It was said during a long ladder marathon. I forget which stream viewer said it specifically, but I remember I'd seen him in the chat before. Oftentimes I check the chat between games to answer questions and interact with my viewers, and after wins it's nice to have someone congratulate you, or after a crushing lost to have someone cheer you up. It helps fight some of the loneliness of the 1v1 ladder, I suppose.
Circumstances aside, I had just lost a TvZ in the early game when my marauder/hellion push was overwhelmed by a large wave of roaches, speedlings, and banelings. My adversary had gone for the zerg equivalent of my build, a very strong low-tech all in off 2 bases. His victory in the engagement led to his more comfortable transition and eventual victory.
In the chat afterwards, a viewer attempted to console me and wrote, "He got lucky".
I don't like that. I don't like it all. First off, Sc2 is a game of incomplete information, but as Einstein said: Browder does not play dice with the universe. Strictly speaking, that is to say, there is no Luck in Sc2. Secondly, even if you think it's "lucky" to happen to go for a strong attack at the same time as me, there's no way to say whether or not his plan was a 2 base all in, or whether he took note of my increasing hellion count and decided some hatch tech units would be a wise investment before a third base or lair tech. Thirdly, even if he did blindly choose this composition and timing, the fact that my build (or execution thereof) failed to scout and react to an attack like this from the Zerg isn't luck-- it's a risk I take when I do what I did.
It goes further than that, though. Much further. When I lose a game, it's easy, seductive, to blame Luck or Imbalance or some other external factor for my loss. If I can externalize the blame, I can feel good about myself. It's comforting to think it's not your fault you lost. Very comforting. At the same time, though, it stunts learning. When I lose to someone, I need to look inwards and evaluate myself, and become stronger. In fact, I learn very little when I beat someone-- most learning comes from losses. This isn't an RPG where dead enemies give you exp, but much the opposite. Losses need to be learning opportunities.
Intermission: with music!
This applies to my thoughts on balance, as well.
If you lose to an all-in that you failed to scout, then you should have scouted aggressively. If your build doesn't contain the scouting and/or the safety to hold certain all-ins, then it is not "luck" that you lose to an all-in; rather, it is a risk you accepted when you chose your build.
As a classic example, if a Protoss player goes for a 1 gate fast expand and loses to a proxy Thor rush with the Factory in his gold base on Shattered Temple, he did not lose to "luck". Rather, he lost because he chose a build that loses to an unscouted proxy Thor, and he failed to scout it. Often when I view a replay against a Protoss where I either go for a 13 gas or I wall him out, he takes a probe or zealot and scouts out all possible proxy locations. My adversaries are smart.
When I lose to a surprising reaper/hellion 1 base elevator attack, I didn't lose due to "luck"-- I lost because I didn't know the build existed. I lost because I was not skilled and knowledgeable enough. After losing to that, I took steps to scout and fight this sort of build in subsequent games. When someone does something interesting and unusual to me in a game and I lose to it, the proper response isn't rage, but rather, respect. Admiration. Gratitude, even, for being given another chance to learn.
In fact, I lost today to a very clever protoss who fast expanded to the gold on metalopolis, aggressively poking my front with zealots and making me think he was all in. I scouted once for secret expos but did not touch the watch tower until my second circulation, when it was far too late. I didn't lose due to being "unlucky", I lost because I was not good enough. Next time a protoss FEs to the gold and pressures my front I will not make the same mistake. This is how I view my losses, and how you should view yours if you want to improve.
When I analyze my replays, I never lost due to luck-- I always lose due to being outplayed. Barring once or twice when I had equipment failures or lag issues, I have never outplayed an opponent and lost.
People comment that this philosophy is Day[9]-esque or cribbed off of his thoughts. If you think that's the case, I've got some serious news for you: this is how you think in almost any field you want to succeed in. Not to rag on Day[9], but being humble and introspective isn't something he personally made up-- it's a habit of a successful person. I suspect it's a philosophy he (among many others) applies to many aspects of his life. You know this is true because he has like 9 hot girlfriends and drives a Mercedes from his bedroom to his garage where he gets in his Ferarri.
Seriously though, I guess this is kinda sparked by what I view as a very immature attitude that a small but vocal minority of people in chats and in some threads seem to have. This attitude would seem frankly preposterous in any other field. Could you imagine someone saying "oh, yeah, sorry boss-- I know I underperfomed relative to the other guy this year, but he just got lucky with his programs compiling well" or "Plus, I think his computer is overpowered so it doesn't count".
Yeah I thought so.
