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1. - I won't win, let's be honest.
2. - I don't make a lot of non 2 player maps and if I make them the spawn positions tend to be locked cross. I don't like spawn and scouting randomness.
3. - Oh shit, brace for it:
I don't really agree on a fundamental level with the selection process
Let's face it, "good map" is as much in the eye of the beholder as "good song", sure, there are some quasi-objective things to songs which make almost anyone hate it, just like with maps. But once you got a song out only a fool is lured into debates of whose musical taste is "better", but hey, you have awards for songs too. In the end, it's ulitarianistic. You want to get a map which is liked, subjectively, by as many people as possible into the ladder to please those people the most. The needs of the many outweigh those of the few. You can talk all about how those people who disagree with you don't understand the game and many people do. But in the end, they still have to play on those maps and if you want this game to grow it's best to get maps into the ladder which people overall like to play on.
The initial selection panel is hardly a cross section of the community
How many people is this panel going to be? It tends to be around 3-4 people, likeminded people because they get selected via a similar process each time who have their own specific idea of what maps they like. You may agree with it or not but it's hard to deny that there will be many people who disagree. These people have the power to select the however-many finalists and every time the finalists get selected enough people voice their dissaproval. People tend to be angry when they felt like they didn't have any influence. Let them vote and they shut up earlier, and for good reason. You can say that they don't have the knowledge to vote. Okay, I can see that argument, so why not limit it to people who have an account in master or diamond league? I don't necessarily agree with it since bronze people have to play this game too but it's a step in the right direction from 3-4 people getting the absolute vote. And really, even those 3-4 people completely disagree which shows that it's extremely subjective, a totally different selection of finalists would come out of it if a single jury member was another person. Meh.
The final voting process is an even bigger flaw.
It's what's called first-past-the-post, the highest amounts of votes wins the competition. Sounds fair no? Well, no, it's an extremely flawed system that should never be used. Last Red bull TLMC showed what was wrong with it. New Polaris Rhapsody won by a landslide. Why? Because it was the only genuinely unorthodox map. All people who wanted an unorthodox map had only one choice to vote for, and so they did. The other 7 maps ate into each other's votes. If the situation was reversed and there was only 1 orthodox map and 7 unorthodox maps, the orthodox map would have won by a landslide.
And this again goes back to the small jury. I'm not accusing anyone, but I will note that they absolutely have the power, would they want, to completely manipulate the system with this. If they want an unorthodox map tow in, all they have to ensure is that 7 maps are orthodox. If they want the reverse they do the reverse. This can go in every direction. If they want a big macro map to win? just select 7 rush maps and 1 macro map. If they want a rush map to win? do the inverse again. I'm not saying they will, I'm saying they can and subconsciously they might be influenced by this.
And even if they don't do it on purpose, even if it naturally just ends up like this, it still influences it. The map which is the most unlike all the others is the most likely to win because the others eat into each other's votes. A first past the post voting system is fundamentally flawed. A better alternative is simply asking people to rank each finalist from 1 to 8 and give 1 point for rank 8 and 8 points for rank 1 and just see which one gets the most points. It cancels this eating into other thing out.
  
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You're missing the point.
This is promoting map making. It doesn't matter who wins, or what wins. Whenever a map making contest pops up, we get a LOT of solid, quality maps. These are maps I use on a regular basis, regardless of whether or not they "won". Just because they're not picked to on the ladder, doesn't mean they just suddenly disappear. You should be making maps because you want to, because you like to do it and think you can make a map worth someone's time. Only a certain amount can win, even if all entries are god damn flawless.
I don't even understand the purpose of this post. It reads like a child giving up because competition is too hard, and throwing excuses out at every corner.
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On March 30 2014 01:13 InfCereal wrote:
You're missing the point.
This is promoting map making. It doesn't matter who wins, or what wins. Whenever a map making contest pops up, we get a LOT of solid, quality maps. These are maps I use on a regular basis, regardless of whether or not they "won". Just because they're not picked to on the ladder, doesn't mean they just suddenly disappear. You should be making maps because you want to, because you like to do it and think you can make a map worth someone's time. Only a certain amount can win, even if all entries are god damn flawless. No, this is perpetuating something people have been complaining about since forever. That the map pool is stale and every map is the same, and this will continue to be the case so long as only 3-4 people select the 8 finalists.
I don't even understand the purpose of this post. It reads like a child giving up because competition is too hard, and throwing excuses out at every corner. This is simply an ad hominem based on silly assumptions. Besides, you just said it wasn't about competition and it didn't matter who won. If it's about encouraging mapping, I still make my maps and continue to do so, competition I agree with or not.
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SiskosGoatee, AKA Jaedolf (I still remember that thing about your comment on reddit about how it is a good thing people die from terrorist attacks), has been trolling since the dawn of time. Please don't feed him.
And it's not like you actually get into constructive arguments, you're always about semantics and other pseudo-intellectual bullshit. Maybe you should make good maps? I have never seen you improve your map or change it from feedback, or fix your lighting, or anything like that. You don't seem to want to improve?
I agree with the voting thing, everyone kind of does. But if you actually make a map that's revolutionary, say a 4p 12 bases map that WORKS, or a 4p map that deviates from the whirlwind layout but still allows for macro games, regardless of who you are, your map will be chosen. So why not quit whining and try to make the revolutionary map? Noone's stopping you.
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On March 30 2014 01:13 InfCereal wrote:
You're missing the point.
This is promoting map making. It doesn't matter who wins, or what wins. Whenever a map making contest pops up, we get a LOT of solid, quality maps. These are maps I use on a regular basis, regardless of whether or not they "won". Just because they're not picked to on the ladder, doesn't mean they just suddenly disappear. You should be making maps because you want to, because you like to do it and think you can make a map worth someone's time. Only a certain amount can win, even if all entries are god damn flawless.
No, this is not true at all from the mapmaking community's perspective. Actually it's the complete opposite. Only the winning maps that actually end up in ladder matter, everything else pretty much disappears because no tournament is willing to pick them up. The amount of people who play these others maps is almost non-existant and irrelevant.
Regarding OP: I disagree fundamentally that TLMC is about ladder players first and foremost. Ladder map pool is WCS map pool which is the map pool for every other tournament as well pretty much. To just neglect this and just care about the short term goal of pleasing players playing ladder is wrong imo.
Ofc you might see the system itself as flawed which I would agree with. Tournament map pools and ladder have different requirements and shouldn't all be treated the same.
But that's the system we get from Blizzard and thus we have to deal with it. The spectator aspect of Starcraft is immensly important, the spectator vs player ratio in Starcraft is abnormally skewed at this point. And most mapmakers basically only care about the esport element when making their maps, designing and balancing with pro play in mind.
Ofc if ladder and tournament map pools would be seperate this would be very different. If mapmakers had a chance to get their maps played elsewhere (like the Koreans with GSL/Proleague) then this would probably be treated much more like a competition to make the best ladder maps purely.
So because mapmakers focus on the high level aspect of play and the system being the way it is (basically a semi-selection of WCS maps) there is no way you can let a Bronze player judge the finalists. And just because someone may have the mechanics to be in master league doesn't mean he has the understanding and experience with maps and map design to judge the layout, origininality and how it plays out in every matchup.
There is a fundamental difference between what a high level mapmaker like Mereel or Timetwister understands about maps compared to some random player who hasn't put in the time to make, discuss, theorycraft and come up with dozens of maps over the years.
That isn't to say that a non-mapmaker couldn't have a similar level of understanding of he put in the time into thinking about SC2 tho. I greatly appreciated monk's and Plexa's analysis of maps when I judges with them and neither of them is a mapmaker and I'm sure this year's judges can do fine as well.
Regarding your last point about the final voting system I have to agree this system is flawed in so many ways and I have never been in favor of it. The community despises or loves maps for the stupidest reasons and your points about maps taking votes from each other in that manner is probably true as well.
I mean basically New Polaris Rhapsody was a perfectly fine map as it was. Mereel just put in the lava mechanic as a little gimmick on top knowing that people would get hyped about it and then people voted the shit out of it, not understanding that maybe it's just one shallow but very flashy feature.
But again my solution would look much different from yours. I'd just not have a public poll or at least heavily decrease its importance.
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On March 30 2014 02:27 Ragoo wrote:Show nested quote +On March 30 2014 01:13 InfCereal wrote:
You're missing the point.
This is promoting map making. It doesn't matter who wins, or what wins. Whenever a map making contest pops up, we get a LOT of solid, quality maps. These are maps I use on a regular basis, regardless of whether or not they "won". Just because they're not picked to on the ladder, doesn't mean they just suddenly disappear. You should be making maps because you want to, because you like to do it and think you can make a map worth someone's time. Only a certain amount can win, even if all entries are god damn flawless.
Regarding OP: I disagree fundamentally that TLMC is about ladder players first and foremost. Ladder map pool is WCS map pool which is the map pool for every other tournament as well pretty much. To just neglect this and just care about the short term goal of pleasing players playing ladder is wrong imo. Ofc you might see the system itself as flawed which I would agree with. Tournament map pools and ladder have different requirements and shouldn't all be treated the same. But that's the system we get from Blizzard and thus we have to deal with it. The spectator aspect of Starcraft is immensly important, the spectator vs player ratio in Starcraft is abnormally skewed at this point. And most mapmakers basically only care about the esport element when making their maps, designing and balancing with pro play in mind. Ofc if ladder and tournament map pools would be seperate this would be very different. If mapmakers had a chance to get their maps played elsewhere (like the Koreans with GSL/Proleague) then this would probably be treated much more like a competition to make the best ladder maps purely. So because mapmakers focus on the high level aspect of play and the system being the way it is (basically a semi-selection of WCS maps) there is no way you can let a Bronze player judge the finalists. And just because someone may have the mechanics to be in master league doesn't mean he has the understanding and experience with maps and map design to judge the layout, origininality and how it plays out in every matchup. Maybe, but the ultimate goal of this is slated to have the maps considered for later. Blizzard can't put a map into the ladder which would confuse the fuck out of new players. They, like most people, want this game to grow and new players leaving the game because they get confused is the last thing they want to see.
There is a fundamental difference between what a high level mapmaker like Mereel or Timetwister understands about maps compared to some random player who hasn't put in the time to make, discuss, theorycraft and come up with dozens of maps over the years. Maybe, but I don't agree with their vision either. It's well known that Timetwister likes defensive maps and I like aggressive maps. The difference is that I don't act like someone disagreeing with me on that "doesn't understand the game" (or maps), it's a subjective difference of opinion.
That isn't to say that a non-mapmaker couldn't have a similar level of understanding of he put in the time into thinking about SC2 tho. I greatly appreciated monk's and Plexa's analysis of maps when I judges with them and neither of them is a mapmaker and I'm sure this year's judges can do fine as well. And I don't agree with their vision either.
Regarding your last point about the final voting system I have to agree this system is flawed in so many ways and I have never been in favor of it. The community despises or loves maps for the stupidest reasons and your points about maps taking votes from each other in that manner is probably true as well.
I mean basically New Polaris Rhapsody was a perfectly fine map as it was. Mereel just put in the lava mechanic as a little gimmick on top knowing that people would get hyped about it and then people voted the shit out of it, not understand that maybe it's just one shallow but very flashy feature. I agree, when I first made that claim of the shirt I did not mean that, but hey, who am I to alter the terms after I made the claim. The lava mechanic is a total gimmick and one that arguably makes the map belong in some kind of fun type of custom game, maybe an extension mod but it's hardly something that'll work in a serious tournament. But yeah, sure, it's original. Just like wandering minerals, not a good idea though.
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On March 30 2014 00:01 SiskosGoatee wrote:
1. - I won't win, let's be honest.
Beat the odds. If you want to enter a competition with the intention of winning you should believe that regardless of how much the world is conspiring against you that you will prevail.
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On March 30 2014 04:18 Thaniri wrote:Show nested quote +On March 30 2014 00:01 SiskosGoatee wrote:
1. - I won't win, let's be honest.
Beat the odds. If you want to enter a competition with the intention of winning you should believe that regardless of how much the world is conspiring against you that you will prevail.
Did you want him to beat the odds now, or should he do that later?
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sisk has done interesting maps, and is also bm and self indulgent/involved
he is right to put a blog up
you are right to "try" to make him submit a map
tlmc is what is here
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United States4883 Posts
Hmm. I'm sorry you don't approve of Team Liquid's free contest to sponsor your name and map.
The judging process receives a lot of input from various sources in Team Liquid. Most of the maps are not so great for competitive play (as tested by several masters players with several different strategies), which is why they're ruled out. It's quite possible that, from time to time, we miss an "unorthodox gem", but what can be done about it? There can only be one winner. New Polaris Rhapsody was a weird paradox of voting (it was like BARELY let it); the public voted hugely in favor of it, but most of us in TL Strategy hated it. And to be fair, it was a terrible map for serious games, which is why it was NEVER used after RBB.
If you'd rather continue to make maps that will probably never see competitive use, that's fine. I don't understand what your issues are with a contest that freely sponsors maps. Does all of this post just go to say that you'd rather have a contest that picks more abstract maps? Or are you just bitching about how you don't like the way we do things? I mean, what are your actual suggestions?
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I don't understand how you could possibly get around the jury requirement. Obviously a jury is imperfect and has biases, but that comes with the territory. Your concerns about the contest are so general no jury could satisfy you. It just seems like an admission of defeat: I'm never going to win this contest, no matter the jury, so why bother?
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On March 30 2014 06:33 SC2John wrote:
Hmm. I'm sorry you don't approve of Team Liquid's free contest to sponsor your name and map.
