL for instance), terrans with reapers if they keep them alive (and they also have scans if they wish to use them), and protoss can scout when they poke with the MsCore push / Oracle ability (which I haven't seen used in)
The game hasn't developed much, so what happens in the game is still pretty unpredictable. People are rising and falling from the top all the time as the metagame is constantly changing. And the game is pretty complex, it's not been figured out, and it isn't clear what the strengths and weaknesses of the players are either. There is hype surrounding the players but alot of that hype is meaningless, as the stats show.
Its' the volatility and burst mechanics. Zerg BW it would take a while for a hydra bust vs a forge FE. You'd be slowly making the hydras over a long period of time, hiding them. In SC2? Wait for either 1 or 2 inject cycles to pop and BAM you have your army.
Almost completely attributable to macro mechanics. Warp gates as well, mules to a lesser extent, however they still provide an extreme amount of income. Look at BW, you don't mine out your main until super far into the game, you mine it out so fast in SC2...
Screw artosis, I'd be more interested in knowing TheBB's prediction rate. running off pure ELO (not even matchup stats iirc), he gets a *lot* of the calls right.
If some of the top UEFA-teams meet, can analysts and sportscasters adequately predict the outcome? Are there ever any mindblowing performances?
Lets say the best teams in Champions League are Manchester, Barcelona and Rome (I don't know if they are, just a fictional example), are they consistently in the top 3 of the league and would people go insane if Rome lost against Cologne?
The top 32 players (Code S) Smash anyone not in the top 100 (Foreigners)? Seems right to me.
Of course the top 32 in the world can take games off each other.
But you can't forget that we have clear favourites as well (Life, old Mvp, DRG etc. etc.). To win the GSL they need 7 victories.
The question you need to ask yourself isn't whether Life is the best in the world, but if you think it's ridiculously unreasonable to win 7 sets in a row against people who are pretty much confirmed to be in the top 32 best on the planet.
Of course it's ridiculously unreasonable. That's why we have different GSL champions, and upsets.
Don't even bother bringing up Chess. You put the top 32 best in the world in a major tournament and it's the exact same thing. The top player changes all the time, however the best usually remain consistent. #1 ELO will not beat #32 #31 #16 #15 #8 #4 #2 in a row consistently, and that's why we have different tournament winners all the time in every major competition where thousands of serious competitors compete.
No one complitely dominating the game, and everyone seemingly having the same chance to win just speaks of balance of the game and the similarity of skill level between high-level players. If there's no real factor differentiating players from each other, then at the end of the day, the game becomes pretty much becomes a coin toss in analytical point of view at the beginning of the match and the player that can make the most out of the game will mostlikely win.
On February 25 2013 03:18 Mongolbonjwa wrote: As long as there is fog of war, RTS-games are inherently doomed to be very much luck based compared to chess for an example, or some traditional sports.
speaking about fog of war and RTS games, has there ever been an RTS without fog of war?
Warcraft I had fog of war eventually but after you've revealed a certain area it stayed revealed; you saw everything what was happening
Brood war took many years to stabilize as well. Look at WoL 2010 and this very last GSL.. how far hasn't the skill level come?
I recently watched a few finals with Boxer and it was actually boring. Compared to the last OSL, the earlier ones felt like bad a-move turtling parties. And at times, races and strats have seemingly been OP and impossible to counter, but yet it all evened out in the end and even protosses won OSLs.
I'm trying to say that SC2 will eventually be ridiculous. When everything is figured out and all the small things that can be done are being done, we will see great games.
I'm actually a bit sad that WoL has to go, because crap, imagine Innovation and Squirtle but even farther in the same direction..
I think this has a lot less to do with variance, and a lot more to do with the fact that all of the top 100 players in the world are incredible and can beat each other on any given day. In BW and SC2 both, a 60%+ winrate is considered rare, so it makes sense that Liquibet predictions would correlate with this. If the top players can't even predict that they will win a match a match 65% of the time, I don't know what makes you think some random TLer should be able to predict the outcome of that match 65% of the time either.
In chess, a game far more skill-rewarding than SC2 (or basically anything else), it is the same way. Despite being a game with virtually no luck, the top players still rarely win against each other, and draws are the expected outcome. It's my opinion that this is a good thing in both games because it means the competition has risen to a very high level.
Well maybe its a bad comparison, but look at the NCAA basketball this season. So many upsets, I think the #1 lost five weeks in a row. And look at march madness, there are usually huge upsets every year. I don't think that's because basketball is a broken sport, I think it all has to do with the players, momentum, and randomness.
On February 25 2013 05:01 omgimonfire15 wrote: Well maybe its a bad comparison, but look at the NCAA basketball this season. So many upsets, I think the #1 lost five weeks in a row. And look at march madness, there are usually huge upsets every year. I don't think that's because basketball is a broken sport, I think it all has to do with the players, momentum, and randomness.
Except this isn't true. The lowest seed to every win a national championship was 8. Cinderellas don't exist; most of the time the teams that are supposed to win do win. Certainly at a higher percentage than what we see in starcraft.
Here's something else. I am an avid liquibet voter. I've voted on every vote this season. I try to vote for the people I think will win, not hope will win. My correct liquibets is 125 of 236, or 53%. 53%! Only 3% higher than what a person would get if they closed their eyes and picked every answer at random (since all liquibets are 50/50).
why hasn't anyone called bullshit on that yet?
a person that randomly bets would have had a probability of B(118;236;0.5)=0,05 of guessing half of the bets right
Wouldn't that be the odds of getting EXACTLY half the bets right? If you pick one of two choices at random over a large number of attempts, your score will converge on 50%, but not necessarily reach that exact value.