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P.S: Wall of text crits you for 9k damage. ATTACK PKMN BAG RUN
At first I was like 'wait who are you?' and then I was like 'oooh, they guy who wrote "Why Masters Players Say They're Bad."
I'm sensing a theme. I don't think modesty works when you brag about it (please resist your temptation to repeat a dumb joke).
edit: I mean, what you're saying is true enough, but by saying it you make it weak It is not luck. You should be satisfied with that. You don't need to show the world what a mature adult you are by telling them how you think it's luck. Do you see what I mean? Perhaps not.. It might just be my own personal reaction to these.
I don't agree with your argument at all. Sometimes people just get lucky because we don't have perfect information, and your Einstein quote is insufficient to disprove this. It's impossible to have perfect scouting, even if you're Terran or Protoss. You can't have scans going up 100% of the time, you can't have scans in the right place every time. The "skill" people refer to is simply a decision made on a probability. Which, while it is not the same thing as rolling the dice (or maybe it is), it's not as close to the skill based assessment people often talk about.
Of course there is luck in games. Sometimes you choose your build before you have the chance to scout and gather information. Say you decided straight away that you're going for a CC before barracks and the Zerg decides to 6pool (both done before scouting)
On March 15 2012 23:34 Blazinghand wrote: yeah what can i saw im pretty narcisisstic.
A better critique of this post imo is "nobody who rages and thinks he loses due to luck will be convinced.by thisnpost."
No, Copper level critique imo.
On March 15 2012 23:36 Pulimuli wrote: Of course there is luck in games. Sometimes you choose your build before you have the chance to scout and gather information. Say you decided straight away that you're going for a CC before barracks and the Zerg decides to 6pool (both done before scouting)
That's part of the meta-game. There is skill to predicting your opponent's builds.
On March 15 2012 23:36 Pulimuli wrote: Of course there is luck in games. Sometimes you choose your build before you have the chance to scout and gather information. Say you decided straight away that you're going for a CC before barracks and the Zerg decides to 6pool (both done before scouting)
That's part of the meta-game. There is skill to predicting your opponent's builds.
No sometimes its not about predicting, sometimes its just "im bored of standard play so ill do something random for shits and giggles"
On March 15 2012 23:36 Pulimuli wrote: Of course there is luck in games. Sometimes you choose your build before you have the chance to scout and gather information. Say you decided straight away that you're going for a CC before barracks and the Zerg decides to 6pool (both done before scouting)
Hm ok thays a fair enough point. That being said i consider that sort of build (for either side) to be a calculated risk and not really the same as what im talking about. At all.
The burden of mistakes... who and what should carry it?
I believe the problem here lies with the connotation of "luck". Luck is poorly perceived, almost as if it necessarily implied a lack of skill.
I do believe this only reflects the griever lack of comprehension. Luck and skills are two independent things, however it's easy to mistake one for another, especially when you don't know your opponent, and therefore fail to see a pattern in his play.
But still, you're unlucky that he sporadically took that risk when you happened to do that build. This isn't much different to poker to me: the majority of winners of the game are simply better players with more skill, but you can't deny there's still luck in it. Sure it may not be to the same degree, but you can't disregard that.
Other things: - ZvP, you spawn cross positions on a 4-player map. You went 15hatch (relatively standard), he scouted after pylon (relatively standard). If he scouts you first horizontally/vertically he can block your hatch. But since you're cross you get it down. You had a 1/3rd chance to have your hatch blocked, but thanks to spawn positions it wasn't. You're lucky. Even if it's a "calculated risk", you're lucky that it worked out in your favour.
- You have a clear army advantage. You mismicro heavily during the important engagement and were on regular move instead of a-move.. Your opponent is lucky you fucked up. There was no calculated risk at all, you just fucked up.
I don't agree there's no such thing as luck in the game. I believe people blame things on bad luck so make up for poor decision making, but there's still luck.
I go about it the same way, except for the 1 base reaper hellion elevator.
I think if anyone loses to that, they are actually terrible. The metagame of 1 rax FE with 2 reactors and 1 tech lab, doing a 1-1-1, doing a 1-fe-1-1, all the really popular builds allow you to have multiple marauders, 2 siege tanks in the case of 1-1-1, and 1 siege tank in the case of 1-fe-1-1.
If you lose to an all-in that you failed to scout, then you should have scouted aggressively. If your build doesn't contain the scouting and/or the safety to hold certain all-ins, then it is not "luck" that you lose to an all-in; rather, it is a risk you accepted when you chose your build.