The judging process receives a lot of input from various sources in Team Liquid. Most of the maps are not so great for competitive play (as tested by several masters players with several different strategies), which is why they're ruled out. It's quite possible that, from time to time, we miss an "unorthodox gem", but what can be done about it? There can only be one winner. New Polaris Rhapsody was a weird paradox of voting (it was like BARELY let it); the public voted hugely in favor of it, but most of us in TL Strategy hated it. And to be fair, it was a terrible map for serious games, which is why it was NEVER used after RBB. It was bad, it was a total gimmick, but again, this is the point I am making, people massively voted in favour of it because it was the only unorthodox map in the final 8. The one map that stands the most away from all the others will always win with a first past the post system, which is my point.
If you'd rather continue to make maps that will probably never see competitive use, that's fine. I don't understand what your issues are with a contest that freely sponsors maps. Does all of this post just go to say that you'd rather have a contest that picks more abstract maps? Or are you just bitching about how you don't like the way we do things? I mean, what are your actual suggestions?
My actual suggestion is contained at the end of my blog:
"A better alternative is simply asking people to rank each finalist from 1 to 8 and give 1 point for rank 8 and 8 points for rank 1 and just see which one gets the most points. It cancels this eating into other thing out."
First-past-the-post is a horribly flawed voting system for the reasons I gave in my post and everyone should know it, it should quite frankly never be used for anything and I'm surprised that so many voting systems and even democracies are still based around it.
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I also won't participate
1. - I won't win, let's be honest.
2. - I don't make a lot of non 2 player maps and if I make them the spawn positions tend to be locked cross. I don't like spawn and scouting randomness.
3. - Oh shit, brace for it:
Really are you ready for the truth?
I don't even know how to make a map
Bam
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United States4883 Posts
On March 30 2014 17:20 SiskosGoatee wrote:Show nested quote +If you'd rather continue to make maps that will probably never see competitive use, that's fine. I don't understand what your issues are with a contest that freely sponsors maps. Does all of this post just go to say that you'd rather have a contest that picks more abstract maps? Or are you just bitching about how you don't like the way we do things? I mean, what are your actual suggestions? My actual suggestion is contained at the end of my blog: "A better alternative is simply asking people to rank each finalist from 1 to 8 and give 1 point for rank 8 and 8 points for rank 1 and just see which one gets the most points. It cancels this eating into other thing out." First-past-the-post is a horribly flawed voting system for the reasons I gave in my post and everyone should know it, it should quite frankly never be used for anything and I'm surprised that so many voting systems and even democracies are still based around it.
That's a valid suggestion which applies to the actual voting process. I like it. But how do you propose we "fix" the initial judging process to narrow down the maps to ~8? Like I said, that part actually has a lot of input from several different areas of TL (including the 6-8 of us from TL Strategy that play around on the maps), so in conjunction with a couple of set guidelines (such as no geysers on ramps, neutral burrowed ultralisks, etc.) I think we have a pretty fair and thoughtful way to initially judge. There aren't just 3-4 "TLMC overseers" that just decide everything. There's a lot of work and input involved before the finalists are chosen.
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On March 31 2014 02:49 SC2John wrote:Show nested quote +On March 30 2014 17:20 SiskosGoatee wrote:If you'd rather continue to make maps that will probably never see competitive use, that's fine. I don't understand what your issues are with a contest that freely sponsors maps. Does all of this post just go to say that you'd rather have a contest that picks more abstract maps? Or are you just bitching about how you don't like the way we do things? I mean, what are your actual suggestions? My actual suggestion is contained at the end of my blog: "A better alternative is simply asking people to rank each finalist from 1 to 8 and give 1 point for rank 8 and 8 points for rank 1 and just see which one gets the most points. It cancels this eating into other thing out." First-past-the-post is a horribly flawed voting system for the reasons I gave in my post and everyone should know it, it should quite frankly never be used for anything and I'm surprised that so many voting systems and even democracies are still based around it. That's a valid suggestion which applies to the actual voting process. I like it. But how do you propose we "fix" the initial judging process to narrow down the maps to ~8? Like I said, that part actually has a lot of input from several different areas of TL (including the 6-8 of us from TL Strategy that play around on the maps), so in conjunction with a couple of set guidelines (such as no geysers on ramps, neutral burrowed ultralisks, etc.) I think we have a pretty fair and thoughtful way to initially judge. There aren't just 3-4 "TLMC overseers" that just decide everything. There's a lot of work and input involved before the finalists are chosen.
The reason first past the post is used is for simplicity, in political elections you want simplicity, to make it as easy as possible to vote. Ranking systems are confusing for many people and would lead to thousands of invalid votes, that is why ranking systems haven't been implemented, the average citizen is an idiot.
Thankfully that doesn't apply to the TL community! I think a ranking system would greatly improve the TLMC, however I can not see a more effective way to do the initial judging either. You need some small group of people with the right knowledge either about map design, game balance or high level playing ability to weed out the bad maps and whittle it down the best 20 or so. I'm sure TL have a diverse enough group of people that they make good choices, i've always been happy with their choices for finalists.
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On March 31 2014 02:49 SC2John wrote:Show nested quote +On March 30 2014 17:20 SiskosGoatee wrote:If you'd rather continue to make maps that will probably never see competitive use, that's fine. I don't understand what your issues are with a contest that freely sponsors maps. Does all of this post just go to say that you'd rather have a contest that picks more abstract maps? Or are you just bitching about how you don't like the way we do things? I mean, what are your actual suggestions? My actual suggestion is contained at the end of my blog: "A better alternative is simply asking people to rank each finalist from 1 to 8 and give 1 point for rank 8 and 8 points for rank 1 and just see which one gets the most points. It cancels this eating into other thing out." First-past-the-post is a horribly flawed voting system for the reasons I gave in my post and everyone should know it, it should quite frankly never be used for anything and I'm surprised that so many voting systems and even democracies are still based around it. That's a valid suggestion which applies to the actual voting process. I like it. But how do you propose we "fix" the initial judging process to narrow down the maps to ~8? Like I said, that part actually has a lot of input from several different areas of TL (including the 6-8 of us from TL Strategy that play around on the maps), so in conjunction with a couple of set guidelines (such as no geysers on ramps, neutral burrowed ultralisks, etc.) I think we have a pretty fair and thoughtful way to initially judge. There aren't just 3-4 "TLMC overseers" that just decide everything. There's a lot of work and input involved before the finalists are chosen. Like I said, you can make the initial 8 finalists be an initial similar poll where only people who have a verified account of master or higher can vote, after the final eight are selected that can be open to everyone.
On March 31 2014 03:46 emythrel wrote:Show nested quote +On March 31 2014 02:49 SC2John wrote:On March 30 2014 17:20 SiskosGoatee wrote:If you'd rather continue to make maps that will probably never see competitive use, that's fine. I don't understand what your issues are with a contest that freely sponsors maps. Does all of this post just go to say that you'd rather have a contest that picks more abstract maps? Or are you just bitching about how you don't like the way we do things? I mean, what are your actual suggestions? My actual suggestion is contained at the end of my blog: "A better alternative is simply asking people to rank each finalist from 1 to 8 and give 1 point for rank 8 and 8 points for rank 1 and just see which one gets the most points. It cancels this eating into other thing out." First-past-the-post is a horribly flawed voting system for the reasons I gave in my post and everyone should know it, it should quite frankly never be used for anything and I'm surprised that so many voting systems and even democracies are still based around it. That's a valid suggestion which applies to the actual voting process. I like it. But how do you propose we "fix" the initial judging process to narrow down the maps to ~8? Like I said, that part actually has a lot of input from several different areas of TL (including the 6-8 of us from TL Strategy that play around on the maps), so in conjunction with a couple of set guidelines (such as no geysers on ramps, neutral burrowed ultralisks, etc.) I think we have a pretty fair and thoughtful way to initially judge. There aren't just 3-4 "TLMC overseers" that just decide everything. There's a lot of work and input involved before the finalists are chosen. The reason first past the post is used is for simplicity, in political elections you want simplicity, to make it as easy as possible to vote. Ranking systems are confusing for many people and would lead to thousands of invalid votes, that is why ranking systems haven't been implemented, the average citizen is an idiot. There are many democracies that do not have a first past the post system, in fact, the amount of democracies that do are rare. I don't live in a country where you have a first past the post system. And our system is in fact so extremely mind bogglingly simple compared to the US system which is districts after districts after districts. It's super simple here, x percent of the votes is x percents of the seats in parliament and the executive branch needs to enjoy majority confidence of the lower house. It's that simple.
Thankfully that doesn't apply to the TL community! I think a ranking system would greatly improve the TLMC, however I can not see a more effective way to do the initial judging either. You need some small group of people with the right knowledge either about map design, game balance or high level playing ability to weed out the bad maps and whittle it down the best 20 or so. I'm sure TL have a diverse enough group of people that they make good choices, i've always been happy with their choices for finalists. And who's going to say that the TL strategy group has that? They basically decide of themselves that they do. I'm sorry but these are the people who will tell you that a certain strategy is completely unviable in their guides and 3 months later that very strat appears in proleague. There is no doubt in my mind that many of the people on TL strategy would have dismissed a crazy suggestion like hatch first blocking a Terran expansion if it didn't come from Catz. I've debated some of these people, they assumed I was in Bronze or something for asserting that back in WoL pure MMM TvZ was viable. Come 1 month later and MKP popularizes the strategy. Which is exactly the problem with a lot of people who think themselves authoritative on strategy, they are too easy to dismiss the unorthodox as not working, and this includes progamers, make no mistake. Progamers are very quick to say that just because something isn't orthodox it can't work. In fact, Destiny goes on and on about how MajOr for instance believes that a strat can't work if the Koreans aren't doing it. And that's basically what greatly limits TLMC and why all the maps are so bog standard, people's continued belief that just because something is unorthodox it can't work.
These are the people that said Yeonsu was worthy of being a finalist, we now know that Yeonsu is horribly imbalanced, something that many people already said and discussed in Yeonsu's own map thread by the way. I don't hold them quite as knowledgeable as they do themselves.
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On March 31 2014 04:12 SiskosGoatee wrote:Show nested quote +On March 31 2014 02:49 SC2John wrote:On March 30 2014 17:20 SiskosGoatee wrote:If you'd rather continue to make maps that will probably never see competitive use, that's fine. I don't understand what your issues are with a contest that freely sponsors maps. Does all of this post just go to say that you'd rather have a contest that picks more abstract maps? Or are you just bitching about how you don't like the way we do things? I mean, what are your actual suggestions? My actual suggestion is contained at the end of my blog: "A better alternative is simply asking people to rank each finalist from 1 to 8 and give 1 point for rank 8 and 8 points for rank 1 and just see which one gets the most points. It cancels this eating into other thing out." First-past-the-post is a horribly flawed voting system for the reasons I gave in my post and everyone should know it, it should quite frankly never be used for anything and I'm surprised that so many voting systems and even democracies are still based around it. That's a valid suggestion which applies to the actual voting process. I like it. But how do you propose we "fix" the initial judging process to narrow down the maps to ~8? Like I said, that part actually has a lot of input from several different areas of TL (including the 6-8 of us from TL Strategy that play around on the maps), so in conjunction with a couple of set guidelines (such as no geysers on ramps, neutral burrowed ultralisks, etc.) I think we have a pretty fair and thoughtful way to initially judge. There aren't just 3-4 "TLMC overseers" that just decide everything. There's a lot of work and input involved before the finalists are chosen. Like I said, you can make the initial 8 finalists be an initial similar poll where only people who have a verified account of master or higher can vote, after the final eight are selected that can be open to everyone. Show nested quote +On March 31 2014 03:46 emythrel wrote:On March 31 2014 02:49 SC2John wrote:On March 30 2014 17:20 SiskosGoatee wrote:If you'd rather continue to make maps that will probably never see competitive use, that's fine. I don't understand what your issues are with a contest that freely sponsors maps. Does all of this post just go to say that you'd rather have a contest that picks more abstract maps? Or are you just bitching about how you don't like the way we do things? I mean, what are your actual suggestions? My actual suggestion is contained at the end of my blog: "A better alternative is simply asking people to rank each finalist from 1 to 8 and give 1 point for rank 8 and 8 points for rank 1 and just see which one gets the most points. It cancels this eating into other thing out." First-past-the-post is a horribly flawed voting system for the reasons I gave in my post and everyone should know it, it should quite frankly never be used for anything and I'm surprised that so many voting systems and even democracies are still based around it. That's a valid suggestion which applies to the actual voting process. I like it. But how do you propose we "fix" the initial judging process to narrow down the maps to ~8? Like I said, that part actually has a lot of input from several different areas of TL (including the 6-8 of us from TL Strategy that play around on the maps), so in conjunction with a couple of set guidelines (such as no geysers on ramps, neutral burrowed ultralisks, etc.) I think we have a pretty fair and thoughtful way to initially judge. There aren't just 3-4 "TLMC overseers" that just decide everything. There's a lot of work and input involved before the finalists are chosen. The reason first past the post is used is for simplicity, in political elections you want simplicity, to make it as easy as possible to vote. Ranking systems are confusing for many people and would lead to thousands of invalid votes, that is why ranking systems haven't been implemented, the average citizen is an idiot. There are many democracies that do not have a first past the post system, in fact, the amount of democracies that do are rare. I don't live in a country where you have a first past the post system. And our system is in fact so extremely mind bogglingly simple compared to the US system which is districts after districts after districts. It's super simple here, x percent of the votes is x percents of the seats in parliament and the executive branch needs to enjoy majority confidence of the lower house. It's that simple. Show nested quote +Thankfully that doesn't apply to the TL community! I think a ranking system would greatly improve the TLMC, however I can not see a more effective way to do the initial judging either. You need some small group of people with the right knowledge either about map design, game balance or high level playing ability to weed out the bad maps and whittle it down the best 20 or so. I'm sure TL have a diverse enough group of people that they make good choices, i've always been happy with their choices for finalists. And who's going to say that the TL strategy group has that? They basically decide of themselves that they do. I'm sorry but these are the people who will tell you that a certain strategy is completely unviable in their guides and 3 months later that very strat appears in proleague. There is no doubt in my mind that many of the people on TL strategy would have dismissed a crazy suggestion like hatch first blocking a Terran expansion if it didn't come from Catz. I've debated some of these people, they assumed I was in Bronze or something for asserting that back in WoL pure MMM TvZ was viable. Come 1 month later and MKP popularizes the strategy. Which is exactly the problem with a lot of people who think themselves authoritative on strategy, they are too easy to dismiss the unorthodox as not working, and this includes progamers, make no mistake. Progamers are very quick to say that just because something isn't orthodox it can't work. In fact, Destiny goes on and on about how MajOr for instance believes that a strat can't work if the Koreans aren't doing it. And that's basically what greatly limits TLMC and why all the maps are so bog standard, people's continued belief that just because something is unorthodox it can't work. These are the people that said Yeonsu was worthy of being a finalist, we now know that Yeonsu is horribly imbalanced, something that many people already said and discussed in Yeonsu's own map thread by the way. I don't hold them quite as knowledgeable as they do themselves.