On February 25 2013 05:01 omgimonfire15 wrote: Well maybe its a bad comparison, but look at the NCAA basketball this season. So many upsets, I think the #1 lost five weeks in a row. And look at march madness, there are usually huge upsets every year. I don't think that's because basketball is a broken sport, I think it all has to do with the players, momentum, and randomness.
Except this isn't true. The lowest seed to every win a national championship was 8. Cinderellas don't exist; most of the time the teams that are supposed to win do win. Certainly at a higher percentage than what we see in starcraft.
I'm not talking about national champiopnships. How many random people who are arguably bad win the premier tournaments? Same thing happens in march madness. the best teams win, but early on, bad teams beat good teams. Last year in the first round, 10 higher seeded teams lost to lower seeded teams including Duke and Missouri lousing, both seeded 2nd in their regional. After the first round last year, only 3 people who made brackets online were perfect. I don't exactly understand what your saying isn't true, all I was saying that basketball has a lot of upsets, especially at the highest level. Even experts were fooled. It seems to me, that its similar in starcraft. early on, there are a lot of upsets and random wins, but in the end, it seems as though the best play at the highest level.
On February 25 2013 03:18 Mongolbonjwa wrote: As long as there is fog of war, RTS-games are inherently doomed to be very much luck based compared to chess for an example, or some traditional sports.
speaking about fog of war and RTS games, has there ever been an RTS without fog of war?
Is there something inherently wrong with a game where the supposed best players so often lose to players who are widely considered weaker than them? Like, is the skill ceiling not high enough? Is it too luck based? Why don't the best players beat the slightly less good players more often?
This has been suggested by pros, writers, community figures since 2008 when we started playing alpha builds. It has been consistently complained about (especially by idra) for years now.
Damned that Artosis curse talk again
People used to use this argument back when foreigners and koreans were equal at a competitive level and it fell apart. The reality is, with ladder, everyone plays everyone and so they consistently strive towards similar levels of performance. There are very few hidden strats, and the game has evolved in WoL to what appear to be optimal strategies as a result of deficiencies in each individual race design. The turtling of zerg to their very strong lategame, the specific timings of protoss to exploit the tech investments of zerg, and the same story for PvT though in different roles (protoss turtle, terran timings). ZvT however is more of an attrition based battle where in the terran hits a timing that allows him to continuously pressure from that moment on. Its a bit different but similar.
so far in hots the games seem to be a little more back and forth and not so penultimate as in wol with the exception of skytoss PvZ so far. This I think is the only penultimate turtle army I have seen yet.
Here's something else. I am an avid liquibet voter. I've voted on every vote this season. I try to vote for the people I think will win, not hope will win. My correct liquibets is 125 of 236, or 53%. 53%! Only 3% higher than the EV of what a person would get if they closed their eyes and picked every answer at random (since all liquibets are 50/50).
why hasn't anyone called bullshit on that yet?
a person that randomly bets would have had a probability of B(118;236;0.5)=0,05 of guessing half of the bets right
Why are you going off on someone who forgot 3 words?
So most likely no one will read this, but here goes. I think there is a big difference between Starcraft and traditional Sports. Traditional Sports rely (often) on minimalistic rules and still the game evolves over time. Furthermore in Tennis you have 'Points', 'Games', 'Sets' and the 'Match', you don't judge a winner just after one Game, that would be too random. Starcraft is allot more complicated, is much younger and has rules, that quickly change. Also to determine a winner we use Bo3/Bo5 and only sometimes Bo7. I personally think, that if every confrontation in Starcraft was a Bo9 or higher, we would have players, reach a 80% winrate (atlest for a matchup).. in winning the Bo9 that is. In Tennis you also don't count each Point/Game/Set and calculate a winrate by that.. that would be stupid.. and thats exactly the way I feel about win rates calculated by sc2-game and not 'confrontation' (Bo3/5/7)
Edit: and btw. Liquidbet has bets that are less than 50% and that are the bets who will make it out of the group
Is there something inherently wrong with a game where the supposed best players so often lose to players who are widely considered weaker than them? Like, is the skill ceiling not high enough? Is it too luck based? Why don't the best players beat the slightly less good players more often?
This has been suggested by pros, writers, community figures since 2008 when we started playing alpha builds. It has been consistently complained about (especially by idra) for years now.
Damned that Artosis curse talk again
People used to use this argument back when foreigners and koreans were equal at a competitive level and it fell apart. The reality is, with ladder, everyone plays everyone and so they consistently strive towards similar levels of performance. There are very few hidden strats, and the game has evolved in WoL to what appear to be optimal strategies as a result of deficiencies in each individual race design. The turtling of zerg to their very strong lategame, the specific timings of protoss to exploit the tech investments of zerg, and the same story for PvT though in different roles (protoss turtle, terran timings). ZvT however is more of an attrition based battle where in the terran hits a timing that allows him to continuously pressure from that moment on. Its a bit different but similar.
so far in hots the games seem to be a little more back and forth and not so penultimate as in wol with the exception of skytoss PvZ so far. This I think is the only penultimate turtle army I have seen yet.
After seeing this thread I started to really vote for whom I think would win.
So far I've missed MC vs RorO because I genuinely thought that MC would win, but after that I haven't been wrong yet. 12 correct votes in a row, including the whole GSTL, part of Proleague round 3 and day 2 ro24 Code A. IMO the game is not as much broken as it just isn't figured out completely. Continous patching makes it hard to go really stagnant with the players. Terran used to dominate for a while , then protoss for a bit and now Zerg for a long while. HotS will make everything different again and LotV will also stirr things up whenever that happens.
You can't compare Sc2 with Tennis, because 1 little mistake in Sc2 might cost you the game whilst 1 little mistake in tennis will just make you lose a point.