[NSFW] Thoughts

This is a touchy subject, so I'm going to just be 100% serious here. Humor deactivated. I guess I'd like to start off by saying that StarCraft is kind of nerdy, and because of it's inherent nerdiness, it attracts a lot of smart people. When you and I play a strategy game of any kind, we assume that it's a match of wits, and we're pitting the best of our intelligence against each other, therefore, the more brilliance person should win more. I think we all want to be that "more brilliant person", because we want to be intellectually exceptional. I think a lot of people truly believe they are smarter than the average player, and therefore, if they are losing, there must be something wrong with the game.

To those who are discouraged: StarCraft is not a barometer of your intelligence. If your timings suck, your build orders make no sense, and you die every game to mutalisks, that does not mean you are not intelligent, or that anything is wrong with the game. I know some absolutely genius people who can't play StarCraft to save their lives, and on the other hand, some really incredibly stupid people who somehow win games. You are not your StarCraft game. Don't overestimate yourself and become arrogant, but also, don't beat yourself up and think you are a piece of shit because you're not acing your favorite video game. Watch Day[9] - he'll always remind you about these things no matter which StarCraft game you play.

Now about actual imbalance: it exists in both BroodWar and SC2. There are maps which are ridiculously imbalanced for one race. There are units that, if you mass enough of them, are unbreakable with an equal amount of resources spent on your own army. For example, in BroodWar:

1 Ultralisk > 1 Siege Tank in the open

50 Siege Tanks in the open > 50 Ultralisks

What changed? Is the game imbalanced? After all, a single tank costs 150 minerals and 100 gas, whereas a single ultralisk costs 200 minerals and 200 gas.

Yeah, that's pretty imba, but it's fair. The game rewards the better player with a win. It would be wrong if a player did everything they were supposed to in order to get a win, but the game turned out to be a draw every time. Well, let me rephrase that. It wouldn't be "wrong" as much as it would be "frustrating".

At the 1984 Chess World Championship, Gary Kasparov faced Anatoly Karpov. The format was "first to 6 wins takes the title". What ended up happening was that 48 games were played and there was no winner, so the tournament officials decided to suspend the match because there were so many draws. That is an almost perfectly balanced game.

If you played tic-tac-toe (I read this mentioned in another blog) against an equal opponent, 100% of the games would be draws. It would be more of an endurance match to see who just gets up and quits first. That's stupid.

In StarCraft, the better player starts building an advantage early in the game, which has a sort of Butterfly Effect later on. They should continue building onto that advantage until it snowballs into a win because there is nothing the other player can do to stop it. If the player who is ahead makes too many mistakes, then his or her advantage will lessen more and more until he or her is at a disadvantage. People who understand StarCraft get this. That's why crowds gasp if a Protoss player loses his first Zealot. It's just 1 unit, but you know later on, that mistake is going to come back to haunt him.

There have been ups and downs in balance throughout the history of StarCraft: BroodWar. There was a time when ZvT wins went through the roof because of the Crazy Zerg strategy, but eventually, Terrans figured out a way to crush that strategy decisively, and made the Crazy Zerg obsolete. No patch was needed. Ultralisks were not nerfed. The cost of Siege Tanks did not change.

Zerg versus Protoss evolved many times, swinging the balance back and forth, most notably, in the classic Bisu vs Savior series:



Before this, PvZ was horrible.

So, I read qxc's blog on the ghost nerf, and I totally agree with him. I think there are certain things that can and should be patched appropriately, but should not make the game so balanced that you can't win even if you do the right stuff. You as a player, however, should always be thinking about strategies, not how much you hate the patches.

But seriously, Blizzard needs to stop patching the game like 50 times a week, because as soon as players get their strategies down, the game changes. All the game changes should come through player innovation, map types, and strategy shifts.

The last part the blog was fairly "serious", but humor mode is reactivated.

Nobody knows what the future is going to be like. If you went into the Bronze Age and told people that we would no longer use swords and shields, but would only use mechanical projectile weapons, flying machines that drop something like a rock that causes fires that can see where it's being dropped, and chariots with no horses, they would say you're nuts and then promptly chop your head off.

Nobody knows what ESPORTS are supposed to look like. If it became a televised event with ESPN-like coverage and commentary, and covered with sponsor logos, that would be a step backwards. You don't want that. First of all, all of the people in the Grandmaster leagues now would be like kids kicking around a soccer ball on the playground. If ESPORTS got to be that big, you would not be a champion, considered "good", or would ever be significant. Right now is your best chance to do something with SC2, and even still, that window could be closing very quickly. "Professional teams" would take on an entirely new meaning.

The problem is, Blizzard controls everything. While Blizzard has a good track record for making awesome games, they have a terrible track record for hosting tournaments. Dear God... Blizzard sucks at tournaments. I think they're entirely aware of this, as well, but want to make sure that they can collect royalties on any big tournament that may exist. Also, the intellectual property rights are much more clear legally with SC2, so Blizzard could potentially just black-out your tournament if they don't like you.

Another problem is that money is not equal to good tournaments. I mean, the prize pools are nice and fat, but to actually win one of those, you would have to go through the very best players, meaning that you'd have to train 14 hours a day, every day, just to maintain a skill level that can compete with the top players just to have a chance at winning. That amount of work, for the amount of money in the prize pools, is nonsense. If someone is going to work that hard, they might as well do something that actually makes a decent amount of money, which, not surprisingly, people decide to do.

People in both BroodWar and SC2 communities completely fail to realize this for some reason.

Having StarCraft on TV is thinking backwards. The internet is the future of broadcasting. In ten or twenty years, there might not even be such a thing as "radio stations", because everyone listens to internet radio. As media moves on, people need to be innovative about their enterprises. If ESPORTS is going to become a thing, it absolutely cannot try to be something it's not. ESPORTS is not Basketball. ESPORTS commentators are not ESPN commentators. It's something new unto itself, and should be unique, because that niche is what's going to draw people in.

I want commentators to be able to use offensive language if they so choose. I want tournaments with no stupid commercials that nobody asked for, or logos all over the screen, because the sponsors want things a certain way. Screw the sponsors! There is no way in hell that the gaming community is just going to change overnight, and turn into this polished club of very polite and formal competition, eating caviar and shit.

Uh, let me make an analogy.

This is BroodWar:

+ Show Spoiler +

This is SC2:

+ Show Spoiler +

DO YOU UNDERSTAND NOW??? DO YOU!?

ONCE A UPON A TIME THERE WERE DINOSAURS FUCKING AND THEN AN ASTEROID CAME BUT THERE WAS STILL LIZARDS AND SHIT AND THEN THERE WAS MONKEYS AND THEY FUCKED AND MADE HUMANS AND HUMANS MADE TECHNOLOGY AND THEN TECHNOLOGY FUCKED ITSELF AND MADE STARCRAFT AND THEN A BUNCH OF MEN DECIDED TO ARGUE ABOUT ON THE INTERNET AND NOTHING EVER GOT SOLVED SO EVERYONE DIED, THE END.