Who says Master League players know shit about map balance? Its simply not feasible to do what you suggest. Most Map maker probably aren't Master league players, so basically they don't qualify to vote under your system. So now you have to add that verified map makers can vote too, but what qualifies you as a knowledgeable mapmaker? Just like being a master league player doesn't mean you know shit about maps, or necessarily what makes a balanced game or what plays well, being a map maker does not of itself mean you know jack shit about how to make a competitive map. So basically you would have hundreds of random people voting, many of whom don't have the knowledge to make an informed decision.
Just like the general populace of TL don't have a fucking clue what they are voting for in the finals of the TLMC. I certainly don't, I vote for maps that look cool, have something interesting about them etc etc. I can't tell a balanced map from an unbalanced one, I rely on people who know more than I for that information. When I played SC2 a lot, I bounced from Diamond to Master a few times, so I know a decent amount about how to play the game, I know what maps I like and what I don't, but thats just personal preference, usually based on what maps I can play my favourite strats, have the best winrate on etc etc.
I've been following starcraft and had stuff explained to me many times about what makes a map a "zerg" map or a "terran" map, but I still couldn't look at a map i've never seen before and make any valid observations about how balanced it is, or whether it would be interesting to play on. You somehow expect that hundreds of random people voting would be better, when people would just vote for weird, gimmicky stuff, then entire final would be maps that have no place in competitive play because they are fun, crazy maps or there would be absolutely no zany maps in the final nbecause all these "high level" master players pick maps just like the current crop of "safe" map designs.
You trust the populace far too much and attribute them with abilities they do not posess. The initial jury is the most sensible way to do things, perhaps they could recruit people from further afield than TL staff and contributors, but I'd bet even if they asked you to judge, you'd still be unhappy with the results.
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United States4883 Posts
On March 31 2014 05:11 emythrel wrote:Show nested quote +On March 31 2014 04:12 SiskosGoatee wrote:On March 31 2014 02:49 SC2John wrote:On March 30 2014 17:20 SiskosGoatee wrote:If you'd rather continue to make maps that will probably never see competitive use, that's fine. I don't understand what your issues are with a contest that freely sponsors maps. Does all of this post just go to say that you'd rather have a contest that picks more abstract maps? Or are you just bitching about how you don't like the way we do things? I mean, what are your actual suggestions? My actual suggestion is contained at the end of my blog: "A better alternative is simply asking people to rank each finalist from 1 to 8 and give 1 point for rank 8 and 8 points for rank 1 and just see which one gets the most points. It cancels this eating into other thing out." First-past-the-post is a horribly flawed voting system for the reasons I gave in my post and everyone should know it, it should quite frankly never be used for anything and I'm surprised that so many voting systems and even democracies are still based around it. That's a valid suggestion which applies to the actual voting process. I like it. But how do you propose we "fix" the initial judging process to narrow down the maps to ~8? Like I said, that part actually has a lot of input from several different areas of TL (including the 6-8 of us from TL Strategy that play around on the maps), so in conjunction with a couple of set guidelines (such as no geysers on ramps, neutral burrowed ultralisks, etc.) I think we have a pretty fair and thoughtful way to initially judge. There aren't just 3-4 "TLMC overseers" that just decide everything. There's a lot of work and input involved before the finalists are chosen. Like I said, you can make the initial 8 finalists be an initial similar poll where only people who have a verified account of master or higher can vote, after the final eight are selected that can be open to everyone. On March 31 2014 03:46 emythrel wrote:On March 31 2014 02:49 SC2John wrote:On March 30 2014 17:20 SiskosGoatee wrote:If you'd rather continue to make maps that will probably never see competitive use, that's fine. I don't understand what your issues are with a contest that freely sponsors maps. Does all of this post just go to say that you'd rather have a contest that picks more abstract maps? Or are you just bitching about how you don't like the way we do things? I mean, what are your actual suggestions? My actual suggestion is contained at the end of my blog: "A better alternative is simply asking people to rank each finalist from 1 to 8 and give 1 point for rank 8 and 8 points for rank 1 and just see which one gets the most points. It cancels this eating into other thing out." First-past-the-post is a horribly flawed voting system for the reasons I gave in my post and everyone should know it, it should quite frankly never be used for anything and I'm surprised that so many voting systems and even democracies are still based around it. That's a valid suggestion which applies to the actual voting process. I like it. But how do you propose we "fix" the initial judging process to narrow down the maps to ~8? Like I said, that part actually has a lot of input from several different areas of TL (including the 6-8 of us from TL Strategy that play around on the maps), so in conjunction with a couple of set guidelines (such as no geysers on ramps, neutral burrowed ultralisks, etc.) I think we have a pretty fair and thoughtful way to initially judge. There aren't just 3-4 "TLMC overseers" that just decide everything. There's a lot of work and input involved before the finalists are chosen. The reason first past the post is used is for simplicity, in political elections you want simplicity, to make it as easy as possible to vote. Ranking systems are confusing for many people and would lead to thousands of invalid votes, that is why ranking systems haven't been implemented, the average citizen is an idiot. There are many democracies that do not have a first past the post system, in fact, the amount of democracies that do are rare. I don't live in a country where you have a first past the post system. And our system is in fact so extremely mind bogglingly simple compared to the US system which is districts after districts after districts. It's super simple here, x percent of the votes is x percents of the seats in parliament and the executive branch needs to enjoy majority confidence of the lower house. It's that simple. Thankfully that doesn't apply to the TL community! I think a ranking system would greatly improve the TLMC, however I can not see a more effective way to do the initial judging either. You need some small group of people with the right knowledge either about map design, game balance or high level playing ability to weed out the bad maps and whittle it down the best 20 or so. I'm sure TL have a diverse enough group of people that they make good choices, i've always been happy with their choices for finalists. And who's going to say that the TL strategy group has that? They basically decide of themselves that they do. I'm sorry but these are the people who will tell you that a certain strategy is completely unviable in their guides and 3 months later that very strat appears in proleague. There is no doubt in my mind that many of the people on TL strategy would have dismissed a crazy suggestion like hatch first blocking a Terran expansion if it didn't come from Catz. I've debated some of these people, they assumed I was in Bronze or something for asserting that back in WoL pure MMM TvZ was viable. Come 1 month later and MKP popularizes the strategy. Which is exactly the problem with a lot of people who think themselves authoritative on strategy, they are too easy to dismiss the unorthodox as not working, and this includes progamers, make no mistake. Progamers are very quick to say that just because something isn't orthodox it can't work. In fact, Destiny goes on and on about how MajOr for instance believes that a strat can't work if the Koreans aren't doing it. And that's basically what greatly limits TLMC and why all the maps are so bog standard, people's continued belief that just because something is unorthodox it can't work. These are the people that said Yeonsu was worthy of being a finalist, we now know that Yeonsu is horribly imbalanced, something that many people already said and discussed in Yeonsu's own map thread by the way. I don't hold them quite as knowledgeable as they do themselves. Who says Master League players know shit about map balance? Its simply not feasible to do what you suggest. Most Map maker probably aren't Master league players, so basically they don't qualify to vote under your system. So now you have to add that verified map makers can vote too, but what qualifies you as a knowledgeable mapmaker? Just like being a master league player doesn't mean you know shit about maps, or necessarily what makes a balanced game or what plays well, being a map maker does not of itself mean you know jack shit about how to make a competitive map. So basically you would have hundreds of random people voting, many of whom don't have the knowledge to make an informed decision. Just like the general populace of TL don't have a fucking clue what they are voting for in the finals of the TLMC. I certainly don't, I vote for maps that look cool, have something interesting about them etc etc. I can't tell a balanced map from an unbalanced one, I rely on people who know more than I for that information. When I played SC2 a lot, I bounced from Diamond to Master a few times, so I know a decent amount about how to play the game, I know what maps I like and what I don't, but thats just personal preference, usually based on what maps I can play my favourite strats, have the best winrate on etc etc. I've been following starcraft and had stuff explained to me many times about what makes a map a "zerg" map or a "terran" map, but I still couldn't look at a map i've never seen before and make any valid observations about how balanced it is, or whether it would be interesting to play on. You somehow expect that hundreds of random people voting would be better, when people would just vote for weird, gimmicky stuff, then entire final would be maps that have no place in competitive play because they are fun, crazy maps or there would be absolutely no zany maps in the final nbecause all these "high level" master players pick maps just like the current crop of "safe" map designs. You trust the populace far too much and attribute them with abilities they do not posess. The initial jury is the most sensible way to do things, perhaps they could recruit people from further afield than TL staff and contributors, but I'd bet even if they asked you to judge, you'd still be unhappy with the results.
I believe the ultimate goal of siskosgoatee is to:
1) Raise hell, post controversial topics, then waffle around and fail to do anything actually productive with his time.
2) Fail at all map/game analysis by insisting that we just don't understand "unorthodox" strategies.
3) and to be able to control the TLMC as he wishes because his ideas are obviously the best.
These blogs are simply the reflection of someone who enjoys bitching, debating, philosophizing, and being "right".
EDIT: Also, didn't we debunk that hatch steal a long time ago? Even with CC first, you end up ahead as long as you scout it.
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On March 31 2014 05:11 emythrel wrote:Show nested quote +On March 31 2014 04:12 SiskosGoatee wrote:On March 31 2014 02:49 SC2John wrote:On March 30 2014 17:20 SiskosGoatee wrote:If you'd rather continue to make maps that will probably never see competitive use, that's fine. I don't understand what your issues are with a contest that freely sponsors maps. Does all of this post just go to say that you'd rather have a contest that picks more abstract maps? Or are you just bitching about how you don't like the way we do things? I mean, what are your actual suggestions? My actual suggestion is contained at the end of my blog: "A better alternative is simply asking people to rank each finalist from 1 to 8 and give 1 point for rank 8 and 8 points for rank 1 and just see which one gets the most points. It cancels this eating into other thing out." First-past-the-post is a horribly flawed voting system for the reasons I gave in my post and everyone should know it, it should quite frankly never be used for anything and I'm surprised that so many voting systems and even democracies are still based around it. That's a valid suggestion which applies to the actual voting process. I like it. But how do you propose we "fix" the initial judging process to narrow down the maps to ~8? Like I said, that part actually has a lot of input from several different areas of TL (including the 6-8 of us from TL Strategy that play around on the maps), so in conjunction with a couple of set guidelines (such as no geysers on ramps, neutral burrowed ultralisks, etc.) I think we have a pretty fair and thoughtful way to initially judge. There aren't just 3-4 "TLMC overseers" that just decide everything. There's a lot of work and input involved before the finalists are chosen. Like I said, you can make the initial 8 finalists be an initial similar poll where only people who have a verified account of master or higher can vote, after the final eight are selected that can be open to everyone. On March 31 2014 03:46 emythrel wrote:On March 31 2014 02:49 SC2John wrote:On March 30 2014 17:20 SiskosGoatee wrote:If you'd rather continue to make maps that will probably never see competitive use, that's fine. I don't understand what your issues are with a contest that freely sponsors maps. Does all of this post just go to say that you'd rather have a contest that picks more abstract maps? Or are you just bitching about how you don't like the way we do things? I mean, what are your actual suggestions? My actual suggestion is contained at the end of my blog: "A better alternative is simply asking people to rank each finalist from 1 to 8 and give 1 point for rank 8 and 8 points for rank 1 and just see which one gets the most points. It cancels this eating into other thing out." First-past-the-post is a horribly flawed voting system for the reasons I gave in my post and everyone should know it, it should quite frankly never be used for anything and I'm surprised that so many voting systems and even democracies are still based around it. That's a valid suggestion which applies to the actual voting process. I like it. But how do you propose we "fix" the initial judging process to narrow down the maps to ~8? Like I said, that part actually has a lot of input from several different areas of TL (including the 6-8 of us from TL Strategy that play around on the maps), so in conjunction with a couple of set guidelines (such as no geysers on ramps, neutral burrowed ultralisks, etc.) I think we have a pretty fair and thoughtful way to initially judge. There aren't just 3-4 "TLMC overseers" that just decide everything. There's a lot of work and input involved before the finalists are chosen. The reason first past the post is used is for simplicity, in political elections you want simplicity, to make it as easy as possible to vote. Ranking systems are confusing for many people and would lead to thousands of invalid votes, that is why ranking systems haven't been implemented, the average citizen is an idiot. There are many democracies that do not have a first past the post system, in fact, the amount of democracies that do are rare. I don't live in a country where you have a first past the post system. And our system is in fact so extremely mind bogglingly simple compared to the US system which is districts after districts after districts. It's super simple here, x percent of the votes is x percents of the seats in parliament and the executive branch needs to enjoy majority confidence of the lower house. It's that simple. Thankfully that doesn't apply to the TL community! I think a ranking system would greatly improve the TLMC, however I can not see a more effective way to do the initial judging either. You need some small group of people with the right knowledge either about map design, game balance or high level playing ability to weed out the bad maps and whittle it down the best 20 or so. I'm sure TL have a diverse enough group of people that they make good choices, i've always been happy with their choices for finalists. And who's going to say that the TL strategy group has that? They basically decide of themselves that they do. I'm sorry but these are the people who will tell you that a certain strategy is completely unviable in their guides and 3 months later that very strat appears in proleague. There is no doubt in my mind that many of the people on TL strategy would have dismissed a crazy suggestion like hatch first blocking a Terran expansion if it didn't come from Catz. I've debated some of these people, they assumed I was in Bronze or something for asserting that back in WoL pure MMM TvZ was viable. Come 1 month later and MKP popularizes the strategy. Which is exactly the problem with a lot of people who think themselves authoritative on strategy, they are too easy to dismiss the unorthodox as not working, and this includes progamers, make no mistake. Progamers are very quick to say that just because something isn't orthodox it can't work. In fact, Destiny goes on and on about how MajOr for instance believes that a strat can't work if the Koreans aren't doing it. And that's basically what greatly limits TLMC and why all the maps are so bog standard, people's continued belief that just because something is unorthodox it can't work. These are the people that said Yeonsu was worthy of being a finalist, we now know that Yeonsu is horribly imbalanced, something that many people already said and discussed in Yeonsu's own map thread by the way. I don't hold them quite as knowledgeable as they do themselves. Who says Master League players know shit about map balance? Who says 3 random members of TL strategy do? I rather put my faith in a thousand master league players than 3 random members from TL strategy.