No. There is no way to have perfect information or use a build that is save against everything and still be effective against standard play. You can, just, be, unlucky sometimes.
If you lose to an all-in that you failed to scout, then you should have scouted aggressively. If your build doesn't contain the scouting and/or the safety to hold certain all-ins, then it is not "luck" that you lose to an all-in; rather, it is a risk you accepted when you chose your build.
No. There is no way to have perfect information or use a build that is save against everything and still be effective against standard play. You can, just, be, unlucky sometimes.
I do not think you read the quoted passage, in which I talk about calculated risk. That being said there are tells for.types of builds and especially as a Terran i feel like i can scout pretty easily slash well
On March 15 2012 23:36 Pulimuli wrote: Of course there is luck in games. Sometimes you choose your build before you have the chance to scout and gather information. Say you decided straight away that you're going for a CC before barracks and the Zerg decides to 6pool (both done before scouting)
Hm ok thays a fair enough point. That being said i consider that sort of build (for either side) to be a calculated risk and not really the same as what im talking about. At all.
Except that when you ladder it's not a calculated risk. When you ladder you have no incentive not to use some gimmicky shit build that won't work a second time, because you'll never get the same opponent again (unless you're top 50 GM or something). Trying to cut corners in defence is a lunacy. I mean, that's probably why the zerg chose the build he chose in your game vs you - cause most Terrans do the same as what you do. That's just I guess, but it should be a fairly accurate one. The other example you gave - vs the Protoss also illustrates my point. You were already expecting an all-in when seeing units at your front door, because you've been conditioned to it by laddering so much.
If you lose to an all-in that you failed to scout, then you should have scouted aggressively. If your build doesn't contain the scouting and/or the safety to hold certain all-ins, then it is not "luck" that you lose to an all-in; rather, it is a risk you accepted when you chose your build.
No. There is no way to have perfect information or use a build that is save against everything and still be effective against standard play. You can, just, be, unlucky sometimes.
I do not think you read the quoted passage, in which I talk about calculated risk. That being said there are tells for.types of builds and especially as a Terran i feel like i can scout pretty easily slash well
Terran has scan. If you can't scout easy/well as terran, there's something fundamentaly wrong with your mindset.
On March 15 2012 23:36 Pulimuli wrote: Of course there is luck in games. Sometimes you choose your build before you have the chance to scout and gather information. Say you decided straight away that you're going for a CC before barracks and the Zerg decides to 6pool (both done before scouting)
Hm ok thays a fair enough point. That being said i consider that sort of build (for either side) to be a calculated risk and not really the same as what im talking about. At all.
Except that when you ladder it's not a calculated risk. When you ladder you have no incentive not to use some gimmicky shit build that won't work a second time, because you'll never get the same opponent again (unless you're top 50 GM or something). Trying to cut corners in defence is a lunacy. I mean, that's probably why the zerg chose the build he chose in your game vs you - cause most Terrans do the same as what you do. That's just I guess, but it should be a fairly accurate one. The other example you gave - vs the Protoss also illustrates my point. You were already expecting an all-in when seeing units at your front door, because you've been conditioned to it by laddering so much.
If you lose to an all-in that you failed to scout, then you should have scouted aggressively. If your build doesn't contain the scouting and/or the safety to hold certain all-ins, then it is not "luck" that you lose to an all-in; rather, it is a risk you accepted when you chose your build.
No. There is no way to have perfect information or use a build that is save against everything and still be effective against standard play. You can, just, be, unlucky sometimes.
I do not think you read the quoted passage, in which I talk about calculated risk. That being said there are tells for.types of builds and especially as a Terran i feel like i can scout pretty easily slash well
Terran has scan. If you can't scout easy/well as terran, there's something fundamentaly wrong with your mindset.
In your first passage... that sounds like a pretty well calculated risk to me lol. Also in your second passage eithdr you misread me or are in agreement with me. Terran scouting is good.
Whenever you talk about a calculated risk, there is a chance that the other player will get lucky and do something that counters the area in which your build is weak. If the other player did that without scouting you to determine the weakness, they got lucky.
That said, I entirely agree with the op. His point is not so much that "luck" does not actually exist in a particular game of SC2. Rather, he is saying that in the overall game there is no luck. You must have the attitude that luck is not a factor if you want to get better. Yes, you may lose some games due to being unlucky, but as long as you have luck among the things that you blame for your losses, you will overlook areas in which you can improve. If you remove luck from your analysis, whenever you lose you will look for small things you can do to rule out various all-ins or otherwise improve.