Its simply not feasible to do what you suggest. Most Map maker probably aren't Master league players, so basically they don't qualify to vote under your system. Most map makers then again have a pretty bad understanding of the game and try to wash this away with the typical "My understanding is master league, my mechanics just hold me back.".
So now you have to add that verified map makers can vote too, but what qualifies you as a knowledgeable mapmaker? Just like being a master league player doesn't mean you know shit about maps, or necessarily what makes a balanced game or what plays well, being a map maker does not of itself mean you know jack shit about how to make a competitive map. So basically you would have hundreds of random people voting, many of whom don't have the knowledge to make an informed decision. We have to add that? Map makers who are master, or maybe diamond+master can vote.
Just like the general populace of TL don't have a fucking clue what they are voting for in the finals of the TLMC. I certainly don't, I vote for maps that look cool, have something interesting about them etc etc. I can't tell a balanced map from an unbalanced one, I rely on people who know more than I for that information. When I played SC2 a lot, I bounced from Diamond to Master a few times, so I know a decent amount about how to play the game, I know what maps I like and what I don't, but thats just personal preference, usually based on what maps I can play my favourite strats, have the best winrate on etc etc. I wouldn't say they do either, but hey, neither do I feel that the judges each year have a clue, and I'd rather if people aren't going to have a clue that the no clue is democratic. I'm sceptical of democracy because people are idiots, but I'd rather that every idiot can vote than that only a select few of them can.
I've been following starcraft and had stuff explained to me many times about what makes a map a "zerg" map or a "terran" map I've made a blog post in the past which comes with a lot of examples of what people said were 'Zerg' or 'Terran' maps has been blatantly, blatantly wrong. Which is why I don't trust the so called expertise on maps of these people. All these so called good map makers with such a good understanding were all hammering about how say entombed valley or Akilon were Protoss maps or how Antiga was a Terran map but if you just look at the numbers then that's not true at all, I don't hold their ability to judge what race a map is going to favour in as much regard as they do themselves.
http://www.teamliquid.net/blogs/441941-theorycraft-and-map-balance
but I still couldn't look at a map i've never seen before and make any valid observations about how balanced it is, or whether it would be interesting to play on. You somehow expect that hundreds of random people voting would be better, when people would just vote for weird, gimmicky stuff, then entire final would be maps that have no place in competitive play because they are fun, crazy maps or there would be absolutely no zany maps in the final nbecause all these "high level" master players pick maps just like the current crop of "safe" map designs. Thusfar your argument relies on the implicit assumption that those members of TL Strategy are capable of doing all that well. I urge you to reconsider that axiom because it blatantly isn't true. Did they not praise Yeonsu? One of the most imbalanced maps in a long time? Hell, in Yeonsu's own map topic there was a very hefty discussion about its balance. A lot of people there said it was a very bad map for Zerg against Terran and to a lesser extend Protoss and these 'famous mappers' would come there and debuke that with shallow arguments. Well, the people who called it imbalanced were right, the numbers are indisputable. 65% TvZ, are you kidding me? Yeonsu is more imbalanced than Daedalus point.
You trust the populace far too much and attribute them with abilities they do not posess. The initial jury is the most sensible way to do things, perhaps they could recruit people from further afield than TL staff and contributors, but I'd bet even if they asked you to judge, you'd still be unhappy with the results.
No, you trust the jury too much. I don't trust the populace all that much but like I said, better a thousand idiots than 3 idiots making up the final 8.
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United States4883 Posts
On March 31 2014 16:28 SiskosGoatee wrote:Show nested quote +but I still couldn't look at a map i've never seen before and make any valid observations about how balanced it is, or whether it would be interesting to play on. You somehow expect that hundreds of random people voting would be better, when people would just vote for weird, gimmicky stuff, then entire final would be maps that have no place in competitive play because they are fun, crazy maps or there would be absolutely no zany maps in the final nbecause all these "high level" master players pick maps just like the current crop of "safe" map designs. Thusfar your argument relies on the implicit assumption that those members of TL Strategy are capable of doing all that well. I urge you to reconsider that axiom because it blatantly isn't true. Did they not praise Yeonsu? One of the most imbalanced maps in a long time? Hell, in Yeonsu's own map topic there was a very hefty discussion about its balance. A lot of people there said it was a very bad map for Zerg against Terran and to a lesser extend Protoss and these 'famous mappers' would come there and debuke that with shallow arguments. Well, the people who called it imbalanced were right, the numbers are indisputable. 65% TvZ, are you kidding me? Yeonsu is more imbalanced than Daedalus point. [
I just want to make sure you realize it's not just TL Strategy that plays through these maps. We're just volunteers among different branches of TL that test them. TL Strategy is just a group of people who enjoy analysis and put out an article every once and a while...we're not like the arbiters of strategy lol. Then again, it makes sense to trust people with game analysis who do purely game analysis.
Also, within TL Strategy, we've always had a problem with the "blink ridge" on Yeonsu. Teoita literally bitches about it every time we see a blink all-in on that map. Same on Frost.
EDIT: Also, don't link yourself to the debunked "false impressions on maps" thread, it doesn't look so good.
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On March 31 2014 16:55 SC2John wrote:Show nested quote +On March 31 2014 16:28 SiskosGoatee wrote:but I still couldn't look at a map i've never seen before and make any valid observations about how balanced it is, or whether it would be interesting to play on. You somehow expect that hundreds of random people voting would be better, when people would just vote for weird, gimmicky stuff, then entire final would be maps that have no place in competitive play because they are fun, crazy maps or there would be absolutely no zany maps in the final nbecause all these "high level" master players pick maps just like the current crop of "safe" map designs. Thusfar your argument relies on the implicit assumption that those members of TL Strategy are capable of doing all that well. I urge you to reconsider that axiom because it blatantly isn't true. Did they not praise Yeonsu? One of the most imbalanced maps in a long time? Hell, in Yeonsu's own map topic there was a very hefty discussion about its balance. A lot of people there said it was a very bad map for Zerg against Terran and to a lesser extend Protoss and these 'famous mappers' would come there and debuke that with shallow arguments. Well, the people who called it imbalanced were right, the numbers are indisputable. 65% TvZ, are you kidding me? Yeonsu is more imbalanced than Daedalus point. I just want to make sure you realize it's not just TL Strategy that plays through these maps. We're just volunteers among different branches of TL that test them. TL Strategy is just a group of people who enjoy analysis and put out an article every once and a while...we're not like the arbiters of strategy lol. Then again, it makes sense to trust people with game analysis who do purely game analysis. It would make sense if their analysis has been proven accurate in the past, but the inverse is true.
Also, within TL Strategy, we've always had a problem with the "blink ridge" on Yeonsu. Teoita literally bitches about it every time we see a blink all-in on that map. Same on Frost.
Maybe, but the map isn't bad for Terran, it's bad for Zerg, I'm not sure what blink ridges have to do with TvZ, the main problem of the map is TvZ, to a lesser extent PvZ, the most balanced matchup, PvZ, is 56% in Protoss' favour, the old maxim is that anything within 45-55 is acceptable.
EDIT: Also, don't link yourself to the debunked "false impressions on maps" thread, it doesn't look so good. How is it debunked?
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Which jury do you think would do a better job?
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Like I said, I don't believe in juries. Ultimately someone is going to select the jury and what that will come down to is that whoever selects it will just put likeminded people in it. Juries are a pretty laughable concept in my opinion in any place. That there are even Olympic games of ice skating where who wins and loses is decided by a jury is beyond me how someone can take that seriously. You're the Olympic champion, because the jury rated you the most highly!
It's not that I don't agree with this particular jury in that I don't agree with the concept of one, especially when it's this small.
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United States7483 Posts
On March 31 2014 17:47 SiskosGoatee wrote:
Like I said, I don't believe in juries. Ultimately someone is going to select the jury and what that will come down to is that whoever selects it will just put likeminded people in it. Juries are a pretty laughable concept in my opinion in any place. That there are even Olympic games of ice skating where who wins and loses is decided by a jury is beyond me how someone can take that seriously. You're the Olympic champion, because the jury rated you the most highly!
It's not that I don't agree with this particular jury in that I don't agree with the concept of one, especially when it's this small.
What other possible method would you use for evaluating a winner?
Would you rather not have map contests at all and thus less support for mapmakers?
Surely you'd agree that some people are more likely to have a better opinion about certain things than others.
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Fighting an opinion-based battle is really just a war of attrition that you won't win. SG's first reason for not playing makes sense, but isn't really worth a blog by itself. The reasons he gives for why he believes the TLMC is a sham seem kind of petty, but not "invalid" and you're not working with something that can be concretely quantified to form a legitimate rebuttal.
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On April 01 2014 03:22 Whitewing wrote:Show nested quote +On March 31 2014 17:47 SiskosGoatee wrote:
Like I said, I don't believe in juries. Ultimately someone is going to select the jury and what that will come down to is that whoever selects it will just put likeminded people in it. Juries are a pretty laughable concept in my opinion in any place. That there are even Olympic games of ice skating where who wins and loses is decided by a jury is beyond me how someone can take that seriously. You're the Olympic champion, because the jury rated you the most highly!
It's not that I don't agree with this particular jury in that I don't agree with the concept of one, especially when it's this small. What other possible method would you use for evaluating a winner? Would you rather not have map contests at all and thus less support for mapmakers? Like I said, just let everyone who can prove they have an account of diamond or higher vote.
Surely you'd agree that some people are more likely to have a better opinion about certain things than others. Nope, not really, I don't buy that concept at all. All people mean when they say "You have a good opinion" is "I agree with your opinion".
People will also say what they are expected to say. The Mona Lisa was originally not considered that remarkable, then it got stolen twice and featured in the news and suddenly every art critic was all over how amazing it was. Why? Because people often confuse fame with excellence.
On April 01 2014 05:57 ninazerg wrote:
Fighting an opinion-based battle is really just a war of attrition that you won't win. SG's first reason for not playing makes sense, but isn't really worth a blog by itself. The reasons he gives for why he believes the TLMC is a sham seem kind of petty, but not "invalid" and you're not working with something that can be concretely quantified to form a legitimate rebuttal. You can argue against the jury part, but arguing against the criticism of first past the post, I really don't see how. There is no excuse for making the eventual poll first past the post, there's just no reason for it at all.
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United States7483 Posts
On April 01 2014 08:19 SiskosGoatee wrote:Show nested quote +On April 01 2014 03:22 Whitewing wrote:On March 31 2014 17:47 SiskosGoatee wrote:
Like I said, I don't believe in juries. Ultimately someone is going to select the jury and what that will come down to is that whoever selects it will just put likeminded people in it. Juries are a pretty laughable concept in my opinion in any place. That there are even Olympic games of ice skating where who wins and loses is decided by a jury is beyond me how someone can take that seriously. You're the Olympic champion, because the jury rated you the most highly!
It's not that I don't agree with this particular jury in that I don't agree with the concept of one, especially when it's this small. What other possible method would you use for evaluating a winner? Would you rather not have map contests at all and thus less support for mapmakers? Like I said, just let everyone who can prove they have an account of diamond or higher vote. Show nested quote +Surely you'd agree that some people are more likely to have a better opinion about certain things than others. Nope, not really, I don't buy that concept at all. All people mean when they say "You have a good opinion" is "I agree with your opinion". People will also say what they are expected to say. The Mona Lisa was originally not considered that remarkable, then it got stolen twice and featured in the news and suddenly every art critic was all over how amazing it was. Why? Because people often confuse fame with excellence. Show nested quote +On April 01 2014 05:57 ninazerg wrote:
Fighting an opinion-based battle is really just a war of attrition that you won't win. SG's first reason for not playing makes sense, but isn't really worth a blog by itself. The reasons he gives for why he believes the TLMC is a sham seem kind of petty, but not "invalid" and you're not working with something that can be concretely quantified to form a legitimate rebuttal. You can argue against the jury part, but arguing against the criticism of first past the post, I really don't see how. There is no excuse for making the eventual poll first past the post, there's just no reason for it at all.
Diamond is insufficient. I know people who got into GM doing nothing but six pool or proxy 2 gate who couldn't tell you anything at all about map balance. The people who get asked for their opinion are generally people who have demonstrated some level of knowledge about the game, and even their opinions are not sacred. There's a lot of discussion and disagreements going on before the final decisions are made. Sometimes you just have to accept that letting a few more qualified people make decisions is superior to letting a far larger group of substantially less qualified people make the decision.
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I usually understand your critics on a fundamental level, but you lost me with your third point.
Of course you can manipulate the voting to some degree as a judge, I'd say that is even your job. Yes, New Polaris Rhapsody won because it had a feature that was so catching that many felt like "it was more unorthodox". But I don't see your point, it is not that we had a bunch of Whirlwind and Daybreak clones and New Polaris Rhapsody. There were some really experimental things around. And I don't see how the judges influenced that. Compared to the amount of standard maps around for the TLMC, they picked the most unorthodox.
Anyways, this is something I rather understand:
1. - I won't win, let's be honest.
2. - I don't make a lot of non 2 player maps and if I make them the spawn positions tend to be locked cross. I don't like spawn and scouting randomness.
Yup, probably noone that isn't on a mapmaking team will win, for one reason or another.
And yes, I see your point about scouting on 4player maps. Also, they tend to always be the exact same: 3-4 bases tucked in the 4corners on a massive plane to create the needed rushdistance. And half of the time they still get turned into 2player maps.
Kudos to Frost for making it work with mirror symmetry (which was the obvious challenge left for 4p maps).
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On April 01 2014 16:51 Whitewing wrote:Show nested quote +On April 01 2014 08:19 SiskosGoatee wrote:On April 01 2014 03:22 Whitewing wrote:On March 31 2014 17:47 SiskosGoatee wrote:
Like I said, I don't believe in juries. Ultimately someone is going to select the jury and what that will come down to is that whoever selects it will just put likeminded people in it. Juries are a pretty laughable concept in my opinion in any place. That there are even Olympic games of ice skating where who wins and loses is decided by a jury is beyond me how someone can take that seriously. You're the Olympic champion, because the jury rated you the most highly!
It's not that I don't agree with this particular jury in that I don't agree with the concept of one, especially when it's this small. What other possible method would you use for evaluating a winner? Would you rather not have map contests at all and thus less support for mapmakers? Like I said, just let everyone who can prove they have an account of diamond or higher vote. Surely you'd agree that some people are more likely to have a better opinion about certain things than others. Nope, not really, I don't buy that concept at all. All people mean when they say "You have a good opinion" is "I agree with your opinion". People will also say what they are expected to say. The Mona Lisa was originally not considered that remarkable, then it got stolen twice and featured in the news and suddenly every art critic was all over how amazing it was. Why? Because people often confuse fame with excellence. On April 01 2014 05:57 ninazerg wrote:
Fighting an opinion-based battle is really just a war of attrition that you won't win. SG's first reason for not playing makes sense, but isn't really worth a blog by itself. The reasons he gives for why he believes the TLMC is a sham seem kind of petty, but not "invalid" and you're not working with something that can be concretely quantified to form a legitimate rebuttal. You can argue against the jury part, but arguing against the criticism of first past the post, I really don't see how. There is no excuse for making the eventual poll first past the post, there's just no reason for it at all. Diamond is insufficient. I know people who got into GM doing nothing but six pool or proxy 2 gate who couldn't tell you anything at all about map balance. There are also people who got to GM doing nothing but CC first, cheesing in the other direction. In fact, I know many people who got to GM playing only one race and don't know shit about the other 6 matchups, and have a biased perspective on 2 of the 3 they do play. But hey, that's why others can vote to, to hopefully cancel this out.
I think it's a bigger problem that people who only play one race vote than that people in lower leagues vote honestly. Bias is a bigger problem than playing skill. Would you want Avilo to be a member of a 3 man jury?
The people who get asked for their opinion are generally people who have demonstrated some level of knowledge about the game, and even their opinions are not sacred. There's a lot of discussion and disagreements going on before the final decisions are made. Sometimes you just have to accept that letting a few more qualified people make decisions is superior to letting a far larger group of substantially less qualified people make the decision. I don't think their opinion is any better than that of a random master league player in the end. The fact that they debate amongst each other shows they aren't experts. The thing with experts is that experts tend to agree. You can't both be experts on something and disagree with each other. That makes no sense. If it's anything more than subjective (which it isn't) and two experts disagree, then one (or both) of the experts is wrong and you can't really call it an expert any more can you?
The point is, there is nothing objective about it which what people seem to think, it's purely subjective. A good map is in the eye of the beholder, nothing more. Winrates are objective, and you can argue maps should be around 45-55 in all matchups, but that's about it.
On April 01 2014 17:15 Big J wrote:
I usually understand your critics on a fundamental level, but you lost me with your third point.
Of course you can manipulate the voting to some degree as a judge, I'd say that is even your job. Yes, New Polaris Rhapsody won because it had a feature that was so catching that many felt like "it was more unorthodox". But I don't see your point, it is not that we had a bunch of Whirlwind and Daybreak clones and New Polaris Rhapsody. There were some really experimental things around. And I don't see how the judges influenced that. Compared to the amount of standard maps around for the TLMC, they picked the most unorthodox. I don't see how you can argue in favour of first past-the-post there's really no argument in favour of this election system, it's flawed in every way and a Borda Count is better in every single way.
Anyways, this is something I rather understand: Show nested quote +1. - I won't win, let's be honest.
2. - I don't make a lot of non 2 player maps and if I make them the spawn positions tend to be locked cross. I don't like spawn and scouting randomness. Yup, probably noone that isn't on a mapmaking team will win, for one reason or another.
- Aggression disallowed
- Super easy natural and third
- PvP as a mirror will be considered.
- ZvZ and TvT as a mirror won't be (TvT doesn't really need to be because unlike PvP and ZvZ it doesn't depend on particular natural/main layouts)
And yes, I see your point about scouting on 4player maps. Also, they tend to always be the exact same: 3-4 bases tucked in the 4corners on a massive plane to create the needed rushdistance. And half of the time they still get turned into 2player maps.
Kudos to Frost for making it work with mirror symmetry (which was the obvious challenge left for 4p maps). Yap, they're all alike, and they're also simply assymetric maps with spawn favouratism in play, one player will get to expand away from the opponent, the other towards the opponent. I like axial 4 player maps more because at least they are fair, I like locked spawn maps which are 2-in-1 the most though and I made a fair bunch of those.
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On April 01 2014 18:05 SiskosGoatee wrote:Show nested quote +On April 01 2014 17:15 Big J wrote:
I usually understand your critics on a fundamental level, but you lost me with your third point.
Of course you can manipulate the voting to some degree as a judge, I'd say that is even your job. Yes, New Polaris Rhapsody won because it had a feature that was so catching that many felt like "it was more unorthodox". But I don't see your point, it is not that we had a bunch of Whirlwind and Daybreak clones and New Polaris Rhapsody. There were some really experimental things around. And I don't see how the judges influenced that. Compared to the amount of standard maps around for the TLMC, they picked the most unorthodox. I don't see how you can argue in favour of first past-the-post there's really no argument in favour of this election system, it's flawed in every way and a Borda Count is better in every single way.
It makes sense to have a jury preselect maps to vote upon, because the average voter will only look at the maps in the thread for a max of 1-2 minutes (if even) before deciding. They won't think through every possible gamebreaking situation. They read "raising lava" get excited and click it, not thinking about how boring it is too watch players wait for the lava to disappear again.
It's a good way to get a large amount of the community into the discussion
Show nested quote +Anyways, this is something I rather understand: 1. - I won't win, let's be honest.
2. - I don't make a lot of non 2 player maps and if I make them the spawn positions tend to be locked cross. I don't like spawn and scouting randomness. Yup, probably noone that isn't on a mapmaking team will win, for one reason or another. I don't know about that, I think someone not on a team will stand a chance of getting in the finals but it would still have to be a map that is bog standard and appeals to the jury with its typical rules of: - Aggression disallowed - Super easy natural and third - PvP as a mirror will be considered. - ZvZ and TvT as a mirror won't be (TvT doesn't really need to be because unlike PvP and ZvZ it doesn't depend on particular natural/main layouts)
Maybe not on a team, but I think you have to be quite respected for your previous works to be considered. There is probably not going to be a "first time map" in the finals, no matter how good it might be.
And then you lose me again:
Also, if you want to watch aggression... just tune into the proleague games these days. I don't know what more aggression you want, most of the games today were terribly enough already. Lots of aggression possible - on the "super easy natural and third" bases we have and the "aggression dissallowed" setups.
And I'm sure all mirrors are considered. But if you consider PvP, and the nonmirrors, all the other mirror's problems will be dealt with partly as well. (and of course TvT depends on particular layouts too. You are not going to stop a 1-1-1 push with an expansion build if you get some amazing siege locations. Or get up a far away fas expansion against banshees)
Show nested quote +And yes, I see your point about scouting on 4player maps. Also, they tend to always be the exact same: 3-4 bases tucked in the 4corners on a massive plane to create the needed rushdistance. And half of the time they still get turned into 2player maps.
Kudos to Frost for making it work with mirror symmetry (which was the obvious challenge left for 4p maps). Yap, they're all alike, and they're also simply assymetric maps with spawn favouratism in play, one player will get to expand away from the opponent, the other towards the opponent. I like axial 4 player maps more because at least they are fair, I like locked spawn maps which are 2-in-1 the most though and I made a fair bunch of those.
My main beef with 4player maps is that - as you say - the rotational symmetric maps are just "imbalanced" and the imbalance simply gets made up by making the distances so long that it doesn't matter. So in the end you just have lots of dead space on those maps. And you could have made the exact same spawn setup with a 2player map, but with interesting 4th, 5th and 6th bases instead of having players eventually put a base into another corner.
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On April 01 2014 20:58 Big J wrote:Show nested quote +On April 01 2014 18:05 SiskosGoatee wrote:On April 01 2014 17:15 Big J wrote:
I usually understand your critics on a fundamental level, but you lost me with your third point.
Of course you can manipulate the voting to some degree as a judge, I'd say that is even your job. Yes, New Polaris Rhapsody won because it had a feature that was so catching that many felt like "it was more unorthodox". But I don't see your point, it is not that we had a bunch of Whirlwind and Daybreak clones and New Polaris Rhapsody. There were some really experimental things around. And I don't see how the judges influenced that. Compared to the amount of standard maps around for the TLMC, they picked the most unorthodox. I don't see how you can argue in favour of first past-the-post there's really no argument in favour of this election system, it's flawed in every way and a Borda Count is better in every single way. It makes sense to have a jury preselect maps to vote upon, because the average voter will only look at the maps in the thread for a max of 1-2 minutes (if even) before deciding. They won't think through every possible gamebreaking situation. They read "raising lava" get excited and click it, not thinking about how boring it is too watch players wait for the lava to disappear again. It's a good way to get a large amount of the community into the discussion You know this has nothing to do with first-past-the-post right? Do you even know what first-past-the-post means?
Maybe not on a team, but I think you have to be quite respected for your previous works to be considered. There is probably not going to be a "first time map" in the finals, no matter how good it might be.
I don't know, there have been cases of very unknown mappers breaking out with these tournaments. But yeah, it probably helps that you have friends.
And then you lose me again:
Also, if you want to watch aggression... just tune into the proleague games these days. I don't know what more aggression you want, most of the games today were terribly enough already. Lots of aggression possible - on the "super easy natural and third" bases we have and the "aggression dissallowed" setups. I really don't see it. I remember the days when speedling expand was a staple build, when Terran would apply 2rax marauder pressure on protoss as a staple and protoss would go 2-3 gate pressure in response, the naturals of the time and lack of photon overcharge allowed that, not any more sadly.
And I'm sure all mirrors are considered. But if you consider PvP, and the nonmirrors, all the other mirror's problems will be dealt with partly as well. (and of course TvT depends on particular layouts too. You are not going to stop a 1-1-1 push with an expansion build if you get some amazing siege locations. Or get up a far away fas expansion against banshees) I'm fairly certain they aren't. The complete lack of knowledge about ZvZ in most of the mapping community is evident. Because no mapper plays Zerg for some reason, the majority of them plays Protoss, some Terran, never met one playing Zerg and this bias does show. The only thing they seem to know about Zerg is the typical stuff of chokes and rusn/distance which isn't nearly as important in for instance allowing certain walloffs against hellions to be constructed with evo chambers but that stuff isn't considered. You see mappers be heavily invested into making the natural wallable for Protoss in PvZ but neglecting that Zerg needs creep to wall against hellions with evo chambers and the choke is often too far removed from the hatch to allow this. Mappers also quite often completely neglect the amount of creep tumours that are needed to connect main and natural.
My main beef with 4player maps is that - as you say - the rotational symmetric maps are just "imbalanced" and the imbalance simply gets made up by making the distances so long that it doesn't matter. So in the end you just have lots of dead space on those maps. And you could have made the exact same spawn setup with a 2player map, but with interesting 4th, 5th and 6th bases instead of having players eventually put a base into another corner.
I don't think making distance longer makes the imbalance not matter. I mean, like in TvT even in Alterzim, you want to spawn so that you can easily drop the natural of your opponent from your main, not in reverse, being able to drop the main from your natural. The opopnent's army is typically situated at the third and can easily defend the main if you drop there, there is also typically less space to drop that spot and it's easier to shield it with turrets. All these things do matter a lot.