Luck exists, it is just not a helpful concept in improving. You should play the game as if there is no such thing as luck. If you find yourself blaming luck, you are hindering your improvement.
There is a luck element to any game with incomplete information. Poker, MTG, even BW. Luck is a factor. Anyone who thinks or says otherwise is just clueless.
That doesn't mean you can't minimize your risks by doing better scouting, but no matter what you do you're going to lose sometimes.
Mr black just compressed my enormous blog post into 3 paragraphs without sacrificing any info. In fact, he is considerably more clear. I suppose risk is better referred to as chance than luck.
So then your contention is that a well-calculated risk doesn't contain enough luck in the "risk" part to make a difference? Because a well-calculated risk is still a risk, clearly luck does play a factor. I don't think its clear yet whether all-in builds can be predicted 100% of the time.
Zerg has really poor scouting options against terran, for example. If they patrol marines and wall off the zerg can't know what's coming, unless there's a build that protects against everything. But then that's a risk to a greedy macro build the terran makes (which again the zerg can't know due to lack of scouting). It seems like luck plays a pretty big factor, even if you do your best to take a calculated risk.
But what do I know, it would probably be necessary to hear the perspective of pro-gamers here..
Edit (as a reply to Mr. Black): Also I don't think its necessarily a good thing to assume that luck doesn't exist in the game for the purposes of improving. It can be detrimental to your mental state if you continuously assume that you lose games because you failed to do enough to stop it, when in reality there was nothing more you could have done (at least which wouldn't have made you weak in another area).
Being depressed obviously has effects on your gaming, if you blame yourself for every loss 100% it might not lead to a very healthy mindset for gaming. That said obviously its not good to blame luck all the time. Like almost everything else I think the key is moderation, and being intelligent about what you can do and what you can't (but always trying to find new ways to improve if possible).
I'm actually fairly unaware of Z and P scouting options, since I only play T-- I don't off-race well at all. I should perhaps add a disclaimer to this effect.
I hate when I halt construction my scv building barracks / bunker, resume construction to try and get him to move / avoid worker harass and he won't move 3 times in a row so he just dies.
On March 16 2012 01:32 Nibbler89 wrote: I hate when I halt construction my scv building barracks / bunker, resume construction to try and get him to move / avoid worker harass and he won't move 3 times in a row so he just dies.
Obviously there's luck involved in a game like Starcraft, but it's not nearly as prevalent as most people would make it seem. The point OP is trying to make in my eyes is that a player looking to improve you should never accept luck as a relevant factor during his play.
A player might lose getting counterattacked when he's halfway across the map and chalk it up to dumb luck. He's going to continue losing the exact same way until he acknowledges the possibility that a good player might counterattack when he moves out and starts accounting for it with his play. Same goes for a strong build that always seems to die to a specific all-in, if you tell yourself that your opponent got lucky for doing that build you're not going through the motions of preventing that loss anymore. You're accepting that you lose to "random shit" sometimes even though it's your build and lackluster scouting/ adapting that makes it random for you.
Saying someone "got lucky" is basically you withdrawing responsibility for your loss, which is the opposite of getting better.
Short concise response: when 2 blind coinflip builds collide (build orders chosen before the game started), and one of then hard counters the other ( CC first vs 6 pool), the game was decided before it even began, and on ladder you don't know your opponent so there were no mindgames involved, the game was decided by luck of the draw.
I agree, but I also have something to add. I will use Tribes: Ascend as an example. In Tribes: Ascend, most weapons have a travel time. This means that weapons, as opposed to most other FPS's, take time to hit the target and thus you must lead the target when firing. Also, you have jetpacks. Oh, and you're moving at over 100 kilometers an hour most of the time. So you also need to account for your own momentum and predict where he is going to be. Furthermore, most weapons do splash damage (to reward increasing accuracy), are semi-automatic, have no clip and a reload time from hell given the fast pace of the game. Yeah. Not an easy game. Of course, every now and then you see somebody pull an insane shot and the first thing that pops into everyone's mind is "Lucky shot!" What few people realize is that that shot wasn't luck, at least not entirely. You'd be a fool to deny that the player's skill contributed to that shot, or that people with more skill pull off those crazy shots on a more consistent basis. To say something is luck, and nothing else, is to deny the skill that the player had that contributed, to varying degrees, to the success of his actions.
EPT
It is not luck. You should be satisfied with that. You don't need to show the world what a mature adult you are by telling them how you think it's luck. Do you see what I mean? Perhaps not.. It might just be my own personal reaction to these.