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United States7483 Posts
On April 01 2014 18:05 SiskosGoatee wrote:Show nested quote +On April 01 2014 16:51 Whitewing wrote:On April 01 2014 08:19 SiskosGoatee wrote:On April 01 2014 03:22 Whitewing wrote:On March 31 2014 17:47 SiskosGoatee wrote:
Like I said, I don't believe in juries. Ultimately someone is going to select the jury and what that will come down to is that whoever selects it will just put likeminded people in it. Juries are a pretty laughable concept in my opinion in any place. That there are even Olympic games of ice skating where who wins and loses is decided by a jury is beyond me how someone can take that seriously. You're the Olympic champion, because the jury rated you the most highly!
It's not that I don't agree with this particular jury in that I don't agree with the concept of one, especially when it's this small. What other possible method would you use for evaluating a winner? Would you rather not have map contests at all and thus less support for mapmakers? Like I said, just let everyone who can prove they have an account of diamond or higher vote. Surely you'd agree that some people are more likely to have a better opinion about certain things than others. Nope, not really, I don't buy that concept at all. All people mean when they say "You have a good opinion" is "I agree with your opinion". People will also say what they are expected to say. The Mona Lisa was originally not considered that remarkable, then it got stolen twice and featured in the news and suddenly every art critic was all over how amazing it was. Why? Because people often confuse fame with excellence. On April 01 2014 05:57 ninazerg wrote:
Fighting an opinion-based battle is really just a war of attrition that you won't win. SG's first reason for not playing makes sense, but isn't really worth a blog by itself. The reasons he gives for why he believes the TLMC is a sham seem kind of petty, but not "invalid" and you're not working with something that can be concretely quantified to form a legitimate rebuttal. You can argue against the jury part, but arguing against the criticism of first past the post, I really don't see how. There is no excuse for making the eventual poll first past the post, there's just no reason for it at all. Diamond is insufficient. I know people who got into GM doing nothing but six pool or proxy 2 gate who couldn't tell you anything at all about map balance. There are also people who got to GM doing nothing but CC first, cheesing in the other direction. In fact, I know many people who got to GM playing only one race and don't know shit about the other 6 matchups, and have a biased perspective on 2 of the 3 they do play. But hey, that's why others can vote to, to hopefully cancel this out. I think it's a bigger problem that people who only play one race vote than that people in lower leagues vote honestly. Bias is a bigger problem than playing skill. Would you want Avilo to be a member of a 3 man jury? Show nested quote +The people who get asked for their opinion are generally people who have demonstrated some level of knowledge about the game, and even their opinions are not sacred. There's a lot of discussion and disagreements going on before the final decisions are made. Sometimes you just have to accept that letting a few more qualified people make decisions is superior to letting a far larger group of substantially less qualified people make the decision. I don't think their opinion is any better than that of a random master league player in the end. The fact that they debate amongst each other shows they aren't experts. The thing with experts is that experts tend to agree. You can't both be experts on something and disagree with each other. That makes no sense. If it's anything more than subjective (which it isn't) and two experts disagree, then one (or both) of the experts is wrong and you can't really call it an expert any more can you? The point is, there is nothing objective about it which what people seem to think, it's purely subjective. A good map is in the eye of the beholder, nothing more. Winrates are objective, and you can argue maps should be around 45-55 in all matchups, but that's about it. Show nested quote +On April 01 2014 17:15 Big J wrote:
I usually understand your critics on a fundamental level, but you lost me with your third point.
Of course you can manipulate the voting to some degree as a judge, I'd say that is even your job. Yes, New Polaris Rhapsody won because it had a feature that was so catching that many felt like "it was more unorthodox". But I don't see your point, it is not that we had a bunch of Whirlwind and Daybreak clones and New Polaris Rhapsody. There were some really experimental things around. And I don't see how the judges influenced that. Compared to the amount of standard maps around for the TLMC, they picked the most unorthodox. I don't see how you can argue in favour of first past-the-post there's really no argument in favour of this election system, it's flawed in every way and a Borda Count is better in every single way. Show nested quote +Anyways, this is something I rather understand: 1. - I won't win, let's be honest.
2. - I don't make a lot of non 2 player maps and if I make them the spawn positions tend to be locked cross. I don't like spawn and scouting randomness. Yup, probably noone that isn't on a mapmaking team will win, for one reason or another. I don't know about that, I think someone not on a team will stand a chance of getting in the finals but it would still have to be a map that is bog standard and appeals to the jury with its typical rules of: - Aggression disallowed - Super easy natural and third - PvP as a mirror will be considered. - ZvZ and TvT as a mirror won't be (TvT doesn't really need to be because unlike PvP and ZvZ it doesn't depend on particular natural/main layouts) Show nested quote +And yes, I see your point about scouting on 4player maps. Also, they tend to always be the exact same: 3-4 bases tucked in the 4corners on a massive plane to create the needed rushdistance. And half of the time they still get turned into 2player maps.
Kudos to Frost for making it work with mirror symmetry (which was the obvious challenge left for 4p maps). Yap, they're all alike, and they're also simply assymetric maps with spawn favouratism in play, one player will get to expand away from the opponent, the other towards the opponent. I like axial 4 player maps more because at least they are fair, I like locked spawn maps which are 2-in-1 the most though and I made a fair bunch of those.
You lost me when you called CC first cheese, it's quite standard and very safe much of the time. I've seen CC first builds hold early aggression easily from zerg and protoss no problem, including 6 pools.
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Italy12246 Posts
On April 01 2014 18:05 SiskosGoatee wrote:
The thing with experts is that experts tend to agree. You can't both be experts on something and disagree with each other. That makes no sense.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpretations_of_quantum_mechanics
The people cited there are among the brightest physicists of the 20th century.
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On April 02 2014 02:45 SiskosGoatee wrote:Show nested quote +On April 01 2014 20:58 Big J wrote:On April 01 2014 18:05 SiskosGoatee wrote:On April 01 2014 17:15 Big J wrote:
I usually understand your critics on a fundamental level, but you lost me with your third point.
Of course you can manipulate the voting to some degree as a judge, I'd say that is even your job. Yes, New Polaris Rhapsody won because it had a feature that was so catching that many felt like "it was more unorthodox". But I don't see your point, it is not that we had a bunch of Whirlwind and Daybreak clones and New Polaris Rhapsody. There were some really experimental things around. And I don't see how the judges influenced that. Compared to the amount of standard maps around for the TLMC, they picked the most unorthodox. I don't see how you can argue in favour of first past-the-post there's really no argument in favour of this election system, it's flawed in every way and a Borda Count is better in every single way. It makes sense to have a jury preselect maps to vote upon, because the average voter will only look at the maps in the thread for a max of 1-2 minutes (if even) before deciding. They won't think through every possible gamebreaking situation. They read "raising lava" get excited and click it, not thinking about how boring it is too watch players wait for the lava to disappear again. It's a good way to get a large amount of the community into the discussion You know this has nothing to do with first-past-the-post right? Do you even know what first-past-the-post means?
Sorry, didn't read it too carefully. yeah, other voting systems should always be considered. Though, in my opinion this is rather a philosophical question.
Show nested quote +
Maybe not on a team, but I think you have to be quite respected for your previous works to be considered. There is probably not going to be a "first time map" in the finals, no matter how good it might be.
I don't know, there have been cases of very unknown mappers breaking out with these tournaments. But yeah, it probably helps that you have friends. Show nested quote +And then you lose me again:
Also, if you want to watch aggression... just tune into the proleague games these days. I don't know what more aggression you want, most of the games today were terribly enough already. Lots of aggression possible - on the "super easy natural and third" bases we have and the "aggression dissallowed" setups. I really don't see it. I remember the days when speedling expand was a staple build, when Terran would apply 2rax marauder pressure on protoss as a staple and protoss would go 2-3 gate pressure in response, the naturals of the time and lack of photon overcharge allowed that, not any more sadly.
Well, if you don't see the aggression when Maru does a 1-1-1 drop into expand, a proxy 2rax and a 1-1-1 drop into cloak banshee until he loses to a proxy oracle rush, then I don't know what sort of aggression you expect.
You are not going to get speedling expands back. Speedling expands in PvZ were mostly defensive builds, setting you up to hold a 1base 4gate. When those rushes died, the speedling expands weren't necessary anymore and died soon after. Also speedling expand is basically an autoloss these days when the Protoss goes FFE and scouts the gas, because he can just react with a fast Immortal/Sentry build and (on the highest level where hardly FF mistakes happen) you are not going to get enough economy up to hold it.
Maps have something to do with such builds not being viable anymore. But more than that, the game got figured out and patched too.
Show nested quote +And I'm sure all mirrors are considered. But if you consider PvP, and the nonmirrors, all the other mirror's problems will be dealt with partly as well. (and of course TvT depends on particular layouts too. You are not going to stop a 1-1-1 push with an expansion build if you get some amazing siege locations. Or get up a far away fas expansion against banshees) I'm fairly certain they aren't. The complete lack of knowledge about ZvZ in most of the mapping community is evident. Because no mapper plays Zerg for some reason, the majority of them plays Protoss, some Terran, never met one playing Zerg and this bias does show. The only thing they seem to know about Zerg is the typical stuff of chokes and rusn/distance which isn't nearly as important in for instance allowing certain walloffs against hellions to be constructed with evo chambers but that stuff isn't considered. You see mappers be heavily invested into making the natural wallable for Protoss in PvZ but neglecting that Zerg needs creep to wall against hellions with evo chambers and the choke is often too far removed from the hatch to allow this. Mappers also quite often completely neglect the amount of creep tumours that are needed to connect main and natural.
You don't need those walls as zerg. I main zerg. It's nice if you can wall, but you don't need to and most of the time you want to spend your money on a third before the wall is up, so at the most crucial time you are not going to have it anyways.
Though it's great in ZvZ, I agree, and I wish mapmakers would consider that more, so that those speedling gambles on first or second inject can be dealt with easier.
My main beef with 4player maps is that - as you say - the rotational symmetric maps are just "imbalanced" and the imbalance simply gets made up by making the distances so long that it doesn't matter. So in the end you just have lots of dead space on those maps. And you could have made the exact same spawn setup with a 2player map, but with interesting 4th, 5th and 6th bases instead of having players eventually put a base into another corner.
I don't think making distance longer makes the imbalance not matter. I mean, like in TvT even in Alterzim, you want to spawn so that you can easily drop the natural of your opponent from your main, not in reverse, being able to drop the main from your natural. The opopnent's army is typically situated at the third and can easily defend the main if you drop there, there is also typically less space to drop that spot and it's easier to shield it with turrets. All these things do matter a lot.
[/QUOTE]
True, but it's tiny compared to imbalances like having half the rush distance from the main/natural production to the enemy third than vis verca.
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No one is then again an "expert" on interpretations of quantum mechanics. It has nothing to do with physics. Physics = mathematics, interpretations of said mathematics is just trying to give numbers, and vector fields a "picture" and it goes beyond the domain of physics. It's appropriately called metaphysics and really not that interesting. No paper has ever been accepted in a peer reviewed journal that handles 'interpretations of quantum mechanics" because it's simply put aesthetic reasoning. People have opinions about it, nothing more. Hell, I have my own opinion about it, I side with Feynman in the "shut up and calculate" camp, that I'm far less of an expert than all those people in fact does not make my opinion less invalid, because that's all it is, an opinion. It's like saying "what is your favourite boson?", everyone with a rudimentary education in quantum physics can answer that and how much of an expert you are in it hardly validates or invalidates your opinion.
On April 02 2014 03:51 Big J wrote:Show nested quote +On April 02 2014 02:45 SiskosGoatee wrote:On April 01 2014 20:58 Big J wrote:On April 01 2014 18:05 SiskosGoatee wrote:On April 01 2014 17:15 Big J wrote:
I usually understand your critics on a fundamental level, but you lost me with your third point.
Of course you can manipulate the voting to some degree as a judge, I'd say that is even your job. Yes, New Polaris Rhapsody won because it had a feature that was so catching that many felt like "it was more unorthodox". But I don't see your point, it is not that we had a bunch of Whirlwind and Daybreak clones and New Polaris Rhapsody. There were some really experimental things around. And I don't see how the judges influenced that. Compared to the amount of standard maps around for the TLMC, they picked the most unorthodox. I don't see how you can argue in favour of first past-the-post there's really no argument in favour of this election system, it's flawed in every way and a Borda Count is better in every single way. It makes sense to have a jury preselect maps to vote upon, because the average voter will only look at the maps in the thread for a max of 1-2 minutes (if even) before deciding. They won't think through every possible gamebreaking situation. They read "raising lava" get excited and click it, not thinking about how boring it is too watch players wait for the lava to disappear again. It's a good way to get a large amount of the community into the discussion You know this has nothing to do with first-past-the-post right? Do you even know what first-past-the-post means? Sorry, didn't read it too carefully. yeah, other voting systems should always be considered. Though, in my opinion this is rather a philosophical question. Show nested quote +
Maybe not on a team, but I think you have to be quite respected for your previous works to be considered. There is probably not going to be a "first time map" in the finals, no matter how good it might be.
I don't know, there have been cases of very unknown mappers breaking out with these tournaments. But yeah, it probably helps that you have friends. And then you lose me again:
Also, if you want to watch aggression... just tune into the proleague games these days. I don't know what more aggression you want, most of the games today were terribly enough already. Lots of aggression possible - on the "super easy natural and third" bases we have and the "aggression dissallowed" setups. I really don't see it. I remember the days when speedling expand was a staple build, when Terran would apply 2rax marauder pressure on protoss as a staple and protoss would go 2-3 gate pressure in response, the naturals of the time and lack of photon overcharge allowed that, not any more sadly. Well, if you don't see the aggression when Maru does a 1-1-1 drop into expand, a proxy 2rax and a 1-1-1 drop into cloak banshee until he loses to a proxy oracle rush, then I don't know what sort of aggression you expect. Something that doesn't require Artosis and Tasteless to discuss their favourite films for the first 6 minutes of the game would be a start. The reason they talk about this stuff is because quite veritably nothing is going on.
You are not going to get speedling expands back. Speedling expands in PvZ were mostly defensive builds, setting you up to hold a 1base 4gate. I disagree, speedling expands were a way to delay the protoss expand as well and put pressure on that. On those old naturals you can't just do a 1 gate expand if Zerg has speed, you can't wall it off in time. Back in the days you would scout at 9 against Zerg, both against 7pools and to know if gas was taken, because you needed to react to that. The game was much more reactionary and your gameplan unfolded as a reaction to what your opponent did, nowadays people have their stuff planned up to 30 supply or something, it's boring to play, and boring to play against. If I want that I might as well play against the AI.
When those rushes died, the speedling expands weren't necessary anymore and died soon after. I disagree, they died once you could wall a natural with 3 buildings and forge expands became common since they served no use any more in delaying the protoss expand.
Also speedling expand is basically an autoloss these days when the Protoss goes FFE and scouts the gas, because he can just react with a fast Immortal/Sentry build and (on the highest level where hardly FF mistakes happen) you are not going to get enough economy up to hold it. Yes, they are now that a natural can be easily walled completely tight. If you're forced to wall with a nexus wall against a speedling expand it becomes a different story.
Consider that speedling expands came back again on deadalus point, you could delay your opponent's expand so extremely long with a speedling expand. In fact, you still can with the new wall but now it's a gamble. If your opponent FFE's and hard walls at the front immediately speedling expand is a waste. If your opponent plans for a 1gate expand and you speedling expand you make 12 lings and you cancel the natural, the wall can't be put up in time at the front. As it stands a hard wall FFE at the front is rare so I always speedling expand on Daedalus.
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You don't need those walls as zerg. I main zerg. It's nice if you can wall, but you don't need to and most of the time you want to spend your money on a third before the wall is up, so at the most crucial time you are not going to have it anyways.
Though it's great in ZvZ, I agree, and I wish mapmakers would consider that more, so that those speedling gambles on first or second inject can be dealt with easier.[/quote]You don't per se need them no, and you don't need them in TvZ, or PvZ as a hard rule either. But mapmakers aren't even considering it while they are considering all the luxuries of Protoss for some reason. The reason is obvious, they play protoss, and not Zerg so they don't have experience with creep tumour locations and all that stuff, you really don't think about that until you've played it.
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Yes, deadalus point. That's exactly the issue. It was a broken map because it wasn't tight. Protoss got a few wins with cheeses, but the stats were pretty onesided.
What you want is aggressive openings that can't fall behind but can also win the game if the opponent makes a tiny mistake to be viable. We already have PvP (and to a certain extend early ZvZ) for that. It's bad enough.
And to talk a bit history:
Gateway expands fell out of style because they weren't good enough anymore. People 3gate expanded with tight and not so tight naturals back in 2010/early 2011. But for some reasons (like roach/ling; like just better zerg defense in general; like the extra 20seconds on warp gate...) they started to go FFE instead. They still could have 3gate expanded, but they didn't because the build wasn't good enough. And that's when speedling expands started dying as well.
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On April 02 2014 04:48 Big J wrote:
Yes, deadalus point. That's exactly the issue. It was a broken map because it wasn't tight. Protoss got a few wins with cheeses, but the stats were pretty onesided. Nonense, there were a plethora of reasons, also let us not fail to consider that both TvP and TvZ had worse numbers on that map than PvZ. PvZ was actually the most balanced matchup on that map. TvP was the biggest offender,I think it was 80% at one point.
However, it's hardly fair to say the imbalance of deadalus point is because of the natural, given that there were so many other things weird about that map. The rush distance was extremely short, the map was needlessly open, the third was needlessly open, so was the fourth. Also note that PvZ winrates on the old incarnation of that map were comparable to derelict watcher which did have a closed natural.
What you want is aggressive openings that can't fall behind but can also win the game if the opponent makes a tiny mistake to be viable. We already have PvP (and to a certain extend early ZvZ) for that. It's bad enough. Yeah, mistakes being punished. ZvZ is the only matchup in the game currently for me which has any sembalance of strategy in the early game going on. All other matchups are just blind build order poker. ZvZ forces you to react to your opponent because if you don't, you die. If you just blindly do your build in ZvZ you don't die vs 'some builds' like it's in all the other matchups, you die vs almost any build. The margins of error are so tight that you are forced to play reactively.
And to talk a bit history:
Gateway expands fell out of style because they weren't good enough anymore. People 3gate expanded with tight and not so tight naturals back in 2010/early 2011. But for some reasons (like roach/ling; like just better zerg defense in general; like the extra 20seconds on warp gate...) they started to go FFE instead. They still could have 3gate expanded, but they didn't because the build wasn't good enough. And that's when speedling expands started dying as well. They weren't good because they had no advantage any more, they weren't needed to secure a natural so why would you? It's obvious that forge FE gives you a greater macro setup than 2-3gate sentry expand so why would you do the latter if the former is also safe? Zerg in response went gasless because speedling expand became useless and the pace of the game was significantly slowed down. This was at its height during certain times in WoL where the standard PvZ was Forge FE vs gasless 3hatch, tasteless and artosis spent 12 minutes talking about their favourite films and then eventually it got followed up by a 2base all in from protoss and the game was over.
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On April 02 2014 14:25 SiskosGoatee wrote:Show nested quote +On April 02 2014 04:48 Big J wrote:
Yes, deadalus point. That's exactly the issue. It was a broken map because it wasn't tight. Protoss got a few wins with cheeses, but the stats were pretty onesided. Nonense, there were a plethora of reasons, also let us not fail to consider that both TvP and TvZ had worse numbers on that map than PvZ. PvZ was actually the most balanced matchup on that map. TvP was the biggest offender,I think it was 80% at one point. However, it's hardly fair to say the imbalance of deadalus point is because of the natural, given that there were so many other things weird about that map. The rush distance was extremely short, the map was needlessly open, the third was needlessly open, so was the fourth. Also note that PvZ winrates on the old incarnation of that map were comparable to derelict watcher which did have a closed natural.
Yes, the stats were like:
65% ZvT
65% ZvP
80% TvP
After they patched it they are roughly:
40% ZvT
50% ZvP
60% TvP
The rush distance is fairly normal. Without checking, I'd say Yeonsu and Heavy Rain are shorter. The map is not "needlessly open". A map does not have to be "needlessly closed" apart from some bases. It's probably going to end up with Protoss having small disadavantages in the midgame, but nothing as big like not being able to FFE/1gate expand.
To your comparison: Derelicted wasn't Protoss-friendly, but 55:45 (in both matchups according to TLPD) is by far better than the 65% of DP.
Show nested quote +What you want is aggressive openings that can't fall behind but can also win the game if the opponent makes a tiny mistake to be viable. We already have PvP (and to a certain extend early ZvZ) for that. It's bad enough. Yeah, mistakes being punished. ZvZ is the only matchup in the game currently for me which has any sembalance of strategy in the early game going on. All other matchups are just blind build order poker. ZvZ forces you to react to your opponent because if you don't, you die. If you just blindly do your build in ZvZ you don't die vs 'some builds' like it's in all the other matchups, you die vs almost any build. The margins of error are so tight that you are forced to play reactively.
OK; I really need to know how you play reactive in early ZvZ, because me and all other Zergs in the world like Soulkey have been struggling there to see inside eggs before they have even been queued. Like, a very common rush in ZvZ is to make only speed zerglings on your first or second inject. Meanwhile the opponent has to build units as well (or he is losing way too much larva spawn time/mining time). But how does he know what he has to react to, when at best he sees a bunch of eggs and that his opponent has mined 100gas or more and it could be all drones.
You can't play reactive to that kind of stuff, because you have to make decisions before you know what the opponent is doing. You either prepare blindly for such a rush after scouting a gas and you get ahead if you do, or you don't and you fall behind/die when he is commiting. And similarily with baneling rushes.
Show nested quote +And to talk a bit history:
Gateway expands fell out of style because they weren't good enough anymore. People 3gate expanded with tight and not so tight naturals back in 2010/early 2011. But for some reasons (like roach/ling; like just better zerg defense in general; like the extra 20seconds on warp gate...) they started to go FFE instead. They still could have 3gate expanded, but they didn't because the build wasn't good enough. And that's when speedling expands started dying as well. They weren't good because they had no advantage any more, they weren't needed to secure a natural so why would you? It's obvious that forge FE gives you a greater macro setup than 2-3gate sentry expand so why would you do the latter if the former is also safe? Zerg in response went gasless because speedling expand became useless and the pace of the game was significantly slowed down. This was at its height during certain times in WoL where the standard PvZ was Forge FE vs gasless 3hatch, tasteless and artosis spent 12 minutes talking about their favourite films and then eventually it got followed up by a 2base all in from protoss and the game was over.
Yes, exactly. Protoss didn't 3gate expand anymore. Because the build had gotten figured out and Protoss were struggling with Zerg builds of that time. That's why they FFE'd whenever possible and the maps got changed so that Protoss could do so on every map, because without it they were in trouble - since, as I already said, gateway expands had been figured out.
Yes, WoL PvZ was a boring matchup, but I don't know why you bring that up, that lies far in the past now. HotS PvZ has gateway expands again with a variety of offensive builds, ranging from light pressure builds (like MsC/Stalker/Zealot pokes), up to plain 7min 4gate semiallins. And unlike ZvZ, in ZvP the Protoss builds are actually scoutable and you don't have to plainly gamble on what your opponent is doing.
The only HotS matchup that you can be somewhat certain off what your opponent is doing is ZvT. Seeing how it is considered quite great and still features a lot of interaction (reapers/hellions; possibly banshees from the Terrans side; queens/zerglings, possibly roaches from the Zergs side) I'd even go as far as to say that in general people prefer to see somewhat generic, easily scoutable aggression, than having to react to things that can be easily missed in the early game.
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On April 02 2014 16:00 Big J wrote:Show nested quote +What you want is aggressive openings that can't fall behind but can also win the game if the opponent makes a tiny mistake to be viable. We already have PvP (and to a certain extend early ZvZ) for that. It's bad enough. Yeah, mistakes being punished. ZvZ is the only matchup in the game currently for me which has any sembalance of strategy in the early game going on. All other matchups are just blind build order poker. ZvZ forces you to react to your opponent because if you don't, you die. If you just blindly do your build in ZvZ you don't die vs 'some builds' like it's in all the other matchups, you die vs almost any build. The margins of error are so tight that you are forced to play reactively.
OK; I really need to know how you play reactive in early ZvZ, because me and all other Zergs in the world like Soulkey have been struggling there to see inside eggs before they have even been queued. Like, a very common rush in ZvZ is to make only speed zerglings on your first or second inject. Meanwhile the opponent has to build units as well (or he is losing way too much larva spawn time/mining time). But how does he know what he has to react to, when at best he sees a bunch of eggs and that his opponent has mined 100gas or more and it could be all drones.
You can't play reactive to that kind of stuff, because you have to make decisions before you know what the opponent is doing. You either prepare blindly for such a rush after scouting a gas and you get ahead if you do, or you don't and you fall behind/die when he is commiting. And similarily with baneling rushes.
I don't think Soulkey plays ZvZ blindly, or most pro Zergs. But the point is that casters do a really bad job at explaning what goes through the mind of players in ZvZ. Bitter is the only one who makes an attempt really but neither the casters nor the observers focus on explanation the logic behind ZvZ. Basic rules of ZvZ:
- Always keep an overlord in vision of the natural mineral line and check if your opponent is droning it up. Casters and observers completely fail to highlight that in ZvZ both players are constantly monitoring the drone count of their opponent at the natural to either punish excessive greed or get ready for a defensive stance if an attack comes.
- If your opponent takes gas, see if he or she continues to mine with 3 donres after 100 is mined and how much gas is mined by clicking on it.
- Obviously always put overlords between you and your opponent to see army movements
- Check queen count and if your opponent has a defensive spine. High queen count and a spine indicates that no aggression is coming and if it's coming it'll be pretty bad aggression that should be easily stopped. Low queen count and no spine means you should make units, even if your opponent is not making units your opponent will be hard pressed to hold your offensive.
Yes, exactly. Protoss didn't 3gate expand anymore. Because the build had gotten figured out and Protoss were struggling with Zerg builds of that time. That's why they FFE'd whenever possible and the maps got changed so that Protoss could do so on every map, because without it they were in trouble - since, as I already said, gateway expands had been figured out.
FFE came as a response to map changes, not in reverse. It started on Shakuras Plateau simply because you could do it there. Which is honestly fine if only a few maps in the pool allow it because it allows for variety.
Yes, WoL PvZ was a boring matchup, but I don't know why you bring that up, that lies far in the past now. Because during that time in WoL it was the height of defensive maps.
HotS PvZ has gateway expands again with a variety of offensive builds, ranging from light pressure builds (like MsC/Stalker/Zealot pokes), up to plain 7min 4gate semiallins. And unlike ZvZ, in ZvP the Protoss builds are actually scoutable and you don't have to plainly gamble on what your opponent is doing. If ZvZ was a gamble I don't see how excellent ZvZ players like Jaedong, Soulkey, Hyun and Leenock can have it as their best matchup by far. They all have very high ZvZ winrates. You can't have a high winrate in a coinflip. ZvZ is far from a gamble. It's a very sophisticated matchup where every action needs to be a reaction. It's just a case of reacting wrongly results into instant death. TvT is far more a gamble in my oppinion where you actually do blindly play against each other, the difference is that making a wrong blind guess doesn't result into instant death, just being slightly behind.
The only HotS matchup that you can be somewhat certain off what your opponent is doing is ZvT. Seeing how it is considered quite great and still features a lot of interaction (reapers/hellions; possibly banshees from the Terrans side; queens/zerglings, possibly roaches from the Zergs side) I'd even go as far as to say that in general people prefer to see somewhat generic, easily scoutable aggression, than having to react to things that can be easily missed in the early game. I'd say that currently Protoss in all matchups has the easiest time to know what their opponent is doing now that hallucination is innate and no longer costs any resource.
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On April 03 2014 03:27 SiskosGoatee wrote:Show nested quote +On April 02 2014 16:00 Big J wrote:What you want is aggressive openings that can't fall behind but can also win the game if the opponent makes a tiny mistake to be viable. We already have PvP (and to a certain extend early ZvZ) for that. It's bad enough. Yeah, mistakes being punished. ZvZ is the only matchup in the game currently for me which has any sembalance of strategy in the early game going on. All other matchups are just blind build order poker. ZvZ forces you to react to your opponent because if you don't, you die. If you just blindly do your build in ZvZ you don't die vs 'some builds' like it's in all the other matchups, you die vs almost any build. The margins of error are so tight that you are forced to play reactively. Show nested quote +OK; I really need to know how you play reactive in early ZvZ, because me and all other Zergs in the world like Soulkey have been struggling there to see inside eggs before they have even been queued. Like, a very common rush in ZvZ is to make only speed zerglings on your first or second inject. Meanwhile the opponent has to build units as well (or he is losing way too much larva spawn time/mining time). But how does he know what he has to react to, when at best he sees a bunch of eggs and that his opponent has mined 100gas or more and it could be all drones.
You can't play reactive to that kind of stuff, because you have to make decisions before you know what the opponent is doing. You either prepare blindly for such a rush after scouting a gas and you get ahead if you do, or you don't and you fall behind/die when he is commiting. And similarily with baneling rushes. I don't think Soulkey plays ZvZ blindly, or most pro Zergs. But the point is that casters do a really bad job at explaning what goes through the mind of players in ZvZ. Bitter is the only one who makes an attempt really but neither the casters nor the observers focus on explanation the logic behind ZvZ. Basic rules of ZvZ: - Always keep an overlord in vision of the natural mineral line and check if your opponent is droning it up. Casters and observers completely fail to highlight that in ZvZ both players are constantly monitoring the drone count of their opponent at the natural to either punish excessive greed or get ready for a defensive stance if an attack comes. - If your opponent takes gas, see if he or she continues to mine with 3 donres after 100 is mined and how much gas is mined by clicking on it. - Obviously always put overlords between you and your opponent to see army movements - Check queen count and if your opponent has a defensive spine. High queen count and a spine indicates that no aggression is coming and if it's coming it'll be pretty bad aggression that should be easily stopped. Low queen count and no spine means you should make units, even if your opponent is not making units your opponent will be hard pressed to hold your offensive.
Yeah, there goes a lot into it. Still, when Shine can go 5-0 vs Soulkey with like 5 different rushes, then I think the matchup does have too much volatility early.
Of course it isn't "just a gamble". But it is supervolatile early on. Like in any matchup, there are going to be some outstanding players. Even in the darkest ages of PvP gambles in 2010-11, MC had an amazing record vs Protoss. That doesn't proof you cannot win quite often by gambling, even if the opponent has a practical chance of scouting/reacting to it. Even practical chances are chances and I don't think it should be up to the defender to play perfectly not to die. It should be up to the aggressor to outplay the opponent so he can take a win. If that isn't the case (which it isn't in certain ZvZ/PvP scenarios as well as in general with some Protoss rushes like Immortal/Sentry that requires the Zerg to react perfectly and the Protoss to not FF perfectly) you just create a game of easy wins instead of back and forth games.
Show nested quote +
Yes, exactly. Protoss didn't 3gate expand anymore. Because the build had gotten figured out and Protoss were struggling with Zerg builds of that time. That's why they FFE'd whenever possible and the maps got changed so that Protoss could do so on every map, because without it they were in trouble - since, as I already said, gateway expands had been figured out.
FFE came as a response to map changes, not in reverse. It started on Shakuras Plateau simply because you could do it there. Which is honestly fine if only a few maps in the pool allow it because it allows for variety.
Tel'darim Altar, Terminus, Crevasse to name a few others were FFEs were good. And they also tried them on maps liek Metalopolis (before it got changed to make it a little better) or Crossfire.
Maybe FFE came to a certain extend because of map changes, the map changes however came because after MC's second GSL title Protoss winrates dropped down to 30-40% on the highest level.
Show nested quote +The only HotS matchup that you can be somewhat certain off what your opponent is doing is ZvT. Seeing how it is considered quite great and still features a lot of interaction (reapers/hellions; possibly banshees from the Terrans side; queens/zerglings, possibly roaches from the Zergs side) I'd even go as far as to say that in general people prefer to see somewhat generic, easily scoutable aggression, than having to react to things that can be easily missed in the early game. I'd say that currently Protoss in all matchups has the easiest time to know what their opponent is doing now that hallucination is innate and no longer costs any resource.
I meant the matchup in terms of predictability of BOs. Terrans are usually going to go for some 3CC+hellion build, Zergs are usually going to go for some 3base build with mutalisks.
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On April 03 2014 03:59 Big J wrote:Show nested quote +On April 03 2014 03:27 SiskosGoatee wrote:On April 02 2014 16:00 Big J wrote:What you want is aggressive openings that can't fall behind but can also win the game if the opponent makes a tiny mistake to be viable. We already have PvP (and to a certain extend early ZvZ) for that. It's bad enough. Yeah, mistakes being punished. ZvZ is the only matchup in the game currently for me which has any sembalance of strategy in the early game going on. All other matchups are just blind build order poker. ZvZ forces you to react to your opponent because if you don't, you die. If you just blindly do your build in ZvZ you don't die vs 'some builds' like it's in all the other matchups, you die vs almost any build. The margins of error are so tight that you are forced to play reactively. OK; I really need to know how you play reactive in early ZvZ, because me and all other Zergs in the world like Soulkey have been struggling there to see inside eggs before they have even been queued. Like, a very common rush in ZvZ is to make only speed zerglings on your first or second inject. Meanwhile the opponent has to build units as well (or he is losing way too much larva spawn time/mining time). But how does he know what he has to react to, when at best he sees a bunch of eggs and that his opponent has mined 100gas or more and it could be all drones.
You can't play reactive to that kind of stuff, because you have to make decisions before you know what the opponent is doing. You either prepare blindly for such a rush after scouting a gas and you get ahead if you do, or you don't and you fall behind/die when he is commiting. And similarily with baneling rushes. I don't think Soulkey plays ZvZ blindly, or most pro Zergs. But the point is that casters do a really bad job at explaning what goes through the mind of players in ZvZ. Bitter is the only one who makes an attempt really but neither the casters nor the observers focus on explanation the logic behind ZvZ. Basic rules of ZvZ: - Always keep an overlord in vision of the natural mineral line and check if your opponent is droning it up. Casters and observers completely fail to highlight that in ZvZ both players are constantly monitoring the drone count of their opponent at the natural to either punish excessive greed or get ready for a defensive stance if an attack comes. - If your opponent takes gas, see if he or she continues to mine with 3 donres after 100 is mined and how much gas is mined by clicking on it. - Obviously always put overlords between you and your opponent to see army movements - Check queen count and if your opponent has a defensive spine. High queen count and a spine indicates that no aggression is coming and if it's coming it'll be pretty bad aggression that should be easily stopped. Low queen count and no spine means you should make units, even if your opponent is not making units your opponent will be hard pressed to hold your offensive. Yeah, there goes a lot into it. Still, when Shine can go 5-0 vs Soulkey with like 5 different rushes, then I think the matchup does have too much volatility early. Well, shine has shown capable of cheesing the best in any matchup and Maru could also 4-0 Innovation on the back of cheeses. Maybe Shine just figured out something about Soulkey's ZvZ, studied him and found a hole in his scouting patterns that no one thusfar was able to exploit? Just like Maru did with Innovation who fixed it afterwards.
ZvZ is still Soulkey's best matchup at 65%, it's hard to explain that with mere luck.
Of course it isn't "just a gamble". But it is supervolatile early on. It is, you make a mistake, you get punished. Forces you to not make them.
Like in any matchup, there are going to be some outstanding players. Even in the darkest ages of PvP gambles in 2010-11, MC had an amazing record vs Protoss. That doesn't proof you cannot win quite often by gambling, even if the opponent has a practical chance of scouting/reacting to it. It does proof that actually, and I never got why people called 4gate vs 4gate a gamble. It might have been stale and repetitive, but it was the opposite of gambling, everyone did the same strat, whoever had the best micro, in this case MC, won. Because of warpgate both sides had the exact same numbers, whoever microed it better won.
Even practical chances are chances and I don't think it should be up to the defender to play perfectly not to die. It should be up to the aggressor to outplay the opponent so he can take a win. If that isn't the case (which it isn't in certain ZvZ/PvP scenarios as well as in general with some Protoss rushes like Immortal/Sentry that requires the Zerg to react perfectly and the Protoss to not FF perfectly) you just create a game of easy wins instead of back and forth games. If it was up to the aggressor to outplay then no one would ever be aggressive any more. Rather what happens in this game are timing windows in matchups. There are simply times in matchups where aggression is rewarded and where defence is rewarded, this encourages players to move out at an appropriate time and then fall back to defend at a later time thereby encouraging interaction. Defenders advantage is not a constant.
Tel'darim Altar, Terminus, Crevasse to name a few others were FFEs were good.
These maps all came after Shakuras Plateau. This was the first map with a natural that could be walled so easily and where FFE started as a thing.
And they also tried them on maps liek Metalopolis (before it got changed to make it a little better) or Crossfire.
Maybe FFE came to a certain extend because of map changes, the map changes however came because after MC's second GSL title Protoss winrates dropped down to 30-40% on the highest level. Those map changes with TDA, Terminus and Crevasse in fact were added exactly in the GSL that MC won so I find it hard to belief that they were added in a reaction to bad protoss winrates after that point.
I meant the matchup in terms of predictability of BOs. Terrans are usually going to go for some 3CC+hellion build, Zergs are usually going to go for some 3base build with mutalisks.
Yeah, I can see that, but don't you rather have it that every game is a surprise? People started to complain that every TvZ was biomine after a while as well. The thing with Protoss, for all its faults, is at the very least that whatever protoss is going to do is a big surprise. Casters are always in PvZ/PvT/PvP talking about whatever the protoss is going to do because Protoss players seem to come up with a new build every week seemingly.
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United States4883 Posts
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It does proof that actually, and I never got why people called 4gate vs 4gate a gamble. It might have been stale and repetitive, but it was the opposite of gambling, everyone did the same strat, whoever had the best micro, in this case MC, won. Because of warpgate both sides had the exact same numbers, whoever microed it better won.
It wasn't just 4gate. Offensive 4gate was by far the most successful build, but there were defensive 4gates which were pretty good against offensive 4gates, and then there were 3gate/robo and 3gate/blink and 3gate/DT and stuff like that, which would often counter defensive 4gates etc. And there was really no way to know beforehand whether your opponent would stop probe production at 21 or 24.
If it was up to the aggressor to outplay then no one would ever be aggressive any more. Rather what happens in this game are timing windows in matchups. There are simply times in matchups where aggression is rewarded and where defence is rewarded, this encourages players to move out at an appropriate time and then fall back to defend at a later time thereby encouraging interaction. Defenders advantage is not a constant.
It already is on the aggressor to outplay the opponent in any matchup in which you don't just rely on scouting. Basically all aggression past 10mins is such that you have to outplay the opponent to make it work. The problem is the scouting/BO-interactions before that + the problem that every bigger attack against 2bases is an immidiate gameender when it succeeds. There is no "he got ahead by sniping the natural" like it is with 3rd or 4th bases. If you lose the natural, the game is immidiatly over. There is no back and forth with attacks that hit before players are spread out. It makes for boring games in which players just optimize the rush until it is maximum commitment with maximum power. Unlike later on in the game in which you have a decent army regardless of whether your opponent does a commited attack or just pokes around. And you have the strategical choices to give up some land or counterattack when you are under attack. All of that is not true if you play against an opponent who just built a fuckton of units and crashes into your frontdoor when your units are all just spawning because the reaction to scouting the 5extra gateways is that tight, or the reaction to scouting the 28zerglings spawning after the first injects is that tight.
It is, you make a mistake, you get punished. Forces you to not make them.
It doesn't work like that. Noone does or will ever play mistake-free. With that attitude you can justify every "imbalance" in the game because we don't know if it would have been imbalanced if Terrans stayed out of range perfectly upon seeing an infestor in WoL (which they often did, but not always), or if there wasn't a magic BO+scouting pattern that would always hold 5rax reaper if done perfectly.
Hell, even if you don't argue with balance and stuff, it is just boring if your opponent has a 50% winrate BO that can force you to play only zergling/baneling for 20mins "because that is the reaction to constant ling/bling pressure". Even when it is just 45% winrate, that's way too high for a way too easy build. It's a game of two players. It shouldn't be possible for one player to completely dictate what the other player is doing for a longer periode of time.
+ Show Spoiler +These maps all came after Shakuras Plateau. This was the first map with a natural that could be walled so easily and where FFE started as a thing.
Those map changes with TDA, Terminus and Crevasse in fact were added exactly in the GSL that MC won so I find it hard to belief that they were added in a reaction to bad protoss winrates after that point.
So, they came after Sharkuras. FFE wasn't a thing, not even on Shakuras, until after those maps were added. Apart from the one or other random occasion, everyone was 3gate expanding back then.
The map changes I was talking about were not "adding a bunch of maps that also turned out to be FFE-able", but over the course of 2011 replacing nearly all maps on which it wasn't possible to FFE with maps on which it was possible.
Also, it wasn't just lucky incidents that TDA, Terminus and Crevasse were FFE-able. Even without FFE, Protoss needs chokes to expand off forcefields as well.
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EPT
